Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Did Intrepid disappoint you in any way since you begun following the development of AoC?
Magic Man
Member
There are some people who aren't really happy with APOC as they claim it was unnecessary. What are your thoughts on this - Is this a logical argument or just people complaining for the sake of it?
2
Comments
A lot of the backers backed an mmo but so far have received a BR which is not being developed into a full game too, it hurts a bit.
I like APOC and think it'll be really good for the game, drawing in players that would have never even considered trying ashes. People like to say that they don't want them a part of the community anyway, but I think that's just a bit toxic. It grows the community, gives people more fun and they may even try the mmorpg.
But yeah, definitely the biggest disappointment was them barely able to have 100 players in the Br without the servers literally shutting down. I know they're fixing this though and I'm super happy to hear, I hope they can get it right
I liked the BR too, I don't think it's bad at all. Especially if they improve it and give some reason to play it, I think it could draw in more players. Bringing more people into the world of Verra is always good. I can't wait for APOC to be back up too, it was fun playing it. I'm just saying the servers couldn't even handle a full 100 players, but hopefully with what they've been doing to the backend it's getting better
I miss A0 so much
At least A0 was a fun thing to test and felt like a mmo
I still hurt over not getting to test it.
Using a battle royale is a good way to get high player density in a small area, and the format itself is fairly fun. I personally had a lot of fun and a lot of recorded footage of APOC. But specifically about people's whining, APOC came in at the coattails of so many other BRs being released, both from new and established IPs. The general public was tired of getting only BRs. Add to that a section of the backers desperately looking for a good game in an MMORPG, and being shown a BR, the two frustrations compound into the shitstorm we saw on the subreddit.
It still all felt like excessive bitching for the sake of bitching, though. Especially since the naysayers soundly ignored or outright denounced any positive comments about APOC.
I understand why they have to do APOC but after playing alpha 0 my mind on ashes changed and it only made me want to play the MMO more. I know ashes will be a great game, but let's face it they have made a few "mistakes," e.g. my.com.
I think it all comes down to preference. Personally, I don't see why the BR should be a better testing ground than an MMO scene. You could still have a lot of people in close quarter combat, testing out the action side of things within an MMO. Maybe in an arena? Battle Royales are often very hard to properly test with the game pushing you to play rather than to report and recreate bugs, due to the zone and other players constantly pushing you to fight and not pay attention to what might be wrong in the world.
There is a difference between whining and disagreeing with the choices that the developers made. As I see it, people often have good reasoning behind disliking BR's and are usually not just spouting nonsense
APOC is still a thing but its just been down for a few months. no eta as of yet
But that's about it.
There was all the BR thing, but it was justified, imo.
Join The Empire!
I think the best way to deal with APOC was not announce the whole thing until after the game launches or during launch, they should have known we came for an mmo and we accepted the BR as a testing ground but the whole APOC thing should have been taking into considration more instead of deciding to release it when the actual game is not even in alpha.
also a few communicative mistakes made regarding APOC as mentioned above.
other then that iam still very pleased with AoC development.
hype level is still nearly the same as 2 years back and i didnt expect to have that with any game before its released :P
Regarding APOC I'm a little disappointed of course. I'd rather have seen an arena mode with some battlegrounds instead of the BR part. I didn't like how heavily monetized it was as well. Kinda made it seem like they always had a plan to make it its own thing.
In the end the BR did some good though. Spotting the backend issues early on is better than then spotting way down the road.
"Did Intrepid disappoint you in any way since you begun following the development of AoC?"
Yes a lot.....
BUT a lot of disappointment can be put down to unrealistic expectations....
I just expected that if comments were being made about the importance of focusing on certain areas that that would be important to them to do so.
However I fully believe that you can't blame someone else for your own interpretations and expectations.
My error on that part and I'm happy to admit it, however it's a known phenomenon that if someone wants something badly, such as a great MMO, they will overlook any warning signs and expect only the best.
I do feel that Steven has played very heavily into that flaw in all of our psyches, by making a huge amount of very vague non-specific 'promises', well not that they were ever really promises even. He's good at that, what else can you say?
So far:
They've made repeated 'mistakes' with simple issues and failed to show that they are capable of learning from them. (Such as kickstarter phrasing etc)
I've seen them vacillate from one 'absolute definately final' decision to another far too often for comfort....
They stressed very heavily that they were all players themselves so understand the importance of communication and having a good 'game dev' period experience, but of the four, five, games I'm backing, Ashes is the one who is actually failing to send regular communications out.
The forum community was unsupported for a long time, and even now rather than supporting their own forums, discord is the communications channel that gets the attention.
They communicated a culture of open contact between player and community, but if you do go out of your way to spend your time to message them, rather than as a minimum, sending a stock email response, they appear to value their customers time as not even being worth that. (This may have since changed.)
Oh, and when I did have a concern and raised it with them by email, I got no response but DID two days later feel massively demeaned by a livefeed, in which it was obvious that they'd been joking about 'Genevieve'. It's common, I'm sure that it's only my paranoia playing up. (One mental issue I don't have)
I may have cognitive decline caused by brain scarring, but according to my most recent tests, I still function better cognitively that 83% of 'healthy' people my age.
If you treated customers seriously, and they raised a 'gentle' concern, surely it would be best to view it as a possible issue rather than disregarding it., or worse, feeling it's a solid business proposal to take the piss out of a random customer.
Just because someone holds a different perspective than you, choses to play a game in a different way, has cultural differences fromm yourself, mocking and belittling is forum troll behavior, it shouldn't be expected from a company hoping to earn themselves billions.
Is it fine to ignore customers. Nah, but they're busy.
Is it fine to take the apparent piss out of your customers. Sure, if THAT's the kind of company you want to be, good luck to ya. No skin off my nose.
But other than one other massive issue that I have, one that has left me with TOTAL disregard for Steven, one that has left me with the opinion that he has a 'money over morals' personality, there IS no disappointment that can not ultimately be overlooked or in which I did not myself play a huge part.
Edit: I keep on thinking of things, gosh, this IS a fun thread!
They refuse copies of signed agreements, unlike the UK, the US apparently is not legally obliged to provide these upon request, unfortunately for @Possum and @Isende, because after having a refund declined, I wanted at the time to transfer account ownership over to them and walk away.
They stopped communicating upcoming PI meetings by any method other than by you having to log into ''discord' and hunt for when it'll be, hoping you've not missed it.
And another! Not thirty seconds ago.
They close off unresolved tickets. (Though the ticket itself was marked as solved over a year agoo)
Um... the fact that rather than answering new questions on livestreams, they will deliberately choose questions answered multiple times before.
I'm only answering the question infront of me.
@kayra Do you feel that if I were to start complaining, that it would 'be for the sake of it' ?
I'm not complaining as it is, only answering the question, I'm now in a position to laugh at all these 'letdowns'. After all, the fact that they're choosing to not listen / change things for the better, won't hurt me.
BR showed major flaws in the backend where it could not run more then 100 people.
That being said the didn't spend to much resourches on the BR.
Imagion A1 hitting and the seen that the game can't handle 100+ people on one server.
Then have to redo backend and bring A1 down again.
Then spend more time cause all these systems where build on top of the old backed.
TBH I think this would be more time consuming then what they are doing now (not months delayed but maybe years).
BR was meant to test the action combat and the backed, it tested the mmorpg a map where people play on.
And IS found some major flaws which needed to be fixed.
And if you make an argument that people where to spread this isn't true cause all the griffins in the storm where close to eachother and then people spread out after that.
Proof where all the dc with the 200 man test in feb where when you dropped down on the griffin after that it was better (still low fps).