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.
Comments
Nothing wrong with 500 top models fighting top models. Fashion is endgame, and it's the probably biggest source of income by far after release (Heck, put a cosmetics shop in before release, just save the unlocked ones to my account).
The problem is that right now, it doesn't even matter what cosmetics they put in, because the character models are so fugly, nothing you could put on them would make them more tolerable.
I know some people don't care, but those people will only pay the sub. The ones to really carry the game will be people for whom looks are important.
This is so important to really focus in on now more than ever.
Think about the failure of Concord, Starfield and Veilguard.
Then think about the success of Baldur's Gate Three, Eldin Ring and FFXVI.
The art direction on the current faces is that of a fail game. I want better for Ashes.
Right now the only cosmetic I am interested in is a paper bag for a helm. I don't know how much money they can make selling cosmetics that make you not want to see the character, but I imagine making good looking characters will be more profitable.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
"conservative progressive"
I don't think that means what you think it means.
WTS Dehydrated water
Shitty writing and lackluster gameplay killed those games
Ashes should work exactly like BG3 does for cosmetics, ie armor should be the same on both sexes. Skimpy for both or realistic for both. None of this 'women get the skimpy version' shit
That's exactly what we're asking for.
+I think the overall human model skeleton size is too small. They look weak.
"Quod mens laeva vetat suadendo animusque sinister / Hoc saltim cupiant implere timore coacti"
Tibia(Eternia)/Knight Online/WoW(Stonemaul)/Warhammer(Ostermark)/Darkfall/GW2/ROR
Some people in here are definitely asking for women to get the skimpy version, given the near nudity on that cartoon looking elf that got posted. Solid 'no thanks' to that asian mmo nonsense.
At least what you posted in this particular comment I'm generally in agreement with, though the models are already workable into a good looking character *IF the character creator actually saved sculpts instead of always reverting to whatever preset was selected. I gave it three tries and it always reverted to the same gaunt looking elf face when the character spawned. It'll save tattoo data though for whatever reason (which are also not all properly leveled on their default angle).
It's a barebones system not fully functional and gear has such little variety that it automatically makes every character look more dull because you've seen ten thousand people in riverstalker armor already in the exact same colors. Just adding more hairstyles and face presets and ffs some damn gear dyes. Anything for more visual variety in the interim.
And fixing the hair rendering too, that looks like ass. Probably boned on that front due to Unreal though, unfortunately.
yeah its an oxymoron to describe the situation of modern artists in the west. They have gone from free the nipple to make her a dude because women are exactly the same as men.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the aesthetic of any 'Asian" MMORPG I have played. Your wording here comes off as hateful.
Just grouping Korean and Japanese MMOs under the word "Asian" is wrong. There are cultural differences between the two.
It's not about being "skimpy" it's about having the artistic freedom and integrity to pursue what actually looks good. It's about honestly.
Concord, starfield, and vailgaurd all made decisions to put artificial and regressive restrictions on what looks good. So there characters look bad.
The writing and gameplay is also bad because of the same regressive restrictions.
I am not asking for nudity I am asking for honesty.
Honestly right now the faces in this game look clinically malnourished.
I want the best for Ashes. What we have now is not it.
Yes, I know it's all place holder. This doesn't change my feedback on A2.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Yeah these asian mmorpgs are crazy.
These images really really make me wish I liked the game play in EQ. There is something so classic high fantasy about it.
I love how much they did with so little tech.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
.
.
. a few months later they showed the models and this is the travesty they turned it into
there is literally 0 reason to do that other than ..well we all know the reason dont we
Travesty is the right word here.
I don't enjoy being negative. I especially don't enjoy being negative about anything related to Ashes.
But you are pointing out a major down grade.
We can speculate conspiracy theory about why this happened until the end of time. None of that matters. I doubt they would come out and tell us why this happened.
There is clearly some extremely talented artists at intrepid. I would rather see them push the boundary's on beauty instead of ugly.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I love this game, it's damn fun to play, but... only at max zoom level. I really don't wanna look at anyone zoomed in.
THIS is what we're dealing with here.
Would you spend money for fashion on the cash shop for... this?
Brood-sister? Is that you?
Well duh, when they picked to max out the 'snarl' slider and set the cheek fullness to zero, they're gonna get some real crunchy looking result.
It's absolutely possible to make the characters look nice in character creator, the issue is that they don't save correctly when actually loaded in.
Edit: Also let's be honest, some people really do just suck at utilizing the character creator sculpt options
Entirely depends on how much effort you put into it
I initially thought this myself.
There are two problems I need to point out.
1: The game is doing something to make your character in game not look like what you have made in the character creator. I have bug reported this. I have also tried every possible graphics settings to try and detail the bug. The malnutrition exists on every setting.
2: If everyone has to put work into making their character look good. It is going to be an ugly world. It should be effort to make the character ugly.
I may delete one of my characters and get pictures of what I am talking about this weekend if I have some down time.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
i was the one who made the second picture, took me an hour n half or so just to get this mid looking character , its the best i was able to make in the whole CC and it still look masculine with a guy jawline even tho i tried my absolute best to turn it into a female and thats the elves , the humans look like malnourished drug addicts no matter what and the vek are just ugly but thats just the vek i guess
then they all look way worse in game so lol
This incomplete system is incomplete and I don't understand.
Feedback is important. Even if the system is incomplete.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Agreed. It just seems like some are less interested in critiquing the art style and heavily focused on this incomplete system makes it look wrong. /Shrug.
The art style is completely subjective. I like it some don't.
I haven't engaged much with this system since the first weekend. I saw it was incomplete. I hit random cause it has no bearing at this time. Create a name and log in.
As a base system test there is room to improve. See people talking about the presets not staying. As for the graphical errors I bet when they add the real system it will be fixed.
My group members are super grateful for the current Empyrean presets, I think we 'each got one', which makes it really easy to just jump in and test stuff and not worry about the character creator load function.
JustVine decided not to 'waste your time' with feedback on it and just 'checks if it is working better' for half hour or so each testing-time, but the feedback from us will come when it's time for that.
Hoping you're getting things closer to what was shown back then, looking forward to it.
its not about an incomplete system being incomplete , its about the direction they are going with the character looks and armors .
also CC being incomplete is fine whats not fine is even as an incomplete system you'd think the options and presets in it would at least be good looking but no its just ugly and uglier , so why wasnt the system incomplete but have good looking characters as the options available instead , that just means that this is the direction and look they want their characters to have from the start otherwise we'd of had decent lookin ones but we dont, which is straight up horrendous
But then, what the characters look like has nothing to do with this being an Alpha. The char creator might be in Alpha, but the models are not. What I've heard in official livestreams was more along the lines of "we'll work a bit on the hair".
The design of the races seemed pretty much finished to me - and if that's the case, Intrepid waste an opportunity to sell cosmetics. They also put off a lot of potential players who just don't want to play something hideous.
It looks so much better than the current character models and I'm a woman saying that. I really do believe/hope what we have is a work in progress, but the last models we saw were nothing like the beautiful concept are they showed us, so I'm really hoping they can make something closer to concept art.
Speak for yourself. I want my female character to look pretty. I want armor made for her, not for you. In real life our clothes are made differently and designed differently because our bodies are different and things fit different. And on top of that I just want to look pretty damn it. I don't think asking for armor that's more fashionable and pretty is too much to ask.
I would like to believe both critique and feedback are valid on the general discussion forms.
I don't think Ashes is going to be made worse by some valid criticism.
The good news is Steven has demonstrated remarkable resilience when it comes to his vision for Ashes.
All of the feedback in the world has not changed the name for tank.
If the ugly face are intended they will stay, if they are open to change they may change.
At this point I am too invested to not put both my feedback and opinion out there.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I happen to love Asian MMO's and a lot of them have great looking character models as well as armor. But since I've had this argument before I'm just going to redirect you to this post with some nice examples from Aion. They had gorgeous armor that covered enough while still being fashionable.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/336597#Comment_336597