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.
Phase 2 missteps and design flaws
Volgaris
Member, Alpha Two
I'm just wondering if others feel the way I do if someone can shed a little light on my thoughts if I'm seeing something wrong.
After two days of playing phase 2 it feels like too much of a struggle. A Struggle to find materials and mobs to hunt. I'm gate kept by the luck of of drops or the luck of materials to craft new gear. Mobs are so contested it's better to wait in a single spot for a respawn if they ever do. I don't know if this is the intended gameplay experience, but if it is this game simply isn't for me, not in this state. I'm not going to adjust my sleep and work schedule to gather copper or flax or <insert material here>, or to camp HH, or some grinding location. I out level my gear so quick it's like i'm swinging a wet noodle and wearing paper plates as armor. Is this Alpha woes? Maybe.. But these issues existed in phase 1 and I did expect them to be eased up on a bit, but it seems it got worse. I'm a player to enjoys playing games in smaller groups and occasionally in a raid size group if content demands it. I understand you can join large guilds to raid level, but I'd rather smash my balls in waffle iron than do that, so boring.... (i think they nerfed that anyways). Probably the best analogy I can think of is playing the game feels like I'm stuck in traffic... stop and go city traffic. We need another 2 starting zones probably, and that might solve this sluggish start. I don't mind a grind, but there's a difference between spending 12 hours kill 2000 mobs to get to level 10 vs spending 12 hours to kill 200 mobs to get to level 10. Lol finding copper is like looking for a lotus in classic wow. better get in that lotus mafia. dumbest thing ever, acceptable for a 20 year old game, but we should know better now.
Unbound gear. This really worries me. You can deckout (twink) a new player with some awesome that makes them super op. And it's basically no loss because that start set can just be handed down again and again. Gear make take from dieing to a single mob at your level to kill 3 or more 1/2 stars at your level. The benefits of starting late and joining your friends later. gear being restricted 1-10, 11-20, ect is really lazy too. I really hope that changes in some meaningful way too. Finding a super good bow is great fun, being handed one isn't nearly as fun. I want to earn my gear and want to earn my levels and I want everyone on the same playing field. I realize this is preference and the game is going to be what they make it, but this design leans the game more towards Ark and session play, this leans the game to being short lived.
Mega Churches, I mean guilds. They'll lock down areas, mobs, resources, and push all the small guilds/groups out. They'll survive on zerging and die on it too (it's boring and people numbers will dindle, but that'll be after the rest of the population dindles). Mega guilds will progress faster than others as a whole. They'll have the ability to lock other groups out of content and/or progression. If you join a mega guild you're just a cog in the machine relying on numbers to progress. Cheese tactics 101. Another tick to the game being short lived.
Ganking and griefing. Intrepid can't police this. Open world pvp games generally are short lived, at least by the masses. Training mobs to wipe groups, ganking gathers, ganking in town. I don't see corruption stopping this. It's too easy to get rid of after doing the crime.. Worst case you get added to a KOS list from one of Stevens sons who'll instaban your computer from the internet. I like pvp, i just see the flaw in this system. the lines are drawn in sand and crossing them doesn't really mean anything to the aggressor. At this point in the alpha it doesn't appear they've put enough thought into how the game mechanics are affected by pvp. I think there can be a balance here, but it will favor the gankee or the ganker, the question is who do they want playing the game? bad pvp is a game killer.
Houses (freeholds?), whatever they are. They are placed in the world and they block spawns!!!! WTF! my wolf and grem spawn points are gone because these dumb houses! this is just annoying. but did they take this into account when allowing houses to be placed in places? do we want the spawns gone? You've lowed the mob count while every mob location is contented like taco truck on tuesday. We want more tacos!
inventory issues. i have lost soo many resources to inventory bugs. in phase 1 moving items from my backpack to the storage and having them disappear. to phase 2 dropping them done to the node bug. I get it, it's alpha, but compound that with the scarceness of material nodes and damn it's just painful. I can only report these bugs so many times. I really want to test out crafting but dang is it locked behind a boring grind for the materials and the vegas odds of losing them when you stash them. i've logged in and out more times trying to move items from my inventory to my storage than I have for anything else. if we seen some progress on this it wouldn't be so painful, but if feels like we took a step back with this on the start of phase 2.
classes seem like shells. i assume the classes aren't complete. but as of now there's really no depth to them. there's no tough choices to make. they all seem barebones for alpha, and they work, which is good, but I really hope theres more to come. I am excited to archtypes and more classes. but if you take the fighter or cleric as it is, it's very barebones. it seems like it's just enough to do the job. which make them.. i guess... static? none dynamic. kind makes the gameplay too easy and little boring.
Well thanks for reading, am I wrong about something? am i right about something? Am I playing the game wrong? Is the game just not for me? Is "it's Alpha so stop complaining"? I guess phase 1 was like the honeymoon phase now all the flaws and cracks are showing, and some make me worry about the games future. Our last best hope for an MMO could potentially be short lived.
TLDR. i have opinions...
After two days of playing phase 2 it feels like too much of a struggle. A Struggle to find materials and mobs to hunt. I'm gate kept by the luck of of drops or the luck of materials to craft new gear. Mobs are so contested it's better to wait in a single spot for a respawn if they ever do. I don't know if this is the intended gameplay experience, but if it is this game simply isn't for me, not in this state. I'm not going to adjust my sleep and work schedule to gather copper or flax or <insert material here>, or to camp HH, or some grinding location. I out level my gear so quick it's like i'm swinging a wet noodle and wearing paper plates as armor. Is this Alpha woes? Maybe.. But these issues existed in phase 1 and I did expect them to be eased up on a bit, but it seems it got worse. I'm a player to enjoys playing games in smaller groups and occasionally in a raid size group if content demands it. I understand you can join large guilds to raid level, but I'd rather smash my balls in waffle iron than do that, so boring.... (i think they nerfed that anyways). Probably the best analogy I can think of is playing the game feels like I'm stuck in traffic... stop and go city traffic. We need another 2 starting zones probably, and that might solve this sluggish start. I don't mind a grind, but there's a difference between spending 12 hours kill 2000 mobs to get to level 10 vs spending 12 hours to kill 200 mobs to get to level 10. Lol finding copper is like looking for a lotus in classic wow. better get in that lotus mafia. dumbest thing ever, acceptable for a 20 year old game, but we should know better now.
Unbound gear. This really worries me. You can deckout (twink) a new player with some awesome that makes them super op. And it's basically no loss because that start set can just be handed down again and again. Gear make take from dieing to a single mob at your level to kill 3 or more 1/2 stars at your level. The benefits of starting late and joining your friends later. gear being restricted 1-10, 11-20, ect is really lazy too. I really hope that changes in some meaningful way too. Finding a super good bow is great fun, being handed one isn't nearly as fun. I want to earn my gear and want to earn my levels and I want everyone on the same playing field. I realize this is preference and the game is going to be what they make it, but this design leans the game more towards Ark and session play, this leans the game to being short lived.
Mega Churches, I mean guilds. They'll lock down areas, mobs, resources, and push all the small guilds/groups out. They'll survive on zerging and die on it too (it's boring and people numbers will dindle, but that'll be after the rest of the population dindles). Mega guilds will progress faster than others as a whole. They'll have the ability to lock other groups out of content and/or progression. If you join a mega guild you're just a cog in the machine relying on numbers to progress. Cheese tactics 101. Another tick to the game being short lived.
Ganking and griefing. Intrepid can't police this. Open world pvp games generally are short lived, at least by the masses. Training mobs to wipe groups, ganking gathers, ganking in town. I don't see corruption stopping this. It's too easy to get rid of after doing the crime.. Worst case you get added to a KOS list from one of Stevens sons who'll instaban your computer from the internet. I like pvp, i just see the flaw in this system. the lines are drawn in sand and crossing them doesn't really mean anything to the aggressor. At this point in the alpha it doesn't appear they've put enough thought into how the game mechanics are affected by pvp. I think there can be a balance here, but it will favor the gankee or the ganker, the question is who do they want playing the game? bad pvp is a game killer.
Houses (freeholds?), whatever they are. They are placed in the world and they block spawns!!!! WTF! my wolf and grem spawn points are gone because these dumb houses! this is just annoying. but did they take this into account when allowing houses to be placed in places? do we want the spawns gone? You've lowed the mob count while every mob location is contented like taco truck on tuesday. We want more tacos!
inventory issues. i have lost soo many resources to inventory bugs. in phase 1 moving items from my backpack to the storage and having them disappear. to phase 2 dropping them done to the node bug. I get it, it's alpha, but compound that with the scarceness of material nodes and damn it's just painful. I can only report these bugs so many times. I really want to test out crafting but dang is it locked behind a boring grind for the materials and the vegas odds of losing them when you stash them. i've logged in and out more times trying to move items from my inventory to my storage than I have for anything else. if we seen some progress on this it wouldn't be so painful, but if feels like we took a step back with this on the start of phase 2.
classes seem like shells. i assume the classes aren't complete. but as of now there's really no depth to them. there's no tough choices to make. they all seem barebones for alpha, and they work, which is good, but I really hope theres more to come. I am excited to archtypes and more classes. but if you take the fighter or cleric as it is, it's very barebones. it seems like it's just enough to do the job. which make them.. i guess... static? none dynamic. kind makes the gameplay too easy and little boring.
Well thanks for reading, am I wrong about something? am i right about something? Am I playing the game wrong? Is the game just not for me? Is "it's Alpha so stop complaining"? I guess phase 1 was like the honeymoon phase now all the flaws and cracks are showing, and some make me worry about the games future. Our last best hope for an MMO could potentially be short lived.
TLDR. i have opinions...
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