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.
Impression of Phase 3 After 17 Days of Gameplay From an Ardent Fan of the Game
xalorin
Member, Alpha Two
I started my adventures in Verra during Phase 2.5 and have quickly become addicted. From 10,000 feet I love the heck out of the game and seriously looked forward to Phase 3. Phase 3 has been an eye-opener and while I still love the game and will continue to play, some of Intrepid's decisions around game direction in the face of gameplay issues have been baffling and disappointing.
I understand the design goal around making Crafting king in terms of the gear available to adventurers and in a perfect world where the crafting systems were fully functional and defect-free I would be perfectly happy with that approach. That said, the current state of said crafting systems are far from being defect free. A majority of recipes in the game at this moment are unavailable due to defects, making it virtually impossible to produce any gear, much less higher tier gear. As an example: I play a ranger main at the moment who is level 18, compared to a level 22 ranger I played in P2.5. I have pushed Tanning and Leatherworking in P3 to apprentice at great expense, both in time and currency. After 15 days of gameplay, I am wearing a majority of Sanctus Skulker and Howling Wolf gear and have crafted weapons. I am UNABLE to make Sanctus Stalker or Howling Wolf upgrades for slots where I am wearing Riverstalker gear due to defective recipes and I can no longer grind for those upgrades with any reasonable expectation I will see them due to the recent decision to stop drops with the exception of radiant gear from 3 Star mobs. This has left my ranger is a state of limbo where I cannot advance him either by grinding or crafting.
Based on this situation, I believe if Intrepid would like to have it's player base continue to enjoy the game and be able to achieve advancement goals, it either needs to rapidly correct the current recipe defects that are making the crafting of gear impossible, or remove the block on gear drops from POI mobs so that players have some avenue for acquiring gear until such time as the crafting systems are more defect free.
One other major area of frustration is acquisition of currency. The current rates of glint drops by mobs is entirely too low to allow a player desiring to participate in crafting to do so, reducing playtime to an undesirable slog of gathering resources that are subsequently dumped to a vendor just to acquire a minimal amount of silver. This activity lacks any sense of enjoyment and is currently totally adversarial as every player competes for what are currently limited resources. It would be much more enjoyable to see glint drop at a respectable rate, especially in light of the fact that there is currently no reasonable amount of gear dropping to help fund crafting activities.
Making adjustments to these 2 problem areas would make a tremendous difference to making the game fun to play. That is, I believe, why we play games after all, isn't it? To have fun? Sadly, AoC is not currently fun to play.
I understand the design goal around making Crafting king in terms of the gear available to adventurers and in a perfect world where the crafting systems were fully functional and defect-free I would be perfectly happy with that approach. That said, the current state of said crafting systems are far from being defect free. A majority of recipes in the game at this moment are unavailable due to defects, making it virtually impossible to produce any gear, much less higher tier gear. As an example: I play a ranger main at the moment who is level 18, compared to a level 22 ranger I played in P2.5. I have pushed Tanning and Leatherworking in P3 to apprentice at great expense, both in time and currency. After 15 days of gameplay, I am wearing a majority of Sanctus Skulker and Howling Wolf gear and have crafted weapons. I am UNABLE to make Sanctus Stalker or Howling Wolf upgrades for slots where I am wearing Riverstalker gear due to defective recipes and I can no longer grind for those upgrades with any reasonable expectation I will see them due to the recent decision to stop drops with the exception of radiant gear from 3 Star mobs. This has left my ranger is a state of limbo where I cannot advance him either by grinding or crafting.
Based on this situation, I believe if Intrepid would like to have it's player base continue to enjoy the game and be able to achieve advancement goals, it either needs to rapidly correct the current recipe defects that are making the crafting of gear impossible, or remove the block on gear drops from POI mobs so that players have some avenue for acquiring gear until such time as the crafting systems are more defect free.
One other major area of frustration is acquisition of currency. The current rates of glint drops by mobs is entirely too low to allow a player desiring to participate in crafting to do so, reducing playtime to an undesirable slog of gathering resources that are subsequently dumped to a vendor just to acquire a minimal amount of silver. This activity lacks any sense of enjoyment and is currently totally adversarial as every player competes for what are currently limited resources. It would be much more enjoyable to see glint drop at a respectable rate, especially in light of the fact that there is currently no reasonable amount of gear dropping to help fund crafting activities.
Making adjustments to these 2 problem areas would make a tremendous difference to making the game fun to play. That is, I believe, why we play games after all, isn't it? To have fun? Sadly, AoC is not currently fun to play.
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Comments
Its a distopian vision of timesinks, spreadsheets and losses.