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Thank you for this post Steven. Your dedication to transparency and tireless efforts to do right by the community while following your passion are appreciated.
TY my friend for your support <3
Thank you for this post Steven. Your dedication to transparency and tireless efforts to do right by the community while following your passion are appreciated.
TY my friend for your support <3
Only question I have is about the Alpha servers. And when they become PTR. Will there be different versions of the service on the Alphas prior to that version going to betas?
There may be slightly different versions of the Alpha or Beta systems, but generally they will consist of the same content.
Hi Steven, big fan of the change to allow beta access for A2 buyers.
Will there be future community events for alpha keys?
There absolutely will be. We will conduct giveaways and lotteries when the time is right.
Could you clarify why there have been multiple tax liens in the past few years? And why you refuse to share financials with the investor that apparently gave you 2 million? To be clear I am VERY excited for this game. It seems like everything I want in an MMO. But I have read some things that make me concerned to give you money at this stage of development.
Tax liens stem from us as a company changing payroll providers and how the state filings were done. This coupled with our change in address from 2020-2021 and not receiving the proper notices. With regards to the suit, that was dismissed and withdrawn and I am not able to speak to it. I want to be clear, no person should give Intrepid money at this stage, unless they are doing so to support a vision or to test a product. Neither of which are a game. Wait till launch, and then you wont need to evaluate concerns, the product and company will speak for itself.
Intrepid has become more greedy than Ubisoft and EA with their $120 Alpha pricing :) Downvote me, white knights, and Corpo boot Lickers.
This pricing is in part intended to reflect the costs associated with running the Alpha for a year. It is often forgot, that the primary funding for this game comes from me. And that the company or myself has never made a profit. This is a passion project, not a project of greed my friend.
Is the "Alpha Key holders have access to Betas" a change that you made today?
And if it's not a super recent change then why did Vaknar tell me that my A2 key (that I got for the food contest last winter) would not give me access to the Betas?
Or does this functionality only work for people who have paid for their A2 keys?
During the stream, there was some confusion around clarifying that giveaway keys we have done in the past, for example the food contest keys, do not provide access to subsequent alpha/testing phases.
However, any keys that have been purchased provide access to subsequent testing phases. So if a user owns a key to any Alpha phase that they have purchased, they also own access to Beta as well.
Were Alpha 2 keys already sent out to those who preordered packages in the past?
Users who own a package should be able to log into their account and see their package in their account inventory. If not they should submit a ticket to our CS team
On the topic of outsourcing for content creation, can you expand on that? Is that just things like assets, or things that are more involved?
Thanks for the response btw
This is mostly assets like buildings, icons, anims, creatures/armors etc.
The main question that I've seen from potential new members of the community is, "Why is an incomplete game priced at $100+ when finished games cost $60?" I assume this is because Intrepid wants to allow people the ability to join the test while limiting the number of testers to a reasonable level and cover expenses at the same time. Is that fair to say?
Yes. There is a combination answer here; It is also true that price directly speaks to (in most cases) the dedication of a user to help ensure higher quality testing, it is also fair to say that users cost money to host on servers and download the game. Given the length of A2, being at least 12 months, we are accounting for those costs with this price.
When Beta starts, the Alpha 2 servers will live concurrently alongside the Beta servers. Players who own Alpha 2 keys (including the new phase keys).
What does this mean? Seems like you forgot to finish the second sentence.
Thanks! I fixed it xD
What is the highest lower bound you would say for alpha 2 development time. I know you just said "at least 1 year", but whats the highest that you could confidently go for that?
There is significant complexity in answering that question, but the short of it is that this depends heavily on our ability as a studio to leverage outsource teams for content creation, and is heavily heavily dependent on what requires iteration due to the testing of A2
Good afternoon friends,
There has been a lot of questions and commentary regarding how the A2 keys work since our AMA yesterday. We are preparing an article to release on the website tomorrow or Monday regarding how the keys and phases work in broader detail. I will take a moment in this thread to clarify in detail how the Alpha 2 keys work and answer some questions in this thread;
🙏💪❤️
Just note that at least on the programmer side, hiring too much can be a mistake. Both due to money burn and the hires getting gradually less efficient due to increasing complexity of the.. whole thing (both code and personnel wise).
Of the 200+ developers on the project, roughly 60 are coders. There is a lot left to do ;)
I'll be honest, while I have been following the development for a short while, Steven is super transparent and the company is fantastic at communications imo. I don't understand what had people upset yesterday. All I know is I'm excited to have an opportunity to test with the release of the keys
Thank you brother
Agree. Some people are sucking at that YouTube rage nipple a little too hard.
Like many mammals, Humans by nature are instinctually drawn to nipples for sustenance as newborns. It can be a difficult habit to break.
With how it’s priced and the fact they’re doing it without NDA, they’re either going to live or die by this alpha. We won’t be kind if it turns out to be a cash grab like the doomers suggest.
I have a feeling they’ll be wrong, but we’ll know for sure soon.
edit:
let me be more succinct for anybody that’s confused. if a2 turns out to be a whaling expedition, that would f**king suck. i believe Intrepid is developing in good faith, but their pre-release monetization model has been abused by many developers before them. I expect their public alpha to be different than others and we’ll drag them if they abuse us.
I don’t think we will live or die by alpha. I think we will continue to build the game and improve it in a live test environment. Anyone looking at a2 as a judgement of the game at launch is not in line with the expectation we have publicly tried to communicate.
There is no way that this is a scam. They are way too transparent to be a scam.
However, that doesn’t mean they are the best company in the world. They have issues. They are currently under a tax lein for not paying their taxes. Making them unable to continue to sell cosmetics.
They have repeatedly made promises on dates and deadlines that they were unable to meet.
They aren’t hiring as fast or as many as they seem to want (considering development is slower than they hoped).
They seemingly are desperate for money, and this game does NOT seem fully funded as they claim.
We constantly provide disclaimers that being in active development may result in missed timelines, delays and complete reworks. This is the development path and strategy we have chosen to adopt because we believe it will create the best product, and we believe it’s the healthiest way to develop large games like Ashes. Maybe this will be wrong, time will tell. It is factually inaccurate to say we are unable to sell cosmetics. Players who own packs can currently upgrade and make purchases and have been able to do so for the last several years. The tax lien issue was dealt with a couple years ago, and were minor clerical mistakes, the company pays hundreds of thousands in employment taxes every week. And we are actively hiring and have hired record numbers over the past 18 months. Funding for the game is not in question, despite what Reddit may say.
Thank you brother for the kind words and for your support. Because of the excitement that surrounds Ashes, there are a lot of emotions and expectations from a wide range of perspectives. And the reality is, alpha is not priced to be widely accessible. While the alpha will run for at least over a year, and will eventually become the public test realm that will run concurrently with beta, we have to support server costs and cdn for users during that time.
My advice, people can be frustrated. But the best remedy for frustration in this case, is to wait until we finish cooking and reevaluate interest when launch comes. Alpha offers no advantage to a player and can be shared by all because of the nda removal. 💪❤️
Best advice; wait and watch the streamers to see if testing will be your cup of tea.