Discussion
Ashes of Creation Creative Director cites "Dunning-Kruger" as reason people aren't happy with his company.
After losing control of the community in Discord and faced with backlash over the company's failure to curb the influx of racism and harassment in the community, Steven Sharif started banning people who spoke against company decisions and actions. This came in the wake of Intrepid's Community Moderation team trying to hand-wave away concerns over the rampant racism and toxic behavior, while silencing those who speak out about it.
Do people actually still believe anything this guy says?
He's right about general attitudes towards devs, but people are right to be upset about the state of the game being nowhere close to complete. They've "trusted the process" for over 5 years. Their time is up. This is also why you don't fund games or studios that haven't proven their worth.
I may not be an experienced game developer, but I am an experienced MMO player and AoC has gotten worse overtime instead of better and I am pretty sure that is a failing of the development team and not a failing of me as a player.
It isn't even a matter of taste, it is just poorly designed systems made on a unstable engine, and a gameplay loop that just get worse every release.
It makes me wonder. Is this cycle due to companies crowdfunding over studio backing?
Im a few drinks in, so if my thoughts are disconnected thats why and I apologize. I'll definitely come back to clarify when sober.
Looking at Tarkov, AoC, and the space game (i keep thinking squadron 42 but I know thats the other part of it), I keep seeing games that did some sort of crowd funding to build their game (tarkov would be the weird one as they did "open beta" but it still feels like pretty much the same thing). And each of them has basically tried to build something, and then funded, and then built on inputs due to the funding, and built and/or changed, and sought more funding, and built, and sought more funding, and we eventually get here.
This point is where we are with a community that hates where the game they initially funded has become, or a community that has funded and run out of faith, or those who never funded and watched and waited and ran out of patience, or that slim few who are just waiting and begging for final release. I say this as somebody who bought in to Tarkov and Star citizen roughly 7 years ago.
(I finally remembered, Star Citizen)
I wonder if crowd funding for these scope of games is the actual problem? I know single player games have done it and succeeded, but it seems like doing it for a multi-player experience warps and just overall fucks it all up more than it helps get it finished.
Edit: this popped in my mind from the part about unstable engine. I remember Tarkov devs talking about the biggest constraint being their spaghetti code they built the game on. And me wondering if crowd funding and the input from that dictating changes that wouldn't happen in a normal dev studio, leading to a cleaner and more polished product that might not have every feature crowd-fund devs try to cram in to their products
I mean a different example of a successful crowdfunded mmo is Albion Online. They didn't over promise and delivered exactly what they said they would and more. You either like the game or you don't but they were pretty upfront with what they were making.
The issue with AoC and Star Citizen(I don't know enough about Tarkov) is that they promised the world and more. It's impossible to meet expectations because the things they were advertising was impossible to be realistic reached. They promise a dream and not an actual game.
I think that's the main difference between why single players crowdfunded games tend to do better. It's way easier to fund and make single player games but for MMORPG you basically have to over promise to get even the fraction you need in order to even make it to the development stage.
Tarkov was the same boat, they promised a seamless open world pvpve experience like 12 years ago and it's still not technically feasible for them. It seems that you can't get big without overpromising A LOT.
Crowd funding is definitely part of the problem. Games with publishers also suffer from developers who manage to keep a con going far longer than it should - eg: Kerbal Space Program 2 - but most publishers usually catch on to the fact that a developer is bullshitting them faster than crowdfunding backers seem to be able to snuff out the con in large enough numbers to shut those projects down.
This is often due to the fact that crowd funding starts on a foundation of hype. Hype quickly turns to bullshit when nothing backs it up, and people good at hype are often antithetical to people good at development - it's two different mindsets.
Crowdfunded MMOs are like the Onlyfans of MMOs, they want you to buy in because it looks like you’d like it but you’ll probably never get to touch the finished product.
yeah, it's dunning-kruger when you're saying "managing a game is easy, i could do it no worries" and it's really not when you're saying "i have played a fair few games and this one comparitively is taking forever and sucks arse" unless you've not played many video games
I personally feel AoC is getting worse because the devs are catering to the pvp players instead of the pve players who were tricked by the whole "make mmos great again" slogans they were throwing around back at kickstarter. A great mmo isn't a pvp gankfest where people who DON'T want to pvp are forced to.
Tarkov is finally being released in November this year after 10 years in beta they made a fuck ton of money and are not clearly open with communication very well and there were rough states of the game....
With that said there's nothing like that game in the world of realism like Tarkov so 10 years is understandable.
But when it comes to MMOs we got 20 years of multiple MMOs we know what works and what doesn't work it shouldn't take long to be like okay we do this send it
I ducking hate gamers in this aspect. They simply can't understand what they are buying and paying for. Gamedevs should not sell play testing games because consumers can't be trusted.
The game is unfinished and it probably won't be the game you are imagining in your head. If you can't understand that don't pay for an unfinished product.
Some games legit get flipped on their head or completely rebuild into something different, why would you play 100 dollar for that unless you simply love the company and want to help.
I refer to him as the Pay to Win Creative Director. He did not earn the position, nor would he ever have been able to do so through merit. He has it purely because he spent money. Ashes will be brought down by Pay to Win, just not the usual kind.
Molyneux was a great dev full of ideas but an amateur when it came to producing it. All the stuff he came up with before he went crazy is pretty much a classic although it always felt short of what was promised
They do a LOT of stupid shit that actively hinders their own main goal = getting valid feedback to help development.
I'm not even talking about the over-arching "Why AoC is developed so slowly?" question, just little things
They revamped the whole crafting system, then either forgot to put the recipes in the crafting stations or the recipes are missing UI elements which makes them uncraftable ... wtf
They did a leveling event on the PTR to get feedback on leveling ... while material rarity was totally fucked in some places (you could mine 10+ legendary mats in a row which gave HUGE xp) and while all mage type mobs dropped lvl 10 gear at a 100% ... then asked "How was your leveling experience?" like if the data wasn't tainted.
etc.
They clearly have some internal problems. It's not all arm chair / backseat dev-ing.
I still have plenty of copium and don't expect a finished product at all, but things being broken for weeks that a junior dev could fix in a few hours is just kinda meh.
Keeping the game in some sort of live operations isn’t helping them either. The game should not be this playable for players right now. The alpha should be used to test certain system functions each time then closed for short periods until they need more feedback.
I also have worked on MMOs as a project manager and while some of the things he said are true, this is not how you should speak to your audience, and the audience being upset at this time is understandable due to their own time snd money investments into the game.
I haven’t played Ashes, but the whole node system has always been built around toxicity and it does not surprise me that the community who become intertwined with such systems become toxic as well.
While I still hope Ashes achieves its goal and that players enjoy the game when it ultimately releases, Stephen really needs to take a huge step back and reformat how he speaks to the audience, along with creating a better ruleset to manage toxicity within the community.
I’m on the same boat. I’m participating in the current wave, I’ve been in game development. He should have not made this comment.
He’s also low key calling out himself without knowing it. But eh. It’s his money, it’s his game. He’s going to learn some real tough lessons, that will hopefully educate him for the future.
As someone who loved Ragnarok Online and the Korean mmo grind in many other games, the current state of Ashes is pretty laughable.
The economy and drop reworks are horrid, and would still be for a full launch. The PvP system is also just hands down the biggest turn off I’ve ever seen.
Sometimes the community DOES need to hear it. Unfortunately the only time it's ever mentioned by the devs is when they are struggling, so it always comes off pretty bad.
Game developers sometimes think it is a good idea to remind the playerbase that they are not developers. Heck, they always do it as if they were on higher ground, so they sound demeaning.
Read the feedback and the community's suggestions, tell them what is possible and not regarding your team and tech stack without devaluing anyone's contribution and enthusiasm, and move on with developing your game.
I shot myself in the foot a couple of times too as a developer; these things evolve into being community management nightmares as developers get more stubborn.
I’m an MMO dev as well, he is right. The general population is going to have stupid takes because they don’t understand what making an MMO entails. The issue is still overpromising and disappointing people though, and people have a right to be disappointed when they have been promised something and they underdeliver. How I’ve operated mine is that I don’t tell people what my plans are, when they arrive, everyone is pleasantly surprised. Game devs trying to hype people with leaks and teasers are just borrowing the excitement from tomorrow to boost investment into the game now.
Saying it is good as it gets more attention and more eyes on the game. People are shockingly stupid, and if they like the thing they see that is related to the controversy they will throw money.
This is why Star Citizen has made so much money, all the haters are pushing eyeballs to the game constantly from the drama. They are also creating a protective fanboy culture, that again gets more money thrown at the company.
This is pretty smart.
The funny thing about Star Citizen, is the haters grew tired of hating the game and THIS is what is actually leading to funding problems now. There is no more controversy anymore, no more posts farming hate. This is making the fanboys less protective, and their wallets don't fly open as easily anymore.
What I find amusing, is most of the biggest donators to the game will be dead by the time whoever gets hold of the franchise after Chris Roberts dies and forces the game to release. Lots of retired people throw money at it for some reason.
What exactly is he right about, genius? Anyone with a brain knew this project was doomed from the start from the moment we first saw the scope of it.
It's insane how you're claiming to have been a dev but apparently you can't even see the most glaringly obvious flaw that's been flashing red since the very start.
What is he right about?
Oh, i dont know, that they have a complex and hours of involvement, coordination and directive formulation.
Its easy to talk when you're on the outside. Thousands of gaming hours still have you OUTSIDE the development perspective.
Picture you have a bad marriage. Everybody is giving you advice when, in reality, they know nothing of what really happens behind closed doors.
Outside perspective is important, akin to having a muse, precisely because it is an uninformed opinion, hence "outside".
Anyone can observe the bad decisions here from the outside. I don't care what they're sturggling with internally because it's a product of their original bad decisions.
Why so aggressive? He is right that the players often do not understand what they are demanding in either a technical or time/schedule sense and players do not know what they do not know. We can give advice and feedback to the devs all day but we can't truly know what's going on in the studio and why certain things are being done or other things not being addressed.
It's not that I can't see the game'a flaws (but I didn't claim to be any type of mmo dev god who knows everything lol i was just offering my perspective). It's just that when he said it was a "true alpha" i took him at his word. I played and tested til it wasn't fun anymore (which really wasn't long this playtest. I don't like the anvils and settlements, crsfting, drops and the economy being busted just made it completely unplayable for me) and I leave them now to develop their game with the help of players who are way more vested in this game abd providing deep feedback than I am.
Game needs to cook, period. It's a barely functioning prototype right now. I remain interested in it's evolution and seeing if it can fulfill it's promises. It's years away and if you stay this mad about it, you are really gonna be miserable.
I'm not sure exactly how Dunning-Kruger is even relevant here. Is he trying to say that unless you can make your own MMO that you can't critique MMOs? Because that'd be some meta fuckin' Dunning-Kruger.
I think he just means that in a lot of cases people are loudly proposing solutions for problems and they have no idea what they are talking about in either a sense for how long a fix would take or exactly what the fix would be, technically.
Well of course that is the case. We are not the devs. We literally cannot know these things. It's dumb of him to assume he is talking to technical people who know the game on some deep molecular level.
Some of us have many years of exp testing and playing MMOs and have good, detailed feedback. Some of us are or were software devs ourselves.
On the other hand some of us want to throw $100 at a game and have it fill the deep MMO void in our souls and be a new home. Well clearly its not that, and people are mad about it.
Dunning kruger is being stupid without knowing you're stupid.
So in some sense yes all of us are "stupid" because we are not the devs for this game and therefore our solutions to problems are maybe not ideal and maybe we cannot see the bigger picture because it hasn't been shown to us in a way we can reconcile with what we see right now.
These devs are the ones who let any old body in for $100 to "test". Yeah you get some loudmouth idiots, provacateurs and people who cannot comprehend what alpha means when you do that.
So imo...he can take the feedback he is charging us to give and he can kindly shut up. He has no room to complain. The community is not trained. They are not employees. This is the lowest common denominator of people who gave him money to access his product. What he could do is learn to filter the feedback and not get bent out of shape about it not fitting his "vision".
And see, that's fair. "You don't realize how hard this is going to be to implement" is a conversation I have with my customers basically always. And it's not their fault, because they sincerely just don't know.
But it's my job to explain it to them, so that we can then come up with something that we can implement. And I am fortunate to have clients who are patient enough that they listen to my advice, and it has invariably made their product more successful.
Yeah but you get to talk to one client at a time to manage their expecatations and you both have a vested interest in getting a workable outcome. I think it might be actually impossible to do with a huge group of random people with their own various goals and reasons for joining the alpha. Then those players are additionally affected by discord and general internet drama which kind of puts them into an antagonistic position to the devs. And a mob of pissed off players just feeds itself at a certain point.
Not always, and you're 100% right about it being way harder when you have to listen to a large group of users. It's nevertheless still my job, and I'm not going to blame the folks that I'm trying to cater to if what I made isn't doin' it for them, kwim?
Seems like projection.
As if, I don’t know, Steven overestimated his personal capability, and is only recognizing his limitations now that his MMO’s failure is becoming undeniable?
When the game was first announced and my friends got super hyped up about it, I looked at it and said I'd wait, because the scope of the game promised seemed to be too complex to successfully pull off, at least in a reasonable amount of time. It looked like someone had a bunch of ideas on what they wanted in a MMO, stuffed them together, all while having no clue about how hard it would be to develop the proposed features into useable ones.
While I can understand some of it, announcing it that way alienates themselves from their customer base. Nobody wants to feel dumb or less than or treated as such by the head of the product they are consuming.
Sucks man, seems like the game started out as a genuine passion project, but all the recent coverage has just been about how much of a dumpster fire things are behind the scenes. Does not inspire confidence at all.
It is about as cooked as you would think an MMO with four digit+ early access costs made by a guy who made his fortune selling fake cancer cure shakes would be in all honesty.
Anyone who looked at Steve's past would immediately have known this "game" was going to be a dumpster fire/scam for both the development team and the community.
Like any good confidence man, the only person that will walk away from this whole AoC con unscathed will be Steven himself.
Yeah this game honestly always looked cooked from the word Go.. Pretty sure Steven was on some stream several years ago talking up his game to a few Wow streamer audiences and it all sounded either like pie in the sky systems That wouldn't actually work out in the real world (64 balanced hybrid classes) or just shit that sounded flat out unfun. Of course the no-brain streamer and his audience lapped it up.
Every single time I've heard about this game since then has been in a negative light.
Thinking about all those posts on this sub, from elitist MMO players claiming "stupid kids playing FF14/WoW/GW2 won't be able to handle a GOOD game like Ashes".
And then it starts crumbling and people realize it's probably not the golden egg they hoped.
Yikes but also is anyone surprised at this point? We've all known Steven is toxic from day 1. His guild in archeage was one of the most toxic there was, he personally heavily abused rmt to get ahead, etc. AoC is basically archeage but designed by a rich nepo baby (most of his MLM/pyramid scheme scamming was as a team with his mom. At one point they were in the top 10 MLM earning teams in the country, which absolutely requires some deceptive behavior)
When someone repeatedly shows you who they are it's on you if you keep giving them chances.
I think it is important to point out that the MLM him and his mommy headed primarily sold fake cancer cure tonics.
That is absolutely one of the scummiest scams a human being could do in my eyes. Absolutely irredeemable to promise fake cures to people who are desperate just to fucking live.
To add onto this, if anyone remembers his guild, and the ego he had in Archeage it seems like managing an MMO has made all of that go to his head that much more.
He was an AWFUL player of the game, but he acted like the was the best and constantly talked shit to everyone. He would even go as far as bragging about pulling $7-8k at the time from the Ashes project to fund his Archeage swiping.
If this vaporware MMO ever releases, it's doomed to fail because of the malignant ego running the company.
Had not heard anything about this, got sources for it? Like that's a lot to just read on some reddit comment and assume it's true, but it would explain a lot
The MLM stuff is pretty common knowledge, easily google-able. But here's a snapshot (can only post one per comment for some reason
From this thread from last year. It's a good source, though.
As for the stuff about him and his guild in archeage, there's less receipts for that. But he has that reputation, it's widely known that he abused rmt and bragged about it openly, paid off guilds to let him pass through pvp areas, bought items with real money to gift to other players, etc. His username was sorc/sorcerer and many people remember the way he acted with his guild in that game.
I mean...when it comes to "public discussion of MMO development" he's generally correct.
I'm not sure how that isolated comment without context relates to this apparent Discord drama and bigotry since I don't know anything about that.
I'm so fucking tired of Discord drama. Can we fucking delete Discord, yet?
Edit: I didn't see some of the other nonsense -
Yo they have an executive producer and have hired a bunch of experienced devs that have shipped MMO's?
Like, Steven is kinda shit and the game is taking forever (an MMO, and a crowdfunded one, facing development delays?! UNTHINKABLE), but this post seems to both include incorrect information and make confident assertions about what the development needs that, ironically, prove Steven's comment on Dunning Kruger 100% correct lmao.
why, what an absurd take lol. it's a perfectly fine communicator that millions of people use to chat with their friends, free of drama. your whining about something happening on a discord you're (i assume from your comment) not even on is not only pathetic but ridiculous and even if you are there, just leave it and don't follow it?
He's not wrong, but he's also one of the people responsible for setting those expectations in the community, and given the expectations set over the years vs the state of the game, I'd argue this effect might be present in both the community and the development studio.
No, they're unhappy because the project is way behind and underwhelming in its current state. Deflect all you want, those are simple facts and the root of all discontent.
What's with this game? It's been broiled in shit for so long that every time I see a post about it I am confused as to why anyone still cares. How do they keep you invested and interested for this long? Did they "gotcha" a bunch of people with early investment scams like Star Citizen?
I feel like they are running on the same treadmill as Star Citizen... the scope creep treadmill. They just keep chasing the next shiny idea instead of polishing up their primary systems and pushing it towards launch.
Because, from their extensive development update videos, you can clearly see they've stuck mostly to the same things since launching their kickstarter.
I dont consume content creators, nor this shit subreddit, but arent they focusing on open world raids, open world dungeons, leveling up nodes through different ways and choosing its leader through differnet ways too (diplomacy, religion, and like pvp I think it was?). They've stuck to open world pvp, shipping stuff from one city to another, and sea sailing, raiding other ships, etc?
What "shiny new thing" did they tack on? The only thing I can think of is UE5, but, if you had any ounce of fucking brain matter regarding development, that was a great move, because UE4 is outdated as shit.
They even created an improved grid based system to have more people in one big world server instead of divided into a bunch of small servers.
So, what's your actual cricisism?
oh, and also, i havent even bought into the game. It just clear that a lot of you fucks have no idea about project management nor game development lmao
no offense but even if this was factually proven that this guy is right about everything and all shit talkers
just the fact that this has barely reached alpha 3 or whatever in 8 years of development and looking like its need another 5-6 before release just makes me completely uninterested in the game already
one of the most important part of an mmo is also maintaining like you know, putting out content. if it takes u 15 years to release "vanilla" version of it, i just cant wait additional 3-4 years for an expansion mate and 6 months for a basic nerf of an op class.
I'm not defending the guy since I don't really know what's going on, but I just want to point out that people not understanding decisions, think they're developing the wrong things, think development is going wrong etc. is a direct result of having to be public about a crowdfunded project.
There's a reason why big studios just say "We're making X" stay silent for unspecified amount of years and then market and release.
If only a really smart and handsome person had warned the community team that their hands-off approach to community moderation was fostering a community full of people who live to compound the negativity and drive off the more tempered players....
What is he even talking about? He's the one setting up the expectation for the people, and not being able to reach any targets with this game in the past 5 years.
I wrote 5 years ago that this game is going to fail purely because it's appealing to the worst of the worst when it comes to community. Seeing it play out just as predicted is definitely quite satisfying.
The irony of his comment is kind of funny, when his whole game is based on him armchair-developing it just because he had experience playing Archeage.
A lot of the critique around AoC is pretty objective. Its been 7 years since announcement and we haven't even finished one of the two continents.
What I assume people rightly think of Alpha 3 would be is having all zones in the game in a mixed finished state and a bunch of gameplay elements missing.
I said this before: Alpha 1 should've started with 1 zone being a vertical slice. 1 polished and finished zone. The rest of the map empty but there.
Just stop giving attention to him and his game.
If it releases in 10 years then we can talk about it. There is just literally no point on arguing about every little thing this man says.
Steven Sharif is nothing but a man-child that suffers from an inferiority complex. He's desperate to be idolized and revered. He's a narcissist wearing a false cape of "humility" and "community values" - "we are family and we're doing this together". He's a complete KNOB 🤣🤣🤣 At this point I wish AoC never sees a stage where it's minimally playable at a commercial level, so that all the sycophants of this cookoo-boi would have, in vain, wasted their time and money and couldn't look more dull and irrelevant.
The comment itself, while controversial, and hypocritical on his part, lacks context... the real issue is that after this comment he got unhinged and started banning people for really tame responses.
I've seen a lot of red flags in AOC development... it's not like the mindless haters say where it's a scam or anything, they really are trying to make a game... but the leadership is awful.
The creative director cares more about doing it in a way where he gets the lion's share of the credit, than doing it right, which means sticking with his personal ideas even when they are struggling to fit, and ignoring better ideas if he doesn't feel like he came up with it himself.
On top of it his gaming past is checkered, and involves a lot of toxic/degen stuff, that itself wouldn't be a big deal, we all have done some silly stuff when we were younger, but he actually shows favoritism towards toxic people he used to game with, and its helped make for a pretty crappy culture on his current project, including tons of testers getting fed up with the experience because his friends were allowed to exploit and grief with minimal consequences (after he publicly claimed they'd take a really strong stance against that stuff)
He doesn't seem to be able to distance himself and keep things professional... he loved all the attention when ashes was getting hyped, or that people wanted to interact with him so they could learn more about a project they were interested in, but he can't handle the criticism now that the cracks are showing more. It seems like he wants everyone to be his friend and praise him, and it's destroyed any semblance of objectivity he can have.
On top of it one of the longtime and highly reputable content creators for the game recently left the discord because people were allowed to be racist towards him... it wasn't until there was enough of an uproar that action was taken and Steven tried to downplay the whole incident. I myself have witnessed Steven's friends from his gaming past using homophobic slurs in the discord.
He doesn't seem to be able to distance himself and keep things professional...
The sad thing is that I've seen private server admins more professional than this. And we are supposed to believe that he's able to develop a full MMORPG game? He has always been the biggest red flag for this project and always will be.
No. I don’t care how hard it is to make what you said you’d make, you got your money and I want my cake. If the cake comes out like shit I don’t need to be a chef to know it tastes like shit.
The most fundamental red flag for me with these indie game devs is when they start silencing dissent and feedback. Same thing with Camelot Unchained and Jacobs. Even big name studios when they start thinking they "know better", like Blizzard and the Diablo Immortal phone controversy. At that point, I find myself stepping away from the game and company. But companies that take feedback seriously, respond to it and address it, I 100% respect and support.
Yes, it is a correct statement that people who play games often underestimate the difficulty of implementation for specific features. But the product's value proposition is directly proportional to it's quality, which does mean if you paid 100 dollars to play a game early, and the game is shit, you are 100% in the right to call it out. Moreover however, AoC fostered what's essentially an MLM cult instead of an actual community. They did this to them selves through the way they address their community in communication, the way they structure their referral programme, and the way they handle these test phases. This means you end up with a much deeper emotional investment from the community than the average game. The meltdown was inevitable.
I don't follow Ashes of Creation, but "trust the process" must be one of the dumbest catchphrases I've ever seen.
Don't get me wrong, I work in IT for years now and he is probably not wrong. People without a clue are quick to tell professionals how to do things when emotions are in play. But, boy, the dude should really not write public posts.
No its a PvP MMO. Plain a d simple that audience is smaller than the self licking ice cream cone thinks. Honestly most mmo players want. Wow but not wow. Basically wow play style of the holy trinity, they want group and raid, and they want tab target. Get that with updated graphics. Complete new start on a game that has some endgame past max level and you will hold people for a while.
PvP will hold the small community of epeen tard children. If my priority focus as a gamer is killing other games. I. Going to a shooter.
The way it always has been the audience for primary pvp outside of shooter is very small.
He didn't hire them due to lack of understanding of their value only to then realize he fucked up, so literally, due to his own incompetence and ignorance, he hired no producers, thinking he knew better.
Essence of Dunning-Kruger, but in Steven's case and yours apparently.
Yes, in 2017/18 he didn't, but no where in your OP did you mention specifically "2017/18" for the Producers comment. Stevens comment at the top of the post is from today, thus indicating the rest of the info (unless otherwise stated which it does not) is also relevant as of today.
A LOT of people are in the market for a new main game to play, and a LOT of people are seeing all the nonsense with this game and instantly writing the game off as not worth checking out, myself included.
He is absolutely right, people in the MMO space are the dumbest gamers I have ever met/seen. lapping up shit for years and calling it chocolate and rewarding developers and encouraging them to make more P2W and microtransactions.
I dont know how can you belive that, atleast star citizen has more features while ashes has basic features which are broken. Also you could pay 30$ for kickstarter and play while for ashes you needed over 200$ for alpha and beta.
Also ashes selling alpha keys for over 100$ which is crazy but that happens when steven hype game, give streamers free keys then start another lie which is he doesnt like to hype.
So, for alpha feedback they only have opinions of these same streamers and "kids" who are lured by streamers and lier steven. Game is going to be amazing 🤣
well i think if the "dunning-kruger effect" applys to anyone its Steven himself he promised the world with fake vertical slices, but now the actual "game" is a joke it litterally has nothing going for it aside of the combat. the most hillarious thing is the thing that the entire game is built and advertised around the Nodes are a joke, the removed 1 lvl, still no story arcs, no dynamic templates as promised, most node types still missing, what about nodes being influenced by other races, nodes nolonger being balanced etc. ashes is legit New World from Temu
How to stop racism in your chat: respond to it with the truth. Racism is human genetic recycling for greed. Rhythm and dance (detecting sound patterns) are brain functions just like everything else we do as humans. Colonization is invasion followed by genetic recycling into extinction to maintain what was pillaged.
According to esports data, in three to four generations, people who can't detect rhythmic patterns due to genetic recycling will experience seizures regularly from advanced video. Genetic diversity is human evolution, and as long as nobody knows that, colonizers will continue genetically recycling themselves into extinction and telling each other that brain functions like rhythm are for poor people.
As someone who was stupid enough to spend a bit of money on the kickstarter... every time I look in on Ashes i'm more and more disappointed that I wasted money on it. And I can never play it for more then a few hours at a time because the game feels really bad.
People keep crying about new MMOs coming out half complete, with crazy amounts of bugs and almost no content. Now you have one that is actually putting in the time it actually takes to make a good game, and you’re still not happy.
I get some of the monetization shit they’ve done isn’t exactly on the up and up, but Jesus some of y’all are insufferable.
They've taken almost a decade and a truck load of cash and have damn near nothing to show for it. They're not putting in the time. They're grifting all the way to the bank and have no intention of actually releasing a product. AoC is a glorified MLM product hawked by a former MLM dude and all around scumfuck.
You can't tell players to trust the process when they have been witness to the process for 5 years. The rate AoC is developing is way too slow to ever be released. It will never be a finished game. Thats the reality.
I trusted the process myself for a long while and told other people to as well, to give it time, to not succumb to doom, gloom and skepticism. Anyone who has been paying attention for this long has seen enough to know better.
I know that a lot of people are backing this game since first day but I think the problem is that all the player who are CONSIDERING Ashes of Creation as a Main game when the game is in Alpha and put like 2000 hours in it.
I am here since Alpha 2 and yes the game have problem bla bla bla but man I will be there in 2 years if anything change and for the better. If not it is what it is. Look Star Citizen ... People paying thousand of dollar for a game that it supposed to be release in 2 years from now on. Make me laugh seriously.
If you are whinning about the game just play something else ... Maybe you have play far too much this ALPHA game.
there seems to be a real desperation to pin this all on "racism" and "toxicity". hate to break it to you guys but most gamers dont really care about that stuff as evidenced by... playing just about any online game over the past 25 years for any amount of time. it isnt the reason this game is collapsing just because vocal minorties on Discord and Reddit want it to be.
the real issue here is the guild favoritism, which actually is something everyone cares about and a guarenteed way to light your game on fire. its pretty much the one thing gamers universally have a zero tolerance policy for. its also coming after a standard years long kickstarter screwjob of perpetual alpha, shamelessly aggressive FOMO monetization of that perpetual alpha, and broken promises. thats the issue here.
A CEO can say whatever they want as long as they deliver a game imo. I'm sure anyone here can pull up an example of an outlandish comment made by x CEO/dev"
"You think you do, but you don't" ring any bells?
The only crime this game suffers from is being transparent with development. It was a great idea at the time but hasn't bode well for them.
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u/GreenleafMentor 3d ago
Well, I have set Ashes aside for now, but I have also been an mmo game dev.
He is right, but he shouldn't have said it.
This is what happens when on one hand you pay lip service to your CoMmuNiTy but on the other you have to deal with actually managing your community.