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I'm on my phone, and idk how to format anything on this thing. I wanted to post photos too just for reference, but the app keeps messing it up somehow so I'm not going to do that.
TL;DR: The desert feels like a massive regressions from what we were shown 2 years ago. The fact that we weren't really told about any sort of issues with the desert makes the regressions feel worse, and the fact that we aren't really being kept in the loop on stuff like this makes me think that based on how Intrepid has handled people's frustrations with their communication in the past, that open development isn't for me. I'll still help with testing the game, give feedback and find bugs, but I'm probably not going to engage with Intrepid's social media and dev updates for a long while. I don't want to set myself up for disappointment again.
So to preface this, I'm someone that really enjoyed Phase 1 a lot. I didn't reach level cap on my main character, which was a ranger, since I wanted to save my energy for Phase 2. I have burnt myself out by playing games I enjoy really hard to the point where I have fond memories of playing them, but not having the desire to play them again, which I didn't want to do for Ashes of Creation. The start of Phase 2 has been polarizing. I personally was having a lot of fun seeing how crowded certain PoIs were and figuring out a solution to that overcrowding problem with the party I was in, but my machine died on me, which ended up causing my session to be cut short, so I didn't get to progress as much as I wanted to.
With that being said, I think what we got from the desert expansion is one of the biggest slaps to the face I've gotten throughout this whole development process. Before phase 2 started, I was very much looking forward to what Intrepid would be introducing in the desert in case they were hiding stuff and wanted players to explore and discover all the things that are available in the zone, and oh boy was I wrong. The desert made me realize that the only thing Intrepid is hiding is a nothing burger with extra vapor sauce in it. I haven't completely explored the area, I'm left with a couple of spots to check out, but the zone looks worse off than what we were shown 2 years ago (The trailer was showcased for the July 2022 dev update). I remember showing my friends this trailer and telling them how awesome the desert looks, and 2 years later, none of this stuff exists in-game? If I showed the current state of the desert to my friends that aren't keeping up with the game, they'd call me a cultist and say that I got scammed. This issues with the desert are exacerbated even further by the fact that:
There's only 3 new enemies that were introduced with the area, one of which is a reskin of the rock golems that we've seen across the Riverlands (See the golems in Carphin. Its the exact same thing, but it's purple instead of blue) and the other is an enemy that was introduced with the new dungeon in the riverlands (The giants)
The allocated areas for the nodes are filled with slate wolves and webweavers and not any desert specific mobs or any of the mobs that we were shown in the trailer 2 years ago. This seems odd, especially if the current state of the desert is the one that's "more far along" than the rest of the zones that we will be getting on the game's release.
None of the trees are harvestable (I'm hoping it was just bugged for me). This makes it so that anyone that wants to set up in the desert can't level their lumberjacking. If it's intended that the desert shouldn't have any harvestable wood, then please just remove the trees. It hurts the idea that you can chop down almost any tree in the world. I haven't looked into the rocks, but from what I've been told, the mineable resources are the same as the ones in the riverlands, which doesn't create any sort of compelling reasons to go to the desert aside from finding animals that can't even be tamed early game, or to find a grind spot that isn't being mega contested.
A large chunk of assets and points of interest that were shown in the desert trailer don't exist. There's no hippos, no weird tentacle mouth looking dudes, no ant-eater horses, nothing. We didn't even get to see the snorse, which would have been fantastic to introduce with the expansion. I would have been okay if we got a few of these things and they were a surprise, but nope. None of it exists.
Now, I understand that the game is still in Alpha, and that unexpected things can happen during development. Assets can get corrupted, frameworks that you depend on can introduce regressions which can cause the team to have to do a complete refactor on all the work they've done. As a dev myself, I've been in situations where stuff like this happens and it ends up affecting my deliverables negatively. The reason why I say it's a slap to the face is because Intrepid said NOTHING to temper my expectations. I was expecting to see what was shown to us 2 years ago, and what I got instead was a barren wasteland that looks like it was slapped together a week before phase 2 was launched with less mob variety than New World. Where are the serpent people that we were shown that dev update? Where is the cool statue of the lady that's covered half way in sand? And worst of all, why didn't Intrepid tell us that what we saw in the showcase from 2 years ago won't reflect the current state of the desert, and what happened that caused the desert to be in the state that it's in right now? You make the people who are trying to hype people up about the potential of this game and the potential of this studio look like complete idiots for telling people that what we're being shown is things that actually exist in-game only to find out that 90% of the stuff that was shown off 2 years ago is missing without an explanation.
Narc made a video awhile back talking about these communication issues and how it has become a point of frustration for him. Steven commented on that video saying that he should probably take a break, and that open development is not for him. At first, I sort of understood Steven's sentiment because that's how it goes sometimes as you're trying to make things. So many things can go wrong as you're working towards creating something. I 100% understand that, but if the communication that we've been receiving around the state of the game is like this, and that me being frustrated about it is a result of open development not being for me, then you're right. Open development is not for me.
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