Ashes of Creation Live Stream Confirms 7-8 Dungeons in Development for Alpha One | MMORPG.com

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Ashes of Creation Live Stream Confirms 7-8 Dungeons in Development for Alpha One | MMORPG.com

In the latest live stream for Ashes of Creation, developers Intrepid Studios revealed that they are planning around 7-8 dungeons ready for Alpha One, in addition to more information.

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Slapshot1188

The current Alpha One testing has provided them with valuable feedback. But they hope to have 6-7 dungeons by the time Alpha One launches?

I think something there doesn’t make sense.

Iselin

They confuse themselves with their own totally arbitrary testing phase designations.

It won't be long before we see alpha 1.0 followed by 1.0a which of course would be called beta 0.1 and beta 0.2 in another game and pre-alpha 0.7b in another.

Slapshot1188

Iselin said:

They confuse themselves with their own totally arbitrary testing phase designations.

It won't be long before we see alpha 1.0 followed by 1.0a which of course would be called beta 0.1 and beta 0.2 in another game and pre-alpha 0.7b in another.

I was thinking the same thing...  they over complicate everything in an attempt to monetize it.  Why sell Alpha when you can charge more for Aloha Phases?  Why settle for Alpha Phases when you can sell PRE Alpha?  And probably Pre-Alpha Phases...

Champie

Slapshot1188 said:
you can charge more for Aloha Phases?

This introduces a pleasant change to the development cycle of games!

Mensur

why god why... do they All need to Milk People?

Dharkarai49

Mensur said:

why god why... do they All need to Milk People?

because they aren't a multi billion dollar company

Mensur

Dharkarai49 said:

Mensur said:

why god why... do they All need to Milk People?

because they aren't a multi billion dollar company

You can still get funding and ask the community for support- but there is a thin line on how you chose to go about that issue. In my opinion this is a setup to get more money- by masking alphas and stages. Also your answer is pretty bad- since its common knowledge. Next time I will explain it so a 9 year old can understand.

Slapshot1188

Dharkarai49 said:

Mensur said:

why god why... do they All need to Milk People?

because they aren't a multi billion dollar company

The lead developer claimed he had enough money to self fund the development of the game through launch. Since that claim,  we have countless sales, new alpha phases, pre alpha phases, a spin-off Battle Arena game...  

elc8745

I understand being skeptical about companies selling things before they even have a game made. Too many companies out there concerned more about making a dollar than making a game.

But you guys are misreading this one a little bit. Alpha in AOC was always tiered into stages. People that bought into Alpha 1 bought into the Alpha 1 "period" including any spot testing that happens and the scheduled Alpha 1 Previews. The spot testing and the "previews" are testing cycles that lead up to official "Alpha 1" so that the devs can test their way into having the features in place that they want for official Alpha 1.

Slapshot1188 said:

The current Alpha One testing has provided them with valuable feedback. But they hope to have 6-7 dungeons by the time Alpha One launches?



I think something there doesn’t make sense.

I can see why that is confusing. What that is referring to are the Alpha 1 testers that have been spot testing and who have participated in the one preview event that has happened so far. The feedback from those testers and those events has happened, and they hope to have 6-7 dungeons by the time "official" Alpha 1 starts. Basically everything that has happened has been under the Alpha 1 "period" umbrella, but Alpha 1 "official" hasn't started yet.

Alpha 1 sales have been closed for months. Many months, not sure how many. They may open up again. I'm an Alpha 2 backer, for the record.

Blastoize

4+ years late. Alpha 1 is for 500$+ ppl and some wanna be youtubers. Game is already fully funded and still they made kickstarter. I get it for new people to be excited etc but this smells like star citizen and only thing missing is new subreddit  aoc_refunds.

Did you guys even saw their last few livestreams? That is years of progress and for what?  For several zones, 3 classes and 1-10 skill lvls, few npc with quests, several mounts and monsters. Thats it. If they release game in 2025 i would be really suprised.

elc8745

It's not 4+ years late. It's late, but not that late. And almost every game runs late in development. Yes I've seen the last few livestreams and they are looking good to me. Better than what I'm seeing coming out of any other mmo. Way better.

Look, I'm a gamer. A 39 year old one at that. I don't like any of this modern game making bullshit. Selling cosmetics, selling alpha/beta, selling in game assets. I'm old enough to remember when this stuff didn't happen, AND the games were better quality on top of it.

But this is where we are. Selling alpha/beta access gets you more serious, more focused, generally older/more financially secure, testers. We live in an age where a single reddit thread can seriously damage or even destroy a game before it gets out the gates. You're not going to just open the gates to a bunch of overprivileged brats to come test your game for free, some of whom are then going to break nda and trash your game on every forum they can find. And they will. And they'll do it for completely arbitrary reasons. The game itself might be fine for the state it's in. But then bias steps in. Timmy doesn't like pvp focused games, so even though he knows the game is fine, he's gonna make up stuff and trash it. And vice versa with pve focused games. That's just one example.

Slapshot1188

elc8745 said:

But this is where we are. Selling alpha/beta access gets you more serious, more focused, generally older/more financially secure, testers. 

Absolutely, positively and utterly disagree.   The only thing it does is mean your testers put in more money, and thus more to milk.

Slapshot1188

elc8745 said:

You're not going to just open the gates to a bunch of overprivileged brats to come test your game for free, some of whom are then going to break nda and trash your game on every forum they can find. And they will. And they'll do it for completely arbitrary reasons. The game itself might be fine for the state it's in. But then bias steps in. Timmy doesn't like pvp focused games, so even though he knows the game is fine, he's gonna make up stuff and trash it. And vice versa with pve focused games. That's just one example.

And thus the fallacy of the NDA.

PS:  Overprivileged brats would be the ones that spent $1000 to join an Alpha test.  That is pretty much the definition of it.  And with that comes a massive sense of entitlement.  You screw up something you are giving me for free and no big deal.  You delay and/or screw up what I paid $1000 for?  You got some serious explaining to do.

All the NDA does today is allow companies to further commoditize their product and sell off extra pieces of a "testing" process.  Of course, if the NDA was down then Johnny wouldn't have quite the incentive to drop $1000 to see it would he?


PS-  Welcome to the forums.  Please do stick around and join in some of the other game threads as well.  We can use all the extra new faces we can get.

elc8745

A person testing a game for free is just as capable of being serious and focused etc. There are many people who would test for free and do an outstanding job. Along with them though comes the people won't. And you have no way of weeding them out. The paywall weeds them out. Maybe there's a better way to weed those people out. And if there is I think companies should think about using it.

elc8745

I think we have different definitions of overprivileged. Just assuming, even demanding alpha access be given to me is an example of it to me. Someone paying for it, that's not a privilege, they had to pay for it.

I agree with you on how some companies abuse NDA's though. There are absolutely companies that are doing that. It's not even a question. I don't think Ashes of Creation is though.

TwistedSister77

Torval said:

Just like I say about CU and Crowfall. It's time to shit or get off the pot. It's time to move things forward. Opening up will push that, but I have a feeling staying closed is about controlling the backlash over lack of progress and all the flaws.

Just a correction to you on Crowfall, they had a free open beta last summer with no NDA.  Also, I see a ton of player made vids after every alpha build recently... so not sure if it's under NDA or they are just not enforcing it.

I expect them to have another free open beta before launch with no NDA.  The last one was pretty popular.

elc8745

It's a valid concern. Any kind of extra experience in anything, especially games, puts those people at an advantage. It's one of the things that sucks about people getting early alpha/beta access. But there have always been people that had to test almost every game so what can you do.

That said, the NDA will be dropping on May 14th, unless that get's pushed back for some reason. So the NDA will be dropping before official Alpha 1 even starts. (Which this alone blows many people's comments in this thread out of the water.)

So, point being, you will be able to watch youtube videos, streamers playing and testing the game, forum posts, the whole 9 yards. If you want to, you can stay just as up to date as anyone else, though without the actual mechanical experience of playing it.

BruceYee

TwistedSister77 said:

Torval said:

Just like I say about CU and Crowfall. It's time to shit or get off the pot. It's time to move things forward. Opening up will push that, but I have a feeling staying closed is about controlling the backlash over lack of progress and all the flaws.

Just a correction to you on Crowfall, they had a free open beta last summer with no NDA.  Also, I see a ton of player made vids after every alpha build recently... so not sure if it's under NDA or they are just not enforcing it.

I expect them to have another free open beta before launch with no NDA.  The last one was pretty popular.

I think you are both right about CF and let me explain why...

Torval basically said they need to 'put up' which I 100% agree with cause CF is now trying to ignore the obvious elephant in the room by adding their battle royale mode. Battle Royale mode is NOT what backers gave them money for the same with CU's side project. I can tell you with almost 100% certainty and I've been saying it for years now that Unity cannot handle what they promised which is large scale OW pvp battles. When you have hundreds of people logging into the game from all over the world in a small area activating abilities + doing other things Unity will literally crash. Remember a while ago when they said they were working with Unity on that then shortly after HUNGER DOME was announced? My GUESS is that Unity told them they can only handle exactly what they are doing in their hunger dome mode so they are hoping that catches on so they can avoid open world pvp OR that the population participating in OW PVP is limited because many will be in the one zone instanced 90 person Hunger Dome.

I can definitely see CF coming up with something like zones for CF as crazy as it sounds to limit the number of people in any specific area.

The numbers 'testing' CF now will not be anything close to the number of people logging in when the game launches and shortly afterward. They know this, they have the sales numbers. What I mean is after launch is when all the full-time hardcore people will start up.

I hope I'm wrong about everything I just wrote though cause I want the game to succeed in the way it was originally presented as a large scale OW PVP game with deep customization.

Iselin

coretex666 said:

I have been looking into this game recently and there is one particular thing I was concerned about.

Based on my understanding, this game will be quite focused on large group / guild content with the nodes, sieges, politics, etc. Do you expect that the players who will not start playing before the game launches will be at a significant disadvantage comparing to the players who have been "testing" the game for an extended period of time?

I mean it is likely these players will have quite a decent knowledge of the game and possibly will also have organised groups with specific objectives, etc. before the game even launches. You then join in on day 1 and before you manage to get oriented in the game and join some guild, you will already live in a world dominated by these groups.

Is it a valid concern or am I way off.

I think that's a concern for all games that have player testing but especially so for crowdfunded games and PvP ones in particular.

The thing is that when AAA mainstream MMOs have player testing that group, that has better knowledge about everything game related on day 1 of release is relatively small compared to the hordes of new players those games attract. If it's a PvE game it also mostly doesn't matter. The former testers will level and get to max level faster but that's no big deal to anyone else new to the game.

Crowdfunded games OTOH have a large following of enthusiastic backers all of whom will get into the game and play it before release. And it remains to be seen if they can attract a new batch of players interested in the game at release but they have spent all of their development time in the public eye so they're kind of old news when they release and most people interested in it are probably already backers who have played the game. It's just a theory and like I said it remains to be seen but I think that's how it will play-out.

So yeah, when it's crowdfunded and PvP anyone coming in new at the time of release may very well have a rough time of it as you suspect.

elc8745

Touching on what Iselin said, yeah it matters more in pvp games than pve games. But Ashes of Creation is intending to have 50k player servers (10k concurrent). So whatever core group of testers there is (likely small), even if they all went to the same server, well you can see how the numbers play out. Drop in the bucket.

BruceYee

About AoC... at this point what is the difference between announcing 1-3 dungeons, 7-8 dungeons or 10-12 dungeons? Cause 7-8 dungeons makes it seem like they have their shit together fooling people with money to put down their guard and give them some of it.

In 5 years all these scams will hopefully be done and we can go over in detail which one was the scammiest. While CU seems 'unchanged' certain ones like this and Pantheon seem to be doubling down so 2021 should be an interesting year.

TwistedSister77

This was posted in a less viewed thread about Ashes of Creation.  I watched the Lazy Peon vid, and was blown away... I was like... yes.. this game looks and  sounds awesome. 

 But, as I watched the video... I just kept thinking... way over ambitious (basically promising the best of MMORPGs in one game).  Then I watched the new dev update gameplay vid of the starter area... 

coretex666 said:

I recently watched a video on this game by Lazy Peon (link below) and it looks like the game is going to have some nice features. Its probably not going to be my dream game, but from whatever is on the horizon, this looks the most as an MMORPG. I think I will give it a shot once it launches. 

Xatsh

I do not really see the issue with backers getting alpha access. Technically the alpha access is free when you add up the sub time, and items obtained with the package. They are not just selling alpha for that much.

And most alpha testers expect a polished finished game due to that being what most alpha are from big studios. All of them have internal testers who work through the real broken stuff... intrepid does not. So only having dedicated people who want the game to succeed testing is a big plus.

The only argument I agree with is people playing will have an advantage over the people not. Might be small but will be there.

No idea how many dungeons are in game already as the whole pre alpha is under nda. So they might have say 6 done already. But does seem alot for an initial alpha. I thought that in the live stream as well.

BruceYee

TwistedSister77 said:

This was posted in a less viewed thread about Ashes of Creation.  I watched the Lazy Peon vid, and was blown away... I was like... yes.. this game looks and  sounds awesome. 

 But, as I watched the video... I just kept thinking... way over ambitious (basically promising the best of MMORPGs in one game).  Then I watched the new dev update gameplay vid of the starter area... 

coretex666 said:

I recently watched a video on this game by Lazy Peon (link below) and it looks like the game is going to have some nice features. Its probably not going to be my dream game, but from whatever is on the horizon, this looks the most as an MMORPG. I think I will give it a shot once it launches. 

At this point anyone who listens to LazyPeon is only contributing to these scams cause he's a 100% paid shill. I told people here before about how he put out a glowing video for 'Oath' the obvious scam then deleted his video after hundreds of his followers backed it but I guess I need to repeat it again. DO NOT trust LazyPeon just because of his posh British accent. If you want honest reviews do yourself a favor check out KiraTV for his opinions.

Slapshot1188

elc8745 said:

I think we have different definitions of overprivileged. Just assuming, even demanding alpha access be given to me is an example of it to me. Someone paying for it, that's not a privilege, they had to pay for it.

I agree with you on how some companies abuse NDA's though. There are absolutely companies that are doing that. It's not even a question. I don't think Ashes of Creation is though.

Overprivileged to me is being able to spend $1000 to access a testing portion of a game and with that certainly comes expectations of what they expect delivered.