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 crafted an entire armor set, which took some time, as I first had to gather the resources. After finishing, I didn’t even reach level 2. The amount of crafting needed to hit artisan level 10 is just too much. At level 10, Journeyman-level recipes drop, which I can't make because I’d have to spend days leveling up crafting, only to end up with a lot of gear that’s useless to me. Selling doesn’t make sense either, because as the game progresses, the gear will flood the market and become worthless. I could just kill mobs, get gear, and level up in much less time.
Suggestions for Improvements:
-Balance the XP given or required for crafting levels.
Add other ways to raise artisan levels:
- Crafting-oriented quests or specific conditions for leveling up.
-Introduce artisan commissions for crafting that grant XP. Maybe adjust artisan gathering commissions so players can gather non-usable materials, allowing them to choose between more artisan XP from the commission without the usable materials, with gathering locations available at different difficulty levels, from easy areas to dungeons or raids.
-Artisan events - create events similar to what we have now, but with additional stages. For example, one stage could require crafting a set amount of gear for next stage, whitch would be influenced by the quality and amout of the crafted gear. For instance, players might repel an attack on a city, advancing to the next stage, after which NPC soldiers would need armor and weapons to defend against another attack. Or, design crafting-only events without combat, so players can't increase both their adventuring and artisan levels at the same time.
I think these changes, or something similar, would make crafting progression more fun and engaging, rather than just sitting and crafting millions of items at different artisan stations without even wanting the outcome.
Fordt things first: I went in mostly blind as an experienced MMO player. I watched some of the live streams but not much. I work and play games in the afternoons when I can. As a result, I spent all my time sub-level 10 in what felt to be the starting zone.
My first impressions weren't the best. I played bard, and while I like the skills and style, the splash damage and difficulty of pulling foes felt unpolished, and the sliding movement when strafing was janky. I spent all my time grinding mobs with a friend to level 5 before putting the class down. When I swapped to ranger I immediately had more fun, and I was solo. Again, just spent all my time grinding mobs. Never got to do caravans or engage in much crafting.
What general feedback would you like to share with the team?
1. The ability to engage in crafting seriously feels like it comes too late into play. I played 10+ hours on a single character and never had/found materials to craft anything meaningful, and whatever I crafted was just to sell for coin.
2. Player direction (exploration) - more direction for where players can go. People always spoke of places that I still have no clue about, and I pretty much stuck around the starting areas in the same 1 or 2 locations. After 10 hours I'd assume a player would be able to see more different areas, a starting/tutorial area should not feel like a grinding trap. This might be the intent of the game though.
3. Player direction (UI) - so much feels hidden. Didn't know about the little button on equip vendors to repair gear, and had to ask chat to find out about it. Spend 30min-1hr trying to figure it out at crafters and vendors. Saw others asking about it too. Relocate the button near buy/sell functions, add a tool tip or quest directing the player to go to x vendor to repair, just some direction as to where repair can happen. On the crafting window I know I reported it as a bug accidentally, and I wonder how many did the same. Went to craft a cut ruby and my ruby wasn't showing up as available in crafting. It was only much later that I realised there was a drop box to select rarity. Not sure if there's a reason for this, but I think a pop up like adding fuel (of any rarity) would work better here so players are prompted to select a rarity, rather than having it blend into the ui. Or, better yet, a bit more of a tutorial on how crafting works. I still don't know the purpose of material rarity - I'm guessing they can make better stuff? Lastly, it was only after many hours on 2 characters, on the last day of the most recent alpha, that I realised that you get a skill point per level in ALL areas, like the weapons. The tool tip pop up states about upgrading skills, but nothing about the tabs or that the pool was not shared. Yes people will figure it out by themselves, but a core mechanic like this should not be stumbled upon.
4. Player direction (Crafting) - I felt no incentive to craft, and I love crafting in games, especially discovery crafting. There's a few barriers here. If you find a crafting table, I think it should stay on the world map so it's easier to relocate. I can't remember which crafting table was where in one area (I could after enough time, but by that point I'd hope to be in a new area and then forget their locations all over again). No crafting hubs (at least when starting) - this could be by design, but it is a barrier none the less. Not enough low level material nodes in starting areas. Plenty of wood, but after going around for 3 hours looking for rocks I didn't have much luck - maybe I wasn't looking in the right areas but that's where player direction should come into play (I was looking around mountains cliffs and caves). Lastly, there's needs to be tiers for crafting. I like difficult crafting, but at the lowest levels it should just be familiarisation to get your feet wet and learn the systems, not deep end right away where the player is encouraged to spend more time on external websites than in your game. Food for example. Still no idea how to craft it or where a craft station is after 10+ hours. This should be one of the first things considering how essential food is for recovering hp and mp.
5. Downtime. I felt there was too much time spent not playing the game while in-game. I don't mind the eating food mechanic, but when you need to sit and eat after every 3 or 4 mob fights your level I spend more time eating than grinding. If you're going to encourage mob grinding, the game shouldn't be an eating sim. Speed eating up or chance resource balance between player and mob. In saying that, bosses felt well balanced with resource management, needling to to off before and get drained right St the end of the fight felt good.
6. I liked the variety of resources in the starting area. Having higher level resources encourages players to return to lower levelled areas. I enjoyed how events rewarded all players with the end chest and not just players who kill steal or tag mobs (though as shared here by others, not a fan of it happening in open world. Too much incentive on aggroing mobs when you're a class that shouldn't. It has led to groups, especially impromptu groups, having a range pc pull too many too fast and wiping people).
Last comment. A lot of people seem to like the grind and the difficulty of things, no hand holding. That's the type of game, go ahead. I don't like hand holding too much either, I like my older style games. However early levels, even in these older games, still have hand holding to learn features. Endgame is not important if people give up after playing 10hrs in a starter zone because they are just grinding mobs and feel like they haven't been provided options, or face decision paralysis because of too many side quests with no main quest indicator. The game as it is reminds more of Aion in the early days than Archeage, but with less direction and worse pacing.
If I find the best grinding spot in my first 10 minutes of play, and it's optimal to sit there for the next 10 hours, that's not good design. Naturally direct the players through quests or prompts to other areas, everyone was prompted to and thus clustered at the goblins. That's fun for a time, but not for 10 hours as you enjoy watching your PC eat and only leave to gather mats, craft them, then sell them to buy more food to watch your character eat, broken up with occasional bouts of fighting. Fighting was fun, at least on the more polished classes, but there is too much of one thing.
Keep up the work, all the foundations look to be there, and the game's coming along nicely. My main sticking point is lack of natural direction across the board. I want to see more of the game in 10 hrs than just a goblin camp and some surrounding areas.
Having a blast with your game, you are truly visionaries! I love so much about the game and see so many ways it can still improve. I would love to see you lean more into the difference in day/night cycles, I like that skeletons come out at night, but where do the other mobs go? Wouldn't it be cool if an area that has goblins/bandits during the day is over run with the undead at night, so they retreat to camps at night where they all huddle together as opposed to being spread out? It would make it an interesting way grind larger packs at night, but you would also have the danger of skeletal enemies spawning on you as you attempt to fight off the larger groups of humanoids that you just pulled.
In general I think it would be cool to make night time much more dangerous to be out in the wilds than during the day. Wolves and bears and undead (or any other nocturnal beings) roam the wilds and are harder to see because of the dark, and in the day everything is easier to see and more spread apart, maybe wolves are asleep during the day and have lower aggro range because of it, but at night they are on the prowl and will get you from a much greater distance.
In this sense it would be logical that all humanoids would be at their camps huddled together for survival, making them ripe for the slaughter if you can overcome the dangers of the dark yourself!
2nd weekend I started to enjoy it more as I managed to group up with some friendly people abd actually hit the bigger mobs and win.
3rd weekend fell fairly flat as the punishment for playing in a group of friends that were higher level than me (2+) really hurt any xp gain and enjoyment and thus I was back to soloing mobs which kinda sucked as i work sunday to monday OCE time.
So I tried to level up mining and weapon smithing to test that only to find out copper and zinc take 4hrs to respawn and are often locked out by the t2 ores. So I spent roughly a day I total looking for copper and zinc only to end up with a storage full of basalt, granite and the odd ruby.
The artisan side of things still needs work (which I know is coming). So my question is this.
For the gathering artisan skills, will there be an ability to make nodes last longer? Like a copper node lasting 2 harvests on the first skill point (level 5), and 3 on thr next skill point (level 10)?
Or
(2 part question)
Will there be dedicated areas the more town nodes level up to specific resource? Or is the resource tier level linked to node level) (ie node level 1 only spawns t1 resources, t2 spawns 70%/30% t1/t2 node and t3 50/50 split?
2nd question
In warehouse storage there is an items, materials and (I forget the 3rd one) storage tabs. Will there be a separate tab for recipes, as recipes will clog up the item space pretty quick before players are able to learn them?
GIven how many armour sets, accessories and various other recipes there are. I had close to 8 recipes in 4hrs of farming mobs. 5 of which I couldn't learn due to being under leveled.
I didn't get a chance to do any PVP this time around, but I can provide my thoughts and feedback on the other three.
Exploration/lore: ignoring the current graphical issues, the world is beautiful. There were times I would perch myself on a rock while regaining mana/hp and take in the sights below and it was amazing. I haven't found a lot of lore yet, but what I have found has piqued my interest. Like the one mountaintop just west of Lionhold with the two corpses and the dual-wielding statue...I have questions lol. There were some immersion-breaking areas like floating trees/grass and the terrain would turn into square tiles randomly, but I saw a lot of those issues got fixed pretty quickly.
Adventuring: I was a bit bummed that some of the quest lines were broken. Nothing like running around the map to collect pieces of the tree only to return to the quest giver and not get that 2500xp + glint you were expecting. It wasn't all for naught though because that does lead me my next piece of feedback that arose from trying to complete quests: combat. Fighting mobs felt really, really good. Since I was solo, I rolled frost for some crowd control and utilized lightning for the Shatter ability which felt AMAZING. I had a lot of fun, and I appreciate how challenging the fights were. I had to pick and choose who and where to fight because while I could most likely defeat an elite melee enemy a couple levels higher than me, chances are I would get my butt kicked by a ranged enemy of the same level. I found just switching my weapons as well would change the combat style which I found refreshing like when I switched up my copper wand for the magic shortbow just to see what would happen. One thing I would like to have changed about the combat is the all-or-nothing aspect of combat experience and credit (for quests) when it came to killing mobs or named NPCs. When Blizzard made the change to share combat experience and credit in WoW to all players who participated - party or no party - to me, that was the best update ever. If combat experience and credit could be split/shared amongst participating players, I think that would be amazing and it would prevent situations like what I saw over the weekend with the Bone Brigade quest where melee players would stand on top of a fallen soldier's spawn point swinging their weapon for 5+ minutes waiting for the mob to spawn so they can try to get credit for the kill. And I wouldn't feel so bad for stealing the kill...*cough*
Crafting: My playstyle will always consist of me looking for resources and trying to craft some awesome items and potions. I don't know yet if I'll be a merchant, but I foresee myself traveling far for resources and being the one to hire guards for the caravan missions so providing feedback for this section is important to me. Crafting resources and goods right now doesn't feel very financially rewarding especially with low level gear. With the exception of tanning, the return on investment based on the amount of resources and time I spend being able to craft low level gear is so low that it's better to sell resources to buy the gear versus crafting it. Crafting is currently only worth it for items and gear that you can't buy like the salves and magic shortbow I mentioned above. For instance: 1 zinc + 1 piece of wood (common) are 5 copper each. Converting the zinc into shards using the wood plus the 1-minute queue time makes it worth 8 copper. I would feel better about crafting if the end result would be worth a bit more than the raw materials combined - maybe anywhere between 12-20 copper in this case, and the higher the rarity of the resource used the more valuable it would be.
That's all I have for right now. Overall, I love what I've seen and experienced so far, and I look forward to seeing what's next. Everyone keep up the good work, and I look forward to playing again on the 15th!
One point of feedback I would like to make from a healer perspective is improving the UI or expanding on customization to party / raid frames.
As a request, I would like to be able to hover cast heals / cleanses using my party or raid frames without having to click on a frame to target that player. I'd also like to eliminate needing to reserve keybinds to target party member 1, 2, etc...
In my opinion, this would provide a very smooth playstyle in terms of supporting a party of any size. I saw an option for hover casting in the game settings but couldn't figure out how to get it to work, thinking perhaps it might be bugged.
It would also be great to be able to toggle on / off raid or party frames at will. I found myself preferring the functionality and size of the raid frames over the standard party, even while in small parties. I was able to toggle these on by hitting the Edit UI keybind, but this didn't seem to be the intended behavior because they were turned off by default and any time the party changed, they would disappear again. Please allow us the option of raid style frames, even while in a party. Maybe this is already in place and I just missed how to go about doing this.
The last thing I'd like to talk about are debuff icons, could we please see these in a more prominent fashion? Could I suggest highlighting a player's health bar with a specific color so we can make informed decisions on cleansing or understand if a player is suffering from certain status effects? For example, even if we can't cleanse a DoT, being able to easily identify that a party member is bleeding or burning would help indicate to healers to pay more attention to them, throw them a HoT, etc...
Again, if any of these things are in-game already, please disregard. I didn't happen to notice them so just wanted to contribute based on my experience. Thanks for a fun weekend, looking forward to following this game's growth.
My thoughts on the Alpha Two experience so far, with feedback focusing on what has stood out and areas for potential improvement. Overall, I’ve been drawn into the game and find it very promising!
1. World and Immersion
The world is visually amazing. Aside from a few textures that could use polishing, it’s immersive and really pulls me in. However, sound design could be enhanced to fully support that immersion. For example, gathering audio feels very basic and lacks the satisfying quality you’d expect from resource collection (like the mining sounds in New World). While the music is pleasant, it often shifts abruptly as I move through zones or enter combat, which can be a bit distracting. A more seamless audio transition between zones and events would help keep the atmosphere consistent.
2. Combat and Mechanics
Combat feels fantastic, even at lower levels. As a level 10 Ranger, I’m impressed with how every button I press seems impactful and contributes to combat. This is a refreshing change from the “button bloat” seen in many modern MMOs, where skills can feel redundant. Keeping combat tight and rewarding like this is a huge plus.
3. Community and GM Presence
The community has been highly supportive and welcoming, which makes the experience enjoyable. Of course, there are some trolls, but that’s expected in any game. One major highlight for me is seeing GM Steven active in-game. Having an actual GM presence in 2024 feels rare and brings a sense of connection between players and the development team. It’s clear that the team cares about the community, which adds to the overall experience.
4. Events and PvP Encounters
Currently, I don’t feel very drawn into the special events or PvP encounters unless I happen to come across them while exploring. From the notifications, there’s not a lot of incentive to pause what I’m doing and join an event. Consider adding stronger rewards or unique PvP-only events—maybe areas that flag everyone for PvP without party alliances—to encourage more participation and excitement.
5. Gear and Character Customization
Gear drops feel very rare. After hours of gameplay and thousands of kills, I’ve only come across a few pieces of gear. If this is intentional to emphasize crafting, that’s understandable, but a slightly increased drop rate or unique loot options could make adventuring more rewarding. Customization options at this stage are fairly basic, though I know more are planned for the full release and future alphas. I look forward to seeing how those options expand!
6. Player Collision in Cities
Player collision can be frustrating in high-traffic areas like cities. I’d suggest disabling player collision in cities to improve movement, provided it doesn’t interfere with node PvP events. This would prevent issues with crowding, especially during busy periods, and make city interactions smoother for all players.
Thanks for putting so much effort into making Ashes of Creation immersive and community-driven. The experience so far has been enjoyable, and I’m excited to see how the game continues to grow.
Now I believe you know this but UI, questing - these two are so far in the worst state. Text for quests are not descriptive enough, I can survive with one quest at a time where it is not descriptive as part of storytelling, but in this case a lot of them were not descriptive. Second issue as well being they were not showing areas on the map. From UI perspective quite often buttons for quests were bugged people unable to complete quests, or some items that were supposed to create quest chains were not acceptable. On this note I love the little items that people can find that will create secret quests, so great!
For UI, text is very small, profanity filter is wonky and some words are censored thought they should not, I was not able to find a way how to make a visible background for hotbars. But I commend you on having fully customisable HUD. great job there! The Map...I like it, but it can be more of an annoyance to use rather than a mystery and cool thing. For example some quests, a lot of markers will appear when people zoom in on the map and have to be nearby. If they do not zoom in they will not notice that there might be something, however it seems the zone of influence(you see what i did there) for the area that is checked is a bit bigger than the minimap which means it will show on the map but not neccessarily on the minimap, which means people might miss stuff because they are not zoomed in on the map all the time.
I am commending you as well on the patch notes almost every second day, and can't wait to see the lightning weather next week. For now I am out and wish you all patience and good luck with the deving!
Overall Performance
The game kept using all my 16gb ram and crashing my PC, further optimisation of the game should resolve this - meanwhile I'm upgrading my ram, but this shouldn't happen. Due to the instability of the game I didn't get to try it much but from what I did see these are my thoughts.
Easy Anti-Cheat App
This app is infamous for causing instability on peoples computers and an alternative solution should be used, otherwise people will think the game is unstable when in reality it's this poor 3rd party software. Why you even need anti-cheat enabled on an alpha is beyond me, you're just asking for more trouble before you've even launched.
Questing
Players are given quests that they cannot do as it's not clear that you need to be higher level to complete them.
Quests are given to you at lower levels than the mobs you need to fight, so although it might be possible it's very difficult unless you're in a large group.
World Map
The icons on the map for POI's and the likes are not clear to differentiate between the terrain (for example a point of interest being silver, next to white/silver mountains - this could do with changing)
Font/Text Size
My eyesight isn't bad and I play many games from different studios, and honestly I've never seen a font that was harder to read than in your game. It's either too small (overall) or too squished at the sides, you should either give players a choice of different in-game font or set the default to something more easier to read - as it seems reading is a big part of the game if you want to understand what you're doing.
Progression (skills/combat)
Although there is clear progression with each skill or the combat level etc, I didn't feel there was anything pushing me to want to level these things up (other than doing job-board tasks). Maybe if trade/market between players was more developed there might be some drive to do this, or if it was clearer to see the node progression (if there was any node progression in this phase). Since there is no group/instanced dungeons there isn't much encouragement to level up combat either.
Mounts
Pressing the mount should both remove AND summon the horse to you, pressing it once to "despawn" it makes no sense in the RP side nor the gameplay side. If not this then at least have an option to make the horse follow you passively within say 10-20 yards or whatever (so it doesn't get in the way of mobs or gathering points, but so you can keep doing stuff).
PvP:
I think the corruption system is pretty neat, but I don't think it really enhances the game all that much. Yeah you can loot pvprs' corpse and stuff like a herd of hyenas. Conceptually I can see it working that if pvprs' are being dicks then the local players can band together to serve justice and such. I don't think that pvpers should be able to attack whoever they want, since I think the majority of players just want to do their things without having to worry about trolls. Keeping pvp in that form i think discourages a good chunk of a player base at the end of the day.
What I do propose, would be something along to either a dueling system (similar to WoW) or better yet, Implement into the town nodes something like Colosseums (for massive cities)all the way down to local fighting pits where non participants can watch and enjoy the battles as well. Even add a crowd enjoyment mechanic at the end of each match to gain some bonus renown or something.
Cities could vote for these to be built in their cities and there can be tournaments held where pvp players can gain renown to the victors along with some bonuses based on number of participants.
Maybe Charge an entry fee and check renown levels, sorta a deal (entry fees and renown checks to help prevent power leveling and exploits) and it can further provide a pvp player and alternative/career for those types of player to follow, without disrupting PvE players' gaming experience.
Anyways....
Crafting:
Generally I think it's ok with having to pay to convert materials at a vendor, but I image eventually when players build their homes or shops even, that players would eventually be able to build their own processing stations once they hit like master level at their craft with all the materials to build said stations could be good. Plus it can be another path to building player economy if having shops in towns were a thing
The fuel system doesn't entirely make sense, (like why would you need wood to cut gems or to turn herbs into powders?) you are already having to pay a cost to process them, but also need fuel on hand as well?
World:
I think keeping fast travel outta the game is great, helps curve power leveling and really makes it feel like being a part of this world as you wander around it.
I'm not a huge fan of having to mob grind like in EverQuest, but so far the balancing there isn't too bad (my highest level character was only 7 I think)
Having a live proximity vouce chat I think would be great too, (as well as the chat boxes, with an option to disable them if you want). Again, adds more of that realism approach that's convenient for a lot of players depending on what the overall goal is for realism vs fantasy when it comes to the game.
UI:
Pretty intuitive, a little clunky at first but not too bad.
With that, I think that's about the rest of what I had intended to cover. Great work so far guys!!!!
I love this game. I like the way combat feels with the different classes. I will admit that it took me a bit to get used to "Q" being the button for auto attack. However, a quick key bind change was enough to square me away.
I like that talents are gained immediately upon leveling.
From what I was able to do with crafting, I enjoyed.
I also liked that nothing was really handed to me. I liked having to figure some things out. I also enjoyed there being a need for a group. Solo gaming, while fun at times, can be boring. I enjoy a challenge.
One thing that seemed to always be an issue was respawn times for quest objectives. With six to ten people waiting to tag a mob objective for a drop, it sometimes felt impossible to complete a quest. I remember standing in spots for 10 to 15 minutes at a time, waiting for respawns. This applies specifically to the "Boneyard" quest where you have to collect records from mobs.
Obviously performance was an issue when there were multiple users in an area. A lot of lag did occur as well as character customization disappearing. These issues would regulate when leaving the greater populated areas.
If possible, it'd be great to be able to rotate your character in the character creation screen.
Overall, with the understanding that this is an Alpha II Phase I test, I love this game. I like the commission board for questing and I love the feel of the combat. I know performance issues will resolve as the game production progresses.
Thank you all for all of your hard work. I look forward to being a part of testing through the game's launch.
~ Methusilan
Context - I found a guild to join before I first logged in. This massively improved my overall experience and I would have had a much different and, probably, far worse experience if I had not done this.
I haven't been following the livestreams super closely recently so I wasn't sure what to expect. Some things were more developed and others less than I was expecting. I was not expecting combat to be so fun! I spent the weekend mostly healing and, atm, that's very reactive (people can go from 100->0 in a blink of an eye) so it's very susceptible to lag which we got a few times in the more populated places. But, if the server responsiveness if neatened up, if the game launched with this combat i would be happy.
Feedback on the healing - numbers are the easiest to change and we're only low level, but I found healing to be incredibly spiky. Party members would frequently have massive chunks taken out of their health or be one-shot. Some of this will be not interrupting abilities that we should, but I would rather have slower healing which rewards mana conservation and smart use of abilities/cooldowns rather than healing that is more a test of reflexes which it is currently. The pace is exciting, but it feels too far swung into a space focussing on reaction time.
The world was emptier than I was expecting and I was a little surprised at there essentially being no 'content' outside of extremely buggy quests and I wasn't expecting the grind to be so long, but the combat made the grinds fun to do. I understand content isn't what the test is about atm, but i'm curious about how much is going to be able to be added and how much is in the works. I would adore if there was more excuse to explore the world, either through some form of map completion tracker, or hidden rewards or anything that encourages and rewards you to get out and see the sights rather than stick in one spot grinding.
Artisans feel very WIP, but at an atavistic level I find it so fun just chopping down a tree or mining a node and the complexity of the system is going to do a great job at forcing people to work/trade together.
Thoughts on the node system. It's really exciting seeing how the systems are being put in place that will create emergent content. My concern is for the experience of the 'typical' player. A player not in a guild or certainly not in the leadership of a guild. Other than the emergent gameplay (e.g. caravan defence/offence or trading etc.), an average player is not going to interact with the node system at all at a development level. My concern is that players will congregate at the node with the buildings they need, and not interact, understand or care about its development as only leaders of guilds or mayors will be interacting with these systems. Even the node quests can just feel meaningless as an individual contributor and not like you're helping the node as the requirements are far beyond what you can supply, resulting in a lack of engagement. My ask would be to make those systems as incredibly transparent as possible. Make it incredibly visible how the node is developing and how even individual players effect this and don't rely on the complexity of the system itself to be enagaging or even understood by the 'typical' player. These players will need the emergent gameplay to sustain them. I want to focus on this as many of us buying in to A2 are the type of player who take an interest in these systems, and will not be representative of the majority come launch.
Other than the combat, what impressed me the most is how the game already forces players to work together. I'm a bit of a socially anxious bean and when I can do everything solo in an mmo I can find it a bit intimidating finding and getting involved in a community even if that's really the reason i play mmos. The fact that you need to work together has already brought me to a guild with lovely folks and playing with my guild has been the highlight of the weekend. It's felt so old school and achieved that feeling of playing with others that you can only really get in an mmo, even if the test is currently content light. I hardly ever get that in most other games but this weekend has been nothing but this.
I could talk a lot about Artisan Skills since it was my main focus this weekend apart from attempting to hit level 10 which I fell short of, by my estimation level 9 to level 10 requires more XP than Level 10 to Level 11
This list isn't all encompassing I can talk a lot more about various aspects of the game but at least these are my first impressions. I did have a blast and spent far longer playing a game then I have in a long while it took me back to my days playing Everquest and World of Warcraft all night into the wee hours of the morning and not regretting a thing but it wasn't a completely perfect experience and I hope some further tweaking and bug fixes get the game to where it needs to be.
Thanks,
LaughingRav3n
First of all i geneerally enyoied the alpha.
Positives:The to most outsanding things in my opinion are the Charakter movement and Response in combat,
and the world designen, it feals like your tiny when your walking araund but when you fight you feel like there is nothing else in the world this brakes the flow of gameplay that your not that fast bored.
Negatives:
I only had one bigger problem and that was not with the server so i dont expeted it to be in a nice looking state but the crafting needs some adjusment in my opinion, not in termes of time or quality but in terms of Information. I think you should be able to see what you can craft in your artisan tap even when your not at a workplace, and there schould be a tooltip for ingeediens like were to find them (buy them from a vendor, comes from a other crafting profession). That woukd make the start for new players with sutch a complex System mutch more enjoieble.
Feedback for clasdesigne
I played a Bard, Cleriker and Tank up to level 9 this weekend.
Cleriker
The kleriker feels great, with a bunchlode of instant heals aoe heals and a great kit for tank healing.
Flash Cure: I think its to cheap for i ranged heal that can be done during a cast. In low and medium damage Fights i use this ability as my main heal to also deal damage and still dont have mana problems, and i think this sould not be the case for a "o shit button".
Difiant Light:
Solid ability but i think it should have a integratet shild for like tow seconds that gives the healers time to heal sombody back up, becaus with 25% health he probebly dies half a second later.
Tank
All of the tank abilitys feel great exept one.
Vengeance: This ability feals rarly worth castin besause of the only minor benefits. It only deals a tiny amount more damage than a aufo attack and has a lot less other Utility than an auto attak. And the sheald is way to tiny to be signifikant. In the earlygame this is most notebel, but even with level nine it dosent feals worth to put it in your rotation.
Bard
I cant give a good opinion for the bard jet. At the start i felt incredible useless in the groops i played comperd to the cleriker, but i as i got along i started to get used to the playstile an i felt better playing a bard. I dont now if it was the early bard abilitys or my playstile with it or that i skilled wrong so i dont no if there ar things that need to be adressed. Eventually the other bard players can share there opinion on that topic.
My first weekend of Ashes impression. My bu** hurts, my knee hurt and my eyes are red. But let's get serious.
PvP:
Haven't done any, I've seen someone complaining about it in one of the comments. It's waaay to early to talk about PvP. But to make things clear in regards to what the guy said:
1. PvP should be balanced.
2. PvP should be rewarding and fun.
3. Let's be honest, no PvP maniac likes the corruption system but it serves it's purpose, AS LONG as there are places where PvP maniacs can go wild (Battlegrounds, Arenas, world PvP zones) which from what is known already there will be (maybe not Arenas) and battleground need to be diverse, like have different objectives. But do consider arenas as well. PvP players love the idea of 2v2 3v3 5v5 and also higher number Battleground which AoC don t has yet. From what I understood the so called Battlegrounds in AoC atm are a sort of mix of BG and Arena. I for one want a place where I can go instantly and engage in carnage
PvE:
My God (which I don t believe in lol), AoC mobs are tough as fk! You can tell the game atm is forcing people to join groups in order to achieve something meaningful in terms of killing a particular NPC that is a little more special than the other ones. Find balance dudes, don t make every single mob that's considered a Boss or Mini-boss so challenging that you need 5 people to kill it ..barely. I'm talking about quests and commissions.
Abilities work quite and interact well with mobs. I do feel there's a lack on utility abilities and CC atm. I loved how NPCs fell on their ass when I tripped them but some of them don't fall whether they are to big or they fly...they need some effect that shows they are under that CC effect.
Certain NPC's moving pattern can be off at times but I know that's work in progress as well.
I once Blitz an NPC just to find myself flying 1km away on the next hill, save and sound tho' felt like using cheats
Certain quest description and objectives are not very clear or not clear at all in terms of what you need to do, what items you need to acquire. I had issues going to certain ZOI whether they were locked or hard to get to. There's almost always some wall that never ends
I want to see notification when I pick up a certain quest item with number 2/4 and I want to see this on the actual NPC as well pointing out that HE is the one I have to kill to get my items or HE/SHE is the target of my quest.
In regards to NPC respawn and chase distance.. I know that maybe you've set a high respawn rate for the purpose of testing but it's RIDICULOUS, it takes like 1 min to respawn maybe less...it should be way more than that. You don't have time to do a /bug or chat or take a *** and the NPC is respawned ready to kill you. Hell why even move to search for other NPCs. Chase distance same story, NPC chases you have of Vera until it resets it's position, it should be at least half that.
Rewards:
I wish there were more ITEM drops from NPCs. I had a really hard time making money to buy gear, food and repairs, but I managed. Now I have to farm like a mad man to get 60 or 70 silver to buy a proper mount. That's gonna take a long time, but who knows maybe I ll beg at the gate of my none lol just kidding, I hear they hire caravan defenders I hope it pays well.
Crafting:
Haven't done any besides the tutorial, just some gathering...man it's slow and those huge hunkajunk icons that occupy so much space in the inventory was a pain...but I get it, I've notice that if you have specific bags to can store more but still, when you think about the fact that each material has 4? rarities it is still a pain at least until you get to at lest Master?
I did love petting animals to death
World:
Looks great I love it. Terrain is good but there are places where you get stuck in some texture and it doesn't make sense that you should. NPC's trapped in trees or flying cats stuck mid air, it is part of AoC flair
I hope not all mounts are as slow as that early horse. I've noticed you can't spin your character or mount around, I wonder what made you take that decision, was it to avoid camera issues? In other MMOs you can spin around just by using left/right.
Conclusion: Despite all that, the potential and hard work is there. I can't wait for the next weekend to play some more.
First Positives.
-Combat—holy shit, it's good. I played TnL and didn't like the combat; it felt laggy and not impactful. However, AoC has an amazing response to button pushing. I'm also playing from OCE, so I was expecting MS to be a problem. The only time I felt the latency was when I tried to dodge certain projectiles. Which in my opinion is impressive for an alpha.
- Movement, same as combat, it felt very crisp, I at all times felt like I had 100% control over my PC and when I pressed a button, it did exactly what I wanted it to do.
-The visuals are very impressive, the game is beautiful, and I know there will be a polishing face later on, so It will only get better.
- Open-world difficulty is very fun, you have to think and play, and you can die if you are not careful, also random mobs have mechanics you have to play around. This is amazing.
- No fast travel, although we used Unstuck mechanic to travel to the nearest Shrine a few times, I expect this to be removed at release.
- The time it takes to leave is good. But there needs to be access to " late game " activities from let's say leave 30.
- Talking with players playing other classes, everyone has the feeling their class is the strongest, and everyone feels powerful.
****Now things I feel need to be fixed by next weekend.****
-Mining nodes, to my understanding, a mining node has random changes to spawn different materials. Not some nodes you have to be a journeyman to mine, and in some you have to be a Novice to mine.
It takes time, to require the amount of exp needed to lvl up to Novice. So most people would have had the time to do this over the weekend. This means the Novice mining nodes will not be cleared, therefore it can't spawn materials for lower types of materials, clogging the world with higher materials and not making room for lower players to mine them.
-Flagging system, it's too easy to abuse it, We can't flag up to contest a grinding spot because the fear and punishment of becoming corrupted is too high. There needs to be a solution somewhere. My suggestion is to be able to create a physical flag, that you plant in the ground, or something similar, where you challenge the other group or player to a fight over a specific area. This way, if the croup doesn't want to fight, they can just leave. Needs to be a 30 seck cooldown on the effect.
-Collecting or depositing to/from bank stops working half the time, simple relog fixes it for a while, but this needs to be a priority
-Other feedback. This is just feedback I think you already know of, and it's not that important to fix straight away.
The view distance feels foggy all the time, is there a way to turn it down, or fix it, I am playing on Cinematic with DALL enabled. Also, the view distance to mobs and other players is low.
- Roads sometimes float in the air, near Jovea
- The map needs more foliage and mobs.
- Teleporting wolfs,
- Mage magma floor doesn't follow the terrain, and can't be cast on an uneven floor, upper leaves of Ursan caves come to mind.
- Prismatic beem is something similar, needs to follow the terrain. Sometimes I end up sending it into the ground because the mobs I want to hit are on a higher elevation than me.
- More quests, and explanations to crafting, to help players understand what to do.
- Farming building, holy shit it takes to a long time to craft that Beer. Poop farming is out of this world. To create 1 beer you need 10 Droppings. When the building needs 150 beers to be constructed. You would then need 1500 droppings.
It feels like you get "droppings" in about 1 in 10 kills. We found that wolves were a good source for poop farming. Now consider this you would have to farm 15.000 wolves to construct that one building. 15.000!
Eater increases the dropping rate or decreases the amount of beer needed.
-Events need bug fixing.
- The Hotbar where the sprint ability to mounts are, can not be moved in the hud setup, this one especially is annoying in the middle of the screen.
-Maybe move some of the ember springs closer to the towns, Jovea's ember springs are sitting a fair bit south of the node. And there is a field of angry wolves between it and the node. Lower lvl players would have a problem reaching the node at times. Did see ash piles scattered there at times.
I played from the day before Alpha 2 released and continued to play every weekend. I was a tank and so far I have reached level 15. I wanna start off by saying, I was expecting this alpha experience to be much worse than it was. My first impression of this Alpha 2 state of the game is that this game is really fun! I have played many MMO's and I just never felt right playing them, I felt like I never mattered, like nothing I did until I hit max level was even worth getting into, that I was locked out of those games until I could finally join the max level players. That is NOT the case with AoC. Everything you do at every level truly felt impactful, each level gained, each skill attained, each region explored, each feature discovered, the experiences with other players, all of it felt like I truly made a difference in the world and it has been a lot of fun!
What general feedback would you like to share with the team?
Tank Class feedback
First and foremost, keep up the fantastic work! My thoughts on improvements is going to stay focused on what my experience was and what systems I feel need work. As a tank, in the early level from 1-10 I felt useless (This is before the tank buffs were added, but my opinion still stays after as well). My damage numbers were low, my mitigation to damage felt weak, and my skills felt like they did not do what they said they would.
Vengeance does not feel like I am gaining any temporary health. The UI has no indication of this. This needs some sort of change in color, or shielding overlay, or some sort of indication that temporary health was gained.
Gaining threat and pulling in enemies was difficult at the early levels as I had no easy way of pulling multiple enemies in before someone else dealt enough damage to pull the threat, at most I could get 2-3 enemies in a group before a mage or ranger pulled them away. I feel that the threat generation needs a slight improvement. I would really like to see an AOE ranged threat generation skill (not just using charge, then intimidating aura).
Other feedback
Combat feel fantastic in general, but when the server is ticking behind and enemies are showing a cast bar, but there attack are already going off, this gave me no time to trip or block when I wanted to time these attacks. This I think needs a decent improvement. I should not be seeing delays in indication and when an attack lands from enemies.
I noticed the distance at which other players or some npcs were visible was noticable shorter during the 3rd weekend than the previous weeks. Even still, the first couple weeks, I felt that I should be able to have a higher view distance than I did. I did not see a setting in the graphics that allowed me to change this (I will admit, I did not look that hard, in case it was there).
Tab targeting is great, Action combat is not as great. I find myself accidentally entering it and sometimes things would get stuck in a way that would cause funky movement of my character and my mouse would move my character when I wanted to mouse over to my inventory while moving. I know these were bug related, but I would like to see some more indications when switching.
I was going to complain about fast travel, but the more I thought it through the more it made sense to NEVER have fast travel in this social sandbox MMO. I mean when I think about it, it would be so cool to offer a taxi service that requires a fee to sail across the ocean in my ship, or risk being attacked by pirates, or having a certain material or good be extremely valuable because I need to ship it across continents. The more I think about it the more excited I get, I think my feedback for this is to explain this better to players so they can understand these systems are here for a reason. I have watched many many streams and followed along more than average, but I still have not heard many explanations regarding this.
I think overall I am very excited to see what the dev team brings and I am happy to be an early contributor to the success of this game by providing helpful feedback.
Here’s some feedback on areas that, to me, could be improved:
1-Character Movement: For a newly developed game on the latest platforms, the character movement feels too stiff and outdated. Movement doesn’t feel fluid, and the gear, clothing, and hair also seem rigid and don’t flow naturally with the character. This takes away a lot from the game’s aesthetics and doesn’t meet the expectations I think many of us have for a modern MMO. It’s like waiting years for an amazing MMO only to find it doesn’t quite take advantage of today’s development capabilities. The character feels “out of place” in the environment, almost like a poorly edited image where something looks obviously off. I’d love to see character movement improved to feel natural and cohesive, with more detail in character design too, as the current graphics feel underwhelming.
2-Class Experience (Cleric): I played mainly as a cleric, and I have to say I really enjoyed it! The spellcasting is fantastic—it feels so natural and fluid, and the effects are just beautiful, fitting perfectly with the game’s environment. But one spell, "Consecrating Wave," really stood out in a negative way. Unlike other low-level spells that look great from the moment they’re cast, "Consecrating Wave" feels lackluster, almost like "throwing a piece of paper." It has no depth or effect, and it doesn’t feel like it belongs in the game. This takes away from the beauty of the cleric class experience, and I hope this spell can be refined to match the standard of others.
3-Questing and Leveling: The questing experience was frustrating at times—so much so that I actually stopped playing for a bit. It’s not ideal for a new player to feel this way. I pushed through because I’ve been waiting a long time for this game, and I understand this is Alpha testing, so bugs are expected. Still, questing felt confusing, with no clear indication of who would offer a quest, and sometimes it was hard to know where to go for quest objectives. After finishing some quests, the NPCs still had quest indicators above them, which was confusing.
4-Quest Objective Sharing: I haven’t reached high-level or PvP areas yet, but I’ve heard feedback from others about how frustrating it is when helping someone kill a creature they tagged. You don’t get experience or quest credit for helping them, which feels discouraging. I think it would help if shared kills counted towards quest objectives.
Overall, I have nothing but high hopes and good faith for this game. It feels like a light at the end of a very long tunnel in this genre, where we’ve been stuck with outdated games for too long. With the right improvements, Ashes of Creation could be that long-awaited, modern MMO that excels in gameplay, storytelling, graphics, and aesthetics.
#1 I would like to Suggest a re-structure of how EXP/drops are determined, specifically the tagging system. From my experience playing a bard solo and in a party the person that hits the Mob first pretty much always gets the reward, even if the person hits it and runs away. This is very frustrating because you spend a lot of time killing said mob just to find out it was not yours and get nothing, a way to fix this in my opinion is base the amount of reward on how much damage the player/party does, for example, if party 1 deals 99% of the mobs HP than they would get 99% of the EXP and drops. example 2: if party 2 deals lets say 30% and party 1 does 70% than it should be split in the amount of %. Now I know you guys did change it a bit and made it something like X% of damage done to mob and its your kill (Which I believe was 50%?) But that did not seem to be enough in my opinion, often times we would be killing the mob that some other player hit first and ran away and we would not get the EXP even though we took all of the damage from the mob and did most of the damage to it.
#2 I would like to discus PVP systems this is a topic a lot of people have brought up, I come from Archeage and in that game randomly killing a new player had almost no downside but it also had no benefit besides ruining someone's day, now this is going to get a bit philosophical so buckle up, In a game where PVP can be non-consensual I think it is important to understand that no matter how harsh we are on these players attacking a random person just trying to enjoy the game is "fun" because they get the satisfaction of knowing they made someone else's day significantly worse, I personally did not experience this in AoC but I did in Archeage. Now what I would suggest in order to combat this is actually exactly what you're doing which is make it a very bad idea to become a "Red" player, however my recommendation is to go even further I think the penalty is fine, but what we really need to solidify this as a really bad idea is a system that "Marks" the player and has players get a reward for killing the red player besides the stuff said red player drops, basically an incentive to hunt red players. I also would suggest making corruption begin much faster if lets say the player kills a lower level character or someone that does not have anything. The reason to kill another player should be for resources, political reasons (in game not real world political reasons) or a Node/Guild war is happening not just to make someone's day a little worse.
#3 This is a hot topic and I did not see anyone mentioning it, Guilds... First let me say I know the guild system and node system is not complete not even close so maybe you have already come up with a way to combat my concerns I hope that is the case but I will write them here none-the-less. As most of you know the lyneth server is home to several content creators including pirate software (Thor) this is the server I was playing on. While playing I saw upwards of 25 guilds full of players of his community (Actual Pirates Insert roman numeral) My concern with this involves the node system more than zerging, zerging will always exist regardless of guild or not. if I remember correctly the way a node works is a guild can "Own" a node so His community could own one node right? the issue is its not one guild its several guilds, now this is not specifically about pirate software, his community was just the largest I saw. my concern is what if they end up "Owning" several nodes at T5? because its not just 1 big guild is 25 normal size guilds all run and operated by effectively one person. I have played many games with "Mega tribes/Guilds" that just take over an entire server which in the end ruins the server and makes it very unfun for smaller groups to get full enjoyment because they can't "Own" anything they cannot have a big base at the good locations and so on. So I would suggest making a system for large scale guilds to bar them from having several T5 nodes, how I would implementing this is have a parent guild that has however many members you plan (I would suggest 250 considering the large scale PVP plans) and that parent guild can spawn smaller guilds that cannot go about X tier (This also suggest a guild Tier system) these sub-guilds would be smaller but be an extension of the original guild they would have an officer of the primary guild as the leader of the sub-guild and these sub-guilds cannot own a node its members can participate in votes and so on, but the guild itself cannot own a node. this way a guild could easily have however many members and not take over a decent portion of Verra. Again maybe you already considered this and its a none-issue but if you had not there is my feedback on that system.
So far I have really enjoyed my time in Verra, minor bugs some lag and issue with grind spots like Highwaymen hill always having every single spot taken by random groups so I cannot farm EXP/Items there but ultimately my experience was positive, graphically the game is very pretty, I was shocked at how well the servers held up and I was amazed by how you guys handled the DDOS attack, Loved the transparency, And I am very excited to see how the game progresses as we get closer to the next stage.
to anyone reading this thank you so much for your time I am not the best at writing things so I hope its not completely un-readable and to Intrepid Thank you for creating a game I truly believe will be the best MMORPG to exist on launch and I look forward to the next test weekend.
This feedback will focus on the game's technical aspects, which are the scope of the Alpha testing.
I won't go into the launcher itself because I feel like that topic has been covered a lot; I will say some of the error messaging is a little unclear and can lead to user confusion around "them" doing something wrong compared to a system setting or issue that is slowing down their ability to access the game.
Within the game itself:
I run a mid-their PC and a ROG Ally Z1Xe - On a whim, I tried to play AoC on the Rog Ally using the integrated controllers, and interestingly enough, the base build of UE5 does recognise controller inputs. Faffing around with some mapping, I was able to bind some keys into the game to allow me to mine and cast 2 spells (I didn't put a great deal of effort into it).
The client ran on the Rog somewhat well, averaging around 20-25fps outside of town, but dropped all the way down to 5fps in town. The very limited memory on the Rog is the cause of that. I would suggest, given the gaming industry is moving toward handhelds such as the Steam Deck and Rog Ally, maybe considering having an even lower quality settings to support these machines, and hopefully some controller support too - people will use the likes of reWASD to map controls for games that don't have it. It usually works pretty well, but native is always best.
On my main PC
I have a 4060 TI, 32GB of RAM, and a Ryzen 5 7500F. I have to say AoC for an Alpha client ran pretty well. I held about 60fps consistently on medium settings for 1080p (I'm not overly fussed about high-end graphics); however, during gameplay, after, I think, the second patch this weekend, I did get some flickering happening when looking at a distance. It would often be triggered while it was raining.
Otherwise, outside of town, the game was using about 6-7 GB of RAM; in town, it would quickly bump up to about 11/12 GB of RAM.
The CPU was about 50/60% consistent, and the GPU was about 70% used, with temperatures hovering around 50 degrees C. So, from what I could tell, performance-wise, the game was operating quite well on a modern-day mid-tier PC.
On your end, the servers held up well for me for the most part; I played solo and in teams of no more than 6, and neither was problematic. I saw some artefacts occur when transferring worker servers (sorry, I didn't catch which ones those were, but it was between New Aela and the road over the bridge that leads up to it), and connectivity-wise, my ping remained responsive (90ms to about 110ms). I was playing on a fresh NA server from Western Australia (which is wild to me how low the ping was; on average, I get between 250-350ms on most other games with no OCE servers).
Great weekend overall, looking forward to playing some more this weekend too
Pros
- Game difficulty pushes you to socialise, form groups and overcome challenges together. I made a lot of new friends this weekend and i think it's an amazing feature.
- Action combat feels better than I expected
- Game world is beatiful
- Unlocking new skills on each level feels rewarding and I like that I can respec for free.
- Dynamic world events feel good
Cons
- mana regen rate is really bad. Using basic attacks should regen more mana and it kinda ruins the combat for me.
- stamina regen rate feels also bad when tanking and active blocking. What's the point of having a shield if I can't reliably block with it because of stamina? I am already losing dps when blocking.
- not being able to receive any xp/loot when fighting the same mobs as other players feels depressing and it takes the fun away
- the pve points of interest such as church, judgement halls, caves feel small and basic. I was expecting to find more floors with a higher mob variety. This design will get boring fast.
- the monster variety so far is also a bit disappointing
- zergs can harass other players and hit them to the point where they are always low hp and mobs will kill them. This way zergs avoid corruption and non zerg players cant get any xp. If the normal players turn pvp on they will die anyways to the zerg. This takes away a lof of fun from the experience.
- Tank aoe skills feel garbage compared to their single target variants(more mana cost, less damage, less mobility and less cc). Unless I aoe farm mobs there is no reason to use aoe skills. What is the point of using action combat if I need to make my skills single target, in order to have some impact in pvp or when tanking bosses?
- Not being able to have multiple skill presets and needing to respec and add the skill points one by one every time is a pain.
- Action mode camera doesnt work while mounted.
- Mounts are waay too slow
- Monsters will chase you to the end of the world until they lose aggro
- There is not much of an incentive for players to explore the world. If I find a grind spot I will just stay there for hours and then I move to next one.
- Player markers on the map are really bad. I cant find my group mates on the map.
- Heavy attacks are missing from the combat
- Crafting feels quite confusing
- I have no idea what to do as a single player in the game atm. I just try to find a group and grind with them. When I have a group I'm having fun. When I can't find a group I feel like the game gets boring quickly.
- Monster attack animations need a lot more improvements to make them feel a bot more alive.
I've been playing pvp and pve competitively in mmos for a long time and I really enjoy the competition. But I think that it's a fine line to how hardcore an mmo should be. This looks like a game that benefits from having a large playerbase. But I dont think there is a large playerbase that will enjoy a game where you feel useless by yourself, where zergs gatekeep leveling zones and where i need to sit to regen mana after every monster fight.
It was so nice to actually get those nostalgic feels from a modern game that I just haven't experienced since playing EQ. I loved the feeling of difficulty and actually being worried about dying while exploring, etc. Games today completely miss the bar when it comes to risk/reward. And I'll be honest, I think it could actually be even more severe, but I get that that probably wouldn't go over too well with the masses. I felt the same with the leveling speed; it could be even slower and I'd be happy. Please, whatever you do, do not cave to the people complaining about leveling speed being too slow or travel taking too long. There is nothing exciting about running from quest hub to quest hub leveling at mach 5 and having absolutely no memories about the experience when hitting max level. Quests should be more about acquiring something (items, materials, access, faction) and not be the main source of leveling experience.
The slower leveling speed encourages exploration and rewards grouping. I've talked to more people in-game during this alpha than I can remember in years. And I'm not talking about the cesspool that is most games' global chat; I'm talking about actual conversations with group members - sometimes between pulls, sometimes about looking for a better spot, sometimes just chatting during a med break. I couldn't believe how much I actually missed the social aspects of these games. When developers shrink the world with quick travel and add group queuing for dungeons, etc then MMOs just become lobby games where no one even bothers talking to each other anymore.
The one thing that I wish was more prevalent in the game was the need for real CC like back in the day. Having those skills. like an EQ enchanter, that could manage the very tough mobs allowed for a well organized group to survive and even thrive during high difficulty encounters. I do wish there was more of that in-game and not just high cooldown 10sec incaps that are basically just used as interrupts most of the time. (This would obviously have to be disabled for PvP though.) That being said, it was still a breath of fresh air to play an MMO again where fights could actually be longer and weren't just group up 20 absolutely zero challenge mobs and aoe them down in 5 seconds or run mindlessly from quest hub to quest hub never even seeing 90% of the game.
When it comes to PvP, it's too early for me to give very good feedback. I will say I'm hugely excited for the structured PvP around the caravan and node/guild systems and lawless zones. I couldn't honestly care less about the flag anywhere part of PvP, but it also doesn't ruin it for me either.
All in all, my already high expectations were surpassed and I'm more excited than ever for this game. I would say for it to be finished, but I hope it's never truly finished and has a never ending list of expansions. Please stick to your vision. I truly believe that a game like this could never get made by anyone else. Thank you for letting me be a part of it.
Positive Feedback: Combat is great, immersive world is amazing, and the archetypes are well designed. These are the most important aspects of a MMO to me and you guys got an A+ in them. Obviously, there is a bit of improvement to be made, but it's clear you guys are excelling in this area.
Constructive Feedback:
1. I found the mobs to be a little crazy. They seem overly complicated. They do a bunch of crazy stuff and they look terrible while doing it. Every mob does not need to be so complicated. I hope that's an easy fix. This issue cannot be left behind or ignored. Half the time they look frozen. Maybe slow down the complicated stuff and work on smoothing out basic stuff like running over to the player, at least until the basics are smooth. The bosses like Firebrand bug out, disappear and get stuck all over, but I'm sure that's easier to fix. I would put a lot more time into the mobs, they're the main thing that make this thing feel like an Alpha. Otherwise, its better than half the MMO's out there ALREADY.
2. Corruption needs work. I've been a noncombatant and killed, and the killer did not get corrupted. So I lost the extra drops but they did not get any Corruption. I LOVE the lawless zones. It makes sense that areas outside of a node (in-between nodes or in-between zones) are lawless. Sorta like the wilderness of a developing world. This should be a permanent feature. Not entire zones, but the in-between areas outside of the reach of a node. It adds risk traveling the between zones, it makes the reward of arriving safely nice, it gives a duty of the border node to police the zone, it gives PvPers the ability to PvP freely because eventually NO ONE with a brain will go corrupted for any reason. Thus, gameplay will be cringy with everyone avoiding fights unless you know you can win. Hiding behind a flag is okay and all, but its going to be abused. Video games like WoW classic have PvP contested zones and obviously there is some Pk'ing, but really its not that bad once the server is running and people are bored of 1 shotting lowbies. Limit the size of the lawless zone and it should be fine. Maybe players will even monetize toll's for protection. Maybe a guild has its gankers for people who do not want to pay, a valid strategy to make money. Also a valid strategy to get yourself obliterated from the population for tyrannical rule. I see a lot of ways to add to the game and the only thing you take away is the safety from a few players for a few moments as they pass through the wilderness, forcing them to take a more stealthy route like LOTR when Frodo got Gandalf killed.
3. 2. Render distance is really bad for mobs and players in PvP. We basically got destroyed because we ran into a guild that declared war on us and barely had time to dismount and fight before they smoked us. Not exactly competitive if we can get ambushed by a guild that isn't even trying.
4. We are able to crash the server whenever we want. I can't wait for that dynamic gridding to come up (and hopefully work).
5. Character creator is messed up and deletes eyebrows if you save your creation... Just saying.
Ultimately, this game is the most fun I've had since WoW Vanilla. I am 100% committed to this project and can't wait to see what you guys do. Great work and thank you for creating this project.
In this type of MMORPG, I honestly would prefer to work with minimal mouse use. I have both a programmable keyboard and separate numpad with extra buttons. Having the ability to have the ability to auto face your target both as a toggle and a press would be invaluable.
Bonus: Ability for game to differentiate between which actual keyboard is being used for those that don't have programable devices, and ability to recognize extended Function keys (F13-24) for all the juicy key binds.
Things I like:
There are definitely things that I think need more time to cook. But unsurprisingly, Steven has pretty much responded to most of the feedback either on reddit, discord or in the PirateSoftware interview. So it seems like it is all on the radar. I will try to shorten to things I think are the most important (even though I know they are being worked on):
The most important bug of all: why does my helmet make me hairless! (I kid of course, it's hilarious lol). Very great progress and excited to see what the future holds.
*Winning an item that was picked up while in a group then have to go back to the spot and pick up that item is kind of frustrating. I get the reason behind it for the PVP aspect but I really don't think that needs to be there. This game already has plenty of PVP things in the game, I think this one could just be go straight to invo.
*I think it would be pretty cool if the weapons themselves had abilities instead of just the passives that can prock. The game is suppose to be "Play how you want" but I don't feel like I can use a spell greatsword effectively as a mage without some weapon abilities. Not a lot but maybe a few like blitz and cleave. I feel like those should be weapon specific while others like Whirlwind should absolutely be class specific.
*The spell greatswords "prock" ability is bleed, snare, or wound. When I was using it, it was doing the procks of volatile, burning, and frost. Is this a bug or is it suppose to do the magic procks because IMO since its a magic sword it should do the magic style damage to help with the magic combos you can put out.
*While I do enjoy what the vision is for the leveling up in this game, I do think its a bit much. the grind is real and while I don't mind because I love how engaging the combat it I can already see it starting to wear on some players. maybe like 10% less per level would be greatly beneficial and still not comprise the grind this game is going for especially at later levels.
* I HAVE NEVER IN MY LIFE ACTUALLY ENJOYED PLAYING A MAGE IN ANY GAME EVER!!! I absolutely LOVE the fact that I can be a Mage and have strong abilities while still hitting heavy with a greatsword! I'm usually the guy who just choses big bonk with fighter and mash away but DAMN the combat is so good with the mage that I cant stop myself from continuing my playthrough with it!
All this said I love the game exactly the way it is now and if it released without any of the changes that I stated I would be completely fine with it and still literally sink all of my free hours into this. I know the team actually reads these and yall are doing a fanfuckingtastic job and each and every one of you deserve to be thanked individually for the hours yall are putting into this.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and considering the few points I put here!
1. Character creator is the absolute first impression that you'll give any new player. I'd double down to make it truly great. Right now its quite basic and in my opinion the character models feel more early 2010s rather than a 2024 character model. Again this leaves a lasting impression and people spend ages in character creator so we'll want to make sure this is superb.
2. The environment is stunning, but needs detail work in certain areas. Its definitely uneven throughout the alpha area. Again this is something I'm sure will be improved on over the next 1+ years so I'm not worried, just giving first impression.
3. Combat is engaging and i really enjoyed it. I think all the basics and core functions are spot on and now its about depth. I leveled a Mage to 10 and i think its one of the thinner classes at the moment. But I have very high hopes for overall combat as its already quite good at this stage in the game.
4. Navigation through the world is rough. The map is about as basic as I could imagine, its hard to find party members if you aren't intimately aware of what the lingo is for the areas etc. I also felt like the mount was a tad too slow. With no fast travel (which I think is a good decision) we will send a lot of time traveling and I think the mounts can be like 5-10% faster. Probably something they can test in the alpha to see what the sweet spot is.
5. The leveling is grindy, which for me is fine, but I think a slight adjustment in balance of group vs. solo content could make the grind feel better. I enjoyed exploring solo for a while and realized I leveled faster that way. I just wasn't getting the experience, coin or loot in a group to incentivize me to do it more. I'd like to see xp adjustments to give more xp in group play while keeping solo xp gain around where it is.
6. Speaking of leveling. I think the overall goal should be that artisan professions should level with your character at a similar rate so you don't find the stuff you can make is way under where you currently are. This will probably mean a highly asymmetrical xp curve.
TLDR. I absolutely love this game even in its buggy, unfinished, play test environment. I finally got hooked around 15 hours in and am clamoring to get back in next weekend. I can see the vision, and its fantastic. Hopefully the scope isn't too much to bite off and deliver on launch or the team finds a way to dial some things back to deliver a great game with tons of expansion potential.
I played Mage at first and I thought the animations were awesome, but I ended up rerolling into a Cleric and loved the class even more. Being able to spec into skills that then bonus with other skills is so fun. I only made it to lv7 this weekend, but I am excited to play more this coming weekend. And yall extending the playtime due to the US holiday was amazing. Thank yall for that.
I ran into a few bugs and problems, but far less then I expected to find and I love how engaged yall are with the community. I agree with some of the comments I've seen about not making the game too easy. I started MMOs playing FFXI back in the day and I loved how difficult the game was and how rewarding things felt when you accomplished them. I understand things can be frustrating, but the feeling you get when you finish a difficult task, quest, or boss is one of a kind.
Thank you for everything yall are doing. It looks amazing and I can not wait to enjoy more of what yall have in store.
1) Love that you are going through the effort of running a proper Alpha. I am so sick of gaming companies throwing out alpha releases that are nowhere close to being ready. Your game right now is further along than many others are when they are opened to the public. Love that you publicly call out that the third phase of Alpha (May 2025) will last at least a year.
2) I love the grind. Both the questing grind, the crafting grind, the mob grind, the harvesting grind. I decided to test whether it was possible to level at a somewhat decent rate by focusing on harvesting jobs. Yes, it is. Plus you get more game experience by processing the harvested materials AND you can earn back a little more than you paid to process the returned items (on many things, but not all). Better than the other ways to earn game experience? Seemed about the same to me, which will be appealing to various play styles.
3) Love that it’s easy to create a party for those tougher/questing mobs. While I mostly play solo (knowing that leveling will also be slower), those times where a single mob was needed for a job I found that joining a party was easy.
4) Like that other players can loot some of your materials and glint when you die. I fully understand why other players here dislike it, but it’s easily countered by stopping off at the bank and depositing those materials. I also like that you cannot do anything with the looted glint unless you find a ‘fence’ as I don’t think players should easily be rewarded for looting PvE players. Perhaps add some type of gain for players who rescue players that get killed?
5) I love the negative experience of dying in its current form. Like #4 above, there has to be a cost when you die. Both of these mechanics force players to think before acting.
6) While the White-Purple-Red standings mechanics are a good start, there is a glaring issue with groups driving off other players by harassing them with attacks. Worse, the player being attacked cannot do anything without themselves going purple to everyone else around. If a player is attacking me (going purple), then I should be able to attack them back while only going purple to THAT player. This mechanic is going to be heavily exploited when the game goes live in its current form.
7) The novice nodes of copper, zinc, and rubies are not spawning nearly enough. It’s great that the starting zones have journeyman resources, but because you cannot easily get apprentice and journeyman tools, these lower tier resources need to have a weighted spawn rate.
8) While some of the processing activities can give a player a little bit extra in return (15-20%), some of the others are horrible gold sinks. Like Jewelry, or Scribing. There needs to be some consistency here, even at this stage of Alpha II. Until there is a player’s market up we cannot have a player run economy, so perhaps a temporary adjustment where processing/crafting generates ~10% loss?
Finally - there is no info on what skills will look like once players hit level 25 and start picking their supplemental classes. The wiki needs to get this added so players can start thinking about this!