I will share the comment here, that I made on Narc’s video. I will add, that Narc is his own person... not beholden to me, or you, or anyone in any community. While you or I or anyone may not always see eye to eye on a particular issue or opinion, it is important to remain respectful and constructive when speaking to each other on platforms managed by Intrepid and our moderator team. I am sad to see Narc’s take on Ashes, the claims he makes against myself and the team. It is unfounded, false and defamatory.
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Narc I am happy to see that you are going to be taking some time away from our development. I think that your choice can help a lot of other people who share the same discontent you do about the process. As I have said time and time again, this journey will not be for everyone. There is a lot of complexity that goes into game development, take that complexity and multiply it by 10 when making an MMO... even more so when making one like Ashes. There will be a time when we start to spend money on Marketing and Advertising, when we are ready for players and not “testers”. Now is not yet that time, and I have been upfront about that in nearly every update stream monthly.
I am not going to address every talking point of yours in this video, but I will say that your characterization of the project, of the development updates and of the team/myself is completely false, off base and very unfortunate. We show development live, and in some cases gameplay code can be completed but scalability, and outstanding feature works exists. I will go into 2 main examples you use in this video, freeholds and the desert. What we showed in the freehold update was ownership, farming, harvesting, and furniture, but before freeholds can make it into testers hands, we still have to work on completing the placement of the freeholds, the zone of influence that has authority, the tax system, the permissions system, the storage and building resource allocations, the population suppression volume, the deployable tech, the deed interface...there is SO MUCH that goes into getting this system into the hands of the testers that is STILL a work in progress... like we say time after time month after month as we work to bring ALL the systems and content online. This isn’t a FAKE showcase... It is INCOMPLETE... because it is a work in progress, which is the WHOLE point of us showcasing updates in the first place. You may disagree with that, but it is the path we believe will best yield systems that players want, and in the way they want them. And most importantly, we COMMUNICATE this during every update we do, these works in progress may be remade, iterated, cut, radically changed as we progress.
With regards to the desert, I will repeat what I posted on the reddit, Many times in zone development before level designers have an opportunity to define the playable space layout, and the placement of POIs, node corks and connections to other zone, our environment team after having completed creating the biomes assets, will do a blockout of a zone using these assets. This is done to evaluate internally the aesthetic of that zone and determine if additional pieces of foliage or terrain are required in order to hit our visual intent for the biome. If you go into A2 currently, you will find those foliage assets, ground textures, cliff sides, etc that were in the desert biome PREVIEW update. The zone is now in a more destructive state because we have just recently laid out a portion of the level designs and made space for the nodes, and POIs. This is part of development. It is a normal part of it. The desert will start to come in focus this January when the world team finishes its level design blockout.
I tuned in a bit to your streams at the start of phase two, and I think the biggest takeaway that people can have with our process so far, is; Ashes is not complete yet. We still have a journey ahead of us. It is going to be a long road, and the testing environment in Alpha Two right now can sometimes feel like a game, but it isn’t yet. We are quite literally in the middle of cooking it still.
It is a totally healthy and acceptable thing to step away and come back when the “game” is more complete. Most people who play games don’t care how the sausage is made. We get that, and we aren’t trying to force anyone to come watch us make Ashes... or to support us in doing so. We don’t say things like , “Ashes will not get finished, WITHOUT your support!”. Our development path is clear and unwavering.
And now that we are in Alpha Two, with an uptime of 5 days a week, people can watch as we submit updates and changes... Phase 2 has been live for 11 days, over the next 5 months of Phase Two, we will be delivering on the features in our roadmap, and in active development it is ENTIRELY possible that those plans can change. It all depends on what we discover during the testing.
Lastly, I am not blind to constructive criticisms. I want constructive criticisms... This is WHY I have chosen the open development path. You stated that people were banned from the reddit for “voicing concern”. That is completely false. I watched on your stream, as the 4 people who were banned for violating the subreddit’s conduct rules over the last 11 days, came back to you laughing about the bans, as some achievement in your chat and discord. Creating an atmosphere of toxicity is not constructive criticism or feedback, and it is not the type of community we are trying to cultivate around Ashes. There is plenty of room for well thought out criticism and feedback, so long as it remains respectful to other community members and the team.
-Steven
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