Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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 III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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.
Comments
I just want to preface this by saying that I've been following AoC for a long time and have played since Phase 1 of A3. I'm giving this feedback because I really want the game to succeed not because I just want to bash it.
How did the pace of leveling feel from level 0 to your highest level (too fast, too slow, or just right)? What made it feel that way?
0-6ish were extremely fast and questing made for a fun, explorative experience. 6-12 were a little more grindy but the pace was still pretty quick. We did notice our dps was really low towards the end and decided to craft gear as none of the mobs (minotaurs) dropped a single piece of gear the entire time we were there. 12-17 wasn't too bad with our new gear but it was definitely much more grindy. 17-20 though was an absolute slog because the crafted gear my 8-man spent 4+ hours making was useless at this point. By the time we realized how consistently the gear from Steelbloom dropped (post buff) we were too weak to contest any spot in there as the other groups had WAY better gear even though they were 3 or more levels lower and we spent hours crafting.
Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
Not even a little. Low level crafted gear is completely useless and high-level gear needs so many materials to make that they won't be viable for at least a month probably more like 2 months. We got a recipe that costs 355 Copper Ingots to make...And the worst part is that it gets completely outshined by gear drops from bosses
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
Gold for crafting is extremely hard to come by early on and material drop rates from the PTR have been significantly reduced. Also, mobs that should drop gear just don't. I was level 20 with starting greys and empty slots after killing humanoids and a rotation of Carphin bosses for literally hours. After the buff to 1-19 gear drop rates, we didn't get a single piece of gear from a Carphin boss after literally ~75 kills. Only mats...
At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
Level 12. No gear drops and crafted gear might as well not exist.
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
Satisfying: The combat feels great and you're excited to put a new skill point in every level
Frustrating: Everything else. No gear drops, low material drop rates, useless crafted gear.
Quick overview of my group's extremely frustrating experience: We planned to buy gear from vendors early which was removed days before Phase 3 launch, so we decided to kill minotaurs to get drops instead. Unfortunately, we didn't get a single piece of gear the entire time we were there. We then decided to craft gear and xp scrolls to help with the grind only to have the scrolls nerfed from 25% bonus to 4% bonus after hours of farming mats (not to mention the material drop rates were SIGNIFICANTLY reduced compared to PTR). Decided to push on in levels and craft more gear later only to have the 1-19 mob gear drop rate increased right after we had moved on from there but by the time we realized it everyone else was so geared we couldn't compete despite being 3 levels higher than other groups. Farmed bosses in Carphin for gear and levels but didn't get a single piece of gear after the drop changes despite being there for hours and killing ~75 bosses.
To be honest, I have literally no idea what you're doing, Intrepid. You want crafting to matter but the gear sucks compared to what drops. You want gear to matter but need hundreds of materials to craft anything worthwhile. You want crafting to matter but the nodes take so long to level up that no gear even close in power to mob drops can be made for months. You want crafting to matter but nerf things like xp scrolls and material drop rates. This feels like the worst phase of this game by far.
=> I liked having to make gear in the beginning. The other armor quest for the 3 piece green armor quest in the Riverlands is too easy and over-powered.
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
=> YES! The limited bank space. Horrible bottleneck. I get not wanting to push players out to settlements, but 1 small slot is too limiting.
At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
=> Level 9 to 10. If you reversed the amount of experience needed to level from 9 -> 10 and 10 -> 11, then that will help.
- How did the pace of leveling feel from level 0 to your highest level (too fast, too slow, or just right)? What made it feel that way?
Stopped at level 7 (I think). Progression speed means nothing when the game simply looks, feels and runs bad. A video game have to hit at least 2 of them. To be clear, the game look fine when camera is zoomed in but let's be honest; we are not going to play the game zoomed in. Fix the visuals in such a way that what we look at looks good when the camera is zoomed out or in others words, when we are actually playing the game.- Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
No. The first 7 levels basically nothing dropped. The game relies on crafting systems to gear up players (it feels like) and the crafting system is not intuitive. Some better crafting tutorial quests might help in this aspect. Still, nothing drops.- Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
What quests? I ran out of them at level 7. Materials and the crafting bag tetris system feels bad. I keep asking "Why? What is the point?" to myself.- At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
Progression never felt fun. The game itself is not fun for a new mage. But beyond that, the game looks bad, it feels bad and it runs bad while playing it. For taking pictures when the camera is zoomed in, it is decent.Anyway, back to the question, I think the reason (of not being fun) is "feeling helpless" when playing a mage. The cooldowns do not let me control the battlefield, and I need to control the battlefield. I do not have the tankiness to render the game irrelevant. I need to kill monsters 1 by 1 even at early game (and it takes multiple spells to kill that 1 single trash mob), or ask someone else to tank/control the trash monsters at which point they just kill the mobs themselves and I just "exist". Existing is not enough for me. I wanna live.
Maybe I'm the problem. But I feel like, as a mage, I need to be able to do "something" during combat. That "thing" is missing in this class/game. There is occasional freeze and that is it. And hopefully someone hasn't frozen the monster before, so it is not immune. And this is early game, against trash mobs. If even the trash monsters are a danger to me, elite monsters are...
- What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
Being able to log in. Seeing the game is actually happening is the most satisfying part of the "progression" if that counts.Now, all that being said, I understand what is being done/developed here. It is a process and I did not give up. I'll keep playing when I'm done with other games. Ashes of Creation is simply not a priority video game for me, not even close, not yet. This is an Alpha build. I understand all that.
If you were to ask me "What would you have us do? What should we fix as a core?" I would list the things below, for the reasons I'll list below.
- I would have you focus on graphics in a way that the game looks good when the camera is zoomed out rather than zoomed in. Zoomed out graphics is what we perceive. I would ask this, perception, to be a "core element" so that game can be developed with this in mind rather than giving it couple of touches to make it just bearable. Obviously, I'll be playing the game zoomed out, most of us will. I understand the argument "finer details, so many polygons etc." I simply do not care about the finer details, most of which I will not perceive during gameplay anyway. So, they don't need to be there to needlessly tank my performance.
- I would have you focus on performance to make the game run at an "acceptable level for the visual quality I perceive". If it is acceptable (for the perceived quality) now, you could optimize to make it run "smooth" in later stages. Calling it "Alpha" and accepting bad performance as a core just to make it barely acceptable after optimizations is a bad idea. Just to be clear, currently, the perceived quality is bad, the perceived performance is bad and the game feels bad.
- I would have you work on the in-game map, the one we open to see what is where. It needs to be easier to read. It needs to be easier on the eye.
Video games used to look good years ago with even older hardware. Technology has undeniably progressed A LOT and yet... We now need to use upscaling technologies, frame generation and whatnot just to get 90+ fps eventaully for low or mediocre graphics quality. I think we are at a point where developers need to ask themselves a simple question; who do we serve? The hardware manufacturers or gamers. That way they will also have their answer to the question of "Who will play this game?".All in all, I feel like, you have fallen the same pit every other developer falls; "reality". All I care about is "what I perceive". This is a video game. Things do not have to be real quality. It is enough for things to create the perception of being quality. This might be confusing. If it is, please feel free to contact me. I'm not a shy guy, nor am I young. In fact, today is my birthday and now I'm a 40-year-old man who have been playing video games since the age of 5. Just like many of you, I also grow up in this "hell hole" And I intend to keep playing for another 30, 40, 50...
I did not organize this post properly. I just wanted to throw it in with the hopes of being helpful.
God speed people.
Honestly it felt slower than last time (level 9.3 atm). But that could be due to having almost no gear to start with in the beginning, not even the basic white ones from vendor were available.
Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
As I said above, gear and stats were huge bottlenecks to start out with.
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
Yes, especially quests that were bugged. It made it extremely frustrating to find out that I couldn't finish the quest and get an "instant level" up sort of feel. Also as many people point it out, crafting stations are all scattered all over place which made it annoying to run around trying to process and craft gear.
While some of the resource spawns been reworked (ore/rocks and wood) and works well now, I couldn't say the same for flowers and hide. It took me way to long just to find some rare daffodil to use for my bow as they seem to be none existent on the map. Animal carcasses still seem to be stuck in the "rarity loop" just as before which is a huge turn off for many.
Another observation I had is that crafted gear progression, especially weapons seem to get exponentially harder as you progress to higher tier with some materials requiring to obtain 100+ of said material. I understand weapons, especially legendary weapons should be hard to come by but at this point it feels nearly impossible or very-very expensive to a point that its not even worth the cost.
At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
When I realized that weapons of higher rarity/quality going to be expensive to craft.
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
Most satisfying was the ability to final able to craft gear higher than rare quality.
Most frustrating is the client being slow even with a fast internet speeds it wouldn't go above 4 mb/s.
The fact you can ask 3 days after the launch of an entire phase how did level 0 to the highest feel should give your answer. You wanted slow leveling but people can hit 25 in 2 days without much of a issue.
I mainly think this is due to how gear works in this game, as long as you're in a party of 8 you can somewhat completely skip the whole gearing up process in this game and just rely on the odd drops, it doesn't matter if you use a level 1-10 weapon against a level 25 it still does good enough damage to progress so there is no road block to speed level or hump to get over on harder content.
- Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
Still have only managed to craft 1 weapon and only by hitting basalt and granite in anvils getting lucky with ore drops, the time sink in this system far exceeds your level. I am nearly level 11 and have only managed to craft one level 0-9 weapon. so basically skipping an entire gear section. I am confused why this game doesnt have gear at any level so 7 for example and actually require level gear to do damage to enemies on level or slightly higher.
- Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
Crafting eats through any gold you make and the gold sink early on is insane again making crafting anything early nearly pointless, would be completely points if you could get a weapon to drop at low level from a mob. I have yet to see any gear drop from a single enemy.
- At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
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The moment I spawned into the world in anvils and completed the mount quest and realised there is 0 actual story line quests to do and just to grind the quest board or do endless running for crafting
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
still the only satisfying part of this game is combat and classes, but this does not mean mindlessly grinding a pack of mobs until level 25 it needs story quests and engaging quest line to be entertaining, that actually feel rewarding an give you things to do, the game is way to craft/pvp focused and pve is just a chore to achieve the other 2 things
frustrating was the fact anvils is a scam spawn, impossible to travel around solo mobs everywhere and die. to many cliffs to walk around and get up, walk for 30mins between crafting outposts, half if not more of the quests bugged and mobs.
- •How did the pace of leveling feel from level 0 to your highest level (too fast, too slow, or just right)? What made it feel that way?
Im am lvl 11 and the pace feels really good. Not too slow or too fast.•Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
Gear: I am lvl 11 and the only item except the starting gear i got is one ring. I actually am kinda okay with that weirdly enough. The reason I am okay with it is that I have only been farming pocket dungeons to get loot. Was maybe a little too rare before the 29/8 update but it feels good now. Drops are so exciting once they drop its really fun this way. I am getting into crafting myself some gear and weapons atm at lvl 11 and that feels like a good pace to get gear aswell so it feels really nice actually. I could have done that earlier so thats why i am okay with only have gotten one ring.
Skills: Feels good, there are plenty of skills to choose and that have a big impact of gameplay and how much healing output i can have as cleric. The harder places you go the more healing abilities you need and those feel in line with eachother.
Stats: My stats are very low since i have not gotten any gear upgrades except the one ring. So my heals feels really low wich Im starting to feel like I really need to change and thats why I stared gathering for some gear upgrades. Otherwise continuing to keep lvling and not getting gear would become more and more difficult wich is expected.
•Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
Not getting gear from pocket dungeons felt like I needed to go do something else to fix that problem. Was getting too difficult otherwise. I have no problem with that, was a nice change of pace to go gather instead of farming pocket dungeons.
•At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
Before the drop rates buff gringing pocket dungeons felt a little grindy and boring since almost no drops at all. Felt like you are not progressing. I like rare drops but it was a little too low, now it is good i think.
•What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
Most satisfying was when I got enough materials to make a spellbook out of legendary/epic materials. Gonna feel real good to finally have the item i grinded mats for.
Most frustrating is probably not being able to pin a recipe on your screen. I constantly forgot wich materials for what item was required.
Levelling pace seems to be fine, it is slower than most games which will let people know this is not the average mmo where you level to max in a week if you want, but it has not been tedious. Levelling past 10
is more of a slog but mostly because of the lack of gear
Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
Character power has been an issue for me in after level 10. This is where the bare minimum I was able to get started to just not be enough and additional crafting would be necessary. Problem is it would have to be crafting of initiate gear which I don't want to do since I am already level 10 and want to start gearing myself with adept gear. Playing rogue with crafted green T1 daggers and blue T1 bow, medium gear from parcel quest and wrists from 2nd outpost and tier 1 gloves drop
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
I would say the biggest problem with the quest system right now is you have no idea what the reward is before you accept a quest so you can't make a good decision on which quest you want to actually take and which ones will just be a waste of time. Making sure quest rewards are on par with their difficulty is what makes you want to finish or at least take all quests. I think mats are in a good place right now, there is still some materials which have inexplicably a different rarity distribution which is fine but there some extremes like dead coral and banyan trees.
If you want people to do more crafting before level 10 gold is definitely the bottleneck
At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
It is at that point now around level 12 where as an alliance we are pushing to level our node and also level ourselves. This double purpose of grinding is making things much better but we are aware it would be so much more fun and faster if we had better gear at this point. Nobody is too stoked to "waste" resources on initiate gear after level 10 so we wait for one of the nodes to get to village stage. This will probably happen soon but until then we are stuck in the slow grind.
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
Most satisfying part of progression were the artisan comissions I could do for exp instead of competing for a very limited number of mobs with these large populations. It has downsides like not levelling weapon skills and no gear drops but it is a nice way to level up early and introduce people to artisanship. But they have to be worth doing ideally at all levels.
I would say the only frustrating part was on launch day when I had to crate a new character and wait out the queue in order to be able to login into my first character after I logged out because of a bugged quest. Other than that this phase has not been very frustrating.
I am generally pleased with the state of gathering, the random chances for gems and metals are satisfying and makes gathering copper and zinc less frustrating because the nodes can't be targeted directly like before.
Rarity distributions of gatherables still need some work done, I have noticed some changes but currently the rarity distributions of coconut trees and plumeria trees are abysmal similar to huntable animals which really need to be fixed, since it makes medium armor unuseable.
Processing has been made needlessly more complicated with vendor items, this doesn't serve any other purpose than waste time and only adds another gold cost, which doesn't make it more interesting.
I apreciate crafting being more reliant on mob drops, the numbers will probably need to be looked at but we haven't really done any crafting yet. Also more diversity of crafting materials used is good. The system as a whole has a lot of problems like incomplete recipes, many useless materials etc
I leveled a Ranger, Tank and a Fighter to 7, 9 and 9. The speed was comparable for each class and felt good. I gathered and quested, and did some solo grinding.
Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced?
Levels 1-6: Gear and skills felt more than up to the job, at level 7 it became much harder. I had to retreat from some overpulls and rely on rations very often.
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression?
YES! The Tank (ooh that name) was my first try. I started in the Anvils, and I could not craft a full set of gear. The recipes on the vendor were for a different zone! I could not find a quest equivalent to the one in Riverlands that awards three pieces of starter gear. At level 9 I had rare and uncommon weapons and jewelry but only two pieces of armor.
The Ranger I started in the Riverlands. Even with CRAZY competition for resources, I managed a full set or uncommon medium armor and jewelry and rare weapons by level 7. MUCH more satisfying!
The Fighter benefited from lessons learned! Beginning in the Anvils, I crafted a heroic 2H Axe and uncommon jewelry. At level 7 I made the trek south to the Riverlands and finished gearing up, mostly rare quality heavy armor. Now I'm a well traveled well geared level 9. It would have been more fun AND immersive in my opinion if that could have been accomplished all in the Anvils. Look forward to revisiting that starting area when it's more fleshed out.
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
Most Satisfying: Completing the look and gear set on the Vek Ranger and Dunir Fighter.
Most Frustrating: Not being able to do the same on a Py'Rai Tank. Disappointing that the two pieces I could craft were designed for Kaelar. The racially unique and thematic variations on the armor sets is a big selling point for me!
My opinion only - I had the chance to participate in every stage so far from Alpha One, and it is encouraging and exciting to see the game coming to life. My hope is that the players (and guilds) that remain match the creativity and energy of the project. Verra deserves more respect than is often present in Global Chat. Rude or goofy character names and some players trying to beat the Alpha instead of testing the game have been the only real sources of disappointment.
Looking forward to what comes next, big thanks!
Pace of leveling feels fine through level 10. Honestly it could even be a little slower and it would line up with other systems better. Especially considering drop rates are intentionally pretty low for gear, more kills/level will mean more gear/level. Gathering Experience being where it is makes it feel productive to do gathering quests and rewards gathering-oriented characters enough that it feels good. Experience from enemies is good too. I also like that stronger enemies that require groups being the most time efficient is a good way to encourage people to group up.
Experience from quests still feels lackluster. Having legendary gathering nodes give more experience than many early quests does make quests feel lacking.
Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
Surprisingly, the power level was great until level 8 or so. That's when the fact that I had only found 1 piece of gear by then started to hurt. Similarly, crafting was so expensive I couldn't afford crafting gear until late level 8 or so. The stats from leveling do a pretty good job carrying a character to level 10 without much gear.
Skills feel great! Combat system is amazing, having meaningful skill choices feels great. Most of the power levels feel pretty good on the Ranger and Fighter that I leveled. Fighter's AOE feels a little overtuned at low levels, but it's very minor.
Gear really didn't influence power much because gear upgrades didn't really happen for either character. This feels pretty bad. I put in probably 12+ hours in and saw 1 gear drop, crafted 2 weapons, and lamented being broke 1000 times. Crafting fees are a huge part of this, but gear drop rates at low levels hurt a lot too. I haven't tested the new drop rates yet, but hopefully that helps.
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
Gear. Gear. Gear. Everything flows well except gear. On a fresh server with no marketplace, buying and selling gear is rough. Most players will need to rely on crafting it for themselves or getting it dropped. If the crafting fees are this high, players can't afford the prices, because no one can sell on the marketplace yet, because there are no marketplaces yet. So we have to rely on gear drops from Humanoids, or make do without.
I made do without. I sold the vast majority of my gathered materials to afford the fees of just a few pieces of gear. I also noticed that I paid DRAMATICALLY more in crafting fees for my gear this time around than the prices I paid on the marketplace in Phase 2.5 for the equivalent gear. This means I'm getting gear quite a lot slower this time around. It also felt like loot drops in general were lower too? I might have just been unlucky.
Maybe we could structure crafting reagents/fees so that novice level crafting is cheaper, but higher levels is more expensive? Cheap crafts need one reagent that is cheap, at some higher tier a new, more expensive reagent is added/substituted. It wouldn't need to be every tier. Maybe you only need new ones at Journeyman and Master or something?
I think when marketplaces finish. and low level characters can sell things to level 10+ characters, this gets much easier. Perhaps we should add a marketplace to Lionhold/other starting areas to help facilitate early economic trading in the first few days of a new server before nodes hit level 3? The players that hit 10 quickly can use it to buy stuff from casuals for early gear and casuals get some money for crafting fees. Maybe this marketplace is more limited than the ones in the nodes to prevent it from becoming the de facto marketplace (thus depriving nodes of much needed taxes). Maybe it allows only 5 items instead of 20. Maybe there is a price limit. Maybe the tax rate is high enough that it is only good when everything else is not an option.
At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
Somewhere around level 7 or 8 the grind starts to feel a lot slower. This is mostly from the lack of gear. I'm at level 11 now, and it does not feel prohibitively grindy, but I could see how other players would find it very boring already. Part of this comes from the lack of drops too. If there were more drops and crafting, it could be 20%-30% slower and still feel good to me. There is very little loot. It makes it feel like fighting things is not really the intention of the game--which...maybe the point is to fight players? This isn't necessarily a bad thing if the intention behind it is better communicated to new players.
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
Most satisfying was probably the gathering XP. Feels great. I know the combat system hasn't changed dramatically, but that's good: it feels great still. Also the quest for the additional bag (I think it's called the "Stockade Sack") is by far the most valuable thing either of my characters encountered. For a long time I have been saying "Bag space is the most powerful stat in every MMO." This bag is better than most any Apprentice/Adept level bag (arguably Apprentice Mining Bag is better, but less versatile) and it feels great to have something like this semi-hidden in the game.
Most frustrating is the lack of gear. I'm not gonna belabor it again, but crafting is prohibitively expensive without marketplaces. It feels like it will still probably be too expensive at low levels even once node marketplaces are up.
Additional Suggestion:
While we're talking about crafting economy problems, there's one we haven't seen yet that won't be a problem until we have a few more nodes and much more node experience that is only tangentially related to this discussion, but that I wanted to mention early.
Your growing Economics team might have mentioned this already but *FASTER ROADS* might be a powerful and elegant solution to an eventual economics issue with marketplaces. Since the mechanic is already in the game, it would hopefully be an easy change.
With as many nodes as we are planning to have, there will soon be a point where player preferences will leave many marketplaces mostly empty, while a handful of favorite marketplaces (this could mean a lot of things and is likely to be an emergent property of how the communities use each node) will have most of the goods, depriving many nodes and mayors of much needed taxes. The limit on Trade Buildings forcing nodes to specialize helps a lot.
However, there are so many specializations that the time it would take to ride around to each specialized market, and back for most of the recipes we have is long enough that it means a lot of other things can't be done during that time. This will force players to find/create favorite markets with generalized goods where they can buy/sell anything they need so they only need to visit one place. Again, it can be hard to predict exactly which market this will be, but players will usually create something like this eventually.
This can be mitigated by lessening the time-cost associated with selling at multiple markets. We've established teleportation will be extremely limited, so that won't work. But the introduction of real life roads made trips between locations more than twice as fast--this seems too fast for the game, but I think if roads gave very generous speed buffs (maybe leveling up with the nodes, capping at +60% or +80% or so) it would help to encourage players to utilize multiple markets in a very large world. It might be necessary to move some gathering nodes further back from the roads for balance reasons in this case.
In P1, the mistake was that lvl10 gear was too strong, making lvl20 gear unneeded.
In P2 the problem was well... first it was like P1, then rebalanced, and since it was mid econ it was better
p2.5 was an unspeakable horror.
P3 now started out strong. However, almost immediately Intrepid shot the economy in the back of the head. Yes gear didn't drop and IT WAS A GOOD THING.
People who knew what they were doing, were able to farm some gear via named mobs, quests and such.
Artisans were motivated to progress their craft as lvl20 gear was basically not a thing, so lvl10 creafting was viable due to scarcity.
Then the fire nation attacked Intrepid went mental and buffed the ever living hell out of droprates. Now it rains lvl20 gear. So why in damnation would people works tirelessly to advance their professions when lvl20 gear will almost always be better? Profession with a stroke of a db update became irrelevant for the next 2 months until journeyman crafting becomes available. Except maybe for animal husbandy.
Hey but at least PVP Andies and nolifers are happy that they can cause wanton destruction on everybody I guess. It's not like they'll dip after 2-3 months.. oh wait... never mind.
Also why were things renamed to dumb shit like Radiant, and others? Actually is is brainpower spent on renaming things? makes 0 sense whatsoever.
This phase could have been amazing, with the crafting and gathering changes. Getting metals is now downright enjoyable at the casino... i mean metalworking station.
Anvils is nice too. Until you're attacked by 15 hawks & 17 raptors.
Honestly the dropchange was and is a massive killjoy. The more time is spend with the game the more hoghwash the "PVX" seems, and the more i think this is a non-stop pvp game.
I mean it already have been stated that meaningful PVE will not be a thing (as in hard content) and what was hard and enjoyable, like release of Forge when it was actually difficult, is being taken away. Actually the bridge on forge is still not fixed to my knowledge, as you can't walk out of the dungeon. Unstuck kills you, so good luck farming glittering spall, or crafting mats. The bridge solution was
SB is downright dumb with the mobdensity. You fart in the wrong direction and you pull something. If it's buffed to P1 levels it's impossible as pyros will 1shot somebody, if it's nerfed to p2.5 (or current) levels it's literally a joke category.
I guess the remaining hope for those that don't want to pvp nonstop was crafting but oh well it was stillborn... again...
If you haven't bought in yet and you're a PVE or Artisan mindend person dear reader i don't recommend atm.
If you're a PVP Andy, this game is for you.
Steven it's time to bite the bullet admit to yourself, you want to make a pvp game. Not a pvx game.
Thank you for coming to my tedtalk.
oh as for why tik-tok brain: because gear drop is short term gratification, and it sacrifices core pillars of the game.
Glory to Arioch
Glory to Winsted
For my mana addicted brothers:
For the Glory of Quel'Thalas
The first thing that I feel needs to be said is that feedback is a two-way street. We the community, and I specifically, can leave all the feedback we want, but if we don't know the goalposts, then our feedback loses a lot of its use.
* To clarify, if I get to level 20 within 2 days, and say the pace of the game felt good, but the Intrepid Team says their in-house goal is to stretch the leveling process out to about 100 hours to get to level 20, then my feedback will miss the mark. It turns into a complaint about the in-house choice to slow things down, rather than feedback on how it felt to level.
With that out of the way... my feedback is as follows.
- The PACE of LEVELING in the game felt way too fast or ramped up. I approached phase 3 more casually, avoiding grind groups. I focused on the starter quests in Lionshold, pick-up groups for some events, harvesting, crafting, and commissions. As of Friday (3 days of play) I was level 13 and I hadn't ventured outside of the Riverlands. As a person that normally focuses on crafting, I was already feeling like I was going to have to turn around and chain myself to a table to catch up. Some argue that it's all about getting to max level, but to me, that dismisses the hard work developer teams put in to providing low level and mid level content. I want to experience that content, and being able to casually trot my way to level 20 within a week (let alone the crazy fast grind groups that hit level 25 in two days) feels too fast.
- My CHARACTER'S POWER felt unbalanced. I base that statement on the premise that Steven has said in the past the game is supposed to be balanced around groups of 8, with some content that will allow solo play. As a CLERIC main, I was able to solo 1* and some 2* mobs that were within +/- 1 of my level; and that was with only the 3 pieces of armor from the starter quest, no jewelry, and rusty weapons from the Divine Gate area. At no point did I really feel a challenge, unless I went really looking for it, or within some of the dungeons. That made me feel like gear wasn't needed and that if I did have gear, I wouldn't need a group at all.
* When playing other classes, it felt more challenging, but I still didn't really feel the impact or need for gear all that much.
- Did I feel like there were any BOTTLENECKS?
+ Not to adventuring, no. I was able to coast my way to level 12 very easily. The EXP slowed down a bit after that, but it didn't feel like a bottleneck.
+ On the crafting side... looking at the processing/crafting bench felt like a bottleneck. Joke aside, I like the complex recipes and process involved in crafting, but it felt a lot more expensive and more of a resource burden than it needed to be, at least in the initial stages. I understand that Glint was made a lot easier to obtain, but not to that degree. The other issue that I felt with crafting that I didn't while adventuring was the time invested or wasted in traveling back and forth to different stations. I didn't feel that while adventuring. Stations don't have to be right next to each other, like they were in the marketplace in Phase 2, but having to go from Briarmoor Farms to Avens End over and over got old fast.
- At no point did adventuring feel grindy; at least not yet. Crafting on the other hand, felt grindy AF from the start. The reasons for that are legion, but the biggest is in the comparison between the speed of leveling your adventure class and crafting profession. If the difference were in some way comparable, I don't know if it wouldn't feel like that, but there is that HUGE difference. If I were able to take a more relaxed approach to the crafting, it wouldn't feel so grindy, but the idea that I have to catch up and level super fast just to keep up with the adventure side...
+ The crafting/processing stations being so far apart in the beginner area and the slower settlement progression (which I feel is at the right pace and won't complain about) made me feel like I was wasting a lot of my time just gophering from one place to another. The fact that crafting recipes require multiple items from different professions is a good thing, but having those stations in different locations made it frustrating.
+ The limited size of the bags and the sheer variety of items needed made it so that I would have to take multiple trips from one location to another. And dropping mats on death (which I'm okay with) just made those trips feel even more of a burden.
* If I die adventuring, yes I drop mats, but if the focus is just to level, I can recoup my loss fairly quickly. As a crafter, that loss isn't that easy to recover from, especially if you're carrying high grade materials.
+ As a crafter, if the gear I craft isn't needed, and I am simply just crafting it to sell to the vendor or trash it, it enhances that grindy feeling. To explain further, the fact that players can progress to level 10 and above very quickly and without any gear makes most of what the crafters do obsolete or unneeded, and therefore, it feels like crafting into the void. Crafters need to be able to sell their products in order to keep up the process smoothly, and in the initial days of Phase 3, that didn't happen.
- The MOST SATISFYING part of Phase 3 so far was the availability of cosmetics.
- The MOST FRUSTRATING part of Phase 3 so far is the absolute insult to crafters and the return of static nodes.
- The MOST CONFUSING part is seeing items listed in the patch notes as fixed and encountering the problems within 5 mins of logging in (an example is the hair).
I'm far from filling the slots with at least a common item. It seems like you don't even need the gear. Currently, it's enough to level up to 20 and then worry about the items, which makes crafting useless.
Unfortunately, the introductory crafting quests are neither feasible nor suitable for introducing the player to crafting at this point. At this point, I would expect to be able to simply try out all the professions briefly to see which ones I enjoy. And that's a real shame, because the crafting system seems really well thought out.
The improvement in crafting and questing was noticeable. The new system is much better, and mining, in particular, is more appealing. The ores now fit much better into the environment. However, the professions can't keep up with the game.
I think the complexity of crafting is far too high for the first 10 levels. To introduce and engage players, radically simplifying the effort would be sufficient. Only from levels 11 to 20 do you have enough time to enjoy the complexity of crafting, as the pace of progression slows down. The system is really good, but should only be given full depth later on.
By the time I'm trying to craft sets like "Ambitious Academic's," other players are already at a level where they no longer need that gear.
The pacing of the leveling 1-10 feels fine, but I know that it is about to slow down significantly (and that is okay). However, quest options really dry up after just the first few levels, and 5-10 feels barren in terms of quest opportunities. The commission board quests are a nice filler but the XP rewards are minuscule and do not scale appropriately - it doesn't feel worthwhile to go back to town for more quests when killing a few mobs and skipping that travel time gives better XP.
Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
Absolutely not. Skill progression is fine, but gear and stat progression are abysmal due to lack of gear availability. This may be the worst low level progression experience I have had in an MMO. Gear drops are virtually nonexistent and crafting is hard-bottlenecked at multiple stages which makes crafting your own gear way too difficult even if you focus entirely on that pursuit exclusively.
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
There are too many to count, but I will try to break down the biggest ones. I will address crafting first, followed by gear drops (likely the most controversial topic this phase so far).
At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
It felt grindy the moment the quests ran out, right around level 4 or 5. It doesn't help that some of the already-scarce quests seem to be bugged. There seemed to be no meaningful progress or direction, and no hope of obtaining equipment that would improve my performance.
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
Honestly, very little has felt satisfying so far, as unfortunate as that is to say. I do not think 99% of MMO players would give this game a chance beyond the first hour under the current design paradigm for low level gear progression. That, and everything associated with crafting, are the biggest pain points by far.
Do not feel limited by the list above. Feel free to share anything you’d like to as you’re testing progression.
So, I understand that the topic of gear drops is a contentious topic, with a patch being required to band-aid fix this issue, but I believe there is a good middle ground to be found. On the one hand, you have people who want crafting to be relevant, which is obviously a valid and desirable goal. On the other, you have people who want to grind and still have some sense of traditional MMO progression without engaging with the crafting at all. Both of these sides have merit, and I think both can be catered to. After all, there is a very wide gulf between "crafting is not viable/worthwhile" and "the only way to obtain gear of any sort is crafting." My suggested solution is the following: Increase common gear drops such that the average player (not a sweatlord in a full raid group) will get 2-3 random pieces of baseline common gear per hour of mob grinding. Let uncommon gear drop at about 10-20% of this rate (roughly one uncommon per 3-6 hours). Finally let random rare gear drop at about 10% of that rate - a true rarity, not something players can really rely on for their progression. Gear of heroic, epic, or legendary quality would only drop from bosses, leaving the upper half of the gear spectrum entirely within the purview of crafters for the vast majority of players. This sort of hybrid system would allow more casual players to slowly progress with sub-optimal piecemeal gear sets they obtain along their journey, but would require crafting in order to reliably access the majority of the gear quality spectrum. I genuinely believe this would offer the best of both worlds, assuming the issues with crafting itself are also resolved.
There should be no amount of major mid to end game BiS gear that exists before nodes hit stages 3 and 4. World bosses should not spawn before this point, or at the very least have their direct gear drops non-existent.
When you get back from your long weekend you'll be seeing major gripes about a specific guild on Shoal who has reached level 25 very quickly (presumably without exploits - we'll assume this for now) and who now have an exclusive monopoly on world boss gear before anyone can even craft level 10 gear.
This creates a major imbalance where the 'haves' continue to get further and further ahead and no other guild will be able to compete. World bosses are locked out from everyone else as that guild will have the gear to hold those positions and caravans in regions they control will be completely impossible.
This isn't merely a matter of 'other guilds will gang up to take them out' - they are level 25 and have Tier 3 Radiant gear from world bosses already before most players are level 15.
The levelling route they took (visible on their streams) requires mobs to be a certain level in certain places - all of which got harder when that node hit level 1. So their levelling route is _only possible_ before the nodes hit level 1, which means it's not simply a matter of copying what they did at this point.
Most of this can be solved by the above suggestion. If World bosses don't even exist until their respective node hits stage 3 or 4 - it gives the other players time to catch up before any one guild can start monopolizing this gearing. If world bosses were gated behind settlements then these groups _must_ participate in settlements in order to gain access to their BiS gear.
Edit: this should also apply to PoI Radiant gear as well, such as what is found in Steel Bloom maybe a negative weight on the drop rates of gear unless a nearby Settlement has the appropriate settlement rank for that gear. As it is this bypasses crafters because better gear can come from Mobs before the crafters can even get certification to make it.
as it is now - Shoal is completely scuffed without any ability to meaningfully compete and the economy in turn is scuffed.
The power of the mage feels really good and I don't mean because they have a ton of spells. I literally only use three key spells outside of arcane missile, and they are fire barrage, ice shard, and lightning strike. I recently added cone of cold and lighting ball to my arsenal, but I have really focused on dealing the most damage synergizing my spell start off with fire as the open then arcane then ice for chill then cone of cold to freeze and hit the big damage with lightning strike with increase shatter damage. I dont have much gear on besides two rings, two earrings, and a necklace and just the basic starting gear. I can only imaging how much damage I will produce when I actually start putting on actual gear that increases my magic power and damage. I was able to run the mini dungeon with two other players and didnt feel useless ever without good gear on.
The quest for the Nexus mini dungeon is bugged and stopping me from getting that xp. Other than that the only thing that is actually slowing my progress is the settlement leveling. I am not able to craft zinc earring even though I have bought the recipe and used it. I do enjoy the effort it takes to craft stuff and the nice surprises you get when you mine granite or basalt (I got two legendary materials ruby/basalt).
My progression doesn't feel grindy to me because I am taking my time and not trying to speed run to max level. I feel that the pacing is good for a casual (father/husband/work/kids' activities) player like me. I don't feel left behind when I log in and the effort I put into my character has been rewarding. I have made my own jewelry and even made a epic lvl 1-9 necklace. The increase in xp with the gathering skills and the crafting skills feels really good, like I am able to accomplish something every time I log in to play when I have the time. The only thing I would ask for is that there were more animals to hunt in the anvil for the lower-level hunting skill because I am still trying to find hawk carcasses to make the leather armor so I don't have to wear heavy armor as a mage.
Please make these the default settings. If any player in your party does not have these settings the entire group can be rolled by this. I consider this egregious enough to be an exploit, because it causes the party to become combatants when they have no desire to.
Also please include a flag "Require Force PvP to use helpful abilities on affiliated combats." to protect support characters from hitting people who become PvP flagged during combat. There's currently no way for support characters to avoid healing them and being forced into a PvP Flag (other than simply not using your most effective abilities)
The pace of leveling in this new phase is slow but good. It is nice, that you even are able to get xp for processing (crafting and gathering more or less), but at a price cost that is ridicioulus. I feel, the tax for this before even any nodes exists should be reduced. Raise the tax after some nodes are finally build. I am level 14 now and barely have any money (50 silver) because of processing for 50% tax + buying basic incridiens.
I am always broke, even if i do comission board quests.
The power of a cleric for leveling and healing regarding the gear is too less. It takes way more time to kill some mobs now, even if i have already around 50 magical power. Also the healing is bad. A tank at my level has around 1500 hp and my strongest skill deliverance heals 10% of it and takes 3,3 seconds to cast. And lets not talk about group heal. This all feels very poor now and kills the fun especially if you have to grind more at beginning with level 10, because the quest xp is not worth it anymore except a few quests you can do in a good group for around 20.000 xp. I don't level much solo in this phase yet, but i have to soon because of my worktime in rl and then questing will not be worth anymore.
But all in all its a good thing that you either go for xp and character level or more like for xp for nodes, because you need the first nodes to craft better gear etc. It is a little forced act and its good!
Thanks guys and keep up the good work.
1. The entire crafting and value system of gear as show in the picture below (I don't own this picture but i wanted to post a visual for everyone to observe)
Why change it? Because the current values are absolutely insane, the disparity in gear values need an absolute re-evaluation because lv10-19 stuff shouldn't absolutely outshine and obliterate lv0-9 stuff of high rarity and the same with 20-25. (Out of context but please give us more levels for testing!)
2. As said above, the crafting system needs to be finetuned and the amount of crafting materials need to be re-evaluated.
Why? Because it shouldn't cost 40 full zinc and 13 armor molds (which require processing prices) plus 11 Metal Gauges which cost 30copper each and another 10 silver crafting charge totaling like 20 silver to craft a single lv10 basic item
3. In addition to crafting changes you guys NEED to revert the gear drop changed or make it ONLY affect lv0-9 gear because right now you have just invalidated anything crafting wise thus obliterated our entire ingame economy by making gear easier to farm.
Why? It should get increasingly harder to get higher level and higher tier gear, you shouldn't be able to go into steelbloom and come out with 20 full sets of gear 2hours later.
4. The PvP flagging, change it back to how it use to be
Why? Because i've been killed multiple times without being flagged outside of lawless zones and the people who killed me never went red and got corrupted which is absolutely not what was advertised in the initial pvp. Granted this could be a bug aswel but either way this needs to change.
The announced corruption system we were given.
This makes no sense. Giving the players a triumphant point in progression that is supposed to bring players together and give the server a purpose to be some kind of, even if slightly, functional community. I have seen it for phase 1, phase 2 and (the player dubbed) phase 2.5. The mayors will get their flying mount, fly around harassing lower level players who can't invest 23 hours a day, grief them (P O L A R) by kiting mobs onto groups that average around level 10-11, then get bored and leave the server and node to suffer.
Over the course of 3 phases I have over 1000 hours in the game and testing. I spent most of my time during phase 1 submitting every single bug that I found, even if it was a tree that was floating 1 foot off the ground. I believe the majority of the player base has done the same thing. I help every new player that asks for it in global and callout the players that are trying to rip off and scam the other players out of their hard earned gold (the people that spend all day at work and only have a few hours a day to play and maybe invest 20-30 hours a week at the high end).
Then we have the node progression that was witnessed today. The second nodes came up it looks normal and like a standard node. Just to find out that the next big milestone for us as players is taken away from us and instantly given to the big guilds; apprentice work stations. This removes any bit of cohesion and ability to make the server work together to help progress everything across the board, and this is only 5 days into a (roughly) year long venture. Instead of sticking with the idea of making the progress feel earned and rewarding, it was just handed to all the funnelers and made the big guilds even stronger. Taking away whatever little chance the small guilds and average players (the majority of your actual player base) had at leveling the playing field and standing a chance to compete at all.
It feels like this was 2 steps forward, and 3 steps back. The average player doesn't have the time or resources to invest in making gold and equipment to stand a chance when there is catering only to the big guilds of players. Please stop listening to the 359 players who gave you $575,000 and listen to the other 130,000 players who have participated in Alpha 2 testing (yes the math is accurate according to just kickstarter backings and not including any additional purchases made for skins along the build duration of the game). I get this isn't supposed to be an easy game, and it's not but please stop catering to the large donation backers and listen to your ACTUAL community.
--- I am level 9. I have only been doing Commissions, Gathering, and Crafting (in the Anvils). I would say the pace of leveling from a non-mob grinding standpoint feels good and is heading in the right direction. I am wondering how effective this will be still be at higher levels though.
Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
--- I am a Rogue. I am still learning Rogue so I can't really speak on this matter.
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
---Tendonite and the Rough Rough. took me sometime to find especially at a higher tier drop.
At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
---So far the new player experience in Anvils feels good and fresh, I don't feel like I am wasting my time gathering as the materials required (for outpost workstations) are cheap which allows you to focus on finding higher tier drops. It's because we are crafting the starting gear faster we receive satisfaction quicker which makes you want to go back out and find higher tier drops.
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
-- Satisfying: Being able to make good quality gear. The amount of work put in gathering and processing feels good to the rate at which I can craft it given the recipe is cheap.
-- Frustrating: Bonfire and Hammers Rest traveling between the two camps for storage and workstations is very tedious. It would be better if the all the workstations were inside hammers and bonfire proper with the storage NPCs in the vicinity. (This would eliminate the outposts)
Im more than ok with the pace of lvling as it is now
Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
The drop rate of gear should be looked into because it is not in line with the rest of the game. My thoughts:
- White common gear should be increased
- Crafting gear should be an progesable increase in costs etc. Now it doesnt matter if its white or legendary, meaning the process costs are the same. This doesnt make any sense economy wise.
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
Crafting looks more interesting now, the biggest win for me is that minables now have a chance for mats. This was my biggest concern in p1. So im really glad this was implemented. But the costs of creating gear should be low for white and increase with rarity.
At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
I havent experienced this yet, but im only level 10 and enjoyed all the way from it.
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
Most frustrating would be that in The Anvils vendors sell the Riverlands recipes instead of the recipes that use materials from The Anvils. Im expecting a fix for this within a couple of days to be honest.
Als i have recipes from commision boxes (copper ring and copper earing and Runebreath bracers) that say Found Unlearnable Recipe. When i gave the bracer recipe to my friend he could learn it though. Seems like a weird bug
I’m currently a Bard at level 15. Most of my evenings were spent mob bashing, and during the day I focused on gathering. I didn’t face any major difficulties playing in a group, even with very low gear (first crafts in white). At level 15 we can still progress quite easily. Group content feels a bit too easy in my opinion, since we can advance without much trouble even with no gear.
Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
I’d say my character’s equipment feels weaker than the challenges faced. However, in groups we can compensate and move forward steadily. Where it becomes an issue is that gear progression should keep up more especially crafted gear in order to handle elite mobs.
I haven’t done the big POIs yet (ROS or Bloom), but for regular mobs it’s fine for leveling. Right now we’re also in an awkward phase: villages are not yet developed, artisans are not apprentices yet, but we keep progressing anyway. A bit of gear drops from mobs, which helps, but overall there’s a slight imbalance. If you want progression to be slower, crafted gear must absolutely keep up, and elites should really feel like true elites that provide a meaningful group challenge.
On the skill balance side, I can feel my character growing stronger with each level, and that feels great and well tuned.
The new stat system looks good, but I haven’t tested higher tiers yet, so I’ll reserve judgment on the mid/long term.
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
Not really. I play in groups of 5–8 and progression feels smooth without major roadblocks. Gathering has also become easier (maybe a bit too easy — I actually liked hunting down small copper or zinc nodes, it gave the game some charm).
At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
It’s still the same issue: while the extra XP from crafting and farming is appreciated, we’re still too focused on mob bashing. Quests are coming in, but I really hope corrupted zones will scale to all levels, because that could bring the kind of dynamic content we enjoy.
Public quests also need more work: right now they’re basically “nice, a breath of fresh air for XP.” Try rewarding effort better — with gold/silver/bronze chests and improved loot. As it stands, it feels like “AFK for a few minutes, grab free XP.” That system deserves deeper work.
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
Most satisfying:
Without a doubt, the server stability. Even though I still get the same UE crashes I’ve had since 2.5, the game is smooth and enjoyable to play, even with a high population online. This is the biggest strength of Phase 3 so far, and something you can truly be proud of.
Most frustrating:
I think Phase 3 should have been pushed to November with all the announced new features. I understand it’s still alpha and that’s fine, but the zones feel too empty in terms of content, leaving only pure mob bashing to level up. For dedicated players, we were expecting a bit more.
Progressing through non-dynamic nodes, where you can just wander anywhere without villages really developing, makes the experience feel less immersive than what Ashes of Creation aims to deliver at launch. Right now it feels like a generic MMO: zone 1–10, then zone 8–15, then 15–20, etc. Not much sense of actually building a city.
Nodes 1–2 bring almost nothing. Yes, there are some crafting stations, but I think you should remove NPC stations around starting areas and focus them in nodes, so there’s a real incentive at level 1. Not only once everyone hits level 3.
Finally, I haven’t pushed far enough yet to judge the economy, but early processing feels too expensive: you need to pay both materials and taxes. Maybe reduce material requirements for novices, at least until the economy (caravans, crafting, etc.) has time to develop, so players feel a better sense of progression.
Thanks for reading,
Imanech
From levels 0 to around 10 to 13 felt decently paced. Gathering mats, exploring, killing mobs leveled progression at what felt like a decent pace. After that it started to get grindy. Spending 4-6 hours constantly killing bears or minotaur's to get a single level.
Did your character’s power (gear, skills, stats) feel like it kept up with the challenges you faced? Why or why not?
It's extremely difficult to craft armor at the start of the game. Towns don't have any way to craft and so everyone is forced to craft in the set stations around the starting area. This means that resources there are going to be depleted fairly constantly. So if you want to make gear you need to go far away to gather mats, with bags that hold very little, then trek it all the way back to process, wait, and repeat this as you can't carry enough mats to get make a set of gear. So as far as my character's power/gear keeping up with challenges ... the gear dictates what challenges I can take, and from level 1-10 thats little to nothing as you can't get gear.
Were there any bottlenecks (quests, materials, gold, difficulty spikes) that slowed your progression? Please share details.
GOLD! Oh good lord did the changes to Phase 3 kill ALL progression. Can't make any money from stone any more, it costs more to repair my fishing rod than the coin I get from selling the fish I caught. Trying to level crafting is flat out impossible. We need to buy even more resources from vendors to craft absolutely anything. There needs to be a MUCH better way to make money. I'm grinding mobs for 3 hours to try and get enough coin to tame a single mount that ends up being a beast of burden anyway. Please, please, PLEASE either go back to the way it was at the end of phase 2 with grinding stone, and not needing extra mats that you need to purchase to craft, or create a much better way (outside of just caravans and crates) for players to make money.
At what point, if any, did progression start to feel grindy instead of fun? What specifically caused that feeling?
What was the most satisfying and the most frustrating part of progression for you?
As mentioned in question #1, around level 13 or so things started getting really grindy. You can't get xp from crafting because its WAY to expensive to do so. So the only option you have is to get together with a group and mindlessly kill mobs for 8+ hours every day to get a single level. Since leveling has become so grindy, satisfaction comes solely from loot drops. Which, at least for me, didn't come until level 14+ when I could get with a group that could kill 3-star mobs. And even then we got a lot more useless runes and essence than we got gear.
Other things I'd like to voice my concerns about:
This is specifically for the Riverlands as I have not played in Anvils though it is probably the same there ... leveling nodes is severely unbalanced, especially at the start of the game. Winstead and Joeva are the only two places with crafting stations at the start of the game. Every single player starting in the Riverlands is forced to craft there which gives Winstead and Joeva a CRAZY unfair advantage for node progression. They lap all other nodes by an entire level easily. These crafting stations should all be located in Lionshold. I'd say an alternative could be to not have crafting at these crafting stations grant node xp for these places, but if they remain in Winstead and Joeva, people will continue to focus farming resources in these places as its the closest spot to the crafting stations which still gives Winstead and Joeva an unfair node xp boost.
Please don't have Animal Husbandry be a shot in the dark when trying to convert to mount/Beast of Burden (Bob). Or make it so we can unlock the ability to choose what we want it to be. If I hunt animals for hours, and finally get one that lives, I don't want to have to throw away money because I got a BoB I don't want/need instead of the mount I've been trying to get for so long, or visa versa.
Bad enough we spend hours gathering just to lose a large part of it in death.