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pvpgate wrote: »

Ludullu wrote: »

But getting proper base-lvl mechanics and features working is waaaay more important, because THAT is what people play.

I can’t think of anything more "base-lvl" than movement and combat mechanics

That is probably because you have no idea about game development.

The way movement feels is literally a last minute adjustment. It could be made between the beta servers going down and the head start servers going live.

While it is a last minute thing, it can't (or shouldnt) be made until literally every aspect of all character models has been created, polished and finalized. It is literally the last thing to be done in regards to characters.

An alpha test is less about how movement feels, and more about "does your character actually move around the game world?".

This is why your expectations are so out of whack.

pvpgate wrote: »

Ludullu wrote: »

But getting proper base-lvl mechanics and features working is waaaay more important, because THAT is what people play.

I can’t think of anything more "base-lvl" than movement and combat mechanics

But you did not talk about mechanics in your Initial post, but animations. And polishing existing animations at a stage when your focus is to design new animations for archetypes, races, monsters, weapons, etc. which are under active development and need to be released for testing wouldn't make much sense.

Polishing starts when the foundation has been layed, and animations are either way not of any mechanical significance at this stage of development. I would starting to get concerned if I got the impression that Intrepid is pleased with the current state of the character animations - or even character design, which looks horrible (the faces!) - but I don't have that impression, because we're still so early in development, despite the game being under active development for quite some time.

I couldn't agree more with you. I'm even starting to doubt whether the character motion designer of this game is really qualify to create the character motion animations for this game.

Ludullu wrote: »

pvpgate wrote: »

I believe that when developing any game, it makes sense to polish the core mechanics first — and only after that, start working on things like "caravan heists"

And that is the most backwards belief when it comes to this kind of test phase. There's literally no point in polishing anything right now, because all of that stuff can change several times before its final form.

But getting proper base-lvl mechanics and features working is waaaay more important, because THAT is what people play.

If you can't separate a proper alpha from the release presentation, then treat Ashes as you would the release version of No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk 2077. Both games were utter shit on release, but fixed themselves in a few years. Ashes is in the worst state it'll ever be. And its main playerbase will be built on release (or right before it), rather than during an alpha test with no promotion, no ads, no huge twitch streamers (well, one, who, I bet, repeats over and over and over that this is a true test) and no proper presentation of the game to players.

The fraction of a fraction of people, who think that the current version of the game is the stopping point of development and will keep that as their entire opinion on the game, is nothing compared to what the game can (and hopefully will) garner closer to release.

If you go and tell your friends "yeaaah, this totally not an alpha test looks totally like not a full release game" - that's on you, not on Intrepid.

I agree that many things you said will change in the future. However, the core content of an MMO, that is, a smooth and silky combat experience, is something that will never change. This is also the purpose of them inviting us to participate in the testing: to identify the flaws and assist them in improving the game, instead of taking it for granted that all the flaws are acceptable just because it's in the internal testing stage and not actively reporting the bugs you've found.

The so-called internal testing means that we, from the perspective of players, discover the problems that the game development team can't detect, so as to help them make improvements.


I believe that a smooth and silky combat experience is the core of the core of an MMO, and significant efforts should be devoted to perfecting it first. It's like the skeletal structure of our human body. Once we have it in place, filling in other game content will make the testing process much easier. A smooth combat experience is also the first thing that new players can feel when they start playing the game.

These experiences will provide players with a great initial experience, which will encourage them to actively test the more in-depth game content, rather than coming in, feeling that the combat experience is terrible, and then leaving the game.

please remember smooth and silky combat experience is the everything in MMO Game !!!