Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Cosmetics from store or found in game will change the look.
Asmon's critique was very specifically about the Highwayman Hills Ruins seen in the recent Cleric demo.
He didn't make the general statement that Ashes of Creation looks generic.
And he didn't make the absolute statement that all of the Ashes graphics look generic.
I'll take that over this any day:
I don't even particularly like that weapon enchants will have special visual effects in AoC. Perhaps it would be fine while in active use and not while sheathed, as those tend to obstruct the finer details of the weapon.
this is a video of westfall in wow classic re done in UE5, the differences between this and ashes of creation is the ashes does look beautiful however for the most part just looks like a bunch of UE 5 assets store bought and randomly placed around the world to create a beautiful looking yet dull non memoizable world,
the zones in wow classic have not just their own theme and style but something about them that you can get lost in or want to spend hours just exploring a single zone that seems to add to a bigger story that ashes just does not seem to have at this current moment, give the video a look and let me know what you guys think, hopefully with polish ashes can overcome this problem
Im not trolling at all, i agree with you that ashes does look beautiful yes, but for a fantasy world on a distant planet with so much history and lore behind it, it does nothing for me that i could literally go outside my house and see the same style rocks or trees or seasons that we currently have on earth, i feel like ashes missed the mark here by a huge amount, take new world for example, it may be one of the most beautiful games to date with extremley well done dungeons, but the open world to an extent is dull just because it has nothing that stands out, just the same cliffs, and rocks, and trees we have seen for our entire lives
From what you have been shown so far that might be the case but which areas did we really see in depth? Apart from the Riverlands, none.
And is it really a necessity to have everything look different for it to be a good fantasy game? I'd argue it doesn't, because the amount of awe in many cases is finding fantastical in the ordinary as it will probably be like for the Riverlands, while we will have much more interesting evironments in different areas, like the enchanted forest in the west, the Jundark probably as well or the vulcanic looking North East.
To cut it short: The judgement of the game "missing the mark" is premature, we haven't seen enough to conclude something like that, just because Intrepid tries to keep visual spoilers of the world as low as possible (definitely a reason why most showcases are in the Riverlands to begin with)
I would guess its more to do with nothing else being ready to show as to why their all in the riverlands
Doesn't mean his argument doesn't matter but that you have to let the team work on it. Plus I enjoyed roaming around New World far more then most other MMOs. Being identifiable by a screenshot shouldn't be a requirement or goal that adds any actual value.
If what you say is true then that either that means Intrepid won't be able to deliver on A2 in the next 19 months or they will have to do some miracle work to raise all that content out of the ground from now on.
I tend to believe that we were given deliberately few insighs into other areas because exploration is a crucial part of adventuring and showing all areas beforehand would ruin what the game tries to deliver, even though many people have become accustomed to getting drowned in content spoilers, ruining the experience for themselves because they lack patience or the willingness to let go of what has always been optional.
i hope so mate, i dont think they have nothing ready, and really hope A2 is not 19 months away, however due to what we see it really wouldn't Suprise me, the problem i have is that we have not seen anything concrete in this game since A1, i am the first person to say that i appreciate the live streams, but what information have we actually got from them?, if classes can be shown in a live stream and then a few months later completely changed it really makes me worry about what they are actually doing, there are so many unknown aspects of the game that really need to be spoken about and when ever we do have an AMA all the important questions are literally just looked over or not brought up, i think its time to start holding intrepid as a company accountable, this would be totally different if this was still stevens project but its not, its being publicly funded, and the people that will jump on this forum thread and say '' no one is forcing you to buy the cosmetics, or A1/2 has a high price tag so people dont buy it, is just ridiculous, A1/2 have a high price tag because their is a limited amount of slots available for sale and even if you are selling pizza for 300$ a slice, if you are selling it to an audiance of 2 million people over a 6 year time frame obviously it will sell, im not trying to discredit what intrepid are doing but we are at a point that the combat looks average, we dont know anything about the game other than the extremley out dated wiki wich is subject to change, we are 2 years post A1 with not a word in sight other than A2 is not years away, ( spot testing was also not years away, several months as per steven stated almost a year ago now ), i dont think seeing other zones is a bad thing, if ashes has the biggest map size of all MMOs a small area of another zone shouldnt matter to much, i guess we might see something new this month on nodes but i highly doubt it, and when we have youtubers like narc making videos saying '' The best healing in any game ive ever seen' it brings false expectations and rose colored glasses, if the healing or combat is bad it needs to be addressed now before A2 or launch, and in all honesty the healing combat is super average, coming from someone that mains heals
Why would "we" need to make final judgements NOW?
Why is waiting for Alpha 2 to determine the quality of the game unacceptable?
Which is different than the complaint about landscapes and buildings looking pretty much the same in every video game using UE5.
Generic is not the same thing as "trash".
(And, if we go back to the OP... Asmongold did not imply that UE5 assets look like "trash".)
Which aspects of the game really need to be spoken about?
Please list some important questions that need to be answered.
His list most likely will be once again "we need to know about all the core systems - NOW" despite it being an alpha state project - I even think we had exactly that discussion on another threat already which is why I chime in on this.
Obviously this is subjective but
What is happening with combat?
What is happening with spot testing?
How will naval content work and where are we at with this in development
How far along are we with systems like nodes, argments, secondary classes, corruption, crafting, basically every system in the game that we know nothing about,
Will A2 access be re opened once A2 is live ( id bet that its just a cash grab stating that this is the final week and 2 months into A2 they are purchasable again)
Literally anything reguarding A2, whats left to develop? Will there be spot testing beforehand, who will be spot testing?
Is this still a privately funded game or not?
Are any of the classes that we have seen a final product that we will see in A2 or do they all need a re work just like the cleric?
The list goes on and on any of tjese questions would be interesting to know the answers to but instead we get queations that have no real purpose and then answers like we are listening to a polotition " maybe" "soon" "we hear you" but never a yea or no answer to basic yes or no questions
I think you have a more specific question than that.
Steven is not ready to discuss spot-testing. He's not even going to tell us if any spot-testing has recently occured. That's tied into his Marketing plans (seems to be someting he learned from Margaret).
Obviously, Steven is only going to tell us how far things are in development during the monthly dev streams.
A2 access might open again if Steven decides they need more or can accomodate more A2 testers.
Steven has already said numerous times that Ashes is privately funded via himself and John.
Plus whatever they get from the packages and monthly cosmetics.
None of the classes are final for A2. You should not expect them to be. A2 is a work in progress.
All of those questions have been answered.
So... we can just add this to the list of previously asked and answered.
Which is why they will basically be passed over by the devs.
The video showed WoW's locations with UE5 assets. To the commenter it looked great because he probably has WoW nostalgia, so all these "pretty" graphics look "like what he imagined the game to look like back then".
I don't have that nostalgia, but I have played WoW classic up to stormwind (and a bit further), so it's not like I haven't seen some of those locations in their original style. And I did like that style and those locations. But imo that style just doesn't really mesh with UE5's assets. Or at the very least the stuff they used for that video.
I think players are being accustomed to Stylized and because it's familiar they prefer it. So I am not really putting much weight in to it.
I like that you mentioned all this. Ashes is not "generic" in the sense of being similar to other games necessarily that I've seen. It is however generic in the sense of realism, which is what I think people were referring to. And I don't think it works well with an MMORPG like this because it leans too far into fantasy.
A lot of things you listed works moreso when somethings similar to other pieces of art/entertainment. Realistic graphics work when you're trying to sell something based in a more real life setting, a war game or even a sci fi horror for example.
It does have some areas though that really stand out like the stronghold they went to for the cleric showcase. It had a very peculiar layout, I was very pleased with that. So I think it is possible to use that realism and throw things together in a way that's quite unique and stands out, making up for the lack of an art style with the graphics. But most of the places I've seen so far aren't really doing that.
I think that's not great and I think this is what people meant. I'd also like to add that Ashes seems to have this... AI look. Like when I went to go buy phones and was comparing my old Galaxy s7 pictures with the Google Pixels pictures(the Google Pixel uses AI to adjust the photos) and man... out of all the phones I compared to those Google Pixel photos looked horrible. They looked really fake, but not like photoshop fake, like... robotic fake. It gave this really weird synthetic feeling looking at them. Like the difference between an incandescent light bulb and one of those t4 fluorescent tube lights that have the weird almost inaudible hum to them and the things it lights up look kinda weird.
There’s really no rational reason someone would think that “WoW locations with UE5 assets” looks good. Other than UE5 assets look good straight out of the box.
😜🤪