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.
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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
1) The Dragon chomps the ground 1 to 3 times (leaves a crater or 3, of course... for the rest of the fight, so you can see how he affects the terrain), and then spits fiery meteors in the sky that fall on the battlefield, and deal damage where they land.
2) at approx the last 20 or 15% HP, have the dragon fly up in the air, breathe fire on to the ground, and scorch the ground, creating a zero safe zone environment, raising the stakes and making it all DPS race, to finish him off, before the entire raid gets wiped cause the healers can't keep up with the environmental conditions.
--- BONUS cool interactions ---
For Number 1 above - Have it so that if a tank stands right in on top of the piece of terrain he is about to chomp, the player can perform a counter attack, like a retaliation with a shield, to knock the Dragon really hard in the Face, effectively knocking the Dragon on his side, allowing for a 5 second window in which you can freely damage him.
As a reaction to this, have the dragon roar loadly to summon adds on to the battlefield while he takes another 5 to 10 seconds to get back up on his feet.
Also, I mentioned "have the dragon chomp the ground" 1 to 3 times, this could either allow for some dynamic action like:
a) the Dragon chomps the ground once, the tank didn't manage to retaliate, the dragon spits fiery meteors into the sky that start raining down and then attempts to chomp the ground a second time, rinse and repeat, and maybe he attempts to chomp a third time, but this time the tank managed to retaliate, effectively giving the player a choice or chance of still being able to stagger the dragon for free dps at the expense of adds being spawned.
b) if the tank retaliates on the second chomp, he can stagger the dragon for 10 seconds instead of 5, but the dragon gets up slightly faster and spawns less adds.
c) if the tank retaliates early on the first chomp, the dragon gets staggered for 10 seconds of free dps, immediately gets up after 10 seconds and does not summon adds.
Effectively giving players some agency over the momentum of the fight.
For Number 2 above - have the water vaporize to create fog blocking vision which doesn't allow you to heal your allies unless carefully placed close to each other, so rangers can't cheese this fight by walking outside of the scorched earth zone yet still hit for full DPS. Let the rangers shoot their arrows and spells blindly if they're not close enough.
--- BONUS cool non-Boss specific interactions ---
Imagine something like the Sparta Movie 300, the enemy is about to attack you, and everyone that holds a shield and is a tank or defender (the cleric seems to also have a shield and uses protective spells) can activate a spell like "Shield Wall" at the same time while being in like a close proximity of 5 in game meters, and the shield walls effectiveness is raised/buffed by 5%, and the radius is increased by like 25%, allowing 2 "defenders" to basically "Shield Wall" a group of 10 people (ofc including the casters).
Now imagine how cool it would be if for example Number 2 which I suggested gets implemented AND then you add a stacked Shield Wall mechanic like this. A group of 40 people has the Dragon down to 15% HP, he is about to fly up high and burn the ground and scorch everything. 8 very well coordinated players with the Shield Wall ability can stack up and use this skill to effectively increase the effectiveness by 5% * 8 = 40% and increase the radius by 25% * 8 = 200% increased radius, (***which would mean you could live out the Fantasy of a scene like in "WoW Battle for Azeroth" where Anduin calls upon the light, raises a big barrier of holy light, engulfing the entire alliance army and healing them back up***) of course in this case 8 people would be defending 32 other players from the full brunt of a top to bottom Fire breath of a Dragon).
Honestly I imagine seeing this on a Twitch Live Stream being done in AoC after full release, by a coordinated Guild... the Internet would be MIND-BLOWN and everyone would recognize this kind of scenario as something you can ONLY pull off in AoC, effectively giving the game something I would call stylized game-play.
Some Feedback regarding visuals:
Sadly so far the game becomes a bit lack luster as soon as you zoom out a bit, everything looks generic as soon as you're too far zoomed out to see any detail on the characters.
I think every player could agree with me, that when they look into a big group of people, they'd like to be able to visually tell X apart from Y or Z.
Visually the game is stunning, but there is a certain lack of stylizing, to help keep it apart from any other game out there.
Take World of Warcraft, you can immediately tell WoW apart, from most games out there. Currently the only way for me to tell AoC apart from other games, is it's UI.
I know you guys are cooking some cool stuff, I just think memorable moments are forged when you can look at a game and immediately tell: "Oh, this is AoC. / Oh, that is this cool Area in the World of Verra / Oh that is this awesome Enemy or NPC from AoC."
Don't get me wrong, I don't want WoW2, but I would like to see AoC stand out. And I just don't have the right words to put explain.
Still amazing showcase, looking to see hopefully more.
- The shockwave travelled too fast and did very little damage. Slower + more damage
- The fire breath should be a one-shot (or a near one-shot ability) but pan to the side slower.
- Mobs spawning should happen more often, for example every 25% - 75%, 50%, 25% HP.
Additionally the dragon should have a timer (either a hard enraged timer) or a de-spawn timer so it is not possible to win the fight just with a prolonged fight with throwing people at it coming from respawn
I am very pleased with the way players must watch boss animations to see what move is coming next. But I also hope for more complex mechanics to arrive in the future.
Things targeting a random player that requires nearby players to stack together to soak damage.
Things requiring players with different magic effects applies to them to run together to cleanse each other (think of a player on fire, and a freezing player needing to go meet to cleanse, or they take continuous dot damage)
Maybe a immolation effect, setting players on fire until they can jump into water.
The complexity of ideas you can add is infinite. I am just hoping for more interaction in the encounter besides heal/gear checks, and dont stand in bad. I am not saying the things I saw were bad, they are necessary parts of a fight, I just want more mental engagement in encounters.
I am of the opinion that hard bosses should not really be cleared on the first encounter. Players must repeatedly challenge a boss to solve the mechanics. After the mechanics are understood, and shared around forums or internet even, other teams might conceivable be able to clear it on the first try if they study... but even then there is a difference between knowing how a mechanic works and being able to solve it in execution.
The area where the dragon stood looked pretty dull and empty I guess. And it would be cooler if the dragon got baited somehow by placing the egg somewhere or something more interesting than he just stands and look dumb after you grab the egg.
I liked the dragons aoe attacks for lvl 25 or whatever it was. Pretty easy to avoid but did quite alot of damage, as it should, best ones was the expanding ring and flying breath of fire I think. I personally as a healer like having people to heal and for it to be a few times during the fight where I have to go all in and have to be focused. For example a big aoe attack where the dragon slams the ground 5 times that noone can avoid and if you get hit with all 5 without any heal you are dead. Those scenarios makes for a really fun time being a healer.
Good stuff!
A couple of problems though:
The dungeon leading up to it being 8 man -- That doesn't really work. If the raid boss is about to spawn, people would just go there as a 40 man raid already and clear it with little difficulty. I think the dungeon should just be tuned for 40 man to begin with because every time the dragon can spawn, the 40 people will be there anyways so the tuning for 8 man doesn't make sense in my eyes.
The difficulty of the boss while being open world -- because of the way he's tuned, to actually be a boss fight -- as opposed to your usual L2 or ArcheAge boss fight with 0 mechanics -- I think that the people who hold the egg should receive a raid wide buff while engaging the dragon while holding the egg and ONLY while next to the dragon. This way, if the party gets engaged on in the middle of the raid, they should still have an advantage and prevent endless resets.
The goal of the invading party should be to try and steal the dragon egg from whoever holds it and remove the buff from the people they're attacking. This would make for fun and engaging fights, rather than being killed on sight because you have no way to defend yourself as you've already used everything on the dragon.
This would allow for both the fight to be fun and engaging despite being in the open world and also allow people to invade with clear goals between invader and defender.
Ground effects -- A minor yet important gripe, I hate circles on the ground, they often overlap with other effects. If you're going to have fire, make it actually burn with a simple 3D model, to make sure people panic and get away from the fire rather than standing on it thinking it's some mage's meteor or something harmless.
Overall a pretty nice improvement on the Alpha 1 dragons. I love that this was more difficult as one of my biggest complaints about the Alpha 1 was that the dragons had no sense of danger and a healer and tank could duo all of them.
The "opacity" (idk if thats the right term) of ability's needs to be looked at, if ur a melee gl telling what tf is going on with how spells are rn.
The Citadel looked amazing visually, hopefully this is representative how the game actually looks, overall good showcase, liked the more "simplistic" approach to the worldboss.
Would have been nice to see other points of view - the short shifts to Bard and Fighter PoV were great - as well as perhaps staying in those PoV's a bit longer.
Both the Citadel and the Dragon raid struck me as excellent for early engagements. Each had a nice blend of danger, randomness (plus some AI involved in attacks), chaos and mechanics -- appropriate to the level.
Some feedback wanted 'harder', well it wouldn't be hard to give it to them, perhaps a nearby NPC or object to interact with that you can tell to, "just try and kill me." Especially if the AI is cranked up a bit. As it was though, the raid could have wiped, and in general some randomness in raid formation can result in unfamiliar teammates, so I thought it all balanced.
I also liked that you had to fight the dragon, learn his mechanics, not a bunch of miscellaneous korn.
Look forward to A2!
xoxo
LFG: Open World, tight knit coordination, multiple roles, will travel.
The fact that loot is so scarce might be the reason why people don't do the dragon. At the very least it should drop a big chunk of experience and some materials for people to craft a single item.
AoC is supposed to have active block, dodge and stamina systems. Please use them more in boss fights.
Tail swipes should knock you back if you don't dodge them
Any attacks which produce a shock wave should require a dodge or maybe a jump to avoid getting knock down.
I like that the boss moves on the arena, but I feel it could be even more aggressive, flank players, picking new targets in the player group to force the group to move around, redirect aggro. Especially versus ranged players, as those guys seem to had it "easy".
Two Citadel of the Steel Bloom "dungeon" felt a bit short and basic. It could use more enemies and enemy types. Maybe a swarm like enemy type, numerous, quick, coming in waves, with low HP / damage output but able to surround the players, prevent them from moving away, whilst few elite enemies - the real threat - approach slower in that swarm.
Blown past falling sands…
Idea for relic mechanic and Spawn of the boss:
After you looted the relic, you must unseal it's power, for that you have to place it outside on the altar. The player will still have the relic icon active on it's UI even if placed on the altar. So if other parties kill the player which looted the relic, and if was already placed is on the altar, the ownership of the relic will transfer to the one who killed the player.
When the Relic is placed on the altar to be unsealed, that's when the dragon actually comes, trying to stop you from unsealing it's power. The relic will have a bar above the altar charging, and based on boss phases and boss HP, the relic will slowly unseal. After the dragon is dead, the relic is unsealed, and can be used for whatever it's purpose is.
After i researched a bit about the lore around the citadel, i feel like the boss spawning flame minions in that kind of environment feels somehow strange.
Because the citadel has a lot of history behind since the Exodus, maybe it would be interesting if the dragon makes use of that part of the lore.
Like for example in one of the phases, because the dragon feels the power of the relic, he also gains powers from it.
Since the field is full of bones, swords, etc, of the fallen soldiers from the past war, the dragon could change his fire to a different color, covering the battlefield with it. Then minions could rise from the ground, either as skeletons or ghosts. I made a silly collage with some pics from the net(not mine), to get a better idea.
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Extra phase idea 1, When dragon HP gets very low, he wont be able to fly anymore, the dragon will run to the nearest water, standing in the center of it, and it will start heating the water with his flames.
If player tries to get in the water to hit it, they will get dmg from the boiled water, this is where the healers have to keep the tanker alive, but also long range classes will be an important factor.
For the boss phases would be nice if the nameplate of the boss changes it's color or blink, just enough to let people know something will happen. Maybe some red glow, etc.
Also, when players goes for the relic, they will get a middle screen message that the Citadel feels their presence, and grow over the entrance "overtime" giant roots, covering the citadel. If other guilds are coming, they have to destroy the roots in order to enter.
After the player has looted the relic, that player will gain a specific aura effect, with a beacon light effect going up the sky.
If other guilds are around, depending on how far the draw distance is set for that aura beacon effect which is following the player, other parties can hunt that player if they can see the aura. If they manage to kill the player before the boss is killed, the relic will drop from the player bag, otherwise not. If they do, they also increase the chances for the loot acquisition chances on the boss.
I know, it sounds a lot, and probably time consuming to do such mechanics, but hey, we are here to give feedback and ideas.
ps. excuse mah engrish, and i take no credits for the images used in collage.
I'll get into that shortly...
Citadel of the Steal Bloom:
I won't get into graphic specifics because you are doing a great job in that department.
- As Neragov points out; the Citadel is blooming with vibrant plants and vegetation, yet the MOBS controlling the area are flaming entities... wouldn't all the vegetation be burnt?... I don't know, something to think about perhaps.
- The whole fight with the Lady of the Rose is bland and if you didn't actually create the content, you wouldn't have a bloody clue what's going on. Things to fix:
1) When the Lady of the Rose starts to channel on the relic, have a beam of green light go from her hands to the relic
2) As soon as she starts channeling have the Demon summon in a mist form slowly on the other side of the relic. When he is fully formed he states verbally for all to hear something like "Ah... Lady of the Rose, We've been expecting you! Acolytes attack!". The demon then casts a spell that summons the adds. As long as the adds are up, the demon can take no damage and the adds attack the Lady of the rose primarily, which forces the group to heal her.
3) While the adds are up the Demon channels against the Lady of the Rose in an attempt to prevent her from freeing the relic (you will see a red beam of light from the Demons' hands to the relic). When the adds are down, the Demon is able to be hit, but at 75% 50% and 25% he casts the spell again to summon more adds.
- At least if you add this kind of minimal interaction, you can get a sense of what is going on...
- I also agree with most of the other posters, the burning areas on the ground are actually quite hard to make out, having the rim of the AoE maybe GLOW a brighter ember "glow" would help identify the burning areas on the floor.
Firebrand the dragon:
NEEDS WOW FACTOR!
- I enjoy the graphics and the the attacks, but the reactions to these attacks are once again (as with the Giant world boss) lack luster.
- Tail swing... everyone hit by the tail swing should be knocked back 10' and knocked down for 3 seconds. Anyone critically hit by the tail should be knocked up and away for 60'-100' and knocked down for 3 seconds
- Claw swipe... everyone hit with the claw swipe should be knocked back 10'. Anyone critically hit by the claw should be knocked up and away for 50' and knocked down for 3 seconds.
- Leap attack... The shock wave should bounce people to the ground and daze them for 5 seconds (they can move but not attack)
- Rings of fire... Those going through or standing near (5') the rings of flame should take damage and then extra burning damage after the fact. This burning condition should last from 6-24 seconds... the lasting time of the condition would be random 6-24 seconds (6, 8, 10, 12 ,14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24)
- Flame breath (on ground)... All those critically hit by the breath should burn for 6 seconds. All those hit are interrupted.
- Flame breath (Air)... This actually looked like it did decent damage. I would just add that those hit by the fire should be interrupted as well.
Not a fan of the looting system up to now. I think you should get loot based on contribution as well as loot that is RNG. I could see people doing this world boss 50 times and not getting a "gold" piece of armor, that seems very excessive for any loot.
These are all just ideas. you are the developers, but I read the posts. People want to see cool things happen when these monstrosities attack.
This is ALPHA 2 only and a lot of you content already looks better than most of the games out there. Add the WoW factor in on world bosses and dungeon bosses and you will see even more excitement about this game.
If this is a risk vs reward game like you want, make sure enough participants are getting items and crafting components in drops.
Still only ALPHA 2.... Lots of time to further polish...
Overall I thought this was a great preview. Getting to go through the steps of a world event like that needed to be done so we could see what you've been talking about for so long.
What excites you about playing and interacting within the Citadel, its enemies, and Firebrand?
Big dragon fights are always cool. I'm most curious to see what the overall start-to-finish experience is. I want to get a feel for the reward-to-time investment ratio, difficulty, and how well or not the objectives are explained/telegraphed throughout the experience.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Citadel of the Steel Bloom & Firebrand Preview?
Excited: The boss encounter looks epic, I want to see those breathes cook some people close-up when it's in the flying phase.
Concerned: I would kind of expect a little bit more to need to be done inside the citadel. It seemed like the party didn't really need to explore the whole thing or complete too many objectives to get the egg.
Are there similar areas or enemies you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
Similar Enemies: I think one the most iconic red dragons in MMOs is Onyxia. While simple, it's an effectively designed fight that punishes people heavily for incorrect positioning and bad threat management. I liked this fight for the most part. Tail swipe > welp eggs > OMG so many adds was a great chaotic mechanic. Other classic WoW dragon fights that occur outside of instances (Azuregos, Ysondre, Emeriss, Taerar, Lethon) all had mechanics in place to punish zerging and had a 15 minute debuff on death to keep players from continuously corpse running to get around mechanics. I think if Intrepid considers all these things and keeps the difficulty in the right spot, this will be a pretty fun encounter.
Similar Areas: It kinda gave me some cursed castle vibes I remember from things like Dragonlance novels to Baldur's Gate games. Good staple fantasy setting, backed up with lore. If that lore is discoverable and prominent, even better.
which let the Sunlight/Lighting look to strong and powerful at the Moment when dear Steven entered the Citadel Estate,
and/or which made it looks truly "insanely" dusty when the Raidgroup fought against the mighty Dragon.
It was like there were countless Particles for "Dust" or maybe Humidity(?) in the Air - and when the Lighting of the supposed Sunlight did shine against it - it became partially a HUGE Smokescreen.
Such a thing would be actually very awesome in a Desert-Storm in for Example the Sandsquall Desert,
but here in this Presentation it looked kinda misplaced.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
All of it. Graphics, atmosphere, animations etc. It looked good.
If I could change something perhaps the fire on the ground could remain during the combat, making placement or even involving the water in the set more. I think it would add to the fight. Also, if hit by the fire, the water would be a good place to dodge in, to put out the flames.
When the dragon died, it just despawned after a while - for such a large beast it would be cool if the corpse would remain on the ground for much longer, so players could stumble up on it and discover it while exploring the area.
Perhaps this could be tied to harvesting skin, meat and bones from the dragon, it should be quite alot of it on such a huge beast. Perhaps it could work as a large node for a while, letting everyone harvest their bags full. Dragonstew for a couple fo days and a bunch of dragonbone arrows would be a good reward even if missing out on the prime loot!
(Edit; I had one more thing - Are there any ragdoll effects for the players? Example, if the dragon does a huge tail sweep, will the struck players ragdoll away and then have to get up on their feets to join the fight again (a kind of physics based CC). I think that kind of interaction really would increase the immersion/experience from fighting a dragon/other huge monster.)
- If the bard's songs only affect your party (group) I would like to see the names of your group be a different colour (perhaps blue) to help distinguish who is in your group vs everyone else.
- Steven spent a lot of time hunting and pecking on that grid. I would like to see keybinds to move the target around on the grid - like the arrow keys to navigate up and down and horizontal. This would allow players to target raid members without having to force mouse movement.
Edit after the Questions: Changing citizenship within a vassal chain shouldn't require you to leave and rejoin and should be at a discount (but maybe still have a cooldown). Then Vassaling wouldn't be so bad. Most players will want to be a citizen of the higher level node and that's why they want to overthrow the parent node.
Also it was mentioned during the stream that this is the remnants of "that event 1000 years ago" (referring to the exodus and apocalypse). This is a shorter time span than we were previously lead to believe (10s of thousands of years ago). Some clarification will be important for those of us in roleplay-oriented guilds to know how many generations ago it was. It's a big difference if it's only 3 dwarven generations vs 30 or more....
Granted, this death penalty only lasted for the mission in question. When you returned to an outpost this went away immediately.
How this could work for Ashes - if the current death penalties only accrue upon release, perhaps a 'recent res' penalty could be applied that lasts for 10 minutes or so (or perhaps it goes away during rest - which means sitting out of combat to recuperate). This penalty gets worse if you die again after being res'd, but otherwise isn't as persistent as the death penalty mechanics otherwise used.
This creates a sense of attrition and it isn't merely about which side's forces simply res faster.
This is a good point. Warhammer Age of Reconing had a lot of events that were largely dead zones as the game aged. No one was participating in them and they required multiple people to complete. The rewards weren't really worth doing anyway so most people just went around them to avoid them.
These kinds of events should feel rewarding enough for players to want to engage them. Don't rely on the player's experience alone to carry it. If I can make more money spending that time crafting and participating in the Auction House, why whould I ever want to risk fighting a dragon?
Please remember to include a tank amongst those whose footage you are gathering for the next time you present one of these raid events.
That said I guess Alpha 2 is right around the corner and so we'll have lots of streams and videos then.
With this same certainty, he should immediately attack the players who triggered the event. He looks directly at the group and roars, attacking would be the logical sequence of this.
And not just stand there eating grass.
So only after this initial attack against whoever triggered the event, should he enter "standby mode".
However, instead of remaining static, he could walk or fly around the arena, while roaring as if he were actually searching for something.
Then as soon as a new group of players entered the area, he would immediately attack those players, thus starting a new battle.
Another suggestion I would make is to increase the Boss's aggro area. Because, although on the minimap it seems like a large area, we can see Steven and his group getting very close to the dragon before it actually enters "combat mode". Which doesn't make sense for a dragon that is enraged and looking for something.
It was interesting to see how the dragon event is triggered by removing the egg
What excites you about playing and interacting within the Citadel, its enemies, and Firebrand?
I hope we see a few group mini bosses and more quests in the citadel so that this area is exciting to explore. Maybe a few underground paths would be intresting.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Citadel of the Steel Bloom & Firebrand Preview?
What I liked was the world and the atmosphere. The dragon was also nice, for an alpha.
What worries me is that the enemies are just standing around. It would be nice to see a bit more lively movement from the enemies and interaction with the environment.
I also think that some of the enemy attacks should have a few dodge skills to make the fight more active. At least I didn't see many of them in the citadel.
The boss music became a bit monotonous after a few minutes at the dragon fight.
Overall, I liked the stream and am excited about the coming months. Thank you very much
Example bellow, not that extreme, and instead of the bubble shield, that would be the boss body skin being affected by high crits, showing the magic skills displacing over his body where it was hit, just the effect, not the hexagon sci-fi effect. And maybe some fresnel glow effect around it's silhouette when hit.
ps. This would be applicable to all bosses, and maybe strong elites
Forgot to mention that when the animation is paused for 0.8 sec from the player skill hit, boss normal attack animation will also go back 1-2 frames during the pause, and when the pause is over, the animation will continue from that point. Also, this only looks believable if there is is a glow effect on boss texture during stop animation .
I also asked GPT to give me an example, just so in case devs read this post, to understand better my feedback idea, in case my words don't make sense.
Attached bellow:
ps. This can be applied to elites and normal mobs as well, with the exception where regular mobs they also get a little push back during that pause.
I feel a lot of fights feel VERY semi, with a group of players pulling one or two mobs and beating at them until they are dead. This is NOT a good template for interesting and engaging PvE gameplay. Also we have all those RPG systems to leverage and at the moment it seems only the HP bar is utilised in combat
Whilst this was not true in all footage, one thing stuck out to me. In too many instances it was a case of player group outnumbering the NPC enemies, instead of other way around. Nothing feeds that power fantasy of facing overwhelming odds like 4 (to be later 8) players beating up that...1 poor NPC /sarcasm
Could we get these ratios reversed?
I have no problem with some fights being multiple players vs few powerful elite NPCs, but I really would like to see far more scenarios where the player(s) faces larger groups of enemies.
Obviously HP, resistances and damage output values have to be adjusted, but that would allow players to feel that sense of that "epic" fight. facing a real threat. This would open up the combat more, as you have to pay attention / manage multiple threats, utilise more abilities from your kit, whatever you are talking AoE damage, CC, weapons with cleave attacks etc.
I feel that especially in the group content, players should face PvE enemy groups and be expected to use more abilities. Those groups should probably be also comprised of different enemy types:
This should feed into the idea of players using their whole ability kit, strategizing in larger fights which enemies they should taken down first, disable first etc.
Blown past falling sands…
I noticed that some of Firebrand's lingering AOE effects persisted under water. I would like to see lingering fire effects like that, both visual and damage, not work under water.
There were several times where I couldn't tell if the scorch marks left by Firebrand's attacks were damaging or not. I like that most of his fire attacks left scorch marks on the ground, but they need to better communicate whether they are hazards or not.
I like that the Lady of the Rose was able to be healed. Most players don't like escort missions, but allowing the NPC to be healed by the player should help with that. I would like all friendly NPCs to be able to be healed by players.
I find it odd that the Steelbloom Citadel quest went straight from an 8-man mission straight to a 40-man raid. If an 8-man team triggers 40-man content, that 8-man team clearly isn't going to be able to complete that questline immediately. Either Firebrand will stay there for a very long time waiting for a raid to get organized, or this specific order of events was done just for the live stream to show off the work they've done.
I would like to add my voice to Crazedly and Salpygidis who mentioned that mobs' aggro radius was too small. At 10:55 in the video, mobs from one side of a doorway were pulled while their friends on the other side of the same doorway ignored everything. Increasing the aggro radius will improve immersion.
Firebrand is SO GOOD. The animations, the attacks, the group mechanics, everything. The fire breath targeting grouped players is such a fun mechanic, the typical AOEs to dodge on the ground, the delayed rings and fire explosions, the jump and ground slams, the Cleave tail swipes, it was all great.
Something that could be exciting is if you could pull Firebrand into the Citadel itself for a totally different type of fight. Almost like you get to choose what fight you want depending on where your tank pulls the boss.
The team will obviously make quality of life changes a the game progress but I wanted to list a couple: Firebrand should roam a little around the battlefield when spawned instead of just standing and staring at you. If a group of many players are close by he should look towards the group or raid leader or whomever picked up his Egg. Similar to the spiders having animations for players getting close, but not initiating combat, Firebrand too should "interact with players" who are close but who haven't initiated combat. Firebrand shouldn't be Stupid, unless he is in the lore, he should try to escape when low on health, flying to the top of the Citadel of the Steel Bloom lobbing AOE fireballs onto the party as they fight elites and dodge attacks all the way up the Citadel until they reach the roof to finish Firebrand off.
I hope the feedback will be helpful, and great work Intrepid Team you all are producing high quality work and I can't wait to see more.