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.
đź“ť Dev Discussion #69 - Alpha Two First Impressions đź’Ş
Dev Discussions are an opportunity to join in on player discussions about topics that Intrepid Studios want to hear your thoughts on. This is less about asking us questions, and more about us asking YOU the questions! If you do have questions about Ashes of Creation, keep an eye our social media channels for our monthly livestreams, check out the Ashes of Creation community wiki, or try the #questions channel in Discord!
In this thread, we’ll be discussing:
Dev Discussion - Alpha Two First Impressions
What are your first impressions of Alpha Two? What general feedback would you like to share with the team? If you were a spectator, what were your impressions of what you watched during the first few weekends of Alpha Two?
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Comments
Love the death penalties and slow crafting, please never give in to complaints about them, they keep the effort players put into the game feeling meaningful.
I understand you'll have to listen to players' complaints about artisan skills not feeling worth the time, but just remember you'll still have to preserve the value of one artisan trading with another. If everyone can supply themselves and their party with all the resources and artisanry products they need, those interactions won't be happening until late game.
Instead, just make it more clear to players that they don't need to be able to do everything in order to progress and enjoy the niche of the game they are focusing on.
Things I'd like to see improvement on are
I would love it if the UI guys could figure out a toggle for this functionality. It's not straight-forward to figure out in a game that has customisable chats, but you could give players the ability to toggle on the option of declaring a dominant channel per chat tab. Every time you have one of those tabs selected open, pressing enter will default to that chatting in that tab's dominant channel, and every time you want to chat in another channel than that dominant one, you actively have to use a / command.
1) I do not feel any incentive, other than overwhelming generosity, to help my fellow players that are being attacked by mobs. When I come in and kill these mobs for them, even if I do the most damage on that monster, and receive no experience or chance for loot, it is not a rewarding experience. Therefore, I always bypass my fellow adventurers as I play rather than looking for people that might need my help and developing a possible bond that might lead to a party.
2) It is infuriating having to wait for a mob to respawn that is needed for a quest only to attack it first but not get credit because I did not do the most damage or whatever metric the game uses. Especially when people spawn camp these mobs, seemingly even when they have gotten the credit or item they need. It simply blocks my progression. And this is as a Ranger where I at least have a chance of putting out the most DPS. As a tank or healer, the only way to deal with this situation would be to party up at all times and, sometimes I just want to grind things out on my own. I am all for systems that encourage social gameplay but I am adamantly against those that make it a requirement, outside of group content such as raids or dungeons.
Please do something to change the way kill credit is awarded. Partial experience for assisting in a kill and not having required mobs be "all or nothing" would make the questing and grinding and even social aspects of the game much more enjoyable.
game crashed at %5 of loading screen
that was my first time experience. which isn't too bad for an alpha game.
But now, my computer turns on and doesn't display. my monitor says no display then goes black.
I spent all day trying to get it working again.
-reseeded the ram, multiple times in different variances.
-pulled out the power supply and tested it, seems to work.
-pulled out my video card to see if it could use the onboard display port, still just black screen.
-removed all the wires to the mother board and pull out the cmos battery. put it all back together and still nothing.
R.I.P
motherboard: Asus Prim Z790-P
graphic card: Geforce RTX 4090 - 24GB GDDR6x
processer: intel core I9-13900KF
ram: Corsair Vengeance DDR5 ram 32GB
power supply: Corsair RM 1000e
One of the saddest days ever, due to the fact, I was extremely hyped for this game for years.
Then, to lose everything.
(looking for rope)
I lean towards playing solo but don't mind grouping for raids or for dungeons that I cant progress on my own. I'm all about finding the right people to group with.
I do like PVP , castle raids, etc.. and cant wait till I find out how that works out. I cant tell for sure yet what type of game this is yet.. seems encouraging from the get go. Hope its not just one long quest and dungeon grind with diminishing returns or a situation where only the elite guilds and players can get the best gear.
Not getting credit for killing a mob you do considerable damage to, but not being grouped, is a disappointment. From the get go .. seems this game is discouraging life as a solo.
Understand this is a work in progress
Queue times were low and went quickly, loading into the initial zone was quick and playable, servers held up.
I loved the direct communication of the DDos attack and quick response, kudos to the intrepid team and shame on the perpetrators.
My only real feedback for launch is around communication for when users can download the client and create a character pre go live. In early alpha it's fine, but it lacked polish and you will want it cleaned up for future releases. It's a minor thing that will really frustrate users who are hyped to play.
Combat feels great, the hardest thing to get right and the team knocked it out of the park. The only real complaints are around UI elements, sometimes it's hard to tell what an enemy is going to do and pathing is buggy. Both of which I would expect to be a bit rough at this stage.
The vibe of the world is amazing, you guys hit the exploration feel. Enough open space and variety to make it feel like a live world. But also dense enough it doesn't feel empty, good balance. My only concern is the game doesn't feel unique, overall art style will need a theme/style.
Initial quest chain, "tutorial" into the game. I think you should view this as different than the rest of the game. The purpose should be to efficiently get a user into the world and ensure they know enough before going. I would consider giving an incentive for doing the quest chain (experience/glint), but also a way to skip it. Maybe an option to collect the resources or just an option to get your starter tools & horse, so you can dip out.
Maybe going through the quests will get a player to level 2 so it's worth doing. But also players who know the game or are making an alt can just bail. This will reduce the congestion of the starter area.
This game give me a good feeling. i think that game have a good potential to become a very good game.
i see a lot of video from youtube and i love what i saw.
for my personal experience. i have download and play for a short time the game.
the only reason why i don't launch the game again is because my computer use 100% of the cpu all the time and i know this is not good for the cpu.
My cpu is I7-9700K 3,60Ghz
and Gpu nvidia msi 2080
with 32GB ram
I can play all the recent game with ultra graphic without problem. this is the first time my cpu is always to 100%.
for my personal play, i only meet 1 bug.
for unknown reason my character lose his hair and beard when i move and in some moment respawn and disseapears again and again.
the last thing, each time a connect to the game this is a different server that is choose by default.
so i need to remember which server i created the character before to choose and play. that is very annoying
thanks you for your work and the game.
Unfortunately, with the current state of the alpha, I lack the motivation to continue playing.
At the moment it seems that it only makes sense to grind mobs in a group, which I don't enjoy at all.
I prefer to level up via quests or instances.
The quest system is currently no fun at all. I often don't even know what exactly I'm supposed to do.
Given the size of the world, traveling takes far too long for me. I think there should be a fast travel system to every node.
Crafting items for the professions also takes too long in my opinion.
At the moment, it seems everything in the game takes an extremely long time.
I really hope that the game will be good in the end, but I think I'll wait until phase 2.
The only issues I would like to report/wish list fix where I got frustrated are:
1. The crafting is a bit confusing, yes it gives the basic details but the first impression is that I need a book to understand the starting point (think Oregon Trail lol) maybe something added to the quest giver options *Can I get a refresher on how to do this would help, sometimes just asking a few times it will sink in.
2. I had to download a fix because my system was too new! there was a driver I had to download so my computer understood how to play.
3. I play with a 2 monitor system, one screen where I can have my Discord and Google, and the other monitors my game, Learning how to MOVE the game from one monitor to the other, I couldn't GRAB and drag like other games. this was frustrating. I think it was Shift ctrl scroll simultaneously to move my screen is what I had to do.
4. I was not able to use my mouse outside the game to click on the other screen, I had to use my Windows key then it released it, this is frustrating due to using 2 monitors and one is for research.
5. My hair when mounted would look like I used glue to stand straight up like I slept on a frozen lake (*I think someone else mentioned this above.
6. there is a place where the otters are just in the "starting area" The water would disappear when I walked through it, like it wasn't a water area anymore just dry land, it is more on the graphics glitch side.
That's all I have for now!!! Thank you for letting me participate in Alpha 2!!!
P.S. Please don't make things too easy for us (leading new players by the hand, fast travel, etc., tons of vendor armor and gear that no one will use) Part of the experience in my opinion is the gratification of a tough quest or a long travel. One of my favorite memories is playing WoW in Jan 2005 and having a tough time fighting Murlocs in Elwynn Forest... now you can be max level in a couple of days, and the game sucks...:)
Lots still to do but my god, I am very pleased with what we have been able to experience thus far.
- Mob tagging, respawn rate, density, quest credit should be easy to adjust.
- Having your corpse be lootable via PVE death by other players is BAD. Corpse lootable by PVP death I am all for, again making it lootable by flagged PVP players only.
- Better explanation on what exactly drops via death would be welcome.
- Encumbrance meter. I couldnt run or sprint at my normal speed. Thought I was bugged, it was too much weight being carried.
- Weapon swapping getting bugged out and then you were unable to auto attack, only skills would function.
- LOVED the XP penalty on death mechanic, very old school EQ1 vibes there.
- I will be posting about Fighter and Tank classes in their sections
Ranger - level 5
Overall: Extremely Positive Experience
• Combat: Reminds me a lot of older MMO's and feels good. Structure of fights early on don't seem as regimented where certain classes are "required" but I can see that being more necessary for serious, long running, higher level xp farm sessions and dungeons. Attacks feel impactful and abilities feel useful.
- The idea of spending time with friends, regardless of class/spec is exciting, though. I was hoping to get in today to try out Mage but it looks like servers are down? In general, the synergy of setting up debuffs and combos through attacks/spells seems nicely on pace to be incredible. So far so good!
- Note: the lack of a damage meter is great. Focusing on the fun of play and using some utilities where needed makes the game feel more interesting already.
Ranger Specific
• The ability Barrage feels slightly out of place, as designed. I would personally prefer to see it be redesigned to fewer shots, such as x3 (@75% dmg) for a long bow and maybe x5 (@45%) for short bow.
• The consumption of mana AND a cooldown on active abilities feels a little off. I can see mana being used to imbue attacks or cast spell-attacks, but abilities such as Barrage, Headshot, Bear Trap shouldn't use mana, in my opinion.
• Hunt of the Tiger and Disengage both feel good and play good. The disengage animation and responsiveness is awesome. Nice work!
• Hunt of the Raven: it would be cool if this ability also summoned a raven pet that would/could possibly attack your targets. (I did not yet unlock this ability, but was eyeballing it and felt the visual addition of a raven companion might make it more distinct from Hunt of the Tiger)
• Gear: Acquiring gear seems to be on par with what I was hoping for, where its not easily gained and not quickly replaced. A good ring or nice weapon might be with you for a many levels, and that is a good thing. I'm hoping that the value of certain things, even found early on, might persist long into the game as well. Such as finding a blue Crit/Pen ring at level 5, that ends up being good as it scales over time (providing % increase).
• World: The open world is great. I love the look and feel of the long distance view... the far off hills and landscapes are just rad. I'm excited to see additional regions, seasonal changes & weather systems.
• Social: Solo play will be limiting, but not impossible. Efficiency will be with groups and will likely build strong communities. I can say that I saw a lot more active chatting going on in general, and it seemed more "human" if that's the word to use. Pickup groups in random spots seemed easy and fun to jump in for a bit of grinding, then hop out when needed.
• Mounts: The animations with the horses are pretty nice.
• Hunting: I don't fully understand the hunting permit/license thing just yet... but I have the idea that it probably relates to the concept of poaching within a node's region of influence... but not being able to interact with some creatures because of this feels a little off. I think a clearer explanation of this somewhere in game would be useful... and perhaps I just haven't come across it yet.
- Note: Is it possible to poach wildlife in another node's region of influence if you don't have a license? The idea of scabbing resources in an illegal way, from competing nodes, seems like it could introduce exciting player concepts (like bounties for poachers).
- Note: When fighting creatures like wolves, I was hoping to be able to "harvest" them in some capacity. Gathering hides, meat, etc. from beasts would be a nice addition.
• Recommendation: I think the addition of a Trading Post or Request Board where players could post a request and then other players could fulfill the request, would be cool. Similar to an auction house, but without people necessarily dumping everything they collect there... it would be the reverse, of people requesting things and then a "race" of sorts for other players to fulfill the request in order to receive the payout.
It has been a couple decades of hopeful wishing to see a game come forward with this level of potential and scope, and I'm all in at this point. I'm looking forward to additional time in game and hope to provide more feedback where I can.
I feel like there should be more clarity in quest indicators, so far the only thing that really tells me anything about a quest is a vauge marker on the map.
a personal issue ive had is it takes way to long to regen health when your out and about alone, i understand trying to make it more preilous but i was running around doing nothing on 60 health for 15 minutes. with 1hp being regened every minute. that really ruins my momentum and enjoyment in wanting to even see if i can fight an add
and the last thing is i dont think there should be any pvp in the starting zone, the friend i was playing with was getting spawned camped by someone a good 10 levels above us and it just ruined any hope he would play the game. now im someone who LOVES open world pvp but not when you just start as a little wee lvl 1 with one mediocre skill and not only die but also get punished for it.
i do think for now the lack of exp share is a bit of a deal breaker for me and just does not make questing or leveling fun
Bad things:
- the commission board and the other one controlled by the mayor make this feel like a generic mmo. I would prefer a more social way of telling players that something is needed from them, to make them feel a bond with the node. Board are too quest like orders
- the environment has no charm. Maybe the biome and nice weather makes it feel so. The game doesn't make me want to live here but rather go and find a different one
- there is not enough risk in the world. Players should "feel" the risk and danger at low levels too. Give them something to start with, which they can lose. Traveling is too safe and easy. Mobs often don't notice the player
- the font is hard to read. Font type and size should be customizable
- the music is not memorable. It will not remind me of this game if I hear it out of context
- I've not tried the crafting yet but I remember the streams and I am not looking forward to it
- mounting/dismounting horses could be slower and more realistic. Also should take more damage when falling. Now they jump down hills without any danger
- I normally don't like the times on a fresh server. I've seen the rush to level up fast in other mmo releases too. What makes an mmo good is when I join months after the initial hype fades and I can still discover and enjoy the game. Even though I know the wiki very well and I've seen Steven's streams, I did my best to avoid spoilers so far and be influenced by other people's opinions. (especially influencers) The game will end up good if it can integrate players at a later time too without forcing them to play with streamers. From what I seen so far, the game is not yet in that stage and might never manage to fill 85 nodes with random players
Good things:
- I liked the mob behavior (but rocks thrown by them should not change their trajectory to hit me)
- spells look and sound good
- horses swimming in the water!
- I like the LFT & LFM global messages. Please delete that global channel
I am looking forward to see more features added, all biomes and nodes, taverns, ships and the big ocean.
Please don't add fast travel.
It does some things well, others not so much.
For the pros, I would say the that combat and class identity are quite strong. Even thou I only played as a bard, I could feel the difference that other classes brought to bear when playing with them.
The world is massive and detailed. This is one of the few MMO's where I would like to spend time exploring, as it is both massive and perilous. It feels like something you have to plan out.
For the most part, I found the server stability to be pretty solid. A few crashes, but nothing outstanding. A little bit of rubber banding, but I am in another country so distance being what it is. Never noticed when I or people I was in a group with passed from one server to another, it was smooth as silk.
I like the variety of mounts, just wish it wasn't so expensive to get them, or at least not a random chance. But I would expect that to iron itself out when animal husbandry is properly introduced.
As for cons, weapons largely kind of feel the same, being glorified auto attack beat sticks. The lack of weapon skills, makes for a fairly boring and repetitive experience.
Passive skills are bland and uninteresting. Their effects are often so small and inconsequential, that you barely feel any difference while leveling. Stamina in particular feels lacking. Personally I would prefer a more general passives, that can apply to any class, a bit like the League of Legends does theirs. Where you can modify your HP, MP, Stamina, Defense, Power, Magic, Luck, etc.
Crafting sucks. While I realize it isn't fully implemented yet, what we have isn't very good. I can't for the life of me understand why everything requires fuel to make. It's just a tax on your time and patience. While I might understand it if it were better contextualize, just as burning wood/charcoal to fuel your metal works, where you instead use oils to fuel your tanning, etc. But honestly, not everything should require fuel.
Gathering is likewise a mixed bag. While some materials like wood are diegetic, except for forests for some reason where you can't cut anything down. Figure that one out. But some materials like ore, are just absolute nonsense. Copper for whatever reason is extremely rare (which hamstrings crafting), and rare materials like sapphires are all over the map. And their placement is completely non diegetic, just sprinkled all over the place with no rhyme or reason, rather then say, a mine or cave. Having actual copper, iron or granite mines would go a heck of a long way to making the materials feel diegetic, and the world more immersive as a result. And give players something to fight over. Many plants are likewise spread non dietetically, where while you might find individual plants here and there, generally speaking you should see more clumps of the same species together, much like you do with daffodils. Just do it with everything else please. In addition, I wish there was more variance with how you interact and pick up materials, instead of press F and wait. Some materials I think should be quick and easy, like in the Witcher 3. Where others I think it makes sense to take a good bit of time, like mining and wood cutting. Overall, it just feels very basic and bland, and doesn't respect your time.
Long story short. The things I think are critical to the health and success of the game, I think are done really quite well. Where as the things that are really not that important, at least not at this stage in development, are not really that great and could use work. Which is to be expected.
Loving the movement of the combat mode (z) but feel that it could be easily improved with a three stage toggle that allows for pve, pvp, &, pve/p targeting for easier combat and risk mitigation when targeting.
First press of Z would be Pve targets only, second Pvp only, Third Pve/p.
I found it difficult to not attack other players at times when ganging up in mobs but not in the party leading to unintentional corruption amongst the bon partied group.
There could also be signposts added also to lead/direct players to the traders & craft specific areas, at present without fast travel it's a bit confusing to remember where they all are at times.
Loving the pace so far & I'll be continuing to add to this post for other suggestions/feedback.
After the trial, there is no multi-language and frequency translation
Q1 I feel that task prompts are often not displayed
Q2 The location cannot be marked as the record location
Q3 Production and collection prompts that there are too few item locations
Q4 Can’t add friends
this is my proposal
BY BEETHOVEN
I am currently unable to login to play today and dont see a post about servers being down. Just want to make aware as i know we are in Alpha and sometimes stuff just doesnt work. I hopw all is well and cant wait till i can join in on more fun in AoC.
World is beautiful, please now fill it with content and lore to interact with.
Class tree felt interesting, some mechanics not clearly described though.
Weapon tree felt very meh by comparison.
Interact distance with objects felt too small.
Sound and music where great.
Engine obviously stills optimization, ran pretty good for me though: 7900x, 4080, 1440p 21:9 DLSS Quality @ 80fps+
Some annoying rubberbanding...and jumpiness. Game could use improved social features (proximity group making?).
Very good first showing though. Excited to follow along.
Got to play a bit more.....some Cleric this time.
I do think it's important to work on some core engine stuff...there were tons of areas where mobs would spawn in and insta-die....or I'd walk to an area and mobs would just sorta play a death animation. Quest kill mobs seeming never spawn, things like that. I like the old-school feel but it still needs to be playable.
Still very much overall a positive take, just needs work still. I'll pop back in after the next "major" patch. Thanks for all the hard work on this....so much potential.
Let me start by saying that the bones of the game are great. Issues aside the general vibe of the game is exactly what it should be and the potential is huge. I will focus here on things that I believe should change, whether it is the focus of this P1 test or not. I'm aware that some of these things are not yet properly implemented and don't indicate the final design, but I will talk about it anyway because I think it is important that we give feedback on those even before we see the final direction.
- 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 by clicking on them or by keybinding.
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.
Extra opinions: looting a corpse is an act of aggression so you should be flagged for it. But please no type of loot lock for pve or stuff like that. I also believe corrupted players should be able to fight back against players without acquiring more corruption. The way it currently works, death penalties from corruption are not a risk, they are a certainty. You go corrupt and it's just ppl coming at you until you die. Your only choice right now is to die early to lose less or keep fighting back until you're full of corruption and lose more. There is no running or grinding off corruption because you'll be constantly attacked, it's a snowball effect. Last but not least, increase the period of time you remain purple after flagging. Around 5~10 minutes if you just fought and didn't kill anyone, around 15~20 minutes if you fought and killed someone.
Last but not least, balance. The corruption system was working great before P1 and on the first weekend, the only issue was the starting zone and respawn shrine camping. This should not be the job of corruption to fix. Because you tried to fix it with corruption, at the moment the entire feeling of the game is never flag, try as much as possible to make the enemy go corrupt. There is very little consensual pvp happening. It's at a pretty bad balance place solely because you tried to fix another issue with the same system.
IMO this has a simple fix. Turn back corruption to what it was, add protection zones around the respawn shrines so ppl don't die on the loading screen, and add a pvp off buffer for new players (level 3 and/or 3 hours of playtime for instance, whichever happens first). In addition, instead of buffing corruption for all scenarios, buff corruption for level disparities greater than 10 (on the account of gear having 10 by 10 milestone upgrades).
I don't think you should go red by killing 1 single player of your level. There needs to be a balance between what the player dying loses and what the killing players are punished with to avoid players from karma bombing. This might be more balanced in later levels where xp debt is more significant and time-consuming, but for now, it is super worth taking a death to make someone corrupt. You gotta balance it so even if getting the other guy corrupt might be advantageous, the cost of death is a deterrent for players to repeatedly do it.
- power curve and TTK
Steven, in the recent Pirate Software interview, talked about new players being integrated into the community at early levels. This also means that new players will be participating in pvp events along with older players. For this to work, we must have a controlled power difference between new players and veterans.
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.
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 is 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.
Additional note: just keep in mind MMO players are 100% about efficiency. If you design a bunch of diverse and engaging encounters, but miss on the balance and make a bad and boring encounter super worth it, players will do that bad encounter until oblivion and then will complain the game's pve is bad.
In addition to both arguments above, I would also like to ask for more visibility on the mob's mechanics. There are a ton of mob mechanics, but most of them are really hard to notice and react to. Most of the time is just damage that you take and the healer deals with it. Ideally, the pve encounter becomes more readable and you can increase the lethality of these mechanics so players have to actually react and defend against them, and not just tank it.
- Powerleveling and XP/drop scaling
Right now, implementation is pretty harsh on players with diverse levels trying to group up. I think it was the right move for the moment as a quick fix, but I think for launch, that might be something that should be looked upon. Anti-power-leveling systems like these, even more lenient might make early-level experiences after launch (like 6+ months after) pretty tough as there will be way fewer people to group up and do content with.
I would suggest a system like ravendawn did, which makes it so when there is a party with a wide power disparity (let's say a guy level 50 parties with a guy level 20), the power of the higher level players is debuffed to match the lower level players. So if a lvl 50 parties with a guy lvl 20, then the lvl 20 will have its power debuffed to match the power of a level 20. That way a higher levels can play with lower levels, help them out without necessarily powerleveling them. Might have some economy implications as ppl can use this to get lower level drops, but I don't know if that is a problem.
On the topic of XP/drop scaling, I also understand the purpose behind. I do believe that ppl cheesing high/low level content could be a problem. But I also believe that if a party manages to beat a super higher level on merits alone, they should be rewarded for that. So on this one I'm at a crossroads and have no real suggestion. Good luck.
- 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.
Events and zerging
I have utilized a few events in my leveling process. The minotaur event that was showcased in particular was one I did almost every time. It was on a set timer (15 minutes) and gave you fixed XP (12k) independent of how many ppl were there and how much you contributed to the event. When this became obvious, we could see every 15 minutes almost a hundred people flocking to the event and making it completely pointless. I'm sure if more ppl knew of it we would have way more ppl there.
I feel like this goes against the risk vs reward design, it encourages Zerg trains and removes the challenge and the actual enjoyment of doing the content. The event becomes a mindless activity you do for XP. This happens for a few reasons IMO.
1. Fixed rewards: I could get on the last second of the event, not hit any mobs and I would get 66 glint and 12k XP. Makes no sense.
2. Fixed timer: An event happening every hour on the hour, of every 15 minutes, or whatever fixed schedule you put it on, it will be exploited as people will flock to it similar to a daily or something like that. It will feel robotic and mindless and gamey like you are on a treadmill of content and I don't believe that is or should be the direction of the game's event system.
3. Event notifications: The events notify everyone in a huge area and you can see it marked on the map. I understand why that is, but It also pushes the system into that gamey robotic treadmill of content scenario. I think events should either have a way smaller area of visibility and announcement, or just straight up not have any UI notifications at all. It was said we would have visual and audio indications of events happening nearby, and I believe that should be the better direction for this system. Sure a lot of players will miss out on events, but is that a big issue? As long as players are encountering some events from time to time, people don't need to be aware of every single event happening in the game.
Action Camera
Action camera still needs a lot of love. Being able to utilize the menus without having to switch back to the tab camera is the number 1 issue. Having a free look bind (like in pubg or cod or whatever) is also a big QOL for action camera users. Being able to use the horse with an action camera is another one.
Right now target selection is too rough as well. I would like a more sensitive target selection system with my aim. If I have one target in the center of my aim I would like to target that instead of the mob I was previously hitting.
Skills like Prismatic beam: You should be able to aim the beam up and down with the action camera. Give those types of skills the Z axis to work with on the action cam (same with blink). Side note on verticality: fighter's blitz doesn't go up right now, please add verticality to blitz.
Overall polish to the action cam would be appreciated.
Final feedback
. 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
The caravan event system is not good IMO. It announces to everyone that there is a caravan in the area, preventing any chance of doing stealth or hidden route runs. It creates unnecessary bloat in the UI and it feels super gamey and not immersive at all. (There are more problems but those could be fixed without changing the system so I won't bring those up)
I suggest an alternative caravan system: To become a defender, you must approach and interact with the caravan. To become an attacker, you must either hit a defender or the caravan. You can have a radius around that caravan in which if someone leaves this radius for a certain amount of time, they are no longer attackers or defenders. It's simple, it doesn't require a UI middleman, it allows for stealth runs, and it's a seamless way to implement it without feeling "gamey"
.I like the Dodge action. Being able to jump and dodge feels fantastic. Maybe add an ability of a second jump after the dodge at the cost of more stamina (like deadlock)? In addition, maybe give each archetype its own Dodge animation. For instance, a ranger does a summersault, a fighter does a corkscrew dodge, a rogue slides on the ground, a mage does a small blink, etc.
.Let us use mousewheelup and mousewheeldown as binds please!
gear: I like the design of a higher tier lower level gear being equal to a lower tier higher level gear. It makes it so you can compare in force with a higher-level player just by farming properly and getting a bit lucky. It also makes sense that if you get lucky with a rare drop, you won't be trading it for a gray item a few levels forward and your luck really matters. If you have a legendary level 10 gear, it should stick till you get another very rare drop from higher levels. I still think the jump in power from gear tiers/levels is a bit too high though.
Constructive Criticism, a mixture of topics are below:
PVP
1. Flagging system needs a bit of an overhaul. It is hard to know when you are force flagged and when you are not. We tried to PvP one night after getting attacked and people not flagged were trying to heal people who were force flagged but they were unable to do so. We just died and lost out stuff. NBD.
2. I think an incentive to Flag should be made such as 10% increase in XP and materials gathered while flagged. This will create more PvP and people who are flagged. I do not think Force Flagging should be a thing.
3. No XP debt when dying in PvP. Losing your materials gathered in PvP is punishment enough especially if it is an organized PvP event such as Caravans, Node Wars, and eventually Sieges etc.
4. Dodge Action should have longer I-frames for the entire duration of the dodge animation and the timing needs to be cleaned up. It is hard to tell if you have to time the dodge during the end of the cast bar or if you have to dodge the projectile itself.
GEARING
5. The Gearing is good imo, items feel rare but powerful at the same time. It feels very rewarding.
QUESTING
6. Questing needs an overhaul, but I am expecting that will come in Phase 2 in December as shown on the roadmap.
7. Quest NPCs. It is hard to tell who has a quest and who does not. I understand the no hand holding and the open book icon might just be a place holder for the moment. But some quests have no indicator and then NPCs with books over their heads which I think is supposed to indicate quest givers have no quests to give. Again, this could just be a placeholder thing, but it is quite confusing.
CRAFTING
8. Crafting times and resource availability has forced me to entirely neglect all crafting until there is an overhaul. New World had some of the best crafting and gathering in a game I've ever seen. Crafting was expensive, a gambit at times, grindy, yet extremely rewarding. But the time to craft was fast. It didn't have artificial difficulty of inflated craft times or resource difficulty. Resource nodes respawned every 2-3 minutes and Copper mines were always Copper mines. Variable resources are fine in higher level nodes but in beginner nodes, basic resources should be the only thing that spawn.
PVE
9. Resting/Sitting needs to be cleaned up. I think it is server lag, but it currently does not give X hp and X mana per second. It is more like X hp and X Mana every 5 seconds. The 1st week of the test, it seemed that regen was working properly and it wasn't such a big deal but as of now. It feels completely broken and useless.
10. Mob AI needs some work which could also be tied to lag, but sometimes the mobs run around in circles or randomly run through walls. I noticed this the most with goblins and a little with the Bandits in Highwayman Hills.
LOOTING
11. Some people in my party complained that they could never see loot on bodies when items were actually there. I never had an issue with this, but they mentioned it, so I am putting it in here as well. Possibly make the drops a little more noticeable.
12. When a party member does not loot the body and there is an uncommon (green) or higher item on the body. The item does not go to the party for a loot roll. It is instantly looted by any individual who gets to it first. Now, I'm kind of a loot goblin so I don't mind this, but I do not think that is how it should be. I do think that if the loot times out, the glint and greys should be up for grabs however, green and higher items should still be rolled off.
Some specific feedback:
Mage combat: feels great. I need to vary my skills up to see more of it but the route I went down is great. I feel like I can stand alone, but more I feel like if I got in a good group I could synch with another mage well to spam combos. Gives me something to strive for.
Armor set bonuses: I’d love for these to be reconsidered. For a game so focused on freedom in weapon choice and how each weapon behaves, skills, so on, being made to wear all of a particular set to max its potential bugs me, and clashes with my hopes for my character. For instances, I’m really looking forward to making a necromancer, but I want him to be front line with a great sword. Y’all have spell swords, which is awesome! But the armor system encourages me to stick with one set which might not be completely well suited for me. Let me wear heavy grieves and gauntlets but a light chest piece because those individual pieces mix and match best together for my build. On top of this, it’ll bring variation to aesthetics for people and could make for some awesome designs, probably some goofy ones too but that’s great. I personally hate armor set bonuses, they restrict people so much and that seems contrary to the core philosophy that I’ve seen.
Sitting mechanic - I’ve seen people complaining about the sitting mechanic. I disagree. It could be a little faster maybe, but the game seems designed to for each class to shine in certain ways, and this is true not only in one battle but over the course of a session. Clerics need bards need tanks need mages and rangers and fighters need clerics. I did solo level and explore a bit, it’s doable, rations helped, maybe boost those a bit instead of the sitting b/c it took 3 or 4 to get sorted, but all in all I thought it was great. It gave my group time to rest and talk between long training stints when we finally ran down on resources, it encouraged me to group event with just 2 others, it was great.
XP sharing - I saw this critique as well and I have mixed feelings. In part I think it’s good to keep it separate, it makes groups avoid one another and prevents over crowding in xp farms such as highwayman hills. I don’t really want 3 other groups squeezing in on a kill to take xp. On the other hand, when the full map is in play and the server max capacity is spread over 85 nodes, I think this is going to be less of an issue. It might be good to share xp, but have a primary group and the secondary that’s kind of treated like “3rd class citizens” if you can, and a group who attacks gets a small bit of xp for helping but not as much as if they would if they’d go on their own.
PvP - I haven’t done this yet, but I’ve seen the discussions. I think this is another issue that will be very different when the full map is open. I would like to suggest one change in approach: make going into and out of PvP mode a longer process. I’ve seen a guild switch to pvp and kill another group and then immediately switch back, just blind siding them. I saw Asmon get hunted on videos. I’ve seen the increased punishments for PvP in response, and I think a 5 minute transition period would actually work better. If people want to PvP, they should have to commit, and be a continuous threat but also continuously vulnerable. Maybe make a difficult to obtain item that negates this for RP purposes, guilds would have to go out of their way to plan mid-city ambushes and commit resources. But otherwise, people see the “bandits” coming over the hill, and in turn the bandits are given a fair chance to… fulfill their role.
That’s it for now, love the game. Plan to play multiple classes and y’all have fulfilled a few desires of mine. I’ve wanted “high fantasy eve” for forever man if the alpha isn’t already scratching that itch. I’m not the chosen one of a million other chosen ones, just a character in a fantasy world living life and it’s awesome. Really admire the vision, the work, and the communication thus far, plan to be around for a long while. (Really thought I was in this but apparently made a full post, my bad)
Secondarily it needs to be based on level.
for instance if i killed a person once and moved on i should not be a red player.
however if i remain and kill that player again i should become a red player.
in a different situation i am a level 25 and kill a level one player whom doesnt fight back. this should warrant red player status due to the unfair player advantage of level difference.
these are just a few simple fixes...
I tried some pvp and it was crazy unbalanced. Mage shields are definitely busted and mages can just stand and be turrets and still win.
This post is not about balance. You'll never have good balance in a game like this. You'll never have good pvp in a game like this. Why force pvp into this game? No one will buy this game or subscribe for this game for the PVP. But with this current system of having people lose resources to PVP randomly, you will definitely have people quit because of it.
I'm begging you to reexamine open world pvp with the goal of: is this actually fun for most people or will this just lead to griefing?
The game is already set up to be intensely grindy. Games like that lead to burnout. You let random people steal your stuff or set up an an environment where burnedout players can get frustrated and attack somebody and then other people gang on them and then that person loses hours and hours of work through the gear that's lost.
I encourage you to set PVP up in a way that allows people to have some fun with it and mess around with low stakes. I mean you're already kind of wasting your time playing PVP because there's nothing to be gained out of it- why make people lose a bunch from it?
I re-emphasize: this game is not going to have high quality PVP. There's dozens of other games that are going to be doing it way better and for people who want that, they will pursue those games. If the PVP isn't low stakes, people are going to be severely turned off by it.