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
I love the combat in AOC so it made me try out three classes
The hunter, fighter and mage
First, the hunter was fun but the abilities felt lacklustre for me for some reason and it felt like unless you hit with both chargeable abilities the mobs were really hard to kill. Also, the jump back didn't feel like it made you get away from the enemy.
I didn't have as much experience with the fighter because when I tried it, it didn't feel fun when even the early mobs could get me down to 2/3 of my health easily. As a fighter I want to feel like I can take on the mobs because I can take the hits a bit more, not like a tank but still a bit more then I can now.
The mage was so fun to play with because of the blink ability making it easy to get away from enemies and all of the attacks felt impactful. Completely opposite of the hunter.
I'm sure the game has already come a long way and I hope to see it continually grow into something special akin to Dark Age of Camelot.
First impressions:
Not used to the controls as a mage. The diamond has attack, sprint, shield (which didn't seem to work), and Left...? Is that meant to be dodge?
I had no idea how the money or the economy worked. I thought in-game money was glint. I was broke until I figured out late Sunday you sold glint for silver and copper. I REALLY disliked people jacking your when you die before a friend can revive you. You can lose hours of mob grinding glint because you walked by the wrong bear or got killed from an invisible mob.
I don't get the needed 51% of damage to claim a kill or xp. I don't know why kill claims can't be shared or xp can't be divided. A higher level player can just camp a boss and claim it over and over again.
Graphically some things really do not look UE5 level. Not sure what I was expecting and it's not a bad looking game just seemed like something was missing.
I wish the map was better or there was path routing or the missions did a better job of telling you where to go.
Overall I had fun learning a new to me type of game. I'm sure most of my observations are just because it's early days and will continue to get polished. Looking forward to seeing more.
I've gotten pretty in-depth into the Artisan skills, and they are in a pretty rough spot at the moment. I know this is very place holder currently but even being in game as is is causing a lot of frustration for many players. As I'm sure has been reported repeatedly, the T1 mining resources needs some major attention. From what I've seen from how they spawn, it appears that once a resource has been mined, another random resource takes its place. Since players need exponentially more copper/zinc for Artisan leveling at the start over basalt and granite, if new resources spawn as anything but copper/zinc they are mostly left untouched.
Another pretty big pain point currently is the Node upgrading system. One extreme example is that trying to complete the Cookhouse building requires Sanctus Longbows as a Citizen contribution. The recipe to craft a Sanctus Longbow requires Journeyman Weaving materials, which should not be apart any contribution to build a base level building. Another part of the Building upgrade that caused a lot of confusion for us was where to get the upgrade points and how the add-on buildings give those to the main Artisan buildings. I found no information in game on what add-on building gives what upgrade point to use on the different Artisan buildings. A lot of the information our Mayors on Vyra were basing their upgrading on were from the Node Livestream from awhile back. The big point used from this livestream was the statement that said upgrading an Artisan building would lock the other upgrade paths out from being completed.
For example, we built the Stoneworks, which has the Mining Station, Jeweler Station, and Stonemason Station. From the livestream, as we understand it to work if we built the Farm upgrade, and used the point to upgrade the Mining Station to Journeyman, it would lock the Jewel and Stonemason path in that Stoneworks building upgrade tree. If the same Node wanted to build journeyman Jewel Crafting, they would need to build ANOTHER Stoneworks, and upgrade that. In my opinion this seems needlessly complex and confusing. This intent could be kept by increasing the points of the other upgrade branches after the first is chosen, and not making it an exclusionary upgrade path. In my opinion I don't think the system makes sense by having to repeatedly build the same tier 1 buildings and upgrading them into different specialties which lock out the other base Artisan professions already offered. The Node upgrading needs a lot more information provided around it that is accessible by both the Mayor and Citizens equally.
Another issue around Nodes is the Mayor election voting period needs to be extended to a full 24 hours so players get a chance to participate. In our server, one of the Nodes triggered their vote at 4am CST, and it ended very quickly. Not many players are around in the early hours typically, and it also required players to be lvl 10 to be citizens to vote. This resulted in a Mayor election with very poor turn out.
PVP:
There's a lot to talk about with PVP, and I know there are systems talked about that are not in play yet. As I believe has been mentioned but I will reiterate on, having safe zones in the new player starting area, or preventing players under lvl 5ish from being attacked would be good for the new player experience. It is pretty frustrating for a new player to be running around exploring Lionhold at lvl 3 and getting ganked by someone lvl 10+.
Another thing mentioned by Steven which I think needs to be fast tracked is the auto flag if looting a player's body not in your party/guild. Being able to run into a group and Ninja loot their bodies while they are fighting without risk of being flagged should not be possible. Another part of this mentioned by Steven was the bag/item that increases the time it takes for other players to open your loot pile, this should also be fast tracked.
I'm not sure if the following is intentional or a bug, but I and others ran into a situation where we killed a player's mount while they tried to run from a PVP engagement, and got corrupted just from killing their mount while they were riding it. The player was not killed, they were Purple when the chase started, but switched to White and then had their mount killed while riding it.
As part of the above situation, players can start a PVP engagement, realize they are losing, and start running away and have their Purple status fall off in a VERY short amount of time (less than 2 minutes). This also happened several times where players engaged myself or guild members, started losing, and unflagged and started running. One mage in particular was able to run in a straight line while I chased them on a Bear mount with dashing, and I was unable to catch them before their Purple status faded. This is incredibly frustrating in a PVP situation, especially when the aggressor can just flee and go White/Green with little consequence. The Purple status needs to take a much longer time to fall off from players in my opinion.
Quests/Commissions:
Honestly with how many issues surround quests, I wouldn't mind them being basically removed at this point. Quest markers are frequently not accurate or send you to the wrong location, rewards are almost never worth the time needed to finish the quest. The map is huge, so if a quest is having you run around between Nodes, you can easily sink an hour into it and then finish it for 3k xp and 17 dull glint? You can kill mobs for 3 minutes and get more reward than that. I completed one of the treasure map hunts, it took about 30 minutes of running around exploring, and it gave me 3 dull glint as a completion... In my opinion having the broken quests with their current balancing is doing more harm than good.
This same thought applies to Commissions currently, if you actively tried to do Commissions you would waste a lot of time running to the different locations for very little reward. Your time is better spent farming one dedicated location for both XP and glint than trying to actively do Commissions.
Server Workers:
We noticed pretty early on that Server Worker 8 constantly had problems. Like, all the time. The only time we were able to play in this zone was in the very early morning hours. To clarify, the Server Worker 8 includes Steel Bloom, Highwayman HIlls, and Winstead, and the locations inbetween. With the way content is distributed currently, these locations are always packed with players and this Server Worker/location in particular are the worst to play in by a long shot. It was consistently crashing, and had the most rubber banding/lag when fighting mobs. If possible, these locations should be split into different server workers to handle the player distribution as it currently is.
Caravans:
Please add the road buff to the caravan so it is clearly displayed when you have it and when you don't (this could also be applied to the player mounts as well). A very frustrating part of trying to do caravans currently is that if the Server Worker crashes while you are travelling on a caravan, it destroys your caravan. I know it's part of testing, but losing several hours of farming glint to a server worker crash just because I was on a caravan is pretty rough.
One thing to note is that when the view culling gets bad, it basically lets you run caravans for free currently since the caravan popup range has been reduced. I don't think this means the caravan popup range should be increased, but know that this is a thing that is happening.
Mobs
A lot of people have been exploiting broken mobs. This sucks a lot in an open pvp game, they are getting huge advantages in both gear, xp, and glint by abusing systems. Please consider adding a reset to mob health if they are unable to target players so they can't be killed if they are being exploited.
Myself and others in my guild suspect there is a major problem with the mob penetration stat. Certain mobs hit like an absolute truck over similarly leveled enemies. One of the most suspected enemies is the goblin shaman's poison glob attack. It just hits so much harder than anything else, so much so that we suspect it has some hidden juiced penetration stats, we could be wrong. Another offender is the Wolf enemies. They always hit way harder than any other similar level enemies. In particular the Risen Wolves(?) In upper Gravepeak.
Sorry for the run on, I overall have genuinely been enjoying the Alpha so far and I really think the core of the game is going in a great direction. There's a lot of room for improvement and I know much is being worked on. I leave every test weekend waking up and immediately wishing it was Friday to play more
I think the new player experience is kinda harsh. I am playing a lot of games and I had a hard time figuring stuff out at the beginning. I kinda got into it but I am still missing things (will figure out eventually).
The combat feels really satisfying and I had a blast just grinding xp on mobs. The only thing I dislike is the xp bump per level. I needed around 90k from lvl 8 to 9 but for lvl 10, I almost need twice as much. It's still an alpha, I know, but is it intended to be that high? That's pretty much the only thing on the leveling aspect.
I can't say much about the pvp. Was attacked once, didn't know how to attack back, ran away. Now I know how to attack back, but that's pretty much it. And yes, i heard a lot about that drama which happened. Doesn't change my mind about this beautiful game.
I can't say much about crafting either, but I will give it a try soon.
I have to agree to almost every comment above me. Attacking quest mobs, which are already tagged by others, should give you the reward for the quest too, because respawn timer are high and it's kinda annoying when like 10 people are waiting for a mob and even if you are in a group and you don't get the kill and need to wait again and after they leave another group joins the wait, and so on. It would be smoother questing like that.
Edit: I forgot to talk about quests in general. It's weird and I don't like questing right now except the board quests (the kill quests). I can't find everybody but I found most of them. But the rest of the quests are just very very weird and complex and weird, yea.
And one more thing, my wife isn't that good in english and I think others maybe too. Is there any way there could be a multi language patch in alpha 2 wave 2 or 3 (German)?
Thanks for the game and I wish and hope for a great and successful development of the game.
Thanks and bye
Questing really needs some work or some better onboarding but I have heard thats coming further down the line, need to give a bit more love to Samia's Hope if you dont want people flooding Lionshold every playthrough (a gear vendor perhaps? unless I missed it).
I really wanted to enjoy tank but it was hard to get active blocking working with the server stabilities, sometimes mobs would just teleport behind me and do a heavy smash, or it just wouldnt register the block. But when it did work, it felt great being able to raise my shield just before getting hit, building my courage resource so i can spam vengeance or fortify if i had pulled a bit too much.
Though I am yet to see what its like in the later levels, I hear it gets better for damage and survivabilty. Early levels however I think there should be alot less reliance on mana for damage output and we definetely need some ability for boosting stamina regen so you can use your dodge when the situation gets spicey.
Mage was so awesome, I loved the spell type synergies and my playstyle was evolving and changing based on what content I was doing or how many skill points i had at my disposal. I found a blue 2handed spell sword while soloing and spent ages trying out different ways I could synergise and play with it. I would die fast but so would enemies - perfect!
The one element that really upset me was that there was no chance for me to really craft anything, No Copper or Zinc, I could find all these other cool looking ores and gemstones but didnt have skill to mine them. Im not sure what type of resource scarcity you are trying to achieve because it seems purely aimed at punishing people who just started out and trying to find early level ores whilst any (im assuming)top level stuff was in abundance. and you needed copper or zinc fragments for almost everything!?
I love that there is no super shiny indicator and you need to scan and learn the environment but I just wished there was one early copper or zinc node that would show me what to look for. By the end of the weekend I could distinguish Ash from Oak from a distance, basalt, granite and all the fancy ores/stones etc.
I found only one Copper node to mine and that was on the final hours of the realm. Granted I got 5 Pieces of copper to turn into fragments - but I didnt see anything that didnt cost less than 6 or 7 fragments...
Bad:
Good:
For one weekend, all I had time for, I had fun and was excited. I submitted bugs and graphical issues I had found. Events are the map are great, bugs aside from completion not receiving exp due to being solo is not conducive to a good experience. FFXIV did a great job of making it a full social experience for all involved in their fate system. I am looking forward to next week and the following weekends as Alpha progresses.
I'm somewhat concerned about the long term player retention with dropping and looting items from player corpses, especially if the player was only engaged in and died from PvE content. While this does allow the feeling of risk when you engage a group of enemies, I don't know how many players will be okay with the amount of items dropped or destroyed, or even okay with the idea at all. Some level of risk is needed, but I can't give a metric for what that number should be.
This couples on to the crafting system where it takes a while to find some types of items (copper and flax for example), and then make it to a crafting bench safely. A scenario where someone has farmed for hours is then killed by something or someone and then potentially loses half of their gatherables might be too severe for a good chunk of people to be long term players. First impressions are very important to players!
Speaking of the crafting system, I'd like to see a reduction in the amount of time it takes to refine materials. One minute per flax, or copper, adds up. While I can go chop wood for fuel while I'm waiting, I don't want to have to wait potentially hours to craft a piece of gear!
Beyond the aforementioned however, I had genuine excitement while playing with a group of friends, and a lot of encounters where we pulled something extra only to make it by the skin of our teeth. It's exhilarating gameplay albeit a bit grindy at this point in time. The combat motions are fairly fluid and really only need some polishing or minor changes. The world is gorgeous (though I have to figure out how to turn the bloom levels down a bit). I'm very much looking forward to putting more time in next weekend when the servers go back up, and that in of itself is worth its weight in gold.
You guys are off to a really solid start here, and I look forward to the new content and iterations yet to come.
As a quick edit, I want to add that while vertical progression is important, having horizontal progression as well as activities in game which cater to all manner of playstyles will be what keeps server populations healthy. Some people want to grind for power, some people want to grind for clothing outfits, and some people just want to escape life for a while and relax by the side of a virtual lake. It's hard to balance between so many pinnacles of what people want, but if you can offer up a little bit of something for everyone, and do that well, then this game will thrive for years to come! And, if those activities can all relate to each other for people to specialize in and further the economy better because of it? Chef's kiss!
First of all, with a few friends we tested the game for the first time this weekend, we have played together on quite a few MMOs and we know what we like and what not, and I would like to thank you for allowing us to test an old school game like this. For an Alpha what we have seen gives us hope, because we think this is the right direction, however here are some remarks:
- The craftsmanship is very complete, however, taking less is quite complicated and risks putting off beginners. A lot of different resources are available (different rarities) and yet T1 resources, particularly on mining, are extremely rare or perhaps not visible enough.
- Inventory storage could quickly become a problem for many people as it currently stands.
- Quest tracking and rewards certainly need to be reviewed because they are really messy in our opinion.
- For PVP we have not had the opportunity to test, but we must not forget and underestimate the ability of certain gamers to cause harm. You have to be careful and supervise to avoid overflows. The loot from PVE deaths is also something I think should be reviewed.
- Various graphical bugs but we are only at alpha and erratic behavior (or too much) of the mobs that we see running in all directions and especially taking aggro on everything and anything.
That's it for now and until next weekend.
(Sorry for my bad English)
My overall impression of that alpha branch was pretty good. I was amazed by the visual fidelity. The level design and audio was pure art and i enjoyed it alot, thats a big thumbs up from me for the entire Intrepid team.
Now to the controversal part.
The Combat has some serious issues in its core design and is something i am not 100% convinced yet.
1. The Auto attack / weapon tree' procc's are very hard to track and feel boring to utilize. Ranger example would be i'm using two abilities and wait till my 4th autoattack finisher to proc the mana regen. Same for the damage procs like 25/50% critchance which has a 50/50 chance. With a ton of group buffs it's super hard to keep track if i procced the critchance or not which is an UI issue obviously but besides that it doesn't feel engaging because people want to use their abilities and not wait for auto attack chains to be done. I think Intrepid is going in the wrong direction here. In my opinion other games use auto attacks to fill the downtime/gap inbetween abilities for a very good reason so the combat doesn't feel empty but it shouldn't be that important at all. Right now making auto attacks seriously important is forcing me to not press any buttons and wait for autoattack chains to be done before i can start press my ability buttons again which i really hate about ashes. Also if i have to react with an ability inbetween the autoattack chains it's starting to count from zero again. It's like resident sleeper waiting to press damage again pretty please.
Besides that the weapon tree debuffs like wounds,snare,bleed etc. are also almost impossible to track your own ones if you play in a group.
My suggestion here would be to keep the autoattacks as a filler but shift all the important advantage buffs/debuffs towards certain abilities that trigger those instead so you are not forced into boring autoattack chains and focus more into proper ability rotations. Feels much more engaging.
2. Crowd control and it's usability in the current build is quiet hard to use for many people. There are many classes that consume certain debuffs with their abilities and other classes try to put their stun ontop like bard and notice someone else consumed it already and the stun won't go through. Not really sure if i like this system where you need X debuff before you can hard CC with certain abilities. Makes it way to complicated for many players. Also for me personally im missing more noticeable VFX for disabled monsters/players.
3. The AI is okay for such an early build but feels like it's lacking behind and needs way more attention and love in the upcoming year. AI was glitching through walls everywhere plenty of collision issues, weird behavior and teleportation. Being a level 25 ranger aggro'ing a level 8 wolf from 50 miles away is just wrong.
4. I think 6 different quality types is too much. Just dipped my toe into crafting this weekend and my entire stash became a rainbow with hundred of different materials in all sort of different colors and because of the terrible stash UI my mousewheel went on fire. Not sure if im able to like crafting system at all. Different crafting stations and no way to keep track of when and where my crafts are done is a yikes. Crafting que's for just a little 250 stack being 4hours is insane considering how many stacks i need to level my profession. Leveling the main profession like carpentry was insane because i was desperately looking for the mass craft button. Not knowing which item gives how much exp for the profession and forcing me to test through all the different crafts finding the best exp gain very anoying.
The crafting gear felt bugged and not showing how much stats is a percentage in the character window.
My overall impression of crafting was like i hate this please simplify.
5. Server performance was pretty good but on a little nodewar with just a hundred players starting a fight the server instantly went to sleepy mode. Not sure if the dynamic server meshing already in or not.
6. I really love the Class identity so far. Bring a mage for aoe dmg, bring a bard for mana, bring a cleric for resurrect etc.. I was really missing a video game that brings back these type of identities and roles. Good job on this one.
7. The economy system seems to go into the right direction. Wasn't touching caravans yet which is really unfortunate because i would loved to test but server instability and the full loss of cargo scared me of putting my time into testing this. looking forward to test it in Phase 2.
8. This one my biggest concern. Dungeons and mini dungeons felt very boring, very little entertaining and just felt like a better grind spot to be honest. The overall dungeon quality need to rise big times. It's missing the feeling of an actual dungeon. It doesn't meet the standard of dungeons at all. If you put more like firebrand/tumok boss fights for 8man groups into the dungeons would be nice. Maybe also some world changing behaviors in these dungeons so the dungeon feel alive can also be linked with boss mechanics. I mean common you have a great engine and an outstanding art/environment/VFX team. Huge disappointment on the dungeon part.
9. The corruption system is way to punishing. Besides that i don't want to give feedback on PvP yet because we're missing classes and tons of abilities to really say something about it.
10. Whoever designed the audio for the cat mount jump. I love you. *Mauu*
Initially, I wasn't a fan of the queue being based on area rather than what the server can handle, but I'm starting to warm up to the concept. Yes, it's frustrating to know that the server isn't at capacity and still having to wait in queue, but it's also an extra incentive to move out into the world quickly, and thus helps to mitigate overcrowded areas where it's impossible to kill mobs.
I am torn on the "all or nothing" system when it comes to killing mobs. A part of me likes that you can't just one-tap tag a mob, although a basic tagging system would still create the same kind of conflict and lead to PvP. But working on killing a difficult mob, only to have someone rock up and burst it down because they're much, much higher level, and then get NOTHING, just feels really, really bad. I don't know what the solution is, as a system which gives exp based on the percentage of damage done makes it less worthwhile to try and steal mobs from others. It is okay to feel frustration from time to time, and I actually think it's important in order to drive conflict, so I'm still trying to figure out what my real and final stance on this subject is.
Class fantasy is pretty spot on, I think. I have played around with all classes up to level 10 and had a look through their skills. Some are more interesting than others in their current form, but generally, I think they all fulfill their class fantasies. No matter which class I'm on, I feel like I have a specific role in the group, and when I'm not on a DPS class, I feel wanted by almost any group. The one thing I did notice, though, was people having a hard time finding groups as a Cleric. Simply because a small group doesn't really have a need for more than one Cleric, and apparently a lot of people chose to play Cleric. I don't know how big the problem is or if it's just a small amount of vocal Clerics, but it might be worth looking at their kit to see if they can bring anything other than pure healing.
When you compare them to the bard, they are a bit of a one-trick pony. On the other hand, bards have a number of ways to support the group, but can't do all of them at once. Thus, there is more reason to bring multiple bards. But perhaps this changes in large-scale groups, where you might need more Clerics and only a few bards. Time will tell.
As an extension of classes, let's talk weapons!
Combo and finishers: I find them kind of tedious. As soon as I use a skill, I have to start over. This makes me automatically gravitate towards weapons with short combos. If the skill trees weren't so focused on finishers, perhaps I'd feel differently.
Skill Trees: Here I have to be blunt. In their current form, I find them really boring. 1% damage, 3% penetration, finishers give a bit of mana... It's just not exciting. I don't mind some of that, but I'd like more interesting choices. Right now, it's all focused on auto-attacking and flat bonuses.
I'd like to see the choice between some flat damage and a chance to get a free instant swing. Perhaps some active abilities, like a 360 sweep on a two-handed sword, a snipe on a longbow, and a disengage or rain of arrows on a shortbow. Just something which makes them more interesting, forces me to make choices, and helps to augment my character even more.
Questing feels really unrewarding compared to just staying in one spot and grinding mobs.
As an example, one of the quests on the mission board at Lionhold is to go and look out over the lake. The exp reward is roughly the same as killing four goblins. It feels completely meaningless to do any quests other than the ones that tell you to kill the mob in the area where you plan on grinding anyway. You get close to no exp, the glint reward is also worse than if you just killed mobs, and there is no added benefit, like reputation. Perhaps it would be worth increasing the exp and randomizing the rewards, so they give materials instead?
If the reward is decent exp for my time and 5-10 rubies, I'd be much more willing to run errands instead of just grinding.
And finally, the recent exp change... It feels SO bad. As in, "I might as well play solo" bad. I understand it was put in place to prevent guilds from boosting lowbie members. But the effect outside of that is just way too big.
In my guild, we currently only have three members in alpha. After this change, we can no longer play together unless we're within three levels of each other. Any more than that, and the lowest person is punished way too harshly. And in the open world, it prevents random people from grouping up.
Yesterday, I was on a level 5 character, grouped up with a level 6 player I had met about an hour earlier. It was fun and going great until a level 7 and 9 showed up and asked to join the group. We invited them, and instantly, I was getting so little exp that I was better off solo grinding, even if it meant having to sit and eat after every three mobs I killed.
To me, the most important aspect of Ashes is that it promotes group play, and the change to exp gain does the exact opposite. I understand that there needs to be a solution for the super-fast guild boosting, but this cannot be it. It simply hurts what I see as the core of Ashes too much.
What if a level 2 character killing a level 2 goblin gets 100 exp? Just as an example. And for every extra level of the goblin, the character gets an extra 15 exp, but up to a maximum difference of 5 levels?
That means a level 2 character killing a level 7 goblin or higher gets 175 exp. That way, no matter if they're out killing level 20 mobs, they're still getting exp as if they were killing mobs 5 levels higher, and you can still group up with higher-level friends and guild mates, without being punished or getting boosted in a matter of hours.
I think 5 levels above player level is around the max you'd consider grinding in a regular group anyway, at least from what I've seen so far. Obviously, I'm just throwing an idea out there and making up numbers. But honestly, I'd welcome ANYTHING other than the exp system we had this weekend (Nov 8-11). It felt so bad and brought me back to the days of playing MMOs where being solo was better and more efficient than being in a group.
And finally a note on PvP. I don't know how long a player stays flagged for, but I think it needs to be longer.
I was attacked yesterday, by a group of people. I managed to escape, which means they didn't turn red.
I decided to drink up and then come right back for revenge. But when I returned 3 or so minutes later, they were no longer flagged. So I had no way of taking revenge, without going red. That makes no sense to me. They chose to flag up and engage, so even if they don't manage to kill me, I should still have a decent window to get revenge, without having to go red.
I see a lot of promise and have high hopes for this game. I'm sure you'll manage to figure things out, and I really look forward to doing more testing in the coming weeks.
I agree with the others ^^ talking about more shared XP/Shared Credit when multiple people tagging a mob. I have found in other games where this works you feel a sense of achievement with your fellow players even when not grouped. It also incentivizes helping out others too out in the open world.As someone from Poland I found it difficult to connect to the US Lyneth server, while some European streamers did not seem to have the same problem. First I had to go through connection issues like code 32 or 33 or something, then I had to choose Lyneth as my server and be greeted by a couple of code 7 issues and wait like 5 minutes for the server to finally switch me to Lyneth. My internet speed averages at 400MB down/200MB up, 3 ping (to some EU server).
I also experienced performance issues, as soon as there were more than 2 other players around - even on low settings. My FPS sometimes fell to 10-15
I have a fairly powerful PC ( i7-10700k, RTX 3070, 32 GB RAM) and no combination of settings I tried seemed to improve the performance in a noteworthy way.
Falling trees also sometimes caused massive FPS drops until the tree stopped moving.
Tank skills with "hybrid/action" combat turned on sometimes felt clunky, especially the "Reflect" ability which sometimes straight up did not fire but went on cooldown. It was also really hard to prioritise a target with the action camera.
The visual bug with flashing mist texture was unacceptable for me. The game can be buggy, laggy etc, it's a technical alpha, but at least fix those visual issues asap so people can comfortably test your game. You spoke about accessibility, color blind mode etc, yet did not manage to fix the issue during the Nov 8 testing weekend which may have deterred some testers and viewers. Instead you brought the servers down for a patch that fixed other things, instead of a bug that affected almost everyone.
The buildings look too clean and undamaged in certain places which I'm sure will be corrected in the future but I just feel like it's worth mentioning.
The game should remember my last chosen realm.
Would be nice if the patcher gave us downloaded / total amount of space in GB, instead of only %
The camera controls feel really weird to me, especially that you can cancel gathering by looking around by right clicking in tab targeting mode which pissed me off sometimes ngl. So LMB turns the camera only but preserves the WSAD navigation directions, but RMB turns the camera and your character? And not to mention the switch in behavior when you have action mode on and you mount up.
As I like the slow levelling and travel etc, I dislike the timers for processing and that the queue was only 1 stack long so you could queue up 1 item, but you could also queue up 50 items? Why not a limit on number of items in total, instead of 1 queue position limit. There also should be some indicator above your processing station that some process is in progress and that the process is done.
I feel like items with bigger rarity should cost more at the vendor? I crafted two caravan bodies, one common, one blue, and they got me the same amount of currency at the vendor.
Having passive BPE AND active blocking, doesn't feel right. I think there's a few ways you could fix this, while maintaining a hybrid system...
add passive Block and parry and evade to the tank tree, at the cost of your active block.
By forcing a spec into it allows players the more World of Warcraft style of tanking, where your actively moving to avoid big attacks, but your stats do the rest of the work for you as far as mitigation. I find that boring, but A LOT of tank players feel like it's "the better route" or at least it's what they are used to or want.
Having your active block matter more.
I said it, throwing up that shield and blocking a big attack feels really good. However, just having it work off of stamina, and having no meaningful talents or skill options inside the tank tree feels pretty bad. I can only block or i can dodge, and one will give me stamina back for doing AND mitigate ALL of the damage if i do it right. Makes it feel like the only real tank should be an ACTIVE evasion tank, dodge rolling to avoid big hits while doing combo's to hold aggro, which could be a fun playstyle but lots of people don't want to play that way. So giving us stamina regen in the tank tree if the stamina was spent on blocking could reward the active block...
OR having it timing based for a "parry" effect like in other games. Forcing the player to time their block to mitigate all or more of the damage would make it skill based and reward dedicated players. I think this is probably my favorite option.
I tank in a lot of mmo's i like it I like the idea of being the one who has to hold attention and mitigate damage to the party and myself, but currently playing a tank in ashes doesn't feel super good. Nevermind that the archtype seems pretty bland, or flavorless, compared to the other archetypes, I can put that off and wait for the Augment system to give the tank primary a "flavor" but i think that part of that flavorlessness is in the skill design for tank unfortunately.
To sum up either tanks need more of a reason to active block, bonuses with their dodge rolls, or they need to do more damage scaling (or threat scaling) with other attacks. AND/OR need a reason to stat into passive mitigation like BPE, not both.
I've played 3 tanks to around 12, in the last few weekends, and I can safely say it's the worst feeling class to play. Literally every single other class feels better to play than the tank, I've played every class except mage past 10, and my mage i think now is 8? Every single other class feels better to play than the tank and that stinks.
The first thing I want to say is that I really liked the game. Its atmosphere has never overwhelmed me. Some areas are too big and I came across empty land in a few places. But this is not a problem, it seemed necessary for the alpha test.
I reached level 11 with the Ranger character. I must say that I found its skills very nice. Apart from constantly killing creatures, I had the opportunity to explore the world of the game. I saw clues at certain points that could be related to the lore. Apart from that, I liked the narrative styles of the tasks I could do. Even though I got stuck on some tasks, I believe I will do them in the future.
It is nice to be able to interact with almost everything around. That's why I can constantly collect things while walking around. I think its professions are detailed enough. I mostly did gathering. Still, I had the opportunity to see other different craftings. Animal Husbandry is a great thing. Maybe I hope it will become more diverse in the future. Still, I think some mounts are more suitable for pulling carts and some mounts are better for riding. So maybe a situation like 50% in production percentages could be better if it was less or more for some mounts. The idea of ​​a mount like Pallas cat pulling a cart seems a bit cruel to me. They look too delicate.
I liked that there were strict rules in the PvP section. It makes a person think twice before killing a player. Because I think the disadvantages given by Corruption levels are very dangerous. But I would like there to be a town in the game where people with Corruption levels can live. (If there is, I apologize for not discovering it yet). For example, in the Black Desert Online game, there is a town in the desert for players who are in pk status and from there they can access the bank or certain shop features. Just as a city can have a mayor, maybe outlaws(pk) players can have a leader(boss) and it can create a nice interaction.
I look forward to playing the game every week. I hope you continue to do good things. I love you and the players who keep the game alive. Thank you for providing us with this game. Have a nice day.
Alpha 2 Phase 1
Hopes
Transmog - I know transmog is upcoming in the distant future, and is a big thing for a lot of MMO players - so I'm all for adding it for those users. I personally am not a fan of it and would love to have a permanent toggle to always show player's default armour appearances. I know Steven mentioned there will be a 'Basic appearance' toggle in large scale PvP to show Light, Medium and Heavy defaults but this isn't exactly what I would like to see.
Overall, having a great time and think you guys have exceeded expectations!
The soft targeting is really bad in that mode. These were the isues I had with it:
- When friendies are swarming a terget, then the soft targeting in action combat mode always targets them end it does not let me attack the enemy target.
^a good sollution for this would be, that when I push an attack skill then even if a friendly is targeted in soft lock, the attack would still hit the closest enemy to my crosshair.
- When I tried to attack another target from my current one, the soft lock did not chage to my new target, but remained on the first target, so I had to kill the current target to be able to soft lock on a new one. This is quite bad, as this makes the soft lock part of the acion combat mode useless, as I still had to switch targets with Tab.
^It would be great, if the soft lock would switch to a new target as soon as I hover over the crosshairs... or at least as soon as I have sent out the finisher with my weapon.
If these issues would be solved with the soft target lock mechanic in action combat mode, I would say it would be a near perfect combat mechanic (for me).
NEW TESTERS: Peg the fan on your old GPU to 60%-75% or you will smell it burning and black screen out.
I really appreciated that, after all of the waiting ! I'm a little french streamer who waited for a long time to be able to stream it.
I won't talk about the bugs I saw because a lot of people will already talk about it, but mainly about my own experience.
1 - PVE
The pve experience is very entertaining and challenging, pushing people to play in group while we can see some spots available for solo players. Some mobs are really annoying when we just want to walk, like wolves who dash into you at every single attack.
While I understand that there are some areas we shouldn't access at some levels, it's annoying to have to rest after every travel because mobs just run faster than your horse.
2 - PVP
I didn't really play pvp, but from the little experience I had, it would be a good thing to have some "corruption bar" to see when we want to not be red anymore (where we would be able to see how far we are from being uncorrupted)
3 - Other things
The available ways to communicate with people may be lacking. Being able to put a ping for the group on the map would be a great add in my opinion. Or being able to create our own chat settings with what we want to see.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game and I can't wait to see how it will turn out in the future !
I jumped in completely lost for the first time on Friday and had no idea what quest to follow for the horse or where to get that first attunement shrine, but after trying a couple archetypes and putting some effort into figuring out what I was doing, I felt right at home. There is a great sense of satisfaction in figuring things out and not having your hand held the entire time, so I hope the game finds the right balance with quests in the future and doesn't become too simple.
By my third day in Alpha-2 I was all-in and wondering what bugs haven't been reported so I could help too. I loved every minute of playtesting and can't wait for the weekend. Godspeed
Also when I did want to group with guildies they may not have wanted me because if I was lower level in the party and the mobs were a level or 2 above the leader it seemed item drops because non existent. Can we please tune that so if a group of 6 people who may span level 11-14 can group together with several getting penalized on XP and everyone getting penalized on drops of the mobs are 16-18.
You’d think you would get rewarded for grouping together and taking down a really hard enemy, but you simply don’t and that’s depressing.
1) I agree that open-world combat should split the exp if multiple parties contributed to a kill
2) Some open world events don't spawn enough enemies. For example "Starving wolves attacking the farm" - consider scaling the pack size and frequency with the amount of participating players up to some limit?
3) Where's all the copper?
First off I understand that certain crafting stations like lets say the cooking or metalworking ones require fuel. Completely understandable!
However why would the husbandry, or tailoring ones or leatherworking require fuel? Currently husbandry is such a ridiculous expense on top of having to add fuel. It feels punishing to craft anything, and the fuel mechanic just frustrates the heck out of me. It is not a fun mechanic and is hopefully removed, it feels so out of place and more of a survival game mechanic than an MMORPG.
And in terms of hardcore pvp, anyone who enjoys that kind of content will go to another game that doesn't severely penalize it. This game has quickly become a joke.
GG's Ashes, way to kill hype that was built since 2016. Hopefully I am wrong, but the writing on the wall says that the pvp scene will go the exact way Archeage did. It will constantly cater to those who whine and complain, resulting in a completely gutted and boring experience.
Combat and creature/encounter design is pretty generic. Once we're past the honeymoon phase, it will get stale fast. Please add some more depth, complexity or variability. Incorporating the story and lore into encounters is one way to add some depth without having to add mechanical complexity. Actually linking spawns to the environment they're in adds a layer of immersion to a game and isn't hard to implement. Right now, it looks like the team has just plunked random mobs wherever they feel like and it's pretty immersion breaking. Like we have a big open field near Winstead and it's just all random mobs standing around.
Combat itself was advertised as a "hybrid" between tab-target and action based, but in reality it's turned out to be 95% tab targeting. Please add more action based skills, or move more existing skills into skillshots rather than auto targeting. This will also add some complexity to combat that is currently lacking. Just as an example, I spent hours grinding at Highwayman Hills farming elites. My combat experience, as a mage, was standing on a platform pressing 3 buttons on rotation without moving, for hours. This is not ok.
As I loaded in I noticed a lack of direction. The starting quest was not very noticeable, and as I got into Lionhold I completely missed the goblins to the north. I ended up doing everything I could in Lionhold and continued south, as this made the most sense to me after walking through town. I was then a little confused about where to go and what to do, as the highwayman in that direction seemed too high of a level.
I spent a decent amount of time wandering around aimlessly afterwards.
Onto professions, I also feel rather directionless. There was no hint about where to find Copper, and I can't seem to make anything without it, or other resources that I don't know where to find. I am now level 10, and have found exactly 1 copper node, and 1 zinc node. I have no idea where to find, or make, paper. I have not found any Ruby.
It just feels like it's impossible to progress, and due to a lack of item drops, I am currently wearing a good amount of the gear I started with.
Lastly, here's a few things that really bothered me:
-FoV; I am running on a 32:9 monitor running at 5120x1440. The game is locked into a horizontal FoV, and increasing aspect ratios above 16:9 will result in seeing less on the top and bottom of your screen, while seeing the same amount left and right, making everything feel very zoomed in.
-Mob tagging; it's impossible to tell if someone beat you to tagging a mob
-Glint being a separate resource to gold, while being the primary way to gain gold, is very annoying. There being a vendor that you can only buy stuff with glint is one thing, but also needing glint to pay taxes is very annoying. I get that it's a droppable resource, while gold is not. However, managing how much you want to keep in your bank, and how much you want to sell, feels very, very bad to me.
-Material Inventroy; feels very restrictive. It feels like when you go out to gather resources, you need to double down on what you are gathering. Either take 2 bags for gathering wood, or stick to chopping down 1 type of tree. I would love to see at least one more slot in these bags, even if that means a reduction to the bag slot limit. I also think it would be neat if these bags stayed small, but you didn't drop the loot in them on death. Any loot acquired beyond those specific slots could overflow into your regular inventory, and drop upon death.
- Soloing on any class early game (levels 1-8) EXCEPT the cleric is rough. Mobs hit hard and no class has any self sustain besides cleric, and bard has minimal heals but also low damage.
- Group grinding is the best way to level so far, but you NEED a tank, cleric, and bard ideally to be efficient.
- Low levels are rough, not many places to grind with dense mob packs, plus 90% of the population is in the starting zone and stuck at low levels. May need to add some more dense grind areas with mobs ranging from level 1 to 4.
- Traveling takes forever. Mount is barely faster than running and the map is huge. Only teleport you have is a port back to wherever you bound to, so bind wisely. Flight paths like WoW or teleports to Nodes like Lineage 2 would be very beneficial.
- Crafting system is extremely in depth. Havent dabbled much into this but may spend one of these phase 1 weekends diving into it. Truly think the best gear is farmed from 3 star elites in the group grinds, crafting might not even be worth with how much time it takes to make something good.
- The PVP system as it seems to be intended so far is AWESOME! Straight outta Tibia/Lineage 2 style flagging/ganking/dropping loot on death if you are red, etc. Going to be hella fun.
- Server stability wasnt terrible. The high pop zones were definitely laggy but I rarely crashed at all. They may need to work on their server "grids" to keep the leveling zones out of the same grid as the starter zone. The star castle in the center of the map (forget what the POI is called) is in th same server map as the initial load in area, making it very laggy due to high pop on that server map.
- The graphics are phenominal. Sunlight rays through trees, the water rippling when you swim through it, primetime.
- I really like the weapon system so far, interested to see what other types of weapons come in. I.e staff, daggers, 2h mace or axes, etc.