Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[dextersmith]

There's a lot of negativity floating these forums. You don't want to sweep it under the rug. But you do want to eliminate the misinformation and temper the anger. Calling out the elephant in the room in the forums (perhaps a "History of FC" where you admit some mistakes, but talk about how you have learned and forged those mistakes into a clearer vision) will give you the chance to be HONEST and FORWARD while also uniting and empowering your mission."

They did that, spoke of transparency, took people's money for undelivered virtual garbage, then left $37k unaccounted for, told people to pretend ks failures never happened, and told Fornax to gtfo.

[Azrile]

They did that, spoke of transparency, took people's money for undelivered virtual garbage, then left $37k unaccounted for, told people to pretend ks failures never happened, and told Fornax to gtfo.

They have already been lying since they started over. Every time they mentioned converting to Unity 5.0 and how long it takes, it is a lie. They are using it as an excuse to buy time for their two new programmers to learn the absolute basics of Unity. Just based on how the two new guys are talking, and the things they are working on.. they probably never really did anything with Unity until this month.

The other lie they are telling ( although Brax is too stupid to know better, so it really isn´t a lie), is the stuff about scaling back the project, and/or the ability to create an island on your own computer and invite friends to play on it. They really haven´t scaled back the game that much. On paper it looks like it.... ´oh, we only have half as many dragons´ ´no more spells for humans´... but that is only his ignorance of how a game works. Adding a second dragon once you have the first one working would be trivial. A spell system is trivial ( remember that game with the off-colored world where the guy was bouncing spells all over the place after a few weekends?). Brax knows nothing about programming or making a game, so his ´pruning´ is laughable. The game they are making now is so far out of their reach and Brax doesn´t even realize where the hard parts are, totally not mentioning them or making them sound trivial, and at the same time ´Upgrading to Unity 5´ is something difficult?

[dextersmith]

And again with the roadmap
...

Basic movements
- walking -- forward, backwards, and strafing.
- running -- forward, backwards, and strafing.
- jumping.

an item on the ´roadmap´ that comes with Unity.

All that grandiose and yet walking and running is a broadcasted goal lol.

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Some fun tidbits to play with: "Instead development would have to continue without a new infusion of funding. No funding meant that we would all have to work on ToA while holding down our day jobs, which is ok with us, as that was what we were already doing."

How is that any different than when they had the cash shop?

[Bodoh]

Favorite quote from Ellysia

All 11 members of the team know that we're going to produce a game, and with this scaled back design we will be able to have something playable in a much shorter time frame than an MMO.

What scaled back design? Again, you have a guy who couldn´t turn on the servers five months ago making a pretty big assumption about what he can do with servers for the new ´scaled back game´... also.. now they have 11 team members again.. 3 co-founders who can do nothing, a few social media people, a community manager and 2 guys who program on their spare time..... and yet.. here we are.. 5 months after Demo Island.. and the ´developers´ are back to getting the character to move correctly... Please stop saying you have 11 developers.. you have 2 guys who are learning to use Unity for the first time, in their spare time...

Any Joe Blow could download Unity and have the same amount of non-progress almost instantly. Would love to hear her estimate her ´much shorter time frame´.... because time is going to go by really fast while these guys spend 3 hours a week learning every newbie thing about Unity. Yes, an MMORPG would have taken them 30 years, but this new game is still going to take them 20.

The place I work, the studio has less than the number of people they have, yet, seemingly, my work-mates seem to produce more than the 11 people they have.

[dextersmith]

Mkay, let's start this shizzle.



Meaning that they've started completely from scratch (Yet they still show the old ''Demo Island'' screenshots under the media section.) Doesn't come as a surprise, it's hard to pick up after someone else's code (Even if there wasn't a lot).

This is interesting:



The plan is indeed Steam Greenlight. Good fun!


And then this part that caught my attention:



This tells me that they want to rack in money using Steam, and then convert the game into a MMO. Something they've always wanted, but can't do.




Ohnoes, no more magic Dat Arcane Explosion in the Kickstarter vid tho!



No flying dragons, kek.

With money wasted on a useless and shit-designed demo, and dragons being not what was promised, and mmo not being a mmo, will cash shop victims be reimbursed since they paid for something entirely different?

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Actually.... going by what they said, they've actually done just about everything that they said they would in that update. They said that "This update will also herald a new level of transparency between us, the team, and you all, the community." But they didn't say that the transparency would extend backwards. So, as long as they have it going forward, technically aren't doing anything wrong. We're just going to have to face it. They spent $37k on beer and hookers. And we'll never get to see the pics of those hookers like we want to. :/

Their previous agreement to transparency still applies.

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Haha, the store is gonna come back soon I guess, the suckers are just begging for it!

Another broken promise; to take the store down and not fund the game through their wallets.

[Azrile]

With money wasted on a useless and shit-designed demo, and dragons being not what was promised, and mmo not being a mmo, will cash shop victims be reimbursed since they paid for something entirely different?

yeah, it is pretty funny that people still trust Brax. ´ hey guys, if you give me $40k we will make this kick ass video and win at KS´ gets $67k and puts out garbage video and cancels KS a few days later ´ I don´t know why everyone is so upset, we always said we couldn´t make a game, but we did fulfill our promise and made a video and did a KS.. not our fault it failed´..

I feel Teddy´s pain so much.. it is almost like he is right here talking to us

[Deleted]

In short. FU all and see you never!

[Azrile]

And that my friend is how you lose $167,000 on absolutely nothing. Some lazy nobodies put up generic websites.. and people throw money at them without ever asking questions.

Won´t be long now before Brax opens a new and improved cash-shop because the fans demanded it, and maybe we can get that total higher. But hey, we have our character walking forward now, that means we are game developers.

[Post]

Right now, we have about 10 people of various backgrounds and various commitment levels, with more in the pipeline being vetted. I am backing this company at present. We will release this game no matter what. Whether it's taking a while because we're financing it ourselves, or with help from publishers or investors. This project will NOT get shelved. It WILL be released to our best efforts.

I love reading his posts now, it's so....unsurprising.

In almost 3 months it's gone from "THIS WILL GET MADE NO MATTER WHAT!!!" to "pce nerds".

[Azrile]

I love reading his posts now, it's so....unsurprising.

In almost 3 months it's gone from "THIS WILL GET MADE NO MATTER WHAT!!!" to "pce nerds".

I am backing this company at present.

This part.. this part needs to be his signature every time he tries to post in any forum. The guy who bragged about backing the company, then gets on a chat and says he doesn´t have enough money to mail out t-shirts to a few dozen people... Brax, Proctor, Joel Lumpypants... they all just type and pretend they are someone they are not.

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Just got some information from over at MMORPG.com.. apparently one of their two fans left ( although Talon has been quiet recently).. just stated that Brax held back some of the $67,000 to help develop Life is Feudal - Exile.

Now this seems odd..

[Pizzaman199]

So someone on their forums said they they might go for a Christmas release date. I really wanted to respond to that saying that Half-Life 3, Portal 3, and Team Fortress 3 are all coming out this Christmas too! I mean they all have the same chance to. Actually... I take that back. Valve actually makes games.... sometimes.... when they take a break from printing money with Steam.

[Deleted]

So someone on their forums said they they might go for a Christmas release date. I really wanted to respond to that saying that Half-Life 3, Portal 3, and Team Fortress 3 are all coming out this Christmas too! I mean they all have the same chance to. Actually... I take that back. Valve actually makes games.... sometimes.... when they take a break from printing money with Steam.

Wait bro! Does this mean L4D3 is actually happening!?

That guy gives me cancer btw.

[khalltusk]

They have already been lying since they started over. Every time they mentioned converting to Unity 5.0 and how long it takes, it is a lie. They are using it as an excuse to buy time for their two new programmers to learn the absolute basics of Unity. Just based on how the two new guys are talking, and the things they are working on.. they probably never really did anything with Unity until this month.

The other lie they are telling ( although Brax is too stupid to know better, so it really isn´t a lie), is the stuff about scaling back the project, and/or the ability to create an island on your own computer and invite friends to play on it. They really haven´t scaled back the game that much. On paper it looks like it.... ´oh, we only have half as many dragons´ ´no more spells for humans´... but that is only his ignorance of how a game works. Adding a second dragon once you have the first one working would be trivial. A spell system is trivial ( remember that game with the off-colored world where the guy was bouncing spells all over the place after a few weekends?). Brax knows nothing about programming or making a game, so his ´pruning´ is laughable. The game they are making now is so far out of their reach and Brax doesn´t even realize where the hard parts are, totally not mentioning them or making them sound trivial, and at the same time ´Upgrading to Unity 5´ is something difficult?

The off coloured world, was that the one an MMO champ user posted up about where he had some skeletons and fired out some spells? If so that is the beginings of a game and it was made by a guy in his spare time. More than "FC" have done.

[Taojnhy]

Just got some information from over at MMORPG.com.. apparently one of their two fans left ( although Talon has been quiet recently).. just stated that Brax held back some of the $67,000 to help develop Life is Feudal - Exile.

Now this seems odd..

The thread Azrile mentions is here.

This is interesting; this CTheRain guy suddenly appeared on the ToA forums towards the end of their second KS attempt. How is he in a position to discuss what funds FC had available when FC wouldn't do that? Also, if he was playing on Demo Island with -over- 30 people, why is it that not a single video or stream ever showed more than about 5 people playing?

Talk about a bait and switch on FC's part; donate to this MMO we're making, oops it isn't going to work, here's a "smaller scale game that isn't an MMO" instead!

[Bodoh]

Does anyone have the ToA client?

Can you PM if you have it, I can do some "checks" what the hoo-haa is about and make detailed analysis what's wrong with it.

[SneezyBeanBuns]

this CTheRain guy suddenly appeared on the ToA forums towards the end of their second KS attempt. How is he in a position to discuss what funds FC had available when FC wouldn't do that?

CTheRain is an insufferable c*nt who likes to speak as if he is part of the development team. Like most of the community, he has a vision in his mind about what ToA should be, and he argues as if the big three will bend over and just lick his bunghole if he commands it. They all have disparate ideas of what ToA is going to be, and they are constantly pushing their inane fantasies while ignoring the huge problems that will come from catering to all their little fetishes. God forbid anyone point out how implementing this crap is going to be nigh impossible for these asshats.

[Bodoh]

A couple of users such as Android and Fornax might have it, I don't think they can really share it though.

why?

it's an MMO, right? surely there's nothing wrong, ahem, sharing the client, since I won't be able to connect to the server...

all the MMOs allow you to download a free client.

[NotADevAlt]

why?

it's an MMO, right? surely there's nothing wrong, ahem, sharing the client, since I won't be able to connect to the server...

all the MMOs allow you to download a free client.

I'm sure its because anyone who participated in those demo were made to sign BS NDAs so word wouldn't spread about how craptastic the experience was. Total "transparency." (hmm, that word again)

[SneezyBeanBuns]

I'm sure its because anyone who participated in those demo were made to sign BS NDAs so word wouldn't spread about how craptastic the experience was. Total "transparency." (hmm, that word again)

I wonder if they'll prosecute CTheRain for revealing they had 30+ on at a time.

[Bodoh]

Does anyone have any idea, what the network topo is?

Photon Server, Photon Cloud, simple Unity Networking (lol) ?