Greetings, glorious adventurers! If you're joining in our Alpha One spot testing, please follow the steps here to see all the latest test info on our forums and Discord!
Options
A move to UE5 is great but the 'little details' are missing badly
HellFrost
Member
First of all I would like to congratulate on decision with UE5, it's really a great engine to future proof your game, however I would like to bring a discussion regarding overall look and feel of the game world.
The first obvious point would be the lack of high quality textures. I understand you were happy to show the move and lighting capabilities of UE5, but textures are really odd looking which makes overall environment look dated. I understand that this game is far from release so hopefully you have a plan to update them as you go.
Second and most important thing is foliage. It's literally 2D foliage. Furthermore it's a static 2D foliage which just make whole world feel static and unnatural. I can see snowstorm in the trailer but bushes or grass patches are just static giving this weird feeling of "artificial environment". Hopefully you are going to address this not only with foliage but with trees branches, leaves and other stationary objects that should have some kind of movement.
Lastly icing on the cake: random small animals like butterflies in the field, random frogs in the swampy area or white rabbit running around in snowy area. There are all kind of small and big animals, birds, snakes and insects you could add to the world that would make the world feel alive and full, living it's own thing. These things goes long way to giving immersion for the game. I've recently played Red Dead Redemption 2 and the world design is truly amazing. Take my 2nd and 3rd point away and that world would feel dead.
I'm not saying game doesn't look good, but it doesn't look amazing as well. These small features would literally push the overall in game world feel warmer and alive.
The first obvious point would be the lack of high quality textures. I understand you were happy to show the move and lighting capabilities of UE5, but textures are really odd looking which makes overall environment look dated. I understand that this game is far from release so hopefully you have a plan to update them as you go.
Second and most important thing is foliage. It's literally 2D foliage. Furthermore it's a static 2D foliage which just make whole world feel static and unnatural. I can see snowstorm in the trailer but bushes or grass patches are just static giving this weird feeling of "artificial environment". Hopefully you are going to address this not only with foliage but with trees branches, leaves and other stationary objects that should have some kind of movement.
Lastly icing on the cake: random small animals like butterflies in the field, random frogs in the swampy area or white rabbit running around in snowy area. There are all kind of small and big animals, birds, snakes and insects you could add to the world that would make the world feel alive and full, living it's own thing. These things goes long way to giving immersion for the game. I've recently played Red Dead Redemption 2 and the world design is truly amazing. Take my 2nd and 3rd point away and that world would feel dead.
I'm not saying game doesn't look good, but it doesn't look amazing as well. These small features would literally push the overall in game world feel warmer and alive.
2
Comments
Having said that, they do act on feedback, like the character basic movements for example. But ye... it's obvious that we are on an Alpha development stage that isnt on Steam for access, nor is completely hidden like dragon age 4 or whatever.
The game is in alpha 1. Ashes is at least 3 years away from release probably 4. Don't expect polishing until beta 2
Like everyone said, the game is in development.
What is more important than that though is that the game is not a AAA game with a AAA budget. It's an indy game with a fairly low budget as far as MMORPGS go and the time period we are in.
Furthermore, it needs to be able to run on as many computers as possible. This means they have to put some limits on how many polygons and how big of textures they can use.
The game looks fantastic as is. Nothing is "Missing badly". The game could not look any better than it does now on release, and it would be amazing, so long as the gameplay is good.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Typical workflow in early design work if a final assets is not decided is to create placeholder assets with correct scale, location and orientation to provide context and review broader issue and then en-mass replace later..
If the ground work is in place and managed well, future revisions for mass assets are exponentially easier to do.
I would also be concerned if a select few of some of the current assets were kept unchanged but I do believe (and hope) there is a lot of work to go!
So when the developers put out videos, repeatedly say in those videos that the animation is going to go through a lot of passes and it has barely been touched by their art folks, you think that they “need to be pointed out”?
You think the developers are going to announce that animations are being worked on (proactively I might add, not in response to anyone, it’s because they know it’s clunky), and then not change them until you tell them to on the forums?
Someone certainly has a ridiculous idea of their own importance.
Here’s the thing, chuckles. The people you call “naive fan boys” are the people who have been around literally for years, watching development, following along, actually gathering info. That way, when glassy-eyed ignoramuses stumble into the forums to grumble for the 3,000th time about the same gripe that’s been addressed 3,000 times already, we can provide information and dispel some of the pained confusion.
Stick around a bit newbie, and if you pay attention you might even learn something.
It wasn't troll bait at all.
It was a well presented and well reasoned rebuttal of your point.
To back up "chuckles" a bit, just because they say something is being worked on does not mean they will fix it to everyone's satisfaction. I think it is fair to present you preferences on the solution. You don't need to be a game developer to know what/how you enjoy playing so everyone's feedback is valid. Now on the flip side, just saying 'the animations are bad' is not constructive and is useless feedback when they actively say they are working on them as it provides no information on the preferred direction, that's fair enough.
I agree 100%.
Criticism about the animations being too flashy, attacks not having weight behind them and lacking impact, that stuff is useful.
And I have no problem with people giving generic criticism either. I do have a problem when someone criticizes the animation, and someone else points out that the issues are known, acknowledged, and at a very early stage of development with little refinement, then someone else gripes about fan boys excusing the problems. That’s just stirring things up to create recreational drama.
As if the devs are planning to release the game without orcs.
The devs are fully aware that they haven't shown us orcs in the game yet.
"Oh. See! Now, they've decided to add orcs, due to my feedback!"
These repetitive posts indicate what the ongoing first impression reactions are, and you can only get those once from each person.
In this case in particular, there have been tweaks to the animations, so it was entirely possible that the tweaks were enough to solve the concern. This kind of feedback means "those tweaks have not yet dispelled the first-impression doubt yet".
Speaking personally, I've been following the game for a little over a year now and already I'm finding it harder to distinguish what I originally didn't like about the animations, and just accepting things for what they are right now. We need the constant flow of fresh eyes, just as fresh eyes need pointers for more info.
Maybe Orkans too?
Nanu nanu!
Honestly, this game gained all of my respect when I found out Steven was fronting the bills. Excited to see the future of this thing for sure.
Star Citizen was another I was excited for and backed on kickstarter, as a comparison I would have preferred No Man's Sky (or even less) graphics in favor of a functionally complete game. I'm no game dev, but I imagine the tech hurdles they have needed to overcome would be less prevalent had that been the case.