I really believe this is the game we've been waiting for (Alpha preview experience)

The game is beautiful. Honestly you can just feel how much potential the game has. There were multiple instance during testing that I completely forgot that I was in an Alpha, until some kind of bug would come along and kind of break the immersion a bit 😂

The only major issue that I noticed was some rubber banding and shuttering. It was pretty terrible on Friday, it got to the point where I almost just rage quit. The sevres came down early and then on Sat they applied a hot fix. The team responded and implemented the fix so extremely fast. I couldn't believe how well it was running. It was completely night and day.

Spent the next 2 days playing and enjoying the Alpha with some rolling restarts here and there implemented for now until they would dive in and fix the issue which would have taken more than an evening to get to.

This game even in Alpha is better than a lot of games I've played that were "complete". Crafting still needs work and there's some odd bugs here and there but you really get a sense of where the game is headed even with the current place holders and really all I want right now is more tests to come up so I can spend more time in Verra.

I have not been this excited for a game to come out in years. I really believe that the Ashes team is going to deliver the game they promised us. I'm so very excited to be part of this journey.

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Comments

Mike McQueen

I agree Gili, sure it’s not all perfect yet, but once it is..there is a ton of potential here and it’s exciting to say the least.

halbarz

Not to be negative about the game but what kind of bugs did you run into? How is the performance during a node upgrade?

Fefner

What's the combat like, is it tab targeting or action combat where you use mouse button to attack and number keys for skills?

Shoelid

halbarz wrote: »

Not to be negative about the game but what kind of bugs did you run into? How is the performance during a node upgrade?

There were tons of bugs, but not many were game breaking. Issues with enemy pathfinding/AI. A frequent issue that would prevent you from dismounting. Gravestones were invisible, making collecting the items you dropped from death pretty hard. Apparently picking up a bow could corrupt your character, requiring you to create a new one. Many of the quests just didn't work. Crafting didn't work or would crash your game.

There were tons of issues, which is why it's so impressive that the game was so fun through all of them.

Khronus

Fefner wrote: »

What's the combat like, is it tab targeting or action combat where you use mouse button to attack and number keys for skills?

The combat was very engaging but there are a lot of issues that need to be tweaked and some completely removed. Hot bar 1 through 0 can be added as well R. Q was the spam in place of an auto attack. It felt very poor to have to spam Q to do basic damage. The animations for spamming Q with the starter sword was WAY OVER THE TOP AND DESERVES THESE CAPS TO SHOW HOW ANNOYING THE Q SPAM REALLY WAS. In some cases, you literally could not see your target because 5-6 melee classes would cover the screen up with giant purple swirls.

The Q spam was definitely the worst part of combat. You could hit Z and change to left mouse click which added a reticle to the screen. This was entertaining for 30 seconds but I chose not to use it because when attacking, your characters locks into the combat animation and physically moves forward. Locked into movement + turning with mouse movement just felt bad.

Remember the days where you would catch someone auto attacking only during a raid and you would be like...."bro....wtf are you doing? Why are you just standing there auto attacking you lazy POS!?". Well in AoC, if this Q spam remains in the game we will all be dealing with people who simply don't attack with Q consistently. Weaving in Q with every ability is just insane and I wouldn't blame someone for being lazy because of this system. It's literally the only thing that is poorly thought out in the game.

As for every other aspect of the combat, it was absolutely AMAZING. Every ability felt right when cast. Each class had minimal skills to use but it still felt like there was a strong team behind designing and developing these skills. Everything else also looked stunning.

Songcaller

Q spam was brought up months ago. I had hoped the combat revamps would remove the q spam. Not sure whether the Devs are even aware of the Q spam problem. I can only hope the A1 Testers have given a wealth of feedback on the Q spam because us A2 Testers are lower priority in the feedback state.

Dygz

I don't think "Q Spam" will be addressed by the devs until after Weapon Abilities are added to combat.

Songcaller

The Q spam is a result of them not wanting auto attacks. Even with weapons abilities the q spam could remain because the q spam is the basic attack. I hope you're right that the weapon abilities will resolve the issue but it doesn't hurt to reiterate older feedback too.

Diura

Neurath wrote: »

Q spam was brought up months ago. I had hoped the combat revamps would remove the q spam. Not sure whether the Devs are even aware of the Q spam problem. I can only hope the A1 Testers have given a wealth of feedback on the Q spam because us A2 Testers are lower priority in the feedback state.

I've seen a lot of people mentioning it so I'm sure it has been picked up on by Devs. Steven also said this on discord AoC discussion yesterday

and then this was mentioned on the "for Devs" thread

Hopefully these are all good signs ^^

Songcaller

Thank you for the update. I'm loving the Verbal NDA lift. Thank you

Diura

Neurath wrote: »

Thank you for the update. I'm loving the Verbal NDA lift. Thank you

It's nice to be able to share

All in it together : D

Dygz

Neurath wrote: »

The Q spam is a result of them not wanting auto attacks. Even with weapons abilities the q spam could remain because the q spam is the basic attack. I hope you're right that the weapon abilities will resolve the issue but it doesn't hurt to reiterate older feedback too.

Could remain. Yes.
I didn't say Weapon Abilities will resolve the issue. I said I don't think "Q Spam" will be addressed by the devs until after Weapon Abilities are added to combat.
We won't truly know how we feel about Q as basic attack until Weapon Abilities are added and we can test it.

Songcaller

Yeah I understand better after explanation. I'm not sure how many combat iterations will happen. I thought the iterations would be an overhaul in one pass but I guess the iterations could be many smaller changes over a timespan too.

JamieKaos

Should be testing a new iteration in the next coming weeks. It takes about 4 hours of work to change each ability so nothing on combat is really going to be really looked at until the overhaul. A lot of what we currently see is placeholders.

Shoelid

Gilikoth wrote: »

Should be testing a new iteration in the next coming weeks. It takes about 4 hours of work to change each ability so nothing on combat is really going to be really looked at until the overhaul. A lot of what we currently see is placeholders.

Yeah, yesterday Steven said that they 're working on some minor changes for combat ATM. Mostly movement related, should make it feel more fluid. I think we can expect to see some changes before the visual NDA drop. Out of curiosity, where have you heard the "4 hours of work" number from?

I also agree on the placeholder topic. My impression is that almost none of the current abilities will make it into the main game, but serve mostly as a representation of different ability types.

With the implementation of sieges, and how frequently Steven's talked about the importance of combat recently, my prediction is that they'll be taking lots of feedback on combat in the month-long alpha 1 test.

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