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Since the servers are down for maintenance right now I thought I'd share my initial first impressions and some general feedback/random thoughts:
Flagging PvP I very much enjoy having the option and freedom of being able to engage in PvP right off the bat. It introduces you to the system and player conflict early on in the game. However I would maybe make the room you spawn in (where the divine gate is) a safe zone, as well as towns (inside Lionsarch) a safe zone and as soon as you go out, you can PvP as normal.
Encouraging social behavior. I very much enjoy that there isn't arrows indicating everything and pointing you into directions.I enjoy having to ask around where x or y is.
Visuals. I noticed quickly that to me personally, houses, stations and whatnot it all looks very similar and samey. It's quite tough to differentiate. What makes a weapon shop a weapon shop, except for the one small sign hanging off the wall? This leads to another issue, where I am entirely lost sometimes where crafting or processing benches are, I simply have no idea, there is not "enough" of a visual indicator to me. I also dislike that in an established village like Lionshold there seem to not be dedicated shops. Have the weapon vendor sell his weapons in his dedicated shop that you have to enter. I don't expect him to carry all his goods around with himself. Not to mention he doesn't even really look like a weapon vendor... I always liked how L2 did it, where you entered a shop and it had a distinct visual and music to go with. It felt immersive. In A2 I searched very long and thoroughly for crafting and processing stations or vendors and instead of enjoyable the search felt more... frustrating.
Visual identity, that applies to the game as a whole imo and also to zones. I do know we are in the biome of the riverlands and yeah it's all going to look relatively similar but I still feel like "zones" if you can call them that inside this biome all look pretty much the same with different enemy types, they lack a distinct theme or feel but maybe I haven't explored enough yet. It still feels very generic running through the world and the visuals as a whole just strike me (personally) as generic. Pretty, gorgeous even. But generic. Even Tarisland mobile garbage to me looked more visually distinctive and pleasing than current A2. Yes, I know it's an alpha, yada yada yada, but those are my two cents. It feels like the game comes fresh off of UE5 and it doesn't look like it's own unique game.
User Interface. Briefly, but I'm sure this is common knowledge to Cody and the gang, I the UI especially the font is close to unreadable in certain UI elements and should definitely be adjusted imo. Maybe not using a serif font in all instances too.
The world / especially starting zones feel a bit too "grand" for a humble beginings type of scenario to me. This might very well just be a personal thing though. But if this is just one biome and it already takes tons of time to get from one node to the other, I'm not sure how it'll be once all of them are in the game and there's more continents. I don't mind travel time, but player numbers will dwindle inevtitably one day, and the more people spread throughout this huge gigantic world, the less full and lived in it will feel. Already, some parts feel quite barren and I miss the feeling of TL where there are hundreds of people running around everywhere.
Combat feels surprisingly responsive. I have only dabbled a little with the Fighter archetype, but the 2h greatsword auto attack to me feels too... slow? It feels like there is too much of a windup and it feels too slow when used with other skills or as means of dps. Maybe that changes later on, I cannot say.
Gear Progression. I love that you can literally get a new sword or something as a drop from monsters or some public event. Or that you can buy actually relevant gear from a vendor. And the visual progression is great. I literally saw a guy being Lv 5 with a cooler sword than mine and wondered where he got that from. Or when people run around with actual armor and not the scraps of clothes you spawn in, it makes me wonder where they obtained them. Gear feels visually distinctive and reflects progrssion and I like that a lot.
Those are just some initial impressions/thoughts after the first few hours. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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