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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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)
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.
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.
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 ^^
Now I played on the 'fresh start' server, and as I'm sure everyone is aware it was mostly a laggy mess, especially in the very starting areas. This NEEDS to be better, melee was more or less unplayable and I had to stick to tab-target autoattacking with my bow for the first few levels; it was the only way I could ever actually hit anything.
Once I was level 6 or so and was able to get away from the more crowded areas I was finally able to actually play melee, and I have to say that the core combat felt great! It really is a fun and well-designed, if a little barebones, melee combat system. Even far away from the crowds though, there was often little bits of lag that poked through here and there. Occasionally a dodge wouldn't quite come out on time, or a monster would walk through one of my hitboxes completely unharmed. Getting these precise timings down is absolutely critical to making the combat feel 'tight', and while it's not far off, it isn't quite there yet either.
Global chat sometimes has interesting conversations going. So having exp be inside of general chat instead of logs... is ugh
First off, amazing game. Truly. It’s off to a great start. I have thoroughly enjoyed my last weekend playing and very much look forward to this coming weekend.
Praises
I love the sitting mechanic and the food. 2.5% every sec for 10 secs is perfect.
Combat feels great, corruption is horrible but very much needed.
Points of interest (like highwaymen hills) are awesome, plenty of spots for multiple parties to grind with a few in between to compete for.
Gathering diversity is amazing, finding more of one thing near this node or that node makes it more grindy. Let’s face it, all MMORPG players live for the grind.
Classes and roles for PvE seem to be doing their job perfectly to come together and accomplish the same goal.
The death mechanic makes players consider their actions, plan ahead, and have an escape route or suffer the sting of dying.
Having a partial loot recovery system that can also be looted by other players adds a great addition to the grind. I can stop what I’m doing and go profit off of someone else who had poor planning.
The caravan system is incredible! Everything Ive read on it is truly game changing. I wasn’t able to use one last weekend but I’ve prepared for it this weekend with my buddies. I’m upset that I slept on this, and I think a ton of other players are sleeping on it too.
Artisan class diversity is another incredible system. I am thoroughly enjoying my carpenter experience and you guys have really hit the nail on the head.
The bags are a bit limited but I imagine that’s just because we’re all at the infancy stage of leveling. Nonetheless, it really makes you think about what’s most important to keep and take to your bank. You can’t just be a carpenter, tailor, and weaponsmith. You have to prioritize what you want to be.
All of the above praises do not match how much I love the importance of social aspect this game emphasizes on. Luckily, I’m playing this with a core group of 4 who jumped right in and a few others who have dipped their toes. Most of what I’ve mentioned before can really make or break the game depending on your socializing. I’m our groups carpenter, and im pimpin out a few caravans with juicy components. My buddy is a tailor and is hooking me up with some good uncommon artisan shirts. Our other buddy gave me the copper bits I needed. And we all help our tailor with grabbing any flax we find along our travels.
Overall, I’m very impressed with the game and you guys have sold me, a long time MMORPG/Strategy game enthusiast, on Ashes of Creation. I’m in it for the long haul.
I have a few requests I hope the team can consider;
Change the ratio of Refining Ore into Bits from 1:1 to 1:2 (or more depending on balancing). Maybe even flax-linen. Specific materials like copper, is time consuming to gather directly, it’s more of a passive “oh hey look there’s an ore I need” gather. You get 5 skins per carcass, so this would only make sense to apply more than a 1:1 to bits.
Nerf the death drops, retain the recoverable loot pile. Instead of a 50% loss, 25% recover (25% guaranteed loss STINGS), a 40% loss with 20% recover would feel much better. It still keeps the same sting of dying, it just slightly hurts less.
One big one for me, is the processing stacks. They’re currently 1, 5, 10, 25, 50. My experience is everything stacks up to 20 or 43 in the proper bag. Maybe it’s my OCD but this drives me UP A WALL. A much more efficient stacks for processing would be 1, 5, 10, 20, 40, 60. If 6 options are too many, I would ditch 40 and go straight for 60.
For lumber milling, that would allow me to craft 60 timber with 26 leftover (2 stacks of 43) where I’d have to use 6 logs as fuel anyhow.
I noticed others talking about not getting aggro from mobs standing right on them. I didn't find that to be the case. I was getting aggro from quite a ways off, even with lower level ones, and then being chased half way across the map if I didn't engage. There was mad leashing going on there.
I tried out Cleric first to level seven and felt I had enough skills by then to heal in a group and also solo. I love that we can change out skills freely so it makes it easy to group and play solo. I've never played a healer but found it easy to jump right into it.
I tried Mage next to level 7 and felt confident out on my own while gathering. The skills looked to be everything I would expect to have as a mage. I like the way we can mix the skills and not be stuck with one skill tree for the elements. Casting animations are well done also.
I like the way gathering is done. I do love the sound of the trees cracking and watching them fall. I didn't get a chance to get into the crafting at that level but found myself with so many materials and no place to put them. I think we need way more bag space at lower levels since leveling is so slow. I had to vendor things I didn't want to. I had to leave an area too often to empty bags and lose a good spot that was gone when I got back. At least let us have room for one of each gathering bag. I had a big main bag with almost nothing in it and was very frustrated materials couldn't overflow into it.
How my character looks is important to me and I look forward to what's being done on character creation. As is i couldn't get a red haired female elf that didn't look like Conan O'Brien. I know it's just bare bones now but it was really funny at the time. In most games your character never looks the same once you log into the game as it does when you made it. I think it has to do with the lighting and I hope something can be done about that so I don't have to keep remaking. Being able to save them will help with that so I can just tweak instead of remaking the whole thing.
I like exploring and I liked that there were lots of things to climb and secrets to find. Fall damage is not punishing and some places you can jump to that you wouldn't think was possible. I hope you keep that. I found one huge tree overhanging a road that I wanted to climb out on so bad but could only walk through it. Looking forward to that being fixed. There were a lot of little details that I appreciated a lot, like rainbows in the falling rain and leaves falling from the trees.
Mob tagging was a thing I had a problem with. I could get the first hit on something but if someone else tagged it and did more damage I got no xp or drops. Not a fan of kill stealing.
One thing that I would love to see is dungeons, and little pockets of content, to have puzzles that involve classes and class synergy. I feel like it would add to the depth and discovery and feeling of accomplishment. Finding a reward after solving the puzzle and then maybe fighting a high level mob or several as well would add a nice layer to it. I feel if you just have mobs only in the dungeon and that is the only thing you run into with nothing else to discover, it will feel like everything else. You would be just fighting mobs in a different area with a different surrounding. However, I feel like this sense of exploration would be beneficial everywhere. Adding little pockets of things to discover while you are exploring makes the world feel worth exploring in the first place. Which it does seem like ya'll are going that route already see as how you have treasure maps and little hidden things here and there. Collections tied to achievements with rewards as well would be nice to have. Add some secrets to discover in dungeons as well like hidden passageways and such.
Maybe the bard can play a specific tune on a specific instrument in a certain order like in Zelda Ocarina of time.
Another thing I would love to see is the bags being worked on a little so that the tetris system works a little better. Right now it seems to be that its better to have like 2 of the same bags. The lumber, and the mining or hunting. It would be better to specifically fit those gatherables instead of them being pretty much the same. (Hunting and mining) Which I'm sure will be worked on and is just a placeholder.
This was touched on in earlier discussions, and was hoping it was still in the works or in the plans, but was hoping there would be more class specific things that would make the class more needed. When we group up right now, it seems that the classes that are needed are tanks, clerics, and bards, but mages, rangers, and fighters seem not as necessary specifically. I get that mages have their eye for revealing camo, and rangers have a lot of roots and snares, but there needs to be a stronger reason to have them specifically. Once again, not sure if this is still in the works, but I just wanted to mention it to make sure that it isn't forgotten because it is one of the things that I look forward to most. The feeling of being needed in every aspect in this game.
I'm sure that this has been said many times before, but I would love to see the naval combat be pretty in depth like Sea of Thieves. I hear so many people ask for this but, man, would love to see that. That would just top off this game if that was also included. >.<
More dynamic events, please. Something that takes the group away from grinding for a few minutes to see what a circle on the map means would be fun. I would also love to see tons of different story arcs come online. Right now, the game is to log on and kill the same mobs, especially as you get to higher levels. If they had 10 story arcs that flipped every day, it would change stuff up. It would also stop this Meta of specific grind spots from happening.
Points of interest would benefit with having some sort of functionality. The Wellspring, for example, looks really nice and good, but has no reason for discovering it. Bringing a reason for that discovery will make that discovery more important and exciting!
- Weapon finishers need to be more flashy, shortbow for example, i have no idea which animation was the finisher, plus it will make the auto attacks have more weight to them, even a little screen shake or something to top it off.
- Each archetype needs more defensive/movement spells to have more outplay options(mage/Tank seems ok), at the moment its just which class does more damage or who has the most levels/gear, no skill expression at all. Dodge roll being more effective would help too.
- Ranger Disengage + Airstrike should give you Dodge while in the air to help with defense/skill expression.
- Auto attacks on non-physical dmg classes being strong while having massive dmg spells feels off, if its going to be like this every class needs to be buffed up to mage level damage otherwise why take a fighter or ranger over a mage?
- Give bows an aoe ricochet like the book? maybe in the weapon tree they have an option for and aoe auto attack or a more damage single target option.
- i can see fighters having a very rough time in pvp and pve in terms of survival, especially with how buggy the AI is.
- need more abilities, everyone is or will be soon using the same abilities as there are obvious choices - please make every spell matter, being forced down the obvious path is always a downer in mmo's.
- Please dont make rogue the usual open with a stun and kill you in 2 secs with no counter play bs from other mmo's.
- Tank class seems VERY boring compared to other classes, skills need to be more flashy and give them decent dmg, tanks are always underplayed because they are just boring, please be different.
- Mage seems to have recieved all the love with ability synergy and graphics - other classes need that same feel.
- Dueling ASAP
- 8v8 battlegrounds arena ASAP - will help with balance.
- Groups need to receive corruption for killing non combatants, not just the killer.
- Planned map will be WAY too big and be full of nothing, there is no need for it to be that big and servers will feel dead.
- pre plan server merges and character transfers, with the pvp/grind like it is currently you will lose players in mass.
Cheers.
For context I am not an MMO player historically. My only experience was a month or so that i grinded FFXIV(excellent themepark).
As a Leading thought, I had a great time and I will continue to play during all the testing phases.
I think in many ways your alpha phase was/is a great experience (with all regular exceptions ... servers, desync, bugs etc.)
The first thing that struck me as a great feeling, that I hope stays around, was that levels matter vs mobs. Especially initially (fewer spells, no synergies set up etc.).
I really liked the Souls series of games, because the game was actually difficult. Even if you had good weapons there is never really an option to play without finesse or execution (some exploits exist, I'm not taking about those). The weapons/armour/stats made a boss fight shorter, but you still needed to execute x amount of times to succeed. Now I know that those games are designed around single player so there is more agency allocated to the player, but i enjoy the game being mechanically dependent as well as power dependent.
I like that i felt pressured as a DPS class (Ranger and mage) to execute mechanically to conserve HP while early leveling. That being said, space is valuable. Kiting and dodge rolling are essential to understand, so the closer the servers are to 100% stable the better. it becomes real easy to create new ventilation in your room when you time something perfectly based on the animation but the damage still registers on your character. I wonder how well this will work across server borders once the dynamic meshing is online.
As far as exp income goes. i like being rewarded for soloing stronger mobs than my character. I think parties is harder to balance and i have no idea how to approach that without inflating level gain too much. I like that leveling is time consuming. Also hyper leveling isn't linearly beneficial, because the rest of the world will be behind you might end up in a space where things don't exist to leverage your level advantage.
Resources.
I enjoyed mining. Its fun to adventure searching for nodes of the mineral you're looking for (copper). I don't know if the plan is to keep ores uniformly distributed across all of Verra to keep crafting stable across all nodes. Or to create diversified distributions of ores across the map (veins, caves, more in the mountains, less in the desert etc..) to promote/necessitate international trade so lets put a pin in that.
Logging is pretty solid IMO. It could use a few more passes, so i hope that's in the works. just things like having the trees cut at the point that matches where the axe was hitting, assets properly disappearing when chopped etc. I like that the trees grow in groups that vary. Sometimes there is only one type in a grove, other times there are mixed forests. I hope building orders in nodes from different biomes use different types of wood that match the biome supported lumber or race required building material.
herbalism was fun. i hope to see slightly more sophisticated distributions of the flowers and herbs. make them trackable by biome. and have them grow in groves with different surrounding trees etc. I don't know if there is a way to have resources in game that hint at where specific herbs can be found. Like a book in a library with riddles/puzzles. i like the idea of exploring forests for different herbs. and making a specific grove type hold a consistent pattern of herbs/flowers helps track from a distance, while still requiring you to explore the forests.
I enjoy playing the alpha. Tomorrow I will try a melee class.
Cheers keep up the good work. Super stoked on the project.
Crafting, I would like to see a change to the timers on benches. Maybe allow players to manual craft one at a time, and use "Factory" type benches for mass crafting with timers? Its not game breaking, but might help with the flow of full time crafter-types.
Being unable to mix material rarities at some stages makes some of the crafting kind of annoying, especially with limited bag space. I was able to get "lucky" and get rarer mats, only to get back to the bench and find I could craft nothing because none of the rarities matched.
Small things, but I know alot of it is in the works still. Really enjoying it so far, keep up the great work!
World: The world is beautiful and graphics are great. From spell effects to under water swimming I think the game looks great and I know we are only looking at a tiny portion of what’s to come. Perhaps my favorite thing about the world is what’s not there and that’s fast travel. My critique would be the map and mini map, I would assume this is not the final version of the two but they really leave a lot to be desired.
Character: I’m going to assume character creation is limited right now so I won’t knock it for its limited feel. However, I will say the Cleric class has been very fun to play. I LOVE LOVE LOVE That it has an old school EQ meets 2024 vibe with a “make a healer important again” feel for group play. I have missed that every class was critical feel like it was pre nexus in EQ. A healer is needed to max heal and rez, a tank was needed for max tanking, a bard was needed for speed and mana, a necro for corps recovery, a mage was needed for DPS and teleport, etc. I could be wrong since I don’t watch every YouTube video out there but this really felt like some of that was being brought back and I love it. I also loved the death penalty because it brought back tangible consequences for dying.
Bugs: As expected, there are a lot of bugs and I know a ton of them are being addressed every week. One extremely annoying one is having to listen to your character getting attacked and dying while you are waiting for the game to load. And to make matters worse you die twice when this happens. Scenario: you get kicked to login and have to come back in. While loading in you hear your character getting beat on and when you get on he is dead. So you revive and while you load to revive your character dies a second time for no reason at all and with no mobs around. At level 9 this was costing me 6% death exp for no reason other than the game crashed for some unknown reason. Anyway, I am sure it will get fixed along with hundreds of other bugs. Selfishly, as a healer, I would like to see the target my target key get fixed. The default key does not work nor did it work when I created an alternate key.
Grades:
Overall alpha impression so far: B+
Faith in devourment: A+
Faith in direction: A+
Scale of 1-10 how excited I am about this game: 1,000,000
Excellent work Intrepid!
So as I've already posted feedback for the first weekend as well as the second weekend <- both linked
Here comes my feedback for the third weekend! Details are again put in spoilers
Something that I wanna do a little different than the last 2 - I'm going to start with some positive feedback first as I feel this can come a little short or be easily forgotton about when focusing on finding bugs and issues
Alpha 2 Phase 1 Positive Feedback
- I love the overall design of the world and characters (monsters etc, not players as these are an obvious work in progress)
It takes a bit of effort and people that want the same things, but if you remember the types of MMO memories from back in the days that Steven talked about as well, memories that you will probably remember for the rest of your life, because you had one of those special MMO moments together with other players - we had that! This one and the previous weekend, we created an amazing community inside our node. Total strangers came together to make the node grow, trusting and helping each other without question, gathering materials like maniacs to get the buildings done and even though when we started, we were way behind, our node started 1.5 weekends late, we have less people than the other nodes and everything, we got so much done by everybody working together, helping, coordinating, putting resources together we got the first building done on our server, everybody was so proud and happy, it's just beautiful to be able to experience this again.
Third Weekend Feedback
PvE & Character Progression
- exp gain needs balancing
Because right now, unless grinding super tanky elite monsters with a full group, there is no reason to farm different monsters with a smaller group size, as you level faster and get more from going alone for easier monsters. Another example is bears giving way more exp than other monsters on the same level even though bears are really easy to kill. I wish there was more to the PvE grind than having basically the same 2-3 options if you wanna be efficient about it. The risk and reward in PvE feels not really good right now to me personally
QoL & UI
- caravans should face the other other direction when spawning
Since the custom chat tabs get deleted upon restarting it doesn't really work yet anyways, and I could not edit pre-existing chat tabs either
Misc
- crafted Horses should give 140% speed as well
- you get a free horse with the same stats making the crafted horses useless to far
- I'm sure there are players that would like to have the option to ride a horse instead of a bear/cat/wolf
- crafting costs are just as high as the others, even though the stats are worse
Thank you and have a great fourth testing weekend!
I must say that for an Alpha, this is coming along nicely. Last weekend was the first weekend that my friends and I were able to check it out and contribute to the testing. I don't know if they will individually post themselves, but I will include their feedback in here.
Professions: I am assuming many of the professions are not fully developed or polished yet, so I am making this feedback with that assumption
The variety of professions feels fantastic and I am looking forward to a player run economy. I like that you can perform all gathering professions at the start and you are not gated.
Gathering - Either the EXP rate or distribution of nodes needs to be reworked. Scarcity of resources nodes like this will only lead to heavy botting or cartels operating outside the confines of the game. I think I found a singular copper node the entire weekend (including veterans day).
I am hoping that hunting is going to be reworked and/or that a skinning knife or ability will be added, because those nodes feel very out of place. The ability to harvest the corpse of any enemy you kill is rewarding and helps clean up entities on the ground.
Refining - The fuel mechanic does not feel right. I understand that fuel will help remove many unwanted resources, but it almost feels punishing. The requirement of generic fuel for all refining needs to be reevaluated.
The quantity limitations of Batch refining to use strict quantities of 1,5,10,etc. needs to be more fluid and allow you to batch craft all that you have. If I have four epic Granite, I should be able to process all four at once.
We should level 10 this weekend and will have additional feedback.
Thank you
game crashed at %14 this time, last week the game crashed at %5 and had to send my pc to a specialist.
no errors pop up, just shut the game down. I have tried this 3 times. ended in the same way.
i started playing on november 8. and the tank feels pretty weak like he has absolute no chance alone he deals no dmg and he cant take dmg i mean hes a tank why he dies so easily and its not everytime a skill issue when mobs hit me from like 30m away while running towards me there is nothing i can do, and also dodgeing it dont feel right i dodge and the mob hit me anyways its not syncron the hit animation and the actual hit so there is no point in dodgeing. and the tank is the one who dies first the exp penalty feels so wrong on him bro im the one in the front i get all the dmg.
2. u have to improve the action mode you only have disadvantages when youre using it like u have no button to let a cursor appear to click something on your UI or something and if you open the map or text chat for example your buttons still work like i want to write a massage so my active screen is the text chat and i have dodge on shift so my charcacter dodges when i use shift in textchat window also the mouse wheel to scroll down text my kamera in game also zooms out get rid of tab target or get rid of action hybrid dosent work and imo a 2024 game shouldnt have tab target dont go the easy way i played ashes of creation apocalypse the combat felt great u already have it why dont u use it .
3. the graphics are horrible the sky i cant look at it so bad does it look for a game in 2024/25 the graphics are like 2008 i atleast expectet a graphic and physik like New World the roads look all the same the world is empty my character detail is worse then Metin2 the amor has no details my hair looks like a disease u have to improve the graphics 100% your Batlle Royal game had better graphics than your actual game like wtf.
4. dont be so hard with free pvp i had the situation where someone fighted a strong mob and i rushed to help him i died and some random guy looted me instantly so i came in time while he was looting and killed him end of story the whole map was after me and i dropped my blue amor make atleast save zones where red flagged are save and where u cant do open pvp like in citys or smth.
and you dont need positive feedback in Germany we say " Nicht beschwert ist lob genug " and i think its beautiful
- crafting gear is not rewarding. It is nothing you do for yourself or for others on your level but exclusively for twinks as you cannot craft things useful for your level as you are so hard limited by multiple factors. It makes sense to make farmable gear more desirable and to make craftable items from blueprints only a second emergency option but if you cannot access it while it means any kind of use in your level range, it is really unfun and feels simply useless.
- Guild wars in their current state ruin experience. They are buggy as they are everlasting while also being not even endable manually which is a pain to guilds of all kinds. They cause not only frustrations by low level players being ganked all over the map and even in Lionhold but also allow guilds to kill you in spaces that should be save like after respawning at an emberspring or in cities. Why punishing a player for flagging when he will simply declare war then to kill for free? That those guild wars in addition make you get negative effects like item loss, durability loss and XP loss made players of our guild being very frustrated. They couldn't farm anymore as they would be nuked by max leveled players for fun, cities had been made unaccessible while mayors scouted on their flying mount for anyone of the guild getting close.. That is an experience that will ruin the fun for every casual that missed opportunity to be already max rank. The only solution is to temporarily leaving a guild making this even less great as it means that having a guild ingame is only negative rightnow when you organise yourself in discord in the meantime anyways. Protection at low level spots, save zones at ember spring and in cities are required to make this not a destructive experience for everyone not-hardcore grinder in the long therm.
- XP sharing needs to be possible at least slightly. The current limitations cause groups being extremely limited in choosing guild mates to join them later on. As everyone levels just as quickly as another it causes you to never catch up with your friends while also being unable to join when you missed playing a session with them. Like this fluctuation within a guild and their groups are almost inpossible and testing new characters is punishing which is quite unhealthy. That you also have extreme limitations in player count is hard to bear. It makes sense to reduxe maximum XP at one point to not encourage giant Raids being build for farming but the drop off should be not a giant cut for a single ninth person but rather per percentages. Like this it cannot stay in every kind of way.
- Crafting materials should differ more. There are so many materials but you need always just that single one all the jobs use to make it be always requested while others go to waste. Why does Tailoring, Leatherworking and Armour smithing require exclusively Grem skin but no wolf, bear or raven skin? Why does weapon smithing, arcane engineering and armour smithing require copper but no zinc? That is an extremely limiting and annoying mecganic and an overhaul of all the crafting recipes is definetly requires.
I will start with recent updates have been good. Such as regen while riding mount has been a fantastic quality of life upgrade. However, the much larger issue that has no fix is community breaking to me.
If you want to group you need to be on a highly populated server currently. Well one of those servers has a guild vs guild war happening. OK fine let them do what they do. Well a level 25 member griefed a group of level 8s and 9s at the church. Killed all the members of the rival guild (3) and others that were not in any guild (myself, plus 2 more) just for being grouped and grinding experience. There is no retaliation, we were all dead in less then 10 seconds. I had a mount that dropped and was taken as a result of the PVP griefing along with other items. This is still alpha and everything will be wiped. Fine I can accept that. However, being flagged for PVP due to PVE bait is not OK.
This was a question asked in the interview with Pirate Software and Steven and the PVP griefing issues were said if it was Asmon or Joe Schmoe then it would be addressed. Well 3 Joe Schmoes just got griefed. The continued emphasis on this being a PVP game and that I have no choice but to opt into the system continues to become more and more disheartening. I enjoy what I have played as a PVE player and have a group of friends from Everquest and WoW who I have played with for 20 years and are looking for a new game. We do not PVP just has not been our thing. We enjoy dungeon clearing and raiding. Competition is fine and not an issue. However, being forced into a system that I do not want to opt into in the first place is not OK.
I do not feel this will be addressed or fixed and when brought up in global chat I was verbally abused and berated over it. So the toxic community has already taken hold basically have made it so the only option for alpha enjoyment is to play on a different server, hope for a group, and hope I do not get griefed. Disheartening does not even describe the feeling of how this is allowed or acceptable. I find it incredibly irresponsible and disingenuous of the studio to know this is happening, have the names (Ristilin) and guild (Apex Order) of the players and to allow it. I am just one person with a small group of friends who are no longer going to get alpha. We are nothing. However, I bet we wont be the only players walking away due to this guild and this forced PVP system. Especially, when I lose stats, exp, and loot as a result of being forced into it. Being griefed is bad enough. Being punished by the game and the system is worse. Especially when corruption lasts for 10 minutes plus. Casual gamers do not have time for corruption timers, griefing, or forced PVP. My feedback boils down to find a better corruption system and respect the casual gamers time. You want this game to be subscription based, well you need to find a balance for the casual gamer. The 1% of the game who running around griefing low level players will destroy any new player experience. They already have for me. My viewpoint on this game is extremely negative now. It will take a long time for that lens to change. It is a shame, because it was so clear with bright vision before.
Anywho. I was a new player for this weekend with 2 nights (about 8 hours) in the game and achieving level 8 as a bard. I ran into a number of bugs and crashes, but I'll focus on the overall feedback I have on the game's feel so far.
Glint is a really odd middle-man for gold. From my own play, I didn't find or catch what the reasoning is for this, besides the in game lore of it being the extra left over when creatures die and disappear.
The leveling and skill attribution in the skill trees of every type felt very ambiguous and not clearly conveyed. I wasn't sure when higher level skills would be available and having the images on multi-choice skills be just a + sign threw me off. On bard specifically, quick wit is a dual ability with an ally/enemy difference that had it's own combined skill on the right and the two individual skills in with the rest, which you could skill into with phantom skill points. (they start 0/1 and can be filled to 1/1 without spending skill points)
Resources in the game are a mess. Having mining and herbalist nodes popping up at random all over the place was visual/mental clutter that negatively impacted my play experience. They felt spammed all over the place and I got no feeling for what was high or low level or where would be good places to look for these in the future. Each resource should have general spawn guidelines, like cliffs, trails, near water, ect. This just feels like they were spilled across the floor and called it a day. The beach as well south of the playable area was littered with mining nodes that felt like a baron dystopic wasteland. I understand it's an undeveloped area of the game, but it felt like the clearest example that node generation is 'random node spawned every 10 feet' than a cohesive vision.
Crafting stations are split up on either side of the starting area. If someone wants to focus on artisan crafts, they have to choose one side or the other or else they're spending half their time running back and forth. When crafting, I had to process things one at a time, which was tedious. Not sure if this is an issue with communicating the proper way to do things, but it was not an enjoyable process.
Hunting bows are sending mixed signals. I thought I had to somehow pull it out and use it, and I took forever to walk up to it and hit f like a plant. I also don't enjoy how stationary the animals are. I can partially understand separating hunting resources from the act of engaging in combat, but it's unnatural how they just stand there and I have to pet it to kill it. I'd love to see these huntable creatures roaming their spawn zones and be able to be hunted in some fashion, maybe using your hunting bow in action cam a few times to take it down. I don't mind not having to fight them, but having a bow be the tool and an up close pet be the action is very immersion breaking.
Crafting isn't really the focus on this phase, but it felt bad not having any recipes for grem or raven meat when I finally found the cookhouse. Having early cooking recipes require farmed goods also felt like a high bar to entry as farmland is limited, especially right now. I also found wolf/bear meat recipe drops that are apparently a given at the cookhouse.
I felt like I had no control over my actual stats. I don't know if I missed something on how I'm supposed to affect them, but it felt missing and unfun to be railroaded on what I presume is the same progression everyone has stat-wise.
Combat felt solid. I like how the ranged/melee option give both physical and magical stats depending on type so you can still experience different playstyles without sacrificing stats. The range of skills and options made it feel like I had real choices.
Did I have fun? Yes. Will I keep going? Also yes. I do apologize for the lack of positives. The new player experience, I didn't feel anything AoC specific that stood out as really new or well done. I compared how I felt and what I know about the game to Albion Online a lot, and nothing made me feel like AoC stood out so far. I look forward to seeing what you cand do to change this.
I just got in this weekend after having to wait to buy a new PC, so I'm still not very far in at all. But, as First Impressions go:
:- The world looks great. It's easy to tell the difference between the environment and the things in the environment that you can interact with.
:- Camera movement is a little clunky, but I'm hoping that's more a case of having to get used to it.
:- Interactions with NPCs seem intuitive enough. I don't recall thinking anything was unusual in any of the conversations. There were a couple where the interactions themselves were bugged, but those will get fixed. The AI voicing was bloody awful in most places, but that's kinda to be expected.
:- Weapons feel rather underwhelming. There didn't seem to be much difference between the ranged weapons, or much difference between the melee weapons. Was almost as if you could have just got rid of all the weapon types entirely and just called them either Ranged Weapon or Melee Weapon.
I dunno if it's cos the last MMO I played was ESO, and the weapons there have their own skills that actually affect your gameplay, but these weapons here just seemed very empty and disappointing. Rather than having certain Weapon Abilities for particular uses, you just hit [Q] and wait for the enemy to die.
Would be nice to see Weapons become more of a combat feature outside of the generic passives that each "type" gets.
:- It was a little disappointing to be out in the wilds, see a guy getting beat on by a mob and I decide to heal them up and help them out, and then to get nothing for helping them.
I'm perfectly fine with them getting better loot for having the majority of the damage dealt, but maybe having lesser loot tables for everybody else would be a useful option. Say, top 10% get the best loot table, the middle 80% get a lesser loot table, and the bottom 10% get nothing? I dunno, you guys will likely think of something more practical than I could.
:- Picking up loot could be tough sometimes. Had to get the exact pixel right in order to access the loot drop. And then you had to do that for each one there. Would be nice to have some sort of small-scale area-loot option so you're not left running between all the different piles. Might also cause some of that added tension you're looking for from others trying to do the same, who knows.
:- I know I only have the very basic starter mount, but it seemed a little sad. The 'Dash' ability seems like a good one, but it lasts for a ridiculously short amount of time so as to be basically pointless.
And having to call it from the inventory and deactivate it from the inventory was a bit of a chore. Would be better as a toggle tied to a hot-key.
:- I liked how the creatures spawned, and how they moved. There were enough of them to feel like they belonged in the world, and it felt like a 'lived-in' world. I liked that there were clear colour-indicators to tell you which affect your XP or are more difficult, etc.
:- I picked a Bard for my archetype. The skills seem ok so far, but appear designed mainly around group play. There didn't seem to be much in the way of actual offensive output, and the majority of the time it was the simple Auto-Attacks that did most of the killing. Maybe a few more options for damage? Although, that could easily be accomplished by expanding the weapons further, as above.
:- It seemed odd in the Loading Screen that every time I logged in, you kept putting me back to a different server. Would be nice for it to remember which I was in last time, or to at least default to whichever one I have the most characters in.
:- The main problem I had with the game was from the level-restrictions put on Party Groups. Since I'd had to wait for my new PC, by the time I got in-game this Friday, all my friends were now 15 levels higher than me and so couldn't group with me due to the limitations put in place. This meant I just trundled around for a bit trying to level up, and when Saturday came, I didn't even bother logging in at all cos the Friday had been that disappointing. I came in again on the Sunday, but was a little half-assed about it.
Just feels that in such a group-oriented game, putting such limits on grouping just doesn't feel like it tracks.
All in all, it's looking very promising, and I look forward to keep trying it out. Keep up the good work
CHARACTER CREATION AND SPAWNING IN
QUESTING
COMBAT
I Push for skill based fluid combat, mechanic counterplay, and player+build individuality.
Theorycrafter, Engineer, Car guy. Learning UE5
Two major things I'm not a huge fan of:
1) Not getting XP for assisting in killing mobs if I'm not the first one to hit it. I think this could be improved upon, even if only you get a much smaller percentage. Anything is better than nothing.
2) Having to rely on the mayor and citizens in order to achieve craftsman upgrade, at least in the beginning.
This might make much more sense for later levels, but I don't think it should in the beginning. I spent most of this past weekend grinding my mining to Level 10 because I was so eager to finally upgrade it to Apprentice. Hit Level 10, did my upgrade, and was hit with a massive amount of disappointment when I learned despite my efforts, I was not able to finally start mining Apprentice level ore because it requires an Apprentice level pickaxe, which I then learned can ONLY be received AFTER a mayor has upgraded the town's smithing.
This means not only do we have to rely on the mayor to make that specific building upgrade choice, but even if they do, we then also have to hope that the citizens will partake in fulfilling the resource reqs to make it happen.
The idea sounds great for later gameplay, but it shouldn't be a hinderance right at the beginning stages of the game.
All that being said, I'm blown away at how great everything else is so far, especially considering this is only Alpha. Can't believe that means it's only going to get better from here! The 3+ year wait has been so worth it! Keep up the great work team!
Currently PVP is the last resort, everyone is already using loopholes kiting mobs on a group, herds of mounts being drop on purple players to get them to go red. Underhand tactics are becoming the problem and the whole rock vs paper vs scissors style goes out the window when you cannot use your kit to fight a person.
I do not have the answer to all these issues the devs based a lot of the systems on older mmos ex archeage the loss of gear is turning a lot of people off to pvp and bringing fear not because of repercussions but rat tactics. Example people go to defend a caravan they get the annoucement you kill someone your good part of the event. Now you loot their corpse your flag purple and here comes someone low lvl/or they simple drop a mount while you are dpsing another player or caravan and now your corrupt. Person had no intentions on ganking or actual grieving just playing the system.