Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
I am really enjoying myself during the testing phase.
I wanted to know if anyone else considers the Time to Kill too fast in the various fights.
It currently makes little sense to me.
I can easily kill with 2, maximum 3 skills, an opponent with similar gear to mine, and at the same level.
This takes a lot away from the responsiveness and enjoyment of being able to engage in the various combats.
It gets worse when the difference in quality level gear changes. There you really risk being killed with one skill or basic attack combo.
From my point of view I would like the differences between the various qualities to be with very small increment so that less quality gear could have a minimum chance against more solid gear.
Currently I cannot consider it “fun.”
The damage in PVP should be at least halved, but I would like to have in general a better chance to play it out in combat without ending it all with 2/3 skills.
Hi Guys, have fun
CLICCA QUI PER UNIRTI ALL'ORDINE
I saw the stream before and doubting to get it before the alpha even began, Piratesoftware explained to me what the key means fully and i was sold.
Once i was done downloading i started making a few characters so i cloud look at the skills trees and see what i liked most, chose mage because it seemd the most cinematic of all classes( as it should).
I love the way the game look and combat feels it had its server hickups but was fine overall.
was a bit at a loss for the crafting side of things but was just mostly trail and error, i like the bag system whit this at the start.
tried to join a guild told me to go to miraleth at level 5 got around 40000k red exp before i got there then they said level on your own before you join us, i deleted that character and started over.
grinded till level 10 joined some ohter guys, firemage is cool but you NEED to have frost spells ohterwise you cannot kill anything worthwhile wich made me sad because i like t be full fire wizard.
at this point in that i started to groep up for cruch and highwaymen afterwards once i got a few levels.
this is when i met Heiler and his gang of goonies. They whent trough the curch real fast and pulled all the mobs into us. killed us had his goonies loot our bodies, and avoided the corruptoin system. once we all revived walked over to demand payment from us ohterwise we cant be there. we refused and he kept pulling mobs into us. need less to say we left complained in global but nothing happend.
This happend to me over 10 times now.
i really enjoyed this open week of gameplay, but i feel like i need to swap servers to fully experiance the game.
And whit the wipe coming the 20th this feel ruined until then.
Devs Keep up te good work i like everything imseeing and thanks for letting us experiance this Alpha. even after the rotten eggs
Good luck all
hope to see you in the ashes of the creation!
This is essentially exactly how i feel i think it has gone great so far and actually much better then i had expected considering the limited systems in-game at this time, and the complaints that are being heard most will be alleviated with the upcoming systems/updates in phase 2. Keep up the good work and communication!
To this point it has been very enjoyable. Thanks to the social teams for keeping us updated, from senior management for keeping the transparency alive, and all of the teams to make this happen. This model needs to be adopted by all software houses for a new agile approach to develop a piece of software. This just goes to show the down side to a hidden deployment where end users get no input to the game so other companies need to adopt the same method that Steven has enforced.
Anyway this is my version of the Game so far including playing the game, professions, functions in the game and Linux.
1) General gameplay : Notwithstanding any other MMO's, I have enjoyed every aspect of the game so far. The focus on trying not to die because you will loose your loot. The mobs which case you and kill your horse, the ability of attacking a high mob without being dodged and parried all of the time is great. They are nice aspects to the game and the combat feels fluid. There are a few niggles which I will discuss at the end. I know this is an Alpha and its a good one so far.
1a) Particle effects. These are very good so far and I like the animations. The effects on some of the spells and the "swipe" animations are great.
1b) Volumetric lighting and environment design. The team are doing great work here at keeping the graphics appealing and realistic, immersive and beautiful to look at.
2) Professions: There are a lot of professions, and I understand the need for these. Its nice to try everything and focus on what you want. This is a good aspect to the game. Crafting times are OK, but crafting items at numbers not on the menu - for example 4 items or 17 items means making regular trip backs to the crafting station to make up the remaining items. So I was wondering (sorry if this has already been discussed) but are there any plans to change from a previously populated table to an incremental number range to specify the amount of items for that instance you would like to craft. One thing I do like is the ability to move from one station to another while items are being crafted. One more thing which I think would be nice would be for mobs to drop crafting items like cotton, linen, flax, copper, tin or anything that can be gathered for starter professions.
3) Chat interface is OK. but it could be a bit better. For a first revision its pretty good. The issues for me at the moment are: Inability to click and whisper, sometimes typing stops if you are moving, I dont know if this is the case but is there a /command menu you can have on there, or the ability to invite a chat conference to 2 or more people ?
4) Occasional irregular model issues: For example, cloaks hanging in the air. A Grem is flying in the air and stuck. Some mobs are stuck on scenery or quickly teleport to locations and go out of site. Wolves run through scenery and disappear and then reappear. Grems will attack you from outside of your range, but they are still hitting you even though you are nowhere near them. This only happens on occasion but generally everything is working well.
5) Gathering works well. I like that certain items take up more space and it forces you to rethink how you gather items. Sometimes I will see 2 node spawns at the same place and it makes it difficult to focus on the one you want to gather. Apart from that I like the node spawning for gathering items and it works very well.
6) Combat and cleaving. Its a nice addition if you are attacking a mobs and they are stood together it will hit 2 mobs at the same time. I have noticed that there are a few players that exploit this. For example if you are standing in an area where there are 1, 2 and 3 star mobs, but you are attacking a 0 star mob, some players will take a 3 star, run straight towards you stay there until you tag it because of the multi target attack and they will then run off so you end up dying. These players keep doing this, you collect your items, do the same thing again, the player does the same thing again especially if you are in a group. I don't know if there is a "report for unethical playstyle" or something but when you have limited time to play because you have to clean, cook, do the shopping, paint the house, do the garden, see family and friends then the few hours on a weekend I spend playing on the game are trashed due to some silly person thinking its funny tagging everything and forcing you to die.
7) Linux: I know this is a windows game and I know there are going to be "just install windows to play it" but first of all I have 4 SSDs, each with an OS and I have quad booted them. Windows 11, Arch Linux, Kali and Nobara Linux. The game works great cross platform, but for an OS such as Kali and Ubuntu due to the kernel versions and microcode for the CPU's then Nobara is the best linux distro IMO for playing the game. The FPS is on par with Windows and there are some tweaks you can turn on/off to maximise performance. I played for 2 hours on Sunday without a crash on Linux which is looking good. I know there is no plan to support linux native, but because I have to do a lot of work on linux its nice to have the game on there for a quick break.
Finally I would like to thank the team for still continuing to keep up the good work on this and spending the time to make this a great game. Although there are a few toxic players which I have had to deal with I feel the community by large is a good place to be and have been very helpful.
Overall I think my impression of alpha two was that I had a lot of fun but wanted more clarity on economic systems, quality of life combat changes .
For economic systems Id like to see clear designations on previews in crafting windows if a product is tradeable. It may be an phase 1 anomaly but i lost a ton of motivation in pursuing alchemy and tinkering because after working hard to acquire rare materials and craft a high-quality survey pylon i realized that it wasn't tradeable. i also poured effort into making higher quality salves only to realize they don't increase in quality. both of these products are for sale at common vendors at common rarity for a fraction of the cost of crafting and a massive margin in time gained. this left me feeling like I had simply chosen the wrong trade skill for phase 1. Maybe more clarity in the crafting window about what material has the largest impact on rarity would be helpful as well. I wasted several rubies I was very excited to have only for no meaningful results.
in combat there were several aspects of targeting that seemed opaque. At a distance a clump of mobs and party members becomes almost impossible to parse. facing, health, bars and debuffs all becoming incredibly cluttered. I don't think any of these indicators needs to change but rather my dropping of target when applying a field effect like root should change. If I'm targeting a creature either the root should originate at the target or by holding the skill i should be able to control placement more precisely. every time i dropped target to root I felt my effectiveness take a hit as i had to navigate the party window, to the tank, then to tanks target to get back on party target. this brings up another point of quality of life in combat, let me target my targets target. I feel like this is such a powerful tool that I can't tell if its been omitted for balance or not but I feel pretty curtailed with out it. otherwise holy hell what a fun time combat is. messing with different rotations, respecing for new situations, trying to feed into other party members statuses is all so much fun. I do wish i could see a few key status words that are important to me. For instance as a ranger, knowing when something is bleeding, shocked, or hemorrhaging is so crucial .but i have to parse the buff bar to read those. maybe if i could set priority of what buffs /debuffs i see first on the buff bar. or if i saw other party members relevant imposed statuses that would help too.
In general I have a list of other things ive noted in my play time:
- the mount dash skill being a biped sprinting for its image is unintuitive.
- Guild window having no clear visual language for online/offline makes interpreting who is around cumbersome and visually draining.
- The map UI element for the ember springs does a disservice to how cool the actual ember springs look and also makes it hard to connect the two as one POI
- the Map Partymember ui is impossible to spot.
Loved so much of my time. especially the social element. i already have a literal physical friends list and black list. I'm so excited to be exploring and adventuring. thanks for all the hard work on making a great world!
Thats all i have for now. thanks so much and goodluck!
I have really been enjoying the Bard. I think it play much like a Bard should. However I want to bring up that the choice of instrument does very little to how the Bard plays. Many of it's skill still use other instruments regardless. I would like to have my Bard play the instrument of choice all the time. Also I would like to see instruments being an equipable item ingame.
I really enjoy the crafting system. It's very complex and extensive which is amazing. I would like to talk about the experience gain or lack or it. Currently the quickest way to level is by killing mobs. Crafting takes so much time and in no way can level a person. I urge you to make leveling by crafting not only possible but match the speed at which we could level through combat. Also, where is the copper! It's going to be the game's running gag! How about alternate recipes that let you level your metalworking without copper or zinc. Just a thought.
I am curious on how freeholds will be acquired. As there are limited number of them on a node, I would imagine them being almost prestigious as being the Mayor.
I can't wait to see the ocean and be able to build ships. Also, what are the big advantages of being a citizen of a node? Is this something that will be expanded upon in the future?
The game is looking amazing! Keep up the good work team!
1) Weekend one was rough due to server issues and then the DDos attack. I submitted my logs for being caught in a zone wall etc. I was not sure what to expect come week 2 but I was impressed with your fixing of a lot of server issues and getting the DDos attacks under control. I honestly have been impressed the entire testing phase at how good the game is and how fast you're able to fix issues that emerge.
2) Monster Tethering. I have no issues with long tethers in fact I sort of like them for a couple of reasons. A) I find it more realistic that the monster is going to chase you down and kill you if it can and not give up after 2 seconds.
3) Monster Difficulty. initially the monsters felt difficult probably because it had been a long time since I had played a game where you could not just blow though any mob without thinking about it. However, as i got use to the game and how it worked, the monsters were no longer challenging. When duoing with my wife, she is a Tank and I am a Cleric, we are able to take two 3 star elites at the same time roughly around our level depending on the type of creature. This to me does not feel right. We should not be able to handle one 3 star elites imo. Let alone not be challenged or in real danger of dying. When in groups often they are pulling four to five plus 3 star elites and while the spike damage can cause someone to die this feels out of whack to me. I know you are trying to balance the game and have to mix the from the old school type of mmo's like EQ and more modern versions like ESO. I still feel like EQ had the best PvE combat as far as difficulty, often you had to kill monsters that were lower then yourself because they would kill you otherwise and you had to be smart in every fight or you could wipe. I feel like the balance should be something like this. A set duo like myself and my wife should be able to kill 1 star elites maybe a few 2 star but not a 3 star. a full group should manage to kill one to two 3 star elites but not more at the same time. Why is this important? first off I don't even bother looking at normal mobs as worth killing anymore. I don't even look at 1 star elites seriously as worth the exp to kill them. This narrows the world and removes lots of places you could be killing or fighting. It also means that dungeons and other places you want players to fight have to filled with 3 star elites and what happens in the long term with power creep, will we be pulling ten 3star elites because we can?
4) Glint. I love the fact you put glint into the game. It fixes one of my biggest immersion issues with mmo's why the heck would a bear or a undead wolf be caring around money? Thank you for making your world make sense in this way. 5 Stars!
5) Exp Debt, I am glad it is in the game. I am one of those people who think dying is good for a player because it teaches them to get better and be smarter, however when there is no penalty for dying it teaches the players nothing. I do think that the exp debt is a bit low currently and it only takes killing a few monsters to fix the debt for one death. I do think that you have a small issue building however with the debt, Tanks die more often than any other class it seems when they are in a group. I could be wrong your statistics will tell you if I am right, therefore they seem to fall behind a bit as everyone is leveling. I think it would be worth looking at and possibly giving them a different amount of debt to fix this issue if it really is an issue and not my limited view of the game as a whole. Also thank you for taking away the Exp debt in the caravan system this has made that game loop much more fun and enjoyable for everyone.
6) Corruption, I love PvP I started playing mmo's with UO and after EQ I played a lot of DAOC. Right now as you have stated the Corruption punishment for murder is higher then you have planned. It does need to be lowered mostly for the reason that you have no way to punish another player for doing something shitty to you in the moment without risk of dropping multiple pieces of your gear. For example there is no punishment in the game system for someone training you or your group. The only punishment is the ones the players make for themselves but you cant just kill the offending person currently making it more difficult to stop players from doing things you cant fight back against in the moment. All of this said, I don't want this to become a gank box with lots of murderers running around just killing folks. I am not sure what the solution here is but hopefully you will find the balance in the game and during testing.
7) Reasons to PvP. When you have something in the world at stake like a guild/node or caravan this can give a good reason to PvP even forcing other groups or people out of a good exp spot could be worth doing. However I would love to see another incentive for people to PvP adding something like realm points similar to what DAOC had where you got added abilities for participating in PvP would increase the numbers of people wanting to partake in the various PvP game loops. it would also add more diversity to builds and give people more agency with their characters never a bad thing.
8) Leveling speed. Currently the leveling is to fast for the length of phase 2. Some people have multiple level 25's at this point and it has only been a little over a month of time and since phase 1 started and that was limited to weekends. given 5 months of game time with 5 days a week I worry the player population will fall since they have nothing to do having been level 25 since dec 23rd of course not everyone has that time or will be 25 that fast but by the end of January everyone will be 25. I know the final level on release is 50 and i am not saying to let us level further since at 25 is where we pick our class augment. Perhaps you can increase the amount of exp greatly so that maybe everyone would be level 25 by March to extend the experience.
9) Starting areas. At this point in testing these areas have become mostly deserted. They are slightly populated by people leveling alts or people moving from 1 server to another. The numbers of goblins around Lion hold is truly impressive. A possible fix for this would be to increase the levels of the goblins and other creatures slowly as the players leave the area, always leaving enough low level critters for new people to kill. But other spots that were once low level become much higher level letting people return to these areas and keep the world feeling populated.
10) The biggest issue that has arisen of late in the game is the power of the Legendary weapons. Some people want the power jump to be much lower between tiers of gear. I don't know what your going for in this area as Devs. However, I don't see the power of these weapons as the real problem. What you have is a couple of problems that are intertwined. A) The ability to get these weapons is to easy, when a large guild funnels all the materials to having these weapons made it does not take long to break the system of rarity. Thus the drop rates of Legendary materials should be adjusted downward by quite a bit. Per individual the drop rate right now might look okay on your data but when you start combining groups of people it changes the math.
11) Caravans. I love the idea and game system around the caravans, however there are a few problems to work out. 1) They are not attacked often enough thus making most caravan runs perfectly safe and the monitory reward for even the shortest trip is incredible. This has a negative effect on the economy. Perhaps adding another clear bonus to the attackers would help increase the rate of attacks... 2) Many People run lots of caravans all day long making a ton of money very quickly. They also run them often at off times to decrease the risk of attack. Adding a cool down time like 36 hours before being able to run another caravan would fix these issues by reducing the number of caravans. Making the hours cool down an odd number instead of 24 makes it to where people will have to vary the times of their caravans or wait even longer to launch another one. 3) When Caravans were first introduced it was a crazy mess on the screen when you were no where near a caravan. You quickly fixed this but have over corrected imo. Now you have to be almost touching the caravan to declare if you're an attacker or defender. A balance of around 1.5 times a bow shot distance from the caravan would be sufficient i think for everyone involved. This way your not instant attacked when you flag as an attacker and the defenders have a few moments to see you coming to attack. 4) Add a name to each caravan, if you don't want people to know the guild or the transporters name let the driver when they launch the Caravan name the Caravan that way when there are multiple caravans on the road in the same area you can identify what caravan your attacking or defending and can inform your guild mates or friends.
12) Guild wars. I love the idea of guild wars and took part in one. Sadly the number of hours for a guild war are very short there needs to be a way to make these last much longer for everyone in a guild to be involved in some way. People live all across the globe and limiting the fighting to 2 hours restricts the numbers of people who can participate. Since we won the war I have no idea if there is a punishment for losing, if there is not one there should be. Since a war is used to make another group of people sorry for what they have done or to force them to do something.
Things I have heard that I am hoping are not true.. 1) That the family system will include some sort of teleport, this could be abused to move large numbers of people across the world removing the entire point of slow travel. 2) That wearing full Legendary crafting gear makes it to where blue materials will make the crafter forge a Legendary item. If this is true then everyone will be in Legendary gear or unable to compete.
Hopes for the future. I am hoping that the size of the world is still planning to be as large as has been talked about in the past making this testing area roughly only 1/14th of the total land area. I enjoy exploring and seeing new places. I hope that each zone like the Riverlands will have some unique items that other zones will need to build things and thus foster a needed trade element with caravans other than just moving made up items to make personal money. I am looking forward to more nodes being added and seeing areas compete more instead of collaborating so all the service buildings are available. I am very excited about the class system I really hope that the options you pick there can drastically alter your character and make everyone much more unique.
Last thoughts. This has been a great experience and thank you again for working on such a cool game. Even with all the bugs and issues it has been wonderful. I want to say stay strong and keep working on your vision of the game, so far that vision has been working and don't succumb to the pressure of folks who don't like PvP or want fast travel or easier monsters or any other desire that ruins the vision of a more difficult and more social mmo. Thank you for reading all this and know that I appreciate all the work intrepid has done so far. Keep up the great work!
PS. Thank you Bill Trost for working on one of the best MMO's I have ever played. EQ was an amazing experience.
So, I've been worried about the current state of PvP within the game where being one-sidedly attacked is an option.
There always will be people who would like to attack non-conscential person(s).
There always will be people who would find such behavior undesirable when targeted themselves.
I crave a middle ground.
I do not want to denounce the current system, but I believe that there should be more on top of it, an additional layer. Both giving the player an in-game way to define: what action from the offender would cross the line and justify the one-sided kill; while at the same time, protect the innocent party, which did nothing to offend the killer.
I hope that every decision made by the developer in PvP field would have as little ways to exploit as possible and therefore lower the stress on everyone as consequence.
I would like to offer an idea of accumulating in-gameGrievance as a some sort of justification actually back person up into one-sidedly attacking other, while complete lack of Grievance when one-sidedly attacking should be detrimental.
I believe that PvP-Flag alone or a corruption alone sometimes not enough to either incite or justify assaulting a person and, therefore, can not be counted as Grievance.
What can be counted as Grievance then? That would depend from person-to person and from group to group. One would count having a monster or a resource(corpse), that you got your sights on, being claimed by another as a Grievance. Attacking a person within a religious place? - A Grievance, I say! Being rude to your friend? - a Grievance! A wanted poster for a person you never met? - A Grievance against the unlucky one!
A Grievance should be carried without a time limit until paid in blood or forgiven, and not tied to PvP-flag.
Settling a Grievance should not prevent triggering Grievances in return.
I hope that the player should have either wide options to or freely able to choose Grievances which can be justified.
I hope that the player should know if he provoked a Grievance and whenever he does.
I hope that it would be possible to screw-up your arch-enemy(is) once-sidedly without major repressions from the game system and uninvolved parties afterward.
I hope that a fresh player who did not even accumulated any Grievances can not be non-conscentialy attacked by any one, thus ruining his experience. But once he manage to provoke a Grievance, he'll know why.
P.S. No system is perfect, and there are always ways of improvement. Please offer some insights, experiences and constructive criticism. Let our collective wisdom be seen by developers and be judged.
Upd1: Ponder the levels of Grievances. Example: "A" triggered a Grievance against "B". "B" can not assault "A" because Grievance total amount is less than X.
Upd2: Ponder the sources of Grievance. Example:
1) Government of a Node made a decision, that doing SOMETHING within Node territory triggers a point Grievance against chosen_node_membership_level players.
2) Guild "A" designated that they don't like guild "B" and therefore every member of guild "B" gets an automatic point of Grievance.
3) Party Leadership don't like SOMEONE on sight and therefore able to assign up to 1 point of Grievance to target against a target for their party members.
4) Religion designate that doing SOMETHING is wrong and therefore would trigger a point of Grievance against members of that Religion
Upd3: Ponder a counter-play against Grievance. Example:
1) Player "A" has good reputation and therefore has a point of Grace as protection before a point of grievance can be assigned to him.
2) A guild or a party designate a player "A" as their spokesperson(face) and therefore has a point of Grace as protection before a point of grievance can be assigned to him. Assaulting such person might trigger an additional point of grievance.
3) Player "C" is new around here and therefore have a number of points of Grace protecting him against Grievances, but he is always aware when he triggers something against someone.
4) Player "D" dislike fighting and did not participate in any PvP activity and did not die for some days. Has a number of Grace points proportional to days without PvP/dying