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
It is an Alpha as we all know and still being developed so maybe its not fully fleshed out yet. TBD I guess.
My main concern is the new player experience. Again this could be because time and development is being put into other aspects that are more important and it hasn't been worked on yet BUT... When you first load into the game there is 0 indication of where to go, who to talk to or what to do. I spent the first 30 minutes confused about what to even do. It wasn't until I talked to some random guard after running around that I found it had a quest. There should be some level of direction or indicator on top of an NPC head and you shouldn't be just left to figure out what to do on your own. I am not saying add a full blown tutorial but just like add an indicator on top of an NPC head or something just so there is some direction of who to talk to.
Very few quests. Not sure if this intended but you have very few quests and half of them were bugged. Again I assume development is just going to different areas at the moment and these systems will be more fleshed out.
Ultimately gameplay was still fun. Spells and abilities were unique and looked great. World looks good aside from invisible walls in random locations were you just cant walk forward like your stuck on something on the ground.
Looking forward to more testing!
I enjoy killing monster to lvl up but the quests needs to get better. They are completely useless to do at the moment and arent good either. The crafting, the speed of lvling, the speed of the whole game is perfect. Every level feels like you archived something big. Every new weapon or armor you get feels like you worked hard for it. Itâs perfect. What I love is that ashes of creation is so good and you have so much things to do and all the progressions in different directions that you donât feel the need to rush and also often just mindlessly run around and explore or do some random stuff.
Some people mention that AoC hasnât an art style. I have to say that I definitely see an unique artstyle. Itâs not quite there but It goes in the right direction. I absolutely love that I sometimes felt like Iâm in the world of âthe Witcherâ itâs just awesome but I have to say that it sometimes doesnât feel corherent. There is definitely work to do. Some things just feel out of place. But since we are in an alpha and what Iâve seen so far itâs fucking good already.
The overall fantasy direction of the world, the classes, the races of ashes of creation is going exactly in the right direction. Itâs exactly what I want in an mmo.
The bard is by far the best class I have seen so far in an mmo. I just fucking love it. I can hear the sounds of the drums and flute just by typing it out haha. The ranger is also fun, but I feel like the bard offer the same as the bard + more, so this has to be adjusted. Especially the damage of the ranger seems a bit low compared to other classes.
The first player experience isnt good. On the one hand I really like to figure out everything and ask people and learn more and more but on the other hand it was frustrating. At the beginning you feel completely lost, you get bombarded with quests that you canât do yet and also donât know where you have to go or what to do. The player should get introduced slower into the game i think. I like the oldschool vibe that you donât get everything spoon-fed, but that definitely needs to be different.
Water physics doesnât look good. When Iâm going through water, it doesnât feel like water. It feels like some lighter liquid than water. Difficult to explain.
Other than that. I just love it!
And to the community: you are the best. I have never seen a better community than the AoC community! Love you guys.
1. Any Quest or Commission that does NOT need you to return to a NPC to complete,
must be able to be completed via a the quest tracker on your screen. Not sifting through the Journal.
2. All applicable quests and Commissions need to be Shareable with your Party.
3. All NPC's that have a quest for you, should have a shimmering name plate.
Any quest you take from an NPC should have a "Quest in Progress" Icon above their head. If a Quest must
be completed at an NPC the Quest in Progress icon should change so players know they are a turn-in
location.
4. a. On MAGE, you need to combine Illuminate with Arcane Eye, and remove it's "dust cloud effect", and also
put Shell in it's place on the side bar for every Mage at Lv5.
b. Need to add charge up casts to FrostBolt, Blizzard, Magma Field, and Meteor.
c. Replace the boring anemic wand animations with FrostBolt, FireBolt, and Arcane Missile effects instead.
d. Need to add 3 charges to FrostBolt, and add FrostBall with Charge up cast effects like the Fire tree has.
e. Arcane Missile should be a stream of seeker bolts while the button is held down, like a Needler in HALO.
f. In battle, Party Members standing in Arcane Circle should gain 3MP/sec.
5. If you're not directly being attacked, or have DoT's on you, players need to be able to /sit and recover during
battle. Not rations during battle, just normal sitting regen.
6. Being attacked by a player should automatically flag you for combat for 10 seconds, ON YOUR SIDE.
So if you decide to defend yourself, just pressing an attack or ability turns your Nameplate Purple, if not it
stays Green. It's a good system, but having to hit Alt+F is just too slow.
7. Killing Lv.1 players in a starting area like Lionhold, should give catastrophic amounts of BLIGHT, and must
immediately give MAX Corruption for their level. To prevent Lv.1's from being used as shields elsewhere,
Outside of those starting areas they are fair game like anyone else.
8. Player Ash piles need to be a LOT more visible, nameplates like the mounts do, something...because I
accidentally looted a player pile because I thought it was a quest item I needed to pick up off the ground.
There are a few looming questions in the form of feedback that I have and I will outline here.
1. Leveling is too linear. We can have systems that give nods to the games of old, but its almost criminal to repeat already identified pitfalls. The 1000 pound gorilla in the room is what happens to progression zones 6 months from release, 12 months, 24 months, etc. There should be some sort of mentoring system or ability to level with newer players, friends, guildies that rewards going back and helping those around. With how much is driven by group play this is going to be a major issue the further from release the game gets and the barrier to entry will eventually choke out any new blood interested in playing. I've always been a fan of the "low floor, high ceiling" methodology of difficulty. Leveling is the handshake to the players to learn the world, the systems, and their classes.
2. Resource nodes do not seem to be deliberately placed. I'm not sure if this something that is being looked at later and the team was just testing basic functionality, but the initial nodes were almost impossible to find. Iron was everywhere, but I only ever found two copper veins. The resource rarity should either follow a zone specific pattern or a rarity scaling pattern that ensures an abundance of the earlier nodes to help move people through the bottleneck.
3. Kill/tag rewards need a rework. I've already seen this stated in several posts, but I just want to make sure I say it as well. As a player who enjoys tanking and healing, this was punishing and made my desire to play go down. You will inevitably see a dip in healers and tanks and this is always driven by a few different factors. One of the largest is ability to stand on their own. I'm not sure what the best solve is for this, but I can confidently say that the current system will ensure that DPS roles are overplayed and every supporting role will be nonexistent.
4. Experience gain system. First off, make deaths more punishing please! I want more debt when I die to make me really think before I decide to pull 3 level 17 bears at level 9. Additionally, give me a reward for playing in a group and add the ability to experience chain. For ever certain number of kills, give me bonus experience or a modifier that makes it fun/competitive to level in a group and against other groups.
5. player status indicators. Look, I'm not 17 anymore playing Lineage and EverQuest on my 14 inch CRT potato. Even with my 39 inch screen, I found it hard to track HoTs and status modifiers on the player bars. Give me some options to either put them above the players head, or raid frames that let me set up what I want to see in them.
6. UI customization. This was a great QoL addition. I enjoyed getting to play with it (when it wasn't being weird and rubber banding), but I found it hard to understand what I could do with it or how to make it do what I wanted. The functionality beyond existing didn't seem to be there at all. I hope there's more to come for this, but if not, I'd suggest some time set aside to rework it.
7. The map is amazing, but useless. This thing is almost too detailed. I found it impossible to find where I needed to go, where my party was, or where the next logical place to level was. Its 2024, give me the ability to customize and label the map beyond a few waypoints. Give me more deliberate details that hint at roads, paths, etc.
I can't wait to see more and I'm hopeful for what is to come! I was only able to test a small amount and I really want to dig into the nodes and crafting. Thank you for all the work, thank you for listening to players, thank you for the incredible communication, but most of all thank you for giving me a game that I can enjoy with my friends and family that reminds me of all the fun of games I really miss.
The one complaint I have with the game design thus far is copper nodes. I'm big into crafting and markets, and I understand there's a lot of fine tuning to get node spawns correct. However, in order to test the crafting mechanic, we need to have resources to use. Copper is used in almost everything, at least at the base level. The nodes are so scarce, I only found 2 the entire weekend, and I looked...hard...
I really hope the devs take the success of Throne and Liberty seriously when it comes to dungeon bosses. They were each unique, had important mechanics, and were at least somewhat interesting to fight, even at the first level of dungeons. If they go the route of most other MMOs and make the boss just a big punching bag, I think it would be a real shame in such a beautiful game.
Please dont' flag me if some rando in my group decides to flag and attack someone. they are the corrupted one's, they get the penalties.
Looting player corpses when you didnt kill them imo should not be allowed for at least a set amount of time. 3-5mins? Stolen glint, is a thing that should give corruption. The amount of people i seen looting someone's corpse 2 sec after they died, same party or not was insane. "oh, you died that's my loot now" said the graverobber..
Safe zone's they're coming, they're needed. thank you.
I did have some weird graphical lighting at night...kinda looked like aliens were trying to find cows to probe?
Kill credit for helping someone not in your group/random player. Be honest, the people asking for this are asking for participation trophies and getting xp/loot for tagging someones else's mobs, not as an incentive to help someone. you help because you can, maybe you gain a friend or a new guildie? ..Risk VS Reward.
Please go back to 5-9 levels of xp sharing. i know it's not the best solution but i was lvl 10 and had a friend join, told them to do some stuff around Lionhold to get a horse and learn some basic's then we could go off adventuring...4 hours later he was lvl 4, kinda felt bad for him, we even took him to low level area's and i would just heal him while he fought for his life..poor guy.
Thank you.
Bugs - I have experienced quite a few bugs, but very little critical bugs. So far, I would say my playtest has demonstrated a high level of fidelity the developers have in ensuring a stable experience for everybody. The most notable bugs I have experienced that might directly impact the user experience are as follows:
âșTargeting Issues- Sometimes, enemies are not targetable, and are highlighted in a green text rather than the red/blue challenge spectrum. These green-texted enemies cannot be targeted directly, sometimes causing dangerous situations for the player.
âșMagma Field Ability Stalling - Specifically when using the "Magma Field" ability, the ability does not charge up to be activated, but instead stalls at the beginning of the ability's activation bar. This has also caused dicey situations. In order to break this stall, i have to press escape or press dodge.
âșNode Storage Issues - Quite frequently, i attempt to deposit or withdraw items to and from my node storage, but notice the item does not transfer. To resolve this issue, i have to re-log. Sometimes, I have to re-log multiple times per hour, depending on how frequently I need to access the node storage. I consider this a critical issue due to the constant re-logging required taking away from the user experience and forcing to re-enter queues.
Quality of Life - I don't have much to say about the QOL features in this game currently. I definitely think there is some improvement needed in the UI, however additional features are slated for Phase II. I especially hope the social menu is planned for a quick release, as this menu would allow better social interactions outside of guilds.
âșOne thing I will note as an area for QOL improvements would be mana regeneration outside of combat. Currently, mana regeneration seems very slow while resting outside of combat. While some of this may be due to current server loads, I have yet to experience a rapid mana regeneration. I hope that in the future, the rate that mana regenerates will increase as the time out of combat increases.
Looking Forward - I look forward to many things within Ashes of Creation, but would like to highlight the following:
âșSecondary Archetypes - This is probably the most sought after item for me. I thoroughly enjoy my role as a mage, and would love to see how I can mesh with other archetypes for a unique experience.
âșMap Expansion - I look forward to map expansion for multiple reasons. First, I believe an expanded map will reduce the server worker instability we currently encounter at times. Second, I am excited to see the rest of Verra. From what we have seen from the Riverlands, I can only imagine the unique landscapes we will see in the future nodes.
âșAPI Integration - While it may not be planned currently, I strongly hope that an API could be accessible to the Ashes of Creation community. I would love to allow our guild to use this API to manage bank storage, XP tracking, node stats, etc. Including an API in this game would allow Ashes of Creation to be set apart from other MMO's by embracing technological advances.
Conclusions - I was hesitant to play Ashes of Creation's Alpha II, but I must say I am very impressed. I was concerned that A2 was going to be below expectations, however my experience has been very engaging. I've went into Alpha II with an open mind, and hope the bug reports I have submitted will contribute to a well-polished MMO that will thrive.
I'll see you all in Verra again very soon.
I knew nothing about the game except my buddies elevator pitch an hour prior to purchase/download. I was and still am very excited about exploring a brand new world in a brand new universe with a few good friends all experiencing the game live for the first time.
-bugs-
the game performs and feels about what i would expect for a well thought out alpha test (cows,pigs, crafting stations, and people on rooftops in lions hold, minimal animations on guards etc. this added to the charm and was a good reminder its an alpha and early in the development process (and that i can be apart of the feedback to shape the game). While i know these bugs will get worked out sooner or later it did not take away from my experience as a 15+ year gamer.
-first login experience-
character creation and login was easy but loading screens went black with big red/orange blurry spots, then secondary loading screen with cityscape appeared and worked normally (loved this art btw) . starter town quests and exploration intuitive but easier with friends to pool knowledge as we started stumbling/crawling through the world for the first time. This was very exciting as it felt like anything could happen (story wise and world exploration wise). loved the art style of everything and the combat system while a bit difficult to target with ranger, seems well thought out and i love the DND style classes. Very easy to understand archtypes. only had a random disconnect once and was back logged in withing 2 min. the game feels like once additional artisan skills enter the game it would be very expansive with alot to do for artisan money making. at current time, it felt like i was constantly asking myself "im logging but what can i do with them after?" " what skills exist and what can i make with the logs?" "can i only sell them to a trader and strip the bark off them and selll to trader?" I had the lions hold curse quest bug out on me but that took about 90 minutes of enjoying the quest to understand and once identified, switched gears to exploring logging and map exploration. While doing the curse quest in lions hold it felt deep like RuneScape quests. (had to go into a random place to find notepad for guy who might be wanted, read love letter to try and find location he went missing etc) quests feel like investigation is rewarded but may not try too many of these quests until bugs are worked out as its hard to tell whats a bug and what people or items im missing to advance the sub objectives. Quests feel like you have to use your brain and they are not just fetch or kill quests. Please add many more deep brain teaser or riddle quests.
-Closing remarks-
I am very much looking forward to what this game will become as the development team continues to fine tune, and add content. I look forward to being part of the testing and having the opportunity to provide feedback that could in a small part, influence the game development cycle. I will add a few requests to additions i would like to see. some of which may already be in development (im still reading about your awesome game and what's on the horizon)
1. Please add more crafting skills to expand off of the gathering skills. SEE RUNESCAPE GATHERING AND CRAFTING for what im suggesting. Ex: you cut a tree down. then you can make into planks , or keep as logs. then you can chose to either make into furnature, build a home, or train fire making skill, or start fletching arrows or bows etc. 1 gathering skill has 3 or 4 crafting skills you can do after the gathering the materials.
2. Please add more quests like cursed quest in lions hold and additional quests with puzzles or riddles.
3. the concept of unique quests with extremely low chance of encounter where only maybe 10 people on the server get a unique skill, title or recipe would be great.
4. eventual 4k graphics optimization would be awesome.
5. target selection system could benefit from an auto target selector or extending the range on the "target closest enemy would be nice for ranged classes where it could maybe snap tot he closest enemy with soft or hard lock. i find myself unselecting my target alot on accident in combat.
6. some additional benefits for alpha testers like grandfathered in subscription pricing that doesn't change would be appreciated or even if just cosmetics titles or monthly in game currency for cosmetics shop after full release.
7. KEEP UP THE WONDERFUL WORK. IM EXCITED FOR AN MMO FOR THE FIRST TIME IN YEARS!!!!
Thank you for taking the time to read.
It was an interesting time.
I mainly focused on my Ranger, and due to timezones and RL issues was mostly solo. I managed to jump into a group with some guild-mates towards the end of the weekend, but that was arranged outside the game.
I managed to get to about level 9 on basically the starter gear. RNG for gear was not very kind, but then again, I sorta used up all my RNG luck when I got some heroic Ash logs. I also got some Purple and Green logs as well which I stored for later.
My current MMO games that I play are City of Heroes - Homecoming and SWTOR, so that's what I use as benchmarks.
Feedback:
Its definitely an alpha. AMD graphics, the character model is not very sharp most of the time regardless of the settings. And if I rest, then there are artifacts on the model.
Ranger camouflage felt like a wasted power. From my reading of it, it was a poor mans stealth. It was to Lower the aggro and make it so you could walk pass mobs without them noticing you. What happened it I would put it on and the character model would distort and just by walking on the road nearby wolfs and ravens would go "Hello Lunch".
Mob Leashing could do with some work.
As a solo ranger, I lost count the number of times I would get a target most of the way down, only for someone else to swing by and land the killing blow and I get zero xp.
However combat in general felt good. I didn't engage in PvP, although there were some on my server that I would dearly love to either have a mute button for, or a of a sufficient level that I could walk upto and gank. The corruption would be worth it.
The crafting and gathering system I personally was confusing. It was only in the last few hours that I worked out that I could sell materials to the vendors and that copper coins translated into silver coins. Now that I've worked it out, it makes sense. The repair costs, I felt, are a tad high and could do with some tweaking. There was never ever any copper to mine. Those that came otherwise are paid actors.
There really needs to be a /ping or /netgraph command. As an Australian, it would be really handy particularly in alpha and beta to see if its my connection causing issues or if there is something else to blame. For example in City of Heroes, /netgraph is a hidden toggle command, but if you toggle it, you see the ping for the last few seconds and if there have been any dropped packets. With it I can see if I need to move to a quieter area or log off for a few hours. In SWTOR there is a small indicator in the ui that shows the ping and I know when its a certain color to again move to a quiet area or forget it for a period of time.
The world and atmosphere of the world was nice. Riding from town to town felt comfortable, particularly when you didn't have mobs chasing you.
Overall, I'm looking forward to the next time I'm able to get in. I can see the rough edges and the holes and the placeholders, but it still has my attention. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes. Apparently you can get different mounts. So I'm going to focus on getting mounts and working on not being flat broke.
Edit to add:
Character Creator - I made a few characters over the weekend on several servers before settling down on my ranger. The creator is good, but has rough edges. Tattoos was not intuitive, and there were places when textures didn't load. And if you went backwards through the creation, it made things worse.
I have not done any PVP in this game, I have done in other games in the past. It can be fun. But only if both sides are in PVP by choice. In my experiences in the past. those that want to be able kill other players at will in any location are doing so for the enjoyment of spoiling the game for others. Not for the game its self. towns should be safe to just hang out, not protected just by guard, player to player combat should be impossible. A good idea is to simply prevent PVP below 5 or 10. A level 11 should not be able to farm level 5 players.
I have played a game where if you attacked another player mor then 5 levels below you, You instantly turned into a 10 hit point chicken until you died.
I'm looking forward to next week end and eventually playing a summoner. and maybe successfully making a ridable mount, 4 beast of burden so fare. Pity the beast can't follow me around and carry my stuff.
All classes looks fun and no boring. I love the fact that the game is difficult and grindy. This gives more value to support classes such cleric, bard, tank. If the game was easy less parties will be made and thosr classes might no find good parties for farm. The risk vs reward looks great. You can die anytime and you need to be better player.
I like the fact that all classes have dps dmg. Cleric, bard and tank can farm solo if it necessary and that was missed in older mmos.
The world feels awesome and beautiful. The discovering areas was great.
The facts I did not like and I want to improved are:
Mount feels very slow even with speed skill. It feels the speed is the same like your character. In one game that no have fast travel a slow mount can be problem. Also how the mount run or moves feels buggy and need improved.
When someone pick your loot from outside your party, need to be flag. Risk vs reward right? To farm in areas and many players sitting there just to pick your loot feels wrong. If the wanted it the need to fight for it.
Night seems very dark. I know that was feedback from users but no one played the game when this changed done. Still the game feels very natural and beautiful in the night but overtime maybe tired many people. I think a slight more light will be good too.
I do not like the trade system how is. I tried to trade first time and a pulled the item from my inventory to trade and the item was deleted and not go to the trade. This was very frustrating. I also click the item but it goes to my equip and not to the trade page. Trade need to be improved and be more easy. Also, delete items so easy must be fixed. Put a garbage icon in the inventory for that purpose.
To send whisper in game seems very bad. You need to fix better the whisper chat in game. I tried 2 days to understand how I send whisper. Many others the same.
Quests like others mentioned, not working or worth. The game need some good and easy quests. To trying to find riddles in quests seems boring for everyone. Quest must be enjoyable and easy. Also need to put icons in the map where you need to go and what mobs you need to kill.
The map when you open it looks a bit terrible. You need to zoom to see things but then you do not see others things auch where you are. The map need to show you details from distance. Also in general need a lot improvement.
Roll system need to be better. I know that you want anyone can wear any armor or weapon but this can bring a lot frustrating. If a Tank gear was drop and all press need it, then the tank will lose the item. But if heavy armor gear goes only to tank, fighter then other classes can not press need. Only greed. That was in wow and was fair and not frustrating. Sure, groups need to find friends to farm with and communicate before press loot. The trade give them that choice but still there is casual and random parties. If an item has magic attack need to go to mages, bards, clerics and not to some other class.
Characters looks ungly and how they run ungly too. I need better character design. Not like wow. Something more Korean. More bright.
My overall impression was goid. I enjoy the alpha and get addicted by playing. The combat and the way the game force you to group felt very nostalgic and remember my old days in oldschool mmos. But I wish the game was more improved in general. Seems that need a lot of work to finish and that scares me a bit. I really hope you fix many problems and you give this great mmo to the people as faster you can. I believe in you and I support you 4+ years already. I hope you find the power to finish the game. All that we want and overtime you improve it bit by bit
events should not give exp unless you participated, afk farming events undermines this game
pvp tagging system is nice, but corruption has far too strong debuffs, the extra loss of exp and inventory are great punishments, stat debuffs like mitigations and movement speed are not, people will target corrupted players whenever already when they see it and the debuffs encourage corruption players to only kill newer people
Crafting:
I only spent about 3 hours looking around crafting and it looks really cool. Im keen to see it once I can spend more time to collect materials to try out all areas and see the journey to get to level 10 in all artisan stuff.
PVP:
I am not a PVP player normally in MMOs. I enjoy playing with groups, playing the story of a game, and then enjoying events or group activities after completing a main story, usually in Wow or FF14. Regarding PVP in AOC, I think the idea of how it is implemented is fine. I think the idea mentioned by Steven in the chat with Thor will sort out players not getting PVPed on lower levels and that will fix a lot of the danger that is felt at a low level. I enjoy the idea of getting gear and then having a little bit of fear of losing my materials when being out in the world. It brings something different to the game that I have not experienced in other games. I do understand that a lot of people are saying they don't want to be killed or lose materials but I think the corruption increase and the blight will sort that out over time.
UX/UI:
I will start by explaining what my play experience was. I started the game and originally could not log in for about an hour and a half on the first day. That was expected so not a issue. Then when I logged in and got kicked by the server a few times trying to get the first quest I got discouraged to do the quest to start. At this stage the group I was going to play with had already made it out of town and started leveling as a group and I was the only one behind. So when I got in I skipped the quest and decided Ill come back later for a mount and tools. Then my next issue was finding the team I was with.
Map:
It would be great to be able to see your team members on the map at all zoom levels. (Maybe just round dots at highest zoom level or something that catches the eye so you can zoom to that location or even just a larger icon of the current arrow would be great) The icons are very small and was only visible on a very zoomed level so I could not easily find where they were. We ended up solving this by asking my team to do a screen share through dicord to show me their map so I could see where they were and then I could put a marker on my map to find them easier.
It would also be great if the manual place(click) marker would possibly have a highlight on the minimap of some kind so you know that you are going in the direction that you marked on the map so you don't have to open the large map to see where you placed the map marker.
Next we farmed together for probably a good 14 hours and had a blast but I would stay that in the 12 hours I probably got 20 silvers worth of glint to sell and no gear at all from level 1 to 14. The only armor I got is what I bought with my silver and I do not know if it was just bad luck or a bug. The next day when I played again I noticed with a new group that I was getting more glint compared to my last party and I found it very strange. The party also told me that you have different settings for parties and this was when I learnt that group loot rules exist. So now I don't know if the party I was in was maybe set to master looter so only the party leader got everything or if it was a bug.
Group looting UI:
It would be great if there was some indicator to let a group know the group rules that are currently applied for the current group that is clear and easy to know when you join a new group. Happy with a Icon or even just text saying "Your current group rules are set to X" and then you click a confirm modal or even if its just a 10 second popup of text or something just so you know what rules are in place in the group you joined.
Also adding some more clarity on this somehow in the game would be great. Like maybe a quest that teaches you about groups and rules and what options exist and then you can complete the quest as a group and get group experience or something so you can learn the mechanics.
PVE:
I really enjoyed playing in a group and farming to get leveling. Im sure the quests are going to be great fun when they arrive but I'm happy if quests can only get you 60% of the way to max level and you have to group to do the last 40% but that's just my preference. I say this because I was in groups when I started playing MMOs and in the 6 years I played Wow the best were the first 3 years I played in a guild. The guild disbanded and I only played story for the next 3 years. I also played FF14 solo and had a blast but I know the game would have been better if it somehow pushed me to team up with people so I really enjoy the aspect of needing to team up to progress in some situations and that crafting and other activities are available when you wish to spend a day farming solo to just have some chilled time doing fun stuff.
Story:
I really like some of the lore about AOC that I have found on YouTube and the bit I read on the wiki. Ill be honest though that I didn't read a crazy amount on the wiki so most of my story hunting was on YouTube and anywhere else I could find videos. I would love to see a video done by AOC that explains the history and the possible future to come story-wise for the game. Just from the bit of story I could find on YouTube from the user LoreForged it got me really excited to play the game. It was also really cool to see where glint comes from and I would really like to see an AOC video explaining the story in more detail history-wise more than what is to come. I also checked the YouTube AOC channel but could not find much info about the story in general but enough about that rant
Overall I must say I'm having a blast playing the alpha and look forward to playing AOC for many years to come since I can see that all progress that has been promised is happening so I'm sure that this game is going to be great. Ill post another post once I have played again but overall I'm super happy with the game and other than falling through the floor a few times and seeing monsters in walls the bugs were few so its going great.
I also really am ashamed of how modern games cater to the every whim of players with crazy cosmetics and instant gratification and events that mirror real world holidays along with pumpkin heads or whatever. I am all for in game events, but lets keep it within lore.
Knowing that a lot of major systems are missing from the current built, I hope some systems are expanded upon. Like for example, I asked my nodes Mayor if he could see who donated what to the Smithy build that way he could keep an eye on what citizens were participating or not. He said no, and I think that's an oversight. Being able to see who or what guild is actively participating and trying to improve the node should be visible and recognized if a Mayor so chooses.
I really really hope some simple and common MMO systems are still coming. Not being able to ping the minimap while in a group and talking directions was troublesome.
Very happy with being forced to run across the world and explore along the way, however certain mobs when aggro would chase you forever and more than once, a 3 star mob was brought into town or another social spot and murdered everyone there.
Overall great experience this past weekend and really looking forward to new builds and seeing systems improved along the way.
Most spells should be scaled down in size. For example Soothing Glow - The effect looks great but could be scaled down quite a bit. Most ground effect can be thinned slightly. The interface can get pretty busy at times and while keeping it busy I think it would be good to thin it out a little. Perhaps slightly sharper effects with less glow? I'm not entirely sure.
- The animations for the different classes were great and I specially loved watching the mages fight.
- I love the older style, slow build and growth, work for what you have, lack of peddling to the instant gratification games seem to go for all too commonly these days. I hope they keep this and don't add crazy out of context events and cosmetic micro transactions. The milestone levels, like the way it was more XP to get from 9-10 than 10-11, really made 10 feel like an achievement. And the work it took to just gain levels period made each one feel good. Each new skill really adds to the character and seeing future skills in the tree really made me want to level to them and try them out. Gear really made difference and was rare enough to come by that when I got pieces it made me really excited, and each made noticeable difference in the damage and survivability.
- This does bring up a concern though that like other games with exponential XP requirements the upper levels will become too much and cause major burn out. I hope that the XP gains from enemies and quests specially dungeons/instances will balance with this and make progress noticeable in the upper levels.
- It's hard to tell what isn't working and what has purposefully been left out of the quests and such but I didn't get much questing done because I couldn't find quest objectives, chat was saying they weren't anywhere, and they didn't seem to be worth the rewards.
- With what is purposefully left out or missing I hope some features like being able to ping or mark the map for a group to see, click on names in chat to reply or message them, chat short cuts, and others are going to be implemented.
- I ran in groups all weekend and we really didn't hit any major bugs or glitches. The game ran smoothly and I only filled out a couple bug reports for some of the cosmetic graphics like when I would use my camouflage it would make it look like I was wearing the gimp suit from Pulp Fiction. Some gear would show only as female body type, and some helms/gear wouldn't show an appearance change when equipped, as in they wouldn't show that I had them on when I did.
- Enemies are deadly and a mob my level would require me to eat and regain mana if not health after each fight. Then if you aggroed too many or an enemy of a higher level or star status and tried running they are almost certainly faster than even sprinting and dodging and track/follow you for unbelievable distances. Some people would kite 3 star wolves and enemies to crowded areas and kill a lot of the crowds. I hope they balance it a bit where you can actually escape minor encounters or accidental encounters.
- I haven't had this much fun in a game in long time and can't wait for more additions and features to be added. Thanks, and keep up the good work.
Character Creation is equally "oh my god I'm going to make the dumbest face ever" and "this character needs their nose to be 10% bigger and it's perfect". Being able to sculpt body features is a great resource for customization. The tattoos need a little extra work however. I was getting some strange clipping and locations not registering over the body when going from different sculpted body parts. But I understand that is expected of the current state of the game.
Initial quests and initial gameplay had me smitten with the game. I stumbled onto the word "agog" when trying to put to words how I felt about the game. Importantly, I am a deep and analytical thinker, so envisioning the background processes and the intent behind certain mechanics and aspects of the game really gets me thinking. I cannot unsee the effort that the team is putting into engineering gameplay aspects of the game. And already, even though this is very early stages I am genuinely excited for the future of Ashes of Creation.
Examples: Combat is so open and fluid with adjusting rotations, efficient use of damage stacking, and adjustments to suit new gear as upgrades occur. Efficient damage dealing in groups is also a collaborative process. If all you do is push buttons and follow a 123 rotation, you're not efficient. I love this aspect of the combat in Ashes of Creation.
My experience was with Ranger, and although managing health was a bit frustrating to start with it really was a "Get good" moment. I shouldn't be getting hit. I shouldn't be taking damage. And it's all about efficiency and burst damage, evade, burst damage, evade, all while maintaining vision and auto-attacks.
Crafting took a lot of hunting around and researching. However, I would absolutely consider this a positive. I learned how to get from the crafting station huts all around the starting area of the map, and because of in game mechanics traveling is rewarding. You find resources to sell on each direction of your trip so you can constantly make money for a few minutes of enjoying the scenery. Or you can be a drone and just ride from A to B, that's OK also.
All in all, as someone that used to be a World of Warcraft zero lifer back from initial release to Cataclysm, that has since lost the spark to play MMOs long term. Ashes of Creation has absolutely reignited the spark with the radiance of one million Radiant Ducklings.
I don't ass kiss, I don't blow smoke, I tell it how I see it. And I can see how bright Ashes of Creation's future is going to be. This dingo is in it for the long run.
Here are my suggestions on what I felt the game needed to change:
1.) There needs to be a slider/an option to type in a number for refining and crafting a specific number of materials. I heard many complaints here.
2.) I personally would like to see more interaction with people in my node. I'd like to be able to see more visibly who is part of the node, and who's just visiting to use our tailoring station. think it'd be beneficial to have a symbol of the node that you belong to, neatly tucked near your name.
3.) Cleric is just too broken. With a spell-sword and a spell-bow equipped, I was soloing level 20 - 1-star enemies with ease at level 14. I just did a TON of damage and healed myself back up to full health using one spell. I don't know from experience, but I heard rumors that they completely dominated PVP.
4.) Spawning areas HAVE to have protection against people that want to bully new players for the thrill. Either that, or not allowing players to engage in PVP until they're level 5-10. Most people DON'T have a reason to fight anyone that early, anyways.
5.) Resource gathering was ROUGH the past few weekends. Getting copper and zinc, a fundamental piece to leveling up Weapon Smithing / Armor Smithing / Arcane Engineering / Jewelry crafting, was a complete joke. I forced myself to play until 3am, when the server was silent, just to snag a few ore nodes. Same thing with willow trees. They were completely gone. And, I already had gotten my apprentice and journeyman's certification before 95% of the server. I was committed! I recommend making a better system for spawning these ore node locations, or just upping the sheer quantity that spawn.
6.) This brings me to the next point. Weapon Smithing, Armor Smithing, Arcane Engineering, Jewelry Crafting, and Animal Husbandry were pretty much next to impossible to level up effectively. There was NOT enough ore to nickel and dime these professions to a higher level. I recommend granting these professions more XP gain, because no one, in our entire 100-person guild, has level 10 in any of these professions, yet literally everyone had Lvl.10+ lumber milling skill.
7.) One thing that I would just enjoy a lot more about playing the mage, is more specific specialization when it comes to what elements they control. The idea of playing a storm mage or a frost mage is a lot more exciting to me than everyone being a standard all-around mage. Also, it's a fashion statement to show off what element you feel you reside with.
8.) I don't know if the respec button will be in later versions of the game, but I think it kind of ruins the concrete decisions you make as a player. I know it sucks to spec your character wrong. But, most of the time when people do that, they don't stop playing, they simply take the time to invest into a new character. I recommend taking out the respec button, or at least creating a scroll that you have to purchase/find in order to change your skills. People WILL make time to look for them.
Here are just a few things. I have more, but this is already running long enough. Hope to see some positive changes in the game. Like I said earlier, this game is phenomenal. I definitely think it will steal a vast number of players from many famous MMO's. Thanks again, Intrepid.
Due to my work schedule, I have only been able to play a single day. I played for about 10 hours the night of November 8th. I started at about 8PM, which meant I didn't have to deal with thousands of new players trying to get in at the same time when the servers opened. I had a couple issues disconnecting from the server at the beginning of the night while still in the starting area. After midnight the servers crashed twice if I remember correctly. It wasn't a big deal for me because we were able to get back in almost immediately.
I generally enjoy the slower leveling up process because it is 100% more rewarding each time you ding. However, it would be nice to have a 50% XP boost while in Alpha if they plan on wiping every few months. This isn't a major problem with me, but it would be nice to be able to actually hit lvl 25 before wipes. I imagine this won't be as much of an issue anyway once the servers are up for longer periods of time.
Getting access to a mount as early as you do is super nice. However, the increased speed doesn't appear to be that much quicker than sprinting. It would be nice to be 20% quicker or so. Even if that meant having to wait until lvl 5 or lvl 10 to get your mount. Just my preference and definitely not a problem. I enjoy that your mount can die and requires a cooldown timer. It would be even cooler if you could get some sort of bag for your horse to allow you carry materials with the same consequences of death as the player has where you may lose materials.
The concept of the current artisan system is great in my opinion. I enjoy that it encourages players having to work with each other to help things come along quicker or smoother. However, it seems like it takes a while to really get into it and make it worth it. It would be nice to make things a touch quicker or easier. I don't have any specific recommendations or preferences on how that could be done. Just a thought. Additionally, it seems like it is pretty expensive to get into at the beginning. I understand that it helps encourage players to focus more on the other aspects of the game until they can get to a higher level to start artisan stuff, but it would be nice to be able to reach lvl 10 and be able to craft at least some of my new gear without taking hours out of my day to specifically reach those levels or losing all my money to focus only on crafting. This could be fixed with an XP boost for artisan skills as well or a decrease in crafting costs. At least during the Alpha period.
When it comes to combat I can only speak from a tank's perspective. I really enjoy the combat overall. It is fun, it seems to flow well overall. It is obviously grindy, which comes with MMO territory, but it doesn't feel too grindy to the point I get bored. I have seen many videos on PvP content and it appears that needs some work, but I did not partake in any PvP in my 10 hours so I will not give my opinion on that kind of stuff.
Obviously, the game overall needs more content, but I understand that is not a focus during this testing phase. I would love to see more nodes in play sooner rather than later specifically to avoid overcrowding in specific areas. There are plenty of other things I could talk about, but based on the Alpha roadmap, it looks like they will be added over the next 6 months so it is pointless to talk about those things. I will likely return to provide additional feedback sometime in January when I have played plenty of Alpha 2 Phase 2. Thank you devs for creating this awesome game and I hope you guys can keep the train rolling on track in the right direction!
I thoroughly enjoyed leveling my little Bard â mostly solo, occasionally duo, and group grinding.
I played 1-7 in the first session, 7-11 in the second session, 11-15 in the third session, and focused on resource gathering in the last session, with about 6 hours per session.
Lionshold was more confusing than encouraging, so I decided to focus on mob farming and leveling up before pursuing other activities.
I found learning my Bard's combat from levels 1-15 very enjoyable and didn't feel the need for other activities while exploring the map and finding mobs suitable for my level. I also found that level 15 was a good point to begin resource gathering and further map exploration.
I joined 2 guilds and 2 node citizenships during the 3 weekends, but I didnât find that very enjoyable.
I think I will find the solo route most enjoyableâcontributing to a node and helping other guilds' efforts, but in a way that is less socially demanding.
Feedback:
What a great game, especially the possibilities in the economy.
Hunting Profession:
I think the hunting profession should be separated from taming. One option could be to rename the "Hunting" profession to "Taming" and make the drops from it exclusively living animals or "failed attempts." This could be combined with a change to the "Hunting" profession, allowing animal carcasses to drop from mob killsâleveling up mostly automatically during core gameplay.
For my experience I've played so far as a Ranger to level 8 and Bard to 16 and a mix of solo and group play with each.
I've played Alpha 1 and pre-2 tests before this.
Compare/Contrast:
A) There are large differences between the Alpha 1 world and the one we now are experiencing in Alpha 2. I see pro's and con's to each. The landscapes had more charm and unique stylized feeling in the old A1 world. The shift to UE5 I imagine drove these changes but it is worth stating that it feels like playing a completely different game from a different studio. The shift in style is that stark.
C) The A1 character builder was better. I don't like my character model at all in A2. Hair texture especially is degraded from A1 as well as options, I'm aware work in progress but worth pointing out that what's shown is less than what we had back then in quality.
D) The A1 starting experience felt better. There is something missing with the A2 starting experience. It doesn't excite you to be in the world, its flat. And the intro quests aren't as good in guiding your journey and progress as A1's. Maybe missing a sense of wonder and adventure? On reflection I think it may have been the initial landscape scenery and the intro music in the game loading screen and when you join the world got you more keen to play.
E) You didn't have to grind the mob a thousand times in A1 test to level from 10 to 13. In A2 I understand that there may be a need to elongate the grind due to lack of content as to give testers something to do, but my feedback is for live launch I hope the dev team fully understands that it isn't palatable for a global launch for live, to have the game be anywhere near this grindy and of a time sink to simply level ones character.
F) Solo players and play is currently all but ignored. The game will fail if solo play is not catered to in large part. There are a lot more players that enjoy solo play than there are players that want to hang out all day in a discord server and hardcore grind with a committed married pace to other players. I do both off and on but I don't want to sacrifice one for the other. Both styles of play need to be fun and engaging and allow for character progression to reach the end game.
I mostly solo levelled as a Bard from level 10 to 16 over the past couple of weekends. You receive no drops currently to progress your character. If you don't group or kill very specific mob types (goblins maybe?) you don't receive gear drops.
G) Crafting stations feel very oddly placed in towns and have non-descript appearances often. Brown random table in a random small 2-story condo on the upper floor.
H) All buildings and structures in nodes and housing look about 40%+ too small. The scaling is off and it makes you feel claustrophobic being in them.
I) The POI's for mob farming for loot drops with a group are more fun to run through then I expected, trying to find elites and named mobs that might drop good gear.
J) I detest the Sit/Rest mechanic and hope it is removed from the game's design philosophy. Its against action combat. Mobs often spawn on top of your group killing party members sitting while you're resting and its counter-productive with the xp debt. My main concern is the accumulated down time is a huge red flag IRL time sink that is unnecessary, elongates the grind, play time session, and isn't respectful to the time commitment players make to progress solo or with their group. Each time I sit to rest for 30 seconds or longer I get immediately bored with the game design and tedious nature and start thinking if I should stop playing to do something else around the house. I don't find sitting to rest over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over interesting or compelling whatsoever. I hate it. Mobs have high ttk and levelling is ridiculously grindy. Making players waste time between every mob combat to rest is insult to injury.
That said as a Bard I never have had to rest or use rations at any point where as my Ranger was a fully dependent useless thing and was very grating to play due to these very severe and restrictive resource drains. I don't want to feel punished for playing a dps class. This is poor game design if that is your intent. All classes need to feel fun and not be dependent on a full group to function through basic low levelling. Constantly being out of mana or needing to rest to recoup hp between every combat that you have to repeat a thousand times to level is DOA non-starter for a live launch. Consumers don't have the patience for that.
K) Node quests/missions set by gov/mayor. I saw one to kill Bears. I easily killed 10 Bears. Problem is I'm not running back and forth on repeat to turn in and collect refresh the quest to repeat. Its one and done unless you go back to town. To level from 15 to 16 I calculated that I needed to kill around 205-225 Bears at a farm spot I found. That's a full day or two's work. Mind you I'm playing as a Bard that doesn't have to sit/rest non-stop wasting time, but its still too time consuming to mount up and navigate through mobs without dying to go back to the node to collect the quest to kill 10 bears again, then run back out to my farm spot and hope no one has taken my spot.
So one problem is its an inconvenience. Another problem is the mayoral missions/tasks are disconnected from the extreme grind and time in process it takes to travel from point A to Point B on the map and the levelling grind. They're a relatively fast mission in which the travel takes as long as the quest does. But levelling is so grindy if you'd elect to run back to town after each 10 bears are killed as an example it would take even a hardcore player a stupid amount of time just to gain one level of character xp. Ie. The flow of character progression and levelling specifically is not palatable to a broader audience and won't sell well if the direction doesn't shift.
L) Crafting a Mount requires FUEL. Makes little sense and isn't logical. I get its place holder and general but it is confusing that wood is the requirement to complete a mount.
M) Ranger has a volley spray type ability that shoots a green horizontal shaped pattern. It felt like this was bugged to never hit and would shoot over the mobs head and do no damage. I have not tried action combat targeting yet.
N) Very difficult to progress gear. Way too many restrictions for group class mix required and level range required to simply grind a POI together and farm gear and level up. Way too much fragmenting making it very problematic to find groups to farm a POI together especially with how slow mounts are and how long it takes to traverse the map to meet up.
O) Mounts
Mounts were much better designed overall in A1. Why was all of that work lost? I will say Bears under-water swimming animation is great. Well done on that. But the mount variety, audio, running animations were all pretty sweet on A1 testing and fast. Large regression. Why are mounts so slow and boring now compared to A1? I have seen a couple of drakes and dragon mounts around that are great.
P) Still not a fan of every class every weapon access functionality in design. Spell bows exist I don't get it. Are there going to be physical books, physical dmg wands, physical orbs or focus w/e they're called. A problem with loot in New World is it rarely drops with perks anyone desires. From group farming often a bow would drop but it would be a spell bow and our rangers would be bummed or visa versa. A magic wand dropped during a group play session I was participating in. I won the need roll. A mage in the group was upset that a Bard rolled need and won it. I think a lot of this could be avoided by having more traditionally defined gear for each class and gear progression paths for obtaining through levelling to avoid frustration especially at low levels where there should be minimal friction of that kind imo for different classes vying for the same weapon.
Q) Lag wasn't bad for me except for around Halcyon. Rubber-banding and server resets mostly experienced on East side of the map but some on West as well.
R) Character Appearance -
One of the only pieces of armor that I received for my Bard was a bone tiara. Really disliked not being able to hide it. I wasn't a fan of how my character looked at all until around level 15 when I found a group for Citadel and got a couple drops. Since the gear drops are so limited and levelling takes forever you're stuck grinding in the same ugly outfit for 10-30+ hours of play at a time before you may be able to update your appearance. A lot of players quit games if they don't like their character. I'd suggest being mindful of that as this current representation of obtaining gear at low levels through 16 is unsatisfactory.
S) Often times I couldn't find a group as a Bard or Ranger around my level bracket to farm group POI's so I would opt to solo farm. The xp gains solo farming are often as good or better than some group POI areas but you receive no gear as loot so do not progress your build other than character level for long hours spent grinding for a single level up. Feels bad.
I'd also suggest placing recommended level or mob level indicators on the map for various mob areas or POI's to help players navigate to and find groups. The map in general needs a lot of work. Its a pain to hover over every silver dot to check the name of the poi and zoom to the right level to do so. Need the names of POI's to be written like map in a book or such so we can quickly read and scan around looking for names without having to go one by one dot checking poi names to find where our group is going.
T) Wand Finishers -
I mostly played with the Wand as a Bard recently but have played with short and long bows and great sword as well. The finishers for the other weapons including bow all felt fine utilizing finishers but the Wand has a random and time consuming Finisher animation that threw off and delayed use of abilities and timing of casts. Often you'd run up in the 5m ability range to land a cc ability like a stun/immobile/interrupt/knock up etc. But your Wand Finisher would proc and you'd be in a 2-3 second Finisher channel and your cc ability would cast on a long delay and you get mauled by the mob you wanted to cc then kite away from. This is a problem for pve and pvp.
Why is wand finisher's a long casted channel animation where they aren't for other weapons?
U) Glint needs to auto-consolidate in your inventory and upgrade to the highest tier it can be collapsed into to save space. Don't make glint a tedious resource that must be constantly touched in our inventory.
V) The game has to cater to more of an audience than just pre-set 5-8 player holy trinity groups that will do every waking moment of game play together and for long periods. If one player needs to take or break or misses a game session, they're no longer able to play with their friends or group? I don't get the game design intent or desire to be that restrictive. I very much enjoy gaming at my own pace. The direction Ashes is going in that regard has me worried. Maybe 5 levels instead of 2-3?
W) Character and mob rendering issues. Mobs pop up out of thin air and it makes farming mobs dangerous as you often kite into invisible mobs you can't see until you kite into their area. It gets you killed, then you have XP DEBT. Leaves a bad taste considering again how grindy the game is atm. Dying to bogus stuff frustrates quickly as its adds to the time sink in progression required.
1. Caravan crashing, You crash from any variety of reasons come back in and the Caravan is on fire and wasted loosing like 20g worth of glint/caravan parts.
2. Can we maybe have another pass at power lvling penalties that changed in the last weekend the impact it had on our guild was negative in that you couldnt really play with anyone a few lvls behind and alot of the times hindered playing with friends because you had a bit more time to invest.
3. Wolves need a nerf
4. Gear drops need a revision still wearing mostly gear that came from lvl 3 Goblins as a 20 Bard.
maybe this links in with the penalty for being with lower players but actually getting gear feels incredibly bland and boring if it even drops at all.
5. I agree with the Looting another players body should flag you if they arent in your group/guild soo many rats.
Cheers.
I loved the feel of artisan skills. Gathering was enjoyable, I felt it wasn't SUPER grindy; just wish this "copper" stuff existed. Saw very few zinc nodes as well, making crafting rather tedious/impossible as I never found enough copper and gave up. I liked the way extra materials bags worked, how it not only was extra space, but increased stack size as well felt very good.
I loved the GM going around making his own stories. I never saw him personally, but seeing his messages was awesome. His riddles are always a delight to try and figure out with my groups. Plus, he actually rewards people who figure it out. Just awesome.
The world already looks beautiful. The lighting is beautiful, the hills and rock and trees all make the world feel very natural. The various roads being interconnected to towns/nodes and other POI's makes the world feel lived in. The size felt good to travel around in, like you were actually traversing a lived-in and populated world, and not just some zones connected together with almost nothing in-between. The small slice we got makes me really excited to get more of it. The skybox is amazing, especially at night. All around beautiful world, can't wait to see it be polished and REALLY shine.
The combat feels absolutely amazing. It's definitely one of the best feeling combat systems of the few MMOs I've played. Even not being a DPS class it felt really good. The Bard melodies felt impactful and the skill to allow Bards to juggle multiple melodies felt super versatile and not like you're just a mana battery. Some of the cooldowns felt excessive though; a lot of Bard's support CD's are around 30 seconds, so I feel like I'm just sitting there auto-attacking a lot of the time. Only problem with combat is, I feel like it's too easy to pull aggro off tanks, making it a little cumbersome and random at times. Healers pulling aggro is a cool mechanic, but I feel like it happens too easily. I feel like punishing healers for being too effective doesn't feel good unless there's a way to protect them.
Now for the feedback.
Overall, the game was a lot of fun, I sank far too many hours in it for a weekend +Monday. The week leading up to it, I couldn't think of anything besides playing. When it finally came time, I felt an excitement I haven't felt in a long, long time. And surprisingly, the game didn't disappoint one bit. The devs and leadership know what game they want to make and it shows. Amazing work so far, I CANNOT wait to see how this game progresses and to see the final outcome. I'm already hyped to play again this weekend! Just 2 days left...
Quack
Some potential pitfalls I see that have happened in other games too
1) Named mob quests, always a massive bottleneck everyone trying to kill the same character, combined with only the final blow counts, leads to frustrating long waits, and the inevitable someone hold back to get the killing blow.
2) With item degradation being 100% repaired, crafting and the economy inevitably stagnate, there's no long term point to crafting as the market will be saturated. This way grinding crafting seems mostly pointless.
3) Groups with different play times, grouping with largish level difference don't work, the level difference is so large that someone a couple of levels behind find it hard to group with friends of a higher level. It means friends who have different amount of available play time quickly lose the ability to group.
4) Obviously still a few bugs, which is understandable, teleporting mobs especially ones that look like they've given up the chase, and run back, then you sit to heal and they teleport next to you for that killing blow
Also I am not a fan of the negative xp on death. With that being said most of my deaths were from buggy mobs, so maybe it wont be as bad when the game comes out, but I still don't think its a fun mechanic considering how slow leveling is. Maybe you could bump up quest xp reward as well.
Another thing I would like to see is enemy NPCs have some sort of idle animation. Walking through the world a lot of the enemies look pretty lifeless. Even just some of them walking back and forth would add a little bit of immersion. I also noticed some parts of the map are devoid of any enemy NPCs. I spent 10 min riding my horse looking for things to kill but found none. Not sure if this had to do w the Night Cycle being disabled, maybe there would've been enemies there if it was night time.
I know others have mentioned the map being hard to use at certain zoom thresholds, so id like to see that changed. It is hard to find where your party members are w out zooming in close to them. I know you guys said map and ui is low prio rn so I'm sure you will change it. On the same vein of ui I'd like to see some sort of friends list and better sorting for Guild Members online/offline and level/zone.
Another minor ui change I'd like to see is an option to disable right clicking on a character model bringing up the mark/menu options. I am very used to right clicking on enemy's when I want to attack them and it bringing up a menu is annoying, Again very minor but it would be nice to disable this.
Lastly I'd like jumping to retain some momentum of the character's movement. Not sure if u guys are willing to change anything movement related but it would be nice.
With all that being said I had a lot of fun playing and am looking forward to this Friday!
P.S. I'd like some sort of additional outline around the enemy you are targeting, can be hard to see when fighting multiple mobs.
I have two big issues early on
1. I don't know what is happening. I have zero clue where to go, what to do, and how to do it. I understand the idea is sandbox mmo and go explore, but I did not even know where to start learning any of the crafting. I know you get the mats from mobs, but after that I could not even cut a tree outside of the tutorial trees. I could not mine a rock. This was kind of frustrating because it prompted me by telling me I did not have the right tool, but I did not know where to go for the beginning trainers and suppliers to find these starting tools. Easiest recommendation is put the starting trainers for all the crafting specialties in the beginning zone in plain sight. From there have them tell me I am over qualified and have them guide me to the better ones. As is, I have zero idea where I need to go to begin my journey. The beginning should be forced on me the middle is where I explore.
2. I hope some kind of main quest system is implemented. Having the world do storytelling is great when I have a clue as to where I am starting. I know this is unrealistic now, but even BDO has a main story and that game is hit mobs for a bajillion years.
All in all, impressive start. I hope solo play gets a little love when it comes to economy because I got to level 5 and had zero money for even one basic gear piece. This was after killing mobs to get to level 5 so maybe help out the little guy, but overall an amazing start to an impressive game.
Classes felt good and reactive, no real delay at all. The mobs did have some delay, not sure whether this was due to server lag or not. For examples Wolves, youâd think you lost them, then out of no where you get backstabbed when the wolf seemed to be around 100 yards away.
If you can remove the âMarkâ button when you left click your character, that would really help. Maybe if you need to mark your character, could you left click your own player icon in the top left? In combat while moving your carmera around, it can get frustrating.
Making it easier to invite and whisper players would be a great help - right clicking their in game character AND name in chat for both of these things would be great!
The node system was a joy to play in, seeing the settlements grow within a couple of days felt really good. Although I thought it got go Village stage almost too quickly.
The quest system, now I fully appreciate this isnât a very solo friendly game, but, when you first starter out, if youâre having to group up, itâs all very overwhelming. Especially for new players. The âSweat of your browâ and âWelcome to Verraâ quest worked well to introduce players into the game and show them a few systems. I think it needs a bit more of this and quests need to be a bit more obvious, maybe with a larger more attractive looking marker.
Quests objectives werenât that obvious either, maybe this is on purpose and thatâs okay - but outside of the two quests I mentioned above, they had a very different feel. Iâm not necessarily asking for hand holding, but maybe it needs to be slightly more engaging.
Font style, it fits the game very well, but also very hard to read.
Events were awesome! Making it easier to group or get credit for kills would help here, as itâs quite disheartening to sit there for 15 minutes, not get invited into a group and get x4 glint. The events themselves were great fun, really takes me back to Age Of Reconing and early GW2 - which is a good thing. You had your own twist on them.
Just to cement my comment above regarding kill credit - I understand a mob tag idea, but this feels a bit clunky, as a group can just come and take over from you a friend/s. Maybe this is intentional for player conflict?
Dying didnât feel as bad as I expected, which Iâm happy about - XP debt felt okay, losing materials felt bloody awful đ.
The world itself was great, not over crowded and plenty of areas to interact with and visit.
All in all I had a bloody great time and I cannot wait to get back into Verra.