Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
[Feedback Request] Tank Updates Shown in January Livestream
Hello glorious community,
We’d like your feedback on the Alpha Two Tank Updates shown during the January 2023 Development Update Livestream.
To help guide this conversation, here are a few thought starters you can choose from:
We’ll be compiling a report for the design team on Friday, February 8 2022, so please try to get your feedback into this thread by then!
Everyone here at Intrepid Studios looks forward to reading all the feedback you have to share!
Important Update
Hello all!
I know many of you have already left your feedback after watching the livestream on Friday. I wanted to drop a reminder that the video was re-recorded and posted on YouTube, which you can find here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwWK9HJNJRQ
Be sure to check that out, as it may change some of your feedback! ^_^
We’d like your feedback on the Alpha Two Tank Updates shown during the January 2023 Development Update Livestream.
To help guide this conversation, here are a few thought starters you can choose from:
- How do you feel about the direction the Tank archetype is taking, based on what we shared during the January Development Update?
- What are your thoughts regarding the Tank abilities shown in the January livestream?
- What are your thoughts regarding the Warhammer & shield, and 2H sword shown in the January livestream?
- Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Tank updates?
We’ll be compiling a report for the design team on Friday, February 8 2022, so please try to get your feedback into this thread by then!
Everyone here at Intrepid Studios looks forward to reading all the feedback you have to share!
Important Update
Hello all!
I know many of you have already left your feedback after watching the livestream on Friday. I wanted to drop a reminder that the video was re-recorded and posted on YouTube, which you can find here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwWK9HJNJRQBe sure to check that out, as it may change some of your feedback! ^_^
4
Comments
This is an area meant for 8 players. But we had 4.
Those 4 fighting 1 elite mob took about 15-20 seconds. That is perfect time to kill for a 4 man.
But that's the problem - this is an 8 man area, meaning an encounter is 6-10 seconds.
I think the area is under tuned if they had an 8 man party and an actual tank doing it's job properly.
1) Basically - the amount of struggle they had today, is what I expect and would like to see as if this was an 8 man group. I want to see an 8 man struggle in this area and not breeze through.
2) with that being said - I don't think a 4 man should be able to compete in the area. Maybe the regular elite mobs but DEFINATELY NOT on bosses. Seeing them being able to still overcome "bosses" as a 4man is disappointing.
3) I hope to see 8 man time to kill on elite mobs be on avg 20-25 seconds and bosses 40-60 seconds
overall today video shows it looks hard but when in is put in context, four level 13 doing an 8 man level 15-17 content - the difficulty setting is under tune.
The game environment keeps on looking better.
The adjustments to the hammer made it look better.
The hitfeedback made combat look better.
Here is some constructive feedback.
I‘ll focus on the tank, but i see issues for every archetype presented.
Aegis shield:
The shield is clipping through the enemies once you go melee, which has the issue that enemies seem to avoid the aegis once you are too close.
I personally dont see the reason for the strong curvature of it. Wouldnt a 2D plane better communicate your party where to stand and also opponents communicate how to play around the mechanic?
In the showcase the tank was able to use any ability and move in full speed during the aegis. The player was not forced into a trade off, „do i sacrifice dps and utility for more survivability for me and my mates?“. It basically becomes an ability spam once it’s available.
The way the ability behaved once the player faced a different direction seemed janky.
Due to not limiting player movement and rotation speed, its a shield that can face any direction any time.
General combat:
Encounters quickly became a tank and spank.
I dont feel like any mechanic of any archetype was relevant in approaching an encounter.
Abilities were just spammed once they are off cooldown.
Vfx felt overwhelming.
It was hard to recognize abilities, from both the mobs and players.
We have only seen encounters with 4 players and around 4 mobs max yet and i couldnt imagine it working out once you have the big player groups intrepid is aiming for.
I feel like some abilities lack visual clarity.
I wouldnt be able avoid abilities for the most part, because it lacks distinctive visual cues.
2 games that do that really well are Smite and the Blue Protocol beta for instance.
The charge ability should be weapon restricted, since the animation uses the left arm. The player must have a shield, or even sword/axe/hammer in the left hand to activate the ability.
Aegis and Grit 10/10, subtle, beautiful, signals that the ability is in effect. Minimal UI polution, maximum gameplay information conveted when they are active, (unlike the ugliness of ESO wow etc etc).
The double slash should belong to the Fighter. The yellow hammer crash that the fighter has should belong to the tank.
The stomp ability 10/10. Love the environmental interaction.
The weapon animations have good motion but need refinement. Work in progress. They are on a good path. Right now, too clunky.
I liked the weapon sizes. Not too large like some anime mmos, not too boring and small. 10/10 but maybe for higher levels, not the starting area.
The tank dealt 0 damage. In PvP this needs to change. It was very disheartening seeing how the targets HP was unaffected by the tanks abilities.
You need to find the perfect balance and it a concern for every mmo and their tanks.
- Active Blocking seems like an impossible idea to balance. Either you can block all attacks or its an additional stress factor that effectivly limits the stuff you can do with raid bosses. And Raid Boss mechanics can give more variety than just the normal active block. Blocking, tanking and following raid boss mechanics seems something that is to much at once and therefore limits the raid boss mechanics.
- The nameplate (and target UI) need improvements about difficulty and level
- Respawn times seems way to fast atm. Respawn timers should be dynamic and decrease based on the uptime of the mob. If the mob was alive a long time the whole respawn timer will be applied.
Edit: Further clarification on my first point: In the current iteration of the AEGIS ability is will always create a safe zone IN FRONT of the enemy mob because it will target the tank. To benefit from safe zone other melee players would have to move infront of the mob which is a big nono in traditional mmorpg combat.
where is the risk/reward and sense of danger if we can reset easily when shit hits the fan.
I couldn't even give you an honest opinion on how I feel about the Tank's abilities or holding Aggro because I genuinely don't know if we even got to see it in action or if Steven just didn't know how to play...
classically - Tanks would always be in the front and damage dealers behind him.
MMOs we learned to control NPC to turn it away from the group.
Remember Steven is also a D&D/Pathfinder guy - why would you allow the enemies behind you and allow them to get to your squishy. His outlook on tanks is on those classic singleplayer RPG.
So hopefully there are mechanics in play that will prevent tanks turning NPC back to group and tanks are gonna need to rely on their shield to protect their dps'ers. That would be a fresh take in mmo.
I would like to dispense with the notion that you need active blocking to 'react' to heavy blows or abilities...I have tanked in many games and it isn't any more 'skillful' to hold active block vs pressing a short duration defensive ability right before a powerful strike.
I noticed that pretty much every time Steven used active block he then immediately lost aggro. That's your conflict of interest.
First - Tank aggro seems to slip away easily from the tank, this could be fixed by adding a tank Aggro skill like FFXIV or make the tank lose threat less quickly
Second - The enemies should have more life in them, they stand still too much, or at least add more life into them because they same stale most of the time.
third - the sound effects ( I know it's a work in progress ) it needs a lot of work, it's decent but needs more lets say.. OOMPH
fourth - Skills needs a slight visual change upgrade ( they're good for an alpha where they stand )
fifth - Bosses were fantastic, though maybe you should add a bar that shows a boss move so you can dodge / know what ability is coming.
that's all for now, I would love to see where this game goes to!
1 - Active blocking sucks, full stop. I don't want tank gameplay to be distilled to holding the block button better or longer than everyone else. Blocking simply isn't engaging I want to use my abilities not just hold block.
2. The other abilities seemed pretty decent, the warhammer gameplay seemed fluid enough and 2h looks pretty good.
3. Simply put the threat management showcased was painful to look at, at no point did it appear as though Steven had threat managed or a strong control (if any) over the flow of combat. Hopefully this can be iterated upon and given the love it needs.
4. Just constructive criticism, please please stop recording these day of. a proper story board for what you want to showcase, showing it through gameplay and than voicing over what you are doing would be far more helpful to the audience. I understand you want to give a 'real' look at people playing the game, however I and others don't want to see people play the game we want to know how the game will be played. That requires clear communication for abilities and what's being shown.
5. (added) The Aegis ability needs work from a cone shaped shield to a radial shield. Requiring party members to move out of position to gain the effects of the buff is just bad design. A similar ability exists for the paladin in FFXIV and is only really useful when the boss is invulnerable. Making the tank still able to move is great however there aren't any real uses for this because anyone with a cleave you are asking your party to stand in damage to avoid a percentage of damage which is counter productive.
Update
The video released on youtube today was a far far greater showcase than the one we received on stream. Thank you for redoing that to better capture what you were going for. I will add in the video you also realize my concern #5 in active gameplay https://youtu.be/DwWK9HJNJRQ?t=2345 This ability is likely the one that would need the most work. As mentioned I believe the solution would be to make the shield a circle centered on the tank and have it act like a temporary "Aura-like" ability, ideally large enough that melee dps standing on the other side of mid-large sized opponents are within the AOE.
The Wolves of Verra
are recruiting: https://discord.gg/Rt8G3sNYac
For a 4 man doing a 8 man area, the TTK was 15 seconds - WAY TO SHORT.
I'm not looking for an easy walk in the park dungeon.
TTK for an 8 man should be 20-30 seconds.
Melee fighting looks fine as long as you don't move around. As soon as that starts, and you are in a recovery motion from an attack, you just start to hover/float around while in taht position before your legs recover from that recovery motion. Makes to combat look super floaty and not immersive.
It was maybe just Stevens settings, but I never really saw the dmg he took or when he was low. Generally spotting anything during combat was hard. Is the attack of the mob AoE in melee Range? Does he have aggro? What attacks/skills is the enemy even using? With all the clubbing and effects going on it was really hard to spot.
When you hover over the icon of a skill and have to read the description, the text is really small. Again, not sure if it was just bad twitch quality and it's easier to read once ingame myself, but looked too small for the time being.
Stevens had problems holding aggro, but I will attruibute that to Stevens gameplay and not the design for now ^^ Sorry Steven, love ya, but sometimes it hurts to watch you play (ik ik, you gotta talk while playing)
Overall awesome update, still love the Riverlands, looking forward to the 4k video Steven promised
Tank: Steven should not have been the one to show off the tank because it only gave the class a bad showing.
1: He could not pull / hold aggro
2: We never got to see the abilities in use because there was always people / mobs blocking them (excluding the aoe fanning effect that he used in the grass)
3: We never got to see the abilities descriptions to understand what we should be looking for in the video
Video:
1: Audio was trash (this was known but they should have warned us to turn down the volume BEFORE they played it.)
2: Players did not know what the plan was so even with gm cheats they still could not put the video together
3: Content was disingenuous and disrespectful. We know you talk about "new players seeing the game" but most of the people supporting you at this point in development ARE gamers who understand the basics of gameplay so don't treat the fans like idiots who need handholding.
4: Distractions, Steven should be focused on what is being shown in the video instead of constantly going off on tangents.
5: Players, let the people who BUILD these classes and understand how to use them. REGARDLESS of what Steven claims we are not "non-core" audiences. If you want people to understand the ins and outs. Content creators cover that in communities.
-Hopes to see shield alternatives(maybe weapon with some defencecive bonuses- ex.parrying daggers or quarterstaff ).
-it would be nice if active blocking(or parry) could activate sort of counterattack-bash ability to hold aggro..
-Mobs also should have good CC assortment - grab, knockback, fear or confusion spell(even taunt skill) etc.
On top of that I feel like shield rush shouldn't be available in a direct fight, it should be only ranged (something like 5-30 yards).
Please don't buff threat generation, instead make some tank oriented gear or talents that will help us gaining some more single or aoe threat. I don't understand crying about the threat generation on level 15 tank...
Anything I mention here as negative is not going to be toxic towards the game but to actually improve it and make people more interested in the showcases
I understand why Steven wants to showcase each update as the lead of the game but there are some important problems during the showcases.
1) There are too much going on. I know that you want to showcase group content with synergies and not just solo but when you showcase for the first time a new class you need to start small to explain the abilities one by one for us to see and then you should go to group content. Have a target dummy or something.
2) In my opinion, Steven should not showcase the new classes. I do not want to be mean but he does not represent the main audience skill level that will play this game. For example, he was supposed to tank or show the abilities and for most of the time he was just autoattacking (Again I do not want to be rude or mean).
Its better to have someone more skillful play the main character showcase and have steven on a dps role to also be in the recording and providing the information that he does everytime to continue the flow of the showcase.
3) Steven mentioned that these recording are made last minute and do not have editing. Why is this the case? As time passes more and more people are watching these livestreams and not having a good production in the showcases pushes people away.
With all these changes I feel like the gameply is going to be much more entertaining and is going to also make us have a much better understanding about what each class does.
Start small, then go group with a skilled player during the showcase
All the best
Not sure if the issue was the higher level area, the way the party was actually playing, or the threat/damage mitigation mechanics needing much more work. Either way, the tank did not do much tanking in the tank showcase...
The new video showed off tanking way better than the original. Really good job guys, loving the progress
I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes.
I like combination of abilities being rewarded in a specific way. I hope this is something planned for all classes. I like that there are utility abilities in theme for a tank (the shield that has the tank take the damage.)
What are your thoughts regarding the Tank abilities shown in the January livestream?
I like them. I'm curious to see how the aggro centric abilities perform in terms of aggro retention when someone isn't demonstrating and are focused on using threat abilities as soon as they are off cd.
What are your thoughts regarding the Warhammer & shield, and 2H sword shown in the January livestream?
I liked them. Animations for the Warhammer have improved. The 2H sword looks good as well but i'm going to watch again and provide more feedback in a subsequent post on this thread.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Tank updates?
I'm excited for ability combos and party utility abilities being themed. Only concern is more a curiosity is the threat centric abilities and how well they keep it when used on CD (I know Steven was busy showing us the game so he missed doing this consistently) and how to balance threat gen against blocking (how balancing as a tank blocking and keeping threat.) The reason I am interested is because I feel that being an interesting choice would make for more thoughtful/engaging gameplay.
It takes tank from like dps having to know which abilities have the highest priority based on damage but also considering threat and then finally do I need or have room to block? That'll make it much more complex for tanks.