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
the anti griefing system. It's amazing. Ill freely admit my group briefed one guy for being a rat and sprinting over to steal our loot while we were being rezzed. As a result, another player killed the 2 marked players in our group while we were trying to figure out how to get rid of the corruption. Losing their gear definitely disuaded us from doing it again. It has also stopped other players from randomly killing me in the wild. On release I'm sure many will complain about the system but it is absolutely effective.
The level grind feels great. It takes a while, especially if you are solo. One thing I will say is players were very stuck in the space of "this place is the best for grinding" yet all over the map are excellent spots for groups to grab xp.
Liked:
The crafting absolutely needs work. But I like the bones we have. Crafting is a long process and expensive, my only gripe is that the return on investment in money is bad. I spend the same or more on the crafting fee as I would make selling to a vendor and that feels bad. I'd like at least some profit increase.
Combat is great, I'll go over my problems in a later part but when it works, it feels so good. As a tank I can feel the eb and flow of a wave and most of the time can see a rogue mob pull aggro elsewhere. Phenomenal in that aspect, I can't wait to see what else is added there
Disliked:
Fighter feels very weak in comparison to every other class. Even clerics can out damage and out sustain a fighter with a pally build. I believe the fighter should rely more on finishers and damage for hp and mana regen. This would fill a void in their class, especially since right now execution effects are very hit or miss.
The god damn animations!!! So many times I'd get hit by a mob who's still mid animation. The big golem are the worst with it, so hard to guess their damage window when the animation doesn't match. That combined with players dog piling a mob. For me, adding the ability to modify the colors of effects and such would be huge.
Gathering! I love a lot of the grind in gathering but holy are t1 mats scarce for mining. It wouldn't be a huge deal if t2 mats weren't so abundant. I feel like adjustments need to be made to the spawn rates of zinc and copper. I found plenty but the amount of tin and iron is too damn high.
Hated:
That i can only play weekends
Over the past 2 weeks I have first hand witnessed what can only be described as a greatness derived from passion, talent, and a level headed team. In today's development stratosphere that is nothing short of amazing.
More secrets: The secret portion of the POI that PirateSoftware found on stream is an incredible portion of the game that I believe should be sprinkled in strategically throughout high density POI's finding a nice farming spot and cool cave with some loot at the end that isn't expected is the coolest feeling an MMO of this caliber can bring, in my opinion.
Small scuffle counterplay: In a scenario where my party is xp farming and contesting an area of another party. If I die and the rival party loots my body, it is incredibly frustrating knowing that (in it's current state) I have no counter play. If I flag and retaliate on them, they just intentionally die to me, I become corrupt, then can't work off the corruption fast enough. They return I die and am at a net loss when they were the aggressors in this situation, I don't know what the finesse in this situation would be in terms of counterplay, but the current iteration needs some attention.
Please do not go down the path other MMO's have, everything is currently earned in this game nothing is given. Every level is impactful, every piece of gear equipped is a power spike and that....feels....good.
Cheers!
Here are my first impressions:
1. Crafting progression is out of step with leveling progression. By the time someone is able to make gear, they've outgrown it.
2. Gathering is a huge bottleneck, particularly mining. There's not enough resources to go around and they don't spawn fast enough.
3. PvP flagging - Alt-F should flag you for PvP and turn you 'purple'. No silly halfway stage where you've flagged up but are still white until you hit someone.
4. Combat is fun. Every class I've played has been enjoyable.
5. The HUD editing is good, but I want to be able to move things like the vehicle and mount toolbars, and so on - they're not currently movable.
6. The keyboard remapping is excellent.
7. Gearing up is harder than it should be, probably because crafting progression is so much slower than leveling progression.
8. Did I mention that combat is fun? It really is.
9. Caravans are boring as hell as things stand. I know there are supposed to be events that make them more interesting, and there's no value in attacking caravans without working crowbars and being able to capture materials. So I'll come back to this later.
10. My wife plays a cleric and she could not make hovercasting work (yes. she has the checkbox checked).
11. Particle effects are too intense, especially ground effects.
12. The voiceover acting (AI?) is terrible.
13. I ended up deleting all my quests because they weren't worth doing.
14. The quest tracker kept turning itself back on for every quest after each login.
Some things i hope they add soon:
-Guild bank, even a simple large item dump chest that only the leader can withdraw from.
-LFG chat category so general chat isnt constantly flooded with lfg messages
-Improved elections, this last election started and ended all while i was asleep and i had no idea, also most of my guild couldn't vote because it was bugging out. I hope they make the election 24 hour cycle and give warning before hand.
-It seems that copper is very rare still for a material that is needed by so many basic artisan things everyone will use such as crafting tools.
Having a blast!
A few of us have talked about professions needing some work more than anything. We understand it is an alpha.
We would like the option to stay and do the profession. Just give a basic animation and an increased xp rate or cost reduction.
We also suggest skill/proffession levels have more impact on the player. It feels like the goal of level 1 is to get to level 10, and you do not feel the "in between".
1. No possibility to bind anything on mouse wheel
2. Flashing and transparent textures(possibly connected to LoD)
3. Laggy mobs, somtimes they can be underground
4. Bad people, who will try to turn any MMO game in to PvE moth's haven by complaining, that they dont want to be killed by other players in open world
5. Sometimes crashes and disconnects (not many)
6. Awful mountup and dismount animation
7. less than 100 FPS in some cases
8. And i heard, that carma system geves TO MUCH penalty for PK. It's to easy to abuse by provoke people to attack first, so think twice, before do this. Simple safe/unsafe zones works better from my perspective
9. RMB click on an actual mob/character trigger dropdown with "mark" option, and it's annoying
In general the game looks nice. Devs have alot of stuff to do. Next week i maybe want to try the actual gameplay (grind, progress, PvP, etc)
When you're in a party and disconnect, don't kick the player out, either put a timer on him till he gets auto kicked or you have to get kicked out of the party by another player.
The leveling nerf went too far, you usually have to band up with players around your level or you get very little exp.
Running a AMD GPU, game looks very blurry.
The team has been hard at work, huge patch notes everyday, it's insane how quickly Intrepid can pump out these updates, i'm used to MMOs taking ages to get rid of an issue or that are still prevalent till today.
-Terrain-
The terrain design is expressive and unique, adding much depth to the game. I love that it’s not just a flat surface – the hills, rocks, and varied elevations create strategic opportunities, like setting up ambushes for passing caravans. This adds a layer of immersion and realism that enhances gameplay.
I’d love to see even more variety in the terrain. Specifically:
* Larger Caves and Deep Mines: Expansive caves or deep, sprawling mines would add an exciting sense of exploration.
* Flying Dungeons or Sky Islands: Floating dungeons or areas in the sky would be amazing and could add a vertical element to exploration.
* Parkour Puzzles and Hidden Areas: Introducing areas with challenging parkour puzzles and more secret places that are hard to discover would make exploration even more rewarding.
Additionally, I would love to see the world feel more magical and mysterious, in line with the lore that suggests it has been abandoned for a long time. Ruins, overgrown areas, and atmospheric environmental storytelling could convey this sense of age and enchantment.
-Combat-
Playing as a Ranger feels exciting and balanced. I enjoy the strategic aspect of combat, where positioning and timing are crucial:
* High-Damage Potential: I appreciate that, as a Ranger, I can deal massive damage when I get the jump on an enemy. Charging my snipe from camouflage allows me to strike decisively, rewarding careful setup and planning.
* Balanced Vulnerabilities: It’s also well-balanced that if an enemy surprises me, they can interrupt my snipe charge, making it much harder to land a powerful attack or escape. This mechanic feels fair and adds depth, as it reinforces the Ranger’s role as a long-range, backline class rather than a frontline fighter.
Overall, I don’t have any major negative points about the combat; it feels rewarding and well-suited to the Ranger’s role.
-Loot-
I would love to see more opportunities for loot in the open world. Specifically, having chests spawn in various locations with random loot would add an exciting element of discovery and reward exploration. Hidden or rare chests would create another incentive to venture off the beaten path and make the world feel more dynamic and rewarding.
-Farming and Gathering-
I’d like to see more variety in the gathering system, specifically with more dynamic spawns. Having ores appear in random locations rather than the same spots repeatedly would make the gathering feel more natural and engaging. This change would also reduce the reliance on player-made maps with fixed ore locations and instead reward players who actively explore the world. It would add some unpredictability to resource collection, making it more dynamic and rewarding for explorers.
-PvP-
As of now, PvP feels too punishing, and there are a few issues that need addressing. One major issue is the corruption system. Currently, only the player who delivers the killing blow receives corruption, while those who helped to kill the target don’t gain any corruption. This creates a situation where the corruption is unfairly stacked on just one player instead of the entire group. This could lead to players exploiting the system by only letting one person get the kill, effectively avoiding corruption for the rest of the group.
-General System-
At the moment, I haven’t had enough experience with the rest of the game’s systems to make a full judgment. I look forward to seeing how other mechanics evolve as the game progresses through development.
TAKE MY MONEY!!!
Clearly needs some polish and there is much to enhance and balance. But, it was way more than I expected jumping into the Alpha this weekend!! This is exactly what I have been praying for….for years!
I have some general questions and things I am hopeful for.
- assuming the character creator is scaled down? It’s good. But could be better. More options are clearly needed. I’m sure this is known and planned.
- Onboarding is a little janky when getting your initial bearings. Not bad. But certainly needs some clean up for a new new player to MMOs
- Still not sure I understand the certificate process for leveling professions. But probably need more time with it.
- Please don’t change the grind of things. I love that it takes hours and hours to level up
- Honestly. Not much that I can think of that needs a complete rework.
One suggestion. Steal the good things from newer MMOs. Throne and Liberty has a great party joining system that makes it easy to offer up your party to other players. Their chat system is robust with emoticons and it is easy to reply to whispers and sort your chat window in a fully customized manner.
Also their targeting UI shows everyone in your party which mob is being targeted by however many players. This is subtle ..but immensely useful for group play.
Can’t wait for Friday!!
I agree with the statements of some amount of shared xp for kills. It's fun teaming up with people in the wilds on the fly without worrying about committing to an actual party. Especially if you're just saving them from something. That or when people pull out 20 enemies from a dungeon into the respawn area and you're forced to survive and get nothing from it. Very annoying.
I would like some more of the quests to work - Not all, but maybe a quick focus on fixing some of the bricked ones. I have like 20 of the paper turn ins for the Arch guy in Lionhold and can't use them.
Finally, making town guards work a bit better would be nice. I've seen several people get nuked in town because someone drags in monsters.
These are my thoughts. I've been having a blast otherwise. Thank you for making Cleric actually fun to play.
What I like:
- Class design is excellent. All of the classes have very cool and unique abilities.
- The sounds and combat feel and feedback were excellent. Playing a mage, hitting a big lightning strike shatter combo feels great.
- The world and environment looks good. Good density of monsters. Varied terrain and PoI's (even though it's just a single biome right now).
- I love the difficulty, the penalties for dying, the lack of fast travel. The game has a very "old school" late 90's early 2000's feel like the golden age of MMO's with Everquest and Vanilla WoW with some Archeage mixed in.
- I love that there are no safe zones and no factions. You can flag up and PVP whenever and wherever you want.
- I like the dynamic events which spawn. I would like to see more of them added.
What I dislike:
- The level and gear scaling in this game is too steep. The jump in power from better gear or higher levels is too high for a game that doesn't have a +/- level restriction for PVP. The difference between white, green, blue, purple, etc. quality gear is also too high. In a PVP focused game there needs to be a flatter power curve that gear/levels provide.
- Player character models aren't great looking compared to the environment, animations and spell effects.
- I think the penalties for being red/corrupted are just a bit harsh. Maybe tone down the amount of equipped gear you drop to a single piece or something. It's very rare to encounter PVP (I had maybe 3 PVP encounters in 30 hours of playing).
- The game is fairly grindy. Takes quite a long time to gain levels even at a relatively low level. Reminds me of old school Everquest in that regard, but maybe is even grindier than that old school EQ. May need to be toned down just a bit.
- I dislike the change made which narrowed the level range you can effectively group with people. This makes it harder to play with friends.
- Other than the "sweat of your brow" quest none of the other quests really seemed worth the time. The rewards for these should be increased (XP and Glint).
- I'm not sure if this was a technical limitation or design choice, but I dislike how player health bars do not update more than every 25%. It feels so good to land a bit hit on a monster and see that health bar drop, but the satisfaction isn't there in PVP. If this is something to help performance in mass PVP (limiting server messages maybe) then I guess I understand but if this is a design CHOICE then I hope you'll reconsider.
https://discord.gg/lod
My first impressions were fairly negative but after a week or so it seemed the server stability became more durable and I begun actually playing last weekend. Overall the game is on a great path. There are some cons however you can get by a lot of them with the "Games in Alpha" famous line. Personally I love the difficulty of the game and I love the grind. Its a breath of fresh air compared to new mmorpgs where you grind 4 hours and are max level.
What General feedback would you like to share with the team?
I'd like to share a few points of feedback with the team and I will try to preface that this is feedback for the alpha not the finalized versions of these systems.
1: Questing/Events, I understand this is probably fairly popular as the questing in this game is very well lack luster. It took me as a brand-new player a few hours to figure out some of the quests (Mind you this is week 1 of alpha 2 Oct 25th) As the tracking was well terrible. I actually started learning the quests by following people around and seeing where they landed. Things I think can help fix this, narrow down some quest's yellow indicators a little bit more than the entire city. Wording, and better UI for the missions would fix a lot of issues, maybe I'm just blind but I find myself needing to squint to look at missions. (I choose not to enlarge ui as its only the missions I have this issue with).
2: Server Stability/Crashing, I understand the main purpose of phase 1 is to test the server's stability and get them figured out. I think you have done a wonderful job in fixing this and continue to improve. However, I do still find myself crashing every once in a few hours. I also came across a bug where my character can't be logged into and when I do it just reloads over and over. I decided to make a new character and post it in the bugs channel however that is filled with other issues so I don't think it may have been seen.
3: Mobs, the team should really consider having mobs disappear faster as the beginning area is just peppered with dead goblins that flop when you load the area. This could contribute to lag and removing those bodies instantly or after a second would help the stability of the starter zone. Otherwise, the starter zones will continue to feel choppy.
4: Healing, I would like to recommend that the team considers including scrolling to heal party members as it is done in New World. Pressing F1-F7 is not ideal, I understand you can change it or switch your key for cycling "friendly" or "allied" targets (still don't understand the difference). But I'd like a cycle for party members/raid members specifically and it to target the lowest party member first. Or just implement being able to scroll through party members and I can make do with that. This would be more of a feature that would help action camera healers such as myself.
Final Notes: You guys are doing great; I love that you respond to feedback and take it seriously. You are moving in the right direction, and the game is already slightly addictive for people who seek the grind such as myself. I understand this game is in alpha and not all systems are finished. The combat I'll be it barebones is lovely hybrid combat, ranged action camera is still a bit wonky but melee action camera feels great. I look forward to continuing testing and meeting new people.
Tagging: Current tagging system is the fastest way to make me despise my fellow players. Nothing worse than waiting for something to kill (especially quest related) hitting it first then having someone or a group come along and out-dps you. Shared credit systems are friendlier. Players today are less polite than the days of respecting the "Camp Check?" in lower Guk.
Materials: Never saw a copper node the entire time I played. Absurd numbers of huntable Deer / Not enough Huntable Grems etc. Population / Placeholder issues I suspect need adjusting..
PVP Flagging system: Problematic... Had one much higher level griefer stop our leveling group because he was able to do enough damage even if we didn't flag, that we'd have died to mobs if we continued pulling.
PVE-Death corpse looting: Don't like this mechanic. Griefy (above example, pretty sure he was trying to get us to die to mobs) Maybe just a 5 min timer before anyone outside your group can loot?
Travel time: Got a bit tedious to trek to storage vendor.
Inventory Management: So far felt a little tight instigating extra travel. Hoping a path to next level bags (craftable!) becomes clear soon.
Leveling: Difficulty/pace feels good so far! NGL, kinda hoping for hell-levels.
Mostly my hope is that once you launch you stick by your guns. Do not make things easier once some players have done things the hard way and do not make things harder once a few players have gotten to do it the easy way, be it crafting or leveling or other. I understand stuff happens and MMO's evolve but if you feel some aspect needs to be "nerfed," try doing so not by taking away but by boosting the other. It matters.
Good luck! Looking forward to next weekend!
Crafting needs a major overhaul. You need to separate the professions, so that players can do them one at a time for a small profit. The fuel system provides a perfect way to deal with this.
Gathering - material that needs processing before use in a craft - metals, stone, wood, fibres etc. need the gatherers doing it purely for node currency. You bring the material to a processor and you get paid in processed material or node currency, + more xp. Gatherers do not have to process their ore, nor do they need fuel. The less material is at the processor, the more they get paid. Player processors can set their buy price.
Processing - the person wanting to level processing shows up with fuel, and processes any material, at the facility into a processed good, that they can walk away with. You get no xp, but you level processing, and (rare) elite drops for crafting as a bonus (gems, etc.) during the process, more depending on rarity of fuel and material. The fee for processing, depends on how much material is at the processor. The processing facility gets the fee in a % of the metal refined, which is 100% paid to the gatherers + markup, Markup% goes on sale at the processor price set by stock level, (or goes to the processor owner), remainder goes to the processor.
Crafting - fuel + processed metal, plus material that doesn't require processing (gems, elite drops etc), you walk away with the crafted gear.
The advantages of this are:
1. No 3-stage crafting, and everything isn't all piled up behind gathering rare mats.
2. No hideous storage crunch.
3. Supply/demand get going which is essential for a functioning economy.
4. Gatherers get to keep gems and other gatherables that apply directly to crafts.
5. Processors get drops of gems and other gatherables that apply directly to crafts also.
6. There is a general "System" that is easy to understand for players.
7. Each profession, is entirely self-contained, yet still provides benefits for the final gear.
All the time I was playing, I was thinking about the crafting - "Why have they got a theme-park professions system for a sand-park MMO?"
I see huge value in forcing groups with caravans and ships to need to cover ground to earn their keep with a risk of combat engagement and some small scale PvE, but single players or small groups being able to teleport to major trade hubs feels like a small convenience thats worth permitting, and that matches the magical capabilities in the game. It could also have huge value in larger battles to have limited capacity to flank the enemy via short distance/limited cap portals.
Some of the ember spring distances also make it more reasonable to let a mob kill me and save a couple minutes traveling, the xp debt isn't big enough to dissuade people from doing this when PvEing. Maybe even let people who are not PvP flagged have access to the mage portals. High cool down/limited daily use would make it a great commodity. Locking people into their PvE flagging for a set period of time could help make this something that can't be abused. If you choose to use a portal you may not flag for PvP for 10 minutes or whatever.
Pros
- new game = good
- large scale world, that seems to have real thought into the biomes, look, feel, and atmosphere of a place to immerse yourself
- a real focus on teamwork and team play. work together to get there faster
- combat feels fluid, fast, responsive, and impactful. all my skills went off when i pushed the button, and had their own visual effect and sound, and the effects seemed to apply correctly(incap, stun, snare, etc)
- meaningful choices for crafting/gathering mean having relationships with those who do and gather the things you don't will be important, instead of everyone having everything
- class and weapon skill trees are easy to navigate and being able to freely change things on the fly is HUGE win. please do not change this
- synergy between classes and party members for combos and buff interactions.
- rewarding gameplay for learning and knowing your class skills and how they interact with the various debuffs/dots/effects. mage is the perfect example here, where the ones that understand what their skills were doing and how to use them, would absolutely dunk on everything
Cons
- mounts are slow and awkward/painful to use. i appreciate having to be mindful of where you leave your mount or it might be killed, but the call it in to then mount it is very slow and clunky. would prefer to be on the mount when you summon it, and then have the separate steps after dismounting of unsummoning.
- monster agro range. some monsters will agro on to you from what seems a mile off, while others will happily keep staring into space as you run circles around them, with no rhyme or reason as to what the difference is.
- monster leash distance. some monsters will loose interest and turn back fairly quickly, while others will seemingly chase you forever. again, no rhyme or reason as to what the difference is.
- seemingly bard specific. melodies/songs leave you in a permanent state of combat, making it almost impossible to eat rations/food between pulls, trade with party members for that sweet piece of loot that dropped, or call in/unsummon your mount.
- loot not automatically being put in your inventory when you win the roll on it. i like the change that people on the other side of the zone cannot get to roll on items any more, but not getting the item i won the roll on, and instead having to find it on the ground, and loot it a second time is very clunky. it also leads to instances where if you are doing a lot of aoe grinding, your item will sit on the ground before you can see where it is and safely collect it, and someone else will be able to take it, or if you crash/wipe/get pushed out of the spot you just loose your item... which is just, not fun.
- glint drops while in party. it should be more evenly distributed among everyone who killed the monster. as right now, there are times some people come away from a farm session with hundreds of glint from drops, and others with less than 50. the disparity is too vast.
- item/glint drop rates. it would feel better if every monster dropped a little bit of glint, and had the same chances of an item, versus the the one random monster will have a huge pile of glint, which leads into the previous mentioned issue, where one person can end up with the majority of the loot, leaving others with nothing
- buffs/debuffs on my player nameplate and other party/raid members. too often there were times where you couldn't see what buffs you had on yourself or other party/raid members, as they would be hidden in the black box with a +5 - +17 to indicate you had a bunch of stuff on you, but no way to break that out or adjust which buffs/debuffs you want to see.... but all you could see what the multiple node buffs you had
- ability to set a focus target. i couldn't figure out or find a way to set the tank as my focus target. i'm not going to advocate for macros or auto targeting of any kind, but a way to set a focus target on my screen would help, versus moving the entire party/raid frame into the middle of the screen for easy access, but which blocks the view. and yes i know i can set a hotkey to target a specific target member, but want something on my screen to click, instead of another button to press. maybe that's just me though
- xp debt and loss of materials when pk'd. it's one thing if i flag up against someone else also flagged, and die, then fair play. but if someone decides to pk me, and i don't fight back, it's very frustrating to get hit with xp debt, and a loss of items.
- other avenues of leveling besides mindless monster grinding. there should be alternative methods that are comparable to monster grinding for earning xp. maybe not completely on par with monster grinding, but somewhat comparable, if for no other reason than to break up the monotony of the monster grind.
i'm sure there's some other things i'm forgetting for both Pros and Cons, but overall I excited for and looking forward to further testing and development. For the "bones" the game, i feel it's in a very good place, and am encouraged by what i'm seeing, and with how fast changes were made and implemented from weekend one to weekend three. looking at you ddos improvement measures and server stability.
keep up the good work Intrepid, it's looking really good so far.
I have played AoC for all 3 of the Alpha 2 weekends that have happened. I love the vision of the game and can see what is to come in the future. That being said, one of the biggest issues I have noticed is the lack of tanks. It is near impossible to find them for groups and I believe that is because there are almost no incentives to play the Archetype, actually it is almost incentivized to not play Tank. If you are the tank, you are the first to die in any encounter, therefore you accrue the most EXP Debt. Even if a cleric were to res you, you are consistently in debt, and falling behind your leveling party. I have thought up a potential fix to help players who enjoy the roll, play the roll they usually enjoy.
1: The first fix I would suggest would be to reduce EXP debt and Durability loss if resurrected by a Cleric by 80%. Every tank I have talked to thought this fix alone would make the class a ton more bearable.
2: An alternate fix for that, would be to spread the EXP debt to the party if the tank dies, Split their 4% exp debt between the party, as it is a parties priority to keep the tank alive, and if the tank dies, everyone should share in the losses. This could make many unhappy, but if you want to incentivize tanking, you also are incentivized to get a good Cleric as well. I think this plays into the Risk vs Reward aspect really well.
All that said, the bones of the game that we are able to test now are solid for sure and I look forward to seeing more of the intricacies that Steven and the Dev team have to offer us in future testing. I have been anticipating this game for years now, and am just happy to be able to experience it. Keep up the awesome work Dev's, you are doing an amazing job.
Regards,
Hirux
Wow! The consideration and time that was put into the development of Ashes of Creation shows. The thought of the nodes, shuffling events and being able to influence the life the gamers could enjoy or even hate. This to me Is the definition of POWER. True warlords and war tactician may destroy quality of life, however the ability to overthrow a node is present and encouraged. the race to be first has also been properly rewarded thru the housing market and node development requirements. The grand jester of being a hero, the overly expression excitement of RNG.... it makes the experience enjoy able and exciting.
Example. I found blue husbandry material, ran to a node to use noticed the requirements, became a hunter level 8 raise the capital. The example is this, during the raising of capital a bear mount user. (with respect urrg)
This is the core to life a want becomes a ton of decisions that may influence your life. To capture the essences of life is what brings Verra to host life. The group dynamic is not only a tool but more.
Communities.
There is this presence of lack, as in tech. Not game. tech as in history of the world. I felt a since of raw as in nothing. Like, how to put this Teachers never taught (primitive society not tech as in reality). the emersion into Verra deliveries a blank canvas as promise. to be born in the (past) is not only cool but an opportunity to see what you made of.
To the PVP aspect I will get there. This is solo and PvE content results. Theres a lot to complain (combat storage lack of) about however respectfully to complain to Any about how fast they need to get something done they are working voluntary on is out there. Finish your vision, With all my support.
Thank you for this my brain is working out in the gym on Verra.
Then it's stupid that we can only have one piece of equipment to collect and we have to go back to town every now and then to repair it. Maybe at higher levels, when it is more durable and you don't feel it too much, but at the beginning it is irritating.
Thirdly. Some skills for collectors would be useful. For example, a buff that increases your movement speed after collecting raw materials. Of course, it is not available immediately, but after reaching a higher level. I invite you to discuss.
In my opinion, the most important thing is to increase exp. It could be different depending on the profession, because, for example, a lumberjack has plenty of trees, while other professions may have different results.
And sorry for my English. I hope what I wrote is understandable to you
first of all, a big congratulations to the whole team for the management of this weekend, few technical problems, 1 crash over the weekend.
For this post, I am going to address some questions that I asked myself throughout the weekend, not related to the stress tested aspect of the servers because my knowledge is not developed enough to talk about it calmly.
the elements that I am going to present may already be known, I apologize in advance if you have to reread these same feed backs a hundred times.
entertainment:
the horse is very rigid, some additional animation would be welcome.
the enemies also lack a lot of animation, we especially notice this in the animals, which suffer several damage without animation, enemies who leave and come back without understanding why.
However, having tested the bard all weekend, the class activities are very pretty and very well animated.
Quality of life
I played several times with a person that I added via discord because in-game is not yet possible.
a visual improvement of the group or raid on the mini map and world map, when you do not know the zone it is very difficult to spot it (which will improve over time with knowledge of the game zone) even though it is an improvement the potion of the people in the group being a little more visible on the map will not be refused.
this remains detail a small button displayed on the ATH or a simple click allows you to directly open the bug report interface will not be refused for my part un ajout de valeur X et Y sur la potition de map, pour nous tester etre le plus precis possible et pour vous regler ces probleme avec le moins de temps de recherche possible.
here is my first impression of improvement this weekend,
I apologize again for the poorly written sentences, and congratulations to the whole team for the work and courage for the future. I will repost later on more specific and precise aspects when I have tested more things and with additional personal ideas.
good luck, everyone has done excellent work, thank you for this great weekend that I was able to spend thanks to you.
Few things of note, the lack of a social menu to make friends and such made it very difficult to get groups together.
It often felt as though the basic mobs had more mechanics than the bosses in the dungeons. For example, In the Ursine Caves there is a 3 star level 19 Ashen Flame Devastator that has a spin attack that should be interrupted if you want to make the fight easier or not outright die sometimes, this guy also revives to like 10% of his hp with a sizable shield on him.... Now take the named boss right behind him, a 3 star level 20 named Nordhorn. What does he do? Auto attacks and sometimes backs up to throw a javelin of light... Much less engaging that the basic mob we just fought to get to him and that felt odd.
High density spots like Highwaymen Hills was almost unplayably laggy... this was not much of an issue in cities but when you are trying to kill things and stay alive every little thing in noticeable.
Now onto some more positive things, the combat feels amazing. Looking at your skills and gear and theory crafting your own small scale build was just fantastic.
The pvp was a super fun and interesting part of the game that has not been in other mmos I have played. I had a lot of fun with the pvp even being on the losing side often.
The synergy of classes is just amazing, not only comps for parties but even skills across classes, like a mage applying shock and the ranger using that to apply silence. I love the trinity system as well and I never felt like there was a class I didn't want in my party.
All in all I have high hopes and I see not only the vision but also the passion to make something good here and I am all in.
We are already seeing huge differences in server culture and migrations between servers due to player politics. If grinding nodes takes month(s) what am I or my guild meant to do if our world loses population and dies or experiences a merge with another world? We spend collectively thousands of man hours on our node and because we chose the wrong server it's game over. Having multiple servers makes that an inevitability and will server to further diminish the player base in a situation where that is already the primary concern driving a merge.
Of course it would be nice to retain our characters and personal/guild economy through a merge so not all would be wasted. However the narrative and story of our server, the economics of individual nodes, the relevant guilds and the server culture they provide, all of that is lost and we can not get that back.
I would love to hear a response to this concern/criticism that a game with this vision can not function properly with multiple servers. It would be good to have some cross-server meta level game play that can function to stitch together the entire community. Having that in your back pocket to lean on would be good for the future health and longevity of the game and it would only serve to grow and unite the player base together.
Threatdisplay: There needs to be an easy way to see if I have threat on a mob. Like a glowing red border on the HP-bar over their head or something. Right now it's only by looking at the target-of-target, and that doesn't really work in bigger pulls.
Visual spelleffects: It's hard to time blocks and abilities sometimes due to all the visual spell effects going on in group gameplay. The mob actions are hard to pick up on in all those fireworks.
Visual status effects: It's not always easy to see what status effects are applied to the mobs. And since there is alot of synergy between statuseffects this makes it harder to know what to do ata ny given time.
Moveble castbar: It would be nice to be able to move the Target castbar separatly from the taget frame. This is mainly to be able to have it close and center to better be able to interupt and react to casts.
Movable status effects: It would also be nice to be able to move the status effects separatly from the frame, both my own and my target. Also to be able to have buffs and debuffs to be scalable and moveable separatly from eachother.
Tab to next target: Not sure what the keybind option is called exactly, but the mechanic of hitting Tab to cycle to the next target seems a bit slugish for lack of a better term. It sometimes trargets a mob very far away, and sometimes it feels like it doesn't switch targets at all. It doesn't feel predictable and is hard to use reliably.
Linking gear: It would be nice to be able to link gear in chat. Right now, there is alot of screenshots on discord to handle loot in the guild.
- Almost no queue times was a very positive surprise.
- The character movement is very satisfying and fun, especially the dodge roll.
- The combat feels good. The abilities and even the normal auto attack combo feel impactful.
- The sound and visual effect design on the abilities is incredible. Seriously whoever made those, especially the sound guy, deserves a raise.
- The world scale is great. The zone feels big but not too big to make it annoying.
- The difficulty and danger of the world is great. It is possible to play solo and its challenging enough so it does not become boring even in a group
The Bad:
- For a game that is heavily reliant on social interaction between players, PLEASE add a friends list as soon as possible. Even if it gets deleted each wipe, it would make it a lot better to keep in contact with people you meet on your travels.
- The hunting profession feels weird and out of place. Going up to a bear and a wolf to interact with it to get its materials is awkward and kills the sense of danger in the world. I would much prefer killing things the normal way (with my abilities) and then harvest my materials from its corpse.
- Quests and Commissions feels almost useless. The low exp and basically no reward made them almost a waste of time. Maybe add some materials for crafting as rewards if you don't want to increase the exp from them?
- The Enemy Tagging system is kind of annoying and unrewarding. It does not feel good to help other players that aren't in your group. Even if you do the majority of the damage to the enemy, you get no reward for it if someone has tagged it first.
- The way people get flagged for PvP is confusing and feels inconsistent. Sometimes people can seemingly attack you or cast CCs on you to screw you over without any punishment or prolonged PvP flag on them which encourages griefing.
The Nitpicky stuff:
- The movement on top of a mount could be a bit more interesting. Maybe more abilities similar to the dash we already have?
- Wolves are way too scary. Their seemingly infinite stamina lets them lunge without end and makes them somewhat annoying to fight.
- More Emotes/2player Emotes. This is probably on the very low end when it comes to development priorities, but I have to put it out there. Sometimes after a very successful battle you just had with your friends and comrades you just wanna give them a hug or a high five!
Hunting is place holder and I hope it will have more info on it in the future. The only tough part of crafting leather armor was finding the correct color daffodils because you are basically fighting for it with several other people and with all the hills it is hard to find at times.
I think the biggest problem with mats is that once they are taken they are replaced with something else that is impossible to take/not worth taking (looking at you iron/limestone/emerald). Then the copper is then stuck behind the level 10-20 mobs and the only reason to take those is to build structures on nodes. The problem is because no one is taking the mat nodes in low level areas they copper/zinc is ONLY respawning in the high level areas so the low levels are not able to use crafting and get pushed out if they try to go to the high level areas by the mobs (I had to do this several times to find Daffodils).
I am not a fast or very social player. So I tend to stay away from power leveling. So I didn't see how easy things are to get gear from drops but a lot of people are saying it is 1000% easier to farm mobs than to craft items. I have to say that doesn't sound satisfying like crafting did to figure out. I also learned a lot about the game in general more than just go here with a party and kill stuff.
One thing I would like is a way to make notes in game on the map or even just a journal note book. Sort of like I am an explorer so I know where things are located in a general area like "Daffodils here" or "High level Boss watch out".
All in all it was a lot of fun and I can't wait for more.
Things I liked
Combat and movement in combat felt good. I was surprised how much I enjoyed tab target again as someone who generally prefers action combat.
Seeing the nodes evolve was great. Wish I could have been there as it dinged, but it was still cool to go to bed in a tent town and wake up in an actual city. I feel like capturing these server moments as a vid memory we can view back in a journal would be a nice touch. FOMO on the server defining moments is real.
Graphics and effects were better than I expected. Although I still hate the Ranger sfx. Sounds like Stormtrooper blasters pewing around me.
Plenty of bugs but stability outside starting zones was a pleasant surprise for a network test. Queue time was rarely an issue.
I like that leveling is a bit of a grind and not insta gratification.
Things I didn't like
Delayed character creator
Starting zones were absolute chaos and largely slide shows or t-posing displays. Gotta spread us out more. New player experience is rough
That AI voiceover work is a miss
Quests weren't particularly fun nor rewarding. Starting quests especially can't support player count ATM.
Trade systems are confusing outside of gathering.
If you're going to make us grind mobs for XP, loot drops need to be more frequent and better. There's just no juice to the squeeze right now. Nothing like grinding mobs and coming away with just glint and droppings and maybe some river stones after hours. Even hours spent in dungeons with my guild netted few equip drops.
Class skills are interesting and fun to combo. Stamina and Weapon skills less so. They don't feel impactful enough...that may not be fair as I could tell the difference when I changed specs...rather the choices weren't particularly exciting.
Likewise if we're just grinding, enemy interactions need to be more interesting. While combat itself is fun, especially vs elites and some mobs that force you to play/move different (shaman), it's still largely mindlessly cycling through rotations without caring who I was fighting.
Commissions and quest were a pain to cycle through. UI there could be better.
With the status of systems in game, as is, I think the testing has gone great so far. Its a matter of balance and more node's unlocking buildings to really come online. I think, once Phase 2 is here and we see more artisan buildings, complaints about 'gear locked' and general grinding complaints, will go away. Lots of grinding left to do in the game.
Only major wish: love to see more droppings drop, or change some of the node resource requirements(i'm looking at you "10 celery/blkberries PER 'Preserved Good'")
Thanks again for all the hard work and long weekends
Founder and Guild Leader of -Providence-