Greetings, glorious testers!
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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
I'm quoting this because I agree.
You can and probably should make it faster for a testing phase with wipes (pre-A2)...but even then that's risky because you'll attract players who think the game plays faster than it does.
I love having to work hard and appreciate what I made/got for myself. It doesn't feel like a grind for the sake of a grind, it just feels about right.
I'm not saying its perfect--Crafting is horrible for example. (Crafting meaning crafting, not gathering/processing.) My character with Level 17 Lumberjacking + Level 17 Lumbermilling = Level 6 in Carpentry. That's just stupid.
That's an arbitrary grind because Crafting (outputting gear and usable items not just components) is so incredibly important, they need it to be hard. But if you want to make it hard like that then the outputs need to be fantastic.
Although now that I think about it, disassembly isn't in the game yet. I suppose when that happens we can just break everything down and recover some "free" components to do more crafting, and that final number will go up along with the other ones. I don't mind if it's like 75% the rate but it shouldn't be 10% the rate. Think about how easy it is to get to Character Level 6 and how hard to get to Level 17. This is that imbalanced.
So hopefully nevermind...?
Open World on-consensual PvP is stupid in AOC. I don't see the point AT ALL. I've played PvP in Ultima Online (the original gankfest) and Star Wars Galaxies, among others.
I just don't see the point in including it here the way that it has been implemented so far.
I'm not talking about PvP zones or events or guild wars or duels or arenas or consensual PVP or any of that. Put that in because that's what the devs want and that's great: I prefer PvE but I'll do PvP when it's part of the game.
But who on Earth is asking for this garbage PvP system as it exists right now? I get that "this game is not for everybody" but *WHO IS GANKING FOR* exactly?
Your loyal fanbase of 1 million monthly subscribers?
There is NO WAY that you maintain 1 million users with a gank system. You would be lucky to keep anybody after the free trial ends. All the ganking psychos can gank each other for a few months, but even they'll get bored the second its not an innocent or defenseless character going about their day dropping free resources; and without the knowledge that they just cost somebody all that hard work for lulz.
Jumping into the game brought a wave of nostalgia, reminding me of the good old days of classic MMOs. That sense of excitement and adventure is definitely there, which is great to see. However, I’ve noticed a few areas that could use improvement:
1. Buff and Debuff Visibility
The icons for buffs and debuffs are far too small and hard to notice in the heat of battle. This makes it really difficult to manage rotations or react to key status effects. It would be helpful to have options to resize, reposition, or even customize these icons for better visibility.
2. Solo Play Needs Improvement
Sometimes, finding a group just isn’t feasible, especially during off-peak hours or when luck isn’t on your side. Having more solo-friendly content or scaling options would make the game more accessible and enjoyable for players who prefer or are forced into solo play.
3. Loot Drop Issues
Loot drops seem bugged. Over the past few weekends, I’ve spent hours farming Goblins, Highwaymen, and Minotaurs, yet the rewards have been extremely underwhelming—just a couple of white wands and a spellsword. This feels broken and makes progression frustrating.
Overall, the game shows a lot of promise, but addressing these issues would significantly improve the experience. Looking forward to seeing how things evolve!
We didn't have MOBAs when the old school MMORPGs existed with open-world PVP. It's simply wrong to look back on those times with nostalgia and try to reproduce them when those times are gone and they aren't coming back.
Maybe if it were open world PVP but only at level 50.
Then everyone could enjoy the game experience 1 to 49 and be prepared to nonstop PVP 24/7 at 50. The reason being that at 50, nobody higher level can gank you. But they sure can at levels 1-49.
I love the difficulty of the monsters. The fact that you need to consider if the monster is fast or slow... does it have range? Is it tanky or does it deal a ton of damage? The difficulty is perfect and we loved the challenge. The fact that there is real risk in the fight of dying and not just some lame grind session where you would just sleep through 99% of the pulls was refreshing. Combat felt nice as well! Smooth and impactful. It felt like your abilities were doing something and contributing to the fight. I love that dropping glint and or materials is a thing. It is hilarious to me that I can die and someone can run up and pick up my glint and sell it for money. Don't you dare ever change this! My friend and I wrestling with our inner greed in the middle of a good farm session on whether or not we should head back to town to sell before we explode like loot pinatas is fantastic. Watching a guild get wiped by over-pulling only to have level 1s run in and steal what they drop like rats is the best.
Some things I dislike. I think the karma system is way too detrimental. I understand it is alpha and there are some odd circumstances right now that require harsh penalties for PVP. However, I hope with time and the expansion of the map that the karma system is a little more relaxed. The debuff to stats is just lame... You might as well implement a system where if someone pks someone else they are struck by lightning and die because if you lose the ability to get away or farm off the karma there is no chance of survival. Guards need to be more logically placed and the AI needs to be adjusted to prevent leashing to hunting grounds. While I loved the combat, I fear the subclassing system only serving as augmenting abilities is going to feel lack luster and classes are going to feel like they lack individuality. Also, please pay close attention to melee playing a diminished role in group pvp. Much like what happened in lineage 2, melee became pointless and impossible to play because range classes like archers and mages dominated group pvp. It got to a point where guilds would not recruit you unless you had the optimum pvp class to serve in archer parties. I am very worried about the rogues' ability to obtain kills or be effective in PVP and survive.
I have a ton more critiques but I will spare whomever is reading this the time. I like the direction your game is going and I am so very excited about the future for AoC. Also, if someone wants to give me a really cool mount to make my friends jealous on Castus I'm not going to complain.
Well done! I hit lv 6, and the core of the game is great and it's fantastic fun. Combat, the visuals, the server stability, all the pieces are there and its been fun testing it thus far.
The below are my "I Feel" statements which can be turned into problem statements. While your intent/actuality may be different, my experience has been as follows:
Things I didn't enjoy:
Character creator was barebones, I get it, but I don't particularly find my characters enjoyable to look at. Fulfilling the fantasy with nice looking characters would be great.
Mob hit - I never really understand when the mob is mine, if other people are also hitting the mob I hit. I wasted a lot of time trying to get 3/3 goblins because there was so much contest
Helping others with mob - Because I never get exp or loot, I never feel like helping others. I do help, just because I want to, but there's no in-game compensation for it
Attack Evasion via left control - I can't really evade goblin shaman or other mob attacks via dodge rolls like in other game. Something feels off, and it makes me want to not even rely on this.
Mob Attack Block - the block doesn't feel worth it in terms of damage reduction. I loved it in New World, in this, it feels useless, so I basically never used it.
Weapon skill tree beginning - the first few levels in this doesn't feel like it impacts me at all. Not like the class skill tree.
Mobs requiring hunting bow - I don't know what a hunting bow is, never found it, and somehow after lv 5 it allows me to pet them? and then that adds a carcass to my inventory? what is going on here?
Action Combat healing - Love action combat, but it would be nice to look at the person and once I press a channeled skill, it would stay on that person. Healing skills on action combat feels weird.
Copper nodes - where are they?? additionally, the distribution of gathering nodes of varying types feels off/unintuitive. Mountains = ores, plains = herbs, forest = trees/herbs, etc. that level of intuition didn't really help here.
Skinning/all trade skills - Either the stuff wasn't well explained or in skinning case, I had no clue how it worked.
Trades stations - Lionshold had only the tutorial gathering stuff and none other was really frustrating. Especially as the next step for trades was to go to the western depot (I think from "Sweat of my Brow" quest") but their stations were incomplete. I get exploration is a big factor but when copper weapons, items are so important for the next power jump, combined with lack of copper nodes and then immense accessibility issue with trades really made this complicated right at the get-go for what feels like no reason.
Mob Events bugged - doesn't give rewards. At least none of the goblin ones I did around the north side and further north of the starting region
PVE Death - Dropping my loot and then randoms taking my loot was not cool. I get it if it was PVP, but with PvE, doesn't feel right
Getting whole equipment drops from mobs - Felt gimmicky, against the crafting concept. It was already rare enough to get equip drops. That plus how hard crafting is to get into, made all of this feel awful
Party mob spawn camping/conflicts - Felt annoying waiting for a mob to spawn in a certain area where all others are waiting to first hit a boss spawn. I get you can flag and fight them but with the density of all other players, you'd get thrashed in seconds. Then you end up wasting an hour or so just to get one mob.
Commission - Find a boss location is really annoying. Not saying you have to give us an arrow directly to the mob, but if we can get hints along the way, it'd be great. Once the game fully releases, all the locations would be posted in online guides so to not have some sort of guide in game feels wrong
UI features missing: /r for reply, friends list
Storage UI felt unintuitive. I couldn't add some items in there, while others I could. Not explained or cleared up.
Goblin NPCs keep jumping/popping in when dead. it was very weird to keep seeing that when I walk into the goblin zones.
I would have liked more clear indicators on the map for various things (cities, material nodes, enemies (mainly bosses), quest items(some aren't so clear), and vendors. Felt off trying to navigate.
With attaining crafting recipes, ingredients, etc, it felt inaccessible because there was no hint or idea of where to get these. At game launch this would be remedied by all the online game guides, but why wait for someone else to do this. Doesn't feel immersive or intuitive at all.
Here are things I enjoyed
Action Combat mode was way more fun than tab target. Developing this mode further would be greatly appreciated as a Cleric
Cleric Skill effects and animations were so cool and felt powerful. Really can feel the divine wrath being brought down
Rare Items/drops - feels like ya gotta really work to get stuff which felt meaningful. Each level, equipment added felt significant.
Party play felt momentous and fun~! Really made you work and fight hard.
Enjoyed having a horse right at the get-go
Night mode having alternative spawns and being tougher.
Seasonal look was great! I hope we can lean in further with blizzards, rain storms, and other interesting weather conditions.
Things I know you are working on so I won't comment further, but I did have a hard time with:
Questing - really not fun or rewarding
Mob Behavior
Mob Density/sparsity
NPC Voice
NPC Quest indicator
Ashes of Creation's greatest strength is its adherence to tradition. AoC's greatest weakness is its adherence to tradition.
When I play this game I am deeply reminded of Everquest, early WoW, and other MMO's of the 00's. Plenty of people will say that is exactly what they want but the entire genre has moved on - and for good reason. Monsters standing around in fields waiting for you to kill them is kinda boring. I've done this a million times before why would I do it again for this game?
"But you need punching bags to kill and loot to level up!"
Eh? The combat's okay. I'm sure more classes and balance passes will really make it feel alive and fun. I'm hoping the skill trees see a full rework but if they don't I'd still play. The resource from each class exists but doesn't feel relevant and doesn't have a clearly visible portion on the interface. Having lots of skills get effects that can stack and synergize is a great idea but honestly I'm not sure they're working? I hardly ever see them appear on an enemy. What even is the class distinction? (Bards and Mages seem in a really good place.) I know my tank is supposed to take hits and my cleric is supposed to heal, but does that even do anything for me?
Then leveling up after level 4 starts to become a serious grind as the quests distributed through various means doesn't seem to really have an impact. And what did have the most impact on leveling up was a Public Quest or two. I hear the game gets really good once you've hit level cap. Something about territory control? Nodes? Politics? I'm not really sure a lot of that is going to impact me and begs the question: If the fun of your game is hidden at the top, why have levels at all? There's still plenty to pursue. Gear, skills, crafting, etc. Do we need to have a barrier to entry "to the good parts" for new players? If you could design the world without the need for levels, could you make less used portions of the world more relevant? Could players explore and engage more right away? I doubt ripping out the leveling part of this game is a sensible decision I'm just daydreaming.
As far as questing is concerned I'd like to use Helldivers 2 as a prime example of how I want the leveling grind to be. I want to go to an area with a general objective tied to the game world with all the tools I can bring to bear. Discover a selection of objectives while there, and pursue them in a hectic rush before the danger gets too great and I have to get out. I want to feel like the world is responding to my presence.
Unrealistic I know. At the very least local hubs might be at the top of my list. You know, locals who feel threatened by the enemies. Standing just nearby. Waiting for me to kill them.
Anyway. World is beautiful. I'm looking forward to development and coming back week after week to see the changes. I'm hoping this game has staying potential because I really could use a good new MMO to escape the real world for a bit.
Cleric is easily my favorite, I can pull tons of mobs and solo tank/kill. Combat is fluid and fun, but skills are.. well while some are insane others are obvious trash. I have a couple of class points still unspec'd cause there isn't anything worth getting. (Tested all)
[Before writing this I watched several other alpha videos for World of Warcraft, New World etc cause I didn't know to what degree to evaluate this Alpha. ]
Farming is fun, which makes it the perfect distraction for the games issues.
Events: Suck. Overlooking the lack of rewards, they need better mobs with more mechanics geared to large groups. They, and many other mobs, need to be larger. I know yall are going for realism here, but size matters and large mobs are exciting to fight.
>Increase event/boss/elite mob size; Group events should be Group events, fewer larger mobs with anti-group mechanics
World: Empty. Overcrowded farming areas, because there are few (meaning 2/3 total). Mobs outside the starting zone are scattered like trees or mining nodes with no real feel that they have a purpose for being there.
AoC set expectations of being a living dynamic world fighting off forest animals, goblins, and even the forest itself leading to the growth of the town or being attacked by these same creatures/elements ceding areas in a constant fight to maintain balance of the node with increased growth leading to increased threats/rewards in the surrounding areas... or maybe I've romanticized the game over the last decade. (Imo events should be towns getting attacked, requiring major player contribution to defend)
Drops: I as an level 10 still have incentive to farm the goblins lvl 1-3 because drop rate of blues is comparable to higher level mobs, but with the advantage of volume. Other than this there is no real drops. Glint or something should be used to upgrade equipment giving players something to always work for other than rng.
Overall I'm excited to farm, but even in the alpha stages the lack of direction seems apparent. We have a beautiful world, decent combat with many lackluster skills and...
Got to Tank level 10 messing around this weekend. Tank grouping is fun and Tank solo and damage is actually better than people think, IMO.
Issues:
1. People only want 1 Tank (and maybe Cleric) in groups. This got worse around level 8 or so. While I don't think 2 Tanks are bad in a group, nor do I think Tank DPS is actually that low, the playerbase has decades of holy-trinity-style gameplay behind the 1 "Tank" mentality. This might get a little better with sub classes.
I don't expect Tanks to be #1 DPS, but I do think it would be good for groups to work, and be encouraged to work, with setups that aren't 1 Tank/1 Cleric/1 Bard/5 DPS, especially for leveling.
>Things that might help now:
2. Combat mostly feels great. I love action mode. Some abilities seem bugged. Tried to report what I could. Taunt (and somewhat Intimidating Aura) seem like they are not generating much threat, possibly they get better at level 20+. Iron Aura is super buggy. Grapple is awesome but glitches quite often.
3. Leveling felt a bit too slow. I am someone who played Everquest at launch, FFXI for a decade, and Project 1999 a few years back, but I think this level of grind, combined with XP debt, on characters who also can't swap classes, is pretty brutal in 2024. I love grinding and I *love* grouping, but maybe make the first 20 levels faster and 40-50 slower if you are against changing the total XP and want the curve to stay the same.
I think PvP will be less enjoyable if people are at vastly different levels of grind, even months after launch.
4. Needs more Mobs. More types of mobs. More spawns. More potential camps. Starter PvE shouldn't be a constant struggle over a handful of slowly-respawning goblins/wolves/bandits.
Quests and more Events might help with this, but personally I hate XP quests and themepark-style content so... 🥲 More options for starting locations, more low-level areas, and ah... *fast travel* might help with this also.
5. Low-level/first-tier resources need higher respawns/more nodes. Similar to #4. High level resources having scarcity is fine, but poverty on the most basic items felt too much. This mostly affected metals/trees/herbs and I never really got to test Alchemy or any other crafting.
> In a twist, Fishing, the typically slower activity, bypassed both of these things, giving plenty of low-level fish and leveling quickly and easily.
6. Processing/Crafting being on long set-and-forget timers is, ah, unengaging? It's a big whiplash from the action combat mode where you're diving about and slashing at things.
>This might not be the direction you want to go, but I might suggest something like the action-crafting in Fantasy Life that draws on player skill as well as numbers? https://youtube.com/watch?v=qdn2GOW65Xo
7. Fast travel. I know the concept of this game, and defended by many players, is "no fast travel ever, anywhere." It's a touchy topic.
The thing is, even UO/Everquest/FFXI had some fast-travel options early on.
UO had Moongates.
EQ/FFXI had Gate/Warp to home point, usable by specific casting classes. Pure Casters and Black Mage main/sub respectively. Wizard/Black Mage main had Translocate (Velious)/Warp II, usable on other players, at high levels.
Wizard/Druid and White Mage had mid/high level gates/teleports to limited, specific locations. These abilities had huge mana costs and huge cast timers (barring Evacuates/Escape), making them EASILY interruptable while being attacked.
Anyway, I think as the world gets bigger this will become more of an actual problem and not just a "convenience" sort of thing. I am not someone who really enjoys going semi-AFK for a 45 minute trek to get somewhere, and this game requires you to be attentive and fully engaged during travel. I think people who are less "hardcore" will bounce off if it starts taking hours to get close to friends for a group.
Even "slow-fast-travel" EQ boats and FFXI airships were NOT fun to use as the ONLY means of transport.
Class-specific player solutions to limited fast-travel creates more player-interdependance and class-synergy.
>Things that might help eventually:
8. Guilds need to be able to support thousands of players.
9. The Guild UI needs to be able to display and sort player levels and classes, and allow right-click invites.
10. Performance needs work. Even on low settings the game has issues. I wager most of that is server-related and not purely graphical as there were times that the game did run much smoother. I have little doubt this will get better on both fronts.
---
ANYWAY, I had a lot of fun this weekend, but most of that was the action-combat and grouping with guild people on voice-comms.
I believe to reach a *slightly* wider audience that isn't 30-40 something grizzled old-school MMO fans, some changes need to be made. I have experience teaching high-school. Younger generations won't be up late in high-school/college chasing that Ashes of Creation dopamine like I was playing EQ/Phantasy Star Online/Anarchy Online/Shadowbane/WoW/FFXI back then. I don't even think I could get my similar-age partner to play with me in the game's current state. Something to think about.
One of my biggest issues with tank was the ammount of dmg blocked which at lower lvls was like 4 dmg out of for example 150dmg hit - felt really small - not sure if its gear dependant but didnt feel like a whole lot.
But I must say most of my issues come from being used to different mmos and for the most part I enjoyed my experience with the first weekend even tho it could be little tedious to progress even a little bit.
I like pretty much everything; however, now I am scared that AoC will not break through, because streaming the game is nust not viable...(griefing, special use cases, stream sniping) but same thing goes for all progression-based games... perhaps some sort of whitelist special server for streamers and their friends/ subs??
1. SW:8 on Lyneth was absolute garbage from go for some reason, and it only deteriorated as time went on. I believe that this either directly or indirectly was to blame for many quests and mobs in the area governed by SW:8 to act...strange. I found an abundance of "ghost" mobs (mobs that can be targeted, but take no damage and do nothing), had near endless rubberbanding, and had to deal with random damage that came from nowhere. these issues did not trouble me anywhere outside of when I was in SW:8. All other server workers I ran on ran rather smoothly.
2. The draw distances are pretty bad. I understand that this might just be for the alpha, but its really easy to lose people. I know this first hand as I have both escaped from being killed and had people escape me killing them just by running outside of the draw range.
3. Respawn points are rather dense to allow distance to be a factor of defense in this alpha, though they certainly make testing things easier.
keep up the good work. I like how different this gam is from the other MMO's I have played.
The general experience of moving around the world is very slow, but that's why I like it. I found that I planned my journeys more. Made sure I had enough rations and supplies and my gear was repaired. And while moving through the world, I actively looked around, worked out the best route (and routes to avoid scary mobs) and progressed toward my goal. The process is enjoyable, and a nice pacing.
The world is beautiful, I like the various nooks and crannies you find. And I know that as time goes by, with different seasons and effects, like thick fog and snow during winter etc. Its going to be a joy, visually.
My main focus though as a player is PvP and combat in general.
I played mainly the ranger.
Ranger so far seems to be going in the right direction. However there are some things which I think could be improved. The bear trap for example, I feel should be thrown. Instead of just materializing and should also be visually smaller. At the moment the bear trap just does not feel very responsive.
Also with abilities like snipe, there should be a way to cancel the ability. At the moment you can by dodging, but that feels a bit weird.
Stamina. At the moment, stamina feels strange to me. When dodging something, sometimes it does not work, and other times it does work. And this is mainly due to desync. Like trying to dodge a lunging wolf, does not seem to work ever.
The regen of stamina also needs to be a bit better. At the moment you can pretty much dodge twice. And I understand that when at max level, if you get two successful dodges, you would get enough stamina to dodge again. But at the moment, it just feels a bit weird. For a range. I want more dodging abilities. Or I want more abilities to dodge. I understand this is likely a tuning issue. But stamina feels weird overall to me.
PvP flagging seems not right. Ultimately I think that PvP should just be on all the time while out in the world. But I understand why you want to toggle it. But at the moment the situation goes like this. I am not toggled for PvP, someone starts attacking me. I then need to go and activate pvp by flagging. I then die, as I was attacked first. I then slowly make my way back to the player. But now they are no longer PvP active. And I can't retaliate. As they just don't attack back. So I lose out. I think that if two people attack each other. That they should both stay actively PvP flagged for each other for like 30 minutes or more. Or have it that, if I attack someone first. I can't come out of PvP for a while, so like 1 hour or something. So its not on and off so quickly. But If I defend myself from someone, then the 90 second PvP flag comes into play. Or something like this. Because at the moment, I can get killed, and try to defend myself against a group of players. But then they will kill me, but I can't take my revenge on them, as in 90 seconds, they will not be flagged. So it's all weird to me.
With the weapons. As a ranger, it feels like it should be the case that if I switch from a bow to a sword, that some of my abilities should change. So for example, if I switch to a a melee weapon because someone is close to me, my headshot ability should change to something, thats more of a melee variant. I am thinking about how in D&D you get some abilities depending on the weapon you are using. And having some abilities augment based on what weapon you are currently using, would be awesome. And make it seem more viable to change back and forth. Or something like this.
Anyway, that's all I got for now. Keep it up!
However, there is one thing that really bothered me. PVP. I know some people really love pvp, but I must confess that I do not. It's one thing if it is guild pvp or in the Node war system. When you are out just having fun exploring the world or fighting mobs, it's extremely disheartening when a higher level player or really any player for that matter, comes over to kill you.
It's quite strange because through the large majority of the testing, I found that the community was incredibly kind and supportive. I saw many players helping out strangers with heals and buffs, or saving them when a TPK seemed about to happen. Playing as a Cleric, I too often threw heals or the occasional res towards unfortunate players.
Yesterday however, a random player just came to kill one of my party members while we were traveling, and I was too far away to help. Suddenly, the game became alot less fun. Now we had to look at every other player as a potential enemy, instead of friend or passerby.
What really attracted me to this game was the potential for a gloriously in depth and difficult crafting system, which looks great so far. But, if I spend hours and hours to gather materials that are then just stolen from me by anyone who happens to be passing by, it drains the motivation to work hard on leveling the artisan paths.
To me, it would make alot more sense to have a duel system or specific areas that are PVP. Honestly, if one of the servers was just PVE that would be fine too. This kind of PVP that is currently in the game just encourages predatory behavior, and in the long term players who are more story driven or are interested in the Artisanship will be driven away.
Other than that very annoying event, I just want to say that you guys have done some amazing work and I haven't been this excited for an MMO in over a decade. Keep up the good work!
- All or nothing system is actually great
It incentivises to move along when there are too many ppl.
If you are soloing and a group is coming along - either grp up or leave. - No PKing necessary.
- Being able to kill higher level mobs is nice
While you loose efficiency - its possible to kill 10 lvl above your level in a group. Opens up less good farmspots when everything superefficient is occupied
- Node system is obviously incomplete but looks great.
Realized that most Mayors want to get rid of their mayorship - because its a ton of work.
It might become difficult to find capable and willing (we have an extremly capable but not willing for another term mayor) people to fill the role. Not to mention that you essentially have to No-Life w/o being able to have deputies.
- Love the interface in general - Being unable to transfer items in storage sometimes is really annoying but probably already known and will be fixed.
- Combat feels amazing!
What I want to see asap (in the appropriate phase, not phase 1):
- This is also for phase 1: PLEASE tell us at least 90 min before you plan to shut down the server
I don't mind loosing glint(or other materials) to a bug.
I don't mind loosing glint to stupidity - mine or another players.
But I DO MIND loosing stuff because I was told 15 minutes before arriving with my caravan that servers will be shut down in 10...
Instances where its time sensitive are exempt ofc - but being a dev myself - immediacy is almost never required and fixes usually take more than an hour to prepare.
This has nothing to do with being in an alpha. I hope that this can be improved upon (also gives your com dpt something to work on while the devs are busy
- Deputy Mayors
Being a mayor is a time extensive job. Deputies that can do some stuff would really help. Maybe also a few configurable titles, so its obvious to talk to those ppl instead of the mayor for the "small stuff".
Not everyone can be on 24/7 and ironically the best organizers are often very busy in their RL. This way you could have someone doing the big picture and other ppl implementing it when its time (like in real life...).
Also would help with the "mayor is leaving realm" issue.
I was in Discord with our Mayor - so I saw how many coms-requests she got.
For cities/metros: Maybe embassies? So you can send dedicated people for issues with other nodes (maybe with 10x corruption if you kill an embassador to your node?)
- Fix to caravan being destroyed on server down (fits into pt1) - this is really frustrating and made me stop playing the char for the day.
This was by no means a comprehensive list.
Left out corruption by choice - not sure how good/bad it works as I didn't have contact - but so far I haven't been griefed (someone did attack me, but backed off immediately as they saw that I don't fight back against someone 5 lvl above me
My impression was mixed...
Positive Impressions:
Negative Impressions (to be taken as feedback not criticism):
I don't want it to seem that I have a mostly negative view of the game, on the contrary, I've been very impressed and can't wait for the next weekend to explore more. The negative impressions are just feedback on the EA, which is obviously easier to do than to just list the stuff that is already great.
Last thing : I feel the UI and UX, need a lot of work, both are very unintuitive. It would be important to have separate feedback on UI/UX from first-time players. I noticed very quickly in the Discord channels that players who had played in the previous Alphas, were very defensive about UI/UX criticism. I think it will be vitally important to get feedback from individuals who are trying to make sense of the UI/UX and controls, rather than just from those that are now "used" to the way it is. It's the same reason why authors never (or should never) edit their own work.
I love the xp grind, it encourages grouping just like the good old days, i hated in New World that it was solo based due to players just spamming board quests to get huge xp rewards, i hated Throne and Liberty for allowing players to get max level in 4 hours (yes someone in the guild i was in managed that), those just didn't feel like what an mmo used to stand for. Grinding mobs, in a group, making new friends is what an mmo should stand for and i clap you for making this feel like it is, thank you!
Movement - felt really good
Crafting - to get the matts like hide, i was farming mobs to start with then someone told me that all you need to do is to interact with the white nods, once i knew this the system sort of became good, yes its not a solo system, you'll need an organised guild to help make progress go quicker, but i liked it. I do think maybe if you are killing certain mobs like spiders/crem's etc, that on a rare occasion a white nod spawns when they are killed.
The World - It looked great, my only con is that in some places you have a wide open space with nothing in it, just fill it with animals or even small grinding spots please. DO NOT ADD FAST TRAVEL, it's good as it is, i know the reasoning behind this (stop zerging), please do not crumble on this.
Loot - Felt ok, didn't like how if you won a roll you needed to pick up the item, that felt off to me.
Combat - Felt really good
Questing - This definitely needs work
Progress - Like i said above, it felt right, i love it
PVP - I play mmo's for pvp, weather its faction based like DAoC, guild related or battleground, i love it. My only concern is if a large guild of 500+ players (making loads of sub guilds) comes into an area and basically rolls everyone to get them out. I don't mind fighting over "best xp grinding spots" its rolling an area for the sake of it is what concerns me.
Yes there were bugs but i know its an Alpha, a lot of players moaned and groaned, just ignore them and keep up the good work and I'm looking forward in further testing and new systems and classes to help test.
I have played a bit of Guild Wars 2 but not that much and only solo and in AoC I'm now part of a big organized guild. I'm playing Ranger and I'm currently lvl 20
- combat feels good
- having no fast travel is great! I enjoy traveling the world.
But when I'm traveling, I'm constantly looking at the map to navigate. I think it would make sense to have some signs in the world here and there that tell you where the roads lead to.
- EXP penalty feels horrible. One death can destroy an hour of fighting monsters. This is not a risk vs reward situation because just by leaving the city and going anywhere, I'm at high risk of dying to wolves and other creatures that are somehow way faster than me, and even a lvl 8 golem that you placed in the middle of the road surrounded by mountains can kill me easily while giving me 0 rewards in case I do manage to kill it somehow. I suggest that exp penalty only applies to corrupted people.
- teleporting mobs I get that you somehow have to prevent people from abusing shooting from an unreachable position, but I hope you find a better way because this is highly immersion breaking.
If I use the rangers airstrike ability to jump over the city walls to get to safety, only to be killed by it after it just teleports after me, feels bad.
-I have often died during the loading screen because my character was already interacting with the world during that time, while I could do and see nothing to prevent it. pls fix this
- Group vs Solo activities:
While i enjoy playing with my guild members to beat dungeons and to farm XP and gear, I also really need my solo gameplay experience in the world partly because I don't always have a big group to play with but also just because I don't want to be forced to play in a group every second I'm in the game.
For the early levels playing in a group was a matter of efficiency for leveling speed but with increasing level it became and absolute necessity to play in a group because everything I could kill alone was either so far below my level that I gained nothing or almost nothing while the mobs that were on my level managed to kill me from time to time so that it wasn't uncommon that I didn't even get enough XP to compensate the XP penalty. So I really enjoyed doing some gathering during my solo playtime because that allowed me to make some contributions to my guild even when I'm not in a group.
So I'm worried that the "Party Gathering" feature that is supposed to come in A2 phase 2 will be so efficient that solo gathering will no longer be a viable way to contribute to my guild.
-Artisan System
the Artisan looks promising, but in this phase it seems too early to give much feedback here.
- The interface needs a complete redesign, especially the map and quest log.
- We need more explanations and information about various features.
- The crafting system looks great, but I didn’t fully understand it, particularly where to find some of the materials.
- Combat is fun!
- Quest NPCs are hard to identify. Sometimes, I was able to repeat a step in a quest and return it again.
Top 2 positive impressions:
1. The combat feels surprisingly great (when the servers aren't overwhelmed).
Playing a Cleric, I always felt engaged with multiple different aspects of the combat. My heals were needed at almost all stages of the game, my damage was not insignificant, and both required me to utilize a handful of unique abilities in different ways to survive/be effective. Even the auto-attacks were starting to interest me, because I needed the mana from finishers and I had to find good places to finish an AA chain.
Some enemies need some tuning, and as a raider I would appreciate more boss-type enemies with mechanics and such (I'm not high enough level for Firebrand yet). But mobs in general are threatening and unique, forcing me to engage with my very fun archetype kit, so for now, that's enough.
2. The cooperation required for progressing, for both my character and my node, is satisfying to say the least.
I was worried that I would feel like a spectator in my Guild/Node, but that wasn't the case. Even though I wasn't very hardcore (no Apprentice artisan classes), I could still contribute basic materials to help get buildings constructed. And there were plenty instances where I had to trade with guildmates to get the things we each needed for our respective combat/artisan classes.
As for combat, there were constantly groups shouting for LFG/LFM all across the world. And there's was clearly a need for team coordination and complete party compositions (Tank, Heals, DPS and Mana I mean Bard), especially fighting 3-stars.
I still want to see how the low-level experiences hold up, as the playerbase gradually shifts towards level 20+ content... but that is a concern for later.
Top 2 negative impressions:
1. Travel time is horrendous.
I understand that there are a number of design reasons that travelling needs to be slow, but I found it far more annoying than satisfying. Getting to quest locations, looking around for resources, running back to the node to empty my bags; all of it felt painfully drawn-out, even with a slightly faster wolf mount. It got to the point where it felt punishing to explore, because if I wander too far, then I have to waste 10 minutes getting back.
I don't know if anything can be done to alleviate this, but it's my biggest issue with the game currently.
2. The economy is not really running...
...but rather screeching loudly across the pavement like a car with no wheels, driven by the sheer determination of a few dedicated individuals. Some resource spawns (especially metals) were straight-up too scarce, not even counting higher rarities. Therefore certain processing/crafting professions couldn't be leveled quickly enough (metalworking obviously, but also animal husbandry because of the high cost of each "craft"). And it was pretty cumbersome to trade, so people only bothered to do it for super valuable stuff.
Aside from the obvious fixes, I think it would help a lot to get market stalls up and running ASAP. Let people trade their excess materials asynchronously, rather than the current method of standing around in town, spamming /shout, and manually trading.
And with that, I think I've said plenty. Don't want to drown out my feedback with any more rambling... Thanks for reading!
As in less death penalties, less or even no materials loss on death, stricter or even no free for all PvP in various non-"battleground" zones, faster travel options at least between cities, and so on and so forth. Basically, I'd like to actually play the game and have fun in my 2 hours a day I can put in it, instead of 50% of time riding my mount to get to fun and then potentially waste my time on pointless ganking both ways.
From my experience trying the game out so far, I think the game is too hardcore for its own good. But I do recognize that there is a bunch of people who want it that way, it just would be nice to have some sort of "herbivore" softcore ruleset server for boomers like me who just don't have time to teabag each other while leveling like if it's 2004 all over again.
Also to reiterate - I'd like to see much better PvE, both coordinated and solo.
Combat
Combat in general is good, monster AI however is finicky. Many times a monster will randomly teleport to you in Combat and hit you even though you were clearly out of range. Some of the CCs don't seem to work even when you see the debuff on the monster. I've also been chased infinitly by monsters until reaching a town where I would rubberband and monsters would disappear.
Healing
Some heal spells will follow the other player running ahead of you infinitly unless they stop moving. Which I get it is going to the target but I feel like you could essentially have alot of heals spells following another character "queued" up if you play it up. Unsure if intentional.
Regen
I'm sure it's a bug but the natural regen of hp mp Stam wouldn't work. Many rations died due to this issue.
Drops and experience
Getting quest credit on kills regardless of being in a party would be nice. Quest drops, even when in a party, we have to kill the bosses multiple times to get our quest item, this is frustrating. Drops in general also seem very sparse currently. Experience gain feels good.
Crafting and gathering
Gathering nodes either have an extremely long respawn rate or maybe just not spawning. Between 2 of us, we found 3 copper nodes. I do understand everyone is going after them but maybe a faster respawn rate would help Combat this? Maybe like a changing respawn rate going off of current player count in zone. Crafting feels slow but this is likely related to lack of resources.
Overall we had alot of fun. Alot of things still need polished, but this is to expected in an alpha. Looking forward to seeing where this goes. My husband has been watching since the kickstarter, I regret waiting to support yall till now. You guys are doing an amazing job so far.
-cait
However my two main pieces of crtique are regarding death penalties and gathering tools.
Death Penalties:
I enjoy the fact that we can drop our loot on death, it creates a good sense of urgency to get back to your loot and recover it, however i dislike how it's 25% drop 25% delete just frfom the start, this feels like somethign for corruption not default. theres nothing more upsetting than grinding for hours with a party only do have a death or two due to mistakes and lose up to 50% of ALL that loot.
Gathering Tools:
I am enjoing and loving the life skills right now, but my main issue is we all start with "crude" weapons and can upgrade to "novice", yet can only gather novice nodes, we need apporentice tools to gather apprentice items but theres nowhere to craft them. we have to rely on the mayor alone to do this and if someone inactive is mayor then the entire node gets left behind. i wont mind traveling across the world to upgrade my tools but its kind of bad design to have 2 different tiers able to gather novice but only 1 tier for the above?
In this test i spend alot of my time running around trying to find where i can upgrade hunting tools only to find that no nodes can do it and no nodes are even trying to do it. maybe change the node control so it isnt a single guild in control and we have democratic votes on what to build next?
1. No matter how many ores I mined and synthed, I couldn't complete or move onto the next step of the quest towards the mount.
2. As a tank, it was difficult to "tag" mobs to gain credit for kills with the hundreds of players competing for kills. I don't care if I get the experience for the kills but just give us the credit for killing them for quests even if we don't tag them. Especially if I have more threat and end up tanking the mob with the other person just watching me kill it.
The graphics are great, the questing is interesting, and I look forward to playing throughout the phase to see how the rest of the experience goes. I've only played one other game where you lose experience when you die, but never a game where you drop materials.
About me
Not a developer or pro gamer, just a normal consumer with some background playing mmos (Wow, Aion, Rift, Albion, TnL, Lost Ark, etc.). Never really played hardcore although I`ve had my months of reaching pinacle content in most of those MMOs, just never really continued more than several months. Age 37.
my experience:
The Good
Combat feels very nice, Played Mage lvl 15, Ranger lvl 6, Fighter lvl 6. In general i loved it. Classes seem fun and talent trees are engaging. Some stuff to fix but in general great. Curious to see how the 64 class system works, id imagine just have partial skill trees of other classes and recoloring skills would be the easy option but i don't see how a necromancer would make sense that way. Graphics and scenery seem very nice my rig is kind of old (1080Ti) but even i could appreciate, will need to upgrade.
Immersion is good, especially when travelling in groups.
Loved the Minotaurs, i hope there is a dungeon full of em
The Bugs
-Water Zones above land in several places
-Horse seems to float when you go diagonally (ADAD)
-I got stuck on some quest and couldn't access storage until i removed it
-You can leash mobs and kill them while they run back if you manage to take them far enough, it can be used to cheese 2-3 star mobs
-Some performance issues at times but probably my pc
-Had a bug where i couldn't loot glint until i relogged
-The moment i created my character i got stuck, i used unstuck with no success and finally got freed by getting pked
-at one point my dodge stopped working during some time had to log out suffer a q and then log back in to get it to work
Suggestions:
-Crafting seems a bit hard to learn initially, i got a bear and had no idea how to turn it into a mount. What is Fuel?
-If you get the 64 cross class play correct it might be insanely good!
-Itemization seems a bit strange, hard to say cause i mainly farmed loot from goblins but i think armor should be more like cloth (8 pieces gives x bonus, 5y,3z) leather , mail, plate, etc. and that being independent from item stats. That way item bonuses can focus on other stats, now it seems like a mix.
-Blues dropping so easily at low lvls from easy mobs like that is 2 much. probably more item variety would help, although the scarcity factor is nice it makes it great when you get a drop.
-PvP consider making it harder to attack non combatants both accidentally (aoe) and to stop griefing (at some point some1 will have enough resources and ppl to not care about the penalty no matter what it is and they will grief 1000%). make it more obvious how to enable pvp
-Quests are a bit hectic atm (did 1, the horse, and cba to continue, i picked up commissions and never managed to get one done O_o)
- map markers (maybe i just didn't see them)
- Soundtrack could use some umphhh at some points (lilith diablo music, stormwind classic wow, etc.)
- some of those floaty rocks seem out of place.
- the Lionsgate are is supposed to be old but the stone is brand new in most places.
Changes I'd like: SOME fast travel options ie maybe one portal zone in each zone?, XP from Shared tagged mobs, a reasonable amount of solo friendly content that contributes to overall progression, rework the UI a bit, more quests (coming I know) and gear rewards for working through quest chains
Combat: feels great to me but i also play a lot of action rpgs it feels very rewarding to go into combat mode aka the action combat mode. i don't use auto attack and love that I'm rewarded for properly blocking as tank. I personally enjoy the fact that if you think about what you are doing and your build you can solo content. its slower paced and more meticulous for some so they don't like it but i lvled faster than friends in the group grinds. that felt very nice to not be punished cuz i like the solo challenge.
Fast travel: i know this is not really supposed to happen but i can't see the game lasting without some form of it. the travel is nice but for the 10000th time just for a time sink will get old as pretty as the world is. the node-to-node travel i am happy to hear is a thing or in talks but i hope it's not limited to being a citizen of a town and just a community unlock. I don't need a lot of quick travel but an hour ride when you have an hour to play the game isn't it. assuming the map is that big. think of the adult that just drove an hour home irl to have to ride an hour to play the game it just doesn't bode well. def not FT from open world though that's for sure. the flying is cool af I like it being limited. the FT def needs to stay limited but def not nonexistent especially later into the game.
PVP: so far it seems cool the corruption system is nice but there should be something in place to not punish say the paladin for saving the weak from a griefer. Griefers should be punished. ppl who engages in non-honorable combat should fear that a group of protectors will come smite them. The protectors should be rewarded not punished tbh. other than that, it's pretty cool.
Loot drop: i love it makes you make a decision to engage in combat or run away. it's really nice but i hope there's artisan clothing that mitigate the amount of loss to reward the player for wearing the right undies out. other than that, it's pretty solid mech that makes your choices matter.
Quests: i know it's not content patch but the quest markers are super vague. I do like figuring them out but having a marker on an area during a quest where the objective isn't is kind of troll. the small, pinpointed quest icon not the big circle. though some of those big circles should be smaller for the kill commission unless yall plan on having them spawn in dif areas come launch or wander around. rikards circle has no business being the whole battlefield for a 5x5 spawn point. The investigation quest i get to leave like that cuz that's part of the quest and by reading the clues one should be able to find it. Most of them are broken af right now and i understand that was not really the intention of this phase so it's no biggie they are still broke. the circles commissions need to be just a lil smaller especially if respawns are long enough that you walk past the spawn area in your search cuz overpopulated zone. maybe 2 min spawn not 5-10 for those. rare non quest mobs keep em rare that's good stuff. repeatable stuff being so tedious is a big deterrent for players that hate quest. i love quest so i figured em out.
Streamers: pls pls pls make content creator servers to keep all that goon squad nonsense away from regular gamers.
I read the other comments and I agree that other players should not be able to loot your body due to a PVE death. My reason is because we already have players that will sit on the sidelines and watch you die just to loot your body. Also they will pull mobs straight to your safe spot while you are trying to heal then ride off and watch you die so they can loot your body without receiving corruption. So not only do you loose a lot of material and glint but you now have 20 mins or more of xp debt to work off all because a player is too big of a pussy to flag and fight you outright. Making bodies unlootable after PVE death will stop a lot of this action.
Xp Gain
I feel you should gain some xp for attacking a creature weather you killed it yourself or not. I would like to see it more like what they do in fallout 76. So if your in a group your group gets xp but if you just want to help out a player who is getting killed so you start helping them while not grouped then you should receive some xp for your efforts. My group had an instance that another player outside our group tagged our target and then moved away so we had to kill it but we recieved no xp or drops for killing it. I can only assume the other out of group guy got it.
These are my only 2 real issues with the game aside from glitches but I know you are working hard in those. Otherwise I love this game.