Greetings, glorious testers!
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
The other matter that I'm struggling with is quests and objective markers. I understand that they are all a work in progress, but it really is annoying and immersion breaking for me to have to look up where I turn things in. Also finding party members on the map is really annoying because the markers don't show up all the time. For someone like me who is directional challenged, this gets really frustrating.
The game is otherwise fun and I can't wait for the server lag and other bugs are fixed to see even more potential.
Keep up the awesome work!!!
Before anyone mentions the karma penalties like gear drops, the stat penalties, etc etc, ask yourself why is that even a thing? In it's current state, this is neither a PvP game or a Pve game. It's more of a PvE game pretending to be a PvP game. Pick one or redo the whole idea because this aint it. Which leads me to the idea of how to save this game before it even launches...
You see, PvP games NEED PvE players. PvE players keep the game economy going and as messed up as it sounds, you need sheep (PvE) to keep the wolves (PvP) happy. If there's too much pressure on PvE players, they leave. This is how games die. No more economy and eventually PvP players have to start getting their own resources which leads them to become the new sheep which others feed on. Rinse and repeat until no one is left.
What I propose is a compromise. Set some nodes up to be full flag PvP zones with no penalty. The hook is these nodes offer HUGE buffs for those controlling them. However, make these nodes easy to take and hard to defend. Why? It creates dynamic gameplay where if you want to keep it, you have to devote players to defending it. This would then create an area with a lot of PvP activity naturally occurring as they'll always be someone wanting to take it and another group with people dedicated to defending it, all day, every day. Toss in a ramping buff so the longer its held the stronger the buff gets. Maybe even PvP currency for guild cosmetics and other fluff via vendors only available at these nodes. Now you've got an area people want to hold.
As for the rest of the world, continue with the current Karma and Blight penalty, maybe even more severe than it currently is. Then make it so that the node we mentioned before as being a contestable PvP area, requires resources gathered out in the more PvE oriented world. Maybe it consumes trees to keep walls up. Maybe you need a constant supply of various stones and/or ore. See what I'm saying? Give PvE a role to play and make them valuable to PvP players.
The reason for these two things is to give PvP players something to do other than troll PvE players while also assigning value to PvE players keeping their guild's node going. Now they're just as valuable to the guild as PvP players while also creating an environment that those who do PvP would have reason to also protect PvE players from players that are toxic and try to grief them.
Just wanted to add my 5 cents and general overview on the alpha:
- - - Leveling - - -
With current content available to the players - grinding is the only suitable option for leveling. Doing any sort of Artisan activity feels just like a side-kick for now. And for this one - I felt very lost. I understand that there's no "main quest" line, that can guide you around the world, but unless you've played during Alpha 1 - it's completely random on where you can farm. Ideally, unless we have some quest-based navigation, it would be cool to have some markers or highlighted areas with suggested levels (this might not sound too "hardcore", but would drastically simplify navigation for a newer audience)
- - - Gearing - - -
As I've mentioned above - artisan stuff is currently more of a sidekick and primarily gear drops from mobs and is purchased from vendors. The drop rates are extremely confusing and not obvious (i.e. some mobs drops equipment pretty consistently, while others only drop glint). Therefore it's not completely clear how and when you should start gearing up to not go empty-handed into higher level areas.
As a temporary solution - would be cool to sell entire set of equipment at vendors, not only pieces of it (obviously of common quality only) and somehow indicate what are the potential farm areas for set pieces of better quality. Maybe share a readable format of Loot Table that is currently used?
- - - Socializing - - -
That is very frustrating that the game that is heavily reliable on social communication doesn't come with basic "Friends" system. So once you meet a nice guy in your party - you either have to get his discord/whatsapp, or you lose him forever. IMO - that should be considered a "minimum requirement" for any MMO game and should be added ASAP.
- - - Networking - - -
Let's leave aside "spike periods" (i.e. first weekend, DDOS attacks & servers start/restart) - the game feels pretty laggy on networking end. I am playing with my wife (so I can see what is happening on her screen) and there're a lot of minor desyncs, random movements and etc. This is not *that* critical in grinding PVE, since you can kinda neutralize those aspects by proper positioning, but this will crucial during PVP & boss fights. I am not sure whether it was due to all the network issues, highlighted in the channels or just poor implementation, but definetely a stuff to look into.
- - - Tanking experience - - -
I was primarily playing a Tank character and I am only speaking for myself there. Tanking did not feel very impactful. Taunt skill is not instant, therefore even after casting it - you have to chase the mob to get it off your DPS/healer, AOE defense abilities are too small, especially considering mentioned de-syncs and I did not find any source of at least minor self-healing, which implies some complications on solo activities. On the positive side - I've enjoyed the movement with all the grapples, dashes, blinks and the visual side of present skills
- - - Partying - - -
I like the idea of 8-man parties, this brings a lot of flexibility to compositions and enables content for more people at a time. But would be cool to have a couple of QOL adjustments:
- To be able to better see people on world map. Currently when you add them to party - it's very hard to understand where they are and how long you should wait for them
- To have a clear understanding of mob-tagging, i.e. when multiple parties farm in nearby spots - sometimes it's just impossible to understand which party will get the EXP/loot
Overall - pretty nice experience so far and I expect great heights for this game in the future
When the actual content comes in the results will determine whether or not AoC will be a ok MMORPG or a great one.
Atm its basically a combat grind archetype test. And that overall is something I won't play for long term.
The XP debt also stops players from trying out new things or trying to learn through failure. I'd disable it for mostly and only give it on corruption death. Also rested XP would be nice.
The world feels dangerous! I loved having to actually fight mobs out in the world, that don't just get instantly one-shotted by yours truely. I pull two enemies, or, as it often turned out, I kite into a group of enemies.. Well, I'm dead. Imagine that! I've severely missed this feeling from other MMOs.
Socialising and grouping up. The feeling of a dangerous world also incentivised me to group up, something I actively avoid in other MMOs because people tend to be quite toxic these days, but we worked together to get through things, despite mistakes happening, met some cool people along the way.
World exploration. Despite only having a portion of the map that we will eventually end up with, its vast. The lack of fast travel makes me run into people I've played with earlier as I traverse the world, its nice seeing familiar faces, I've missed this too! It also lead me to explore, an aspect of MMOs that is very important to me and I haven't felt this compelled to explore in a long time. I ended up going to every corner of the map in this test, just for the sake of exploration.
Enemies. I like how different each enemy feel. The fact that they have their own types of attacks and special abilities makes you have to adapt. It helps keep the combat fresh whenever you face a new foe. Enemy variation is very important, and I think we're on a good track here to make every enemy feel unique.
The pace of leveling. I enjoy the slower pace of leveling. I'm not a big fan of the leveling experience being tossed aside and seen as a hindrance to get to "the real game" that is endgame. Don't get me wrong, endgame is important, but the journey to get there should be as well! I know for a fact this will make it feel so rewarding reaching max level, at least to me.
Gearing. Gearing was very difficult (I assume this is due to us not having any real quest rewards yet) but I also like the slower pace of gearing, maybe not to this extreme but it makes me feel really good whenever I did get that upgrade. Gear should matter from level 1 and getting an upgrade should be a dopamine hit. I managed to craft a few pieces which ended up being useful.
The class fantasy. I definitely felt like a mage, my abilities had the oompf you'd expect from a magic wielder, and the spell effects look quite cool! I am gonna be very interested to see the skill system expand as the game progresses.
The negatives then,
Professions feel very convoluted. It was very hard to grasp what professions I needed to progress and gather materials from in order to progress crafting in the profession I tried to focus in, tailoring. I think a lot can be done here to be more straight forward without oversimplifying. The crafting times were also really rough and it wasn't clear to me when I crafted something that took like 10 minutes if I could leave the crafting table and come back to it later or not, so I waited, this didn't feel great.
Most gathering professions I understood quite easily, however, hunting made little sense to me in its current iteration. I pet an animal four times and then it dies? I also do not like that the hunting prey and their enemy equivalent look the same just that one you can "hunt" and the other one you cannot, one is harmless, the other one isn't. I would much rather have you kill a normal enemy and then go up to them to process their corpse for the hunting experience.
Loot in group. Having rolled and won an item, you then need to go back and loot this item from the corpse. I'm not sure I am a big fan of that because often you tend to move on while the loot is being distributed, this makes me have to run back alone to loot the item and risk getting killed by respawning enemies. It makes the gameplay a bit less fluid in my opinion.
Dying while in a group. Its very hard to differentiate your own ashes from your party members when you come back to loot them, this lead to scenarios where people accidentally stole from eachother. A clearer indicator of who the ashes belong to would be great.
The character models. I played as an Empyrean, which I understood to be a learned, regal race if you will. Yet, in the character creation I could not for the life of me make my character not look like a goblin. The face, the face looks like a goblin. I'm confident this will get polished eventually but I just had to get it out of my system haha.
Friends list. I might have missed it but I couldn't find a friends list. I'm sure we will get it but sooner rather than later would be nice.
Other than this there are just general alpha issues, such as:
Horse animation freezing, so you just glide.
Flying NPCs.
Flying objects.
Holes in the terrain.
Not being able to put/take things from storage without relogging first.
Abilities going on cooldown despite not going off.
Talents in the skill tree only working every now and then, such as Accelerative Blink for Mage.
As a kickstarter and having been very worried at times whether this project would amount to anything I can now safely say we have something here and I look forward to the future for Ashes of Creation.
- More unique abilities with the monsters and how they interact. They didn't feel that differentiated to me. I want to it feel very different fighting different opponents to keep the game engaging
- Fewer mobs but larger detection radiuses. It's unimmersive having so many creatures, and them not seeing you so close up
- Don't stagger items to level 10. Given how long leveling takes, I don't see why not have items able to spawn at level 6, 7 etc...
- Fix resting! Haha. Made Bard mana aura the most in-demand thing past the first couple levels.
- Maybe show an avatar of the mayor and positions or something so you can get more of a feel for the community
- I'd look at Remnant 2 for modern, exceptionally done 3rd person gameplay. AoC feels a little too zoomed out and not precise
- As everybody says, more XP splitting
- Likewise, don't need to allow neutral player death loot drops. Should flag PvP if not a party member. XP penalty and running from respawn are enough
The node system is promissing and already creates a sense of diplomacy and geopolitcs, with both cheerfull alliances and agressive battles between guilds (even if the server Ive played, who was the fresh one for november 8ers and EU, so maybe the least populated one). The promiss was a mmo half sandbox, half themepark, and of course right now we cant already see the themepark complete, but we can feel it starting to emerge. The villages are nice, even though Id like to be able to enter in more (if not all) building, espacially the church (how can my character pray and mourn her fallen comrades ?)
The combat system is great, and classes are a ton of fun (ive tested fighter, ranger and mage).
I am enthousiast about this project especially because I love old school mmo pace, to me mmos tell us the story of a simple man or woman slowly becoming strong, and have to be long enough to make every accomplishment feel real and meaningfull. This is something you are nailing.
Its also the case for the artisan system : I love its complexity and grindness. The thing I hated the most is about artisanship however, its the interface of crafting workstations : we should be able to make bundle of crafts by any quantitiy we want, and not only by bundle of 1, 5, 10 or 25... The more often, I has 25 of one ingredient but only 23 of the other, and that doesnt make any sense that I cant make 23 crafts, especially since it take long and need less fuel when you are making more at once.
The other things I'd like to see implemented are related to the interaction with the world. Id like to have access to a player log when he's talking in global chat to see who is talking : a big level 20 or a small level 5, what class, etc. I would also LOVE a system to make friendly dual non lethal with other players. This could really turn dicy situations into fun events, sometimes a simple dual can trivialise a whole war (besides its so cool to dual just to test things between 2 archetypes!!!)
Also its great we already have some emotes, but we need way more of them with time, and I believe they should add a text in the chatbox to make players care about them. We need to be able to lie down, laugh, wheep even. When I salute, I like to be able to salute someone specifically, and Id also like to be able to have disrespectfull emotes to some others. Make the characters feel more real and rp compatible.
Last one before I think of 10 more things : for the love of all gods, let us give names to our mounts. They desirve to exist as any other character !
Congratulations on your game ! It has the most potential !
The second issue is that the game’s crafting and processing feels bad. I feel like I’m interacting with a spreadsheet in those menus and the certifications were something I just did not care to look into after realizing that crafting items is just placing a tile into a square and hitting a button. This is probably not a focus right now, but if that’s what it’s going to be then that will be a hard miss for me. I want to explore beautiful landscapes and mine rare ores, and then have a fun way to craft items into weapons.
Didn’t play all that much since the combat was also not to my liking. It too felt old, which I think is the point.
All in all, I even with some polishing this may not be the game for me. I guess I helped pay for others to have fun haha. I’ll come back and check it out later and see if it feels better. I’m playing brighter shores currently, and while simple, it’s quite elegant and fun. It’s the UI that really struck me. Have fun out there gamers.
Combat is pretty good. I'm an action combat type of player and while I have my gripes I like the combat more than I don't. Stringing together abilities and timing them for highest crit chance based on finishers feels good and fun to execute. I however am not a huge fan of how damage is received and I don't expect this to be changed but just my 2 cents. I'm a fan of action rpgs like the dark souls series and currently it doesn't feel like I as a fighter can solo anything at or slightly above my level with out a healer or over gearing. I'm not asking for enemy nerfs. But the combat would benefit greatly from a parry or better blocking system and an improved dodge/stamina recovery. This would allow for skilled players to avoid damage and not need to always rely on healers and tanks. I know this would have major implications on the entirety of the game but it would make the world of difference to me. Perhaps this will be less of an issue as server stability and hit detection improves. Being hit by invisible projectiles and taking damage from none telegraphed attacks, blocking not mitigating much damage combined with the poor regeneration of stamina and mana when a server is overloaded was frustrating.
My biggest complaint at the moment is the inability to take action against players who "steal" items from dead players. If I die and lose 25% of my materials and go into xp debt that's fine. What is not okay is I can't attack a player who's has stolen items in their inventory with out me becoming corrupt. I think this is a MASSIVE oversight. If someone "steals" items from my dead body I should be able to attack and kill them penalty free. Point blank period. An exception can be made for group play where it is now a requirement for teammates to loot eachother to stop players from ratting items and materials.
Lastly, smaller complaint. Mining sucks, no real ryhme or reason to where materials spawn. No mines or veins to take control of or fight over. Would be an interesting gameplay loop as a guild or group to take over a mine and have to keep the mobs at bay while stacking up on materials. Or allowing for open pvp in these types of areas.
Wanted to add my voice in here and share my experience so far.
What are your first impressions of Alpha Two?
I'll be honest, my first impressions were not what I expected them to be. Of course, having been a long time follower and supporter of the project I want nothing more than to see this project succeed. I also knew very well that this was testing, and having been involved in previous testing phases for games I kind of thought I knew what to expect. After a couple hours in game the first weekend, I have to admit I did feel a sense of worry regarding the progress that the team had made with the game up until this point. I kind of thought it was going to be further ahead than what was being shared with us. That said, for what we have now, I am happy with the rate at which Intrepid have been fixing things and addressing issues over the first 3 weekends of Alpha 2.
What general feedback would you like to share with the team?
Don't rush into the next phases just because you have a timeline you've communicated. I really hope we can leave phase 1 of the game with everything performing really smoothly and with the large majority of performance glitches ironed out. For example, lag is a big issue right now, and absolutely kills the desire to do any combat when the servers aren't cooperating. Hopefully that sort of thing is completely gone by the time we enter phase 2.
I also hope enemy behaviour, and pathing can be worked out. Right now, the action part of the combat feels very wonky since I honestly can't predicate what certain enemies are going to do, making it very hard to dodge or block attacks.
Finally, I know this is still early, but since we're talking general feedback, I really hope you guys have plans to flesh out the solo experience in the game. I don't mind grouping up but as a father of two kids, it's really hard sometimes to commit to group play, because I might have to stop at any moment and get up. Things like being a little more independent when out, like being able to sit and recover HP quicker, or play "well enough" by dodging and blocking enough in combat such that there is less downtime would make solo grinding sessions more doable.
Keep up the great work, and I'm excited to keep testing and seeing how the game grows.
My primary feedback (from an old EQ1, WoW vanilla, DaOC player) is that very low level gameplay has a lot of particles and 'glowing' magic things going on. This can be tweaked, but it seems like from level 1-5 everyone is already casting god-like looking spells and abilities. I think this is a negative for visual progression and scaling - remember the first time in WoW or EQ you saw someone with an enchanted sword that glowed? It was a real milestone.
1) I would greatly tone down the early level effects (e.g. mage magic missle, have it just fire two small balls etc, not five large powerful looking missles - do it like Neverwinter Nights etc, it slowly scales up). Fighters should not be weaving around giant big arcs of flame/effect - a very simple animation that still feels good, and later on they become this big-effect enhanced attacks.
2) I would greatly tone down the early level gear appearance - make people look like basic peasants with low detail.
When you hit level 5, then you start to see some minor effects kicking in etc...10... make it so someone really stops and notices 'wow that guy looks powerful, i want to be like him'.
The NPCs could use more titles, letting you know what role they play; Many of them you have to talk to, in order to find out that this or that NPC was the corresponding one for a quest. The quests typically tell you to speak with someone bearing a role, rather than their name.
As good of an idea as it may have sounded on paper NOT having quest directional indicators, it didn't seem very practical, in application.
Overall, great job, team! I can't wait to see what is to come.
1. Login sucks eggs - Having to cloudflare check every single time is a massive, absolutely abhorrent annoyance. I pray this is temporary. It will be a major turn off to players at launch. This alone will Veilguard the game into dust without fail.
2. Realm selection - I think it would be great to have this be the first alert that pops up before creating characters. My logic is that landing in the right country should take precedence.
When I created my character, I didn't realize I was in an EU server, eventually I DC'd, logged in again, and noticed selector button at bottom.
Having auto-detect would be a great solution to this.
Auto-detect “determining location…” prompt
Auto-select region based on IP in background of prompt
Provide realm list for that region
Player clicks to select realm, *player is auto-connected to realm*, THEN dive us into creating our first character and into the game.
We would bypass the character select screen one-time only, during the initial setup phase, like many other games out there. Some flip it too, realm selection, into creation. Either way works.
when logging back in from exiting, returning to a blank screen on a different realm, with no character can be a scary experience.
Might give the impression their character has been deleted or banned without warning. That would also cause unnecessary support requests/angry messages.
Players would prefer the game to load into the last played server, with our character's avatar, so we can hit "play" and go.
Auto-connecting post-realm click removes an extra “select realm” friction click.*
I understand you're not region-locking. No prob, just ensure that the first server we land on is in our country.
FRICTION CLICK MADNESS
Can you say FRICTION CLICKS? Let me help you eradicate those right now:
Currently, we have to:
Click to open the launcher (this is a freebie),
1.Click to login
2. Click a stupid, useless checkbox that everyone on Earth despises.
I tested with and without my VPN, every time I login, I get a pop. Not ok. This issue alone would likely tank the game so fast you'll be eating underwear for dinner while drinking Veilguard Punch.
If this is a timeout-related issue, please make that abundantly clear, or if you’re not going to split from CloudFlop, then please find a way so we only click it once and never again. We don’t want to have the added login lag from the stupid pop either.
Verified accounts and or 2FA accounts, needn’t have to click a CloudFlare human auth! CF sucks. The entire universe wants to send CF into a black hole.
3. Click to get into the game.
Post login, we have to:
1. Click "Change Realm"
2. Click to select desired realm
3. Click "Select Realm"
4. Click Character
5. Click "Play"
8-9 clicks to enter the game. WHAT?! How about not…
A BETTER LOGIN EXPERIENCE
As follows:
1. Click “Login”
2. Never see another Cloudlfare Auth again (or find a way to see/click it once and NEVER again, so there’s no login lag/pops)
3. Autorun un updater
4. Go on and auto log us into the game post update. We already clicked to login, whyyyyy do we need to do it twice?!
This has always annoyed me with a a lot of games. I have a special place in my heart for games that do this simple 3-step process (it’s only 4 because CloudFlop, that’s on y’all)
Post-Login
1. Load into game on last played realm/character
2. Click “Play”
3. Realm selection/delete becomes secondary/irrelevant at this point.
So 8-9 clicks down to an obligatory 2. Or 3 with this CloudFlop ridiculousness, + optional clicks.
Which way do you think is going to make you more money, Intrepid?
GAMEPLAY FEEDBACK
Including the Action Cam targeting and me finding the toggle being Z made me a happy camper!
I was getting flustered and bored with tab, thinking that’s all there was. PHEW!!! My gameplay experience became much better. This hybrid system will work well for me.
I feel like mobs being strong for the sake of teaming up is best saved for events. Lots of us prefer to play solo until the need arises for help. Why aren't you catering to this demographic of players?
So far, I'm not feeling the solo aspect right now. You want us to feel like we're working for levels, at the same time, it takes ages to kill enough to finally level up. Feels like quests don't offer enough XP either.
I feel like this could be better balanced, so it doesn’t feel like a grind, but also doesn’t feel like a chore either. Has to be a happy medium in XP gain between the two. Strike that and progression will be so perfectly balanced, even the Spiffing Brit can’t break it.
No matter what, I can’t get the game to run fullscreen, only windowed FS. That’s no bueno, I don’t like windowed FS at all. Please solve this. All my stuff’s up to date and settings are solid.
If I try to get any res into full, there is a weird lag in mouse tracking. Mouse pointer will be over a button, except the button doesn’t initiate hover animation until a few inches above the button and appears incapable of handling FS as it gets very sluggish on a pretty powerful PC.
The absolute mess of steps in quests is maddening. You’ve GOT to reduce that tenfold. Ain’t nobody got time for 1,479 sublists.
EXTRAS
I hope that spell FX will evolve over the next year to be spectacular in a way that other RPGs aren’t. UE5 has a boatload of potential, push the game to the max. Sparkles, particles, flickers, waves, sonar, etc… Things that can make spells really stand apart from both each other, and other games.
TUTORIAL could be better and more interactive. Think about a majority of RPGs that take you from A-Z. The First Descendent is a solid example, along with Destiny 2, Bloons TD6, Star Ocean, FF, Skyrim, etc. Takes you through, step by step on a quest or mission, into the game.
As a visually impaired man, I am SUPER GREATFUL for the ability to resize everything in the game HUD. This is exactly what I was hoping for. Large text and everything else.
Now if we can get that same treatment on menus, buttons, etc, I’d really be over the moon. Everything is hard to read and I’m forced to 4k vs 1080p, which would solve a lot of that, typically games get larger at lower res. On screen text for “how to” move/melee/etc is soooo small.
Consider the amount of visually impaired individuals in the U.S. and think about the globe, then you’ll realize why ALL on-screen text needs to be easily legible for everyone, plus options to enlarge UI/button/quest/dialogue text.
Music is beautiful. Sound FX are good right now, they can certainly be spiced up, though. Former audio engineer here – so think about using EQ to shape the sound for the intended delivery.
Cut more mids on sounds that deserve much more brightness and shimmer, more bass for large impacts, using tools like LoAir & Submarine to add more depth to say a quaking move from a hammer hit. Impacts you can’t just hear, but feel.
Basically, bring out the special nature of the sound, modulate it with Turnado, bring it to life, don’t throw in sounds everyone has heard from every RPG over a lifetime. Those boring, generic, boomy stock assets or sound libraries.
That’s what I’ve got in my first round of thoughts.
The game is hard to solo, and that’s ok, it’s good incentive to get a group. And where there’s incentive to get a group there is incentive to behave in a way they will get you a group.
I love the pockets of mobs for grinding. The fast respawn time ensures competition can support a couple groups at once but that these pockets are all over means there are many options.
I played as a tank and relative to other games there’s a LOT more movement. This is exciting and dynamic and fun. With that being said, I’m thinking of strict raid mechanics where healers focus is on the tanks and dos responsibility to balance thier damage and staying out of the “shit” - I hope the chaos will remain manageable in big raids for the clerics sake.
As for things I didn’t love, my old eyes beg for bigger font. That’s not the same as UI scaling. I don’t want a bigger chat box, I just want bigger letters in my chat box. I also don’t love the way chat works. Typing a message then realizing you’re in the wrong channel you can’t simply go back and type /party because doing so erases your message. It’s annoying.
It also wasn’t super easy to see other players levels. By design perhaps but the only way was if I have someone as my target and then it’s still an issue of font size.
All said, I loved the pacing. Hard things are hard. Crafting takes time, rewards are tied to risk. No armor until you earn it is a brutal slap in the face of modern MMOs that just give everything away and I’m here for it. Make Epics Epic Again.
I was impressed by the overall quality of the world. Sure, it has lots of bugs but it's an Alpha. Lots of issues still revolving around questing, NPC's bugging out, disappearing, jittering, etc. Performance was pretty good. Have a 4090 on max settings and it was pretty smooth overall. Had a few hitches here and there. Only crashed once. The map is huge, and this is only a small portion of it. WOW. This game will be enormous.
I did love finding my little pocket of the world and grinding. Most folks left me alone and let me have my fun. The time to level felt pretty good. I love a slow grind. Hope the curve gets steeper as I progress down the line. I only made it to level 6 but had a ton of fun doing so.
Crafting needs a lot of love. Felt pretty basic from an implementation perspective. Tool tips would be great eventually. Having to craft one item at a time was brutal. I did like the gathering system. Spread out and random.
From a corruption system perspective, i'd like to echo what someone said above.
Corruption should not go away if you are killed by guild members, alliance members, or friends. We had a guild gank/kill us as we were fighting a boss, which was unexpected and fun, but when we returned to seek out revenge, none of them were corrupt anymore because they had all killed/resurrected each other enough times that the corruption was gone. And to follow up, there should be a timer that prevents corruption from going away from people who were recently friends, guild member, alliance members, etc, to prevent people from unfriending a friend just to help remove corruption.
Keep up the great work Intrepid. You are definitely on the right path.
I feel that overall my only real complaint that doesnt include unfinished systems, is the fact that I was really hoping to be able to level as a noncombatant if I wanted to. The exp for gathering and crafting is very small and it makes this method not viable for actual leveling. I understand the game is geared towards fighting as most MMO's are and that this one in particular is heavy on group play. But I would really like to see the EXP rates increased a significant amount, or to at least scale better so that dedicated crafters dont get left in the dust. We NEED those dedicated crafters so that we can grow nodes, get better gear, and play the game to its fullest. If, as a skiller, I get left behind at say level 30 when everyone else is 50, I wont be able to get materials or recipes for high level content when people start wanting it. Nodes will progress slower in general if everyone has to go grind levels killing things instead of gathering and crafting. I understand that skilling should be slower as it is safer, but please look at increasing the exp as it will make the game more enjoyable for everyone.
Also please fix mining resource node spawns so that we dont have iron sitting there forever before anyone can use it.
Thanks and keep up the great work!
1° one: The way Power leveling works right now
The last changes to it made it TERRIBLE to find groups, you cant play with people 3+ levels than you or you will get like 30-40% less XP, That is disgusting. This game is 100% a group game, to play with other people but if you PUNISH people that hard for trying to play together its terrible for the game. I took like an entire day to find 6 people to farm together in a guild that has 400 members because we couldnt play with other people that are 3+ levels than me.
This system shouldnt exist like the way It is right now, I think killing (the change was to kill it and not nerf it) raid groups (9+ people) is fine, but having ALSO to get people 1-2 levels from you is really hard, It should be changed as soon as possible because this game is not even easy to farm, you took tons of hours or maybe days to farm and having this kind of punishment is terrible. In my party the higher levels was leveling faster than the lower levels, how this should make sense?
TLDR Power leveling nerfs shouldnt make people doesnt want to group up with other people, it should just make people that is 5+ levels harder to carry the lower level. Nerfing the XP for anything lower than 6 levels of difference is absurd and will make player have less interactions with each other (In example I was solo farming instead of grouping up because people wasnt accepting me for being higher levels or I couldnt make a group and call lower levels because they would have a terrible farming).
Here is an example that shows that people will need to choose a range of players with like 2 levels to play with (you can read the comments)
2° Targetting in Action mode
Right now its terrible targetting in action mode, you need to Press Tab to set a target sometimes (you cant just use Soft lock because it most of times just doesnt change targets when you already fighting) and this will make you hit random mobs/players if there is more than 2.
My solution to that: Create a button to Target the enemy that is in the center of your CROSSHAIR. This crosshair have almost 0 utility right now because most of the times that you want to lock a target that is in the middle of your screen using Tab it just doesnt get the right one.
This change that I propose is to have a key binding like Guild Wars 2 and Throne And liberty has, when you Right click while your aim is in an enemy it will lock into this enemy. Since right click is the block in this game so having another button for that is fine but please, bring this feature. Action mode without having a way to select the target that you REALLY want is terrible when there is more than 5 players. The middle of your aim should have more utility with this Keybinding that I'm suggesting.
I can assure to you that a low amount of higher level players are playing using Action mode because of this problem. It should be just fighters and not that much because for fighter when shooting with a bow (most of the times) it is also terrible to aim and pick the right targets.
Thank you for your attention!
Main:
Other:
Meme:
Trees should do big damage when they fall on you.
The level up animation is a bit weak. I once missed that I had leveled up mid combat (maybe thats saying something about the other animations lol)
Also love the size of the Riverlands. Verra is gonna be HUGE. So great.
I've already played more than I thought I would, so overall my experience has been positive. My only major criticisms, though, is how difficult it is to find anything.
Specific NPC's are difficult to find. In Lionhold alone I had to run to every NPC several times, just to get some idea of who was where. How about implementing a system where you can ask the guards in town where a specific vendor, official or some other important NPC is, and then that NPC is marked in the minimap? Would cut down on wasted time running around like a headless chicken.
Also, it's incredibly difficult to find the mobs and such that I must go for to complete quests. Most of the time I just went in a random direction and hoped that I ran into them by chance, but in most cases I never found them, and was tempted to simply abandon rhe quests. That's a shame. Give us some clue where to look for completing quests, please.
Like I said, though, I overall greatly enjoy the game. It's just annoying how much time I used looking for mobs and NPC's rather than engaging with them - especially when I never found them.
As many other have stated, AoC's Alpha has been above and beyond and it should be the new industry standard for an Alpha. There are many other big name AAA title MMOs or otherwise whose full public launches have had more bugs and issues than this Alpha did, which just goes to show that you are confident in what you have, and won't show it until you are.
I would gladly wait 7+ years again if this is the ALPHA for every game.
The Bad
I'm a tank main for as long as I can remember, from EQ to Lotro, Aion, Rift, WoW and everything else in between, I always play a Tank as my first and main character.
Tank here on AoC feels very... uninspiring to say the least. I didn't have too much of a chance to test other classes in the 4 days I did play (Phase 1 Tester here), but of the ones I saw and played, Tank felt undeniably the worst to play.
It didn't have the tankiness, damage or CC to deal with near on level mobs alone or even with the support of groups at times, and it often devolved into kiting in circles and occasionally turning back to hit to ensure you have aggro. Only when I was fighting below level mobs while over geared in greens and blues, could I solo anything without running in fear.
I'm aware that AoC is not designed to be a solo game, but everyone else in my group and my own limited testing with other classes showed that the Tank was the only class in the game without the ability to reliably solo enemies. It could've been my build, or my gear, or my strategy, but it's a pretty consistent point of view that I'm hearing among other testers as well. BUT since every other class in the game can reliably solo to some degree, I would love to see Tank get some buffs, or every other class get nerfed. The latter seems rather lame and a lot harder to pull off.
I'm holding out until I get to see secondary class augments before just abandoning the class entirely, but Tank NEEDS some love.
The Ugly
The Power-leveling Nerf. I wasn't around during the first two or three weekends of testing, but from all accounts I can hear the changes made were far too heavy handed. I agree that you should not be able to take a Lv1 character into a Lv25 zone and kill one mob to instantly boost them up to Lv7 or whatever it was.
But on the flipside, the lower level player taking anywhere from 50-80% XP loss from having a single ally whom was 4 levels higher NO MATTER what you were killing is WAY too much. The thought that players will always be the same level, or within the same two levels is a bit unrealistic. The higher level player ends up leveling before the lower level player, because of the dropped XP rate, therefore the lower level player can never catch up and bridge that gap in levels. IE, two Lv10 players killing one Lv15 mob gives say 4,200~ XP each. Where as a Lv12 player would get 3,800 and a Lv8 player would get 800.
OMG OMG OMG Nerf Shortbow! Even though the numbers for Shortbow and Longbow add up to nearly the same for their combo chain, Shortbow far outperforms the Longbow, and just by using one it was enough to ENTIRELY change what I could solo as a Tank, and I personally didn't enjoy HAVING to using a Shortbow and kite to be able to solo.
Edit: Slight spelling/grammar
Though I would like more done to the crafting systems in the game. Gathering speed stats don't give a clear explanation of what it does and if it even works. I'm not quite the fan of the queue time to possess/craft materials or equipment. The queue for crafting feels like a mobile games.
I love the rarities of materials and how they drastically improve items, when they work as intended. I've found that most items can be crafted with higher varieties of materials and make a better end product but painfully others can't. Id like to see that become more consistent. Additionally oddly vendors purchase items like mana salves at significantly lower prices than the materials used to make it. Same for armor or weapons. This confuses me as one would expect a large reward for a finished product over the materials.
Overall I am excited to get my hands on the game every weekend and mess about with everything in the artisan system. And am optimistic about the future of Ashes of Creation.
For a considerable number of years, I have been complaining to myself that there is no mmo available that has the elements that I find intriguing: a game that has stunning graphics-landscape-world, cool looking characters with exceptional skills, engaging gameplay, a robust combat system, reasonable leveling aspects, a balanced blend of PvE and PvP, no P2W, and an unparalleled world to immerse yourself in. And then... I entered the game for the very first time, as a tester, only to realize 10 minutes later that THIS is what I've been looking and waiting for my whole life!!
Everything seems very nice in the world. I took several screenshots. I have truly missed a game that resembles this. (the child within me desired to weep as I wandered the world). I understand that the game is still far from having its final look, and I know that everything will look epic at the end. (Hoping I'm still around until then to give it a shot!
Keep up the hard work, people are eager for this: a real bad-ass mmo like no other!
Funny... mage shield is pretty much down in 2 hits by PvE and as soon as it is gone I am dead... both PvE and PvP ...
The combat is satisfying (overlooking the lag and issues), the game design of yore lending itself to grouping up is fantastic and the abundance of interconnected systems is a joy to get into.
Every gripe or bug I've encountered I've reported, but some of them Ill bring up here.
1. Give us Macros, or extensive control over abilities. I really want to be able to designate different behaviour per actionbutton. Like having mouseover on my Charge (Blitz) but not other abilities. Being able to bundle several abilities into the same actionbutton but with conditionals (like `stance/form` or `known` (talent) of WoW-fame)
2. Allow us to differentiate between AutoAttacks and Abilities in the coloring of attacks (combat numbers). I am too programmed from years of WoW of having AA being white and abilities being yellow. Please Steven
3. Map markers.. Player indicator and party/raid indicators are atrocious right now. Especially as they don't render on the maxed zoomed out map.
4. MAX CAMERA ZOOM! Please let us increase the max zoom _a lot_ more.
5. Loot left on corpse after winning a roll. I assume this is a temporary fix to combat that exploit, but mentioning it cause if it isn't temporary it needs to be reverted.
6. Lerping of the sun/moon. The light from these is amazing, but then having the jagged jumps and frame-by-frame lighting updates kills the mood
7. Mount-cooldown. After mounting and dismounting in quick succession you have a small cooldown before mounting. Please remove this. I too often find myself hitting the interact key twice cause I am bonkers or thinking I wasn't in range with the first click - and then find myself with this cooldown.
8. LEAVING COMBAT. Please copy WoW here and just have a set timer, being longer after PVP combat. Currently you will be stuck in combat for the durations of many debuffs, and then just stood there not able to eat to combat f.x. a dot ticking.
9. "More dialogue options UX". For NPCs with more dialogue options than able to be presented there needs to be a clear indication of this (like at profession trainers). Too many times have I (and others) not scrolled down to find the NPC actually also trains X profession.
10. Servers not up 24/7.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
THANK YOU STEVEN SHARIF for risking your money and betting on making this so far amazing experience.
Words cannot express how grateful I am for you.
"Oh let's gank these dudes, oh shit wait I have to change my settings real quick ..."
WTF
If a player flags and attacks someone or gets attacked, all players inside his group get flagged (automatically) and marked combatant. That's it.
If a player flags and kills someone, all players get flagged and combatant. Anyone contributing to the kill gets corrupted (active healing, not AOE shields or buffs, active damage).
The way it's currently, it's easy to grief players.
You go to a group that's farming flag yourself and get them low but not kill them, cc them, and they get killed by mobs, and you won't get corrupted.
Also, ppl who are not flagged and get killed by flagged players shouldn't lose exp in my opinion if they die.
Besides, if one flags in a group or raid, all should be flagged, or you shouldn't become corrupted if you flag yourself and accidentally kill one who is not flagged in their group.
Combat/controls:
Sprint is a toggle which isn't working - you can't toggle sprint off, so once you press sprint you always sprint until your stamina is depleted (pressing sprint again does nothing) unless you press ESC.
Switching to action mode very often does not lock the cursor.
Talking to some tanks blocking the way it's now is kinda useless, and they don't bother with it in pve.
Gear:
Set Bonuses are neglectable and don't feel like they have any impact.
Leveling:
Though it's taking a long time compared to other mmo's there's a massive bonus side - you can be sure that once max level ppl actually know their class with higher chance.
Graphics:
Seeing an option for fgen I guess it's going to get implemented in the future - wondering about hdr if that's planned as well.
I’m a new Alpha2 player who intentionally went in blind. I’ve tried to avoid any content posted from last weekend and YT info/guides, as well as community discussion within the Discord. I played all weekend and streamed for 16 hours plus on one of those days. Regarding my MMORPG experience, I played EQ from launch until 2015 and WoW from 2009 until last year, albeit on and off. This weekend, I got one Ranger to Level 8 and another to Level 11. More on that later…
1. Lobby- My first impressions begin with the lobby area. After launching the game, I had some problems with the Server Selection tab. I believe that this tab and the data available when selecting a server should receive attention as soon as possible since it affects your experience in many ways over time. When I got home late Friday to begin testing, I was tired but stoked. This led to a mistake on my part in selecting my server. I was previously misinformed in one of the Discord threads that both of the new Fresh start servers were located in the central U.S. Granted, the region is in parentheses, but I was focused on the (Fresh Start) portion. I also tried to rack and stack servers using the selection arrows that sorted Ping in Ascending or Descending order. It had no noticeable effect, and there was no data available in the ping section, so I simply selected the Fresh Start server that was first in Alphabetical order. Selecting the EU fresh start is, of course, on me, but I feel it would help make it easier to differentiate if you were to take away the parentheses sorting and break the regions down into tabs. For example:
Region-United States
| Server Name | Ping |
| Server Name | Ping |
Region-Europe
| Server Name | Ping |
| Server Name | Ping |
I also sincerely hope that our selected server will remain up when we load in off the launcher each session in the future. I saw a few people who didn’t know this was a thing and who thought their character had been deleted or lost, so they started over from scratch without realizing they just needed to go reselect their server.
3. Gameplay-After loading in, I found the game to be playable and had no issues for quite a while, despite being on an EU server whilst located in the Southern central United States. I was lucky to not encounter many of the bugs others did at first. I had very few issues and reported bugs such as flying mobs and the horse remaining in the air after dismounting. I played for hours that night despite being exhausted and found the game so enjoyable even in its Alpha test state that I couldn’t wait to log in the next day. On Saturday, I logged in and DC’d several times, which eventually led to me discovering my mistake. I started over in the US Fresh Start server. After doing so and continuing the grind, I came up with a list of things I’d like to see changed:
• Mob aggro speed after spawn. It’s currently too fast. You should get about 5 seconds where it won’t aggro unless pulled. Several times, the mob had been killed by another player, and I was unaware of its location; therefore, I would be sitting to eat and have it spawn out of nowhere and instantly attack me, which is no fault of my own if I’m new to that area. This is the only way that I died the first 3-4 times, all the way until Level 9 on my second character.
• Charge animations or teleporting for all mobs that have an effect that “charges”. Wolves and Elementals specifically. They were a nightmare to fight as a Solo Ranger because they would often bug out after their charge, disappearing, then appearing again behind me, but only after hitting me, which didn’t give me enough time to respond if I was kiting a higher-Level mob. Alternatively, they would get Rooted by my skills, but due to the charge, they would be dozens of feet past the Root point, often in my face. This led me to avoid fighting them completely since I couldn’t reliably kite them if they teleported too often. Wolves were usually manageable once I had Vines, but only if they were lower Level. For comparison, at Level 10 I could easily kite and kill the Level 16-17 or higher Minotaur in Joeva, but a Level 13 wolf was a near-death experience almost every time. I could also kite the 2-star elementals on the far lower right side of the map near Titan’s ring Minotaur event if it weren’t for their bugged charge ability. They only killed me after the charges.
• Map scaling. When you have tracked Commissions in an area, you need to zoom in on the map for info, but then when you do and go to click and drag it around after zooming into your area of interest, the commission popup areas are so large that you often can’t help but click the highlighted portion and bring up your Journal. I feel it would help to make them smaller or have an option to toggle the Journal pop up off.
• Joeva DC/crash bug. I lost a LOT of time to this, which stinks. It’s probably the number one thing I’d like to see fixed. Twice, I had been grinding in the area, only to get disconnected. When I logged back in, I was at an area I had not been in for hours. I had all the loot and money from my previous grind session, but not the experience. Losing 70k experience one time, then another 40k later, was a truly terrible experience in a game like this. It was the only time all weekend when I wanted to log off or quit. If there’s a single instance where GM’s should be able to intervene and help a player out, I feel it’s moments like this. I had to grind to Level 9 multiple times because of it. I know I could swap locations, but I was really enjoying Solo grinding Minotaur in that area…
Overall, I’d pay to play the game even in its current state. I feel it has incredible potential, and I had an absolute blast, bugs and all. Thanks for a fun weekend, I’m looking forward to future tests.
Also, thanks a ton for the extra day and the Happy Veterans Day wishes!
-TTV MuthaTuckaa
I got the ol Everquest vibs