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.
Comments
The key difference being that investors in a meatloaf restaurant who found their money was spent to build a burger shack would be suing to get their money back. In our case though, we are just expected to suck it up because some of the customers are happy to eat the burgers instead.
I'd think any investor would be happy to see a component of what they invested in released early so testing could start sooner. Why wait until the whole restaurant is made to start testing the meat? Making a quick, cheap stand to start testing the meat makes a lot of sense as you are getting feedback early and have time to make improvements. All of this can be done while the restaurant is being made as the chefs that would be improving the meat aren't the ones building the restaurant.
It is, but not for the reason you outlined.
A friend of mine opened up a Greek restaurant about 10 years ago. He had a few investors, mostly family.
The restaurant was going in to a new building, but the building itself was running more than 6 months behind schedule. The business had paid for the space in the building, had paid the company they were going to use to fit out the restaurant itself, and had paid for the equipment. All up, they had put about 1.5 million in to the place, and had at least 6 months longer than expected before making anything on their investment.
So they decided to invest a little bit more. They bought a trailer, filled it with suitable equipment and started selling just their souvlaki from this trailer.
It meant they were able to make a small amount of money and were able to fine tune the recipes used. As a bonus, when the restaurant was able to open, they then had a second outlet that they could take to events and such, and made some really good money out of it in the end.
I never really looked at Apoc in that manner, but it actually is a fairly good analogy.
However,
It is also a terrible mistake marketing/PR-wise that makes me feel disgusted to my core. As I've said before, they should have never named it 'Apocalypse' in order to alleviate the confusion - it should have stayed as 'Alpha 1 Phase 1' therefore not a separate game. Now, officially, the first game of Intrepid Studios (a company which used Kickstarter for marketing purposes - a gamble on its own due to the high risk of the game not releasing on time which did happen but not gonna get into that
I almost have complete trust in Intrepid Studios but it gets harder and harder to defend them. To be honest, until I see things working in MMORPG Client and therefore proving that things can move from APOC to the MMO, I am siding with you guys (that is assuming you are not haters or/and unnecessarily salty people)
However.
The only reason I'd be upset with Apoc to the level you suggest you are is if Intrepid say they aren't going to make an MMO any more. That is also the only way this situation could ever be called a bait and switch.
As far as I am concerned, the rest is just business.
The people that invested in the restaurant I talked about above didn't put 1.5 million dollars in to a food trailer, but for what turned out to be almost a year, that is all they had.
Then they had their restaurant, and still had that trailer - which indecently allowed them to take their brand to an audience that wouldn't have come across it otherwise.
The parallels are astonishing, and I'm surprised I didn't make the connection myself.
In a few years when (if) we have the MMO, and the BR still exists as a stand alone product bringing in additional revenue and also putting Ashes of Creation out to an audience that would otherwise not be aware of it, people complaining about it now will look back and feel foolish.
Also, Apoc BR is very, very different from Fortnite. Fortnite was marketed with a very in-depth skill and "class" system for constructing buildings. And has an in-depth quest system and combat system that revolves around attempting to construct buildings while mobs attempt to kill you and demolish what you've constructed.
The Apoc BR is about as simple as an MMORPG game component can be: player v player combat with object destruction... and a moving storm which pushes carebear players, like me, to combat others. In fact, IS has simplified the BR with a smaller map, rather than add increasingly complex features to the BR.
Even the Castle Siege isn't considerably more complex - it's simply another game component that is a key component of the MMORPG.
Apoc Castle Siege focuses more on building destruction and adds minimal class "kits". We get early access to castle sieges without waiting for the devs to ensure that mob AI is robust.
Apoc Horde should also be quite simplistic - we will get early access to rudimentary mob AI without robust questing and without Nodes.
I don't really like BRs. I think that is true for most of this playerbase, though we have different reasons for disliking BRs. There is a contingent that clamors for an arena instead of a BR, but, the BR is better than an arena for those of us who are PvE-focused players. The Apoc quest system supports both PvE play as well as PvP play. Easy for me to get in the top 5 just by hiding instead of fighting and, if I can't complete kill quests, at least I can complete destroy object quests and open chest quests. And those PvE quests provide the same rewards as the PvP quests. So, we really do have early access to the minimum gameplay for a PvX MMORPG, rather than being stuck with the minimum PvP gameplay for a PvX MMORPG that an arena would provide. (Plus, again, that storm forces me to move into combat range rather than just hiding the entire time.)
By comparison, CoE has been on my radar about as long as Ashes.
Even though CoE has been in develepmont several years longer than Ashes, we have no access to CoE gameplay at all. We were supposed to get early access to minimal gameplay last year and then we were told that this year we would get early access to a different form of minimal gameplay... neither has come to fruition. We can't even run a character model through rudimentary environments.
Typically, gamers are not able to jump into upper management game development roles without learning the ropes of game production. In the case of Ashes, Steven was able to do so because he had tons of money.
Gamers who work their up the ladder learn the roadblocks on the roadmap and adjust their expectations accordingly.
Steven, on the other hand, jumped on board trying to manage and market like a gamer rather than like a game dev. He was hoping to be highly transparent because he empathized strongly with the player mindset rather than a game dev mindset. And, he set dates for Kickstarter rewards with a very naive expectation for when those rewards could be delivered. Steven was expecting to have launched the game before 2020 but, we will barely have Alpha 1 before 2020...if the devs are even able to skate Alpha 1 in before January.
Steven has been trying to give us some semblance of reaching KS goals and original expectations by giving us bits of early access to gameplay - rather than none.
I'm not really sure what kind of faith people think they could be having.
I suppose we could still be playing A0 with action combat rather than tab-target combat.
But, we still wouldn't have any more info about the MMORPG than we have right now.
We can't even get an article about Divine nodes because Steven as changed something so significantly about the designs for Divine nodes and Military nodes that he's not ready to share that info with us yet - let alone demo how those nodes might work.
People would still be complaining that we don't have enough info about the MMORPG.
The lost faith should truly be about the dev team not being able to be meet Steven's original timeline - but no one should ever have had faith in that original timeline.
One of the key factors mentioned in today's livestream is that the devs had been waiting on Unreal’s Chaos system to handle siege destruction, but recently decided to go with their on code. That's significant. And a major reason why Castle Siege is a year late. The devs gave us a bunch of info regarding how they have developed building destruction for sieges.
Apparently, people are perceiving that to be non-MMORPG info, but building destruction for sieges is one of the primary pillars of what makes Ashes gameplay unique. The appeal of Ashes is guild v guild player warfare, nor is the appeal the class or crafting systems.
The appeal of Ashes is how sieges work with Node progression to dynamically change the world. But, they've been waiting for almost a year on Unreal's Chaos system and, again, designs for Divine and Military nodes are changing so drastically that they can't even share articles about those nodes.
Notice how, in Friday's livestream they bent over backwards to avoid mentioning the BR.
Also, notice that when they did mention the BR, it was generally in the past tense!!! bwahaha!!
Friday's livestream was 90% about sieges and the MMMORPG.
So, what info would the devs be able to provide now, that they haven't already, to support faith that the MMORPG is going to meet the hype once it's released?
The real concern should be whether IS will have the funds for a continuing development cycle that will easily take twice as long as for the MMORPG than Steven originally expected... maybe even 3x to 4x longer than his original expectations.
The devs appear to be moving along at a comparatively snails pace... but still steadily moving along.
It is a good analogy.... Until you realise that there is a huge difference in scope between making a meatloaf and making an mmorpg.
I get it that a lot of people here dislike BR games, but there is sense to what Intrepid are doing. I've seen a lot of online games fail purely because they didn't fully test their server performance and combat before release. This usually results in a very bad experience for the player.
Whether you like it or not the BR format is perfect for testing the performance of your hardware and basic systems before adding more complex things later on.
I'm still super excited for this game but it makes me want to "re-forget" about it when I even think about the time it will take to get into the beta phase I donated my money to get into. I'm terrible at waiting for things so it's better to just let it go and when the betas get actually close I can get hyped more again.
“Man is to baby as dog is to puppy.”
“Dogs and humans are different species!”
While Apoc probably does generate enough revenue to fund itself now, the initial revenue to start development of Apoc was 100% from the MMO Kickstarter backers. I get that some are more than happy to play apoc, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that we were told our backing funds would be used for an MMO, and some portion of it was instead used to fund a parallel project and generate additional funding/profits for Intrepid.
Steven has said he will most likely invest $10 million more in the future. I have almost no concern regarding the financing of the MMORPG. Although not Trump-rich, he has a substantial amount of money. Besides, he can always raise money from the bank etc (which probably won't be even needed).
My only concern is APOC and its transition to the MMORPG. They said they want to have that engaging true action combat in APOC being in the MMORPG. Well, personally I don't see that co-existing with tab target which is much simpler to implement and has a wider audience. Steven himself has said if hybrid combat fails, he will go with tab (for no reason given and more than twice in the last 6 months) ..so that raises the question of why we needed APOC in the first place. iT hElPs tEsT tHe BaCkEnD oF tHe mMoRpG..right, but that wasn't the main intention. Personally, if I don't see a direct implementation of **mechanics** from APOC in the MMORPG, I will be quite sad and feel betrayed. I put my trust in the studio, it is only natural that they should do the same and **manage our expectations**. Yes it is game development and things change - and that's OK. We are a relatively small community here with most of the backers waiting for the MMORPG proper. There are about 50 active people on discord, around 5k active viewers on youtube and 40 people on facebook etc. They should involve this niche community in the development so we can help them create a truly 'player influenced game'. Dev discussions are a great example of this. They ask questions to us about certain features of the MMO and gather feedback every month. This is then shared with the team and apparently it even causes discussions among devs! Our feedback basically shapes some aspects of MMORPG design which is **wonderful** to hear. More things like that and being honest with us would benefit them in the long run imo..soo that's my two cents on the issue
Exactly... Wandering Mist misses the point in half the conversations I have with him. So don’t mind him talking about something he doesn’t understand.
Oh the irony....
I understand your points perfectly fine, your arguments just have so many holes in them due to your lack of knowledge that's it's easy to derail them.
Oh and analogies only work if the similarities outweigh the differences in relation to the argument you are making, just saying.
Brand diversification and product spin offs are just a fact of corporate life. As backers of Intrepid (specifically not investors), we have absolutely no say in anything, and as far as I am concerned as long as they are still developing the MMO, we have no reason to complain at all.
Based on that, it seems to me that the core issue is that some people wrongly think they are investors, and also have little to no understanding of the corporate world.
And no, we aren’t investors. As backers we’re in a weird situation where we are in-between being investors and customers, though unlike either the company who we gave money to isn’t in any way accountable to us. That’s the danger of crowdfunding. And that’s a huge reason to be nervous when things don’t seem to be going well.
I’ve backed plenty of projects where either the project never produced anything at all (the first project I ever backed went that way, it’s weird I ever did it again) or produced something that was garbage or just didn’t live up to its promises. This project took hundreds of my dollars though.
And you know what? I’ll take back a bit of what I said. I am literally an investor here. You’re wrong in saying none of us are. I paid quite a bit for a lifetime sub because I had faith that the game would be good and that I’d be playing it for years, and the money I’d save in not having to pay a subscription would eventually be worth it. By definition that makes me an investor.
And one of the easiest ways to get close to meeting the hyped dates for Early Access is to start by offering a space where players can just fight each other. It's minimal coding. No need to worry about AI for mobs.
The combatants can use a minimal number of abilities. Also, easy to tie those abilities to gear rather than fiddle with character stats and classes.
BR is about the easiest way to accomplish that. The alternative is to have no BR and still just have the info we're getting from the dev livestreams while we wait for MMORPG Alpha 1.
It's fine to be nervous about crowdfunding games. It's common for games in development to become vaporware. And, it's not unusual for games to not meet their design goals - or for the design to not be fun in actuality despite seeming "on paper" like it would be fun.
You should know what you're getting into.
We aren't investors. Investors have legal contracts and methods of penalizing dev companies that don't meet milestones or that consistently present mediocre demos of their work when the milestones are due.
Kickstarter patrons and purchasers of founders' packs don't have that clout.
We paid our money and just have to hope we enjoy the final product. (If we actually even get our hands on the product.)
"An investor is any person or other entity (such as a firm or mutual fund) who commits capital with the expectation of receiving financial returns. Investors utilize investments in order to grow their money and/or provide an income during retirement, such as with an annuity."
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/invest
You are acting like the only meaning of the term “invest” is the first one. I’m referencing the second one, “to make use of for future benefits or advantages”. That’s exactly what buying a lifetime sub is. It’s a financial investment that you hope pays off in the future by saving you money.
It’s like buying a $120 yearly subscription to a game, when the game costs $15 a month. If you play it for a year then you paid $60 less than if you’d been paying monthly. If you get bored of the game and stop playing after 6 months, then you paid $120 when you'd have only paid $90 if you were paying monthly. You are showing faith in the game with a financial investment that only pays off if it continues to engage your interest and entertain you for the duration.
Some people are only emotionally invested in this game and risk only disappointment if it doesn’t turn out the way they want. (3rd definition given by M-W.) That’s not the kind of investment I’m talking about though.
If you are developing a product that will take you 5 years to complete, and find along the way that you can spin off a small portion of that product to be a stand alone product, and this stand alone product can allow you to test some of your core infrastructure (in this case, server structure, sign in systems, payment systems etc), as well as providing your brand with an extension that could well bring more people to the core product when it is released, you would be foolish to not do it.
There would be far more of an outcry if just the three core systems listed above (a small fraction of what Apoc can be used to test) were not working well on launch day. Apoc allows Intrepid to get those things right before launch - and if they succeed in doing that and have a launch day without server issues, without sign in issues and without payment issues, then Apoc will become the model that all MMO's will follow.
Essentially, it will become the new norm.
Edit; there is no situation where purchasing a product or service that a company provides makes you an investor in that company. It makes you a customer or client.
Even if you purchase the products or services of an investment institution, you are then investing in other companies, not the institution you paid the money to. If a company does ask you to invest money in itself without providing you with a form of partial ownership (shares), what you have there is a scam.
We are not investors in Intrepid, we are customers.
We have no say.
Well, to be fair, we have the same amount of say in this as we did in New Coke.
(I almost said “nobody” but I see the rare post demanding action and/or answers from Intrepid on this board and getting upset when their demands aren’t met. It’s the usual “old man yelling at the sky” syndrome.)
I'm glad you didn't say "nobody". I'd have pointed you to other threads, but I think you know that.
To be clear again, I don't like Apoc. I've played it once, and it seems to me to be a small MMO with all the parts of MMO's that I like missing.
That said, I see value in it. I see it's value as a testing ground. I see it's value as a possible revenue source should development run longer than expected. I see it's value as a gateway to the MMO genre for BR players wanting more. I see it's value as a way to prevent Verra as a world being confined toan MMO.
As I said above, if Apoc works as well as a testing ground, every MMO developed going forward will follow Intrepids example here.
As players, we have the right to have some doubts, fears and/or worries.
However, we have no right to claim a lack of trust in Intrepid unless/until Apoc proves to have not been effective.
This is always a bit of a controversial topic. How much should a games developer listen to their players? I've seen games fail because they tried too hard to please their players, just as I've seen games fail because they paid too little attention to their players. Hell, in WoW's case the devs have gone from one extreme to the other which is partly why the game is in such a mess right now.
One thing to always keep in mind though is that we, the players, have relatively little information to work with. We don't know what goes on in the studio, or what the devs are planning later down the line. I've seen a lot of suggestions on these forums of things players want to see in Ashes, not realising that those suggestions might not be possible in the game. It's completely understandable that most developers choose to ignore player criticism since so much of it is worthless rubbish.
It is.
What would have been a better statement is to say that people have no right to lose trust in a Intrepid for taking an action (any action), until the results of that action are clear.
Any person claiming they have lost trust in Intrepid for trying to do the best they can is a person with a warped notion of what trust is.