Alpha Two Update Notes - November 8, 2024

Vaknar

Here is what's changed for Alpha Two since last weekend's test. As a reminder, if you come across bugs during this test, please report them to us in-game using /bug - As always, we look forward to seeing testers interact with these changes, and provide feedback on them!

StevenSharif wrote:

Glorious testers, Intrepid has been hard at work this week making adjustments based on the data collected from last weekend's testing. It is important to note that development is not a perfect science. Sometimes when you fix bugs you make new ones, and often times velocity of work done correlates to new bugs generated. Please be vigilant this weekend as you test the changes listed below. Thank you for your help and patience, as we continue to make Ashes of Creation better and better - Steven

HIGHLIGHTS

• Fixed issues with the launcher impacting testers that are connecting via IPv6
• Updated NPC Navigation performance by more than 100x
  This functionality was impeding our server performance in certain situations. Players should now notice much less rubber banding and much more responsive NPC behaviors
• Fixed a bug to prevent “ghost characters” appearing to be stuck on invisible walls in the world
• Fixed a bug causing an infinite loading screen loop if the unstuck command was used while mounted
• Added a Corruption “Blight” stat that is gained from killing non-combatant players. “Blight” causes you to gain Corruption faster for subsequent PK’s

KNOWN ISSUES

You can find a list of Known Issues here


FIGHTER ARCHETYPE UPDATES

• Knockout ability activation time has been reduced
• Knockout cooldown has been reduced from 18 seconds to 15 seconds
• Cataclysm will now apply Tripped to Staggered enemies

MAGE ARCHETYPE FIXES

• Fixed a bug causing “Enchant Weapon” to permanently provide empowerment buffs. These will now last for a limited duration
• Fixed a visual bug for the Mage’s prismatic beam ability

CHARACTER

• Adjusted experience formulas to reduce the effectiveness of power leveling
• Reduced raid bonus experience multiplier when in a raid with 9 or more players
• Player swim speed has been reduced from 66% to 50%
• Sprint is no longer usable while swimming
• Fixed a bug causing players to incorrectly spawn if no war event spawn locations were found
• Fixed a bug causing combat settings to not properly persist on login
• Fixed a bug causing mounts to sometimes block projectiles
• Fixed a bug that caused increases to the 'healing received' stat to stack indefinitely.

CORRUPTION

• Added a scaling Corruption penalty which reduces movement speed
• Added a Corruption “Blight” stat that is gained from killing non-combatant players
• Blight causes you to gain Corruption faster for subsequent PK’s
• Corrupt players’ locations will now appear on the mini-map for other players within a 100-meter radius
• Corruption reduction from killing enemies now scales based on the enemy's difficulty
• Corrupted players will no longer be able to remove equipment
• Corrupted players will no longer be able to trade
• Fixed a bug causing players to become combatants incorrectly when killing a corrupted player
• Fixed an issue where corruption was sometimes granted during sanctioned PvP, as well as cases where it wasn’t granted if both players were in a guild

ECONOMY

• Updated commissions and quest rewards
• Gathering/Processing/Crafting will now grant more XP with higher rarity and/or tiers
• Crafting XP now better matches the power of the item crafted
• Saplings now spawn and mature to adolescence faster
• Adolescent trees now mature to adulthood faster
• Adolescent trees now reward less base wood to account for their faster spawn and growth rate
• Adolescent trees now do more durability damage to lumberjacking tools
• Hunting & Gathering experience has been increased
• Reduced base XP rewards for common and T1 Gathering/Processing/Crafting
• Gathering tools initially given by the Sweat of Your Brow quest have had their durability reduced
• Reduced the durability of starter tools from 110 to 60
• Fixed bugs that allowed the sale of items for negative value
• Fixed missing crafting stations in Lionhold
• Fixed broken text in the Tailoring Station

NODES

• Reduced Node XP gain by 85%
  We felt that Nodes were leveling up too fast. This change is to prevent nodes from near-instantly leveling up
• Added additional Mayoral Commissions
• Added additional war preparation commissions so that war can be declared more easily
• Updated the Mayoral Commissions in New Aela so that it has a similar number of slots as other nodes
• Updated regular elections to begin their registration phase 5 days before the 1st of the month
• Updated the citizen renouncement dialogue
• Increased the cooldown time to rejoin another node after renouncing your citizenship time to 36 hours
• Increased the time for the first unscheduled election to 24 hours
• Fixed a bug allowing storage to be transferred via cargo between nodes
• Fixed a bug causing items placed outside of default Node resource storage to be lost
• Fixed a bug with Node expansion plots that didn’t work correctly

LOOT

• Item roll duration has been increased from 15 seconds to 30 seconds
• Time for loot rolls appearing will now pause if another loot roll is in progress
• Fixed a bug causing Ashen Haunts to not drop gear

POPULATION

• Made changes to the NPC population in Samia's Hope
• Made changes to the NPC population in the Scholar's Academy caravan camp
• Fixed a bug that prevented Goblin Shamans in the Ursine Caves from throwing their poison orbs
• Fixed an issue with NPC pathfinding
• Fixed bugs in Samia's Hope commissions, so they should no longer refer to incorrect NPCs
• Fixed a bug causing Named Goblin High Shamans to do significantly less damage than intended

THE KILLING FIELDS

• Increased the spawn area of NPCs
• Increased the spawn rate of skeletons at night
• Ravens will now attack goblins

UX/UI

• Added a Breath Bar that should appear while underwater
• Made several changes to UI font sizing
• Updated the Buff Bar to no longer resize the UI when a character has max buffs/debuffs
• Updated HUD UI iconography for the ignore and leave event icons
• Fixed issues with notifications in The Daragal Estates showing incorrect text
• Fixed a bug that caused an “Unknown Notification!" pop-up
• Fixed a bug that caused UI windows to be the incorrect size after resizing
• Fixed a bug causing cargo to not properly update
• Fixed a bug with transferring Commodities via Caravan Cargo Storage
• Fixed a bug causing Warehouse items to sometimes not show up the first time you open Warehouse storage

ENVIRONMENT

• Made improvements to road generation and visuals
• Made improvements to the environment in Samia’s Hope
• Changed visuals for the rounded bottoms of waterfalls
• Fixed a bug causing plants to sometimes grow through roads
• Fixed a bug causing some parts of the world to appear pink

LAUNCHER & CONNECTIVITY

• Fixed issues with the launcher impacting testers that are connecting via IPv6
• Fixed a bug with the launcher that caused multiple authentication web browsers to open at the same time
• Reenabled "GPU Crash Debugging" in Launcher settings
  Note: Having this on can help us fix issues for people who crash often, but this will take up more space on your computer

STABILITY

• Updated NPC Navigation performance by more than 100x
  This functionality was impeding our server performance in certain situations. Players should now notice much less rubber banding and much more responsive NPC behaviors
• Made a multitude of changes to improve client, graphics, and server stability
• Made a multitude of changes to NPC navigation to improve server performance
• Fixed a bug that caused 'ghost characters' to appear stuck on invisible walls in the game world
• Fixed a bug causing an infinite loading screen loop if the unstuck command was used while mounted