Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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.
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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.
Comments
So, a hypothetical for you;
Imagine Intrepid don't have the economy aspect of the next beta phase ready to test, and won't for 6 months. However, imagine they do have some back end server stability issues fixed and ready to deply that they need testing.
Thus is an *exceedingly* realistic scenario. I can not possibly convey to you just how plausible this scenario actually is.
So, with the above, should Intrepid delay the next alpha test until the economy changes are ready, and then deploy them at the same time as the stability fixes that are likely to cause some server down time, or should they start up an alpha test with those server fixes in place, so that the issues that will lead to some server downtime are resolved before the economy changes hit alpha?
Which option should Intrepid take here?
It will achieve less testing for the final product, thst is about it.
So, if we are to assume this thread and the other people whining to delay the next phase had an effect on this decision at all, then congrats guys, you actively made the release version of the game worse.
from Steven
Personally I dont believe it will be enough time, there is not much to do but to trust on his word or not but thats exactly what I tried to archieve. The fact that people dont see it or even worse are against it is just honestly sad. There has been supringly a lot of pushback against the delay which just shows how many people do not care if the game improves or not and has the best launch possible whenever it will be.
Thank you for the people who choose to support AoC because I do like this game and hope it has a bright future and furthermore I hope the people who are againt it for some reason reconsider their life choices.
GG
You are saying that you don't think they have the time to get the test to a state you want to see it in before the next phase.
Most of us agree.
What we are saying is that this is not the point of testing.
If there is one thing I have learned about Steven in the 8 or so years I've been following this game, and the {somewhere between 4 and 7 years, being non-specific to protect identities of the people I am talking about} I have been talking to friends of mine that work for Steven, it is that he is surprisingly susceptable to peer pressure - but only if it comes from online sources.
What this means is that the loudest people in this community absolutely have the power to fuck this game over - and that is exactly what they are doing. Steven often times listens to people online that have no clue what they are talking about, have no understanding of game development but harp on about what *they* want to see, and Steven listens to them over the people that are actually making the game, that actualy know what they are talking about.
@davenb if you want Ashes to succeed, the best thing you can do, and I mean this with all honesty and sincerity, is just shut the fuck up.
I think this can be refuted in one second continuing with the construction site example. If you can see that the foundation of what is being built is crooked and will not be able to bare load. You do not continue to construct it.
I mean, that isn't an overly good refudiation.
The build on alpha that we are testing is not the version that Intrepid are directly working on. The developers are not pushing their work to alpha to see if it works as expected, is stable etc. Rather, each team has their own build to push their own work to in order to test it.
This simple fact in itself renders your analogy broken. Unlike construction, leaving alpha in place does not stop the construction of things that need to be fixed.
However, what your analpgy missed is that stopping the alpha isn't akin to stopping construction of a building in order to fix potential issues, it is actually akin to stopping investigating what those potential issues are, and trying to fix the issues using only the data you have on hand.
The game isn't perfect, we all know that. Finding out why is THE REASON ALPHA EXISTS.
Stopping alpha because there are issues is literally counter productive to what the alpha test is supposed to be achieving.
The problem, as I have been saying for a very long time, is that a handful of loud people want to PLAY the game, not TEST the game.
I am of the opinion that the best thing Intrepid can do for this game, and thus for their company, is kick those people out of the alpha test.
All of this is contingent on intrepid knowing that the leveling system, combat, npc balance, etc etc is all bad, and as of this moment it isn't clear that they do. On the contrary everything i've seen so far suggests that the zerg up and grind npcs is intentional.
I am not advocating for stopping alpha, i'm for identifying the problems in leveling and emphatically stating that this isn't the intended design, which as far as i'm aware has not been said
You quite literally said finding out why is the reason alpha exists but when we tell you its because you need to grind mobs with no mana and no rotation and in a massive guild, you say its "not a game bro".
If you really want to say we can infer absolutely nothing meaningful about the final product from the alpha, then fine, however that's a bold claim on your end not ours.
As an aside, i've absolutely tested alpha games before, and the combat and systems in those alphas was absolutely foundational and made it to the full release of those games no question.
I had the privilege of playing an alpha right now actually that I think is more studio quality ready than a lot of triple A titles.
I've been in alphas that had combat change for the worse and those for the better, but ALL of the alpha states were always significant.
So, a few points.
First, what games have you alpha tested? I ask this with genuine interest, as there are VERY few games of any genre that have an alpha test that is not strictly invite only, and those invites are based on the testers understanding of how game testing/development actually works. You show little of that understanding, so I am assuming the games you have tested were not invite only - so I am very curious as to what games they are.
Second, the combat system is indeed not where it should be. However, things like this are iterative - meaning Intrepid need testing to happen at every stage. The notion that they could take things offline, fix the combat system without actual iteration and then push the next build of alpha out and things are just magically better is fanciful at best, but laughable is probably a better term.
If you are testing, Intrepid is gathering data. If you find it not fun, and decide to leave, the point at which you do so is also valuable data for Intrepid. If you are killing mobs and running out of mana, Intrepid will look at that, and they will look at things like mob density, mana regen (including many ways to increase it), average kill times, experience gains etc, and they will contrast that with how long they want it to take people to level. If it turns out that people are able to kill things faster than they intended and thus level faster, it may well be that they maintain a restriction on mana.
The point is, a change to something like mana has ramifications for the entire game. It is something that needs to be well considered, and will need to be iterated on in order to get where Intrepid want. They quite literally have to start the alpha test off knowing that it will be rougher on testers than the live game and iterate to make it better - but hey, as you should know being an experienced alpha tester like myself, that is what alpha testing is about, right?
The reason I say "it's not a game" is because this is kind of the intention. They want to see where peoples breaking points are, the test is designed in part to achieve this. Things are harder now than they will be, and the iteration that will happen after testing brings things in line to where they want it to be.
It is not designed (for now) to be fun, to be a game. It is designed to gather data.
Hense, "it is not a game", and don't expect it to play like one.
Third, if you are not arguing for the alpha to be delayed, why are you in a thread asking for the alpha to be delayed, arguing with the one person that is saying the alpha should not be delayed?
First: I can't/don't want to get into specifics on which games
Second: If the combat is not where it needs to be at, glad we agree, if its iterative, i'm not certain what the problem of giving feedback is. To remind you and the audience you're frequently in most threads telling people that you're not a rapper so stop rapping at you (that its not a game its a test).
You seem to do a 180 and suggest that giving feedback is actually valuable, in which case your thesis of not needing play testers seems to fall apart? You need us to find where the game isn't fun and thats exactly what we're doing? So why are you in every thread saying we should be booted from the alpha for looking for some kind of gameplay loop or intention behind the game?
Third: Admittedly the thread here is largely irrelevant. I just noticed that you're highly dismissive of all feedback in threads, for example the thread about the guy who said there are frequently more ranged in combat because there are a greater number of ranged classes than melee. You criticized (derailed) the post because it didn't satisfy your semantic need for nit picking, that he can't actually imply direct causation of there being more classes translating to an actual more amount of players on the battlefield. The onus isn't on him to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt or write it as if it were a research paper. Rather its more of a balance of probabilities, likely people will try out classes on a somewhat random basis and that would translate in the way the OP is saying, there's no reason to believe the distribution would be 80% fighter like you suggested in the thread.
When another person made a thread saying the combat feels kind of janky, you basically gaslighted him and said alphas are always bad this early in development and you can't infer anything because you're too uneducated on alpha testing. Despite the fact that as stated earlier, you're making the claim that we can't infer based on what we see, and instead to infer based on what YOU SAY which means the onus is on you to get us to disregard our own eyes.
In other words your feedback is largely dissmisive, highly semantic and I think largely riddled with falsehood.
I certainly hope you're not anyone important to IS, because this kind of elitism is the exact thing they need to fail spectacularly to encourage them to keep swimming down the river of blood.
Take this how you like, but I would assume your "don't want to" remaining excuse is due to there not being any actual alphas you have been involved in - because again, they are almost always invite only. I can not think of any quality MMORPG that has ever had an alpha test that was not invite only. What I tell people is feedback that the test as it is now is not fun is not usful feedback.
Objective data on classes is useful feedback. Subjective data on when people are giving up and going off to do something more fun is useful.
When people say things like "this game sucks, people are leaving because it isn't fun", then yeah, the appropriate response is to tell them that this is a test, not a game, and it is not necessarily supposed to be fun.
I am dismissive of "feedback" that is out of order - things that should be looked at later on. However, even within that, I am (usually, situationally dependent) not telling people that they shouldn't give good feedback (few people know what that is), but more that they shouldn't expect much to happen to resolve their concern for a while, because it is an issue to be dealt with some time in the future.
When I see feedback that I consider good, I say as much. There was someone suggesting that Intrepid should do some work on setting up pre-downloads for patches, and I thought that was a good idea to be worked on now, and so said as much in the thread.
Then there was the melee thread you talked about. My comment there was purely the objective fact that classes are not all played in equal numbers. The opening comment of that thread essentially said that there are fewer melee players because there are fewer melee classes - a statement that is self-evidently wrong.
So, when I see good, valid feedback, I agree with it. When I see feedback that is likely to be dealt with much later on, I tell people to not expect much right now. When I see "feedback" that is essentially people complaining that the game isn't fun, I tell them that is because it is a test. When I see people making factually incorrect statements, regadless of what the rest of their feedback is, I pull them up on what is factually incorrect.
Feel free to find an actual flaw in the above. I was involved in an alpha test for an MMORPG that is currently live (not ESO) where for 2 weeks during said alpha, the camera was upside down. There was an intention to have this as an effect on some bosses for a short amount of time, and a number of rushed people and poor decisions saw it pushed to the test environment as a permanant state for all players.
Then there was the game that broke "move forward" for a period of time. Technically it was still there, it was just not possble to bind a key or mouse button to it.
Or the game that literally had all abilities deal 1 point of damage for almost a month.
These are the kinds of things that are normal for an actual alpha. This is why I assume you have not been in one if you are making claims like "As an aside, i've absolutely tested alpha games before, and the combat and systems in those alphas was absolutely foundational and made it to the full release of those games no question."
The notion of "combat feels a bit janky" is a beta issue, not an alpha issue. I'm not saying and have never said it isn't *an* issue, just that it isn't an issue for today.
So do I.
Most of my posts on these forums (99.99%) are aimed at other posters, not Intrepid. My assumption is that Intrepid do not listen to me at all, and my genuine hope is that they don't listen to anyone that doesn't work for Intrepid.
I have had a small amount of feedback that I am uniquly suited to provide, and that feedback was given directly to the developers that asked me to provide it, to do with as they see fit as they are the ones that know better than I ever could.
You asked me for an actual flaw but then glossed over the main substance. The flaw is that you're wasting everyone's reading time and derailing the thread by putting ridiculous requirements on the OPs that they format their posts as if it were professional content "If I WaS rEaDiNg ThIs FoR a JoB". You nitpicked that he couldn't prove causality on his argument, when reading the post on a much more reasonable onus you would have understood that he was saying due to the nature of large scale open world combat and yes even more available ranged classes, that range would dominate and force multiply. If we have to explain really basic concepts to you because they aren't worded in a 100% accurate manner you're a liability to the forums not an asset because you're going to drown out all useful information with random statements like "Achskually the seat of power is not a SEAT AT ALL REEEE, they attempted to fool us friends but never fear, only I could figure out that it was not really a seat!!! bravo bravo"
Someone posted a thought with an opening statement that was factually incorrect, but also counter-productive to the point they were trying to make (I have not gone over why this is the case in that thread, the OP of the thread is clearly not capable of taking that information on board).
Then someone posts exactly 311 characters pointing out to them that this opening statment may be worth changing.
The OP of said thread that made the factually incorrect, counterproductive statement then doubled down on it, despite the blatantly obvious nature of it being incorrect. Said OP even agrees later on in the thread that the core reason the statement is factually incorrect (there are different numbers of players playing each class) is in fact true, yet still maintains that their blatantly obvious, factually incorrect statement is valid.
After all of that, you are blaming the person trying to help them out by pointing out the flaw in their post, rather than the person that made the blatantly obvious mistake, and refused to admit it was a mistake even when they themselves state that the reason it is a mistake is true?
You are placing the blame for the time you feel you have wasted at the wrong poster, my friend. Always direct blame at the initial mistake, not the attempt to remedy said mistake.
My point specifically is that you're being hyper literal, using the wrong evidentiary standard, and expecting professional quality posts from random people on the internet.
You could probably go through every single post on the forums and find some kind of error, which I actually think is partly the accusation. Maybe the time would have been better spent focusing on what he got correct.
Factually correct, sure, but not "professional".
On top of that, I don't necessarily expect factually correct on the first pass. That is why I provided a simple explination of the issue in my first post on the matter. It is an easy thing to see how one could get caught up in a pre-concieved notion they may have and lose track of the fact that the number of classes in a game has no direct relation to how many people play each of those classes.
However, once an issue is pointed out, I do have an expectation that people will generally correct themselves in matters of fact.
Maybe I could, but I wouldn't.
I would only correct facts in posts I think have merit and warrant discussion, but factually incorrect notions will prevent some from engaging in said discussion.
If someone posts something factually incorrect, but it is on a notion I just consider to be stupid (there is a lot of that here), I am not going to waste my time correcting anything.