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So, Ashes of Creation, the game that began development in 2017 and had scheduled to deliver its first Non-NDA Alpha testing this week, has punted the NDA reveal by another two months in a decision late Friday. Coming off their February Testing where during the Official Live Stream they said they ran into issues, Creative Director Steven Sharif said “my team has determined that additional polish is needed in order to guarantee a smoother Alpha One testing phase”
More on that can be found here: https://ashesofcreation.com/news/2021-03-12-an-update-on-alpha-one-schedule
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One word – OOF!
What's going on is that they need the alpha 1 to look good, because they are already so far behind that they cannot afford another backlash from the community on testing. And although the testing is purely for discovering the mistakes, their image is already screwed by releases they have put out.
Oh boy, here we go again.
Ouch, that's definitely gonna sting a little.
lol. I like the new outro.
Players are already breaking the NDA (As seen in the comment section of KiraTV's "NDA Remains" video), so Intrepid does need to play it safe. They could easily keep the hype while they are playing it safe with the NDA extension, by releasing the Know Your Nodes: Divine or a glimpse of the Summoner.
While they "polish" or apply the wrench, they should give us some Razzle Dazzle! (Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! The Great Oz has spoken!)
This delay is all about the dropping of NDA and public perception of the game. They are still doing "spot testing", so testing will still be going on.
My guess is they are working on combat, as there were a lot of public concern about that.
Yeah your points are pretty valid IMHO, it's a shame but maybe Intrepid can get on top of their breaks and proj man issues in the next 2 months. Nobody is expecting polish in an Alpha 1.
Bringin the heat! I like it 😎
What? delaying things is part of the model. Its really the "normal" thing, so i dont agree.
Naw this makes sense, your points valid just think your delaying not the game just an alpha your not gonna get the info needed from a larger sample size which in turns slows down game production as a whole in my eyes. your delaying a alpha so when ppl actually play it later and they see it’s still very an alpha they gonna say things like “why you delay it’s still broken” and nonsense like that , that’s what’s so concerning too
Clearly it's not at a NDA free level of testing. If it goes live on Streaming platforms and does not meet a certain level of hype it's as good as dead. Taking the PR hit now is probably a less bitter pill to swallow now then getting undesirable influencer nukes. That's my take.
This is starting to go into the same path of Star Citizen, where the director will be confused about what Alpha is.
Alpha is not supposed to be polished, it's supposed to work and they should fix critical bugs.
Seeing this, I'm glad I haven't invested on Alpha and Beta packages, won't do the same mistake again as I did with Star Citizen.
This was a BIG miss for Intrepid. I bought the alpha 2 pack after learning everything I could about the game, and I was so ready to finally see the non-NDA alpha 1 release. Anything would have sufficed, as long as people could walk around and explore the world, fight mobs and stuff.
At this point it should have been called Ashes of Hope. As a early bird KS backer I’ve been backing AoC longer than almost anyone, but more and more I’m loosing heart. I know eventually intrepid will deliver but I’m starting to feel like by the time they get their act together and eventually release, all the wonder will be gone and it will be one of those things you get, say thank you for, take home…..and put it on the shelf.
It’s not so much the repetitive delays, that’s expected. But the constant misrepresentation of this or that and mismanagement and improperly allocated resources on the company side is simply put, getting old. At what point will intrepid studio’s get their act together? It’s a little late in the game metaphorically speaking, to make so many beginner mistakes, this announcement should have been made after the last session or at the very least a stand by order should have been issued
Honestly, if the game comes out before 2023 or 2024, then it will be a rushed game 100%. The pace of development is just too slow to implement the depth of systems they want for AoC, and have it come out sooner.
It's best for fans to not hype the game, because this will pressure them to rush the game even more.
I think we all know why Intrepid is encouraging hype culture – to sell cosmetics in order to get more revenue. Steven isn't a black hole made out of money, after all, and MMOs take millions and millions of dollars to complete. There's a reason why most niche MMOs like Ashes don't get off the ground and if they do, they don't stick around for very long.
As always Jalon you hit the nail on the head. After the announcement by Steven during the last live stream of issues from the Feb closed alpha test I knew delays were inevitable.
I miss the old intro paradox paradox paradox
I don't mind waiting for the game to release since my pc might not be able run a smooth 60 fps if it were to release today. However the point you made in the video does raise some concerns.
i think the polish part they tryna achieve is definitely the combat system..i heard the combat at the current stage is not good but i think this is kinds good and bad at the same time
Since 2020 I would give them Leave way on the 2 Months. The issue is He could of went we are Delaying 2 Months because of Covid but that being Said We can just hope that in June 1 through June 30th there an Alpha because if there is not a Alpha and it's Delayed again there maybe issues behind the scenes. Really there are a lot of Games that was planned for 2021 and Delayed until 2022 this early in 2021.
By the time this will launch we will be looking forward to a new generation of games. Again a game that will fail because of incompetent owners.
why do they keep doing this every fucking time? why not just swallow their pride and stop giving deadlines they cannot deliver, just say fucking May from the beginning. It is so fucking annoying if they just said may from the beginning it wouldnt be a problem, but they keep giving you false hopes same as saying 2020 release and somehow they want us to take them seriously and give them the benefit of the doubt when they delay. UGHHHHHHHHHH
Would this delay have happened if they didn't release the battle royal?
Who's voice is that on the end?
I mean it's better than hearing the words 'until further notice', but June 1st is a huge push back for something that was a week away from happening. I hope it's not polish like you said, because it's not gonna be perfect and should not expected to be for alpha.
I must say the ashes community on discord is so toxic. They shut you down the moment you state an opinion. They are the definition of the outcasts of society and they wonder why real life people might not like them so much, they are so repulsive. They are the very thing they swore to hate and never become. You cannot negotiate with a mob of brainless snowflakes.
To be fair they need the gameplay to be a base that people think is good when they get to play it otherwise ashes will be doa like whatever that terrible amazon mmo was
Who cares let them push it back, or you can have a cyberpunk edition, it comes it when it comes out.
Give them time,we dont want issues like Cyberbug to ever happen again😂😂
the problem is the NDA….if the game still has a lot of things that give a "bad look" like monsters getting stuck in terrain or players clipping trough the floor, or simply crap framerate even tho is an alpha test and this kind of things are to be expected, there can be a lot of bad faith youtubers that will make videos roasting the game for clicks and potentially damaging the image of the game.
You can only give a first impression once, and they wanna make sure their first impression is a good one.
Arsh but true
Being a software developer myself for products that are WAY easier to develop than computer games, I can tell you that work estimations are really hard. When my boss asked me how long I will need for a certain time, my estimates are always a range from an educated guess up to 3 times that much time.
They've met the "Pre test-2" schedule and if they've found a major issue in that test, 1 month is very likely not enough to fix such an issue. So a 2 months delay seems reasonable to me. Also, keep in mind that usually those dates wouldn't be published at all in the first place. The only reason we know about the setbacks is that the development process is made transparent.
Also, a non-NDA Alpha is a big risk they're taking. If all those content creators rush into the game and the feeling is mediocre, this can be a huge setback for the game as it won't get the hype it will need on launch.
(I've first heard about AoC when the Kickstarter was almost over. Since then I check into the development process 2 or 3 times a year. Taking only 58% longer than you estimated at the start of the project is what I call a pretty good estimate for such an enormous project. I would expect more than 120% more time than estimated. So, if the game releases in 2022 because the Non-NDA Alpha is successful and AoC can go to Beta this year, that would be an amazing achievement)
This is why Jahlon is so valuable. He will praise successes and fairly criticize failures.
I think it's obvious what's happening here. Intrepid is very afraid of bad first impressions of the general public. And that's a very reasonable concern AoC really doesn't need any bad rep right now. On the other hand I haven't bought any of the pacs so I'm not that invested in alpha I releasing as soon as possible. So that's probably the reason why I don't see too much of an issue with this delay.
Soooo, what I'm most concerned about is hype for the game dying or people just turning away from the game. I'm also mad that they didn't tell us about a two-month delay more than one week out. But I'm a little more inclined to believe that option two happened because they couldn't keep the server up for more than 5 minutes in a recent test.
Anyway for instance there are a lot of people that will just turn away from the game (possibly forever) if they get a bad intial experience. For instance during the Summit interview. Summit talked about how the forest was terrible to play on launch. And has heard how the game is much better now but still doesn't want to play it due to that initial experience. We could argue that's dumb but that's reality. I'm sure Steven doesn't want to spend months dispelling the myth that the gameplay is will be crap based on A1. I'm sure he has learned his lesson with the bad BR pr making people think that the MMO was never real among other things.
Personally I think some people are expecting too much especially after watching a recent MMOBYTE where the guy watched the lv 10 raid boss video. He says "Does that actually look like something you want to play" he said it looked Mediocre and generic. Which is hard for me to understand since I've been here since 2017. And I couldn't be more pumped to see ashes really look like a game with boss mechanics. But then it hit me he probably hasn't been paying attention since 2017 and is probably comparing it in his head to something really cool like that raid in WOW where the boss turns off the light and you have to fight in the dark. But that's just not where ashes is right now and I really don't think the broader public gets that. I think they will see the unfinished combat and mechanic lacking bosses say the game is trash and never play it. Just like summit. Just like there are some people who won't play due to the bad intial experience of the BR and fears ashes is just another P2W company. We could say that opening the game to the broader public is good for the community. But if it hurts the brand of the game isn't it also ultimately bad. Since we all want ashes to have the best chance of success. As steven said MMOs survive based on the launch. Sure its possible to turn around a bad launch. But it's by no means guaranteed. Not every game has a name like final fantasy behind it. (Though perhaps it's a bit too early to mention launch)
And while yes people are going to hate on ashes no matter what or when NDA lifts. I rather they do it without the combat and mechanic lacking bosses as targets (these are pretty big targets). Personally it would really suck to see every single comment about the game for months be about how the combat sucks knowing that it was halfway through a combat revamp.
To wrap up I guess I'm just really concerned what will happen when possibly a million or more new people over the week play test see ashes. It could be another hype wave like the last one. I just want it to go as smoothly as possible.
Thoughts?
Hope I haven't come off as rude or incoherent or anything.
I didn't think this was a hit piece, it was just honest remarks that I was thinking as well. And my belief is that Steven knew months ago they would not make this milestone in their schedule but kept that bad news until the last week since they're so behind they could not even figure out what the new scheduled date should be until forced to picked one this week, which inclines us to think even more heavily that even this new date pushed out two months is yet another hip-shot SWAG guestimation that could be missed as well. I know this scheduling notification trick all too well as a contractor for a construction management company myself. Sad news indeed, and god I hope I don't come to regret the hundreds i've poured into cosmetic cash shop items thus far.
My bet is that they force themselves to just stick with the non-NDA 1-week Alpha1 Test May 14 date for better or worse just to prevent mass panic. But that the June 1st Alpha One 1-month Test is once again delayed two+ months, all too easy to once again say that "due to issues found in the May 14 test we have more polish / issues to handle and so June 1 Alpha One Testing will be pushed back to "Fall of 2021".
And we all know how they love that vague use of the "Fall" timeframe. It sounds nice to the ears at first because you think Fall… October, but they use every last day of Fall and don't do it until early December where even then it wont be fully ready but they'll force it out to prevent mass panic. So long story short, we'll see you all for the 1 month Non-NDA Alpha One Test in December, not June.
Intrepid has a serious problem accepting the criticism that may come after the removal of the NDA on the grounds that they have promised much and have been unable to implement most of it. The project is extremely ambitious, requires thousands of elements to be refined, and I am afraid that such a small studio may not be able to deal with it, so we will only get a trimmed version of what we were promised, if we get anything at all.
unrelated question:
how much money are they spending on ashes?
Isn't Intrepid still in the "hiring" stage? How do they expect to launch anything without proper devs.. seems like they got 10 artists for every programmer over there 😆
I was really looking forward to this game, but my rose colored shades have been taken off since last months live stream. I see you pretty clearly now Intrepid. Good luck!
The real problem is actually turning the fear porn of naysayer prophecy into reality:
1. When naysayers said, the neverendum scam of star citizen; it wasnt as a joke, it was because it happens again and again, by unscrupolous companies, who want payment without ever having to finish a product. The tommorrow never comes hopium scam of aetherial time lines.
2. You employ veteran experts for their experience of not facing unknown problems, as they have been there, seen it and done it. This expertise/foresight enables reasonably accurate timeline planning along with worst case scenarios. So what 'unknowns/unforeseens' are we talking about …and… not accounted for ?
3. People exaggerating positive timelines, will only ever leave you with egg on your face. Optimism will simply leave you advertising a game under deceptive practice. Granted, pessimism doesnt build hype. But any hype wont be worth crap with persistant, never ending set backs anyway.
I agree. I hate kicking people when they are down. But if you dont want speculation/bad reputation to fill in the voids, honesty and clear explanations is the best policy. Trust is everything. Lose the trust and you lose the customers. While proving the naysayers 100% accurate.
Yet, it is alpha (still) and the saving grace is that substantial observable progress has been made. Fundamental design changes may prove necessary and unavoidable in alpha. But that can only ever be excused with prototype technology that has not been tried before, so experts are in the dark on timelines. I thought that prototyping/framework had been fleshed out already, if not detailed ? Perhaps it is a case of design creep and moving goal posts ? Yet Steven explicitly stated that design creep wont happen as he understood the problem. Perhaps seperating volutary from involuntary design creep, may have been wiser.
The single reason for this delay is to protect themselves from showing how bad the game and especially the combat still is.
Which is reasonable and understandable for any company , but Intrepid was supposed to not be just any company.
So much for transparent development and confidence in your product…this delay and pr talk makes me lose a lot more confidence than any bad early showcase could.