Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
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I apologize but your view spurs my imagination of some guy taking a hot steaming dump right in front of me.
@neuroguy the gameplay demo was unprofessional and they should reconsider both not releasing a video every single month and for Steven to commentate on it only and not play.
He is a first time game dev.
What he loves to do is lead his guild in combat.
There should be no surprise that he's not adept at staying focused enough to follow the outline for a long demo, but...
I think the real takeway should be that we now need some shorter demos that focus on two or three of the topics.
My primary concern with the demo is that we already have a fairly decent understanding of Cleric.
In 5 years of development, we know next to nothing about Summoner gameplay.
We haven't seen Bard gameplay.
Seems to me more important to demo Summoner Active Skills 1-10 or even Bard Active Skills 1-10 than Cleric Active Skills 15+.
(Everyting is subject to change and there is no release date - updating to UE5.1 means there is continual scope creep - so nothing they ever show us is guaranteed to be the same by release.)
Intreprid should care more about showing off classes and syngergies as this means so much to people gameplay wise and it was frustrating to watch such a relaxed demo with little on offer.
The worst thing from this gamestream was Steven annoucing during, that there will be active blocking+parrying for all classes but then the devs saying we're still deciding on a resource which for me brings into HUGE question the lack of care for gameplay fundamentals.
If they haven't decided on a feature that is going to be prevelant for all classes then I can see there efforts being a balancing nightmare for PvP and I can't stress enough how I hope they take gameplay more seriously otherwise I'm not looking forward to AoC for a competitive and rich PvE mechanical game.
Monthly livestreams are AWESOME and we get new info every month, which is a tough task for the team, we know! We are all so thankful for it, it gives us a lot of confidence that the game development is progressing.
However, I support the OP's opinion. If you are going to commit to monthly livestreams with in-game clips, at least organize these clips so that they give off a GOOD impression of what the gameplay is like.
Considering the dev team and Steven have said many times that "this game will not be for everyone", including "more risk that usual mmos", open-world pvp, etc, This means it is geared less towards "ultra-casual" and more towards "people who actually want to play and compete". Although there will be a place for everyone, streams like this make it feel like its going to be a game for random ultra casuals with no risk and no challenge.
This is very much different from the ranger showcase, where you were only showcasing skills one at a time. Here it was group mechanics, and therefore the party should be more organized, better positioning, etc. Things you need to do to stay alive.
I hope its not an ego thing for Steven. Its not driving me away from the game at all, but its just making these streams "MEH" instead of "YEAH".
In short, I am appreciative of them doing this but I do think there is a very careful balance to be had and we as consumers should be very mindful of that.
Personally I enjoy the style of update video where crumbs and hints are given and allow the player to speculate, especially when the reality is that we're not far enough in the development process for details (that are meant to be tested and changed and tested again in A2 and beyond). I know people are hungering for solid information (especially since it means we're closer to A2), but it's just not there yet.
There were quite a few tidbits that I enjoyed learning: that they're still deciding if/how to implement a stamina system (which is a really good indicator of where they are in the dev process, if basic game systems like that are still being debated), that in response to comments about how easy the gameplay is, that Steven responded by saying this is just a demo and that AoC will be on the "harder" end of the difficulty spectrum, hints of more mini-games (which tells me that there will be a variety of these and it's not just a peripheral system), that global systems like Constellations and damage types will affect gameplay, and a lot more.
I would recommend a second watch-through, since there were a lot of tiny comments that hint at much bigger systems.
Steven did say they were level 15, or around there at least.
I don't know why everyone forgets that this is very much a work in progress, even when Steven prefaces every single video by reminding us that. Of course it looks bland, it isn't even close to finished yet. These videos are not a representation of a finished product, rather a glimpse into the progress that has been made.
We haven't seen Rogue, yet, either, but... we pretty much understand how a Rogue is likely to function.
Prior to Alpha 2, we should see some demos of augments - we have an understanding of Active Skills from the Alpha 1 demos.
Also... we shoul probably at least have the last two articles for Know Your Nodes poste some time soon.
In addition to...
NODES 3
i think the issue was, that Steven made it look like level 2 gameplay
If I'm being picky, whether this live stream showcase or a showcase from a year ago...there does seem to be something just kind of missing. Like an element that could make them better, that'd bring them from an A to an A+. No idea what it is though.
Could just be the never ending desire to want more info, to see more. Either way, live streams in general are already an A, and far better than what any other company I can think of does.
grow up
Personally I really enjoyed this one with everyone having fun playing the game while showing some skills. I prefer they keep it fun even if it makes longer streams with the same amount of info, not turn streams into some PowerPoint presentation meant for a board meeting of execs.
If you return after Beta starts, the streams will probably be more to your taste since Beta is a complete game that is being put through the final polishing steps. This is a work in progress. They are not really focused on showing off. They are working through the problems of development in bringing their design to fruition and showing their progress along the way.
While IS does want feedback, asking for what sounds like a complete, organized, and flashy product simply cannot be provided yet as it does not exist.
Prefer focussed but happy with whatever.
Anyone with a decent brain after fully listening and watching this stream should know that gameplay and fundamentals have taken a back seat IE they don't have a committed team or just 1 staff member to making ideas in this area that only Steven signs off on.
If I was an employee tasked with complete oversee of classes, gameplay, fundamentals and user experience, I would of had active blocking and 'X' as a resource done EONS ago. Western development is lacking I'm sorry, they care more about a unique and fun experience, both ingame and out of game in their own working environment than they do GETTING TO WORK! Steven as the only real leader is clearly too soft!
I'll be dabbling in my Korean delights shortly, this western effort better get a damn grip of itself because I don't know what kind of fool would find it amusing to watch snail pace development and decision making that has actually been put on damn video!
AoC trends are literally a ghost town, both on youtube views and twitter likes. There needs to be decision makers in Intreprid that know what people want to hear and to do that in a far better manner than Steven's waffling.
Userbase in the early stages matter too, there are too little from the competitive background from games such as Lineage 2 and Archeage and these are the kind of players that will put any game through its paces unlike a lot of you from story focused games or games that had no potential to be massively popular but worked in their own cute charming way (like EQ bs).
I don't understand what makes a good dev update for this reason. I never feel satisfied with any show cases because everything is subject to change.
I didn't like the conviction because it sounds like the old focus mechanism has returned. I liked the fact the hybrid gameplay still didn't return to a crosshair though.
I think the potential is present but I didn't come away with a sentiment of 'Cleric will be awesome'. I didn't come away with a sentiment of 'Cleric will be crap' either. I just saw the whole update as exploration and entertainment. I didn't see the update as a technical diorama like other updates have been.
Somewhat similar that was shown sometime ago for a couple of classes.
I see a lot of comments on here talking about not getting exactly the class preview they wanted, or complaining about development speed and that seems unusual to me. Naturally every update isn’t going to speak to the exact area of the game that you’re most interested in. The development process and speed has been impressive since the unreal engine 5 and texture tool update.
I’m someone who can watch someone else’s gameplay and be entertained though.
Hard disagree on reconsidering the monthly livestreams. Many people enjoy the updates and seeing the world evolve, even if it's just showing off some mounts, as long as that's the expectation going in. Not having things like the blocking resource figured out may sound fundamentally concerning to you but it is also an extremely trivial thing to adjust and it WILL need to be adjusted for balance. When they don't have everything fleshed out 100% yet [probably why other archetypes are not shown yet @Dygz ], it's fine to leave things to later that are just tuning for the sake of balance. Trying to finalize things for balance now is a fool's errand and a waste of resources imo.
I care less about 'professionalism' and more about clarity and conciseness (which may be what you meant). Clarity is number one in my mind. Clarity includes setting expectations for the stream, identifying what will be showcased, which I think historically has been done very well. Clarity also includes identifying what information they still do not feel comfortable with sharing or want to keep from players, this has not been done quite as well as setting expectations but still well enough. For example, some people are claiming that Steven intentionally didn't reveal more about the constellation system which would be valid, but that needs to be communicated explicitly and not speculation by the viewers [ @Fantmx I agree with your post otherwise but their intentions need to be explicit about the amount of information they are sharing so we are not wondering if it was a botched script where more info was meant to be shared haha]
I think this encapsulates what a lot of people have eluded to in terms of the difficulty and competitiveness. I think this dev update pre-recorded video would have been best split in two. One part just explicitly showing off the new weapons, cleric skills, constellations + day/night. A second part with gameplay where they do not have to be burdened with explaining anything and could show off the zombies coming out of the ground, the ambience, the group mechanics and synergies and just show some organized party play + giving people a nice sense for the pacing/ambience/feel of the game. This would include going to the observation point and seeing the constellation.
So personally, I am considering not just my personal take on the dev update but what other people may take away from it too. The target audience for the dev updates is mostly invested players who are knowledgable, but it is also the source material where content creators make this stuff more visible.
The pre-recorded videos are a slightly different story, they lend themselves to casual viewing much more readily due to the lack of updates and other ramblings that are only interesting to people closely following development. Look at the AoC youtube channel, the number of views for the pre-recorded standalone 4k videos vs the full dev livestreams (this update: 43k vs 17k; gathering: 91k vs 51k; ranger combat: 107k vs 51k; melee combat: 96k vs 60k; seasons: 76k vs 49k; character creator: 80k vs 51k... you get the picture). This is why Liniker 's point on showing cleric hybrid combat or Gui10 's comment on focusing on showing off group content or other people's arguments about seeing more skillful/difficult combat are important/valid . Also it's why I've never gotten annoyed at Steven saying this is early alpha footage subject to change, before during and after the videos lol.
Clarity in the pre-recorded videos is important and things shouldn't be left to speculation too much or require specific knowledge [what I was trying to say to Azherae]. Sure we have known the cleric stuff for a while now but it takes a minute or two to re-hash it. Yes we all know about hybrid combat but it takes a minute or two to just show it off for the cleric. It's a hard balance to strike, you don't want there to be zero overlap with previous videos/content/info but at the same time you shouldn't repeat the full description of nodes or hybrid combat every video either.
lol go back to your korean fake mmo gacha bs
I would just like to point out that the combat team was created earlier this year. Even though the game was started in before the Kickstarter (2017). I don't think either of us know enough about development cycles to state conclusively when a specific function should be completed. But I do know that what they are working on now is far from complete and I don't expect anything to look amazing yet. They are showing us the direction they are going and asking what we think about it.
You said:
" I don't know what kind of fool would find it amusing to watch snail pace development and decision making that has actually been put on damn video!"
That's fine. What is being done here is not what you are looking for. Since you seem interested in Ashes, come back during beta or around release. You will find much more of what you are looking for.
I'm pretty sure the issues were a combination of clouds in the sky and the fact that they weren't even sure where to look to find the constellations. So, they went to an area where the clouds were not in the way while they took a look around.
They were in a forest too, and went to find an open area where the trees weren't in the way.