Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
A player named Asp used this loophole to kill rangers in Lionhold as they attempted to sell loot at the equipment vendor.
There are also a number of AOE effects that trigger combatant status unintentionally, though I'm unfamiliar with which ones.
To me who is a person that barely consumed dev streams, didn'tread wiki posts or followed spreadsheetlike others might do, I tried to experience everything blind and just by myself. The way you find yourself without much clues feels very realistic and remembers me of oldschool World of Warcraft during classic times. It's challenging but very enjoyable when you got used to it.
Though to improve orientation as well as communication with other players I would love to have:
- the ability to install permanent markers or symbols to my map to better remember locations for certain grinding
- the map having an overlay option that shows regional names of locations you have been to (as I love to have a clear map you have to discover but returning to a location or calling out areas would be so much nicer like that)
With those additions the game wouldn't be lazier but grant you more orientation in areas you learned about for a greater quality of life.
Please, keep on going. You are doing a great job!
Also quote from wiki: "The developers will be seeking testing feedback on the addition of a gameplay layer to crafting that determines the outcome based on the player's performance.
For example, if you're creating a sword, and you are crafting that sword, you will have an interface- a gameplay layer that you will see and you will begin to hammer actually that sword into an appropriate outline. And your performance there can help influence the outcome of that craft. – Steven Sharif
It is likely that Star Wars Galaxies inspired crafting mechanics will be present in Ashes of Creation.
Without getting into too much detail I will say that it's likely that you will see some inspiration surface itself in that regard. – Steven Sharif
Previously it was stated that repetitive skill-based crafting mechanics, such as mini-games, are not an intended part of the crafting experience."
The thing is that those quotes are from 2021/2022 and the image from 2023 live stream, so I wonder what exactly changed between now and then because for the love of whatever Verran gods are listening, let me have my crafting minigames. Gathering minigames, too.
I'm not opposed to "fast crafting" as shown in the image, or progress bar style offline crafting, but when I'm playing the game I actually want to play. Not have the game play itself for me.
If I was interested in that I'd "play" progress quest.
since there are enough discussions and bug reporting posts, I would like to let you take part of my experience at the first weekend of testing.
My name is Ben, 40+ years old and I am a German guy. I play on realm Shole as a cleric with a gild called Seelensturm.
It was Thursday 5 pm (7am PT) I just arrived from work and I was looking around with whom I will play the game. At this time I just joined the DC of Seelensturm to get to know each other. And I was wondering, why everyone was acting like a teenager. My first though was "ohh no, they are to young" as long as they told me there will be a pre alpha 2 test with visual NDA in two hours. Now I transformed to a teenager as well. So nerves to finally see the game I was waiting for so long.
Taking part at alpha two stage in DC we have been motivated to face and defeat the end boss of the game launcher, entering queue and starting area. As told we did. And thanks to Intrepid to handle all those end bosses on the other side of our screens. You have been amazing. It helped almost all of us from Seelensturm to access the game. We have been able to quest and get a horse and got the chance to see more of the games landscape. That was way more than I expected to see.
Friday, start of alpha 2 test. through bug fixing and patching the start was delayed by a few hours. It was 10pm the test started and I played for one our, till the def-stream on Twitch started. I was tired from work and stooped watching the time all started to play alpha 2. I came more or less to the same point I was at the pre testing the day before.
Saturday a had an appointment I could not shift. So I played a little in the evening for around 3h. I showed the game to some of my community. We looked around and try to get all the impressions I did not got so far. The starting area was very empty at this time because the most tester have been through this part of map. We found so much details. So nice and brilliant artwork of buildings, landscape and NPCs. We played a little PvE and liked the animations of spells and combat.
Sunday my mum had birthday. Sorry, but not even AoC brought me to skip my mothers birthday.
I was only around an hours in the game, luckily no queues. All mates have been in higher level than me, not surprising. And we went to places I definitely would not run alone and have had so much fun. My healing was not worth mentioning but I tried hard. Bards are more important than I thought. So I am thinking about playing it after the next wipe.
After mom's birthday I faced the DDoS attack. Thanks to those starting it. So Intrepid got the chance to test and adapt their defense and we used the time to plan further steps, what to do after next wipe, which node we will participate and talked about our experience.
My conclusion is: Alpha 2 test is more than I expected. More of everything. For me it is exactly, what Steven told all the time. Yes I faced bugs, yes I had disconnects, yes I had queues and error massages during login, yes the game crushed and yes the performance was leaking some times. It is what it is, a work in progress. I was positive surprised what I have seen. A team working hard even on Sunday to defeat an attack. Problems seemed to be solved within a few hours. Intrepid Team stay as you are and keep the limit of transparency you showed all the years. Even if I am no friend of PvP, this game catches me and who knows, may be I get to love PvP though playing AoC.
Lovely Greetings
EKFBen from Shole
Seeing a lot of content being generated by folks reacting as if this is a game, which is like eating barely mixed batter and providing a star review as if it's even in the neighborhood of cake.
Intrepid already has a massive backlog, so my feedback is simple: good work and keep going.
See you next weekend.
I also mentioned this here, as I fully agree on this:
You will se as soon as you get into it
I fully agree on this as my feedback was similar:
Gladly again, thank you.
... But at the same time remarkably impressed with what is actually here and how it plays. This is not my first Development Alpha, so I knew what I was getting into, and it is overall far better than I expected.
so first of all I wanted to thank you for this first amazing weekend of A2! It was much more fun and went smoother than I honestly expected, so thank you!
For this feedback post of mine I'm going to try and make everything as easy to read and structured so feedback that might be irrelevant at this stage can simply be ignored/skipped
More detailed thoughts on the individual points are put in spoilers
- Texts should be bigger & scalable without having to make the whole UI bigger
- There should be an indicator for selected friendly targets in a group
- arrow up option to copy the most recently sent message is a nice to have
- timestamps for the chat in a must have for me personally
- being able to click on names in the chat for things like reporting or whispering
- targeting not working properly, especially self target
- targeting range way too wide
Would be nice to narrow that down or make it customizable. Honestly with the way this wide auto target works it feels even less action target for me since it personally feels like playing with a malfunctioning aim bot
- make the corruption system less abusable please
I personally think player to player trading should be completely disabled when corrupted.
The overall penalty is no too much imo, like dropping items should be a risk you gotta take when killing others.
Or even have both, no trading, no cleansing by dying. Have corrupted players being forced to work off the corruption would be good in trade for not as much stat dampening (just my opinion though, feel like this is the most subjective topic)
A node for corrupted players. Maybe in a zone that makes sense for that such as the open seas. There player to player trading could be enabled again, as well as a storage system and make it a safe zone for corrupted players where nobody can kill each other. Much like the typical pirate islands
- Personally don't like the way the death penalties work. Below a suggestion of mine:
For PvP on the other hand, I would prefer to see it be more rewarding by nothing getting deleted and the full amount of dropped stuff being lootable. This way you can maybe also get your stuff back when killing the person that killed you.
- I feel like having less to no quest guiding is fine with better quest descriptions
- spread exp gain more evenly maybe
- lock the material bags to the specific type
I'm going to edit stuff inside this post instead of posting new comments under this to keep it structured
Thanks for reading
Feel free to discuss
And have a great A2 everyone!
Each biome necessarily needs unique resources so there is a reason for caravans and players to go to the other biomes and trade materials - currently that is not the case
Player names should be selectable in the chat, e.g. for party invite etc.
Rubies are ultra rare to find. So are they only worth like 5 copper by selling it to the trader? makes no sense
The dungeons, for example Tower of Carphin, are not really big and varied - as a reference I recommend taking a look at the dungeons in ESO, they are huge, beautiful and very immersive,
No matter whether it's any caves in the open world or the big raid dungeons, they're all very well done and something like that just invites you to explore - Every dungeon should also have a more or less strong boss at the end who has a chance of dropping set parts so that the players also feel the need to visit this dungeon several times
Performance:
I have a Ryzen 7900X3D, RX7900XTX and 64GB DDR5-6000 Ram, I play on Cinematic, 4k Ultrawide and have around 50-60 fps, the textures are still pretty washed out and the lighting effects could be better, graphics and performance aren't up to par yet Overall, there is still a lot of room for optimization here.
+ an option to enlarge the text size
+ AI voice is extremely ugly (good for miming on the internet but not good for the game)
+ theres a big problem with the active blocking mechanic: u simply dont know when u have to block, just warn the player like 0,5s before the mob attacs like in ESO so u have time to block in right moment
+ sort online status in guild menu
+ Cleric should get exp for rereviving mates
- pvp flag system options and corruption
The current system gives you 2 options: to hit everyone or no one. This is easily abusable. You can have groups where 1 person doesn't flag and makes so you either don't use any AoEs because you don't want to kill the green, or you risk getting corruption even though 7 out of the 8 in the party are hitting you back. You could have ppl doing raid bosses where everyone in the raid but 1 flag for PVP and this single guy effectively prevents other groups from contesting the boss simply because you can't mass AoE the raid without going corrupt.
The good news is other games have already fixed this issue and it's pretty simple. Just give us more flagging options. We should have at least 3 pvp flags: Offensive, defensive, pacific. In offensive, you would hit everyone including greens. On the defensive you would only hit purple and red players, making so you can pvp against consenting players without the risk of going corrupt from accidentally hitting greens. Pacific would be hit no one. There is also the possibility of splitting the defensive in 2, by adding a flag just to hit red players (so that way you can pvp red without the risk of going purple). An UI element choose display the 3/4 flag options and the one you have selected at the moment should be highlighted. You can see these flagging options properly implemented in past games like Tibia and most recently Ravendawn.
Example from Tibia:
The flagging system also needs a way for you to choose where your support/healing abilities will land. Getting flagged by doing an AoE heal and hitting a random person who is not in your party (or even your enemy) and going purple because of that shouldn't happen.
I think it is important to notice that these types of decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, using menu settings to decide these things is NOT the way to go, as it is not a binary static decision. It needs to be UI elements that you can easily swap between either through clicking on them or keybinds.
A reminder that this flagging system has nothing to do with affiliation. You should not be able to attack party/raid/guild/alliance members, even if they are corrupted (also helps prevent the killing of your corrupted friend situation).
Additionally, I think the way corruption is assigned should change. I think everyone who participated in the kill should get corruption, with different amounts of corruption based on kill participation (last hit gets full corruption, ppl that participated gets 1/2 or 1/3 corruption). This is important as a deterrent for ppl to walk in Zergs doing "safe pvp". You go around with a raid group, kill ppl without worrying about corruption because you're safe in numbers and only 1 of your players will need to clean it and your raid can protect him while he does it. By sharing corruption between everyone that participated in the kill, you make so the more numbers advantage you have in an unconsenting fight, the more you get punished for it. Putting it in design philosophy terms, the way it works currently the more ppl you have, the less risk you have, but the rewards are the same (or even bigger as you can do it more often). With the corruption-sharing design, the more ppl you bring, the risk stays more or less the same as the amount of corruption the party gathers grows as the party size grows.
-Nameplates: allies vs enemies identification
In the same PVP-related vein, we need better visuals on who's who on the battlefield. I think this identification should go by the health bar color, name color, and UI icons. To me, raid and party members' hp should be blue, to differentiate from the neutral green players. Parties with members that did damage to your party should all have their names turned red. The player's affiliation should be clear to you through an icon in their nameplate (same node, same guild, allied node, etc).
In this image (beautifully made using paint) we can easily distinguish who is flagged or corrupted (name colors) and who is our allies and enemies (health bar colors), and an additional icon tells us the players' affiliation.
- power curve and TTK
This is one of the things that I expect to be nowhere near close to the final design intent (and I'm aware we are seeing the beginning of the power curve and it doesn't mean that will be the same power curve in higher levels, I just wanna touch on this regardless). While I do think that the feeling of power spikes after leveling is a good thing, I also believe that the current power spikes will cause some problems with the PVP. This is an open-world PVP game where a level 20 can and will kill a level 15, a 10, or even a level 5. The node war system makes it so players are permanently flagged for days(weeks?) and has nothing stopping them from killing every low-level player in the node. Not only that but caravans, guild wars, castle, and node sieges, will all have restricted pvp with big level differences.
This game has long leveling (which is a good thing) and not only will we see huge level disparities at launch, but after a few months, how will new players participate in these types of content? And to note here I'm not talking about week-old players, I'm talking about months-old players that still haven't reached max level and therefore are being one-shotted by max levels and unable to participate in any of the good and important pvp systems in the game.
This includes gear. If we get insane power spikes from gear, then we will have the same situation but even worse, because a player can take months to reach max level and then they are still months behind players with good gear and are still getting one-shot by them. It is a terrible way to create a power progression for a game with this much focus on emergent pvp gameplay.
Therefore, the power curve MUST be controlled to make it so even new players have some sort of survivability in these conflicts. The power curve should be similar to a saturation curve, like this:
Of course, there will be a power difference between players, but these under-leveled and under-geared players need to stay alive long enough to feel like they are contributing to the fight. Which brings me to the topic of TTK. The TTK we are currently seeing is abysmal (which I hope comes down to balance issues and not design direction). Level 20 players are blowing up level 16 groups before they have a chance to react. This is terrible in a game with so much emergent gameplay. And it will become even worse when level and gear differences increase. THIS CAN NOT BE THE DESIGN DIRECTION. Please, consider increasing the base Time-To-Kill of the game. TTK should be based on something ridiculous like 5 players attacking an AFK lower-level player for 5 seconds and it should go up from there.
This way it makes it incredibly hard for big groups of players with no coordination to kill anyone, even lower-level players being healed and supported by higher-level players. It makes so that skill, teamplay, and coordination are the determining factors in these fights. Armor reduction, anti-healing abilities, and crowd control abilities must be MANDATORY for a group to kill another group. If the group cannot time and coordinate the use of these types of abilities with big damage, they shouldn't be able to kill anyone. But properly timed, these combos should be enough to wipe anyone. With this design, small groups can easily pick off targets while big Zerg uncoordinated groups run around headless chickens and are not able to kill anyone. I would recommend watching Ravendawns' design direction on this aspect (it's not ideal but it's done in a good way).
- Mob density and aoe/ranged abilities
The current pve design has very few ranged and aoe abilities from monsters. There are several encounters in which the tank can just hold aggro and face the monsters away from the rest of the party and no one has to move at all anymore, creating a very static combat scenario. There are a few things that can be done to avoid these scenarios.
1. Add more ranged mobs: That would make it hard for the tank to pull them all into a small area away from all players
2. Give some of these mobs more AoE abilities that can hit a big area around them.
3. Mid-of-combat adds: Adds (like summons) in the middle of combat are spawned with random aggro, making it so they are not instantly glued to the tank and the tank has to work to grab that additional aggro.
4. More balanced threat management: So the tank doesn't hold permanent aggro and the mob can aggro into someone else after a period where the tank has exhausted his big aggro abilities.
5. Smart AI: Mobs with the ability to throw AoE abilities that focus on doing damage on the most number of players, and not on the aggroed player. Also mobs with the ability to do off-aggro skills like debuffs, and CCs (mob focus the CC on healer so he can kill the tank more easily).
- Diverse hunting spots
Following up on the pve design, I would like to address how it feels to grind these spots for multiple hours. Again, I am incredibly in favor of loooong leveling, and if the core gameplay (combat and pve design) is fun then grinding for hours on end is fun. But, inevitably, it can start feeling stale after a few days. This is the time when you eventually move to another grind spot. And here is the catch: if the other hunting spot feels like you're just doing the exact same thing as the other hunting spot, the feeling of staleness won't go away. Eventually, players will be burned out because every place plays the same.
That's why, for this type of game design to work, it needs diverse hunting spots that feel like you're having a completely different encounter than what you were hunting before. Some spots should be focused on a smaller number of mobs, while others should overwhelm you with numbers. Some spots should feel like you need to be moving all the time to stay alive, while other spots should feel like the challenge is in reacting fast enough to the mob's mechanics and dealing with stuff like cleaning stacks and debuffs, interrupting mob's mechanics and grouping to soak damage. You should also use resistances and immunities to shake things up a bit. If a creature is immune to sleep, or immune to being tripped, it can completely change a player's effective rotation and add that feeling of new gameplay. I believe every hunting spot should be treated as a mini-boss encounter, with different mechanics and challenges. Keep the gameplay fresh and the players who like the grind gameplay will never feel burned out on the grind no matter how long it is.
- combat ress material components
I wasn't a big fan of the combat ress idea, but I actually enjoyed it when I experienced it. That being said, I do think there should be a material component to these resurrections, as I believe all death should have a cost. Material components would add another "skill gap" to players who can stay alive and players who are wasteful when hunting, and it would also limit how many times you can ress your party in a single hunting session. It also adds to that prep gameplay before the hunts which is a nice touch
-environment verticality and depth of dungeons
This is one thing that I believe is still to come since everything environment and content-wise seems to be very bones, but I would still like to talk about it. Most of the POIs in the game are incredibly flat. I would like to see dungeons that are so extensive that you get lost in them. I would like to see more underground locations being explored, like the ursine cave but to a much deeper extent. Going into these places should feel like a daunting adventure that requires preparation and commitment.
- Questing and new player experience
I know the new player experience is not the focus right now, and it's far from being complete, but I want to comment on it anyway.
I am 100% against any type of handholding or immersion-breaking in-game icons above NPCS. The only exception is the new player experience. I believe players need to be properly taught a lot before leaving the initial zone. I think the current new player experience does a good job with the professions tutorial, but people still need to know about nodes, about pvp (how to flag, flagging system), and about some of the game's design (ppl will think the quests are bugged if some of them have markers and some don't, if some of them are more clear and some are more secret).
Once they get to a node, they need some sort of mini tutorial on what is a node and what they should do there (citizenship, mayoral roles, commissions, wars, and sieges). A good new player experience doesn't overwhelm the player with everything at first, but it gives them the info on systems as needed (the basics: what is the system, how it works, what is for, etc).
I also believe Quests should follow a "risk vs reward"-ish design. Simpler quests like killing x mobs and talking to a person, with small rewards for completing the quests could always be straight-forward and well indicated in the quest log and map. But quests that give better rewards and are more high profile should be completely hands-off, including mysteries, secrets, and puzzles to solve, and a difficult pve encounter (some solo some group) to finish.
Final feedback
.Citizenship cooldown is not active. Currently, people can cheese the mayor mechanics by becoming citizens of multiple nodes in a short period of time.
. Who gets the glint on the party should be a setting just like the rest of the loot. I believe you should be able to choose the option that the party leader will get all the glint, so the party can later use that pooled glint to run their caravan together. Or at least we should be able to put multiple players' commodities in the same caravan. Running individual caravans is against the group design of the game IMO
"NPC Ambient behavior" seems to be the goal of Alpha-2 Phase-2 which would be planned for end of December.
Looking forward to it.
Edit: though honestly now that I look at all planned features with a closer eye and compare it to the alpha schedule and current state of the alpha... I'm mentally preparing to add standard 3-6 month delay to all those planned dates.
2. Queue Timeout Bug: There’s a weird issue with queue timeouts. If you get disconnected while waiting, it sometimes locks you into this timeout error that says it’ll eventually time out but actually won’t. What’s really happening is that a “shadow” of you is still in the queue, and it only times out when your turn in the queue would’ve come up, which can take hours. It’s seriously frustrating.
3. Low Entity Render Distance: Even at max settings, the render distance for entities is really low, like 10 meters or something. It makes running into mobs way too common and finding the next pull a pain. I’m guessing it’s a server performance thing, but it ruins both PvP and PvE.
2. Gear Power: Gear feels way too strong right now. Levels and skills don’t seem to matter as much as gear. A level 10 character with good gear will destroy a level 9, and it’s even more extreme between levels 19 and 20. I get that gear should matter, but right now it’s all that matters.
3. Node Footprint: The node locations on the map have this obvious square footprint, which looks super out of place. I assume it’s just temporary, but since nodes are such a big deal, it’d be nice if they were integrated better.
4. Map Quality: The map (under the M button) really needs some love. Right now, it looks like something out of a 2005 Unity game. I like having a lot of detail on maps, but it could use some serious polish. Maybe take some inspiration from the Elden Ring map?
2. Synergy Between Abilities: Ranger abilities don’t seem to combo together well. The only noticeable synergy is that attack speed from Snipe boosts Barrage damage.
3. Barrage as Main Ability: I’m not the biggest fan of Barrage being the main ability, but I can live with it.
4. Class Mechanic: The class mechanic (Marks/Hunts) feels pretty shallow. Hunts are like boring Warrior stances but without the momentum, and Marks are just flat damage buffs against marked targets. They’re not terrible, just not great as the defining class feature.
5. Single-Target Damage: Ranger’s single-target damage is too low compared to Mage. Mages are supposed to be the kings of AoE, which is fine, but their AoE spells are doing as much (or more) single-target damage as Ranger’s single-target abilities. It makes playing Ranger feel pretty underwhelming.
The entire part of the ZOI north, east and southeast of the node is completely empty. No mobs, no resources, nothing at all.
For a day or two we grinded the mobs surrounding the node that are lvl8/11 but now we are out. Every mob in the other areas is very high level. The lowest POI, Ursine Caves, has lvl 15 3 star mobs at the entrance, while every other node has locations for lower level players.
The zone southwest has lots of resources to gather, but they are surrounded by mobs that are lvl 20-ish so its impossible to get them, and if we want to test out gathering and crafting we need to travel a lot and go in other nodes.
I understand this is not a content testing alpha but we would appreciate if the devs populated the ZOI with some grind spots and resource nodes for players of different levels and playstyles.🙏
Environment: Beautiful, and aside from a very funny area in Halcyon where you can swim in the air, and a few roads that path through the air, the environment seemed clean.
Combat: Auto Basic attack should be enabled by default. Literally every person I played with asked how to enable it. It should be more accessible in the menus. Combat felt fun and responsive once I enabled the auto basic attack. I only played Fighter, so it might be different for other archetypes.
Questing/Commissions: Most quests and commissions do not feel worth the time invested considering the paltry XP gain. Exploration commissions feel like a waste of time and effort, so I avoid them completely despite my interest in exploration.
Glint: The game doesn't make it clear what glint is for.
Character Creator
The CC is very underwhelming, and the character models are not beautiful. I eventually ended up just skipping it with a premade selection since the saving functionality is broken.
Leveling
Right now, there is a big disconnect in terms of knowledge, adventuring, and artisanship between levels 5-10 and going from Lionhold to your first node. There is a lack of efficient crafting and trading options early on as well.
Node
I saw Joeva on Lyneth jump from an encampment at 74% XP to a village node in a 2-minute period. That was very strange, and I hadn't heard anyone from Intrepid mention why that is happening.
Tank
Overall tank abilities feel good, although there are big issues with dodge and block. The threat mechanics are very TBC, which is great. It's not hard to keep aggro but it's not fire-and-forget either.
As a tank, I want the evasion buff from dodge but not the large ground that I cover when I roll over, which both looks comical and makes me jerk the mobs around. This is not good for tanking as it creates a lot of chaos. There should be a secondary option to use dodge to proc evasion without the movement or with much less movement, like a quick sidestep. A sidestep would also look much better than groups of players rolling around on the ground constantly.
I did have some mana issues as a tank if I was grouped and there was no bard...so I would be conserving mana constantly and my damage would suffer greatly. I wanted to try out some of those group defensive skills, but mana was already a major issue, so I didn't take them.
The auto attack weaving as a tank is not very interesting. Occasionally, I would wait for 4 melee swings before resuming abilities. That's about it. The weapon trees should involve much more choice instead of just deciding what I want my finisher to do (if it even procs). Perhaps giving options for the 2nd and 3rd swing to be buffed?
Active block is terribly unfun. In a tab MMO, tanks should be pressing block for a short buff and then moving onto the next skill. Right now, you just sit there like a chump holding down block. Pressing and holding block while being unable to use other skills to generate threat or do damage is beyond boring. You don't even get to swing basic attacks. It would be a little more interesting if some tank skills could be used while blocking, that would add some depth at least. Or, better yet, active block just shouldn't be in the game at all. Ashes is not a souls game with no latency and fancy animations to parry. Ironically, 'active block' makes tanking far less fun and active.
Corruption
Corruption penalties look to be in an ideal state, besides the baiting issues that other players have brought up. I was not hunted by higher level players, and that's how it should be.
Trade
There isn't enough trade capacity to service the player's needs, especially at this point in testing. Trading through global chat is not a reasonable solution.
As far as the future of trade systems in the game, I don't know how player stalls or the auction house will work, but I hope Intrepid realizes that a localized economy game needs massive capacity for a small number of players to create a very large number of market orders. Each player should be able to create at least a thousand market orders because only 0.1% of players are going to spend hours of game time on the market every day. Intrepid needs to let allow design space for a tiny minority of players to service the trade of a majority of players.
This is a big mistake that New World made and is the reason they swapped to a global trading post system so quickly after launch. They had a bunch of different trading posts but there was no capacity for players to fill them with goods. It was as if the designers assumed that every single player would post the maximum number of market orders every single day.
The AoC markets being localized instead of global means that the game will need about 20x more trade (and storage) capacity in the design space than a game like WoW. For example, instead of a healthy game needing about 20 market orders selling copper in a single global auction house, now you need 400 market orders selling copper at 40 different locations all over the world. Multiple that need by the number of items in the game, including different material rarities and the individual sales of gear. And if auction house or player stall market buy orders are also intended, then you can double that number again. Ashes will need massive trade capacity in its design to resolve the needs of the localized economy.
Initial class thoughts: seemed fine up to these levels. Focused build around ice + lightning and liked available synergies. High dps and very squishy when shield isn't up. Mana seemed always topped off when just farming in a group (likely would be different for major fights), and seemed pretty fine to me when solo (which I spent most of my time). Note that I always kept a stack of rations handy to help speed up recovery when needed, but was surprised at the number of equal level mobs could knock down before needed to rest. Seemed like I could solo higher elites like the golem near the crystal without running out (at least if it weren't for all the nearby trash mobs respawning).
Edit: one thing I'd like is an option to toggle the AoE trigger effect from spells. There are times (both grouped and solo) when you don't want to be hitting nearby targets (like sleeping ones), but other times when you want your AoE turned up to 11.
Low level gear: I liked finding crafting recipes that I could turn into better gear. I think I found 2 pieces of the riverlands level gear, but the recipes found plus the ones available from npcs I was easily able to craft myself a full set of T1 gear by level 6.
Gathering: didn't have much time actually in the game this weekend, but was able to get a few levels in most of them. Did not advance to level 10, which also was a reason for not grinding those out yet. That said, gathering seemed worth it just for the glint. I did run into a bug where my herbs would go into my mining bag after the herb bag was full. And when I took those out, for awhile ore wasn't going anywhere (at least not into my inventory), but that fixed itself with time.
Quests/leveling: some seemed mandatory (like the horse and the delivery mission), while almost all the commissions seemed buggy and/or not worth the effort by themselves. A couple times they led me to areas where I just got DCed and thrown back into queue. For the most part, I found just grinding equal level (or one level lower) mobs was most efficient in terms of experience and loot. Doing this solo gave me way reward than either being in a group or raid. Sure we could kill much higher mobs grouped up, but at least at low levels this didn't seem worth it. Obviously at max level it will be critical to group up to get the best drops (and for protection), but at lower levels in the current iteration it doesn't seem optimum ... although it is far more fun to play grouped up than not.
If I had one recommendation for improvement, I'd suggest making the named mobs for kill quests just needing to be damaged by player (or player healing another player that damaged the named mob). Those mobs should not drop special loot and not grant any experience over a normal mob in the area. It is not fun spending an hour trying to get credit for a quest only to be outdone by a dozen solo melee players swarming the spawnpoint completely preventing your ability to get credit (whether solo or grouped).
The first is widescreen support. This can be solved with a simple INI entry as I noted in my bug thread. This really makes it hard to play on a wide screen, which has become quite common.
Second was the voiceovers. I can look past them as I know they're temporary, but oh my god they're very bad even for AI voices. Use something like Elevenlabs, where you can make a clone of a staff member voice with less than a minute of talking and produced output sounds far, far, far more realistic.
Social Gameplay - Ashes’ alpha is one of the most social mmo I’ve ever played. I hope it maintains this all the way to the release of the game. People group up and talk to each other. You meet people in the world and this makes the game so alive! Also, grouping currently is the best way to progress your character. I think this is important to getting people to play together. Please keep it this way. Solo play needs to be less efficient than group play or else group play will rarely occur organically. I think if people want to play solo they should be able to. However, there should be some challenge to doing so but make it so that it is stull possible and the reward for solo play should be decent but not as effective as grouping with others.
Combat: I love the combat. It already feels better than a lot of other MMOs. The combat is fun and impactful. The skills are also extremely fun to unlock and use! There does need to be a bit more polish but I’d say it’s like 80% there and just needs a few small tweaks to get there all the way. But the team has done an amazing job developing this. Defiantly one of the best features of the alpha.
World: The world is beautiful and large. I feel like I’m going on an adventure when traveling in it. I think it is a good start. However, there needs to be more crafting materials in it. There simply is not enough as is for low level crafting. Basic resources should be common. While late game resources should be rare. Right now everything is uncommon which is not good. The world needs content but I am sure that is the plan and I’ll have to wait and see how the world evolves further into the alpha before I can further comment on this.
Crafting: it needs to be much easier to make low level crafting items. Systems should be easy to pickup and hard to master. Right now it’s tough to pick up and hard to master. This just makes crafting to much of a pain to even get started with! Please make it so a lvl 5 or lvl 10 doesn’t take a long to make. Over time crafting items should take longer and harder to make gradually as you level up. But not at the start!
Questing and Commissions: they simply are not worth doing at the moment. The rewards are not worth the effort. Questing is a bit of challenge due to the scale of the world. There’s a lot of traveling involved for some quests and that can be not very engaging gameplay. The quests are also hit or miss in quality. I don’t think regular mmo questing will work for this game. I would suggest having a drastically fewer quests than other MMOs. But the quests you do have are high quality engaging, well written, memorable, and feel like an actual adventure. This way they actually make the travel feel worth it. There also should be rewards to make the time invested in the quests worth it. As for commissions, i honestly don’t like them as a concept. I don’t think doing menial tasks in games are fun personally. Hopefully commissions are completely optional and avoidable so players who do not like low effort content can enjoy the other aspects of the game.
Dungeons: I feel like the dungeons are kind of small. It would be nice for them to be larger. Also I would like to see more bosses, secrets, treasure chests, and rewards in them. Traps could also be an interesting addition to add more challenges to them.
That’s my feedback so far. I am excited to see future updates for this game. And am enjoying playing the game.
Mount Call Improvement: Responsive Summon Range Suggestion
One enhancement I'd love to see with the mount system is a more immersive approach to the mount call feature, especially when the mount is within close range. Currently, if your mount is nearby, calling it requires two actions—one to despawn it and another to re-summon it to your side.
My suggestion is to allow the mount to path directly to the player if it’s within earshot, creating a realistic experience where the mount actively approaches without needing to be re-summoned. This would streamline the call mechanic and make mounting up feel smoother and more intuitive. For example, if you dismount temporarily, you could call your mount back to you without the immersion break of despawning and respawning.
I will say I'm impressed with the speed at which your team is reacting to and handling issues. Not very often anymore do you see a dev team that's not only paying attention, but actually doing something in real time when issues arise. In my opinion, that just shows the pride/investment (along with obvious talent) the team has in their work. Its refreshing to see.
I like the combat so far, and progression seems decently paced, but admittedly, I didn't get real far last weekend, due to work. So Ill just hit a couple small things real quick.
I do think there needs to be little work with the mounts yet. I know you've heard it needs a way to identify yours from the others. I'm hoping you have plans to be able to name it. I also think it needs to be made clear how to stable it or despawn it or whatever. I saw many horses standing around while people were fighting things. Along with creating lag potential, its also going to be a guaranteed cause of griefing. I would like to see a little more help in general though, in the early game. I don't know if you have plans for more of a tutorial from the start or not. If not, it may be easier at this point to add in something as another tab or section in the journal that has some basic tips, at the very least. Even the more experienced of us are bound to have some questions in a game this complex. One thing in particular id like to see is a basic key for the symbols on the map/minimap. I also don't remember seeing much for tool tips with the mouse-over either. Its a beautifully built world, and I love the complexity of it, but that same quality does inevitably create a level of confusion. Id hate to see the game's success damaged by something so easily avoided.
I also thought the DDoS attack was handled pretty well, all things considered. I was surprised to see one this soon though, as I'm sure you were too probably. Im very interested to see how it goes this weekend now. Being an IT specialist myself, Id be curious to know more about that whole incident.
There's other small points to mention, but I'll wait to see if they're in the plans yet. It is only in alpha still, after all. I'm sure Ill have more to say once I have a bit more time with it. Overall though, I think its going very well. Tell the team they've done a great job so far.