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.
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.
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.
Showcase Feedback: For the 1st video
Solvryn
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Intrepid, you are a professional company. People who have been following you, know you have the capacity for some of the best work in the industry.
Today did not reflect that, to start, today seemed like it was less tempering expectations and more pillowing the ground for a soft landing in the beginning of the stream.
Unto the reveal and its production:
Ugly
1. It is extremely unnecessary for an epilogue and storytelling for a professional development reveal on class and combat systems.
Find the time to take the tank, find a mob and showcase the abilities and use whatever support you need from your team to highlight the abilities that are in development.
2. Cut the Fat from your productions, that means less epilogue and storytelling until it's appropriate for those activities, when we're testing the systems of lore for your game. I feel like there was so much unnecessary time spent doing nothing thus making your reveal.
3. The communication between the Studio and the audience is not clear when you do not rehearse your classes or can't even put your classes to practice. More time was spent wiping, blaming others, missing abilities; not really truly understanding the role you're playing. You're creating an MMORPG. That's not just being an entertainer on the screen, that's understanding mechanical function and framework of your class design and the combat you paired with it.
Bad
1. You do not owe your supporters a constant monthly update, but you do owe it to yourselves to put forward your best work. In this case, the production and the reveal. Don't rush anything, the stream could have been put on hold or canceled. Get the sound under control, sound is a massive part of your UI and UX experience and it absolutely contributed to the apocalyptic feedback.
2. Please stop playing like novices. It's a developmental showcase and you want feedback, but its hard to provide feedback when you're entertaining, wiping, whatever it was you were trying to do and failing at showcasing. It doesn't inspire confidence that you know your own game or you even QC it.
3. Today presented a demonstration that perhaps there is a lack of understanding where engineering, design, and human psychology intersect. This isn't uncommon, in fact; even the best and brightest engineers and designers in the world do not understand the psychology of the product they create and often times they fail to make a product that people who will use it will understand.
The UI/UX experience is incredibly important, from the Icon on your desktop, to the launcher, to the character creator and archetype selection, to where we are currently is the combat and class design.
Combat and Class design is the vehicle in which players will interface through the rest of Verra creating those amazing experiences you all plan to deliver, however combat and class design seem to be conceptual.
There are new attribute and effect changes that were not explained prior to the revealing of the latest class design iterations (so we can fundamentally understand what we're supposed to be understanding with the class kits), there are incomplete animations and universal functions (dodge roll and active block). A vehicle needs all wheels on ground with all of the components functioning. Then either a malfunctions in case of the abilities or the AI.
4. Finish your universal skills.
The Horrid
1. Your Mob AI is about functionally useless, work on updating that first before you continue on with your class reveals, inputs matter when the feedback loop from player(s) to AI to player(s) are ultimately broken, unresponsive, or uninteresting. Today, the one thing I saw the most is footage dumbed down by Twitch with crappy AI and it did not do your prototype class and combat design any justice when the mobs are barely functioning. This matters before you upload it to 4k, people can forgive the particle quality of the stream due to Twitch. They will not be so forgiving when it comes to unfun mobs.
2. Margaret is the Director of Communications, a last-minute video hastily and poorly done and given to her to present is unprofessional and inappropriate. Please provide each other with ample amount of time to communicate and present your best work, you have the capacity to be the best in the business, now do so.
The Good
Intrepid, you're among the best and brightest in this industry with the most capacity and potential. Professionalism and exceptionalism is the one expectation of you that does not require temperance on anyones part. Become the gaming giants you have the potential for.
Onto the Tank;
1) You added impact animations, good start. Once they get a few more particle effects and their further flushed out the art will look even better, now make sure your palletes are redone so they match the surrounding world and don't look like a photoshop overlay. Artistic continuity is apart of that UI/UX experience and it will be the first thing players notice if it looks weird.
2) Your aggro design is most definitely a prototype. There's not much to respond to until you fix the AI.
3) I like the skills conceptually, but I feel that until we see the tank functioning well, I cannot provide any further feedback.
Thats the limited feedback I can give on tank based off of what I've seen, today was extremely hard to give feedback to.
Today did not reflect that, to start, today seemed like it was less tempering expectations and more pillowing the ground for a soft landing in the beginning of the stream.
Unto the reveal and its production:
Ugly
1. It is extremely unnecessary for an epilogue and storytelling for a professional development reveal on class and combat systems.
Find the time to take the tank, find a mob and showcase the abilities and use whatever support you need from your team to highlight the abilities that are in development.
2. Cut the Fat from your productions, that means less epilogue and storytelling until it's appropriate for those activities, when we're testing the systems of lore for your game. I feel like there was so much unnecessary time spent doing nothing thus making your reveal.
3. The communication between the Studio and the audience is not clear when you do not rehearse your classes or can't even put your classes to practice. More time was spent wiping, blaming others, missing abilities; not really truly understanding the role you're playing. You're creating an MMORPG. That's not just being an entertainer on the screen, that's understanding mechanical function and framework of your class design and the combat you paired with it.
Bad
1. You do not owe your supporters a constant monthly update, but you do owe it to yourselves to put forward your best work. In this case, the production and the reveal. Don't rush anything, the stream could have been put on hold or canceled. Get the sound under control, sound is a massive part of your UI and UX experience and it absolutely contributed to the apocalyptic feedback.
2. Please stop playing like novices. It's a developmental showcase and you want feedback, but its hard to provide feedback when you're entertaining, wiping, whatever it was you were trying to do and failing at showcasing. It doesn't inspire confidence that you know your own game or you even QC it.
3. Today presented a demonstration that perhaps there is a lack of understanding where engineering, design, and human psychology intersect. This isn't uncommon, in fact; even the best and brightest engineers and designers in the world do not understand the psychology of the product they create and often times they fail to make a product that people who will use it will understand.
The UI/UX experience is incredibly important, from the Icon on your desktop, to the launcher, to the character creator and archetype selection, to where we are currently is the combat and class design.
Combat and Class design is the vehicle in which players will interface through the rest of Verra creating those amazing experiences you all plan to deliver, however combat and class design seem to be conceptual.
There are new attribute and effect changes that were not explained prior to the revealing of the latest class design iterations (so we can fundamentally understand what we're supposed to be understanding with the class kits), there are incomplete animations and universal functions (dodge roll and active block). A vehicle needs all wheels on ground with all of the components functioning. Then either a malfunctions in case of the abilities or the AI.
4. Finish your universal skills.
The Horrid
1. Your Mob AI is about functionally useless, work on updating that first before you continue on with your class reveals, inputs matter when the feedback loop from player(s) to AI to player(s) are ultimately broken, unresponsive, or uninteresting. Today, the one thing I saw the most is footage dumbed down by Twitch with crappy AI and it did not do your prototype class and combat design any justice when the mobs are barely functioning. This matters before you upload it to 4k, people can forgive the particle quality of the stream due to Twitch. They will not be so forgiving when it comes to unfun mobs.
2. Margaret is the Director of Communications, a last-minute video hastily and poorly done and given to her to present is unprofessional and inappropriate. Please provide each other with ample amount of time to communicate and present your best work, you have the capacity to be the best in the business, now do so.
The Good
Intrepid, you're among the best and brightest in this industry with the most capacity and potential. Professionalism and exceptionalism is the one expectation of you that does not require temperance on anyones part. Become the gaming giants you have the potential for.
Onto the Tank;
1) You added impact animations, good start. Once they get a few more particle effects and their further flushed out the art will look even better, now make sure your palletes are redone so they match the surrounding world and don't look like a photoshop overlay. Artistic continuity is apart of that UI/UX experience and it will be the first thing players notice if it looks weird.
2) Your aggro design is most definitely a prototype. There's not much to respond to until you fix the AI.
3) I like the skills conceptually, but I feel that until we see the tank functioning well, I cannot provide any further feedback.
Thats the limited feedback I can give on tank based off of what I've seen, today was extremely hard to give feedback to.
4
Comments
I believe they are on the right route and it may be to do with stephen just being a gamer like the rest of us that he just wants to jump on and play however he definitley needs to put some hours into learning the class and a bit of preperation before these streams go live, id rather just see him tanking level 1 mobs with a big hp pool and focus on showing us abilities, threat, etc, id also like to see the real cooldown numbers on spells to see what type of abilities would be classed as a big "CD", you are right its extremley hard to give feedback with what we saw
I absolutely love Steven Shariff the man, the gamer, and as a person, love when he comes and bullshits in the discord.
But when that Intrepid shirt is on, He's CEO and Creative Director of his company.
The second recording is much better.
I am sure thats been handled.