I understand his point. If they are saying "this is the state of the game," then don't show a generated presentation. Either show actual footage or say that this is our concept and only a concept.
Yes, but that is unfortunately the whole point of a showcase. If you really don't want to get your hopes up, you need to check out of the livestreams and only play the game when you can. Don't listen to fluff. This isn't just an intrepid studios problem.
People really haven't learned from Cyberpunk, Ubisoft and worse, The Day Before making small vertical slices that don't represent the game's state are still just accepting this dumb industry practice. Devs sell their ambitions so hard but always end up biting more than they can chew resulting in a compromised product.
Everything they showcased has BEEN created and assets that they've created. They can show it however they want, especially how they WANT to implement it. You are just being a childish fool who can't understand, hence Steven calling Narc "uninformed".
@@Okilian_tvthey are always supposed to be different. Maybe some even intended to be different. But then their incompetence makes them hit a wall but they are high on that pre order/supporter pack money so they continue the lie.
This hits hard. I see AOC players bashing the shit out of the state of the game. When we have been suffering through SC for how long? Just getting server meshing and a new system. Also funny when people call this game a MLM/pyramid scheme.
To the point on the showcases: I’m with Narc on that the language and tone implied that the showcases were a selling point for people. The alpha not reflecting much, if anything, from those showcases feels like a bait and switch. And if this, as you say, is just them trying to focus things for testing…..that would be fine if they communicated it openly. But they’re not and instead shutting down discussion. Also, yeah, this is all important cause people are giving a bunch of money to them right now based on the available info
Your comment sums up exactly how i feel about the situation and the take away. Its disappointing that Steven hasnt acknowledged this sentiment from testers and backers, and is exactly the lack of communication Narc has been referencing the last couple months. Its fine that the game is in the state its in, but why did we have to find out ourselves. Many would have loved to know the showcases were just concepts, as no doubt the showcases were the main driving force for people spending $$ to back the project prior to A2s launch. A heads up prior to A2 launch showing where each system was IN A2 vs how they were shown in the “alpha 2 showcases” would have gone a loooong way to quell this whole situation imo.
@@JetGC Well they have 3 main design flaws in their strategic design that need to be solved before i am the slightest bit optimistic. 1. They cant match the comparative investment risk/reward in building nodes over many weeks/months, with the risk/reward they want to give for knocking them down, in
@@GrappLr 7 years ago (read comments): th-cam.com/video/KHTWhIF5cqI/w-d-xo.html 7 years ago: th-cam.com/video/9b_hp9La78g/w-d-xo.html 7 years ago: th-cam.com/video/xhtjb9rFlhs/w-d-xo.html
First time viewer, and I believe his whole issue is that they stated that all those things were current in this Alpha 2 phase and that Alpha 2 would look like or include all the things that he shows and references. I do wish he got more info on the banning he talked about in the redit section. I've only seen a 5-hour session from 2 days ago, and the game seems really cool, but hearing what he mentioned in his video does raise a few red flags.. Thank you for more info on this and another prospective!
My pleasure. I didn't prewatch this or anything, so was my on the moment response/reaction. I could go deeper into it now that I've had time to think about it. But in general, I stand by what I said.
@GrappLr totally fair, I made this comment roughly 3/4 through the video under the assumption that you maybe were more biased on the side of the game (like 60/40 or 70/30). Made it to the end and heard you basically state, "I don't give a shit about the testing aspect, outside of a few personal complaints/general fixes/quality-of-life ideas" which is a very "I play the game to have fun" which I resonate with a lot. And then to see you proceed to tab into Marvel Rivals. 😂 I'm glad I stayed until the end. Am a new sub now, lol
To be fair it was all Stated before. The Developement is currently in Alpha Phase 2 wich is planned to add more stuff over time till at the end most of the Systems and things are tested. We are litterally 2 weeks into many months of Phase 2 and 3 after wich will also be testing stuff... People just went crazy and dont get developement. It simply does not make any sense after the Networking and Stability tests of Phase 1 to now just push out every half finished System and Region cause in the end they will have bugreports for stuff they are actively working on right now and all those reports are to be sorted out and unvalid... Alpha stage is kinda talking of Whitboxing stuff maybe Grey and Blackboxing sometimes but i wonder how the outrage would be if they show completely untextured objects and assets and push regions in the game wich will change massively in the next months or years... then player would say oh but we have had those already etc --- same as UI wich gets iterated and changed with every new System that gets further to being finished to include those or change the layout alltogether. People are just shitting and claiming its a lie or a scam now despite it beeing completely on line with the Alpha Phases and what they have told people to not see it as a finished Game yet but a Testing Environment. A few days into the one Phase where stuff will get added over time for selective Playertesting its crazy xD Edit: Also to add on this Narc has some valid points of course but i dislike his unhonesty so much i will never watch his content from now on its just crazy how he contructs stuff around comments from Steven wich are completely logical and shifts them into something else. One can misunderstand sure but there was nothing comming from him clearing that stuff up and getting into that desolate Dessert region wich most likely is cropped out cause there is active worldbuilding for maybe a Node or other POI's in that Region is just disingenuous... Thats how i see it. He was allways a bit weird but thats just too much for me just to get some more clicks for his channel wtf are we even talking about here...
I think the biggest issue was intrepid releasing phase 2 without a lot of features, then going on vacation for 3 weeks. People were placated by the communication and I think they’re subconsciously agitated by the lack of it. They’ll be back though.
That is true. I don't know why Phase 1 wasn't just extended until Jan 6 or something after the holidays and just let people roll out their phase 1 character through the holidays.
From the Start this has been Pantheon Vs Ashes of Creation like every Game in the MMO Space this is why they open it to play. Was it to early Yes, But if you look in on Pantheon you see that it was too Early for that game too. this is why they have Early Access mark on the Game just don't do the Wild Ends To ThroneFast or the other way around or you see they only have two of the 3 Zones Done on each side (There 5 or 6 Zones you have to go through)besides that there seems to be nothing but Zone done & no mobs in the Zone all it does now is give Breathing room. The point I'm making is both will not be Done for 2 years & Both are EverQuest just in Different ways Pantheon seems 1999 & Ashes seem 2004 the only reason I like Ashes more is There a F*(Kin Map. Yes that run is not fun at all if you don't watch a Video on how to do it.
Steven stated a long time ago that assets where fully finished for 8 biomes yet now they dont even have the assets finished for a second zone? also steven stating that theyre not spending any money on marketing yet they do monthy updates with builds made just for those showcases, you cant tell me that those fake build arent eating up a ton of dev resources.
Hey, I really appreciate you making an effort to understand his points and attempting to bring discourse, rather than dismissing his opinions outright. That’s a refreshing approach in these discussions. While I do believe Narc is wrong on some things and has been two-faced in many scenarios over the years (something even proven in the Doc’s latest video), I have to reinforce his take on the "selling under false pretenses" point. It’s completely reasonable, and trying to downplay it with arguments like "but is it a big deal?" feels disingenuous and wrong to me. Let me give you an analogy to clarify: Imagine I show you the concept of a brand-new car I’m creating, and as a big fan of cars, you’re intrigued. I present all these amazing features, not just conceptually but as actual working components in the car itself (think of this like the freeholds shown in-game). I tell you about the engine, its horsepower, and all the exciting possibilities. Now, I say: "You can try out this car for $500. It’s not entirely finished yet, but you can test it." This is akin to the rhetoric Steven uses to market Alpha 2. The day comes, and you finally get to test the car after paying hundreds of dollars. But as you start it, you realize the engine is junk, and the features you were most excited about aren’t even implemented. Instead, it’s just a nice-looking frame that’s clunky and far from what was promised. You’re then told it’s just a “frame test” for stability, and when you express genuine concerns, the conversation is simply shut down. How would you feel? To bring it back to Ashes of Creation, Steven and the devs-who are also subreddit moderators-have been closing down negative feedback posts. While I’m not aware of any in-game bans, I’d assume Narc exaggerated this for drama. I don’t blindly support him, as I know he has a tendency to exaggerate, but the analogy stands. If this were any other product, people would be yelling bloody murder. I know I would. The crux of the issue is that it’s disingenuous and deceptive to advertise features supposedly implemented in the game, charge significant sums for people to test it, and then fail to deliver even half of those features. I want this game to succeed and personally believe they can take as much time as they need. Like Narc, I think the state of the game isn’t the problem-it’s the deceptive communication and marketing strategy used to maximize profits early on. Steven has repeatedly said, "It’s just a test, don’t expect to play a great game yet." But wouldn’t it have been better to say something like: "Most of the systems you’ve seen in our showcases are not in the game yet. They don’t work, and it will take months or even years for you to see them fully implemented." That would have been honest and transparent. But that’s exactly why this is not “open development.” Open development implies full transparency and honesty about the state of the game and its systems. What we have here is something different: a carefully curated release of information, where certain details are intentionally withheld to maximize hype and profits. This is not about sharing the raw truth of development; it’s about controlling the narrative to drive pre-sales and maintain excitement, even if it comes at the cost of credibility and genuineness. Anyways, I always love watching your videos-keep doing you. Thanks for fostering genuine discourse, and sorry for the novel I wrote here! Wishing you and everyone who sees this a Happy New Year and much love! ❤
I get your take here. I don’t fully agree with you, but do get where you’re coming from. As to what kind of message they have given, I think they were not great at communicating, but also far from lying or malicious. It’s somewhere in between, and closer to just simply bad communication, albeit probably some sweetening of words for marketing purposes (we can be sure that they also do want to raise money for development costs )
"While I do believe Narc is wrong on some things and has been two-faced in many scenarios over the years." This is the part where i dismiss his Opinion because this proves your basically the same as the two-faced Devs you are criticizing. And grifting the AoC Haters negativity.
@@Vell1981 You are well within your rights to do so. However, outright dismissing ANYONES entire perspective is short sighted. Nobody, and I mean nobody is entirely black/white. You will always find some good and some bad in rationally thought out oppinions. No matter who´s it is. Thoughts and oppinions are after all subjective!
Most of the stuff is probably in the development branch on their version control system and might be merged in at any time during testing. The builds we are playing right now in both the PTR and the main servers are not the only builds for sure. That's just how this stuff works. I bet in the office they are playing on a build we won't be seeing for a long time. They may have even cut out a bunch of stuff and then called that the live test build which is what we are playing.
they admitted the builds shown were fake? If its that easy to add to the game than why not just add it when your asking people for triple figures to test a game, you arent allowed to criticize.
i dont really see them testing much of anything. bugs, like getting duplicates of yourself on the map, mounts freezing or running off without the owner, empty gathering nodes, bag / storage bugs, gathering nodes and mobs being underground or miles up in the air, that have been reported for months now and non of it even made it to a "known issues" list, let alone that any of it got fixed. Spelleffects and model textures, that's what they work on. Alpha is usually about making systems work and bixing bugs, but that' does not seem to be happening much, nor is there much communication about it. also, showing a completed area claiming that what is shown is the current state of the game and then delivering a pretty much empty map after people have payed is just misleading if not a plain scam. That is completely illegal in my county.
im definitely concerned because making the map is like one of the earliest steps of development but they seem to be doing it differently. First the world is made, then you build and add the content into the world. And Grapplr is mistaken, making the map isn't as easy as just have the assets and putting them down. You have quest related areas, PATHING is a huge thing. Polishing map imperfections, lighting, ambience, doodads, terrain, elevation. Making one canyon for example could take one person a week to get it right and you have to make sure the npcs and their pathing meshes with the environment.
Well... if someone try to sell you a product, stating that it is something, or has characteristics that it doesn't have, it IS called a scam. GrappLr is just a content creator that for some reason, that may or may not be money related, is in favour of the scammer this time.
The biggest problem with P2 launch is that it's not P2.... it's P1 extended. The only thing they did was give us big stress test to play in. This is the 'lie' most are talking about. They could have easily avoided a lot of backlash by just waiting for P2 to launch when the level design for the desert was complete, and having the rogue to come out. The fact that these systems aren't in place when the goal of P2 node development and economy and now nodes are already done developing to the highest level, and the economy is already fucked up due to exploiters. And Intrepid isn't around to address this or do anything about. Crafters have gotten 0 feedback since the Alpha 2 started after giving them 5+ pages of threads, and you can't do Node/Economy progression without the crafting system. Nothing has changed since P1 in that sense either. P2 is not ready for launch and they launched it anyways. This is where the outrage is. And Narc, as Narc does, went in full tilt without portraying the facts properly. There are reasons for the outrage. Narc just did a bad job about bringing them up... yet again.
I haven't even installed Ashes of Phase 2, because I knew there would be very little to do, at least, nothing I had not done yet in Phase 1. But I guess many people didn't get this memo, or got scammed by other content creators that Phase 2 was going to be an amazing launch. But this aside, I agree with you entirely, Phase 2 should have been delayed until at least Rogue launch, at least from a marketing perspective.
Phase 2 release added nodes, player shops, 2-3x server population capacity ect. The point is to over 5 months add the content they promised but people are overdosing on copium from their expectations. At this point its a fact that a good chunk of the alpha testers dont understand and cant comprehend what an alpha is. They want early access/beta levels of gameplay content as they put in hundreds of hours into the game. Intrepids biggest mistake was dropping phase 2 and then leaving the game open during their holiday break. Good gesture to let anyone including those who dont celebrate or dont have friends/family to have something to play that was incredibly underappreciated by some of the community to the point of outrage that there werent constant fixes going on while the team wasnt even at the office. The start of Phase 2 showed that MANY people need to step away from the game for a few weeks or a few months because their criticism ends up just being noise from them being overly emotionally invest in this game having spent money on it.
@@SuperBlackatude Server capacity doesn't mean anything when game world size didn't increase. Forcing 2-3x the player base onto a server that didn't grow and didn't add any new mobs/camps to compensate is only a negative. We know it's an alpha. Phase 2 isn't supposed to be a stress test alpha anymore and that's what we got. When you sell access and tell people what the test is going to be about and not deliver you are selling something falsely advertised. Case in point, this would not be allowed to be sold on steam as you aren't getting what's advertised. If you want to buy into phase 2 because you want to test what was advertised you already missed out on that point as nearly everything is already progressed up to max
@@onewingedangelo1611 "Server capacity doesn't mean anything when game world size didn't increase"? The rest of what you say I understand and can agree, but this does not make sense for me. One server handling more traffic DO mean something... The point should be on what you what typed later, there should be more than "just" stressing the servers with more traffic, etc
@@william.strebe What I mean by this is just because the servers can now hold 4000 people... the current game world doesn't have enough content for 4000 people. You spread those people out throughout the whole map and people are still fighting for content because there isn't enough to facilitate them. That's what I mean.
I have no interest in Ashes of Creation at this stage. I just started following you from your PoE 2 videos. I threw this video on while grinding for something to watch. I've been a software engineer for 20+ years and can't imagine how difficult it would be to do open development on something this large and complex. Most users (or players in this case) only care about when things will be done. They never care about quality until after the fact. If something isn't done on time, then users are pissed. If the devs rush to get it out on time and it's not perfect, then users are pissed. It can be demoralizing for devs when working on something where no matter what you do someone is pissed. It is possible that some of Steven Sharif's actions are an attempt to protect his team.
Great comment here. Yeah, there’s a pretty much nobody does open development like this. I hope it works out for them though. And I can absolutely imagine Steven wanting to protect morale among other problems.
I don’t understand why people are investing so much energy into this game right now. It’s not up to par at the moment for the content people want to make with the “game”.
Narc's comments aside as he was clearly quite emotive in that video, my personal irk with the game currently is that I do wish they made it clearer that it was a concept (the showcases). I genuinely did think the things they showed we can take as the 'base' alpha and we are working from there onwards. This, along with things like using color grading in their videos whilst commenting on colors etc and how everything pops during their showcases does not sit well with me. Thankfully the latter was (semi) fixed after the lighting changes that were implemented with A2P2. Does the game have potential? Definitely! Do I feel like the messaging has been terrible, and their showcases misleading? Yeah, I do unfortunately.
At 3:37 did this guy slam the last of a cup of coffee, take a swig of soda and swished it around his teeth, and then flushed it down? If so, that's some gamer-shit indeed.
Crazy how Paradox Gaming did the same exact format as Narc from positive to negative and narc took his place after supplanting him and then did the same thing.
This was excellent. Great reaction. I’m an enjoyer of old-school MMORPGs that really capture that spirit of the good old days like in EQ but also incorporate a fresh take on the genre as a whole and Ashes of Creation has been on my radar, but I haven’t been closely following it like a lot in this space. Actually, in the Omens of War expansion which was really brutally difficult (Citadel of Anguish / Overlord Mata Muram raid for those familiar) I enjoyed the aesthetic and I thought some of the design was interesting. I heard one of the devs in this expansion worked on some of the encounters on Ashes of Creation so that's how I heard about it. Without knowing too much, It seems like the right approach would be to wait for a more complete product/version of the game before diving in so just passing by seeing what’s going on with the game seems interesting so far but it seems like the best thing to do would just be to wait a little bit before release? I guess it's kind of like Pantheon in that sense which we finally got early access but there isn't a whole lot there, just the skeleton. Seems like its going to be great but just have to play the waiting game for a couple of years? Cheers lads
No matter what anyone says (COPE), when you have hundreds of people working on a game, it simply cannot take that long. It just cannot. I'm not saying the game should be out in two months, but working on something for 5 years, and have such a barebone Alpha, is extremely weird. Call me what you want, but I been playing mmo's, testing alphas and betas, since 1999. Peace
The biggest thing that's making it take so long is that they swapped from UE4 to UE5 and lost a lot of the progress they had made to make the game better in the long run. Unfortunate but necessary
@@mobilereis Can take indeed a decade but they actually show progress, the alphas actually feel like alphas, they dont go show fake progression and showcases and charge people for an entry to test something that is not even 5% what was promised, i tested quite a few mmorpgs and all them felt like it was ready to release then AoC, of course its different has some of the mmos i tested are older but yet still AoC needs to be more transparent and stop selling fake preview of the game.
Man, I really agree that desert release deserves criticism... But every single other point that Narc says on this is video is straight up bs and people are really buying into it without questioning him or checking for any proofs. And besides that. I've played and tested a bunch of games in the past in Alpha: Valorant, Heroes of Newerth in 2009.. man you name it. I love doing these stuff. And in none of those playtest I never had seen such a disregard for the devs like he is doing right now!
Even the desert criticism is a little vacuous. They already have all the assets from the preview, they just are doing a "level design blockout", according to Steven.
@@drooskie9525 then they shouldnt put it in the alpha until its ready. testing a placeholder is a complete waste of time. they wrote a check they couldnt cash by showing everyone a finished desert biome, but really all they had were some dirt hills and scorpions
41:00 Nah come on, Steven, claiming their not spending on marketing .... Every showcase has been marketing, how much did they spend making those beautiful mockups?? They don't show the game at the stage it's actually at, it's almost all prototypes. They don't discuss the issues their facing, it's not open (as in transparent) development it's more like they replaced the brick wall in the back of the showroom with a window into to the factory floor, and then they put a neon sign outside "come watch our engineers build your car" but the window has privacy glass. And when you go in and can't see shit through the glass they say well why don't you look around the showroom floor and see if theres anything you like. "Here look at this it's a folding cup holder, it'll definitely be in your car once it's built, unless we have to add it later, maybe" The whole "open development" thing is just an excuse to put out marketing to sell shiny turds instead of making an actual game, Steven once had a dream but now his head is full of wow killer ambitions
I do think you misrepresent a bit on the communication part. He's saying that 1) the communication is bad and 2) most of the CCs stopped making regular content. It's an 'and' not a 'because'.
@GrappLr that's fair, I liked the video overall. I appreciated that you at least saw the humor in things like the desert bit and the sub goals. I was a little sadge that you were seemingly quick to ascribe bad intentions to Narc (oh he's leaving because the ashes viewership is going lower) but always defend Steven by saying that we don't have enough information to know what's really going on behind the scenes. But I can understand that someone may be more cynical with something they are more familiar with (being a content creator) and less eager to be cynical with something they are less familiar with (game dev) Anyway brother, I appreciate that you're so responsive to people and will absolutely check out more of your vids. Def subbed ✅️
@@whatwouldericdo I don't particularly see how this is bad intentions though. Obviously Narc is a content creator and he's making a living right now doing YT and Twitch. He has every right to look to widen his horizons as a content creator. Is this a bad thing? For me, it's simply the most logical explanation. I'm personally not streaming or even playing AoC Atm because I think the content is bad, and no point doing it until Rogue is out at least.
@GrappLr maybe bad intentions was the wrong way for me to describe it. Maybe it would be more accurate of me to say that you're more willing to assume there's more going on than what's being said in Narc's case. When talking about Steven you say "well, we don't know, we don't have all the information, assuming is bad faith, etc" But with Narc, he laid out exactly why he was leaving and instead of taking it at face value you are quick to accept an additional motivation that he never mentioned. I think overall if you were willing to engage with alternative motivations on both sides (I personally think there's plenty to explore when it comes to Steven) or were taking each side exclusively at their word, it would have a consistency of logic that would be difficult to take issue with.
@@whatwouldericdo I get what you're saying. In my mind, it's highly likely that both burnout from a subathon (in an environment like Phase 2 where there's almost nothing new) and lower viewership recently are highly contributing factors to "dropping" a game. And as it's highly likely, I talk about it. On the other hand, could AoC be a scam? Sure. But I don't think it's highly likely. I also think that what Steven said is reasonably likely to be true. Thus, i weight these things differently. I find no point talking about AoC being a scam, or engaging in that angle, because for one, it's not likely enough to be true to warrant seriously going into, and for two, what's the point of engaging down that path? I'll still play it, as will most people. I've already paid to be part of the Alpha, as have most people. So engaging in the hypothetical serves very little. At worst, it discredits Intrepid unfairly and harms them when they don't deserve it while demoralizing the devs working at the studio, and at best, it does what? Warn a few people of a scam that they've already fallen into?
I would argue Star citizen is even more open and its a much bigger studio. Sure people throw around scam citizen, but if you actually take time and do some research, they even show yearly financial reports and is extremely open.
SC is way - WAY - more open than ashes. Actually, most crowfunded games and as open as SC is, it is just ashes the one who is not open at all, people just dont know.
@@mostneuterso u have no clue what you are talking about, no offense, but allow me to explain you. SC is funded by the community, JUST and only, byt the community. When SC launched the kickstarter, people threw at it tens of thousands of money FOR NOTHING in exhange. People just donated it for the funding, merely for the funding. When SC released it firsts ships models, THE PEOPLE said: Hey, I sent you 20K EUR, what if you allow me to test these ships earlier in exchange? - And SC devs said, okei, so what we are gonna no is a funding model based on ships. Depending on how much you donate, you will have free models of ships to mess around with. And that until now. Thats how it started. The 40k pack is just ALL the models of SC ships that exist and will ever exist. It is a reward for a donation. SC is funded by donators. There is no paywall, thats just a low iq meme that you saw on some low iq video on youtube.
steven, or any of the other devs have never stated that the showcases arent representative of the progress of the game. in fact they openly state things like "you will be testing this desert in the alpha 2" in the showcase stream. no matter how it's spun it's a massive issue that nothing in the showcases have ever been real, not even the zones. I think theres too much defending of the showcases, I've been gaming and following games for over 20 years and it's really not that common to be shown extensive showcases for years on end and then not a single one of the systems is in the game. Judging by the state of freeholds alone in A2 it makes me believe pretty much not a single system is even 10% finished, and that IS an issue. these showcases were years ago and not once implied that they're concepts, not reality.
To your point on the networking issues. It has definitely improved. No queues even with much larger server populations and the render distance has improved. Large scale fights are hit or miss sometimes they feel good and sometimes it becomes a slideshow (players just sliding across your screen). They have definitely made strides on the networking at the very least.
I m on PTR the hole time! To be honest they did soo much in short time. Like you said at the beginning no grass tree etc. Only function. From patch to patch more Ambiente etc. Just wait and come back later. This game will be amazing
I do think that most content creators are uninformed - about the development process. Unless those content creators are in on the development process, then they are uninformed about why things are being released into Alpha in the way they are. Steven has said that they will do what is best for the game (and this the future players of this game), and if they have to delay their timelines because the systems are breaking with larger amounts of people playing (yay, we get to test!) then they would not be adding in more systems.
It is just insane that this guy think thats AOC is open development, really shows how poor knowledege he has on the indie space, and even more on the crowfunding space. Do you want an example of open development of a much - MUCH - larger project than AOC? Star Citizen. 2 videos each single week informing about the development. 2 roadmaps, one showing what is comming in the next update and another showing what is being worked on and when it will be finished. Second-by-second data and public and open tracking of all the funds they receive. Public trade registered Accounts published in the HRMC and a more-friendly version for non-accountas published each year to the community. Weekly posts and forums on feedback threads. Community managed reddit forum. Etc, etc, etc.
The biggest problem with P2 launch is that it's not P2.... it's P1 extended. The only thing they did was give us big stress test to play in. This is the 'lie' most are talking about. They could have easily avoided a lot of backlash by just waiting for P2 to launch when the level design for the desert was complete, and having the rogue to come out. The fact that these systems aren't in place when the goal of P2 node development and economy and now nodes are already done developing to the highest level, and the economy is already fucked up due to exploiters. And Intrepid isn't around to address this or do anything about. Crafters have gotten 0 feedback since the Alpha 2 started after giving them 5+ pages of threads, and you can't do Node/Economy progression without the crafting system. Nothing has changed since P1 in that sense either. P2 is not ready for launch and they launched it anyways. This is where the outrage is. And Narc, as Narc does, went in full tilt without portraying the facts properly. There are reasons for the outrage. Narc just did a bad job about bringing them up... yet again.
I've been following Narc for a long time. I said a year or so ago that AoC would not be ready until 2030 or later and got flamed for it. Its entertaining watching him flame out during an alpha. Wish him the best and he will be back I guarantee it.
Sure..out of bounds. Come on grappler go to the desert and record a segment where the desert in alpha 2 looks even somewhat like in the presentation in 2022. Also in truly open development Steven would have said that these segments are just vertical slices of what the game can look like. This is just marketing to get people to buy access packs and other cosmetics. It is meant to pump up the hype around the game.
Never said it looked just like the segments in the showcase. But I played a ton in the Desert during Phase 1, and it didn't look a thing like Narc was showing.
Indeed. TH-camr Golgot has some videos about similar issues on what is being presented vs whats actually ingame (or comes years later into the game or never).
Just to be clear. The video examples Narc gives of a completely empty desert is NOT how the desert looks like. While the desert is in fact underdeveloped it has trees, foliage, water, mobs etc. This alone should disqualify any intentions Narc have of pretending to do an honest assessment. In other words, he is being dishonest. He's also giving the impression people are being banned from the official Ashes subreddit and forum left and right, which again is not true. There's tons of criticism and complains on the forums. which is encouraged by the devs. But if you're a dishonest ass hole, then yeah, you get banned. As you should. Again Narc is being dishonest. He also spends an awful lot of time using minor bugs, like a mount running funny, to say something about the devs integrity. Who gives a fck about a funny running mount at this stage. Especially when the mount can just be put in inventory and out again in seconds and problem solved. Again, dishonest. The list goes on.
"this seems a lot of complaining" I mean what were you expecting from this video Also it seems your main defense of the game/dev team is that "they probably have everything ready they just don't want to implement yet". Seems a bit naive. You asked for sources but you never really paused and took a look at Stevens comments and reddit posts. It took me 5 minutes to find these things. Regardless, interesting point of view.
I don't really need to defend Intrepid, nor is it my place to do so. I'm saying that from what I've seen, there is not anywhere close enough evidence to make me think we should be attacking Intrepid. All they're really guilty of is not meeting dates they've stated certain things would happen. There's obviously other minor stuff they're guilty of, but it's not that big a deal in my mind. You can be free to disagree though, because what's a "big deal", that's pretty subjective.
While some of Narc arguments are silly, I think his general message is correct. Steven shows these things on stream to bait people into buying the game. Imagine a sales man showing you 100 little amazing products and asks you for upfront money and then you have no idea how many years you have to wait until you get all of them. Worst part is all little the products work the best when you get all of them. Ashes grand scope while cool is also it's main weakness. The game falls apart and will keep falling apart for years. Not only do I think this game will keep trying to harvest as much money as possible but it also flawed in game design. What you experienced between Phase 1 -> phase 2 where it felt the same will be a repeating story and that will lead most players in getting angry.
Ok, real-quick, just going to give myself some credibility. I've logged 200 hours on ashes of creation, probably more. I've played since the stress test, which was the day before phase 1 started. I have met countless copium players (including Narc), actual pirates players, overlord players, enveus players, etc. I am even on one of steven's monthly development streams. I have played this game... A LOT! Anyways, here's my opinion. This game is god tier already, and it's not even a game yet. I have seen so many different people play this game for more than 10 hours a day, every single day. I've, firsthand, watched so many testers sit and grind xp for hours and hours, in the most boring possible ways, not getting tired of this game, only saying positive things. People like this game, because it is good! Steven is right, good systems are what make a game fun, and that is exactly why AoC IS fun. My honest opinion, if GrappLr isn't absolutely right about Narc doing this for a publicity stunt, then it's because Narc is salty. He should be discredited for making propaganda for his viewers to eat up. There is no way in hell that him showing off the edge of the map, saying that it's the desert in its entirety, was fair at all. The desert, for the most part, does not look like that AT ALL. I've farmed in it for weeks. It definitely isn't finished, but steven said in his posts, that it will be soon. When the game is good, Narc will stop his crying and come running back, especially when he sees that he's losing viewers, because he got big off of AoC.
@GrappLr It was quite a rash decision to call out and smear Steven's good name, abandoning the game that got him big, over being burnt out from playing too much. His tolerance for the game's grind is going to come right back down, and he's going to look stupid when he comes back to it. Also, side note, this was the only reaction video I found for this. Thanks for having an unbiased response on the topic! Narc's heavily skewed/one-sided response was not what I was looking for.
Kind of sad to see Narc going into his villain arc. He's so clearly invested in Steven being a liar selling a scam showcase that he's completely stuck in his echo chamber. That sucks, I liked his old content over the years.
And I'll take anything that keeps me happy, and I'm satisfied for now and I will be here playing because to me nothing else is out there that I like, and no one like "Narc" is going to tell me what to do, he is probably a Dem a HATER.
@@quest1524 did you even watch Narc's video? they showcased the desert biome saying it was finished and the true desert biome that is not live is complete empty and shit (I can confirm this because I am playing the alpha currently and I feel they lied)
@@rodrigokiwi2 the fact that you are playing an alpha expecting anything is crazy to me… they have said the entire time that it is not in a playable state and that the alpha is for testers.. to expect anything else is dumb
the kick starter was 8 years ago, in the same year, they released the following footage, misleading everyone back then like the game was actually already playable etc. 8 years later, there is nothing. No mechanics, first biome not finished, second biome is just UE5 generated landscape without anything in it. They did make a lot of mounts tho which you can buy. And ooh yeah do you remember the battle royal to test the game loooooooool, 7 years ago (read comments): th-cam.com/video/KHTWhIF5cqI/w-d-xo.html 7 years ago: th-cam.com/video/9b_hp9La78g/w-d-xo.html 7 years ago: th-cam.com/video/xhtjb9rFlhs/w-d-xo.html
I share the same mindset as you for the alpha. I do not expect me to play the entire time im kind of treating it like a arpg would. Which is play til im getting tired of it then wait til a new update comes adding stuff then play again. Like yeah im a tester im gonna report bugs and see if i can duplicate the bug to help figure it out but im playing the game as if its a game
Idk who Narc is, but the amount of time he spent fellating himself over being a “normal” guy and “not like other content creators,” already set the stage for the bullshit that was to follow. He literally admits that the content that’s found the most success for him has been content that is negative and pokes fun at the “potential scam.” He then goes on to say other content creators are biased because there’s incentive for them, after just telling us his incentive to be negatively biased. The “not real” part sent me. The voice he uses to narrate his own opinions? It’s not his, its not real. He needs to use an AI voice with a fancy sounding accent because it makes him sound way more credible than he is. Guy seems like another ragebait content creator.
steven wants it both ways, he wants to market his game to look incredible with fake showcases that drive mmo gamers crazy with anticipation and online hype, charge them hundreds to get to play it early before they see the reality of it, but he then wants to turn around and say 'it's just an alpha what did you expect?' when these excited gamers don't get what they saw in the videos. It's really not complicated, it's ethically wrong and also completely unnecessary and damaging the project more than he realises, anyone defending it has just got stockholm syndrome from too much unethical capitalism selling you lies so much you feel like you deserve it.
The desert DOES look like that over half of it. Yea, on the beach and dunes, it's bland. Narc chose the dunes, and not at the minotaur oasis for a reason
The way u are stating the facts are disingenuine, U use the phrase, "But Again" when someone sells u car and u look it from outside and is absolute gorgeus and when u buy it and trying to get in there are no chair or engine or anything u got scammed. The fact u dont understand that and get to techichal stuff makes me feel 2 things, or u are getting paied or u want to get paied in the future,In both cases u are dishonest
The only reason I watch Narc's videos was because of AOC. He's just going to lose viewers including me because I have no interest in his other content. This rant is exactly why most development isn't open.
I'm unsubscribing and spreading the word on Discord. This TH-camr deletes replies that contradict him... Furthermore, I'm blocking your channel. You are not intellectually honest.
Anyone who does not acknowledge the downfalls of steven and intrepid at this point just don't care and in my opinion are pushing the games failure by enabling the lack of integrity shown by intrepid. As an alpha 2 tester and APOC player I am extremely disappointed in them(Intrepid). Following the project for 7 years and they don't even have a fully fleshed out zone out of what 20? No matter how you put it that's just not acceptable. Then to top it all off Steven essentially says the live updates aren't real they're just made to show off in game assets but they pass them off like its the current state of the game.
Ok, so hear me out. I'm almost certain they can put together a fully fleshed out zone (in terms of assets, areas, etc.) within weeks, if not faster, if that was what they intended to do. But they have much much higher priorities at the moment than that, mainly networking and their server meshing. Now, I could be wrong, but I think once (hopefully IF lol) they figure out server meshing, we'll start seeing much faster content releases.
@@GrappLr while I agree they have the ability to do so their team is made up of individuals with a lot of talent. I think its ignorant to not acknowledge the lack of progress when the live updates were presented in a manner that made it seem like we were seeing the game in the current state when it in fact was not. Stevens whole thing about open development was transparency, yet what he showed during live updates were not real but they were used as a sale's pitch. There's nothing transparent about it when you lie about the games progress. That is why some of us are disappointed, not because we don't think intrepid cant do it we're upset we were lied to. If you are okay being lied to, you endanger the integrity going forward because you'll just be lied to again. The conversation we're having is about integrity, not their ability to eventually make the game. EDIT: Not to mention people are putting a decent amount of money down towards the game based on those live updates/showcases.
@@Jefibo actually intrepid devs are not particualarily known in the industry.. actually quite the opposite, most of the devs were fired from other companies or they Intrepid is their first job.
Thank you for talking about how to properly implement changes and how you don’t make multiple changes at once. Good take on the current state of the alpha test. I’ve been enjoying it, but I also didn’t play in the alpha 1 cycle.
It's sad Narc feels that way because I liked his content. But even I can understand that Ashes is in early development, I don't expect fully fleshed environments or systems this early. It's a damn MMO, I'm more than happy to wait to see the game when they start the advertisement campaign for it. Still, it's a shame Narc feels that way because that will have repercussion on his audience and leaving ashes the way he did is straight up shitty imo.
@@Iliketoeatjam A lot of people have joined in just the last couple years. And are under this illusion that the game is early. Forgetting that we backed it in 2017. That we had early testing in 2018. That we also got Apocalypse in 2018. And that they did already go dark for 2 years. This is not a game that has been in development for 2 years, it started 7 and a half years ago that we have been waiting and listening to promises, and the development has been going on for 6+ years of that (Steven didn't have the full Dev team during Kickstarter and slowly grew it, so true development didn't start right after Kickstarter). And we know that currently the game is minimum 3 years away from launch. We didn't care cause it was "early development" when we tested in 2018, we didn't care as much when they went silent cause we wanted to give them space and time. The minimum they can do after 7 and a half years is to give a proper showcase of what they have and what they're doing.
My issue with narc is how he tries to grift off negativity. There is nothing wrong with stating your displeasure but often more than not, he stretches the truth. Im sure he will be back when new content is released and start this pattern all over again.
Yea they need quantum networking, real 5 Engen sound good but is it or was it real or just fake, look I made something a little better so we should call it something that sounds cool.
I mean if i recall it has 8y of development and the game still looks like a preset demo made in U5, in my eyes has someone who been in alot of alphas n betas (mmorpg), AoC looks like a generic preset model demo of unreal engine, feels like a scam, its like there was no actual work done into it, the time they been developing the game should be atleast 40% ahead of its current state, showcases been nothing but forged lies, cause none of it are present on the game, steven is in fault in all this mess has when he opens is mouth starting painting a portrait like the game is almost finished and this and that and when we get the real picture of the game its just a rough sketch of something, i understand the frustration alot of people been expressing, cause this game is not in a state to be defended neither take side with a lead developer that is too ambitious or dilusional, AoC can have a future if they actually go transparent and stop scam users with fake showcases of non existing content.
As an AoC content watcher, i kinda understand why narc had to quit cuz steven really do yap alot and overpromises things during showcases As a programmer and developer, yeah, its kinda hard meshing systems over systems while preventing bugs when you have a game with a scope like this😂. Its just so unfortunate that it all had to end like this. Narc introduced me to AoC.
They tried to do the node progress but system failed and staff on holiday, so they went to previous builds of server. Mark my words narc is content farming
I am just happy I didn't get baited by aoc even tho I considered it a couple times. I got burned on bad alpha tests too many times the only time I ever buy games at this point is either when they are sub 40 bucks because that's my throwaway amount per month or they are 80%+ on steam. Happy with my poe 2 purchase. Happy I didn't buy AOC because even if it wasn't intended as a scam, the sheer amount of incompetence and misleading information has turned it into one. Alpha was supposed to not be an endless slog on nothing. At the pace they are going it will last multiple years +beta.
I respect his plight and his scrutiny over the project (Narc) but his tone in this video screams delusion to me. If you put a massive project like this under a microscope during its development then obviously you are going to notice inconsistencies and missed deadlines and changed plans. It does not mean the project is built on lies lol that is such a ridiculous jump to make at this time. Just feels like a lot of complaints for the sake of a viral video.
Tbh i never liked the guy, i had some exchange of opinions with him over discord chat. Him being gone is a win imo. The guy acts as if he knows it all talking about videogame in general. Being a youtuber doesnt make you necessarly right in everything you say. That being said, i'm playing less than the phase 1 for sure mainly cause it feels like they just wiped and added nothing and overall for some reason im getting worse performance than phase 1. The desert looks atriocious. If we don't want to be pretentious and calling it a scam we can say that they are behind development IMO
As an uninvested outside observer of this game and the current situation ill tell you straight up i would not invest it. I think everyone should just wait for more progress and a eaither early access release or the actual launch. If this game truly is being developed then it will launch when it launches and atleast that way if features are cut or never implemented for reasons unknown, when you do purchase it finally, youll know what youre actually buying as opposed to this circus where you literally have zero clue if and when youll ever get what you THINK youre funding.
What's really going on is that if you buy into a game in active development hoping to play a full game, even though they say multiple times in every video that the game is not in any way ready to be played, that you should expect a shit game, not working functions, broken things, and that you are in fact a TESTER, and you end up still buying it and complaining about the state of the game, THATS ON YOU. Nobody forced you to buy into this, and it was made very clear that the state of the game is absolutely shit.
He's saying, "is not real," because if you log into then game right now, you literally see none of that. I get what he's saying. Sure, they can maybe be implemented at some point, but I can understand why someone says they're sorta selling based under false pretenses.
Narc thinks for something to be considered real it has to be playable in the alpha it seems. Like if it was ever in a showcase and it's not in the Alpha then it's a lie. I get how you could think that but to me that's you tricking yourself.
Narc built his channel on sensational remarks that have no place in the current reality of the game. I do take issue with alot of what he says because its not true. I am sure i am not the only one who thinks his conclusions were way off base. Especially after Steven himself asked narc to nicely "chill out" and take a break after one of the videos weeks ago. People have been bringing up to Narc that its "only an alpha" to get the guy to realize he is complaining about things that are not even implemented yet. Thats not feedback. Its annoying complaints. Especially when you repeatedly lie about things. People will call you out on it. Again his "axe to grind" attitude towards the game/and Stephan doesn't help anyone. I can totally understand Stephen not wanting narc to spread bs about "the way things are" based on loose assumptions or outright lies. No game dev wants that incorrect info to be out there.
I won't come back until Beta to give the game a fair test. At the current state it's incredibly boring in it's design and game loop. Open world dungeons are boring, and uninspiring as well. Hopefully they turn it around and I imagine its going to take a long time.
I understand his point. If they are saying "this is the state of the game," then don't show a generated presentation. Either show actual footage or say that this is our concept and only a concept.
Yes, but that is unfortunately the whole point of a showcase. If you really don't want to get your hopes up, you need to check out of the livestreams and only play the game when you can. Don't listen to fluff. This isn't just an intrepid studios problem.
People really haven't learned from Cyberpunk, Ubisoft and worse, The Day Before making small vertical slices that don't represent the game's state are still just accepting this dumb industry practice. Devs sell their ambitions so hard but always end up biting more than they can chew resulting in a compromised product.
@@Brandon75689 Intrepid studios was suppose to be different
Everything they showcased has BEEN created and assets that they've created. They can show it however they want, especially how they WANT to implement it. You are just being a childish fool who can't understand, hence Steven calling Narc "uninformed".
@@Okilian_tvthey are always supposed to be different. Maybe some even intended to be different. But then their incompetence makes them hit a wall but they are high on that pre order/supporter pack money so they continue the lie.
As a Star Citizen player this is entertaining to watch. ( eats popcorn)
I'm here with you. They merely adopted the cope, we were born in it. Molded by it lmao.
LOL
@@Humpdurious Well said Bane well said
Star citizen player be like: "first time?"
This hits hard. I see AOC players bashing the shit out of the state of the game. When we have been suffering through SC for how long? Just getting server meshing and a new system.
Also funny when people call this game a MLM/pyramid scheme.
To the point on the showcases: I’m with Narc on that the language and tone implied that the showcases were a selling point for people. The alpha not reflecting much, if anything, from those showcases feels like a bait and switch.
And if this, as you say, is just them trying to focus things for testing…..that would be fine if they communicated it openly. But they’re not and instead shutting down discussion.
Also, yeah, this is all important cause people are giving a bunch of money to them right now based on the available info
They aren't shutting down discussion, steven was on reddit discussing this entire fiasco. he did lock a thread but that was for a different reason.
Your comment sums up exactly how i feel about the situation and the take away.
Its disappointing that Steven hasnt acknowledged this sentiment from testers and backers, and is exactly the lack of communication Narc has been referencing the last couple months.
Its fine that the game is in the state its in, but why did we have to find out ourselves. Many would have loved to know the showcases were just concepts, as no doubt the showcases were the main driving force for people spending $$ to back the project prior to A2s launch.
A heads up prior to A2 launch showing where each system was IN A2 vs how they were shown in the “alpha 2 showcases” would have gone a loooong way to quell this whole situation imo.
exactly
@@JetGC Well they have 3 main design flaws in their strategic design that need to be solved before i am the slightest bit optimistic.
1. They cant match the comparative investment risk/reward in building nodes over many weeks/months, with the risk/reward they want to give for knocking them down, in
@@JakeyEX Steven has acknowledged it and has even talked about it. You're just ignorant.
The problem is this was pitched as this is progress that is made. In reality it was just concepts meant to get ppl hyped and sell alpha keys
You would make a good addition to Ashes of Creation marketing team.
Tell them to hit me up in DMs
@@GrappLr you are coping, asuming there are underlining reasons why he is making the video, instead of looking at what he is saying .
@@GrappLr 7 years ago (read comments): th-cam.com/video/KHTWhIF5cqI/w-d-xo.html 7 years ago: th-cam.com/video/9b_hp9La78g/w-d-xo.html 7 years ago: th-cam.com/video/xhtjb9rFlhs/w-d-xo.html
First time viewer, and I believe his whole issue is that they stated that all those things were current in this Alpha 2 phase and that Alpha 2 would look like or include all the things that he shows and references. I do wish he got more info on the banning he talked about in the redit section. I've only seen a 5-hour session from 2 days ago, and the game seems really cool, but hearing what he mentioned in his video does raise a few red flags.. Thank you for more info on this and another prospective!
My pleasure. I didn't prewatch this or anything, so was my on the moment response/reaction. I could go deeper into it now that I've had time to think about it. But in general, I stand by what I said.
@GrappLr totally fair, I made this comment roughly 3/4 through the video under the assumption that you maybe were more biased on the side of the game (like 60/40 or 70/30). Made it to the end and heard you basically state, "I don't give a shit about the testing aspect, outside of a few personal complaints/general fixes/quality-of-life ideas" which is a very "I play the game to have fun" which I resonate with a lot. And then to see you proceed to tab into Marvel Rivals. 😂
I'm glad I stayed until the end. Am a new sub now, lol
To be fair it was all Stated before. The Developement is currently in Alpha Phase 2 wich is planned to add more stuff over time till at the end most of the Systems and things are tested. We are litterally 2 weeks into many months of Phase 2 and 3 after wich will also be testing stuff... People just went crazy and dont get developement. It simply does not make any sense after the Networking and Stability tests of Phase 1 to now just push out every half finished System and Region cause in the end they will have bugreports for stuff they are actively working on right now and all those reports are to be sorted out and unvalid... Alpha stage is kinda talking of Whitboxing stuff maybe Grey and Blackboxing sometimes but i wonder how the outrage would be if they show completely untextured objects and assets and push regions in the game wich will change massively in the next months or years... then player would say oh but we have had those already etc --- same as UI wich gets iterated and changed with every new System that gets further to being finished to include those or change the layout alltogether. People are just shitting and claiming its a lie or a scam now despite it beeing completely on line with the Alpha Phases and what they have told people to not see it as a finished Game yet but a Testing Environment. A few days into the one Phase where stuff will get added over time for selective Playertesting its crazy xD
Edit: Also to add on this Narc has some valid points of course but i dislike his unhonesty so much i will never watch his content from now on its just crazy how he contructs stuff around comments from Steven wich are completely logical and shifts them into something else. One can misunderstand sure but there was nothing comming from him clearing that stuff up and getting into that desolate Dessert region wich most likely is cropped out cause there is active worldbuilding for maybe a Node or other POI's in that Region is just disingenuous... Thats how i see it. He was allways a bit weird but thats just too much for me just to get some more clicks for his channel wtf are we even talking about here...
I think the biggest issue was intrepid releasing phase 2 without a lot of features, then going on vacation for 3 weeks. People were placated by the communication and I think they’re subconsciously agitated by the lack of it. They’ll be back though.
That is true. I don't know why Phase 1 wasn't just extended until Jan 6 or something after the holidays and just let people roll out their phase 1 character through the holidays.
From the Start this has been Pantheon Vs Ashes of Creation like every Game in the MMO Space this is why they open it to play. Was it to early Yes, But if you look in on Pantheon you see that it was too Early for that game too. this is why they have Early Access mark on the Game just don't do the Wild Ends To ThroneFast or the other way around or you see they only have two of the 3 Zones Done on each side (There 5 or 6 Zones you have to go through)besides that there seems to be nothing but Zone done & no mobs in the Zone all it does now is give Breathing room. The point I'm making is both will not be Done for 2 years & Both are EverQuest just in Different ways Pantheon seems 1999 & Ashes seem 2004 the only reason I like Ashes more is There a F*(Kin Map. Yes that run is not fun at all if you don't watch a Video on how to do it.
3 weeks….? Get a life
Steven stated a long time ago that assets where fully finished for 8 biomes yet now they dont even have the assets finished for a second zone? also steven stating that theyre not spending any money on marketing yet they do monthy updates with builds made just for those showcases, you cant tell me that those fake build arent eating up a ton of dev resources.
Having an asset ready isnt the same as having it implemented though.
first biome is not even finished.
Hey,
I really appreciate you making an effort to understand his points and attempting to bring discourse, rather than dismissing his opinions outright. That’s a refreshing approach in these discussions.
While I do believe Narc is wrong on some things and has been two-faced in many scenarios over the years (something even proven in the Doc’s latest video), I have to reinforce his take on the "selling under false pretenses" point. It’s completely reasonable, and trying to downplay it with arguments like "but is it a big deal?" feels disingenuous and wrong to me.
Let me give you an analogy to clarify:
Imagine I show you the concept of a brand-new car I’m creating, and as a big fan of cars, you’re intrigued. I present all these amazing features, not just conceptually but as actual working components in the car itself (think of this like the freeholds shown in-game). I tell you about the engine, its horsepower, and all the exciting possibilities.
Now, I say: "You can try out this car for $500. It’s not entirely finished yet, but you can test it." This is akin to the rhetoric Steven uses to market Alpha 2.
The day comes, and you finally get to test the car after paying hundreds of dollars. But as you start it, you realize the engine is junk, and the features you were most excited about aren’t even implemented. Instead, it’s just a nice-looking frame that’s clunky and far from what was promised. You’re then told it’s just a “frame test” for stability, and when you express genuine concerns, the conversation is simply shut down.
How would you feel?
To bring it back to Ashes of Creation, Steven and the devs-who are also subreddit moderators-have been closing down negative feedback posts. While I’m not aware of any in-game bans, I’d assume Narc exaggerated this for drama. I don’t blindly support him, as I know he has a tendency to exaggerate, but the analogy stands. If this were any other product, people would be yelling bloody murder. I know I would.
The crux of the issue is that it’s disingenuous and deceptive to advertise features supposedly implemented in the game, charge significant sums for people to test it, and then fail to deliver even half of those features.
I want this game to succeed and personally believe they can take as much time as they need. Like Narc, I think the state of the game isn’t the problem-it’s the deceptive communication and marketing strategy used to maximize profits early on.
Steven has repeatedly said, "It’s just a test, don’t expect to play a great game yet." But wouldn’t it have been better to say something like:
"Most of the systems you’ve seen in our showcases are not in the game yet. They don’t work, and it will take months or even years for you to see them fully implemented."
That would have been honest and transparent.
But that’s exactly why this is not “open development.” Open development implies full transparency and honesty about the state of the game and its systems. What we have here is something different: a carefully curated release of information, where certain details are intentionally withheld to maximize hype and profits. This is not about sharing the raw truth of development; it’s about controlling the narrative to drive pre-sales and maintain excitement, even if it comes at the cost of credibility and genuineness.
Anyways,
I always love watching your videos-keep doing you. Thanks for fostering genuine discourse, and sorry for the novel I wrote here! Wishing you and everyone who sees this a Happy New Year and much love! ❤
I get your take here. I don’t fully agree with you, but do get where you’re coming from.
As to what kind of message they have given, I think they were not great at communicating, but also far from lying or malicious. It’s somewhere in between, and closer to just simply bad communication, albeit probably some sweetening of words for marketing purposes (we can be sure that they also do want to raise money for development costs )
"While I do believe Narc is wrong on some things and has been two-faced in many scenarios over the years." This is the part where i dismiss his Opinion because this proves your basically the same as the two-faced Devs you are criticizing. And grifting the AoC Haters negativity.
@@Vell1981 You are well within your rights to do so. However, outright dismissing ANYONES entire perspective is short sighted. Nobody, and I mean nobody is entirely black/white. You will always find some good and some bad in rationally thought out oppinions. No matter who´s it is. Thoughts and oppinions are after all subjective!
narc literally proved himself correct about the desert though ?
@@kreenbopulusmichael7205 what do you mean exactly ?
Most of the stuff is probably in the development branch on their version control system and might be merged in at any time during testing. The builds we are playing right now in both the PTR and the main servers are not the only builds for sure. That's just how this stuff works. I bet in the office they are playing on a build we won't be seeing for a long time. They may have even cut out a bunch of stuff and then called that the live test build which is what we are playing.
This exactly.
Or you're getting scammed. You know. That's also possible.
they admitted the builds shown were fake? If its that easy to add to the game than why not just add it when your asking people for triple figures to test a game, you arent allowed to criticize.
i dont really see them testing much of anything.
bugs, like getting duplicates of yourself on the map, mounts freezing or running off without the owner, empty gathering nodes, bag / storage bugs, gathering nodes and mobs being underground or miles up in the air, that have been reported for months now and non of it even made it to a "known issues" list, let alone that any of it got fixed.
Spelleffects and model textures, that's what they work on.
Alpha is usually about making systems work and bixing bugs, but that' does not seem to be happening much, nor is there much communication about it.
also, showing a completed area claiming that what is shown is the current state of the game and then delivering a pretty much empty map after people have payed is just misleading if not a plain scam. That is completely illegal in my county.
im definitely concerned because making the map is like one of the earliest steps of development but they seem to be doing it differently. First the world is made, then you build and add the content into the world. And Grapplr is mistaken, making the map isn't as easy as just have the assets and putting them down.
You have quest related areas, PATHING is a huge thing. Polishing map imperfections, lighting, ambience, doodads, terrain, elevation. Making one canyon for example could take one person a week to get it right and you have to make sure the npcs and their pathing meshes with the environment.
Well... if someone try to sell you a product, stating that it is something, or has characteristics that it doesn't have, it IS called a scam. GrappLr is just a content creator that for some reason, that may or may not be money related, is in favour of the scammer this time.
The biggest problem with P2 launch is that it's not P2.... it's P1 extended. The only thing they did was give us big stress test to play in. This is the 'lie' most are talking about. They could have easily avoided a lot of backlash by just waiting for P2 to launch when the level design for the desert was complete, and having the rogue to come out. The fact that these systems aren't in place when the goal of P2 node development and economy and now nodes are already done developing to the highest level, and the economy is already fucked up due to exploiters. And Intrepid isn't around to address this or do anything about.
Crafters have gotten 0 feedback since the Alpha 2 started after giving them 5+ pages of threads, and you can't do Node/Economy progression without the crafting system. Nothing has changed since P1 in that sense either. P2 is not ready for launch and they launched it anyways. This is where the outrage is. And Narc, as Narc does, went in full tilt without portraying the facts properly. There are reasons for the outrage. Narc just did a bad job about bringing them up... yet again.
I haven't even installed Ashes of Phase 2, because I knew there would be very little to do, at least, nothing I had not done yet in Phase 1. But I guess many people didn't get this memo, or got scammed by other content creators that Phase 2 was going to be an amazing launch.
But this aside, I agree with you entirely, Phase 2 should have been delayed until at least Rogue launch, at least from a marketing perspective.
Phase 2 release added nodes, player shops, 2-3x server population capacity ect. The point is to over 5 months add the content they promised but people are overdosing on copium from their expectations. At this point its a fact that a good chunk of the alpha testers dont understand and cant comprehend what an alpha is. They want early access/beta levels of gameplay content as they put in hundreds of hours into the game. Intrepids biggest mistake was dropping phase 2 and then leaving the game open during their holiday break. Good gesture to let anyone including those who dont celebrate or dont have friends/family to have something to play that was incredibly underappreciated by some of the community to the point of outrage that there werent constant fixes going on while the team wasnt even at the office. The start of Phase 2 showed that MANY people need to step away from the game for a few weeks or a few months because their criticism ends up just being noise from them being overly emotionally invest in this game having spent money on it.
@@SuperBlackatude Server capacity doesn't mean anything when game world size didn't increase. Forcing 2-3x the player base onto a server that didn't grow and didn't add any new mobs/camps to compensate is only a negative. We know it's an alpha. Phase 2 isn't supposed to be a stress test alpha anymore and that's what we got. When you sell access and tell people what the test is going to be about and not deliver you are selling something falsely advertised. Case in point, this would not be allowed to be sold on steam as you aren't getting what's advertised.
If you want to buy into phase 2 because you want to test what was advertised you already missed out on that point as nearly everything is already progressed up to max
@@onewingedangelo1611 "Server capacity doesn't mean anything when game world size didn't increase"? The rest of what you say I understand and can agree, but this does not make sense for me. One server handling more traffic DO mean something... The point should be on what you what typed later, there should be more than "just" stressing the servers with more traffic, etc
@@william.strebe What I mean by this is just because the servers can now hold 4000 people... the current game world doesn't have enough content for 4000 people. You spread those people out throughout the whole map and people are still fighting for content because there isn't enough to facilitate them. That's what I mean.
I have no interest in Ashes of Creation at this stage. I just started following you from your PoE 2 videos. I threw this video on while grinding for something to watch. I've been a software engineer for 20+ years and can't imagine how difficult it would be to do open development on something this large and complex. Most users (or players in this case) only care about when things will be done. They never care about quality until after the fact. If something isn't done on time, then users are pissed. If the devs rush to get it out on time and it's not perfect, then users are pissed. It can be demoralizing for devs when working on something where no matter what you do someone is pissed. It is possible that some of Steven Sharif's actions are an attempt to protect his team.
Great comment here. Yeah, there’s a pretty much nobody does open development like this. I hope it works out for them though.
And I can absolutely imagine Steven wanting to protect morale among other problems.
Yhea but they lied about how far development has come. Thats whats tilting.
Don't show something that is far from reality and there will be no backlash, what do you think about this ?
I don’t understand why people are investing so much energy into this game right now. It’s not up to par at the moment for the content people want to make with the “game”.
It’s too early to really dive all in
@@GrappLrThat’s what I feel. It’s not worth the headache from the game, the people or the network rn. Stay blessed.
he made the player argument you were talking about on stream but didnt talk about in the video. it was most likely to keep the video short
Narc's comments aside as he was clearly quite emotive in that video, my personal irk with the game currently is that I do wish they made it clearer that it was a concept (the showcases). I genuinely did think the things they showed we can take as the 'base' alpha and we are working from there onwards. This, along with things like using color grading in their videos whilst commenting on colors etc and how everything pops during their showcases does not sit well with me. Thankfully the latter was (semi) fixed after the lighting changes that were implemented with A2P2. Does the game have potential? Definitely! Do I feel like the messaging has been terrible, and their showcases misleading? Yeah, I do unfortunately.
They lost me when they charged people more than a regular game to be testers. NO thanks
“The old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time for monsters.”
Makes sense, they're saying this is what the game will be for Alpha 2 and it's just not. They lied.
This is spot on. I'm glad someone understands what's going on and why the discrepancy.
At 3:37 did this guy slam the last of a cup of coffee, take a swig of soda and swished it around his teeth, and then flushed it down? If so, that's some gamer-shit indeed.
he said, it's to keep his teeth healthy / turn yellowish
also... that's olive oil
@@ryanjoseph.51 Interesting, so after he finishes a cup of coffee he swishes olive oil to rinse his tooth enamel?
I swish water after finishing coffee. It helps from turning teeth yellow long term.
The oil part is a meme.
@@GrappLr Ahhh ok. Yea I do the same. I was like, "Hmmm never heard of olive oil but I understand the reasoning". Haha.
Crazy how Paradox Gaming did the same exact format as Narc from positive to negative and narc took his place after supplanting him and then did the same thing.
Paradox gaming was someone I actually actively disliked. Narc overall is cool in my book. I would not compare the two.
Agreed, Narc is more entertaining in a fun way. Only problem is serious negativity is not complimenting his format of silly fun.
@@beowningu4669Narc expected more content after the reset.
I'd rather he voice his grievances than ride a toxic positivity train
@@GrappLr Is Paradox the guy that was saying you had "emo hair" and would beat you up?
This was excellent. Great reaction.
I’m an enjoyer of old-school MMORPGs that really capture that spirit of the good old days like in EQ but also incorporate a fresh take on the genre as a whole and Ashes of Creation has been on my radar, but I haven’t been closely following it like a lot in this space.
Actually, in the Omens of War expansion which was really brutally difficult (Citadel of Anguish / Overlord Mata Muram raid for those familiar) I enjoyed the aesthetic and I thought some of the design was interesting. I heard one of the devs in this expansion worked on some of the encounters on Ashes of Creation so that's how I heard about it.
Without knowing too much, It seems like the right approach would be to wait for a more complete product/version of the game before diving in so just passing by seeing what’s going on with the game seems interesting so far but it seems like the best thing to do would just be to wait a little bit before release? I guess it's kind of like Pantheon in that sense which we finally got early access but there isn't a whole lot there, just the skeleton.
Seems like its going to be great but just have to play the waiting game for a couple of years? Cheers lads
I mean. I had fun in Phase1 for sure. It’s just that phase 2 is almost the same and didn’t want to do the same thing twice.
A game director that uses as an argument "for your mental health" is soo low.
Grapplr! I love this guy! So glad this popped up, used to watch you on twitch all the time. Subbeddddddd❤❤❤❤❤
Welcome back!
Since day one, this “game” was announced, I told you all: “Nothing but a scam.” I was called a fool, well…
No matter what anyone says (COPE), when you have hundreds of people working on a game, it simply cannot take that long. It just cannot. I'm not saying the game should be out in two months, but working on something for 5 years, and have such a barebone Alpha, is extremely weird.
Call me what you want, but I been playing mmo's, testing alphas and betas, since 1999. Peace
Doubt you've been testing then. Mmorpgs can take a decade to make for even large overly funded companies.
The biggest thing that's making it take so long is that they swapped from UE4 to UE5 and lost a lot of the progress they had made to make the game better in the long run. Unfortunate but necessary
@@mobilereis Can take indeed a decade but they actually show progress, the alphas actually feel like alphas, they dont go show fake progression and showcases and charge people for an entry to test something that is not even 5% what was promised, i tested quite a few mmorpgs and all them felt like it was ready to release then AoC, of course its different has some of the mmos i tested are older but yet still AoC needs to be more transparent and stop selling fake preview of the game.
Man, I really agree that desert release deserves criticism... But every single other point that Narc says on this is video is straight up bs and people are really buying into it without questioning him or checking for any proofs.
And besides that. I've played and tested a bunch of games in the past in Alpha: Valorant, Heroes of Newerth in 2009.. man you name it. I love doing these stuff. And in none of those playtest I never had seen such a disregard for the devs like he is doing right now!
I was never expecting much from Desert this early on. But I guess I could see how some were.
It wasn't BS at all. It was actually pretty mild feedback tbh.
Even the desert criticism is a little vacuous. They already have all the assets from the preview, they just are doing a "level design blockout", according to Steven.
@@drooskie9525 then they shouldnt put it in the alpha until its ready. testing a placeholder is a complete waste of time. they wrote a check they couldnt cash by showing everyone a finished desert biome, but really all they had were some dirt hills and scorpions
Narc: "the test was tedious and boring"
Me: IT IS A TEST! (It's going to be shite tedium)
41:00 Nah come on, Steven, claiming their not spending on marketing .... Every showcase has been marketing, how much did they spend making those beautiful mockups?? They don't show the game at the stage it's actually at, it's almost all prototypes. They don't discuss the issues their facing, it's not open (as in transparent) development it's more like they replaced the brick wall in the back of the showroom with a window into to the factory floor, and then they put a neon sign outside "come watch our engineers build your car" but the window has privacy glass.
And when you go in and can't see shit through the glass they say well why don't you look around the showroom floor and see if theres anything you like.
"Here look at this it's a folding cup holder, it'll definitely be in your car once it's built, unless we have to add it later, maybe"
The whole "open development" thing is just an excuse to put out marketing to sell shiny turds instead of making an actual game, Steven once had a dream but now his head is full of wow killer ambitions
I do think you misrepresent a bit on the communication part. He's saying that 1) the communication is bad and 2) most of the CCs stopped making regular content. It's an 'and' not a 'because'.
I can't know exactly what he meant. It was my first reaction, I didn't prewatch or really have time to think things over too deeply.
@GrappLr that's fair, I liked the video overall. I appreciated that you at least saw the humor in things like the desert bit and the sub goals.
I was a little sadge that you were seemingly quick to ascribe bad intentions to Narc (oh he's leaving because the ashes viewership is going lower) but always defend Steven by saying that we don't have enough information to know what's really going on behind the scenes.
But I can understand that someone may be more cynical with something they are more familiar with (being a content creator) and less eager to be cynical with something they are less familiar with (game dev)
Anyway brother, I appreciate that you're so responsive to people and will absolutely check out more of your vids. Def subbed ✅️
@@whatwouldericdo I don't particularly see how this is bad intentions though. Obviously Narc is a content creator and he's making a living right now doing YT and Twitch. He has every right to look to widen his horizons as a content creator.
Is this a bad thing? For me, it's simply the most logical explanation. I'm personally not streaming or even playing AoC Atm because I think the content is bad, and no point doing it until Rogue is out at least.
@GrappLr maybe bad intentions was the wrong way for me to describe it.
Maybe it would be more accurate of me to say that you're more willing to assume there's more going on than what's being said in Narc's case.
When talking about Steven you say "well, we don't know, we don't have all the information, assuming is bad faith, etc"
But with Narc, he laid out exactly why he was leaving and instead of taking it at face value you are quick to accept an additional motivation that he never mentioned.
I think overall if you were willing to engage with alternative motivations on both sides (I personally think there's plenty to explore when it comes to Steven) or were taking each side exclusively at their word, it would have a consistency of logic that would be difficult to take issue with.
@@whatwouldericdo I get what you're saying. In my mind, it's highly likely that both burnout from a subathon (in an environment like Phase 2 where there's almost nothing new) and lower viewership recently are highly contributing factors to "dropping" a game. And as it's highly likely, I talk about it.
On the other hand, could AoC be a scam? Sure. But I don't think it's highly likely. I also think that what Steven said is reasonably likely to be true.
Thus, i weight these things differently.
I find no point talking about AoC being a scam, or engaging in that angle, because for one, it's not likely enough to be true to warrant seriously going into, and for two, what's the point of engaging down that path? I'll still play it, as will most people. I've already paid to be part of the Alpha, as have most people. So engaging in the hypothetical serves very little. At worst, it discredits Intrepid unfairly and harms them when they don't deserve it while demoralizing the devs working at the studio, and at best, it does what? Warn a few people of a scam that they've already fallen into?
I would argue Star citizen is even more open and its a much bigger studio. Sure people throw around scam citizen, but if you actually take time and do some research, they even show yearly financial reports and is extremely open.
SC is way - WAY - more open than ashes. Actually, most crowfunded games and as open as SC is, it is just ashes the one who is not open at all, people just dont know.
geniune question, do you think selling an ig item for 40k+$ locked behind a paywall is fair?
@@mostneuterso u have no clue what you are talking about, no offense, but allow me to explain you.
SC is funded by the community, JUST and only, byt the community.
When SC launched the kickstarter, people threw at it tens of thousands of money FOR NOTHING in exhange. People just donated it for the funding, merely for the funding.
When SC released it firsts ships models, THE PEOPLE said: Hey, I sent you 20K EUR, what if you allow me to test these ships earlier in exchange? - And SC devs said, okei, so what we are gonna no is a funding model based on ships. Depending on how much you donate, you will have free models of ships to mess around with.
And that until now. Thats how it started.
The 40k pack is just ALL the models of SC ships that exist and will ever exist. It is a reward for a donation. SC is funded by donators. There is no paywall, thats just a low iq meme that you saw on some low iq video on youtube.
@@mostneuter you should do a bit more basic research about that that "40k+" item actually is.
@@seveneternal7988 doesn't matter, any ig item about 20$ is a scam
Discovered you recently through ashes. Good content, keep it up. But please, please, please centre your cam.
No, majestic cat statue must be in the frame
steven, or any of the other devs have never stated that the showcases arent representative of the progress of the game. in fact they openly state things like "you will be testing this desert in the alpha 2" in the showcase stream. no matter how it's spun it's a massive issue that nothing in the showcases have ever been real, not even the zones.
I think theres too much defending of the showcases, I've been gaming and following games for over 20 years and it's really not that common to be shown extensive showcases for years on end and then not a single one of the systems is in the game.
Judging by the state of freeholds alone in A2 it makes me believe pretty much not a single system is even 10% finished, and that IS an issue. these showcases were years ago and not once implied that they're concepts, not reality.
To your point on the networking issues. It has definitely improved. No queues even with much larger server populations and the render distance has improved. Large scale fights are hit or miss sometimes they feel good and sometimes it becomes a slideshow (players just sliding across your screen). They have definitely made strides on the networking at the very least.
It's really what's holding them back the most. I hope they can really ace the networking.
I m on PTR the hole time! To be honest they did soo much in short time. Like you said at the beginning no grass tree etc. Only function. From patch to patch more Ambiente etc. Just wait and come back later. This game will be amazing
I do think that most content creators are uninformed - about the development process. Unless those content creators are in on the development process, then they are uninformed about why things are being released into Alpha in the way they are. Steven has said that they will do what is best for the game (and this the future players of this game), and if they have to delay their timelines because the systems are breaking with larger amounts of people playing (yay, we get to test!) then they would not be adding in more systems.
Honestly same. Like i tried the fighter a little but am probably just gonna wait till rogue
It is just insane that this guy think thats AOC is open development, really shows how poor knowledege he has on the indie space, and even more on the crowfunding space.
Do you want an example of open development of a much - MUCH - larger project than AOC? Star Citizen.
2 videos each single week informing about the development.
2 roadmaps, one showing what is comming in the next update and another showing what is being worked on and when it will be finished.
Second-by-second data and public and open tracking of all the funds they receive.
Public trade registered Accounts published in the HRMC and a more-friendly version for non-accountas published each year to the community.
Weekly posts and forums on feedback threads.
Community managed reddit forum.
Etc, etc, etc.
I'm calling it here. This game will release and flop or never release at all.
This guy in a nutshell:
"But what does it mean?!?"
The biggest problem with P2 launch is that it's not P2.... it's P1 extended. The only thing they did was give us big stress test to play in. This is the 'lie' most are talking about. They could have easily avoided a lot of backlash by just waiting for P2 to launch when the level design for the desert was complete, and having the rogue to come out. The fact that these systems aren't in place when the goal of P2 node development and economy and now nodes are already done developing to the highest level, and the economy is already fucked up due to exploiters. And Intrepid isn't around to address this or do anything about.
Crafters have gotten 0 feedback since the Alpha 2 started after giving them 5+ pages of threads, and you can't do Node/Economy progression without the crafting system. Nothing has changed since P1 in that sense either. P2 is not ready for launch and they launched it anyways. This is where the outrage is. And Narc, as Narc does, went in full tilt without portraying the facts properly. There are reasons for the outrage. Narc just did a bad job about bringing them up... yet again.
Yeah, I didn’t bother playing Phase 2 as I saw this coming.
I've been following Narc for a long time. I said a year or so ago that AoC would not be ready until 2030 or later and got flamed for it. Its entertaining watching him flame out during an alpha. Wish him the best and he will be back I guarantee it.
Sure..out of bounds. Come on grappler go to the desert and record a segment where the desert in alpha 2 looks even somewhat like in the presentation in 2022. Also in truly open development Steven would have said that these segments are just vertical slices of what the game can look like. This is just marketing to get people to buy access packs and other cosmetics. It is meant to pump up the hype around the game.
Never said it looked just like the segments in the showcase. But I played a ton in the Desert during Phase 1, and it didn't look a thing like Narc was showing.
i think star citizen has the most open development. have the same issues as AoC though
Indeed. TH-camr Golgot has some videos about similar issues on what is being presented vs whats actually ingame (or comes years later into the game or never).
Just to be clear. The video examples Narc gives of a completely empty desert is NOT how the desert looks like. While the desert is in fact underdeveloped it has trees, foliage, water, mobs etc.
This alone should disqualify any intentions Narc have of pretending to do an honest assessment.
In other words, he is being dishonest.
He's also giving the impression people are being banned from the official Ashes subreddit and forum left and right, which again is not true. There's tons of criticism and complains on the forums. which is encouraged by the devs. But if you're a dishonest ass hole, then yeah, you get banned. As you should.
Again Narc is being dishonest.
He also spends an awful lot of time using minor bugs, like a mount running funny, to say something about the devs integrity. Who gives a fck about a funny running mount at this stage. Especially when the mount can just be put in inventory and out again in seconds and problem solved.
Again, dishonest.
The list goes on.
"this seems a lot of complaining" I mean what were you expecting from this video
Also it seems your main defense of the game/dev team is that "they probably have everything ready they just don't want to implement yet". Seems a bit naive.
You asked for sources but you never really paused and took a look at Stevens comments and reddit posts. It took me 5 minutes to find these things.
Regardless, interesting point of view.
I don't really need to defend Intrepid, nor is it my place to do so. I'm saying that from what I've seen, there is not anywhere close enough evidence to make me think we should be attacking Intrepid. All they're really guilty of is not meeting dates they've stated certain things would happen. There's obviously other minor stuff they're guilty of, but it's not that big a deal in my mind. You can be free to disagree though, because what's a "big deal", that's pretty subjective.
What a dumpster fire of a game.
While some of Narc arguments are silly, I think his general message is correct. Steven shows these things on stream to bait people into buying the game. Imagine a sales man showing you 100 little amazing products and asks you for upfront money and then you have no idea how many years you have to wait until you get all of them. Worst part is all little the products work the best when you get all of them.
Ashes grand scope while cool is also it's main weakness. The game falls apart and will keep falling apart for years. Not only do I think this game will keep trying to harvest as much money as possible but it also flawed in game design. What you experienced between Phase 1 -> phase 2 where it felt the same will be a repeating story and that will lead most players in getting angry.
All game developers do this.
Ok, real-quick, just going to give myself some credibility. I've logged 200 hours on ashes of creation, probably more. I've played since the stress test, which was the day before phase 1 started. I have met countless copium players (including Narc), actual pirates players, overlord players, enveus players, etc. I am even on one of steven's monthly development streams. I have played this game... A LOT! Anyways, here's my opinion. This game is god tier already, and it's not even a game yet. I have seen so many different people play this game for more than 10 hours a day, every single day. I've, firsthand, watched so many testers sit and grind xp for hours and hours, in the most boring possible ways, not getting tired of this game, only saying positive things. People like this game, because it is good! Steven is right, good systems are what make a game fun, and that is exactly why AoC IS fun. My honest opinion, if GrappLr isn't absolutely right about Narc doing this for a publicity stunt, then it's because Narc is salty. He should be discredited for making propaganda for his viewers to eat up. There is no way in hell that him showing off the edge of the map, saying that it's the desert in its entirety, was fair at all. The desert, for the most part, does not look like that AT ALL. I've farmed in it for weeks. It definitely isn't finished, but steven said in his posts, that it will be soon. When the game is good, Narc will stop his crying and come running back, especially when he sees that he's losing viewers, because he got big off of AoC.
I start off by saying that he’s probably burnt out from the subathon.
@GrappLr It was quite a rash decision to call out and smear Steven's good name, abandoning the game that got him big, over being burnt out from playing too much. His tolerance for the game's grind is going to come right back down, and he's going to look stupid when he comes back to it. Also, side note, this was the only reaction video I found for this. Thanks for having an unbiased response on the topic! Narc's heavily skewed/one-sided response was not what I was looking for.
Kind of sad to see Narc going into his villain arc. He's so clearly invested in Steven being a liar selling a scam showcase that he's completely stuck in his echo chamber. That sucks, I liked his old content over the years.
30:38 Is 100% straight on point imo
And I'll take anything that keeps me happy, and I'm satisfied for now and I will be here playing because to me nothing else is out there that I like, and no one like "Narc" is going to tell me what to do, he is probably a Dem a HATER.
this entire reaction is cope. aoc is a scam
Your entire comment is a cope… please lmk how anything they’ve done hasn’t been completely transparent
@@quest1524 did you even watch Narc's video? they showcased the desert biome saying it was finished and the true desert biome that is not live is complete empty and shit (I can confirm this because I am playing the alpha currently and I feel they lied)
@@rodrigokiwi2 the fact that you are playing an alpha expecting anything is crazy to me… they have said the entire time that it is not in a playable state and that the alpha is for testers.. to expect anything else is dumb
the kick starter was 8 years ago, in the same year, they released the following footage, misleading everyone back then like the game was actually already playable etc. 8 years later, there is nothing. No mechanics, first biome not finished, second biome is just UE5 generated landscape without anything in it. They did make a lot of mounts tho which you can buy. And ooh yeah do you remember the battle royal to test the game loooooooool, 7 years ago (read comments): th-cam.com/video/KHTWhIF5cqI/w-d-xo.html 7 years ago: th-cam.com/video/9b_hp9La78g/w-d-xo.html 7 years ago: th-cam.com/video/xhtjb9rFlhs/w-d-xo.html
I share the same mindset as you for the alpha. I do not expect me to play the entire time im kind of treating it like a arpg would. Which is play til im getting tired of it then wait til a new update comes adding stuff then play again. Like yeah im a tester im gonna report bugs and see if i can duplicate the bug to help figure it out but im playing the game as if its a game
well they need to let us know what is going on
Thank you for the video internet sleuth. ❤
Idk who Narc is, but the amount of time he spent fellating himself over being a “normal” guy and “not like other content creators,” already set the stage for the bullshit that was to follow. He literally admits that the content that’s found the most success for him has been content that is negative and pokes fun at the “potential scam.” He then goes on to say other content creators are biased because there’s incentive for them, after just telling us his incentive to be negatively biased.
The “not real” part sent me. The voice he uses to narrate his own opinions? It’s not his, its not real. He needs to use an AI voice with a fancy sounding accent because it makes him sound way more credible than he is.
Guy seems like another ragebait content creator.
they also rerolled the game on unreal so they had to rebuild everything in unreal and update each asset. so if it looks worse thats likely why
steven wants it both ways, he wants to market his game to look incredible with fake showcases that drive mmo gamers crazy with anticipation and online hype, charge them hundreds to get to play it early before they see the reality of it, but he then wants to turn around and say 'it's just an alpha what did you expect?' when these excited gamers don't get what they saw in the videos. It's really not complicated, it's ethically wrong and also completely unnecessary and damaging the project more than he realises, anyone defending it has just got stockholm syndrome from too much unethical capitalism selling you lies so much you feel like you deserve it.
yeah a mod banned me from narcs discord so lol what goes around comes around. Id like to know the real reason he went full aggro against AOC
because its a scam... ashes is a echo chamber. it was obvious its a scam ever since the battle royale or even earlier, thats years ago...
Grap sounds like me when my friends are pointing out all the red flags of my girlfriend.
What is Narc talking about... the Open development is all about showing concepts and get feedback.
I could have played phase 1 but I didn't because I knew lvling 2 times for 80hr would be alot.
Fair
The desert DOES look like that over half of it. Yea, on the beach and dunes, it's bland. Narc chose the dunes, and not at the minotaur oasis for a reason
Sure, but the majority I assume looks just like, or better, than it did in Phase 1. So it's unfair to use the exception as the case to show.
@GrappLr agree. If he had stood near the Oasis, he wouldn't have gotten the reaction he was looking for. Such a bum.
The way u are stating the facts are disingenuine, U use the phrase, "But Again" when someone sells u car and u look it from outside and is absolute gorgeus and when u buy it and trying to get in there are no chair or engine or anything u got scammed. The fact u dont understand that and get to techichal stuff makes me feel 2 things, or u are getting paied or u want to get paied in the future,In both cases u are dishonest
That empty desert doe😅......I spit out my protein shake, gamer simps will overhype anything.
> plays game in alpha
> gets upset that game is in alpha
the bald guy who wears clothing and underwear with steven's face on it. what a clown fiesta hahahahahaha
That one was legendary
The only reason I watch Narc's videos was because of AOC. He's just going to lose viewers including me because I have no interest in his other content. This rant is exactly why most development isn't open.
I'm unsubscribing and spreading the word on Discord. This TH-camr deletes replies that contradict him... Furthermore, I'm blocking your channel. You are not intellectually honest.
nobody is going to pay monthly to play this game. it is so obvious, this game is straight up trash
your reaction was very hard to watch
Anyone who does not acknowledge the downfalls of steven and intrepid at this point just don't care and in my opinion are pushing the games failure by enabling the lack of integrity shown by intrepid. As an alpha 2 tester and APOC player I am extremely disappointed in them(Intrepid). Following the project for 7 years and they don't even have a fully fleshed out zone out of what 20? No matter how you put it that's just not acceptable. Then to top it all off Steven essentially says the live updates aren't real they're just made to show off in game assets but they pass them off like its the current state of the game.
Ok, so hear me out. I'm almost certain they can put together a fully fleshed out zone (in terms of assets, areas, etc.) within weeks, if not faster, if that was what they intended to do. But they have much much higher priorities at the moment than that, mainly networking and their server meshing. Now, I could be wrong, but I think once (hopefully IF lol) they figure out server meshing, we'll start seeing much faster content releases.
@@GrappLr while I agree they have the ability to do so their team is made up of individuals with a lot of talent. I think its ignorant to not acknowledge the lack of progress when the live updates were presented in a manner that made it seem like we were seeing the game in the current state when it in fact was not. Stevens whole thing about open development was transparency, yet what he showed during live updates were not real but they were used as a sale's pitch. There's nothing transparent about it when you lie about the games progress. That is why some of us are disappointed, not because we don't think intrepid cant do it we're upset we were lied to. If you are okay being lied to, you endanger the integrity going forward because you'll just be lied to again. The conversation we're having is about integrity, not their ability to eventually make the game.
EDIT: Not to mention people are putting a decent amount of money down towards the game based on those live updates/showcases.
Well said. Couldn’t agree more. @jefibo
@@Jefibo actually intrepid devs are not particualarily known in the industry.. actually quite the opposite, most of the devs were fired from other companies or they Intrepid is their first job.
@@seveneternal7988 even more reason to be concerned then. I didn't know that.
Thank you for talking about how to properly implement changes and how you don’t make multiple changes at once. Good take on the current state of the alpha test. I’ve been enjoying it, but I also didn’t play in the alpha 1 cycle.
@25:12 Uniformed content creator tho... not uninformed.
Not someone without information, but someone in a uniform.
It's sad Narc feels that way because I liked his content. But even I can understand that Ashes is in early development, I don't expect fully fleshed environments or systems this early. It's a damn MMO, I'm more than happy to wait to see the game when they start the advertisement campaign for it.
Still, it's a shame Narc feels that way because that will have repercussion on his audience and leaving ashes the way he did is straight up shitty imo.
„Early development” after 8 years is a crazy take. They showcased systems that don’t exist ie. they lied
@@Iliketoeatjam A lot of people have joined in just the last couple years. And are under this illusion that the game is early. Forgetting that we backed it in 2017. That we had early testing in 2018. That we also got Apocalypse in 2018. And that they did already go dark for 2 years. This is not a game that has been in development for 2 years, it started 7 and a half years ago that we have been waiting and listening to promises, and the development has been going on for 6+ years of that (Steven didn't have the full Dev team during Kickstarter and slowly grew it, so true development didn't start right after Kickstarter). And we know that currently the game is minimum 3 years away from launch.
We didn't care cause it was "early development" when we tested in 2018, we didn't care as much when they went silent cause we wanted to give them space and time. The minimum they can do after 7 and a half years is to give a proper showcase of what they have and what they're doing.
My issue with narc is how he tries to grift off negativity. There is nothing wrong with stating your displeasure but often more than not, he stretches the truth. Im sure he will be back when new content is released and start this pattern all over again.
Yea they need quantum networking, real 5 Engen sound good but is it or was it real or just fake, look I made something a little better so we should call it something that sounds cool.
I mean if i recall it has 8y of development and the game still looks like a preset demo made in U5, in my eyes has someone who been in alot of alphas n betas (mmorpg), AoC looks like a generic preset model demo of unreal engine, feels like a scam, its like there was no actual work done into it, the time they been developing the game should be atleast 40% ahead of its current state, showcases been nothing but forged lies, cause none of it are present on the game, steven is in fault in all this mess has when he opens is mouth starting painting a portrait like the game is almost finished and this and that and when we get the real picture of the game its just a rough sketch of something, i understand the frustration alot of people been expressing, cause this game is not in a state to be defended neither take side with a lead developer that is too ambitious or dilusional, AoC can have a future if they actually go transparent and stop scam users with fake showcases of non existing content.
As an AoC content watcher, i kinda understand why narc had to quit cuz steven really do yap alot and overpromises things during showcases
As a programmer and developer, yeah, its kinda hard meshing systems over systems while preventing bugs when you have a game with a scope like this😂.
Its just so unfortunate that it all had to end like this. Narc introduced me to AoC.
Yeah, I see both sides as you do. I expected it (which is also why I didn't install Phase 2).
They tried to do the node progress but system failed and staff on holiday, so they went to previous builds of server. Mark my words narc is content farming
I am just happy I didn't get baited by aoc even tho I considered it a couple times. I got burned on bad alpha tests too many times the only time I ever buy games at this point is either when they are sub 40 bucks because that's my throwaway amount per month or they are 80%+ on steam. Happy with my poe 2 purchase. Happy I didn't buy AOC because even if it wasn't intended as a scam, the sheer amount of incompetence and misleading information has turned it into one. Alpha was supposed to not be an endless slog on nothing. At the pace they are going it will last multiple years +beta.
I respect his plight and his scrutiny over the project (Narc) but his tone in this video screams delusion to me. If you put a massive project like this under a microscope during its development then obviously you are going to notice inconsistencies and missed deadlines and changed plans. It does not mean the project is built on lies lol that is such a ridiculous jump to make at this time. Just feels like a lot of complaints for the sake of a viral video.
Tbh i never liked the guy, i had some exchange of opinions with him over discord chat. Him being gone is a win imo. The guy acts as if he knows it all talking about videogame in general. Being a youtuber doesnt make you necessarly right in everything you say.
That being said, i'm playing less than the phase 1 for sure mainly cause it feels like they just wiped and added nothing and overall for some reason im getting worse performance than phase 1.
The desert looks atriocious. If we don't want to be pretentious and calling it a scam we can say that they are behind development IMO
It's certainly behind development, I don't think anyone disagrees here.
As an uninvested outside observer of this game and the current situation ill tell you straight up i would not invest it. I think everyone should just wait for more progress and a eaither early access release or the actual launch. If this game truly is being developed then it will launch when it launches and atleast that way if features are cut or never implemented for reasons unknown, when you do purchase it finally, youll know what youre actually buying as opposed to this circus where you literally have zero clue if and when youll ever get what you THINK youre funding.
What's really going on is that if you buy into a game in active development hoping to play a full game, even though they say multiple times in every video that the game is not in any way ready to be played, that you should expect a shit game, not working functions, broken things, and that you are in fact a TESTER, and you end up still buying it and complaining about the state of the game, THATS ON YOU. Nobody forced you to buy into this, and it was made very clear that the state of the game is absolutely shit.
He's saying, "is not real," because if you log into then game right now, you literally see none of that. I get what he's saying. Sure, they can maybe be implemented at some point, but I can understand why someone says they're sorta selling based under false pretenses.
It’s so funny how young think their opinions matter. No body cares what you think. Steven gives two shits about narc.
Stop looking so handsome man you're gonna turn me gay
It’s not gay if we don’t make eye contact
@@GrappLr😂 ayyyee oooo 😅
Praying for this games downfall
It feels like he's just grasping for straws and trying to start controversy. I use to like him a lot.....but now his judgement feels inaccurate.
Narc thinks for something to be considered real it has to be playable in the alpha it seems. Like if it was ever in a showcase and it's not in the Alpha then it's a lie. I get how you could think that but to me that's you tricking yourself.
Narc built his channel on sensational remarks that have no place in the current reality of the game. I do take issue with alot of what he says because its not true. I am sure i am not the only one who thinks his conclusions were way off base. Especially after Steven himself asked narc to nicely "chill out" and take a break after one of the videos weeks ago. People have been bringing up to Narc that its "only an alpha" to get the guy to realize he is complaining about things that are not even implemented yet. Thats not feedback. Its annoying complaints. Especially when you repeatedly lie about things. People will call you out on it. Again his "axe to grind" attitude towards the game/and Stephan doesn't help anyone. I can totally understand Stephen not wanting narc to spread bs about "the way things are" based on loose assumptions or outright lies. No game dev wants that incorrect info to be out there.
I cant imagine being this upset over a game that's barely in alpha. Quitting a game that hasnt started!
O i believed that the games was much more developed. Im on Narcs side. I feel they are years behind what they made me believe.
I won't come back until Beta to give the game a fair test. At the current state it's incredibly boring in it's design and game loop. Open world dungeons are boring, and uninspiring as well. Hopefully they turn it around and I imagine its going to take a long time.
And how long as AoC been in development? 10 years....??? what a joke as its still in alpha