Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Options
How much does the quality of the game drop
Vadim199
Member, Alpha Two
Many players came to this game remembering the old WOW, RF online, Linage.
What we have in fact, you can win in PVP can only Zerg. Only Zerg can participate in any game event (Either get killed or do much more damage). Only a Zerg member can wear something (They just won't let you into a dungeon without PVP without letting anyone take damage). Only Zerg members can level up (all spots are taken by them). A good example would be the Soul Deus guild, which was able to destroy the entire server from which a large number of players left.
Cities are not even 1\5 unlocked.
The stability of the server is falling step by step. Play is no longer possible freezes for more than 3 seconds.
Now the big question is why?
Assuming maybe because there are a lot of players on the servers. I think so.
What are the developers doing? Reduce the number of servers (Yay))))
Which is why I've lost over 50 friends from this game. No desire to enter this project. There are no players in the game and there are only testers.
None of the developers do not think about the players, do not even call such you say “testers” and consider it normal that people bought your not cheap game in which you only mock them.
+ Constant cheating with deadlines under the pretext of gifts for testers, etc.
I made 50 friends in this game, lost 50 friends and lost a lot of time without getting the fun I paid for.
So far the game is made for 2 / 10
I do not recommend it to anyone
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
What we have in fact, you can win in PVP can only Zerg. Only Zerg can participate in any game event (Either get killed or do much more damage). Only a Zerg member can wear something (They just won't let you into a dungeon without PVP without letting anyone take damage). Only Zerg members can level up (all spots are taken by them). A good example would be the Soul Deus guild, which was able to destroy the entire server from which a large number of players left.
Cities are not even 1\5 unlocked.
The stability of the server is falling step by step. Play is no longer possible freezes for more than 3 seconds.
Now the big question is why?
Assuming maybe because there are a lot of players on the servers. I think so.
What are the developers doing? Reduce the number of servers (Yay))))
Which is why I've lost over 50 friends from this game. No desire to enter this project. There are no players in the game and there are only testers.
None of the developers do not think about the players, do not even call such you say “testers” and consider it normal that people bought your not cheap game in which you only mock them.
+ Constant cheating with deadlines under the pretext of gifts for testers, etc.
I made 50 friends in this game, lost 50 friends and lost a lot of time without getting the fun I paid for.
So far the game is made for 2 / 10
I do not recommend it to anyone
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
0
Comments
As for zergs - we have no proper tools to deal with them yet. No properly balanced guild wars or node wars, no fully designed corruption and bounty hunting, no proper PvE AI that would react to a zerg in the best way possible. So of course zergs would dominate right now.
Though, none of this is to say that on the full release zerg still won't win most of the time. That's simply the nature of these kinds of games. It's impossible to completely stop a zerg from winning in an open world mmo. And with Steven's love for that kind of gameplay, it was kind of obvious that the game would inevitably have the design that appeals to zergs. So the best thing we can do is just keep reminding Steven to implement at least a few tools that help players deal with zergs.
As for your friends. If they left because they completely dislike the game - that's a shame, but they wouldn't have stuck around either way. But if they left because the game is unfinished, then just keep their information and then contact them when the game does release.
But if you look at the total number of players that were there when there were a lot of servers and after they started to be cut, you can see that players are leaving.
Servers in their regions have been removed and they are trying to increase the number of players on the server without taking into account the fact that the choice of servers was due to the geolocation of players
And the Zerg problem is obvious and I realize that there is nothing that can be done about it directly.
It should be solved by adding points of interest for solo players or small groups in PVP zones or adding such points of interest in general.
Right now there are 6 such points of interest and all of them are places to get ingredients.
It just results in players being taken away from the nearest servers.
And there's no challenge for small groups.
Let me explain about 50 people
2 Guilds completely decided to leave as the servers are being cleaned up and there is no possibility to play without delay.
Also there is no competition for groups of even 8 people as the spots are occupied by groups of 16 players.
No doubt there are problems that I voiced to solutions in game design.
But we all understand that we will change 100 times and it is silly to take offense at that.
But what's happening with the servers is very bad.
Because the quality of the game is falling (delay, overpopulation, few points of interest).
That is, adding servers for all regions, which would eliminate the delay
And until the problem with the monsters that teleport for 2-3 chunks from the game will not be solved
The game is not suitable for playing
(this is still a discussion and I'm curious what others think about it)
This is not a game yet, hence why it's not suitable for playing. It's very suitable for testing though. And our testing directly helps Intrepid solve their issues. The most direct example of this I can give is the Proper Burial quest. 2 days ago the location near the cemetary was lagging so damn much that you couldn't even kill a mob properly. Yesterday it was completely fine.
And Intrepid keep saying every day that they're working on more and more such locations. And they would only know which locations to work on if we overload the servers in a semi-natural way.
And this is a problem that is now getting worse for a long period of time.
Try to play conditionally with a VPN from the region KZH CH RU.
And you will realize that you can not kill a single mob.
Their models do not move, and you get damage.
At any time.
When there were EU servers, there were pretty bad lags, and everyone put up with them because it's testing, but now you can see a static picture and that's it.
This is also called alpha testing of the game.
But now we only have the word “games” in the title.
And players now leave with negative emotions, which means they are very likely not to come back.
So the company thinks they can sell early access to the game (to testing) and then have no liability.
Legally they are right, but no one will express trust, and even more so no one will express warm feelings in support of the company, because they have abandoned most of the players.
The way it all looks and feels is that people are being paid to work for them, not to play an unfinished game and provide information for analytics.
There is no problem with removing progress
The problem is that you can't get it anymore.
We'll still have several cases of very bad lag or bad connection or bad gameplay. All because this is still an alpha. Anyone who thinks this is a game is delluding themselves.
And they claim it's available for gameplay.
When neither of those things exist.
They may not come back not because the game won't change, but because the company's attitude won't change.
Try to look at the hell divers story as an example.
And what happened to their stock and their attitude towards Sony.
The thing you are forgetting is that right now, only testing matters.
Intrepid could have 100k players spread out over 50 servers, but that would be useless if they are needing to stress test servers. One server of 8k players is of more value to them for a stress test than any number of total players if those players are spread out over many servers.
Intrepid only provide access to Ashes as a test right now.
If you go to the alpha sign up right now, you get comments like this
Or this
If you came in to Ashes now expecting a game rather than a test, it is because you didn't read.
The problem isn't that we're testing, it's that they forget that we're primarily players anyway
So if we were employees it would look like you live in Florida but from this day forward you have to work in the NewYork office come as you please it's not the company's problem or leave in general.
So it's easier for them to offend and chase away 60% of all players in order to increase online on one server by 10%.
They don't think about their users (maybe only at this stage but it's a fact:)).
There's nothing stopping them from keeping those servers and doing a sale promotion in the right region.
How many times the mobs are on the ceiling
How many times items go missing
How many times there will be tech work on weekdays
As long as it is possible to play with normal lag and without severe freezes.
Since the first described problems they are normal at the testing stage
And the rest are critical and only the rest they aggravate.
We have seen issues with server stability in the previous phases , some POIs such as Steelbloom, HH, Ursine Caves and Carphin were pretty broken under heavy player presence. I cannot say I have seen ANY improvement in those locations due to patches. It was all mainly service restarts and dropping player population which made them perform at an acceptable level.
I would imagine a lot of people semi-understand what alpha testing involves, but everyone has a breaking point, nor peoples free time is actually free. Phase 2.5 limitations are clearly too much for many. Player population is unlikely to recover any time soon, until we hit the next major content drop.
One can only hope this data helps with dev of the dynamic gridding. The one system which is supposedly going to improve the server performance in locations with a lot of players.
Blown past falling sands…
Stephen stated about the availability of the servers
And indicated that there will be a server in Europe.
And everyone accepted that it was not 6 but 3 because the pooling system had to be tested.
But now there's only one left and the situation I described above.
And about what you said
He adds in his own way at the end and talks about bugs, not about availability.
They are thinking about their users, you are thinking about yourself.
This is an alpha test. Sometimes that means you have things to test, sometimes you don't.
Everything Intrepid are doing is in service of the final product. You are literally here arguing for a worse final product.
Sure, they may have said there will be EU servers, and there has been EU servers. However, they have also said many, many times that everything is subject to change based on the needs of testing. That is what you are here for - testing. If what Intrepid need to test right now isn't of interest to you, skip this one.
More importantly, stop whining.
It was promised that Bandit would be out by New Year's Eve.
It didn't.
There was a promise that we would meet dynamic map quests in phase two?
Nothing was updated for phase two.
The thing is, everything Steve says is a 99% probability lie (what will appear may not be a lie, but when it's a lie it's always a lie).
The thing is, I and none of you are hired to work for them.
We are users anyway, and buying a product, putting yourself in the shoes of a tester with the fact that it will be taken away from you when they want it, is nonsense.
It's not a startup, it's not a voluntary fundraiser.
They don't have a lot of money and they need those sales.
So all the posts are aimed at getting people to buy the “product”, and the ads from bloggers are aimed at the same thing.
But there's no product, and they want to continue development with the logic that we're sponsoring them and they'll give us work for it, because they can't afford offline load testing.
Because there's no money to get those servers up.
That is, they have no money and decide to start selling by adding waves of access constantly increasing the time of possible sale
But at the same time they try to absolve themselves of any responsibility to the users and the buyer, even in the posts calling everyone employees (testers).
That we get all the responsibilities of employees and all the responsibilities of players
If it's testing why is anyone getting banned and access taken away?
For RMT for grifting it's testing as you say which allows you to debug these processes and catch.
But no we get penalized as players (progress deletions, constant removal of servers without normal warning, unstable or deleted servers, no support, administrators in communities are volunteers from the community).
We get penalties as testers (Bans players on the background of personal sorrows, bans on the background of RMT, bans on the background of finding bugs that give an advantage (example eternal chests)).
And after all that, you say I'm whining)
Think about why these people think that we just carry their money and they do not owe them anything.
Because what guy on YouTube said they don't?
So, yeah, you need therapy.
I apologize in advance to everyone reading this.
My native language is not English, but I tried to correct the text.
No we don't. What the fuck are you even talking about?
You are participating in a test. All of the things you are complaining about are things that are inherent to a test. If you didn't want to deal with them, why did you purchase access to a test?
I've been involved in a lot of testing
Almost all of them from different companies, but this is the first time I've been treated with such disregard.
When buying I agree to testing, I agree to a substandard product or constantly changing, not to have it taken away from me at any time.
THX BRO
You got me)
I did a fair amount of bug reporting, performed my self appointed tester duties by being analytical, writing my reports in bullet points, step by step reproduction, etc. Actually, I did it quite a bit and it burned me out and that's my situation.
Game's f'd right now. It looks like a game, it smells like a game but it's a self induced migraine if you take it too serious
Lastly, I believe you can get a refund on your purchase if you aren't happy anymore. But I suggest just taking a month long break. Meanwhile, you can give constructive feedback on the forums. I had a pretty big feedback doc that I never fully finished condensing into something anyone would actually read because it became overwhelmingly time consuming, so I'm taking bite sized pieces and making forums threads here and there whenever I have time. It's a suggestion.
First, you agree to the game being taken away from you at any point when you play any online game, let alone when you participate in testing one. That is just the nature of online games.
Second, you may have been involved in a lot of testing, but it obviously was not alpha testing. Different test phases are, well, different.
During beta testing, you have the game fairly much in place. You are testing it out to see if it is fun, if details are all correct. If you were beta testing MMORPG expansions, you were essentially play testing rather than actually testing.
During alpha testing, we are testing to see if the game client is stable. If the network is robust. If the server is up to the task. They haven't even implemented Dynamic Gridding on the servers yet - so the server architecture isn't even feature complete at this stage.
The good news for you is that those 50 friends you made will all be back testing in the next phase, and the phase after that. So if they are actually frieds you made, you should be able to find them again.
It is a test environment.
To set your expectations appropriatly, look at the recent developer discussion thread where they were asking for feedback on the new *tester* experience - not the new *player* experience.
That is because you are supposed to be here to test, not play. If you are in the mindset of playing, of this being a game, then yeah, you will be disappointed.
That's kind of what I was getting at. I thought it was implied but, ya, in hindsight "product" would have been a better word. But still, I think people get the general idea... I hope
The thing to keep in mind is how little experience the bulk of people have with a test like this. There hasn't been an MMORPG of any note that has had public access this early in development. At this point in development, out of house testing is usually either not even started, or by invitation only - a friends and family test.
This is why I am always suspicious of people with questions on this testing phase, yet say they have been involved in alpha testing. If you have been involved in a test as early as this in another MMORPG, it is because you know an MMORPG developer - and so would be asking them those questions.
The notion you have of taking breaks is the correct way to do things. Get in to the test environement and run around, do things, generate acticity, and when you get bored or fed up with it, just stop. Don't feel bad about stopping, don't think that this is a bad sign for the "game", don't necessarily even post about why you stopped (unless it was a technical issue). Just stop. Come back with the next major update to the test and do the same thing all over again.
The key thing to keep in mind, the thing I am trying to drill in to some specific peoples head, is that people are not getting sick of the game, they are not getting bored of the game, they are not getting fed up with the game, they are not leaving the game. Rather, they are sick, bored of, fed up with and leaving the testing environment, and that is expected.
Even for an alpha, the game is absolute trash.
I've had access since October and apart from a few new, mostly empty zones, not much has changed.
In my opinion, the game is a piece of garbage that has remained in the past.
And I don't need to be an expert in game development. If you take so much money for an alpha and want testers, you have to offer something.
We always knew progess would be reset from time to time. There has always been information that Intrepid will make emergency resets if things go really bad with critical bugs/unintended interactions. This is a part of testing.
All realms disappearing and so on and so forth has been announced in advance; I can however agree that *sometimes* it's not very easy to gain access to that information... But most of it comes by their official discord server.
I have no idea what you mean by people getting banned for "personal sorrows", so I am not going to comment on that.... But speaking for myself, I am very happy about them banning people for RMT and intentionally abusing bugs once they're found.
If you find a bug, you can attempt to recreate it twice or thrice in order to test the triggers; and then you bug report it and move on. If you continue to abuse it for your own personal gain, then you deserve being banned since you're messing up valuable data.
In the end, it seems quite obvious that you are not here to test things; you are here to play.... And while that is okay - players do also generate valuable data - having the expectations of this being a properly fine-polished game by any means is just... well, doomed to disappoint.
Finally: you should not have bought the pack with the idea that "I am buying pre-access to a very expensive game" rather than "I am making a generous donation to Intrepid, and I get to see and participate in the creation-progress in return."
They have offered something - a test.
Some people really enjoy testing games, even in such an early stage like this.
On the other hand, some people don't.
If you don't enjoy early stage testing, yet paid to access early stage testing, that isn't Intrepids fault.
But in my opinion it is absolute garbage. Despite its alpha status, the whole game is poorly realized and unprofessional.
In addition, we are no longer in an earlier alpha phase.
I like to test games, but only those that are worthwhile. And with this game, I don't see it ever being any good.
And I don't like it at all when time is not valued.
To be able to test something here, you have to invest a lot of time, which is absolutely not worth it.
The content so far is simply garbage. No real quest system, no instances, totally bad combat system.
The whole game design is stuck in the 2000s.
If you are used to beta testing games, beta testing MMO expansions, or beta testing translations, then yeah, it will look really bad to you.
However, for an alpha test of a large scale MMORPG, it is in better shape than a number of released MMORPG's that are currently considered successful were at this stage.
However, lets look at your actual complaints about the game, you listed three.
The first is no quest system. You are correct - it isn't in the game yet. There are quests, but they are filler.
The second is that there are no instances. Ashes isn't really leaning on instances for content delivery, so that is expected. Instances will be used in small amounts, but largely for story progression and such - and so there is no point working on them until the quest system is in place.
Your third issue is combat. It is bad right now, you are also correct here. Combat design in an MMORPG is an iterative process. This means that they add in all of the abilities they think they want, and then they iterate on them to achieve both balance and fun. It is a system that isn't going to be "finished" until launch, although to be honest it still won't be finished by then.
Helping to shape that iterative process is one of the things us testers are here for. It is what gets done (at least the major steps) during an alpha test.
So really, with your three complaints, you are completely right in that the test environment doesn't have those things - but that is because that is what an alpha test is about. If the game had a properly functioning combat system, quests in place and zoning sorted out to the point where instances were being created, we would be beta testing rather than alpha testing.