Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[Kyanion]

How to fail hard apparently.

A self taught coder could figure out how to make an mmorpg in the amount of time it took them to "learn" what they know now.

Azrile, I don't blame your skepticism but it's a pretty reliable piece of information and maybe Teddy was afraid of them trying to take him to court over whatever contracts he signed.

It took over a decade to learn what the publishers offered them, maybe in another decade we'll learn some more tidbits of these failed kickstarters.

I have to hand it to Brax, he's given us all more entertainment over the years than his shitty mmorpgfail ever could. The shelf life of an mmorpg is what, 5 years?

Publishers? HAHAHA yeah right. Those are as real as the 'prototype' they had back in the Shadowpool days.

[Azrile]

Reminds me of the ToA 'stress tests' when 10 people showed up.

GreedMonger has already done stress tests last month.. but nobody showed up.

Which is part of what goes missing in the story of these two games.. the fact that they are talking to air, because nobody is listening to them or really cares about their games ( other than us with our popcorn). You could take all the fans from Greedmonger, and all the fans from ToA, and they would still have to pug people to do a battleground in WOW.

[srs]

Okay guys, who's dumber?

Yo guys,
Just wondering if we discussed combat stances before?

because I was just thinking about combat in toa and was thinking how cool it would be to be able to assume a stance that perhaps makes swinging from a certain direction more effective, perhaps a stronger block, maybe different stances help when on different terrain types ect.

Curzman or Brax?

This guy really believes TOA will ever see the light of day and he's supposedly 21 years old. I know the public education system sucks but seriously how does he even get on the internet?

[dextersmith]

Okay guys, who's dumber?



Curzman or Brax?

This guy really believes TOA will ever see the light of day and he's supposedly 21 years old. I know the public education system sucks but seriously how does he even get on the internet?

Original cause WoW warriors and monks never had stances! Shouldn't they prioritize making a game first?

[Post]

I love how Black Desert was under ToA in the MMO's he wants to play.

[Kyanion]

Haha I love the part where he talks about integrity. Good lord Brax is a piece of shit.

[lawow74]

because we learned things firsthand that game creation schools could NEVER teach you.

That is pure gold, straight from the horse's mouth.

[Azrile]

Haha I love the part where he talks about integrity. Good lord Brax is a piece of shit.

I love the part where he said ´offers´ as in more than one... seriously. Because, you know they did such an amazing job with selling their kickstarter. No doubt in my mind the 3 stoogies could get into a room and just wow people.. because, their videos were just so appealing. These guys just reek of charisma...

[Kyanion]

I love the part where he said ´offers´ as in more than one... seriously. Because, you know they did such an amazing job with selling their kickstarter. No doubt in my mind the 3 stoogies could get into a room and just wow people.. because, their videos were just so appealing. These guys just reek of charisma...

Heh makes you wonder what the 'prototype' was that they showed these supposed publishers. A steaming pile of crap? They had this magical prototype that was complete and being shown off yet they only managed 3 screenshots back in the Shadowpool days. Then after that they forgot how to code and then learned how to code again in the FC days only to forget again when pressed on the matter.

[Azrile]

Heh makes you wonder what the 'prototype' was that they showed these supposed publishers. A steaming pile of crap? They had this magical prototype that was complete and being shown off yet they only managed 3 screenshots back in the Shadowpool days. Then after that they forgot how to code and then learned how to code again in the FC days only to forget again when pressed on the matter.

And don´t forget that amazing video they did for their first kickstarter. So if they are saying they learned a lot from the SP days, can you imagine how bad the video was back then? Sure stoogies, here is a million dollars..

[lawow74]

It's like was said before, if they got any offers, they were to basically hand over all creative control and the vast majority of profits in return for the IP. Cos there's no way anyone would seriously fund a bunch of pie-eyed know-nothings for anything less.

[Taojnhy]

So, hang on a sec. Brax says, "If we wanted to take the money and run, we could've done it during SP."

But I seem to recall Brax emphatically stating that they didn't take donations then. In fact...here:

Third, the false statement that we received money from fans during our Shadowpool days. We owners put in tens of thousands of dollars of our own money over the years and never once asked for or used money that wasn't ours.

So...which is it? He can't have meant "taken the money we put in ourselves and run" because that would be a stupid thing to say.

[Deleted]

So, hang on a sec. Brax says, "If we wanted to take the money and run, we could've done it during SP."

But I seem to recall Brax emphatically stating that they didn't take donations then. In fact...here:


So...which is it? He can't have meant "taken the money we put in ourselves and run" because that would be a stupid thing to say.

Well, in their shitty defense... He did say could have. Doesn't really mean that it did happen.


Also, it annoys me that Brax keeps fucking up its and it's. Yeah I know, small thing but still :P

[Fallen Angel]

Grammar naziism is the reason both KS failed. Heartless bastards.

[khalltusk]

I love it though, says we are game devs we learned all this stuff yeh ofc!

Then another post much later, oh we have had to hire and said so during crowd funding as we have no idea how to actually make a game. Completely liars the lot of them.

[lawow74]

But that falls under the blanket excuse of 'just being human' they later made, so it doesn't matter all the shit they talked in those chatlogs their psycho-fan was kind enough to archive for us, cos all's forgiven...right?

It just reinforces what we've known for a while: They will say and do anything if it means they get to make the game they want to make. Doesn't matter who gets used along the way, what they do to their reputation, none of it. The game is all that matters. And for their die-hard fans, it doesn't matter either, cos they want to play that game.

[Azrile]

I love it though, says we are game devs we learned all this stuff yeh ofc!

Then another post much later, oh we have had to hire and said so during crowd funding as we have no idea how to actually make a game. Completely liars the lot of them.

And just the time frame. Making a prototype of a demo back in 2005 would have been infinitely more difficult than with Unity or Hero Engine. I also had to laugh because in his comment he specifically mentioned that they learned about art pipelines... but then ten years later they couldn´t get their spider imported into Hero Engine... which is basically drag-drop.

Their lies just make no sense. They had a prototype and demo available back in 2005, which they built in 2 years. But then they come back in 2012 because game engines are now much more powerful and easy. Yet with these powerful new tools, in 2 years they could produce nothing and had to use a cash-shop to hire Teddy to get anything done at all. Given the ease and power of Unity and HE, shouldn´t these 3 super-hero rockstar devs have been able to quickly recreate their prototype from 2005? If you built in in 2005 using difficult engines that required real coding, shouldn´t you be able to recreate it in the same time frame using easy to use engines? And then it gets even better because when they came back, they specifically said they were scaling down the scope of the project. So you come back with all this experience, with better tools, and with a smaller project, and you can´t create anything compared to this awesome prototype you had going back in 2005.

[khalltusk]

But that falls under the blanket excuse of 'just being human' they later made, so it doesn't matter all the shit they talked in those chatlogs their psycho-fan was kind enough to archive for us, cos all's forgiven...right?

It just reinforces what we've known for a while: They will say and do anything if it means they get to make the game they want to make. Doesn't matter who gets used along the way, what they do to their reputation, none of it. The game is all that matters. And for their die-hard fans, it doesn't matter either, cos they want to play that game.

Its just crazy though, as they are intentionally misleading their fans and anyone else. We all know games companies bend the truth (to varying degrees) but out right lying by saying you are game devs you know how to make a game then later on admitting that you don't know anything about being a game dev and that you hired someone to do it for you should be enough to turn away everyone. Sadly real people put money into the project, this only goes to show you should be careful and take time to look at something before buying.

Hell I bought Aliens CM - Got stung hard, as gearbox did the most blatant bait and switch and basically fucked over the fan base for a quick buck. Theres also the rumours of them shifting funding from that project onto their own projects and outsourcing the game. Really scum bag level shit. ToA are not on that level as at least ACM is a game, but still its very fucking shady and should not be tolerated.

snip

Exactly! There are so many points where you just scratch your head and go WHAT?! If you have previously worked on Maps/Mods or any sort of basic coding or the like then picking up unity is REALLY simple. Hell I could follow the tutorials and then start dabbling with the settings and other options and create variations (mostly break stuff as you know thats how I learn ).

These guys in my eyes have made NO effort on their own part to make a game. Just for some reason thinking they can outsource the work to someone else when they could not get the 1st KS money in they opened the cash shop to fleece potential fans to try again with a 2nd KS and even then it was bad.

Hell you could have used the warcraft 3 engine back in 2005 to make small scale RPGs, I made a shitty map that I had quests for and 4 player characters. A few NPCs etc to interact with in a basic way too. (The Wow engine being a huge variation of that and ofc heavily modified but the principle idea is you have something to work from).

I could go on about how with the old source engine which is heavily modified quake tech afaik you had the old world builder tools. That could allow people to make mods for HL. Fan made shit back then like CS and TFC got bought by valve as the concepts were fantastic. With all this stuff available even back then, these could have and should have been learning if they truly wanted to build a game.

[Taojnhy]

EDIT: I finally realized that my reading comprehension skills aren't so hot around 3am; the whole "take the money and run" was talking about the supposed offers they turned down for ToA, not possibly donated funds.

Given the ease and power of Unity and HE, shouldn´t these 3 super-hero rockstar devs have been able to quickly recreate their prototype from 2005? If you built in in 2005 using difficult engines that required real coding, shouldn´t you be able to recreate it in the same time frame using easy to use engines? And then it gets even better because when they came back, they specifically said they were scaling down the scope of the project. So you come back with all this experience, with better tools, and with a smaller project, and you can´t create anything compared to this awesome prototype you had going back in 2005.

In a plot twist worthy of a facepalm, it emerges that their 2005 prototype looked like this:

You stand in a large empty meadow bordered on the south by heavy forest with a river to the west. To the east you can see smoke drifting into the cloudless sunny sky. Thick overgrowth hinders passage to the north.

In the middle of this field are the skeletal remains of a dragon and inside the skeleton is a smaller skeleton of what appears to be a raknar. Inside the raknar's skeleton is a human skeleton.

Possible exits: W S E

Command?>

[Kyanion]

EDIT: I finally realized that my reading comprehension skills aren't so hot around 3am; the whole "take the money and run" was talking about the supposed offers they turned down for ToA, not possibly donated funds.



In a plot twist worthy of a facepalm, it emerges that their 2005 prototype looked like this:

You stand in a large empty meadow bordered on the south by heavy forest with a river to the west. To the east you can see smoke drifting into the cloudless sunny sky. Thick overgrowth hinders passage to the north.

In the middle of this field are the skeletal remains of a dragon and inside the skeleton is a smaller skeleton of what appears to be a raknar. Inside the raknar's skeleton is a human skeleton.

Possible exits: W S E

Command?>

Dennis

But for real, yeah even an old old school text adventure is more than these rockstar devs produced.