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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
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.
Post got deleted - Followup on rage quit
Xeeg
Member, Alpha Two
OK, I was pissed and wrote a flame rage quit post. They deleted it, sure. I swore and was upset and maybe said things that arent appropriate for the forums.
But most people replying were missing the point. It wasn't about being an "alpha", it wasn't about current game design or design decisions.
This is the best analogy I can think of for why i got so mad and why i am going to take a long break from this game:
It felt like I was playing a game of D&D and the DM had made some elaborate puzzle that our team had been working on for 3 weeks. It was a very difficult and challenging puzzle, and we failed at multiple parts and were already punished ALOT for failing at various steps, losing half our money and a bunch of items. FINALLY, we get to the very end and there are two doors.
Correct door should give us the loot we have been struggling for, incorrect door throws us down a pit
We solve the puzzle and pick the correct door, but the DM didn't want that so they throw us in the pit anyways.
Thats what it felt like, and thats why I was so mad, and still am.
But most people replying were missing the point. It wasn't about being an "alpha", it wasn't about current game design or design decisions.
This is the best analogy I can think of for why i got so mad and why i am going to take a long break from this game:
It felt like I was playing a game of D&D and the DM had made some elaborate puzzle that our team had been working on for 3 weeks. It was a very difficult and challenging puzzle, and we failed at multiple parts and were already punished ALOT for failing at various steps, losing half our money and a bunch of items. FINALLY, we get to the very end and there are two doors.
Correct door should give us the loot we have been struggling for, incorrect door throws us down a pit
We solve the puzzle and pick the correct door, but the DM didn't want that so they throw us in the pit anyways.
Thats what it felt like, and thats why I was so mad, and still am.
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Comments
Your analogy unfortunately just makes it abundantly clear that it's the latter. Theorycrafting during alpha isn't your primary job. Getting rewards isn't the primary concern. Feeling like you've solved the game and should get rewarded isn't what this stage of development is about.
If you're not satisfied with exploring the game as it is, commenting on what works in the current version, under the condition that all of that knowledge, skill, and group coordination might end up being useless in the next version, then you've missed the objective of testing, sorry. No part of your game exploration at this stage is supposed to matter in any way that benefits you. What's supposed to matter is whether the previous and current version feel nice to play and why, disconnected from how your progress as a player transitions from one version into the next. That you poured effort into the previous version is completely insignificant for the development process. (And, again, should frankly be something you're able to enjoy for your own sake, as a matter of maturity and appreciation for the way you invest your time - otherwise yes, a break would probably be a good idea that you don't really need to be angry about or accuse others for. It's fine, take your break, this doesn't have to be a bad thing.)
I'm sorry your thread got deleted. It probably didn't help if I derailed it slightly, and I suspect it got deleted because someone on weekend moderation duty didn't want to take the risk. It probably didn't deserve to be silenced, unless you said something particularly spicy near the end. Not trying to cause drama about the moderation here, just saying: I disagreed with you, but I do think it's fine for you to discuss your opinion bluntly. [Just doesn't mean there won't be backlash... =P ]
Blown past falling sands…
Now, I'd like a question to mods, what exactly was the reason for the deletion? None of the dicussion in the comments was inflamatory. If anything, we brought up great points of feedback for Intrepid and some of us even asked Xeeg to extrapolate on a few points, which would've helped get even better feedback.
So, @Vaknar @Roshen what was the reason to delete a perfectly fine discussion thread?
Seriously, I see this as a pretty big red flag for the forum moderation.
This is you saying "Into the pit you go!"
We didn't need a tank.
Maybe rather than say my analogy is bad, try to understand my analogy.
👋 The discussion was fine, other parts not so much. If the OP think their original post was wrongfully removed, they can DM me or a CM. But we don't chat about individual mod actions publicly.
And if your whole goal was to just clear that location w/o a tank on principle, then you seem to have succeeded. But the game simply told you "no, we don't want this happening". And like I said in the og thread, I'd imagine that this change came from other servers, where people DID clear that spot w/o a tank a few too many times.
Now pull it together, man. 🤗
Why remove a whole good discussion over a few bad posts, when you could've removed the posts or asked the posters to edit them?
No, I originally went into the area with a full group of 8, tank included. The tank didnt help at all, added nothing to the party or the fight, and didnt get any loot, and only died and got mad.
Same with clerics actually. They were needed for resses or big heals, but 2 bards worked just as well. And a cleric that couldnt turn away from the oculars (which was most of them) were just as bad as anyone else. The most successful team I had was 2 clerics, a bard, a mage, and a ranger. But the ranger got screwed because none of the loot drops were for them, so they left. We once had a party of 3 bards and a cleric that also did well up there.
Even with the promises of fat loot, it took hours to get the grind going, and people died a few times due to ocular spell and left. The frustration wasnt that i couldnt get the right party comp, its that no matter what party comp you had, if people couldnt turn away from the spell and the healers couldnt top up whoever had agro, it took 20m to restart the fight. All it takes is 1 mistake. So you grind for 5m and someone makes a mistake and then 20m of more downtime, AFTER spending 2-3 hours just to get into position.
Overtime I experimented with different party comps based on who was available and willing and had time to even try up there. The less people required the better. Even getting a team of 5 was hard enough, a team of 8 was impossible. No one wants to fight up there. Like i said, there were about 5-10 people on the server that were willing to keep trying there with me, and none of my guild wanted to.
We still dont "need" a tank anymore than a level 5 ranger "needs" a tank to kill a level 5 grelm.
If your argument is that you cant even leave lionhold at level 1 without a balanced group of 8 archetypes then this game is doomed.
I'm fine with my rage post being deleted. I swore and got mad at the devs, whatever. Don't care either way, needed to vent.
I haven't farmed that spot, nor have I really watched how it's farmed, so answer me this. Does the Ocular's ability damage you if YOU're the one looking at it, or is it when the Ocular is looking at you? If it's the latter then, can the ocular be aggro-controlled (i.e. the direction of his gaze)? And can a tank in sub-BiS gear take a hit from the Ocular?
If the answer to my question above is the former, then this particular quote just sounds like a skill issue. Which is mostly prevalent in pugs.
So the question then becomes, why did your guild stop going to that spot? Was it not lucrative enough (this was one of the questions I asked in the OG thread)? Was it too hard for your current guild? Did the guild just stop playing?
If the spot wasn't lucrative then, was it because the gear is shit or doesn't drop often enough? If the gear is shit, why exactly were you so adamant on farming it in the first place? And if it's not shit, then why does no one else try going for it?
If the answer to that is "enchanted lvl10 gear is just easier to get", then there's the main part of the feedback for Intrepid's econ team. If the answer is something else, then I'm real curious about that, cause it would also be great and productive feedback, rather than just complains that Intrepid hates YOU in particular.
So, if you're so staunch about definitely not needing a tank there, and yet you say anyone who you brought there just kept dying to the Ocular, then literally this entire situation just sounds like SKILL ISSUE. You're frustrated that other players in the game don't share your fervor for farming THAT EXACT SPOT, and the ones who are willing to farm it are just shit at the game.
Your issue in the og post was that the Ocular's damage went up by 1k. Which, to me, means that you found a way to farm that spot by literally facetanking a massive nuke w/o an archetype that's literally built for that. And now that this particular shitty strategy got "fixed" - you complain that Intrepid is out to kill you and just you.
If the Ocular attack is meant to be facetanked - the tank is the role to do that. If it's not meant to be facetanked, yet people were still able to do so - Intrepid fixed a bug. And if now there's only a very particular way to not facetank the attack (i.e. if the damage is done when the players are looking at the mob) - you have a skill issue on your hands, and not a dev-related mistake.
You need anything from it?
Spiders be spidery.
Maybe i was misunderstood. I spent a lot of time just forming groups and getting anyone who wanted to try up there to go. Regardless of class. If we needed a tank as well it would be even worse!
Now that they jacked the damage (perhaps as a soft incentive to require a tank?) it was worse. So i got frustrated and rage quit.
The whole point was that it was already hard enough up there, I was already struggling to get teams to go and fight, and they make it even harder?!?
So either the gear that dropped there wasn't worth shit (at least comparatively) or the effort required was just so damn high that even good gear wasn't worth it.
I think an easy fix would be to create some kind of alternative access to the spot (ideally reachable through a quest, imo). This would still allow Ocular to be as hardcore as it is right now, but it would at least create a better incentive for people to at least attempt to farm the spot.
Obviously a much better resolution to all this bs is to just reduce full item drops to near-non-existent and make the crafting side of things a much better/smoother experience. One of the biggest issues with the crafting side is obviously the node buildings being super hard to properly set up. Node sieges might help out with this, because we'd be able to rearrange some of the overall building setup on the server, and of course just having more nodes would help too (as well as lvl4 nodes).
So I guess it'd be a question of "what's harder: adding some ladder/stairs 3d models to the game or adding all the shit I mentioned above".
Most of it was skill issue/learning curve, as you asked about earlier. Once I figured out how to actually get to the grind and do the grind it was fine. I actually solo farmed one ocular once. It took a very long time, but I did it. I also did bard/cleric there once as a duo and it was similar. Doable, but took too long and wasnt efficient. Thats why i started to 4/5 man it. It was the sweet spot.
The problem was I didnt have a core group of people who wanted to keep doing it. Was the reward worth it? I think so, I kept telling my guild about it. They came a few times but all it took was a couple times for the cleric to not turn around properly before they quit and said the juice aint worth the squeeze.
Compounded on this, is that the oculars up there are currently bugged as hell, and the carphin tower is laggy. They will leash back to their original spot and regen to 100% over and over during a battle, randomly. Maybe this is intended behaviour? Shrug. If they behaved normally then yeah maybe i could see them trying to make the spot a little harder. But 4600 dmg on a regular attack? They were already doing that with the spell, which was already causing the spot to be too hard for regular players.
Anyways, I had a few people that were willing to keep trying with me over the past few weeks, and I was finally making progress where I had a few clerics in the realm I had met that knew the spot and could do it successfully. Most of my time and effort had been weeding through random pugs until I trained up enough people to actually do it. And then they jack the regular attack to 1 shot us too. It was just too much man.
This is what i was talking about with the "into the pit" mentality by the devs. It felt like they saw us up there, didnt care that we were struggling as all hell already and didnt really capitalize on anything, and decided to turn up the difficulty dial purely because "people shouldnt be up there" or something.
My caravan already bugged out that morning and yeeted itself 10km off the map. I was tired of caravan runs and bugs. I've already been told by the forums that gathering "isnt for me", so the only thing left is mob grinding and PVP. In order to PVP I need decent gear. This was my last thing to do in the game, and they took it away from me. So I rage quit.
Honestly, that sounds like alpha testing.
You aren't supposed to be here looking for thst reward. Your reward right now comes in the form of making the game better - or at least that is where it should come from.
I know this is just saying " it's alpha, what do you expect", but that is very much the case. The balance in regards to risk vs reward isn't in place yet, and indeed can't be put in place until the classes are fairly well set, the PvP systems are fairly well set, and the PvE content is fairly well set. Since changes to any of these would result in a change to the risk vs reward paradigm, that risk vs reward is essentially the last piece of the game put in place.
This is not likely to change your mind, or make you feel better, or anything like that - but just keep in mind I have seen games in much later stages of development than this where encounters didn't even have their loot tables in place.
Yup, I get it. And no, it doesn't make it feel better. Just the thought of logging in right now gives me electric shock anxiety vibes. My desire has been completely smashed. Time to move on.
Good luck with the game.
same....
I was just thinking about this. To some extent, I agree. Also, I am probably just burnt out and need to take a break anyways.
But on the other hand, I don't agree. Even though we are alpha testing, part of what is driving us IS the reward. I know of at least 3 people who quit just because of the caravans bugging out. Said they would come back later. The time investment to losing the reward was so great that they didnt want to try again until it worked properly.
So yeah, risk vs reward still matters in Alpha testing.
Ashes is not in a state where people should be attempting to play it in a recreational manner - yet many people are trying to play it as their primary means of recreation.
Taking a break from it is probably the best thing you could do.
I'm sure you remember me saying (for years now) that anything social can't be tested during an alpha or beta test - you are experiencing first hand the main reason for that.
As to your last comment that risk vs reward still matters - it matters in terms of needing to get it right for the live game. As you yourself said, people are leaving, but knowing that they are leavig because of things that will be fixed.
That is how it should be. It isn't as if Intrepid can just immediately fix all the issues that the game has that are seeing people leave - they would be able to go live tomorrow if that were the case. Rather, it is a matter of knowing that the fixes people want take time, and temporary fixes shouldn't really be considered. If that means people step away from the test for a while to play some other game, cool, go do that, and come back when you're ready.
I sort of agree, but I also "get it".
I've been testing MMO's since the very early 2000's. I've been involved in tests that didn't even have animated player characters due to how early in development it was. I fully understand what an alpha test is, and what it should be.
But then, I have also been involved in a number of early access MMO's. Some early access MMO's use that early access as a beta test, Pantheon is a great example (the game is currently less playable than Ashes). However, some treat early access as a sneak peak, or a way for the more diehard fans to get in earlier. In many cases, an early access game will have the entire core gameplay in place, and will just add in ancillary systems and update graphics while early access is going on.
Since people conflate alpha/beta/early access (due to there jot actually being a specific difference), I can understand how many people straight up wouldn't know what to expect from an alpha. I can understand how people would think that a game they have paid to access would be in a playable state - even though I know thst isn't how it works.
That is why a good number of my posts over the last few months have been checking people's notion of what an alpha actually is.
No, that's exactly it. They "test" the unfinished game, get to the caravan stage (which is the gatekeeper for much of the end game content), find out that its bugged, report it, and then feel like they have nothing left to test and decide to come back later.
Spending hours and hours just for a caravan to bug out isn't the greatest "lets test that AGAIN" kind of feeling.
The people I talked to said "if they wanted to test the caravans they wouldn't do it in an environment where we have to waste hours of "non-testing time" just to build up and run it." They would expect that if they want the caravans tested, we would be given unlimited money, quick caravans, and just be able to test them quickly.
It's funny to me that people in the forums say "this isnt a game, its a test" yet the environment we are given is one that requires "testers" to grind out the game well beyond anything thats just a "test". We are put in a position to "play" the game because of the time commitment required. So is it a test or is it a game?
Any "testing" environment I've ever been in has been respectful of player time so that we could isolate and test the systems that need to be tested. Not waste time grinding things that dont need to be tested anymore.
I mean, the testing environment should be exactly as respectful of testers time as the game is of players time.
If testers are complaining that the test is not respectful of their time, developers need to address that for the live game.