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, weâll 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, weâll 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.
September 2024 Livestream Discussion | What are you excited to test? đ€â
Hello glorious community,
Weâd like to hear what youâre most interested in testing when Alpha Two goes live! With the âGuide to Alpha Twoâ 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:
Everyone here at Intrepid Studios looks forward to reading about your testing ambitions, and weâre excited to see you Verra soon
Weâd like to hear what youâre most interested in testing when Alpha Two goes live! With the âGuide to Alpha Twoâ 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:
- Whatâs the first thing you plan to do when Alpha Two servers go live? Share your game plan with us!
- Whatâs something youâd 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?
Everyone here at Intrepid Studios looks forward to reading about your testing ambitions, and weâre excited to see you Verra soon
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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.
Likely level up and kill players in the starting area.
Whatâs something youâd 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
Climb that first build mountain-goat-style.
Whatâs something youâd 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.
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.
Spend way too long in the character creator.
Whatâs something youâd 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
cons
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.
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.
Whatâs something youâd 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.
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?
At some point I'll join JamieKaos' guild (since I owe him for the key giveaway
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...
I agree with all 3 of your points. Nodes will make or break this game.
When solo, explore everything! In detail probably. With friends, whatever we decide together.
Whatâs something youâd 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.
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.
Whatâs something youâd 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. đ€©
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!
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...
Whatâs something youâd 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...
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.
- 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.
[*] Whatâs something youâd 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.
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.
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.)
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.
Since there will be no addons allowed in the game, itâs even more important that options like this exist within the base settings. An option to make interactable items more visible, or highlight them in some way, would make a big difference for all players. Customizable visibility settings could greatly improve the experience, ensuring that no one misses out on important interactions simply because theyâre hard to see.
This small adjustment would have a major impact on both accessibility and overall gameplay quality.
but I am planning to focus on exploring remote areas and dungeons. especially once rogue comes out.
Once in game, I will check out the various places around. Since there will probably not be a lot of content (testing, right?), wandering around, seeing the sights, dying from random mobs, and generally getting the feel will take another few hours.
After that, getting to know the areas, classes, systems, etc. will take the next year or so.
My biggest concern is how the game will be perceived if corruption penalties are weak right out the gate of A2
PS. On an unrelated note, the recent articles for the A2 Roadmap and A2 Guide have been chock full of errors and aren't being checked before being displayed to the public. For example, many of the tank ability tooltips have 2 or 3 misspellings each. I know the studio is in a rush, but I would recommend Intrepid create a procedure to proofread their communications at least once before publishing.
This is very true. Kind of concerning how many misspellings there are once you have read through all the ArcheType Abilities. They are absolutely everywhere.
I would love to say ... ... ... ... ... ... " The Alpha Two ".
But i don't wish to sound sarcastic. I am kinda looking forward to test mainly the Rogue - and the Ranger. Summoner as well but i am aware not every Archetype will be available at the Start.
I am also very excited to "discover/explore" the Riverlands a bit. Being an Explorer in Video Games was always one of the greatest Joys for me since the turn of the Millennium.
How will it look ? Seeing a Node level up ? Witnessing the changing four Seasons ? Going along a Coastline ... ... ... ... fighting a few Enemy Mobs ?
How effectively will i be able to report Bugs and Glitches ? I am confident i am gonna find some. It's a true Alpha after all.
â Occasional Roleplayer
â Currently no guild !! (o_o)
- node buildings
- node wars
- node leveling
- node housing
- questing in the node
- questing outside the node
- gathering in the node area
- node marketplace
- selling goods in different markets
- killing people of other nodes
- killing people in my own node
- consequences of in-node community strife and possible actions/ resolutions
- methods of inter-node community strife and possible actions/ resolutions
- dungeons and how they relate to our node
- how quest events relate to nodes
- resource wars with other nodes (stealing resources) and the variable resource spawn rate
- maybe try not being a member of a node?
I understand that we will only have nodes to level 3, so there will be no vassalage, but I am curious to see what that is like when implemented.
Probably start racing towards leveling professions and meet up with other members of my guild.
Whatâs something youâd like to see the community achieve together during Alpha Two testing?
Huge PvP battle would be awesome, either on land, or on sea later down the line. Taking down a high level node via siege combat and seeing how it impacts the environment around it for ourselves would be cool.
Which system stands out the most to you, and why?
I'm really interested in pursuing caravan runs, as well as exploring the lawless zones later on. They seem to offer a high level of risk vs reward, and aren't dependent on narrative, which I imagine isn't a huge focus for the team right now. I'm similarly excited to check out Carphin, but imagine it will be more fun later once the narrative elements are polished up a bit more.
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?
I typically enjoy leveling professions, although what I'm really waiting for are the genuinely challenging interactive crafting systems that will be implemented later down the line. I've always wanted an MMO that actually requires a degree of skill and practice to master its processing or crafting professions, particularly cooking and alchemy, as they seem like such obvious targets for those systems. I will be testing those systems I usually enjoy getting into higher level PvE content with a guild, so I'll likely check out Carphin. I don't usually do that much PvP, so dipping my toes into a PvX game is something new to me, but I plan to work with my guild to achieve as much as possible. I do enjoy other competitive, round-based games with friends, so I'll just have to think of it a bit like fusing the two.