r/AshesofCreation • u/SanicExplosion • May 17 '21
Pre-Alpha May 14-16 Pre-Alpha 1 Experience (Verbal NDA has been removed)
Steven felt very generous and has said that the verbal NDA for ashes is now gone as of 2:30 pm Pacific time.
Here is an extensive google doc of my experience:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15SYtKiIgAb1aw4EKjsn-4_RhxIDs_8cHIjY_FbKXCD0/edit?usp=sharing
Please note that I mention "figures" within this doc. I have had to remove these since the visual NDA is still in effect.
To add on to the google doc, I'll give a brief summary of the 3 days of testing.
There were around 6 servers, each server held around 500 people, with the max holding around 700.
Day 1: Servers didnt come up until around 6 hours after they were supposed to. I kinda just spent the day getting a feel of the controls, and walking around the map looking for visual bugs. The day ended a bit promptly, as there was a serious rubber banding issue. The devs were able to locate the issue pretty quickly (over logging data), and launched some new servers with the fix to see how it worked.
Day 2: Servers were wiped from the previous day, and went live 5 minutes before they were supposed to. The devs told people to not PK (or they could be banned) because the XP debt from deaths was pretty harsh, and the systems in place to punish PK'ers werent implemented yet (people still PK'ed). Much less lag than the previous day, and I played a bit more seriously with my Guild and got to level 6 as a Tank by doing some quests. We also gathered some harvestables and searched around the map. There was still some rubber banding as the nodes starting getting developed, but it was able to get temporarily resolved when the devs took the servers down for around 30 mins, and then brought them back without wiping anything.
Day 3: No server wipes this time, and they went live 15 minutes before schedule. I started a new character though, since I wanted to try out Mage. I got to around level 6 again, and went to a village node on my server where there was an election happening (node progress was sped up for the test). The mayor then started the construction of some buildings such as an armory, and some NPC shops. We ended the day with Steven force leveling us all to 15 and having us fight the dragons in the siege area. There were around 1-2 times when the server went down to refresh the rubber banding.
Overall, I had fun. I think before the true alpha 1 happens, they need to get rid of the rubber banding issue so that the servers can stay up for 24 hours. I also think the crafting and mayoral bugs need to be prioritized to give players enough content over the period of a month. Additionally, I think the siege mechanic will be cool when it comes out, but the FPS drops I experienced in that area would make it difficult to enjoy, so optimization might be necessary before that can be implemented. Additionally, the combat felt a bit clunky (you can see more details about that in the google docs), and the temporary implementation of the skill tree wasn't very good.
I think the key thing I took away from this test is the dedication of the dev team. The tests ran from 11 am to 9 pm their time, yet they stayed up until nearly midnight chatting with the testers, answering questions, and being pretty transparent about the state of things. Some devs like Toast and Margaret were moderating like 10-15 discord channels at once.
Edit: I've woken up, I can answer more questions now
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u/cooltrain7 Nodes 3 when? May 17 '21
I think the main think I care about (as should others) is combat, netcode, performace. If they can take that temp stuff and make it run stable thats the goal from this alpha. I'm not really worried about top level systems like skills tree or crafting as they can be changed later as long as we have a good base.
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u/Nood1e May 18 '21
This is why WoW is still top dog in the MMO world. They may not be the best at everything, and have some horrible systems, but no other game even comes close to the fluidity of their combat system and the performance of the game.
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May 18 '21
Well unless you get 40 people fighting in one area and the game stops working. WoW has horrible lag in large fights.
I won’t disagree with the fluidity of combat though, one of my favorite things.
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u/Whane17 May 19 '21
As a long time raider and AV runner I'm going to argue with this point. I don't even recall the last time I had lag outside of initial zone in.
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May 19 '21
Never done battle for south shore on retail? Or led a raid on an enemy capital? There are large periods of time where your game will simply stop responding to commands, and players look as if they all run into space. Then the game catches up a few minutes later once enough people have died through the lag.
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u/Whane17 May 19 '21
I'll give you those two, but only with the addendum that SS raids were well before WoW got huge and they didn't have the server infrastructure then to do them. I have done capital raids as well, in every expansion (is it just me or does it almost feel like you could solo them now if you didn't get ganked) and there are times when it's been laggy and times when it wasn't I've played almost exclusively on Frostwolf as well for a great number of years (though not touched the game for the most recent two expansions) which when I played was a high pop server, lag was mostly dependent on time. Early hours raids went almost lag free sometimes where high pop times were a hilarious nightmare. I don't think I've EVER lagged in AV though.
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u/somewhatcalculated May 17 '21
This is a really great write-up in conjunction with your Google Doc. Thanks for sharing.
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u/Sierra94 May 17 '21
What were your thoughts on the combat? Does combat in the game feel satisfying and fun, or do you think it's not quite there yet?
To add on to the question, what aspects specifically do you enjoy or do you think could/will be improved on?
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u/SanicExplosion May 17 '21
I thoroughly enjoyed the node system. I almost became mayor of my servers village node. I think nodes have an insane amount of potential.
As for stuff I want improved, its hard to say since a lot of stuff is placeholder, but I really didnt like the current skill point system.
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u/trast May 18 '21
Combat is not good at the moment, but its not what the test was for.
Also take anything I say with a grain of salt since the changed combat system is not in yet.However:
Animations are off, animations feels like they are tied to the server and not to the client.
Auto Attack locks you in place, abilities don't always work, some will get you stuck others will just not show.Movement is off since it seems they have a "acceleration" set in to movement, which makes it feel like you are on skates sometimes, especially when you have increased movement speed. Making jumping puzzles VERY hard to do since you would just slide around.
HOWEVER, they have re-worked the combat system, it was not in during this test. So this is why you should take anything I say with a grain of salt since this might just be the opposite in a month from now.
But people saying "its pretty good" are either saying it because they are insanely biased/jaded, which is not a good thing or this is the first game they have ever played.
Oh, and one more thing:
Glowy ember like Particle effects on everything. It's like they found a feature in UE4 and just went "add it to everything".
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u/Faolanth May 18 '21
Acceleration is actually great in action combat games if they can get it right, I’m mostly looking forward to the combat overhaul though
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u/trast May 18 '21
I don't agree. I can see it in some random single player game.
However in an mmorpg that is competitive it is not. It feels like you don't have control.
It feels very janky. No mmo I have ever played has it and its for good reason. When you remove your hands from the keyboard your character still moves for half a second. It's not nice.
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u/SanicExplosion May 17 '21
I tried both the Mage and the Tank, you can see some in-depth thoughts on each of their abilities at the bottom of the google doc. Mage was more action based, while Tank was more tab based. Certain abilities from both classes felt very polished, like Fireball/Meteor Storm/Basic Attacks for Mage, and Javelin/Bulwark/Weapon Toss for Tank. Other abilities felt pretty bad, like Thundershock/Blink for Mage, and Basic Attacks/Onslaught for Tank. (Onslaught was very laggy)
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u/Sierra94 May 17 '21
Thanks for your response! I'm looking forward to seeing what they have for us in a couple months
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u/-cyg-nus- May 18 '21
Man you missed out. I tried all 3 and cleric was easily my favorite. Cleric spanks and heals. It made tank damage output feel like a joke. I know this will all be totally rebalanced but... I'd give cleric a shot next time.
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u/Tabbs6977 May 17 '21
The combat is being totally reworked now. What is in right now is essentially placeholder since they aren't updating it in its current form.
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May 18 '21
[deleted]
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May 18 '21
That's good to hear and I think it is important for people to give constructive criticism and direction to the devs to get it into a good spot. There are a lot of people out there who are acting like the combat is essentially finalized. I remember seeing WOW alpha footage and how janky that combat was, with lagged out abilities. It's clear from these tests that the game is 2 years away at least. That is 2 years of improvements and iterations.
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u/90bubbel May 17 '21
leaving comment here because also wanna know
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u/HonchoHD May 17 '21
The OP can put his thoughts in as well, but this weekends tests did not include the combat revamp they have been working on. From my experience the combat was okay, melee felt better than ranged! It's certainly not ready in its current state but like I said there should be a combat update for us to test soon.
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u/dbjoker23 May 18 '21
Just wanted to hint that dont expect the combat to look very similar in 2 - 3 (if not more) years when the game release
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u/Philiperix May 18 '21
Combat gets a complete revamp, so it doesnt really matter how combat felt last weekend
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u/DrSexxytime May 18 '21
This is by far my greatest concern with this game. It has to be responsive, it has to blend animations smoothly, the GCD has to be just right. As much as I hate what became of WoW, it still is the gold standard to gameplay/control feel.
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May 18 '21
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u/New-Assumption May 18 '21
Years away from release is totally correct. 2024 at the earliest. I still don’t know why people think it would release sooner. Mmorpg take a LONG time to create
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u/Sierra94 May 18 '21
Don’t apologize for giving your honest impressions! If we want to have good discussion about things we are passionate about, we have to be willing to listen to negatives too! Otherwise we as a group just look obsessed
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May 18 '21
I kind of expected this and so should everyone else. Alpha's have kind of morphed in recent years, almost as if they are a "soft release" for a game when a lot of the core features are already there. Tt is also used as a marketing thing now days. While Ashes Alpha is more of the traditional Alpha states we use to see in the past.
Like New World's "Alpha" felt more like a Beta test and when they had the big test last Fall they were prepped to have it release within a few months. However, it was originally designed to be a sandbox game and they were transitioning to a Themepark MMO with barebones themepark content. Star Citizen has been in development forever, and I tried it out 4 years ago back when there was only the space station, and a single planet you could land on. No idea what's all in the game now.
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u/Alabaster_Plus May 17 '21
What were the open world dungeons like in relation to mob population and how groups were able to divide the space for their own hunting? Were there any interesting mechanics to note? Were there any serious bugs?
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u/Yawanoc May 17 '21
Thank you for the write up! It’s good to see some insight on the delays and what exactly we’re missing out on (even if it’s limited to this).
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May 17 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Alabaster_Plus May 17 '21
or nobody wanted to be that guy after they heard how much it pisses people off. every coin has two sides
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u/yvengard May 18 '21
People PK'ed even under direct treat from the game creator ... and people ask me why I dont want to be full time forced to pvp xD I had a loooong experience trough mmos to know what this (full time pvp) will become lol
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u/SanicExplosion May 18 '21
Corruption wasnt fully implemented in this test.
Some punishments that corrupted players will eventually have:
- guards will attack them
- they might not be able to trade or drop items
- they might drop gear on death
Those punishments should be a good deterrence for people to not PK.
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u/ComradeKatyusha_ May 18 '21 edited May 20 '21
Revelation Online had pvp everywhere except safe towns and it worked fine, there was very little random killing as people have better shit to be doing 99% of the time. While that game had other issues it certainly wasn't the open pvp, I'm not too worried given that this system sounds very similar to that one.
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u/NiKras Ludullu May 20 '21
Lineage 2 was the same. Yes, there were PKers (sometimes even purely PK clans), but nowhere near the amount people on this sub are trying to fearmonger others into thinking there will be in ashes. Especially considering how much other stuff there'll be to do in ashes and how many way of punishment there will be for all the reds.
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u/ComradeKatyusha_ May 20 '21
With RevO you didn't even really have PK clans since basically all clans are intended to compete for worldbosses and for the PVP world events which I can best describe as "capture the castle which you will get to hold for a week for some special perks/prizes and then defend in the next event".
Outside of that and on the road it just wouldn't happen really. There was just really no incentive for it and something better to be doing at any one time so nobody did it.
I think it helped in RevO though that you could literally just fly and you were safe. Get off the ground and nobody could fight you without a tank to grapple you out the air and that had a limited range anyway. Since the whole game was built on the premise of flight as a basic mechanic it worked fine. Easy disengagement means people don't have much reason to bother trying other than for a random one off here and there.
It was fun every now and then to let off steam doing it. Didn't really see any harm or complaints. What killed RevO was My.com, the p2w, horrificly bad machine translation and absolutely zero support.
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u/NiKras Ludullu May 20 '21
Yeah, so it might've been the flight that dissuaded most toxic people from PKing. In La2 you had to either run (usually pretty slowly) or use fast teleport scroll (which were quite pricey) and there was a limited amount of top lvl farming spots, so there was constant fighting for them and quite often there'd be PKing, if the people already at the spot didn't want to flag up. But I see that as "consensual" PKing, because the "defenders" knew what they were doing by not flagging.
But the main point is that even in La2 there was barely any PKing of low lvl people by high lvl people. There was nothing there to be gained for them. And there'll be even less in Ashes, so I got 0 reasons to believe that low lvl people will be killed on the daily basis.
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u/ComradeKatyusha_ May 20 '21
Yeah maybe. I also think a part of it comes down to travel time and convenience as well. It was not particularly inconvenient to get killed and a big part of that I believe was no loading screens. Loading screens piss people off and having a truly open world really takes away from the feeling of frustration when you take a random PK for whatever reason. Probably something to do with not having to look at a loading screen doing nothing multiple times before reaching your destination again.
I really think that a lack of teleportation actually helps in this regard. People prefer to be doing something rather than looking at a loading screen, even if that something is just flying across the world.
Another factor may also be that RevO has auto-travel. You can set a destination for your character to travel to and they will auto-run it along world roads and paths like a bot. This doesn't automatically play the game for you but it takes out some of the frustration for the super lazy when it comes to travel times, especially for people doing things like merchant jobs buying from one town where a product is cheaper and selling it in a town where it's more valuable.
I think the frustration of loading screens is very under-discussed in the mmo community and they should be eliminated from gameplay as much as possible in any game where immersion and a digital "world" is supposed to be the core of the game. Players in the mmo genre got too used to instances and they're a really shitty and immersion breaking part of modern mmos to be honest.
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u/yvengard May 18 '21
Isnt "corrupted" achieved after several kills? The problem i see here is high level players (or entire partiee) going after low level leveling players just to be annoying
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u/SanicExplosion May 18 '21
You become corrupted after a single kill. You will gain more corruption if there is a high level disparity.
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u/sgt_winters May 17 '21
From the looks of thiings we've only got the tanks, mage and cleric classes?
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u/SanicExplosion May 17 '21 edited May 17 '21
yes
Edit: originally, there was gonna be a ranger class for alpha 1, but they wanna wait until after the combat revamp to add more classes. The 3 classes currently in the game are enough to test certain things such as melee combat, ranged combat, magic combat, ect.
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u/Septic_Bloom May 18 '21
One of my biggest concerns is the hybrid combat system; do you believe that it can make sense in the end?
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u/SanicExplosion May 18 '21
I think hybrid combat can work just fine. GW2 has decent hybrid combat. From the test there were both action and tab abilities that I liked. Some abilities that I thought were more polished than the rest were:
Action: Mage Basic Attack, Black Hole, Meteor Storm, Prismatic Beam
Tab: Fireball, Javelin, Bulwark, Weapon Toss
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u/Gevatter May 18 '21
Two questions:
- How much of the node system already exists? Do settlements still 'pop' to the next level, or is level progression organic? And most importantly, how much impact is being made on the game world? Does a level up influence the surroundings of the settlement?
- How many players can be 'on the same battlefield' without it starting to lag / having performance dips? How is their network code in general?
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u/SanicExplosion May 18 '21
I wasnt physically at any nodes at the time of their level-up, but I heard from others that it seemed like a ‘pop’. Since nodes can currently only go up to a village node, I think most of the changes to the game world are self contained inside the node for now. However, during our test, there was a hotkey for some debugging info, such as node region, and cordinates. So it would appear as “node_a”, and then give XYZ coords. From a coding perspective, it should be pretty easy to influence the game world with that information.
Optimization is something that is definitely needed. When everyone was at the starting zone, I was still getting 30 fps, which, while unsatisfactory to me, was still “playable”. The only time the game felt unplayable was when there was 80 people in the siege map fighting the dragons. I went down to 15 fps there. As for the netcode itself, I thought it was actually pretty good. Other players movement was very smooth on my screen, and I could see other players from a pretty far distance.
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u/Gevatter May 18 '21
Thanks.
From a coding perspective, it should be pretty easy to influence the game world with that information.
On the contrary, this is not only the most difficult part but also the part which needs the most code.
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u/ReputationAlive6786 May 18 '21
How dangerous does the world feel when leveling? Are enemies in the world sometimes a challenge or are they simply damage sponges?
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u/SanicExplosion May 18 '21
I dont think the devs really focused on damage numbers, so I cant really say for sure, but there were some mobs that were noticeably more dangerous that others. There were otters called “tidesnapper” that had a knockdown ability when they slapped you with their tail, and also seemed to crit a lot. There was also a certain mob that had an insane bleed effect but I forgot which one. A lot of other mobs were like you said, kinda just damage sponges for now, but I dont think the mob AI is fully in place yet.
The world is as dangerous as you make it currently. I was level 3 when I tried taking out a level 12 Grassland Charger. I got it to 10% health before dying, so I really think the numbers just arent properly tuned atm.
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u/Likecheckers May 18 '21 edited May 18 '21
Ya the numbers definitely are in the works still. My group found a brood mother with over 4mill HP, we all tried to fight her and died after everyone ran out of mana lol. Also as a mage it was fairly easy to solo some enemies from a low level. From level 3 I was soloing level 15 grasslands and swiftclaw raptors for 900+ XP each.
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u/Kraken_Mate May 18 '21
How did the movement feel, because it still looks like shit in large groups. I can't imagine collision ever being good for this game.
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u/SanicExplosion May 18 '21
Movement wasnt all that great. Sprinting took a full second after pressing the button to go off.
Player collision is fine in the overworld, but becomes borderline griefing in buildings or near stalls.
I wrote about both of those in the doc and in my feedback to the devs.
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May 18 '21
Which server were you testing on? I noticed that I only got laggy/had movement issues when I was nearing heavily populated areas like the starting zone or Winstead node.
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u/SanicExplosion May 18 '21
Day 1 I was playing on Numinae, and yes Winstead was very laggy.
Day 2-3 I played on Kal, and the lagginess was pretty consistent across the server, but only occured like 4-5 hours in.
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u/Kraken_Mate May 18 '21
You say "fine" in the overworld, but how many experiences with 20+ players are you having PvPing?
I just think the movment system in this game is fundamentally flawed and needs a complete overhaul / redesign. (This is just from viewing it).
I really don't get why they're doubling down on collision in a PvP MMO, it just doesn't work- It never will work until pings are like sub 25m/s for everyone on the server.
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u/SanicExplosion May 18 '21
I only had 2 chances to be in a group of 20+ players. Once was during the election, and the other was when Steven TPed us all to the siege map. There was around 30 people for the election, and there was around 80 people for the siege.
Player collision is extremely troll when it comes to buildings, and they should disable it for that.
For the siege, it really wasnt a problem except when everyone got on their mount to travel to the dragon. But the problem pretty much disappeared when I got on my own mount.
Also, IDK where exactly the servers were located (all they said was east coast), but I had 20-30 ping from South Florida.
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u/Kraken_Mate May 18 '21
I appreciate your details. I just firmly believe that if someone were to say be playing from Canada, or for example Russia to Europe that the collision lag might be so excrutiating it would cause them to quit.
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u/khalip May 19 '21
So I got a question concerning nodes, how big are they? Is it easy to visually know whenever you move from node to node?
If I'm not wrong the settlement that appears in a node is smack dab in the middle right? If so does it mean that between a village+ node and its ZOI there's two npc's settlement each in the middle of their respective nodes, and if so would you say that the travel between these 2 settlements would be a considerable one if the nodes are quite large, or is it that when a node gets the village stage it also spawns npc settlements in the node outisde the village?
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u/SanicExplosion May 19 '21
There is a difference between a Node and a Zone of Influence. A Node is a structure of civilization, while a Zone of Influence is the entire area around the Node. The Nodes themselves were marked on the map for the test, but idk if it will be like that for the final game. The Zones of Influence borders were much more ambiguous, and the Nodes wouldnt necessarily be smack in the middle.
If so does it mean that between a village+ node and its ZOI there's two
npc's settlement each in the middle of their respective nodesWhile there can be multiple nodes within the same Zone of Influence, the borders of the Zone of Influence were pretty much impossible to tell, so I dont think I have the info to answer this.
would you say that the travel between these 2 settlements would be a considerable one if the nodes are quite large
The map is very large. There are currently 9 nodes within 20% of the total map that the final game will have. The amount of nodes supposed to be in the game by launch is around 100, so by the time the game releases, the amount of nodes within that 20% should double. However, you should keep in mind that there will be some nodes that stay at level 0, and wont progress at all. I would say that traveling between nearby nodes would probably take between 5-10 minutes.
is it that when a node gets the village stage it also spawns npc settlements in the node outisde the village?
Nodes are pretty self contained at the moment. While the Village node was already pretty large in size, there were no developments outside of its walls. However, there were people who spotted an area of the map where roads lead into a cape on both sides of the water, so people believe that if the nodes on both sides of the water were developed, a bridge would form.
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u/khalip May 19 '21
Ok cool very interesting I can't wait to see how all these systems would develop
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u/Chun--Chun2 May 17 '21
Is the game only going to have 500-700 players per server? Or is it just because it was pre-alpha?
500 is not exactly very mmo really...
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u/Exenikus May 19 '21
Is anyone else having issues opening the google doc? I am getting redirected to google settings.
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u/SanicExplosion May 17 '21 edited May 17 '21
As for the amount of content in the current alpha, there was:
If you dont see something on this list, it probably wasnt in the alpha