Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Feedback Thread - Alpha One Testing
Greetings, glorious Ashes of Creation community! Thank you all so much for helping us with our ongoing Alpha One testing - your feedback is essential as we work to bring Verra to life!
After you've joined in our Alpha One testing, please let us know your feedback on the below topics:
If you're looking to report a bug instead, please be sure to check out our Known Issues list first. Then, please use our handy Bug Reporting Template to let us know as many details as you can in your in-game bug report!
After you've joined in our Alpha One testing, please let us know your feedback on the below topics:
- Download/installation process
- Client performance
- Server performance
- Check back later to see what else we're looking for your feedback on!
If you're looking to report a bug instead, please be sure to check out our Known Issues list first. Then, please use our handy Bug Reporting Template to let us know as many details as you can in your in-game bug report!
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Comments
Cons
So far the Launcher installation, Patching and starting of the game went well.
Issues
- I noticed a HUGE framerate drop, when the game was up and running.
- The server stability is lacking a little. First login I didn't get pass the Character menu, second time I got in and killed a few mobs. But then again the servers went down.
So far I am on around 7 crashes, I get the message that all servers are shut down for maintenance. When i shutdown the launcher and reopen it, I can join in again.
Somehow the game launcher seems to be draining my internet, and making everything slower including my FPS.
I'd also like to be able to track more than one quest at a time on my map.
I really don't like having to spam/hold down a key to do auto-attacks. That's an RSI waiting to happen.
Lastly, can we just get rid of this action vs tab target swapping thing? Just make the combat one mode like GW2 which will dramatically reduce your development time and make the experience consistent instead of dealing with action mode vs tab target mode bugs and behavior.
I know this isn't the feedback that you asked for, but it's what's bothering me right now.
The game is actually running fine for me on a mid-range PC (i5 Skylake and 1080 Ti) and other than the "summoned to a totem of players and frozen" thing, the game ran well.
Also the copper pickaxe seems to have no use. Not sure if stone was added erroneously to a tier higher or if stone was really intended to be gathered with the iron pick, if that is the case then there may need to be some clarification that newbies need the iron pick to actually progress with the crafting quest.
While combat feels and sounds good, I don't like that my dwarf clips into most mobs, especially long creatures.
It would be nice to see the world react more to the character, for example grass and flowers being moved by the player character.
I was happy with the optimization, only had two client crashes in a two hour long session. Acceptable for a pre-alpha.
I liked having some dialogue options when getting quests, although the game as a whole could do better to convey lore to the player. Why should I care about this world?
The node system is cool, but the rest of the world seems a bit dead. It would be nice to see more life and immersion added. NPCs doing their thing outside of the cities, mobs fighting other mobs. Reasons for mobs to be in certain areas (there is some of this with the crypt for example, but outside of dungeons it just seems like mobs are plopped down arbitrarily).
It would be nice to see a current added to the river. It is flowing quite strong yet has no reaction on the character.
It would be nice to fish outside of predetermined fishing spots.
I've got often an Client crash with the UE4 Error:
Fatal error: [File:Unknown] [Line: 198] Unreal Engine is exiting due to D3D device being lost. (Error: 0x887A0006 - 'HUNG')
(Drivers of my PC are up to date)
The resource spawn for the Quest "Crafting a Sword / Wand) are to low, especially the Redwood Timber
The lost of Resources after an death are to high, especially because they are so rare to find.
There should be an Option to turn of the auto hiding of the Quest- and Chat Window.
Here is my experience while playing on a Warrior on Norlan through level 5
- Basic Questing and POI - Initial direction when starting out felt confusing. One can figure it out after walking around a bit, and that green names means targets you should probably talk to, but for new players it might be helpful to guide them for their very first quest.
- Quests - starting out they generally felt *too* far away. Depending on the vision you want to have for the game but i suggest if you have a quest hub like the starting zone, maybe keep quests relatively near for the first 1-2 quests and then branch out after those intro 1-2 quests.
- Quests - some seemed bugged, Seeking Traitors (7) told me to find a camp and then kill some of the traitors, but when i got there they were WAY above my level and one shot me. When i rezzed back to go there and try again with friends, it was pointing me to another spot, much farther north west than the original camp
- Quests - Narrative: A Burden to Bear, part 1 and part 2 - quest seemed very buggy. Locations for progressing the quest were off and i couldn't get past part 2 as it just wouldnt advance.
- Quests - Narrative: Crashing Through (1) - got this quest early, the first step was to kil the cursed chargers but there weren't any of them anywhere near the quest loc.
- Quests - (Forgot the name but the one where you get alcohol and drink or smell it) - This quest got bugged on my party on step 4/5. We couldn't complete it after drinking 3 of the bottles, interacting with everything in the crypt and killing everything in it and abandoning quest/retrying
- mobs - Mangled Maw (lvl 4 near Drythorne) holy crap these do way too much dmg - or comically if that's intentional then that's pretty funny
- character details screen - overall impressions - put a space between Character and Details. Perhaps mouse over the main stats give details about what each one will do? I think there might be some place holder in here for now, so maybe this is tbd.
- Menu Tips - Opening bag/character details screen/keybinds opens a pop up at the bottom of my screen that has to be closed every time you open it. After the first 5-10 this becomes kind of annoying and is unnecessary.
- Tank - playing this class feels underwhelming compared to Cleric and Mage. Clerics and mages are doing insane dmg compared to warr, and with mages being able to do it from afar and run away, clerics with so much selfheal - there does not seem to be a pro to being warrior. Playing with a shield didn't really seem to improve the experience damage/tank wise even with block talents. When playing the first 5-10 levels, it's that initial experience players have that will make them continue playing and i don't think you have it 100% right for warrior right now. Cleric feels amazing to play, and those who choose this route probably will stick with it. Mages blast so hard, it's exciting to see crits and big numbers. I'd suggest moving the dmg numbers up on warriors or improve their starting tankiness. I get that perhaps there's an endgame vision for warrs that maybe they scale with talents, but you don't want to make the grind so sufferable that the tanks give up. That ends up causing an imbalance in your trinity and that will end up causing bigger issues later on when everyone needs a tank and no one plays it
- More Warrior notes - Skills - Onslaught / intercept - this spell feels really really good. the range is fantastic too.
- Warrior skills - shouldn't these scale with the weapons i have equipped? Seeing a level 2 mage do more damage in 1 spell than i could possibly do using all of my abilities feels bad.
- Javelin - feels clunky, mob frames to you instead of moves in quickly, and then it runs back to where it was partially. The range feels kind of small when you consider that it runs back 20-40% of the distance you pulled it anyway. Great idea to add in this death grip but the spell animation needs work.
- Lacerate/Resounding Smash - Feels clunky to use when spamming auto attacks, is it possible to make it queue lacerate if you press it while spamming Q? Because what is happening now is you have to full stop pressing q to use these skills.
- Default Keybinds - I recommend changing spam button to R as default. It seems more natural than Q spamming with pinky
- Keybind issues - Any spells bound using a modifier + your bound autoattack button (so if you do Shift+Q or Alt+Q) appear to be neglected. I tested binding Alt+Q, Shift+Q and Ctrl+Q and it wasn't working properly - Ctrl+Q would dodge and Alt+Q would just spam attack.
- Directions - I feel lost. I don't know where i should aim to go, where i should go to next, or where my quests are. I just ended up wandering and grinding mobs after level 3~.
- Gathering tools - i didnt see the need to have cheaper gathering tools if they were going to be completely useless on nodes. Played a fewhrs and did not find a single node i could actually use Axe and Copper Pickaxe on
- Crafting - It seems difficult to hit enough gathering nodes to craft anything. Not sure if gathering nodes have been minimized on purpose but if yes, then disregard.
- Ship - the ship near the ferry north of mistmire appears to be falling perpetually. It would land, appear to sink into the water partially and then reset 4 feet above water and fall again.
- Water and Swimming - I love the water and waves in this game. Environment looks fantastic. But sometimes while swimming fast, your character ignores laws of physics and flies through the water (and air) to the point where you don't lose air, and just fly through the surface/over the waves. But wow is it pretty!
- Wildflower Extravaganza - this quest is bugged, inspecting his flower collection doesnt give quest progression
- Skills - Add Cooldown to the tooltip of the skills, possibly even a remaining CD timer (as for some icons it's hard to see when skill will come off cd)
- Loot off mobs - make it easier to know there's loot off of mobs. Maybe a chest or a bag taht shows and disappears, or an audible sound alongside the chat menu so you know it was successfully looted. I really like the map has the icon that lets you know potential loot is out there, but without a visual (sometimes mob disappears) it's hard to know exactly where to stand to loot it.
I'll post more as i continue playing but these are my initial thoughts up through lvl 5. I will likely start changing weapons and seeing how that goes moving forward.
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Edit - looks like feedback was to be focused on this:
Download/installation process
Client performance
Server performance
i'll keep my original post above but here are my thoughts on the above focus topics
1. Download/install - It was fairly straightforward, but it was slow. Even with my fast fiber internet, it was still slower than i'd expect to download the game.
2. Client performance - performance is feeling good so far, very stable for an alpha. Login- to game launch feels good/right. On my computer i did not experience any lag or gameplay issues.
3. Server Performance - i've experienced some janky mob mechanics where a mob would reset or go back 1-2 seconds but that was early on and i haven't experienced it since
I would have to agree with the addition of opacity options to the minimap. I would even suggest making it resizable in future builds, too.
The spam/hold down a key felt fine for me, no different than spamming a rotation in other games.
The starting crypt area seemed to overload my Ryzen 7 3800X / RTX 2070 Super a little bit. Might be a bug with the particle density w/ the fog on the ground.
[*] Download/installation process
Finding it in discord was a unique experience. Once I got the installer it was pretty straightforward. I did have a message pop up about hard drive space around the 40% mark but the installation continued without a problem. I have a system with 3 drives in it. I have a 250gb SSD that my OS and all my typical C: files are on. I then have a 2 TB HDD and 1 TB SSD. I downloaded the installer to C:/user/downloads and then installed the game on 1TB SSD:\Intrepid. I am thinking installing the game a different drive may have prompted this space message despite the destination having ample space.
[*] Client performance
No issues with the client in ~3 hrs of running around just killing stuff. I have a 1070 GTX (Nvidia gods give me a 3080 please) and ran the game on ultra without FPS problems.
[*] Server performance
No issues at all.
This can happen if you're trying to report a bug in action mode - you should be able to toggle back to tab with Z and report a bug successfully!
Whenever you see the Launch Game button grayed out, please close out of the launcher, and make sure any launcher processes are closed in Task Manager, and then try again!
In general, it can be faster to run a Restore to grab the latest/freshest files, rather than waiting on a patch that checks the changes for all your existing files!
For all other folks that are sharing feedback outside of the three requested topics, please feel free to create a thread in this forum category to share more of your thoughts!
After coming back in after this crashed. Spawned away from the mountain and closer to the cave exploration area down south of the mountain. Moved a few feet then it froze up again. Wondering if this little corner is having issues maybe
Download/install process:
*took a little longer than expected considering I have 1Gb down for speed, but I assume that was due to some bandwidth issues on your end.
Client Performance so far:
*have been getting a lot of crashes with UE-something (didn't catch it), this is mainly occurring in my current location. Earlier had no issues.
FPS sitting around 70-80 with Ultra on 1440p
Server performance:
*not sure if the server is causing the above or client problems. little stuttering here and there could be server or client I suppose.
Purchase and download of the game was smooth and flawless.
The character creation screen was decent. The server selection screen was ok, would really like to see bigger drop down menu for available servers with larger text.
On entering the server the world itself looks great and movement felt good. Although, there was quite a bit of server lag and instability, not many people around and I was experiencing some major frame drops.
Quests, the quest npc locations really need to be more visible. Although I did like the interface of the quests, it was easy to read and easy to follow.
Beginner crafting quest. I feel like the wooden pickaxe and chopper are kinda useless, since the first quest requires you to have the iron ones, I spent my first silver on items that have no use that I can see. Felt like I wasted my silver.
Mounts. The mounts look fantastic, I’m very impressed with the horse mount design and animation are on point!
A few things I didn’t like. It would be nice to be able to move the keybinds especially for the weapon from Q button. It feels super awkward to use the Q button and then the 1 button for your first ability. I’m not sure how you would be able to change this but it seems very weird to have the UI set up this way.
The UI, please make it so we can move around the elements of the UI. I’d like to be able to move around the party, HP bar and target enemy bars.
I’ve not ventured too far out of the starter area yet so I am looking forward to testing more tomorrow!
Edit, sod it, died again went down from 12 redwood log down to 1 log on 2 death and 5hrs gathering. sod that gathering and making a weapon quest line
[*] Download/Install Process: Went off without a hitch. On Verizon Fios Gigabit, w/ Ethernet Connection. Installer and Actual Client Download and subsequent install was fine.
[*] Client Performance: Given that it’s an alpha, it’s relatively stable. However, as I noted in a response to another player - there seems to be some issues with particle density in the open dungeons, particularly in the first crypt w/ the consumption of the beverages. Reference: My PC Build is an AMD Ryzen 7 3800x not overclocked, RTX 2070 Super, 32GB DDR4 RAM. Frame rates perpetually dropped to about 15-20FPS. Open world seemed fine.
[*] Server Performance: Very little noticeable issues. Some rubberbanding, but only when I was in the spawn point with other players - probably due to just the loading in of characters. Cleared up when moving into the open world.
I was confused at first but only because i was skim reading and i eventually figured it out... (by reading all the way lol)
Client performance:
No crashes yet. decent frames. not many probelms.
Server performance:
Minor Lag stutters at times but nothing major. Only problem i've experienced was me logging out.. then back in.. only to be falling through the map endlessly. I had to delete the character. But it was at the beginning so no big deal.
No issue at all, everything goes great!
Client performance
- When I logout to fix some in game bug. Sometimes, the server list doesn't refresh itself, need to restart the client.
- When I logout to fix some in game bug and log back in, sometimes my character list is empty. To fix the issue, I quit the game and log back in without restarting the client and without changing the server selection in the list.
- When I logout to fix some in game bug and log back in, sometimes my character list loading to the death. I tried to close the game and come back without restarting the client and it didn't fixe the issue. I had to restart the client to fix the issue.
Server performance
- My computer spec:
i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz
RTX2060
- My FPS showed some sort of stability. But Ultra seems to be a little bit too much. At logon, when everybody trying to login, I experienced some lag but I think it was from my computer. Then I used the "High" setting and my gameplay experience goes better.
- I tried to change my Nvidia settings to default and I gained 15-20 fps for an average fps of 45 with Ultra settings.
No issues here at all
Client performance:
Unsure what this is. But in terms of logging in i had no issues.
Server performance:
Enemies seem to take too long to load when running around fast in a mount. Often I would stop and then an entire pack of enemies eventually became visible right on top of me and attacking me.
Also i seemed to see players teleporting/stuttering until i got closer to them. Monsters also seem to stutter specially during "big battles" like the fire dragon with the raptors.
Servers felt fairly stable. No lag on my end, no disconnects.