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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
I think the atmospheric change with the audio in particular was great - love the sound of the bugs and different wildlife props to the sound team.
I don't think it would do much harm to make it a TINY bit darker - just to have a more distinguishable transition from day to night. I don't think it has to get much darker as I don't think the entire world needs to have like Steven said - this survival element to it. But absolutely, lets see how you can incorporate this into places like Caves, Dungeons etc.
How about an event where an artificial solar eclipse is created which provides a temporary increased darkness to the world until the event is resolved?
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I am curious to what extent the constellations will actually have relevance in the world. I agree that a little more information might be needed to be critical of it, so I might have to reserve judgement on it.
-A little darker is fine.
-If it's going to rain, there should be clouds
I think the timing Steven discussed sounds about right. I usually only get to sit down and play games for 2-3 hours at a time, 4-6 if I'm lucky. If I get stuck playing at night the entire time I'm in-game for a 3 hour session, that doesn't feel great. So having at least one taste of day and night over the course of 3 hours sounds like a good deal.
Personally, I think the night could afford to be just a touch darker. Not by much, but a little.
What aspects of the day & night cycle w/ constellations are important to you?
I want to be able to see different events / NPC behaviors / mob behaviors occurring either only during the day or only at night. This will lend the player incentive to re-explore different areas during various play sessions. I think having some areas where night time really feels dark and dangerous is good. The innermost part of a thick, wooded forest where the nocturnal predators come out more frequently at night, for example.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the day & night cycle w/ constellations?
Excited to learn more about constellations, how they'll be activated / taken advantage of, how they'll affect players, what other game systems get to synergize with their appearance, whether we'll be able to become astronomers and track the patterns of the stars.
-I Never experienced it personally and after looking at it fast-forwarded using gm controls it's even more confusing, but the existence of day & night cycles should change a lot of that must be done.
What aspects of the day & night cycle w/ constellations are important to you?
-Constellations are something new but they exist IRL and having to look at constellations only at night time is good but having a device that allows the user to observe them during the day would be better or just makes it fare for people who only log in during the day time due to time constrictions in IRL.
Is there anything, in particular, you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the day & night cycle w/ constellations?
- Having to look at constellations or finding them is a new system and it's exciting and cannot wait to play and find them. I like stargazing. My only concern is the amount of visibility where having so many moons should make it very bright at night. If there were moon cycles where some moons disappear and reduce the visibility would be cool.
A: During the stream I wasn't convinced/immersed enough to feel like it was night time. I'm not advocating for a survival-esque level of darkness because that's ridiculous and quite frankly just frustrating. But I do feel it should be darker. Personally, I feel the old vanilla WOW night cycle captured the perfect level of darkness with the moon acting as a great light source. Emphasis on the old vanilla WOW because modern night time in wow is brighter than when it was back in 2004.I still have nostalgia moments of starting a new character and leveling in Durotar with the moon shining on the surface. I feel that nostalgia because I felt immersed.
The lighting in the distance was more acceptable than the immediate lighting around your character. It barely transitioned from day to night around the character, especially the nearby ground.
I wasn't quite certain if I was understanding the whole server time correlating to day-night cycle. Is server time not a 1:1 ratio with real life 24 hour clocks? If it's a 1:1 ratio that would mean night time occurs when most people sleep. I don't think that's a good idea. God forbid closing off certain events, mechanics, quests on a particular day and night cycle. I think GW2 does it quite well where day and night cycles throughout a 24 hour period.
Miscellaneous
1. I noticed it was mentioned that the undead have faster regen timings than other mobs. I think it might be an interesting mechanic if during the night, you bring an undead mob toward a light source (such as a lamp post) to thwart the increased regen mechanic. Given that the undead are weaker to 'holy' sources of damage, perhaps a 'holy' light source of some kind may impact their environmental effects.
2. I feel the fog could be polished up a bit. While this is of course personal preference, and depending on artistic style the team is going for, the ground fog was a cool sight at first but quickly became forgotten. As if I just stopped noticing it/caring it was there. The ground fog itself is great but I feel it would benefit the ominous tone if fog was moreso throughout the atmosphere with reduced visibility. Imagine the only thing you see as an undead approaches you is it's glowing eyes in the deep fog as it slowly walks through the fog revealing the remainder of the undead body. Now imagine 10 undead enemies in the fog, each a set of glowing eyes shining through the fog. Way more immersive, creepy, and keeps you on your feet.
3. Either intentional or not, I think I saw fog dissipate when the cleric AOE spell was being used. Could be the poor video compression and maybe I'm seeing things but I thought it was (and think it would be cool) if the AoE spell DID dissipate fog.
What aspects of the day & night cycle w/ constellations are important to you?
Are there examples of day & night cycles in other games that you feel are done well? If so, in what ways?
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the day & night cycle w/ constellations?
The night is way to bright.
I was hoping for a dark night.
I think you guys should try a dark dark night in A2 and change it if it indeed doesn't work for the reasons Steven said/other reasons.
2. What aspects of the day & night cycle w/ constellations are important to you?
Immersion primarely but I would appreciate it affecting abilities and questing and such.
3. Are there examples of day & night cycles in other games that you feel are done well?
Warcraft 3.
5. Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the day & night cycle w/ constellations?
uhhh....
It doesnt have to be survival/horror game dark but the night on the graveyard didnt "feel" like it was nighttime.
Maybe the view distance could be reduced by a big chunk and/or textures a bit darker. This would make those 5 year old lanterns be even more impressive and significant as they could be light circles in a distance.
Maybe races can have dark vision or casters can have a light spell. You could have magic items that let you see better in the dark. Stealth could be more effective at night.. list goes on.
Especially when running night time caravans this could be a layer of depths to it too. Do I light the lanterns of my caravan to increase my vision range or do I let them turned off to be less visible? Same for naval combat and stuff.
I would love to see the amazing day/night be a kind of gameplay layer for us.
Oh and just one thought, the day/night cycle shouldnt be dividable by 24h. If you have 4h day/night cycle then every day the casual 9 to 5 worker will log in at the same ingame time, maybe only has an hour or two to play, so he always plays at night and never sees the sun. Even in the video game he plays.
" The fog itself looks pretty good, but comes off awkward because it sits on trees and hills like snow instead of how fog actually acts in real life. The hills and trees should rise above the fog line in a place like this and not have just a layer of fog on every flat surface like the individual branches. "
The lunar eclipse could possibly be a random "special" event happening every now and then and it would decrease the visibility greatly. Perhaps you would need in-game items or spells to see your surroundings outside of populated areas without in-game lighting. Perhaps some of these items or spells would increase visibility only for yourself or for your raid/group. Perhaps there could be in-game items, skills or spells which could give a hint or exact time when the next lunar eclipse will happen.
I think this kind of game mechanic would be awesome for (large scale) pvp & naval content to begin with. And I cant think of any other game with such a mechanic.
Perhaps because of a good reason lol - but this is just an idea
The details how the lunar eclipse would happen I havent thought about, but realism is not necessary in a fantasy game
Other feedback that I have:
* I think the night & day cycles should be slightly longer than a few hours.
* The constellation mechanic is cool and I think the lunar eclipse could be a good addition to that. Dark nights and constellations work well together. Maybe some constellations could only be found during lunar eclipse?
* There could be so much other content made for lunar eclipse too: special boss fights or quests, items to be found, maybe some ghost ship which would spawn at the sea only during lunar eclipse?
BTW: I keep writing solar eclipse, continuously need to fix with lunar
Also don't make the day and night cycles too long and apear at the same time every day. I imagine it wouldn't be so fun for those who can only play at the same time only would end up playing at nights in game.
Beyond that, my only concern is constellations becoming either a mandatory thing for whatever role they play in player's class builds, or so trivial that it might as well not be there at all.
The day night cycle was cool. The switch between ambient noise from day to night was striking. I do wish the dark was juuuuust a little more dark.
I liked the constellations, but I don’t quite get the system yet. Personally, I want a system that I can turn my UI off as much as possible and use celestial navigation. But it’s a nice to have. Seems cool, but I think more info on the functional aspects of constellations would be awesome.
Nice job!
Making the night unimportant removes a lot of situations from the game.
It should for example be more dangerous for travellers/sailers and caravans at night.
And the night should also impact pvp. When should we move our troops? Should we attack at night or day?
All these things help make the game more immersive and dynamic.
I would also like to see the weather impact the night. So when there is overcast the night is darker than when the sky is clear.
The cycle should be on the long side. In some MMOs I don't even recognise that the night has come and gone which I think is a shame.
You can do so many exiting things with darkness. Don't reserve it for dungeons please.
I think there are some things that are important to this game feature and here are some ideas that I think could be leveraged with the day night cycle:
First at a high level I think that some aspects of gameplay should be limited to day OR night.
Constellations:
-I loved this feature. This is freaking cool. Never seen it before in an MMO.
-These could be used to navigate or do questing with. Like maybe you have to do quests to unlock and map out all the constellations. Unlocking them opens up more game features.
-Maybe you can pray to certain deity/constellation for buffs.
-Constellations could unlock a couple unique abilities for each class or something now that you have the backing of that deity.
-These could unlock entire ability trees or provide expansions with more content.
There is likely so much you could with these, I don't even know lol.
Moons:
-It would be awesome to see a quarter moon or half moon. I know there are three moons at the moment, but maybe this could add a layer of gameplay. Examples are below...
-Moons looked great to me. Most games have a boring one moon thing. I like that it feels like your really on another world where its different. The shattered moon is very cool too.
-I'm not sure if moons also rotate themselves, or just rotate across the sky but it would be awesome if it felt like they were also rotating. Or maybe one stays the same and two of them rotate. Again making it feel different than our own moon. (boring we have to see the same side every night in real life). Make it more fun and interesting!!
-Can we have one of the moons be a day moon? Just barely visible in the sky?
Day/Night Cycle:
Cycle Time:
-I would like the day cycle to last longer than a night cycle, making night a bit more special when it comes. I feel like this makes you say to yourself "ohhh, its night time now and I need to switch gears and go get some other things done while it lasts". Kinda makes it feel like you need to break from what your doing and you pay more attention to it.
-As far as the actual realistic time or gametime.. not sure how to best slice that. Most games I have played you get like 1 or 2 hours real time in a cycle. As long as you have enough time to complete activities your aiming for. I think I would lean on more the longer side of this. I feel like 1 hour is too quick. I'd say go 2.5 hours for day and an hour and a half or so for night.
Visibility:
-Night time might be very slightly darker. However I understand and agree with the direction Steven stated during the livestream here. If you think about it in terms of real life, the moon actually can make the night very bright. Vera has three moons currently. I would imagine that sorta realistically, three moons would actually provide a ton of light during the night sky. I know its a game, but applying some logic here this makes sense.
-If we did have half moons or quarter moons, maybe this impacts the level of light in game. Even a little more dynamic lighting. Just a thought.
-Spell effects looked cool to me in their effect on the environment during night.
Cycle Triggers:
-Enemies could be stronger or weaker during night or day.
-Some enemies may or may not be present during day or night. Encouraging re-exploration and gameplay loops of an area during each cycle.
-Rare enemy mobs and/or bosses (small or large, single or group content) spawns might only happen during day or night.
-Very Rare enemy mobs and/or bosses (small or large, single or group content) spawns with multiple conditions. An example of this might be that a werewolf boss will only appear at night and the full moon. Any other moon condition and he wont appear or spawn. Spawn location could be random to make killing it more fair. A large sandworm might only spawn during the day in a desert biome, etc...
-Certain materials for gathering might only appear during day or night cycles.
-Quest lines that might only be available in one cycle or the other
-Religious events
-Environment effects like the fog/haze, glow bugs, flora/fauna changes similar to the weather effects, etc
-Sound, like crickets, the owls you had, etc
-Certain gear may have a light glow or effect based on day or night.
-Access to certain areas of the map could be dependent here.
- Very smooth immersive transition and transition time from one cycle to the next. Not just a quick change in sounds or environment, bugs etc, but a weave in/out of these features over a period of time. I don't wanna see butterflies suddenly change into glow bugs for example within a couple seconds.
I'm wondering if the map will be celestially realistic or moons tweaked to be more visually impressive. Ie will we see only 1 moon or no moons at some times, phases of the moons etc. Love the explodey moon.
Not clear on what the point of constellations are but it seemed annoying that they weren't more visible, surely they are not playing hide and seek. how will I plan my game play around what stars are visible when?
Imo survival games add a lot of tension, and hold the potential for the risk vs reward that seems to be core to the Ashes philosophy. Irl day/night cycles vary, as does the brightness. What we saw on stream seemed like a realistic maximum (full moon, clear sky, etc...). I think having "realistic" day/night cycles would add a tremendous amount to the game. At the poles the days/nights could longer but also less sever (the 21hr days in alaska for example often have prolonged periods of dusk), some nights might be darker than others based on the moon phases, etc... I know this sounds like a lot, but if you just ask, some physics/astrology nerds will 100% do the work for you. Just offer to name something after them. Your biggest problem then will be someone getting in trouble for taking super computer time to model the forming of the solar system. Obviously you dont want to deal with the actual physics, but all you need to know is what the cycles are like, and then approximate them. This info for a similar system probably already exists and is in the public domain.
Feel
I think varying the night/day cycle would add a lot to the feel of the game. Have dark nights be rare perhaps, or a red moon, etc... but have the effects of that be felt. Maybe caravans dont want to run on dark nights? Maybe it's more dangerous on those nights? Maybe guilds plan attacks based on these cycles so they can sneak up in the dark (and have a way of preventing/mitigating this of course). This also creates natural scarcity which can allow you to turn certain nobs to help balance the economy (see examples below). This will also make it so that people living in one area have more of a concern for this than others. This can then encourage player interaction as people need to ask around before going out into the wilds at night (and older players get to show off their knowledge).
Systems
As Steven has said before, systems make the game, not graphics. I would echo many of the ideas in the posts above. Make some rare bio-luminescent plants only findable on dark nights. Certain creatures are more or less active at different times of the day/night in addition to being more powerful. Have certain races better at seeing in the dark. Add potions to mitigate the darkness. Have light sources available, let them keep some creatures away and draw others (or just make it easier to see light sources from a long way off). Have secret passages only discoverable or enter-able at certain times. Have certain scary creatures only hunt at night (but have valuable loot!). Have land based angler fish analogs that imitate rare glowing herbs to up the risk/reward for players. Lean into the difficulty changes. Graveyard at night should be a bad idea or more like a hard mode with an appropriate reward.
TLDR Make the dark risky, and therefore more rewarding. And add a way to mitigate/brighten it to appease a wider audience/create a gold sink).
PS The concept of ideas being "stolen" is largely a fallacy. Sure being first can help/is important, but being the best is more important. Just because someone else opened a restaurant serving the same kind of food as you, or made a similar phone as you, doesn't mean they will be more successful. You just have to make it better, and no one else will remember the other guy.
The team member bars should be on the right side of the screen and selectable with hotkeys. The selected member highlighted in the list. The player own bars should be the same size with those of the other members. It is enough that the player is always on the first position (but I have some doubts about that restriction too - maybe I would like to be on the last position or in the middle, depending on what class I play)
A more compact list could also be available for bigger teams.
The fighter hammer spell animation makes me feel that it does not damage mobs very close in front of the fighter because the damage intuitively should be at the head not on the handle. Such an animation could be combined nicely with a different one which pushes close enemies away, in order to be at the appropriate range for this 2nd hammer spell (not sure how is called)
The cleric was holding the staff too high while running but the staff was sliding during casting to a different position in the hand, then back when the casting ended. That needs polish.
I hope nobody will be offended... but the Vek running animation is bad, no hand movement, the legs do not extend enough... looks like an old lady crossing the street with bags in her hands. Maybe the armor causes that kind of run? I am not used to such animation.
The constellation highlight is too easy and obvious, like for dummies. I would prefer players to have to learn to recognize configurations on the sky. If needed, you can add devices and spells to help pinpointing toward the relevant areas but experienced players should not need such highlighted drawing. Now to what purpose they are used was not clear to me. If that is not yet decided then I hope you will add some challenging sky mechanics, not astronomy or astrology but something else. You have now the chance to be innovative.
I loved that the character was blinking when you zoomed onto it's face.
It’s felt great. The ambiance sound effects are adding to the nightly atmosphere.
What aspects of the day & night cycle w/ constellations are important to you?
A large variety of constellations.
Some constellations not visible depending if you are south or north of a continent.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the day & night cycle w/ constellations?
Night is not dark enough. It could be a bit darker. Not too much because isn’t a survival game but at the showcase it looked more like dusk. Lamps we saw in the cemetery was pointless because of that.
It looked pretty smooth, very nice and I just loved to see there's multiple moons and additional system planned (constellations, mosters etc)
What aspects of the day & night cycle w/ constellations are important to you?
So what imo would be important to have/look out for are things like:
- the "Darkness Level"
I feel that it was great to see a night time that felt like at night but wasn't too dark to impact gameplay in any way or even turning the world more into a kind of survival game with PvPers and monsters just waiting to ambush around every corner. However, I would love to see you playing with that. Whether it's dungeons being more dark, certain areas being darker and maybe even dangerous in some way. And hell, maybe even use that dark survival aspect and create areas that are hard to pass through at night! Also since skills are already lighting up the surrounding in the amazing UE5 way I think it'd be great to see usage of items such as torches for some specific things like dungeons.
Just one really important things for these things to work would be that people can't just adjust their brightness in the settings and skip the mechanics that way.
- the world changing with the cycle
I think it's boosting immersiveness by a lot being able to walk through a world and have it feel completely different depending on the time of the day. Monsters changing, monsters spawning, fog, sound (amazing job there), NPCs changing spots or even going to bed, dungeons opening/closing...
And one of my personal favorites is the nature changing as well, flowers closing up at night, some mystical plants doing the opposite, glowing stuff, moving stuff, color changing stuff. I just love that haha
- making the cycle/mechanincs important
Important might not be the correct word, but I think it's really important to make such great features not turn out irrelevant in the end. The constellations sound amazing, it would be a shame to just not need them at some point or some just being useless.
Same with any other mechanic regarding the cycle, like the mosters, areas, etc. Spawning monsters that nobody need would be sad to see, instead if you want an area to be only attractive during a certain time of the day you could just despawn the mobs and instead make a great visual change of the area, make it look amazing and maybe hide an acchievement somewhere.
I think this is basically just about balancing things out, as it is with so many things in a game. Keeping stuff interesting and relevant would just be really nice to see
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the day & night cycle w/ constellations?
Actually there's just 2 things I want to mention here, because I really think what we've seen so far was just amazing already.
First would just be balancing like mentioned above again, to keep things interesting.
And second is something I'm not worried about myself, but a lot of people seem to be kinda unhappy with the brightness of the night time even though we've just seen one work in progress in one area for the first time, and Steven mentioned there's going to be darker areas. We know people talk and complain first before they listen and think, however this is not going to change and I just think to stop the majority of complains would be good for the game PR wise and so imo just showing them, instead of just saying it, that there will be darker areas would help there.
I liked the aesthetic. I agree with Steven's comments that an MMO should not feel like a survival game as night falls. However, would it be possible to limit view distance at night without making everything darker in a way that makes it feel a bit more like night without actually being less lit? That way I could still visually see the world, but the night offers more than just being a darker hue, and I can imagine some visually stunning moments as dawn arrives and my view pans out into the wide world.
What aspects of the day & night cycle w/ constellations are important to you?
It is important for me to have night and day feel different. More enemies at night, different sound features, and certain exclusive resources. If the day/night cycle and constellations don't offer more that just aesthetics, they don't seem that valuable, especially compared to seasons.
Are there examples of day & night cycles in other games that you feel are done well? If so, in what ways?
Not really. I feel like most games I am familiar with just cut off the player resources by removing visibility and increasing mob density/aggro. This is fine in a survival game, but in any other genre, this just limits the player to only really enjoying the game half the time.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the day & night cycle w/ constellations?
I am concerned that the constellations seemed hard to find even though Steven knew where they should be. Going only from what was shown maybe some sort of auditory indicator like a twinkle or a visual indicator like faint constellation lines becoming darker as you go from cold to hot in your search would improve the experience. I am also a bit excited Steven said the day/night cycle would be long with a very gradual transition. I don't know what "long" means in this context, but I would hope the cycle is hour day hour night with 5-10 minute transitions. I'm mainly excited for this as it fits a similar 1:12 time keeping ratio with the proposed 1 week seasons.
It was the briefest of mentions, but the one he went into the graveyard for, Steven did clarify ahead of time that the constellation would only be visible from an area inside the graveyard. A reason to visit/see that part of the world - though he also made mention that collecting the constellations *might* be involved in questing/accomplishments.
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This was an odd an un-expected reveal. I think they made comments about a couple of other games featuring something similar, but yours truly hasn't come across it, before. It seems like a fun innovation, whoever originally came up with it, for MMO's.
My hopes for it?
Asides from something meaningful like a reward for mapping all or groups of the constellations, I really hope that those of us whom will play the game enough will be able to gain bearing by looking at the stars/constellations. I.e. If you figure out a constellation that's visible year-round, you could also know what direction you're heading by orienting yourself to it, and perhaps even tell where you are in the world by your location relative to the constellation's. It's possible, since the world won't wrap at the edges.
Really great to get a look at this feature!
1. Whole day/night cycle last 8h so we have 3 cycles in the game during 24h in real
- day 4h
- sunset 1h
- night 2h
- sunrise 1h
2. Year cycle last 1 month in real.
- 2 weeks summer
- 1 week autumn
- 1 week winter
- 1 week spring
3. There are areas where winter and summer is all the time
4. As for constellation mechanic, it looks innovatory and somthing new but I don't think it's good idea conect it with 1 race when it will give some buffs, I can't imagine this mechanic in practice and looks unfair. Nevertheless I see constellation innovatory mechanic in profesions (gathering) called astronomic and final product could be some constellation sheets used in enchanting to improve gear.
1. How do you feel about the day & night cycle?:
Always approve of day/night cycles.
2. What aspects of the day & night cycle w/ constellations are important to you?:
I could have sworn this was said in the stream at some point, but based on everyone's reactions, I'm not sure if it was now..... Celestial Navigation would be one useful way to employ the existence of Constellations. Unlocking hidden mysteries of ancient architecture (Celestial Architecture)...doorways only open when the stars are in the right places. Omens etc, for event triggers, when the Moon appears above the maidens head, it turns to the color of blood and blah blah such and such happens...
Agricultural astrology
3. Concerns:
Night time does not feel dark enough. I agree with another poster that the light from the lamp posts were not needed with the current iteration of darkness present. Due to this, immersion is not quite there for a graveyard full of zombies. Not enough fog thickness. I personally believe it would be cool to see glowing eyes in a fog, while barely being able to make out the silhouette of the monsters in a thick fog.
Fog could trigger more so around nastier opponents as well..
P.S.
I know you guys can do it!!!
The below video link of How To Apply A Simple Fog Inside Unreal Engine 5 is obviously not to tell the Devs how to apply fog...as they clearly know.
I am in the “make it darker” camp, especially for a graveyard. The newb areas can be brighter, but if we are going into a graveyard at night, it should be super dark, and we should bring our own light…
BYOL: I think having some of the support classes have utility light capability and night vision would be way more fun. Having the ranger run off into the darkness (with personal night vision) and bringing back some zombies as people are huddled around the cleric who has a halo of light spell up would be a great mechanic.
Constellation and skybox. It’s an interesting direction, but certain constellations visible for a fix local vantage point was confusing. Overall, I like the direction of an active skybox that has timing aspects beyond just “day/night” having lunar, planetary and constellation alignments that effect in world events that have to be discovered would be awesome. The three moons could align during a real world full moon for example, and some planets once a quarter or real world year…. Would be super interesting.