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.
a message to steven and the intrepid team
Chicago
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
so i have been testing alpha 2 for about 4-5 months now, there have been ups and downs, bugs, performance issues, exploits, data leaks, the list goes on, pretty much everything we would expect during an alpha phase of a game, and in all honesty it is quite refreshing to see a true alpha. the reason i am making this post is i just finished narcs video and would like to voice my opinion in a different way, i am by all means not a huge narc fan, i am neither a hater but i feel like he made a few good points in his video however i also think he is to close to the project and is at times a bit emotional and to quick to voice his opinions.
steven, we appreciate the fact that you and your dev's are active in the community, its nice to finally see GM's back in the game, i love the fact that you are also active on reddit, i don't quite agree that you are a mod there but that's a different discussion and beside the point. Most of us look forward to the monthly livestreams and are happy with the fact that you share some of the development process with us, if not always quite honest this becomes a very grey area in my opinion.
i don't want this post to be all negative so what i will say is for those that did not get to experience pre alpha 2 testing, the game is night and day, intrepid have put in a huge amount of work getting the game ready for alpha 2 compared to the state it was in when we dived into the pre A2 tests and this shows that intrepid are committed to the development of the game and can infact get things done quite fast when they put there mind to it and this is very nice to see, the game on those first tests looked a bit how the desert looks now but in the riverlands ( barren ) but by the time A2 launched on dec 20 the zone was hugely improved Apon.
now the reason for the post and the points narc highlighted in his video, over the years you and your team have shown time and time again footage of the in game world, systems and elements of the game that in reality just don't even exist, and from my perspective it seems like we are getting one of these showcases that correspond to the times that alpha keys or packs seem to go on sale, you need to understand that while we understand that game development is not a linear path, the core audience to your marketing tactics are vastly a majority of dad gamers, it is extremely deceptive to show these live streams and by all accounts market it as this is the current state of the game whilst selling these packages to people that have next to no idea of game development, these people are also recommending purchasing this game to their friends and family based on showcases that you have shown, that in reality don't reflect the state of the game at all and actually don't even exist., you also need to understand that your average gamer, at this point of time is probably in there 30s and whilst they can afford to purchase the alpha package, 120$ is quite a steep purchase for most of us, we are not all multimillion Ares and you are not selling us your real state packages, these are people that share your vision and have been team intrepid for pushing 8 years now.
in reality, we don't care if there are bugs, we signed up for this, we don't care if there are delays, we understand this, and we don't care if everything is a work in progress, but what we do want is honesty, we don't want to have to read the fine print, give us the good the bad and the ugly in the live streams and we will be much more appreciative for it
we are all rooting for this game, and we are all team steven and intrepid, just don't end up like the developers you started making this game to avoid
all the best happy Christmas and new years to you and your team.
steven, we appreciate the fact that you and your dev's are active in the community, its nice to finally see GM's back in the game, i love the fact that you are also active on reddit, i don't quite agree that you are a mod there but that's a different discussion and beside the point. Most of us look forward to the monthly livestreams and are happy with the fact that you share some of the development process with us, if not always quite honest this becomes a very grey area in my opinion.
i don't want this post to be all negative so what i will say is for those that did not get to experience pre alpha 2 testing, the game is night and day, intrepid have put in a huge amount of work getting the game ready for alpha 2 compared to the state it was in when we dived into the pre A2 tests and this shows that intrepid are committed to the development of the game and can infact get things done quite fast when they put there mind to it and this is very nice to see, the game on those first tests looked a bit how the desert looks now but in the riverlands ( barren ) but by the time A2 launched on dec 20 the zone was hugely improved Apon.
now the reason for the post and the points narc highlighted in his video, over the years you and your team have shown time and time again footage of the in game world, systems and elements of the game that in reality just don't even exist, and from my perspective it seems like we are getting one of these showcases that correspond to the times that alpha keys or packs seem to go on sale, you need to understand that while we understand that game development is not a linear path, the core audience to your marketing tactics are vastly a majority of dad gamers, it is extremely deceptive to show these live streams and by all accounts market it as this is the current state of the game whilst selling these packages to people that have next to no idea of game development, these people are also recommending purchasing this game to their friends and family based on showcases that you have shown, that in reality don't reflect the state of the game at all and actually don't even exist., you also need to understand that your average gamer, at this point of time is probably in there 30s and whilst they can afford to purchase the alpha package, 120$ is quite a steep purchase for most of us, we are not all multimillion Ares and you are not selling us your real state packages, these are people that share your vision and have been team intrepid for pushing 8 years now.
in reality, we don't care if there are bugs, we signed up for this, we don't care if there are delays, we understand this, and we don't care if everything is a work in progress, but what we do want is honesty, we don't want to have to read the fine print, give us the good the bad and the ugly in the live streams and we will be much more appreciative for it
we are all rooting for this game, and we are all team steven and intrepid, just don't end up like the developers you started making this game to avoid
all the best happy Christmas and new years to you and your team.
7
Comments
Steven's overexcitedeness for dates sure as hell comes off as a lie, even despite all of his prefaces and "subject to change" disclaimers, but I personally completely understand that because I too love to promise stuff when I'm hyped about it and the plans at the time seem very doable. Sadly, that hype then turns to crashing reality of "oh, right, there's a shitton of stuff that needs to be done before I can deliver on that promise", so those promises can be taken as "lies" post factum.
We, obviously, all want Steven to stop giving all of those pretty and nice promises, cause they rarely work out - but I'm not sure if his personality will ever let him manage that. The only way I see that happening is if we completely remove him from the showcases and Margaret just completely takes over and does everything by the numbers and as close to their current reality as possible.
Being excited is fine. Showing ideas is fine. But dressing up ideas as the current state of development before people had access to the Alpha to check on the actual state of things isn't.
I just went back to Youtube and checked on the Desert Preview. At no point in the video was mentioned that this isn't an actual representation of the game, so the impression you get is that the video is supposed to Show the progress Intrepid made. If you read the positive comments below the video, this is also the sentiment that people had at the time. What you see is the game; not a mere vertical slice only made by and for the art department. Even the official video description nudges you to believe that, I quote:
The thing is: the desert topic wouldn't have gotten any negative traction, as it does now, if Intrepid had been upfront and stated back then that the video does not show the actual game but is an artistic idea the team wants to go for. But as right now, the only impression people had of the desert was what was shown two years ago; and obviously they expected to see it in the game two years later (now) only to be told it was naive to understand the preview video in such a way in the first place. That's not open communication.
I agree, the issue for me here is not really the fact that none of this exists, it may not be a lie per say however it is highly manipulative, my issue is that quite a few people myself included, recommended this game to friends based on the last few years footage, this would not be an issue if the packs did not have a 250$ price tag but as they did I think people should be able to expect the game to at least look like it is shown in the Livestream form, obviously with bugs and things that need fixing, but visually it shouldn't be this much of a difference.
Also as people have pointed out it does not make alot of sense to me as to why this was even previewed if work did not start on the desert until two years after, these are the sort of questions that we would like answered for open development
All the showcases are the same. We've seen the idea that Intrepid have for their features, but those ideas will be fully realized later on. Absolute majority of planned features are not optimized for a full server of testers yet. And even with the stuff that is optimized right now, people still complain that the game is laggy/buggy/etc.
Take Highwayman Hills as an example. It's a relatively small area, barely populated by mobs (at least I've seen waaaay more populated areas in other games), but it could pretty much shit on a server worker if there were just a few too many players in that location. And, as far as I understand, it came down to mob AI + environmental design + player activity x amount of players in the location. And that's for a location that Intrepid deemed optimized enough to release it in P1.
Now imagine the same situation for a new desert. Completely new location, untested by proper mob spawns and mob pathing, unoptimized visuals on every asset (cause those showcase assets did look nice), filled to the brim with players (because it's the new shiny thing, just as addition of dwarves suddenly made everyone play a dwarf)... That shit would be permabroken and the server workers for the desert would be nearly constantly down.
Now think about it in the context of majority of devs being on vacation, while majority of players are in the game. No one's there to resolve server issues. No one's there to quickly optimize the super obvious faults of the untested design. All the while thousands of players whine and scream on reddit/here that desert is completely unplayable. It would be an even bigger mess than it is right now.
Now, obviously, Intrepid still made a mistake by releasing P2 right on the holidays. All of what I described above seems to still be an issue for even the current state of P2, so it all could've been avoided if they simply moved the release to mid january or smth.
p.s. here's a tinfoil hat theory. They did all of this to cull as many people from the testing as possible, in order to lessen the server costs. The reduction in servers points towards that. The near-absence of anything truly new in P2 points towards that. And judging by twitch/yt views and general feedback from people so far - it does seem that way fewer people have stuck around since P2 started, even though the release itself had a shitton of people logging in.
By the time stuff begins to get fixed and new stuff gets implemented (late jan++), a ton of people will have forgotten about the test completely, especially considering the apparent shitty behavior of some players, that has also gone kinda unaddressed due to the holidays.
Good points mate, time will tell, hopefully they have something big planned for when they all get back from break
One of my primary tasks at Activision was to evaluate the dates provided by the Producers and let the Executive Producers know what the realistic dates were.
Every week, I would check in with the various teams to see if they were still on track.
Programmers... are you still on track for this code?
Artists... are you still on track for this art?
Sound... you're adding more VO? OK that means the release date has to be pushed by at least this many days.
QA... has production given you this latest build?
There will always be delays - never trust dates given by game dev teams.
I think it was Heavy Gear II that was supposed to release Nov 1998.
I hadn't seen my god-daughter in a couple years - she was turning 11 Dec 3rd.
last week of Oct, I told my Producer (Dave Georgeson) I was flying home-home for Thanksgiving and I'd be back 2nd week of Dec.
He said I couldn't do that because the game was releasing the end of November.
I told him that was impossible. He told me it had to release the end of November. I checked with all the teams.
The still had stuff to do that would make that date impossible. QA said even if Production gave them the Gold Master Final build that week, they would not be able to sign off on it before December.
So... I took my vacation.
The game released June 1999.
Never trust dates given by game dev teams - especially not dates that are given 6 months or more in advance.
There will be delays.
It's still early Alpha TESTING.
Optimization is worse for me in Phase 2 than it as in Phase 1. Somewhere in between Phase 2 and spot testing before Phase 1.
But, I used to work in QA for Activision, so I'm not expecting Alpha Testing to be fun.