Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Some feedback about combat after the first weekends of testing
Yoanna
Member, Alpha Two
First and foremost, I want to thank the dev team at Intrepid for their hard work. I was blessed enough to be able to get into Alpha testing after following this game for about 6 years. I went in with a lot of anticipation and a lot of fear for being disappointed once again.
But Verra is a great place to be, thanks to the devs, the producers, the engineers, sound designers (phenomenal job guys! Please continue providing us this quality!) and phoenix initiative testers.
Combat as the core gameplay loop already feels great, but I want to give a little bit of feedback I think I didnt see anywhere before yet.
Camera movement and clicking
I use the tab target system a lot and thus use leftclick + hold as well as rightclick + hold regularly to see what's around me and move my character around. I noticed, that releasing the mouse button after rotating is recognized as a click. This makes me either loose my target if I activate the "click on empty to clear target" option or it gives me the context box "mark target" with right clicking and ending up on a mob or myself. I would really appreciate this to be changed, so the system doesnt recognize click+hold as a simple click any more.
Dodge mechanics
I really like the dodging system, I feel stamina is well balanced. Enemy tells are very well done, recognizable and long enough to actually react to it. The cast bars though sometimes are out of sync with the attack animations and dodging seems inconsistent. The patch that showed "miss" in the combat text helped quite a lot, but I still struggle to dodge enemy casts consistently. Example: minotaur hunters' "Radiant Javelin". It has a clear tell, a cast bar and I think even a projectile. Still I am not able to dodge the damage of said javelin consistently because sometimes the cast bar feels off. From the mechanics this doesnt seem to be a ping issue as well. Also, about cast bars and syncing, see below.
hit consistency
As a caster main, I use a long cast time spell to open up on my enemies quite a lot. What I noticed is that the initial hits doesnt register consistently. I see the damage on the health bar happening after the spell lands but it seems the mob resets about half a second later, starting the fight and running towards me with 100% HP again. This is happening with Judgement on Cleric about 5% of the fights I have (vs. NPC mobs).
cast bar/animation synchronisation
As I pointed out in my point about dodging, I also see some inconsistent behaviour in my own casting and the skill vfx. Especially "consecrating wave" seems bugged at the moment; the skill shows a casttime (1.2s) in the tooltip but no cast bar is showing. The vfx triggers as if it was an instant cast spell, but the cast time blocks the usage of other abilites afterwards. If you combine it fast enough, you can start a "Divine Flare" immediately after the wave has gone off but it wont trigger the spellcast (to explain it a bit more: cast wave - vfx go off - trigger div flare - targeting circle - click - circle disappears - no cast happening).
But Verra is a great place to be, thanks to the devs, the producers, the engineers, sound designers (phenomenal job guys! Please continue providing us this quality!) and phoenix initiative testers.
Combat as the core gameplay loop already feels great, but I want to give a little bit of feedback I think I didnt see anywhere before yet.
Camera movement and clicking
I use the tab target system a lot and thus use leftclick + hold as well as rightclick + hold regularly to see what's around me and move my character around. I noticed, that releasing the mouse button after rotating is recognized as a click. This makes me either loose my target if I activate the "click on empty to clear target" option or it gives me the context box "mark target" with right clicking and ending up on a mob or myself. I would really appreciate this to be changed, so the system doesnt recognize click+hold as a simple click any more.
Dodge mechanics
I really like the dodging system, I feel stamina is well balanced. Enemy tells are very well done, recognizable and long enough to actually react to it. The cast bars though sometimes are out of sync with the attack animations and dodging seems inconsistent. The patch that showed "miss" in the combat text helped quite a lot, but I still struggle to dodge enemy casts consistently. Example: minotaur hunters' "Radiant Javelin". It has a clear tell, a cast bar and I think even a projectile. Still I am not able to dodge the damage of said javelin consistently because sometimes the cast bar feels off. From the mechanics this doesnt seem to be a ping issue as well. Also, about cast bars and syncing, see below.
hit consistency
As a caster main, I use a long cast time spell to open up on my enemies quite a lot. What I noticed is that the initial hits doesnt register consistently. I see the damage on the health bar happening after the spell lands but it seems the mob resets about half a second later, starting the fight and running towards me with 100% HP again. This is happening with Judgement on Cleric about 5% of the fights I have (vs. NPC mobs).
cast bar/animation synchronisation
As I pointed out in my point about dodging, I also see some inconsistent behaviour in my own casting and the skill vfx. Especially "consecrating wave" seems bugged at the moment; the skill shows a casttime (1.2s) in the tooltip but no cast bar is showing. The vfx triggers as if it was an instant cast spell, but the cast time blocks the usage of other abilites afterwards. If you combine it fast enough, you can start a "Divine Flare" immediately after the wave has gone off but it wont trigger the spellcast (to explain it a bit more: cast wave - vfx go off - trigger div flare - targeting circle - click - circle disappears - no cast happening).
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