September 2024 Livestream Discussion | What are you excited to test? 🤓☝

Hello glorious community,

We’d like to hear what you’re most interested in testing when Alpha Two goes live! With the ‘Guide to Alpha Two’ shown on stream in mind, what systems or gameplay elements are you most excited to test?

To help guide this conversation, here are a few thought starters you can choose from:

What’s the first thing you plan to do when Alpha Two servers go live? Share your game plan with us!
What’s something you’d like to see the community achieve together during Alpha Two testing?
Which system stands out the most to you, and why?
What systems do you interact with most in other MMORPGs that you play? If those systems are present in the launch of Alpha Two, will you be testing them?

Please don’t feel limited by the thought starters above. Feel free to share anything you’re excited about Ashes of Creation’s Alpha Two from the guide video shown during the September Development Update

Everyone here at Intrepid Studios looks forward to reading about your testing ambitions, and we’re excited to see you Verra soon

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Comments

MybroViajero

Vargan

There are two types of players:
The ones who sulked when they heard that some endgame materials will only be available in lawless zones.
The ones who grinned ear to ear when hearing the news.

Vyril

What’s the first thing you plan to do when Alpha Two servers go live? Share your game plan with us!
Likely level up and kill players in the starting area.

What’s something you’d like to see the community achieve together during Alpha Two testing?
Get Intrepid to keep Phase 1 and 2 under NDA
We're in to deep now. Right now, let's get that stability done.

Which system stands out the most to you, and why?
Corruption system not being in a good enough spot for the public.

What systems do you interact with most in other MMORPGs that you play? If those systems are present in the launch of Alpha Two, will you be testing them?
PvP

Ludullu

What’s the first thing you plan to do when Alpha Two servers go live? Share your game plan with us!
Climb that first build mountain-goat-style.

What’s something you’d like to see the community achieve together during Alpha Two testing?
A MASSIVE pvp battle.

Which system stands out the most to you, and why?
Hopefully nodes growing and falling. But a full cycle of that will most likely only come in P3, so not something for A2's release.

What systems do you interact with most in other MMORPGs that you play? If those systems are present in the launch of Alpha Two, will you be testing them?
L2's karma system. And OH YESSSS, I'm gonna test it so hard that people will start complaining.

George_Black

For me AoC will be the perfect mmo, based on its core philosophies.
Many things that people want to test I have seen them work in L2. Simple as.
The only thing I doubt is the class and weapon systems.

In an mmo we make characters based on some image we have for ourselves. What they wear, what they wield, how they fight, what consumables they use/throw, and/if they have magic powers.

For the entire A2 B1 B2, I want to test the animations of the abilities of the archetypes and how they look with the identity matching weapons of the archetypes (no books on fighters).
I want to test the class augmentations and see if there are enough distinct playstyles (64 will most certainly wont be the case. Anything near 25 is good, but they have to be distinct).

Scribbing, cooking, map making is not necessary.
Good classes/weapons matter.

It doesnt matter if you have cool animal husbandry, and many sbilities for your animals, if you are not satisfied with your character.

As I test how fun our characters are I will report bugs and join group events.

Balance is something for after launch.

Dracslavian

long que times or what?

Legi

What’s the first thing you plan to do when Alpha Two servers go live? Share your game plan with us!
Spend way too long in the character creator.

What’s something you’d like to see the community achieve together during Alpha Two testing?
Kill Firebrand, upgrade Nodes, fight for them.

Which system stands out the most to you, and why?
Caravans and the PvP aspect around them. Its just a fun system. Risk vs reward in the open world. Everything can happen. Band together with strangers to improve security, pay people to be your mercenaries. Even when you play as a highway man hunting down caravans is fun.

What systems do you interact with most in other MMORPGs that you play? If those systems are present in the launch of Alpha Two, will you be testing them?
Gear and class progression mostly. In some games the interactive crafting was fun (like FFXIV) but in general I play for power and completition. I will see what Ashes has to offer in all regards. Who needs sleep anyway, right?

Other things I noticed in the livestream:

pros

characters and their gear look good for lvl1
minimap looks decent with quest trackers
ai voice over sounds fine for the first Iteration and sufficient for your run of a mill quest. can still have proper voice actors for specific npcs or important questlines or something
world in general looks amazing. the wind in the plantlife, the water, very nice.

cons

NPCs are floating or clip into the ground when not on flat ground.
In the building around the portal the wall texture inside the arcs was imperfect which makes sense, but every wall seemed to have the same imperfections.
flickering textures on the roof this building
flickering textures on npcs (oldin murphy, grundle mixford)
out of combat hp reg looks a bit slow.
grass and such could be denser (in some places)
Ground texture in some places looks like it should have more Depth/strutcture. (Doesnt UE have something for that. Think I saw something on YT)
the town looks a bit empty. Its huge but not much to see(?). Will have to play it but that was my first impression. I suppose that changes with players arriving?!
commission board could look better. first its a bit small, second the letters on the board could have some structure. in the video it looked like it was a flat texture.

Hevel

Number 1 on my list is to see the node system in action. Specifically, I want to see the node advancement process. I am curious how much influence a single player (not the mayor) has over a node's development and how players will react to the opportunity costs involved with growth.

Second is the artisan system. I want to watch a chunk of raw material turn into a master crafted item. I am curious to see how far players will need to go (and how far they are willing to go) to find the resources they need. I am also excited to see how much interdependency there is between the artisan classes. For example, will the tanner be able to substitute the toad oil from the alchemist with seed oil from the farmer?

Third, I want to play around with the player market. I have been spoiled with interlinked auction houses for too long. I want to see players haggle. I want to move goods around to take advantage of price gaps.

Last, but not least, I am going to try to climb just about everything. Mountains, buildings, walls, mailboxes, NPCs, waterfalls, oddly shaped corners, and just about anything that isn't directly connected to the ground.

Syreena

What’s the first thing you plan to do when Alpha Two servers go live? Share your game plan with us!

The first thing I plan to do is explore the beautiful world of Verra, I love to explore and see if there are any types of collections I can get going on such as finding points of interest for achievements or what not.

What’s something you’d like to see the community achieve together during Alpha Two testing?

I would love to see a big family photo take place! That would really test the server meshing if we could get a huge group of us together in one space to celebrate this game and world.

Which system stands out the most to you, and why?

The crafting/Artisan systems seem like they are going to be something worth really exploring and sinking my time into.

What systems do you interact with most in other MMORPGs that you play? If those systems are present in the launch of Alpha Two, will you be testing them?

Personally I like collections, I am not sure (I haven't seen anything) if there is an achievement system in place or a collection such as a bestiary or a "All the Things" style collection page. If not I will probably work on leveling artisan skills first.

TheDarkSorcerer

What’s the first thing you plan to do when Alpha Two servers go live? Share your game plan with us!

Spend an hour or two in character creation. Then explore the world of Verra. I will most likely spend most of my time doing PvE and seeing what the quest experience is like while giving feedback on mage skills.

What systems do you interact with most in other MMORPGs that you play? If those systems are present in the launch of Alpha Two, will you be testing them?

PvP... But I don't see no rush in interacting with the PvP aspect of this game during Alpha 2. PvP is longterm in this game. I'd rather focus on the PvE aspect, which in my opinion will bring life into the game and make it memorable.

Leonerdo

Gonna be making a Cleric and seeing how viable it is to play the game without a guild. I'm a raider in FFXIV so I'm mostly going to be testing PvE content. But uh... I don't imagine raids will be do-able at the start, and certainly not without a guild. Instead, I'll just be running around doing quests/commissions/story arcs, and helping out the random players I come across. And for all that running around, I'm probably gonna need a mount ASAP, so I suppose that's my first goal.

At some point I'll join JamieKaos' guild (since I owe him for the key giveaway

), and figure things out from there since I'm not used to playing in a guild. Hopefully we can do some world bosses/dungeons/raids.

Oh, and I'm gonna jump around and climb on stuff a lot. Gotta see how many tall things I can stand on top of.

Probably not gonna mess with the crafting yet, but I'll pick up a scythe and do some plant gathering along the way.

Edit: But FIRST first, I'll have to mess around with the UI, since I'm very particular about keybinds and hotbars. Hopefully I don't find any game-breaking bugs before even starting to play...

Rickist

Hevel wrote: »

Number 1 on my list is to see the node system in action. Specifically, I want to see the node advancement process. I am curious how much influence a single player (not the mayor) has over a node's development and how players will react to the opportunity costs involved with growth.

Second is the artisan system. I want to watch a chunk of raw material turn into a master crafted item. I am curious to see how far players will need to go (and how far they are willing to go) to find the resources they need. I am also excited to see how much interdependency there is between the artisan classes. For example, will the tanner be able to substitute the toad oil from the alchemist with seed oil from the farmer?

Third, I want to play around with the player market. I have been spoiled with interlinked auction houses for too long. I want to see players haggle. I want to move goods around to take advantage of price gaps.

Last, but not least, I am going to try to climb just about everything. Mountains, buildings, walls, mailboxes, NPCs, waterfalls, oddly shaped corners, and just about anything that isn't directly connected to the ground.

I agree with all 3 of your points. Nodes will make or break this game.

Nerror

What’s the first thing you plan to do when Alpha Two servers go live? Share your game plan with us!
When solo, explore everything! In detail probably. With friends, whatever we decide together.

What’s something you’d like to see the community achieve together during Alpha Two testing?
Find all the mechanics bugs, and, more importantly, really hone in on and fix any "fun and engagement bugs". As in, fixing and changing systems and features that makes the game less fun and engaging to play.

Which system stands out the most to you, and why?
Overall? Nodes obviously. If you mean limited to what we saw in the dev stream, I am super happy you guys are going with AI voice overs. Big, big positive choice for the game.

What systems do you interact with most in other MMORPGs that you play? If those systems are present in the launch of Alpha Two, will you be testing them?
If the artisan system is any good, probably that. And yes, definitely.

-T0Mb-

What’s the first thing you plan to do when Alpha Two servers go live? Share your game plan with us!
First I will test the character creator and make a great character! Then I will do quests and at the same time explore the beautiful Verra.

What’s something you’d like to see the community achieve together during Alpha Two testing?
I'm interested to see how the community can build a node and what kind of benefits it can provide to its citizens. Also I'm looking forward to see how the dungeon raids will work.

Which system stands out the most to you, and why?
Maybe open world dungeons. I'm curious about how they will work out.

What systems do you interact with most in other MMORPGs that you play? If those systems are present in the launch of Alpha Two, will you be testing them?
In GW2 I liked to take part in events that you could encounter during questing or exploring the world. I want to see how these events will affect the nearby area and what kind of rewards you can get when completing them. 🤩

When watching the stream I though everything looks pretty good for an alpha test and I will have a good time in Alpha 2. But there was still one little thing that I didn't like and that thing was those awful hair colors of some npc humans (purple, blue, pink, teal etc.). Thank goodness Steven sayed in the stream that this thing is going to be fixed!

Agripinensia

What’s the first thing you plan to do when Alpha Two servers go live? Share your game plan with us!

Well, I only get access in Nov, so I will probably still be playing Factorio Space Age (shoot me a PM if you're in the same weird boat :P) and probably die a lot watching guildmates' streams and regular streams while playing - lol
When they go online for me, I will be playing 16h+ shifts to catch up to my guildmates and be part of the spears head so I have a chance of getting a freehold in Phase 2...

What’s something you’d like to see the community achieve together during Alpha Two testing?

The player community: Nothing special
The community including DEVs, hopefully making this the first PvX game not morphin into a gank/grief-fest.
I am still not on board on getting corruption only killing "green" players - I think you should get a 0 value temp corruption for attacking (goes away when you stop attacking "PvE"-players for 15s) and have it manifest with a value when you kill someone.
Many people won't know that they get flagged as soon as they fight back - so If I wanted to abuse the system, I would attack you and hope your natural instincts kick in fighting back instead of just running away or standing still.

Which system stands out the most to you, and why?

No Pay2Win - I thought about putting Node-System 1st, but after thinking about it: I can't think of a single MMO that doesn't have some form of P2W these days (except for maybe a few REALLY old ones like Ultima Online I didn't take a look at)

What systems do you interact with most in other MMORPGs that you play? If those systems are present in the launch of Alpha Two, will you be testing them?
tbh: I don't play many MMOs these days.
But in general: Dungeons/Raids, since thats the only worthwhile content current MMOs have if you aren't a millionaire or unemployed(massive time or massive money).
I will interact with what you are selling as those - although I do not think open World Dungeons/Raids are comparable to instanced ones.
Not sure if this is a good or bad thing yet - we will see when the dust has settled and the no-lifers have had a chance to pull past the mere mortals.

Regarding the Stream istself
I know you didn't ask this, but I want to note a few things:
- The Trailer (Margret narrating over a cut video) should have been put at the start to pump us up - Inbetween it was actually anticlimactic - I was constantly thinking: "Lets see some gameplay"
- During the actual gameplay portion, it would have been nice to see more of the actual gameplay and less of "There is a jump puzzle here". - If I hadn't seen previous streams, my impression would have been: Nothing is ready, so we show us trying to jump to some roof-area for 10 min straight (I think it was about 5).
At least ~30 min of actually realistic 1st player experience (yes, I call people who pay money players, not testers - no matter how you phrase it since we will be testing it by PLAYING through the systems you put in place...) would have felt more like the "guide" you promised.
I think you should at least have leveled to mid level 2 - so we can see how progression will actually feel with some extrapolation (Exp Req rising vs XP gain rising), what you do when leveling up, etc.

As much as it pains me, since I really love what you are (trying to be and as far as I can tell are on your way to archieving) doing here - this was the first stream where I felt less pumped after it than before.
And please take this as it is intended: Critique.

I am not heavily invested (Burning $120 doesn't really phase me) and I wouldn't take more valuable minutes to write this if I didn't care about your product.

For next time (Beta Release?) maybe make a "First hour in the game" video where you only spend 5-10% explaining stuff you explained before (say something like: We talked about this in our Stream before, link will be in description instead).
Maybe ask some guys from the Phoenix Initiative to tell you what they think should be featured - I mean - they ARE heavily invested into your success and probably have a better perspective of what the prospective players are interested in seeing.

These were my thoughts. Sorry for my spelling and grammar mistakes - you are allowed to keep the ones you find - english is not my first language and again: I don't want to bash you.
This still remains the most promising project in development - there are tons of things you are doing right - lets be fair: If someone lists the things you are doing right instead of what you aren't, you're f-word...

ShivaFang

You've implemented a mechanic to 'gate' the influx of gold in dynamic ways - which is one of the things that will be good for the economy of the game.
In the stream (and we've seen this in other streams) there are a few 'junk' items that are being dropped by enemies (Glass shards, goblin snarelines, ancient bones). These are the kinds of things that tend to be considered 'vendor trash' in other games.

I genuinely hope these aren't things intended to be sold to NPCs. They have no place in the economy you are building and completely destroy the intent of the glint system. There should be nothing in the game that either isn't directly tied to a temporary quest or valuable as being traded between players outside of the glint system. So if these aren't specifically needed for early crafting they should be scrapped from the game.

Likewise the 'Welcome to Verra' quest gives currency directly instead of just the glint. This means that there is a very repeatable source of direct currency (on every new character) that bypasses the glint system, and defeats its purpose.

edit: Yup confirmed 26:14 when looking at the vendor "There is also a checkpoint for players to sell things they find out in the world" No, bad. This destroys the glint system.

Otr

[*] What’s the first thing you plan to do when Alpha Two servers go live? Share your game plan with us!

- fall through a holes of the bridge Steven mentioned in the stream: https://youtu.be/lB5euffRa-g?t=1545
- and check what happens if I swim to the edge of the ocean.
- I will search for a place where it rains
- check if I can report bugs in-game
- see if anyone is role-playing
- see if I can level up without doing quests, even if it takes longer. Because NCPs typically feel fake.

[*] What’s something you’d like to see the community achieve together during Alpha Two testing?

- to see the nodes form micro-nations around the high level parent nodes
- to dig a hole to the under-realm and find Tulnars

[*] Which system stands out the most to you, and why?

- risk vs reward. If I can get rewards without risk, I will report them as bugs.
- the citizenship as it makes players get an identity bound to a node.

[*] What systems do you interact with most in other MMORPGs that you play? If those systems are present in the launch of Alpha Two, will you be testing them?

- leveling, fighting, dying, crafting, exploring, making alts. A little bit of everything. Not too much especially in the early phase.

Imnotkio

I want to touch on the visual UI indications present during the showcase. UI elements on top of the NPC's head to indicate quests, and giant dialog boxes to attract the players. I'm a little disappointed by this and hope this is a placeholder and not the intended design. We were led to believe the game wouldn't follow this route. I understand that received feedback could have gone in that direction, but I would hope to fix this issue differently.

So I would suggest instead of using UI elements to give players cues to quests, shops, etc, to be more creative and use in-world elements. For instance, if the NPC has a quest for the player, then that NPC waves when a player goes in its sight and maybe shouts "Hey, adventurer, can you help me out?" or something like that. So you have both visual and audio cues to which NPCs have quests, but it's not done through some lazy non-immersive UI element on top of the NPC's heads. The same goes for shops, instead of a UI element, a big sign with an anvil to cue the player that's the blacksmith shop.

Hopefully intrepid uses creativity to implement solutions to modern issues rather than following the modern lazy path.

Glizzzii

I feel like seeing everything converted over to UE5, with updated cloth physics, lighting upgrades, and efficient building tools- is something I am keeping my eye closely on.

But what I am hoping to see MOST, is an updated version of the largest PVP events like CASTLE SEIGES. I think this spectacle was the biggest highlight of Alpha 1, and drew a lot of positive attention to AoC. I am hoping in A2, we get to see an even better presentation of the Castle sieges (updated combat, better graphics, effects, animations- player numbers, etc.)

willsummon

Great video. Thanks for showing the Archtype skills. A lot of potential.

For example, the mage having a choice of four different schools of mage; fire (high damage), ice (a snare with good damage), lightning (burst dps), and arcane (damage and utility).

Also, if Bill Trost is a good example of the excellent quality and experience of your personnel, Ashes of Creation is in good hands.

In addition, the maps, previews, and explanations were all spot on. Very well done.

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