Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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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.
Comments
I agree, in the Alpha One Preview, they are currently surprisingly diminutive in height.
I have not voted at all.
We can't share screenshots of the Alpha One Preview, so we can't even show how beefy and wide or skinny and thin Dwarves currently are in the character creator, so...people not in Alpha One must be voting from their imaginations, rather than on solid data.
Yes the people who play dwarves will likely vote. Because the majority of people who play fantasy dwarves don't want to play what is currently being offered in the alpha.
I kick started the game because dwarves were advertised as a playable race...the concept art and the Dunir lore and flavor text cemented my backing...
What is currently being offered is basically getting "Gnomed"
I am hoping the runecarver cosmetic set is the precedent that we the dwarf players will get come release.
Now is the time to get this issue nipped not by the time BETA rolls around and to much time has been invested into race development.
"pound for pound the strongest fighters" So what less than 100 pounds currently? basically a puntable object in battle.
the object does not fit the mold...
"Don't be deceived by their stout stature. They're pound for pound the strongest warriors the world has ever known."
It is not possible for me to invalidate the poll.
But, the slanted, poorly-worded, biased poll invalidates itself.
I don't have to do anything to try to invalidate it.
The time to get the issue nipped, if there is an issue, was two years ago.
What is currently being offered in the game is an Alpha One preview with the goal still being what is in the concept art I've posted above.
All I've said is those don't look like Gnomes. Gnomes are considerably thinner than that.
And, it's unlikely that Dwarves are going to get much wider than that.
"Probably because the people who are fine with the Dwarves are less likely to even participate in the (poorly-worded, biased) poll."
Seems like a invalidation attempt to me...
i'll decide when i see them! until then i'm going to hammer home the type of dwarf i and many others want to play
How is it poorly worded or biased?
Following the discussions on 2 different threads, plus concerns raised on the reddit sub, the question is very straightforward:
Do you want the model changed to look like the beefier stockier kind?
And the options are way clearer and less unnecessarily granular than what you proposed (which was very biased).
If you want a straight answer, you don't ask leading questions nor dilute the expected answer with a ton of modifiers to the answers.
Don't believe me? Here's what you proposed:
What are your current impressions of Ashes Dwarves?
You're arbitrarily dividing the answers that want them changed into smaller and smaller portions to make the first possible answer as big as you want it to be cause you like them as they are now.
But hey, free forum. Feel free to go create your own poll and name it "UNBIASED, BEAUTIFULLY WORDED, STRAIGHT UP AND FAIR POLL ON DWARVES"
As it stands at this time around 70 percent of 100 votes want them changed to look more like Warhammer ones. And of those, about half want said change only for Dünir.
I believe you agree with that last part too, reading your posts.
At this point you just seem disappointed that what you think/feel has seemingly no substantiation.
The only way you could think I said this is if you thought the only way for a Dwarf race to look cool was if it were to copy Tolkien.
And then you complain that those who do like the actual proportions on dwarves are less likely to vote...
You come out looking like the kinda person who doesn't vote in elections and then complain when the candidate you didn't like wins the race (not saying that you do so for real political elections)
Agreed that he made a weak argument there.
However, he has the absolute right to believe that only Tolkien-Warhammer like dwarves look cool. So that doesn't "entirely" invalidate his point either.
And he can very much vote on that belief, as will other probably.
I don't think having an appreciation for a variety of dwarven aesthetics precludes oneself from primarily liking one type in particular.
he enjoys word salad and Stirring drama unnecessarily in discussions for what i assume his own personal enjoyment.
Deflection and misdirected bread crumbing..He might just be doing it just for the attention and validation.
Nothing personal just an observation...
Apparently he's an expert on Gnomes now...
i like to think he sides with us and is doing this just to keep the thread relevant and it from falling into the abyss /shrug
Especially at a time when most of the Ashes followers can't even get into the game to evaluate for themselves what beefier, stockier might mean.
The title of the poll thread is: POLL - Do you want the Dwarf models changed?
Which inherently slants the results of the poll despite trying to clarify that to just meaning beefier/stockier once people get into the thread.
There's nothing in there that allow options for, "Sure, I would like some tweaks, but it's mostly fine." Or, "Sure, I'd like them to be more stout but it's not a deal-breaker if they aren't."
What you're after is... "70 percent of the respondents said they want the Dwarf model to be beefier/stockier so it needs to be changed before beta."
I'm not disappointed at anything, because I don't really care whether or not the Dwarves are beefier/stockier.
There is a wide range of depictions of Dwarves that are all fine. They can be like EQ Dwarves. They can be like WoW Dwarves. They can be like Warhammer Dwarves.
What I don't want to happen is for people to present poll results thinking they have overwhelming support to trigger changes they want and then be bewildered and irate when they discover that the end result is not much wider than is what is currently in the concept art.
And, if the devs do make the Dwarves much wider than what is currently in the concept art I posted, I don't want people to be bewildered and irate with the delayed schedule of release that will very likely cause.
But, the wider the change, the more work it's going to be for the devs to change all the assets they've already created...which means more delays in release for a game that is already consistently seeing significant delays.
Which means the content that was offered is still up for debate and totally malleable.
Which suggests to me that content can change without detriment to any time frame/schedule concerns.
we only saw 4 of 8 possible races in system format during alpha.
Content wise anything seems totally open for criticism and debate with or without biased on unbiased community polls.
So far the general consensus from players who prefer to main play Dwarfs is that there is more room for improvement and a level of dissatisfaction from what is currently being delivered.
Again, you say that, but you also advocate for them to be like EQ ones. You can't have it both ways brother.
You are so biased you can't accept anything that does not agree with your demands for change.
What I've said is there should be no surprise that a dev team comprised mostly of EQ/EQ2 devs are going to believe that Dwarves designed to look like EQ Dwarves are cool and badass. And since thousands of players continue to play EQ and EQ2 - and I think Dwarves are about 4th most popular out of 19 player races - there should be no surprise that they are confident most followers of Ashes will be OK with the Dunir as depicted in the concept art I posted. If Steven was not also confident, the concept art would already look like WoW Dwarves or Warhammer Online Dwarves. And the switch to that would have occurred a couple of years ago.
I don't advocate for them to be "like EQ Dwarves". I advocate for them to be like whatever the concept art they have been showing us and creating 3D models and armor for for the past 2+ years.
This is why I said earlier, "You're not a game dev."
Because you think like a gamer; not like a game dev.
You want changes but have no conception of how changes can impact a release schedule.
Not a content test means that they are primarily evaluating data about logins, networking, server population and progression.
Not a content test says nothing about already created assets being totally malleable.
So you would vote for them to be bulkier and more like the WoW/LOTR/Warhammer ones, but refuse to vote.... out of contrarianism?
Are you a game dev?
Expert on dwarves..
Expert on Gnomes...
Expert on Game devs...
Hold the phone everybody... I think we have an expert here...
Intrepid seem to have enough time to make functioning mount cosmetic skins and animations for alpha system testing, I am sure reworking a primary race to meet their own design brief and player expectations is probably in their best interests overall.
I'll take "somewhat malleable" Dygz so can we just make them "somewhat" more wider, stouter, prouder and stalwart and less diminutive and acrobatic?
This is clearly not a good argument.
If you don't like the look of the Dwarves now, cool. Tell Intrepid specifically what it is you don't like, rather than just "they don't look like the Dwarves in other IP's", which really is basically all I have seen so far.
If you can't find something you specifically don't like about them other than that they are not Tolkien Dwarves, then I'm not sure what to say other than that this isn't a Tolkien IP.
I think a number of us have made the exact details of why we don't like them in other threads.
I (We?) don't like the narrow waist (and most of the rest), excessively diminutive stature, the fact that they do front tuck flips when jumping etc.
What I prefer: a more stocky and stout build, more muscular, perhaps a little taller (about navel height compared to humans perhaps?), heavier in their movements, etc
Is this influenced by other IPs such as Tolkien's books, Warhammer, The Witcher, etc? Yep. I like those dwarves better.
I don't like the ones you can see in EQ, the Narnia movies, Snow White and the Huntsman, Willow, Baldur's Gate 3 etc
Thus I would personally prefer the current ones in Ashes, that I see as being closer to the latter group, to look more like the ones I do like.
So far, it seems a majority has similar ideals of what they want dwarves to be like.
If as we get more votes, the majority switches to keeping them the same, then so be it. Otherwise, it may be a statistic worth taking into account for the dev team.
It would have been nice if they changed it two years ago for sure. But the next-best time to do it is now, before they add a bunch of content and animation passes.
What we have ingame now does not match the concept art. So to make it match they have to spend time and resources to change it anyway. It makes perfect sense to at least seriously consider what (if going by the poll so far) the vast majority of the player-base wants.
Yeah we need more datasets, but the current poll should be enough to make the devs at least consider making their own official poll, like they did with the daily login issue.
Ignoring the issue now will likely end up with a huge outcry closer to release, forcing them to either spend 10 times the resources to change the models and all the animations and armor compared to now, or not change a thing and just realize that no node will likely ever be a dwarf-dominant node, and all the resources they put into making dwarf node buildings are wasted. The prudent thing for IS now is to take it seriously enough to actually listen to their player-base, get the data they need, and then decide.