Greetings, glorious testers!
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Environment
Old school MMO feel. The world, while a work in progress, feels dangerous. Wrong turns can get you in sticky situations – and it’s thrilling. Literally not knowing what lies over every hilltop or valley gives that sensation of thrilling urgency and a sense of purpose. I dipped a toe into the Sandsquall Desert – saw some starred mid-20s mobs and instantly nope’d the heck out of there. That said, the biomes have “good bones”!
The mob designs are creative, unique and memorable – while conveying the sense of scale to the world. I was pleasantly surprised by the movement kit of the Otters in the Riverlands, and the Beetles in the desert rightly conveyed the unforgiving desert climate.
All of that said, before I get hit with the “It’s alpha”, the world will need some more density between POI/ZOIs to feel more alive; otherwise, it risks losing the novelty in the “wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle” sense.
I did not obtain a usable flying mount, so this has all been observed from foot / ground mount.
Combat
I played Bard for the duration of the public alpha 2, and played Mage during the pre/early alpha. While playing tank classes as an alt in WoW since Legion, and playing Holy/Disc Priest / Resto Druid from Vanilla through TWW as my mains, I wanted to change it up. Mage visuals are phenomenal for a start – but I felt that some spells (fireball!) were lacking some “oomph” feeling. I know that through the various builds, some archetypes had bugs with spell attacks properly recording their hits on mobs – but even after some of the fixes, I feel that the trade-offs need to be a bit stronger. If there’s going to be a mana spend for a hard cast, the damage should feel a bit more impactful.
Bard, however, felt amazing. I admittedly found myself enjoying it far more than I expected – and will likely main it – into Beta/Release. The song system is unique in combat – and had the right toolkit mix of hybridization for damage/healing/support.
Combat, overall, felt great. I very much enjoyed the dynamism that it afforded. However, I do feel that tab targeting needs some work – specifically in the area of target prioritization. If I’m looking at a pack of mobs straight ahead at 12oclock, why if I tab target, does it switch my target to something off screen or not in the cone of focus? I think if this gets resolved, it’ll be a huge, huge win.
Guild War vibes. Love it. To borrow from Pirate Software, Pressing buttons is surprisingly addicting and fun.
I do enjoy the XP Debt. I hope it does have diminishing returns in the PvP aspect. I’d be afraid of griefers intentionally keeping people down. If this has been addressed somewhere, please let me know!
Nodes/Crafting/Gathering
I did not experience node contributions enough to warrant feedback on the settlements – so I will pass on this. Visually, would love to see some diversity between Joeva, Miraleth and Winstead in terms of architecture – but again, something that will likely be fleshed out in future builds as this is definitely a technical alpha’s alpha.
Crafting – great start. Reminds me a bit of FFXI and New World. I think with more polish / some streamlining on how what materials interact with the recipes (and fleshing out some of the reagents) will go a long way. Perhaps its user error, but I did not find out until right before the DDoS attacks that merchants sold reagents like Honey or Seeds.
Gathering – this needs the most love. I would love to see dynamic spawning of beginner nodes based off the server meshing. Copper, Zinc and Granite were simply hard to find. I did see some bug reports / casual mentions in the discord that the nodes spawned under the environment meshing. If true, looking forward to this being resolved in a future build.
Alternatively, I believe I read that node resources were on a 30min timer to respawn. If this is the case, I’d like to see some scalability in this based on location, if possible. If Lionhold’s ZOI has X-hundred people, it reduces the cooldown to 15mins or something.
Misc.
Casually, it was great to see the world filled with player characters. I know from a theme park/carousel MMO like WoW, sharding is deployed to manage resource loads – server end – and in game – but, I like that Ashes has avoided that!
LOTS of fun, lots of potential. Happy to contribute.
(my experience 15 years wow, few years Rift)
i write this more for developers than for other players.
i will not talk about server issues launcher issues lags etc because that was expected and its almost a norm when launching a game. i want to focus on game itself. i will write it as a list of points because of my english skills, so its more readable.
i start with things i didnt like:
-game needs to be more noob friendly at early levels (1-5) (maybe even 1-10).
you will get in TOO MUCH things before u even step out of lionhold to kill some mobs (not counting goblins on way down to lionhold). for example i think its pointless to make quest about to become citizen when u even cant become citizen on your lvl..
-quest items "glow" is realy ugly, badly visible. i think you can change it just to outline the item. it will look better and more "readable". for example ive been collecting some tree splinters from ground and i had realy hard time with that on cinematic seting (i played maxed at 4K) because that q item "glow" was blending with all those ground clutter things , intense lightning etc.
-talent trees, very boring, (at low level) very ugly, all windows in game basicaly looks old, bad, boring. i realy ndont like window artstyle because i dont think there is no art and not even style.. its just boring generic windos and it doesnt make game look good. (atleast give us a seting where we can change window top colour from that weird green to whatever, like some colour options)
-i think basic economy rules (like seling glint etc) need to be explained ingame at start i a very simple way (make it quest) and not on some website like wiky. people went in and didnt understand how to make money for first gear etc.
-i think its realy bad to make early levels content almost not soloable .. keep the challenge where it belongs
-i realy dont like the fact that weapons are just stat sticks...
-quest guide marks are sometimes very unintuitive
- horses can stay mid air when dissmounting and if you mount it again it can kill you with fall damage even if horse is only 4 feet in the air.
-whole mob spawning system need alot work. its broken, sometimes you wait 5 minutes for mob, sometimes you cant even keep up with spawn rate.
-im very confused how mob taging and loot rules works.. for example. dude was killing mob ( not in party) and i shot his mob cca at 30% hp.. and i looted the mob and he dont...
WHAT I LIKED:
thats easy. i like whole saturday experience. game ran actualy smooth, not 100% but it was 10000% better than friday. so i was able to go and do some quests without being disturbed by server lags etc. and there was a moment where i was telling myself that " this feels like a completed game experience" ofcourse its not but it felt like that because at saturday i cant even recall any major problems. so if im about to judge aoc experience by that saturday , i realy liked the game, it was chill gaming session, i did quests, droped some items , bought some gear and felt boost in my power . it was realy nice. so i think if you guys fix things that need to be fixed and game will run smooth, then i can tell, this is it, this meets my expectations for next mmo to live in.
I just want to share the opinion of someone that fits probably a large demographic of this game: 30+ age, full time job, will goblin mode as many free hours as I can spare into a game I like.
I will break this up by core systems, environment, and core gameplay loop. Lastly I will just compile a quick list of bugs I found to keep it all in one space. I’ve played just about every MMO worth mentioning so I feel I got a decent idea of what’s good and what is just considered bad by the majority of the mmo community. Regardless this is all my opinion so take that as you will.
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Combat
I played fighter/tank/ranger and can say it overall feels fun and fluid. There were minor bugs that can easily be ironed out and didn’t take away too much from the feel. One thing that did take away from it a lot was switching from action combat to tab target to bring up your mouse to either level a skill or mess with something in your inventory. If someone invited me to a party or I was in the middle of leveling a skill or organizing my loot and a monster attacked it felt very clunky to switch back to action combat real quick to fight back. One solution to this may be a key that quickly brings up your mouse to do what you need rather than switching your entire combat mode. I won’t delve into this much more until the secondary classes are added and get the full feel.
Crafting/Storage
The crafting takes way too long and I don’t feel it adds any substance to the system other than being a nuisance. It takes like 30-45 minutes to convert enough raw resources into something useable for a sword for example. But now it takes 2 seconds to make said sword it just doesn’t make sense. If this is set in place to slow down progression of nodes a much better way would be to make the resources respawn a little slower or something along those lines of first come first serve to it. Also the whole path of exile approach to materials taking up 3 or 4 slots in a line just doesn’t do much. It’s unfortunate because I know time has been spent to make that a thing but in other games like wow, final fantasy, archage everything is just one size and a little bigger to see the sprite of the item. This was a wheel that didn’t need to be reinvented. The separate resource tab and bags are a nice concept but currently any bag can hold any material so there’s like no reason to not just take a mining bag that has 16 square slots versus the herb bag for example that only has 8 square slots worth of inventory. My suggestion would be a weight system versus the space system and resource bags to only hold the resource they are intended for or have a weight reduction for that specific resource. This would make caravans much more necessary for moving things around or open up a need for beasts of burden when farming or crafting. Leather bags that attach to your mount for more carry weight. Or an ox type mount you can bring around with you around the node to hold your materials as you refine them. The possibilities are very numerous with a weight storage system versus the space one that games like Diablo and path of exile use. This would also give pvp gankers something to think about when going around killing farmers who don’t want to partake in pvp, do they really want to pick up all those logs and ores they’ve been farming and get weighted down or should they just grab a couple things and keep hunting. Also please more copper!
Farming
Mining: Some rocks need more distinguishing factors to tell them apart. I spent so much time having to go all the way up to them to figure out what it really was. Could just be the graphics on my end but that was a little annoying. One suggestion I have that would add a little flair to farming would be to add some blue or purple sprites saying “this resource node will be guaranteed rare quality” maybe just some little butterflies or flakes that happen randomly that lets someone know hey farm this first. Could even open up some pvp among farmers fighting for that good tree spawn or that epic rarity copper rock. This just gives that mini “hell yea” moments while farming that make that trip all worth it. A good way would be like when a tree is cut when it comes back there’s a 10% chance it respawns green, 5% chance for blue, 1% for purple .01% for rare. These values could be tweaked to how rare developers want these mats to be. Also mayors could pick a temporary node buff at a certain time that increases the chances of these rarer materials to spawn.
Environment/Questing
The environment was great I did some exploring of unfinished areas and really liked the jungle biome despite it being empty that is definitely someplace I’d like to set up a player owned house in the future. A lot of this game lacks its own personality. Which can be good and bad. World of Warcraft is very lore rich and has memorable cities like Orgrimmar for example but at the same time that isn’t keeping it alive. Meanwhile a game like Archage I can’t name a single town or city from that game but I still really enjoyed the time I spent playing it. I want to say the better focus for longevity is the core gameplay versus creating a lore rich world. I didn’t read 90% of the quests I just took them looked for a yellow circle and got a vague idea of what I needed. If it gave good exp I’d do it if it didn’t I’d delete it. If you wants quests to really mean something they need to have meaningful rewards like runescape. You unlock things for your account that help you forever like formulas for certain gear, access to certain areas or spells. That makes quests worth paying attention to and doing. If it’s just for a bit of dull glint and some exp then I might as well have gone to kill like 10 mobs. These quests take tons resources and hours to make, fix bugs for, add items for. All to be an unmemorable skip dialogue and give me my exp thing. I’d say don’t waste your resources and time making these take this item from point A to point B or collect these 5 items and bring them back and make something worth doing that has real game changing rewards or unlockables. Could be something like a mining quest that gives you a 1% boost to chance of finding rarer resources or a Smithing quest that unlocks the ability to make a sword others can’t make unless they do the quest as well. This is definitely one of those wheels that needs to be reinvented or copied off runescape.
Gameplay Loop
I still haven’t figured out what the gameplay loop is this could easily be blamed on the many systems still missing. So far it’s join group, kill mobs for xp, level up, find stronger mobs. During downtime it’s farm mats, turn mats into better gear and consumables to kill mobs faster. Repeat. Obviously dungeons are coming, player owned housing could be a huge time sink if done properly like using the materials you farm to build out your house rather than some prebuilt house just spawning in front of your face. Building walls, buildings, decorations around a node city could be something artisans could sink time into rather than deposit mats> watch building spawn out of think air. There’s still too much missing for me to fully go into this so I will leave it up for editing in the future as the game progresses.
Side note
PLEASE stop letting any random person just have free access to your mats when you accidentally die. It’s very toxic inducing watching someone you were just farming mobs with yoink your glint and materials you’ve been collecting. Makes you come back to your body and say woooooow. It’s understandable for pvp you got rekt get better. But while farming mobs? The durability and xp loss plus walking back is already plenty punishment.
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Major Bugs:
-Storage stops working after a while of playing don’t know how to replicate as of now.
-Many mobs can get stuck and killed by ranged players with no risk to them giving them easy xp
-Sometimes while moving items from one resource bag to another or into storage the item just disappears.
-Many mesh holes to fall into. The mountains need a lot of work.
Minor Bugs:
-Fighter charge ability never closes the gap just goes forward a small amount and does the damage.
-Fighter whirlwind ability gets stopped early by any auto attack or shielding should just click the ability again if you want to stop it early.
-Ranger spread shot when it’s held to condense it goes through mesh and doesn’t hit target if there’s any kind of elevation difference between you and target.
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Current feelings about game: If it was left open to play as is right now it would be my daily game until it gets boring from lack of content whenever that time may be.
***I will continue to edit and add to this as opinions change and more bugs are found any comments or discussions or disagreements let me know***
I'm playing Tank and I'm currently at level 8. For this alpha 2 return, I'll try to be concise while providing feedback on my experience for the first week-end.
User Interface:
The general font used is too small and not very readable, making it uncomfortable to use for extended periods. Increasing the size and adopting a sans-serif font would greatly improve text readability and make me more inclined to read and engage with the game.
The current interface feels outdated, cluttered, and difficult to navigate, especially when dealing with crafting systems. I'd like to see a more modern and immersive design that better supports gameplay.
One specific example is the tank class resource representation; it took me 48 hours to figure out that my "Courage" was centered around the icon of my class, but without any clear numerical data or visual cues, it's hard to understand how to manage it effectively.
Skills with multiple stacks (e.g., the knee strike) are poorly explained and lack emphasis. I found it confusing to keep track of my stacks, which detracts from the overall experience.
Nameplates are also not very clear or easy to read, making it harder to stay aware of my surroundings and opponents. The same applies to the skills tree; its complexity makes it difficult to navigate and understand.
The class progression is solid, but I'd love to see more innovative and dynamic ways to manage armory upgrades. Simply adding modifiers feels like a missed opportunity for something more engaging.
Overall, the user interface is the most work-intensive part of the game for me. Improving readability, reducing clutter, and enhancing gameplay experiences will greatly enhance the overall enjoyment of Ashes of Creation.
Graphics / Art :
While Ashes of Creation has a nice visual aesthetic, it lacks a bit of polish and personality. The assets are of good quality, but they're also quite generic. I'm hoping that the team will soon develop an unique artistic direction and graphical style by emphasizing ambiance, lighting, or lore.
The crafting stations are difficult to distinguish from one another and are clumped together in one area. It would be great to have some sort of overlay with tooltips to indicate at a distance what each station offers.
The terrain connections and city footprints feel a bit too obvious. Adding more subtle visual cues could help enhance the immersion.
One aspect that's missing is adequate lighting sources for nighttime, which would make the evening hours much more immersive. Adding torches or other lighting elements could greatly improve the atmosphere.
The automatic sword shield attack animation can get a bit repetitive and feels like it's stuck in a loop. Some variation would be welcome to keep things fresh.
From a technical standpoint, there's currently no noticeable optimization for graphics, which is a shame since the Async technology from Unreal Engine 5 has already shown impressive performance gains - up to 40% increased frame rate and quality! I think this should be implemented as a base feature soon, as it makes a significant difference."
Lemonking did a great job of offering very nice custom settings : https://gist.github.com/Lemon-King/b352d69889e4665f4a8d4ed257ad3954 that improve visuals AND performance quite substantially.
Sound Design / Music :
While the game has a solid foundation for sound design, I'd love to see more music tracks added to create a more dynamic and engaging atmosphere. The current soundtrack is starting to feel repetitive.
Adding more auditory cues, such as distinct sound effects for quest completion and resource gathering, would greatly enhance the player's experience.
I also think it would be great to have more prominent event announcements for nearby events or activities. This could include things like "Monster Sightings" or "Quest Updates".
User Experience / Progression:
One thing that's been frustrating me is that I can't resources on horseback without having to dismount and check. It would be much more convenient if there was a visual indicator showing the resources available even when I am on my mount.
The journal validation process for commissioned quests feels a bit unclear, with too much emphasis on the quest details rather than the completion status. Adding some clear indicators or animations to show when a quest is complete and if you can complete it in the journal or in person would make it easier for players to track their progress.
Experience and Challenge:
I think one of the biggest draws for me has been the presence of elite monsters in the wild. The experience of encountering these creatures and trying to take them down has been incredibly engaging. However, I do think that some of the other systems could benefit from more variation and challenge at lower levels. Perhaps having a few "tiered" difficulty options or adding more NPCs with unique behaviors would help to make the game feel more substantial.
Artisan System :
I have to admit that the early stages of the crafting system can feel quite overwhelming, especially for new players. The node distribution for resources like Copper and Zinc feels a bit off-balance, making it difficult to progress without investing too much time or effort.
One thing I think would really help is having better tutorial guides or more explicit guidance throughout the early levels. Having some clear instructions on how to set up your crafting station, choose materials, and so forth would be incredibly helpful in getting players up to speed quickly.
Leveling Indicator:
Lastly, I think it would be great if there was an indicator showing the level of difficulty for upcoming events or challenges relative to our current level. This could help us plan our activities and prepare more effectively for what's ahead.
Overall, I'm excited about the potential of Ashes of Creation, but I do think that some tweaks in these areas could really help to enhance the overall experience.
Positive Points:
The map is truly impressive for a single region, showing that the team has done an excellent job with exploration and content creation. However, some areas of the map can feel too large or empty. I'm looking forward to seeing how this will be improved as the game evolves.
The game's difficulty is relatively well-dosed for a group experience. The challenges are challenging enough to be interesting, but not so difficult that they become frustrating. This seems like a great base for creating an active and enthusiastic community of players.
The netcode is very smooth, which is a key point for online play. Stable connections and reasonable latency are essential for seamless interaction with other players.
Characters are fun to control, meaning the gameplay is fluid and responsive. This adds a lot of pleasure to the game and allows me to focus on strategy rather than the gameplay mechanics themselves.
Elite enemies have interesting patterns that require thought and coordination to defeat. This reinforces the idea that these creatures are genuinely threatening and not just mere monsters to clear out.
The skybox is lovely, adding an element of beauty to the game. The landscapes are well-detailed, and visual effects are generous. This contributes to creating an immersive and engaging atmosphere that will help me dive deeper into the game's world
Archetype balance: I tried Mage first, and I thought that the damage on its initial ability (the one with the arcane bolts) seemed a little too light. I get that this is supposed to be a group game, but the friend I started with who was playing tank, and indeed the ranger I switched to later, seemed a little more powerful out of the gate. It doesn't need a lot more, but getting dialed a little higher might balance the move a little better. That said, Ranger felt good. Combat and sustainment needed attention, as it should, but it felt capable.
Artisan skills: So much crafting needs copper, even beyond the skills you would expect. After playing all three days, I wasn't able to find a single copper node on Vyra server. Maybe it was further afield, but I saw lots of iron. Increasing copper spawns so it can be found at a rate similar to other low level materials would help artisans get more into that system. Based on what I was seeing in Global chat, I wasn't alone in this.
Early "Sweat of Your Brow" quest: The structure and text of the quest seemed to imply that you could deliver to both outposts, and if you tried that, we ran into an issue where you were then unable to complete the quest. Perhaps add the option to get more snowdrop and deliver to the other place, or make the end state a little clearer? Either way, the NPC you do most of the quest for sounds like a drunken bumpkin idiot. I keep hearing that he is an AI generated placeholder, but I say he is perfect. Do not change him. I would miss him.
I’ll provide a format for people to fill out if they wish and I will update it as I read a lot of these posts as needed when I can. Feel free to use this if you wish, add to it, or use something different if you wish. I do wish for people to leave out things that are a natural part of the Alpha; ex. buggy, laggy, balancing, ect. These are obvious problems that don’t help to be reiterated many times at this point in development. I’m sure the AoC dev team are aware of a great number of these already. Also, the in-game bug report tool is there for a reason, let’s steer this away from the general bugs of alpha 2. Feel free to fill out any or all as you see fit, I put stars next to ones that could be the most useful imo.
****Please feel free to answer any number of these sections here!****
Or feel free to just respond to what I or others have said!
Primary class played thus far in A2*
Experience with that class*
(Since you have the most experience with it, I would prefer more in-depth answers here instead of on classes you haven’t gotten to play much yet)
Combat (targeting/pacing/feel)*
The AoC team*
The world/terrain/map/open world dungeons/PoI’s*
Professions (gathering/processing)*
Leveling (speed/effectiveness/feel)
NPCs (friendly and enemy)*
Nodes*
Quests*
PVP*
Sound effects/music
Visuals/graphics
Animations
World difficulty/group play*
UI
Camera
Inventory and player storage
Raids/raid bosses
Gear
Drops
Other changes?
Hopes for the future of the game*
Other MMOs you’ve played extensively (gives insight into some people’s views) and about how long you’ve been following AoC development
Primary class played thus far in A2*
I have mostly played as Cleric thus far in A2, I played with my buddy most the weekend who played as a fighter. Unfortunately, I had many crash/connection issues this weekend, but I was able to make it to lvl 12.
Experience with that class*
(Since you have the most experience with it, I would prefer more in-depth answers here instead of on classes you haven’t gotten to play much yet)
Cleric feels like a decent start to a healer. The dev team has put a lot of exciting thoughts into how healers heal and function. I love the variety for healing preferences, be it hot focus, raw heals (hard casts), or longevity and even preventative healing like shields. There’s a good place for many of the different types of healing styles for players. In this game there is also a great opportunity to flesh out a new type of healer which (I haven’t seen much before) is the actual melee class healer. One who’s really thicc and is up in the thick of things providing the ‘extra’ heals to melee who always seem to get hit a little harder than the rest of the raid. (Please expand on this aspect, it’s very good gameplay). I view the future of healers filling several roles when it comes to a raid atmosphere. Some who provide the big chunky heals to the tanks and such; those who have blanket heals for the rest of the raid, and diverse healers who can do a bit of flex healing and keep their mana higher for the majority of the fight as to be a safety net for the other healers, along with ones trying to mitigate heavy incoming damage with shields and such. The aoe shielding ability from the bard seems like something the cleric should have instead.
The variety that the cleric has in terms of heals feels fun to play with. In general, there’s an answer to most things. Though I tend to feel like 1 healer shouldn’t be doing everything, especially in raids, roles can tend to overlap with other healers. This can easily lead to wasted heals since it’s almost impossible to coordinate on that degree with your other heals in real time reaction.
Though, the damage of the cleric seems a bit lacking. It feels hard to kill things unless I fully respect to the more damage focus side, but I dislike doing that because I personally just find other players to fill that role while I pocket heal. I mean I’m playing a healer for a reason. This does bring up an issue of requiring people to play with, so if clerics find themselves far behind the curve of people leveling they may run into performance issues when killing things alone. This has always been a hard one to balance because if a healer is doing as much damage as a dps then why even have dps? Pvp would devolve into just a mass of healers fighting each other. I’m still unsure to this day of how to make a healer viable in pvp or pve alone and keeping it balanced for the rest of the game.
As a cleric the healing felt meaningful and while I could heal people that get hit with those heavy hits from mobs, I couldn’t sustainably keep that type of healing up due to mana cost. This means it requires players to really just not be braindead and sit there in the ‘fire’ and keep just dpsing or something. Agency for other roles feels good and it gets punished (either through death or massive mana costs for the healers) to correct the issue.
Mostly my friend and I played together, and group farmed. I would group things up and he would cleave them all down. It worked pretty well tbh. Though, healing ripped threat a lot of the time which makes sense since he wasn’t a tank class. (Also please change tank class name haha, how about guardian?) solo potential feels bad, but group play feels like a healer should be, (required).
Combat (targeting/pacing/feel)*
Combat felt actually quite good already! The world felt dangerous, which I very much love! I enjoy the fact that most enemy NPCs had a sort of ‘heavy’ attack that can be dodged or blocked (it’s a little too predictable right now but that could easily change later on)
I do worry about the game becoming a zerg this zerg that type of game. I think the best way to not let this take over is the exp split. Making it ideal to be in a group of 8 or so instead of 30 when it comes to exp gains is a decent way to balance this imo. Maybe even splits of exp until like a grp size of 8 and anything after that falling off harshly?
I know Steven doesn’t want to hear this part. But when it comes to the action targeting vs the tab targeting; there will only be one imo that is superior and used by everyone. If one ever becomes less viable than the other one, then that one will become the only one used. I think it is a mechanic that needs to just be combined somehow, or one being deleted. It doesn’t work very well imo. And the targeting reticle doesn’t seem very viable right now, at least for a healer or caster type. Aiming melee attacks seem to make the best use of it right now? Either way, I sort of see the ‘action’ targeting method as a complete waste sadly.
The out of combat mana regen seemed kind of meh, but given that this could be due to cooking being a thing, I could see leniency. I would just like to not be eating mountains of rations and sitting all the time to regain mana for minutes between every 3-4 pulls or so. Now yes, this is an important aspect of the game. If you regen mana too quickly outside of combat, then it could lead to things like kiting away and breaking combat in pvp just to sit and regen it all back real quick behind a tree, allowing you to jump right back into the fight after. That would be a problem, especially on large-scale pvp.
The AoC team*
I was impressed by the AoC team this weekend. It felt great having real time feedback and updates on the discord. They were fairly effective when it came to being a team and working to overcome problems.
Obviously, the DDoS attack challenged them quite a bit. But I’m sure they will come up with something to help in the future. But this weekend gave me faith in the team
It almost feels weird having live service again in games. I really prefer it. It may be more costly but honestly Steven, it makes a world of difference! I would be willing to pay a little more a month just to have all the great features that older games used to have.
I hope the team keeps building a game that they want to play! This is the only way a game can be good again imo. Obviously, Steven never wants to do this but, keep it NO PAY TO WIN/CONVIENCE! I will quit the second that cancer invades this game, it is an atrocious plague to overtake the gaming community and cutthroat executives that invade an entertainment environment with that crap can eat shit! Making money in this industry should be about how enjoyable your product actually is instead of addicting someone to your cheap game and using divisive/manipulative measures to milk them like livestock.
The world/terrain/map/open world dungeons/PoI’s*
The world felt amazing! There were lots of PoIs to go and see and the terrain actually felt lifelike in that a mountain actually felt big and difficult to traverse over. I like that the world makes you feel small. As a world should feel! The world felt generally full (obviously there were missing mobs in areas) but those are just alpha issues. They will be fixed. I like how there was all sorts of important places around the map to visit and that it wasn’t all just linear progression level wise. I like the dynamic of mobs being all sorts of different levels leaving places to level in a lot more of an open concept.
The world dungeons made me very hesitant at first. But the respawns were fast enough to not force too much friction between the like 5 groups that are there. And they are generally large enough to accommodate multiple groups. The only thing that really made it difficult was when your team needed to regroup rez and or eat rations. There may need to be some sort of ‘safer’ areas in these locations that allow for this instead of being stuffed to the hilt with mobs that respawn very quickly. I hope your team can keep this in mind going forward when designing these areas. Or even in cases like the tower of carph, maybe a clear floor for people to even log out at and come back to in maybe even a day and it be safe enough to do so? Or a rez attune spot on these floors too?
I’m sure the map will become better, but it needs a little marker for party members when fully zoomed out. Keep making tweaks, good job with it so far! The mini map slider seemed a little off too.
Professions (gathering/processing)*
Tbh I think this is very early in the development for a lot of these. I think they need a lot of work in general right now.
Iron and copper look too similar
I love the ideas behind all the professions and how so many feed into others and how you’ll be allowing multiple focuses for each player. 2 grandmaster level ones makes you really think on which ones you want to focus later though! This system definitely pushes players into guilds/groups and markets!
The only major change I think you need to consider at this point in the alpha is that mobs shouldn’t just drop glint, think about them dropping materials for professions too. Such as meat for cooking or provide a skin to cut off after defeating mobs or fur?
I like the idea of the different levels of tools to make your job of gathering easier. I also like the fact that it is a slow process. It makes you selective with your time instead of mastering everything on a bunch of alts quickly. This forces more community play, as long as professions are kept as important as Steven plans for them to be.
This will be a very important aspect of the game and I urge Steven to really get working on this sooner rather than later because this could really make or hurt the game if not done well.
Auction houses for nodes will also be very important for this. Or ways to sell goods without having to always do it in person.
Gathering in the game so far has been leisurely and pleasant so far. I haven’t gotten the chance to try fishing yet. Again the only thing I would change is the hunting side of it. Make actual killing mobs part of hunting/cooking/tanning?
I would also kind of like to see a different way to get animals for the husbandry system too? Maybe small variance in mobs like hp or attack power? This way we can hunt and ‘tame’ enemy mobs in game based on those stats? I sort of attribute this to the system Ark has where all dinosaurs have a set of stats with them. Maybe if you could implement this into the game to some really dumbed down version, it could be a very engaging profession where you are going and hunting out the best mobs out in the wilderness? Like maybe +-1-3 of each of those stats on all mobs making them have more hp or hit harder? Then a proficient hunter could read a stat sheet of mobs later on as they level up with a scan of some sort? The current way of petting these weird spawns out in the wilderness feels really weird to me.
Leveling (speed/effectiveness/feel)
I like the length of leveling, I like it to be slower as long as the world and content leveling up is rich and engaging! If it’s the same sort of grind and boring af to level new alts I will just want to get it done as fast as possible no matter how boring it might be. Don’t just leave all the pvx content for end game! If you make leveling enjoyable, like grinding for gear, making new gear, fighting lower level bosses/raids, PoIs that are fun and have good questlines. Randomness is important too. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of work for your design team to make quests not repetitive horse crap, or the same world events all copy pastas of each other and just sprinkled throughout the areas. Make them unique whenever possible!
This one’s sort of hard to argue at this point in development because ultimately it can easily be adjusted through sliders later on in fine tuning. So, I’m not going to hit on this part too hard. Just simply that the process will need a lot of set up to be exciting later on down the line. Just as world building needs tools to make it easier to set up the world later, this is similar.
NPCs (friendly and enemy)*
The AI voice acting needs work. Whatever, alpha problem. I’m not worried about that part.
But I do think the AI voice acting could be quite enriching to the experience in the game and I tended to prefer it when I heard the NPCs actually talking to me.
NPC behavior was a little erratic but again alpha problem. I like how the enemy NPCs have heavy hits but they need to be a little more random or unexpected, though keep at least some of them telegraphed. I love how the heavy hits sort of add a darksouls sort of vide to the game with the dodge mechanic. Now I’m happy with it as it is, it makes you feel more involved in the combat!
Nodes*
Another costly aspect when creating so many towns and versions of towns! I’m glad to see the work here for creating the different buildings and stuff. Just please don’t make it copy pasta to all the other nodes out there, god that kills the game for me. Unique towns are what enriches the game to the next level! Just think of Stormwind or the Undercity in WoW. Entering those towns were very flavorful to the experience of the game and the races that live there! They leave an impression!
Right now, they are a little too similar, but again alpha problem, hopefully.
I love the idea of how they level up and stuff and have their own economy and citizenry.
There’s a lot left to be seen here obviously, I would like if the entire area kind of leveled up with the node though, like roads and stuff. Can’t remember if you planned this already or not.
Quests*
The rewards are pretty bad as it stands now, exp and money are pointless amounts (can easily be changed). The stories you try to paint with them do a little bit of service towards the game. But honestly the team need to step this section up imo.
This will take a lot of set up as well. But the quests now feel very generic! Go kill, go loot, bring this to …. Unique quests like you keep teasing in some of the trailers. Ones that make a big change or difference to the areas are exciting story telling. Like you start killing goblins and when enough people do this quest it changes the zone. All of a sudden, the goblin king raises up and starts to invade due to his kins men being slaughtered. Then more of the mobs start to respawn in areas as goblins and maybe give them unique ai like they slowly move towards the towns in the area making it feel like it’s under attack, instead of them just sitting there in the world.
Dynamic quests would be amazing but honestly, I don’t know how you would set these up personally. They would almost need cycles for each type of quest. I’m also uncertain if you already plan for these as nodes level up? You teased one where a tree in the distance exploded with dark energy, like that is interesting! Make more quests that do things like that one. Then it’d be ok if they are a little more basic methods of telling the story of the game. Maybe make a main story quest line of some kind for the game? Make that a way to introduce new races or enemies or such?
But quests right now seem like they are all of the monotonous variety. I will take a longer look at these in the future, but I think this area needs a lot of love because they can be the story telling of the game. This is a big aspect of making the game more interesting.
PVP*
Seems fine. The only bit I personally got to experience was when the servers were going to be wiped before Friday. This was mostly people not caring about the consequences because they were getting wiped anyways. So it’s hard to judge here for me. The little I played around with on Thursday seemed to be in a decent spot.
The only main part of this is that mount killing was rather annoying by pvpers during this time. But a lot of these issues can be tuned later on so I’m kind of just leaving this as an alpha problem for now.
Sound effects/music
Absolutely fucking epic! Keep up the great work!! Steven the team is rocking this part! Sounds…. Hit hard I love them! They are what helps make the experience more exciting and even real. I love epic combat sounds and voice lines from monsters and the towns around the game. Big thuds of a mace make it amazing for me!
Small change right now would be make the greatsword sound a little more like a slash instead of a thud? More versions of combat music maybe? That can get a little monotonous.
Keep up the great work here. You’ve set the bar high so far, keep it there.
And I know a lot of people aren’t all that into the noise level of a tree being chopped down. Personally, I liked the sound myself. I could hear the people out in the fields surrounding Lionshold at work. It actually sounded like a logging camp out in the distance. More sound effects around the town like that could help a lot with making it feel more real and exciting. I can point to one distinct sound I think most people from WoW know, and that’s the tink tink tink of the stonemasons in Stormwind. I won’t be forgetting that sound for a long time.
Visuals/graphics
I have no problems here for the most part. I like the looks of the game quite a bit! I only wish for the epicness of spells to stay where they are or go even higher. Spell visuals of Warhammer 3 total war are quite epic in scale and exciting when you cast them for the most part. I love my favorite spells being visually flashy and exciting. A massive fireball should look, feel and sound like a comet hitting the enemy! I think there should be some almost game crashing levels of spells if you can make it work lol! Monstrous scale spells are why I love the magic side of the genre so much.
Some things are hard to put a visual on, but if your team thinks on them a little more I think they can make quite a few more of the abilities more interesting. An example from my gameplay is bless weapon. How about we make it turn that greatsword into a glowing or flaming looking weapon? And when I take the bonus one where it allows me to have some mana regen, maybe put a little mana sprite that circles around my head or something? This could be in the process of being made so I won’t harp on it much more.
Generally, looking great, can still be better. Keep it up!
Animations
These seem to be rather what I expected. I love the fact you animated the trees when chopped down. Stuff like that needs to be everywhere you can stuff it into this game. Great job with it thus far.
World difficulty/group play*
I like the difficulty here in the world. If you pull more than 2 mobs that are a little above you in levels it could be challenging to kill them. I like that it makes you think about traversing the world instead of the brain dead MMOs like BDO where you just click on the map, and it auto runs you over there. This difficulty on the mobs makes you want to group up more and work together instead of just taking advantage of everyone else for your own gain. The world also makes you very thoughtful about traveling to other places.
Group play is rewarded and makes people want to work together more in the future, so they aren’t just all using each other and shitting them out the other end when they are done with them. This game is starting to really set up the better side of group play, better than most other games. Keep up the work.
UI
Obviously heavily under construction. One note is that I LOVE the ability to move everything wherever I want.
I like being able to remap all the buttons as well.
Camera
I actually really like where the cameras sit on characters. And I find myself zooming in to look up under trees or such and I like when a game makes you want to do something other than keep it at max zoom because it allows you to appreciate the game even more as a byproduct.
Inventory and player storage
Seems fine. The herbalism bags seem pointless unless you make the stack faaar larger for those ones specifically. I assume there’s a lot of work here to be done so I won’t harp on it very much. I like the idea of storage being node specific. Small note is there needs to be a little more storage space.
Raids/raid bosses
From what I’ve seen on your showcases, there needs to be a lot more involved in the raid bosses.
Though it’s hard to speak to this when I haven’t been able to do them myself. You have a large kit here to work with, having the players with sprint/dodge/block. Use all this in your raid fights. Large fire breaths from a dragon that coat a large amount of the raid is kind of boring mechanic wise for boss fights. I just wish for a little more in your raid boss fights for now. The big ogre with the tree, that one was a little more interesting where you have to kill the tree weapon. But where were the dodges in the fight? Not much seemed like you need to dodge out of it in this fight and thus wasn’t terribly engaging beyond the norm imo?
Gear
Looks great so far for basic gear. My main thought here was I really want to see some freaking EPIC looking gear for characters, probably more so in the late game. I want to see a crystal great sword that’s bigger than the size of my character like Guts or darksouls. Something that makes me look at it and want to put thousands of hours into a profession to get it. Or maybe even a staff of pure light or living wood. Or glowy shoulder pads, or boots that leave an ice trail? Or hell even a giant dragon scale for a shield? I just generally want better looking gear at later points in this game which I haven’t seen a ton of art for yet.
Drops
These seem rare enough to be exciting when they do drop. But again, as I said above, I would prefer drops from mobs be more for professions like cooking/hunting/tanning when applicable. I think mobs should drop a few more interesting things. And maybe if a higher-level hunter kills something they get more meat when they kill mobs? Not much more on this as it’s still early dev.
Other changes?
I would kind of like to see the mage lightning ball shoot out electric bolts at additional target and do direct damage from the orb hitting things. (the orb is too slow for pvp I think to be useful). I look forward to seeing the fire and earth spells for the mage when they are done.
Hopes for the future of the game*
Naval combat in this game is something I deeply look forward to! I wish for this to really make you feel like you are out at sea. I want big waves, wind and storms if possible. Ideally something sort of like Black Flag. It makes you feel like you are out in the ocean and when in combat it takes a lot of maneuvering and teamwork to get your guns on point and do damage. I think this is one of the most exciting aspects that could easily fall flat on its face for this game. I would love for the ocean to feel expansive and vast. I hope the team manages to really make this a very exciting feature because it could be a massive pull for your game for players!
I wish for raid boss fights to be a little more exciting and interesting and the world’s cities to be more interesting than copy pastes of other cities. Keep all the future biomes feeling big and filled to the brim with stuff, dungeons and places. I really hope the games PVP doesn’t turn into just zerg everything with AoEs and stuff, that’s not engaging gameplay imo. I feel like the economy of this game will be very engaging and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
I really hope to see the teams’ efforts for making all the subclasses. I hope they can turn each of the different healers into something unique and spectacular. I also wish for them to make sure each of the different iterations of healer have their own identity or even role in the game come end game. I would prefer to see the different subclasses make you heal differently such as a shaman or something focusing on hot heals and high priests being the big chunky tank healers. This would provide a great variety for boss fights in the pve realm and allow for a larger and more exciting variety of boss fights. It could also work well in large scale pvp.
Other MMOs you’ve played extensively (gives insight into some people’s views) and about how long you’ve been following AoC development
I’ve played Wow for the most part since original vanilla. I dabbled in FF, Ark and BDO. And I’ve been following AoC since 2020. I almost always play healers.
Hi,
First of all thank you for that first access to the game, for some it was amazing, for other pretty chaotic but overall, we're all happy to finally come to the point where stuff gets real
I thought that it'd be great to create a post where i can recap and update my ideas for the game mechanics or interfaces.
Take what you're interested in and forget about the rest, here's just few notes about my thought while playing. There will probably be some already said stuff, but I'll be updating this post every week with new things.
Also as a second list, I'll join you a list of bug and weird behaviors I've encountered.
My experience has been pretty short, cause I'm one of those who had the Unreal Engine crash. I spend one or two days between stress testing and alpha 2 trying to find a way out of this. Finally managed, I'll explain in the end of the post what i did.
Of course everything here is related to improvement and bugs which is pretty negative but I must say i had a really great time and even if this is "only" an alpha 2, the game is great and I can't wait for what's next
I tried many stuff but with the queue time between each try, it took me 2 days to finally make a config working.
So I did many things and it's hard to say if it is one specific or all of it who made the difference. I can try to apply each of my solutions one by one to find the good one maybe but that'll be long with queue.
So to make my game work, I had to :
- Disable CPU boost in BIOS
- Do this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsoMl-e2-Tg
- Do that :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VwaWNRFXKU
- Also I was still crashing after a bit of playing but without UE error, just a freeze. So i had to limit FPS, which pretty much saved me in the end I finally managed to play for a whole evening (night) without a personal crash.
I've got a shit ton of logs on all my crashes but I'm not really comfortable in sending it here tbh. If you need it let me know, I assume your team has enough of those :PI will roll back all those changes so I'll try playing without next week, and let you know if it works
Here you go, I'll be back next monday eventually to give my new feedbacks
So I'd like to just give feedback of what I felt was the biggest issue so far, and that is the graphics.
First, I wish there were more options exposed to use. Not just "Shading"-Quality or "Post-Processing"-Quality. I'd like to see more specific options within these be togglable on it's own.
Options like Motion Blur, DLSS Sharpening, Spell Density, Volumetric stuff, water quality etc etc.
Give us players more options to customize game visual's. Not isn't just good from a performance pov, but also visuals.
For instance, I was looking to get more clarity but without having to turn on any sort of sharpening filter cus it always looks pretty awful to me. But it was rly hard to find a balance between the Post Processing, Anti-aliasing/DLSS and Shading. It was not straight forward what Quality to put the different features on. Give us more separate options for graphics/visuals, pls!
There was also many times were I felt that models and textures felt a little bit to generic. It was often hard to distinguish between background and objects/NPCs, as they kinda blended together in similar color schemes and saturation, it didn't help that everything on the screen looked like you had a "softness" filter on your screen, almost blurry. Which goes back to the options I was talking about earlier, give us more specific options to turn on or off!
I think the generic fantasy style and making people look for stuff works rly well for a particular set of players who like to explore a lot on their own without any sort of hand holding what so ever (old time Everquest players or Vanilla WoW players), but I think this game needs a LIIIITLE bit more clarity between important aspects and just background aspects for the average joe.
I don't rly have much to say about the rest as of right now. Serverlag and disconnects made me not wanna push to much into attempting to level or rly get a good feeling of the combat.
Imagine the surprise when I sit down to write my feedback now, and instead of dwelling over the hours I spent trying to login due to the ddos, and position: [1], I am letting you know that I became a fanboy! Seriously, your game is addictive, I loved playing it even when it was evident that its only half baked, and for sure your implementation of a Healer / Cleric is the best I had ever experienced with an MMO, ever.
Well done, and good luck! Can't wait for the next weekend.
Visually looks pretty good, especially for an alpha
Movement is mostly pretty good, but has a few areas that didn't feel great.
Combat is also mostly pretty good, but likewise has room for improvement.
Aside from these points, a few things to note
Great test overall! Sucks about the ddos.
Big agree. I would like to see auto-attack work like this: tab, press Q to begin auto attacking. Instead of: tab, immediately auto attacks.
Why? Because tab targeting is not predictable, so why would anyone want to not control that at least starting the auto attack sequence?
Also a big agree on the target of target key not working and I want it so bad ha ha.
Questing - So the solo content in this game needs to be looked at. I get it that its supposed to encourage you to get into groups to farm content and I get that I do like to do both but when people get sick of being in a group and want to go solo for awhile the content should support this. If I am really good at my class and can master how to play the game I should be rewarded for that instead of getting people to carry me through. I do like the challenge of soloing since the world is hard so I wouldn't tune the game to solo players at all but if we decide to solo for a bit we should be compensated and rewarded xp for doing so even if its slightly slower. Also, when people start the game a couple months after launch no one is going to be there to group with and we should think of this as many of the hard core players will be max level land most semi casual players won't be making too many alts to support it so there needs to be a back up where solo players can keep up maybe not be the best and most efficient but it needs to be close. The boards are a bit rough you accept all the quests but the kill quests don't even give you a hint of where to locate them maybe quest text can tell you or something subtle. I spent 3 days got to lvl 8 because I got in a Carafin farming group to boost it. Maybe give a bonus xp for questing if you do it solo or just boost the over all xp from completing quests in general because almost all the groups were just hard grinding and not even messing with the quests.
Empty Zones - Some of the zones felt super empty barely any mobs and when the nodes level up outside the nodes get higher level and I was forced to try and find places that had lower levels. I would often die doing this and it is frustrating getting these big xp debts so rapidly and it taking forever to get rid of it.
Fast Travel - Maybe some fast travel might need to be put in because even with a mount it was 15 to 40 min run to get to my group as they waiting for us to get there and this is a very small portion of the map the world is going to be massive. so Maybe just a fast travel to areas or maybe make it to where you cannot take supplies with you when traveling I have no idea but I believe you might want to consider this at some point as if the world is going to be as massive as it is and it take 2 hours to travel across the world to join a group. I am not saying we need teleports but maybe faster caravans that travel the roads or something like that.
Auto Attacking - In the lower left is a button for auto attack when you press this button nothing happens except your character does an attack but there is no response via the UI to show that you clicked the button so you really don't know if you did an attack from it.
Quest Givers - The map does show where to go for some of the beginner quests on the map which is great but if your supposed to figure it out on your own like all the quests later on I would recommend doing that from the beginning to be consistent or on the killing quests from the boards show the location of where you can find the mobs. Either way is fine but that should be consistent through out so that players know what to expect. Also when your going to turn in a quest it does show you on the mini-map the location but in game maybe something a little better to show there's a quest to turn in on the npc would go along way or maybe a glow up to you all, but it would be nice to be able to see this is the person i need to talk to.
Named Mobs - So the one thing I did notice when doing these bounty boards that when you did find the named mob it was if you didn't get the first hit you didn't get credit which causes bottlenecks. It would be nice that either you do a person who does more dmg gets the credit or everyone who tags it gets credit. Now regular mobs can be first hit but these cause huge bottle necks and can cause servers to get bogged down when a group is just sitting there waiting for the named mob.
Rations - This one I did not get to fully test but those beginner rations take about 5 of them to fill up the health bar so maybe the vender sells more expensive food and make crafted food better than sold but its tough sitting down eating 5 rations after every fight unless your intention is to push people into joining massive farm groups which make lvling easier but is more boring that traversing the world doing board quests.
Gathering - This actually impressed me I love the closeness to New world but you guys gave it a flare. The only thing I would say is that it would be nice that if the node is higher than my level maybe it could say hey you can mine this at whatever level so that we have something to work towards. I loved the passive fishing it feels great to be able to fish and not have to micro manage a bobber or what not.
Fighters - So I main a fighter so I can only give you perspective on what I like to play. Now I do love how most mmo's got the great swords and axes and maces however that is limiting what a fighter is especially if you look at real world types of fighters. What I did not see yet and maybe you might have plans for is a Samurai type class but the biggest one I do not see represented are Sword and Shield DPS fighters. There are so many like the Spartans, Gladiators, Hoplite, Vikings all used offensive fighters with a 1hnd weapon and a shield. Now the 1hnd sword skill tree is already primed for it but it just need like 1 or 2 skills from the shield side to seal the deal!!!! Like an offensive slam or shield bash type ability would be cool and it would make this entire fantasy possible and I know many warrior type players would flock to play it as its 100% unique with the exception of World of Warcraft for like 1 or 2 seasons. You could even take away the defensive benefits in a stance or something to make them not OP. Running out of mana is tough for a fighter because I found myself doing my auto attk sooooo much and it takes all the fun out of it. Now if we had a better way to regen mana it wouldn't be a problem but the things in place right now is not enough to generate mana but maybe something where when we hit we get mana back or something anything to helps us out.
But to close this out you guys did a phenomenal job and I love what I see because I know you guys will fix all the issues you find and each week will get better. There were way more bugs and problems in 2002 when we were testing World of Warcraft and the sections were much smaller than Vera so hats off to yall!
1. Server Performance/ Launcher/ Login: The servers are undoubtedly not ready yet, and needs work. Anybody saying any different is not being honest with the Devs. I play on the server "Vyra" and the level of issues that I encountered were innumerable. Sometimes you would launch the launcher and receive an error. and couldn't get the patching client. Sometimes you would open the game and be stuck on connecting permanently. When you get into queue it would get stuck at 1 which was a display bug that left you wondering what your actual position was. But you didn't want to close the queue as it would likely give you a launcher problem again. When this was fixed it began showing 9999 instead.
Assuming you made it past all this you would get into a server that if you were far away from spawn would work with some lag. While in other areas closer to spawn would be unplayable altogether and experience the brunt of the server crashes. It was very often that when you press an ability the server would not register the hit. Famously, in my farm group, I counted 10 auto attacks before one went through at one point at highwayman hills. It is very likely Intrepid is completely aware of all the issues I stated here. But I don't want to understate the importance of server stability being the number 1 priority of fixing.
2. Bugs: Bugs galore which was to be expected from the alpha 2. Some very funny and others very frustrating. One bug had our ally turn into the bears we were fighting at the Ursine Cave area after he died. While others saw all my currency turn to 0 after selling an item. I could go on and on about bugs. But this is why we have the /bug command in game so I wont waste everyone's times.
3. Quests/Events: The next feature that needs to be corrected once the top 2 are under control is the questing system. I have to say what is there as far as interesting bread crumb quest items and locations have been compelling. It is very cool to go to a location and find some scrawling on a wall or a rune on the ground you can interact with. However this was overshadowed by the unclear messaging of the quests. Take for example the quest that asks you to "Find the Blood Rune in the Aelic Ruins" I spent 20 minutes circling that area to find that rune to find absolutely nothing. I read through the quest description twice and still had no luck. To make matters worse it appears as though there is a yellow marker to tell you where it is but when you go to the marker there is nothing to be found. In other quests the yellow marker tells you exactly where you are going but in others its incredibly confusing. I understand ashes does not want to hold your hand, but I would rather no marker than one that marks locations that are useless. Moral of the story is there needs to be more cohesion with quest directions.
I would like to add as well, make sure there is an indicator for where certain quests are. There is a clip of a streamer ( Sodapoppin) stopping the game entirely due to (partially) frustrations about what marker constitutes a quest as some are unclear. (I originally thought it was the book icon and sometimes it is and other times its just flavor text.)
It looks like there may be some secrets hidden around. I LOVE THIS. Going up to something and seeing a bone campfire that i can interact with for example; the first thing I think is "Ohh I wonder if I can get an item and make something happen here". I highly recommend you place secrets like that throughout the world with something you can do to interact with those things for a reward. ( DO NOT make these obvious )
Lastly for questing, I personally think they should be used sparingly and interestingly. Have them tell a good story or be a quest that is genuinely engaging. Please avoid the wow version of "Kill 10 boars" and instead try a Runescape approach of longer in depth questlines that bring players to multiple places.
4.Art Style: Ashes has a very interesting problem when it comes to art style. On one hand the draw distance and the vistas, as well as handcrafted mountain ranges are absolutely beautiful. There aren't many places that look copy pasted for somewhere else ( except the nodes assuming that's only for testing ). Everywhere I go I have my mind blown by how immersive and sizeable the world is.
The part that doesn't work however, and a point I have heard from several content creators is something I agree with. The game currently doesn't feel like it has its own unique art style added in. Something where you look at the characters and armor and go "That's Ashes". A way that I think this could be worked on is by looking at player models. The player model looks slightly too small for the world they inhabit. Also, they do look fairly like a generic UE5 character model i'm sorry to say. I would recommend experimenting around with different character model styles to give an Ashes touch to it.
5. Nodes: Currently I don't have too much to say about nodes as there really isn't much to them in their early iteration. I would like to see the different levels and see where they go. I hope leveling a node isn't as fast as it is in the current alpha build since the moment the test started within 30 minutes Joeva leveled up. I'm assuming this is just for testing purposes but I do want to note it. The idea of being in certain territory is really cool however, and I love the fact that when I walk around Winstead ( where our guild lead is mayor ) I feel a sense of superiority over the players there XD.
Apart from this, it is strange to have the landscape "squares" around each node. I understand that is probably where the node will build out to. But I think the terrain should look more natural without the weird clipping issues on the lower levels.
6. Combat: Whoever the combat designers are, they are fantastic. Combat in this game for at least fighter and mage are very compelling. My guild and I have spent several hours discussing what optimal builds would be and a guide for the rest of guildies. The synergies the abilities have with each other are really interesting and fun. All I have to say on combat is keep up the good work and continue to expand options in the future. Also make the final hit of any weapon combo a little more obvious so we know when to continue with our rotation.
For specialization this may be a hot take. I understand the vision of Intrepid is to lock players into a certain build with talents and make it hard to switch. PLEASE DONT DO THIS. I find that switching talents around is incredibly important for different situations and will really suck to be forced into suboptimal play for your class at times. The game is punishing enough as it is.
Another hot take. Do not let players receive every talent in their tree. Force them to pick which ones they want and which ones they don't. This allows for different builds and encourages us theory crafter's to really play with the class.
Lastly, XP Debt... Personally I am not a fan. I think there are better ways to punish a player for dieing. XP debt is not that big of a deal at low levels but as you get higher, dieing even once can send you back 10 minutes + of regaining XP due to the sheer amount you need. Better ways include durability damage, respawn timers, losing materials and others. Some of those already happen to you when you die and is already very punishing. I don't think the XP Debt is necessary.
7.Travel: Verra is absolutely massive and I love that. This makes travel times long and tedious. But retains the immersive grandiose nature of the world. I have seen a few content creators talking about allowing fast travel. I highly disagree. Adding Fast Travel in my opinion will undermine the size of the world, and the problem solving of getting from one point to another.
It has already happened a few times where someone in our guild needs us to reinforce them but we are far away. We tell them we are on the way but it will take some time. Then you come riding over the hill to help with their battle feeling like you are fighting at helms deep. The inconvenience of travel is a major part of this game and I think adding fast travel forsakes the vision.
Reference:
These are the main points I really wanted to touch on. Note that I did not speak on crafting as I have done none of it. It would be foolish of me to critique a system I have not even engaged with. If anyone has any thoughts feel free to leave them below. Perhaps we could give some great feedback for the developers.
Thanks for reading,
( Genesis) Kaia
Combat and Mage class design:
From mage's perspective the combat the combat felt good and responsive. Using the wand to apply elemental effects that help you trigger reactions is super fun to use (especially when u proc the laser). Doing the Mage AoE Shatter is one of the most satisfying things to pull off and its the biggest reason why I enjoyed the combat so much. Seeing the word SHATTERED on the screen 8 times makes me feel good like nothing else.
Pre-lvl 10 you arent very strong cuz you dont really have many good spells and/or gear but thats honestly fine cuz its literally lvl 10 out of intented 50 lol. Not all classes are supposed to feel good early on. I feel like thats the problem with progression taking so "long" (8-12 hours of game time is not long imo) but past lvl 10 when you get upgraded gear and all the spells necessary to pull off the AoE rotation it feels like a whole new class.
World design:
Vibe of the world is decent. I really like how vertical the map is in many places. Lots of hills, rocks and mountains to scale and while the movement isnt perfect yet doing parkour with Mage blink or Ranger backflip is already one of my favourite things to do.
Plus its rewarding to scale stuff and then seeing some glorious vistas with your friends and just chill. And suprisingly the lighting is much better than I expected it to be. Its not perfect by a long shot but sometimes it just hits and looks actually pretty.
Content:
Quality of the content available was ass. Mob placement random as fuck, broken quests, commissions that give you fuck all of exp so they are not even worth doing cuz killing 10 bears takes 2 minutes and rewards you the same exp as a commission. The only content currently worth doing are events and grinding mobs that respawn quickly which I think is little embarrassing given one of the goals of the Phase 1 is to test the progression.
I didnt do much of artisan stuff apart from some gathering and when I made the guild creation stuff and I had to use the scribing stuff
On node system:
So far I am very surprised with how well the node system worked on our server in particular. On our server mayors tried to coordinate their node progressions so everyone on the server is able to experience as much of the content as they can. People actually seem eager to talk, form a community, work together and dont pull their trigger to just mindlessly attack people. It often worked for our group to just talking to people to solve issues which if you ask me is already big success
The biggest criticism of the node system I have is that it hits level 3 in 5 hours so most people wont even get to experience level 1 or 2. I think it needs to be scaled down by a lot. Maybe it was intended for this test but since I dont have any information about that I am judging it based on what I experienced.
One more thing is the citizenship system. It cannot be left in the state it is now. You CANT have people just dropping citizenships to skew the mayoral vote anywhere they want. There has to be a cooldown even in phase 1 otherwise Intrepid will make people dislike the node system a lot imo.
If there was one thing I would want to be fixed before next week its this. ^^
There were many things I liked however I feel we are here during these alphas to critique and scrutinize.
A few things I would consider needs attention from my time and experience.
1) Solo survivability, I know this is being pushed to be a group oriented experience. A player will be solo at times for different reasons and it they should be capable of standard population mob survival. this will play into some of my other points late as well.
2) Player economy being supplied by various artisans will require those artisans to be somewhat self sustaining while gathering resources, not too many folks gunna group up with you to watch you chop down trees or pick flowers. Again solo survivability.
3) Resources for mining and herbs seemed very very sparce for the T1 nodes, now this could have been due to the number of players but I don't think so, I had to venture far away form lionhold to find T1 mining and herbs and the mobs in those areas were way beyond me if I failed to avoid their aggro. I dont mind the grind of leveling any of the skills I do mind frustration in futility.
4) Leash distance, leash distance, leash distance......this is actually ludicrous. And aggro range could prolly use a touch as well due to mob respawn frequency.
5) The drop on death mechanic needs a lot of work, I encountered numerous times folks just watching you die and grabbing your items and dipping. This does not encourage the group or social aspect I think youre intending. something needs to be done here if you intend to leave this function in for players killed by npc's. Perhaps a recovery timer where it cant be stolen immediately or something, but death runs because I dropped some sweet resources is not an "interesting mechanic". Watching a cleric who could have been healing me and/or helping fight stand there and watch me die then immediately take my drops and still not revive me is a terrible, terrible mechanic.
All in all Im glad I bought the original supporter packs and look forward to next weekend!! Thank you for your hard work and dedication!
2. I thought the world was beautiful, but I personally would like more unique fantasy aesthetic added into the zone. ( I want to know what zone someone is in just by seeing a bunch of giant floating islands, etc. )
3. The map needs a little fine tuning at some point. EX: When I would zoom in / out I would not be able to see my party members icons at times because they would disappear.
4. I would like the ability to hotkey mouse scroll wheel up and down.
5. I think the active block system should be only available to tanks and buffed significantly for them. It didn't feel like it had much impact as any other class that I tried. I'm also not a fan of dodge rolling as a defensive. So, I would be fine if it was just removed from the game and active defensive cooldowns took it's place.
6. Overall, I enjoyed what this current iteration of alpha 2 offered. I'm looking forward to being a part of the continued progression.
That last one is rough. I completely agree, this is not a good mechanic. Maybe people should go red if they did that. Maybe get a faction hit equal to if you killed them. It might seem like a cool idea, but your right, it fucks with the team spirit. You could argue, that then you coudl black list them and all that, but honestly, people would do it any way, especially if you cant see who it is.
Thx! Hadn't really noticed the batch processing. Just for the processing or also when crafting weapons etc?
Maybe this comes with node development (my node was petty borked because the mayor lowered the taxes to the point where they couldn't fund any development) and may not be an issue if the mayor increases processing queues somehow.
2) have you ever played a game with player driven economy and gear? You won’t compete with massive clans funneling mats to a select few crafters. Want to be a crafter? Join a clan.
3) it’s a delicate balance between sparse, and free stuff everywhere. They should slowly adjust this, although for testing purposes it could probably use a boost.
4) again it seems you don’t play difficult games much. This is a non issue for most people who played old school hardcore mmos. Learn to not flag every mob you run by.
5) griefers will find a way to grief. This is why any mechanic/dev time spent in game to foil this is a pointless waste of time. Just like life, griefers find a way, and usually pvpers suffer because of it. Never once do the victims of the griefing learn their lesson though. So you can’t blame the people who do grief.
In summation. Seems you want a solo game where you can do whatever you want, and be safe, while also enjoying the protection of random passer byes. This is not how a pvp game will work. If you aren’t in a persons clan, you are just a mark. An exploitable loot drop. Get used to this, and join a clan yourself.
video formats are also available in about 8 hours from the time I'm writing this post
https://youtu.be/xTFWFvzpcSo = Negative Video
https://youtu.be/dNg3L3hiyq4 = Positive video
i will start with the negative feedback to end on a sweet note:
1. Performance-
this one is the most obvious it could be, this game is pretty early for this big of a project and that shows, with the amount of FPS dips you will experience, i do not have the strongest computer every but i do have a 3080 and had a bunch of problems all over the map. the general rule is the closer you are to a node city the lower your frame rates, this obviously changes if there is big raid going on in any dungeon\enemy camp. during the first or second day of the test we managed to break the server by creating a raid and farming a big camp.
the performance doesn't stop at fps drops, due networking problems you also have to deal with constant rubber banding and inconsistent enemy behavior such as unresponsive enemies that suddenly 1 shot all the party or a zombie that is supposed to do 19 DMG but instead due to lag, does 100 attacks of 19 DMG, killing everything near it.
nearly every fight that ins't 1 vs 1 will leave you wandering who did the DMGto you.
there are also bugs like being stuck in 1st person camera, being locked in an animation, enemies stuck in walls and plenty more, that i might make a different video about the funny moments they create.
2. Artisan skills are not as standalone as i expected-
what i mean by that is that when following ashes of creation years ago i had the expectation that you will be able to play as a artisan player only, and you can, you just have to be max LVL with max gear before that. now why do i say that? because all your resources are surrounded by enemies of differing levels and they are the only locations to find resources, i had the expectation that keeping your stuff safe from other players would be the biggest threat but nope. also you don't get much exp from doing artisan stuff, less than a LVL 2 mob.
i really don't like this approach because it just funnels everyone into level frenzy first and then punishes those who don't focus on leveling and upgrading their equipment which seems to drop in higher quality than what you can make, at least at the start, obviously as the servers stay up more crafters will get higher quality craftables and will provide higher quality equipment, that said, mob LVL will also rise at the same time leading to higher quality equipment drops, if this is only for the tests i will be happy but it if it is going straight into the main game, it will devalue a lot of craters.
3.Mayor elections-
this point is only for scientific nodes. just like i fear way back then, mayors are just guild leaders or a guild representatives, elections take form in a small UI screen showing you the name, and you just have to choose who you want, you don't know who is who, what they think what they want to do, if want some info go speak to them if they even respond to your lowly status. the most simple and obvious step is to force the mayor candidates to write down what their plans are, what future they see for the node and hold a debate between the candidates, it will get the community together and will actually give a voice to the solo players and smaller groups.
4. enemy chase range is insane it needs to be lowered, they basically chase you until you leave their zone, or go a very long distance away
5. information is lacking-
what i mean by this is that when starting out, if u didn't watch every stream for the last 7 years it will be hard for you to find out, that you get plants from farming in a node that needs to be LVL 3 in a plot dedicated to farming, that you have the blueprints for and have the level needed to build all the buildings for your farming, a new player will have no idea what to do, they will simply look for vendors or random plants set in the world, all i want is a simple explanation that to get X you have to do a,b,c no need to specifically tell about every single plant or potion.
6. refining-
for some weird reason, refining is lock into batches of 1\5\10\25 when u get deeper into artisan skills you will start filling your storage (which is also bugged as hell and deletes some items) because refining can only do 25 each time and has only 1 Q it forces you to put in 1 batch the rest in storage and then you can continue farming. just let me put everything at once, i farmed it through honest work, no reason i need to AFK near the station just to process all my resources.
7. Caravans feel useless-
for now i don't see the point in caravans, all nodes in the test have the same resources and the amount of stuff u can move on you is pretty generous,maybe when the world is split and some nodes cannot produce certain resources it will make more sense, to send a big amount of items into a node, for sale. but for now no houses or shops that can be set up so you have to sell by hand anyway, take from this point whatever u think, i still haven't decided how important this feature is.
i can keep adding more and more, but i am aware that it is just an alpha test so i didn't write things like, rarity of the creature doesn't affect the mount u create and whole lot of similar bugs and features that are not yet in the game.
now for the positive feedback:
1. community-
AOC made me do stuff i haven't done in years, interacting with people and it's not a pain, at least most of the time. group game play is highly encourages here, mobs have high health and will require a healer for most big adventure, players are quite nice and will heal you if they see that you are low on health, as you go higher in LVL so does the competitiveness and you will be looted many times, try to keep away from the big guilds and you can have a lot of fun.
2.combat-
using your skills is fun, syncing with your teammates can provide higher DMG and status effects you can combo. movement feels nice and your skills have weight charging up a skill for it to do big DMG and a small shake, feels great, there is a very high ceiling that can be reached by learning the combo options
3.artisan potential-
this point is kind of double edged because the potential is very high but is hindered by LVL gating the content. the potential of actually being able to have full businesses in the game, with big chains of supply is truly interesting, the animations for those professions look very nice for the stage the game is at.
i would like to see how different servers will do, in relations to supplying resources and crafting certain items, because higher quality resources will require mayoral intervention to make higher quality stations to process those resources, resulting in either a very diverse node variety and big alliances between nodes or a copy paste format if there will be a best is slot type of combination
4.visuals-
every few minutes i find myself stopping and looking over a hill to see an amazing looking tree or building just big random point of interest that will lure you over, just to check how that thing looks from up close, the art is pretty basic but somehow is recognizable, i believe that if u show me a screenshot with no context i will be able to tell that it is ashes,though i can see why people will say it looks pretty generic.
5. team dedication-
all throughout this weekend the intrepid team seems to have gone into 24\7 mode, meaning they split into 2 teams, 1 working day while the other works the night, there have been a ton of problems but it is expected and the testers were informed months if not years in prior. and from a personal point, i have to say i expected way worse, like 5 hours Qs and endless disconnects, but for most of the time the servers were up and running, obviously with all the problems i named in my negative video. this doesn't include the last day of the test which is when I'm writing this script because the servers were DDosed making playing impossible.
6. world lore-
spread all around the world you can find in different enemy camps small and interesting bits of lore, not forcing lore down our throats feels great
7.mounts-
the persistence of mounts feels great, it does lack a bit in the veriety department, leading to funny moments of you forgetting where you parked your horse. the animations look nice, cant wait to see the rest of it.
8. happy surprise-
for this point i got some feedback from other people, and i can say that a lot of others were expecting a lot worse and were surprised by the result
i have a few more positive things i want to say but they are all potential of what things can be, and i don't want to speculate i want proper testing and then feedback, so i will leave the rest for the future
Hi there,
I had the opportunity to enjoy the first weekend of Alpha 2 to its fullest. First of all, I want to thank @Steven for giving us the chance to experience this game at such an early stage of development. As a Software Architect myself, I know how valuable, yet tedious, it can be to let customers glimpse an unfinished product. That aside, I fully understand the intentions behind this test; you want to find bugs and gather feedback as early as possible to steer development effectively. (To anyone complaining about the state of the game, I suggest reading up on Agile Development and Scrum.) I’m also aware that this is not a test for the UI, but those elements are tangible, so I will comment on them.
I will break down my feedback into different sections.
# Network / Server / Loading
## Stability
I tested the game before this weekend and I have to say, you’ve already improved it based on the data gathered this weekend. Holy smokes, that’s impressive! I never experienced any "rubber-banding." For a game currently in Alpha with thousands of players, this is fantastic. Regarding desyncs and players not loading in, that’s why we are testing, so I don’t blame you for that. I also did not have any login problems. However, it was funny to see the server crash right after Steven announced, “Ah yeah, by the way, the servers are online!”. I also never experienced any issues with "crossing" to a new server.
## Sounds
I find the music delightful, but I didn’t hear much else. I like the transitions to “enemies close” and “combat.” One thing to note: when I’m on the startup/loading screen, the sounds should be muted. I don’t want to have my ears blasted before I even start playing!
# Combat
In general, the combat feels great. Movement is responsive, and the skills and actions are fluid. It’s mostly minor details that need tweaking. I don’t think the game needs two modes; I would be just fine with action mode, but healers exist, which is why there’s tab targeting. As I played through it, I actually started to prefer tab targeting over action mode.
## Action Mode
Overall, the action mode combat feels very nice. However, I had the issue that, in some cases, the responsiveness of the mouse movement got mixed up with tab targeting. I think that’s just a regular bug. Still, there are aspects of action combat that I find annoying.
When in action combat, it would be nice if the game switched to tab targeting whenever I open another UI window, like the inventory or character menu. There were also times when I pressed “I” to open the inventory and no mouse cursor appeared at all.
Additionally, left-clicking should not make my character run to the next NPC while in action mode. What I found particularly frustrating was the automatic change of the current target when I didn’t want it to happen. For example, I was attacking a mob with my bow, using a sneer ability to slow it down, then turned around to create some distance. Upon turning back, I started clicking to draw my bow, but somehow it switched my target to another NPC, which I accidentally added to the pull. This should not happen—the target should only change if I actively press tab or if I don’t have an active target. When I'm not in combat, the current target should be displayed based on where my mouse is pointing until I deal damage to it, at which point it should lock onto that target. I felt that locking onto a target wasn’t as effective as I would expect; in some instances, it felt like I was attacking one target and suddenly switched to a different one mid-combat.
There’s a bug where, if you mount your horse while in action mode with right-click for defensive mode, the horse controls become weird. Generally, I think that when you’re in action mode and mount your horse, you should remain in action mode rather than switch back to tab targeting. It would also be cool if you could auto-attack while riding your horse, similar to mounted combat, which would support the idea of mounts having their own abilities.
## Tagging
I found the tagging mechanism somewhat confusing because there was no UI response indicating whether I had tagged an NPC or someone else had. I think what World of Warcraft does by graying out the health bar of the NPC is a great indicator for players to know that a mob is currently tagged by someone else, and they won’t receive credit for killing it.
I fully understand that if you get the initial tag, you are ahead of someone else in terms of damage, but that also creates opportunities for higher-level players to one-shot NPCs, leaving others without a chance to tag them for certain quest mobs. I was repeating commission quests for killing Quick Teddy, and often I would one-shot him, giving no one else the chance to tag the quest, even if they were in a group with multiple players.
In general, I think that players should receive credit for killing quest mobs if they contribute damage. This means that if 20 players deal damage to Quick Teddy, all 20 should receive credit for the kill, allowing them to move on without waiting for a long respawn timer. (Value player time!)
## Tab Target
I believe tab targeting is superior for ranged DPS and healers, while melee classes feel a lot nicer to play in action mode. I think the auto attacks on "Q" aren’t really necessary in tab target mode(could be the default to auto attack automatically), as I found myself toggling auto-attacking constantly in toggle mode. Without toggling I get cancer in my fingers... When casting abilities, auto-attacking should automatically start as soon as you press the ability, not limited to just ranged abilities and only if you have a cooldown available for that ability (This makes the game easier to control without loosing anything, why even having to press Q in tab target I consent on doing damage if I press on an ability). This happened to me in a situation where my Fireball wasn’t ready yet, and a mob attacked me. I spammed Fireball, expecting my character to weave in some basic attacks until Fireball was ready. It makes sense to do this, especially when pulling multiple mobs; it can be very annoying to keep pressing "Q" while switching targets. The button is small and not very visible in the heat of combat, which can lead to accidentally turning off auto-attacks without realizing it.
If something attacks you while you don’t have a target, the target should automatically switch to that new target. This is important for players to have awareness when they are being attacked or if a player tries to snipe them from a distance. I also think that ability cast bars should be shown below the target health bar.
## Resting
I like the resting feature, but I don’t think a player should sit longer than a minute without doing anything to regain full health and mana. This respects players’ time. I think the regeneration speed should be based on flat numbers rather than percentages; for example, healing 50 health per tick instead of 2.5%. This would make higher-level food more valuable, as it would regenerate more health.
I also felt that sometimes I wasn’t able to rest while having debuffs, which should not be the case, and at other times, I could sit and rest while still in combat with goblins, which ultimately led to my death. I didn’t feel like there was any out-of-combat resting regeneration, which is fine, as you have the resting mechanism in place, so I don’t think there should be any regeneration outside of combat while sitting, except for using consumables and potions.
## Dodging
This is a topic I always enjoy discussing. The only games that I believe have successfully implemented meaningful dodging are Elden Ring, Dark Souls, and Lost Ark. A dodge should be an ability used to avoid hits (make you immune) or stop a combo, but right now, the dodge in Ashes of Creation feels like merely rolling away without preventing damage. It shouldn’t be a spammable ability that allows you to roll multiple times until you’re out of stamina. Instead, I suggest implementing a cooldown and make the dodge grant immunity so that if you time it right, you can perform a nice play against your enemy. Dodge a certain ability or prevent a final blow of a combo.
A dodge should allow you to escape a combo or avoid certain mechanics entirely. Additionally, the talents related to dodging feel lackluster; better talents could include reducing the cooldown, enabling you to roll twice in a row, regaining stamina, or increasing speed after dodging.
## Loot
I appreciate how loot is handled in Ashes; it feels familiar and visually pleasing, with different colors indicating rarity.
Loot should be protected for a certain amount of time. I encountered several situations where an NPC killed me, and another player instantly looted my body. I also had instances where I killed someone, and someone else looted them. Loot should be protected for about 60 seconds for whoever killed the player. If I die to an NPC, the loot should also be protected for 60 seconds, allowing me to return and retrieve my belongings.
If I get killed by someone and a friend loots my corpse, the loot should not be marked as stolen if they want to trade it back to me.
## PKs and Corruption
Killing others is the most fun for me. I actually exploited the corruption system to the point where I feel responsible for many of the forum posts about this topic. You can easily damage someone enough that they panic and run into an NPC, getting killed by it. From there, it’s free loot because you don’t incur any punishment or corruption for attacking another player. A potential solution could be to implement a system where if you damage a player and they die within 30 seconds, you receive a punishment. Additionally, as long as the player remains in combat—even if they pull an NPC onto themselves—you should be punished if the player wasn’t in PvP mode.
You could camp the attunement stones since there was no kind of protection zone or invulnerability granted when a player respawned there. Overall, the griefing system works, but there are minor details that need to be addressed.
# Quests
I don’t want to touch too much on the state of questing since it feels more like an alpha issue. In general, the fluidity of quests should be easier to grasp and understand, especially if you want to attract a younger audience to the game. Most players currently engaging with this game are in their 30s and have likely played a lot of MMOs. The next generation may not be as familiar with these mechanics, so quest texts should be straightforward and a bit more guiding. There should also be safeguards to prevent players from locking themselves out of quests, such as selling quest items by mistake.
When you complete a quest, it should clearly show that you’ve gathered all the required resources. Additionally, when returning to the NPC who gave you the quest, there should be a screen that allows you to check how many items you’ve already gathered. This screen could mirror the one shown when you press "J" for the quest journal.
To keep things simple, it’s also important to maintain consistency—development anti-patterns apply to games too. UI elements should use the same color scheme for new quests, quests you’re currently working on, and completed quests ready for turn-in. As soon as you turn in a quest, the quest items should disappear. If that’s not happening for me, it could be an issue. Quest items in your inventory should be marked clearly as quest items to prevent accidental selling to vendors.
I’ve also had several instances where I defeated a quest mob but didn’t receive credit for it. One reason I found was that when I killed a quest mob outside the designated area—like in the quest "Boxed In" in "The Killing Fields" . The undead NPCs wouldn’t count toward progression. As mentioned in the game mechanics, you should receive credit for a kill if you deal damage or heal someone who is attacking a quest mob, even if its not your tag.
## NPCs
I encountered some bugs, like spider mobs crawling on the ground that I had to hit with my bow. When I first started playing, I didn’t realize I could have picked up the starting weapons in the first room, which was frustrating because I couldn’t attack the spiders without a bow. I also believe that cows and pigs in Lionhold should be attackable, but doing so should make you hostile to the guards.
I experienced a situation where I could hit goblin mobs with my ranged weapons without fear of dying, which allowed me to pull a large number of them. I abused the aggro system to kill them without getting into trouble myself; I essentially jumped on some flower pots, pulled the mobs with my bow, and then finished them off with my longsword. In my opinion, NPCs' melee ranges should be larger than the player's to prevent these kinds of tactics in raids and dungeons. I appreciate how World of Warcraft makes NPCs immune to damage and resets them if they can’t attack you. This is something actively happening in WoW Classic, where mages can exploit mob pulling to clear entire dungeons for massive EXP and loot.
EDIT: I also don't understand when a Mob resets. Somehow they start running away only to come back later while you sit and drink in order to beat up your ass.
In general, NPCs should have pulling mechanics based on their level and type. For example, a dog should have a higher aggro range because it can smell you from farther away, compared to a foot soldier. Additionally, if you are 10 levels above a foe, their aggro range should be reduced since they wouldn’t want to engage you.
I appreciate that certain types of NPCs spawn only during specific times of day or seasons; it makes the world feel more alive and immersive compared to other games. However, I noticed some NPCs, like ravens, were visible from very far away, while others spawned only about 20 meters from my character. In this regard, having more consistency across the game would enhance the experience, though I understand it might also depend on player density and other factors.
## UI
I don’t want to focus too much on the UI since it’s still in alpha and not part of the core system; it will obviously change before release. However, I do have some suggestions regarding what I think is necessary. For example, damage numbers shouldn’t be customizable; nobody really cares about that. Why would anyone want their damage number to be green? In my opinion, Fullcraft Classic has the best damage number display. When you score a critical hit, it should appear as a large number so you can easily see, “Wow, I just hit a crit for big damage!”
The escape button should always close all UI elements currently on screen and take you to the menu if it isn’t already open. The map should be movable only with right-click, and while holding right-click, it shouldn’t interfere with any other UI elements on the map. When you press enter, it should always bring you to the chat, allowing you to either open it or send the message you’ve just typed, if any.
I like the idea of map markers; they’re fun and should be visible in the game world. Additionally, I think it would be beneficial to add a ping system similar to the one in Apex Legends, which is superior to anything that has been implemented so far. This would help raid leaders communicate effectively, telling players where to stand and what to do during major PvP events and node sieges.
## Professions and Nodes
I'm not much of a crafter, but there are a few things I’d like to see. If there’s a button to start a job to create items, that same button should also be used to claim the finished products. I understand this might be due to alpha testing, but it’s frustrating that I can only choose one temporary item at a time. Additionally, waiting 15 seconds for timber to process feels excessive. I think reducing the processing time to just one second would help new players get acclimated more quickly.
Also, the quest items for obtaining your horse feel useless since they can just be discarded. While gathering flowers in the wild, I thought it would be nice to gain experience from that, as gathering contributes to node levels. There are players who enjoy resource gathering, and they should be able to level up through this activity. Make Love not Warcraft!
Regarding the bag system, I don’t think river runes should be allowed in the lumberjack's bag; only lumber should go in there. Additionally, bags specific to certain jobs should have a significantly larger capacity than the default bag, which can hold any material. It doesn’t make sense to purchase a lumberjack bag if it’s the same size as a standard materials bag.
## Loot
Regarding mob looting, it was clear what type of loot was contained within each mob. I would like the opportunity in the loot window for rare items to see who has needed an item, as well as who ultimately receives it. This way, players can discuss potential trades with each other.
Event chests should be lootable by any player for their own personal rewards. Alternatively, when you enter an event, you could automatically be grouped with other players, so when one person opens a chest, the loot is shared among everyone in the group. This would prevent the situation where only the first player to reach the chest gets the loot.
I accepted a quest from a merchant to kill goblins. As soon as I accepted the quest, the goblins dropped new loot that I could sell as vendor trash. I don’t think loot should be unlocked by a quest; it should be available by default. This way, if you’re already grinding goblins and have collected a lot of the necessary items for the quest, you can turn it in right away. All items should be treated as trash unless they are specifically quest items.
As mentioned above, if someone loots my corpse and wants to return my items, it would be nice if they weren't treated as stolen but as my loot. Additionally, if I get revived on the spot, I shouldn’t have to pick up my own loot again.
## Horse
The idea of having horses early in the game is nice, but they aren't worth it since they aren’t faster than running with sprint on. If the horse dies, there’s a 10-minute cooldown, which I think is a bit too long; it should be reduced to five minutes, which aligns better with player needs. Additionally, the UI and toolbar should clearly indicate when there’s a cooldown on the horse due to its death.
If you die and respawn at an attunement stone, your horse should also be healed and respawn. There’s also no indicator showing how much health your horse has, which is frustrating, especially since it can die from just a few hits from a goblin or wolf.
# Classes / Balancing
I played around with all the classes and brought each of them to level 10. While I appreciate that group content is a main driver of the game, solo players shouldn't be left in the shadows when it comes to leveling. Commissions should provide more experience, so if you choose to solo level instead of grinding, you don’t fall too far behind.
I really like how the classes feel distinct from one another. When you play as a fighter, it feels like a fighter, and when you play as a mage, it feels like a mage. I especially enjoyed being able to use any weapon and still make my class work with it. I had a great time playing as a mage with a greatsword, dealing spell damage and AOE farming goblins near Lionhold. These combinations make the game much more engaging, as you can experiment with a fighter using a bow, a ranger with dual daggers, or a tank wielding a wand. However, some classes don’t fit this idea as neatly; for example, a ranger always needs to use a bow to execute their main spells, which makes it difficult to mix things up later with subclasses like tank or fighter, effectively locking you into a specific weapon.
Additionally, some classes have spells that lack combat utility, like the mage’s Illuminate. While I appreciate having such spells in the game, they should have a purpose during the night, as it was too bright for the Illuminate spell to be effective. Instead of just lighting yourself up like a flare, the Illuminate spell could project light to illuminate a certain area.
The tank class felt quite lackluster. Even though you have high mitigation, you still miss out on a lot of damage and tend to die faster than a mage, who can pull 20 mobs and kill them all efficiently. My experience playing a tank was not very enjoyable.
As for the game's design regarding higher-level players receiving credit for killing lower-level players within a range of 10 levels, it’s important that a level 5 player can defeat a level 8 player without excessive difficulty. Right now, it feels like as soon as someone is two or three levels above you, they become exponentially stronger and can dominate you regardless of your efforts. Even if they have corruption, you feel like you have no chance of survival.
# Dueling
In my opinion, there should be a dueling feature. With PvP being a hot topic in the game, this would help players improve their skills with friends or settle disputes. Of course, there should be certain mechanics in place to ensure you cannot be killed by other players during a duel. You should be immune to any healing, buffs, damage, or outside interference while dueling.
Dueling should only be permitted in specific zones, not in dungeons, raids, or during boss fights. When you accept a duel, both players should start with full health, full mana, and all cooldowns reset. As soon as you accept the duel, the timer should begin, and all abilities should be sealed until the duel ends. Once the duel is over, players should regain full health, full mana, stamina, and all cooldowns. This way, if you get attacked after the duel, you aren’t easily killed by a griefer.
Best, Rextrem
Just thinking about PvP going forward, I have tried all but the Bard (I know they have a specific interrupt ability) and Cleric. It is a little concerning when trying the Mage, that a lot of the abilities are channelled/casted and no mob was able to interrupt me. I think this might have issues going forward, especially in PvP and I think it lowers the skill ceiling a bit for the game which is a shame.
What do others think about this?
I am aware of a lot of my feedback comes after network stuff gets fixed.
-Collision polish, looking forward to seeing all collision get the polish it needs and deserves.
-Reticle Bloom, especially for healing reticle bloom is too wide and not nearly accurate enough. On a Cleric the heals don't always go to who you're aiming at and the game switches between targets, that needs to get fixed to where heals go exactly who I'm looking at.
-A held "Cast on Self" button, there's an option for target self. But its only good in tab, not great in the action mode. The way this should work is that if I hold it, all my buffs/heals friendly abilities cast on me then upon release everything harmful gets redirected back at the reticle target. I want to be able to cast on myself while training on my target the entire time.
-Moving into more hybridization, I think melee is a lot more hybridized than ranged classes. Cleric, Ranger, and Mage aren't nearly has hybridized as they should be. (I'd say the solution to this is options for "Snipe" an option to either be tab or free-aimed. The same goes for "Headshot". Same for a lot of the heals on Cleric. Mage is okay in terms of hybridzation, but a couple more spells having the option to be free aimed or tab would be grand.)
Tank and Fighter are actually (and properly), hybridized. I think Ashes becoming completely hybridized in conjunction with its physics and Z axis puts it on the path to the one MMO that could have the best combat in the genre, even surpassing the likes of TERA. (which the combat team could look at, because it was a combo system game too)
Things I am going to praise up and down:
-Whoever designed the movement and physics so far deserves a medal. While obviously needing polish, being able to play on the Z axis (intentional or not) for instance jump kiting / bunny hopping is in a great state. The momentum gained as a movement player and enthusiast feels awesome. Movement, just needs a little more of a pinch of intertia and momentum in the gameplay to smooth it out.
-Being able to angle myself and clip trajectories while maybe a little over the top, the intertia and the Z axis feeling is awesome and I hope is expanded upon. Because it's not easy to do and you need to know what you're doing to pull it off, so it adds an element and skill ceiling just like jump kiting.
-I hope Intrepid plays into this a lot more because it adds a level of depth to the game not present in the genre. Do not gound the combat, but make the Z axis a skill ceiling thing instead.
Things that need a bit more thought:
-Active defenses will always be bloody superior to boring passive and RNG ones, but they need a bit more development to be great.
Active block taking from Valheim would still be a huge benefit to it, especially if there were a combo status effect attached to perfect block for reactionary gameplay / counter punching.
So Perfect Block > Enemy Stagger > Trip into a stun works very nicely. (As an example please be a little more orig than that)
Dodge being an iFrame is fine, but it doesn't tie into the combo system.
-Basic attacks, so basic attacks are often times they are supplemental DPS when there is downtime inbetween cooldowns and they're completely lackluster even though they're an important portion of the DPS gameplay.
Wallop functions more like a basic attack to me instead of what basic attacks are right now. Basics just need more development so they supplement more efficiently and effectly.
Basics can be interesting in a kit in terms of supplementary DPS, please don't ignore them they're the delivery of the weapon system and the only things that make weapon trees interesting.
The things I liked (combat & rotation talk):
I played fighter and mage and they both feel amazing. you can tell people who worked on the combat played other MMORPGs and drew some great conclusions when it comes to how to build a character and what type of abilities feel good to use while lvling.
The combat is very satisfying and the free respec was great, it allowed me to test all kinds of ability combinations and there are two things I want to highlight in this regard.
Fighter:
the fighter gets access to Lethal Blow fairly early on, and it has the capability to restore mana and health based on overkill damage which is amazing. i used to play warrior a decent amount in World of Warcraft and it was so clunky back in the day without a pocket healer. Lethal Blow really helps reduce the downtime between mobs.
Mage:
in my experience mage is very tedious the first 6 lvls, but around lvl 7 i could spec into Shatter and lean more into chill/freeze & lightning abilities. Shatter feels amazing, very satisfying and strong both in solo and group content. after reaching this point with Shatter rotation mana was almost never an issue as long as i utilized the weapon skill that restored mana on finishers ("Refreshing" something something maybe? can't recall the name from the top of my head) in solo content. in group content I had to sit down sometimes, but again, as long as i weaved in some auto attacks to recoup some mana, it felt fine.
when you are doing group content with Shatter the idea is basically the same as in solo: try to proc Shatter as often as possible, however on 3+ mob pulls I recommend to use Hoarfrost (to apply chilled), Cone of cold (to apply frozen) and Chain Lightning (proc Shatter). when Hoarfrost and CoC are on CD you can substitue with frostbolt + auto attacks (you should weave in some Auto Attacks even during group pulls to recoup mana).
long story short i LOVE the combat. especially Shatter mage, it's incredibly well done
The negatives, and things that could be improved in my opinion:
other than the obvious bugs and crashes i didn't have too much annoyance with the game (for the bugs i made bug reports so i won't get into them).
i remember being very frustrated with the chat system at the start.
originally i had "dodge" bind to my Shift button, but every time i was typing my char was rolling all over the place. so i changed it to Ctrl, but even on Ctrl sometimes i rolled off cliffs and stuff while typing, i wish this was not a thing. also would be cool if the chat closed when i press "Escape". sometimes i start typing but get into a situation where i have to react immediately, and by reflex I press Escape. unfortunately in this game does not work and found myself quite frustrated by it at times.
i know the team has more pressing issues at the moment, but eventually would be cool if we could change font size without increasing the overall size of the UI.
i hope the game will have more quests such as "Seven Save Us!". it leads to a grinding spot (Church of Seven Stars) that became a popular grinding spot for a good reason on my server. these type of quests can alleviate the grind a bit, while still funneling people to the grinding spots. (i've heard some people feel a bit lost and directionless at times, these type of quests are great at making people discover grinding spots).
talking about quests... i really like how not all quests have quest markers. it was a bit unexpected in the current year, but i welcome such things. i actually had to read the quest log and what NPCs say to complete their quests, i find this pretty cool.
overall i really enjoyed participating over the weekend, keep up the great work. obviously there is still a long road ahead, but in my opinion the direction is great and I'm really excited about the future of the project. hopefully the team can solve and mitigate DDOS attacks in the future...