Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about 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.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about 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.
Weekly Feedback Request - 02/27/2025
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
1. Mob bugs from leashing to layout in how some mobs are locate. Nearby mob groups can be vastly different in power and level only a little distance between the two groups. More than once I accidently stubbled into an elite camp.
2. Quest bugs. Making sure quests chains work, mobs appear, balancing between quest chapter so it is not a situation the next chapter can only be completed after leveling multiple levels. One level per chapter is fine.
3. Archetype balance between abilities and gear.
4. Visual bugs, including bugs that are triggered by going into the shade and back into the light. Such as the bald bug where female characters with short hair disappears after going into the shade and back into the light, leaving the character bald until relog.
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1. Information on archetypes and later classes.
2. Information on nodes and dungeons.
3. Information on biomes/zones.
1. 3-day market expiration timer bug
2. Tank Grapple failing
3. Mobs becoming green
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1. Material caravans are a currently useless system. More importantly, I cannot foresee, even years from now, why anyone would use them instead of personal bags. For material caravans to be worth the increased risk and reduced speed of the caravan system, it would need to be at least 100 times the capacity of grandmaster personal bags. And right now, apprentice material bags are more than sufficient for any material movement needs.
Therefore, in order for AOC to have the economic pillar of risk while moving materials, it will require broad redevelopment of several of the economic systems, and that complete redesign should probably start soon. Otherwise, moving materials around the interior of the continents will simply be a matter of inconvenience and not risk.
1. ARE YOU GOING TO PRIORITIZE COMMUNITY BUILDERS OR DESTROYERS?
When you build game mechanics that make it possible for one group to make a server a miserable place to play, you may WANT and INTEND to see small groups banding together, but what you WILL see is population dropping.
No one is stuck here. They’ll just go find a more enjoyable way to spend their free time.
Prioritizing community destruction (friction) over community building will bring about the eventual destruction of the population except for the worst of the worst. Let killers control the game and that’s all you’ll have.
Some people view driving people off a game, killing a server, as “winning”. You must take this into account when building your game. You CANNOT depend on the good will of players to protect the community of the game.
They will simply protect their peace and leave.
2. APPEARANCE OF UNFAIRNESS
It has become widely known that certain guilds, streamers, and players are provided unfair advantages from the developers including reduced penalties for exploits. If this is the truth, that’s extremely disappointing, but even the appearance of unfairness is an issue. The appearance of unfairness will kill the game if you don’t get this figured out. People get super angry at this kind of thing and leave games.
3. LOW POPULATIONS
When, not if, but WHEN you have a realm that’s population has largely left, how will you handle this? Transfer? Merge? How are you going to keep the game fun for the players who are plugging along after a population has plummeted?
Your systems, especially around crafting, depend on node building and freeholds. Those depend on large enough populations to build and maintain them. But your game is not friendly to casuals or solo players right now so how are you going to keep it from falling apart when populations drop too low to do anything?
4. CATCHING UP
And related to all of this is the experience for people who start the game late or have fallen behind. If you design this game so they can never catch up and are perpetually a lower class citizen because certain groups are allowed to gatekeep the upper echelons of gear and content, then you will drive away the player base you need to keep realms alive. If the leveling experience, the solo player experience, the small guild experience is miserable, people will leave before finding a group to do content with.
There has to be a better way to catch up.
People will leave if they see no reasonable way to reach the top when they’re behind, if it appears there is unfair leeway given to certain guilds or people, if the game becomes a miserable way to spend their free time. You MUST prepare for and address this now, for the sake of the future of this game.
Alpha Two Phase II Feedback
Top 3-5 Most Important Bugs:
1. landscape breaks and river distortions/inconsistencies
2. Some mobs are hyper aggressive and have super speed
3. Login = fall through ground bottomless pit style
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1. Ability to look at all city's buy orders remotely to see what they need before you spend the 10+ minutes running there
2. Consistent messaging and awareness monitoring of wars from guilds and nodes. maybe some fog of war for those not involved to prevent external unbalanced influences
3.large limit caps on similar items on a single node marketplace in order to encourage item spread and increase trade, intention being node growth without long wagon train day that seemed to upset others.
Market Searching - Major win in my books to have searching by item and rarity. Thank you!
Turning with Keyboard - I logged in on Thursday and for the first time I was able to actually use my keyboard to turn in a functional manner. No more turning in slow motion. Fighting is so much easier.
For context, I have carpal tunnel and it's really important that I'm able to vary how I'm using my hands. Repetitive stress is bad, so being able to switch from keyboard to mouse and back is great.
Timer Variation on Gatherables - This is already helping the gatherable rarity issues. Can't wait to see the rest of the system.
Aquatic Mounts!!! - OMG so much fun that we can now explore underwater!
Tropics are cool - Very cool area. Gorgeous water and light.
Concerns & Suggestions:
Secondary Archetypes
I am completely serious about this. If secondary archetypes are not substantive and actually make a significant difference to how the classes play, don't bother implementing them. If they're only cosmetic and flavor, the system needs to be relabeled as "optional class flavor." I was super excited about having 64 class options, but if they're not actual classes, calling them "classes" while not delivering on the promise of 64 classes will just piss of the masses, including myself.
Character Creator
Please please have a vastly improved character creator for Phase III. We will be creating characters that we will be playing for potentially years. I want a pretty character. Pretty pretty please.
Mixed-Level Groups
I want more options to group with people of different levels. Obviously carrying needs to be avoided but please let me play with my friends and still be able to level.
Chat System
Ok, I can see some changes were made to the system. Thank you for working on it. But the fact that I can't just keep typing to the same person in tell without clicking back into the box for each line of text is SO IRRITATING. I'll be honest, the fact that chat has been a clusterfuck actually makes me mad. This is not effing new tech. For all the gods' sake, copy some other working system from 20 years ago if you can't figure this out.
1 account = 1 vote per server
Mayor systems should be 1 vote per account per server. Solves a lot of election tomfoolery.
Benefits of Citizenship
There needs to be more benefits to being a citizen. Right now, it is more advantageous to be node-less than to be a citizen.
Eternal War
There needs to be a cooldown in how often a node or guild can be wardec'ed so players aren't stuck in eternal warfare (ex. Joeva on Vyra).
Also there should be a timer on wars. When time runs up, add up the score and declare a winner.
XP Variety
I don't mind a slow grind - seriously, if it takes me months to get to max level I'm cool with that - but I cannot stand a slow monotonous grind. Please include a wide variety of activities that will give decent xp.
Fishing
The current system (which I understand is mostly a placeholder) is pointless. This should be an interactive profession that requires some attention from the player.