Creative Director's Letter

Valentina

It has been posted, and contains cool things like the world map, and info on ALPHA 1 for the MMORPG and more!

https://ashesofcreation.com/news/2019-12-31-creative-directors-letter

Steven joined the discord community voice chat in a brief Q&A, and answered some questions in the chat as well.

Valentina

Arterius said:

I really want to believe in Ashes. I feel like out of all the kickstarted MMO's it has the chance to be the most unique

Me too! I am a KS backer, and I love what they aim to achieve with the game, and they have recruited a lot of top tier talent in the industry to their development team over the last year, as well. Personally, I am very satisfied with this letter and it contained more than I had thought it would. The letter has also been very well received by the community in Discord as well, the mood is much lighter and more optimistic than it has felt recently!

Valentina

Arterius said:

Valentina said:

Arterius said:

I really want to believe in Ashes. I feel like out of all the kickstarted MMO's it has the chance to be the most unique

Me too! I am a KS backer, and I love what they aim to achieve with the game, and they have recruited a lot of top tier talent in the industry to their development team over the last year, as well. Personally, I am very satisfied with this letter and it contained more than I had thought it would. The letter has also been very well received by the community in Discord as well, the mood is much lighter and more optimistic than it has felt recently!

Sure but they can write anything in the letter. It didn't have any video's, no dates, barely any screenshots, etc...

For now its just empty words and promises.

That's not true, there are dates, January and March. Internal testing for Alpha 1 begins next month (January), Alpha 1 is being shown in March at GDC, nobody is going to give a very specific date until probably that time which is common practice. This is a MMORPG in development by an indie studio, and only 2-3 years in to actual production. Most games from AAA studios have the benefit of being a secret for the first few years of development until they are announced and can have firm dates, and even they almost never actually meet those. Games like Ashes of Creation don't have that benefit, they are announced before true production even begins for crowdfunding which makes things only seem longer.

delete5230

Valentina said:

Arterius said:

Valentina said:

Arterius said:

I really want to believe in Ashes. I feel like out of all the kickstarted MMO's it has the chance to be the most unique

Me too! I am a KS backer, and I love what they aim to achieve with the game, and they have recruited a lot of top tier talent in the industry to their development team over the last year, as well. Personally, I am very satisfied with this letter and it contained more than I had thought it would. The letter has also been very well received by the community in Discord as well, the mood is much lighter and more optimistic than it has felt recently!

Sure but they can write anything in the letter. It didn't have any video's, no dates, barely any screenshots, etc...

For now its just empty words and promises.

That's not true, there are dates, January and March. Internal testing for Alpha 1 begins next month (January), Alpha 1 is being shown in March at GDC, nobody is going to give a very specific date until probably that time which is common practice. This is a MMORPG in development by an indie studio, and only 2-3 years in to actual production. Most games from AAA studios have the benefit of being a secret for the first few years of development until they are announced and can have firm dates, and even they almost never actually meet those. Games like Ashes of Creation don't have that benefit, they are announced before true production even begins for crowdfunding which makes things only seem longer.

I say Awesome to both of you. 

I had my fill of news letter stalling with Pantheon.... But if they show actual progress and tentative dates it much better     

Even if they cant make them, at least the intent is their.  

Albatroes

Actions speak louder than words Steven. Honestly, more stuff was shown back in 2016 vs up to this point, so if 'faith' wants to be restored to stall ridicule over this title, more mmorpg footage needs to be shown, like living towns/crafting/caravan system w/e. Talking about how the BR is doing so much for the combat/seige testing w/e is just showing people how hollow the game is, especially when people were told the game would at least be in Alpha 1 before the end of 2019.

Valentina

Albatroes said:

Actions speak louder than words Steven. Honestly, more stuff was shown back in 2016 vs up to this point, so if 'faith' wants to be restored to stall ridicule over this title, more mmorpg footage needs to be shown, like living towns/crafting/caravan system w/e. Talking about how the BR is doing so much for the combat/seige testing w/e is just showing people how hollow the game is, especially when people were told the game would at least be in Alpha 1 before the end of 2019.

Nodes/Caravans among other things are all confirmed to be going to be in Alpha 1, it's not going to be a hollow alpha where you just log in and run around in circles with 1 quest and there will also be no NDA, so you will be able to watch it on streams if you don't have A1 access. They have already shown early iterations of these systems in videos before, there was essentially a year-long delay for reasons explained over this year over and over, and is covered again in the letter.  

Honestly anyone believing that they would hit the 2019 alpha mark, and 2020 release was being naive. MMO's are famous for never releasing at their projected release dates, and Intrepid was silly for providing one at all. Again, an indie studio which had a very tiny team until after Kickstarter, which was in the middle of 2017, was not going to be able to finish and release the game in two years. An AAA studio wouldn't even be able to come close to those dates. They have to actually BUILD the game, and as I said before, other games have the luxury of having their first few years in total secrecy. Games like Ashes of Creation do not get to have that, you are seeing a game actually enter production proper and go through all the development hiccups and setbacks that come with the early years that you don't see from AAA studios/games. It can make development seem longer, without progress, but it really isn't since most games in this genre take between 5-8 years to develop.

jahlon

Valentina said:

Honestly anyone believing that they would hit the 2019 alpha mark, and 2020 release was being naive. 

The problem is, they said they would make "before 2020" not it doesn't look like they will even make "in 2020"

 It will probably be 2022 before we see this game launch.

Vrika

Talk is cheap. After they failed Apocalypse launch I don't have any trust in them until they give us something that's fun to play.

Soybean

Valentina said:
That's not true, there are dates, January and March. Internal testing for Alpha 1 begins next month (January), Alpha 1 is being shown in March at GDC, nobody is going to give a very specific date until probably that time which is common practice. This is a MMORPG in development by an indie studio, and only 2-3 years in to actual production. Most games from AAA studios have the benefit of being a secret for the first few years of development until they are announced and can have firm dates, and even they almost never actually meet those. Games like Ashes of Creation don't have that benefit, they are announced before true production even begins for crowdfunding which makes things only seem longer.

When you tubers first talked about this game they made it seem like the game was ready to come out in a matter of months. That turned out not to be true and those you tubers ended up deleting those videos. People not trusting what Steven says... well he did that to himself. The battle royale was monetized all to hell and back so we have a pretty good idea what is to come in the MMO, even if it is COSMETIC ONLY.

Kajidourden

Wake me up when they have a game to play.  Even Star Citizen has that at least.

jahlon

Soybean said:

Valentina said:
That's not true, there are dates, January and March. Internal testing for Alpha 1 begins next month (January), Alpha 1 is being shown in March at GDC, nobody is going to give a very specific date until probably that time which is common practice. This is a MMORPG in development by an indie studio, and only 2-3 years in to actual production. Most games from AAA studios have the benefit of being a secret for the first few years of development until they are announced and can have firm dates, and even they almost never actually meet those. Games like Ashes of Creation don't have that benefit, they are announced before true production even begins for crowdfunding which makes things only seem longer.

When you tubers first talked about this game they made it seem like the game was ready to come out in a matter of months. That turned out not to be true and those you tubers ended up deleting those videos. People not trusting what Steven says... well he did that to himself. The battle royale was monetized all to hell and back so we have a pretty good idea what is to come in the MMO, even if it is COSMETIC ONLY.

This is pretty much spot on.

When the hype train left the station it was all aboard for a before 2020 launch, with a fairly detailed road-map for the early testing in Alpha.

Then this BR appeared.  Which, while not defending the heavy monetization of the BR, the testing it accomplished was necessary.  Early hitboxes were horribly desynced between clients, the combat felt horrible, the game was unresponsive, etc.

Unfortunately, they kept on the track of the Battle Royale, and they didn't realize that as a BR it wasn't good enough to compete in the BR market, and as a testing ground once players hit max level and earned all their goodies they weren't going to be interested.

To many things were promised as "coming soon" but just haven't been delivered.

Intrepid really needs to re-align their deliverable schedule and manage expectations or this game is going to have several more years of trouble stacked up before they ever get to launch.  

Vrika

jahlon said:

Soybean said:

Valentina said:
That's not true, there are dates, January and March. Internal testing for Alpha 1 begins next month (January), Alpha 1 is being shown in March at GDC, nobody is going to give a very specific date until probably that time which is common practice. This is a MMORPG in development by an indie studio, and only 2-3 years in to actual production. Most games from AAA studios have the benefit of being a secret for the first few years of development until they are announced and can have firm dates, and even they almost never actually meet those. Games like Ashes of Creation don't have that benefit, they are announced before true production even begins for crowdfunding which makes things only seem longer.

When you tubers first talked about this game they made it seem like the game was ready to come out in a matter of months. That turned out not to be true and those you tubers ended up deleting those videos. People not trusting what Steven says... well he did that to himself. The battle royale was monetized all to hell and back so we have a pretty good idea what is to come in the MMO, even if it is COSMETIC ONLY.

This is pretty much spot on.

When the hype train left the station it was all aboard for a before 2020 launch, with a fairly detailed road-map for the early testing in Alpha.

Then this BR appeared.  Which, while not defending the heavy monetization of the BR, the testing it accomplished was necessary.  Early hitboxes were horribly desynced between clients, the combat felt horrible, the game was unresponsive, etc.

Unfortunately, they kept on the track of the Battle Royale, and they didn't realize that as a BR it wasn't good enough to compete in the BR market, and as a testing ground once players hit max level and earned all their goodies they weren't going to be interested.

To many things were promised as "coming soon" but just haven't been delivered.

Intrepid really needs to re-align their deliverable schedule and manage expectations or this game is going to have several more years of trouble stacked up before they ever get to launch.  

Intrepid's error with Battle Royale was that they launched it as standalone product. They should have done like Crowfall and just ran limited time combat tests for their backers. Instead now they got a deserved reputation of launching crap games and immediately abandoning the crap that they launch.

Gigabear

Vrika said:

Intrepid's error with Battle Royale was that they launched it as standalone product. They should have done like Crowfall and just ran limited time combat tests for their backers. Instead now they got a deserved reputation of launching crap games and immediately abandoning the crap that they launch.

Exactly this. Any money they manage to gain from this for their supposedly fully-funded game has come at the cost of incredible damage to their reputation. 

Intrepid had PVP arenas as early as PAX WEST 2017, and a basic PVE demo at PAX EAST 2018. This in addition to their alpha 0 client(DEC 2017), which was decent for a pre-alpha.

They had a community full of people super-hyped for the game, myself included.

Then, at some point, they thew everything away to make this monetized BR mode. Combined with stuff like the My.com thing, it shattered the community, ruined IS' reputation, and derailed the hype train completely. 

Despite 2 failed attempts to launch this thing, IS still won't cancel it. As a result, I don't see them surviving past the launch of Ashes, if they even get that far.

Frykka

Valentina said:

Albatroes said:

Actions speak louder than words Steven. Honestly, more stuff was shown back in 2016 vs up to this point, so if 'faith' wants to be restored to stall ridicule over this title, more mmorpg footage needs to be shown, like living towns/crafting/caravan system w/e. Talking about how the BR is doing so much for the combat/seige testing w/e is just showing people how hollow the game is, especially when people were told the game would at least be in Alpha 1 before the end of 2019.

Nodes/Caravans among other things are all confirmed to be going to be in Alpha 1, it's not going to be a hollow alpha where you just log in and run around in circles with 1 quest and there will also be no NDA, so you will be able to watch it on streams if you don't have A1 access. They have already shown early iterations of these systems in videos before, there was essentially a year-long delay for reasons explained over this year over and over, and is covered again in the letter.  

Honestly anyone believing that they would hit the 2019 alpha mark, and 2020 release was being naive. MMO's are famous for never releasing at their projected release dates, and Intrepid was silly for providing one at all. Again, an indie studio which had a very tiny team until after Kickstarter, which was in the middle of 2017, was not going to be able to finish and release the game in two years. An AAA studio wouldn't even be able to come close to those dates. They have to actually BUILD the game, and as I said before, other games have the luxury of having their first few years in total secrecy. Games like Ashes of Creation do not get to have that, you are seeing a game actually enter production proper and go through all the development hiccups and setbacks that come with the early years that you don't see from AAA studios/games. It can make development seem longer, without progress, but it really isn't since most games in this genre take between 5-8 years to develop.

I guilded with Steven/Sorc in AA and he is a marketing genius learning to be a creative director.  He knows what he wants and will eventually get there but it has quest chains and PvE dungeons with Bosses so a full 5 year dev cycle is expected.  Real Development began on this (the mmo) in late 2017 so 2022 is reasonable.  As a White Order officer I will play when it is done and polished...  I've tested Crowfall now for 4+ years and we are coming out of the home stretch into release.  My expectation is NW late this spring (toogle PvP? wtf)... then CF soft launch this summer, CU beta this summer with xmas launch, Pantheon who cares (no PvP.)

Frykka

Intrepid's error with Battle Royale was that they launched it as standalone product. They should have done like Crowfall and just ran limited time combat tests for their backers. Instead now they got a deserved reputation of launching crap games and immediately abandoning the crap that they launch.

Crowfall is now on its fifth iteration of combat and its 3rd major UI update.  These things PvP wise take a lot of internal and player testing to get just right.  CF is almost there.