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 don't like the mount system. Seems clunky. Just spawn the mount in and out with the character on it. QOL
Combat, seemed ok for the current state, would like to see a priority on auto attacks. Playing a tank and swapping to a bow bar for mob pulling only for my auto attack to be completely cut off when bar swapping felt bad. Animation canceling auto attacks with skills or bar swaps is very ESO i know, But combat (IMO) has a clunky feeling here, i think that would help. Or maybe just a faster cast time on auto attacks. Getting stuck in the auto attack cast combos feels like New World and that combat was garbage, please dont follow that.
Fast travel, I don't really follow the boards or dev discussions. I hope its coming. Would be very painful without it.
Weapon swaps, every so often on tank my weapons would be bugged (no auto attacks). this would happen after a bunch of weapon and camera swaps. Not sure exactly which was causing it.
EXP,
would like to see some sort of tagging system. Fighting for mobs isn't fun.
Game certainly has potential. I didnt have a lot of time so my testing was limited to lvl 5-7 on a few different classes. Looking fwd to testing some more, hopefully having more time next phase. Keep up the good work!
Some specific feedback about weapon skill trees, Finishers, Deadly Finishers, Extended Finishers, Extended Deadly Finishers. I don't think I actually understood them until I started writing this, and I'm still iffy.
First, there is a lack of clarity on what your deadly finisher chance actually is. You can calculate by the skill nodes, Deadly Finisher 55% + Deadly Finisher Chance I-III 30% = 85%, but do the nodes in your inactive weapon tree affect the chance too? So if I take all 6 deadly finisher chance nodes do I get 115%? Or 55% + 55% + 30% + 30% = 170%? It would be nice if your chance was shown in the UI somewhere. I only wonder if the chances stack regardless of your active weapon because "Weapon Training: Critical Damage" applies to your character sheet stats regardless of having that weapon selected.
Second, it's sometimes not clear which attack is actually the deadly finisher. For wand it's pretty clear from the laser beam, and the extended finisher seems to be that the laser beam goes longer, so the deadly and extended finisher are both the 5th(?) attack. But then I switched to a longbow. The finisher is clearly the 3rd attack, I think the deadly finisher is that the 3rd attack hits twice, and for a little while I wondered where my extended finisher was because of how it worked with wand, and I wondered if the double damage was actually the extended. I didn't hit a 4th time because as a mage I was just trying to freeze my target and then shatter, so I was surprised to see the 4th attack act exactly like a finisher, and re-apply frozen, so I guess that's the extended finisher (But wait, if it only as a 25% chance to be deadly, why does it always hit twice? Is that not the deadly part?). It has been a journey to get here, and now I'm left wondering if re-applying frozen with the extended finisher is triggering diminishing returns and if I would be better off not having the extended finisher?
Third, it isn't clear if the "Weapon Proc Duration" nodes affect the mage finisher modifiers, or just the finisher modifiers inside the skill tree. I.e. does one of those nodes increase my freeze duration by 15% when triggered from elemental empowerment?
TL;DR: It's difficult to see how skill tree choices map to reality, and how finishers work is unclear.
Crafting
I think the amount of time it takes to progress is perfectly fine. It shouldn't be a walk in the park to reach skill cap.
Something I do take issue with is the processing amount increments, i.e. 1, 5, 10, 25, etc. My issue comes directly from a place of not having enough storage space. By forcing these increments, I'm forced to either micromanage processing or store leftover materials in storage, which will quickly fill up. For example, I might have 3 common copper, 2 uncommon copper, 2 rare copper, 3 heroic copper, and 3 epic copper. It would be tedious to process this, but it takes up 20 slots in storage, and that's just raw copper. Another solution would be to somehow stack different qualities together, but I don't know how feasible this would be. Ideally I could choose to process all of my material of one type/rarity in one click, even if I had a weird number of it like 3.
Also for storage, I feel that the 20 quantity stack limit is a little harsh. My storage filled up very quick, and I'm not even focused on crafting.
I think it's safe to say that copper, zinc and rubies feel a little scarce. I take issue with the reliance on rubies, as all scribe recipes as well as health potions need them. Since alchemy is the processing skill to scribing, I don't think they should both heavily rely on rubies for end products. In order to make scrolls I've almost completely forsaken health potions.
Adventuring Progression
It's slow as hell, which is fine, for the most part. I'd just like more options than grinding. I know quests aren't in a good place right now, but the balancing on commission rewards could be much better. More Exp and more money/glint. I currently do not touch them because there's more to gain from just grinding.
I'm on the fence with gear progression. I got lucky and got two high magic power weapons as a mage, and I have been destroying level 17 brown bears as a level 13 for 2500+ xp each. At the same time, I still don't have shoulder or bracer armor. It seems like your power level is heavily reliant on your weapons, and I think this is fine, so long as the game provides some catch-up weapons every now and then, perhaps as quest rewards?
I find the inconsistency of mobs dropping loot to be a little frustrating. I think I would prefer if they all dropped something, even if it averaged out to getting the same amount of loot in the end. I.e. Instead of 20 glint from 1 out of 5 minotaurs, have all 5 minotaurs drop 4 glint.
In The Second Place: I don't Usually come to the Forums and I am Not very good at presenting arguments.
Having said this, Here we Go.
Tank Combat : Tank attacks are WAY to slow unless you are CONSTANTLY using skills, Getting up in the Enemy's face usually ends up with the enemy BEHIND the Character. (My Observation) Auto attack is slow, kind of like The character is a Total Newb at sword handling. I've seen Fighters with a Greatsword making 2-3 swings to 1 swing of the Tank's Single hand Longsword. (Not a real problem just an annoyance and it kind of breaks immersion.)
XP Gain: Slow, The Grind is a Turn Off. Questing XP is Non-Existent Constantly "Farming Mobs" is (In my Opinion) a Total turn-off to actually playing the game. (Yes, Yes, "BuT, MuH AlPhA"), The Grind is not limited to ONLY Leveling The Character, But also The Character's Life Skills, Can't Mine because Almost Every Resource out there is of a Higher Level than the current skill, ("Apprentice Certification is Required" for your lowassed mining skill to be able to hit this node with a starter pick.) Also, The NON-existent Resources out there, There are resources when the servers start, but they are few and FAR between and they do not respawn fast enough to help the player level the gathering skills near fast enough to keep up. (Also certain "Zerg" Guilds have 1 to 31 chapters, Oh Sorry.. I to XXXI, worth of Characters of the same Guild name, Just Different Roman Numerals, out hunting these ore-Animal-Wood-Flora-or-Fauna, Harvestables) Makes for a VERY frustrating Experience when one is trying to Harvest enough to craft that next sword or Armor set for the next tier level. Only to find that it has been "Zerged" by the OTHER 300 some odd Harvesters in the same area... And Yes, ALL of them with the same Guild Name...
The Corruption System: Needs to be Buffed, I am PvP Averse. I refuse to Flag, That is Just how it is. Will I PvP? Yes, Eventually, But not right now. And I don't like being forced into it. So Buff the Corruption System until it hurts the E-peen Strokers to even THINK about hitting someone who is just out learning the game. (OR, Better Yet... Add an Opt out for those who Do not want to PvP. Flag Out/Opt out World PvP Anyone?)
Keep in Mind.. These are MY Opinions, and My Impressions of Things. I am Sure there are others who share my opinions but, I speak Only from what I have personally witnessed.
Three Weekends worth of playing and I finally got my Tank to Level 11, Other MMO's I would be Level 30 just playing Casually. I'm not a "Sweatlord" Leveler, Nor do I stress to Hard on "ThuH PeRfEcT BUiLd", I play for my own enjoyment and to help my friends Level as well. As such, My First Impressions are: The Game is Great, just needs a few Tweaks, Guild Sizes need to be Limited to a Less than 500 number, Resources need a shorter respawn time, and Be Made more abundant at the Lower (Novice) levels, Open World PvP need to be limited to those that Actually care to flag up in town and Leave or (as stated) the Corruption system needs to be So Harsh that E-Peeners won't hit Non flagged Players EVER. Is the Game Fun? To an Extent. Is it a Grind? Yes and a Harsh one at that, Extremely So....
Thank you for Listening to my Rant, The Hammered One.
So to my feedback. I'll separate it into 4 sections:
Thoughts aligned with the goals of Phase one:
1 - Positives
The combat felt fluid.
Leveling was fun and rewarding.
Difficulty was perfect, and it makes creating a group a necessity not just an option (which in my mind is the whole point of an MMRPG). Anyone who says they couldn't grind solo wasn't willing to work on artisan skills or go to lower level areas. I understand that isn't as rewarding to grind solo, but that's the point. If you want to play a solo game, play a rpg not an mmorpg.
Every class has a important role in a group, this make it valuable to group up with any class.
Didn't get disconnected often, and when I did I got right back into the server.
2 - Problems to be solved
There was a bug I had in the goblin village outside Lionhold where my camera would stutter and I would get stuck, switching direction and camera mode would fix the issue but it happened quite a few times.
When I got disconnected the first time my character was missing from the server, so I created another. This happened 3 times, and this happening such a short time from on another caused me to get frustrated losing the effort I had put in. I found out reinstalling the game brought my characters back, but this was a big one for me.
Getting armor and weapon drops for mobs shouldn't be party excusive. When fighting goblins I found I was only getting glint drops, but when I joined a group killing the same goblins we got armor, resource and weapon drops.
3 - Everything else (not aligned with phase 1)
Joining a party/ group is intuitive, leaving one is not. It is my opinion there should be a leave party and switch group button on top of the party list. With a leave button you wouldn't have to first click on your character then choose leave party, you could simply just leave whenever you're ready. Then a move group button would allow you to easily switch between your groups depending on their need, which could be huge in the large battles.
We need a place to find groups. I found while traveling the world and grinding mobs I would get invited to join a group, but I had to go out solo from the beginning and when I would join a group I didn't know their makeup ahead of time. This lead to odd groups and opposing goals. It would be nice to have a meeting spot, this would be more community driven unless an adventurers hall ( or something similar) was made by the developers. Even better though would be a group board, where groups could find essential classes they need for specific tasks and adventurers playing solo could find a good group to join.
The quest system is broken, everyone has said it. I made the mistake of trying to complete some of them, wasting hours. It would be nice if they were cut out until the time where that phase of testing was ready. As I've told my friends, "just do the quest to get a horse, don't do any other quest nor commissions, they are a waste of time".
4 - Completely personal
I would love to see a small spot in the map that is completely fleshed out, with no enemies to fight, quests to complete, trees that can be cut, etc. Just a spot on the map that shows off the full capabilities of the dev team and what ashes of creation can be.
This would do multiple things:
- Shut up all the nay sayers.
- Give all of the testers a "proof of divinity' in a manner of speaking. We all believe, but it would be nice to have a "spot to pray" lol.
- I don't know how the dev team feels but I think it would be a fun project to complete an area from start to finish, instead of looking at all of the things to be done in the larger world of Verra. As there are years worth of work still left to be done, personally I think it would be extremely rewarding to have that to show to everyone.
Combat - Fun with skillshots and dodging.
Crafting - not fun. very convoluted and hard to pick up. Animal Carcass wouldn't drop for me from anything. I just wanted to hunt some animals and craft some simple armor. Not so simple of a task! Very easy to give up on the crafting. Needs more baby steps and some quests maybe.
Quests - mostly all broken
Atmosphere - Love it. Game is really gorgeous and grand, but also simple enough to not be overwhelmed.
Progression - I didn't really feel like I was progressing much at anything. Quests were impossible to do, I couldn't quickly get a handle on how to craft gear. The only sense of accomplishment I really got from grinding out a few levels was getting to level up my skills.
Suggestion - the crafting stations in lion's hold that let you get your horse were very frustrating, as they only had one recipe to craft. I was really trying to use Lion's hold as a place to go gather some things and bring it back to see what I could make. Could not do that, and it was very frustrating to have to go and wander around looking for an appropriate crafting station.
Watching gameplay on YouTube and Ashes’ monthly demos, I thought the game would have that typical 'Easter MMO' vibe. In my mind, I had already written it off, but I was surprised by how pleasant it looks. It's high fantasy without leaning into that cheesy Easter MMO feel, at least for now.
Maybe because I haven't been playing MMOs like WoW or ESO lately, I forgot how bad the camera view can be in some games. If I were to offer feedback, it would be to look into adjusting the camera distance for characters. Personally, I really dislike the ARPG feel in MMO, where I can zoom way out and play the character like it’s an RTS. I understand the origin of this, as most old MMOs had the same issue. In WoW, with addons, you can zoom out so far that your character looks like an ant. I’d love to see Ashes avoid this. It’s crazy how Path of Exile 2 (from the videos I've seen) has a better camera distance than most MMOs, and that game is an ARPG, which should allow for more zooming out.
Finally, going through this feedback, I realized one thing that the New World AGS team did really well, the camera placement. If I remember correctly, when you were out of combat, running around town or exploring, the game used an over-the-shoulder view, like single-player RPGs such as God of War. Once you entered combat or unsheathed your weapon, the camera would switch to a more centered view. As simple as it sounds, this camera angle helped create a stronger connection with your character and the world around you.
That’s probably my biggest piece of feedback. As for everything else, there’s still a lot of work to be done, but the team knows it. Good luck to you all
Launcher:
Have the damn thing remember the last played server!! And maybe show the number of chars on a given server in the list
Quests & Tasks:
Overall on par for an alpha, but annoying enough for me to stop interacting with them:
some NPCs offer no quest dialog, even though they should, other NPCs remove the quest items but don't complete and still track the no longer existing items, some quest no longer track on the map, no matter if you choose to or not.
some Tasks are impossible....a grey lvl4 one asked me to scout a gryphon's nest...with no way I could find to get up there to those lvl11+ birds.
active tasks keep showing up on the task board
For how buggy quests are atm, an option to see who gave a certain quests would really be helpful when I have/want to abandon the quest and pick it up again
Crafting:
only a few professions in the starter regions with no further guidance where to find the others. In general not enough in-game infos on the how, what and where.
"hunting" feels like a joke...or at least wrongly named, it should be taming
Baseline costs for processing seems way to high
Systems:
Inventory seems like a joke, lots of space which isn't used, limiting factor is the crafting inventory. Which, for how grindy crafting is, is way too small.
Itemization for the first 5 levels was also not present...think I saw a ring and maybe a cape drop. I don't expect blues and purples, but some kind of grey trash items that at least are a tiny bit better and different looking than that starter gear...to keep up the illusion of progress
I was slightly disappointed that a lot of the showcased features aren't actually in the game yet. The showcases had been presented as 'this is what we have now in the game' rather than 'this is a vertical slice of what we want to be in the game'.
Specifically missing;
- character creator
- season progression (but can be forced to change manually)
- profession traits
Probably a few others.
I am VERY VERY impressed with Bard. There's at least 4 different ways to build the class (Full mana, healing, front line dps support, magic damage support) and a lot of in-between too.
I prefer to play the front line dps support (enough to probably go Bard/Fighter in the future) and had greatly underestimated Bard as a healer and cheerful melody in general until I got into a group without a cleric and respecced for cheerful melody and 'yellow' story buffs. That resonant weapon healing proc is huge!
By comparison - NONE of the other Archetypes have this versatility. Particularly Fighter and Ranger are very one-dimentional flat. Hopefully they can get another pass soon to bring them closer to the diversity of build choice than they currently are.
The moment I accidentally countered an enemie's ability was a pivotal moment for my enjoyment of the class. I had been using Clever Retort for the -30% damage from Humiliation on rotation until I realised I could counter the attack that my party was getting massively hurt by. I hadn't even noticed the cast bars before that moment. I used to play GW1 mesmer back in the day and it very much harkened back to that.
Last weekend changed a few things and I'm no longer able to counter the things I'm used to. A little clarity on what I can and cannot counter might be worth it. Clever retory says it "Interrupts and silences" if it says something like "Interrupts spells" or somesuch, that would be good if that's the intent (and maybe something on the cast bar to help understand what's a spell and what isn't). I couldn't even counter a pyromancers "Flame Throw" - but I reason maybe it's because the fire is already in his hand and it's not so much a spell as a motolov coctail that he's tossing.
A few technical and order-of-operations issues with PvP, Caravans, Corruption, and Wars that I'm sure will get ironed out.
My character is currently in some weird state where I cannot sell Commodities in any fashion or any node. I /bug it every time I try. I'll try again next weekend to see if it's fixed. I have a feeling that my character is completely bugged in this regard for some reason, so I'm thankful to hear we'll get a wipe in December.
One of my key issues related to Raid groups zerging levelling areas - but you resolved that with this weekend's patch. Level differences being more punishing hurt some of the social ways we had been grouping to level, but we mostly agreed it was good for the game - it just required us to restrict our levelling groups more than we liked (which was disappointing for some). A lot of conversations that amounted to "You are welcome to join us but it seems you'll only get about 500xp/kill and won't level very quickly" happened on Friday and Saturday.
The only significant progression feedback I can think of right now is how much better grinding is compared to literally everything else. You buffed the comission board a bit but you took away most of the value of the gathering board. Before it was a nice little "Here have some bonus XP while you gather the things you'd want to gather anyway". But now it seems as though the board takes away the resource - which makes it absolutely useless. The resources are more important than the XP. The xp and glint rewards for those need to be MASSIVE to outpace the work done.
There is a lot of sentiment that copper is too rare - but I understand it's because of how quickly it's farmed up. The gatherers in my guild say it's gotten better since our server was able to unlock Apprentice Mining and the apprentice level resources have been starting to get rerolled.
About PVP :
Please dont EVER listen to those who think there shouldnt be open pvp in this game. The corruption system is already creating an environnement where there's a lot less unecessary griefing than in wow classic pvp server for instance. Attacking unwilling players is a big risk and dont happen this often for now, and will happen even less when characters wont be subject to server wipes (for now, everything's a test, remember?). We need the game to be what it was promissing to be on the kickstarter, a game where you can win big, and lose big. MMO became like jobs for some people who only want to accumulate and keep. They shouldnt have. Getting upgrades is pointless if its the only goal of a mmo playtime. MMO are supposed to make us live a fantasy life, where there should be as much victory than loss. A death when nothing happen to you except repair your gear IS NOT a loss. If you think gear is supposed to be a salary for painfull hours of grinding, it might be because you dont like grinding with other players that much, you dont see that as fun, and therefore you should understand that this game is not for you. If you only like the destination, and not the journey, the whole thing just sucks. Plus : there are already a shitload of other mmos for you if a pve mmo is what you are looking for. Leave this mmo for the ones who actually love pvp based games, who love diplomacy, who love espionnage, and most of all a game where everything can happen at any time.
About Fast Travel :
For the love of god, dont ever listen to those who ask for fast travel. Fast travel is basically a shrinking machine for big virtual worlds who ends up feeling so small and soulless. Fast travel would just ruin my experience in this game. Once again, if you wanna play in a game where things are convenient, therefore you should understand that you cannot play to a mmo immersive and as realistic as a fantasy world can be. Let people who wanna feel like frodo crossing the middle earth a game for them to play. Every other mmo has your fast travel pleasure, go for them.
About solo grinding :
Please keep the hp and mana regeneration pace as it is. Solo grinding is doable, but its hard and should be hard, and make players need rations of even better good cooked meals not to have hours to wait before they're full again, and IT IS GREAT. When a mmo dont make solo grind hard, solo grind is the only thing existing at the end, and it sucks.
About professions grinding :
Please keep it hard, interconnected between different professions and long. I dont like needing fuel for tasks who shouldnt need it because its not realistic, and I dont like the interface to make me choose between 1, 5, 10 or 25 crafts when I can make only 23, but thats it the rest is on the right track. In mmos, some love to fight, when other love even more to craft. Let those ones feel superior in professions that the ones who dont care about profession grind, while they might feel inferior in the battlefield. Let those ones have the better stuff to sell, let them have the place they desirve in this world. If only soldiers are important people, this world wont feel realistic, and economy will be shitty.
I just wanna say to players that are suuuure than nobody like pvp or fast travel that maybe they think that because they were playing in other mmos of the past decade with other players like them, thinking "we are the mmo players community", except it wasnt true. A LOT of us were not playing these mmos, were not playing any mmo anymore, because there wasnt a good meaningfull mmo anymore on the market ; and yet we are fans of mmos. We were so much wanting for a game like that to happen, so please think about us for a second and for the love of god, let us have our game.
On a lighter note, I forgot about some feedback I had on my first weekend that I want to post here :
- Lots have said it, but a friendlist would be really nice to have in game. I love my guild, but I also like the other encounters I had with other players sometimes in rival guilds and I love this double scale social structure that only an individual friendlist can maintain alive.
- Would also love to be able to respond directly to someone whispering me without having to type back his sometimes long pseudo to answer
- I would love for the the rock and metal ores to be more realisticly placed in the world, in small hills and moutains instead of wherever ; and their numbers should be polished, with way more copper and way less saphire and rare metals
- I hope when the hunting system is polished, we can tame any beast who attack us, and not have these monstrous still beasts who exist just for taming
- As someone who love character creation with many details, I know its not polished and thats fine for an alpha, but it would be nice that the "save character" in the character creator was working. I tried to use it two times and it didnt save at all what I had created
- Finally, this is painfull to say but I really didnt like the music in game. The music of carphin is good, the music for firebrand is good (both i just saw on videos only), but the music for riverlands isnt memorable AT ALL. I feel like it needs strong melody riffs to sinc in. The current music sounds vague and progressive, and i wouldnt recognize it if I was hearing in out of context. I have to say this is one of the hardest thing to nail, because the starting zone area's music is one of the most important things in a mmo if it wanna become cult
Again Congrats on this alpha 2, its very promissing ! Keep up the good work !
Stability and performance:
Keeping in mind that this is alpha, I was very suprised with the initial stability and the improvements. In the first week servers were bravely holding, and there werent insane queue times, which may of course be influenced by number of people as well. I remember the first week or two the heavily farmed areas like Highwayman Hills the mobs felt very broken, teleporting around, not reacting etc. This week already there were 4-5 farming groups and it was a pleasant experience, so the progress in those is very visible as is the plan for Phase 1. Same goes for the queues which were handled in around a day. Overall it is way better experience than I expected from alpha, and the actions team took build my confidence in them being able to tackle remaining issues.
World:
Several times during the past three weekends I had to just stop, look around and think to myself "Beautifull". The visuals and feelings of scenes are very good, especially sunsets and sunrises are somehow quite special in the world. It is very nice that there are recognizable and visible landmarks like Tower of Carphin, or Lions Hold that stick and stay in the memory, and the tower specifically looming over the riverlands and being visible from most places. It has a great effect of "oh I want to visit this place and explore it".
The issue that I see and believe it's rather temporary is the difference between the areas around Mireleth/Winstead compared to New Aela, as New Aela area feels quite empty and unfinished, but if it is brought to the same standarts as the rest of the riverlands it will be spectacular.
Combat:
The general feel of combat feels great. When the server is running nicely and creatures work as intended, it is very good and can keep me engaged. I've spent numerous hours over the weekends solo or group battling, and it was always fun. I like how creatures have sometimes familiar abilities that you know are scary (I'm looking at you highwayman sniper killshot), and that some creatures have interesting behaviors like wolves backing a bit and runnign around before closing in to attack again. The only downside is that sometimes there are situations that remind me of Path of Exile, where out of nowhere I get oneshot, and I dont have a feedback or knowledge on what happened. I think a good example is Albion where you get post-mortem list of what actually killed you.
Classes:
I've tried several classes to around level 9, and one to level 17 so far, so here's my first impressions from those:
Mage:
I like the interactions between statuses, thinking up rotations how to weave those spells together to achieve maximum burning damage and such. I like the balance between weapon combos and abilities, it feels well balanced and I dont feel like I'm using just weapon too much, and the added effect to weapon from the elements feel really great. I think that this should be the ideal goal for the amount of ability/weapon combo gameplay for a lot of classes.
Fighter:
Semi-good. I believe that most of the time the regenerative form was bugged, because the regen was ocuring only each 5 seconds, and that ruined my feelings of forms in general, but I am eager to try them when it's working. The abilities feel impactfull, but I feel like there is often a lot of cooldown on them, aside from those that reset on weapon combo, so it felt like I'm weapon attacking a bit too much, and only sometimes use abilities, partly because wasting higher cooldown ability when target doesnt have effect that boosts it feels bad, so you have to wait for the status inducing ability too, which results in a bit too much of time spent purely weapon attacking.
Tank:
Something feels missing here. The vengeance feels unimpactfull, and most of the time it felt like it's not really worth the courage cost. I found myself weapon attacking a lot, and only rarely having some attack off cooldown, which resulted in me just putting autoattack on, and watching screen for attacks to avoid. On low levels blocking with shield doesnt seem to do much, so greatsword looked like better choice overall, and even on higher levels the shield was mostly for the defensive stats, not for the blocking itself. Overall gameplay felt too passive to me, and even though I got only to level 9, the abilities that I saw on lvl 12 didnt really motivate me to continue the class, as they didnt seem that enjoyable to use, and on huge cooldown.
Bard:
The one that I got to level 17. Easiest starting experience of my Verra life. Almost felt like a cheating to be fair. Abilities to refill mana and health to myself resulted in me still having leftover rations on level 12. The options look nice. The songs and resonant weapon interaction feels like there is a lot of options. And then it all sadly in group content devolves to Mana Song. The only way how to not play mana song bard is by having more than one in the group, given how strong and qol this is. And since groups I believe are designed more to include each archetype, this feels a bit counter-design. Healing song sounds like a very nice help to cleric in groups, but then the best help is to provide him with mana so he can heal indefinetely. 10% damage song sounds nice, but not having to make mana breaks results in more clearspead anyway. I've purposely put everything to mana regeneration with shortbow, being able to hold full group of people permanently going, and then people kept contacting me because they wanted bards just like that, which feels like it forces the class into one strict gameplay. Feel of the abilities is great, the options when playing solo are very nice with being able to travel faster, kill faster with dps songs or do bigger pulls and sustain through healing songs, but in group it feels like everyone wants just one thing from you. This class overall from the general design seems like the goal other classes should try to achieve, as there is already plentifull ways how and what to use, if the issues above are solved. And for the finale, the sagas. 99% of time in group I've used the Destiny for the blue buff that increases mana regeneration, and didnt use sagas at all, because the buff is just too strong to have it down for three minutes. As for saga actives themselves, they feel super unimpactful given that it is very long cooldown (1min 30sec to gather needed buggs), and the results are mostly unimpressive. The only ones that felt good was the Apocalypse in combat, but it's shunned by the fact that having blue buffs is better for mana upkeek. And the 70% gravity one which is my favorite to jump around, as it's very fun.
General vision of the game:
Love it. Things feel difficult to achieve, and that means they feel rewarding when achieved. I LOVE how some areas of the game feel very dangerous and unreachable for me yet (Tower of Carphin), because then the act of leveling and gearing and getting there will be amazing. The ever present threat of PvP is great, because it adds a sense of mortality, and knowing that everyone can attack you if you piss them off is amazing. If something, I feel like exp debt is not that punishing, as at some points on level 16 when I didnt have any materials, it was way better to just die and respawn on the other side of location than to run there. No fast travel is godsend. Going out in the wild with friends feels like a proper adventure. Never change it please.
-Didnt take disengage at all, didnt need it, Snare + bear trap+ roll was better for PVE
-sometimes got the deadly finishers of weapons i wasn't using but had leveled( this did get /bug reported)
-Really love that it takes a whole city coming together to build the buildings
- Crafting EXP should be higher at the starting stages, by the time i was almost lvl 17, i had just started learning and finding level 10 leather working recipes
- Snipe was incredible loved it no changes
- 10/10 Lots of bugs, great alpha, cant wait for Phase 2
I saw that on the first day I was playing and haven't been back on. I got alpha 2 access during kickstarter and maybe haven't stayed up to date as I should, but I thought a modern MMO would know better than to use dumb ideas like xp loss.
Most of the content creators I could see were just grinding EXP on a spawn...
It may be because of the alpha state of the game and the content not being implemented yet though I hope it will change. I want to level up while discovering the world and the lore of the game, doing dungeon with my mate and PvPing enemy guilds scums. Not grinding mobs.
I don't like the Death EXP penality idea, there are a lot of ways to make deaths meaningful other than saying to the player: "Did you see the last hour you played the game? Pooof! Disapear." Put a gold sink on it, lose materials, ... OK. but no exp lose.
An example being killing the rock throwing goblins, I couldn't find them anywhere and there is no indication of where they are on the map.
I also spent 20 minutes each looking for two different hunt and kill quests within their respective circles but could not find the target. It's not like I'm searching for a long lost pebble, they either didn't exist or were hidden somewhere ridiculous.
There was an event quest in the starting area that was to kill a particular type of goblin invader (or something like that), every time the event spawned the enemies spawned for the first few minutes and then stopped spawning, I tried this event multiple times but me and the other players couldn't finish it because the enemies stopped spawning.
From an overall experience standpoint, the starting area was too difficult overall, enemies had 3-5x the health I did and dealt much more damage. I had maybe gone a minute of walking from the starting town and I was getting clobbered at level 3.
The performance is also severely lacking, even for an alpha. Barely getting 50fps on lowest settings with hard stutters on a modern system made combat difficult.
The game and concept show a lot of promise though and I will be continuing to play the alphas!
TTK in PvP is also absolutely ridiculous right now I've gave extensive feedback about this before... TLDR power creep from weapons is crazy you can kill people in 3 seconds theres no skill in combat its all about items - 60s to 30s ttk that was once mention is not even close to being a reality and gear is ridĂculously strong players without large guilds have Zero chances of fighting someone with high tier gear when they get killed with 2 skills this feels VERY BAD
PvP sucks at the moment, corruption baiting is TERRIBLE having an option to dont hit white players wont fix it - players from enemy guilds using mounts to bait and staying unflaged while talking shit to you while you cant do nothing about it because you will get red and their friends can kill you without flagging and get your loot ansolutely sucks.. guild wars also doesnt fix it they will drop guild to grief you and you cant do nothing about it
non combatent players should NEED to flag to attack reds, and a single stack of corruption should not drop gear AND WORLD BOSSES / RAIDS SHOULD BE PVP ZONES
even in Mo2 as hardcore as it is you CANT loot corpses without flagging for PvP same should be in Ashes if you want to loot a corpse you should NEED to flag up and get purple when looting
Alt F4 during combat is still a thing... combat logging should not exist you should stay ingame for 60s if you log out
you can lose your combatant purple state MID combat someone can start attacking you and mid fight if you dont hit you go white and the guy gets corruption this is stupid
you can relog to reset your flagged status and go back being non combatant
The servers seem very laggy at times, as mobs will often move at incredibly high speeds and sometimes teleport. That lv25 5* dragon? I must've aggrod it, ran away, fought another mob and it appeared next to me, bitch slapped me for just over 1k damage. Scared the bajeebus out of me! Overall, it can be very difficult to try and use a dodge effectively... If i ever remember to use them. Seeing a more traditional MMO with block/dodge mechanics is something I'm not used to, but it's a very welcome change.
I'd love to see the crafting system receive some love. The bags seem silly, flower bag has 4 lots of 2x1 slots, meanwhile a hunting bag has 4 lots of 2x2 ? I get it doubles your stack size, but i can just carry 2x as many flowers in my hunting bag. On top of that, having tiers to materials, and such tiny space for them, gathering just one material becomes a chore. Not being able to store that material anywhere except the cities, then having to carry them to processing places... Just trying to craft a single item becomes a massive chore i haven't managed to achieve yet. Also not a fan of everything just being a waiting game. Maybe some minigame like in FF14 would be cool, but passive waiting for extended periods of time is a poor choice imo.
Tried a little open world pvp, joined couple of parties. Mage definitely seems strong. Levels matter. People can bait you into 1vX scenarios. I received everything I expected and more. Truly looking forward to how the game develops and balancing tweaks so we can enjoy everything in all its glory.
It was annoying at first, but by the second day it was infuriating how many mobs I would kill and get essentially zero credit for. No matter where I went (limited due to my level), there were groups of players and usually someone at least a couple of levels higher than myself. Even when I was off to the side, it never failed that someone else would come swooping in to take the kill from me. This meant that a simple mission of killing 10 mobs took me nearly an hour to complete just because of how bad the Kill Credit system is.
Another example is the mission where you kill Bone Crusha. There were always multiple people waiting for him to spawn to kill him. A few of the times I had the mission, we even formed a line just so all of us wouldn't accidentally take the credit from someone that was there before us. Every single time there was a group that would come charging in to kill him in 1 or 2 hits and then run off. We had to abandon the quest.
Even when I was in a group with my friends, there would be someone else swooping in to take the kills. It got to the point where on Sunday we decided to give up on all the missions and just focus on crafting.
If the Kill Credit system doesn't vastly improve, then this game is already dead for my friends and I. Long grinds to level is one thing, but now it's being slowed down to nearly a stop cause you can't complete missions or get proper credit for kills.
My main gripe with it is the way resources are handled at the moment. I understand that the game wants to create resource scarcity for the sake of competition, but the way the system works at the moment, especially in regards to mining, rather than encouraging competition amongst each other, the system has the playerbase as a whole competing with itself.
If mining nodes can respawn as any resource and higher tier resources are locked behind mining progression, this creates an environment where everyone becomes extremely slow to progress in mining. There is no competition within the playerbase, as the players have no control over it.
The other thing I was wondering about was Linux. I am fully aware that you guys have all hands full with more important things, so the question isn't actually related to the technical side. Assuming that it is technically possible to run the game on Linux as it is right now, which seems very likely, I'd like to ask if running the game on this currently unsupported platform is compliant with the TOS.
Networking has a way to go; Alpha 2, early testing caveats notwithstanding. Too often would a node of daffodil, tree, quest giver, or quest item require me to log out and back in before using it. Something that will be fixed before launch of course. That was probably the biggest detriment to my playing sessions which speaks to how nicely things worked.
The skills are lovely, the combat is lovely, the scenery is lovely. I like the motion, although wouldn't mind a bit of tweaking to the speeds of some creatures. For example, wolves don't actually teleport in real life. The teleporting 600mph wolf movement is a bit unreasonable. I also ran into a few instances where a bear would aggro and stand on its hind legs for around 5 seconds, which seems like it may be unintentional.
Overall I think the launch of A2 Phase 1 was great. There were very few queues, if any. The world was very populated with tons of people everywhere and small groups of strangers forming to complete content. That content was very buggy, but that's to be expected.
One thing I think is mandatory to get right before too long is the mob spawns. I had three different important mobs spawn inside of nearby rocks and essentially brick the quest until a server restart. This isn't something that can happen, really.
On the topic of quests -- they are not rewarding enough. People are all but abandoning quests after level 4 or 5 in favor of pve party leveling. While I think party leveling should be competitive, it is outpacing quests by a far too large margin. These quests are not exactly quick to complete as most of them require figuring out riddles and traveling to quite a far away place on a mount. A 2000 xp quest at times feels like it should be rewarded with 30k xp instead. Just for a quick example, At level 9 I could complete a few quests an hour to gain anywhere from 15k to 30k experience. That same amount of time spent in a party killing groups of bears is going to give 100,000 or more. This disparity is too great this early on, in my opinion. Especially when the objective is on testing out the systems and bug reporting, not powerleveling to max.
Finally, please, please, please, please have text size and cursor size/color available by next weekend. I found myself looking to find my cursor more often than I did healing my party at times. It is a massive accessibility issue.
Edit:
I wanted to add on something most people will probably talk about as well: Bards. They simply have too much utility and very little downside. In my opinion a bard that can sustain an entire party's mana, make themselves, the party, or a caravan move significantly faster, and even move faster than a mounted horse indefinitely, should not have more hp than a cleric or even any of the DPS classes. There should be a massive punishment for having that much utility. We all saw how quickly a bard became the #1 priority for any group finding.
Besides the issues with very high populated areas the game runs smoothly and can't wait for there to be even more improvements to the servers so we can have large scale battle or struggle to out compete in a grinding zone.
I know certain systems are currently not available right now but what is there now is incredibly solid. the game play loop was fun grinding with a group discovering ways to get efficient and enemies have a variety of audio/visual queues to determine their actions and being so dangerous the first time you encounter them when you are learning how they work. I would love to become experts in dealing with enemies and there to be so vast that its difficult to memorize for an individual. some enemies I feel should get rebalanced i.e. oculars can instant kill your whole party including tanks in one shot if you don't stun lock them.
I love the fact that gear is greater than player level so that it balances the game around interacting with your crafters so you can deal with higher level enemies for greater rewards right away. I did notice some gear have values unbalanced where some level 10 armor is better then level 20 armor even if both are common tier so I know the numbers are not final.
Keep up the good work and I want to thank you for creating an experience I've dreamed of having.
General Experience
- Played for 3 weekends, created two characters (Ranger level 11 and Ranger level 13) on two different servers.
- Enjoyed the PvE and PvP elements; combat feels great for an alpha, showing strong potential for further improvement.
- Impressed by the corruption mechanic and the fully PvP-enabled world, allowing for free-form player interaction beyond structured events.
- Gathering system is particularly enjoyable, with similarities to New World’s mechanics, which were a strong point in that game.
- Crafting is promising, adding depth by requiring recipe discovery, contributing to a sense of progression and character development.
Positive Aspects
- PvE/PvP Mix: The balance between PvE and PvP feels engaging and well-integrated.
- Combat Mechanics: Combat feels solid, and the alpha stage suggests room for further enhancement.
- Corruption System: Interesting mechanics around PvP flags and corruption, promoting both voluntary and spontaneous player interaction.
- Gathering System: Enjoyable and reminiscent of New World’s system, emphasizing resource collection as an integral aspect of gameplay.
- Crafting: While minimally explored, the crafting system shows promise, particularly through recipe collection, which enhances the depth of progression.
Areas for Improvement
Skill Trees: Skill and weapon trees are buggy, particularly with abilities like extra crit and mana on finishers ceasing to work over time.
Ranger Class Balance:
- Lacks strong AoE capabilities compared to classes like Mage, leaving Ranger’s area-of-effect abilities feeling underpowered. (to make it easy to understand, when you give a class mid tier aoe and somewhat ok single target you end up with something that is not that good at both)
- Limited single-target abilities (2-3 options) that are often hampered by long cast times or animations, making them easily avoidable in PvP scenarios. (dodge roll is a thing)
- Situational effectiveness: Ranger performs well in single-target damage, but only if the enemy is caught off-guard. (you basically relies on a snipe off camouflage)
- Aerial Skills: The skill that allows Rangers to leap into the air could benefit from smoother movement continuity during activation and some form of added benefit (e.g., damage reduction or crowd-control resistance).
- Disengage Mechanic: This ability is currently restricted by invisible walls when jumping off cliffs, which impacts usability. (you literally stop mid air 100% of the times and even get a sound clue)
- Auto-Attack System: Feels somewhat unsatisfying; potentially a personal preference but worth noting for overall combat feel. (
Final Impressions
Despite the bugs and balancing issues typical of an alpha, the game shows significant potential.
I also got positive feedback from friends who watched my stream, noting that it plays better than some other popular games in the genre, like T&L.
A few things I'd like to see cha get or looked into.
100% looting a corpse within x amount of time should flag you. Since you are "stealing".
I'd also love to see an item you could craft or add to crafted items that protects a few pieces of gear from dropping if you are corrupted. Like maybe 2 total pieces that you can guarantee will never drop. Good for x amount of deaths before needing reapplied.
As well. Flagging should be a group choice. If the group or raid leader flags it should mark all combatants in the party as pvp targets. It's kinda bullshit when you can have members hide behind non flagged members to bait corruption.
-on unreal engine 5 it seems quite weak to me even on max. setting
-the display of guild members is very weak and colorless online/offline
-lots of flying animals/npc in the air
The new XP method that was implemented I believe to stop speed leveling doesn't feel good in my opinion. Raids have been heavily nerfed to where if you have 9 players for a group you'd rather just leave one out because of the xp penalty(we got more than 50% xp going from a raid of 9 to a party of 8), this does not feel great. Also with the level disparity it doesn't feel good to leave out people because they are technically a bit lower mostly noticed this with tanks who are more likely to get XP debts out of anyone and noticed this with level 25's.
The loot system where you have to pick up the item after winning a roll feels just awfull.
Loot drops don't seem balanced within the game. Very few gear dropped over my leveling of 1-20. The only exception was the special pocket dimension inside the steelbloom citadel where gear was dropping all the time. It would be great to see overall droprates improve.
Absolutely loved the combat so far.
The entire crafting system needs to be overhauled, 1 - 10 should be the easiest levels as they are intro's to the systems.
Also maybe consider only making the higher tiers of crafts NOT require so much involvement with other professions
For example, crafting slate weapon molds required multiple professions, and to make higher tier qualities you would need ALL of those to be the same quality.
I would argue that the BASE leveling crafts should be kept simple and straightforward, and that we keep these high costing materials to the more complicated drop recipes.
Don't get me wrong, I actually think this level of intricacies can work at the higher tiers of crafting... but seeing at as early as level 10-20 is ROUGH especially with no way of easily purchasing materials from other players.
My only other concern would be density of normal mobs. I would add more general non elite mobs, and places where they are stacked for every level. It really tapers off at 20+.
Besides these 2 major factors, honestly the game impressed me and I was expecting things to be a lot more unpolished.
The combat flow feels GREAT, and the intricate debuffing system paired with the extensive combos means there is a LOT of room for a min maxer like myself.
I would say the Combat is currently being undersold, since I see VERY few content creators delving into how deep the system is right now.
Given the fact that this is before secondary archetypes, and MULTIPLE weapons missing... This is an AMAZING start for a min maxer like me.
The world size is also awe inspiring, and the idea of traversing a literal world to find exotic resources is an amazing concept to me.
I won't lie, I was a skeptic for a very long time. Now I genuinely believe this could be the next great MMO.
Also side note: INCREASE COPPER RESPAWNS! Bruh we need 10,000 copper to upgrade these buildings, seriously just make it easier to farm lol.
Combat feels great. It's very responsive and synergizing/comboing with people in your party/raid makes you feel extremely impactful. The dungeons (especially Carphin) are interesting and have a lot of area to explore and grind. Gear feels impactful even if I would like to see slightly more drops so I'm not wearing greys in 4-5 slots by the time I'm level 25. Also, I love being able to give an old piece of gear to someone else when I get something better.
The bad:
The updated xp system disincentivizes you from grinding levels in a group of more than 8 or with people even 1 level different from you which is completely counter to the entire combat design around group-play. I understand not wanting people to power level other players but when a guy I've been playing with is away for a few hours and falls 2 levels behind, he shouldn't be getting so much less experience that we can't even group up together anymore without it being extremely inefficient for him.
The ugly:
Corruption doesn't work. At the start of Alpha 2, it felt impossible to get corruption as you could kill non-combatants completely for free without any repercussions. In the most recent update, you could get corruption from attacking a purple (combatant) player and not even killing them. Add in the corruption baiting, mounts causing corruption, griefing players to <25% health but not killing them, and the PvP flag status not properly showing and you get an absolute cluster of a system.