[Feedback Master thread] Alpha Two Phase One | First Weekend Test Impressions

This is a master thread for general feedback coming out of the first-weekend test for Alpha Two Phase One! Feel free to leave your multi-topic, all-encompassing feedback posts here

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Austrinaut

Unintended skill effects - when you have Thorns enabled on yourself and you're struck by a combatant, it automatically harms the combatant and flags you as a combatant, allowing them to kill you without suffering corruption.

A player named Asp used this loophole to kill rangers in Lionhold as they attempted to sell loot at the equipment vendor.

There are also a number of AOE effects that trigger combatant status unintentionally, though I'm unfamiliar with which ones.

Lycielle

First of all I want to say that playing feels great and super fun once you got over your confusion I started with as there really was no guidance at all.

To me who is a person that barely consumed dev streams, didn'tread wiki posts or followed spreadsheetlike others might do, I tried to experience everything blind and just by myself. The way you find yourself without much clues feels very realistic and remembers me of oldschool World of Warcraft during classic times. It's challenging but very enjoyable when you got used to it.

Though to improve orientation as well as communication with other players I would love to have:

- the ability to install permanent markers or symbols to my map to better remember locations for certain grinding
- the map having an overlay option that shows regional names of locations you have been to (as I love to have a clear map you have to discover but returning to a location or calling out areas would be so much nicer like that)

With those additions the game wouldn't be lazier but grant you more orientation in areas you learned about for a greater quality of life.

Please, keep on going. You are doing a great job!

northie

I'm gonna continue my monologue here because manual crafting is/was planned to be a thing at some point if this image is to go by.

Also quote from wiki: "The developers will be seeking testing feedback on the addition of a gameplay layer to crafting that determines the outcome based on the player's performance.

For example, if you're creating a sword, and you are crafting that sword, you will have an interface- a gameplay layer that you will see and you will begin to hammer actually that sword into an appropriate outline. And your performance there can help influence the outcome of that craft. – Steven Sharif

It is likely that Star Wars Galaxies inspired crafting mechanics will be present in Ashes of Creation.

Without getting into too much detail I will say that it's likely that you will see some inspiration surface itself in that regard. – Steven Sharif

Previously it was stated that repetitive skill-based crafting mechanics, such as mini-games, are not an intended part of the crafting experience."

The thing is that those quotes are from 2021/2022 and the image from 2023 live stream, so I wonder what exactly changed between now and then because for the love of whatever Verran gods are listening, let me have my crafting minigames. Gathering minigames, too.

I'm not opposed to "fast crafting" as shown in the image, or progress bar style offline crafting, but when I'm playing the game I actually want to play. Not have the game play itself for me.

If I was interested in that I'd "play" progress quest.

EKFBen

Hi everyone,

since there are enough discussions and bug reporting posts, I would like to let you take part of my experience at the first weekend of testing.

My name is Ben, 40+ years old and I am a German guy. I play on realm Shole as a cleric with a gild called Seelensturm.

It was Thursday 5 pm (7am PT) I just arrived from work and I was looking around with whom I will play the game. At this time I just joined the DC of Seelensturm to get to know each other. And I was wondering, why everyone was acting like a teenager. My first though was "ohh no, they are to young" as long as they told me there will be a pre alpha 2 test with visual NDA in two hours. Now I transformed to a teenager as well. So nerves to finally see the game I was waiting for so long.
Taking part at alpha two stage in DC we have been motivated to face and defeat the end boss of the game launcher, entering queue and starting area. As told we did. And thanks to Intrepid to handle all those end bosses on the other side of our screens. You have been amazing. It helped almost all of us from Seelensturm to access the game. We have been able to quest and get a horse and got the chance to see more of the games landscape. That was way more than I expected to see.

Friday, start of alpha 2 test. through bug fixing and patching the start was delayed by a few hours. It was 10pm the test started and I played for one our, till the def-stream on Twitch started. I was tired from work and stooped watching the time all started to play alpha 2. I came more or less to the same point I was at the pre testing the day before.

Saturday a had an appointment I could not shift. So I played a little in the evening for around 3h. I showed the game to some of my community. We looked around and try to get all the impressions I did not got so far. The starting area was very empty at this time because the most tester have been through this part of map. We found so much details. So nice and brilliant artwork of buildings, landscape and NPCs. We played a little PvE and liked the animations of spells and combat.

Sunday my mum had birthday. Sorry, but not even AoC brought me to skip my mothers birthday.
I was only around an hours in the game, luckily no queues. All mates have been in higher level than me, not surprising. And we went to places I definitely would not run alone and have had so much fun. My healing was not worth mentioning but I tried hard. Bards are more important than I thought. So I am thinking about playing it after the next wipe.
After mom's birthday I faced the DDoS attack. Thanks to those starting it. So Intrepid got the chance to test and adapt their defense and we used the time to plan further steps, what to do after next wipe, which node we will participate and talked about our experience.

My conclusion is: Alpha 2 test is more than I expected. More of everything. For me it is exactly, what Steven told all the time. Yes I faced bugs, yes I had disconnects, yes I had queues and error massages during login, yes the game crushed and yes the performance was leaking some times. It is what it is, a work in progress. I was positive surprised what I have seen. A team working hard even on Sunday to defeat an attack. Problems seemed to be solved within a few hours. Intrepid Team stay as you are and keep the limit of transparency you showed all the years. Even if I am no friend of PvP, this game catches me and who knows, may be I get to love PvP though playing AoC.

Lovely Greetings
EKFBen from Shole

xDrac

To give more visual context on making shops more immersive and easier to distinguish, I'll attach some Lineage 2 screenshots of a Weapon Shop:

CROW3

Between available time on my side, server queues, and whatever instability issues impacted the US servers on Sun, I think I was able to test for maybe 2-3 hours in total. Current state based on expectations is ok. A lot of bugs, rubber-banding, and drops - but the ingredients are there.

Seeing a lot of content being generated by folks reacting as if this is a game, which is like eating barely mixed batter and providing a star review as if it's even in the neighborhood of cake.

Intrepid already has a massive backlog, so my feedback is simple: good work and keep going.

See you next weekend.

Kotako

Excellent review. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience.

Winterfang

mentalvoyager wrote: »

The drop on death mechanic needs a lot of work, I encountered numerous times folks just watching you die and grabbing your items and dipping.

I also mentioned this here, as I fully agree on this:

Winterfang wrote: »

Loot should be protected for a certain amount of time. I encountered several situations where an NPC killed me, and another player instantly looted my body. I also had instances where I killed someone, and someone else looted them. Loot should be protected for about 60 seconds for whoever killed the player. If I die to an NPC, the loot should also be protected for 60 seconds, allowing me to return and retrieve my belongings.

Slipree wrote: »

Haven’t been in game yet, but solo survivability looks fine from what I’ve seen. This seems like a “gut gud” type of scenario. No offense, maybe you just aren’t used to hard games.

You will se as soon as you get into it

Or maybe not because the things get nerved. In my opinion if you play in a group or an overpowered class like cleric you are fine. But solo tank, ranger etc. you have to "sit" a lot.

Winterfang

xDrac wrote: »

Flagging PvP I very much enjoy having the option and freedom of being able to engage in PvP right off the bat. It introduces you to the system and player conflict early on in the game. However I would maybe make the room you spawn in (where the divine gate is) a safe zone, as well as towns (inside Lionsarch) a safe zone and as soon as you go out, you can PvP as normal.

I fully agree on this as my feedback was similar:

Winterfang wrote: »

Killing others is the most fun for me. I actually exploited the corruption system to the point where I feel responsible for many of the forum posts about this topic. You can easily damage someone enough that they panic and run into an NPC, getting killed by it. From there, it’s free loot because you don’t incur any punishment or corruption for attacking another player. A potential solution could be to implement a system where if you damage a player and they die within 30 seconds, you receive a punishment. Additionally, as long as the player remains in combat—even if they pull an NPC onto themselves—you should be punished if the player wasn’t in PvP mode.

You could camp the attunement stones since there was no kind of protection zone or invulnerability granted when a player respawned there. Overall, the griefing system works, but there are minor details that need to be addressed.

patrick68794

Timed loot protection or some kind of consequence for stealing another player's dropped loot would be good. Getting killed and finding out that a player took all your stuff despite your death location still being marked on your map is pretty frustrating. Even if there was just a notification saying someone looted your stuff that would be a better solution than the utter lack of anything right now.

EKFBen

Kotako wrote: »

Excellent review. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience.

Gladly again, thank you.

IustinusShiva

I was simultaneously disappointed to find that a lot of what we saw in the showcases was in fact a 'vertical slice' or something not actually implemented....

... But at the same time remarkably impressed with what is actually here and how it plays. This is not my first Development Alpha, so I knew what I was getting into, and it is overall far better than I expected.

Kiwi_

Hey dear Intrepid,
so first of all I wanted to thank you for this first amazing weekend of A2! It was much more fun and went smoother than I honestly expected, so thank you!
For this feedback post of mine I'm going to try and make everything as easy to read and structured so feedback that might be irrelevant at this stage can simply be ignored/skipped
More detailed thoughts on the individual points are put in spoilers

UI

- Texts should be bigger & scalable without having to make the whole UI bigger

Personally I just can't read the texts in their default size. I have bad eye sight so reading small things, even with glasses/contact can be insanely tiring for me and can cause headaches

- imo it would be nice to see the level of yourself and party members somewhere near the HP bar
- There should be an indicator for selected friendly targets in a group

So far there are no indicators (unless it was bugged for me) In raid groups yes, but not in the normal groups. Clicking on the party members frame had no indication on it if it was selected. You could see the selected target on your screen of course, but I strongly feel like there should be a highlight on the player's frame as well, like there is in the raid. Big QoL thing for me playing a healer

- need a way to get the mouse in action mode (to interact with the UI) without having to switch to tab mode

Chat

- arrow up option to copy the most recently sent message is a nice to have
- timestamps for the chat in a must have for me personally
- being able to click on names in the chat for things like reporting or whispering

Targeting

- targeting not working properly, especially self target

The thing that was working the least was the key for self target, not sure if it's an issue that has to do with action/tab mode and switching, but using the key (f1 by default I think) to self target simply didn't work most of the time. Same with switching between friendly and enemy targets, I would need to do some more testing when and why it starts not doing what it's supposed to but because of that it currently feels very clunky

Action Combat Targeting

- targeting range way too wide

For me personally the range for the targeting in the action combat is way too wide, resulting in wrong targeting a lot of times
Would be nice to narrow that down or make it customizable. Honestly with the way this wide auto target works it feels even less action target for me since it personally feels like playing with a malfunctioning aim bot

- Action target feeling not as good for ranged and healing right now

I don't feel like this issue for me affects melee, only range. I would prefer to see a target selection in combat mode for a hybrid mode. Similar to Throne and Liberty (let's leave the overall game quality aside here) where you can select targets by aiming and clicking while still having the action camera. Even better imo would be an option to chose between selecting a friendly or enemy target in an action/hybrid mode. For example left click select enemy target, right click for friendly target or simply shift click. Either way, even though I understand the approach for Ashes, with the way the targeting in action combat works right now it really doesn't feel as good for me right now, especially with points like not being able to switch target properly that way (due to the wide range) without using tab or switching combat modes.

- switching between action and tab mode has to be smoother

Right now it's pretty glitchy. The camera mode does not change immediately so your mouse stays on the screen for a while longer and you can't turn the camera when switching from tab to action. Also the FOV slightly changes (or the camera angle?) Overall feels very clunky right now

Corruption System

- make the corruption system less abusable please

Right now the system is highly abusable. We tested a little and the most easy abuse is for just one player to go red, then trade all their items to their mates and have them kill them to cleanse the corruption.
I personally think player to player trading should be completely disabled when corrupted.
The overall penalty is no too much imo, like dropping items should be a risk you gotta take when killing others.

- less abusable part 2

As long as you can avoid dropping your stuff on death, you should not be able to get rid of corruption by simply dying imo
Or even have both, no trading, no cleansing by dying. Have corrupted players being forced to work off the corruption would be good in trade for not as much stat dampening (just my opinion though, feel like this is the most subjective topic)

- Corrupted Playstyle Suggestion:

If you were ever to change the corruption system as well as the death penalty system as mentioned below just somewhat in the direction I suggested - I would also like to suggest an idea that I feel could make risk and reward and corruption a more immersive and worthy playstyle in the game for those that wanna be the bad guys.
A node for corrupted players. Maybe in a zone that makes sense for that such as the open seas. There player to player trading could be enabled again, as well as a storage system and make it a safe zone for corrupted players where nobody can kill each other. Much like the typical pirate islands

Death Penalties

- Personally don't like the way the death penalties work. Below a suggestion of mine:

Differentiate between PvE and PvP deaths. For my personal feeling a better approach would be to PvE deaths not be lootable by other players. I think dropping some items and losing a part of that forever is enough penalty for PvE deaths. (assuming the deleted items on death are meant to be that way - dropping some of the lost stuff, some just getting deleted) Also because you have to run back and pick them up again as well. So it's a loot loss and time penalty (+exp).
For PvP on the other hand, I would prefer to see it be more rewarding by nothing getting deleted and the full amount of dropped stuff being lootable. This way you can maybe also get your stuff back when killing the person that killed you.

Questing

- I feel like having less to no quest guiding is fine with better quest descriptions

Quest markes and stuff being buggy is an obvious and known thing I think, however I don't mind having less quest guidance like back in the days, as long as you can somehow find a solution by reading the quest information given to you.

Leveling

- spread exp gain more evenly maybe

I personally like the slow leveling speed, however I would really prefer to all kinds of activities giving similar exp, because right most things don't give nearly as much as spamming events for example. So even though I think the events are fun, I think it would be even more fun to be able to chose what to do in the game and still making progress in a similar pace.

Crafting/Gathering

- lock the material bags to the specific type

The way it works right now there is just no reason to get the herbalism bag for example because it just has way less space than others

I'm going to edit stuff inside this post instead of posting new comments under this to keep it structured

Thanks for reading
Feel free to discuss
And have a great A2 everyone!

Gee1

I liked a lot of things, but I won't go into them below. Here is my feedback:

Each biome necessarily needs unique resources so there is a reason for caravans and players to go to the other biomes and trade materials - currently that is not the case

Player names should be selectable in the chat, e.g. for party invite etc.

Rubies are ultra rare to find. So are they only worth like 5 copper by selling it to the trader? makes no sense

The dungeons, for example Tower of Carphin, are not really big and varied - as a reference I recommend taking a look at the dungeons in ESO, they are huge, beautiful and very immersive,
No matter whether it's any caves in the open world or the big raid dungeons, they're all very well done and something like that just invites you to explore - Every dungeon should also have a more or less strong boss at the end who has a chance of dropping set parts so that the players also feel the need to visit this dungeon several times

Performance:
I have a Ryzen 7900X3D, RX7900XTX and 64GB DDR5-6000 Ram, I play on Cinematic, 4k Ultrawide and have around 50-60 fps, the textures are still pretty washed out and the lighting effects could be better, graphics and performance aren't up to par yet Overall, there is still a lot of room for optimization here.

+ an option to enlarge the text size
+ AI voice is extremely ugly (good for miming on the internet but not good for the game)
+ theres a big problem with the active blocking mechanic: u simply dont know when u have to block, just warn the player like 0,5s before the mob attacs like in ESO so u have time to block in right moment

+ sort online status in guild menu
+ Cleric should get exp for rereviving mates
+ make the minimap like this (3:24):

https://youtu.be/EG9UqwqS2ug?t=204

Gee1

Imnotkio

Let me start by saying that the bones of the game are great. Issues aside the general vibe of the game is exactly what it should be and the potential is huge. I will focus here on things that I believe should change, whether it is the focus of this P1 test or not. I'm aware that some of these things are not yet properly implemented and don't indicate the final design, but I will talk about it anyway because I think it is important that we give feedback on those even before we see the final direction.

- pvp flag system options and corruption
The current system gives you 2 options: to hit everyone or no one. This is easily abusable. You can have groups where 1 person doesn't flag and makes so you either don't use any AoEs because you don't want to kill the green, or you risk getting corruption even though 7 out of the 8 in the party are hitting you back. You could have ppl doing raid bosses where everyone in the raid but 1 flag for PVP and this single guy effectively prevents other groups from contesting the boss simply because you can't mass AoE the raid without going corrupt.

The good news is other games have already fixed this issue and it's pretty simple. Just give us more flagging options. We should have at least 3 pvp flags: Offensive, defensive, pacific. In offensive, you would hit everyone including greens. On the defensive you would only hit purple and red players, making so you can pvp against consenting players without the risk of going corrupt from accidentally hitting greens. Pacific would be hit no one. There is also the possibility of splitting the defensive in 2, by adding a flag just to hit red players (so that way you can pvp red without the risk of going purple). An UI element choose display the 3/4 flag options and the one you have selected at the moment should be highlighted. You can see these flagging options properly implemented in past games like Tibia and most recently Ravendawn.

Example from Tibia:

The flagging system also needs a way for you to choose where your support/healing abilities will land. Getting flagged by doing an AoE heal and hitting a random person who is not in your party (or even your enemy) and going purple because of that shouldn't happen.

I think it is important to notice that these types of decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, using menu settings to decide these things is NOT the way to go, as it is not a binary static decision. It needs to be UI elements that you can easily swap between either through clicking on them or keybinds.

A reminder that this flagging system has nothing to do with affiliation. You should not be able to attack party/raid/guild/alliance members, even if they are corrupted (also helps prevent the killing of your corrupted friend situation).

Additionally, I think the way corruption is assigned should change. I think everyone who participated in the kill should get corruption, with different amounts of corruption based on kill participation (last hit gets full corruption, ppl that participated gets 1/2 or 1/3 corruption). This is important as a deterrent for ppl to walk in Zergs doing "safe pvp". You go around with a raid group, kill ppl without worrying about corruption because you're safe in numbers and only 1 of your players will need to clean it and your raid can protect him while he does it. By sharing corruption between everyone that participated in the kill, you make so the more numbers advantage you have in an unconsenting fight, the more you get punished for it. Putting it in design philosophy terms, the way it works currently the more ppl you have, the less risk you have, but the rewards are the same (or even bigger as you can do it more often). With the corruption-sharing design, the more ppl you bring, the risk stays more or less the same as the amount of corruption the party gathers grows as the party size grows.

-Nameplates: allies vs enemies identification
In the same PVP-related vein, we need better visuals on who's who on the battlefield. I think this identification should go by the health bar color, name color, and UI icons. To me, raid and party members' hp should be blue, to differentiate from the neutral green players. Parties with members that did damage to your party should all have their names turned red. The player's affiliation should be clear to you through an icon in their nameplate (same node, same guild, allied node, etc).

In this image (beautifully made using paint) we can easily distinguish who is flagged or corrupted (name colors) and who is our allies and enemies (health bar colors), and an additional icon tells us the players' affiliation.

- power curve and TTK

This is one of the things that I expect to be nowhere near close to the final design intent (and I'm aware we are seeing the beginning of the power curve and it doesn't mean that will be the same power curve in higher levels, I just wanna touch on this regardless). While I do think that the feeling of power spikes after leveling is a good thing, I also believe that the current power spikes will cause some problems with the PVP. This is an open-world PVP game where a level 20 can and will kill a level 15, a 10, or even a level 5. The node war system makes it so players are permanently flagged for days(weeks?) and has nothing stopping them from killing every low-level player in the node. Not only that but caravans, guild wars, castle, and node sieges, will all have restricted pvp with big level differences.

This game has long leveling (which is a good thing) and not only will we see huge level disparities at launch, but after a few months, how will new players participate in these types of content? And to note here I'm not talking about week-old players, I'm talking about months-old players that still haven't reached max level and therefore are being one-shotted by max levels and unable to participate in any of the good and important pvp systems in the game.

This includes gear. If we get insane power spikes from gear, then we will have the same situation but even worse, because a player can take months to reach max level and then they are still months behind players with good gear and are still getting one-shot by them. It is a terrible way to create a power progression for a game with this much focus on emergent pvp gameplay.

Therefore, the power curve MUST be controlled to make it so even new players have some sort of survivability in these conflicts. The power curve should be similar to a saturation curve, like this:

Of course, there will be a power difference between players, but these under-leveled and under-geared players need to stay alive long enough to feel like they are contributing to the fight. Which brings me to the topic of TTK. The TTK we are currently seeing is abysmal (which I hope comes down to balance issues and not design direction). Level 20 players are blowing up level 16 groups before they have a chance to react. This is terrible in a game with so much emergent gameplay. And it will become even worse when level and gear differences increase. THIS CAN NOT BE THE DESIGN DIRECTION. Please, consider increasing the base Time-To-Kill of the game. TTK should be based on something ridiculous like 5 players attacking an AFK lower-level player for 5 seconds and it should go up from there.

This way it makes it incredibly hard for big groups of players with no coordination to kill anyone, even lower-level players being healed and supported by higher-level players. It makes so that skill, teamplay, and coordination are the determining factors in these fights. Armor reduction, anti-healing abilities, and crowd control abilities must be MANDATORY for a group to kill another group. If the group cannot time and coordinate the use of these types of abilities with big damage, they shouldn't be able to kill anyone. But properly timed, these combos should be enough to wipe anyone. With this design, small groups can easily pick off targets while big Zerg uncoordinated groups run around headless chickens and are not able to kill anyone. I would recommend watching Ravendawns' design direction on this aspect (it's not ideal but it's done in a good way).

- Mob density and aoe/ranged abilities
The current pve design has very few ranged and aoe abilities from monsters. There are several encounters in which the tank can just hold aggro and face the monsters away from the rest of the party and no one has to move at all anymore, creating a very static combat scenario. There are a few things that can be done to avoid these scenarios.

1. Add more ranged mobs: That would make it hard for the tank to pull them all into a small area away from all players
2. Give some of these mobs more AoE abilities that can hit a big area around them.
3. Mid-of-combat adds: Adds (like summons) in the middle of combat are spawned with random aggro, making it so they are not instantly glued to the tank and the tank has to work to grab that additional aggro.
4. More balanced threat management: So the tank doesn't hold permanent aggro and the mob can aggro into someone else after a period where the tank has exhausted his big aggro abilities.
5. Smart AI: Mobs with the ability to throw AoE abilities that focus on doing damage on the most number of players, and not on the aggroed player. Also mobs with the ability to do off-aggro skills like debuffs, and CCs (mob focus the CC on healer so he can kill the tank more easily).

- Diverse hunting spots
Following up on the pve design, I would like to address how it feels to grind these spots for multiple hours. Again, I am incredibly in favor of loooong leveling, and if the core gameplay (combat and pve design) is fun then grinding for hours on end is fun. But, inevitably, it can start feeling stale after a few days. This is the time when you eventually move to another grind spot. And here is the catch: if the other hunting spot feels like you're just doing the exact same thing as the other hunting spot, the feeling of staleness won't go away. Eventually, players will be burned out because every place plays the same.

That's why, for this type of game design to work, it needs diverse hunting spots that feel like you're having a completely different encounter than what you were hunting before. Some spots should be focused on a smaller number of mobs, while others should overwhelm you with numbers. Some spots should feel like you need to be moving all the time to stay alive, while other spots should feel like the challenge is in reacting fast enough to the mob's mechanics and dealing with stuff like cleaning stacks and debuffs, interrupting mob's mechanics and grouping to soak damage. You should also use resistances and immunities to shake things up a bit. If a creature is immune to sleep, or immune to being tripped, it can completely change a player's effective rotation and add that feeling of new gameplay. I believe every hunting spot should be treated as a mini-boss encounter, with different mechanics and challenges. Keep the gameplay fresh and the players who like the grind gameplay will never feel burned out on the grind no matter how long it is.

- combat ress material components

I wasn't a big fan of the combat ress idea, but I actually enjoyed it when I experienced it. That being said, I do think there should be a material component to these resurrections, as I believe all death should have a cost. Material components would add another "skill gap" to players who can stay alive and players who are wasteful when hunting, and it would also limit how many times you can ress your party in a single hunting session. It also adds to that prep gameplay before the hunts which is a nice touch

-environment verticality and depth of dungeons

This is one thing that I believe is still to come since everything environment and content-wise seems to be very bones, but I would still like to talk about it. Most of the POIs in the game are incredibly flat. I would like to see dungeons that are so extensive that you get lost in them. I would like to see more underground locations being explored, like the ursine cave but to a much deeper extent. Going into these places should feel like a daunting adventure that requires preparation and commitment.

- Questing and new player experience
I know the new player experience is not the focus right now, and it's far from being complete, but I want to comment on it anyway.

I am 100% against any type of handholding or immersion-breaking in-game icons above NPCS. The only exception is the new player experience. I believe players need to be properly taught a lot before leaving the initial zone. I think the current new player experience does a good job with the professions tutorial, but people still need to know about nodes, about pvp (how to flag, flagging system), and about some of the game's design (ppl will think the quests are bugged if some of them have markers and some don't, if some of them are more clear and some are more secret).

Once they get to a node, they need some sort of mini tutorial on what is a node and what they should do there (citizenship, mayoral roles, commissions, wars, and sieges). A good new player experience doesn't overwhelm the player with everything at first, but it gives them the info on systems as needed (the basics: what is the system, how it works, what is for, etc).

I also believe Quests should follow a "risk vs reward"-ish design. Simpler quests like killing x mobs and talking to a person, with small rewards for completing the quests could always be straight-forward and well indicated in the quest log and map. But quests that give better rewards and are more high profile should be completely hands-off, including mysteries, secrets, and puzzles to solve, and a difficult pve encounter (some solo some group) to finish.

Final feedback
.Citizenship cooldown is not active. Currently, people can cheese the mayor mechanics by becoming citizens of multiple nodes in a short period of time.

. Who gets the glint on the party should be a setting just like the rest of the loot. I believe you should be able to choose the option that the party leader will get all the glint, so the party can later use that pooled glint to run their caravan together. Or at least we should be able to put multiple players' commodities in the same caravan. Running individual caravans is against the group design of the game IMO

northie

...and I'm gonna add another dribble of info I have uncovered from wiki delving for anyone who might have missed it like me - despite having read the alpha two roadmap a few times.

"NPC Ambient behavior" seems to be the goal of Alpha-2 Phase-2 which would be planned for end of December.

Looking forward to it.

Edit: though honestly now that I look at all planned features with a closer eye and compare it to the alpha schedule and current state of the alpha... I'm mentally preparing to add standard 3-6 month delay to all those planned dates.

Snekkers

Hey! So I spent like 45 hours grinding this weekend, got my Ranger up to level 19. This feedback is just what I picked up during this time, but there’s definitely more to come as I keep playing on the weekends.

Phase-Related Feedback

1. Server Tickrate Issues: Feels like servers have a really low tickrate. It messes with everything from mana regen and stamina usage to how often DoTs proc. Even mob AI seems easier because of it. This makes it super hard to regen mana without a Bard since resting barely helps.

2. Queue Timeout Bug: There’s a weird issue with queue timeouts. If you get disconnected while waiting, it sometimes locks you into this timeout error that says it’ll eventually time out but actually won’t. What’s really happening is that a “shadow” of you is still in the queue, and it only times out when your turn in the queue would’ve come up, which can take hours. It’s seriously frustrating.

3. Low Entity Render Distance: Even at max settings, the render distance for entities is really low, like 10 meters or something. It makes running into mobs way too common and finding the next pull a pain. I’m guessing it’s a server performance thing, but it ruins both PvP and PvE.

Gameplay-Related Feedback

1. Tooltip Clarity: The tooltips right now don’t show the actual damage numbers, just the scaling info. I’d love to have the exact calculated damage there by default and only show the scaling if you press a button for advanced info.

2. Gear Power: Gear feels way too strong right now. Levels and skills don’t seem to matter as much as gear. A level 10 character with good gear will destroy a level 9, and it’s even more extreme between levels 19 and 20. I get that gear should matter, but right now it’s all that matters.

3. Node Footprint: The node locations on the map have this obvious square footprint, which looks super out of place. I assume it’s just temporary, but since nodes are such a big deal, it’d be nice if they were integrated better.

4. Map Quality: The map (under the M button) really needs some love. Right now, it looks like something out of a 2005 Unity game. I like having a lot of detail on maps, but it could use some serious polish. Maybe take some inspiration from the Elden Ring map?

Ranger-Related Feedback

1. Longbow vs. Short Bow:

Attack Speed vs. Damage: The current dynamic between longbow and short bow feels off. Longbow has a lower attack speed but is supposed to deal higher damage. However, in practice, the higher damage isn’t impactful enough to justify the slower attack speed.
Range Difference: The range difference between the two bows is just 5m, which doesn’t feel meaningful in actual gameplay. It would be nice to see more distinct ranges, like short bow having around 20-25m and longbow having 40-45m.
Role Distinction: Short bow could be designed as a high DPS, close-range weapon for skirmishing, while longbow could serve as a long-range, slow but heavy-hitting option. This would help solidify their individual roles in combat.
Impact on Ranger Spells: It would be interesting if the attack speed and range of the bows influenced the cooldown and range of Ranger spells. For example, using a short bow could result in lower cooldowns but reduced range and damage on spells, while a longbow could have longer cooldowns but increased spell range and damage.
Mismatch Between Basic Attack and Spell Range: It feels awkward that the basic attack range of the bows is different from the range of Ranger spells. If both bows share the same spell range, the difference in their basic attack range becomes less relevant.
Distance-Based Damage: I heard an interesting suggestion that longbow damage (both basic attacks and possibly abilities) could scale with distance, rewarding players for maintaining maximum range for higher performance. This would add a skill element to using the longbow effectively.

2. Synergy Between Abilities: Ranger abilities don’t seem to combo together well. The only noticeable synergy is that attack speed from Snipe boosts Barrage damage.

3. Barrage as Main Ability: I’m not the biggest fan of Barrage being the main ability, but I can live with it.

4. Class Mechanic: The class mechanic (Marks/Hunts) feels pretty shallow. Hunts are like boring Warrior stances but without the momentum, and Marks are just flat damage buffs against marked targets. They’re not terrible, just not great as the defining class feature.

5. Single-Target Damage: Ranger’s single-target damage is too low compared to Mage. Mages are supposed to be the kings of AoE, which is fine, but their AoE spells are doing as much (or more) single-target damage as Ranger’s single-target abilities. It makes playing Ranger feel pretty underwhelming.

Vaknar

I'll be merging threads into this one

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