Everything feels so unfriendly...

Hello,
I wanted to give feedback about the whole informations/UI/crafting and overall feel of the game.

This game feels very player unfriendly in terms of crafting or even knowing what you can craft and where.
If you to craft apprentice lumberjack axe:
- you need to train the apprentice level of lumberjacking (0 info about where/how etc. but let's say you figure that out or ask other people and find it north-east from Lionhold),
- you need to gather ridiculous amount of mats (really I need 10 logs and copper to make one axe?)
- you need to go to the city to craft it,
- now you realize you need to find a better woodshop than in regular city (in my opinion apprentice items should be available in the open and give people time to realize how systems work, journeyman systems should be limited to buildings inside the nodes, until then we are established in the world and +/- know what is going on),
- you manually zoom in through the cities to notice if they got woodshop. Better woodshop is only visible with different color on zoomed minimap, zero informations when you click the node on the world map or anything which is a bit weird,
- you run there and realize that to even craft one basic axe you need to spend 10+ silver (depends on the tax rate),
- after feeling that you finally achieved some great lumberjack axe you realize that it has 0 impact on your gathering, you don't craft any faster, you got like 1% chance to gather 1 more log from each tree and that's it

Seriously, how is it supposed to be fun or engaging? It is more exhausting than exciting in any way. What is the plan of all these systems to work besides some zerg guilds and funelling everything to a single officer in order to make anything in this game? I don't expect to craft any crazy items, but like crafting first green level 10 lumberjacking axe takes either a few gold to buy mats or ages to find better quality than common materials. Why these things are still not adressed after 2+ months?

To sum up, what I would want them to change/look at:
- logical amount of resources for these items (stronger/higher tiers can take more resources, but seriously, tier 1/2 tools should be a good way to introduce us to crafting/gathering/processing)
- info what I need in order to craft that item (like red fonted message "Require Woodshop Tier 2 Station")
- instead of zooming in to every node and look around for coloured icons just click on the map marker of the city and have info what is built there (it can be limited to cities that you only visited or have unlocked emberspring)
- some mail message or mini quest when you get level 10 novice as to where to learn a skill or who to look for. Like a letter to your mailbox saying "Congratulations young adventurer, you should visit XXX around briarmoor farms".
- instead of Lumberjacking speed rating info (which I have no idea what it is) just give me info what speed is it, just like attack speed rating converts to attack speed visually in character panel. You can't find that stuff for artisans so I have no idea what 100 speed rating for professions means.

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Dygz

ELWOW wrote: »

Excuses excuses, no wonder you got like 4-5 posts per day for over 4 years, you are too invested into this and see no fault in terms of game design and dev lack of love in terms of some core designs. They prefer to rework visuals of skills for 3rd-4th time over fixing core systems in the game. They waste time on reworking skills of unfinished classes over fixing or atleast trying to solve very important aspects in the game. I guess fixing visuals are more important for ALPHA as you stated 10 times already 😀

I worked at Activision for 10 years, so I understand how development and testing truly work.
I don't think I've said anything about the game design in this thread.
Right now, the devs are still heavily focused on fixing optimization/stability. They will get around to "fixing core systems" in the next couple of months. Though - they have adjusted plenty of other stuff in Alpha 2 besides just reworking the visuals of skills.

AirborneBerserker

@ELWOW I had a similar experience with getting a mining pick. Took 9 hours to farm the mats and get to the point where i could actually make the pick axe. The worst part is that it doesn't actually make a difference. Still takes the same amount of time to mine things with the new pick as the old one, which makes one wonder why the stat is on the Pick at all if it makes no difference.

As for all the people saying "just ask for help" yeah let me telegraph to every player in the game that I have 9 hours worth of copper in my inventory and ill be heading to this exact location, I'm sure 100% of them are all stand up people and none of them would every pull some fuckery like waiting to see my name one shot me and get 5 hours of mining done in 4 seconds.

Azherae

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

As for all the people saying "just ask for help" yeah let me telegraph to every player in the game that I have 9 hours worth of copper in my inventory and ill be heading to this exact location, I'm sure 100% of them are all stand up people and none of them would every pull some fuckery like waiting to see my name one shot me and get 5 hours of mining done in 4 seconds.

This part tho...

Sure, we are supposed to make friends and find people, but if anything really encapsulates why AoC is 'unfriendly', particularly outside of the concept of just testing, it's this right here.

Sure, this is true for most MMOs, no one is ever obligated to help you, but the sheer potential for messing with this is really up there.

Reminds me of the slavers in Elite a little too much...

context: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/letl7w/announcement_from_the_new_pilots_initiative_do/

Obv not the same, but we ain't far off.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

This part tho...

To me personally it's a global chat problem. How can tribalism of node/guild based gameplay be promoted if literally anyone can just type in global for groups and/or trades.

Of course people will be more aggressive to each other when there's barely any sense of community. Especially when the previous server culture gets disrupted by an inflow of people with a drastically different culture (i.e. Vyra in P2).

thunderfury2024

Dygz wrote: »

Alpha testing is not necessarily intended to be fun and engaging (as Steven continues to remind people).
Especially not before the devs are focused on balancing Crafting.

That's just a cheap excuse. Why test the game if it's boring.

Every WoW alpha was 1000 times more fun than the current game.

ELWOW

thunderfury2024 wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Alpha testing is not necessarily intended to be fun and engaging (as Steven continues to remind people).
Especially not before the devs are focused on balancing Crafting.

That's just a cheap excuse. Why test the game if it's boring.

Every WoW alpha was 1000 times more fun than the current game.

I agree, and I stated it after he said that. On top of that we are like 20+ years after WoW's alpha, we got tons of more tools to make the systems more viable and user friendly. We have tons of games to take some pros and cons and make it better. Sadly there is audience that will protect this game for whatever reasons no matter how wrong devs will be. I can't understand prioritizing many pointless fixes over fixing huge and most important systems in the game. This should be main goal and focus to make it in good state as soon as possible and later on just tweak it to not be too overpowered or undertuned. Currently every important system feels like bugged or placeholder state and all we got in patch notes are some movement/feeling/mounts fixes or visual fixes. Even worse, they try to fix treasure hunting as fast as possible to fix the core problem of the game that we lack materials. Giving us 20+ copper or zinc or whatever resource that is missing on the map to the treasure hunt is not a good way to fix these problems. I shouldn't get 20 logs of wood from treasure hunting, I should get something that is truly a treasure or atleast feels like one.

Dygz

thunderfury2024 wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Alpha testing is not necessarily intended to be fun and engaging (as Steven continues to remind people).
Especially not before the devs are focused on balancing Crafting.

That's just a cheap excuse. Why test the game if it's boring.

Every WoW alpha was 1000 times more fun than the current game.

Same reason that you pay to test the Alpha - because you want to support the devs while they work to create game systems you eventually want to play.
WoW let people in at a later stage in the development - and - we didn't pay to test WoW.
Steven warned us many times that Alpha 2 is a true Alpha; not a fun Early Access situtation.

Dygz

Azherae wrote: »

This part tho...

Sure, we are supposed to make friends and find people, but if anything really encapsulates why AoC is 'unfriendly', particularly outside of the concept of just testing, it's this right here.

Sure, this is true for most MMOs, no one is ever obligated to help you, but the sheer potential for messing with this is really up there.

Reminds me of the slavers in Elite a little too much...

context: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/letl7w/announcement_from_the_new_pilots_initiative_do/

Obv not the same, but we ain't far off.

Interesting.
I was never expecting to make friends in the game during Alpha 2.
I've always been expecting to collaborate with friends already formed from Discord and the Forums.

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