*old post - lack of information on cosmetics

Hi, I'd like to make a suggestion and ask other members of the community what is your opinion on this. I'm starting to get frustrated with the social media and marketing team for all their daily posts that only showcase exclusive skins that people paid $250 or $375 to get and are no longer available for new community members.

I don't understand what's the reason behind this decision, you are not "saving the good stuff" for launch by not showing an in-game obtainable lion mount, and only showing off the cool-looking black and purple lion. This only contributes to the "Ashes of Cosmetics" meme and I keep seeing people being misled commenting on these posts assuming they will be able to get what they think are mounts/pets/armor.

I've also seen people commenting stuff like "will your game have X mount/pet?" and your twitter account replying yes with an image of some exclusive skin misleading the person to believe that you are showing an actual mount/pet that they will be able to obtain.

I want to believe intrepid when you say these skins help you build the models for the variations and stuff, so please, instead of your posts being 99% skins and 1% in-game stuff, make it 90% in-game stuff and 10% skins, or, if for some reason you just don't want to show as many in-game mounts/pets even tho you already show the models as skins, just stop making daily posts with images and videos only showing these expensive skins, or at least make it clear that those are skins and you will have in-game variations but you don't want to show it.

I also hope that for Alpha 2, you don't the same as in Alpha 1, where most of the mounts and armor sets were exclusive skins that people can no longer obtain, especially because Alpha 2 will be a big showcase, and will be up and running for a long period of time.

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Azherae

Isn't this almost exactly the correct response to your last complaint though?

The wording used is VERY specifically 'What emblems would you place on a similar set of armor?'

I'm not saying it's perfect, but this absolutely isn't 'hey you can get this armor in the game', it is 'you can get armor that looks like this in the game', and given the relatively stylish-yet-generic form of that armor, I would be really surprised if you couldn't?

In short, how is it 'still incorrect', for you?

EDIT: For clarity, yes, I understand that the responses given are of cosmetic armor, but by the premise and PROMISE, we will get similar themed armor that is not cash-shop.

Azherae

EDIT: Wiggly doublepost.

Liniker

Azherae wrote: »

In short, how is it 'still incorrect', for you?

You and I know those are not armor sets, but that guy and many others seeing these posts don't know that - not only because they don't follow the project closely, but because the social media person Never makes it clear that these are not armor sets, quite the opposite, they post clips of alpha footage wearing skins and recolors as armor with no disclaimers and reply to comments of people asking about armor showing more skins.

Dygz

Caught them doing what??
Is there something in the tweet that says, "You can obtain this armor set in-game!!" ???
The tweet displays a set of armor with some descriptive text about the tabard sigil and asks what types of sigils you would like to acquire in game.

They are letting us know that the armor set has moved from concept art to 3D models.
You know - informing us of progress!!!
And they're asking on feedback about stuff we'd like them to add.

Nothing in the tweet states that's PC armor rather than NPC armor.
I'd say the descriptive text implies The Order Of The Steel Bloom is an NPC Order, rather than a player character Order.

Azherae

Liniker wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

In short, how is it 'still incorrect', for you?

You and I know those are not armor sets, but that guy and many others seeing these posts don't know that - not only because they don't follow the project closely, but because the social media person Never makes it clear that these are not armor sets, quite the opposite, they post clips of alpha footage wearing skins and recolors as armor with no disclaimers and reply to comments of people asking about armor showing more skins.

Ok, I understand now. If Intrepid were to absolutely guarantee that dark brown or black versions of those two cosmetics, would be available as ingame armor, with stats and everything, would it still be a problem 'because the thing shown is a red version which is unobtainable in game'?

I can see that, especially since the response did not contain text, just images, which could be seen as pretty dodgy. Nothing like 'half an explanation with some emojis' to inspire confidence...

Liniker

Dygz wrote: »

Caught them doing what??
Is there something in the tweet that says, "You can obtain this armor set in-game!!" ???

Dygz wrote: »

Nothing in the tweet states that's PC armor rather than NPC armor.
I'd say the descriptive text implies The Order Of The Steel Bloom is an NPC Order, rather than a player character Order.

@Dygz I want to see you white knight about this kind comment (this it wasn't hard to find it's a reply to that same steel bloom tweet, they do this all the time)

Do you also think this is OK and they are not implying that those skins are PC armor sets to people that Clearly think they are PC gear sets? LOL do you think this guy will be happy when he finds out what they show are 375$ pack exclusive skins with no obtainable in-game variations?

JustVine

Liniker wrote: »

I just saw AoC twitter account doing the same thing again... and this is what I'm talking about!

How is this OK?? If this person doesn't follow the project closely he is being led to believe those are armor sets and they are not... they are are exclusive cosmetic skins from a previous 375$ pack.

That's very disingenuous! even tho for some odd reason that only God knows why, intrepid keeps showing off these skins and also recolors of these skins as in-game armor for Alphas (even tho there shouldn't exist any recolors besides pieces on different sets that should be hard to notice at first glance)

I agree with everything you are saying here with two caveats.

First caveat is we have no idea what their plans are relative to in game sets. They could be planning all manner of in game samurai and roman sets. They therefore answered the person in the tweets you pasted with what they felt comfortable showing. So it's their words, not their willingness to use the pictures, that is 'wrong' here.

They have a (in my opinion BAD) policy of keeping in game stuff 'close to the chest', which means when they want to show the potential 'truth' that they will have samurai and western armor, they can't show them anything other than said expensive unobtainable cosmetics as 'proof of intent'.

Could they just say 'we intend to do something like this in other pieces'? Yes. Could they caveat 'hey you can get something SORTA but not exactly like this'? Yes. I agree they need much clearer caveats. Is it wrong to show them these exact visuals however? Absolutely not. It would not hurt their marketing to be more precise about what they are showing them. Right now they are being extremely lazy when they have no reason to be and that is why I agree with you. I just don't think showing people the pictures is in themselves the misleading part.

Second caveat is that we have no way of knowing how far they plan on taking that whole 'cut up the set and move them to completely new sets' part of that paragraph you pasted. Steven says it in a way that can definitely be taken as 'they won't recolor or retexture and then sell' the ENTIRE piece, but once each individual piece is on different costumes/gear sets, they are not breaking their word by doing so in that context nor by having NPC outfits of said recolors/retextures. This is why I think it isn't necessarily wrong to show them the recolors. It is once again, the messaging part of it that comes off as misleading.

But the root of why all of this is so easy to misconstrue and misunderstand comes from Steven's original policy, not showing off the recolors as if you might be able to get something like this in the game itself. Because honestly the original policy is unclear enough that it might very well be possible to 'collect them all' and just 'get the full set by proxy even if it looks recolored, retextured, and tweaked for it's recontextualization'. The policy itself is phrased and word in a way that can confuse multiple parties, and is a reason that while I have given Intrepid money already, I will advocate strongly against supporting the projects cosmetics until they clarify literally everything cosmetic related publicly and in a clear and coherent way.

Tl;dr It's not ok, but we need to be very specific about what isn't ok or they'll have every right to ignore otherwise valid criticism and not see what exactly needs to improve from the marketing teams perspective. IS can definitely improve on these issues with a bit more care, thought, and clarifications on policy.

PenguinPaladin

If you look at it with a whats showable perspective, they can show off already shown no longer available cosmetics, because they are already shown..... i would assume, every set they show directly has 5-10 similar sets made with it... you dont use a model one time in this kind of buisness... they want to keep as much of the game hidden as they can, while still being very transparent. They will show off everything they make, thats already been available to the public.

JustVine

PenguinPaladin wrote: »

If you look at it with a whats showable perspective, they can show off already shown no longer available cosmetics, because they are already shown..... i would assume, every set they show directly has 5-10 similar sets made with it... you dont use a model one time in this kind of buisness... they want to keep as much of the game hidden as they can, while still being very transparent. They will show off everything they make, thats already been available to the public.

I of course will disagree that you can't make the assumption of 5-10 sets. Steven has very non-standard philosophy when it comes to cosmetics. He is also funding a lot of this himself and is therefore slightly less influenced by the economic force that would normally make one make that type of calculation that leads to that type of reuse of assets. He want's to preserve some sort of ambiguous 'essence of collectability' that makes his decision making process foreign to anyone who isn't him as it's a very abstract ideal.

And I will elaborate what I said in my previous post, by 'keeping as much of the game hidden as possible is a bad policy'. if it's going to restrict you giving players as good of a representation of an example of what you mean when you are marketing as possible, it's a bad restriction. I'm not saying they need to show us everything, or that keeping things close to your chest is bad. I'm saying that IS is incredibly RIGID about it and it's hurt their publicity a number of times both with prospective customers, and people already interested in their project. They need to be slightly more liberal with information than they have been, because Steven is not a very effective communicator when it comes to certain topics, which can be more easily rectified by 'having better examples of what he means'. And if those better examples don't exist yet, that is all the more reason for the marketing team to put in a little more thought into how they give and explain their examples.

So as I said in a previous post, I agree with the sentiment that using the pictures they have been using is completely fine. But it's largely the messaging around said pictures which is lacking and it is the marketing departments job to be more clear spoken and communicative relative to the limitations and context of said images relative to their own policies so that they don't mislead people. It's not like the marketing team has so much going on that they can't spend a little more than 5 seconds answering with a picture and some tacky (and quite frankly sarcastic) emojis.

PenguinPaladin

JustVine wrote: »

And I will elaborate what I said in my previous post, by 'keeping as much of the game hidden as possible is a bad policy'. if it's going to restrict you giving players as good of a representation of an example of what you mean when you are marketing as possible, it's a bad restriction

I dont think this applies a whole lot to displaying cosmetics. Development of a game is a slow process. I believe the reason for them to show off model and cosmetics in the first place is just to "flesh out" their monthly live streams in the first place, otherwise they would only need a 10 minute video about the mechanics they have somewhat nailed down each month, and that isnt really something "exciting" for the population wanting info.

I think showing some cosmetics, shows enough for someone to assume the type of things available. Just like how showing some bosses and mechanics gives you a hint at the dept of the combat and showing some weather effects lets you know about the progress being made without spoiling the entire game for potential players

Dygz

Liniker wrote: »

I want to see you white knight about this kind comment (this it wasn't hard to find it's a reply to that same steel bloom tweet, they do this all the time)

Do you also think this is OK and they are not implying that those skins are PC armor sets to people that Clearly think they are PC gear sets? LOL do you think this guy will be happy when he finds out what they show are 375$ pack exclusive skins with no obtainable in-game variations?

There's nothing white knight about it. You just have a bizarre perspective.

Someone asks if all gear in the game will have a shiny, prisitne appearance.
And the devs answer is "no".

You added a whole bunch of extra stuff to that discussion that's just based on your own bias.

PenguinPaladin

I think the frustration coming forward about how they keep showing stuff we have seen before thats no longer obtainable, but nothing "obtainable" in game just comes from people believing the game was further along than it is. And grasping at straws for more information to show exactly how far along development is

Dygz

PenguinPaladin wrote: »

If you look at it with a whats showable perspective, they can show off already shown no longer available cosmetics, because they are already shown..... i would assume, every set they show directly has 5-10 similar sets made with it... you dont use a model one time in this kind of buisness... they want to keep as much of the game hidden as they can, while still being very transparent. They will show off everything they make, thats already been available to the public.

Yeah, I mean... again...
In the tweets, they are showing us the progress from the 2D concept art used during the month of sale, to the 3D rendering later in development. They also use those tweets for some fun Community interaction.
Really has nothing to do with marketing. Most of the stuff on Twitter is not about what's currently purchaseable.

JustVine

PenguinPaladin wrote: »

I think the frustration coming forward about how they keep showing stuff we have seen before thats no longer obtainable, but nothing "obtainable" in game just comes from people believing the game was further along than it is. And grasping at straws for more information to show exactly how far along development is

It is about what they say, not what they show.

Liniker

Dygz wrote: »

They also use those tweets for some fun Community interaction.
Really has nothing to do with marketing. Most of the stuff on Twitter is not about what's currently purchaseable.

Ok, now I know there's no reason to continue this conversation as you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Ashes of Creation is a product, this is a business, Intrepid hired a marketing team and a social media manager and they get paid to do their job - which is Marketing. Every single post they share is marketing, even tho some might not directly be advertisements.

PenguinPaladin

JustVine wrote: »

It is about what they say, not what they show.

The original post here was a complaint about the fact that what the marketing is showing i constantly models that people have bought in bundles up to $375 costs, and not showing the in game obtainable armor.

And my stance on that is, they dont have in game obtainable armor yet made to show. They have an obligation to make these already purchased armor sets, to fulfill what people have already bought. In game obtainable armors or otherwise will be variants made later on when obligations are fulfilled, i assume.

Cat Quiver

I don't use social media, but glancing at their twitter page you're just making shit up.

Craiken

I don't understand what's misleading about the Twitter posts. They don't say the skins are available. Am I missing something?

Dygz

Liniker wrote: »

Ok, now I know there's no reason to continue this conversation as you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Ashes of Creation is a product, this is a business, Intrepid hired a marketing team and a social media manager and they get paid to do their job - which is Marketing. Every single post they share is marketing, even tho some might not directly be advertisements.

LMAO

Shoelid

Dygz wrote: »

Liniker wrote: »

Ok, now I know there's no reason to continue this conversation as you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Ashes of Creation is a product, this is a business, Intrepid hired a marketing team and a social media manager and they get paid to do their job - which is Marketing. Every single post they share is marketing, even tho some might not directly be advertisements.

LMAO

He's not wrong.

While IDK about the tweets being misleading, I would say that it's definitely not a good look. The tweets exist to show off shinies to people who aren't as invested in the development of the game and try to drag them in. The look up the shinies and the first thing they see is either 1)a giant price tag or 2) they're too late to get it.

I also recall a tweet of a mount captioned with something like "Any other mount suggestions?". As if they're taking mount suggestions and putting them in game.

Their marketing is super weird when compared to what the game actually is.

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