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 Request - 1/30/25
Greetings, Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Please share your top 3-5 most critical issues or feedback topics for this week's testing in the thread below using the following format:
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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 Monday, 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 or feedback topics for this week's testing 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 Monday, 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!
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Comments
Weekly Feedback - 01/23/2025
Alpha Two Phase II Feedback
Top 3-5 Most Important Bugs:
1. Caravans Issues (bad performance with 5+ caravans on screen / crashing the game, vanishing, teleporting you to carphin, healers healing caravans without being defenders,etc)
2. Speed desync issue (seem to be a speedhacking protection but you desync everytime you go a little bit faster or use a disengage ability)
3. Mining resources having fixed rarity for a set amount of respawns
4. Getting corruption on a legit kill (caravans, wars, fake purple players)
5. World bosses respawning with server restarts/crashes (tumok has been disabled, but firebrand still respawns some times, some times his respawn bugs and its every 3 hours)
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1. 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
2. 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
3. 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)
4. 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
5. Gear progression and power creep. Expanded: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/64606/gear-progression-and-power-creep and also https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/65691/the-problem-with-gear-waterfall-stats-and-enchanting
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Top 3-5 Most Important Bugs:
1. Key bindings - Left movement and look still binds to right
2. Mobs (Spiders and mushroom to name the ones I see most) under the ground texture. Attacks dont always land because of this.
3. PVP issues. Cant attack flagged players sometimes. For example Watching someone loot ash pile and cant do anything to them even though they are flagged as combatant.
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1. Death punishment is painful if there are lag spikes server side or issues with mobs not taking damage and character stuttering instead of moving. A pull that should be easy can result in player not moving correctly and stacking damage in bursts. This results in a death that shouldn't happen from a damage dump all at once. For example the mushroom mobs explode under the ground texture and that doesn't register until all at once. Dead in a fraction of a second and loot and exp lost from simple pull of a few mobs.
2.
3.
1. Caravan issues (Respawning, disappearing vans in bad spots, not able to properly recall vans etc) More means to recover vans would be great; talking to caravan masters to respawn upgraded vans at a fee etc.
2. Node bugs. Trade bureau not giving 50% glint discount, probably other misc things here that I'm unaware about.
3. Clipping bugs. People disappearing into the ground. Mobs disappearing into the ground. Desync issues (running in spot then rubberbanding back).
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1. Optimization. Optimization is completely all over the place. This leads to people being able to log on more quickly to mob tag Tumok over other people, participate in Zerg v Zerg content longer than other PCs, massive disconnecting due to crashes. Of anything else, stabilizing the server is massive to me.
2. Economic and Progression. The second most important thing to me is how the economics are being developed. This patch released and provided a lot of new content. Micro dungeons. New gear to farm. New systems to test (Guild, level 20 enchanting, etc). However, when the patch was released, I, and many others in the guild I'm in, were not expecting the major glint grinds being diminished or just outright removed. In particular I'm talking about Shardlings, Minotaurs, and Scorpions in the desert.
My issue here stems from the fact that the Alpha 2 is meant to test economic progression, which requires a vast amount of time and dedication to complete, more particularly Glint. If the idea is to test these systems, why is Glint being nerfed completely across the board, and then no alternatives being provided to continue the glint grind? And, if these changes are fundamental to the direction, why were these not really explained more in depth to the players?
The amount of glint it will take to level Guild is a huge undertaking. And, this isn't also addressing that you need glint to run your own personal caravans for gold, which is another monetary asset that you have to utilize to gear yourself or purchase wares to increase crafting proficiencies or utilize it in whatever form you want. Glint is the ONLY means to gain gold, and it feels like the means to acquire glint has been reduced drastically.
If we're meant to test these systems, then I would think the alternative of providing larger amount of glint so you CAN test these systems would be the answer, but instead they've been drastically reduced and we are now expected to spend larger amounts of time to even test the systems.
The answer to this is honestly simple; provide adequate enough farms to replace what was lost. Having these farms in the lawless zones made it great, because you could even contest and take risk in farming them. There should be farms that are in the lawless zones that provide more glint than any other farm in the game, simply for the fact you are taking a risk going to them. For the time being though, I and many others are left farming the lawful zones at less glint per hour attempting to undertake the burden of grinding the guild levels out.
3. Gearing. Please add coal already. Please allow us to test steel. Please allow us to experience crafting. Please provide higher drop rates on mobs for gear. Please provide faster respawn times for bosses. Please provide gearing farms in lawless zones so people have a reason to go to them and risk a bit of PVP.
People keep telling me its an alpha. And we're meant to *test* things. But we can't test things if the gearing process is abysmal. Where people have literal node timers on the level 20 gathering nodes and spend 24/7 running to them and keep other players from even trying to attempt gathering. Where the drop rates on gear is extremely low. Where its 450(!?) pieces for a single JM scroll.
To end my feedback, let us test things, not have to experience a grind to participate in any of the systems. If its an Alpha, then provide us more specific week to week instructions on what system in particular you would like to see players aim to complete, and along these lines, provide a lesser burden on the players to test these systems. It doesn't make sense to me to make the process so steep when the idea is to figure out if these systems work or not.
Alpha Two Phase II Feedback
Top 3-5 Most Important Bugs:
1. Unexplained storage wipes.
2. Mob leash range is all over the place for some mobs, players are getting chased over hundreds of meters by both trash and elite mobs.
3. Client-server de-sync related bugs, being unable to loot, getting attacked by invisible mobs and players.
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1. Grind is becoming a reoccurring theme I see in all important game systems: levelling, gear progression, gathering, crafting, guild progression. "We hate grind", " we don't want players to kill the same mobs over and over again to gain few percent towards the level" promises from the early days in 2017 have been clearly forgotten. This is not the MMO you promised to make. Nor this helps with testing and discovering bugs and other issues.
2. Static resource respawn locations and static respawn timers. Whatever we are talking about gatherable resources or rare drops from mobs this game has it. This frankly invalidates any data you are gathering about "testing the economy in Phase", especially if you consider...
3. Caravans remain money printers. That's one way to introduce hyper-inflation and create a massive power gap between players.
4. PvP power gap thanks to broken power scaling down to really poor balancing of stats and enchanting. Enchanting and pumping damage stats produce too big of power advantage between geared and average players.
5. We are back to Phase1 power issues with rare gear. Time to kill another player is insanely short with good quality gear. Rethink what gear progression should mean and how much of a power gap it should produce, unless you want to limit your playerbase to a really narrow customer base.
6. The game atm is turning into an avalanche of stacking power sources, thanks to statis resource spawners, caravan money printers, stat stacking, unbalanced gear, and we don't even have access to other sources of power like freeholds and guild progression. There is plenty of players out there who have jobs and real lives outside the game world. We cannot game those systems to remain competitive stat wise, there we will be eventually excluded from any form of reasonable competition in all open world and sandbox systems like caravans, guild wars, node wars etc. This is a positive feedback loop and those differences will crash the playerbase numbers in a persistent game world.
Blown past falling sands…
1. Unexplained storage wipes.
2. Mob leash range is all over the place for some mobs, players are getting chased over hundreds of meters by both trash and elite mobs.
3. Client-server de-sync related bugs, being unable to loot, getting attacked by invisible mobs and players.
Top 3-5 Most Important Feedback Topics:
1. Grind is becoming a reoccurring theme I see in all important game systems: levelling, gear progression, gathering, crafting, guild progression. "We hate grind"?
2. Static resource respawn locations and static respawn timers. Whatever we are talking about gatherable resources or rare drops from mobs this game has it. This frankly invalidates any data you are gathering about "testing the economy in Phase", especially if you consider...
3. Caravans remain money printers. That's one way to introduce hyper-inflation and create a massive power gap between players.
4. PvP power gap thanks to broken power scaling down to really poor balancing of stats and enchanting. Enchanting and pumping damage stats produce too big of power advantage between geared and average players.
5. We are back to Phase1 power issues with rare gear. Time to kill another player is insanely short with good quality gear. Rethink what gear progression should mean and how much of a power gap it should produce, unless you want to limit your playerbase to a really narrow customer base.
6. The game atm is turning into a positive feedback loop of stacking power sources, thanks to statis resource spawners, caravan money printers, stat stacking, unbalanced gear, and we don't even have access to other sources of power like freeholds and guild progression. There is plenty of players out there who have jobs and real lives outside the game world. Those cannot game those systems to remain competitive stat wise, and will be eventually excluded from any form of reasonable competition in all open world and sandbox systems like caravans, guild wars, node wars. I dont see how this can be healthy for the playerbase numbers.
Blown past falling sands…
1 - Caravans - When the driver dies the caravan is invulnerable for the entire duration the driver has ressurection invunerability timer which is like 1min30 so alot of the time u kill a driver and u cant dmg the caravan and then jump back on it and die again starting the timer once again.
2 - Ranger, Disengage and air strike turning on autop attack dispite turning auto attack on range is turned off, found out it was classes as a melee attack and had that turned off which fixed it however a recent patch seem to have undone that again. randomly shooting mobs u have targeted when using mobility skills kinda annoying especialy in dungeons causing accidental pulls. These kinda mobility skills shouldnt be classed as an attack skill and triggers auto attack if the option is on
Feedback
1 - Enchanting is busted it way to strong being a flat increase it might make sense at lvl 50 but atm when everyone using lvl 10 gear it realy destroys the TTK, pvp with 0 enchants feel great however once enchants involved its like instant deaths. I feel they should be % based so it scales better throughout the levels like 10-20% bonus per +1 (maybe a little less for weapon stats) this would also better scale armors and secondary stats aswell balancing gear better atm if it doesnt have primary stat (str/dex/con) and so on it a useless piece of gear due to enchanting.
2. Resource quality is horrendous atm, crafting requires heroic+ resources to be better than mob drops which is almost impossible to get with hides and even wood (due to only getting decent coloured off rare/god node spawns which is silly system) i harvested 700 wolfs this week so far and gotten 2 blue wolf carcasses which has a chance to proc to something useful so effective i feel ive achieved nothing gear wise this past 2 weeks progression wise since i havant been able to make anything better than the mob drops. Only mining or herbalism atm gets decent amount of useful coloured resources (This is honestly slowly become a quitting point for me not being able to progress cause impossible rarities even the rarity bonus doesnt seem to do much like for logging i run 3 heroic logging back with rarity along with an epic axe + some low quality logging armor and i still yet to see anything above a blue off non god nodes resource)
3. "god nodes" current itneration feels horrendous basicly if u dont get them within the first hour of the new day you wont see them at all since they automaticly put on timers and harvested on spawn. This especialy noticable on willow since the first weekend of apprentice axes ive only seen 1 rare drop from willow) cause major guild find em early on and camp them on spawn since they respawn at set times in the same spots. If u wanna keep god nodes atleast make them spawn in different spot each time and have a varied time respawn. I dont mind the system its just implemented very poorly since it the only way to get good quality wood atm i do wish they had different appearance like oak tree had but u patched that out this weekend now they all look the same
4. Boss recipes drops seem to be a little to rare for there respawn time aswell farming camping them for 30/60 min respawn to get a usless green piece over and over kinda sucks i would like to see the ability to convert boss drops pieces into recipes or the item so even if u fail the roll for recipe of craftable items the armor piece still has a use like if it took 10 boss drop items to convert into a recipe or 5 to the crafting item it would keep value on the boss drops gear.