Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Better communication of intended systems
odishy
Member, Alpha Two
First I'll start by saying, I appreciate intrepid leaving the servers open during the holidays. I also appreciate intrepid giving folks time off.
However... I think phase 2 rollout was handled very poorly. Large radical changes around player density before everyone was sent home was a bad idea. It has basically left Steven as the skeleton crew trying to address major issues, while Intrepid fully understood folks would be highly active and excited to play during the holidays.
First and foremost can we please get communication around expected system and player density.
If the goal is 3k in river lands and 3k in desert, then I understand why merge them now. But can we please get some communication on what the plan is, because I can say 6k in river lands is not good.
Second is around gathering, the system we have now is not the system that was showcased. If the current system is a stub, that's ok but please tell us. Currently the only feedback has been "there is plenty of copper and marker stalls will fix it". Which is clearly not working and has crippled the entire artisan system.
Lastly, is around exploits. This was addressed in phase 1, but it's only worse in phase 2. Will Intrepid ban bad actors?
However... I think phase 2 rollout was handled very poorly. Large radical changes around player density before everyone was sent home was a bad idea. It has basically left Steven as the skeleton crew trying to address major issues, while Intrepid fully understood folks would be highly active and excited to play during the holidays.
First and foremost can we please get communication around expected system and player density.
If the goal is 3k in river lands and 3k in desert, then I understand why merge them now. But can we please get some communication on what the plan is, because I can say 6k in river lands is not good.
Second is around gathering, the system we have now is not the system that was showcased. If the current system is a stub, that's ok but please tell us. Currently the only feedback has been "there is plenty of copper and marker stalls will fix it". Which is clearly not working and has crippled the entire artisan system.
Lastly, is around exploits. This was addressed in phase 1, but it's only worse in phase 2. Will Intrepid ban bad actors?
2
Comments
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Alpha-2_phase-2
Also it's just the Alpha 2 roadmap, it doesn't answer any questions in regards to intended systems or design that we currently see.
For starters is the gathering system a functional stub or the intended design? Is the intention to have 6k players per zone or was this in anticipation of the desert biome? If so, is the design to have 3k per zone? When new zoned are released will this cause wipes/server merges?
Furthermore what is the stance on exploits in alpha and will Intrepid ban testers? Because currently the exploiters have sullied the test environment, making many systems non functional and driving testers away.
These are not proprietary secrets and intrepid should already be thinking through this stuff and should be sharing with testers.
Furthermore the data being released is sporadic and doesn't make sense. Steven said 30k people were trying to login on day 1. They had 3 realms with 6k capacity or roughly half the capacity for players trying to login. Then he said they have 100k testers, but again capacity planning for 18k.
Is this a stress test phase? If so, can you explain the timing or be more transparent for what comes next?
The Alpha 2 Wiki page has 92 (yes, ninety-two) footnote references to official Intrepid communications.
Have you ever heard of the proverb ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink'??
Hmm, okay. Let’s look at the gathering stuff in the wiki linked there for one example:
Well that isn’t at all how gathering works in alpha 2. The current implementation is completely different than their past communications from over 2 years ago that should have made it into alpha 2 by now:
Keep your proverbs to yourself if you don’t even understand why people want some clarification on these things.
Oh yeah I forgot all about this system and the complaining I was supposed to do about it.
Obviously since it was never going to work particularly well for Herbalism or Lumberjacking, I understand why it was changed, but it affected a lot of the Econ stuff too.
Oof that particular slice looked nice, genuinely looking forward to when AoC looks/feels like that clip more consistently.
Either is fine just communicate it to us, don't make us guess.
I believe that, at the moment, Intrepid has the same stance on this as the poster that first responded to your OP, that the wiki is sufficient information for these things.
This thread has the chance to turn into a debate on how valid/true that is, but I wouldn't expect most people to put their effort into it. And technically, they communicated 'transparent', not 'communicative' in the way that most such studios are now.
In any case, the staff is on break now, so even the meetings that would be required to decide what exactly to tell us, wouldn't be happening. Just make sure not to let the incoming 'debate' cause you to be overly negative toward the staff.
Also don't interpret this as if I wanted their website to host a wiki ! I totally understand that the it's not what a game website is for. But overall, a general admitted "Foundational Principles" section for the game would be nice. Nowadays there is so much content about the development of Ashes of Creation that it would take me more time to read/watch through it then to read the Lords of the ring trilogy...