I played for a decent chunk of time during the alpha and wanted to give my thoughts on things. I'll start by saying I know it's an alpha and not everything is implemented or in it's final state, so I'm not treating it as a final product. I've played in an alpha much earlier in development too (before there were towns I believe)

Overall I had a great time. The game is fun, it evokes a sense of adventure and I think it has a massive amount of potential that it's already capable of living up to.

The game became progressively choppier over the course of the weekend, like it was dropping frames, but it seemed to be server side. As a performance test I guess that's one of the things you wanted to see. It didn't seem to make a difference where in the world I was or how many people were around me, though I missed out on the REALLY crowded stuff because I'm in a very bad timezone for it.

The main gameplay issues for me were UI/UX
The map wasn't very clear or readable. I'd struggle to find where I was on it because the marker doesn't stand out very well. When things show up and don't show up on the map at different scales feels off for me, made the map feel not very informative at useful scales.

The hotbar and ability slots could do with a fair bit of improvement. There's a bunch of things like toggles and abilities you don't use much that you should be able to click to activate without having them on one of the hotkeys. This also applies for consumables on the bar. Also, you have to remove a consumable from the bar before you can replace it with an ability in the slot. If you try and just drag an ability into a slot currently occupied by a consumable, it won't go in.

Creature names are never displayed except in knowledge. Long term this could be a problem. If I forget what something is called and have full knowledge on it already, I will never be told again what it is. My suggestion is that names be displayed when you have your cursor over them, just as resources do. If you want to limit it to creatures you have knowledge of, that's fine too, if the no names thing is part of the mystery. But never showing the name isn't a good idea.

Some other gameplay aspects I noted:
The world design with areas surrounded by cliffs and funnelling people into a few bottlenecks to enter is mostly just frustrating. Roads are already faster. The blocking areas off behind cliffs just adds a lot of travel time to and from areas, particularly when you're just trying to leave. While there should be bottlenecks and areas with only a few entrances, currently there's too many set up like that. Particularly when walkable and non walkable terrain is not always that clear. While I support making travel epic and encouraging exploration, I think too many barriers to a combat hotspot just makes the experience frustrating. If you want to prevent players just rinding through, then perhaps some travel debuffs instead like "rough terrain" that makes it impassible for horses or slows them down significantly would do it. Or just add more ways in and out of the areas, or one way ways out so at least it's easier to leave. Players have lives outside of games and it should be made relatively easy to jump OUT again without causing yourself major setbacks.

The camera is too zoomed in. You can only see about 4 or 5 steps in front of you and that feels way too close.
Also rocky terrain looks a lot like small rocks, which makes it difficult to actually find small rocks in an area covered in rocks. Which is also odd because often there are NO small rocks in an area that is very rocky.

Which brings me to a broader point about regions - the currently feel very samey. As this is an alpha that's fine, but longer term, a lot more detail should be put into the effects and materials used to make each area feel like something different to every other area. Even areas like heartwood and the area with all the spiders and undead feel pretty much the same even though there are some palette changes and effects to make them feel different, the contrast isn't very strong and lacks atmosphere. As I said, since this is alpha that's fine for now and has no impact on my assessment of what I think the game will be like, but definitely needs refinement for release.

I also think if you're going to have a short test, you should probably give player characters a boost, or they're going to spend a solid chunk of it scrounging for resources instead of crowding around doing the things you want tested.

Sound - I found a lot of the sound effects, particularly of creature movement vague and unclear. I couldn't tell what direction something was coming from. Clearly different creatures have different movement sounds but I could tell what was what. Even my horse made sounds I wasn't sure were from a horse. So I think the sound design needs refinement to make it clearer what is happening. Particularly since you can hardly see anywhere, sound is an important cue.

I think that's all the feedback I have on the alpha test. The next block is just things I'd like to see in the game, based on playing it and not really alpha related.

The game has huge rp community potential, so there's some extra things I'd like to see to support that

1. Out of combat clothing: Give players options for some purely cosmetic clothing that they can display while not in combat to show off their character's identity. Could be all kinds of crafting recipes in there, which also creates another market for crafters.

2. Chairs you can sit on - another good thing for rp and housing

3. wilderness buildings - solitary building spots out in the wilderness that have specific functions and are not attached to towns and so don't receive all the benefits of towns. Potentially player owned, but possibly just player maintained, requiring resources of specific types to be donated to them to keep them running.
   These would also make useful landmarks and meeting places for players teaming up on the fly.
   Examples would include:
   -Roadside Inns for resting on long journeys. A relatively safe spot to rest and get a meal - perhaps for a fee. Perhaps they need to be maintained and protected and so accept donations of resources and coin to keep them running.

-Hunting lodge. A building found off the main roads in areas where frequently hunted creatures are found. Provides campfire rest and basic facilities for repairing or ammunition. Perhaps holds records for epic hunts eg "golden stag" or the like.

-Witch's hut. Isolated little shack with a cauldron for a campfire rest and some cooking. Bring your own fuel for the fire and maybe leave a donation of herbs or reagents to use.

Mounted Combat
I think it would be really fun to have an entirely different set of skills for mounted combat that need to be learned to use, perhaps including skills or equipment to unlock it in the first place to turn mounts into more than just transport, perhaps battle mounts operate differently and when you are dismounted stay in the world and can be attacked, as the health system would probably have to work different for combat mounts to the travel mount system (which basically gives you a whole extra shield before you start taking damage)

I think being able to be a knight, a lancer or a horse archer could be a fun thing

I played in the last alpha (and a much earlier alpha) and have been getting as much time in the beta as I can. Here are my thoughts so far. I've played a lot of MMOs starting with UO.

Poison
Poison is very powerful, it does a lot of damage. That's fine, but the alerts that you are poisoned are barely noticeable. I've been downed several times because I didn't notice I'd been poisoned again. Secondly things that poison do it a LOT - as soon as you cure you get poisoned again while remedies still on cooldown.

So my suggestions for poison are that the UI/UX for poison needs more feedback. You should NEVER be unaware you're poisoned. I aware a lot of effects aren't in yet and this is likely not the final state, but it's the current playable state so that's all I can talk about. Secondly, remedies/other poison cures should give you a brief poison immunity. You should be able to stop just constantly being poisoned.

Starter character/creation
I started a street rat as a second character. Street rat starter is not very playable. It's not simply hard - most of the time the abilities don't work. You hit a key and nothing happens. Sometimes some abilities will work if you aren't standing next to something but if you aren't standing next to them the ability can't hit them, it's pointless to have melee abilities you have to be out of melee range to use. You do absolutely no damage to things like goblin enforcers. You can't make poisons because you can't get the ingredients and you can't get gold because the things that drop gold will kill you while you can't damage them. I can't really get a feel for how it's supposed to play because mostly it just... doesn't do anything. It's not a good starting experience.

There are a lot of stats and effects in game, but nowhere in game does it tell you what they do, and the wiki isn't up to date. On character creation you adjust your stats, but the stats aren't explained well. Then there's all the extra ones like encumbrance and other gear stats that are also not explained.

Ports
Ports should have town protections or defenses. It seems silly that something is part of a territory yet completely undefended, given most of the time you're at a port you're loading or looking at a map. There should still be unprotected road between the port and town, but the port itself should be protected as long as there is a town in that territory it should get the same protections as part of that territory.

I don't know if this is intentional, but mana/life drain works on things that are immune. Also life drain works while effects like death circle are active.

Continents
IMO Myr needs an update. Visually it's very samey all over with only a few areas with distinct feels. A lot of the terrain is also difficult, you'll just randomly get stuck on it despite the fact it's no different to terrain you were walking on just fine. Passable and impassable hills are indistinguishable in a lot of places and so much of the ground looks like small rocks. Even if the layout doesn't get updated, I think the continent needs a visual overhaul. Most of the time I have no idea where I am without looking at a map because it all looks the same.

Aehern is a much more interesting continent, though some paths around fire and ice elementals are impassable without teleport abilities. My only complaint is that there are paths that are indistinguishable from the terrain, you have no idea if you're on a road or not except for the buff.

Now onto the controversial part:
PvP
I know currently the pvp systems are not fully implemented and not working properly, so this is not a complaint about the current state of pvp, more my opinion on what it could be, should be and shouldn't be.

First of all open world, free for all killing (Reds) never works out well. It disproportionately creates a negative impact on the player base. In UO the perception of PKs was that they were something like 50% of the population when the number was much much lower. It drives players away disproportionately and doesn't add much to the experience. I was ganked the other day. I was just after kp so I didn't lose anything important and it didn't waste any of my time. But if I was time poor and only had a few hours to play per week and had been gathering something important to my progression and lost it, that would likely demotivate me to keep playing. I had friends who left UO for similar reasons. There was nothing exciting or interesting about the experience. It was tedious. If that happened regularly I would end up just quitting. The number of people having pks in game appeals to is small. The number of people it repels from a game is much larger. Plenty willing to try it will just quit in frustration. Many will refuse to play it at all. In such a brilliantly community based game, that seems like a bad move to me.

I don't think the demon world is going to work out well for the same reasons, but we'll see in testing.

RPGs are not the right environment for that sort of gameplay. FFA brawly pvp only works in games that are designed specifically around that like shooters. It doesn't work in games with time sinks. It has to be fast in, fast out, low penalty.
PvP in a sandbox mmorpg should be larger scale than that- guild vs guild/nation vs nation factional conflict over resource and territory control. Refine that, make it dynamic and interesting and you'll have good pvp conflict going on. Refine the uses of territory control and states (such as occupied/pillaged/controlled) for a more dynamic experience. Make diplomatic tools for different types of relationships with guilds/nations/territories. I could likely flesh out concepts (I'm a game designer) but it's not my game. You guys know what you're doing better than I do.

Quality of Life and "nice to haves"
Hotzone exploration names resetting to unexplored every time you log out is more than a little inconvenient. I don't know what any place is called.
More cooking recipes mixing various ingredients. Just for flavour (and maybe some for buffs?)
Being able to sit in chairs
Equipment reflecting the material it's made of (recolours/material swaps)
Chat bubbles above people's heads - please - being able to see what someone is saying to you because they're saying it to your face instead of having to look away to the chatbox is so much better.
More chat options at all, everything in one window can be a mess.

A creature's name never shows up on it. Ever. I have to look in my journal to see what something is called and If I play the game after a long time, or go somewhere I haven't been for a long time and go fight something I have 100% knowledge on I will have absolutely no way of knowing what it's called if I don't remember. With multiple similar things in an area I might still not ever know which is which. This system is not great for memorising what things are called because it never ties the name to the creature for the player. I can remember a lot of plants because their names come up, I can't remember all that many creatures. It should at least come up when you mouse over it (at least once you have some degree of knowledge on it. "???" on a creature you have zero knowledge on might be fine and interesting)

A "repeat action" loop for things like unloading carts and wagons into storage would be nice.
Being able to type how much gold I want to deposit/withdraw like with other things would be good, having to use the slider is not great.

@Quixa Welcome, fellow UO veteran! xD

@Matriarch I'm in Australia, was playing with a ping of about 220-280ms. It was mostly fine, occasionally a lag spike sent things teleporting around, but this was not the usual experience. It was very playable

I'm pretty hyped for a few reasons:

They seems to be addressing many of the issues that the classic sandbox MMO style has and many with broader, more modern MMOs:

Grinding
Time sinks like grinding can really ruin a game. If people are so focused on just getting through the tedium in order to get to the fun, you'll lose a lot of players before they even get to the fun. Those players are less likely to engage with the community and it can tend to create a very isolating experience. The people that stay and engage are the ones that join active guilds and the like, people that find the fun, but the games often don't really actively encourage this with gameplay.

This game attempts to address all that with their exploration and discovery based progression and viability from the start. It will be interesting to see how well this works and what changes need to be made, but in principle it sounds like a great way to handle it.

Sandbox community balance
MMO Sandboxes have a range of challenges, particularly indie ones. PVP is always a big contentious one. In a world where players can control resources, land, buildings etc, there is always going to be the need for some form of PvP, otherwise it's just first come, first serve, locking later players out of most of the gameplay. This is usually made worse by gearing and levels, where the wealthy powerful people can pretty much stop anyone from ever being able to do anything or get anywhere without making those players stronger.

The opposite is also true. Full open PvP creates other issues, usually starting from the philosophy that "players are the contend and PvP is a valid form of gameplay". This often ends in a bunch of bored, mid to high end players just causing trouble and disruption and discouraging new players by preventing their progression. Many have tried to solve this, some have succeeded in various ways. EVE is often cited as the best example.

Catering to the full spectrum can be quite challenging for a sandbox game, but this seems like a compromise worth trying. It could end up working really well. I play a bit of Black Desert and it tehcnically has open world PvP, but it's set up in such a way that hardly anyone goes around just randomly attacking people because the penalties in place make that not worth doing.

I think the multiple worlds with crossover ability has some very interesting potential for interactions. Not everyone on the co-op world is going to completely hate PvP, so when a bunch of Demons come through to loot and plunder, it's not going to be a total pushover. Depending on how hard it is to get through and what can be done about it, this could lead to some very interesting player run events.

Scope
MMOs are huge and expensive to make, particularly for small indie teams, it's a huge challenge and very ambitious. Many have tried to get around this by making little content and then relying on players to make it interesting. This tends to not go so well, due to things I've said above in the other sections. They tend to gain a loyal following, but not a very large one, which obviously can cause problems for the viability of a MMO.

This game seems like it could be viable for their team size and creates an interesting experience without requiring the crazy amount of feature and content blowout many others need before their game is actually interesting enough to play.
I think the biggest challenge is going to be balancing a lot of these features and resources, because players do interesting and unexpected things and you can't anticipate every strategy and build that players will adopt.

So basically, I think overall the team seems to be focusing on all the right things to make the game viable while also being aware of the resources they have available to them. Definitely one to watch closely!

@dracokalen I had to ask to discover with ranged attacks, you right click to attack without moving because I was having the same problem.
Personally I prefer the Diablo shift + left click

@OlivePit
"Hot bar ballance is a hot topic that has been discussed at great length and heavily tied with the ballance between items that replicate skills but do not require the effort of hunting the mob for the skill, and spending knowledge points for the skill.
There is talk about there being more consumables as part of the 'alchemy' system that is not yet implimented which just increases the debate.
The devs have never weighed in on the discussion. As such it is unlikely to change."

-I can already open my inventory and use food or a poultice, it doesn't need to be on the bar to use, so there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to access it without needing to

"The cliffs and terrain funneling are absolutely intended. The best guess is to make player ambushes possible which would also encourage traveling in groups. There are paths up and down the cliffs that are minor changes in texture and take time to get used to. The windy maze into the bone yard, ogre city, and bandit layer are also absolutely intended and will be kept. Plan on gearing up, gathering friends, having plenty of consumables and moving as group when going after big targets like dragon. I got lost three times trying to find the path to him two alphas ago but finally figuring it out was worth it."

-I don't think they should completely eliminate them, but I think there's too much of it in too many areas adding too much travel time. Even if they just make it easier to get OUT again as travel already takes so long, it adds a lot of extra time just getting in and out of areas.

"There is a fair amount of diversity in the regions but can be hard to see until you go through each and discover the resource variety of each. Some small stones are common, others have no flax plants at all, some have purple mists, some verdant growth, some heavily restrictive hilly bits. It is there but hard to notice in this short test."

-I know about that but visially the differences between most of these places are minimal. I noticed the fog, but I barely noticed a difference when I was in it and when I was out of it. Moving in and out of heartwood was also barely noticable apart from the creatures in it. The differences are there, but they're not very strong. A world that emphasises exploration needs more - but it's only alpha so I'm not expecting it all to be there yet.

"They have armor skins advertised already, same with furniture (dont know about functional tho)."
-I'm going further than armor cosmetics, as it would be silly to reskin a plate helm as a floppy hat in combat, but perfectly reasonable for someone who wears full plate to wear a floppy hat around town. What I'm talking about is purely cosmetic gear. UO used to have some clothing layers that had no stats on them (until they made veteran reward pieces that did). I'm talking about that sort of thing, pieces that are for personal character, not items of gear for their stats. Good for RP, potentially good for trade (depending on how they're made or acquired) or for cash shop items.

"Mounted combat would be totally OP and yet another unbalancing factor in favor of heavy armor melee who already have the most advantages in the human world... at one point in time your characters movement speed was tied to your dex, there were players that could move faster than horses. It was totally removed. As such I do not expect to see it come back at all."

-There are plenty of ways to address this - giving them their own abilities so when you're dismounted you're at a disadvantage, various abilities causing dismounts vs save. As always, give it advantages and disadvantages as a playstyle. Dismounts could cause stuns too, making you extremely vulnerable. There's plenty of ways it can be addressed to balance it out. But I'm not expecting any such system would be in at launch.

Overall, while I don't agree with all of your points I totally get where you're coming from on them.

@Kazzier Exactly, like UO is what I had in mind, it doesn't literally have to be bubbles but bubbles do NOT have to be intrusive, they can be quite transparent, what they provide is a uniform background to make text legible. Mainly what I want is overhead chat text.

@Lifeburn Already addressed this too.

@Jameow said in Feedback/Why I've stopped playing:

If I need to bring a bunch of pvp geared people to defend the PvEers just in case, that's a lot of standing around just in case. and will likely be the reason no pvp happens. So bringing pvpers to a pve "risk vs reward" encounter discourages pvp. From what I've seen of pvp metas here and in other games, it tends to come down to "what is currently the most overtuned, near impossible to avoid damage strategy" - not risk vs reward. All reward, no risk.

Yeah sure, for guild vs guild or town vs town that works fine when properly delineated and structured.
It isn't. It's the same trap that dozens of sandbox mmos have fallen into. Everyone always says that's what they want and every time the population is too small to support them. Because it encourages toxic playerbases.

@Kazzier said in Feedback/Why I've stopped playing:

Correct me if I am wrong, but for people who don't want any PVP or risk, they wont have to be concerned about this on the PvE planet?

So I assume this is fixed by simply awaiting the PvE planet.

Just like us wanting the PVP environment - We are awaiting that world.

Yes, the risk will be very low and the Arborians will have all the advantages. But that's not my point.
My point is that it's not a risk vs reward setup for pvp. It's largely in the favor of gankers and pks. The design is the same as every other shut down pvp mmo because it doesn't actually address the problems that hemorrhage players.

And as I said about the PvE world already What is there to actually do after I've explored?

@Lifeburn For example: If the PvEer is farming ice elementals, the pvper just needs to go fire damage and resist and there's nothing the pveer can do to win that fight. The PvPer already knows what's going on because they can scout it first. It doesn't matter that they can drop gear if they get to pick the fights that are strongly stacked in their favor and avoid the others. They're not taking the risks, just like they don't in other games. Blue scouts, naked scouts, or just knowing who's in the area.

I know there's hardly any pvp now, I'm not worried about it at the moment, but if it becomes a bigger thing it will be a problem, like it does in every other rpg with open world pvp for exactly the same reasons.

This is not meant to be a complaint about the state of the game, rather to explain where I am, what is/isn't motivating me. I fully intend to return, just not yet.

1. Open world pvp: Risk vs Reward
If you're a PvEer, or geared for it, it's all risk and no reward. I haven't been murdered out in the world often. But I want to talk about the design here a bit.
Fractured is very gear heavy, you take equipment to use abilities that are useful in the area you're planning on going to. Your gear's resistances reflect the stuff you intend to be fighting. Your vulnerabilities are the things not used in the area. PvPers know this. All they have to do is use the vulnerabilities in the gear they know people in the area will have. If you outnumber them too much, they just won't show up.
The PvEer is taking all the risks. Their resources, their time. The PvPer is taking none, but gets all the resources.
If I need to bring a bunch of pvp geared people to defend the PvEers just in case, that's a lot of standing around just in case. and will likely be the reason no pvp happens. So bringing pvpers to a pve "risk vs reward" encounter discourages pvp. From what I've seen of pvp metas here and in other games, it tends to come down to "what is currently the most overtuned, near impossible to avoid damage strategy" - not risk vs reward. All reward, no risk.

Where's the fun supposed to be? In fighting encounters that someone else has already worked out that they're the likely winner before even engaging?

PvP makes sense in town vs town, guild vs guild, alliance vs alliance factions things around territory and resource control. It doesn't make sense just knocking people off out in the world for their loot.

Am I going to stop playing just because there's a risk of pvp? No. Dying in pvp is an inconvenience and costly time wise. Alone it won't stop me playing, but it also might make the risk of doing something that day higher than not logging in at all if I haven't got a lot of time. The game is very time consuming, anything that sets you back can be an absolutely huge impediment when you're time poor.

In general I don't think PvP and RPGs mix very well except in very controlled conditions. With skill/ability/stat/gear differences, team number differences, no clear goals or objectives it ends up just being bored pvpers on meta builds with nothing much to do farming players who are doing other things, which ends up satisfying no one. RPG games are time sinks with progression emphasising increasing character power/stats, generally pvp games are fast paced action with low downtime that are generally aimed at minimising differences in characters to emphasise player skill. Even in Fractured, the game is all about your stats- resistances, damage types and procs.

2. Exploration and Character advancement

I love the exploration in the game, I like discovering new places and new creatures and getting new abilities from them. It's a fun system. Currently the world is too small, but that's fine, it's still in development. Last time I logged in I went "what do I want to do today?" And came up blank. There wasn't anything motivating me to keep playing. Nowhere to go, a few abilities I still want to unlock but Grinding tough mobs isn't exactly a riveting experience a lot of the time, particularly if they're rare. I'm not a grinder, I will usually choose variety over fastest, most repetitive route. It does make me worry a bit about the longevity of gameplay apart from towns, the world is actually very static. I'm not sure if when it's out there's much on offer to keep me playing longer than the months it would take me to explore Syndesia and Arboria (chances of working my way all the way to the demon world just for exploration in a ffa pvp environment aren't very high). I'm not really sure what there will be to do once I've been everywhere and killed everything? What's the motivation for Arboria players supposed to be later in the game?

I'm also Australian, it's a weird time zone for the majority of the population so grouping can be difficult. This again also links to being time poor. If you have 1-2 hours, there's very little you can do because by the time you've met up, got to the location and started hitting stuff, you have to go somewhere safe to log out. This can be exacerbated by needing to rest frequently because stones are so heavy, so groups spend a lot of time just running around looking for stones when a fire is needed. I LIKE the campfire and rest system. I like that there are opportunities encouraged to take breaks, talk strategy etc, but can be very time consuming in places that don't have a lot of rocks.

I can't talk a lot about gear as I've only had 2 sets and resources are still being implemented.

Those are my main points. There's other stuff I'd like to see that would engage me but they're not things that should be priorities at this stage of development, mostly flavour stuff. Let me sit in chairs, more cosmetic options, even purely visual clothing pieces like cloaks, accessories etc. Stuff that supports RP, character engagement and immersion. But as I said, that's not stuff that should be a priority, so is only a minor point at this stage of development.

@Clinion I made the character last week. This is about them starting out and their starter abilities. There are plenty of later abilities that are useful, but you can't get them solo because the starter abilities don't work well. This is a problem for a starter class because if you're new to the game, you try this class and it just doesn't work. Later with more gear and abilities it's viable, but as a starter it isn't without a group to do most of the work for you.
Dexxer characters are viable because poison is op and bleed is effective. You don't start with either of those. You can't get them without teamwork. Which is fine if you're starting out with a group, but if you're starting out solo once everyone has already passed those parts, you can't.

I've used other melee and spellcasting abilities, I know how they work. Yes there's some clunkiness that needs to be worked out, but what I'm saying is that as a starter the street rat currently isn't working.

I made a street rat as a second character to try it out and it's not simply difficult, it barely works

Most abilities are cancelled by any action by you or a mob hitting you, meaning it is almost impossible to use any abilities because you can't move, can't be hit, which generally means you can't actually be in range to use the ability, then the damage is VERY low. This also applies to the lunge, you need to be still to use it, which is very clunky for a mobility ability. Once you factor in latency for most players, this makes most of the abilities unusable starting out as they have to wait far too long before using an ability.

I was trying to take down a goblin enforcer, which other starters can comfortably take down. The Street rat does practically no damage to it. As it currently stands this is not a very playable introduction to the game. I got through the tutorial island fine, but it was still a fairly clunky experience compared to other classes.

I'm sure this isn't the intended experience, I haven't used many dex based abilities before on my main so I can't really compare if it's just dex abilities that aren't working properly, but with nothing but the starting abilities in the street rat toolkit, it's not very playable in it's present form compared to other starters.

@Prometheus Thanks for the information.
I'll make a bug thread for the street rat.
I'm a small gamedev myself, I completely understand how much work redoing a continent would be

@Kazzier Exactly, like UO is what I had in mind, it doesn't literally have to be bubbles but bubbles do NOT have to be intrusive, they can be quite transparent, what they provide is a uniform background to make text legible. Mainly what I want is overhead chat text.

@Ablabla said in Thoughts so far:

@Jameow said in Thoughts so far:

I started a street rat as a second character. Street rat starter is not very playable. It's not simply hard - most of the time the abilities don't work. You hit a key and nothing happens. Sometimes some abilities will work if you aren't standing next to something but if you aren't standing next to them the ability can't hit them, it's pointless to have melee abilities you have to be out of melee range to use. You do absolutely no damage to things like goblin enforcers. You can't make poisons because you can't get the ingredients and you can't get gold because the things that drop gold will kill you while you can't damage them. I can't really get a feel for how it's supposed to play because mostly it just... doesn't do anything. It's not a good starting experience.

The issue you are probably experiencing is something I also experienced on gladiator which is your basic attack will override any ability you try to use. So if you are spamming your mouse click for basic attacks then you won't be able to actually use your abilities. So make sure you stop doing basic attacks, then click your regular attack, wait for the attack to finish, and then spam your basic attacks again.

The devs basically allowed us to interrupt our abilities, getting used to the freedom takes a bit.

I think you're likely right, but also it's a responsiveness issue.
One of the abilities is a dash. I wasn't attacking. or moving. It just... didn't do anything most of the time. I worked out I need to be still to use it (which in itself is clunky for a movement ability) but others even when I'm not basic attacking... nothing. Hugely unreliable whether they work or not. I'm going to assume it IS me cancelling my abilities, but lag means I have to wait much longer than I should, meaning I have to spend a fair bit of time just... standing there doing nothing to use an ability. Particularly since my attacks do practically no damage anyway.

I don't have this experience with other abilities to the same degree that I've used on my main, including other melee abilities.

I think I've found a bug and I think I know what's triggering it, but I can't be certain

I've noticed that a lot of the time mobs hit with shimmering sphere just... stop. They get stuck in an animation and stop acting.
I think what is happening is shimmering sphere has made them fail their cast and they get stuck casting.

I played in the last alpha (and a much earlier alpha) and have been getting as much time in the beta as I can. Here are my thoughts so far. I've played a lot of MMOs starting with UO.

Poison
Poison is very powerful, it does a lot of damage. That's fine, but the alerts that you are poisoned are barely noticeable. I've been downed several times because I didn't notice I'd been poisoned again. Secondly things that poison do it a LOT - as soon as you cure you get poisoned again while remedies still on cooldown.

So my suggestions for poison are that the UI/UX for poison needs more feedback. You should NEVER be unaware you're poisoned. I aware a lot of effects aren't in yet and this is likely not the final state, but it's the current playable state so that's all I can talk about. Secondly, remedies/other poison cures should give you a brief poison immunity. You should be able to stop just constantly being poisoned.

Starter character/creation
I started a street rat as a second character. Street rat starter is not very playable. It's not simply hard - most of the time the abilities don't work. You hit a key and nothing happens. Sometimes some abilities will work if you aren't standing next to something but if you aren't standing next to them the ability can't hit them, it's pointless to have melee abilities you have to be out of melee range to use. You do absolutely no damage to things like goblin enforcers. You can't make poisons because you can't get the ingredients and you can't get gold because the things that drop gold will kill you while you can't damage them. I can't really get a feel for how it's supposed to play because mostly it just... doesn't do anything. It's not a good starting experience.

There are a lot of stats and effects in game, but nowhere in game does it tell you what they do, and the wiki isn't up to date. On character creation you adjust your stats, but the stats aren't explained well. Then there's all the extra ones like encumbrance and other gear stats that are also not explained.

Ports
Ports should have town protections or defenses. It seems silly that something is part of a territory yet completely undefended, given most of the time you're at a port you're loading or looking at a map. There should still be unprotected road between the port and town, but the port itself should be protected as long as there is a town in that territory it should get the same protections as part of that territory.

I don't know if this is intentional, but mana/life drain works on things that are immune. Also life drain works while effects like death circle are active.

Continents
IMO Myr needs an update. Visually it's very samey all over with only a few areas with distinct feels. A lot of the terrain is also difficult, you'll just randomly get stuck on it despite the fact it's no different to terrain you were walking on just fine. Passable and impassable hills are indistinguishable in a lot of places and so much of the ground looks like small rocks. Even if the layout doesn't get updated, I think the continent needs a visual overhaul. Most of the time I have no idea where I am without looking at a map because it all looks the same.

Aehern is a much more interesting continent, though some paths around fire and ice elementals are impassable without teleport abilities. My only complaint is that there are paths that are indistinguishable from the terrain, you have no idea if you're on a road or not except for the buff.

Now onto the controversial part:
PvP
I know currently the pvp systems are not fully implemented and not working properly, so this is not a complaint about the current state of pvp, more my opinion on what it could be, should be and shouldn't be.

First of all open world, free for all killing (Reds) never works out well. It disproportionately creates a negative impact on the player base. In UO the perception of PKs was that they were something like 50% of the population when the number was much much lower. It drives players away disproportionately and doesn't add much to the experience. I was ganked the other day. I was just after kp so I didn't lose anything important and it didn't waste any of my time. But if I was time poor and only had a few hours to play per week and had been gathering something important to my progression and lost it, that would likely demotivate me to keep playing. I had friends who left UO for similar reasons. There was nothing exciting or interesting about the experience. It was tedious. If that happened regularly I would end up just quitting. The number of people having pks in game appeals to is small. The number of people it repels from a game is much larger. Plenty willing to try it will just quit in frustration. Many will refuse to play it at all. In such a brilliantly community based game, that seems like a bad move to me.

I don't think the demon world is going to work out well for the same reasons, but we'll see in testing.

RPGs are not the right environment for that sort of gameplay. FFA brawly pvp only works in games that are designed specifically around that like shooters. It doesn't work in games with time sinks. It has to be fast in, fast out, low penalty.
PvP in a sandbox mmorpg should be larger scale than that- guild vs guild/nation vs nation factional conflict over resource and territory control. Refine that, make it dynamic and interesting and you'll have good pvp conflict going on. Refine the uses of territory control and states (such as occupied/pillaged/controlled) for a more dynamic experience. Make diplomatic tools for different types of relationships with guilds/nations/territories. I could likely flesh out concepts (I'm a game designer) but it's not my game. You guys know what you're doing better than I do.

Quality of Life and "nice to haves"
Hotzone exploration names resetting to unexplored every time you log out is more than a little inconvenient. I don't know what any place is called.
More cooking recipes mixing various ingredients. Just for flavour (and maybe some for buffs?)
Being able to sit in chairs
Equipment reflecting the material it's made of (recolours/material swaps)
Chat bubbles above people's heads - please - being able to see what someone is saying to you because they're saying it to your face instead of having to look away to the chatbox is so much better.
More chat options at all, everything in one window can be a mess.

A creature's name never shows up on it. Ever. I have to look in my journal to see what something is called and If I play the game after a long time, or go somewhere I haven't been for a long time and go fight something I have 100% knowledge on I will have absolutely no way of knowing what it's called if I don't remember. With multiple similar things in an area I might still not ever know which is which. This system is not great for memorising what things are called because it never ties the name to the creature for the player. I can remember a lot of plants because their names come up, I can't remember all that many creatures. It should at least come up when you mouse over it (at least once you have some degree of knowledge on it. "???" on a creature you have zero knowledge on might be fine and interesting)

A "repeat action" loop for things like unloading carts and wagons into storage would be nice.
Being able to type how much gold I want to deposit/withdraw like with other things would be good, having to use the slider is not great.