Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
I have a follow-up question to add to the OP: What kind of customization do you hope to achieve with the UI? What layouts would you create for yourself, in terms of utility and aesthetics?
One of my previous posts kind of mentions some of this.
My area of concern is about class icons. Having 64 different icons of which many will be slightly similar might cause confusion rather than clarity. In my opinion, the icon should be intuitive and provide a visual shortcut, but it feels like I am going to have to make an effort to learn the class icons through making up mental associations such as "songcaller looks like a treble clef". A part of the problem is the high fantasy signifiers such as "soul weaver" or "scion" are too niche to draw upon a player's assumptions about fantasy. You can get away with icons such as sword = damage, shield = tank, cross = healer etc. But that is because we have become acquainted with those icons across many different games. Perhaps icons are not the best way to communicate class identity and it should be expressed through other means such as gameplay or spells?
2. Have the auto-sort button be customizable. some people want all there gear in an order across the top. i need the usable items so my heath potions got to the top left and are always first. allow us to change the first slot every thing is sorted by, instead of left to right it's bottom to top going left to right.
3. Allow us to change where the default new gear enters our bag. i hate when i have 100 slots and i just used an item that disappeared then the next thing i pick up fills the slot.
4. Allow us to hide all buttons on the inventory and only show up on hovering over them or have an accordion style that pops up on one button click.
5. Allow us to put an auto close timer on our panels for those of use that raid with our inventory page up.
6. if we are getting saved role gear sets. allow us to put a button we can key bind to quick swap. so we don't have to open a character sheet then click over to the saved gear sets.
7. on the map if everyone in the raid is in one area when you mouse over the cluster of icons, the mouse turns in to a sort of mini map style zoomed in of that area for more detail of where everyone is.
8. Allow us to make custom marks on the map that can be saved or shared with load outs. for siege battle plans during raids. locations where we found rare minerals. faction enemy's houses or areas to not travel to.
9. if I'm fishing and have a fishing pole equipped and an enemy runs up and attacks me allow me to make my main skill do a gear check to equip my battle gear or just my weapon to fight back.
10. let us decide what quests or tasks get put in the screen quest tracker. so if there is a cluster of daily quests to pick up but the two kill quests that are time sensitive are my goal i don't have to remove every thing and find the two i need tracked.
11. let us save the locations on the screen where the panels open up to. if I'm crafting and my inventory keeps opening on top of the panel I'm crafting with.
12. let me change the layout of my health, mana, buff and de buff bars.Let me separate them and drag them to different areas of the screen.
13. let us make an exploration UI good for screen shots and just enjoying the scenery when sailing on a boat that can be a hot key press or button in the corner that switches the UI to another UI/hides or a minimal UI with like five buttons.with different key binds.
14. give us a way to give custom marks to players that only i can see that stack along side the raid leaders marks. so if I'm a DPS i can mark all the enemy tanks or healers but i need to still focus what the raid leader is marking.
15. Give us a UI feature that gives distances to all marked targets.
16. Give us a feature to have an X or arrow on the screen showing one or multiple marked targets are out of view or behind your field of view.
17. Give us an in game note pad or calendar that can have links of items,quests, monsters or map locations to create in game guides for guild members or locations on when and where the raid is to start.
2) I would also like multiple rows for action bars added, if possible. I as a player use keys 1-5 and F1-F4 a lot. So being able to set up my bars in a way I can place F1-F4 abilities, above the row of 1-5 abilities would be most helpful... Also being able to add a row that I can strictly dedicate for things such as potions, food, trinkets etc. not related to spell casting abilities.... I think being able to have 3-4 bars with about 6 action keys per bar, would be lovely for many a player.
3) With the action bars, I would also like it to where you can hide specific action bars/keys not being used for spells, potions, etc at that time. So a bar of 1-6 could be adjusted by the player to not show the 4th action key, leaving a gap between 1-3 and 5-6.
4) Allow there to be flexibility with bag itemization... I would like to be able to have bags I can "ignore" so that random things do not get placed in it. I would also like to have the flexibility to assign bags for specific things. This bag only holds armor. This bag only holds consumables. This bag only holds items related to my crafting selections such as mining... this way these bags do not get filled with JUNK! ALSO! CAN WE PLEASE HAVE A WAY TO PUT ITEMS IN A BAG, THAT CAN NOT BE SOLD/DISENCHANTED AT ALL OR GIVE US THE MEANS TO RECOVER THAT ITEM, EVEN A FEW DAYS LATER . It is so frustrating when you accidently sell something and you can not get that item back, when all you were trying to do is clear out bag space prior to a raid or something needing plenty of bag space. Raid on Friday, to realize on Monday, that you had accidently sold that nice shield you were saving for when you became a higher level... all for the sake of clearing bag space.
5) Please have Main quests listed separately and a different color from other side quests in the quests tracking category column. Players like to know what quests they should be prioritizing and the list not be overwhelmed with dailies or random go and fetch quests. So perhaps "Main quests in relation to your node progression, mayor needs, siege defenses, etc" show up on the top of the list with gold lettering... Random filler quests from npc's... show further down the list or in a secondary list being of another color. If there is a quest tracking limit... the quests that are a part of the main quest line take preference to the random go an fetch quests.
6) Add 3-4 custom marks that I can apply above players "that only I can see within the party". This will help in healers focus, without the need to mark someone for the entire party to see, in regards to something that does not pertain to them... so perhaps add 6 symbols that everyone can see and a lead assign to the group. And then 3 or 4 symbols that are completely different that can be used on an individual player basis.
People will even upload their sick customizations to the internet and brag about them.
Here is an example from runescape:
Thicc banners:
Thin Banners:
I see a need maybe for newer players but as you play more and work things out it just gets in the way. That is why a toggle option in the settings somewhere would be very nice.
1 - fully customizable
(create (personal choice of the quantity) and positioning resizing of each skils bar, inventory, improvements ect ..)
(and associated call keys)
individual button to view and display the list on the skil bars on-off drop-down menu that displays only the occupied boxes
2 - easy, clear, functional
all configurable shortcuts
the possibility to adjust the volume of the music, special effects and the game in general independently
3 - have the choice
to display or not the minimap to adjust its transparency level
to display or not the list of quettes and the current quette must be able to remain permanently displayed if I want to
4 - original, must be signed aoc
design styled
at the bottom of the screen a small scrolling message displaying a joke or a message from steven or a team member
The most important thing is being able to continue playing while having the UI open (inventory, etc).
This requires the ability to move various UI screens around, and resize them.
A picture says more than a thousand words, so here a screenshot of a game I'm sure you've heard of.
Multiple UI screens open, yet room for more, and this without blocking player vision (to a degree anyway) and keeping skills/health bar visible.
I have a few thoughts when it comes to the UI system in Ashes, and I hope to share some insight into how they would actually be applied. I'll likely be assuming some strength and weaknesses of the game's processes, but of course if my most wild dreams are possible, I wish them acheived!
Never throw anything out!
Unfinished assets are one things; but never throw out a single decent, fleshed out piece of art. One of the things that I envisioned when I saw all of the "potential" art styles for the UI of ashes of creation I think.. Well would I rather that they spend hours and hours of pain and effort to make sure that everything is uniform, consistent, and beautiful for everyone on the game... or would I rather that they make a decent run on a few BEAUTIFUL UI pieces like shown in the forums and during the livestream, and allowing the user to take advantage of ALL of those.
I think my general conclusion is the latter. What I want to see out of the UI is an INSANE amount of customization, of course short of including a literal art/document editor within the game. Allow us to put our spells anywhere, even change the coloration of the UI. Give us images that we can intentionally place on the UI and create our own custom borders. Even if all of those things aren't possible, getting one or two of them would already put you guys a step above many games, not even just MMOs.
I can see someone complaining about the idea of spending 4 hours on character creation, just to be faced with another 8 hours of work customizing the UI. Which is where my second point arises.
Import/Export the beauty of players!
When you provide the community, especially those as creative and involved as our own, with tons of tools to customize and invent unique layouts, they will build amazing things. People will make UIs worthy of an entirely new game with their spare time. They will create incredibly immersive, yet intuitive UI layouts that could be universally accepted. I'm positive that the UI creators on the team will make something exactly like that as well, however the players will have their own preferences, and I know you all are ready to cater to it.
Assign every slider a value, every position a grid square, etc. That way when it's all said and done, and the sweaty chad or chadette has completed a flawlessly mastercrafted UI (Or even character design), they can upload that creation into a string of characters, and allow others to bask in the beauty!
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Per usual, thank you so much for reading and considering,
Chaos
No offense but I would much rather the devs talk about the game this way than turn into every other company. Currently Intrepid studios is one of the few developers that even tell there community what is going on regularly. If you are looking for professionalism I suggest looking elsewhere. I would rather they not take the advise because if they do the streams will be worse to watch.
Inventory management... the minigame.
Agile - As a hoarder, I need to quickly clear out my inventory so I spend more time adventuring than I do staring at my inventory in town!
1. Possible currency tab incl counts of key materials for those crafters/traders? For example:
Gold 1000
Platinum 1000
Materials
- Elmwood 1000 (851 bank)
- Iron Ore 522 (500 bank)
With collapsible categories2. Quick sell grey/junk.
3. Stack all buttons are amazing too, to/from bank. If I have 200 of something in the bank and 35 in my inventory and I hit quick stack to bank, it moves just those items that already have stacks.
Quoted to Boost
On the topic of the UI... I have a visual impairment that makes high contrast for text and the background behind it, almost a requirement.
I can see everything else just fine. I don't just have bad vision, but suffered from an injury years ago which I don't mind describing, but the end result is that is I need text that stands out vibrantly from it's background, and black and white in any orientation, be it black text on white backgrounds or white text on black backgrounds is near impossible for me to see. Like this forum haha.
There are also a number of color combinations used in video game UIs that make text difficult too.
It is best if I can at least change the color of the text. Even better if I can set a background for any text in the game, and am able to change that background color too.
I am not alone in the particular visual impairment from which I suffer. I can promise you that many thousands of people playing your game, would appreciate any efforts in this regard.
Thank you!
Essential features:
0 - Minimal
1 - Fully Customizable at will
2 - Open to community addons for UI and gameplay
3 - Free Camera Positioning, both in 1st and 3rd person.
An MMORPG game should never have an inflexible UI. It is fundamental that the player can customize his game screen, without aesthetic obstacles.
Nothing should disturb the synergy between player and character.
Also, the most important thing for the success of AoC is investing in animation quality (characters and motion environment) to surpass similar as ArcheAge 2. The ideal is to surpass the quality of Red Dead Redemption Online, Assassins Creed and Hogwarts Legacy.
It's not the repetitive mechanics or story that holds a player for years, but the organicity promoted by natural interaction. This is the lesson that stands out throughout the history of the best MMORPG games to date.
Without an open api for community addons You won't get any community. : )
The situation has been the same since inception and there is a community...
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LoL... "The situation has been the same"...not a good thing. The success of an MMORPG, commercially and historically, depends on an OPEN and GROWING community to survive.
AoC is not The Mystic Quest. It cannot be a make-believe MMORPG.
...
On the contrary, system exploitation happens precisely for such reasons:
1 - when the game limits the player's freedom.
2 - when the game has programming flaws
3 - when Devs don't invest in professional and active GMs
The antidote to avoiding system exploitation is the game to be open to the addon community and not have programming flaws or repetitive and boring activities.
It is not a "decision", it is nothing more than the manifestation of a personal will.
It's a bad choice, unfortunately.
Hopefully the reality of the business of creating and maintaining an MMORPG will open Steve's eyes.
Yeah, it's not about "arguments".
The thread asks for suggestions and opinions. If there is restriction, censorship or previous position that everything will depend on the sole, exclusive and discretionary will of the Devs, you kill the game, and its community, before it was born.