Alpha Test feedback Sep 12th, 2020

events
#1

This thread was for the open Alpha playtest of Age of Ascent (AoA) that was held on Saturday the 12th of September at 1900 UTC (1400 US Central, 2000 UK time).

To reserve your place for the next playtest, sign your pilot up at https://portal.ageofascent.com

Please return to https://portal.ageofascent.com when the playtest is due to start, and you will be automatically admitted.

We’re testing the PvP combat module again - but with the new technology base and our awesome new visual style! Everyone will be in the same ship loadout, and it’s everyone for themselves!

Other modules of the game such as trade and industry, mining and mission running will be in other playtests later this year.

After the playtest has finished, please do come back to this thread to give us your feedback and comments!

  • We are only testing the PvP experience in this playtest, not the full game!
  • You’ll get the best experience if you have equipment suitable for piloting (eg mouse and keyboard, or a gamepad controller)
  • You’ll need to be in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge web browsers on any OS of your choice
  • Players from the last playtests will notice that the radar is currently turned off - this is because it is being substantially enhanced at present
  • For this test we’ve got the music soundtrack turned off by default

– NOTES FOR THIS PLAYTEST FOLLOW
In addition to the notes from the last playtest, available here, this playtest has the following changes:

  • A bug that caused the mouse and keyboard to be locked out when a joystick was attached has been resolved. Please note that we do not currently support joysticks, but will do in the future. Gamepads work fine!
  • We’re testing out a new (lower damage) weapon for all ships
  • Names are now displaying on other ships, so now you can see who you’re shooting!
  • We’re in a different part of the universe for this playtest, with an updated skybox and new space station models
  • Asteroids have been refactored entirely for a much lower polycount, but with more detailing on them

We look forward to seeing you there!

Top 25 results from playtest

Pos Player Name Shots Fired Shots Hit Accuracy Kills
1 @PsychoRomeo 49,416 32,407 65.6% 59
2 @GM_Cerberus 23,064 10,220 44.3% 23
3 phantom_64 27,416 14,720 53.7% 18
4 @ubluntu 54,344 12,140 22.3% 17
5 jetcool 35,864 14,252 39.7% 14
6 @GM_thundercat 29,288 10,383 35.5% 12
7 @Regnadp 46,032 8,337 18.1% 8
8 ZyZ 8,648 4,747 54.9% 8
9 Tookus 19,840 5,741 28.9% 4
10 theElderKing 30,616 3,130 10.2% 4
11 jfab 40,696 3,138 7.7% 3
12 Fallon 30,848 5,266 17.1% 2
13 nev0x 9,496 2,043 21.5% 2
14 Hocuspocus 17,976 317 1.8% 2
15 @Asvenger 42,920 2,404 5.6% 1
16 Raph 18,080 1,329 7.4% 1
17 vfab 9,600 1,194 12.4% 1
18 Brohatma Gandhi 10,776 960 8.9% 1
19 Nfab 42,112 946 2.2% 1
20 Gaster 23,224 510 2.2% 1
21 @GM_stormcrow 13,864 2,948 21.3% 0
22 @kraik 4,976 848 17.0% 0
23 Psycho Queen 18,464 356 1.9% 0
24 King 23,392 263 1.1% 0
25 Duran 13,312 230 1.7% 0
1 Like
#2

Oh baby. Now I can call out the TC Feeble Corkscrews from the Ubluntu Spirals with surety.

1 Like
#3

LOLOL. I suspect the feeble corkscrews might actually be me rather than TC. But I guess we’ll find out!

#4

So I would absolutely love to destroy the other ships in this playtest as I feel is my birthright. However, I’m experiencing a weird bug where all I can see is the instructions on how to fly/fight at the top of the screen, the targeting system in the middle where I can see the speed I’m going at and my ship’s integrity, and a few circles at the bottom of my screen, as well as the currently decorational buttons, all on top of a black void. I can hear the other ships shooting, and other players can come blow me up, but I can’t see any of the actual action.

#5

Hi teslarecoils,

Thanks very much for letting us know. Can I quickly double check that this image below is pretty much what you experienced?

image
image1920×962 56.7 KB

Many thanks, in advance,

SC

#6

Another blast. I like the addition of the names. Can’t wait for the return of the gravidar!

The lower damage weapons definitely cause noticeably longer time to kills. Combined with the low projectile fire rate and the ships performing more like boats in syrup, it felt like I should have been flying a frigate using those weapons as turrets, not a smaller interceptor.

Overall though still fun. Can’t wait to see the scoreboard.

Edit: Also noticed that going backwards still inverts your strafe.

#7

Yep, that’s exactly it!

#8

Looks really good… Love the asteroid field and capital ships.

Did you used to have an option where you could invert the pitch? I always invert my my controls in the games I play and not being able to do so is really messing up my play style and screwing up my chakras. It was by far the biggest issue I had by miles.

#9

Thanks very much for confirming. We’ll look into it further!

SC

#10

Excellent playtest today. I had a much better framerate than last week. The ship movement also felt much more responsive, though I can’t say if that was just the improved performance.

I like the lower damage weapons, they give more time to evade and chase.

Thanks for another great half hour in space.

#11

Thanks for the kind words - will pass them on!

I believe the ‘Y’ key inverts pitch; will double check and let you know for next time, though.

SC

#12

Top 25 results from playtest

Pos Player Name Shots Fired Shots Hit Accuracy Kills
1 @PsychoRomeo 49,416 32,407 65.6% 59
2 @GM_Cerberus 23,064 10,220 44.3% 23
3 phantom_64 27,416 14,720 53.7% 18
4 @ubluntu 54,344 12,140 22.3% 17
5 jetcool 35,864 14,252 39.7% 14
6 @GM_thundercat 29,288 10,383 35.5% 12
7 @Regnadp 46,032 8,337 18.1% 8
8 ZyZ 8,648 4,747 54.9% 8
9 Tookus 19,840 5,741 28.9% 4
10 theElderKing 30,616 3,130 10.2% 4
11 jfab 40,696 3,138 7.7% 3
12 Fallon 30,848 5,266 17.1% 2
13 nev0x 9,496 2,043 21.5% 2
14 Hocuspocus 17,976 317 1.8% 2
15 @Asvenger 42,920 2,404 5.6% 1
16 Raph 18,080 1,329 7.4% 1
17 vfab 9,600 1,194 12.4% 1
18 Brohatma Gandhi 10,776 960 8.9% 1
19 Nfab 42,112 946 2.2% 1
20 Gaster 23,224 510 2.2% 1
21 @GM_stormcrow 13,864 2,948 21.3% 0
22 @kraik 4,976 848 17.0% 0
23 Psycho Queen 18,464 356 1.9% 0
24 King 23,392 263 1.1% 0
25 Duran 13,312 230 1.7% 0
1 Like
#13

I like that you can see the names of the targets and also the damage status. I also noticed that there were some ships that seemed to be bots. If so, I think this is good for it offers a way to calibrate flight techniques. I didn’t like the reduced damage. At one point I kept making hits, but seemed like I couldn’t ever take them down. Once I found the supposed bots, it took a long time to finally get a kill.

The new art was ok, but to be honest, with the environment not affecting the gameplay, I just didn’t want to take any time to look around.

The last thing I noticed was that it seemed that my mouse wasn’t quite as responsive as the last play test. I haven’t deliberately changed anything on my end in the past two weeks, but some update may have had an effect, or maybe I’ve just had more coffee today. Anyway, it might be nice to have some sort of control calibration so that at least if you can’t change things, you can at least get some empirical data to let you know you your controls are performing as expected.

#14

Gravidar is next up on the list of things to return, along with target lock.

I could be wrong, but I’m not sure we changed any of the flight envelope performance from the last playtest to this one… I’ll double check and get back to you; but if the parameters were the same, I might have to compare some VT from the previous playtest and see what’s what.

SC

#15

Very glad to hear that ubluntu; I wonder if that’s purely the reduced polycount on the asteroids… something to investigate further.

SC

#16

I’ll try that next time, in which case. Maybe consider adding that to the key mapping graphic?

#17

Video from yesterday’s playtest!

See you next time!

#18

Hey guys,

We double checked, and actually the flight parameters in terms of performance (thrust, turn rate etc) were the same for this ship as before; however there were some differences in the display perception that may have made the ship seem less responsive to you.

  • Lower fire rate of the weapons
  • Shorter range of the weapons
  • Much larger space stations
  • “Space Dust” was less visible due to the skybox colouration
  • Field of View was changed slightly

These 5 environmental changes basically acted to create a perception of a slower flight performance envelope from the previous playtest, although relative to each other ship (in both playtests) the performance was identical.

Perception is a huge part of the game’s overall feeling, and so it’s very useful information for us to have - that each of these seemingly small changes (external to the ship’s performance envelope) - change the perception of the entire flight experience as much as they did.

SC

#19

I’ve been playing a lot of Elite Dangerous lately and the ships in that game feel like faster, more standard issue fighters even though there’s faster projectiles and lower time to kills. I think the main thing that contributes to this is the rate at which enemies translate across your screen. So I would say the three main factors that contribute to my feeling of sluggishness would be

  • Average engagement distance
  • Ship speed
  • Yaw/pitch rate, and to a lesser extent strafe speed

The slower projectiles meant that the engagement distance was closer. The time it took to close that distance was more apparent, hence the feeling of flying in a slower frigate. And, despite targets being so close (which causes things to translate across the screen incredibly fast), the pitch/yaw rate meant that it was surprisingly easy to stay on target (considering how lumbering the ship was otherwise), hence the feeling of being in a turret seat. That was my perception, anyway.

Edit: I guess I totally didn’t notice field of view changing, but that could absolutely have a huge impact on perceived speed as well.

Alpha Test feedback, Sep 26th, 2020