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Impressions after buying and playing all weekend

Superbitsandbob

Well-Known Member
World and world building: I found the world pretty immersive but hope that it gets it own identity at some point. It looks very similar to Shroud of the Avatar for example but understand when using Unity this happens. The zones, especially something like meadows, needs more standout landmarks and camps. It felt quite placeholderish. The zones also need more diversity on biomes and weather. The 3 in at the moment seem very similar style wise. I was excited to see the marsh type area when zoning into the second zone (not sure of name) but it only stretched a small way in to the zone.

Performance: I was playing at 4K mostly max settings and it was really smooth for me in general with the odd lag. Overall really good.

Combat: I loved the pace of the combat as an old EQ player. I think it was paced perfectly. The difficulty of combat was also really good and balanced well. I have no idea if this is something that will change but each class seems to be very limited in abilities. The combat felt quite simplistic because of this limited toolbox and options to effect combat. Things like pets, CC, agro control etc seem quite limited.

I feel the chevrons may not be a good idea to determine difficulty. I found so many camps I wanted to fight at but there was no grouping going on there so was forced to move on. This equalled less fun as I felt locked out of content for no real reason that I could see. As a niche MMO as well, in the future after release new players will come in and may not be able to always find low level groups and some content will be locked out for them if they are forced to solo. I would much rather see just a general level progression with some named mobs here and there to determine difficulty rather than splitting mobs up into solo, duo or group. At least for landscape mobs anyway. More options means more fun. I think EQ had this down perfectly where a camp may have a small level range for mobs, say 10-12 for example. The difficulty for a group came from the risk of pulling more than one mob and looking at how to tactically approach that fight.

Let one player learn all the tradeskills. People who want to do it will do it anyway with alts and what not. Why not just let the one character do it.

Looking forward to more playtime though. Some interesting mechanics in the game that feel really fresh.
 
World and world building: I found the world pretty immersive but hope that it gets it own identity at some point. It looks very similar to Shroud of the Avatar for example but understand when using Unity this happens. The zones, especially something like meadows, needs more standout landmarks and camps. It felt quite placeholderish. The zones also need more diversity on biomes and weather. The 3 in at the moment seem very similar style wise. I was excited to see the marsh type area when zoning into the second zone (not sure of name) but it only stretched a small way in to the zone.

Performance: I was playing at 4K mostly max settings and it was really smooth for me in general with the odd lag. Overall really good.

Combat: I loved the pace of the combat as an old EQ player. I think it was paced perfectly. The difficulty of combat was also really good and balanced well. I have no idea if this is something that will change but each class seems to be very limited in abilities. The combat felt quite simplistic because of this limited toolbox and options to effect combat. Things like pets, CC, agro control etc seem quite limited.

I feel the chevrons may not be a good idea to determine difficulty. I found so many camps I wanted to fight at but there was no grouping going on there so was forced to move on. This equalled less fun as I felt locked out of content for no real reason that I could see. As a niche MMO as well, in the future after release new players will come in and may not be able to always find low level groups and some content will be locked out for them if they are forced to solo. I would much rather see just a general level progression with some named mobs here and there to determine difficulty rather than splitting mobs up into solo, duo or group. At least for landscape mobs anyway. More options means more fun. I think EQ had this down perfectly where a camp may have a small level range for mobs, say 10-12 for example. The difficulty for a group came from the risk of pulling more than one mob and looking at how to tactically approach that fight.

Let one player learn all the tradeskills. People who want to do it will do it anyway with alts and what not. Why not just let the one character do it.

Looking forward to more playtime though. Some interesting mechanics in the game that feel really fresh.
You can always come back to where high chevron enemies are when their colors become green. You would be better geared as well.
 
You can always come back to where high chevron enemies are when their colors become green. You would be better geared as well.
I think the issue at that point is that there isn't really any reason to. Unless the higher chevrons give more XP or even still give XP when they are green? Not sure. Overleveling content has always been a thing in MMO's but the chevron system seems to make mobs artificially overpowered for the level range. Especially in the low level areas. I was unable to level at many of the interesting camps in the zones that would normally be my level because of it.

I guess its old school thinking (which the game is trying to be maybe) but a levelling experience that smoothly progresses you through or around the zones has generally been a thing because it works. The difficulty for groups would come from taking on mobs higher level than the group.
 
I think the issue at that point is that there isn't really any reason to. Unless the higher chevrons give more XP or even still give XP when they are green? Not sure. Overleveling content has always been a thing in MMO's but the chevron system seems to make mobs artificially overpowered for the level range. Especially in the low level areas. I was unable to level at many of the interesting camps in the zones that would normally be my level because of it.

I guess its old school thinking (which the game is trying to be maybe) but a levelling experience that smoothly progresses you through or around the zones has generally been a thing because it works. The difficulty for groups would come from taking on mobs higher level than the group.
I think you mean you are unable to SOLO level at these camps, these camps are meant for groups.
2 or 3 or 4 ups are meant for non solo content.

Most games have this idea, it's pretty common place.
I don't think your "old school thinking" is correct as I don't think that's how it was old school. DAOC, WOW, UO, I can list a ton of games that this is not done like that.

Almost never are games set to do higher level mobs, they are normally fighting "elites" or "boss" mobs. Some games have a system of doing mutli mobs and elites and bosses though. But I don't know many games where because you are a group you do higher and higher levels.
 
I think you mean you are unable to SOLO level at these camps, these camps are meant for groups.
2 or 3 or 4 ups are meant for non solo content.

Most games have this idea, it's pretty common place.
I don't think your "old school thinking" is correct as I don't think that's how it was old school. DAOC, WOW, UO, I can list a ton of games that this is not done like that.

Almost never are games set to do higher level mobs, they are normally fighting "elites" or "boss" mobs. Some games have a system of doing mutli mobs and elites and bosses though. But I don't know many games where because you are a group you do higher and higher levels.
I still play classic MMO's on emulated servers like P99 (EQ), Asheron's Call, DAOC etc and none of these games are how you describe.

EQ for example never had any boss mobs apart from raids and named mobs in dungeons. 99% of the content is normal mobs and not classified as solo or group except by level. So for example if you go into Guk or Tower of Frozen Shadow as a group, most of the time you are fighting normal mobs of determined levels until you reach one of the named camps. There are no group specific mobs outside of a small percentage. The challenge came from trying to avoid pulling more mobs than you could handle and using your toolboxes to manage the fight. It was unavoidable in a dungeon as a group to not have to fight higher level mobs like yellows and reds. It was common. UO never had any mobs like this back during its early days. You had dragons, but the challenge was based on level. Hell you could even tame them.

Maybe these games changed over time but I don't recognise the games as you are referring to them. Back then the term elite and boss were not even a thing. Maybe when WoW came out. Playing WoW classic recently the vast majority of the content are normal mobs with elites etc mostly being reserved for dungeons.

The issue I have found is not that there are mobs I can't solo, that is common in any MMO. The issue is that if you have to solo, which lets be honest is common, then a lot of the interesting content is locked out. It makes even less sense when you see a camp with 1, 2 and 3 chevrons.
 
I agree that content is locked with camps that have mixed "ups" in camps which I think shouldn't be mixed at all. I think camps should be focused where some areas of the camps are 1 ups, others 2ups, and then hardest group content be 3 ups and maybe even a 4 up in it.

I've seen this as a big problem in this game as that even on the road you will die to a random 2 or 3 up.
So while I agree with your point of mixed camps, I do not agree how you say those games are like that, for sure not in DAOC as there ware raid bosses in that game that could not be solo at all.
I never played EQ and P99 is eq, nor did I play AC, I did play AC2 and again, not all the content in AC2 was able to be beaten or seen or played by a solo player.
UO for sure had content that you could not solo (unless maybe you were a tamer exploiting the multi drakes until that changed). Not counting the champ spawns and what not too.
 
I agree that content is locked with camps that have mixed "ups" in camps which I think shouldn't be mixed at all. I think camps should be focused where some areas of the camps are 1 ups, others 2ups, and then hardest group content be 3 ups and maybe even a 4 up in it.

I've seen this as a big problem in this game as that even on the road you will die to a random 2 or 3 up.
So while I agree with your point of mixed camps, I do not agree how you say those games are like that, for sure not in DAOC as there ware raid bosses in that game that could not be solo at all.
I never played EQ and P99 is eq, nor did I play AC, I did play AC2 and again, not all the content in AC2 was able to be beaten or seen or played by a solo player.
UO for sure had content that you could not solo (unless maybe you were a tamer exploiting the multi drakes until that changed). Not counting the champ spawns and what not too.
Yeah I mean all MMO's have mobs you can't solo. I don't mean everything should be soloable. It definitely shouldn't. The point is that from the very start in the newbie zones, you have a misbalance in camps that end up only being doable in a group. You shouldn't really need to differentiate between solo and group mobs outside of names/elites/bosses or whatever you want to call them if you have everything else balanced right.

As I said my experience of playing classics MMO's like EQ. UO, AC, DAOC etc, which I thought this game was leaning towards maybe I have that wrong, did not use this system.
 
I agree that content is locked with camps that have mixed "ups" in camps which I think shouldn't be mixed at all. I think camps should be focused where some areas of the camps are 1 ups, others 2ups, and then hardest group content be 3 ups and maybe even a 4 up in it.

I've seen this as a big problem in this game as that even on the road you will die to a random 2 or 3 up.
So while I agree with your point of mixed camps, I do not agree how you say those games are like that, for sure not in DAOC as there ware raid bosses in that game that could not be solo at all.
I never played EQ and P99 is eq, nor did I play AC, I did play AC2 and again, not all the content in AC2 was able to be beaten or seen or played by a solo player.
UO for sure had content that you could not solo (unless maybe you were a tamer exploiting the multi drakes until that changed). Not counting the champ spawns and what not too.
Some camps are just this. Like in SNH, the smugglers tend to progress from 1 to 3^ as you go deeper into the camp. Bear cave does it too. Inside CV is a whole random mash, never know what you get or where. In Meadows, there is a massive camp of all 1^ exiles levels 16 and 17.

You can try to carefully hunt 2^ and stay fighting at-level mobs/for drops or do like me and stick to wildlife and training hunting/gathering mats. High turnover = high material gain + still green = some exp. Win-win. When they go grey, I move on... except maybe the odd 1^ easy gray buck or doe cuz tea. Now that I'm stronger and my tactics are refined, I move on to greater challenges.

Barring an oddly place mob that just felled some poor soul, you generally don't find any 3^ out roaming or at the front of a camp in SNH and most other places unless the camp is entirely 2/3 or 3, but that's not nooby territory. Also learning to pull is extremely important.

Your road 3's weren't in SNH were they? I think SNH is the place where people learn and should be safe. 90% of the map has mobs that do not proximity agro and is safe (a bit less when thieves spawn at night) After this, players enter the dangerous wilds and have to learn to be aware and how to take care of themselves.
 
I think the issue at that point is that there isn't really any reason to. Unless the higher chevrons give more XP or even still give XP when they are green? Not sure. Overleveling content has always been a thing in MMO's but the chevron system seems to make mobs artificially overpowered for the level range. Especially in the low level areas. I was unable to level at many of the interesting camps in the zones that would normally be my level because of it.

I guess its old school thinking (which the game is trying to be maybe) but a levelling experience that smoothly progresses you through or around the zones has generally been a thing because it works. The difficulty for groups would come from taking on mobs higher level than the group.
You generally can't take on mobs higher than +3 vs your party's levels (Tank/cc and DPS, healers low level are ok) due to the 'nope' effect that reds have over your ability to land good hits and skill effects.

+1 or 2 levels out of range isn't impossible, but its generally not worth doing. Maybe if you are trying a rare named/boss or something and have no other choice at the moment.

Anything that is green still gives exp and 3^ do give more than 2 or 1.

color code:
red = 3+ levels above you, largely should be avoided, no way to tell 'how red'/far above you they are
yellow = 1-2 levels above you, not ideal but not terrible to fight
white = same level
blue = 1-2 below
green = 3-10 below
gray = 11+ below and no exp is awarded (still full loot though)
 
You generally can't take on mobs higher than +3 vs your party's levels (Tank/cc and DPS, healers low level are ok) due to the 'nope' effect that reds have over your ability to land good hits and skill effects.

+1 or 2 levels out of range isn't impossible, but its generally not worth doing. Maybe if you are trying a rare named/boss or something and have no other choice at the moment.

Anything that is green still gives exp and 3^ do give more than 2 or 1.

color code:
red = 3+ levels above you, largely should be avoided, no way to tell 'how red'/far above you they are
yellow = 1-2 levels above you, not ideal but not terrible to fight
white = same level
blue = 1-2 below
green = 3-10 below
gray = 11+ below and no exp is awarded (still full loot though)
So what is a 3^ comparatively level wise or do we not know that?

I was in meadows at level 9 and was pretty comfortably killing 1^ yellows but when I went back to an earlier zone and tried a 2^ blue it felt artificially more powerful (I say artificially because it was just a random landscape mob wandering around). So a 2^ blue was stronger than a 1^ yellow by quite a bit and level/colour wise was 2-4 levels lower.

So a group fighting a 3^ white could potentially be equivalent to them fighting a 1^ mob a fair bit higher than them level wise.

I guess my feeling is that you could remove chevrons and a group could just fight higher level mobs that are the equivalent of whatever the 3^ would have been and it would just feel cleaner, with only one conning system to think about. Unless the way the higher chevrons work is that they have the same hit and to hit values (AC or whatever) as a 1^ of the same level but their power is inflated by just their hit points and how much damage they do. This then just makes them tankier equivalents that do more damage but are effectively the same a 1^.
 
Hey hey Superbitsandbob!

Welcome to our game, our forums and thank you so much for your video that I watched yesterday. I've been answering a few of your questions in the comments of the video. I hope this clarify a few things for you and your viewers. You are very welcome to reach me anytime for more informations

Thank you very much for your feedback aswell. Our Tech Director is gone for a few days of well deserved rest (not really hollidays but he is forbidden by the team to take his computer with him), so he will not be able to develop himself the thinking behind the chevrons.
I will try to explain the idea behind the chevrons system and why we went for that route.
Our game is really about grouping, making friend, and playing together. Everything we create in the game is designed with the idea of encouraging players to band together and tackle challenges together. Obviously, our game is also soloable for players that prefer to do that, or in between sessions with friends, but the core idea and purpose of our game is group play. To make it easier for players to know what type of content is designed for them, we have the chevrons system, which is the equivallent of elite and champion mobs in other game. You gain bonus experience for grouping and defeating the "correct" content.

I really would recommand to group up next session you play ( you can poke me personaly, I would be happy to get you for a tour). It's truly in group that the game make all sense. The roles anc classes are designed for group play. It's a much more enjoyable experience as a group.

You can use the LFG tool (O) and the global channel /gl to set up a group with players arround your level.

This is also a thread that gather plenty of useful informations to start in Embers Adrift. I hope this can answer some of your questions and concerns.
 
Hey hey Superbitsandbob!

Welcome to our game, our forums and thank you so much for your video that I watched yesterday. I've been answering a few of your questions in the comments of the video. I hope this clarify a few things for you and your viewers. You are very welcome to reach me anytime for more informations

Thank you very much for your feedback aswell. Our Tech Director is gone for a few days of well deserved rest (not really hollidays but he is forbidden by the team to take his computer with him), so he will not be able to develop himself the thinking behind the chevrons.
I will try to explain the idea behind the chevrons system and why we went for that route.
Our game is really about grouping, making friend, and playing together. Everything we create in the game is designed with the idea of encouraging players to band together and tackle challenges together. Obviously, our game is also soloable for players that prefer to do that, or in between sessions with friends, but the core idea and purpose of our game is group play. To make it easier for players to know what type of content is designed for them, we have the chevrons system, which is the equivallent of elite and champion mobs in other game. You gain bonus experience for grouping and defeating the "correct" content.

I really would recommand to group up next session you play ( you can poke me personaly, I would be happy to get you for a tour). It's truly in group that the game make all sense. The roles anc classes are designed for group play. It's a much more enjoyable experience as a group.

You can use the LFG tool (O) and the global channel /gl to set up a group with players arround your level.

This is also a thread that gather plenty of useful informations to start in Embers Adrift. I hope this can answer some of your questions and concerns.
Cool thanks Elloa.

The bonus XP for killing the correct mobs relative to solo, group etc does help to better understand the chevron system. I will hopefully get some grouping done at the weekend and will check out that thread thanks.
 
So what is a 3^ comparatively level wise or do we not know that?

I was in meadows at level 9 and was pretty comfortably killing 1^ yellows but when I went back to an earlier zone and tried a 2^ blue it felt artificially more powerful (I say artificially because it was just a random landscape mob wandering around). So a 2^ blue was stronger than a 1^ yellow by quite a bit and level/colour wise was 2-4 levels lower.

So a group fighting a 3^ white could potentially be equivalent to them fighting a 1^ mob a fair bit higher than them level wise.

I guess my feeling is that you could remove chevrons and a group could just fight higher level mobs that are the equivalent of whatever the 3^ would have been and it would just feel cleaner, with only one conning system to think about. Unless the way the higher chevrons work is that they have the same hit and to hit values (AC or whatever) as a 1^ of the same level but their power is inflated by just their hit points and how much damage they do. This then just makes them tankier equivalents that do more damage but are effectively the same a 1^.
It's hard to say exactly how a 3^ would compare to a 1^ in terms of level gap difficulty.

It is very possible to run into a 3^ 'gray' bear for example that will wreck you (meaning it is more than 10 levels below you) yet you can solo a 2^ white or yellow (at level or 1-2 above level). It depends on the mob, their ability mechanics and natural speed, your abilities/class, a lot of things.

In general, you should not attempt to solo 3^ regardless of level (or anything red), but it may be possible depending on the type of enemy, their stats, your stats and strategy, etc.
2^ at a given level are significantly weaker and can often be handled solo.
1^ are meant for solo players.

Many mobs move faster as their ^ increases (bears and rats are an easy example) and some will run faster than you even while attempting to flee for your life out of combat stance! Fireflies and several other mobs are notoriously slow. Wolves, crocs, deer, especially spiders! and other mobs are quite fast. Spiders are scary fast, even I can't outrun them yet and I'm built for speed!

There is an exp and loot chance bonus for increased ^ iirc Your best bet is to have at least one friend to adventure with who's class compliments yours. You can do so much more with 2 than with 1, even taking on a 3^ red named rare spawn (speaking from experience, it was brutally slow, but possible). Tank + heal is very effective or a healer-dps paired with a dps-healer or sometimes just 2 good dps working well together and no heals can do the job. If you don't get hit, you don't need heals! or armor for that matter.
 
I think the issue at that point is that there isn't really any reason to. Unless the higher chevrons give more XP or even still give XP when they are green? Not sure. Overleveling content has always been a thing in MMO's but the chevron system seems to make mobs artificially overpowered for the level range. Especially in the low level areas. I was unable to level at many of the interesting camps in the zones that would normally be my level because of it.

I guess its old school thinking (which the game is trying to be maybe) but a levelling experience that smoothly progresses you through or around the zones has generally been a thing because it works. The difficulty for groups would come from taking on mobs higher level than the group.
The thing is it's not a solo game. They advertise as keeping grouping as the main focus. Solo play is an afterthought. If you do solo pay you should do content you can handle alone that wouldn't match what group play could do. The small loopholes for soloing is crafting.
 
Played a lot solo, very viable for most things, but likely won't do so well in dungeons or with rare spawns and getting rare/bis loot
 
Played a lot solo, very viable for most things, but likely won't do so well in dungeons or with rare spawns and getting rare/bis loot
Yeah pretty much what you would expect for an MMO really. I think maybe talking about the chevron system has been confused with saying everything should be soloable. It was just that the chevron system added a layer of complexity to identifying the mob challenge level that I hadn't seen in classic MMO's (by classic I mean EQ, UO, AC). It's been pointed out that these chevron type things were in the second gen MMO's so it's not untried.
 
Chevron is like elite and boss symbols, its pretty much in all the old school and new MMOs just another way to do it.
 
Yeah pretty much what you would expect for an MMO really. I think maybe talking about the chevron system has been confused with saying everything should be soloable. It was just that the chevron system added a layer of complexity to identifying the mob challenge level that I hadn't seen in classic MMO's (by classic I mean EQ, UO, AC). It's been pointed out that these chevron type things were in the second gen MMO's so it's not untried.
Helped a noob recover his bag in SNH ezmode area but it was from a 3^ bear.

I was level 20 dps and the bear nearly took me down (woulda helped if he didn't YOLO attack it and instead let me prep and pull from ranged, 2-3 attacks before it reaches me)


It depends on the mob, skills, mechanics, etc but if you consider that level 5 3^ bear was meant for a party of 6 5's, shoulda been lvl 30 to solo (we had 25 levels combined so a close fight)
 
Hiya @Superbitsandbob thanks for stopping by and taking the time to leave feedback & make some videos about us! I'll try to comment on some of your points below.

World and world building: I found the world pretty immersive but hope that it gets it own identity at some point. It looks very similar to Shroud of the Avatar for example but understand when using Unity this happens. The zones, especially something like meadows, needs more standout landmarks and camps. It felt quite placeholderish. The zones also need more diversity on biomes and weather. The 3 in at the moment seem very similar style wise. I was excited to see the marsh type area when zoning into the second zone (not sure of name) but it only stretched a small way in to the zone.
Newhaven North & South are essentially the same "place" which is why they look so similar. Once you reach Meadowlands & Dryfoot however things should start to feel a bit different (Dryfoot especially since it is more of a desert). Weather is planned but right now the skybox setup is pretty static.

Performance: I was playing at 4K mostly max settings and it was really smooth for me in general with the odd lag. Overall really good.
Do you recall where you encountered that odd lag? I'm curious if it happens again if you disable shadows (set shadow distance to 0%) and see if the lag is still present. There is some initial lag when loading in a large number of humanoids but that typically smooths out pretty quickly.

Combat: I loved the pace of the combat as an old EQ player. I think it was paced perfectly. The difficulty of combat was also really good and balanced well. I have no idea if this is something that will change but each class seems to be very limited in abilities. The combat felt quite simplistic because of this limited toolbox and options to effect combat. Things like pets, CC, agro control etc seem quite limited.
We purposely spaced out starting abilities to not overwhelm players. Once you hit level 6 you can choose a specialization which further defines the play style of your character; this is where CC is introduced. We wanted to give players a taste of the "base role" before introducing more complex topics such as CC (which is also likely not needed as much at low levels). We consider levels 1-6 to basically be our tutorial in South Newhaven.

I feel the chevrons may not be a good idea to determine difficulty. I found so many camps I wanted to fight at but there was no grouping going on there so was forced to move on. This equalled less fun as I felt locked out of content for no real reason that I could see. As a niche MMO as well, in the future after release new players will come in and may not be able to always find low level groups and some content will be locked out for them if they are forced to solo. I would much rather see just a general level progression with some named mobs here and there to determine difficulty rather than splitting mobs up into solo, duo or group. At least for landscape mobs anyway. More options means more fun. I think EQ had this down perfectly where a camp may have a small level range for mobs, say 10-12 for example. The difficulty for a group came from the risk of pulling more than one mob and looking at how to tactically approach that fight.
The chevrons (as other's have mentioned) are inspired by how other games typically handle the differentiation between solo and group content. Some of our largest inspiration here is likely Vanguard's dot system, where they had anywhere from 1-5 dots which indicated how big of a group you likely wanted before attempting it. Our goal is to provide viable means for solo and group players alike. In order to accomplish that without trivializing content we found that the chevron system allowed us to clearly indicate which mobs were solo friendly, which were small group friendly, and which were tuned to a full group of adventurers. In addition to that, the color of the chevrons indicates what level the npc is relative to you so you can further judge the difficulty (this is obviously similar to EQ's con system). To properly incentivize players tackling the appropriately tuned content the experience reward is adjusted based on the size of the group relative to the chevron count. If you are a full group taking on 1^ npc's you will not get near as much experience as if you were taking on 3^ npcs; you will still gain experience it just will unlikely be worth the effort. Hopefully that gives a bit more insight as to the design behind the chevrons. Let me know if you have any further questions!

Let one player learn all the tradeskills. People who want to do it will do it anyway with alts and what not. Why not just let the one character do it.
This is a tricky one. The trade skills were designed to rely on one another in some way to mimic adventuring interdependence. Being a game that values social interactions we did not want crafters to be completely self reliant, which means that if we were to give everyone all trade skills then you really wouldn't need to rely on anyone else to perform said actions. We're still heavily iterating this game loop and hope to make some improvements in the near future (keep an eye on the patch notes).

Looking forward to more playtime though. Some interesting mechanics in the game that feel really fresh.
Great to hear!
 
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