Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
My feedback & improvement ideas after two intense weekends
Tarija
Member, Alpha Two
Hi to the lovely team & forum,
I got my AoC game key super early as bday present from my dad (a part time game tester) in 2016 and was so excited that I played pretty much nonstop during the past two weekends.
First I need to point out that the game already feels amazing, especially for an Alpha. I had tons of fun grinding, grouping, questing and crafting. Also the vision the devs have in mind for the later stages of the game is great and many concepts remind me of the good old days of Ultima Online, the MMO which I played to bits and set many early milestones for the genre in the late 90s.
Since these golden days of my youth I search for a game that gives me a similar experience, encorporates the same spirit, thrill, risk and reward, innovative ideas and rewarding grind that UO had - and I think Ashes could really become this game in the next few years.
As you can see I am very enthusiastic about the game and that's why I also have some ideas that I would like to share here, in hope that maybe some of the lovely people from the Ashes team might see it.
I'll try to keep this short, but here are a few thoughts and ideas:
1) Game Masters and prisons: I have read that there is the plan to give each AoC server its own Game Master or Admin to keep things in order and help players out and I think that would be amazing. this already worked amazingly in Ultima Online where the GM could temporarily throw cheaters or wrongdoers into an ingame jail where players could visit them, throw tomatoes and win some of their gear in an auction (lol!). a little sign on the jail cell gave information about the name and violation the respective inmates have commited. an hilarious and great idea that could come back with GMs in Ashes, would love to see it!
2) Group-VOIP: Another thing Ashes might benefit highly from in my humble opinion could be an ingame VOIP within your own party of 8 players. meet a random in the wild? just group up and start chatting, no exchange of Discord etc required. this could also lower the entry barriers for new players, make group play more coordinated and would motivate lone wolves like myself a lot to become a bit more extroverted.
3) The Summoner: Ashes already has probably the best monster diversity Ive ever seen in an Alpha (at least since the PoE Alpha) and it's only the first of many bioms to come, hence I'd LOVE if they implemented a skill that can revive those monsters to fight on your side, similar to Spectres in PoE (= summoning a weaker version of a monster from the world to follow you and fight on your side, using its unique set of skills). might be a performance issue tho due to large scale battles and pvp, but they could be PVE only support to start.
4) Random world events / spawns: I really love that there is no fast travel, it makes the world so much more interesting. I only think that the current "events" are a bit static and predictable. additionally to those events already in the game I'd love to see random, small events you can stumble upon when traveling thought the world that do not require several people to complete, but could be done optionally as a solo within a few minutes (similar to Witcher or Skyrim, where small random events that might take 2-3 minutes to take part in made traveling by mount or foot even more interesting).
5) AI NPCs: The idea that is already planned afaik to have NPCs which use AI and are able to response to individual questions by players (like "hey, where can I buy Greatswords?" or "which is the most populated node in this side of the world?") would be utterly amazing. that might be the single most innovative thing in MMOs or even gaming in general to come in the future, and Ashes could be one of the first game to use AI in an open world sandbox environment.
6) Open world PVP flagging: One issue we noticed during open world group PVP is that some players abuse the fact that you can turn PVP flagging on and off "on the fly" and basically whenever you want. Example: We had a PVP fight and one opponent unflagged himself right as he went low hp, walked into an aoe effect and died, and a member of our party became corrupted for killim him. I'd suggest that flagging and unflagging for PVP can only be done near nodes / while in town (similar to how many other known MMO titles handle it). It also makes for a more exciting experience to really "commit" to being PVP flagged for a journey inbetween nodes, instead of flipping it on and off every few seconds.
Ok, I think I need to reevaluate my definition of "short" but that's basically it.
Already love the game and am very excited for everything that is about to come
I got my AoC game key super early as bday present from my dad (a part time game tester) in 2016 and was so excited that I played pretty much nonstop during the past two weekends.
First I need to point out that the game already feels amazing, especially for an Alpha. I had tons of fun grinding, grouping, questing and crafting. Also the vision the devs have in mind for the later stages of the game is great and many concepts remind me of the good old days of Ultima Online, the MMO which I played to bits and set many early milestones for the genre in the late 90s.
Since these golden days of my youth I search for a game that gives me a similar experience, encorporates the same spirit, thrill, risk and reward, innovative ideas and rewarding grind that UO had - and I think Ashes could really become this game in the next few years.
As you can see I am very enthusiastic about the game and that's why I also have some ideas that I would like to share here, in hope that maybe some of the lovely people from the Ashes team might see it.
I'll try to keep this short, but here are a few thoughts and ideas:
1) Game Masters and prisons: I have read that there is the plan to give each AoC server its own Game Master or Admin to keep things in order and help players out and I think that would be amazing. this already worked amazingly in Ultima Online where the GM could temporarily throw cheaters or wrongdoers into an ingame jail where players could visit them, throw tomatoes and win some of their gear in an auction (lol!). a little sign on the jail cell gave information about the name and violation the respective inmates have commited. an hilarious and great idea that could come back with GMs in Ashes, would love to see it!
2) Group-VOIP: Another thing Ashes might benefit highly from in my humble opinion could be an ingame VOIP within your own party of 8 players. meet a random in the wild? just group up and start chatting, no exchange of Discord etc required. this could also lower the entry barriers for new players, make group play more coordinated and would motivate lone wolves like myself a lot to become a bit more extroverted.
3) The Summoner: Ashes already has probably the best monster diversity Ive ever seen in an Alpha (at least since the PoE Alpha) and it's only the first of many bioms to come, hence I'd LOVE if they implemented a skill that can revive those monsters to fight on your side, similar to Spectres in PoE (= summoning a weaker version of a monster from the world to follow you and fight on your side, using its unique set of skills). might be a performance issue tho due to large scale battles and pvp, but they could be PVE only support to start.
4) Random world events / spawns: I really love that there is no fast travel, it makes the world so much more interesting. I only think that the current "events" are a bit static and predictable. additionally to those events already in the game I'd love to see random, small events you can stumble upon when traveling thought the world that do not require several people to complete, but could be done optionally as a solo within a few minutes (similar to Witcher or Skyrim, where small random events that might take 2-3 minutes to take part in made traveling by mount or foot even more interesting).
5) AI NPCs: The idea that is already planned afaik to have NPCs which use AI and are able to response to individual questions by players (like "hey, where can I buy Greatswords?" or "which is the most populated node in this side of the world?") would be utterly amazing. that might be the single most innovative thing in MMOs or even gaming in general to come in the future, and Ashes could be one of the first game to use AI in an open world sandbox environment.
6) Open world PVP flagging: One issue we noticed during open world group PVP is that some players abuse the fact that you can turn PVP flagging on and off "on the fly" and basically whenever you want. Example: We had a PVP fight and one opponent unflagged himself right as he went low hp, walked into an aoe effect and died, and a member of our party became corrupted for killim him. I'd suggest that flagging and unflagging for PVP can only be done near nodes / while in town (similar to how many other known MMO titles handle it). It also makes for a more exciting experience to really "commit" to being PVP flagged for a journey inbetween nodes, instead of flipping it on and off every few seconds.
Ok, I think I need to reevaluate my definition of "short" but that's basically it.
Already love the game and am very excited for everything that is about to come
0
Comments
I agree, if they can do it in Taverns they can do it for groups and raids.
My experience flagging was a bit different. Once I flagged and unflagged, I had to stay out of combat for a min or so (didn't time) before my pvp status changed back to green non-combatant. If you are seeing players that can somehow go immediately from purple combatant back to green non-combatant during a fight, perhaps report as a bug?