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.
A2 Nov Feedback
Solvryn
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
This was a minor unhinged rant I'm going to extrapolate on given the time I've talked to this person and respond with other points made by members of the community to me and attempt to structure it into something a bit more palpable for the developer team. I get that some people are actually discouraged and some are encouraged so I'll touch base on it.
"the basic attack system is a complete failure and actively removed a massive gameplay element from both action and tab combat, in an effort to create a trash tier illusion that actively hurts both modes.
Cleric is one of the worst designed classes I have ever seen, borderline mobile game tier.
afk mob grinding simulator
0 content, nothing of note. Everything in ashes atm is not just worst ingame than archeage, but it's worse on a theoretical design level too xD
Intrepid UTTERLY failed at the concept of long leveling: long leveling can be fine if you make meaningful progress towards stuff during it, but nothing that you can do can ever matter before cap when power scales so hard per gear tier / from gear in general. Your power doubles if not more every 10 levels (from gear) and makes EVERYTHING that you did before each tier a complete waste of time due to how efficient every second spent before that tier is.
gear is 98% of power rather than 50%
The TTK makes it an absolute travesty that wont even be worth playing on launch if it doesn't change
The worst character creator that I have seen in years + female characters might be even uglier than new world characters...
Mob design is really bad (I basically go afk no matter what we're fighting, but I can't ACTUALLY shut my brain off because every like 15 seconds whatever it is, will almost one shot someone/the tank... and then it's 15 more seconds of literally no damage occuring... It's awful, let me sleep or keep me on my toes - don't leave it in the middle / at the very least let pull size determine whether it's one or the other."
______
I have no idea what IS plans for any of the things I'm providing feedback on, this is going to be a thread that comes from my guild and my friends.
1) Basic Attacks - This isn't the first person I've come across and shared this opinion with the basic attacks and it seems the simpliest way to make basic attacks come off a bit more interested is to take the trees the basic attacks have and turn them into combo procs rather than just autos at a proc chance.
What I mean by this is, the first attack can be three LMBs, to proc the bottom tier in the weapon chain.
The second tier can be two LMBs and scroll down to proc the second combo chain.
So on and so forth - I think combo chains should act more akin to the way "Wallop" works now as an active filler when other buttons are on cooldown, rather than just some passive weaving. Currently conditions the autos bring enhance gameplay, but autos themselves are pretty lack luster and boring.
2) Cleric - This isn't the first time I've heard this from people who really love playing aggressive healers, more akin to Mistweaver monk with fist weaving or Chloromancer/Dominator from Rift.
Cleric is extremely passive, I imagine this might change come complete class kits with the secondaries.
3) AFK Mob Simulator / AI - As a future Summoner, I'm starting to sweat a little with the way the AI functions in this game, it's dangerous, but it's easy. Long as you're careful, the mobs are pretty easy to kill.
I'm hoping the AI actually starts to scale in difficulty in conjunction with danger in the future. Difficulty isn't danger, difficulty is mobs with mechanic depth. Danger is how much the mobs are scaled.
And, if AI is indicative of how summons will behave, then I really hope Summoner is out of the world with an extremely broad sense of what a summon is, instead of the way some of the AI behaves in the game currently.
4) It's alpha, the systems in place aren't done yet. But no ones attacking caravans yet, people are being entirely too peacable - but that also comes with things like crafting not being in place and materials actually being intelligently generated through the map.
5) I'm going to combine long leveling with gear - the gear scaling in this game definitely needs iterations. I'm not too sure whats going on with the gear scaling, but it sure seems like more than 50%, again I imagine this balance change comes when logistics actually means something in this game. So I understand my friends frustration when gear is pretty much everything at this point.
6) The TTK is really low, I get the logic of this will "let the smaller guilds compete against the larger guilds", maybe in guerilla warfare, but geared zergs will usually run through anyone they fight just to do the nature of the maps alone. I think varied TTK relative to the amount of button presses and gear we have would something worth looking at, raising the TTK because one shotting your opponents is not skill at all.
7) Character Creator - There's a lot of pretty people in this community and they like to stay pretty both ingame and out. I do hope there will be refinement to the art style so it matches better the concept art that was presented in the showcases.
Males and Females have all varieties of builds, I do like that theres some naturalism on the character models themselves, but Empyrean are supposed to be beautiful yet they kind of look like Elder Scrolls high elves and those aren't appealing in the slightest.
There are games that prove that people like pretty things, so I hope the character creator becomes a lot more varied.
Some people like having busty females with nice butts, and that's okay.
Some people like slutmog in game and that's okay.
Some people want Tieflingesque Tulnar and not just some weird looking bugbears or worse yet the OG version of Worgen which got a remake (please dont make Tulnar look like OG worgen they looked weird)
--
I already touched AI so I'm not going to retouch it, I'll revisist my thread with upsets and constructive feedback to accomodate the lack of constructive rants from my friends and compatriots. Cheers.
"the basic attack system is a complete failure and actively removed a massive gameplay element from both action and tab combat, in an effort to create a trash tier illusion that actively hurts both modes.
Cleric is one of the worst designed classes I have ever seen, borderline mobile game tier.
afk mob grinding simulator
0 content, nothing of note. Everything in ashes atm is not just worst ingame than archeage, but it's worse on a theoretical design level too xD
Intrepid UTTERLY failed at the concept of long leveling: long leveling can be fine if you make meaningful progress towards stuff during it, but nothing that you can do can ever matter before cap when power scales so hard per gear tier / from gear in general. Your power doubles if not more every 10 levels (from gear) and makes EVERYTHING that you did before each tier a complete waste of time due to how efficient every second spent before that tier is.
gear is 98% of power rather than 50%
The TTK makes it an absolute travesty that wont even be worth playing on launch if it doesn't change
The worst character creator that I have seen in years + female characters might be even uglier than new world characters...
Mob design is really bad (I basically go afk no matter what we're fighting, but I can't ACTUALLY shut my brain off because every like 15 seconds whatever it is, will almost one shot someone/the tank... and then it's 15 more seconds of literally no damage occuring... It's awful, let me sleep or keep me on my toes - don't leave it in the middle / at the very least let pull size determine whether it's one or the other."
______
I have no idea what IS plans for any of the things I'm providing feedback on, this is going to be a thread that comes from my guild and my friends.
1) Basic Attacks - This isn't the first person I've come across and shared this opinion with the basic attacks and it seems the simpliest way to make basic attacks come off a bit more interested is to take the trees the basic attacks have and turn them into combo procs rather than just autos at a proc chance.
What I mean by this is, the first attack can be three LMBs, to proc the bottom tier in the weapon chain.
The second tier can be two LMBs and scroll down to proc the second combo chain.
So on and so forth - I think combo chains should act more akin to the way "Wallop" works now as an active filler when other buttons are on cooldown, rather than just some passive weaving. Currently conditions the autos bring enhance gameplay, but autos themselves are pretty lack luster and boring.
2) Cleric - This isn't the first time I've heard this from people who really love playing aggressive healers, more akin to Mistweaver monk with fist weaving or Chloromancer/Dominator from Rift.
Cleric is extremely passive, I imagine this might change come complete class kits with the secondaries.
3) AFK Mob Simulator / AI - As a future Summoner, I'm starting to sweat a little with the way the AI functions in this game, it's dangerous, but it's easy. Long as you're careful, the mobs are pretty easy to kill.
I'm hoping the AI actually starts to scale in difficulty in conjunction with danger in the future. Difficulty isn't danger, difficulty is mobs with mechanic depth. Danger is how much the mobs are scaled.
And, if AI is indicative of how summons will behave, then I really hope Summoner is out of the world with an extremely broad sense of what a summon is, instead of the way some of the AI behaves in the game currently.
4) It's alpha, the systems in place aren't done yet. But no ones attacking caravans yet, people are being entirely too peacable - but that also comes with things like crafting not being in place and materials actually being intelligently generated through the map.
5) I'm going to combine long leveling with gear - the gear scaling in this game definitely needs iterations. I'm not too sure whats going on with the gear scaling, but it sure seems like more than 50%, again I imagine this balance change comes when logistics actually means something in this game. So I understand my friends frustration when gear is pretty much everything at this point.
6) The TTK is really low, I get the logic of this will "let the smaller guilds compete against the larger guilds", maybe in guerilla warfare, but geared zergs will usually run through anyone they fight just to do the nature of the maps alone. I think varied TTK relative to the amount of button presses and gear we have would something worth looking at, raising the TTK because one shotting your opponents is not skill at all.
7) Character Creator - There's a lot of pretty people in this community and they like to stay pretty both ingame and out. I do hope there will be refinement to the art style so it matches better the concept art that was presented in the showcases.
Males and Females have all varieties of builds, I do like that theres some naturalism on the character models themselves, but Empyrean are supposed to be beautiful yet they kind of look like Elder Scrolls high elves and those aren't appealing in the slightest.
There are games that prove that people like pretty things, so I hope the character creator becomes a lot more varied.
Some people like having busty females with nice butts, and that's okay.
Some people like slutmog in game and that's okay.
Some people want Tieflingesque Tulnar and not just some weird looking bugbears or worse yet the OG version of Worgen which got a remake (please dont make Tulnar look like OG worgen they looked weird)
--
I already touched AI so I'm not going to retouch it, I'll revisist my thread with upsets and constructive feedback to accomodate the lack of constructive rants from my friends and compatriots. Cheers.
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