Feedback for future Dev Streams

Dear Intrepid Studios

One Year has passed since Alpha One and many advancements were shown on the monthly Dev Stream. But I can't be quiet and have the need to share an opinion on those Streams. While what is shown does state the massive amount of progress the development of Ashes of Creations had gone thru in the past year, sadly most shown stuff in the Streams is on the Grafic side like:
Environment
Race appearance
Armors
Pets
ingame assets like furniture and else

Only a few things were shown yet of the other maybe more important aspects of a game like footage of a simulated castle raid with 500+ simulated players, showcase of node interaction simulatet or some new skills. However every video was either cinematic or with hidden UI. Sadly stuff like gameplay, UI, Skills, Skill Trees, how the church system does work, how the different systems that bring buffs, debuffs, augmentations and others to the game. Shure those things are hard to show in visuals since they are more technical. Even during Streams with multiple players by Stevens side not much of the playerinteraction was seen.

Most of the players will rarely hide the UI, most of the time the UI will be active and i would love to see what progress was made on that front:
how does the UI look
how does the Inventory and character menu look
how does the skill window look
what can be done in these windows

I'm aware that everything related to the game is “suspect to change” as Steven loves to say. but my guess is that all those hundreds of people working on the game did more than only environment, skins, and in-game assets design. And I, even if it will change, would like to see some of that progress as well in the future dev streams.

Keep up the good work and let us see some of the progress that isn't environment or skin.

Regards
Asraiel

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Comments

Asgerr

Things like Skills, Skill Trees, Augments and Nodes (past a certain level) have not been shown because they're not finished. And seeing as though people bought access to Alpha 1 then shat on the game for not being complete or lacking stuff... they're gonna bide their time.

They're also not gonna showcase the UI in pre Alpha 2. That'll be the last thing to be completed, along with localisation.

With that said, Steven has hinted that in one or two Dev Streams, they'll start showcasing some of the combat skills and the ranged combat.

Another thing to note is that many of what you call Graphics updates are in fact far more:

Environment - that's the entire world you're gonna be playing in. If the world sucked, the rest would not matter. Add to it the dynamic seasons and weather, and you're also provided with an overworld mechanic which will affect combat gameplay, resource gathering, the economy and exploration significantly.
As well, the last Dev Stream which focused on how they created tools in UE5 to optimize and expedite the creation of assets, whilst retaining uniqueness and avoiding New World's copy-paste issues, is a way to further expand on the development progress. It's an exciting tool to have in AoC, which will only improve the game and be useful for a myriad of things.

Race appearance - what they showed was also meant to request feedback; that people in the future may get the best races to play with.

Armors and pets and mounts - whilst you might look at them and say: oh that's just more cosmetics, Intrepid has stated multiple times (though no one seems to listen whenever they say this) that those also serve to populate the world. Those skins and mounts will also be NPCs and Mobs that exist in Verra.

And to conclude, I want to re-state the opening point: many people will see these dev streams and take them as a finished product, when it's clearly not. Showcasing all the combat, node progression and types, UI etc, before it's ready for a first iteration reveal, will only bring negative press to the game, despite this being a literal Alpha.
They will show what they have ready, when it's ready.

Warth

UI is something that will quickly be judged by the people seeing the video.
They don't want to show it, as it might leave a bad impression with it being WIP and all.

Dev Streams aren't just there to show transparent progress, a great part of those are promotion as well.
Showing something that doesn't look up to par just doesn't make sense from their perspective. It needs to have that certain level of quality to be shown.

BaSkA_9x2

I would just like if the monthly dev streams had more Q&A. If it's one hour long, I wish Q&A would be, at least, 30 minutes.

WHIT3ROS3

I understand where OP is coming from, I'd love to be a little fly on the wall at Intrepid and see/hear all the cool design discussions, both good and bad. Choices that have not been made and things that haven't worked out. I'd love to hear about the problems and disasters that must inevitably come up when developing such a monumental project.

However... As Asgerr said, I also understand why that just isn't possible due to the nature of so many who would see it and just not appreciate the context. You only have to see the comments on youtube or in Twitch chats to realise that most don't listen, don't read and actually don't really care.

That kind of transparency would only lead to problems, bad press and needless piling on by some who seem to get off on shitting on things. It's sad... but I think Intrepid has made the right choice in taking more of an "Ice-berg" approach and just showing the tip.

AidanKD

To be fair, they have started going in more of a technical element bringing in developers so we can get into the process and there is a lot of great snippets of info. that we just wouldn't have got otherwise, like their insight when they are having kind of developer sessions into design decisions. Think the Weather/Combat/Biome videos, we have had three of the last four sessions with developer guests and incidentally they have all knocked it out of the park.

I think if we continue to see systems with knowledgeable guests to supplement the delivery, and yes absolutely more Q&A where able, though truthfully I think with the big videos we have had recently i'd say I have no complaints on recent streams if anything they usually run over being like 1hr 30m ish streams.

Warth

You can't get into too much technical detail though. Just look at the last stream. 4/5 of the viewer didn't even remotely understand the usefulness of the landform tool. All they saw was "LMAO 30mins worth of rocks".

You need something to show that's approachable by the general player base.

PenguinPaladin

Warth wrote: »

You can't get into too much technical detail though. Just look at the last stream. 4/5 of the viewer didn't even remotely understand the usefulness of the landform tool. All they saw was "LMAO 30mins worth of rocks".

You need something to show that's approachable by the general player base.

"Lmao 30 minutes worth of rocks." Is what they should show to reflect the progress of development.... people seeing snipits of combat and such and assuming the games 2 years away is not a good move.

The monthly livestreams purpose should be to inform people of the state of the game, not to farm hype for a game this deep in development still.

AidanKD

Warth wrote: »

You can't get into too much technical detail though. Just look at the last stream. 4/5 of the viewer didn't even remotely understand the usefulness of the landform tool. All they saw was "LMAO 30mins worth of rocks".

You need something to show that's approachable by the general player base.

I humoured the idea, but if you go through twitch chat on the stream VOD the majority of people are actually really engaged and interested. So I think your interpretation of "30 mins of rocks" may be one small minority of people, but I personally disagree with your interpretation that most people feel this way - and in fact feel the exact opposite.

It's pretty clear especially with a combo of devs and Steven being a bit more layman - even seeing it in use - that it is going to cut down development time. And that is something that people were happy to see and hear about.

Asraiel

as a player that played in alpha one seeing some new skills is nice and it did show at least 5-7 new skills from the visuals alone and we dont forget to mention that obove all about Ashes of Creations stands the words "suspect to change" so even everything that was shown in the past year still can change.

environment shure is a thing but i like to refer here to other games that had also buitifull environemt but lacked gameplay those games failed big time, on the other side it give many games that lack the visual but have content and even the visual is missing the games does very well.

In creating the environment a lot of it comes from the engine Unreal 5 directly where all the grafic asses are saved and only had to be put together. shure that needs fantasy as well but Interpid doesnt need to create all asses themself travel the world takeing fotos and add it to the collection. the collectin allredy has assets and grafics of over 20 years or game development allredy in it.

even if the ui still isnt final alpha one participants and those that watched vids from then know how the ui did look then and if theres progress they can show. so those who follow the project will see the diffrence. and the game isnt finished in the next 2 years. once alpha two starts is where you can think about a release date.
but for alpha two the full map will be provided and alpha one map was only like 20% of the map with still missing assets, and from what the past year has shown is a snow area (open dungeon), a Palm lake, the river delta, vulcanic and the desert partly in i would say by the look at the map from the wiki thats around 50% of the map only.

and since the dev stream mostly features environment and skins its hard to tell how far the progress elsewhere is of the game. cause there are so many systems planned that interact with eachother:
Religion, Pve Guilds, Player Guilds, Marriage, houseing, crafting, transporting, navel, underwater, dungoen, open dungeons, node stages and what is linked to them like Dungeons or good, and so on

in alpha one we had tank, cleric and mage as characters seeing the missing 5 would be nice, doesnt need to be with augmentation.

Finding players will not be the problem if the game does deliver what it promises, and once alpha two starts and streamers are active ingame new peoples will problably overrun and then is still a beta one and two befor the release. and thats when even more players join in. once it releases it will spike in players. IF the game did become what is said it will. scetics are currently high in the community of mmo-rpg and pc-games in general. to many failed games in the past and even if i hope i cant say "its not a scam" like some other games in the passt. i hope its will be real but i cant say sadly.

Keep up the good work Intrepid

Asraiel

for the cosmetic showcases would be nice to state if the shown cosmetic is a shop skin or a ingame achiveble skin. so peoples easyer would know.

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