Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
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 II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
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.
Weekly Feedback - 01/23/2025
Greetings, Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Please share your top 3-5 most critical issues in the thread below using the following format:
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Alpha Two Phase II Feedback
Top 3-5 Most Important Bugs:
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2.
3.
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
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2.
3.
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To keep the thread organized, we kindly ask that you avoid back-and-forth discussions, and stick to the format above for your posts. We'll be closing the thread on Tuesday, 10 AM PST
Important Note: While we greatly value your insights, please understand that we cannot guarantee all bugs or feedback topics will be addressed, or provide a specific timeframe for fixes.
Thank you for your continued support, feedback, and dedication to improving the Alpha Two experience!
Please share your top 3-5 most critical issues in the thread below using the following format:
======================
Alpha Two Phase II Feedback
Top 3-5 Most Important Bugs:
1.
2.
3.
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1.
2.
3.
======================
To keep the thread organized, we kindly ask that you avoid back-and-forth discussions, and stick to the format above for your posts. We'll be closing the thread on Tuesday, 10 AM PST
Important Note: While we greatly value your insights, please understand that we cannot guarantee all bugs or feedback topics will be addressed, or provide a specific timeframe for fixes.
Thank you for your continued support, feedback, and dedication to improving the Alpha Two experience!
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Alpha Two Phase II Feedback
Top 3-5 Most Important Bugs:
1. When a target is frozen and staggered, hitting them with chain lightning will only proc shattered and not shattered and aftershock.
2. Repeatedly freezing targets, they will begin to move through the freeze on the 3rd time even though they still have "frozen" status effect. Makes it hard to fight alone.
3. Grems having a ranged bite that can take half your hp from like bow ranges.
4. Rare+ harvestable loot spawning in the same locations and not being random, this leads to camping and takes away the joy of hitting a legendary node when you find out it always spawns there and someone will fight you for it.
5. quality of the mount (common, uncommon+) not affecting the speed of the mount. A legendary bear should be faster than a common croc.
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1. Absolutely hate caravan targeting change. Thought it was intended that you cant target the rider, and so you need to take down the caravan to take them down. Makes no sense that under attack your caravan slows down when they can just kill you off it to make it stop much easier. Where is the love for small groups and solos?
2. Allow us to harvest from other peoples freeholds with the cost of turning purple for a time (same timer as looting a corpse). That way all the good loot isnt locked behind freehold spam and those of us that are solo have a chance at nice loot. This also makes it so that freeholds arent just free money generation and guilds must police their strongholds or risk loosing items.
3. New Aela's tower (near mountains bottom right) has chests that spawn and give XP, no one fights the mobs at the tower (I used to when they were 17+), people just sit there and farm the chests for xp and free money. Take the XP away so they stop. Please bring the level back of tower mobs to level they were in alpha 2 phase 4. loot timeout should happen slower, I shouldnt have to shield up and walk into whatever we are killing to take the glint that dropped for me every time it drops for fear of someone else taking it after just a minute. It should be like 5 minutes before it becomes anyone lootable (same for gear drops).
5. Change up the spawns for mounts and carcasses, its impossible to harvest raptors because zergs camp them and put you to sleep before you can get any harvested. This makes it really a challenge for solos to level animal taming.
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Weekly Feedback - 01/23/2025
Alpha Two Phase II Feedback
Top 3-5 Most Important Bugs:
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
- Corruption (overpunishing causing more griefing than preventing (karma bombing and mob training), going from purple to green mid combat, flagging options on menu and not on HUD (more flagging options) and more. see all at: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/491743/#Comment_491743
- The small pvp TTK (making group pvp coordination all about doing damage) and all the problems it causes (Like the irrelevancy of the debuff system (wounds, weakened, shaken)). Expanded: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/63918/current-pvp-ttk-design-is-bad-for-the-game
- Action cam polish (more nuanced target system and ability to lock the target in the center of the crosshair, ability to access menus in action cam, better mount action camera usage)
- PvE encounter design (less static and more mobile, more constant pressure less insta kills). Expanded: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/63848/feedback-on-pve-encounter-design
- Gear progression and power creep. Expanded: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/64606/gear-progression-and-power-creep and https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/65691/the-problem-with-gear-waterfall-stats-and-enchanting
=====================Alpha Two Phase II Feedback
Top 3-5 Most Important Bugs:
1. Respawn timers on named mobs seems to be either broken or adjusted to the point that the experience of grinding these to find recipes and items is not enjoyable..
2. 525 Error continues to consume my guildmates... running out of people to play
3. Desync in what players are seeing / can target causes lots of xp deaths and invincible pvp opportunities
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1. Leveling vs world building... there is a lot of amazing things to find and do between 1-25 that I worry will be completely skipped over if the max level is 50... there will be such a level disparity that it will complicate a number of systems. I wouldn't mind the leveling experience taking twice as long if it meant I got to enjoy the work the team has done to fill the world with useful things to do. Perhaps we could have an alternate advancement system, similar to the planned vertical vs horizontal enchanting where levels above a lower max cap could adjust how the classes are played without introducing additional level and gear caps.
2. Flagging - There seems to be a lot of confusion on going purple or red and the implications and what is required to fight. It seems odd that someone can steal and in order for me to get my stuff back I am the one putting all the risk into trying to get it back... This isn't a complaint about having PVP or stealing in general just that the system and experience seems not intuitive.
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Alpha Two Phase II Feedback
Top 3-5 Most Important Bugs:
1. Caravans. These are my preferred open world events to participate in, but I've lost two caravans and several commodities to random bugs that just make it all disappear and never return. I don't mind going through the gameplay, but being out ~50 gold worth of materials and goods really set my character back on guild plans.
2. Kiting issues. It's not really a bug, but the kiting is still insane even after the changes. We watched one guy harass another group for almost an hour, just constantly dragging mobs into them. We tried to step in and help as we could, but he still caused their group to wipe several times. I was even using the bard skill misdirection to get the NPCs off my party and the misdirection seemed to have little to no impact.
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1. Customer Service Response Time: Customer service response times are very slow, or non-existent. I thought I may have just been a fluke in that I had two tickets opened and I never heard back from them, but I'm hearing from more and more people about very slow responses, or no response at all, from the customer service teams on general customer service inquiries. Customer service has a huge impact on the perception of a company, especially in early development situations, and I want to make sure the Intrepid is putting the best foot forward for those issues.
2. Quest Lines: Can't wait for quest lines to be put into the system. While I have had plenty of fun just going out into the world doing PVP or artisan tasks, having half the quests not complete, or be bugged has left me to just no longer interact with them. I can't wait to get more into the lore of the world too!
3. Love what you have done to the bard class! Even though I feel like I do baby damage, I love the true versatility of the bard and I feel like you are the first game to do the support bard true justice!
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The Finest Adventurer
1. Mob Tagging. Seeing new players trying to kill mobs that they tag first, only to have someone a significantly higher level than them pull that one and everything else around causing them to get nothing because they do not deal as much damage feels bad.
2. Alts. If this is an Alpha meant to test, why can't players at least transfer money and items between alts? It sucks making a new character and having to do everything all over again just for testing purposes. The least we can get is being able to share a storage for items and money so it isn't as taxing.
3. Gathering info while mounted. While walking you can go up to a gathering material and see what it is. While mounted you need to dismount just to see if its something you want to gather or not. You should be able to go up to a tree, stone, or flower and see what it is before getting off to gather it.
4. Artisan level certifications. This one I can't wrap my head around. Why does this system exist? For me at least, it completely breaks immersion. If I reach a certain level in an artisan path, why can't I just use a better tool and be able to do it? If there is a tree, rock, or flower that I couldn't gather before, when I reach the appropriate level and have the better gathering tool for it why wouldn't I be able to do so? What is stopping me besides a system that says I can't unless I get permission from someone?
5. Attacking Guards. If someone gets killed by another player in a town, Guards and NPC's should react. To my knowledge I haven't seen it, I have gotten killed multiple times in a town, being farmed, and unless another player does something about it the guards do nothing. If towns are supposed to be safer places, guards and townsfolk should react, and the killer should probably gain a bounty for that location that drops over time the longer they stay out of that area.
Alpha Two Phase II Feedback
Top 3-5 Most Important Bugs:
1. Losing connection with the "live" world. Not sure what to call this bug, but when you're moving through the world and then you suddenly aren't seeing mobs or your party members. Have to relog to get back to the "live" world. It is happening a lot and is really irritating.
2. Characters, NPCs, and Gatherables not on the surface. It's like the ground surface is not set up correctly and I've seen party members seem to sink down into the ground.
3. Not being able to leave a caravan event without it bugging and causing issues.
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1. Leveling speed for later characters.
If you have lost time due to life or started late and are lagging behind others in your guild, it is a SLOG to try to get back up to speed. Enough that although I'm loving the game and enjoy my guild, I'm frustrated to the point where I've thought of quitting for now. A few things related to this:
2. XP for gatherables is not viable.
If it is intended for pursuing a gathering profession to be a viable way to level, it is far from the case now.
3. Chat improvements.
Whispers need to have an audible indicator option. Chat windows need to be more customizable. Reply is needed badly. Custom chat channels so we can create alliance chats.
4. Timers/static locations for rarities.
The way it currently is, when someone finds a gatherable of a particular rarity - like a legendary copper node - they know that on a timer, they'll be able to gather this item at this node at this rarity again. That leads to people camping nodes and running timers. My personal opinion is that this sucks the fun out of the gatherable system.
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Top 5 Most Important Bugs:
1. While grouped and participating in Caravan PvP if the group leader initiated the attack on the caravan the rest of the group would not flag. The rest of the group would not have the option to attack the caravan, and would have to drop group to be able to use choose that option. We didn't have a chance to see how if this issue is mirrored for groups initiating defense of a caravan. This happened multiple times during the weekend and on Monday.
3. While performing attacks on caravans we could not damage the caravan after initiating the attack, this would require us to re-log to then allow for that character to damage the caravan. This happened multiple times this weekend I sadly can't remember all of them. Additionally in another instance when attacking a raft our ranged attacks would not be able to damage it but the melee attacks could, and for that specific instance the melee attacks also looked to be doing damage at where that caravan converted to a raft as the numbers were floating in the distance up stream from where the raft was coming from. This is just my guess though as we didn't follow this caravan from the conversion point.
3. While farming in Remnants of Sephillion at the building with coordinates -946979.20, 762729.30 (this is from Ashes Codex map sorry if this isn't the x,y from in game) the mobs began to stick into the environment. The tank would attempt to chain pull them and then they would run back to whatever they were stuck to and stay there, while there they would regen all damage done to them back to full health. As the farm in that area went on, more and more mobs began to fall into this glitch. This occurred around 11pm Sunday-2am Monday.
4. Multiple times this weekend different members of the group would not be able to see other player's characters and in some cases hostile mobs. This too would require a re-log and in some case a full reboot of the game to fix this issue.
5. While playing on Monday 3am-4am PST both myself and another player had a bug where the water would render in the distance but within view distance it was invisible. We both tried re-logging and rebooting the game for this but the issue persisted from Halcyon to Aithanahr.
Top 3 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1.Waterborne Interactions, while fighting on the water the currents made it impossible to loot dropped ashes. We don't believe this is a bug, more a result of the water current mechanic moving the character from the spot and interrupting the looting animation. Not sure if this is intended and is just a skill issue or if this is just an un-intended result of the water current mechanic, but I think it is important to be able to interact with objects in the water.
2. Small Group PvP, this tends to be just a dps race, with ranged/caster classes being at quite an advantage due to the amount of disengage from dodge rolls and movement abilities. This issue is increased due to fact that you can maintain a ton of momentum by b-hopping about, or jumping while exiting a dodge roll.
3. Armor balance, damage output compared to survivability feels out of balance. Physical and Magic resistance meaning nothing, light armor wearers still get nuked by magic attacks and for heavy armor physical attacks still do a ton of damage as well. I saw a level 25 tank get nuked by two sub 20 physical dps classes before he could get help from his caravan group, could have been a skill issue, but I think it's just that damage reduction stats are just way to under tuned.
Please allocate some resources to fixing/optimizing Carph.
Feedback:
Losing items from PVP should be removed completely. There are endless reasons to attack someone beyond them attacking you. I will not list them here.
This system is essentially the same as a state that doesn't have "Stand your ground" laws. I shouldn't have to wait until I am attacked to defend myself. I shouldn't have to be changing gear or thinking about what I am going to lose. When a known enemy comes into sight, sometimes you have to strike first. Common sense.
Not only does it do less healing but now costs twice as much.
For reference, Divine Flare costs 120 mana to use and Flash Cure now costs 133 mana.
The spell feels like trash now
1. Dwarf deformation bugs on certain pieces of gear (Ambitious Academic set, specifically cloak and pants)
2. Mount desyncing issues with teleporting back to position where you initially got on your mount
3. I had an issue where I logged into New Aela just outside of the starting cathedral and my character was completely naked and shot into the air and continually would float up until the end of time.
4. Gatherable and monster spawning in desert seems over tuned, large packs of mobs all over node corks and 15-30 individual gatherable resources condensed into small areas causing an excessive amount of these materials into the economy making their price plummet.
5.
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1. Artisanship progression UI. Since artisanship is such an integral part of Ashes, it could benefit from more feedback whenever you gain experience for any given skill progression IE: xp bar moves up, displays current artisanship level, amount of XP until next level. (Potentially in the bottom right corner above where it displays your loot gains.) This will strengthen the feeling of progression with a sprinkle of dopamine as well as let the player know their progress without opening up separate windows.
I think thematic naming conventions will help build the character and identity of any given zone. I do understand a lot of these items are primarily in a functional state and more flavor will be added further into development. I truly believe creativity in item names tells a story to help the player further identify and connect themselves with the places they choose to spend time in.
Love the work you guys are doing, truly believe this is the next big great MMO
Overview
The economy surrounding the hunting, tanning, and leatherworking professions in AoC is severely unbalanced. Many issues within this pipeline have been ignored by the community, leading to an underwhelming experience for hunters, an over-saturation of tamed animals, and a stagnant leatherworking profession. This document outlines these key problems and proposes solutions that align with existing game mechanics.
Problems in the Current System
1. Hunting is Unengaging and Oversimplified
Hunting in its current state is extremely dull. Players only need to locate a static hunting target and initiate an interaction to either tame the animal or acquire a carcass within 15 seconds.
The static nature of hunting targets and their set respawn timers make the activity predictable and uninspiring.
The mechanic encourages botting, with players farming bears, otters, and griffins for materials required in tailoring and armorsmithing.
2. Overproduction of Tamed Beasts
The game currently produces more tamed animals than carcasses, leading to a flooded market for mounts and beasts of burden.
Most Animal Husbandry artisans are forced to sell mounts at a loss due to the lack of demand.
Steven has mentioned upcoming mechanics to limit mount lifespans, but this only mitigates the issue rather than addressing the root cause: the skewed ratio of carcass drops to tamed beasts.
3. Leatherworking is Unviable as a Profession
Due to the scarcity of carcasses, progressing in leatherworking beyond the apprentice level is nearly impossible.
In Phase 1, no servers prioritized upgrading leatherworking, nor is it on any upgrade plan now.
Some creatures, such as Skeenwalcers, do not drop carcasses, despite leatherworking recipes requiring their hides.
There is an imbalance in material distribution—some materials, like bear and wolf bones, have been artificially added to the loot table to compensate for deficiencies, but this does not resolve the fundamental problem.
4. Exploitation of Low-Level Zones and Static Spawns
High-level players use AoE spells in low-level zones to farm legendary and epic carcasses, creating an unfair and immersion-breaking experience.
Hunting mechanics that should require skill and challenge are instead reduced to a simple timing race to claim static spawns.
The limited number of static high-value hunting targets (Swiftclaws, Griffins, etc.) results in botting and frustration.
Proposed Solutions
1. Implement a Dynamic Loot Table for Carcasses
Instead of just dropping bones, creatures such as bears should have a chance to drop carcasses of varying rarities.
The probability of a higher rarity carcass should be influenced by the player’s hunting stats.
The level difference between the hunter and the target should impact the likelihood of a high-rarity carcass drop (i.e., more challenge = better rewards).
In parties, standard loot distribution rules should apply, with higher-level hunters increasing the chances of better loot.
If another player tags the beast first, the loot should be significantly downgraded to discourage kill-stealing.
2. Introduce More Dynamic Hunting Mechanics
Replace static hunting targets with dynamically spawning creatures that roam and react to player presence.
Introduce roaming mini-boss creatures that attack hunters, similar to the area near the cookhouse.
Increase the spawn rate of high-value creatures like Shell of the Ancients and Terror Birds while making them actual hunts rather than simple timed grabs.
Allow hunters to engage in real combat before taming, requiring them to weaken the beast first.
3. Incentivize Leatherworking Progression
Adjust material distribution to ensure that leatherworking remains a viable profession.
Rework crafting recipes to require a broader range of materials rather than over-relying on rare and difficult-to-acquire carcasses.
Introduce additional leatherworking-exclusive bonuses or benefits to increase player investment in the profession.
Conclusion
By shifting the focus from passive, repetitive hunting mechanics to an engaging, skill-based system, AoC can revitalize the hunting, tanning, and leatherworking pipeline. Dynamic encounters, improved loot distribution, and a balanced economy will make these professions more appealing and rewarding for all players. Let’s not allow this critical aspect of the game to be overlooked or abandoned—let’s create a system that rewards challenge, strategy, and dedication.