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.
Alpha 2 is just a delay.
Blip
Member, Alpha Two
So when I got access i was under the impresion that it be available 24/7.
So real Alpha 2 that was promised is delayd until May 2025.
A bit shady of Intrepid i think.
So real Alpha 2 that was promised is delayd until May 2025.
A bit shady of Intrepid i think.
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Comments
If you lost a bit of hype then it worked
The real Alpha is end of october where they will have people testing the game in large numbers and fixing / improving things with the data.
Why is your expectations its a game without any of the work required in the alpha stage? You really ought to understand what you are buying, and stop thinking alpha = early access.
Am not thinking about this as a ea. But I was thinking about it as a live service that was available 24/7 from the geko as most did.
not "weekend playtest" ... we expect to get what was sold to us ... nothing more
They could have delayed everything until May 2025 but this way I am happy I got pre-alpha2 access even though they call it wave 1 and 2.
The access to the full alpha2 is still there. Just the hype part is not satisfied, the hope to start playing now.
ok imo devs were probaly planning on releasing at phase 2 on october however due to issues with the current testing probaly had to push what they original wanted back but didnt wanna push date again so added a phase 1 which is basicly the same thing the PI/A1 testers are currently doing so they can fix im assuming server issues
So thats what it looks like to me however only the devs realy know, sucks yeah but developing games are unpredictable at times.
Also one other thing in regards to persistence is that there 2 things that can be server persistence which is what player were all thinking but there another kinda which is character persistence which is basically trying not to wipe things which they said there trying not to wipe muiltipul times so it could be miss communication there where devs meant character persistance not server so it is possible that miss communication could play here too but yeah who knows it is what it is.
I reckon phase 1 gonna annoy alot of people who go into thinking it not gonna be a queuefull performance ridden mess which is what im thinking it gonna be going by what we seen.
Yep that is my point.
What I am however pretty puzzled by is the way Intrepid has handled the whole situation - by jumping on their own face for no reason whatsoever.
From the outside it seems to me that especially during the July stream Steven and the Studio in general tried to hype us up for the A2. "We are confident about Q3 despite the rumours." Dude, cmon. No offense but you know from your own history how many last minute issues can pop up, you were already on a crunch for freaks sake. There was NOTHING to gain from hyping this up in that moment but a whole lot to lose from it and lost you have. Unnecessarily.
I think that the mechanics you, Intrepid, finished look great and I am excited for it to come together and once finished I am as confident as ever that this will be a fantastic game to play. However, at this point I cant take any mentioning regarding times seriously. I'm not going to trust that there will be A2 tests ever weekend of Phase 1, I don't expect Phase 2 to start in December nor that the test times will last 5 days or that Phase 3 will start in May next year. I am 100% certain that this is what you want, but at this point I have doubts you can deliver on any on that in the projected fashion.
And while I am aware and fine with your statement at the bottom of each slide "Development is a moving train and subject to change" and treat this as the core message to everything you put out, the hyping up has obviously for YEARS at this point brought in unnecessary drama and criticism.
I am no expert on public relations, but from my perspective it seems that you could have done way better by dialing back the hype, avoid the unnecessary criticism of your wavering on announced plans, or just plainly saying "look guys, Stevens investment into the company has exceeded all the funding through kickstarter supporters and package purchases by 5... 10 times (whatever the actual number is) and we would appreciate your continued support through [product XYZ]." You got a very committed community here that does not require insane hype, nor rosey promises or sugar coated studio updates. So far it seems to me that while people are a bit bummed out because of the development speed, just like Steven said "the quality of the product can speak for itself". Please start believing your own words on this one and keep it straight with us. That's what we are here for after all, that's why we are still here.
Alpha 2 is persistent, its pretty obviously they are going to be working up to it being persistent as well as that is all part of testing.
Why would you throw money for a alpha test without understanding how things work? That sounds like extremely naïve to not even do a little bit of research on game development, and not even having relistic espectations.
Effectively what you are saying is you thought alpha is Early access. It really doesn't matter if u are openly not saying that, but how you are talking about things right now screams you think alpha is a early access. And you have no clue how alphas work and the work devs need to do for it.
Hence u complaining about the start of alpha 2, when they have already said the date when it is fully persistent. And even then you should expect things to go down if they need to. Next time understand alpha development it will help your expectations a lot 9well i guess you will have a better idea now)
When you purchased your pack did you expect you would be playing Ashes in A2 through Beta, or testing Ashes in A2 through Beta?
Those aren't mutually exclusive, just so you're aware.
Insulting someone does not change facts, but it might make you feel like a big man.
In an alpha they are, which may be the root of folks' disappointment.
Nope they're not actually. Never said I was disappointed either. Don't put words in other people's mouths. It just makes you look dumb.
Ok there - have fun.
Oh I will lol and I hope you've learned something about not putting words in other people's mouths. It's a valuable lesson for people to learn that doesn't seem to be taught often enough.
Nope they ARE exclusive in Alpha, you clearly know nothing about what an Alpha is if you think it is 'Playable'. Please put your ego to the side, listen to what people are sying so you can shed your ignorance and false expectations.
They are not mutually exclusive. All you're doing here is projecting your own ignorance and lack of knowledge. If the alpha isn't "playable" then there will be nothing to test beyond their login servers because that means the actual game (or "software project" if you want to be pedantic) doesn't work. It doesn't have to be finished or have all of the gameplay mechanics and features for it to be "playable" either. All that actually means is that you can log in and perform actions. That is technically all playable means. Testing anything in the game beyond logging in will involve actually playing it. You can't test progression if you're not playing. You can't test combat mechanics if you're not playing. You can't test collision if you're not playing. They can't gather metrics on server stability if people aren't playing. And guess what? The main goals for phase 1 are: stability, scalability, performance, and progression.
How do you propose they gather test data on progression if people aren't playing the game?
lol - I edited my royal 'your' to be more accurate. Everything else is your defensiveness to own. Have fun with that.
That must be it. Somehow I'll find a way to go on.
Alpha 2 will be all about this new development phase of the game (Nodes, Progression etc). It is likely we as Alpha players will not have the ability to go ham 24/7 until May as the servers begin their conversion into more stability and into the Beta Phases. The developers will need time to implement and revise things that may not be working and thus the down time is needed.
I'm sure this is all old news and such like that. All I can really recommend is some patience.
I hope you have a lovely day.
If you are not the type of person that can go with the flow or deal with change, ESPECIALLY at this point in development, then you shouldn't be engaging whatsoever, and just wait until the game is released. Save yourself the frustration that you ultimately set yourself up for. HAVE NO EXPECTATIONS and you'll do just fine.
With bottles in their hands
You need one more drop of poison
And you'll dream of foreign lands
You don't understand game development terminology if you think "log in" and "Playable" are the same thing. Playable means to experience the gameplay loop as it is intended, aka to be getting the indended experience that the design is trying to achive. It denotes a mostly feature complete game, aka a Beta.
You're just being pedantic so you can try and be right lol "playable" isn't some industry standard term that means you can play the entire game from start to finish or experience all of the gameplay mechanics. You will be both playing and testing the alpha, because testing directly relies on playing. I also did not say that "log in" and "playable" were the same thing.
Now if you want to argue that we won't just be playing like we will be at launch, then sure, that's going to be correct for the most part. They will want focused testing and they will want people to go about things in specific ways or to focus on or ignore specific aspects of the game at times. That is normal for this sort of public testing but it also generally doesn't make up 100% of the testing periods and they will at times want people to play like normal so they can gather data on various aspects of the game when they're being used as intended at release (this may not be until closer to release but it will happen, because that's part of what they're going to be wanting feedback on before release).
i am a game dev and you are absolutely correct about term usage. "playing" just means literally playing, simple as. if we say "alpha/beta test" then yeah that means you're playing an alpha/beta - you log in and PLAY.
it's super deceptive (or ignorant) for anyone to say "you will be testing and not playing!", tbh.