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.
My unsolicited feedback on P1
BigBadAardwolf
Member, Warrior of Old, Kickstarter, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Kickstarter backer #12 here. I only installed/played across this weekend. Really enjoyed Ranger, surprisingly enjoyed Tank, and as a consummate "Ranger" class enjoyer across a number of MMOs, I've decided that I'm going to main tank for P2, so that's exciting to me! I've not felt much pull to play outside of my comfort zone before, which is a testament to where the development team is at with the game.
Quests suck. I don't expect to have my hand held in this game, but it's also not enjoyable to me to try to decipher where I'm supposed to go. I have some memory issues and trying to remember where Outlaw Cliff Pass is just straight up eludes me. I get that solving puzzles like that is some people's thing, though, and that's why it's nice to have guildmates that specialize in that kind of thing. I also rarely care about questing, outside of how to incorporate them into the most efficient levelling/progression process, so take that with a grain of salt.
Combat feels great. I didn't get past 10, but there's a definite growth of power/sense of power that kicks in right around level 7-8. Full disclosure, I'm a masochist that enjoys grinding mobs. It's like playing a slot machine where you win the ability to pull the handle faster, which is exactly what I'm looking for. I do feel a disconnect between the experience gained fighting mobs of the same level vs. lower level mobs; It seems to be more efficient to me to drop 10 level 4-5 mobs than 1 level 9 mob, when I'm at level 9, since there's a greater chance of dropping more gear/glint. It's also far more fun and makes me feel like a badass. The risk for engaging same-level mobs (I had this on both Ranger and Tank) just didn't seem worth it to me.
Overall the UI and game were VERY polished. Selling things is easy and intuitive. Maybe I missed it, but having the ability to repair worn gear piece by piece instead of the only option being 'repair all worn gear' would be very useful to me, rather than having to unequip items, repair them, then re-equip them.
I didn't play long enough to fully get into the depth of stats and how stats stack, but I did manage to get a bug that gave me -150% lifesteal, which was more comical than it was frustrating once the dev team helped me identify the issue. I literally critted myself to death! IDK who else got this, but let's make a reverse vampire Passive_Lifsteal_Reaction club.
Controversial opinion: I'd like controller support. It's easier for me to learn the muscle memory for rotations using a controller than it is with a keyboard; I haven't played KB/M on anything of substance in the last five years or so, outside of Phantasy Star Online 2 (which also had EXCELLENT controller play in the update/rebooted version), and I was reminded why this weekend. I don't like having to remap all of my UI access and skills off of 1-10 because they're inefficient, and I prefer EDSF over ASDF because it offers a quicker response time to QWAZX on the pinky/ring finger and RTGV on the index finger, without me having to reach for 1-6 and come off the movement keys. Why we've accepted ASDF as the standard has eluded me for at least a decade. I get that this is a personal preference/me issue, and the vast majority of y'all are going to put my head on a pike. There's also the argument for accessibility, though I wouldn't claim that I need a controller for accessibility. Game plays just fine and I can enjoy it just fine without controller.
I very much enjoy going into the mouselook/action mode for farming large groups of mobs. Loved having the option. There's a little bit of a disconnect between where the game targets on tab and the mob that I want it to target, but I don't expect that with tab targetting, either. I think at this point it's still a matter of me learning where the boundaries/hitboxes are and the limits of the technology behind it, but I did want to mention it in my feedback. I'm not sure what solution I would propose, and don't think there's anything inherently negative or flawed with the way it functions now.
It would be nice to be able to lock the cursor to the screen in the Z/action mode from within the game. I have a multimonitor setup and using this mode forces me to also screen lock the mouse, which makes it an (admittedly small) inconvience. It's not just 'z,' it's 'make sure the mouse is on the right screen, scroll lock, z' and then if I fat-finger z, suddenly I have to repeat that while in the middle of fighting something (usually). I get that this is mostly a me/skill issue on my part, it's just something that would be nice to have.
Needs a /me or /emote in chat for roleplay purposes.
Needs a chat buffer large enough for a paragraph for roleplay purposes. 500 characters would be nice. 1000 would be better. I get y'all don't like giving players the ability to post large walls of text, but I don't think that punishing the RP community for the sins of gold sellers and spammers is the right response, either.
Some of the voiced lines are inconsistent in volume. I was pleasantly surprised that some of the voice acting is already in, glad to see that. I did like that all of the quests I did attempt were well-written and crafted. I didn't see any placeholder text or anything similar to what I've experienced in alphas/early launches before.
Developer/community response for resolving the issues I had was stellar.
Overall, as it stands right now with the game, I'm at an optimistic 4-star Yelp review. Controller support and RP QoL fixes gets y'all 5!
Was it worth the 7 year wait? Probably. I'm glad I was wrong about some earlier doubts I had, and I'm very much looking forward to the next testing phases.
Quests suck. I don't expect to have my hand held in this game, but it's also not enjoyable to me to try to decipher where I'm supposed to go. I have some memory issues and trying to remember where Outlaw Cliff Pass is just straight up eludes me. I get that solving puzzles like that is some people's thing, though, and that's why it's nice to have guildmates that specialize in that kind of thing. I also rarely care about questing, outside of how to incorporate them into the most efficient levelling/progression process, so take that with a grain of salt.
Combat feels great. I didn't get past 10, but there's a definite growth of power/sense of power that kicks in right around level 7-8. Full disclosure, I'm a masochist that enjoys grinding mobs. It's like playing a slot machine where you win the ability to pull the handle faster, which is exactly what I'm looking for. I do feel a disconnect between the experience gained fighting mobs of the same level vs. lower level mobs; It seems to be more efficient to me to drop 10 level 4-5 mobs than 1 level 9 mob, when I'm at level 9, since there's a greater chance of dropping more gear/glint. It's also far more fun and makes me feel like a badass. The risk for engaging same-level mobs (I had this on both Ranger and Tank) just didn't seem worth it to me.
Overall the UI and game were VERY polished. Selling things is easy and intuitive. Maybe I missed it, but having the ability to repair worn gear piece by piece instead of the only option being 'repair all worn gear' would be very useful to me, rather than having to unequip items, repair them, then re-equip them.
I didn't play long enough to fully get into the depth of stats and how stats stack, but I did manage to get a bug that gave me -150% lifesteal, which was more comical than it was frustrating once the dev team helped me identify the issue. I literally critted myself to death! IDK who else got this, but let's make a reverse vampire Passive_Lifsteal_Reaction club.
Controversial opinion: I'd like controller support. It's easier for me to learn the muscle memory for rotations using a controller than it is with a keyboard; I haven't played KB/M on anything of substance in the last five years or so, outside of Phantasy Star Online 2 (which also had EXCELLENT controller play in the update/rebooted version), and I was reminded why this weekend. I don't like having to remap all of my UI access and skills off of 1-10 because they're inefficient, and I prefer EDSF over ASDF because it offers a quicker response time to QWAZX on the pinky/ring finger and RTGV on the index finger, without me having to reach for 1-6 and come off the movement keys. Why we've accepted ASDF as the standard has eluded me for at least a decade. I get that this is a personal preference/me issue, and the vast majority of y'all are going to put my head on a pike. There's also the argument for accessibility, though I wouldn't claim that I need a controller for accessibility. Game plays just fine and I can enjoy it just fine without controller.
I very much enjoy going into the mouselook/action mode for farming large groups of mobs. Loved having the option. There's a little bit of a disconnect between where the game targets on tab and the mob that I want it to target, but I don't expect that with tab targetting, either. I think at this point it's still a matter of me learning where the boundaries/hitboxes are and the limits of the technology behind it, but I did want to mention it in my feedback. I'm not sure what solution I would propose, and don't think there's anything inherently negative or flawed with the way it functions now.
It would be nice to be able to lock the cursor to the screen in the Z/action mode from within the game. I have a multimonitor setup and using this mode forces me to also screen lock the mouse, which makes it an (admittedly small) inconvience. It's not just 'z,' it's 'make sure the mouse is on the right screen, scroll lock, z' and then if I fat-finger z, suddenly I have to repeat that while in the middle of fighting something (usually). I get that this is mostly a me/skill issue on my part, it's just something that would be nice to have.
Needs a /me or /emote in chat for roleplay purposes.
Needs a chat buffer large enough for a paragraph for roleplay purposes. 500 characters would be nice. 1000 would be better. I get y'all don't like giving players the ability to post large walls of text, but I don't think that punishing the RP community for the sins of gold sellers and spammers is the right response, either.
Some of the voiced lines are inconsistent in volume. I was pleasantly surprised that some of the voice acting is already in, glad to see that. I did like that all of the quests I did attempt were well-written and crafted. I didn't see any placeholder text or anything similar to what I've experienced in alphas/early launches before.
Developer/community response for resolving the issues I had was stellar.
Overall, as it stands right now with the game, I'm at an optimistic 4-star Yelp review. Controller support and RP QoL fixes gets y'all 5!
Was it worth the 7 year wait? Probably. I'm glad I was wrong about some earlier doubts I had, and I'm very much looking forward to the next testing phases.
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