Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[Throren]

I'm going to respost Azrile's post from here in the tamriel foundry thread as well xD

[Kyanion]

I'm going to respost Azrile's post from here in the tamriel foundry thread as well xD

Thank you Throren, I don't follow other game's forums so I didn't want to create accounts there to do so. I know some of us are involved in the other communities so I'd rather people that are established there do so.

It really kills their already shaky credibility when they create new accounts (like on star citizen) to spam their shitty 'game'.

[lawow74]

Hahahaha, we have a bot scanning for ToA! Also, I'm totes Myobi's alt.

And we're evidence of need for Internet police cos we're engaging in defamation! Oh, this is rich!

Looking at the other forums, they're flogging that 'AMA' they did on the really reals gaming site as evidence, but at least on the SC forum someone burned the everloving fuck out of them for their spamming. Let's hear it for a real Kickstarter project.

[Deleted]

The kickstarte hasn't even started and already their actions are cracking me up!

Crowfall has locked the thread.

Best is the SC one. He fucking owned the OP, lmao!

I also enjoyed the big Warcraft topic a page or two back. I seriously can't wait for the 19th.

[Maddoc]

I tried making an account on ToA's webpage but I'm not getting any fucking confirmation email. Anyone else had this problem with their site? Tried resending it, nothing. Guessing that the site doesn't have an automated system for sending the confirmation email and that the tools at ToA need to do it manually. That would explain what they are using all their time on though.

[Yunru]

And fixed:



This is what you get, when you turn text araund to give the right messige.

[lawow74]

Confirming I really wanted that Cartman eyepatch and dance animation...

[Kyanion]

Damn Myobi that is impressive work, though I do want to highlight one part. At the top when you say "In October 2013, they started up their first Kickstarter that lasted until November, according to Brax himself he had failed to show the true potential of Trials of Ascension, forcing him to cancel the Kickstarter… honestly, what actually happened is way more embarrassing than that, it turns out no one in his original team knew much at all about game development at all, therefore besides the toilet paper notes and a couple of really basic screen shots, they had nothing to show of the “game”, based only on promises of greatness people refused to support the project and without the 750,000$ that had been requested it became harder to find people to develop the project for them."

Wasn't one of the reasons the Kickstarter was cancelled was that HeroEngine forced the project to be shut down because they were using stock HeroEngine utilities? I know that was talked about a few times earlier on in this thread, but I dunno if ToA shut down the KS first or if it was cancelled by KS itself. I guess all in all that isn't super important.

[Deleted]

Hype about evidence? You HAVE seen all the stuff that has already been posted in this thread right? Alexa data, posts they have made on other forums and how clueless they are (I'm talking the devs themselves). 60k needed for a technical demo that competent game creators can make on their own for no money. A store selling game items for a game that hasn't even gotten to 'alpha' yet. And this is just a small smattering of things that are easy for ANYONE with a brain to find.

Please try and be a bit more polite if you want me to take you seriously.

I am not the most technologically literate person out there; 'server regioning systems' and other technical garbage mean absolutely nothing to me. But what I do know, is the age old life lesson of 'just because someone somewhere said it on a remote part of the internet, doesn't mean it's true'; of course, the same also applies to ToA, but I think you're smart enough to get the gist.

You really are holding out some small glimmer of hope that this 'game' is actually legit aren't you? Did you WATCH that AMA? That 'game' looked fucking terrible and they want people to shell out tons of money to get THAT off the ground? This 'game' will NEVER and I mean NEVER be able to produce even half of the shit they keep talking about in their forums.

I have tried to be incredibly objective about this. I'm sorry that being fairly neutral automatically means I'm suddenly attacking your point of view. Calm down. It's just the internet, and there's also two sides to every debate.

So yeah you keep waiting on your proof, to be honest we'll have to do very little if they put up a Kickstarter asking for 200k+, but in case they try to put a lower amount to sucker people and steal money there will be plenty of evidence of clueless devs and the posts they have made about making something that 'looks' like a game, IP data from accounts that all post together and act like different people and so on.

I'll believe it when I see it! I'm more interested in seeking which members of the community are fake than anything else. The game and its 'clueless devs' can go and burn for all I care.

There is plenty of hype, but the thing is. The hype isn't on their side.

Basically, as I just said. There is a lot of hype about evidence on these forums, and therefore on bringing them down.

[Kyanion]

I have tried to be incredibly objective about this. I'm sorry that being fairly neutral automatically means I'm suddenly attacking your point of view. Calm down. It's just the internet, and there's also two sides to every debate.

You never really answered my question though. Did you watch the AMA? I don't know how you can be so objective about it after watching that. I think one of the most telling pieces of information about ToA is this: In the past 6 months have you seen the lack of posts on their threads, the lack of people watching the AMA, the lack of well..anything? I think they scaled back the amount of fake posters and hype. I mean hell, the Kickstarter announcement thread over there has 77 posts and 2,290 views. Some of the older annoucement threads and general threads have a sharp dropoff on views and posts. The AMA had less than 80 people watching and very little action in the posting sections of the forums.

[Sunaka]

This will be interesting. They chose a strange time of year for it though, haha. Finally, I will be able to see this proof that I have been waiting for. Then I will decide how to respond, both within this community and theirs.

I'm going to be incredibly disappointed if all this hype about evidence is just unfounded.

I've been wondering about it being anticlimatic myself. Don't think Azrile's posted since the date announcement.

[Deleted]

You never really answered my question though. Did you watch the AMA? I don't know how you can be so objective about it after watching that. I think one of the most telling pieces of information about ToA is this: In the past 6 months have you seen the lack of posts on their threads, the lack of people watching the AMA, the lack of well..anything? I think they scaled back the amount of fake posters and hype. I mean hell, the Kickstarter announcement thread over there has 77 posts and 2,290 views. Some of the older annoucement threads and general threads have a sharp dropoff on views and posts. The AMA had less than 80 people watching and very little action in the posting sections of the forums.

I did watch bits of it a few days after, but IMO just because their game is crap doesn't necessarily mean the evidence isn't. I'm not trying to disprove anything here, but it could equally be to do with the fact that they just don't know what they're doing, or any number of other reasons that due to a lack of knowledge I am not qualified to answer. But let's wait and see shall we? It would certainly be easier if all the evidence was true.

I also agree that there is something fishy about the community, but I want to know how much is real and how much isn't, really; the viewing statistics only tell me what I already knew about the amount of registered forum members being far higher than the percentage of regular users. As soon as we figure out which users are the 'bots', (which will come eventually, I hope) I'm quite tempted to start a witch-hunt myself on the ToA forums.

[Deleted]

It appears you put a lot of effort into that Myobi.

You're one badass troll.

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It appears you put a lot of effort into that Myobi.

You're one badass troll.

[lawow74]

Do you get that? They wanted YOUR money to pay for someone else skills, so they can make a profit from! It’s just that simple and ridiculous! It’s just a bloody insult to any real game developer out there!

Not just that, they went to any length to misrepresent interest in their project in order to build hype and try to get more donations. They lied to those with genuine interest about how many people were in their community, they fabricated website activity, they blatantly took advantage of people's idealism, all so they could try and get more money to pay someone to make their vision.

It's like the saying goes, 'The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.'

[Deleted]

Also, let me clear up what in my opinion was their most important mistake in all this.

They wanted to develop a video game based on their own ideas, none of them really knew how and that’s absolutely fine! Tons of people started up like that! The issue was…

Instead of learning the bases of video game development (such as freaking programming) they took the “easy” way out, they had over 10 years to pick up a set of tools and learn how to use them, instead they went around begging for money to find someone else to develop the game for them as they wanted to!

Do you get that? They wanted YOUR money to pay for someone else skills, so they can make a profit from! It’s just that simple and ridiculous! It’s just a bloody insult to any real game developer out there!

That's what I thought happened too. I think they started with good intentions to make this game, but (presuming this even happened) after they stupidly turned down an opportunity to fund it several years ago, having tried to revive it several times, they became desperate, and, lacking in ability, they resorted to said methods to try and make the game.

But, paying people to make a game for you isn't really that ridiculous. In various ways, developers do it all the time; they're always trying to make their job easier by doling out parts of development to third party studios. Heck, video game publishers exclusively do it; they almost literally give you money if you make a game for them that they can cash in on. The whole point of video game KS most of the time is to raise funds to hire outside talent to finish it. There's a fine line between what's allowed and what isn't. What's wrong here is a moral issue - IMO it's how they represent themselves to us, and supposedly manipulate data to do it.

[Azrile]

Just a heads up, we will be going live a few hours before they start their kickstarter. Main things will be

The IP addresses from fansites where we have a few IP addresses, and then a list under each one of all the alt-names they used on those forums. With that, we have links going back to their official forums where those ´alts´ engaged in conversations with themselves, and many where the ´ alts ´ basically surrounded a new poster and had a long conversation with a new person while pretending to be multiple people. We also have links to the official forums showing that frequently the people encouraging the devs to ´sell stuff on the cash-shop!!!´ were actually the devs on alt accounts.

We have emails showing incompetence and fraud. These mainly pertain to the conversations regarding when ToA stole Hero Engine assets and were forced to cancel their first kickstarter. We also have a bunch of emails where Brax just sounds like an incompetent idiot by asking the dumbest questions. These are a bit more complicated (and less useful) because you have to understand the tech to understand why what he is asking shows he knows nothing. But for us, these were the most damning because they show just how impossible it is for someone so clueless to ever build the most complicated type of game there is. And finally we have a handful of emails where Brax (and another dev) are trying to buy things on the Unity forums, and then admit that they do not care if it actually works in the game, only that they can use it in a video to make it appear that it works.

With regards to that last point.. we are also working up a ´quick facts´ regarding their server tech and the kit they are using just so people are aware that a lot of teams with a ton of technical abilities and skills have not been able to successfully break the 20 player limit in a semi-functioning game. Referencing that with the ton of really stupid questions Brax asks, it should be fairly obvious he isn´t going to be able to do something those guys can´t do.

We are also going to reference some of the dozens of indy games that were built with Unity by 1-man teams and how much better those games look despite ToA taking years and years, 5 devs and $60,000. And finally, we are going to be linking to all the garbage they bought for $5 and $10 that suddenly turned into these monumental achievements in their progress.

And yeah.. a link to the dozens of Unity tutorials and videos ( 15 mins) that show you exactly how to make a spell missile. I mean seriously, that huge technological hurdle of following along with a tutorial video that even allows you to download all the coding and art to do it..

[Kyanion]

Aww hell yes Azrile is here! I am looking forward to this!

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heh they now have a timer on their home page for when the KS goes live.

[Time Sage]

Please, pay more attention to what I wrote. I never said that.
Let’s see if I can make myself clearer…

Video game publisher: “A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer. They often finance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer (the publisher calls this external development) and sometimes by paying an internal staff of developers called a studio.”

Video game developer: “A video game developer is a software developer that specializes in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games.[1][2] A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks[3] to a large business with employee responsibilities split between individual disciplines, such as programming, design, art, testing, etc. Most game developer companies have video game publisher financial and usually marketing support.”

The issue here is that Forged Chaos is neither publishing nor developing Trials of Ascension, and that’s what’s ridiculous. Their community is the one financing their one and only developer, Teddy! What they are doing, any one of us can do, beg for donations around the Internet and give them to someone else in order to make you a product so you can profit from, on top of that, they keep calling themselves “game developers”, it’s just plain disgusting and guess what… it doesn’t fucking work! If it was only that easy everyone would be into game development, thus the main reason why their Kickstarters will keep being huge fucking failures.

Also, hell no! That is not what Kickstarters are for! Kickstarters objective is to aid independent game developers, the ones without publishers, the money is used for tools, extra help and what not, as you said yourself, Forged Chaos wants to use the Kickstarter to publish a video game, it’s a complete different thing! They are fully dependent on hired developers since none of them learned how to freaking program in the last 10 freaking years.

To be fair there are many people on devolpment team that never touch the code. Writers would be a big example. Artists would be another, though what they make does show up physically in game.

[lawow74]

I'm sure the info-bomb Azrile drops will be categorically dismissed as an elaborate hoax/troll on part of a psycho-obsessed person or persons, at least where IP addresses and dev E-Mails are concerned. The rest about Unity tutorials and whatnot should be more unimpeachable as reasons why their game is doomed to never attain its goals as it stands and is what I expect to be the hardline against which their Kickstarter will not cross.

[Kyanion]

I'm sure the info-bomb Azrile drops will be categorically dismissed as an elaborate hoax/troll on part of a psycho-obsessed person or persons, at least where IP addresses and dev E-Mails are concerned. The rest about Unity tutorials and whatnot should be more unimpeachable as reasons why their game is doomed to never attain its goals as it stands and is what I expect to be the hardline against which their Kickstarter will not cross.

Yeah I think the part that shows IP addresses will mainly be for the legit people that support ToA to see that people they have been talking to...might be the same person or persons. The breaking down of why Unity will not do what ToA wants is the meaty part of the discussion which will show that the 'devs' are clueless and tried to make it 'look' like a game was being made.

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To be fair there are many people on devolpment team that never touch the code. Writers would be a big example. Artists would be another, though what they make does show up physically in game.

Fair enough on that one, however there are posts which highlight just how little 'lore' has been done for the game. They used to post and crow about how they had 2 people write like 50 pages of lore in a month which is a very small amount over a month time frame with 2 people. I don't think they had a major credited writer until very late in this project. You can also say they didn't have someone who could code this mess until very late in the project as well.