The 2 Main Reasons people are quitting P2 already

1.Leveling
The current leveling experience is beyond awful. Obviously we're desperately missing alternative progression paths with Questing and Story Arcs, but even without those features it's laughably obvious that Intrepid put absolutely no thought into what a current player's leveling experience is going to look like.

There are only a very small amount of suitable grinding spots in the game and the mob distribution across the map is annoyingly random. Overall the world feels like it is completely void of any understanding how people are actually leveling right now.

How about grouping up mobs in a way that makes sense for people to pull those packs instead of scattering them around an entire zone for no reason when that is the only way you guys provide to level? How about providing enough mobs to kill so more than a single group can populate a PoI? How about temporarily raising the XP for killing mobs so this insanely monotonous grind at least feels somewhat rewarding? How about you provide alternative mob spawns when you take crucial ones away to spawn things like Freeholds? How about adding temporary grinding spots to service the massively increased server capacity?

Even for somebody that is part of an organized hardcore guild and has a much higher tolerance for tedious grinding than the average player, the leveling experience is incredibly draining and most definitely not fun whatsoever. It really feels like the Developers are completely disconnected from what leveling currently looks like because it's so much easier to just boost yourself up with an admin command.

2.Gathering
The feedback from Phase 1 was loud and clear. There are simply not enough resources to gather, especially copper. And for some reason, absolutely nothing has been done about this for P2 besides a cheeky comment from Steven that there apparently is enough copper being gathered and it's apparently just sitting around in player's inventories. What a bunch of BS.

Gathering currently is completely unenjoyable and I know a lot of people that normally love gathering and crafting, but simply can't enjoy it in AoC, because running around for hours and not being able to find resources kills any amount of motivation to test the profession system. This once again feels like a major system that Intrepid pushed into the game without investing a single thought into the actual player experience.

If Intrepid wants people to engage in the crafting system so bad, how about we don't lock the most basic materials behind hours of mindlessly running around without any direction in hopes of finally finding what you need to get started?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Overall thoughts on Phase 2

Let's be honest, this should be barely allowed to be called Phase 2. It's literally just Phase 1 with 2 new races, a "not remotely close to being shippable" extension to the desert, storefronts that lack even the most basic of quality of life features on top of making the entire launch experience miserable by shoving tons of players into the same world while not providing meaningful countermeasures to ensure people still have a decent time.

Phase 2 is significantly more buggy, the server performance is a lot less stable and the amount of disconnects & crashes people are experiencing is way higher than in Phase 1. Overall it is pretty obvious Intrepid rushed Phase 2 out to be able to deliver an update before Christmas and completely disregarded the player expectations in the process. Overall this release makes me a lot less optimistic about the future of this game if this is the type of update we can expect every 2 months.

Unless we get some massive sweeping changes to these very obvious pain points in the very near future, the player retention will drop massively within the next month of two. And while that's expected to a certain degree because of general fatigue, the poorly designed leveling progression and gathering experience will without a doubt be the main reasons for that drop.

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Azherae

Can you clarify how many people, roughly, you know, that normally enjoy Crafting and Gathering, and are not enjoying it now?

Just in case it needs to be said, this is not a 'gotcha' question nor an attempt to discredit the effort of your post.

Tebzera

I'm with OP, and such players that leave now, will never back and will speak bad about the game to the community, making testers' work not rewardable as it should be.

Most of players are just playing today due to the FOMO sense, not to test the game as promoted.

Who is innocent enough to believe that who starts today will not be years ahead of someone that will start when this game released in the next 3-5 years? That's how Intrepid is playing with the community. Otherwise, they would accept refunds.

BRAD_AoC

Azherae wrote: »

Can you clarify how many people, roughly, you know, that normally enjoy Crafting and Gathering, and are not enjoying it now?

Just in case it needs to be said, this is not a 'gotcha' question nor an attempt to discredit the effort of your post.

I'd say the overwhelming majority of people I've talked to in my guild and circle of friends don't enjoy the current state of gathering & crafting. For various reasons. But the most common one is that gathering doesn't feel good in terms of resource availability. Processing being clunky, especially only being to process in set amounts is another one I've heard a lot.

Sathrago

Azherae wrote: »

Can you clarify how many people, roughly, you know, that normally enjoy Crafting and Gathering, and are not enjoying it now?

Just in case it needs to be said, this is not a 'gotcha' question nor an attempt to discredit the effort of your post.

Answering this on my own behalf, but I am not playing the current p2 because hardly anything has changed, theres not really any new systems to test, and it doesnt seem like any of the feedback for the processing and gathering was considered.

I know freeholds are in now, but from what I heard they cost a ton of gold and you can only plant the most worthless of gathering materials there, trees. fucking. trees.

Node sieges are apparently in but this is so far off and hardly ever going to happen for actual testing. so its just not a system i would be able to get into either.

Then theres a new dungeon and new races, both essentially reskins of other content that have no new mechanical functionality to test.

Edit: I forgot about the new nodes, This is sadly the same as the above. Nothing new to actually test.

Azherae

I just know that sometimes it helps to have precise numbers when it comes to things that are hard to measure.

For example, Intrepid can maybe see that 'only' 2k players are actually consistently playing the game.

But those 2k players could all be 'just grinding even if they would rather be gathering', so without a survey, they wouldn't be able to say 'most people don't enjoy the current state of the game'.

From my side, the count is 3 out of 6, that 'are not enjoying the current', (and 1/6 that just isn't playing).

That said, answer appreciated, I'd guess 'guild' at 20+ and 'interested friend group' at 7-10, I guess.

brita

I agree to an extent. Gathering is bad because there are ALOT of people on the server right now, the one of only 2 servers. Additionally, people who would be doing high level content, questing, or some other activity that wouldn't usually craft has nothing to do but either grind mobs or craft/gather. Because copper is used so much in items and progression, it's a really sought after resource. And without anyone being able to progress further to Tier 2 stuff, it'll continue to be mined and sometimes replaced with T2 nodes that take up space.

But I think we'll have to just give our feedback about this stuff and wait, I don't want to be one of those "It's an alpha" people, but, it is an alpha and they're currently testing netcode and max server load, not resources or balance changes.

nanfoodle

Im a crafter in most MMOs. Wss a master crafter in ESO and that speaks volumes of my willingness to grind. I have not messed around much because I don't play as much sd the rest of my guild so I'm behind in levels and just want to get ready for node wars.

However, I have been in close contact with the crafters in my guild and their thoughts. There feedback is enough to keep me away from crafting. I am 100% in the wait to see if they will fix it camp.

KingDDD

River lands is one small percentage of the game world. It's not built for this amount of players currently running around. It'll be another 18 months until we can actually see the real game loop.

thunderfury2024

I've already stopped playing because Phase 2 doesn't really contain anything new.

I'll only continue playing when leveling with quests is really possible and there's more content.

At the moment it's just boring.

DvalinTTV

I bought the game yesterday, and I can confirm that the first 5 levels are pretty tough. Some quests are hard to understand, and a few just don’t make sense. There are way too many players and not enough mobs—everyone tags them before I can. But I’m not giving up!

Sathrago

KingDDD wrote: »

River lands is one small percentage of the game world. It's not built for this amount of players currently running around. It'll be another 18 months until we can actually see the real game loop.

then they should add more servers to bring the amount of players in line with what would be expected populations of these regions instead of removing servers.

Vhaeyne

I honestly believe that anyone expecting questing and "story arcs" to eliminate the grind will be deeply disappointed at launch.

This isn't because Intrepid will fail to deliver the game Steven envisions.

It's due to a combination of mixed messages from former Intrepid staff over the years and the near impossibility of a dynamic world, composed of unique, ever-changing nodes, providing a cohesive, story-based leveling experience for 200 hours up to the cap.

We will be on the grindier side of what probably most modern MMO players are accustomed to; and that is a bit of a call back to a more old school approach, of which you will find many callbacks in the design for Ashes. – Steven Sharif

My idea there might be a bit more on the grindy side. This is obviously subjective, but but I think it ties in again to that risk versus reward philosophy. We're spreading out also things that can contribute to leveling. It's not all just through grinding: There's quests, there's artisanship, there's gathering, there's PvP. Those things all contribute to gaining progression experience. And, there's a lot of different dials along the progression path that people have the ability to interact with, whether it be their weapon level progression, or their adventuring class progression, or their artisanship level progression. There's areas where players are going to be distributing that focus.– Steven Sharif

These quotes align perfectly with the current state of the game.

Personally, I believe the populated servers, the grind, and the limited grind spots or resource nodes are fostering the kind of engaging player friction that Steven constantly emphasizes. I'm loving Phase 2 because of all this.

blktauna

There's rewarding and accomplishing grind and then there's this, which is mind numbing tedium. I'm also finding the crafting process to be overly convoluted and non intuitive.

Noaani

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I honestly believe that anyone expecting questing and "story arcs" to eliminate the grind will be deeply disappointed at launch.

Agreed.

Quests will supplement grinding, but is unlikely to be able to replace it.

nanfoodle

Ya, questing is neather satisfying or fun. Yet

Zehlan

Azherae wrote: »

Can you clarify how many people, roughly, you know, that normally enjoy Crafting and Gathering, and are not enjoying it now?

Just in case it needs to be said, this is not a 'gotcha' question nor an attempt to discredit the effort of your post.

I agree with the OP but tbh the crafting system is a dumpster fire. Spending hours to find copper and zinc is terrible. It also is a big red flag that they went from 8 or 9 servers down to 2 plus lyneth which is only really there because of pirate software. That alone tells you what people think overall!

Azherae

Zehlan wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Can you clarify how many people, roughly, you know, that normally enjoy Crafting and Gathering, and are not enjoying it now?

Just in case it needs to be said, this is not a 'gotcha' question nor an attempt to discredit the effort of your post.

I agree with the OP but tbh the crafting system is a dumpster fire. Spending hours to find copper and zinc is terrible. It also is a big red flag that they went from 8 or 9 servers down to 2 plus lyneth which is only really there because of pirate software. That alone tells you what people think overall!

Eh, I'm just used to 'needing to gather actual data' for various reasons. So unfortunately I can't go with 'Intrepid launched less servers and Artisanship sucks so [insert correlation here]'.

Do you know some number of people, personally, who have access to Phase 2 but have already lost interest/hope because of the overcrowding or artisanship?

blktauna

I'm becoming increasingly irritated with the crafting system. There is no direction, the resources are always gone, you need enormous amounts of 'fuel', the lower level benches are crazy hard to find initially, the whole thing is completely unintuitive and because resources are mind numbingly tedious to farm, you either forget what you were doing and wander off to do something else or you run out of bag space and are sol. I'm still under lvl10 so I don't know if it improves but the low level experience is not conducive to retention.

Aszkalon

BRAD_AoC wrote: »

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Overall thoughts on Phase 2

Let's be honest, this should be barely allowed to be called Phase 2. It's literally just Phase 1 with 2 new races, a "not remotely close to being shippable" extension to the desert, storefronts that lack even the most basic of quality of life features on top of making the entire launch experience miserable by shoving tons of players into the same world while not providing meaningful countermeasures to ensure people still have a decent time.

I had a feeling it might be this way,

but it seems Ashes of Creation still has a L~OOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG way still to go, before it arrives there where i think Sir Steven and his mighty Crew want it to be.

And just like that,
it's like all those " 2030 !!! " and " 2034 !!! " -Squallers and Shouters seem to be more right and on Point than expected.

Not meaning to take a shxt on Alpha Two at all. It just looks like this is still taking a whole lot longer than expected.

What is truly important right now -> is that Sir Steven and his mighty Team don't give up along the way.

nanfoodle

Aszkalon wrote: »

BRAD_AoC wrote: »

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Overall thoughts on Phase 2

Let's be honest, this should be barely allowed to be called Phase 2. It's literally just Phase 1 with 2 new races, a "not remotely close to being shippable" extension to the desert, storefronts that lack even the most basic of quality of life features on top of making the entire launch experience miserable by shoving tons of players into the same world while not providing meaningful countermeasures to ensure people still have a decent time.

I had a feeling it might be this way,

but it seems Ashes of Creation still has a L~OOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG way still to go, before it arrives there where i think Sir Steven and his mighty Crew want it to be.

And just like that,
it's like all those " 2030 !!! " and " 2034 !!! " -Squallers and Shouters seem to be more right and on Point than expected.

Not meaning to take a shxt on Alpha Two at all. It just looks like this is still taking a whole lot longer than expected.

What is truly important right now -> is that Sir Steven and his mighty Team don't give up along the way.

Posts like this don't add anything to the discussion. This is a real Alpha and feedback is needed. IS has been listening and making changes. Just digest we are not playing an early access game. We are here to test and give feedback.

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