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
At least I hope they do, cuz they are a crucial part of the game after all. And we, the players will play them, they won't just be some npcs that you will see every now and then.
Now let's look at the definition of stout:
1. (of a person) rather fat or of heavy build.
2. (of an object) strong and thick.
Now tell me again how the ones we've seen actually fit this description.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/images/a/a9/Vestments_of_the_Runecarvers.png
This is the sort of stuff that I keep seeing that makes it hard for me to side with Intrepid on this. I have to give what I feel is constructive criticism where it is due. That looks like the dwarfs we all know and love.
The dwarfs we have now are not that.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Those do look more like traditional gnomes than traditional dwarves
What color is the dress!
Real talk. I am have to imagine the guys are much shorter than they look and the cloths are very baggy to see these guys as Gnomes. The belt is a marker for waist width. I have never seen a obese Gnome. I could see how a taller Gnome with a wide waist would look like a Dwarf.
Still if the Dwarfs in game looked like this we would not be having this conversation.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I have been loosely reading your conversation and I have to say I agree with you. What you said follows what Intrepid is trying to do. They could be like every other gaming company and just say "This is our content, now give us money.". Instead, Intrepid is saying "We want to make the best possible game for MMO players that are tired of the same-old content, so please tell us your feelings so we can keep ourselves on track.". This type of dialogue with the gaming community encourages us to voice our opinions and concerns about design opinions. Anyone who has ever developed a piece of art (Game, film, drawing, writing, etc.) knows the value of true and honest criticism. "Looks Good!" is as good as a slap in the face.
My personal bottom line: When we think of dwarves we think of stout, bearded creatures that can move mountains. This comes from Grandfather Tolkien's description of his own dwarves and has been the base model for the majority of dwarves in our modern age (Hence why Tolkien is often called the Grandfather of Modern Fantasy). It is no different than elves. Prior to Tolkien, we viewed elves as small, child-like creatures often causing mischief.
That's not to say this can't be changed and there are certainly people who have tried it before. However, all change isn't a good thing. Those who enjoy fantasy (And Ashes is clearly a Fantasy-based MMORPG) also understand and expect the common tropes when involving the fictional races such as elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, orcs, etc.
When it comes to the Dunir, I do feel as though they should strictly resemble the classic dwarf vibe. For the Nikua, I can see the current models that we have and I would be fine with them. They are both dwarves, but the Nikua should resemble a race not shaped by the mountain, but by the ocean. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense to make them resemble closer to short people, less stocky, though I think the defining feature of a Nikua would be their hairstyles and body markings.
Lastly, we need to keep in mind that there are many fictional races throughout literature, games, and movies. When you change a race, like dwarves, that resemble something else, those fantasy nerds will look at it and say "Why don't you just call them Halflings or Gnomes and be done with it?". Which is, I believe, the main discord in this forum post.
This piece from the Kickstarter seems undisputable:
I am willing to accept that the art team may have changed Dwarfs over time as they were working on the game. The argument that the Dwarfs were never like the Dwarfs we all know and love from other popular high fantasy settings feels weak. We have verbal lore evidence and art proving what Dwarfs used to be.
I agree with you that I would rather have the game out in a timely manner than have them redo a whole race.
If there is some simple tweaking that can be done to fix all of this. We should be pushing for that.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I did not make the claim that Ashes Dwarves were never like Middle Earth Dwarves or any other type of Dwarf - rather.
What I said is that Verra lore is not following Middle Earth lore. Vera lore is not following Pathfinder lore.
The Ashes Dwarves by appearance, both in game now and in all of the concept art, conform with images of Dwarves on the spectrum from The Seven Dwarves to Warhammer Dwarves - as demonstrated by the variety of Dwarves in Jackson's the Hobbit.
"What we all know" includes the thousands of people who love the appearance of EQ Dwarves.
I don't even know what you mean by "what Dwarves used to be". What you thought the verbal lore meant may be different than what the devs envision their lore to mean.
I've said several times that we should expect the final base model to conform with the concept art.
Other people push back that the concept art does not reflect "the Dwarves we all know". I disagree.
I've also said several times that the sliders in character create may result in characters that are closer to what is being asked for, but don't expect it to reach Warhammer "perfection".
You can push all you want as a gamer/player.
I'm just saying from the perspective of a project manager in game development, don't expect significant change to the base model at this late date.
Also, it's fascinating that people can be expecting Ashes Dwarves to appear and act just like "the Dwarves we all know" - even though we all know that Ashes Orcs appear and act nothing at all like Orcs we know from any other franchise...not even close.
AoC dwarves just have an illusion magic cast on them to make them look thinner
/s
tag me next time wazzock. and yes they do feel this way (except dygz and probably a hand full of fake dwarf fans!), it has been proved with threads like this one.
They look like Pathfinder/D&D orcs correct.
Now guess what Pathfinder/D&D dwarves look like
This conversation has been going on for days now in multiple threads. You should know what I/we mean by now with: "The Dwarves we know and love.". People have been describing those dwarfs in many different ways.
We have also shown multiple examples of how the dwarfs' descriptions don't match what is in game currently. We have shown concept art that is not a match for the game currently. That is the evidence I was talking about.
As for your project manager prospective I did say I agree with that a few times now. I don't want delays for this. We don't know what tech Intrepid has under the hood to change things like this. It could be an easy fix.
The Orc situation is easier to explain. Orcs have never been very consistent from franchise to franchise. That is why they come with less expectations. At least for me they don't.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Make the poll!
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
https://strawpoll.com/xzzpjg4yr
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I know which Dwarves you want to focus on, but "we all know" that that is a narrowminded view of the spectrum of depictions of Dwarves.
That is disingenuous because we can't show screenshots of what the Dwarves look like in the game right now.
The guy in the video that Agerr posted clearly states that while he is aware of the complaints about the Ashes Dwarves being too skinny and not very dwarfy-looking, that's not what he currently sees in the character creator.
Again, you don't know. But, I kinda know.
What we don't know is whether or not the character create sliders will result in builds that make the naysayers complacent. So, that is what people should be keeping an eye out for.
Stout is not necessarily the same thing as beefy and wide. So, while we may very well be able create Dwarves that are more stout...that doesn't mean we will be ale to get them to be as beefy and wide as Warhammer Dwarves.
You said on page one, "This concept art is perfect." And I've said, we can expect the Ashes Dwarves to look like that - especially with sliders.
But, that concept art of Dwarven armor is not beefy and wide.
Dwarves have not been very consistent from franchise to franchise, either. But have been more consistent than Orcs, probably. Possibly more consistent than Elves. It's not particularly reasonable to assume that Ashes Dwarves will be just like Middle Earth Dwarves, but there is quite a bit of variety in physicality even among Middle Earth Dwarves. Not all Middle Earth Dwarves are stout. Certainly, not all Middle Earth Dwarves are beefy and wide.
Polls worded dripping with bias aren't particularly meaningful.
There are screenshots out from Intrepid. We have shown them in these threads.
How would you word the poll?
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Just got reminded of this dumb metal album:
how epic is this lol
We need images that where snapped zoomed in to be similar in size to the concept art you say you like to get a proper read of proportions. We need to be able to take the pics for the purpose of comparison with the concept art rather than just any old zoomed out shot which was taken to show a general impression of Ashes Dwarves in-game.
Actually, really, we should use screenshots of Dwarves in the current character creator. I have some, but I can't post them because visual NDA is still in play.
That being said, the Dwarves in the beach pic you posted are about as stout and wide as what's in the Dwarven armor concept art you say is perfect. The primary difference is height. The Dwarves in the armor concept art have slightly longer arm bones and a slightly longer femur than the Dwarves in the beach pic but the width of the shoulders and the girth of the waist are pretty much the same as the armor concept art. Again, we could get a clearer comparison if we actually snapped a pic that is zoomed in to be similar to what's in the concept art.
The Dwarf with brandishing the weapon is smaller, mostly in height, than the concept art. Again, the width is about the same and the girth is about the same.
The width of the shoulders is about the same as the image you demo as what's mustered in your brain when you think of Dwarves, the Ashes Dwarves you posted are not quite as tall.
But that is different than beefy and wide.
The art pics that you posted are not much wider nor much beefier than the screenshots of the Ashes Dwarves you posted.
The Warhammer Dwarf in the video Conrad posted is much shorter than the concept art you posted that you say you like. The shoulders of the Warhammer Dwarf are much wider than the concept art you posted.
As far as I can tell we agree, but you keep arguing as if we don't agree.
I think that the Ashes Dwarves in-game are surprisingly small in height.
We should expect the Ashes Dwarves will look like the Dwarven armor concept art you posted and said is perfect.
We especially should expect that sliders in character create will allow Ashes Dwarves to look like the Dwarven armor concept art you posted and said is perfect, even if, for some reason, the base model does not look like that.
What I said is that we should not expect the Ashes Dwarves to be MUCH wider...and I later reference the Warhammer Dwarf in the video... which is much shorter than the Ashes Dwarves concept art and has much wider shoulders than what is in the Ashes Dwarves concept art.
Soooo....please point out where, in any of that, we disagree.
If I were going to make a poll, I would take a few days to get the wording right, but something like:
What are your current impressions of Ashes Dwarves?