Thoughts on why a long Alpha 2 is necessary and alpha burnout isn't an issue

Kilion wrote: »

Strevi wrote: »

Kilion wrote: »

Strevi wrote: »

Liniker wrote: »

There's not really a perfect solution here, the most important thing is to get the game balanced, polished and ready for launch, and since the path is with an NDA free alpha with paid access, If people don't want to get their launch experience ruined, the only solution is to just not participate in alpha and beta testing and not watching content about it.

What are your thoughts on this?

I would prefer this paid access to have also a monthly subscription, in addition to the current Voyager Pre-Order Pack price.

Why? The game isn't at the point of being done by then and it seems inappropriate to double charge someone for helping with tests which are heavily reliant on your participation. Even though it is fun, it is kind of work as you basically become part of the development team so to speak and that is quite the opposite of what I would think would warrant paying twice.

Because I want to prevent Steven to claim that the Voyager Pre-Order Pack price is to support developers rather than keeping the servers up and refuse offering the alpha 2 soon.
Also I do not want to abuse his pockets even if are endless. Let him use his money to pay even more developers.
And finally by agreeing to charge a monthly subscription would maybe make him presenting all the unfinished parts of the game in a somewhat decent shape which makes sense.
Edit: also a long beta without subscription would look like those pay to play games supported by selling cosmetics and then switching to the intended subscription might cause complaints, players trying to delay the release, saying that was not ready, developers greedy etc.

I have a few questions about that. Why would he deliberately delay the Alpha 2 longer than he has to when every month of unreleased development is a net loss to him and him only? Why do you suspect Steven is making excuses regarding the financing? It seems a bit odd to follow something where the person in charge seemingly is not to be trusted. And why would you be concerned about his money if Steven himself seems to be 'abusing his pockets' as you put it? Maybe my lacking english skills are showing here but I fail to make sense of you said here.

Why would a monthly subscription fee for an Alpha compel or force him and Intrepid to present unfinished features? And why would he agree to double charge for Alpha 2 access when that leads to them having to do something they clearly do not want to?

The Wiki suggests that the Beta Phase has been planned for quite some time to be 'short' and I suspect that is meant in comparison to the Alpha phases.

We talked quite a bit across various threats but you lost me on this one, I genuinely can't figure out the overarching sense behind this one or where you are getting with this really. I understood you want double payment for Alpha 2 access but beyond that... its just a big question mark for me sorry.

I think the beta phase will be short compared to other games which go through the beta.
The game was announced in 2017 and after they failed to meet the deadline for the kickstarters, they switched to the attitude of "when is ready". If Steven would want himself to offer the game in alpha 2 for a long time, I would have no issue. But I doubt such a thing is intended. I think the alpha 2 is not not intended to be longer than 9-10 months and that moment is sometime in the far future. And this thread tries to change those plans.
We don't know the state of many game mechanics and I oppose them to show a mix of not finished things just to satisfy the curiosity of players. We may be arroganly think we know better than they know what they should do, but a first iteration for those things must exist (the map, quests, ship combat, crafting...)
If they really need some specific feedback, they could give limited access to a few non streamers under NDA.

The game was announced in 2017 and after they failed to meet the deadline for the kickstarters, they switched to the attitude of "when is ready".

Yes, but what else did you expect them to do? Try to make promises about a release while they have to still build their team during 2 years of lockdown? Make new promises that were just as speculative as the ones before? Possibly put their development teams under ridiculous pressure again and again for a new release date they don't know whether or not it's realistic?

If Steven would want himself to offer the game in alpha 2 for a long time, I would have no issue. But I doubt such a thing is intended. I think the alpha 2 is not not intended to be longer than 9-10 months

Alpha 2 servers are said to be persistent so I'm not sure where you got your information from that the time would be limited unless you mean that it will take 10 months from Alpha 2 to full release; unless of course my reading skills have completely left my body.

We don't know the state of many game mechanics and I oppose them to show a mix of not finished things just to satisfy the curiosity of players.

So you don't think the open development process was a good idea?

If they really need some specific feedback, they could give limited access to a few non streamers under NDA.

Isn't that what they are doing? As far as I am aware it has been said that spot tests are taking place under NDAs.

I think they did the right thing when they didn't make new promises about the next phases especially during the lockdowns where it was far from clear how things will go from then on. To me it was the right decision to offer - offer not compel! - people to see how things are going by putting out little livestreams along the way. If some people can't handle watching that because they are not interested in the development process - they shouldn't watch. Sure, development has been slow from what we saw, but I don't see the issue with that since to me it seems what they have been doing is developing primarily tools which will help them design now at a high pace without losing out on quality.

There is nothing in the Alpha 2 key package that informs players the might be charged extra for participating in the tests, so I think trying to change that now would be akin to a scam, especially since its for testing a game, so the focus is not to just have fun.

All things considered, the only thing that I am really surprised about is the amount of animosity this community has recently shown towards Intrepid for trying to offer an insight into the development process. Again - if someone is not interested in the development - don't watch livestreams about development. You can't go to a butcher to moan for the lack of vegan options either.

Alpha 2 is what streamers and youtubers and through them 90% of people will base their opinion on Ashes of Creation on.

If the Alpha 2 is bare bones, very unpolished and with very little content, that will make the public turn away from Ashes.

For this reason I do not believe they can afford to approach this from a purely technical point of view.

Alpha 2 needs to come out reasonably polished and with enough content to make streamers and youtubers go ''wohooo, let's go for some more''.

It at the least needs the classes (combat, especially combat), the node system (including sieges) and the caravan system to be in an impressive state.

Together with a couple of polished, difficulty-adaptive dungeons and some good quality questing and lvling zones.

For this reason I sincerely doubt A2 is anywhere near and I would be extremely surprised if it hits us in Q1 of 2024, yet alone 2023 (I see no chance of a 2023 A2).

Intrepid has a lot of work to do.

Blip

We are fussing over a non-existing issue.

mmo-rpgs take ages to make.

Between 7 and 10 years of active development, by already established studios

We are nowhere near that with Ashes of Creation.

They seem to have actually entered active development in 2020 (Covd realistically didn't help much either) by making a studio from scratch.

If Intrepid just worked like a normal studio we would just forget about AOC until Alpha 2 at the least.

So we wouldn't be fussing over it, it wouldn't seem like an eternity, it would just hit us one day almost without expectation.

Instead Intrepid is going out of its way to have an open development, with all the advantages and disadvantages.

If ''waiting'' for AOC stresses you out, then just get out of the Intrepid media-loop and forget about the thing and one day in 2025/2026 you will see it explode on YouTube and be like ''ohh, yeah, I remember, awesome, guess I can go play it now''.

Ludullu

Ironhope wrote: »

If the Alpha 2 is bare bones, very unpolished and with very little content, that will make the public turn away from Ashes.

NW had a shitty beta. Then they waited a year. And they sold FUCKING 4.5 MIL FIRST MONTH and apparently 25 fucking mil uptill now.

That's for $40 for a game that was known to have 0 content on release, then had an absolute shitton of problems for the first year after release and just now starting to turn things around.

I cannot imagine how much Intrepid would have to fuck things up to not get millions of people to at least try a month of the game. Literally no one will care if alpha2 looks like shit.

Even if that 25mil figure is sales and not units (cause it's written confusingly), it's still crazy how many units they sold, considering the quality of that game.

Not only did they have a shitty Beta they also announced they were going to be P2W and they were extremely insincere and hypocrithical about it.

And yes they still did relatively well.

The thing is, if they had a polished beta and did not announce the P2W stuff they would have done much better.

NiKr wrote: »

I cannot imagine how much Intrepid would have to fuck things up to not get millions of people to at least try a month of the game. Literally no one will care if alpha2 looks like shit.

Did you find Narc's copium stash and snort it all before he could react NiK?

Millions of people will see AOC for the first time through the streamers and youtubers who will check it out and will not give AOC a second shot if they don't get a good impression then and there.

Your average gamer Joe is physically incapable of understanding what an Alpha is and that a lot can change betewen Alpha 2 and release date. They are utterly incapable of it no matter how much it is explained.

If Alpha 2 doesn't look great, public impression about it will go sour from then onward.

Intrepid has to release and do stuff for testing eventually anyway.

Might as well wait a while longer to release it in a better state for the public to make a good impression out of it.

What is the alternative? Give in to ree-ing copium addicts on forums? Yeah, that doesn't sound too smart.

I (for their sake and ours) hope they will just wait and throw a decent A2 at us, one to make a good impression.

Personally I don't think they have a choice.

Those here thinking this project is founded to completion are not only high on copium but they don't understand the basics of mmo-development.

Mmo-rpgs dont only take huge amounts of time to make but also cash and AOC is a particularly ambitious project.

They will need to sell as much A2 keys as possibe.

Releasing a polished A2 can make the difference between selling 10.000 or 200.000 keys.

Not to mention that if the A2 makes a good impression, sales of cosmetics and such will go through the roof.

They need those tens of millions, especially with the economic shocks projected to hit the global economy in the next years.

They can't afford to release a mess of an A2.

I hope they're wise enough to realize this.

A2 isn't coming this year and 2025 release is quite optimistic at this point. Both things are for the better.

Ludullu

Ironhope wrote: »

They can't afford to release a mess of an A2.

I hope they're wise enough to realize this.

After 2 years, the biggest video is still only 2.6mil. And I bet that most people that saw that video have forgotten about the game. And I'm sure that if alpha2 comes out as it should - an alpha, people will just forget about the game again until it comes out.

And when the game comes out, all those people will just come back and play the game. Just as it happened with NW.

Blip wrote: »

Yes - And not one second earlier. I plan on dying in peace. Meaning ingame XD

Kilion wrote: »

We don't know the state of many game mechanics and I oppose them to show a mix of not finished things just to satisfy the curiosity of players.

So you don't think the open development process was a good idea?

Open to people like you who have great ideas sure.
Open to streamers and youtubers... not so sure.
Open to WoW and FFXIV players... no.

Kilion wrote: »

The game was announced in 2017 and after they failed to meet the deadline for the kickstarters, they switched to the attitude of "when is ready".

Yes, but what else did you expect them to do? Try to make promises about a release while they have to still build their team during 2 years of lockdown? Make new promises that were just as speculative as the ones before? Possibly put their development teams under ridiculous pressure again and again for a new release date they don't know whether or not it's realistic?
...
I think they did the right thing when they didn't make new promises about the next phases especially during the lockdowns where it was far from clear how things will go from then on. To me it was the right decision to offer - offer not compel! - people to see how things are going by putting out little livestreams along the way. If some people can't handle watching that because they are not interested in the development process - they shouldn't watch. Sure, development has been slow from what we saw, but I don't see the issue with that since to me it seems what they have been doing is developing primarily tools which will help them design now at a high pace without losing out on quality.

I think the lockdown had little impact on software development in general. Their delay have other reasons.
I understand they learned to avoid giving deadlines. I don't blame them for that.

Kilion wrote: »

If Steven would want himself to offer the game in alpha 2 for a long time, I would have no issue. But I doubt such a thing is intended. I think the alpha 2 is not not intended to be longer than 9-10 months

Alpha 2 servers are said to be persistent so I'm not sure where you got your information from that the time would be limited unless you mean that it will take 10 months from Alpha 2 to full release; unless of course my reading skills have completely left my body.

The link you provided says
Persistent means that the Alpha-2 servers will be kept up all day and night until launch.[1]
I also understand it will be free of charge.
Therefore I cannot assume it will take 5 years or as long as needed.
But their attitude of "when is ready" does not give us a clue how much work remains. I assume there is still a lot of work until release. Others here on forum think the same:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/388833/#Comment_388833

I don't want to be a jerk and demand access to persistent servers which "will be kept up all day and night until launch" for free a few years long. I would rather pay subscription. But then, if IS agrees for such a change, then I expect them to provide a decent environment, even if not optimized and full of bugs. By decent I mean the the core elements of the game, the so called pillars should exist (except the story). At least the node wars, caravans, crafting and 4-5 classes. And NPCs to kill.

Kilion wrote: »

There is nothing in the Alpha 2 key package that informs players the might be charged extra for participating in the tests, so I think trying to change that now would be akin to a scam, especially since its for testing a game, so the focus is not to just have fun.

...

Kilion wrote: »

All things considered, the only thing that I am really surprised about is the amount of animosity this community has recently shown towards Intrepid for trying to offer an insight into the development process. Again - if someone is not interested in the development - don't watch livestreams about development. You can't go to a butcher to moan for the lack of vegan options either.

I don't know about the animosity. I guess you mean reaction to the tank presented recently. I cannot comment on that as I was not reading those posts.

I am confident IS can adjust the tank as needed.
But animosity is a good reason to keep the gates to an Alpha 2 closed until they are prepared

Liniker

NiKr wrote: »

And I'm sure that if alpha2 comes out as it should - an alpha, people will just forget about the game again until it comes out.

And when the game comes out, all those people will just come back and play the game. Just as it happened with NW.

Exactly!

Strevi wrote: »

Open to people like you who have great ideas sure.
Open to streamers and youtubers... not so sure.
Open to WoW and FFXIV players... no.

I appreciate the compliment, but that's not really something they can filter for without breaking every right to privacy that exists. Intrepid cannot act based on what might be desirable, only based on what is actually possible. And it is possible to charge people a solid amount of 250$ to even get an Alpha 2 key. How many people still actively playing WoW or FF14 are going to do that?
Influencers? Sure, there is a reason why they almost sound like a disease and for sure the Lord of the ever twitching eyebrows Asmongold will flood his fans with livestreams about it and maybe tell them again how terrible it is that people in Ashes can have agency over other peoples game experience XD

Suffice to say, the pay wall will keep a good portion out but not everyone at that's the best we can hope for. Other than that I'll just keep away from anything but the subreddit and forums here.

Strevi wrote: »

The link you provided says
Persistent means that the Alpha-2 servers will be kept up all day and night until launch.[1]
I also understand it will be free of charge.
Therefore I cannot assume it will take 5 years or as long as needed.
But their attitude of "when is ready" does not give us a clue how much work remains. I assume there is still a lot of work until release. Others here on forum think the same:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/388833/#Comment_388833

I think thats a bit over the top pessimistic. I would agree if you or Liniker would have said they need to improve their communication regarding the building of tools, even though I assume that people haven't shown much interest in the technical part of the development process, they want gameplay footage and more gameplay footage. Intrepid wants to show bits of the current process and has continuously stated that they do not plan on revealing things that cannot be exactly revealed, like systems which you can't just show, those need to be experienced. Also depending on how viewer numbers did during livestreams that had more technical interviews explaining the tools e.g. developed for creating new assets in UE5.1 they might have determined that it does not really make a lot of sense showing off something people don't want to here about despite its significance for the overall development speed.

And that's where I see the biggest issue. Since I've been watching I have picked up again and again hints about how Intrepid was building new tools to have multiple people working on the same part of the project at the same time. If I had to guess, the reason why the quantity of "content" seemed low it is primarily due to that. The technical team had to learn from the designers how they would go about creating landscape, textures, skills, gear etc and then build a tool that makes that process easier. They give that tool to the designer, they give feedback and give it back to the technical team, they improve it, the designers approve of the tool now working in a way they can use it and from then on design speed is twice as fast as before (arbitrary number). So in my opinion, with every tool they have built but not shown because nobody seems interested in that, the actual development speed has kicked up significantly. I wouldn't be surprised if the map is +60% done (probably primarily lacking the island & ocean landscapes) and the teams are slowly starting to work more extensively on the classes, augmentations and so on. It's also just a guess but I think that the tools they have been building will make 2023 a very efficient year in development process as they can put their nose to the grind stone.

Strevi wrote: »

But animosity is a good reason to keep the gates to an Alpha 2 closed until they are prepared

Which I agree with. But I don't think charging people a second time will help them get the value they need out of the Alpha 2.

NiKr wrote: »

After 2 years, the biggest video is still only 2.6mil.

Combined, the mentioned videos alone have 6 million views, which is in itself only a small part of the nr of views all content creators on YouTube, Twitch, etc have gathered so far.

To way you pretend like this is nothing is just ridiculous. Brands will pay huge sums of money to get seen by such numbers, not as elaborate presentations, but as annoying adds to be dismissed in a moment.

A fraction of these viewers buying alpha 2 keys would have a world's difference for Intrepid. Not to mention the numbers of people who would buy cosmetics too. It would translate in tens of millions of dollars.

NiKr wrote: »

And I bet that most people that saw that video have forgotten about the game.

I'm sorry but that's just a ridiculous (baseless) assumption on your part.

If people are left with a possitive impression they aren't going to forget sht, they're going to want more.

It's how games in general get their playerbase.

NiKr wrote: »

And I'm sure that if alpha2 comes out as it should - an alpha, people will just forget about the game again until it comes out.

It should come out with enough content and polished enough to give a good impression and leave people wanting more, way more.

NiKr wrote: »

And when the game comes out, all those people will just come back and play the game. Just as it happened with NW.

NW lost huge % of its potential playerbase in these periods, you absolutely do not want AOC to follow in NW's steps

Kilion wrote: »

Strevi wrote: »

Open to people like you who have great ideas sure.
Open to streamers and youtubers... not so sure.
Open to WoW and FFXIV players... no.

I appreciate the compliment, but that's not really something they can filter for without breaking every right to privacy that exists. Intrepid cannot act based on what might be desirable, only based on what is actually possible. And it is possible to charge people a solid amount of 250$ to even get an Alpha 2 key. How many people still actively playing WoW or FF14 are going to do that?
Influencers? Sure, there is a reason why they almost sound like a disease and for sure the Lord of the ever twitching eyebrows Asmongold will flood his fans with livestreams about it and maybe tell them again how terrible it is that people in Ashes can have agency over other peoples game experience XD

Suffice to say, the pay wall will keep a good portion out but not everyone at that's the best we can hope for. Other than that I'll just keep away from anything but the subreddit and forums here.

Strevi wrote: »

The link you provided says
Persistent means that the Alpha-2 servers will be kept up all day and night until launch.[1]
I also understand it will be free of charge.
Therefore I cannot assume it will take 5 years or as long as needed.
But their attitude of "when is ready" does not give us a clue how much work remains. I assume there is still a lot of work until release. Others here on forum think the same:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/388833/#Comment_388833

I think thats a bit over the top pessimistic. I would agree if you or Liniker would have said they need to improve their communication regarding the building of tools, even though I assume that people haven't shown much interest in the technical part of the development process, they want gameplay footage and more gameplay footage. Intrepid wants to show bits of the current process and has continuously stated that they do not plan on revealing things that cannot be exactly revealed, like systems which you can't just show, those need to be experienced. Also depending on how viewer numbers did during livestreams that had more technical interviews explaining the tools e.g. developed for creating new assets in UE5.1 they might have determined that it does not really make a lot of sense showing off something people don't want to here about despite its significance for the overall development speed.

And that's where I see the biggest issue. Since I've been watching I have picked up again and again hints about how Intrepid was building new tools to have multiple people working on the same part of the project at the same time. If I had to guess, the reason why the quantity of "content" seemed low it is primarily due to that. The technical team had to learn from the designers how they would go about creating landscape, textures, skills, gear etc and then build a tool that makes that process easier. They give that tool to the designer, they give feedback and give it back to the technical team, they improve it, the designers approve of the tool now working in a way they can use it and from then on design speed is twice as fast as before (arbitrary number). So in my opinion, with every tool they have built but not shown because nobody seems interested in that, the actual development speed has kicked up significantly. I wouldn't be surprised if the map is +60% done (probably primarily lacking the island & ocean landscapes) and the teams are slowly starting to work more extensively on the classes, augmentations and so on. It's also just a guess but I think that the tools they have been building will make 2023 a very efficient year in development process as they can put their nose to the grind stone.

Strevi wrote: »

But animosity is a good reason to keep the gates to an Alpha 2 closed until they are prepared

Which I agree with. But I don't think charging people a second time will help them get the value they need out of the Alpha 2.

There was actually a stream showing tools they made, which speed up the modeling. I think was last summer, when they shown the sand momma

I cannot link it now that I write on mobile.

Regarding the rest of the post, I am not sure if there is any more to clarify.
If you say you expect big progress then maybe Alpha 2 will actually be short, 9-10 months only, as I think it is worth being open for us to test. Then no monthly subscription is needed.
I say such a subscription should exist only if - the alpha 2 take longer than that
- and Steven doesn't want to keep the servers online that long

I don't want the subscription to exist in order to be a paywall but because I see it fair for a game which intends to be a subscription based game. Those who can afford to play it after release, can afford it now too.
The Voyager Pre-Order Pack price includes some subscription time after lunch but the rest of the money is not for us to decide how should be used.

If you say it should be used to keep the Alpha 2 servers up for 2-3 years instead of paying additional developers, I do not support you.

Why would you play an unfinished game so long anyway?

Edit: the subscription after release should be high enough to bring a profit and sustain further development. Before release, I want a lower subscription which would just cover the servers running cost, including having GMs.
Those who want to support paying developers before alpha should buy cosmetics.
My wish would be after release, the subscription to be high enough to be unnecessary to sell cosmetics. But I know this is not going to happen.

daveywavey

Regarding burnout:

I think the players that have bought into Alpha-2 because "they want to play the game" are more likely to burn out. They're just impatient.

The players that have bought into Alpha-2 because they want to help test the game and help improve it for release, will be fine. They've accepted what they're getting into.

As long as there are enough of the 'testing' group, I don't suppose it really matters how many from the 'playing' group end up burning out.

Strevi wrote: »

There was actually a stream showing tools they made, which speed up the modeling. I think was last summer, when they shown the sand momma
I cannot link it now that I write on mobile.

Don't worry, I know the one, but that part was actually the one where I heard people say "booooring" about and the community managers will 100% have picked up the feedback of the community just like they did after the Tank livestream. I suspect that we have seen much less about the tools than Intrepid could have shown us by now.

Strevi wrote: »

If you say you expect big progress then maybe Alpha 2 will actually be short

I expect Intrepid to build the world way faster with these tools than they could do before. But that doesn't mean that Alpha 2 will speed because of that - because the Alpha 2 is not just a phase you do because you promised those pesky customers something to play with.

They have to seriously put the core mechanics to the test and that takes time. Even if the rest of the world map is done 1 month after Alpha 2 started, if the core mechanics of the game aren't fully tested, there is no reason to cut the Alpha short, it has to continue to collect data in the confines of the environment.

So a faster designing process does not equal a shorter Alpha 2 to me.

Strevi wrote: »

Those who can afford to play it after release, can afford it now too.

The people who who have Alpha 2 keys have already paid for it. That is why I repeatedly said: It would double charge the Alpha Key buyers. And it's not just "playing the game" it is a test phase for the fundamental systems of what will at some point become the game. Charging double for that would EA level scumbaggery.

Strevi wrote: »

Edit: the subscription after release should be high enough to bring a profit and sustain further development. Before release, I want a lower subscription which would just cover the servers running cost, including having GMs.
Those who want to support paying developers before alpha should buy cosmetics.
My wish would be after release, the subscription to be high enough to be unnecessary to sell cosmetics. But I know this is not going to happen.

I made a very simplified calculation multiple times to get an understanding of what it would take for Intrepid to run this game at a profit and with just subscriptions of 15$ a month alone 250'000 players would be enough. That is FAR from anything WoW has as an active player base (see reference here). Again, Steven said he had this projects development covered from the get got and there is no need to put unnecessary extra bills on Alpha testers. It makes no sense, it harms the goal of the Alpha 2.

Kilion wrote: »

Strevi wrote: »

Those who can afford to play it after release, can afford it now too.

The people who who have Alpha 2 keys have already paid for it. That is why I repeatedly said: It would double charge the Alpha Key buyers. And it's not just "playing the game" it is a test phase for the fundamental systems of what will at some point become the game. Charging double for that would EA level scumbaggery.

It is not mentioned how long the Alpha 2 will last. I think they should keep it short, like 9-10 months long and then they can avoid also the "scumbaggery" argument you mention (which I don't see it important).
There will also be Betas, where they can still balance things.

What do you see as a core mechanic which could change during Alpha 2?
For me core mechanics are things like flagging/corruption, which should not be changed into an opt-in flag like New World did during testing.
But I agree, because core mechanics the game can fail.

Ludullu

Ironhope wrote: »

Combined, the mentioned videos alone have 6 million views, which is in itself only a small part of the nr of views all content creators on YouTube, Twitch, etc have gathered so far.

And yet their stream vods barely break 90k on YT and on twitch they only get a few thousands viewers. Even Asmon's reactions get ~300k views, which is in line with views on his other vids so it's mostly the same people watching Ashes news instead of new ones.

And I'm sure that the "6mil" number you imply is also pretty much same people, just distributed across different channels.

Ironhope wrote: »

A fraction of these viewers buying alpha 2 keys would have a world's difference for Intrepid. Not to mention the numbers of people who would buy cosmetics too. It would translate in tens of millions of dollars.

And they have already bought in. 100k in fact. And even more people will buy in when alpha2 releases. But they won't really care what form alpha2 comes in. But the hardcore audience might care. Because Steven has been yelling about "true alpha this true alpha that", but if they release an alpha2 that feels like an almost finished game - that's literally the same marketing trick as all the other companies do. So Intrepid would be no better than any other corpo trash or EA scam.

Ironhope wrote: »

I'm sorry but that's just a ridiculous (baseless) assumption on your part.

If people are left with a possitive impression they aren't going to forget sht, they're going to want more.

It's how games in general get their playerbase.

I addressed this in the first part of this comment.

Ironhope wrote: »

It should come out with enough content and polished enough to give a good impression and leave people wanting more, way more.

Addressed in the second part of this comment.

Ironhope wrote: »

NW lost huge % of its potential playerbase in these periods, you absolutely do not want AOC to follow in NW's steps

NW lost its playerbase because it was a shit game. They showed off a shitty BETA (not alpha) and then released the same shitty game. If Ashes does the same - they'll suffer the same fate. But we're not talking about the release or the beta. We're talking about alpha2 and Intrepid has been saying over and over again that they're doing a "true development alpha" where the game is unfinished and there's bugs and crashes and all that good testing stuff.

If they release a polished product as alpha2 - that would mean they've been lying this whole time and have turned to the same shitty marketing that pretty much every other current company exploits. And imo they're already on that path.

NiKr wrote: »

Ironhope wrote: »

Combined, the mentioned videos alone have 6 million views, which is in itself only a small part of the nr of views all content creators on YouTube, Twitch, etc have gathered so far.

And yet their stream vods barely break 90k on YT and on twitch they only get a few thousands viewers. Even Asmon's reactions get ~300k views, which is in line with views on his other vids so it's mostly the same people watching Ashes news instead of new ones.

And I'm sure that the "6mil" number you imply is also pretty much same people, just distributed across different channels.

Ironhope wrote: »

A fraction of these viewers buying alpha 2 keys would have a world's difference for Intrepid. Not to mention the numbers of people who would buy cosmetics too. It would translate in tens of millions of dollars.

And they have already bought in. 100k in fact. And even more people will buy in when alpha2 releases. But they won't really care what form alpha2 comes in. But the hardcore audience might care. Because Steven has been yelling about "true alpha this true alpha that", but if they release an alpha2 that feels like an almost finished game - that's literally the same marketing trick as all the other companies do. So Intrepid would be no better than any other corpo trash or EA scam.

Ironhope wrote: »

I'm sorry but that's just a ridiculous (baseless) assumption on your part.

If people are left with a possitive impression they aren't going to forget sht, they're going to want more.

It's how games in general get their playerbase.

I addressed this in the first part of this comment.

Ironhope wrote: »

It should come out with enough content and polished enough to give a good impression and leave people wanting more, way more.

Addressed in the second part of this comment.

Ironhope wrote: »

NW lost huge % of its potential playerbase in these periods, you absolutely do not want AOC to follow in NW's steps

NW lost its playerbase because it was a shit game. They showed off a shitty BETA (not alpha) and then released the same shitty game. If Ashes does the same - they'll suffer the same fate. But we're not talking about the release or the beta. We're talking about alpha2 and Intrepid has been saying over and over again that they're doing a "true development alpha" where the game is unfinished and there's bugs and crashes and all that good testing stuff.

If they release a polished product as alpha2 - that would mean they've been lying this whole time and have turned to the same shitty marketing that pretty much every other current company exploits. And imo they're already on that path.

If they promised to build the game together with players and providing them updates, these streams are not the kind of updates players commonly expect. I've seen this trick used before by a small indie dev. His development was just a scam pretending to be an early access.