Alpha 2 Release Delayed, Roadmap Announced, and Amazing Bard Gameplay Reveal
With the unfortunate news of the Alpha 2 being pushed to Q4 of 2024, the Bard Reveal hopes to salve some of the pain with a 2 hour video showcase!
Alpha 2 Announced for October 2024
Unfortunately, the Alpha 2 has been pushed back to Q4 2024, with an expected specific date to be revealed in the Live AMA with Steven Sharif on August 16th, 2024. The current expected month is October 2024, with more details, as well as a fully fledged roadmap to be revealed during the AMA. To participate in the AMA, visit the forums, or watch live on the official Ashes of Creation livestream.
For those that cannot tune in live, we’ll have a breakdown shortly afterwards of the most important points here on the Ashes Moments Newsletter, so make sure to subscribe below!
Bard Dance-A-Long
The Bard reveal gave us our first look at both the new Rosethorn armorset, as well as the reworked Dunir dwarf as the tank. With the dynamic music yet to be completed (by the accomplished Bear McCreary), we get to see how fluid, musical, and choreographed the long-awaited Bard finally is. Watch the full 2 hour gameplay reveal on the Ashes of Creation Youtube, or scroll below for a quick look at some important kit gameplay elements that, as always, are a work-in-progress.
We also see the first look at the Spellbook weapon, which is also the first weapon with self-contained animations. The Spellbook weapon floats near the user, and animations are completely independent to the characters own model. This tech can provide the foundation for more weapon types that can be isolated from the character model and open up a suite of new gameplay mechanics in the future. Animations are still in progress, such as having the Spellbook disappear/be holstered when idled. Also, the Spellbook isn’t relegated to just the Bard, nor is the Bard restricted to just the Spellbook as a weapon.
Skill tree allows for more freedom, as the only requirement to progress to the next tier is a minimum number of points invested. This fixes a common problem in Pre-Alpha 2 testers that were complaining about having to invest in skills they didn’t want to use, just to unlock a skill they wanted to use.
One of the higher tier passives allows you to choose whether Melodies increase in effectiveness over time, or allow you to weave two different Melodies concurrently.
Melodies are a type of cast that work concurrently with other abilities, and are created by a professional composer that will sync with the biome/area/environment to provide a very immersive experience. These include increases to healing received, as well as mana buffs. These are meant to be working passively, as they have a long duration and 0 mana costs.
Dances are one of the main methods to apply short-term, short-range, highly impactful buffs to allies, that can increase movement speed, evasion, apply a shield, and more. One of the main differences in a Dance is that you can move during the cast time, and the buff will be applied to any ally that enters your range. This advocates for Bards to quickly move around a raid group and have a major impact in PvP battles. Bards with great map awareness will be have an insane impact, as they can dynamically apply these buffs to the relevant groups at crucial times.
One such Dance (Mesmerizing Dance) also applies a temporary stun called Incapacitate, and it was during this showcase that we were introduced to CC Diminishing Returns (finally), allowing for players to not be perma-CC’d. This was expected, but it’s glad to finally see implemented. These Diminishing Return values are applied within groups (type), so Snare, Root, Chill, and Freeze all share the same CD, and Silence/Disarm share a different CD.
Songs are single-target abilties for allies or enemies. These can applying heals or increase attack speed/cast speed on allies, or apply a Chilled effect on enemies, slowing and applying damage.
Stories are the main class mechanic for a Bard. This mechanic can be built by utilizing these specific Story skills that generate either the a Tragedy Theme, Comedy Theme, or Mystery Theme. After acquiring a specific combination of these 3 Themes, it will allow you to use the Bard Ultimate Ability named Saga, which has a different effect depending on the combination of Themes.
Battle at Daragal
After showcasing the Bard kit, Steven and the development team went on to tackle a new area, Daragal. This area is the first encounter where we’ve seen the Elite System, mobs that are much tougher than regular mobs, denoted by Stars next to their name. The more Stars, the tougher they are, and the better rewards.
We also see mob passives in this fight, with Skeleton mobs having a Revive mechanic, and the Revenant Reaper Elite Mob, who has a unique effect that it can steal the Revive mechanic from any living Skeletons around him. This results in uncoordinated parties who either pull both mobs together, or fail to kill the Skeletons with the Revive buff first, having to kill the much more difficult Elite Reaper twice, increasing the likelihood of a wipe.
This was much better showcase of open-world non-dungeon party grinding, with a variety of Elite mob types with skills that appropriately leveled players need to play around. However, this was a poor showcase of the updated lighting system, as there was even a moment when the party needed to flee a big pull, that Steven himself couldn’t find his way out of a single room. With Unreal 5’s lighting engine, as well as Lumen, the current implementation is nowhere close to the ceiling that it could be, nor should be, for a functional open-world game. The moments where lighting shines are in the extremes, both in heavily bright moments, and extremely dark areas. No one wants to die because they couldn’t see where they were.
However, Steven elaborated afterwards that the new lighting system won’t be in a representative state (along with sound) until the end of August, so feedback will be better received afterwards.
First look at a Three-Star Elite - Dragal Taskmaster
The Elite area grinding culminated with the summoning of the 3-star Daragal Taskmaster, who summons his own Thralls, and has a built-in Revive mechanic. This fight took approximately 3-4 minutes for a party of 6 players, with several close calls (as well as an extra Elite pull that needed to be burst down first).
Customizable UI Settings
We received a sneek peek at the teased UI settings that allow players to fully customize the font, size, and colour of various Damage/Healing/Crit numbers to their own specification, a utility that is often overlooked in many games, or gatekept behind a Cash Shop (looking at you Maplestory).
As we’ve seen the HUD be fully customizable before, seeing intricate font settings, as well as Targetting and Auto-Attack settings already implemented is a promising sign for development, and accessibility.
Question & Answer Section
Some answers to questions that were relevant are:
Multiple Bards in the same party will not have the same buff stack, but different buffs can be used concurrently
Players cannot use abilities while mounted currently
Heals (from all classes) can crit as well
Siege Summons may be planned for the Summoner in the future
Bard AoE Abilities are not obsctructed by line-of-sight
And that ends it for this month’s showcase! With the sad news of the Alpha 2 delay, we hope that the August 16th AMA answers all our questions regarding what exactly to expect come October, and remove some of the FOMO players have been feeling in regards to missing the Alpha 2 key sales (and hopefully not induce reverse-FOMO for those that felt pressured to buy at the $250 pricetag just for the key).
As always, make sure to subscribe to the Ashes Moments Youtube Channel to get ready to submit your gameplay clips for the world to see, and subscribe below to keep updated on all things Ashes of Creation!