Do you think you are a part of the "Target Audience"? Why or Why not?

Not trying to explain things for people but it sounds like to me that you aren't listening. Cupcake didn't explicitly say they /want/ to play solo. Much like Azherae they explained that because of the way mmos tend to go they tend to be forced to either go along with a certain set of things, or play solo. I think they were hoping things improve relative to the design of that, that makes them feel less targeted.

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Well, Alpha-1 didn't quite deliver everything people were expecting (whether those expectations were correct or not), so there isn't as much to talk about other than philosophical stuff.

So much of what one would discuss for this game is already covered, there won't really be anything to say until the next Dev stream.

But from my data scraping, the posters that post now are the ones that always post, they just started to segregate into their 'tribes' while waiting. Only a few actually drifted away for the time being. Most others are still here, just posting much much less. (this is anecdotal, I am going by memory, but if it matters, my memory type is semi-photographic with symbol-color synesthesia to boost it significantly, point is that I didn't actually 'check all recent posters against my collected data', I just remember them all)

Expect a huge burst of activity, either positive or negative, Friday afternoon.

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Other people's capacity to tell themselves that the game will turn out to be something they enjoy has nothing to do with the development or the marketing.

Dygz started this with the assertion that everyone on the forums believes they are part of the target audience, was told 'no' by at least two people, and then as usual 'decided that those people were wrong'.

Some of us are more self-aware than others.

Your perspective is in no way what I'm challenging with this response, I'm just pointing out that it doesn't even remotely underscore Dygz's point, because Dygz's point started from the usual position of 'whatever someone says a thing is meant to be, is what it is'. Starfish.

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That's what I figured.

Except that Dygz' quote inexplicably treats 'solo players' as a monolith.

Is that what you're going with? "Ashes says it will appeal to solo players" and since you are a Solo player and it appeals to you, they have done as they said? They have met the bare minimum requirement of at least some percentage of solo players?

That's literally the only way in which your personal opinion has any connection to Dygz's point. A logical stretch, but if that's the way you want to assert it, then at least it's clear.

"Some subset, including myself, of the total varied concept of 'solo players', has been convinced that they are part of the target audience."

Unfalsifiable by your existence and as of your statement. Great.

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Absolutely. I'm 'fussing' over the way Dygz deals with this, not the way you do, my only wish was to point out that the two don't have any connection, before this became another of those

If Cupcake had left the words 'solo player' out of their post altogether, Dygz wouldn't have been able to latch onto them. There are multiple issues with being a solo player in Ashes that do not currently have any presented solutions, so those players are left hoping.

Some of the issues literally cannot be solved without diminishing some of the benefits of grouping. That's a known part of design (or at least I HOPE so or there will be some unpleasant awakenings later), and Ashes has explicitly stated multiple times that they will prioritize the grouping aspect.

It doesn't matter if Intrepid 'hopes' to fulfill the wishes of two diametrically opposed groups within the same design space, because the possibility of doing so may be beyond their reach.

You are a solo player who wants them, or (I doubt this) does not yet realize the parts of it that will make your experience lesser. Cupcake might just not want them, or just 'already can see the parts that will diminish their experience'.

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Are you in that group?

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Makes sense.

As an example of ambiguity that cleared up a lot for me in a positive way, that might not seem to make a lot of difference to others, on a recent stream, Steven verified how many Guilds could be in an Alliance, and that Guilds could only technically be in one Alliance.

Before that point there were quite a few things to be concerned about that would have emerged from a different answer. Getting that answer, for me , alleviated a lot of my concerns about the game.

I'll give an equivalent concept for New World to clarify why. When I heard that New World was going to be faction based PvP with self crafted gear, my first thought was 'wait, what's their system for preventing the snowball?'

And then I watched the news through the testing phases, looking for it... aaaaand... nothing, at least so far.
Now of course one could say 'they'll obviously change it, why would they leave it like that?'

But would you bet on it? i.e. preorder New World before you saw the change?