Greetings, glorious testers!
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Id just make characters on both servers, unless they don't let you do that.
Alpha-1 allowed you to make characters on as many servers as you wanted. I had Resna, Norlan, Lyneth, ??? (probably Tenok), and they only mentioned those four in the server status announcements. (No idea why the wiki's screenshoter had more options.) That does seem to imply I could've played in both US-East and EU-West if I wanted to, though.
Once Alpha 2 comes out we need a thread for all of us forum regulars to plan on which servers to play-test together for extra fun
True I haven't developed a game but I do understand businesses as I have ran a few. When setting up a business plan you consider the cash on hand, the working capitol, and what it will cover. The income stream is cash coming in based on billable items going out.
What you are saying is the skins are the billable items going out. This is factually incorrect because Steven has stated this game is already funded to completion, no need for anyone to purchase anything. Steven is no stranger to business which means these packages were considered ahead of time and factored into the overall cost and covered by the investment capitol he had set aside for this project. This means the money from those skins was never designated to fund anything. The alternative is he does need the money to continue development of the project and he has lied to us. I do not feel that is the case at all.
If you are someone working a piece meal job then yes, your pay would be directly related to the work you did. Since I don not know the inner working of Intrepid I can't say with 100% certainty but I am 99% sure the people making these skins are employed directly through Intrepid and are not working piece meal. If they weren't employed by Intrepid then yes the money income could very well be funding those projects but the cost to Intrepid would most likely be considerably higher as well.
You are right that having a cash shop doesn't mean less skins in the game. It just means less skins people have access to if they can't afford it. That's always a fun prospect for people that like what someone is wearing but don't have the funds.
Just as a side question, you said "I dont think you understand development very well." Could you provide your background in game development so that I can better understand your authority in making that statement.
Development of assets isn't being separated out for these sets. They're part of the gear that's being made for the game proper.
He has also said the current packs are there purely for people that wish to support the game, and suggested to people to not buy them unless support is their main motivator.
As pointed out in the above post, the character skins created for pre-order packs are being used in the game, and so are a part of regular development.
I'm curious, in all of your businesses that you have run, have you ever spun up a new business unit?
Steven has that covered.
no, he doesnt. he doesnt have unlimited money. he has a cash flow though, but not sure if he makes more than what he spends every month.
i think he said it himself, the game is funded through completion as long as he the development doesnt extend for too long.
You asked what would happen if development of the game goes 2 years longer than expected.
I said Steven has that covered.
Now, unless you are think that two years of game development time would require unlimited money, I am not at all sure how tou could think that I said Steven had unlimited money.
And indeed he did say that the game is funded as long as it doesnt extend for too long. Two years past the planned date isn't too long - and so is within the scope of what he has covered.
Now, based on your reply to me, it seems the question you thought you were asking is more along the lines of "what happens of the games development goes so far past what is expected that Steven can not cover for it, what happens?".
I didn't offer up an answer to this question, because it is not the question you asked. If you are looking for answers to a specific question, you should probably ask THAT question, esther than a different question - which seems to be what you did here
i thought it would be obvious that i was referring to an unspecified amount of time when i mentioned 3 different amounts when i said one year or 2, or even month. i might as well have said 5 years, 10, 2.5, etc. i guess next time ill just list every possible number there is to make it more clear.
2 years past the planned date is a long time...specially when you are paying 100 people. you dont know how much money he has, how much he makes from other sources and how much he is spending every month, unless you secretely do and you arent sharing
my point was, that the packages can help fund the game
You guys are crazy! The equivalent in my country would be 7000USD. and i am even very hesitant to even buy the smallest pack and i do well over min wage...
It is probably costing Intrepid around $175,000 a week to operate right now (low end estimate, I am not factoring in things like software licenses). We may be able to fund a weeks worth of development a year via cosmetics.
It is hard to change prices based on the IP address. It is very easy to cheat the system with any VPN.
The problem is that the packs are far too expensive considering the absence of a precise release date for the Alphas/Betas/final game, the absence of a participation system in the development of the game with votes.
For 375$ we are entitled to have a precise calendar of deadlines without which the packs will not attract many customers.
Or at least offer the pack holders the possibility to actively participate in the development of the game with the guarantee that the feedbacks will be considered. We have all participated in Alphas/Betas with reported bugs that were never taken into account and that remain a year after the release of a game.
I'm paying $375 now, without skin cosmetics, just for access to Alphas/Betas if I can be guaranteed that my feedbacks will be considered.
The 375$ pacl offers
Access to future Alpha Two test phase (No release date)
Access to future Beta One test phase (No release date)
Access to future Beta Two test phase No release date
9 months of game time ($135 value) Ok good point
$125 in Embers (in-game marketplace credits, NO P2W!) Excellent point that there is no P2W
The Grapoon (Accessory Cosmetic Skin) not bad
Various cosmetic skins blablabla. Ok but many players doesnt care about skins
Name reservation. Good point
No.
Saying this tells me you simply shouldnt buy a pack, as you dont actually care about the game.
If you care about the game, you will want Intrepid to release each stage when it is ready, and not a moment before. If you care, you wouldn't want Intrepid to be beholden to what essentially amounts to a best guess for each date.
That is why these packs are supporter packs, they are there for the people that wish to support Intrepid/Ashes, not just for people that want to get in to the game now.
People that just want to play the game can wait until it is ready. You aren't going to be pleased with the alpha state of the game anyway.
As to you saying if you pay $375 your feedback should be considered - I will ask you why good feedback from someone that hasn't paid anything should NOT be considered?
I've put some money in to Ashes because I want the game to be the best it can be. That means waiting for it to be ready, and it means accepting that us back-seat developers dont know what the fuck we are talking about, and should leave decisions on game design to the people that are literal experts in that specific field.
TL;DR... if supporting Intrepid is not your main goal in buying a supporter pack, dont buy a supporter pack.
If you are breaking down the contents of said pack to see if it is worth your money, if you are expecting your voice to be louder for buying a pack, or if you are expecting a date as to when you can get in to the game, then your main goal in buying a pack is not to support Intrepid, and you probably shouldnt then consider buying a supporter pack.
There are fans and there are clients. A game cannot get founded only by fans. It needs also clients.
And can you explain me how someone who didnt buy the packs can make a significant feedback without playing the game ?
You need to pay to have access to Alpha/Beta
And also according to you, « supporting » means only financial support. But « supporting » is also bug report, balance test, gameplay suggestions etc…
Your point of view seems naive, and you seem to be offended by my topic.
Indeed.
Supporter packs are for fans. This should be obvious.
Clients come when there is a product for them. Again, this should be obvious.
Why would you want to be a client of a company with no product or service?
It's not like you miss out on playing the game if you don't back it now.
I mean, if all you want to be is a 'client', why are you even here when we are literally years away from release?
According to you people who don't buy pack should send feedbacks without any possibility to test the game. It makes no sense.
Now you deny the fact that any sale makes the buyer a customer. You need to get out of your little Care Bear bubble because you're not going to play this game alone. I'm also interested in Ashes of Creation )
The game is apparently already funded, but that doesn't mean the investment is recouped. And for my part, I'm not going to ask your permission to have my own vision of my little investment of 375$.
I am so happy that you are not part of the commercial staff, It would be the assured bankruptcy.
As to your comment that I am now denying the fact that a sale makes the buyer a customer - well, a quick search would tell you that I haven't used that word in this thread prior to this post - so obviously that isnt something I have said.
Please refrain from restating others statements and presenting them as if your restatement of them is the statement that was made.
What I said was that fans are the clients come later. In order to be a client (note; client, not customer, learn to read), one needs to be using the product or service of a other. Just buying it doesnt make you a client - using it does.
Now, unless you are using a product developer by Intrepid, you are not currently a client of theirs. You may be a customer, but not a client.
This is why restating others statements is bad form. I'm sure (quite sure, in fact) that you thought client and customer were the same thing.
They are not.
Writing a lot is like shouting loudly, it doesn't make your words more relevant. And developing your argument around the difference between a customer and a client shows that you are out of ideas.
In this particular case, ideas are more important than semantics. And my idea is to sell a maximum of packs to make money money '"bro", with or without the toxic people who have populated the forums since the beginning of time.
Not sure where you are going with that question but, I have run shops, delivery, CS, project manager, set up new branches in new locations, organized the processes in which everyone interacted, and in 2 places I was the GM. Not sure what you meant by unit. Can you clarify that? Was this tying into this convo somehow?
You didn't answer my previous question, "Could you provide your background in game development so that I can better understand your authority in making that statement."
No matter, this just requires a minor adjustment in order to make it easier for you to understand.
Ok, so, imagine you are running a retail shop. Maybe you're selling shoes, because that fits my example.
With each pair of shoes, you give out some shoe laces - your manufacturer seems to have forgotten about them for our purposes here today.
However, you also sell shoe laces for people that want something else. Perhaps they want a different color, perhaps they want the ability to have different laces in the same shoe on different days - not really our concern why people want different laces.
What you are saying is that if you buy a pair of shoes, you should get as many sets of laces as you want.
As a store owner, the shoe laces you bought to go with shoes are not something you want or intend to see a return. You have them because they are essential to your customers using your product, and so you simply give them out.
However, the laces you purchase in order to sell, you expect to see a return on these. They are not the same shoelace inventory as those you give out for free.
If you have run businesses, I have to assume you understand this.
As to your earliercomments about how there is no need for anyone to purchase anything because the game is fully funded, you seem to have ignored the possibility here that perhaps this is the beginning of Steven making a return on his investment.
If the game is fully funded, and on top of that Steven hired an artist to create these cosmetics, if the sales of that art covers the cost to produce it and the rest is pocketed by Steven, what's the issue?
Like, you complained that the cost to produce these assets must be coming from the games development fund (which realistically it should, since the assets will be used in game), but you seem to have not considered the fact that perhaps these cosmetics are simply a self funded side project.
I mean, again, if the cosmetics on offer right now are paying their own way, being used in the game on NPC's and such, and Steven is simply considering the excess revenue from said cosmetics as a return on his investment, what is the issue?