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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.
Subject: Feedback on Recent Stat and TTK Changes
tmx-test
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two
Subject: Feedback on Recent Stat and TTK Changes
As an active player who has been deeply engaged with the game’s systems and combat, I wanted to offer some feedback on the recent stat changes and the increase in time-to-kill (TTK), which I believe have had a significantly negative impact on gameplay.
1. Stat Fatigue & Diminished Clarity
The recent change to item stats—moving from small, easily understandable values (e.g., +1–2 Strength or Intelligence) to values in the hundreds or thousands—has introduced a sense of "stat fatigue." These inflated numbers make it more difficult for players to parse the value of upgrades, creating confusion and diminishing the sense of progression. This mirrors a problem seen in other MMORPGs, such as World of Warcraft, which led them to implement multiple stat squishes over the years to restore clarity and meaning to gear upgrades.
2. Enchanting System Downgrade
Previously, enchanting gear felt meaningful and rewarding. Each enchant provided noticeable stat increases across the board, and the waterfall nature of stats meant that crafted and enchanted gear could be tailored in a way that felt impactful and unique. Now, enchantments contribute less than 1% to an item’s total stats, making them feel negligible. This removes a core layer of the gearing loop and turns enchanting from an exciting gold sink into something that’s barely worth engaging with.
Instead of altering the core enchantment system, a more balanced solution to TTK could have involved scaling down the offensive impact of Strength and Intelligence (e.g., reducing power gain per point), while simultaneously increasing the value of Constitution and Mentality to enhance survivability and defensive play.
3. PvP Feels Sluggish and Less Engaging
Ashes of Creation's PvP combat was one of its standout features—fast-paced, tactical, and rewarding. The recent changes have made it feel sluggish and unresponsive. With lower damage, reduced healing effectiveness, and haste being nerfed, combat lacks the tension and immediacy it once had.
From extensive PvP testing and scrims, we’ve found that engagements now often devolve into prolonged focus-targeting with raid-wide callouts, excessive in-combat resurrecting, and battles often only ending when support players run out of mana. This doesn’t encourage dynamic team play—it promotes monotony. If the intention was to raise TTK, a better approach would have been to distribute more defensive cooldowns and interrupts across classes to introduce tactical depth, rather than simply stretching fights by reducing all throughput.
4. PvE Combat Feels Chore-Like
Combat satisfaction in PvE has also been significantly reduced. Previously, players enjoyed the impact and power their characters exhibited when taking down mobs, bosses, and caravans. Now, everything feels slower and more punishing—not because it’s more challenging, but because combat lacks the visceral feedback and pacing that made it enjoyable. This undermines the PvE experience, turning engaging encounters into drawn-out slogs.
5. Loss of a Unique Gearing Experience
One of the most innovative parts of Ashes was its gearing system. Crafting high-rarity gear at lower levels and progressing through enchanting created a sense of agency and investment. Unfortunately, with the shift in stat scaling and the devaluation of early-level gear, players now skip directly to farming mobs for basic level 20 gear. This erases a large portion of the game's progression loop and removes incentive to interact with crafting, enchanting, or the broader economy during the early to mid-game.
The previous issue with static nodes could have been addressed through greater PvP contestability or randomization, rather than reworking the entire gearing model. The unique path of character progression through gear rarity and enchantment was one of Ashes’ strongest differentiators—and it should be preserved.
Closing Thoughts
While the intent to increase TTK is understandable, the way it was implemented has hurt multiple aspects of what made Ashes fun and engaging. A more targeted approach—such as tuning primary stat scaling and adjusting enchantment costs across tiers—could have maintained the unique gearing and combat identity of the game while achieving balance.
We appreciate your commitment to developing a living, evolving MMO, and we hope this feedback will be taken into consideration to restore the game's momentum and preserve what made its systems truly enjoyable.
*TM*
As an active player who has been deeply engaged with the game’s systems and combat, I wanted to offer some feedback on the recent stat changes and the increase in time-to-kill (TTK), which I believe have had a significantly negative impact on gameplay.
1. Stat Fatigue & Diminished Clarity
The recent change to item stats—moving from small, easily understandable values (e.g., +1–2 Strength or Intelligence) to values in the hundreds or thousands—has introduced a sense of "stat fatigue." These inflated numbers make it more difficult for players to parse the value of upgrades, creating confusion and diminishing the sense of progression. This mirrors a problem seen in other MMORPGs, such as World of Warcraft, which led them to implement multiple stat squishes over the years to restore clarity and meaning to gear upgrades.
2. Enchanting System Downgrade
Previously, enchanting gear felt meaningful and rewarding. Each enchant provided noticeable stat increases across the board, and the waterfall nature of stats meant that crafted and enchanted gear could be tailored in a way that felt impactful and unique. Now, enchantments contribute less than 1% to an item’s total stats, making them feel negligible. This removes a core layer of the gearing loop and turns enchanting from an exciting gold sink into something that’s barely worth engaging with.
Instead of altering the core enchantment system, a more balanced solution to TTK could have involved scaling down the offensive impact of Strength and Intelligence (e.g., reducing power gain per point), while simultaneously increasing the value of Constitution and Mentality to enhance survivability and defensive play.
3. PvP Feels Sluggish and Less Engaging
Ashes of Creation's PvP combat was one of its standout features—fast-paced, tactical, and rewarding. The recent changes have made it feel sluggish and unresponsive. With lower damage, reduced healing effectiveness, and haste being nerfed, combat lacks the tension and immediacy it once had.
From extensive PvP testing and scrims, we’ve found that engagements now often devolve into prolonged focus-targeting with raid-wide callouts, excessive in-combat resurrecting, and battles often only ending when support players run out of mana. This doesn’t encourage dynamic team play—it promotes monotony. If the intention was to raise TTK, a better approach would have been to distribute more defensive cooldowns and interrupts across classes to introduce tactical depth, rather than simply stretching fights by reducing all throughput.
4. PvE Combat Feels Chore-Like
Combat satisfaction in PvE has also been significantly reduced. Previously, players enjoyed the impact and power their characters exhibited when taking down mobs, bosses, and caravans. Now, everything feels slower and more punishing—not because it’s more challenging, but because combat lacks the visceral feedback and pacing that made it enjoyable. This undermines the PvE experience, turning engaging encounters into drawn-out slogs.
5. Loss of a Unique Gearing Experience
One of the most innovative parts of Ashes was its gearing system. Crafting high-rarity gear at lower levels and progressing through enchanting created a sense of agency and investment. Unfortunately, with the shift in stat scaling and the devaluation of early-level gear, players now skip directly to farming mobs for basic level 20 gear. This erases a large portion of the game's progression loop and removes incentive to interact with crafting, enchanting, or the broader economy during the early to mid-game.
The previous issue with static nodes could have been addressed through greater PvP contestability or randomization, rather than reworking the entire gearing model. The unique path of character progression through gear rarity and enchantment was one of Ashes’ strongest differentiators—and it should be preserved.
Closing Thoughts
While the intent to increase TTK is understandable, the way it was implemented has hurt multiple aspects of what made Ashes fun and engaging. A more targeted approach—such as tuning primary stat scaling and adjusting enchantment costs across tiers—could have maintained the unique gearing and combat identity of the game while achieving balance.
We appreciate your commitment to developing a living, evolving MMO, and we hope this feedback will be taken into consideration to restore the game's momentum and preserve what made its systems truly enjoyable.
*TM*
11
Comments
1. Stat Clarity is Severely Lacking
The system was already confusing when 1 Strength equaled 3 Power Rating, and 3 Power Rating only amounted to 1 Power. Now, it’s even worse. The Power Rating conversion varies depending on the gear equipped—sometimes it’s a 50:1 ratio, other times it’s 20:1. There’s no consistency or clarity.
How are players supposed to make informed decisions about gear upgrades when the numbers behind them are so obscure? Why not just present the data transparently? Something like, “This piece gives 4.3 Power Rating” would be straightforward. Instead, we’re presented with overly complex conversions involving Strength, Power Rating, actual Power, gear slot modifiers, and bonus attributes—none of which are clearly explained.
It feels unnecessarily complicated and creates a frustrating barrier to understanding core game mechanics.
2. Enchanting Has Lost Its Purpose
Enchanting used to be a central and rewarding part of the progression system. Now, with the current flat 1% scaling per level, the system feels dull and unrewarding. Realistically, pushing gear to +20 for a marginal +3 Power gain over others is not worth the investment of time or resources.
There’s no real risk vs. reward incentive—just a high-risk, low-reward grind. The scaling needs to be re-evaluated to feel meaningful and worthwhile, especially at higher levels. Right now, it feels like players are being punished for engaging with a core progression mechanic.
3. PvP TTK Adjustments Feel Misguided
I understand and support the intention to reduce the frequency of one-shots in PvP and create longer, more tactical fights. However, the chosen method feels unnecessarily disruptive.
The previous system could’ve achieved this with a few thoughtful tweaks—adjusting the Power Rating ratio from 3:1 to 5:1 and enhancing armor scaling from enchants, for example.
Instead, this patch overhauled the system in a way that feels rushed and unexplained. The lack of transparency from the design team about the reasoning behind these changes only adds to the confusion and concern. It gives the impression that changes are being made arbitrarily, without a clear guiding vision.
Final Thoughts:
This patch introduces confusing mechanics, unintuitive scaling, and significantly impacts core gameplay systems in a negative way. Players are left unsure of what direction the game is heading in, and without clear communication from the developers, confidence in the design direction is understandably shaken.
In its current form, these changes are not enjoyable and difficult to recommend.
The main issue 90% of players complained about was enchanting. Ridiculous power gap and completely broke the game for the non-sweaties.
Enchanting is the endgame of progression. You're already at 95~99% power cap, and enchanting takes you to 100%. Like every endgame progression path, it should be hundreds of hours for the smallest percentages gained.
you're part of the vocal minority that was on the winning end of the broken system and asking for it to remain broken so you can keep winning
PvE is completely fine, barely changed.
PvP is much more skill and coordination-based now. Before, all you had was press W and use your big damage cooldowns. Currently, even at 8v8 fights which is the biggest TTK of the game, you can easily wipe out the other party by properly using debuffs and focusing damage at the right time. If you can't kill anyone, that's a sign you were being carried by gear and a low-skill gameplay ceiling.
I do agree with crafting gear, though. Remove rare and under gear mob drops past level 10. The benches and node progression will gate the progression, and we will use crafted level 10 gear for months before level 20 gear unlocks.
There are plenty of well-designed systems in other MMORPGs; they should take inspiration from them. Right now, they’re just making things more complicated. Even in an alpha, it's better to start with a solid, functional system and refine it as development progresses, rather than building something just to keep changing and reworking it.
That kind of approach burns through a serious budget. They really need to take a step back and design a coherent system one that’s mathematically balanced, adds real value through item progression (like color tiers), and maintains consistency across weapons and armor. Otherwise, I fear the whole thing will spiral out of control, and we’ll end up completely lost.
IMO this entire clown fiesta happened due to 2 problems, namely early game tempering being too strong and INT/STR focused builds oneshotting people without getting oneshot in return.
For the former I think it's entirely justified to have a level 0 item be as strong as a level 20 item as long as you've spent a huge amount of gold to get it to that point. As for the latter, why did they have to nerf all stats across the board instead of just buffing CON/MEN? That's a real head scratcher.
I'd argue that the coordinated claps in PVP did not feel tactical - especially considering melee classes were underplayed and ranged classes all spiked power and ignored defense. A variety of factors contributed to the meta that emerged.
By adjusting the gear and dealing with scaling, hopefully they've given themselves the room to work on abilities, cooldowns, and combos - to help things feel less sluggish. Hopefully it also gives them room to continue to iterate and improve on the crafting and gearing systems. I'd love to see a game emerge where a variety of builds and gearsets are viable.
Dwarven Guild est. 1996. Hammers High!
Don't think I could disagree more, honestly I feel like it's coming from someone that plays the game 2 hours a week and doesn't understand the core pivotal system of the current game. First, this is an MMORPG, not a competitive Esport, if this game requires 1000 hours to gain +5% stat buff over someone that played 25hours. People are just not going to do it. They will log off and play something else because the time investment is not gonna be worth it, and only log back in when actual content is happening, node war, world boss, sieges, castles, etc. This is already happening in the current state of the game where server pop is in constant decline for that last few weeks/months because there's no content.
Now you might think "Good then", except no, this is exactly how the game will die. If people are not engaged in the game they will care less, if they don't care, they won't login when an event happens. And slowly but surely, your server pop will die and that will be the end of that. Or the game devs will turn back to the lazy ways of fake engagement they've been using for years. Login daily rewards, Daily quests, FOMO Events, all that stuff that is boring, repetitive and slowly sucks away your fun and your soul until you uninstall.
I seriously hope Ashes will do better than this.
Enchanting was far too powerful before and one-autoattack PvP wasn't even worth engaging in.
2. Actually, enchanting now and then increased stats by 1% per enchantment level. It was just rounded up to nearest int. Currently if you enchant your gear to +8, you will have 8% power gain. And that's how it should be. Enchanting is just a flavor, not main source of power. Before stat changes enchanting was the main power source, providing over 50% of total player power.
3. Before changes everyone was one tapping each other without any kind of skill. Snipes hitting for 7.5k, clerics healing for 10k. It was fiesta, that's why people wanted intrepid to change it. Now combat in gvg require more coordination. I understand that it negatively affects the groups that lack said coordination and relied on one person doing AoE one shot.
4. Combat pace itself in PvE did not change. So mobs might be dying slower, but they didn't die fast before anyway. Your cooldowns are the same, also you can easly hit over 250 power. That's more than we had during leveling. So how come PvE is bad now, and wasn't bad before?
5. Ashes of Creation gearing was not innovative. It was just chase for heroic+ gear to get most possible stat lines and then spam enchanting it. Gear still matters, I would argue that it matters even more now, because it's your main power source, instead of enchanting. Obviously lv20+ characters will chase after lv20 gear, not level 10 gear. I would still happen with enchanting. The only reason why it didn't happen is because we have limited amount of nodes and having access to lv20 crafting took some planning and only happened after we got map expansions.
I have some different thoughts on this system. I feel that before enchanting was entirely too power. On the other hand it is now nearly useless until you are min-maxing on BiS gear. I would like to see enchanting be closer to a 10-15% increase rather than less than 1% or a 800% increase.
Hard for me to fully comment on this, I feel like we have had too little time and many people have not adjusted or even found what the new meta for PvP will be. I do know before these changes that I found PVP extremely boring in large scale engagements due to having very little counter-play to what the enemy was doing due to TTK being too fast. It was impossible to track if a ranger was sniping you from a ball of 100 people and it being an effective one shot, isn't fun or engaging. Most engagements were just fully diving into the enemy team and striking first usually meant a win if number of people were close.
I agree with the sentiment, but I my reasoning for it is because every mob has been turned into a non-engaging health sponge. They don't really do damage and mob health was not lowered in the same proportion that damage was nerfed. Also xp being tied directly to health has had the consequence of needing to kill many more mobs to level, this should probably be addressed and more xp should be tied to mob level instead of health.
I agree I made a post about this issue, explaining my thoughts and a potential solution that is too long to put here.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/67106/gear-level-matters-too-much-gear-quality-needs-to-scale-non-linear#latest
HAHA, what do you mean PvE barely changed? I can go solo 3 star elites on my rogue because PvE now is piss easy thanks to mobs doing alot less damage but at the same time having alot more health. The only way i die in PvE now is if and when i'm out of mana because things take it's own sweet time to die now. PvE is a full on long drawn out borefest.
You are delusional if you think PvE has barely changed. Lmao.
1. its not tempering, tempering is different system that is not added yet
2. enchanting giving 12% more stats is already good enough. But for the sake of argument, sure, we didnt get higher, but we are using common enchanting scrolls and common charms. Eventually we will have opportunity to have both of those legendary to make enchanting to 20 almost guaranteed, although insanely expensive
Over all on the feel wise front I feel like we went 100% in the opposite direction and need to split the difference. Top end players were pushing 600 power before, we are at 200 power now, and I feel the appropriate level is around 400.
I do feel like enchanting definitely isn't worth it anymore and now the market will inflate as players don't have a good gold sink.
I also feel like the difference between a common and legendary doesn't really matter as much as it used too either.
That's an easy fix, just need to adjust some mob numbers. You don't need to break enchanting and PVP TTK again to fix it.
you realize that ppl on ptr were just barely 300 power and fights were ending in 3 seconds?
also enchanting to +10 makes you 10% stronger, its not nothing.
I've been playing MMOs since before you were born, probably. We have always grinded for an absolutely long time for low gains on endgame. That's the old-school way of doing it. It's why pvp MMOs worked before and why these new zoomer low TTK Korean gear MMOs like archeage die.
If you and your low skill gamer friends don't enjoy a game where gear matters but skill matters too, you can go play some p2w game and go pretend you are good by buying your gear.
This just delays when you get your gear. It's not meaningful progression or a fix. It's not even a band-aid.
There is no clear sense of gear progression with the new stat curves because it's harder to tell what a good upgrade is at the higher end. They just replaced STR and INT with Power Rating which makes gearing more convoluted.
This just killed enchanting as well since it's not meaningful it eliminates the end game gold sink. This "fix" sounds like it comes from someone who barely plays the game to understand how much this change impacted.
Enchants at +10 currently provide a 10% power gain
205/127 is a 61% power increase.
If this is not enough progression and power gap for you guys, I'm sorry but you want a game that the only thing that matters is gear
Yeah Now I know for sure you don't play the game and probably barely hit 25 recently. Getting full +8 takes a week or two, not a problem, getting full +10 takes months. spending months of time farming gold, pushing enchants, having items failed, reset, destroyed, recrafted for a meager +2% over someone that played 20hours, is NOT rewarding.
The stat overhaul was implemented to address major balance issues—especially with the previous enchantment system. Under the old system, players could add +20 to a primary stat on gear that started with only +3 to +6, leading to a single item having up to 300% more effectiveness than its base value. Multiplied across 16 gear slots (9 armor pieces, 2 weapons, 5 jewelry), this could result in roughly 4,800% combat effectiveness—which was simply unsustainable.
To counter this, the developers increased base stat values and proportionally reduced enchantment impact. Now, fully enchanting all gear may offer around a 10–15% overall power boost, which—while more balanced—still feels substantial. This system also doesn't account for additional bonuses from gems, tempering, food, scrolls, elixirs, and potions.
That said, I’d propose compressing the enchantment tiers and reducing their total quantity. Instead of requiring 320 total enchants (16 gear slots × 20 levels), reducing this to 5 levels per piece (80 total) would be much more reasonable and approachable.
Similarly, I’d like to see a hard cap of ~5% gain per consumable type (food, elixirs, scrolls, etc.), so that stacking every buff doesn’t result in an excessive power gap. If each category capped at 5%, the maximum total boost would be ~30%—enough to reward min-maxing without creating untouchable power disparities.
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3. PvP Feels Sluggish and Less Engaging
PvP 1v1s definitely feel slower, but not without silver linings. Combat now encourages tactical callouts and group coordination, where shot-calling specific targets and flanking support players can turn the tide of a fight.
In my experience on the NDA PTR, small group skirmishes and node sieges felt much more dynamic. There was a clear ebb and flow to fights, and the presence of a rogue or two sneaking into the backline created meaningful pressure. It’s no longer just “zerg, root, push”—and that’s a good thing.
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4. PvE Combat Feels Chore-Like
PvE definitely feels slower, but this seems intentional. Group content is once again designed for 6–8 players, rather than being soloed or duo’d like before. Losing the ability to nuke large pulls feels like a natural shift back toward cooperative gameplay.
We're also only halfway to max level, as reflected in the skill trees—so pacing will evolve. Mana management, for example, now requires attention. Instead of pulling endlessly and nuking groups down in 3 spells, people must actually monitor their resources, which adds welcome depth (though the system still needs tuning).
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5. Gear Rarity and Scaling
I feel Gear rarity should be compressed. The jump from common to legendary gear is currently too extreme, which can lead to “legendary or bust” mentalities. A more subtle, linear progression—something like 1–2% stat increases per rarity level—would make upgrades feel meaningful without being mandatory.
This would ensure that legendary gear feels like a true bonus, not a requirement, and that each step up in rarity has impact without overshadowing the rest of the system.
Murkwater
Woaw aggresive much? Lmao funny kind of snowflake here. First, to that first comment, no you don't. You just don't, don't pretend like you're an OG or you know me, you're just not and you don't.
Secondly, no it wasn't. again no, stop talking about things you know nothing about or are getting too old to remember properly.
Old school MMO systems enchanting has always scaled with level, the higher the risk the higher the boost. Go look back at the old source material of the 2 MMOs that Ashes is inspired of. Early enchanting always been easy and provided low boost, and as it got tougher, you got better boost. Risk vs Reward, rings a bell?
Maybe you were too busy getting farmed in those game as well to remember properly
we are using common enchanting scrolls and common charms mate, are you dense?
why every enveus player always defaults to "Yeah Now I know for sure you don't play the game and probably barely hit 25 recently." when they dont have anything smart to say?
Other than the bloated stat numbers, this change has been refreshing. Gear is where they should be, I understand more fine tuning will come but you're in the right direction intrepid