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*old post - lack of information on cosmetics
Liniker
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Hi, I'd like to make a suggestion and ask other members of the community what is your opinion on this. I'm starting to get frustrated with the social media and marketing team for all their daily posts that only showcase exclusive skins that people paid $250 or $375 to get and are no longer available for new community members.
I don't understand what's the reason behind this decision, you are not "saving the good stuff" for launch by not showing an in-game obtainable lion mount, and only showing off the cool-looking black and purple lion. This only contributes to the "Ashes of Cosmetics" meme and I keep seeing people being misled commenting on these posts assuming they will be able to get what they think are mounts/pets/armor.
I've also seen people commenting stuff like "will your game have X mount/pet?" and your twitter account replying yes with an image of some exclusive skin misleading the person to believe that you are showing an actual mount/pet that they will be able to obtain.
I want to believe intrepid when you say these skins help you build the models for the variations and stuff, so please, instead of your posts being 99% skins and 1% in-game stuff, make it 90% in-game stuff and 10% skins, or, if for some reason you just don't want to show as many in-game mounts/pets even tho you already show the models as skins, just stop making daily posts with images and videos only showing these expensive skins, or at least make it clear that those are skins and you will have in-game variations but you don't want to show it.
I also hope that for Alpha 2, you don't the same as in Alpha 1, where most of the mounts and armor sets were exclusive skins that people can no longer obtain, especially because Alpha 2 will be a big showcase, and will be up and running for a long period of time.
I don't understand what's the reason behind this decision, you are not "saving the good stuff" for launch by not showing an in-game obtainable lion mount, and only showing off the cool-looking black and purple lion. This only contributes to the "Ashes of Cosmetics" meme and I keep seeing people being misled commenting on these posts assuming they will be able to get what they think are mounts/pets/armor.
I've also seen people commenting stuff like "will your game have X mount/pet?" and your twitter account replying yes with an image of some exclusive skin misleading the person to believe that you are showing an actual mount/pet that they will be able to obtain.
I want to believe intrepid when you say these skins help you build the models for the variations and stuff, so please, instead of your posts being 99% skins and 1% in-game stuff, make it 90% in-game stuff and 10% skins, or, if for some reason you just don't want to show as many in-game mounts/pets even tho you already show the models as skins, just stop making daily posts with images and videos only showing these expensive skins, or at least make it clear that those are skins and you will have in-game variations but you don't want to show it.
I also hope that for Alpha 2, you don't the same as in Alpha 1, where most of the mounts and armor sets were exclusive skins that people can no longer obtain, especially because Alpha 2 will be a big showcase, and will be up and running for a long period of time.
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Daily posts are a good way to keep attention and get people who aren't tracking as carefully, to see activity and not feel like the project and team have 'disappeared' without them having to watch full videos.
Showing too much ingame stuff would be a return to a level of transparency that probably isn't optimal right now.
Sure, I'd love to see just about anything else, but art departments carry these sorts of projects while the backend stuff is being tweaked and finalized. I feel like one has to be fairly 'into' Ashes as a whole to 'care about' or 'understand' the situation relative to the mounts and cosmetics.
My point is not that they Should be showing all the in-game stuff, I also think it's to early for that, but if they are not ready to show in-game stuff just don't show anything or just post something else - I don't like that they are making daily posts with images and videos for years now, only showing off skins, and with that they are misleading people that as you said, aren't us, the backers, and don't know that everything they show off are skins from $375 packs that are no longer available. I think that's just a dirty way to do marketing.
This is certainly one of their core audience communication problems. As Azherae pointed out a majority of their social media communications is not directed at us, their already captured audience, but prospective people who don't know anything about the game. They need to maintain attention, focus and impression of consistent progress in order to keep the support revenue up, essentially. They continue to claim they don't need our money, but as it stands they are a lot more behind schedule than they want to admit. The longer they keep that revenue stream going, the less they need to implement bad pr options.
Therefore from that perspective, the reason why they do this is simple, it's an easy way to make people aware that progress on the game is happening and that it's not just purely vaporware. Due to a variety of skill gap issues they are still working on filling, the main focus of the dev team in terms of what they feel comfortable showing is those very same cosmetics. And again as Azherae points out, they have moved further away from purely transparent development into a more opaque model, which limits stuff they can post that is more so 'in progress' by quite a lot.
You bring up very reasonable concerns relative to consumers being mislead and has been something I have been fairly critical of as a marketer myself. But they really do have very few alternatives for frequent posts on social media. There is a relative level of complexity their shop cosmetics show in terms of skill and technical capacity, that more plain cosmetics that are a core part of the game, will not. Steven also has a misguided (in my opinion) tendency to 'want to keep secrets for launch,' which is valid for some things, but not armor and mounts. These two guiding factors along with the skills gap in their systems team combine into the outcome you see here.
Alpha 2 is a much bigger milestone for them, and they will have to do as you said show more in game obtainable stuff by then. I wouldn't worry about it though as that was always the plan to my knowledge (feel free to correct me though.)
Overall I hear you and am very empathetic to your concern, but they only have so many options without repeating older content or closing more of their skill gaps. Once the UE5 switch over is complete I would expect it'd be a reasonable and good idea to repeat content with these model updates of more 'in game achievable things'. I think that will be a return to much better content social media wise.
Over all an alacarte support structure would be better over all and assuage some of your concerns I feel. But for now they continue to keep those prices, essentially 'because Steven said so as he wants us to feel he doesn't need our money'. We can't do much about that other than call for such a feature to be implemented until he gives in unfortunately.
Steven Sharif is an experienced gamer himself, and doesn't want the best-looking stuff to be bought-only.
It' s understandable your point of view about SM, it's a bit annoying and sometimes boring to see how more mounts and exclusive skins are shown every 4 or 5 days on social networks than game stuff, however you also have to understand that things are not done overnight, the SM team of intrepid are qualified professionals for something they will have that schedule/programming on their social networks.
Maybe they can't show more in-game stuff because it's not approved or maybe because they don't even have them yet, but I think we all understand that AoC is still in an Alpha state, recruiting more developers for AoC to have a more fluid, solid and better development, so it's understandable that right now Intrepid are focusing on some stuff and not others and that's why there will be sectors/departments/stuff of the development that are not ready to be shown.
Probably that SM schedule and programming on social networks will continue for months because that is what they have to use (for now) and what Intrepid allowed to show the SM team (for now).
When Intrepid has more things ready and approved to show the SM team will be able to have more tools, as it happened with the CC, races, UE5, etc.
It seems to me that many of Intrepid's SM releases are other things than exclusive mounts and skins, so don't generalize as they also try to do a good job with the material they have.
As the first person commented, I also don't think that their social media and marketing strategies are targeted at us, backers, we see the cosmetics on their livestream and discord.
This is targeted to the general public - and they don't know that information, have a look on their twitter comment section and you will find people saying things like "oh I can't wait to get this mount when the game launches" and in none of their social media posts they say that the stuff shown is a just a skin from an expensive package that will never be available to obtain. That's the problem.
I appreciate your input, you bring some good points to the discussion. I understand the importance of maintaining your audience engaged and capturing the attention of new members, however, I feel like if they don't have anything else to show besides cosmetics, maybe it's a little too early in development to even have a social media manager + marketing lead + content creator specialist and be pushing all these daily posts.
I also feel like it harms the project when new members of their community find out about the game by a post showing off something that came in a $375 pre-order pack that they can't even get, and that's pretty much the majority of their daily posts.
Some of the questions that go along with them help me envision how I want my characters to behave in the game.
It's not always about cosmetics that can be purchased. There are tweets about the Character Creator. There are tweets about biomes and villages, etc.
Tweets about cosmetics don't entice me to purchase cosmetics that I don't like.
And again, the game hasn't launched, so their social team is probably struggling to keep their social account active and interesting without showing anything that can give away plots/storyline etc.
I can assure you, their social accounts and what they post will look a lot different once it's launching or when the pre-launch marketing begins.
The truth about their current stated policies is more complex than what you have stated as your understanding of the policy. Here is the main window into the current policy:
Notice how first of all he is referencing the fact that there won't simply be 'the same set in a different color'. He mentions things like texture changes, recolors, and having individual pieces be incorporated into different armor sets. That is not equivalent to 'there's going to be the same costume but in a different color' by any stretch.
Texture is a huge part of what makes a costume feel a certain way. Layer on a complete change of context, that will almost certainly require minor tweaks to fit the sets over all presentation and you have a possibly radically different looking piece. He himself even states in this same post that 'it may be difficult to tell at a glance', so I am pretty sure he and I are on the same page in what he is saying here.
I would therefore argue that based off this core guidelines that no, 'obtainable variants' are neither guaranteed nor something you should expect. You might get something similar, you might get something radically different. Either way they get to rightfully try to sell you on the idea that a 'retextured, recolored, recontextualized and possibly tweaked version' is equivalent because it's a bad pr look to not do so and they've been very honest and transparent about their approach as stated above.
No one is arguing, on the other hand, that the best cosmetics won't be obtainable in game. He states that as part of his guiding policy. We have no real reason to disbelieve that. The community will speak out on release if it's not true, and it will be something that will gradually be fixed over time because there will be incentive to make that true. So for now I'll take Steven on his exact word. You know why? He's consistent.
Nothing here contradicts my assessment and only reinforces the exact points I am making.
Notice how here Toast is referring mostly to creatures, and how Steven has consistently mentioned NPC's as a major place you will see these 'alternatives', not exactly player obtainable versions of the sets. Because mobs and mounts are all one coherent 'skin', I think animal husbandry enthusiasts and mount lovers as whole will be the more obtainable 'color alt' scenario, but again that is still a might. So far I haven't really found quotes equivalent to this that support the same for armor and costumes, on the other hand.
I'll leave you with this last bit of footage https://youtube.com/watch?v=JH-sX1aFljM&t=3509s clip starts at time stamp and goes to 1:01:37
He makes it clear in this clip that his idea of how the shop will work down the line is that you will get something exclusive and that it and I quote "I want to incentivize purchase, by offering limited items; limited time, limited quantity. So that you have confidence when you purchase them they wont be offered later down in some other way." - Steven Sharif Pax East 2018
Even if these initial monthly cosmetics now have some alts, the policy in the long term is not just stated perfectly clear here, but in a lot of other quotes from Steven as well. The guiding principle, is the Steven sees cosmetics as something that shouldn't be repeated. Alt colors of a costume is definitely not what he means by 'equitable alternatives'.
So to me this is a person who has been very up front with his policy, and that leads me to believe he will go for the more radical shift of 'recontextualized, retextured, recolored' more often than not unless people put enough pressure on him to change his mind (which I don't even know is possible or not as he tends to not like changing approach or stances quite a lot.)
If that somehow still wasn't enough evidence for you, I welcome bringing more clips and evidence to the table here.
A marketer can bring a lot to the table at early stages of development as they tend to have the skills for and are largely in charge of gauging player feedback and making sure a product is actually marketable in the first place. Additionally the type of grassroots style content creator program brings them a pretty huge signal boost and you need someone like Margaret for that type of thing.
So while I'd agree with part of your sentiment, that it's hard for a marketing team to be effective in this scenario, there isn't a shortage of work to be done relative to that role, especially with an indie game like AoC that is a lot more dependent on possible player sentiment then a big company that can afford to be a bit less perfect in their design choices.
Also AoC started out with a lot more systems oriented content than they are currently aiming for and only recently lost one of the main people capable of keeping a systems focused edge to their marketing content (Jeffery). Once they have a replacement for him I expect certain types of content to return. There is a lot more to share that probably needs some finalization and spot checking from the person who will eventually take Jeffery's place, and to move on without them on board would make it harder to integrate the replacement.
It's just an awkward spot really. I do agree that it is likely hurting their image somewhat, but I think that it's hurting their image a lot more with the people already invested in their project's morale, than it is people who don't know about them yet. But other than things I've already mentioned they could change, there isn't much else they can do at times like these. You can't not have your social media team you've been training for years and simply let go because a vital cog left. The amount of retraining later would be staggering.
Over all the company is just a bunch of humans trying to do their best with their current limitations. So over all, pretty fair critiques from you. I just hope they aren't taking it and the situation too personally (other than Steven who really should just make the alacarte change to shop support.)
As I understand it, it is impossible to have substantial discussions about complicated subjects on social media.
That is what this forum is for.
I don't care about cosmetics, I am focused on the game.
But the superficiality of social media would appear to me to be the ideal venue for purely cosmetic issues.
I agree that they definitely should be using their social media for that, as I really want this game to succeed and I want them to make money with their cosmetics.
I just feel like the way they do it It's a little too much for how early it is and how little they have/want to show from the game, perhaps they could focus more on community stuff, some behind the scenes, some events, some AMAs, maybe give some love to the Discord as well - and when they do show off the cosmetics make it clear for the general public on each post that those are just skins but they will show off more in-game stuff in the future.
They we cute - and had me thinking more about what my friends and I want on our farm.
The current tweet is a fun ad for vacationing at a Verran lakeside campgrounds.
But they need to be posting something. They can only share bits and pieces of items and key art since the game is pretty much under tight lips until further notice. IG/TikTok is the most powerful tool in the world for brand awareness for any new brand/company. And if you don't have those, you don't exist.
EX: There are over 5 BILLION views of Elden Ring content on TikTok. That is a HUGE amount of exposure. More than any discord, twitch, youtube platform can give.
Ashes currently have close to 300k content views on TikTok. So staying active on social platforms, even post launch is important. So they are posting what they can
Once a customer can pre-purchase the game they'll start spending money on media and ad placement.
For one, the social media headspace has such a short memory and once you jump on stage you have to continually wave your hands around even when you have nothing to say to stay ‘relevant.’
Two, at some point you have to put up or shut up or risk losing an audience - and the time difference between those two can’t be forever.
Third, the risk of being shot down in ideation is quite high. You could be dead before you even had a chance and relegated to an uphill climb to regain attention instead of dedicating that attention to heads down product dev.
I clearly appreciate the transparent development that Intrepid has embraced (since I joined this community 3 years ago), yet I think this could have been done more organically without monthly/weekly/daily marcom blasts.
They ask some questions about what we would like to see and we answer.
I never think of the tweets as ads for the monthly cosmetic store.
And, Steven will say that they aren't really ready for a true marketing push, yet.
How is this OK?? If this person doesn't follow the project closely he is being led to believe those are armor sets and they are not... they are are exclusive cosmetic skins from a previous 375$ pack.
That's very disingenuous! even tho for some odd reason that only God knows why, intrepid keeps showing off these skins and also recolors of these skins as in-game armor for Alphas (even tho there shouldn't exist any recolors besides pieces on different sets that should be hard to notice at first glance)
The wording used is VERY specifically 'What emblems would you place on a similar set of armor?'
I'm not saying it's perfect, but this absolutely isn't 'hey you can get this armor in the game', it is 'you can get armor that looks like this in the game', and given the relatively stylish-yet-generic form of that armor, I would be really surprised if you couldn't?
In short, how is it 'still incorrect', for you?
EDIT: For clarity, yes, I understand that the responses given are of cosmetic armor, but by the premise and PROMISE, we will get similar themed armor that is not cash-shop.
You and I know those are not armor sets, but that guy and many others seeing these posts don't know that - not only because they don't follow the project closely, but because the social media person Never makes it clear that these are not armor sets, quite the opposite, they post clips of alpha footage wearing skins and recolors as armor with no disclaimers and reply to comments of people asking about armor showing more skins.
Is there something in the tweet that says, "You can obtain this armor set in-game!!" ???
The tweet displays a set of armor with some descriptive text about the tabard sigil and asks what types of sigils you would like to acquire in game.
They are letting us know that the armor set has moved from concept art to 3D models.
You know - informing us of progress!!!
And they're asking on feedback about stuff we'd like them to add.
Nothing in the tweet states that's PC armor rather than NPC armor.
I'd say the descriptive text implies The Order Of The Steel Bloom is an NPC Order, rather than a player character Order.
Ok, I understand now. If Intrepid were to absolutely guarantee that dark brown or black versions of those two cosmetics, would be available as ingame armor, with stats and everything, would it still be a problem 'because the thing shown is a red version which is unobtainable in game'?
I can see that, especially since the response did not contain text, just images, which could be seen as pretty dodgy. Nothing like 'half an explanation with some emojis' to inspire confidence...
@Dygz I want to see you white knight about this kind comment (this it wasn't hard to find it's a reply to that same steel bloom tweet, they do this all the time)
Do you also think this is OK and they are not implying that those skins are PC armor sets to people that Clearly think they are PC gear sets? LOL do you think this guy will be happy when he finds out what they show are 375$ pack exclusive skins with no obtainable in-game variations?
I agree with everything you are saying here with two caveats.
First caveat is we have no idea what their plans are relative to in game sets. They could be planning all manner of in game samurai and roman sets. They therefore answered the person in the tweets you pasted with what they felt comfortable showing. So it's their words, not their willingness to use the pictures, that is 'wrong' here.
They have a (in my opinion BAD) policy of keeping in game stuff 'close to the chest', which means when they want to show the potential 'truth' that they will have samurai and western armor, they can't show them anything other than said expensive unobtainable cosmetics as 'proof of intent'.
Could they just say 'we intend to do something like this in other pieces'? Yes. Could they caveat 'hey you can get something SORTA but not exactly like this'? Yes. I agree they need much clearer caveats. Is it wrong to show them these exact visuals however? Absolutely not. It would not hurt their marketing to be more precise about what they are showing them. Right now they are being extremely lazy when they have no reason to be and that is why I agree with you. I just don't think showing people the pictures is in themselves the misleading part.
Second caveat is that we have no way of knowing how far they plan on taking that whole 'cut up the set and move them to completely new sets' part of that paragraph you pasted. Steven says it in a way that can definitely be taken as 'they won't recolor or retexture and then sell' the ENTIRE piece, but once each individual piece is on different costumes/gear sets, they are not breaking their word by doing so in that context nor by having NPC outfits of said recolors/retextures. This is why I think it isn't necessarily wrong to show them the recolors. It is once again, the messaging part of it that comes off as misleading.
But the root of why all of this is so easy to misconstrue and misunderstand comes from Steven's original policy, not showing off the recolors as if you might be able to get something like this in the game itself. Because honestly the original policy is unclear enough that it might very well be possible to 'collect them all' and just 'get the full set by proxy even if it looks recolored, retextured, and tweaked for it's recontextualization'. The policy itself is phrased and word in a way that can confuse multiple parties, and is a reason that while I have given Intrepid money already, I will advocate strongly against supporting the projects cosmetics until they clarify literally everything cosmetic related publicly and in a clear and coherent way.
Tl;dr It's not ok, but we need to be very specific about what isn't ok or they'll have every right to ignore otherwise valid criticism and not see what exactly needs to improve from the marketing teams perspective. IS can definitely improve on these issues with a bit more care, thought, and clarifications on policy.
I of course will disagree that you can't make the assumption of 5-10 sets. Steven has very non-standard philosophy when it comes to cosmetics. He is also funding a lot of this himself and is therefore slightly less influenced by the economic force that would normally make one make that type of calculation that leads to that type of reuse of assets. He want's to preserve some sort of ambiguous 'essence of collectability' that makes his decision making process foreign to anyone who isn't him as it's a very abstract ideal.
And I will elaborate what I said in my previous post, by 'keeping as much of the game hidden as possible is a bad policy'. if it's going to restrict you giving players as good of a representation of an example of what you mean when you are marketing as possible, it's a bad restriction. I'm not saying they need to show us everything, or that keeping things close to your chest is bad. I'm saying that IS is incredibly RIGID about it and it's hurt their publicity a number of times both with prospective customers, and people already interested in their project. They need to be slightly more liberal with information than they have been, because Steven is not a very effective communicator when it comes to certain topics, which can be more easily rectified by 'having better examples of what he means'. And if those better examples don't exist yet, that is all the more reason for the marketing team to put in a little more thought into how they give and explain their examples.
So as I said in a previous post, I agree with the sentiment that using the pictures they have been using is completely fine. But it's largely the messaging around said pictures which is lacking and it is the marketing departments job to be more clear spoken and communicative relative to the limitations and context of said images relative to their own policies so that they don't mislead people. It's not like the marketing team has so much going on that they can't spend a little more than 5 seconds answering with a picture and some tacky (and quite frankly sarcastic) emojis.
I dont think this applies a whole lot to displaying cosmetics. Development of a game is a slow process. I believe the reason for them to show off model and cosmetics in the first place is just to "flesh out" their monthly live streams in the first place, otherwise they would only need a 10 minute video about the mechanics they have somewhat nailed down each month, and that isnt really something "exciting" for the population wanting info.
I think showing some cosmetics, shows enough for someone to assume the type of things available. Just like how showing some bosses and mechanics gives you a hint at the dept of the combat and showing some weather effects lets you know about the progress being made without spoiling the entire game for potential players