Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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 III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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 2 - Phase 3 Suggestions Based on Play-Through Experience to Level 25
Lark Wyll
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Hello,
This will be my final feedback and suggestion post for a while while I let the game cook. Brief experience summary, I've played since A1 and in every phase. My current character for A2.3 is a level 24.5 Rogue. This phase I've done a bit of everything from crafting newbie weapons at Aven's End, some processing, a ton of gathering in Riverlands and Tropics, a fair amount of commissions, a couple crate runs, and the normal combat grind both solo and group. Normally I only do combat but was trying different elements this phase.
On to my suggestion for AoC development going forward:
Concern:
The game is moving rapidly through phases but the quality of systems design (economy, gear progression, artisanship, storage, loot quantity and frequency of mats, glint, gear, etc.) are not improving and at times feel partly or wholly unviable. In each successive phase the play through's don't feel like a better experience playing the systems mentioned and large issues are present and widely agreed upon, even if the solutions are not. There are obvious improvements to the phase as a whole, but from a systems standpoint of the user experience is what I'm referring to. The concern being that not enough actual testing and iteration is being done to funnel players repeatedly through in conjunction with dev iteration on the FTUE, economy changes, early levelling and character progression flow to ramp towards a successful game launch.
I understand the desire for permanent servers and uptime as a player and promises that may have been made for this phase going forward, but I would suggest changes to the testing model to benefit not us the players, but to aid Intrepid in refining their product.
My suggestion:
Switch the remaining Alpha Testing to a flexible testing period schedule interval of One to Three months, then update, wipe, and fresh start to funnel players back through major updates made to the Economy, FTUE, Questing, Combat Loot, Artisanship, other systems etc.
From my experience as a tester it appears that the devs need as much players going through the early funnel level 0-20 as possible. Reset, iterate, wipe, and present a new test. And pour the player sand back through the funnel to keep gaining feedback positive and/or negative on what needs to be improved, friction points, what's moving in the right direction, what remains problematic, etc.
The Node/Settlement early levelling and stage advancement flow is the back bone of this game and needs live simulation as frequently as possible for the game to succeed in my view. Intrepid has to nail that landing for live launch. If Intrepid has a calendar goal, let's say in the next 2-4 years to launch the game (I have no idea), it behooves them to pour the tester sand through the early 0-20+ systems as many times as they can release new ECON/NODE PACING/STATIONS PROGRESSION RATE/COMBAT LOOT AND GEAR PROGRESSION FEEL, iteration for us to test as many times as they can keep up with. I'm not suggesting to wipe and reset the Alpha test servers on a set schedule, but I am suggesting that Intrepid and AoC would benefit mightily by not pretending AoC is ready for a permanent server testing phase and instead repeatedly run testers through your Fresh Character 0-20 funnel to iterate on the game and find the right pacing and design philosophy for the economy before the live launch.
Let's say the devs wanted to launch the game within three years from now, cut off a year for Beta testing (is that reasonable idk?), which leaves you with 24 months, and Intrepid on avg. decided to reset live testing servers every three months. That would only leave eight resets to iterate and get the game systems dialed in before launch. And the longer the devs wait to hone in on the core game design, econ, combat game play loop to make combat players want to play the game, etc. the less time and opportunity there will be to test variations of their formula to find the right mix to achieve a successful launch without having to keep moving goal posts.
Use us, the testers. Put us back through the funnels. Reset and iterate as often as you can to test different economy flows and rates to find a formula that will lead to a healthy game population. Again, I wouldn't reset just to do so and test bogus ideas. But if you want data and you're unsure of which direction to go, release different tests with wipes in between and compare the user experience feedback, the data you collect and help pick a direction to move in. Right now the economy feels like the testers are on a yo-yo moving up and down during the live phase testing and even from the tester sweaty player experience a lot of it feels incoherent with how the economy is being changed rapidly during the actual test. From a scientific stand point I doubt your team is able to present a problem and find a sound conclusion and solution with the constant variable changes being made.
I am trying to keep this post as constructive as possible to help provide some input that I think has value if adopted and not critique or go down rabbit holes on my specific game style or econ style preferences. Regardless of what type of game play I'd like to see, I believe a tighter iteration and test frequency would benefit Intrepid to dial in the game and get it on rails (assuming the elements of the game I mentioned are worked on to provide testers with a continually improved flow to communicate with the devs in regards to in lead up to live launch. Keep pouring the tester sand through the funnels after frequent iteration and let us smooth out the rough spots. That's my suggestion for the dev team.
P.S. Rogue is ridiculous. Grapple for life.
This will be my final feedback and suggestion post for a while while I let the game cook. Brief experience summary, I've played since A1 and in every phase. My current character for A2.3 is a level 24.5 Rogue. This phase I've done a bit of everything from crafting newbie weapons at Aven's End, some processing, a ton of gathering in Riverlands and Tropics, a fair amount of commissions, a couple crate runs, and the normal combat grind both solo and group. Normally I only do combat but was trying different elements this phase.
On to my suggestion for AoC development going forward:
Concern:
The game is moving rapidly through phases but the quality of systems design (economy, gear progression, artisanship, storage, loot quantity and frequency of mats, glint, gear, etc.) are not improving and at times feel partly or wholly unviable. In each successive phase the play through's don't feel like a better experience playing the systems mentioned and large issues are present and widely agreed upon, even if the solutions are not. There are obvious improvements to the phase as a whole, but from a systems standpoint of the user experience is what I'm referring to. The concern being that not enough actual testing and iteration is being done to funnel players repeatedly through in conjunction with dev iteration on the FTUE, economy changes, early levelling and character progression flow to ramp towards a successful game launch.
I understand the desire for permanent servers and uptime as a player and promises that may have been made for this phase going forward, but I would suggest changes to the testing model to benefit not us the players, but to aid Intrepid in refining their product.
My suggestion:
Switch the remaining Alpha Testing to a flexible testing period schedule interval of One to Three months, then update, wipe, and fresh start to funnel players back through major updates made to the Economy, FTUE, Questing, Combat Loot, Artisanship, other systems etc.
From my experience as a tester it appears that the devs need as much players going through the early funnel level 0-20 as possible. Reset, iterate, wipe, and present a new test. And pour the player sand back through the funnel to keep gaining feedback positive and/or negative on what needs to be improved, friction points, what's moving in the right direction, what remains problematic, etc.
The Node/Settlement early levelling and stage advancement flow is the back bone of this game and needs live simulation as frequently as possible for the game to succeed in my view. Intrepid has to nail that landing for live launch. If Intrepid has a calendar goal, let's say in the next 2-4 years to launch the game (I have no idea), it behooves them to pour the tester sand through the early 0-20+ systems as many times as they can release new ECON/NODE PACING/STATIONS PROGRESSION RATE/COMBAT LOOT AND GEAR PROGRESSION FEEL, iteration for us to test as many times as they can keep up with. I'm not suggesting to wipe and reset the Alpha test servers on a set schedule, but I am suggesting that Intrepid and AoC would benefit mightily by not pretending AoC is ready for a permanent server testing phase and instead repeatedly run testers through your Fresh Character 0-20 funnel to iterate on the game and find the right pacing and design philosophy for the economy before the live launch.
Let's say the devs wanted to launch the game within three years from now, cut off a year for Beta testing (is that reasonable idk?), which leaves you with 24 months, and Intrepid on avg. decided to reset live testing servers every three months. That would only leave eight resets to iterate and get the game systems dialed in before launch. And the longer the devs wait to hone in on the core game design, econ, combat game play loop to make combat players want to play the game, etc. the less time and opportunity there will be to test variations of their formula to find the right mix to achieve a successful launch without having to keep moving goal posts.
Use us, the testers. Put us back through the funnels. Reset and iterate as often as you can to test different economy flows and rates to find a formula that will lead to a healthy game population. Again, I wouldn't reset just to do so and test bogus ideas. But if you want data and you're unsure of which direction to go, release different tests with wipes in between and compare the user experience feedback, the data you collect and help pick a direction to move in. Right now the economy feels like the testers are on a yo-yo moving up and down during the live phase testing and even from the tester sweaty player experience a lot of it feels incoherent with how the economy is being changed rapidly during the actual test. From a scientific stand point I doubt your team is able to present a problem and find a sound conclusion and solution with the constant variable changes being made.
I am trying to keep this post as constructive as possible to help provide some input that I think has value if adopted and not critique or go down rabbit holes on my specific game style or econ style preferences. Regardless of what type of game play I'd like to see, I believe a tighter iteration and test frequency would benefit Intrepid to dial in the game and get it on rails (assuming the elements of the game I mentioned are worked on to provide testers with a continually improved flow to communicate with the devs in regards to in lead up to live launch. Keep pouring the tester sand through the funnels after frequent iteration and let us smooth out the rough spots. That's my suggestion for the dev team.
P.S. Rogue is ridiculous. Grapple for life.
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