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 Request] Alpha Two Fighter Archetype Preview Shown in March Livestream
Hello glorious community,
We’d like your feedback on the Fighter Archetype Preview shown during the March 2024 Development Update Livestream.
To help guide this conversation, here are a few thought starters you can choose from:
We’ll be compiling a report for the design team on Friday, April 12, 2024, so please try to get your feedback into this thread by then!
Everyone here at Intrepid Studios looks forward to reading all the feedback you have to share!
💪 Learn about the Fighter archetype and its impressive kit in this gameplay video! Ashes of Creation Alpha Two Fighter Archetype Preview
https://youtu.be/OAUJRQM8INY
⚔️ Let us know in the comments if you are going to play as a Fighter!
We’d like your feedback on the Fighter Archetype Preview shown during the March 2024 Development Update Livestream.
To help guide this conversation, here are a few thought starters you can choose from:
- How do you feel about the Fighter Archetype Preview?
- What excites you about playing and interacting with the Fighter Archetype?
- Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Fighter Archetype Preview?
- Are there similar Archetypes you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
- What are your thoughts on the Fighter's abilities, mechanics, and combos?
- Do you have opinions on the great sword animations, Fighter VFX, and unlockable procs? If so, please share them!
We’ll be compiling a report for the design team on Friday, April 12, 2024, so please try to get your feedback into this thread by then!
Everyone here at Intrepid Studios looks forward to reading all the feedback you have to share!
💪 Learn about the Fighter archetype and its impressive kit in this gameplay video! Ashes of Creation Alpha Two Fighter Archetype Preview
https://youtu.be/OAUJRQM8INY⚔️ Let us know in the comments if you are going to play as a Fighter!
5
Comments
Battle cry's synergy for melee pushes into groups of enemies is great. Love the dual effect of it.
The movement flow of cancelling whirlwind into the main looked amazing. If most cancellable abilities will flow into other stuff as smoothly as this - it'll be amazing.
Rupture... WE'RE FUCKING BLOODSUCKER IN THIS BISHHH! As a Bloodsucker main in Dota2, I dearly hope that Fighter augments can provide a rupture-like effect onto tank's abilities, cause I would still prefer to play a tank, but this ability is definitely pulling me to play a fighter.
Wounds have a great internal synergy and I assume would also synergize well with other physical classes, which comes back to the BC's melee push synergy - so positive points across the board.
Crippling blow has a foot icon, but a sword attack animation. I guess the foot icon is there to say that it "slows down target's feet", but I'd prefer if the animation kinda matched the icon, so that it's more intuitive on what your character does. Maybe smth like a low shin kick would be a better animation for this ability.
Along the lines of rupture, I really hope fighter augments can give the vampiric effects to tank as well
I also love that we can use abilities while in air from a jump (or at least it looked like we could). Looks cool and also has a very practical application for movement and positioning.
Ability speed is linked with atk speed, which I personally love.
Forms changing on the fly and immediately utilizing the archetype resource is great. And the forms themselves seem to be a good base lvl for a fighter mechanic.
Weapon mastery stuff is obviously early, but I'm glad we already got a tease and a "we're working on it" word.
Weapon skill builds seem to be DEEEEP (imo). And I love that there's interactions both ways, from basic attack to abilities and the other way around.
On the topic of weapon passive - we definitely need player-made presets, cause oooh boi, respeccing all of this would be a pain.
Abilities already implied it, but I'm glad that the devs themselves mentioned that they always keep in mind how archetypes will synergize with each other, when creating mechanics/effects.
As for the mob farming part feedback - I'd definitely prefer harder mobs for bigger groups. The number of mobs is just right imo, but their impact on a 4-member group (while the location is supposed to be for bigger groups) is already negligible. Definitely need either stronger abilities on them or maybe some of their own synergies/classes that have a bigger impact on the party. And respawn rate would need to be balanced based on how difficult those mobs are.
As a final statement, definitely liked the showcase. Stuff looks great so far.
p.s. can't wait till Azherae's/Noaani's notes on the tiny showing of the fast-flying logs. I'm they loved that
p.p.s about the YT video. I'd prefer if it was a direct video rather than a premiere, because that way there's a much higher chance of syncing the twitch stream with the YT vid. Otherwise we might miss out on the last words of the video cause we gotta go back to the stream. Though, if the premiere was chosen because it lets you release the 4k quality immediately on demand - it's fine to keep it as a premiere.
I do feel like some skills/animations of the skills take too long.
It feels a little bit slow paced combat, and might give people a "boring" feeling.
Other then that it might be severely disadvantaged against a ranger thats moving around continuesly.
Most skills will never hit the ranger, because the animation takes too long.
As it feels to me right now, an increase of about 17.5% in animation speed would be needed for some skills.
But it is hard to tell from this preview.
Try some real pvp battles with another dev as a ranger or mage or any other ranged class.
And see what skills just will never work.
The Fighter Archetype feels incredibly well fleshed out! The fluidity of the archetype overall just feels phenomenal, the sound effects are on point, solidly responsive to the attacks shown in the showcase and overall a really great showcase of the archetype!
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Fighter Archetype?
I'm very excited to see my tank friends enjoy this class to its fullest ability. I think with the toolkit that they are given, they're going to have the zoomies and have so much fun haha!
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Fighter Archetype Preview?
Concerned for my own life as a squishy mage in PVP, Yes! lol!
What are your thoughts on the Fighter's abilities, mechanics, and combos?
Loving the combos and weaving that can be accomplished from executing the toolkit rotation. It gives the abilities a stronger, more meaningful impact! Also being able to use a jump which can scale up cliffs or leap over gaps is really handy when it comes to the open world terrain!
Do you have opinions on the great sword animations, Fighter VFX, and unlockable procs? If so, please share them!
The animations look fantastic. Some of the abilities have me curious as to whether or not there is an overall adjust for in game blood effects via the options menu, to increase bloodspill on your own end to see. I'm a dark souls kinda girlie, but no blood effects is okay with me too
Click here to visit Snow elf's Twitch channel
A true warrior was what I saw and felt today.
Attack and Defense Transitions
The combination of skills and the time of use between them has improved a lot, thanks for noticing that the fluidity between movements makes everything look much better.
Question .
Example 1 disengage walking
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxAfOZmW0K2exnTl4moHvkPNL1SVVW1pU_?si=y8NNiesi0HL5wsKK
The way characters disengage from a PvP/PvE fight is that way or will there be changes in the future to allow characters to disengage in a better way?
IMO fast walking doesn't look that good, but if they could make the characters do a fast sprint to get out of the fight or maybe back away very fast but looking at the opponent it would look better.
Where is this? https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxuJKtT7rx_mOWt8s-hw2PRvf85Tvtbcue
Will it be used again or do you plan to do something better with it?
Maybe use it to give the characters release sprints in future fights?
1. I think both skill trees are very disorganized. People generally view things in a certain order. Normally we will view things from left to right, or from top to bottom. I think its very strange to have the beginning of the branches appear in the bottom middle of the current implementation.
I think this mockup is more intuitive, while retaining the same practicality. (imagine the red lines are directional arrows). It obviously doesnt have to be in this exact format, but I would like the tree to be more in line with this approach.
2. There are 2 types of options within the weapon skill tree. The "+" sign icons, which offers choices, and the non "+" sign icons, which seem to be just flat stat increases. I think there should be more of the former, and less of the latter. The choices that the "+" sign icons provide are much more engaging when trying to carve out your builds identity. I wouldnt even be against removing the non "+" sign icons entirely.
An example of the "+" sign icon choices. I think there should be more of this.
Edit: I just found out that the class skill trees are shaped like a "whirlwind" for fighter, and a "bow&arrow" for the ranger. I dont think this was noticeable to nearly anyone, and Im not really a fan of trying to create skill trees around this model. I think its prioritizing form over functionality, and creating a less readable format as a result. If there is a commitment to this, I would at least like a toggle in the settings to a more readable format.
I will say that having Fighter and Tank use mana feels wrong, as martial archetypes. I understand there are game design reasons for it, but it still seems counter intuitive.
Overall, great stream.
I think the ending animation of the leap is too abrupt, especially at long range- the arc down is steeper than it should be makes it look less fluid than the rest of the kit
Also I think the general melee hitlag on basic attacks is good, but it might be SLIGHTLY more than it should be: I think hitlag is awesome, just a slight adjustment down and I think even people who don't "like" hitlag would appreciate it
Oh wait you already did.
Then shut up and open it up! now!
Anyway jokes aside very good. I will let my experient peers give the feedback since they never fail to give good feedback and you guys always have a reasonable filtering to understand each feedback.
But overall i won't be fighter... But i liked it.
Thanks and pretty much silent hype towards the game. Thanks for trying to bring the first M to MMO back.
In general, the kit seems pretty interesting, my main worry is that I have troubles figuring out what augments could bring to the table, it feels too complete for a primary class without augments. I like the mechanics and combos that were shown, but I think maybe some functionalities could be kept behind augments etc... For instance, the ability to cover vertical distance with a leap/charge. I don't think the base archetype without augments should be able to cover that much height. The wound mechanic seems to be stacking many effects, and on top of that, you have snares, multiple gap closers, CC reduction/immunity, etc, all in the base kit?
Little note, please don't hate me Lord Steven, but I am strongly convinced it would really benefit the audience to have one of the combat devs who already is familiar with the kit to actually record the class showcases to properly display the cool mechanics/combos/rotations etc... Steven seems to be figuring out the things as he goes, and having a lot of fun, but if feels less representative of what the potential of the class is.
I can see the animations (hands body weapon) working well with 1h/shield, dual wield and a bit of spear. Mb down the road we can see another pass. I dont mind the unrestricted weapon selection. The animations will do justice to all the different weapon users.
Love the stances. The defensive feels natural to me.
This will be my first "rage" fighter, since I didnt play wow and it looks fun.
The colors are great but maybe the should occupy less space on the body and weapon. More aura-like might be better.
What a pleasure this livestream has been. Fighter, pure combat prowes. The rework on the magic yellow hammer shows the dedication of IS to it's archetypes. Can't wait for the classes showcase.
I will be unbiased when the balancing test comes. I dont pick OP playstyles and right now this fighter could kill the gods.
My all time fav livestream since the beginning. Now all I need are some dual swords....
Here are a few things that intrepid may keep track of:
-ability kit looks a bit too „jump and dump“. A theme i observed in a few of the showcases, is that the archetypes have a primary utility(in this case the dash and leap) and afterwards it looks like you are just facerolling your 7 damage abilities.
-blood effects are a bit too much
-some vfx and some abilities are really problematic for large scale fights
-the fighter is maybe too mobile relative to other classes
-A lot of Aoe, Mobility, tankiness and anti cc, life drain, anti heal, execute. Where does the rogue fit into this? The fighter has a swiss army knife feeling to it, covering a lot of roles. Hopefully it does makes sense when we see the archetype in the context of other archetypes.
Edit:
Upon watching it again i decided to add a few points.
- the skill ceiling looks like it might not be high. The gap between learning the class and mastering doesnt look deep. (medium hard to learn and easy to master)
-the forms/stances should be attached to different augments/classes. You got 64 archetype combinations, give them some identity and dont spread it too much on the baseline kit.
-There is not much room for approaching things differently within an encounter, i probably would approach every fight the same with that kit -> encounters could become monotonous. This is probably my biggest concern with the current iteration.
This brings me to the point of mechanics. Imo some abilities should have more combination depth and exciting variables (Mobas do that well).
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E.g. blitz is not reseted through kills, instead it is reseted through triggering effects from other abilities like slicing maim.
Possible combo:
-Leap strike into enemy group.
-Use slicing maim. (It ended up hitting 1 target in front line and 1 in backline)
-Dive the backline target with blitz, reset blitz and dump damage.
-Disengage with blitz to the frontline.
Im a bit disappointed we havent seen any hint of action targeting yet.
I think it would be a good idea to add a breakpoint or tier for each family of weapons, so that as you advance a weapon to a high level in the Skill Tree, it would unlock a lower tier for similar weapons in their Skill Tree. For example, if you lvled Greatsword to 80/100 in the weapon skill tree, it could lvl other similar weapons in the same family to like 40/100. For example, it could lvl all physical 2-hand weapons to that lower tier of 40/100. This way, you won't have to start from 0 to switch between similar weapon types.
I think this is a good idea because once you get to a high overall level for your character, switching weapons would be a huge detriment to your gameplay and would require you to backtrack and redo lower level content with your character level being high, and your weapon level being low. It would also make sense from an RP viewpoint, as your character is building experience using a type of weapon and is familiar with that type of weapon.
I liked the momentum mechanic and how it interacts with the stances. I like that there are abilities that use momentum but the stances encourage you to keep your momentum maxed. I'm also looking forward to seeing how the weapon progression interacts with the class and how that feels. While they look good, some of the abilities that are just basic attacks with a bonus effect look boring. Wish there were more multi-hit and charge abilities.
I'd love to see a charge/hold ability or a stage in the basic attack that can be held to charge up. Bonus points if you can move while charging. I enjoyed the berserker from Tera. It felt good to charge up an attack, line it up, and drop it on your enemy's face (or miss and cry). The warrior awakening(greatsword) from Black Desert is almost a perfect great weapon fighter to me. It nails the greatsword fantasy in my eyes. I also like the greatsword and great hammer from Monster Hunter. I guess I have a weird thing for charge abilities but I like the feeling of moving around and charging up an attack with the greathammer.
As a random thought, leap might feel better to use if it was a 2 stage ability. First stage you leap into the air and the second part allows you to pick where you land.
I think the animations looked good. Not sure if this is because you are still in development but it looked a little weird that it flipped between the red/bloody effects and the yellow/light effects. It might be nice if it's more uniform. I think I prefer the more red/bloody effects.
The skills look really nice - but maybe slower animations and bigger damage would fit a warrior / fighter much better. ( I am , obviously not talking of ANY balancing... There's no balancing in an alpha). But the design behind warrior seems to be a fast paced character. I wonder if it will work.
I am watching the showcase right now and that dash / close up its really powerful - but its soo fast. It looks like the warrior has no weight.
More general about movement:
The animations seem a little bit abrupt. Especially panning left and right . The character rotates with no animation whatsoever which gives the feel of a floaty character. This applies for all characters that we've seen.
The running animation while doesn't look floaty it looks stiff . The upper body not moving while the legs have a basic animation.
IMO audio cues are REALLY powerful for immersion and fun, makes it more about playing less about looking at UI elements, just a thought.
First thoughts on feedback is Balance. Which, believe was covered. Classes look great but how does that rate in PVP, escapes, etc.
2nd: spawn. Always a tricky subject in any game. But are there mechanics being put in place to mitigate mobs vs population and people say questing in the same area.
3rd: commitment to the grind. Time will tell on this one.
Honestly AoC looks amazing. I am very anxoius for Alpha 2.
Thank you!
I only have one idea for the fighter and possibly all classes, maybe an indicator that shows what ability might be a good combo from the one you just used. obviously that's not everyone's taste but I've enjoyed this from games like SWTOR and Archeage. and this could show that 2 abilities are a good choices so we don't then force metas.
but again brilliant showcase for the class I've loved my entire time playing MMO's
The only glaring thing that stuck out to me was the sword size compared to the character. It just does not look big enough for how big the impacts of the skills look or how the movement and combat made it look like he was carrying a heavy weapon like a greatsword while it looked like a regular sword.
Otherwise, I thought this was a great first look at a new class.
Generally there good indication for how the wound could be played around with, however other directions were slightly unclear. Like are we expected a build around wirldwind (Iconic) is a more single target build not useing wound a thing as well?
Main concern from my side is the fact that these animations look so mobile and fantastic, that suddenly the Cleric seems very immobile, with little movement and no real "filler" like weapon combos.
I do love the various ways of movement, both targeted and a couple with free movement.
Weapon looked fantastic, and great work with the weapon tree!
- Overall fighter direction is good
- Mobility looks excellent in my opinion!
- The basic attack animations are much better (good weight, no longer flashbang)
- The pve portion looked enjoyable with mob density
- Designing for fun first, balance second is a wonderful concept!
Dislike
- Leap strike visuals are too strong for the effect. (Less meteorite, more Diablo 2 Leap Attack)
- Cataclysm feels heavy and nice, but maybe the ground spike effect could be toned down a bit.
- The other abilities could also be like 20-40% subtler? (Less blood splatter, less blasty effects, less bright flash)
- RNG procs for important effects still don't sound fun. I can see many of the procs being the deciding factor in PvP/PvE, and having to roll dice to activate them just feels like a source of frustration.
Worries
Since Ashes of creation is designed for group play from small engagements to big ZvZ, I think it's important that fighter is not completely useless in a 250v250 environment.
Currently, the lifesteal + cc immunity would enable the fighter to dive into large ranged zergs. However, when in the future [Blood Fusion] and [Exert] get "balanced" (made boring), I'm worried that every fighter slot is a wasted mage slot in the bigger fights.
I really liked the Impact of all the Attacks it really feels like it has a lot of weight on the 2 Hand weapon.
a bit outside of fighter but related to the stream, specifically the collection of the letter from the Forlorn Hero. I believe we are beyond text base/UI only interactions when it comes to this. Let us interact with the NPC via emote/animation. He physically extends his hand with a glowing item in it. Then have our character have an interaction key to start a recipient animation to collect it.
Furthermore, this could also be extrapolated with trading between players: where trading players play out a short animation of trading items via hand.
This is a suggestion for making these interactions of item trading/giving/taking more immersive and less reliant on just having a UI pop up. Keep up the awesome work, my jaw literally dropped at the fighter preview as Steven flew atop a rock.
Thank you for your continuous work!
- Some of the swing animations looked instantaneous (almost like the sword teleported from its standard position to halfway of the swing).
- Strafing while swinging looked a little weird. Like when swinging in place, the lower body looked great, while strafing and swinging the lower body looked... funny, in a bad way. Don't know how to better describe it, just (to me) a very noticeable disconnect of upper and lower body while strafing and attacking. Don't know if something can be done about that, perhaps swinging a heavy sword should reduce movement speed a little and that would help?
- Not a fan of full body glow when using some abilities. Unless it's mandatory to telegraph it, I'd like that be toned down to maybe just eye glow, or some other, lesser VFX.
- Basic attacks seem fine, but for abilities the VFX density was a bit much, it reminded me of BDO's spammy VFX. More flashy effects get telegraphed better until they obstruct other effects, so there should be a sane limit to how much you can crank them up in the options.
[*] What identifiers do you have to see if something is over-tuned?
[*] Is it going to be player feedback based?
[*] What the player meta is? (like what weapons and skills everyone is using)
[*] How are you going to identify player skill issues vs getting fixes for unbalanced skills?
Twitch.tv/Kreirian
So, they'll be coming in, but today maybe it would be better for not all of our responses to get 'filtered through my Protectra V', especially since the team has said outright 'we can take it'.
So, I think my responses this time will be 'to theirs', so that the design team can get the 'raw' version, which might be a good representation of 'people like them', and then 'anything I point out', which normally happens the other way.
As for me, I guess mine will be last. It looks like everyone who gave feedback so far is really positive about it, and that's great.
I cannot for the life of me understand how someone can look at that showcase and think it looks "slow". The skills pace is great and that was without the many many AS bonuses that Fighter can get from many sources.
Were we watching the same stream?