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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
What, how is it not an RPG lmao.
It checks all the RPG boxes.
Stats, progression, story, questing... the list goes on
Are you saying this just because it originally was to be entirely pvp-focused?
I already mention that system many times in this forum, Albion online have some of the best features in mmorpgs, ashes should take some notes from Albion
But, again, even the devs don't list it as an RPG.
Fanta Orange shares a whole lot of boxes with Coke, doesn't make it a Coke. Doesn't even make it a cola.
My thoughts exactly. Albion Online has every system working together to produce a greater whole that keeps the game sustainable and most features from becoming dead content even in the long run. I can only hope AoC takes many of its strategies from Albion's playbook. Or rather, instead of taking the actual ideas, figure out what makes the ideas work and modifies them for AoC.
However, likewise, AoC has systems that make it superior to Albion. For example, I love the concept of progressing nodes. In addition, the corruption, non-combatant, and combatant paradigm provide an incentive to fight back against PvPers unlike Albion, which punishes you for fighting back by locking you out from potential escape once you commit. The avoidance of cluster queues via open-world gaming with limitless player involvement is another thing I'm looking forward to.
But these are only concepts. We'll see if AoC can pull them off in a synergistic and satisfying way.
There are a number of design tools that are apparent from a town planning perspective that achieve this
Now NW works on the basis of a smaller total population than AoC however I strongly believe, as stated in earlier posts, these are design elements that come into play in real life design just as much as adapted versions for virtual.
If cannot interpret these points then strongly suggest bring in a Town Planner, Architect and/or Landscape Architect to review the adaptation.. and you may just find a stronger improvement from the Artist only approach.
I agree as well, proximity chat should be usable anywhere. Trolls will exist regardless. Do not cut features just because you can't solve the issues yet
While you could hope it will help communication between players, it will make it harder ...
Some people like me will have permanent shutdown proximity chat. I use vocal chat only to speak people random subject (so ... can be often people far from my character, proximity will be useless) or because the need of coordination is strong enough.
So i will have proximity turn off all time, and here come problem : some people will try to communicate, i will ignore them because i don't even know they speak... the time they consider "maybe he turned proximity off" many things could happen...
(i have nothing against group/raid/guild voice chat also. i am even in favor to it)
Rather than having a 'blacklist' or 'mute' for Proximity chat, have it be a pure whitelist with one extra point.
"People in your parties automatically get added to your whitelist."
Also that you can see some small indicator of people talking next to their nameplate, obviously.
So when someone tries to talk to you, they know that until they party up with you, or you manually whitelist them in some other way, you can't hear them. They'll take whatever steps they need to make it so you can hear them. From then on, you can always hear them in future until you remove them from the whitelist.
Since this is a 'broadcast' style comms protocol, the filter wouldn't be too hard to implement in this direction, and the entire point of proximity chat is that it doesn't require secondary curation. i.e. if you wanted to talk to a different group of people in voice chat, you had to get around this anyway.
Then you can have people who also just 'auto-whitelist everyone' or 'have no specific whitelist at all'.
Might work well for the feeling of nodes too, since it's the equivalent of 'getting to know the NPCs when you enter a new RPG town'. None of the 'locals' will talk to you until you prove yourself.
For example lumbering, tree resources cycles with seasons, huge amount of tree resources will be there at start of one cycle, and increase the respawn time(with a random number or not) through time, then tree resources will not be a resource so easy to find in environment at some point but tree resources point will keep respawn but not for everyone can get, until we are having a new season cycle, new tree resources will be there with random but relevant locations and start with a random huge amount resource point then decrease with time again.
And if Ashes want to increase the complexity, can make factors like if players chop old tree not enough will decrease the amount and increase the respawn time of herbs or maybe stones also, or maybe gather too much resources will effect how many resource will be in next cycle.
I remember a few years ago when Albion was still being backed and I think they hit a milestone that meant the game would have a mobile version. I swear, right then and there, a long time ago, I thought to myself: this game will either have shitty graphics or be full of teleports, loading screens and, by consequence, TP camping.
If the game didn't have to be mobile friendly they could've done so much more and the game could've been so much better, without the awful limitation of mobile devices. That makes me very sad.
Other devs just need to take they features and use in a new looking gen game like AOC and voila, they have great pvx mechanics, the hellgates , corrupted dungeons, best mount system, with fighting, transport, war, gank mounts, everything in the world is player crafted even mobs , dungeons drops
1. As mentioned , the resource gathering was one of the fun aspects of the game. I also enjoyed Fishing but the random part could get tweaked.
2. The Ambiance in the game was top notch. Listening to players shoot, chop wood and mine from various distances really helped to make the world feel alive. The echo from mining in an open area....well done.
3. Somebody mentioned that the creature AI was poor. It was actually pretty descent. I liked how, as an example, the Lynx would circle around you. Alligators would tail slap you. There is always room for improvement but it was good enough.
4. The forts/cities really felt alive. Always a lot of players moving around. You could hear the various sounds of crafting as you moved past them.
5. The graphics were on par with AoC. Some of the graphics were amazing.
The stuff that was a negative for me..
1. Traveling was a little bit to harsh. I understood not being able to get back to a point to quickly but felt that the recall to Inn could have been shortened a little more.
2. For a game that was supposed to be played with other players, this game was amazingly anti- group friendly. Everything from start points to a lack of quest sharing made it difficult to run with a friend for playing.
3. The chat system was poor. That needs a lot of work. Also the game had a kind of voice system that I never got a handle on.
4. A lack of a shared bank system. A player should only have one common bank. Having a bank in every town in combination with how weight worked made it where I only played out of one area.
5. PvP felt kind of pointless. This is not a problem for AoC as this game is being designed from core up around a PvP system.
6. Combat needed balancing...still. The hatchet was stupid powerful and apparently that was after it got nerfed.
7. Lack of a double tap directional dodge. I know a lot of players did not play with this on but I got really good with it in GW2.
And now for my biggest complaint. This one really made me wonder how a game got so close to release but managed to just leave the ability out.
No ...Swimming.......
I was dumbfounded at this. Fortunately that will not be an issue for AoC.
I an going to play New World on release. I enjoyed it enough and AoC is still a long ways off. I guess in some ways the developers should be grateful that New World is not a fantastic game or a game set in a fantasy setting. It has one major edge over AoC. It does not have a monthly subscription requirement. Like it or not, that is an advantage.
If you venture out into the wilds, you should be aware of the return travel time just as much as the travel to the destination. The complaint I always see people have about "having to run back to town is too tedious" is outright ridiculous to me. Gamers have become too entitled to instant gratification.
Yea New World is definitely very anti-group. I hate that it's so hard to get the same quests.
As for the no shared bank system... that's a feature. It's also a feature of Ashes of Creation. It gives you more reason to claim a territory and to defend it, and to think of it as your home. If you could access your bank anywhere, you have no reason to dedicate yourself to a single town. This is further helped by the fact that if your faction owns a town you CAN actually access that storage inventory from other towns.
About PvP I agree, and I seriously hope they create PVP-only servers.
Peoples travel time complaints are because there's no danger in travel and thus it's uneventful... because there's no pvp threat when you have pvp off.
The devs are are trying to turn a square peg into a round hole and have to release before the product is actually a round hole.
There should be no surprise that group quests are not yet a thing for a game that was intended to be a hardcore, PvP-centric survival game.
It's like adding Coke to Fanta Pineapple and then saying, "WTF! I was expecting this to taste like just like Coke, but it still tastes like pineapple!"
Right now, New World is still a round peg trying to become a round hole.
Those are some very good points, narrower paths really do help. However, AoC has a collision system between players (is that true? I am not 100% sure), so I wonder if that would be possible? They might have avoided it so trolls don't block the streets. Sucks though, I would like to see dark dirty alleys in cities, where shady characters sell stolen goods XD
Well, when everything else is a dumpster fire being mediocre begins to look great.
It's very slight in New World.
But, collision is a Siege strategy in Ashes.
New World also doesn't have collision in cities, so that helped with that