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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
We need to talk about PirateSoftware’s interview.
DottorMorte
Member, Alpha Two
I'm thoroughly disappointed with this interview.
The interviewer barely touched on what SHOULD be added during phase two - content we still haven't seen - and instead focused mainly on features for mega-guilds that few players actually care about.
What's more concerning is that Steven, instead of standing firm on his vision, seemed to be tailoring his answers to meet Pirate's expectations. Once again, he acted more like a salesperson than a creative director.
So Steven, let me be clear: we don't need you to keep selling us future features that only heaven knows when we'll see. What we need is honesty and transparency.
Focus on delivering FEWER features but actually releasing them, rather than constantly discussing 100 new features when you haven't even released 90% of what was promised for phase 2.
The interviewer barely touched on what SHOULD be added during phase two - content we still haven't seen - and instead focused mainly on features for mega-guilds that few players actually care about.
What's more concerning is that Steven, instead of standing firm on his vision, seemed to be tailoring his answers to meet Pirate's expectations. Once again, he acted more like a salesperson than a creative director.
So Steven, let me be clear: we don't need you to keep selling us future features that only heaven knows when we'll see. What we need is honesty and transparency.
Focus on delivering FEWER features but actually releasing them, rather than constantly discussing 100 new features when you haven't even released 90% of what was promised for phase 2.
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Comments
Aliance chat was always planed. So you could have 4 guilds of 300 working as one unit. Or is there something else?
I'm inclined to doubt the veracity of this statement. What makes a mega guild? Lots of players.
That being understood, what affects mega guilds affects lots of players. Shouldn't lots of players care about things that affect them?
Most things that affect Mega guilds don't really affect anyone else. Things like reducing the number of artisanship that can be maxed out while have almost no affect on large guilds, because if their access to large numbers. Has a huge impact on smaller guilds and solo players, especially in a game which has 22 different professions.
Mega guilds already bypass most of the "restrictions" that other people have to deal with. Focusing on more features which give them an even greater advantage enabling them to dominate them even more.
It was nothing more than a PR stunt that hid behind pre-arranged fluff questions and content to make both Thor and Steven look good. That is it- period.
That is essentially the purpose of this game.
Steven's MMO history is thst of running large guilds where he dictates what people do, and people generally do as they are told.
This is what Ashes is being built as. Always has been.
Pirate: "Any plans on improving the chat functions, like whispering?"
Steven: "Yes we have plans on improving the chat functionality"
That was more or less the entire theme of the interview. OBVIOUSLY they have plans on improving stuff.
I think they would be better of just explaining the vision to new people. Or actually show something new in-game with pirate, like rouge gameplay or something that is soon coming. No need to do an interview to say, "yes we are still working on the game"
Just imo. I like both steven and pirate.
It does appear to be pandering to the mega guilds. And there was skirting around the issue of large guilds and how they can throw the balance off in the game. The vassal system and the guild progression systems can balance this, but we won't know more until we get to test them. And thats a ways off. As it was said though this game is met to be played in groups and generally greater numbers will have the advantage. As the game is now the mega guilds have a massive advantage. And the guild progress system still won't prevent pirates from having multiple guilds, and there's no telling if any of those pirate guilds will even choose to increase their numbers over taking passive perks. Maybe make it against the user agreement or something or TOS. but then enforcement would still be hard to do.
not everything was future stuff, some of the stuff was reportedly put in like the caravan name plates. pirates brought up a good point about name plates for loot too. They need to make sure guild, node, and religion will show on those name plates. We also learned that we should get to test rogue by about the end of feb. that's good stuff.
i'm not going to white knight the game and i'm not going to trash it. it has issues that if not address will likely lead to an early death of it, but also they still haven't put everything in so those issue could actually not even be a design issue we're just playing a game with missing pieces. we haven't even seen iteration one of these systems. What i do see is frequent updates and changes for the better. Steven has a vision and he shouldn't be swayed away from that trying to please everyone. i still don't agree with his approach to testing or his use of the term alpha but that's okay.
Blown past falling sands…
Why?
He is asking questions from his perspective - which is what we would want.
Questions from the perspective of a smaller guild or solo player should come from the perspective of someone wanting to play as part of a smaller guild, or that wants to play solo.
Essentially, people asking developers questions should be sticking to self serving questions.