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📝 Dev Discussion #69 - Alpha Two First Impressions 💪

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Comments

  • Big_MajkelBig_Majkel Member, Alpha Two
    I'm after 3 weeks with game. Every week i spend over 20 hours for playing, its mean: im in love.

    Geting experience and progress to higher level.

    Getting every another level of our character is longer, more demanding and it is cool. Offcourse every mob with higher level give us higher ammount of expirience, but we can feel the challenge getting bigger and bigger. I'll venture to say that this process could be slowed down even more, let the character's level more reflect the effort and time invested. Right now are people with 25lvl (offcourse without good gear and own grown in crafting), but still it after 3 weekends with game. Too fast in my opinion.

    Penalty for dead

    Death have to hurts, if someone don't want to lose materials have to geting less risk. Making mistakes has consequences. Please don't change this.

    World of game

    Looks very well but... I know that it alpha, not final product but places when mobs are spawn one by one looks bad, especially when at the same time the game has very well designed POIs. I mean places like between Halcyon and Ursine Caves. Also many part of map are empty, i dont know it's supposed to be like that (example plains near border between Miraleth and desert). For this reason, I rate the current state at 9/10. Good job, enough few little corrections and world will be awesome.

    Glint

    God bless the man who came up with this. AWESOME THING.

    Craft and ghatering

    Time needed to reach progress is good. This will MMORPG for years, people looking for this. Not reaching maximum in 2 weeks and trying to get progress by mechanics full of random straight from asian competition. Playing like robot, everyday doing the same things at few characters. Please always keep away AoC from this style of gameplay.

    Limiting number of proffesion who players can reach the maximum is very good. This forces to trade, makes that everyobdy are needed no matter what proffesion hes chose. This also encourages people to join the guilds. This good, MMO games are to play togheter, to be a part of great society. Ashes of Creation is at this road. That's great!

    Offcoruse im aware that right now we have 1 biome so all resources are here and this will change with latter phase of alpha. Thats will another amazing feature of this game, forces to long time travel for demand resources or to buying from players playing like merchants.

    Linking the profession level to the character level game protect us from alts only to craft. Its only way to keep economy. Please never change this.

    Caravans

    Very good idea to introduce this into the game. Offcourse this still need a work, but idea is great. I am convinced that in the future the system will be more complicated and the prices for goods will be variable.

    Drop rate

    It's good that items drop not very often. Items are domain of crafters, who need ghaterers. All of them need a lot of time to grow hes proffesions and only them can give us the best items! That very important for econmy, im sure you know that. Stay with this please! We dont need another game for self-sufficient players.

    Weapons

    Everyone can use all kind of weapons. This creates a bit of chaos, but probably i dont know everything and its reason why its like that.

    PvP

    System looks good, killing makes us a target for other but this time we can lose more than exp and materials. We can drop items. Offcourse in current state of players progression maybe that not hurt too much, but in future losing a highend epic/legendary items will stop villians. Most players will limit themselves to legal PvP, but this that somebody can be bandit and killing without respecting a law introduces additional danger into the game world. Its good, bandits also are needed :)

    PvE

    Diversity of opponents at alpha is more than i expect. Everything is as it should be. The only thing to fix that comes to my mind its spawn a wolf with 3 stars near Oakenbane Keep on the road leading through the tunnel. Many players die there, probably this wolf should be behind the wall.

    Looting

    The player's ashes should be signed. Stealing is a part of game and dont should be punished more than is right now. Current state of nodes, where every have black market makes easy selling stolen glint but in future that will harder. In my opinion thats not need a changes.

    Summary

    I'm in love, AoC can really be a savior for many MMORPG players. Devs, you make a great job, keep on.
  • DevlinaDevlina Member, Alpha Two
    edited 2:29PM
    Hii Intrepid! I hope us players are not stressing you all too much over these weekend tests! Also, thank you for the last weekend test's extension, now my sleeping times are absolutely f'd because I just couldn't get enough LOL. On a serious note though, thank you, your hard work is very appreciated!

    First and foremost, I just want to say that I am already very invested in the game (and have been religiously following for many years). I hope this post does not make it sound like my opinion of the game in its current state is a net negative, because it isn't!

    Now then, here are my opinions and suggestions from my experience with the game over the last 3 weekend tests (& stress test):

    Death penalties, PvP & Looting:
    EXP debt from PvP deaths is very punishing. It promotes toxicity by incentivising higher level players to grief lower level players, because even if the victims are not likely to drop anything worthwhile, they will still incur EXP debt.

    No-PvP Zones are needed in the starting areas, around Ember Springs and inside Nodes (Encampment+, outside of Node Wars obviously). As it stands, players need to choose between being "spawn camped" at Ember Springs or reviving at their "Home" Spring, which could be really far away, so in the case of Caravan PvP(but also applicable in many other cases) players who are helping defend the caravan may be unable to regroup due to spawn camping. The starting zone allowing PvP means some players' first experience of the game may involve being killed over and over again by higher level players, which will likely negatively impact their desire to continue playing. As for Nodes, at the moment it feels like the guards are not reliable enough to keep players safe due to various reasons such as pathing, buggy AI, etc.

    Corruption requires some more clarity on how it can be removed - it mentions PvE kills reduce it, but it is not immediately clear what level/difficulty of mobs you need to kill. Additionally, killing 1 player or mount should not mark the killer on the map for everyone to see. I was under the impression that being visible on the map to other players would be a penalty incurred for higher levels of corruption. Finally, at present corruption can be cleared by being killed by anyone. This can be abused by asking friends/guildies to kill you in a safe spot, then return your dropped items to you. Friends/party members/guildies killing a corrupted player should not count towards reducing their corruption. To add another layer of protection against "cheating" corruption, there should be a hidden buff or status for "recently in friend list/party/guild", so that people can't get around it by leaving party/guild or removing friends.

    Caravans announcements and prompts for being Attacker or Defender make it too risky to use one. The fact that as soon as I start a caravan anyone in the vicinity will be notified and have enough time to assemble friends/guildies to come camp my caravan makes me not want to even try. It would be a much more engaging system if players who wished to transport commodities using a caravan could rely a bit on stealth, while player who wished to raid a caravan had to rely on luck coming across one(or scout around in search of one). This would still make it tense for the caravan driver, while giving them a chance to transport their goods without needing to always have a full raid defending them. Someone else mentioned in their comment an easy way to participate as attacker or defender based on how you choose to interact with the caravan upon stumbling across it - you can either start attacking, which tags you as attackers or interact with the caravan to be tagged as defenders. I agree this seems like a nice and simple solution.

    Looting dead players in PvE feels very bad for anyone who is running pugs for grinding and happens to die. Unlike the security you may have from being in a group with guildies due to established trust/rules in place against that, being in a party with strangers offers no safety. Not only is this the case at the moment, but also anyone outside of the party can just come up and loot your corpse without incurring corruption or even being flagged for PvP. Please, at the very least add a timeout/cooldown for dead bodies to only be lootable by party members (maybe 1-2 minutes). Additionally, it would be even better if there was a way to designate one other player as your primary "next of kin" so to speak, who would get first dibs on looting your corpse when you die. This doesn't have to be a long lockout for the rest of the party. Something like a 30sec head start, so that while there is still urgency (if they are still in danger during combat/being CC'd/far away from my ashes), they at least have a little leeway to grab my loot before others get a chance to. Also speaking of the piles of ashes left on death - please make it more obvious whose ashes they are. Ideally, this could be done by retaining the person's name on the Ash pile, while also changing the font colour, so that own ashes have my name in green, while others' ashes have their name in white/grey. At the moment, there's no clear way for others to tell whose ashes they are looting (aside from their own due to the grave marker on the map, which is also not reliable if multiple people died very near to each other), which can result in accidentally looting the wrong person.

    Looting in general needs some adjustments. For starters, it can be difficult to grab your loot when EXP grinding in a group or raid. Even more so for people who are more involved in the fight, such as tanks and supports/healers (no offense DPS players). As a support/healer main, I have the mentality of always looking out for my party, making sure I am doing my best to keep them topped up with health & mana, purifying ,etc. This translates into me taking a little too long to get around to picking up my loot, which in turn ends up with others looting it, so I lose out for being a team player and choosing to be helpful, rather than selfishly ignoring people in danger, in order to secure my loot. Speaking of looting in a group, please make loot on corpses (mobs) more noticeable. It can be difficult to spot a lootable corpse when they are in a pile of other bodies on the ground. Sometimes, I may not notice that there was something lootable until it's too late and someone else has picked it up. Also, please make the loot distribution settings easier to find - I have seen other people adjust them in other parties, but have been unable to find them when I've been the party leader. It would be intuitive to right click on my health bar/avatar and have the loot distribution be there, same as the option to "Leave Party".

    Mobility disparity between classes is very noticeable. Some classes have far more mobility than others (fighter seems to have the most, while cleric has no mobility outside of "Wings of Salvation", which requires you to target an ally). Considering clerics would likely be the primary target in group PvP, it's difficult to understand why they have been left in the dust like this, with barely any means of self preservation other than heals, which can be interrupted or prevented via CC.

    NPC & Mob Behaviours:
    Unpredictable/Unreasonable mob behaviours can be difficult to deal with. Some examples are wolves and borks which chase very far and are able to continuously lunge at you (especially when riding a mount), so they are basically impossible to shake if they happen to be the same or higher level than you. Another example are the Bloomeria mobs, which for some reason don't seem to ever leash. They will follow endlessly until either their target or they are dead. I reported a case where a lv.18 Pink Bloomeria followed me (lv.7 at the time) across the map (from Daragal Estates to Ursine Caves) until it finally killed me. My party member stuck around nearby hoping to loot my corpse for me, while the Bloomeria was fighting a Minotaur mob. After the Bloomeria killed the Minotaur, it randomly aggroed on my party member who was several feet away from it. It then chased him all the way to Halcyon and killed him too, before finally leashing back to where it came from... Lastly, the Rock Elemental type mobs are very janky at the moment. Their animations are not clear, they get stuck in place and then suddenly teleport next to you, they lunge at odd angles and hit you even when it looks like they shouldn't have and their slam sometimes hits you even if you are not in front of them.

    Mob aggro seems to be very erratic at the beginning. In a situation where one player accidentally (or intentionally) aggroed a mob by getting too close, then ran towards other players, the mob can just randomly switch aggro without any input from either player (i.e. no one hit the mob, taunted, or any other interaction). This can sometimes result in opportunities to grief people by training mobs on them, then letting the mobs kill them and looting their corpses without ever engaging in PvP. In my opinion, unless the mob has been damaged or CC'd by someone else, it should stay aggroed on its initial target. I also feel that there should be some variety in mob aggro range based on the level difference with the player. At the moment it feels like there is barely any difference in the range at which a mob will aggro onto you regardless of the difference in level (so a lv.3 Slate Wolf and a lv.20 Slate Wolf aggro all the same when compared to a lv.15 player for example). This should not be the case - mobs that are 5 or more levels below the player level should have a very small aggro range, as well as a longer period of time before they aggro onto you, whereas mobs that are 5 or more levels higher than the player could benefit from having a slightly increased aggro range and lower timer for aggro trigger. Additionally, there should be some indicator as to who has aggro(especially when it comes to identifying who will get kill credit) of the mob. This is mainly important when considering players from separate parties, as well as those that are not in a party. If I am hitting a mob, but will not get kill credit for it, I'd rather not waste my time trying to kill it. Making the mob's nameplate greyed out for the person who doesn't have "aggro"(again, meaning kill credit potential, rather than the mob's attention) or highlighted for the person who does would be a great change.

    Ambient mobs behaviour is also lacking. NPC Ambient behaviour is mentioned under Phase 2, so I won't go into too much detail here. I am hoping this includes more interactions between mobs and NPCs, as well as more idling. We currently have populations of bears and wolves living peacefully among deer, huntable mobs being completely static (no idle animations, no movement, no interaction - a good example would be for horses to be able to bend their heads down and eat some grass).

    NPCs having strange speech bubbles over their heads that make it seem like they are saying something, while it's actually just a description of the NPC. I.e. "A captain of the guard wears a scowl on his face...etc", but it shows up as a speech bubble over the guy's head (who is called "Quest NPC Master" by the way...?), making it seem like he is talking about himself in the third person, which is a little bizarre.

    AI voice overs are jarring and not very immersive. At this point I have turned the VO volume down to 0 as I'd rather just read the text...

    Chat, UI, Tooltips & Other settings:
    Locking the mouse cursor to game window should be an option in the settings. At the moment, regardless of whether I am playing in windowed/full screen or in-between I can and do accidentally move my cursor to my second monitor.

    Contrasting/bigger indicators for party members on the map are required. At the moment it is very difficult to find my party/raid members on the map as their indicators blend with its colours too much. Not to mention, unless I zoom in almost all the way, they don't even show up on the map. Ideally, we should be able to adjust the size and colour of the party members' indicators on the map in the settings menu.

    Adjustable colour and size of mouse cursor would also be very much appreciated for similar reasons to the above. In some environments due to the colour blending in, it can be easy to lose track of my cursor.

    More detailed tooltips are also desirable. Especially when it comes to indicating things like duration of CC effects (main offenders here are weapon combo finishers for CC such as snare or daze). To add to this, it would be great to be able to see timers for Mayor voting, citizenship completion and renouncement. An added bonus would be a quick notification to let you know when crafting/processing has finished. This can be done via the chat and should include a timestamp (of local time).

    More info in party UI, specifically being able to see own buffs/HoTs applied to allies. As a Bard/Cleric player, it has been frustrating having to select a party member to be able to see the duration of buffs or HoTs I've applied on them, as they are not displayed in the party UI, even though I can see their own buffs on there. Ideally, I'd like to be able to see CC/debuffs listed first, then my buffs or HoTs in the party UI, so I know if I need to cleanse and when to reapply said buff or HoT. Meanwhile, in raid UI there is no information whatsoever regarding debuffs/CC on allies or the duration of the buffs/HoTs I've applied, which means I have to constantly switch through allies to check them for debuffs, etc.

    The chat profanity filter seems to be a little out of sorts? Last weekend I noticed words such as d*ck and sl*t were not censored, but the word "hole" is, so typing the word 'whole' gets partially censored, which is weird..

    A Friends List function is a must! It is strange that despite the game being so heavily catered towards social gameplay a friend list is not available.

    A Dynamic List of currently online players similar to Classic WoW would also be great. It should show a list of 50 players with their Name, Level, Class and Guild, along with a refresh button. This would be very useful for guild recruiting, identifying PKers, dealing with ninjas, etc.

    Cooldown on trade window is a bit of a nuisance. I'm unsure as to why this was implemented, but it's proving to be more annoying than anything..

    Trading materials can be quite annoying. If I am giving materials to someone and they are giving me materials back, I'd assume that the game should consider the space I would have freed up by giving my materials over when accepting materials from someone else. Except it doesn't. So you have to trade twice to be able to completely transfer items, unless both parties to the trade have enough space regardless. I also feel like I should be able to split a stack of materials inside the trade window, rather than having to do it in my own inventory, to then drag into the trade window.

    Bugged storage/inventory requiring frequent relogs to be able to transfer materials. For me it has not been that much of an issue, mainly because there were rarely any queues for my server, but I imagine it would have been incredibly frustrating were that not the case. More often than not, it seems like right-clicking items from your inventory to quickly transfer them to the bank is what seems to cause the issue, as the game doesn't seem to know what to do with items, if there are no stacks of the same material with enough space free to add up.

    UI Indicators for scrolling on NPCs dialogue - this has mainly been an issue with the Artisan Skill trainers, who have a list of skills they can promote/demote. They tend to have 3-4 skills they can promote and demote, but there is no visual indicator that you can scroll through this list, so at first glance you can only see 2 skills with their promote/demote options. This results in many players not being aware that there are more skills that NPC can promote or demote, so they end up spending time looking through all the NPCs, struggling to find the correct trainer and then asking in global chat for help.

    Mount nameplates should only be visible to the mount's owner. To others it should just be displayed as 'Mount' or something else that indicates that this is someone's mount without giving the owner's name. The reason for this is to avoid displaying the proximity of specific players, in order to reduce griefing(if a PKer is hunting a specific player and sees their mount, they will know that player is nearby, etc). Also, please let us name our mounts!

    Loot Roll pop-ups would benefit from queues to trigger them after combat has been exited. This would mainly benefit players during group grinding as, at the moment, it can be very obstructive/distracting to have multiple loot roll pop-ups appearing on the screen during combat, especially as a tank/healer/support player.

    Node Mayors and Tax Rates - it would be great to be able to see nearby Nodes' Mayors and Tax Rates in the Node UI based on region or 5 nearest, for example.

    Gear Comparison UI seems to display incorrect calculations more often than not, showing stuff like -power when comparing a new, better gear piece to your older one which has less magic power for example.

    Forgetful UI. What I mean by this is that the game doesn't remember things like server selection, last character played, tracked & untracked quests, commissions that have already been picked up from commissions boards (they still show up as available and the only way you can tell its one you already have, aside from looking at your quest journal, is that there is no audio sting when clicking on it), as well as menu views(i.e. if I last looked at my Artisan Skillbook and viewed the gathering professions progress, when re-opening the skillbook, I should be looking at that section again, which is not the case right now).

    Clearer Quest Journal UI with clear distinction between commissions and quests (as currently most players refer to commissions as "questing", which is not accurate and gives them the wrong impression about the game's questing experience).

    Commissions completion could be automatic. Why have an option to go into the UI and complete the commission? It would be better to just auto-complete and give the reward immediately instead of having to do the extra step of opening the Quest Journal just to click "Complete Commission". If this was an intentional choice for reasons such as saving up the exp to gather enough to level up without risk of loss on death(which still doesn't account for EXP debt), then at the very least please make it easier to see which commissions and quests have already been completed in the Quest Journal UI at first glance(could be a little check mark in front of the name of the commission for example). As it stands, between the game forgetting which quests I tracked/untracked and the lack of visual indication that something has been completed, I have to spend time either re-tracking quests after every login (which is quite often due to the storage bug at the moment) or clicking through all my commissions until I find the one I just completed.

    Player Info should be easier to view. This mostly refers to being able to see the player's class and level without having to stand right in front of them. I should be able to see the players' levels in the party UI. It would be even better if I could hover a player's name to see a tooltip with their class and level. As an added bonus, it would be great to be able to click a player's name in chat and immediately DM them instead of having to type /whisper or /tell with their name.

    Linking Items/Commissions/PoIs in chat would also be a fantastic QoL addition.

    Storage Clerks need a marker on the map for zones other than Nodes (Samia's Hope one is particularly difficult to find for me sometimes, while new players seem to struggle to find the one in Lionhold). Perhaps a little storage chest icon?

    Skill Presets would be fantastic. It has been more and more annoying having to respec every single time I switch from group play to duo and solo (as a bard). Action bar presets would compliment this very well.

    LOD issues with both players and NPCs. I noticed a change in LOD while playing last weekend. I've been playing in a party the whole time (always with my duo) and noticed that if they were to move a few feet ahead of me, they disappear off my screen even if I can clearly see they are very close by on the mini map. This was also the case with mobs, which resulted in aggroing a 3* lv.20 Dire Wolf that ended up killing me. I have checked my LOD settings and messed around with them to no avail.

    Combat & Party Stuff:
    Shared EXP/objective completion outside of party needs to be added. In some areas it can be nigh-impossible to complete a commission objective due to someone camping the spawn. I'm still unsure if kill credit is awarded for first tag or most damage inflicted, but either way it has been a bit frustrating. Not to mention that when more hardcore guilds emerge on the servers, they will take over the main farming spots making it impossible for other players to progress their characters effectively.

    Action Combat seems to be under-utilised and under-optimised. At the moment(to me) it feels like there is no point in playing with action combat when you have the crutch of tab targeting. It would be good if, perhaps, PvP forced action combat and disabled tab targeting? This would make PvP more challenging and skill-based, while also putting everyone on equal footing(aka no tab targeting crutch). Additionally, how can a game be classed as a hybrid action combat/tab targeting when the mobs seem to mainly use tab targeting(I'm looking at you skeletons and goblins throwing curveball projectiles that are simply undodgeable...)?

    Abilities going on cooldown even if they don't go off because the mob died before the cast finished feels pretty bad.

    A Duelling Feature would be amazing and would give opportunities to test PvP without flagging/gaining corruption. It would also offer some RP opportunities, player driven contests, etc.

    Game VFX, Physics & more:
    Spells look very flashy. which can become quite distracting and disorienting in full parties and even more so raids. It would be great if we could adjust the VFX for other players separately while retaining(or separately adjusting) the VFX for NPCs. I also hope that accessibility is being taken into consideration with a colour blind mode in the works.

    The water physics are a bit too much. It looks like I'm swimming in clear gelatine...

    The open world feels empty in some areas. There are a lot of empty fields, cliffs and forests with scarce(or in some instances non-existent) populations of NPCs, lack of structures, etc. Also, the textures for the ruins are incredibly clean and basically have no visible damage.

    The music is not very memorable at the moment and doesn't always feel appropriate to the setting, region or situation. Oftentimes I have "tense" music playing, indicating that I am in combat or some kind of danger, when nothing is going on...

    Crafting & Gathering:
    Hunting (referring to the gathering skill) is incredibly lacklustre at the moment. The implementation also feels quite strange as it results in static mobs that do not interact with the world and just wait for you to go pet them and pick up their dead carcass? I assume this is a functional state of the skill for testing purposes. Either way, a more immersive way to implement this could be to just have all mobs be killable, however, if you choose to level the skill, you can then interact with the corpse after looting to skin or collect meat/bones/grisle/whatever else. The current implementation of hunting could be tweaked and used for taming beasts for training(mounts & BoBs) with the addition of using bait and/or traps to make the mobs stand still so you can capture them. The "taming" process could have a success chance based on skill level. If it fails, the animal could get a status effect/buff preventing it from being tameable for a while, so you could either fight and kill it(while still being able to skin it for mats) to force a respawn, or wait for a while and try again once the buff wears off.

    Farming (referring to the artisan skill) is also very bare-bones, although having seen the livestreams, I imagine that there is more depth to it and we are just not getting that version at the moment. Regardless, I would love it if there was more depth and immersion to farming as well. Being able to collect seeds of gatherable herbs/berries/etc as a chance loot while gathering in the wild would be great. We could then plant them in our freehold homesteads for later gathering, which could also offer a small chance of collecting more seeds from them(similar to the way it is in V Rising). This would introduce a way to somewhat self-sustain for animal husbandry and cooking professions. It would also be great if we could build a well on our land(similar to how Enshrouded implemented this) so that we could draw bucket(s) of water on a cooldown to save ourselves from having to buy it from a vendor.

    Crafting should allow custom quantities. At the moment, if I have 7 or 8 of a material, I can do 5 and then be forced to do 1s, which is very inefficient in terms of both fuel and time spent managing the crafting, and defeats the whole point of being able to leave stuff on to craft while doing other things. I don't know if this is something that is in the making or not, but being able to have at least 2 jobs(rather than only one per bench) going at the same time would be amazing. This could even be a benefit of higher levels of the respective artisan skill, a higher level bench researched and built by the node or personal benches on freeholds(would be a great incentive to buy one!).

    Gathering Nodes seem to spawn with no rhyme or reason all over. I have a vague recollection of mentions of how some resources will be available in some regions while others will not, which would drive players to move goods between nodes due to supply & demand economies. I don't know if the current implementation seems skewed due to all of the nodes being in the same region, which is why all the gathering nodes are similar. If this is the case, then fair enough.

    Gathering Tools Benches - having individual benches for each gathering tool seems unnecessary to me. It also clogs the map UI with additional icons for each bench. It would be better if all tools could be crafted on the same bench, which had an icon representing tools(maybe a hammer, which is a universal way of displaying "tools"). This could create some complications with how the tools are upgraded to the next level (i.e. Apprentice) via Node upgrades, but I'm sure that could be worked around.

    Vendors selling food and gear much cheaper than what it would cost to craft(i.e. selling fruit salad for a few copper, when it costs a lot more just from vendor reagents, not even counting the actual gatherable mats involved in the recipe) makes the crafting of low level stuff pointless(at low levels) until it is necessary to upgrade the profession, at which point it will end up producing a whole bunch of fodder stuff like in classic WoW.

    Being able to level artisan skills beyond the max level required for the next upgrade seems like a strange choice. Why can I go to lv.11, 12, etc before I've upgraded the skill to Apprentice? Additionally, being able to promote and demote skills without losing progress seems to go against the idea of limiting the number of Artisan skills a player can progress. What's to stop me from managing them by promoting/demoting as needed, to have multiple skills whenever I want to use them? If this is a feature implemented purely for testing purposes, then that's fine. Otherwise, this needs to change.

    Mount quality doesn't improve mount speed... so why bother getting a blue wolf when the white one does the same job? I hope this is something that is only implemented in this way for testing purposes.

    Trading gathering tools between players should be enabled. Sometimes I'd love to be able to give my sickle to my party member who is focusing on levelling their Herbalism and whose sickle just broke while we're way out of reach of any vendor.

    Vendors being able to repair anything seems a bit unrealistic(in a fantasy game, yes I know..). Still, I hope that this is something only implemented for testing purposes. It doesn't make sense for Gerald Belford to be able to sell me everything, buy my glint and repair my weapon, armour and gathering tools. I'd much rather have a blacksmith NPC I can go to, who can repair my stuff. Perhaps he can also sell you a repair kit which can patch up tools on the go, but doesn't restore full durability and maybe even makes them more likely to break if you use it multiple times consecutively without going to a smith for a proper repair. Breaking can just mean an exponential increase in repair cost, rather than making the tool unusable and needing replacement.

    Other(nit-picks):
    Unstuck function teleporting you to the nearest Ember Spring is very easy to abuse by people transporting lots of mats between nodes(I tested this - if you are between two Ember Springs and moving away from the one behind you and in the direction of the one in front, you just have to be slightly closer to the one in front and voila! You just shortened your journey). It can also be used during PvP, so a griefer could kill someone, loot them then use Unstuck to get away before they themselves get killed and drop gear. To address both of these scenarios, it should always teleport you to your home node and should not be available to use during PvP.

    Immersive Navigation for commissions and quests would be better. I'd love to navigate to commission areas using descriptions of notable landmarks and directions(i.e. North-east of Lionhold, etc). This is a lot more reminiscent of old MMORPGs without handholding. It would also promote more player socializing.

    Mounts "t-posing" and sliding everywhere or getting stuck in small bumps in the terrain. With the current mount speeds, while I was playing my Bard it was faster to travel on foot using my move speed Melody + the stamina skill tree upgrades and sprinting instead of using a mount.. I've timed it. Not to mention it's easier to jump over bumpy terrain.

    Weapon 'skills' gave me the impression there would be active skills included, not just passives(which are quite repetitive). This makes me concerned about how the secondary classes will be implemented and how unique they will be...

    Losing stuff from the second materials storage tab when renouncing citizenship feels pretty bad. It should automatically transfer anything from the second storage to the first one, so long as there is enough space.

    The Quest Items Inventory tab is not being utilised, resulting in quest items just going into the standard inventory tab. Moreover, unique quest items dropping from mobs should only drop once. I've had 7 duplicates of the "Oath of the Kyronic Order" item in my inventory, because the mobs at Warhelm Ruins just kept dropping it, despite me having already picked one and used it to start the related quest.

    Event Participation Rewards are on the other end of the spectrum in comparison to how kill credit is being awarded for mob kills. That is to say, I've had multiple occasions where I just passed through the area where the Goblin Caravan event happens, completely forgot I even went through it and did not participate in it at all, then was suddenly awarded 12k EXP! I feel like participation should be required, whether you need to complete at least one step of the event(in this example, maybe at least bring some boxes to the NPC or participate in killing mobs), otherwise people will abuse this by afking in the area and gaining exp for free. In fact, a dynamic EXP reward distribution would be even better to deter people from constantly sitting in the same spot waiting for the same event to get the same EXP. This means that an event could have a maximum amount of EXP to award participants, which is then split between all the participants. If there are too many people doing the event, which makes it much easier and quicker anyway, then they get less EXP for it. As a fail-safe, there could be a capped min and max EXP reward from an event for additional protection(against bots abusing the current type of event participation rewards).This would eventually make some people leave in search of better ways to gain EXP, thus freeing up some of that for the ones who remain/come after. Lastly, the way the events are displayed on the map can be confusing. Sometimes it shows an event as active when you go near the area where it occurs, but then you enter the highlighted circle only to find that the event has finished a while ago and it's just the reward chest(which you can't loot anyways) that's keeping the map marker on. Not to mention that some events' goals display incorrectly, where it will say things like -12/7 mobs killed, so joining late you would have no idea of the progress of the event.


    Well, this took me half a day to type out and format! I will give class-related feedback on the respective class posts as this one is already way too long. Once again, sorry if this comes off as overly critical, it is not my intention. I am simply too invested and want this game to succeed, but also to be able to fully enjoy it. As a particular streamer says now and then, it's basically my last hope for reigniting my passion for MMORPGs.

    With the best intentions,
    Devlina
  • RaoshRaosh Member, Alpha Two
    edited 12:04PM
    What are your first impressions of Alpha Two?

    Open world: Excellent, feel like back to Wow opening in 2004.
    PVE: Mobs need improvement in combat strategy and animation
    PVP : to balance, not a big deal at this stage.
    Gameplay: feel great with all class but the fighter...the fighter is by far the worst class to play. Gameplay is not fun and the visuals are really poor.

    What general feedback would you like to share with the team?
    Please keep the game as difficult as it is right now, with death penalty and so on, we don't want an another Korean game where open world pve is just a way of getting XP. The feeling of getting aggro from the mod we should not messed up with if so good and engaging. Also include reward for people that are good at exploring (treasure chest for instance, that can pop randomly on the map on location difficult to reach). I said randomly because again we don't want youtuber / sites spoiling everything. Do whatever you can to make things not predictable.

    Misc :
    - Tons of bugs with quests, but I am sure you are already on it, I am personally not able to validate a lot of team.
    - UI seems old, and especially awkward with crafting. Need a good polish.
  • AmarAmar Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    edited 12:27PM
    I've been thinking about what I could add to this discussion since it started. My time to play over the first 3 weekends was limited due to RL however I'm really looking forward to a free weekend coming up and time to play in earnest. That said I really only have positive thoughts about Ashes so far.

    I'm primarily an explorer and crafter/gather so I ran out into the world very quickly to just have a look around. I saw very fast that Verra is a dangerous place and you need to get some levels under your belt before ventures too far away from Lionhold. I personally think this makes gathering in particular extremely interesting. Having mobs of different difficulties and different sizes mixed in randomly around resources added a challenge and thought to the process. Can I actually collect that without dying and loosing some of what I've already got in my bag. I ran into a random wolf or webweaver in the midst of trees that surprised me a few times. That's enjoyable. I've played enough games where I just had a big loop in the world to run and collect the resources... that gets boring very quickly. I got really happy last weekend when I ran across my first tin deposit while just out looking around. Keep the resources spawn and the mobs around random it's way more interesting to need to search for them.

    I absolutely love the combat toggle. After exploring both fighting modes I personally fit the best with action targeting however I toggle it to tab as my trigger safety. Also all the key binding control allows for fantastic personalized play. To that point I wouldn't mind seeing all of the mouse buttons be customizable if possible however that's a minor thing. I did set interaction on the side button but would like to explore different arrangements in action mode with the main buttons as well but that's just me...lol.

    Lastly for now, I've seen a lot of comments about big guilds controlling resources, area etc. I don't personally believe this will be as much of an issue as the map grows and more systems come online, especially without fast travel. Verra is going to be a huge world with plenty of things to do for everyone. We're playing right now in just basically one biome of a world with oceans to cross and dive, an underworld, islands etc. I personally look forward to getting lost in it...

    Keep up the good work!!
    Amar
  • VovkStrilkaVovkStrilka Member, Alpha Two
    Hi there! So I wasn't able to play much due to work coinciding with the release of wave 1 however here is as much as i was able to feel and find.

    Combat overall feels really good, especially once you start learning more abilities the impact of them feels much greater, such as the fighters jump and slash down ability (sorry horrible with names). I will say however that I agree with others in that the current system for gaining xp outside of a group feels poor. While I'm conscious the game is largely meant to be played in groups, the all or nothing division of xp means that in player dense areas like the starting area, it can take you a while just to get the few kills needed for a quest, as even though you may have killed 10X the mobs needed because you didn't get the first hit or deal the most damage you aren't credited with the kill. I spent maybe 45mins to an hr just trying to kill wolves, and was only really able to complete the 10 needed due to the fighters leap ability. If instead you were credited with the kill and gained even some xp after dealing a threshold of damage i.e. 10%, this would make it significantly more bearable to try and play especially at the low levels.

    Another qualm I ran into was the Loot rolling for while you are inside a group. As someone with ADHD and who has experienced similar mechanics in other games, I was constantly forgetting to go an pick up the drops after they rolled for me to gain them, and likely lost a few due to this. While I understand it has been stated this is intentional to prevent long range teleportation of items and the requirement to protect the loot pile, it feels like it would be a better solution to have the item teleport to the inventory of a player as long as you were a small radius away from the loot pile (we were farming the frogs at the small lake south of halcyon which from one shore to the other seemed like a reasonable radius). Similarly to prevent people from just running to the other side of the radius to escape combat but still gain items, you could make it a "King of the hill" situation where if the pile is accessed by someone outside of the group the roll timer resets for that person, which would mean you have to roughly guard the pile while you wait for the roll to finish.

    While scarcity of resources is an intentional and inherent part of the game, I feel as though level 1 resources are too scarce in relation to other levels and should be much more abundant, especially if they are a constant requirement even once you progress to higher levels and tiers of gear. I was regularly running across higher level minerals and plants and while plants were plentiful, it was extremely difficult to find any amount of level 1 minerals to be able to increase character proficiency to be able to mine the higher tier resources. While I'm sure this was an exasperated issue with thousands of players just starting and being in the same area, I worry how this issue may devolve when more and more players are added to the equation with further waves.

    In a similar vein it is very ambiguous in game currently how far you need to progress a skill to be able to receive a certificate, though I have no skills past level 2 so there may be a popup im unaware of, being able to know early on what your aiming for could help provide momentum and motivation to players to focus on those skills.

    I haven't seen anyone else run into this issue but at some point after my first play session all of my quests reset and could not be turned in such as turning in items to a storage master. I ran out of time to try and replicate this issue though or to see if abandoning and starting the quest from scratch would resolve it.

  • VandarVandar Member, Alpha Two
    Really like the game in the current testing state. Many things to improve but the base is good. I did not experience too much lag or crashes. but solo a lot and am out of the cities much. halcyon is our base on the Lotharia server. I like gathering and crafting so i will continue there i leave the pvp/pvx fighting to others.

    my experience with gathering is that it is dangerous and takes a long time to advance. Doing it with combat is both more rewarding and gives more xp.

    I do not mind that it is timeconsuming and takes effort but it should be more rewarding as it costs also a lot of money and materials. you feel 2nd grade compared to the fighting system.

    If it takes so much time and effort that also should reflect in the value you get from the vendors.
    If it is so difficult to lvl up and then to get your license and tools that should also reflect in the rewards

    Also the bag system needs a little tweaking to accomodate the amount of different resources combined with the rarities. just add 2 or 3 extra pockets per lvl. with lower quantities in the designated bags.

    Also consider adding an extra bag per gathering skill (over 2) for journeyman, master and grandmasterlevel.

    For processing:
    I think processing is to easy to level compared to gathering. you do not have to spend a lot of time and the collecting you do not have to do yourself (if you don't want to)
    with just a fur orders you can reach lvl 10. It should take much more effort.
    focus on the quality and diversity produced and not the quantities.

    For Crafting:
    I can imagine this is the same for crafting.
    It would make sense that your experience increases mostly with the different techniques involved with diversity versus the experience in massproducing singular items because the materials are in abundance.

    And finally do something about the ruby and copper rarity.
    Scarcity is good but if it is a common resource it should be common.
    If you worry about abundance, then double or triple the cost of the resource.
    at least you have the fun of gathering the stuff :)

    Greets, Vandar (future Grandmaster Gatherer/Collector)

  • unspokentomcatunspokentomcat Member, Alpha Two
    I had way more fun than I would have expected.

    As of the time I played, I feel that the fishing should have more of an active role when doing it. I was able to get my fishing up very quickly while I was AFK. I would recommend that the fish fight back and you have to actually reel the fish in by clicking the left or right mouse button.

    The switching between action camera and the use of the cursor when opening you inventory should be smoother. The example I would use is when I am in action camera mode and summon my mount it goes to curser mode instantly, and when I dismount it goes back to action.

    There should be a slight increase in exp when you are leveling up solo. As a busy person with life, I would be able to hop in and get some exp for my level and not feel I am left behind.

    I think that if you attack a mob after it is being attacked for a quest line you should be able to get the credit as far as the quest goes but nothing should drop for you from the kill. (goblin quest at start had me there for 10 minutes due to not hitting the target first).

    Action Camera for the range weapons and mages doesn't feel like action combat, it feels more like a soft tab where I just place the crosshairs on the target then I can shoot and after that I can run and jump and move around and never miss the target with my action clicks on the left mouse. Is that supposed to be how it works or is that part still in the works?

    Gathering should have a better indicator to tell what can be gathered. For example, when I had to gather daffodils, I couldn't figure out what could be gathered and what was just grass until I walked into the center of the pile and looked down then the interact dot showed up.

    Hunting should have a way better animation to it because it is very confusing as to what I am actually doing to the animal, am I petting the animal or am I killing it for the meat. LOL there were times when I was thinking oh nice, I may get a wolf to make a mount then BAM I killed it for the meat. I think that you should be able to carve the meat off animals you kill as a feature of the hunting skill and tame the animals you pet in the wild with an activity that you have win in order to get the animal as a tamed.



  • CadveunCadveun Member, Alpha Two
    Overall, even with the early state of the game, it is fun and immersive.

    The roles are implemented well, and a parties' success is greatly improved when you have a diverse makeup.
    Most of the archetype skills' visuals and impact look and feel great so far.

    The game started out with exploration and figuring out what is what, but the game quickly devolved into "grinding." Essentially, people are standing in one spot fighting the same mobs over and over with the same move combos over and over...for hours.

    I think that the respawn mechanic is ok for the open world, but I hope that there will be many instanced dungeons that have mobs that don't respawn over and over, traps, puzzles, traversing levels of dungeons/castles, etc. Essentially, you go into a hard instance prepared and equipped and you work your way to the end for possible X reward/xp. If the game will only be fighting the same mobs over and over that respawn on top of you, many will tire of this mechanic after doing it for 6months.

    The gathering/crafting system has a lot of promise, but the current bare bones implementation is tedious and convoluted. I recommend that the artisan professions be less reliant upon the other professions especially at the lower levels. The system currently requires everyone to essentially be everything. I think most people would like to choose a profession and be identified by that profession and to focus on that profession. At the lower levels each profession should stand alone with the crafting station that goes along with that, not have to run around to other crafting stations. The gathering of materials can remain the same but just let them be used at that one crafting station. At higher levels, like master, sure make them require materials from other professions.

    I played mage mostly and really enjoyed the class, and many of the skills felt really impactful if you hit the appropriate combo skill. I recommend them introducing more skills to allow for longer CC and blink needs alittle rework or maybe reduce the cooldown a bit. Some of the higher tier skills are alittle underwhelming. Blizzard barely damages anything, but it has a 2 minute cooldown. The arcane circle's buff is barely noticable and the buff doesnt last long at all. The amount of time it takes you to cast the buff basically minuses the minimal extra damage you just did for 10 seconds. The beam is pretty good, but could be tuned up a bit.

    Corruption is currently overtuned, and it is too easy to grief someone.



  • ChunkaChunka Member, Alpha Two
    edited 7:51PM
    I joined a2 this weekend on 8th of November. Here's some feedback from me which might seem very harsh but im just being honest and im actually still hopefull for the game so don't get me wrong.

    Combat feels better than it looks, but it still has a long way to go ( it's 6/10 for me atm). It's also kinda hard to get the real feel for combat cause the game is laggy, rubberbands happen and mobs and different animations lag a lot. But all in all combat is decent for alpha.

    Dying feels pretty bad at times, im okay with losing xp and even droping materials but i rly dislike that part of those materials get destroyed instead of all being lootable again, it just makes no sense and it feels rly bad.
    Also when someone else picks ur body that's outside ur group should instantly get purple and stay that way for at least 20-30 mins (risk vs reward right?!).

    Quests are currently at a rly bad state but its not being focused on so i understand, even tho i would still appreciate if you would tweak the xp of them so we actually get some feel for actual lvling (which should consist of quests, mob grinding, commisions, events, dungeons, raids and the rest of the content).

    I didn't get to try to pvp yet and even feels like i have no reason to do so or even when i do (which is very rarely and its a gamble) it's more punishing than rewarding if the other party doesnt fight back. As much as i understand corruption and what it's supposed to bring, i still wanna do a lot of random pvp in open world, which is the most fun experience in MMOs imo and im not rly finding much reasons to do so atm.

    Loot feels very awkward atm, some spots drop usefull items (gear and weapons) and others just some glint in very small amounts. From previous mmos that i played i got used to looting almost every single mob, which drop gold, thresh loot, materials and gear/weapons, so looting in ashes feels very boring atm as it is.

    The environment looks and feels weird, especially at some empty places which are just an open field with bunch of mobs. Not doing any quests ( cause they are pretty useless atm) doesn't help either since u can't get immersed into zones and what they're supposed to represent in the (quest's) lore.

    Map looks very bad atm and it gets bugged quite often, can't see NPCs, ur group mates' icons are almost invisible, its rly hard to see embershrines.. The old look of it did give me some nostalgia cause it reminded me of mmo "4 story" that i played a lot.

    I've been following the game for 4-5 years now (actively) and all the showcases that we seen over the years definitely imroved with time but they also set a very high expectation for me. I'm not gonna lie i expected a lot more from the alpha before the nda dropped, even when verbal nda dropped and i heard its rly bad from my guildmates, i still believed it was actually good, it has to be better than a1 at least. And many things did improve since a1 don't get me wrong, but the amount of fun a1 brought to me (just watching it) was nuch higher than the 1st 2 weekend of a2 did and even this last one that i played.


    With all that aside, im still hopefull for the game and i believe it will be good one day, when it releases hopefully or even in betas already. The game still has a loooong way to go but ill continue supporting it and giving feedback throughout our journey in a2 following the betas and release. Thank you and keep it going and don't give up on ur core pillar of the game pls ^^

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