Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
- The combat is amazing; it feels really satisfying to press any button. I played a Fighter and a Tank up to levels 13 and 11.
- The class fantasy is really well done.
- The incentive to play with others and the social aspect of the game is great. It's been a while since I played with so many people, and it feels good.
- The world looks fantastic. Maybe it could use a bit more destruction to fit the background story of us returning after 10,000 years or something, but I like it as it is right now.
What I feel could be improved:
-Quests, in general, are pretty lackluster; they need better rewards. Also, if someone in my group kills a mob, it should count for me as well—basically, if I get the XP, I should get credit for the kill in my quest.
- Mob variety. I love the ones currently in the game, but we need a more diverse bestiary.
- World map: I can’t easily find my party members unless I zoom in halfway, which is inconvenient.
- UI: I guess it’s still a work in progress, but a friend list would be nice. The guild UI should also have more functionality, like allowing me to invite people to a party when I right-click on them, and i sometimes have problemes seeing who i am targeting.
- Increase mob spawn rates and density. I love grinding a spot with the boys, but sometimes I spend more time looking for a good spot than actually playing and fighting. Beside POI the rest is a bit lackluster.
- PKing and corruption should either be removed or only allowed in the Desert, Ocean, or other lawless areas. Only consensual PvP should be in the game; otherwise, it will turn into a griefer paradise.
1. Combat feels quite good. It's smooth and impactful. Does need some balancing and fixes to have some skills/combos procs make more sense. I.E. a lot of fighter skills look to benefit from stagger + trip, but as far as I can tell, you can only stagger while in a specific form. Bleed also feels quite weak.
2. NPC agro/reset ranges need a rework. They agro too easy and chase you to the ends of the earth. We've had a mob from RoS chase us all the way to New Aela. Similar issue in Carphin.
3. I know this is a controversial subject, but death debt needs to be thought over in the initial Alpha Phases, maybe bring back in Phase 3. While I agree it should be there overall, there are too many bugs with mobs atm that cause deaths due to bugs/lag/crashes rather than skill issues/bad decisions. Diminishing returns or a death debt grace period would be nice; i.e. 15-30 minute cooldown so back to back deaths don't stack it if you have a mob continue chasing you to embersprings...
4. Density of early artisan materials; I'm sure this will change but feels quite scarce at the moment. Hopefully more of this to come in Phase 2 if that's more of the intended time to get further into artisan and gathering.
5. PVP -> Very lacking at the moment, not a lot of it. Hopefully will be better in Phase 2 when we have more game loops available.
6. Terrain and movement physics: This is by far what feels the WORST. Getting stuck on random small objects you can't walk over. I've even gotten stuck climbing a set of stairs... this really needs a re-work, a long with general movement/jumping/climbing etc.
7. Finally.. visual clutter and the DAMN CURSOR xD. It's almost impossible to find your cursor in the visual soup of effects, coupled with the tone and hue of the cursor blending too easily with the rest of your screen. We need an option to change the colour on it to something brighter and easier to notice. Would also be cool to see a brighter and more distinct area high light when using skills that are targeted with the cursor.
Im playing a Cleric currently at level 14.
I'm very happy with the game. Clearly I'm going to play it. I couldn't find a replacement for my WoW Burning Crusade experience.
I suffered a bit leveling without quests. But after getting new weapon, it got faster.
Later I joined some groups where I tested the healing: it was good too. I liked that I need to do some dps to help my mana. Some issues with the UI, but very easy to fix.
Issues while healing:
- Can't properly cancel a cast if I have no target. If I'm using hover UI to heal someone, and I want to cancel a cast with ESCAPE key, the General Options for Main Game appears. Escape button should show the menu if there is no active target, or active cast of an spell. Or another key to cancel a cast of an spell should be added.
- The Mend spell wasn't working with hover UI. Always casting it on me.
- Maybe a key to target self without losing my current target. This helps a lot for healers.
Professions was a bit hard to understand, but it is good (apprentice with wood). I'm sure quests can help understand them.
The UI to make things can be improved. Accepting a custom number of processing (not fixed 1, 5, 10) and accepting mixed rarities can do the trick. It was annoying to go to storage back a forth to complete 1 by 1 some stuff.
Conclusion: I want to play it now!!!
The main two concepts that I would hope get addressed are:
These are just the concepts but I hope they are implemented and that nerfs for the purposes of not allowing people to progress too quickly or get "powerleveled" aren't prioritized over having fun with your friends or different sets of friends.
Also, please give us account, guild and city storages. Managing larger amounts of resources by just individual character banks is very big hassle. Account-wide storage to me just makes sense, especially if you do want people to roll alternate characters.
Things I liked:
- Combat & (Mostly) movement. At this stage, very nice to see, and can see from previous videos it's constantly improving. Movement in combat / spell casting ... Movement whilst jumping, both really nice to see.
- Death debt, this i love, reminds me of DAoC, and makes levelling feel impactful.
- Events were awesome, take a leaf out of GW2's book, this is how you bring people together, and they felt really rewarding as well, i would like to see more to them though, like what someone would call a large scale stringed-together "meta" event, but i'm sure this will come - or i just haven't seen it yet!
- Difficulty in Mobs, feeling threatened and careful of my surroundings is great for crushing my ego.
- The world design is great, i love being able to look at a mountain range and say, that's where we're headed.
- Skill tree seems pretty robust, i'm excited to see how archetypes combine.
- I like how the game relies on community, and crafting, however there are big caveats to this which i'll mention below.
- Open World PvP, Despite what all the PvE'ers are moaning about i love open world PvP and the friction the game can cause, i just hope that the Corruption system is fledged fully enough to deal with abusers / griefers. And that there are plenty of opportunities to welcome "legal" open world PvP.
- Quest Inventory!! My biggest pet hate in other MMO's - nailed it, good job. (but make sure the quest items actually go into it).
- No Pay to win. No Pay for convenience.
- Dodging & Blocking, great. Sprinting, great.
- Sunrise / Sunset ... probably one of the best looking games i've seen at this time. See Night below :-P
Things I Didn't Like:
- Its been said before, the questing. Even old MMO's have moved away from the traditional "Grab quest, carry out quest" It's not fun gameplay, text is old school, The Ai voices are ... interesting, but need work. I mention GW2's "hearts system" which for me was enjoyable, because I didn't have to think about what i was doing, and a lot of the times it coincided with events.
- The "Tutorial", i saw someone mention that this could be done from before the portal, i think that's a great idea, and then you port into your starting zone, having everything thrown at you as soon as you got in, was actually really overwhelming and confusing.
- Artisans / Gathering, i committed quite a bit of time towards this, and felt really deflated afterwards that i had to come off because i felt like i wasted my time when i could have just been grinding. It's not rewarding, it's way way way too complex for levels 1-10. Having just a flat % Exp reward for gathering would be ideal for arguments sake let's say 0.5% so it scales with levels. For a game that is going to be reliant entirely on this system it needs a lot of work and has to be bullet proof. Games like Albion Online have a similar system but have simplified it, GW2 you can actually get to max level just by Crafting, because that might be what your chosen task is to do in the game. If it truly is "Sandpark" this should be a viable option for those kinds of players.
- UI, this was a big issue for me, it ties into everything above, Questing, the Map, party icons, gatherables (lack of UI), looting / visuals of, Crafting .... oh my, Points of interest on the map. A lot of it isn't clear enough for what it is, or is too convoluted.
- Mount animations, it's awful, too floaty, gets stuck on everything.
- Fuel in crafting, hate it, why i need wood, to process and cut wood into timber ??? Sure for smelting i get it, but just let me buy coal or something, it seems so unnecessary. There's far too many things involved for crafting something at level 10 that will be out levelled in a couple of hours.. the juice is quite simply not worth the squeeze.
- Night time
Things i would like to see:
- Less grab and fetch quests, more dynamic questing like events.
- A really robust corruption system, does the punishment fit the crime.
- An active fishing system, similar to Archeage that promotes open world PvP with high risk high reward.
- A dedicated tutorial area, separate to the starting zones (like Gw2), where you then move on to Vera.
- Zone wide / multiple involved events.
- Better UI for mobs, the star system is "Okay", but better visuals around their Health Bars (Bronze silver gold, legendary borders?)
- As above, for crafting. I want to go to process some gathered items, it tell me how much i have (not have to remember or open my inventory) tell me how many i can craft, a slider to decide how much to craft! and/or "Craft All" and then the time worked out depending.
- Better party Icons on map, pref by base class / archetype or support / dps / tank.
- A really intuitive LFG system (definitely NOT like GW2)
- More rewarding quests if they are a must - again, juice worth the squeeze?
- Better telegraphing of big attacks from mobs, similar to Wildstar or GW2, so you know what you need to dodge or block.
- Alternate group displays for healers? / display of buffs.
- /follow, /assist macros or options.
There's loads more but i'm sure hundreds of other people will cover theirs.
Again thank you, it's made me want to play more again next weekend, really looking forward to what December and May Bring.
EDIT!
Oh oh oh oh... something i forgot that i consider really important. A PvP levelling system & Rankings / titles. With access to other abilities, passives, stat increases. This will be a touchy subject. but i get to max level, then what ?
Dark Age of Camelot, and GW2 did this & i think ESO ? although GW2's was a little pink a fluffy. Where as DAoCs was pretty all in, but took yeaaaaars to progress through, the first couple of ranks were pretty quick, but it was exponential and a huuuuge time to contribute towads. But so rewarding in it. things like, Stun Breaks, or stun Fields, Mana Regen active / passive, Stat increases, block chances, parry chance, healing bonus, healing crits, melee crits, spell crits, CC mitigation / duration, Total Stamina, Stamina Regen ... sooo many more, all scaled from a PvP based levelling system known as "Realm Points". It's why players still play to this day 20 years later.
Seeing someone with the Realm Rank of 10+ was genuinely like ... oh, i do NOT want to fight this person as a RR5.
GW2 had it based around the PvE aspect of their World Versus World siege system, but it wasn't impactful enough on other players in my opinion. Again some players would hate this i'm sure, but! not everyone wants to do just PvE content / lore / story content post 60. Give something for the PvPers to really sink their teeth into.
Ranger-Specific Feedback:
Hard CC: Ranger doesn’t seem to have any hard CC like other classes do—think a trip or something similar. Not sure if this will be introduced through secondary classes later on, but right now, it feels like a gap.
Movement & Kiting: Ranger has some movement, sure, but it’s just not enough to kite effectively—especially without waiting for every single cooldown to refresh.
Bow Animations/Class Fantasy: The running animation with the shortbow looks a bit ridiculous, like an adult running with a toy bow made for kids. There’s a big difference between an actual short recurve bow, like those used by the Huns or Mongols, and the toy-like shortbow we have here. Plus, while the shortbow’s auto-attack fits the Ranger fantasy, the longbow (when not casting snipe) feels way off. For the class identity, a Ranger should be a fast-paced, high-dexterity character throwing projectiles at a swift clip, positioning themselves to outwit opponents. It’s close, but just not quite there yet.
Imbued Ammo/Hunts: Instead of making each type of imbued ammo its own skill, why not have them work more like an aura you toggle with one button? Think of something akin to rogue poisons or paladin auras in WoW—same idea with the hunts. (Yeah, I know WoW’s a buzzword here; everyone stay calm.)
Gathering Feedback: Gathering feels kind of weightless and bland. If time-gating is going to be such a big part of gathering and crafting, we need some audio or visual dopamine hits to make it more satisfying. Look at New World for inspiration (Bill, I’m looking at you)—my dad literally plays New World just to hunt, gather, and harvest. It’s that satisfying.
Mounts: The mount animations are rough, which is surprising given how great the sidepass movement on the horse is—really close to the real thing (grew up around horses, so I noticed!). But the sliding and awkward movement while running and turning? Major immersion breaker. And on the wolf mount, the player’s position looks uncomfortable, to say the least.
Mob Aggro Leash: Having a mob chase you for 300 meters is brutal, especially when you think you’ve left them behind, only for them to catch up after a few seconds and one-shot you. It’s rough and feels pretty bad—definitely could use some tweaking.
Crafting Time-Gates: If a batch is going to take 10-30 minutes, at least give us a way to queue multiple jobs at once. Seriously, please.
Some might ask why I’m not giving more positive feedback here. I figure that if I’m taking the time to write this up, it’s because I’m enjoying the game and having a good time. You can safely assume that whatever I’m not mentioning is going well. Thanks for all your hard work—overall, I’m really impressed so far!
I am 45 years old and have been gaming for about 40 of those years, 32 of which have been completely on mmorpg games. I have been there for all of it and I game 30+ hours a week on average. If I am in to a game I will put in 60+ hours a week in to it. My feedback comes from a position of experience.
First impressions:
Absolutely beautiful game with excellent combat flow. Clerics healed well, fighters damaged well and were a little tanky. The combat system exceeded expectations, and it just felt good. The leveling wasnt too grindy, it seemed to be right in the zone for just enough to feel accomplished and not annoying.
General feedback:
With a 5800x3d and a 3080ti it was still laggy with lots of graphical tearing, even after updating my drivers.
Less important to me than the gameplay, however.
Trying to figure out how the crafting worked was difficult, and I hope to see crafting quests to guide us through the basics in the future. The crafting is tedious, confusing, and very little reward for doing it currently.
I did not enjoy the rarity of minerals to mine or how grindy it was to "LVL" mining- I didnt even get the opportunity to try crafting anything more than molds. Just the realization that I cant find any nodes and to get leveled would take me more time than allotted just made me concentrate on other things. I think increasing the availability of nodes would help significantly.
I hate that you drop items when you die and can get looted while waiting for a rez. The xp debt is just annoying. Unfair to classes that are dependent on other classes to have synergy- as a fighter, its just too difficult to grind solo and I lost alot of mats because of it. All of my leveling came when I had a bard or cleric with me, more so the cleric. With a healer, the fighter was an absolute unit. Excellent work on that class, I had alot of fun on a dps class which is a change for me- usually I tank or heal.
The Cleric healing build were amazing but they lacked alot of dps moves, making leveling challenging for clerics as well. I have to admit the main reason I made a cleric was to try to build a paladin build (which I am hoping to see still from secondary classes) but I ended up making my cleric healing focused and leveling with fighters because they just werent viable for damage dealing. One thing I did notice when trying to heal groups in the dungeon is that even a tank that outleveled me by 5 levels could not hold agro off me. There should be more threat per second for tanks and an agro dump for healers. I spent more time healing myself than healing the group. I wish hover healing was more viable, I struggled with it and ultimately ended up clicking each heal out in the party ui. Making a hold to cast modifier for self heals (like shift heal) would help immensely for hover healers.
My main homie made a bard hoping to synergize with my fighter and for most content could not keep up with heals- I think the bard was done really well but I think there should be a more healing focused build for the bard as well. They are just more or less mana batterys for clerics at this point.
Grinding xp was ok, but I wish the quests had more... just more content. I initially tried leveling with quests but most of them were so vague or just broken that i abandoned questing all together. They seem soul-less and pointless.
I would love to see an auction system so that our crafted items could be sold to other crafters and interdependencies used. This will be very rewarding for crafters.
Experiencing the "dungeon" was actually a massive bummer to me. It was just a zerg of people kiting mobs thru a bunch of disorganized groups and running in to loot mats people were dropping. If this is the main content of the game, I dont see how it will succeed- this absolutely ruins the game for me and all of my friends who tested this weekend. I would really like to see closed instanced dungeons that require the use of specific class utilities and mechanics to be successful, making classes roles have an actual purpose. This is the biggest and most important point for me. Its what made me leave lin2, it was just mindless grinding for hours on mobs everyone was competing for and no real mechanics involved. The loot system from bosses is hit or miss, and you dont even know who will get access to the loot, whichever zerg party has the biggest epeen will always win. Its a system that will always fail, promoting only the geared guild to get more geared while everyone else just wastes their time and gets their pulls taken. Not fun at all to most of the player population.
As this is critical feedback, I want to point out that I had alot of fun playing this game- more than most games that have come out recently, and I think the combat flow is a huge part of that. This has the bones to be an amazing game, hopefully one that will find a balance to fit the many different types of gamers that play it.
Grinding mobs is how I want to level. Preferably with groups.
Some of the monsters feel special and use cool abilities. More of this, please. It would be nice if the 2-3 star monsters were also a different color or something to make them more obvious to small groups that can't kill them.
I like the class system but I hope the secondary class has a very significant impact on your skills.
Could be better.
Playing the Fighter is just an awful early game and soloing even lower-level mobs is extremely miserable until you get blood fusion to get back some of your missing HP.
Eating rations should stay on you until you reach 100% hp. Having to eat 6 or so rations to full heal is really frustrating.
Mobs are often found standing on structures that we can't climb up, like the roof of a house, what is the point?
There should be no death penalty for consensual duals. I want to have fun killing my friends, we can't practice.
There should be way more mobs in the game. There is far too much empty space right now that could have great camps to farm.
Bows fire so fast, especially the short bow. It's like a machine gun, totally unrealistic, and does more auto-attack damage over time than a melee weapon.
I do not care for weapon finishers. It is very hard to see when they proc when other things are going on that you need to pay attention to.
Strong dislike.
I really hate the corruption system. If you want to PVP you are forced to bait people into it or you just can't. A lot of the time the people you are fighting want to kill you but just want you to go red first. After you go red they will come back and fight, hoping to loot your items. I know griefing would be out of control if it wasn't in place but there is the problem. People who want to gank can't realistically engage and those who don't want to will still be victims from time to time. Basically, no one gets what they want. I'm not sure what the solution is. I enjoyed Dark Age of Camelot PVP where it was restricted to a very large area of the game but all leveling was possible outside the PVP zone.
People looting your friends and not flagging for PVP.
My overall impression of Ashes of Creation so far is positive. The pieces of systems that we can see look like they have the potential to grow into something genuinely impressive, even if they are not there as of yet. While there are bugs and server problems and exploits, the overall experience itself has been enjoyable enough that without forcing myself to play it, I have been drawn to play the game in favor of other activities, and even after taking breaks to do other things, I've gravitated back towards Ashes. There are bugs and glitches and exploits, but many of them have already been fixed or are being actively worked on, and as long as effort continues to be put into the game, I feel reasonably confident that it will be able to rise to the standards it looks like it is shooting for. However, that is going to take time, and it is going to be a great deal of effort, and unfortunately there is also the distant concern of how that development time will be funded and whether or not additional funding will be needed. A distant concern, but still a concern.
Combat feels, for the most part, satisfying. Audio/visual feedback on abilities lends a good feeling of weight, with examples such as Lightning Strike for Mage, and Snipe for Ranger, standing out as noteworthy. If that feeling is continued throughout the remainder of abilities, then things will be good. Fighting mobs feels relatively difficult especially as the levels increase, but not impossibly so, and both levels and gear make an immense amount of difference.
Death feels brutal. In and of itself, dying feels bad, but, appropriately bad for the most part. You do not want to die, you want to avoid it, it's a harsh lesson to learn, but it's a lesson with a purpose. Be smart, be careful in what you engage and how many enemies you take on, learn when you need to run. However, there are some issues. Mob position/mob aggro feels somewhat inconsistent, potentially due to server issues, and some mobs are extremely quick and are nearly impossible to outrun, which can make for what feels like unfair deaths during levelling. Losing half of your materials is rough, but you can get back half of what dropped, except that in a realistic situation you are not going to get it back because anyone who happens to come by is going to loot your pile because there is no penalty for doing so. As an addendum to combat/death, the range at which mobs will finally break off aggro is obscenely far and needs to be tweaked, as it currently stands trying to run away from a singular mob that is too difficult can be a 5 minute sprint
Quests in their current state feel like they are frankly not worth even paying any attention to outside of a handful of very specific ones, and grabbing commissions that involve mobs you were already grinding. The rewards for the quests both in terms of XP and in Glint are so low that you would be better off just grinding mobs, and to my knowledge, there are no gear/rep/node currency rewards yet for quests, certainly not in any that I've personally found so far. Events, however, generally feel rewarding. The XP rewards are typically in the 12-15k range for many of them around Lionhold, and Glint rewards are in the range of 50-90 or so Dim Glint, making them largely seem worth the time investment, with a few notable exceptions having oddly low end-of-event glint rewards balanced out by the mobs within the event dropping upwards of 30 glint.
The AI voiceovers for quests are... lets just be honest here, they're bad. They sound cartoonishly slurred and off-pitch. They're funny, but if they're going to be used long term, they will eventually need work. Not even remotely a priority, but notable nonetheless.
Artisan professions are interesting and allow for a good variety of gear to be made, however, since the gatherable resources only refresh after being harvested, every area eventually becomes inevitably saturated with materials that are too high level for anyone to actually gather, and spawns like Ruby/Copper/Zinc simply cease to exist or become so rare as to be functionally extinct. The XP required to level up gathering also feels like it needs to be tweaked, as even after gathering in excess of 600 Basalt/Granite, I was only partway into level 4 for Mining, and yet when hunting for Grem Carcasses, I gathered less than 50 and was already nearly level 5 in Hunting.
I played ranger (level 15) and bard (level 10). I really loved the unique feeling between the classes, the clear sound ques, the spell effects and the gameplay feeling behind the two classes that I played, and what I saw from the other classes. Obviously, there is tuning to be done here and there, especially when it comes to balancing, but that is a matter for later Alpha stages.
I do feel like bard could have some more single-target oriented buffs (like their attack speed buff) that they perhaps also choose whenever it should be an AoE or single target (similar to their mana, heal and freeze attack). It feels like they have so much potential, but are essentially reduced to a mana battery due to the harshness of especially low-mid level mana consumtion. But I'll be willing to admit I am far from the best bard there is, and there is a possibility that I am just not a very good bard. :] I just picked one up to level with my friends who arrived with the November crowd.
I love the combat of Ashes (buggy, teleporting wolves aside). It feels fun, challenging and engaging in most parts. Mobs behave differently, the group has to set up priorities and apply different tactics depending on the mob type. I love that!
I was one of the people who had Ashes as a first introduction to death penalty (other than repair bills, of course) and while harsh at times, it does actually feel like a positive thing for me - aside from the way it indirectly punishes tank players due to the class' frontline nature. And that comes from someone who is from the more casual MMORPG crowd ;] (WoW, GW1, GW2, BDO etc.)
Gathering feels okay. Obviously hunting feels very much like a placeholder (I assume we're not going to pet creatures to death at release...) - but the general idea feels like... standard gathering. Its very fun to find rare materials (especially hunting targets such as cool armored mounts) in the wild and I very much hope you keep that. Possibly that these cool mounts dont have set spawn points during release, but rather can pop up a bit everywhere; increasing their rarity and general appeal.
Processing is... not as good, in my opinion. It feels way too resource heavy and overly complicated at times. Animal husbandry feels like an enormous gold sink that is just impossible for people in smaller communities / solo to handle in the long run, and farming was just a huge turnoff for me (that might be a me-thing though, I never liked "farmville-esque" gameplay in MMORPGs).
Crafting is where the real issues come - I took one look at it and decided that I wont touch that with the long end of a stick. The exp gain per craft is wayyyy too small; it is soooo much more efficient to just go gear hunting from mobs. My small group of A2 friends and I even decided to almost completely ditch crafting at December's wipe (unless there are MAJOR revamps until then) due to how tedious and inefficient it felt.
Ashes has the potential of becoming a truly beautiful game. The way light works in the open world, the beauty of summer and elegance of winter is something actually mesmerizingly beautiful to behold. Obviously, there are graphic glitches a bit here and there (beware the napkin cloak!), but I believe that with the finishing polish, Ashes will look fantastic. The player characters (and NPCs in general) do not feel like they live up to the beauty of the world in itself, but I understand perfectly well that this is because you're focused on system fixing at the moment and not the beauty details.
The writing really feels (and hopefully is) a bit placeholder-ish at the moment. And the AI voice acting made me cringe my spine out of place. It seriously felt like a parody from Viva la Dirt League. :'] I am generally a person burning for the lore of the games I play, but the way quests, dialogues and especially the voice "acting" made me just skip through most texts after a while of genuinely trying to get involved in the lore.
The music we have heard so far did not disappoint though, especially the general calm music while exploring and in character selection. Same goes for general audio, such as spell sound effects, mob sound effects and trees being cut down. Hats off to the entire audio team!
I know the current corruption system is a bit of a placeholder, but I feel like I should share the experience I had the other day. I was grinding in a group and suddenly another group pushed into our territory, essentially just doing their best to out-grind and out-tag us. Obviously, our exp and loot gain dropped to less than half and we figured that we'd just do what we thought was expected in this game: push them out with PvP.
The thing is, we tagged up and engaged; and we got corrupted players immediately as we wiped them, as they did not tag up to fight back. We wiped them once or twice until other players in the area came looking for our corrupted ones.
It just felt a bit strange; is the game not meant to encourage PvP conflicts over PvE zones? Or is it meant to become a PvE struggle until one group gets tired and leaves?
I felt like this was something brought up by a lot of L2 and other old-age PvP MMO gamers in the past, and back then I did not really realize how true their words would ring... Yet here we are, and I definitely felt exactly the anti-PvP issues they brought up many months ago.
I obviously, as someone who really dislikes non-consensual PvP in general, do not want people to be able to flag up and hunt people down with little to no penalties - that is just going to kill the casual crowd that I believe is necessary for the survival of the game... but it certainly did not feel very PvX-ish to just be pushed into a corner of PvE tag-battle where the only other two options was to either leave the area, or risk our players losing gear going corrupted. I am afraid I have no idea how to solve this issue, but I wanted to bring attention to it.
After the third time they did that, we resolved to kill them all, but they switched back to PVE and we got corrupted. Sorry for the long story, my point is that we should include a cooldown between switching from PVE and PVP so players can't just switch back to PVE to farm others unpunished or if in a difficult situation. I would like to know if this has happened to anyone else and what do you think on this issue.
So a couple of observations and I'm certain I'm repeating some things from other players but here goes...
Mobs: I love the fact you have to dodge mobs in some places because they're too strong. But that's the problem too, some of them are so out of place as to be head scratchers. A good example of this is just outside the boundaries of Miraleth. Here, you can encounter a L9 skeleton hanging out next to a L15 Rock Elemental. Or the Dire Wolves that suddenly appear in the oddest places as the only 2 star, L13-15 creature for 15 minutes in any direction. Some of these spawns just don't make sense. I'd love to see a bit more balancing of the areas and I'm certain this is too come but it was something that leapt out me repeatedly while testing.
Looting: So I have a problem with looting. Specifically - corpse looting. In order to find resources I was having to travel long distances. Those random high level mobs I mention above caught me out more than once on my way back as I'm riding my horse. In one case, a group of L15+ (5-6 of them) stood at the base of a hill, watched me die without interfering and then looted my corpse. The problem of course is the fact you lose resources when you die already. The addition of having your corpse looted on top of resource loss is so punishing and aggravating it made me stop playing twice during this long weekend to take a break and cool my anger. Can we do one OR the other? Having both is so punitive as to make me not want to play. I've heard the same complaint from others as well.
Crafting: This was frustrating to the extreme. The sheer lack of basic resources, the costs involved and the aforementioned loot problem made this a very un-fun process. Additionally, please allow us to choose any size crafting queue we want as this system is developed more. Having static choices made the actual process more than a little frustrating. All this said, I also understand there's a fair amount of placeholders in this system so I do look forward to things to come.
Questing: Boy this was a doozy. Numerous quests I couldn't complete because the mob that was supposed to drop an item simply never did. Even something as simple as the "Gather ancient tree shards" was difficult to complete because shard spawn points would not work even though they would show visibly. The last time I completed this quest it took more than an hour running between shard spawn points to get the 12 I needed. I encountered this so often I began avoiding quests that required gathering quest items other than harvesting. Also, mob spawn timers for named bosses is ridiculous. I gave up completely trying to catch named bosses for quests because they would never, ever be there. In one case I waited almost an hour for the named mob to spawn and it never did. This is not fun at all.
PVP: Last but not least...this system is busted currently. It's not just balance issues which are to be expected in any game that allows PVP. That's a constant struggle. No...this is the punishment aspect. You've made PVP so punitive that I was not interested in participating at all. If this is simply going to be world wide Null Sec from EVE then it will not be a fun game. Strong guilds will control the entire world and if you don't cooperate you'll be bullied into non-existence. People who have no desire to be PVP experts will not pursue a game which constantly takes from them because they don't want to play that way. A true open world game has areas that will cater to all styles of play. I was under the impression the Wild areas would be the open world PvP - not standing next to a rez shrine in the starting area and then being corpse camped for the lolz. If you don't find a good balance for the system you will never see a large base of diverse playing styles and will chase off a significant portion of the player base you'll need to make this game a long term success. Either give us "High Sec" or remove the punitive nature of PvP by eliminating corpse looting entirely or even better - Both.
Immersion The game is so incredibly immersive. the world feels so big and the terrain feels real. Beyond just the world building, the areas with the highest populations (specifically Lionhold) have little to no resources because they are constantly being harvested and stripped for low level crafting. It gives you incentive to take a risk and go out to more risky areas to make a profit. This is something that I have never experienced in a MMORPG. It makes the world feel so real and, while frustrating, makes a ton of sense. Also, no fast travel is good. I want to feel like going across the map is a full on task.
Combat The combat feels unique and well done. the dodging and blocking mechanics definitely need some polish (I know, its an Alpha) but you can actually side step and actively block in a tab target game. It feels fantastic, and makes it more than just a button clicker combat.
Crafting Slow and steady. It matches the overall progression in the game. Every level takes work, every time you level up and get the sparkles around your character feels like an actual achievement. I can see a lot of folks having a problem with this, but getting max rank in an artisan profession should be major. It incentivizes getting materials from other players to complete your special recipes. Also, I like having some recipes hidden behind drops and dungeons. getting special rare recipes Will set others apart in this great big world of crafters.
PvP I did not experience PvP at all during the first weekend. I'm not huge on PvP anyhow, but I love the idea of being able to have beef with someone for coming in and yoinking your drop, and being able to do something about it. I also love the idea of having one group of players start an all out war because they stream sniped the wrong guy. This doubles back to immersion. Your actions have an impact on the world and the politics of other players/guilds/nations.
Economy This is the one gripe that I have about the current state of the game. Currently there is no system in place to set up a market stall or market board to sell goods. I think that there should be some kind of marketplace in the main nodes for you to sell goods that doesn't involve polluting the local chat with "selling uncommon copper frags for 1 silver a piece!" I would like to be able to rent out a market stall, put my goods up for sale, and have players come up and buy things from that stall if they like what they see. This keeps to the Immersion of the game, but I would be happy if anything similar was put in place.
Overall, this weekend resparked my love for MMORPGs and I will be participating every weekend and hanging on every word that Intrepid has to offer to me. I look forward to every patch, update, podcast and event in the coming months/years. The developers care and attention to the game so far has me filled with hope that this is not another cash grab game that will be stuck in development hell. I look forward to seeing all of you out there and on stream. Have a good week everyone, Friday is not too far away!
I don't understand why it spawns at my side.
I'd like to, at least, have the option to summon+ride automatically.
Get rid or greatly reduce the mount unsummon time.
When the mount dies display the cooldown over the icon in bar, in the tooltip is just not enough.
I'd like the ability to use the raid party view (the grid) even if I'm in a 8 man group and not in a raid.
I find it better for healing.
Actions that require you to stand still (such as eating a ration) should cancel autorun. At the moment the ration is wasted.
First time entering the world is overwhelming, to say the least. New player experience is all over the place.
Are commission boards really necessary in Lionhold?
I got attacked by mobs multiple time just after reviving at an emberspring, not pleasant.
Placing level 14 slate wolves just outside a node entrance is an evil GM move.
Corruption baiting is a paint in the butt, especially being a mage.
Node guards don't attack mobs unless slapped across the face by them.
Ping is great.
Combat is very good.
SFX design is very good, especially mage's lightning spells.
Can't wait to listen to McCreary's work.
Overall this first wave surpassed my expectations.
CLICCA QUI PER UNIRTI ALL'ORDINE
Just make no loss of loot and gear on death problem mostly fixed
I've been having a blast these past weekends. The game truly gives off an oldschool MMORPG vibe, and I love that this game is motivating players to group together more than your average modern MMO. The combat feels really nice, the atmosphere is amazing.
Negatives and Ideas:
What I liked:
Everything feels weighty and meaningful. Every level, every material. I love the rarity in the spawn rates of mats, especially mining ones, and I love you have to search for materials instead of grinding the same spots. Absolute perfection for me. Additionally, the crafting system itself is complex and in depth. The sheer breadth of dependencies is a breath of fresh air compared to MMOs I have played in the past.
The node system is just fantastic. I know we are low levels right now but the world feels different and "living" more than i thought it would. Seeing node strategy discussed in chat, buy orders, etc. truly brings to life the civilization aspect of the game.
Combat is simply superb. Top marks.
The sheer scope of the world feels fantastic already, the bigger the better.
What I would like improved
The UI, outside of the skill bar leaves a lot to be desired, especially the world map. The icons on it are not self explanatory at all. It is also pretty buggy for me, routinely lagging by 5 seconds on open. Reported in game.
Once I read a buy order, I would like to be able to refer to it during my travels. It is difficult to remember which "rock" for which "item" I need when 25 minutes away from the node.
The pull time/distance for monsters is SOOOOOO long. I have ran for 5 minutes before from a mob and it not break aggro. I think those distances need to be tuned down some. They need to remain impactful but I have been chased all the way to another node before lol.
Overall, you guys are 100% on the right track. Stay strong to the "weight" of decisions/events/levels.
Well done.
Levelling + XP Gain:
I personally dislike the grinding state that leveling is in currently. I think that Levelling should be a combination of Exploring the world, gathering resources, doing quests, dungeons and raids. AND ofc also killing mobs. But i really really dislike games in which the primary way of gaining experience IS grinding. Its just a boring, mind-numbing experience for me. With the amazing world that you created i think there is so much more potential than just mind numbing, endless Mob grinding. Make people explore the world as you lead them on quests with meaningful storylines that make the world feel alive. On their way they can gather resources discover dungeons and raids etc.! Gaining experience this way is just way more fun and make people actually discover the game that you built in all its factettes.
I still think mob grinding should be a viable option for the people that enjoy it. But the average player shouldn't be forced into it to level quickly.
Currently Quests are very confusing, very unrewarding, very one dimensional und honestly unfun at this point. There need to be clear indicators for quest pickup and completion points and also better, intuitive design and ways of navigating the player to the next location of a quest.
This honestly still needs a lot of work!
AOC already has a big Risk vs Reward factor with dropping materials, large Map traversal time, Corruption System etc. etc. I think losing XP on death is just an UNFUN system. I see no point in that system at all. It just feels bad, period. There is enough risk vs reward already. And with the current Grinding times to level, losing that amount of XP is just a unfun timewaste. Remove XP loss on death please!!!
ALSO you built cool systems like Caravans and Nodes etc. But there is no good intuitive REWARDING quests that lead you through them. You need to do that! Most people just ignore it at the moment.
Combat:
Tried out almost all the classes to around lvl 10. The combat is very fun, feels impactful and responsive. Great work! I think the fighter and the ranger are fun but they feel very linear in the skilltree. Otherwise great work. Looking forward to whats coming!
PVP
Combat is fun and i can see this game being a great PVP game.
The Corruption system although i love the idea of it. It definitely still needs some work tho. BUT i think it should definitely be part of the game! I love this kind of system because ive enjoyed playing games like Archeage where its similar. AOC, Having a caravan system in the game where bringing materials from point A to point B to get a large reward it NEEDS something like the corruption system to add a Risk vs Reward aspect. Which is FUN in my opinion.
BUT many people dislike this system as a whole. I think it would be a good idea to implement Peace Zones where you cannot PVP flag -> Especially for Starter Zones and adjacent areas and "War Zones" in which you can be attacked anytime by other players. This way you could also make Caravan runs through exclusively peace zones for players who dislike PVP as a whole and would rather "opt out". BUT these MUST be way lower rewards than Caravan runs with risk involved. Leading through "War Zones" should then also give much more reward because of the risk of getting killed.
Maybe there should also be a option to COMPLETELY OPT OUT OF PVP for players who just dislike that type of gameplay. I think if AOC wants to gather a large playerbase they need to adjust for it too, and many people dislike the PVP flagging. BUT if they do that there needs to be a resolution for caravans. For example if you start a caravan it automatically enables PVP if you want to or not. People who dislike PVP can then just make their money doing other things, or run the "Peace Route" as i explained earlier.
Anyway i can see this game being very fun and cool game for PVP in the future with implementation of Ships and Oceans and Castle sieges etc.
Other:
I love the Artisan systems. Looks very promising for an alpha. I think its great that getting high lvl in a Artisan profession takes a lot of grinding. It puts value on getting there! Keep it that way! If everyone can do it, it diminishes its worth and enjoyment.
Mount animations definitely still need some work. Especially walking to the side, "strafing" with mounts looks very awkward still.
If you want to loot a corpse of anyone wether they died from PVP OR PVE i think you should NEED to flag up and get purple when looting it so other people are allowed to kill you after. Because many people abuse the current system to steal materials from people grinding PVE mobs with no consequence, because of the corruption system you cant kill someone who steals your corpse in PVE currently because there is no purple flag.
With further development i see a bright future for this game
But as it stands at the moment, i am a bit disappointed (but hopeful)
Right now, there is no way for me to invest in another player's caravan aside from giving them gold to upgrade their caravan. If my guild has a couple people who want to run caravans all day, there's no way for me to trade them glint or commodities to move on their caravan. It means that the people running caravans need to farm glint in between their runs.
I should be able to trade glint or trade commodities within the node they are stored so we can pool resources.
PVP
After seeing what happened to Asmongold this past weekend, it's clear to me that there needs to be a scaling punishment for players that PK characters at significantly lower level. Perhaps corruption needs to scale at 2x the rate when a player is 5+ levels below, 3x for 10+ levels below, and so on.
I think the wrong move would be to make safe zones. Corruption is the system to deter undesirable behavior.
AI voice
The AI NPC voices are giving me uncanny valley vibes. I can't put my finger on it.
Armor
I'm starting to understand the stats, and it is disappointing how weak a mage would be if I put them in full plate. I can use a spell greatsword, and get in close, but there's no available plate that would help me lean into that fantasy.
It would be really cool if there were recipes for crafters to make armor of each type that caters to the stat needs of every build.
Professions
Gathering and processing are far easier to progress than crafting. The novice recipes feel irrelevant long before you can even get enough materials together to start crafting enough to approach level 10. This goes especially for armorsmithing and weaponsmithing.
Overall, my experiences were very positive, fully knowing that content was and is not the purpose of this round of testing. The beginning player experience does need to be fleshed out some, without too much hand holding. LazyPeon's video kind of sums up my thoughts on this weekend. The devs have been FANTASTIC addressing issues and making noticable changes throughout.
Keep up the excellent work, and I will try to deal with my AoC withdrawal for the next 3 days.
We will discuss the problems in three different scenarios PVP, PVE and PVPVE.
1) PVP
Currently, because the corruption system is very punitive, some guilds have started to place non-combatant, unarmored players in the middle of massive PVP so that the enemy gets the "corrupted" status for accidentally killing this non-combatant player.
However, the situation gets even worse when these same players leave their mounts in the middle of the fight and, for some reason, killing someone's mount also gives you corrupted status.
And this "strategy" culminates in another player, also a non-combatant, being able to kill the corrupted player, without entering the combatant state.
2) PVE
Disputes over farm locations are legitimate and add a new level of fun to the game. However, with the changes to the flag and corruption system, the fight for farm locations has basically become a non-combatant player, attracts several mobs to someone's group and this group basically has no other choice than to press ALT + F4 to not be killed, as killing that non-combatant player and getting the corrupted status would be too punitive
3) PVPVE (global bosses)
Having conflict between players to compete for the best drops in the game is the pinnacle of the experience of playing AoC, but even that is being affected.
I saw the unfortunate situation in which a guild was killing Tumok, all non-combatants and with their mounts spread around the boss to avoid any attempt at contestation through PVP.
4) Conclusions and suggestions
These players, who make these "strategies", are obviously not wrong, they are using the game system to obtain the best results, which is fair in a competitive game. However, I believe that this is not the ideal scenario for a game that is fundamentally a group PVP game.
So, here are some suggestions to solve some of these problems:
A ) Killing mounts does not grant corrupted status
B ) The area around global bosses makes the player combative, such as when entering the desert or during caravan events
C ) Make points of interest such as Tower of Carphin, Steel Bloom, etc, combatant areas
With these three suggestions, I believe that most of the problems mentioned in this post would be solved. However, alternatively, a more immediate solution would simply be to reduce how punitive the corruption system is.
We all wish a bright future for "AoC" and we will do our best to try to help make this game even better, thanks!
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I tried Ranger and Mage, Ranger got to 10 and Mage to 6. The gameplay for both feels good, although Mage feels far more powerful at least at that stage - Ranger seems to have crazy mana costs on its abilities for what they do, so I was spending a lot of time eating, while Mage was just blasting on CD.
The grind is okay, although as Ranger I felt I had much less ability to recover if things go sideways.
The good thing about Ranger is that it felt it had just about good number of abilities to play with - not too little, but also not too many, which I think is also important. I don't really want to be dealing with keybinds overload and overly complex interactions.
Which is also I feel would be a bad thing about mage, although I did not get there - it seems to have one-two damage dealing abilities too many for my taste from what I see.
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Exploration is nice, but without some sort of main quest it's trial and error to where to go. Zones are clearly segmented by level, but there is little to no indicator beforehand of which is where. I'd actually like to have map to be more better indicators for areas levels and quests.
And as a matter of fact, I'd certainly like more quests - I hope there will be plenty for people who want a more guided experience like me. After all I do want "proper" PvE and I think it's important to have too, dungeons, raids, questlines, story, and all..
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Always on PvP. I'd be lying if I'd say I am a fan, I had a few interactions where I got just killed for nothing really. I hear there is corruption and all, but right now it's such a leaky bucket people seem to have little to no fear of it.
I fear that whatever we have seen with Asmon is just a precursor of what is to come, because way too many people are simply assholes and live to grief and all these free for all PvP games eventually implode on themselves scaring more reasonable people away. And there won't be Steven to insta ban people who go out of hand.
I don't know how to solve it, but it is definitely an issue to solve.
Strengths: Combat, world design, risk vs reward, artisanship, game has a good foundation, and stability improved throughout the test.
Needs Improvement: Stability and functionality are a work in progress, the goal should be to have it run buttery smooth. Quest and event functionality was mostly broken.
Potential Concerns: Regen rates feel too slow even with food, and processing times are too slow. I am fine with these systems as is, provided higher tier food restores more mana and higher processing levels decrease processing times and add additional order queues. Not the focus this phase, but something I will be tracking.
Didn't try: Corruption, Caravans, Guild Wars, etc. Basically didn't get into any PVP this go around. I plan on testing these systems in the coming weeks and breaking as many as I can!
TL:DR Came away from the weekend impressed with the foundations of the game, particularly the combat, and excited for what's to come. My concerns are mostly around getting everything stable and functional, but even in one weekend I saw noticeable improvements in that area.
I enjoyed combat overall. I enjoyed combat from a PvE perspective.
Mana Recovery:
While this was definitely an issue with players, and I understand you want people to bring Bards to groups to aid this. Not sure if the claim that the resting recovery issue was truly a bug that players were claiming during this past weekend on Lyneth. With the lower level area's crowded and everyone grinding, there was a definite issue with mana recovery.
Gathering:
A new game will always have people trying to figure things out. I get the learning curve. However even running round aimlessly trying to figure out what nodes I could and could not gather felt REALLY bad. Some sort of mini-map UI I can hover over would be so helpful. Zinc & Copper were extremely rare for being Novice level gatherables. I only ever found 1 ruby node during the entire weekend. While scarcity drives costs in a MMO, even more so in a Social Sandbox MMO. Novice level things should be more abundant than the higher level things I was constantly running into.
Crafting:
I did engage in some Novice level crafting over the weekend. The largest critique I have is the system has way more of a cost than benefit to its ratio. I need to collect the materials, fuel, and money to craft something. I was dabbling in Herbalism and Alchemy mostly this weekend. I wanted to craft myself some mana potions as a bard. Why does it require fuel to grind daffodils into powder? Why does it cost money? There needs to be some logic to these costs. I get a smelter needing fuel to make my Copper or Zinc into bars/metals etc for making armor, weapons, tools etc. But some things shouldn't cost anything. When the player character is doing the actions to make the product it shouldn't cost fuel. I.E chopping logs, grinding herbs etc. It also shouldn't cost money. Unless that's just a tax for using the publicly available systems, which is what TAXES should be covering.
During the past weekend, the main thing that had me not wanting to engage further were the steep costs. To make mana potions I need Daffodil power & Honey. Daffodil power no problem, other than the coin cost. Honey, on the other hand in current state the only place to get this is from a vendor for 23 copper PER 1. Meaning it cost me 35 copper to make 1 Novice Mana Potion. (23 for 1 Honey, 6 to make the Daffodil Powder, and 6 more to make the potion.) When I can just go to the NPC at the laboratory and buy them for cheaper than I can make them.
I am fine with crafting being an investment. I am fine with things taking time to craft. I am not fine with crafting being expensive for crafting sake. Which is what the current system feels like it is.
I strongly recommend taking another pass at crafting as it needs some serious rework and balance.
(I was also severely confused why I'd need a Ruby of all things to make a health potion.)
Questing:
Questing does not feel fully flushed out. While I feel like this will be more flushed out later. Questing felt like a hide and seek game in its current state. I do feel like external guides will make these easier, but in its current state it leaves me feeling like I'd rather not engage with it. I'll lead with the Kryonic Oaths, I received 4 of these as drops during some group leveling. Per the instructions I was to turn them into an NPC, and I couldn't even do that once I found the NPC.
I'll quote my work place. If I cannot take someone off the street and give them a Work Instruction to follow a process from start to finish. I did not write said work instruction clear/well enough.
If I can't take a quest from start to finish, it feels like something to me that is not fully flushed out.
EXP & Leveling:
I enjoyed grouping up with players and grinding EXP from mobs. However, the EXP from grinding gatherables felt very lack luster as those skills got higher. Even in the Novice levels. I'd recommend doing some re-balancing on those exp values to make it not feel like a slog to get to 10 on the limited amount of things you can gather as a novice.
As and ending note. Intrepid you're doing amazing things with this game, and I know its only an Alpha and things will improve over the next year or two. Please keep up the hard work. I can't wait to play more Ashes of Creation. I want it to be the next MMO I put thousands of hours into.
The approach is good. Ashes of Creation is not too easy and finds a good middle ground. The punishment on death is also good.
The action combat needs to be adapted. I want to attack what I'm aiming at and not have everything in the tab.
The world is beautiful for an alpha. The races have been well implemented so far.
The general design of the weapons and armor give back the old Mmo feeling.
Ashes of Creation is going a good way with “still” many construction sites.
But the Alpha 2, or rather the team, has shown how well they work.
High praise and keep up the good work Intrepid. You're doing a great job.
Ps. I love Ashes of Creation
Greetings from Germany
1. I think what you’ve put up for A2 is amazing. Kudos to the designers and developers!
2. Playing a fighter has been fun.
3. Lower level ores and minerals need to spawn more (copper/rubies).
4. Crafting should allow you to select the number you want to craft. Otherwise a lot of time is spent running back and forth.
My biggest complaint is the abuse of the game mechanics - a group or individuals are farming XP, resources or drops…bad actor(s) come along and lure a mob into the group, mobs kill and the bad actors loot the bodies. They don’t get any penalty but the losers are looted and get an XP debt. I hope this is corrected in some way so players killed by a mob have a chance to return and retrieve their stuff, or the bad actors get corruption.
Latency has been hit-and-miss. After a rough start, it's been ok for me on the client side - there are a few issues with rubber-banding related to climbing, but that's about it. A little bit of input latency because the servers are so far away, but aside from the DDoS episodes it's been stable, which is the most important thing.
Monsters rubber-band a lot more, however. Wolves most of all; when they're low HP they'll back off and circle you for a bit. Or at least, that's what I think they're trying to do - I just see them skate around and pop underground for a while, then teleport up to me and resume attacking. If I kill them with a spell while they're skating, their corpse continues moving until it finally decides where it was when it died.
Next most glaring thing to me was that quests and the overall onboarding experience were mostly broken. This has been amply covered by others, so I'll leave it there.
Finally, I've liked most of the map design so far, particularly natural features. Larger structures such as the crater north of Miraleth have been done well, terrain generally feels well balanced with realistic scaling and landmarks (Lionhold's bridge being an exception; it's a bit odd to have such a feat of engineering leading to a small plateau with nothing on it).
Execution of ruins isn't quite right in a number of places, though. There's a large wall, about halfway between Lionhold and the graveyard to the east, which is tilted hard into the ground with no evident structural damage. Lots of loose bricks around the ruins of Aela, but no collapsed roofs that I can recall. Surprising lack of overgrowth, too - after so long, I'd expect trees and vines to have taken over in places.