Concerns about the progress we have been shown...

Sathrago

So over the years we have been shown all sorts of things that looked quite good. but it turns out most of this was just a proof-of-concept. Things such as the character builder. Its been stagnant since the showcase and if anything looks worse. characters look awful. The terrain itself is honestly strange. some of the "castle" pieces are just shoved in at random angles just to block off an area. it looks horrible.
And what is going on with these quests? one of the first quests you get is go stand in a circle around 5 or more spawn locations for a chance every 3 minutes of getting one portion of the quest completed. They made improvements recently from when soda lost his mind over not being able to understand map icons, but these things dont feel designed by anyone who has experience making quests or actually playing through them as a player. Also shame on you inhouse testers for letting them sit there like this just because the quests gave bad experience. You are getting paid to test the game why are you not pointing out such obvious problems?
Dont get me wrong, I understand this is an alpha. the problem im having is with the almost advertisement style monthly updates we were getting that have not really progressed since then. Ashes is supposed to be a system heavy game, right? So why are the mechanics for gathering placeholder? Why am i petting a wolf to skin them? You have a hunting bow item, and an actual bow weapon with attacks. put them together please.

Edit: adding another big issue. the logic to processing materials. not only can you not process a custom amount of items, you are forced to only process one quality at a time. Who thought this was good? let me throw as many as I want in there of all qualities and get the damn ticker ticking. I dont want to have to "stock up" my processing goods of each quality, effectively clogging my storage and inventory, just so that im not sitting there micro managing 1 minute processes.
I also dont understand why talent trees exist the way they are now. They look to be coded by someone who took a store asset and made it worse. not by game devs that worked for 8 years on a project. We were shown multiple biomes, castle sieges, a character creator, the custom tools used for placement of assets, etc. quite a long time ago but they dont look like they have seen much iteration and improvement since their showcases.

Honestly, I feel like the in-house testers you’ve had this entire time have failed to do their jobs—they’ve been too busy playing the alpha like an actual game. I found multiple exploits in just the first few areas close to Samia's hope. Just sitting there in the open being used. People dont care to report these things because they get to quickly level or complete objectives. Then you have these buy to play testers... They see the price tag on the alpha as already contributing enough to the games development that they can now just play it like its a released game.

Sigh... Sorry for the random ass ranting. I am pretty tired from my first day in the alpha and I honestly just should go to bed but here I am. I am worried about the future of the game. With the scant amount of time I have to test it on weekends ill keep reporting bugs and exploits. But I dont think this is enough to soothe my worries. the developers are dropping the ball on features that I thought would be much further along after so much time has passed since their reveals.

Just to end it on a positive note, they have done a good job with two things that are why I am still on the optimistic side of this entire mess. Combat feels good, powerful, meaningful and clean. (my friend says its because this is client side and is a massive issue because we can basically tell the server whatever we want and it will let it happen. but I hope hes wrong). The second is that there is no mini game for the basic form of fishing. Keep it this way. save mini-games for sports fishing.

Ill end it here. Say what ya gotta say. im here for the long run as I have been for many years. Just very concerned now that I have a look at their current progress.

Taleof2Cities

Keep your head up, Sathrago, and remember this first phase of testing isn't about content.

This first phase of testing is about stability and performance. Hence adding new waves of players starting with this weekend.

For example, the Sandsquall Desert and Tropics biomes that we've seen in showcases ... those will eventually drop their "lawless" tag and become new zones later in Alpha-2.

Yeah, I've given up on the vast majority of Alpha-2 testers. They're more interested in playing the game, grinding levels, and doing zero feedback or bug reports. The devs seem fine with that at the moment ... so the in-game data they are getting appears to be passable for now.