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
how do you know he is lying?
he said in an interview many, many years ago, that developing the game will take roughly around 30million dollars, and he funded that with his own money. kickstarter and packs are for additional features and polish.
can you tell me what are core features, content and polish and provide examples?
Announcing A2 and getting ahead of development... you just skipped passed so many stages bro.
if they announce a2 its because they have everything ready for a2 to start ?_? i mean im sure they dont wanna make the same mistake they did with estimates and such... that's why they arent announcing anything.
I mean if the game was already funded, it would not been delay of 5 years...
Spoken like someone that has never worked on a complex project.
Funding has not been an immediate issue for Intrepid as yet.
Coming from you, who know everything about anything, Im not surprised that you are also an expert in "complex project"... But funding is always an issue for every project even for big studios.
that being said im also impatient and cant wait to experience AoC
I would deem combat or nodes or naval content core features and none of these have been completed, combat specifically has come a long way since A1 but its still looking pretty dull
Core features most likely include but are not limited too
Nodes- not ready
Combat- far from ready
Naval content- not ready
Secondary classes- not ready
Main classes-not ready
Caravans- not ready
Seige gameplay- not ready
Boss fights - not ready
Dungeons- not ready
Crafting- not ready
Character creator- might be ready?
The list goes on we have not seen anything resembling anything close to real gameplay for any of these, we are up to our second take on cleric wich still lools bad ( as a healer main ) and we havnt even seen all the classes let alone secondary classes, obviously this is my opinion but lets be honest, the sales of cosmetics and bundles is paying for this game and as so we should be entitled to more than we are seeing
I dont think asking for a timeline of where we are in development is rushing or being un reasonable, like we have stated many times, we are not asking for dates but more of what is left to develop before the next big milestones
funded means you can pay your develepoers every month until completion. so you have an estimate on how many months it will take to complete something. then you know how much money you spend per month and how many months it will take. thats how steven knows...
how do you know they havent been completed? just because we havent seen them in the monthly updates? you know, when they show us something in the monthly updates, they usually finished that months ago...
id argue that the combat system is completed implemented. you have several mechanics that we have seen. you can attack monsters, you can attack players, use your abilities. your character performs an animation when it uses an ability or attack, each ability displays a vfx and a sfx, etc etc.
However, the combat system might be in a polishing stage. They are iterating over it, maybe making cooler animations, etc, etc
core features are decided by the devs, so this is a rough example.
core feature: the player needs a character to play the game. that character has behaviors, skills, hp, mp, combat, etc, etc.
completing the character system doesn't mean making all 8 archetypes and sub classes. it means creating a "character factory". you create a system that allows you to create archetypes with hp, mp, a portrait, skills, etc.
you don't need all 8 archetypes to play the game. adding all 8 is adding content (and then polishing it of course). but simply having the ability to create these classes is the actual core system.
look at how games add classes over the years. that doesn't mean it took them years after release to finish the class system, they are just adding content.
characters have an inventory. the inventory is another core system. making it pretty, adding sorting functions, making it robust, adding security, etc, are just additional features and polishing.
characters can display emotes, like dancing, waving, hello, goodbye, help, etc. Adding that capability is the feature (in this case, it might be an additional feature, since it's not necessary to play the game), then adding 10 emotes is content. making the animations of those emotes better, or optimizing performance is polishing.
they have shown us some archetypes because they have the ability to have archetypes in the game (which is the core system). they haven't shown us all classes because they haven't finished adding content to the game.
there are also invisible systems that the players can't see. For example, they have talked about their anti cheat system (and anti rmt). how do you know that's not finished, or funded to completion? I don't know if it's finished or not (and no one does), but its probably funded to completion, however many months it may take to develop.
I challange you to find me something they have shown in the livestreams that is actually finished, and i dont mean polished
i just gave you an example X_X
they already have their character system, for example. how do I know? we have seen and played different characters. they might need to be polished, and more content, aka more classes, might need to be added. for example, we won't have the summoner at the start of a2, but we will still be able to play the game using other classes.
if they launched a2 tomorrow, you could log in, make a character and level up and play, fight mobs and players. How is that core system not finished? you might not have lots of classes ready (which constitutes as content, not as a core system), or they might need some polishing, but the core system is there.
example: wow added the dragon class in their recent expansion. does that mean their class system was incomplete for the past 20 years? no! It was complete, they just added content.
If everything was finished, we would be at Beta.
In Steven's view, there's a bunch of stuff that's not ready.
Nodes aren't even "ready" enough for a demo - that got delayed by a month.
But, that's really just arguing semantics.
Steven seems to have enough money for development to continue for several more years.
We will get Alpha 2 when Steven deems the systems are ready enough for Alpha 2.
we are talking about core systems finished (or at least funded to completion). we arent talking about the game being finished. and it will never be finished until they stop developing or the service closes. you can always polish more, add more things, patch, DLC, expansions, etc. you just need to draw a line and say "we are going to launch it as it is now".
the reason they haven't launched it yet, or at least we arent in a2, its because there isnt enough content or polish. all the core features might as well be there, but there isnt much content to do...so players could hit the end in a week. whats the point of playing then?.
if you make the claim that there isnt enough content / polish for the players to have an enjoyable experience and the game cant be launched like that, then i 200% agree with you guys. But if you make the claim that the core features arent finished, how do you know that? do you have insider info? do you secretly work at IS?
if we go by what steven said, the core features are finished and they just need to add content. he said that in a past stream...and even then, the development of the core features is funded to completion by himself. anything extra from the kickstarter and packs is to add extras to the game, to make it a "more complete" game when it launches.
they could very well add quests and mobs to get you to level 50, or even 20 - 25, use some placeholder art and launch the game next month with just half the classes. then slowly add content up to level 50 as they make money from subs and cash shop, add more classes, fix bugs, polish, add better visuals, etc, etc but it will probably make for a shitty game launch and lots of people won't want to play for too long.
if we believe steven, there is no evidence that the core features arent ready yet, just evidence that the game as it is wont be too enjoyable for too long.
as far as I know, they decided to make a change last minute, that's why they delayed it. and look we got a cleric update outta nowhere, which was supposed to be for this month, but we got it last month. so that update was already ready for who knows how long..maybe months.
Nah, I don't know everything - I just tend to not talk about things I don't know about.
An example of that is the current thread on the proposed 4th player flagging state - I really have no idea at all how it would play out, and so have not posted a single thing in the thread.
This may appear to some people as me thinking I know everything - but that reflects more on their assumption that people will just talk about anything rather than only talk on things they know something about.
Well i told you that nothing we have seen is completed and asked you for an example, and i mean in a finished state waiting polish, lets be honest here
If we are re working the whole fundamentals of the cleric class it seems to me the bigger issue is combat as a whole, and i would say the combat as it is, even if the effects look decent, is no where near a state close to playable,
Nodes- most likely we will see this month but most likely nowhere near completion,
Corruption?? - god only knows how this will play out as we have bkt seen or heard a peep since A1,
Secondary classes- no clue, and no point even getting into this as we cant even seem to get the first classes ready,
Naval content- half the map is suppose to be water and we dont even know if this will be testable in A2
Caravans/sieges/worldpvp/arenas/pvp gear- do we know anything other than what the out dated wiki tells us?
Crafting?? - another blank
Character creator- this one ill give you it lools amazing, but have heard almost nothing in almost a year and i thought we would be able to test it at some point,
Website revamp- was states we qould be able to see some items in our invintory by now that we have purchased.
Most lilely you will see this as complaining, its not, im simply statimg that funded to completion has an expiery date and if we are being honest we all know that the cosmetic packs are funding the team upgrade etc, wich i am fine with,
Somd people play off like " year its fine if it takes another 4-5 years" but in reality we dont all have 4-5 years to just wait, and i stick with my innitial statement, i feel we deserve a roadmap of what is currently being developed and what is nrxt in the pipeline, mile stones etc
node. the implementation might be complete. however, they might still be missing art. if you mean ready for launch, then no. if you mean the systems are working, then sure. just slap low poly placeholder graphics and you can play it. we might have not seen it in action because they dont want to show low poly placeholder graphics.
corruption. they already have a flagging system in place, which means the core system to make corruption is ready. red just has a different configuration than purple or green. also, everybody who played l2 knows how this is going to play out xD.
secondary classes. again,thats content. the classes system (or blueprint if you want) is more than ready. we already played apoc and a1.
naval. we havent seen it but is this a core system or an additional feature? it might be ready (a flagging system already exists) maybe they just need art. they can only show 1 thing per month so yeah...
Caravans/sieges/worldpvp/arenas/pvp gear. we had sieges in a1, so the system is ready. tweaks, polishing and content? maybe, maybe not. ow pvp? thats just an option you turn on or off on the maps..we already did pvp in a1 and apoc. arenas, they said that will be for the future, so not a core system. caravans, we already have pvp, an inventory system, items, etc, all you gotta do is remove the death penalty while ur doing the caravan and do some pathfinding and boom ur done. how do you know its not done?
character creator. we only saw a bit of it, cant say if its in a polishing state or not, but they said it will be ready before a2...so its probs nearly done.
website revamp. i can see everything i purchased o.o
Some of these wouldnt be core for A2 however, since A2 is not a completed state at start which is expected. They already said naval wont be in at the start and the map will be like 20% of the world size (3 biomes as far as we know atm of course can change). A2 will start at level cap of 30 i think it was and archetype split at 25 i beleive so they only have to have the start of the archtype stuff completed. We also know summoner wont be in start of A2 and probaly the bard either so they only class we havant seen that will probaly be in at start of A2 is the rogue.
Its almost like the game is in Alpha right?!
Thank goodness you only talk about things you know. Considering your omnipresence on this forum, you know a lot!
I can't imagine what would happen if you started talking about what you don't know.
Nah, there are a lot of threads I just don't participate in.
I mean, I literally gave you an example of a very current 10+ page discussion thread that I haven't commented in at all.
But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your opinions - I mean, why start now, right?
"Completed" means that the feature is finished and ready to go. This isn't going to be the case for anything pre-Alpha-2. And, we wouldn't want it to be, cos it hasn't been thoroughly tested yet by the army of testers ready to go.
"Funded" means that there is enough money to keep the studio running.
Just cos there aren't any Completed features yet doesn't mean that they're not Funded. They're run by a guy who's so good with money that he's already a millionaire who can afford to spend millions on making his dream game. The studio isn't going to struggle for money.