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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Not showing the MMO
Hjerim
Member, Leader of Men, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Hi Intrepid,
It was nice to see some new creatures and things which are in progress, however; We still do not see things from the MMO itself.
I understand that you have been burned and know the consequences of being transparent, but I think you have gone from one extreme (being too transparent) too another (Not showing any content at all).
More places I begin to see people which are doubtful of the entire MMO, that it will never happen and I also see people making memes about it, as a result of not seeing any progress in a year.
You argued at the latest livestream that you were not comfortable with showing stuff because it is subject to change or might get scrapped entirely. Yes this is something we are aware of as gamers, it happens all the time.
To me it feels like you do not trust your own product, and that is sad.
I hope you get back to being more transparent, and I think it would be healthy for the community.
Thanks for reading. Do you agree?
It was nice to see some new creatures and things which are in progress, however; We still do not see things from the MMO itself.
I understand that you have been burned and know the consequences of being transparent, but I think you have gone from one extreme (being too transparent) too another (Not showing any content at all).
More places I begin to see people which are doubtful of the entire MMO, that it will never happen and I also see people making memes about it, as a result of not seeing any progress in a year.
You argued at the latest livestream that you were not comfortable with showing stuff because it is subject to change or might get scrapped entirely. Yes this is something we are aware of as gamers, it happens all the time.
To me it feels like you do not trust your own product, and that is sad.
I hope you get back to being more transparent, and I think it would be healthy for the community.
Thanks for reading. Do you agree?
2
Comments
We might be gamers, some of us might be mature, but there is a large variety of gamers. In the past, IS has been burned (like many other developers) by the community. So saying we are all mature and able to understand simple issues like 'things may change,' is clearly not representative of the whole community.
I have yet to feel like they don't trust their own product, but maybe that's because they haven't released a product I think they would judge themselves on.
I like the art and developer clips, Q&A's, and such. I am not too worried they haven't shown more, it's nice they have shown some. For a lot of AAA games, for a long time at least, you didn't even see previews until release.
Quite honestly I would rather they allow Alpha 1 backers to start playing/testing the MMO.
Second, and probably most importantly, this game was crowdfunded on kickstarter. This means they had to announce the game a lot sooner than most other games would. We just had E3 a few weeks ago, and the majority of the games announced and showcased there are set for release early next year, so they are very near completion already. This means they have a lot more they can show that is guaranteed to be in the finished product. I reckon Ashes is still at least a full year, possibly two, from an actual release.
FFXIV started development in late 2004, then it was officially announced in 2009 and released in 2010. By contrast, Intrepid Studios was founded in December 2015, and they announced the game in early 2017, less than 2 years into the development cycle. If we go by the usual timeframe of 5-6 years for an mmorpg, we are still 1-2 years away from a full release.
Simply put, we are getting a rare insight into how a game is developed from the ground up, but that also means that there is not a lot Intrepid can show us that will be easily understood by the general public. After all, do you really want to see all the lines of code, etc that they have written this year? Yes it's frustrating not seeing tangible evidence of development progress, but I personally would rather be patient and give Intrepid time to do their work.
Developing good quality games TAKES TIME. I know it's hard but we all need to dial back the hype a bit and be patient. If it gets to this time next year and there is no clear visible progress, then I will get worried and wonder if the game is going to fail. But until then, I will give Intrepid the space and the time they need to make a great game.
Might want to listen to the last stream again, lot's of under the hood stuff, optimizing pipelines as well as optimizing in general. Maybe let them get that out of the way and have some patience?
It's like making a character and a character creator. The character creator takes a vast amount of time longer to create then pumping characters out afterwards.
Just, you can't really show the making of the character creator now can you?
Edit: How can people say there has been no progress w hen we have been shown thebuilding tool as well as the animation change btw? What is it that you want to see so badly really? "it's nice to see that creature, but it's not mmo stuff"... okay?
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
This always seems a weird argument to me. It's not like APOC is a completely separate project from the mmo. Literally everything they have developed for APOC can and probably will be integrated into Ashes of Creation.
Also, like it or not, an online game's net code and server facilities are vital to the success of the game. Sure it's not as impressive to see as a complete combat system or pretty graphics, but in my opinion it's just as important. Too many online games with great potential fail because of unstable servers and I'd hate for that to happen to Ashes.
APOC is the perfect format to develop and test the net code that will be used in the mmo later on.
They are simply using the test map to show the progress rather than the MMORPG map because they don't want to show MMORPG locations until we are closer to beta.
I'm a millennial...
And I'm far from like this person you've discribed here.
Nothing of what they showed is strictly for APOC (except maybe the powerjump, but that can also be an ability in the mmorpg).
They showed us new waves and water shader/animations, new animal animation/new animals, better destruction tech and projectile hit mechanics.
All of those are important for the mmorpg. I know that that was not interesting for many, but the wave and water shaders alone were enough for me tbh xD
Just want to point out that only the extra stuff that we will most likely see after launch is funded by the kickstarter. The main game that we are waiting for was funded by Steven.
Whereas I do agree that people have a tendency to have high expectations in terms of what is being showcased during the livestream and in testing phases, I do also think that there are a lot of people with longer attention spans that have the right to remain skeptic about the product.
Just like how IS have been burned by the community in the past due to outrage, there tends to be a reason for the uproar and there have definetly been incidents where the community was right to have their doubts.
I am yet to doubt whether or not the product will come out, but it would be nice to see assets used in an MMO setting and not on the APOC map. There are various different systems that will take place in the MMO that are not present in APOC and for people to be curious about those is nothing but a good thing. Of course there are always exceptions and you can never expect the entire community to be fond of the decisions made by the studio, but from my perspective there seems to be an overall understanding and agreement that MMO's take time and should be iterrated on during their testing phases
TL:DR: I think the OP's concerns are very valid. People have a tendency to see any critisism brought upon the game as being just negative and people have the right to remain skeptic
Everyone here has all the rights to say what they want about Ashes. That goes for those that want to point out the negatives and those that want to point out the positives.
Was the point of this thread just to make complaints? I don't think so, and I believe that when some members post more negative concerns there is some benefit to countering with positive aspects and opinions from different points of view. I feel the same way about threads that tend to be "all love" for Ashes, sometimes the things said in those threads also need a counter opinion.
"You argued at the latest livestream that you were not comfortable with showing stuff because it is subject to change or might get scrapped entirely. Yes this is something we are aware of as gamers, it happens all the time."
Not everybody seems to get this
Formerly T-Elf
But of course the ignorant masses don't understand just what it takes to implement and support so many different Pokemon, and get up in arms about it. Thankfully the head of the project put his foot down and is not pandering to the masses on this.
This is what annoys me about people. They immediately light the torches the moment things aren't as they expected, and are very quick to blame and complain without first doing the research to know what the hell they are complaining about.
I'm not saying players shouldn't complain about things in games, as the feedback is important. But please for the love of all things gaming do your research and think about things before you start complaining.
Its part n parcel with how this rodeo goes down.
8Like watchdogs with its grafics or Anthem with its "living world")
Formerly T-Elf
I've never felt they don't trust their own product, quite the contrary.
I also want to see more stuff but just because they don't show it doesn't mean I jump to conclusions about that reflecting some deeper issue than their comfort level.
Formerly T-Elf
Stop being self entitled, we are getting way more snippets of the game development than many other games out there, how can you still find something to complain about?! seriously... it's being worked on and it will be great when it is polished to the level the devs are proud of showing.
I think calling the OP entitled is going a little too far. Demanding? Perhaps, but wanting to see systems and aspects of the game showcased in the MMO setting is understandable as it is the reason why a lot of us are here.
I'm pretty sure it was stated that it will all be there at launch assuming it was funded for. If it wasn't, they would've done it anyway, just after launch.
For instance for the longest time Intrepid thought they were going to release this year. And just because the network is having issues that doesn't mean other departments were having issues. So they must have more done than they have shown. So I think it's very possible they have more than three Boss characters done. And I believe we have only ever seen like three Boss characters. Wouldn't seeing something like a new boss character be pretty cool guys. Especially since that's something that would be in a MMO.
And if some of you say "Well maybe they just haven't done that yet. How could you know?"
I would say "Well I wish they would provide some kind of in depth update to what exactly they were doing instead of "back end issues" and "apoc things" most of the time like some other indie MMO.
https://camelotunchained.com/v3/category/news/
I could really go on about issues on transparency for like pages but I don't want to make this too long since I want people to actually read it.
P.S.
Sean Murray interview where he talks about the difficulties of no man's Sky launch and development. And why he will only talk about games when they're done and not in development.
Which is what I'm sure Steven is doing now.
Now before any of you get mad. You should know I really want this game to do well. I'm really excited for it. That's why I'm still here even though they haven't showed MMO footage in 6 months. I just think we should call out issues as we see them. And I think they're lack of communication is a huge issue. Especially for new people like I'm glad it's finally there but it took like four months to put a notice next to the download button of the Battle Royale that you can't play it. People were buying beta because they thought they needed that to play the BR. And that's really sad to hear.