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I have mostly no-lifed the game and here are my thoughts (this will include some bugreporting)

HighbornHighborn Member, Alpha Two
edited January 6 in General Discussion
Firstly: i have reached 22 in P1, did some carphin, some SB, so not new player.

This will mostly likely not be well structured just writting my thoughts out.
I have reached 25 (as a tank), 11 in armour smithing, run some caravans etc all the stuff you could do, i probably done it. Mostly.

Firstly, i think tanks are in a lot better place now. The buff to taunt (2x max hp as aggro instead of 1x), and intimidating aura are nice. In pvp tank feels a bit week / off, but it's probably because it's not the playstyle i'm looking for so it's probably a #skillissue.

POI thoughts:

SB is still a place I immensly dislike. In HH you can probably overpull. In the forge you are likely to overpull. In SB if you look the wrong way YOU WILL overpull.
I don't have a problem with the inherent design and layout of SB. I Don't have a problem with (well maybe a bit) lvl15 firestarters oneshotting lvl20 characters (it can happen). My problem is that mob density is waay damn high.
While i don't have a lot of exp with sephilon and gravepeak, in most places you can go to your preffered spot while not pulling half a village. Not in SB.
I think a good fix would be just to... make it bigged. a 20-25% size increased SB does sound nice, and while i might be wrong, this is the only way to fix it, without nuking everything else. (this would nuke the forrests and stuff around it). Or just reduce aggro range a bit.
Other than that i'm excided to see the place finished as the horse trick no longer works and assetts wear clearly missing.

The FORGE is really great. I started at lvl20, and had to have 2 heals and 2 bards, and now i can easily coast by with 1 heal and 1 bard. The progression is great, for tanks.
The place looks good (when there's not global illumination bug). Mob density and variety is reasonable. I remember fondly when the patrolling striker at the start was the big bad boogieman mob that we barely dared to pull.
However it's not without issues.
Grills doing fire damage is just chefs kiss.
Exploration and skips are MAD and I love it. You don't wanna to belowsmasher? go around. Don't wanna deal with bs? do the lavafall skip. You want to go from unique golem to Zammer? Yep there's a skip. Wanna go from the Crucia to lassix? yep there's a jump. Please keep designing open places like this.

While according to codex medium and light gear exists i have never seen a single medium piece drop, and i have seen only ONE light pants drop. I lived there for larg parts of 20-25 mind you. Heavy gear is also not part of any set, please fix.
FYI i love that the forge gear is kinda bugged and pitch black. Please keep it that way.

Bellowsmassher has a WAAAAAAAAY too big leash range. There are quite many people exploiting it to partially or fully do away with it's charge. I have sent in video and bugreports of it. (I'm yet to beat this boss)
The elemental boss is strange but nice. We tried to defeat it but failed. Partially due to it's charge put it into the terrain, and it's "i'm hugging myself ability" couldn't be seen or interrupted. However the zombies before it feels like complete ass. I understnd wanting to make the fight interesting, but the heal debuff is INSANE. Not the part where it reduces healing done by 100% but the part where healing done becomes damage. The tooltip does not indicate this btw, for any zombie in the game.
In the forge is especilly bad since you don't have any space to kite.Them also applying it with every single AA is just screws all meeles over. First of all, those mobs neednt be there, secondly the healing debuff makes a difficult fight nearly impossible. (yes they can be cleared beforehand and yes they'll respawn midfight). Honestly they'd be nice adds if not every single AA applied the debuff and/or healing was preveneted and not turned into dmg. Adds are nice during a fight. A little bit of chaos, just to keep you on your toes.
(btw zombies charge is buggy, and have seen zombies around gravepeak run into the horizon. It's probably the most amusing bug ever, and half of a mind wanting to keep it. Just to see run through the air into horizon like, "i must go my people need me")


Cursed crushers last stand ability is also bugged atm. During their last stand, if they have the bull icon (forgot the abilities name) the bleeding that is applied TO THEM by players heal them. The only way to prevent this currently is to completely stop dps and / or unspeccing those from weapons. This completely kneecaps rangers and parts of fighter kit. Please fix this.

I can't consistenly reprduce this but once the fire elemental viped us for "seemingly" no reason. It did it's firery rush, and I grappeled it back. It started the animation of "hugging itself" right after the rush but before the grapple. When the grapple ended, it instantly viped us.

Mages ball lighning is iconsistend AF, and sometimes deal vipe dmg. Otherwise they're fun to fight.

Nurse respawn timer is wierdly low. We farmed the absolute hell out if (like everybody else lol), but it's respawn timer seem to be missing a zero. Or intrepid just wants give gaer to clerics, but with the rumors of cleric nerf this seem... weird?

The puzzle not working for a time and it being fixed by a fixed bridge feels.... off. I get it why. For the time being it's better this way. Should you go past the point, the only way to get out was to unstuck. In the future there needs to be a way to get out.

Golems are very fun to fight, especially the named one. It's firey spit and smash abilities are engaging and rewarding.

Reapers are... meh? Also they currently grossly overteleport you. If you taunt them from afar, they teleport waaay behind you. Seemingly their TP is 2x the range it should be. I mean they overshoot you by the distance you're to them. Please add light armour lootable to them and the mages.

Zammer fight is ..... IT works as intended but it seems undertuned. For real, he's too easy.
Here is a step by step buide to kill him.
Don't tank him in the middle. Pull him to the left side of the room. Ranged stands around the corner, a bit spread. You tank it about at the halfway point of two walls. Meelee is in it's back.
This completely trivilazises the fight without actually breaking it, here is why.
Many ranged attackers range is higher then it's anvil smash, so when it want's to do it, it sometimes has to walk, allowing a lot more reaction time than it should have. Secondly it's easier to dodgroll out if it. Yes you can dogeroll out of it. Seondly it's spinning attack has a LOT LESS chance to hit the ranged. there is about 2/3 chance of it not attacking them. 1/3 it spins towards the tank running away. about 1/3 of it spinning towards the wall. Finally when it spins towards rangeds they can disparese and they take like 1-2 ticks of dmg.
The ramping dmg is very slow. I'M pretty sure at this point we could 6 man it with my guild. 10% damage is up meh, and the 20% is where it starts sweaty. It never reached 30%, he just dies.

Here are my recommendations regaring how I would fix it, withouth overtuning it.
1: Make it so that the spawns are fixed. One spawn is Tank and Striker. Other one flamestroker and Crusher.
2: at 75% of boss hp spawn one comes in, or if they are cleared resawpn and come in.
3: at 25% spawn two comes in.
4: both set of adds benefit from zammers extra 10% dmg buff.
5: zammer get's an extra stack of his buff at 15% regardless of how many he has.
6: anvil smash's range should be the enitre boss room.
7: reduce the damage zammers cleave by roughly 10-15%

WHY do i think theese changes would be good.
Firstly: this is atm a tank and spank
Secondly: spawn one of adds are annoying but not unoable. They would introdce some much needed chaos. Tank and Striker would temporarily ramp damage up. One can be CCd for a bit, while the other one is dealt with. This way zammer has some extra time to ramp his damage.
Thirdly: zammers direct dmg nerf to the tank would allow the tanks to actually live while mobs are pulled without dying to 2 bad crits.
Fourthly: this would make anvil smash during the second add phase actuall something you have to deal with, especially when it comibes with the chaose that the flamestroker introduces. Also crusher anvil smash lol.

These changes would make the fight a hell of a lot more difficult without overtuning it. Adds can be CCd, and dealt with, 2 bad crits wont kill the tank ('im looking at you steelbloom), and it'd make the fight more engaging for DPS players too.


I LOVE the unique resoures there btw, can't wait for the armor smithing station to be implemented. (and the rest i guess)

Lava being able to crit for 4k+ dmg is just funny.

Name mobs are very easy to kill. We 4 manned lassix lol. They should be buffed. just 10% more dmg and defence with maybe 30-70% more hp.

Molten core droprate probably needs a buff, espacially if the intended mechanic is that only those can be used for glittering steel.
Ah also i guildie mentioned that the wolf can run on lava.... lol

I can't wait for further expansions ot the forge, i have a great time in it, even with it's flaws.

The caravans:
The caravans are..... I don't want to say bad, because they're not but definitely a mixed bag.
In my opinion, currently the risk vs rewards is out of whack. Caravan runners need to get parts, bobs, glint to be able to run a caravan. Attackers need to have a pulse. The risk for attackers is very low. I play on EU and there are 2 maybe 3 big zerg-ish pvp guilds that attack and ransom caravans that make life miserable for caravan runners. What especially feels sucky is that if you beat the inicial wave of attacked they'll bring in more people maybe even from other guilds. Even if you beat them back once they'll come back with more. Az we say in SC2 more sh1t counteres less sh1t. Sh1t in this case is people.
After they roll you, they teleport their own in and skip town. (this also allows defeners their backup caravans btw)

In my opinion it's completely unbalanced, that the caravan runners need to walk slowly while the attackers can teleport their caravans in and pick up your loot.
What feels especially egregious is that the caravan driver can be, and in many cases is sniped. Now, i don't have a problem whit the driver being killed. My problem is that with enough efford the driver can be sniped sub 15 seconds, making the carvan a glorified loot pinata. What could help with this if the driver didn't recive the heal dampaning. Or had more defences. Or hp. Not sure. Maybe all this bs will go way when journeyman caravans are up and aracane engineers can create stuff.
Also why is caravan armour not in the game? It clearly exists. or should exist.

I can't comment on the pvp balance of the game. I have done very little pvp that wasn't a zerg fest.
One thing i can comment on is exploiters. Please, don't reset exploiters to level one. Ban them from phase two, until phase 3 or until beta.

Many grievances regarding caravans, and other resources come from people lying and cheating their way up to lvl 25 and bullying out others who have had honest gains. I don't mind fighting for resources, farming spots its. I mind fighting people who go the where they are dishonestly.

Crafing seems.... a bit odd. I know that this is early days, but lemme share my two cents. Lvl 10 crafts are a bit insane, to the point where i know mayn people who are in the armour making business (like me armoursmihtng and a guildie who is a leatherworker) who decided to bang out t1 stuff to level. With the current node buffs even not being a citizen of said node, i can get 4-5% exp from banging out 2nd company boots at lvl 10-11 armoursmithing. While this is really nice as I don't need to gather all the stuff (willowood plank, thread animal fat) to level but... it's a bit fast. (It's with the 100% node bonus and the 50% bandit cleared bonus). I'm not sure how i'd fix. Preventing lower level crafts to level seems excessive.
High rarity hunts are also not in the game. I know Steven commented on this therefore I won't comment on this too deeply. Please fix. Animal fat & leathers are a big big bottleneck, and i kind of starting think this is purpuseful. Maybe animal husbandry will be the way to go? Still it'd be nice to get high level gear while system for theese is largely missing

I haven't one any overword bosses in p2, however, i think their regen should be havily nerfed, and defensive stats buffed from what i seen i P1. Even after the gear nerf and their buffs tumok is too easy. We couldn'T zerg the mechacnis, but when it enraged the fight became trivial. Damage ramps overall for bosses form what i've seen need massive buffs.
Firebrand is OK.... ish. His flamebreath is nice, but everything else just ok. Not too bad, not too good, just ok.

Grems ranged bite is just really bad at first but after you get used to it is just amusing.

In high player an mob desity areas server perf drops like a rock. Especially around the edges of server workers, mobs become a laggy, teleporty, stuttery mess. This specific example was in steel bloom, when half of the mobs were not spawning. Even when players arent all there it's inconsistent AF.

Grapple is somehow seemingly more buggy then it was in P1. It completely breaks when there is elevation difference between the tank and the target.

Pandoras box, the desert.
Yeah it needs POIs. It's corrently dead unless you farm glint or minotaurs. You know this, i know this. everybody knows this.
They need biome specific mayoral comissions and boards and stuff. Also please remove the ash / oak trees.

Speaking of trees, node cork trees are inside the terrain, and function more like bushes lol.

Please open the seas. May people know how to consistently go thorugh the red wall. I get it. There's nothing there. However this opens a new, route from Miraleth to New Aela. This would allow caraveneers to make nice profits while allowing bandits to control few chokepoints to try to prevent it, while on the "open seas" the trip is largely safe. I don't think there are any drawbacks.

Ah speaking of water caravans, caravans can bug onto eachother. If you drive your raft near a converting caravan, the new raft can port onto the old one. It's ammusnig as neither can move but the bottom one can rotate. Top one also covert back to land on top of the bottom one. We had many kekws when this happened.

I think i didn't forget anything. Please share your thoughts. Maybe my experiences are not common, or just #skillisues
Would love to hear your opinions.
Glory to all Tanks
Glory to Arioch
Glory to Winsted

For my mana addicted brothers:
For the Glory of Quel'Thalas

Comments

  • HighbornHighborn Member, Alpha Two
    edited January 6
    I'm really excited to see what intrepid will cook up next. Most of the issues i've metnioned are just inconsistencies and (seemingly) easy fiexes (apart from the Zammer part). I love the game, and want it to succeed. I hope i didn't come off as a doomer as that was not the goal. I'd not have done crazy hours and late nights if i thought it was "meh".
    You know it's real when you forgo sleep to squeez in a bit more.

    I hope the intrepid team sees the love and passion of many players, who are online. Don't let the negativty drown out the silent people who are playing / testing. The best and most consistent metric is that WE ARE HERE. Those that are doing things in Veera love, or at least like the game to log in. (those that can, do, those that can't teach make videos)
    Glory to all Tanks
    Glory to Arioch
    Glory to Winsted

    For my mana addicted brothers:
    For the Glory of Quel'Thalas
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