Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[Deleted]

In separate news, you may remember that the Greedmonger public 'stress test' was originally supposed to occur on April 25th and was postponed to the following week (May 2nd) because their forums suddenly went offline for several days. Well, the forums came back, and May 2nd came and went without a word, prompting 1-2 posters to ask what happened.

Here's James Proctor's response:



Sound familiar?

haha, that's great. What a surprise indeed.

Regarding the 2 new guys, it's interesting to see they're atleast legit. Clearly they are not dumb, they must be aware of what happened to ToA right? Failed kickstarters and generally Brax's incompetence. I personally wouldn't want to associate my name with such a fail project.

[lawow74]

I dunno, I could see them hiring these two on the short-term to work on the game and try to push it into some kind of semi-playable state(VERY early access)in six months with a mix of cash and profit-sharing, so they can get it out there on a B2P with a cash shop, try and get people in the door and keep developing further in a build-as-you-go effort.

In theory, it could work. In practice, I just don't see it ever competing well enough that this dev team stands a chance of keeping the ball rolling. It's like giving a six-year-old a softball and then putting him on the mound in a major league game.

[Kyanion]

It seems a little misleading to say they have 15 yrs experience in the industry seeing as they apparently haven't ever even made or worked on an actual game that's out and we can play.

yeah 15 years in the industry my ass. Not even if you added their experience together. Doing it as a part time hobby and being new to Unity will make it an even slower learning process. It is amusing that they are trying to get more people attached to this train wreck. I am quite curious what this 'plan' will be to fuck over their 'fans' err I mean get this game made.

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In separate news, you may remember that the Greedmonger public 'stress test' was originally supposed to occur on April 25th and was postponed to the following week (May 2nd) because their forums suddenly went offline for several days. Well, the forums came back, and May 2nd came and went without a word, prompting 1-2 posters to ask what happened.

Here's James Proctor's response:



Sound familiar?

Haha good ol Greedmonger, new company, same shit.

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Also I still take anything FC says with a metric shit ton of salt. I still wonder if these two people are who they say they are. I mean giving names is one thing, but is that the truth? We'll see.

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I'm guessing this is one of them https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffmaddox

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The Geoff guy likely has 15 years of experience in various forms but the other one sure does not seem to have that. Either way FC was lying about something which isn't surprising.

[Kotori125]

Yeah, Elyssia already backpeddled and stated that they only have 15 years programming experience, as apposed to (gaming) industry experience. Like I said, word choice and all that. http://www.trialsofascension.com/for...-3#post-129815

Geoff I trust. That is transparency that Toa needs to learn from: I have technical experience, but no direct experience in game development and still learning Unity. At least he is upfront about his shortcomings, and not trying to make it sound like he is the savior of Toa. (If he is a lie, at least he is a believable lie).

Jason I do not trust. He seems to be hiding by vague terms and not upfront (common with Toa business practices). And he is supposed to be the main Unity Developer, but does not state any specific projects done in Unity (whether solo project for fun or otherwise). As it is stated, it seems like he has professional experience in game development, so where are the examples of his projects for people to actually trust him at his word. Else is seems like empty words.

First experiences are crucial for trust. What people want to initially reveal about themselves for the first experience/introduction means a lot. Significantly more than people asking questions about you and you answering them (initial trust vs. gaining trust).

[Kyanion]

Yup the most glaring thing is really no Unity experience or really gaming experience to speak of. And for a first project you take on an MMO, good luck. I am still curious of what this 'plan' will be and how these people are being paid. Though it seems like these 2 are doing it part time while they work at real jobs I doubt they are getting paid anything upfront and it is just 'future profits'.

Man they need to hire more people for the 'social media team' now that I think about it, they lost a few so they need more hype people.

[Azrile]

Those 2 “programmers” are probably people from the Unity forums that have been selling them shit such as the script to name others players, I’m assuming that FC will be paying them with whatever is left from the fan donations and a % of the final profit.

They are definitely two guys from the Unity forums that sold them ´something´ early on, but it wasn´t the Naming System

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Steam Greenlight seems like the option they'd run to. Anything to cash in with their game at this point. They know they won't get much in donations or crowd funding anymore.

People seemed to be confused about the Greenlit procss.

You pay $100 and put your game into the process
You get a webpage with comments section on Steam and can advertise and give progress reports
Steam members can vote on your game
If you get enough votes, your game gets added to Steam. The votes you need to get is pretty substantial.
Once your game gets greenlit, you can sell it as a finished product, or sell it as early access. If you sell your game as a finished project, it will get ripped in the comments if it is not a finished product. If you sell your game as early access or alpha/beta, then you better be making updates frequently and have the game in full development or you will get ripped apart.

It will not work for GreedMonger or ToA for a couple reasons. First off, both games will get ripped apart early in the process before they get enough votes to even start earning money. And then if they do manage to get greenlit, the amount of money they make will be a trickle, and not nearly enough to fund the development of a game. If they try ´early access´ type crap and sell an alpha version of the game, they will not only get ripped apart for their past, but they will get ripped apart by the people who buy the game because of slow progress. For instance, lets say they get greenlit, and sell their game for $10 and on the first day they sell 100 copies. They now have $700 dollars (Valve keeps 30%), but they also have 100 customers who are going to be hounding them for progress. That $700 is not going to get them anything.

Like I said before, both these games are at less than 0. They are going to start on Steam in defensive mode and only ´gain´ customers there that they already have on their forums now.

[Kelimbror]

Umm...is this Brax from FC? he signed posts in the past as -Brax and the questions he's asking are way too familiar...

I'll do a write up soon here to see if anyone is working, has worked, or has interest in the asset im looking for. Though I do not personally have a budget for it I know that MANY MANY MANY MANY people do, and there is large interest with regard to the asset/plugin im looking for

I've been searching around for quite awhile for an Atmospheric Scattering solution that works with spherical AND standard flat-terrain projects.

Right now I'm trying to find something for Spherical Planet Terrains specifically as my current project is leaning more and more towards that. Unfortunately I'd do this myself but the ramp-up time of learning shaders myself is being hampered by everything else.

And then there's this entire thread: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/hav...an-mmo.232711/

The two I quoted are from a month ago and if it's him...wow. He's looking for an asset on Unity that "MANY MANY MANY MANY" people want. I didn't even realize that many people were even into ToA in the first place. Is this just eerie coincidence and it's a different person? Or is he up to his old tricks again?

[Azrile]

Yup the most glaring thing is really no Unity experience or really gaming experience to speak of. And for a first project you take on an MMO, good luck. I am still curious of what this 'plan' will be and how these people are being paid. Though it seems like these 2 are doing it part time while they work at real jobs I doubt they are getting paid anything upfront and it is just 'future profits'.

Man they need to hire more people for the 'social media team' now that I think about it, they lost a few so they need more hype people.

We will see. If nothing else, this gives them 6 more months where the kool-aiders can say ´give them time´. In the end, you still have 5 guys who have never made a game, trying to make a MMORPG. One of them sounds competent.. I am guessing he will be about like Teddy.. 4 months of being excited to be working on a MMORPG.. a few months of grin-and-bear-it... and then a final realization that Brax is an incompetent clown at which points he walks away.

but yeah, these guys are just hobbiest who will be playing for a few hours a week.

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In separate news, you may remember that the Greedmonger public 'stress test' was originally supposed to occur on April 25th and was postponed to the following week (May 2nd) because their forums suddenly went offline for several days. Well, the forums came back, and May 2nd came and went without a word, prompting 1-2 posters to ask what happened.

Here's James Proctor's response:
Like I said else where I was sick yesterday and ran into some issues with the build. We will be having some news this week though so stay tuned.


Sound familiar?

Yep, he is predictable. If you read back through their forums, that is all he has done for the past 2 years. Make an excuse ( never his fault) for why something is delayed, and then promise something new in a few weeks. Still can´t wrap my head around the person on their forums who donated $3500.

[Deleted]

Umm...is this Brax from FC? he signed posts in the past as -Brax and the questions he's asking are way too familiar...


And then there's this entire thread: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/hav...an-mmo.232711/

The two I quoted are from a month ago and if it's him...wow. He's looking for an asset on Unity that "MANY MANY MANY MANY" people want. I didn't even realize that many people were even into ToA in the first place. Is this just eerie coincidence and it's a different person? Or is he up to his old tricks again?

Doesn't appear to be him. Seems like a fool though, so they could've been buddies

[Azrile]

Doesn't appear to be him. Seems like a fool though, so they could've been buddies

That is actually a very typical thread regarding making an MMORPG. Someone asks for a tutorial or a ´kit´ to make a MMORPG.. many sensible people tell them that if you need a tutorial, you aren´t going to make a MMORPG.. and then the OP blasts people for doubting him.

The reddit thread that is linked is gold if you really want to hear some smart people talk. Crazy to have a backend dev from MO and CCP talking in the same thread.

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yeah 15 years in the industry my ass. Not even if you added their experience together. Doing it as a part time hobby and being new to Unity will make it an even slower learning process.

Yeah, Elysia was great at saying they both have 15 years of ´industry experience´.. right up until people demanded to know their real names... then it turned into one guy with 15 years experience programming ( 0 games) and another with 2 years experience ( 0 games). And the really the best part about these two new devs is their current jobs... which they are going to keep.

[Post]

Still can´t wrap my head around the person on their forums who donated $3500.

That was the guy who made the drama videos right? It was pretty hilarious seeing him putting Greed Monger (the name is so stupid yet fitting) "in his sights" to really try and expose them! Then like a week later dropping all of that and going to be their community manager.

[lawow74]

That was the guy who made the drama videos right? It was pretty hilarious seeing him putting Greed Monger (the name is so stupid yet fitting) "in his sights" to really try and expose them! Then like a week later dropping all of that and going to be their community manager.

Like I've said before, people are just desperate to believe they are special. The whole of human history cites many good examples.

Still waiting on this magnitude-rich plan. *munches popcorn*

[Azrile]

That was the guy who made the drama videos right? It was pretty hilarious seeing him putting Greed Monger (the name is so stupid yet fitting) "in his sights" to really try and expose them! Then like a week later dropping all of that and going to be their community manager.

I am not sure how anyone can read that chat-log, and watch Proctor´s video about Fergeson and think the guy can make a game. I mean seriously, you are betting $3500 that THAT guy can pull this all together after 2 years of nothing but excuses? Also, there forums are really quiet considering Joel said they had hired a bunch of people. I think it is more just like ToA where they sent out a bunch of emails to anyone who ever heard of the game and downloaded Unity.

We will see, both games, reborn from the ashes of their previous ashes of their previous ashes. Both games are nothing but press releases and forum posts.

[Kyanion]

Didn't take long for ToA to start having fanboy hype about PvP features when no actual plan has been put in place yet. Yeah you have 2 new devs with little to no game experience (at least some coding experience) joining 3 devs who can't even turn a server on without a walkthrough. Nothing ever changes on those forums, they look so far in the future at how X and Y will work they don't even realize they haven't even finished writing the A out of the ABCs.

[lawow74]

From what I could see, you had the one guy who was ranting some time back about how PvP needs to be wanting to know how it's going to work, and if it's not going to work how he thinks it should, he's going to ditch ToA forever.

[Azrile]

Didn't take long for ToA to start having fanboy hype about PvP features when no actual plan has been put in place yet. Yeah you have 2 new devs with little to no game experience (at least some coding experience) joining 3 devs who can't even turn a server on without a walkthrough. Nothing ever changes on those forums, they look so far in the future at how X and Y will work they don't even realize they haven't even finished writing the A out of the ABCs.

yep, this is how you non-develop a game for 13 years. Already May, which means 5 months since anything was done on the game, and more than likely, most of what Teddy did accomplish has already been screwed up. What they had up for demo island will be the highpoint of the actual game development for another year. But who cares, this was always a forums game anyway.

[Deleted]

Umm...is this Brax from FC? he signed posts in the past as -Brax and the questions he's asking are way too familiar...


And then there's this entire thread: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/hav...an-mmo.232711/

The two I quoted are from a month ago and if it's him...wow. He's looking for an asset on Unity that "MANY MANY MANY MANY" people want. I didn't even realize that many people were even into ToA in the first place. Is this just eerie coincidence and it's a different person? Or is he up to his old tricks again?

The only issue I have with this is that it's over a year old, which doesn't really explain what he's up to now. But it is another good piece of evidence to add to the pile suggesting that FC doesn't know what they're doing as usual. At least they hired some proper programmers this time. But, no game industry experience. I can almost see why experienced game programmers would actually be avoiding them.

[lawow74]

Browsing various comics on The Oatmeal I wandered across this one and was reminded of our friends from Greedmonger when reading entry: The Bullshi**er.

[Kyanion]

My fave is the small blurb from CyberNacho: "To be perfectly honest, I don't have any professional game development experience and I'm still getting familiar with Unity"

God sign me up for this game! KOOL-AID time!

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Oh and don't worry, as far as Gassy is concerned "Just to help clarify, there are a lot of changes happening right now (which, with my NDA, I can not disclose)"

NDA this, NDA that, TRANSPARENCY my friends!

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From a NOT-Dev: "Honestly now that the community doesn't have any stake in the funding of the project the only thing we can berate is FC's use of the 68k. I'd imagine most of that money went towards making the demo but a lot was probably lost in the creation of the KS. FC has a long way to go to get past this second defeat. We are pretty much back to square one in terms of moving forward as it seems now. I think that some of the announcements we will see in the near future are going to be cuts in the features of the game. I think they will probably just go back to humans and possibly dragons but I have a feeling the raknar are going to be cut as they weren't funded by us."

Why do these fans make posts like these? Do they know what the devs are doing? If they think ToA does not have to be more transparent they are going to be in for rude awakening number....god who knows what number. So many repeated failures in that project I lost count.

[dextersmith]

From a NOT-Dev: "Honestly now that the community doesn't have any stake in the funding of the project the only thing we can berate is FC's use of the 68k. I'd imagine most of that money went towards making the demo but a lot was probably lost in the creation of the KS. FC has a long way to go to get past this second defeat. We are pretty much back to square one in terms of moving forward as it seems now. I think that some of the announcements we will see in the near future are going to be cuts in the features of the game. I think they will probably just go back to humans and possibly dragons but I have a feeling the raknar are going to be cut as they weren't funded by us."

Why cut spiders when they're semi done? Dragons can't be cut cause $60k paid for them. There's no combat or permadeath to cut, only ceo's, sand and wood chopping.