Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[Bodoh]

Yeah, they just refuse to accept that 'we create the ideas and other people make them real' is NOT a viable production model on anything resembling the scale they can operate at. Why exactly that is, who can say for sure? We can theorize what elements are in play, but to what extent and ratio is just guesswork.

Besides entertainment, my biggest concern is making sure no one gets suckered in by them without seeing dissenting viewpoints exist, differing accounts of what went down over the years and so on. If people choose to ignore those, so be it. Lead a horse to water and all that.

They are deluded.


UO was made by highly skilled people.

The original Ultima VI was made in Borland C++.

The artists, there did a ton of pixel art (the industry standard at those days).



'we create the ideas and other people make them real' = idea guys.

[Deleted]

New update y'all.

http://trialsofascension.com/news/ar...2#.VhpU3yuTybF

Funny thing is they can't figure out how their Raknar walked on walls

[Kyanion]

Haha I love how they are going to host a dev chat and take 5 members of their community to join them. Oh BOY! Wait, do they even have 5 members LEFT of their community?

[Bodoh]

I will pour cold water on their dev update.


1) The bird... no left-side, no top-view and no color for the bird. How is the modeller going to model?

Simple! Buy an asset to substitute, then, bait & switch.


2) Modelling planks of wood... rectangle polygons and texture them. Voila! Blocks of wood.

What next?

[ThePotato]

So they're still designing arbitrary props for a game world that couldn't even be classed as a game? Forget the combat and weapons systems and a stats and levelling system lets make wood and an eagle ostrich instead, yes thats what this game needs right now.

[dextersmith]

I do think they cared. Dexter, he never said "get lost." I was sour, and almost all of my posts last year were negative, and I suggested that perhaps I should stop coming to the forums. He simply agreed. As it is, I dont go anymore. I only check this thread once or twice a month now.
...

There have been good points made here, and the lack of any fruit from their "labors" is all you really need to see to gauge who was right. ToA is doa. Its dead before arrival, as it never will arrive. I dont remember the "how much money you got" comment, or the "do you still love us?" At this point I no longer feel burned, just tired and a tad bemused. I feel bad for those who donated and might not have been in a position like I was.
...
Ildefonse should at least get HIS $5k back. That's really sad to me. Anyway, there's some answers.

Negative or not, you're entitled to your opinion and it's your prerogative to express it to people you funded.

The last question included in a faq on a roadmap was "Do you still love us?" His response was "How much money you got?"

What makes Ildefonse any more deserving of a refund than others?

- - - Updated - - -

New update y'all.

http://trialsofascension.com/news/ar...2#.VhpU3yuTybF

Funny thing is they can't figure out how their Raknar walked on walls

Their biggest feature and they don't have a clue about it?!

- - - Updated - - -

Haha I love how they are going to host a dev chat and take 5 members of their community to join them. Oh BOY! Wait, do they even have 5 members LEFT of their community?

Are there even 5 fans?

[lawow74]

I think they have around a dozen accounts posting regularly on their forums still. Unless someone is up to shenanigans, it is still more than five. But yeah, I don't know that they'll hit triple digits even with a game release of some kind, and pretty much guarantee they'll never see four.

[Bodoh]

If you analyze the texts contained the forum posts made by sock-puppet accounts, they point to one person, brax doing this.


Hey Brax, do yourself a favor. Get rid of all the sock-puppet accounts and there is zero legit forum users reading your post.

[lawow74]

I'm pretty sure that they've abandoned that practice at this point. They only have a handful of posters left, and I am guessing they're unique accounts. That said, if they are still trying to artificially inflate things, I wouldn't put it past them after all these years of their antics.

Regardless, they could have the posters in the world and it wouldn't matter, unless some were going to donate money and/or time to help them try and make their little dream project a reality. This thin trickle of weekly 'progress' is like trying to fill a swimming pool with a leaky faucet. I would personally be surprised if they get something functional before a new version of Unity arrives.

[Deleted]

If you analyze the texts contained the forum posts made by sock-puppet accounts, they point to one person, brax doing this.


Hey Brax, do yourself a favor. Get rid of all the sock-puppet accounts and there is zero legit forum users reading your post.

We've indeed been over this point before. They were deff having 'chats with themselves' before we pointed it out. Nowadays they're all legit for sure. Simply because of the lack of actual posts But boy! What an honor, to hang out with the 'devs' during their chat! There's gonna be so many viewers. During their AMA they had ~50 viewers and I'm sure 5-10 of those viewers were from this thread

[Kyanion]

I do think they cared. Dexter, he never said "get lost." I was sour, and almost all of my posts last year were negative, and I suggested that perhaps I should stop coming to the forums. He simply agreed. As it is, I dont go anymore. I only check this thread once or twice a month now.

I honestly think Don Danielson is a good guy, but just does not really see what he did. He liked UO. He liked the feel of that world, and thought, hey, why cant we do that? If they can, so can we!

The problem was, they didnt really do much work. They expected others to do that work. Now, they are starting AGAIN, and perhaps they will do the work. But, they will never see profit. Ever. It could happen that one day they have a game that maybe 50 to 100 people play, but its not anytime soon. I honestly believe they will fold up again at some point and put this all behind them. If they could pay some of us back, that would be nice. But, they did say it was a donation, not a purchase.

As for his beer and hookers comment, yeah, that was unprofessional. I was not bothered RIGHT then when he said it, as I was only just beginning to respond here in this thread back then, I know he said it sarcastically in frustration with the pretty sour tone that was coming from over here.

There have been good points made here, and the lack of any fruit from their "labors" is all you really need to see to gauge who was right. ToA is doa. Its dead before arrival, as it never will arrive. I dont remember the "how much money you got" comment, or the "do you still love us?" At this point I no longer feel burned, just tired and a tad bemused. I feel bad for those who donated and might not have been in a position like I was.

Either way, they did take money and squandered it, not knowing what they were doing. I should have been able to see, but I was stupid too.

Its like they wanted $40,000 initially to get a good KS campaign going, they got $64,000, and went crazy adding in all kinds of stupid content that I KNEW was too much. Then they create a KS WAY too early and still have the balls to keep trying. I cannot believe it. The times I did go over to the forums months ago there was NO ONE there. Its a dead forum with maybe 5 people regularly posting. The oddest thing is that they keep plugging along unaware of their sad doom.

Has to be hubris. They are good guys, with good families. They are just not clear headed when it comes to the gaming business. Not at all. They need to face what happened, own it and move on. Ildefonse should at least get HIS $5k back. That's really sad to me. Anyway, there's some answers.

I'm sorry but I really don't think they DO care. If they cared they would have known better and not taken people for a ride with donation crap. They fleeced a lot of money out of people and then rushed that second kickstarter to torpedo all the chances they even had. I read transcripts from the early early days of this project where they claimed to have a team in an office working on this game and decided to fold up shop after not getting what they wanted. All they ever produced back then was a few screenshots.

And I don't think they care NOW. Why? Because they are STILL at it, trying to make a game stringing people along again, this time they aren't taking money (yet) and hope to get to Steam Greenlight or some such thing.

They may be 'good guys with good families' as you say but they are still horrible people when it comes to this game. All I've seen from Brax is an arrogant asshole who fleeced a lot of money out of people and has the gall to keep going after this many failures and lies. And I highlight the lies part because that is what they've been doing. In the early early days they talked about being coders and had an office with people working on the game. Then later when they came back they talked about being coders and tried to do a KS. Then later they admit they have no coding skills but STILL tried to get more money out of people. Except that whole part about no coding skills came AFTER fleecing 60k+ out of people.

No 'good' guy does that shit.

- - - Updated - - -

We've indeed been over this point before. They were deff having 'chats with themselves' before we pointed it out. Nowadays they're all legit for sure. Simply because of the lack of actual posts But boy! What an honor, to hang out with the 'devs' during their chat! There's gonna be so many viewers. During their AMA they had ~50 viewers and I'm sure 5-10 of those viewers were from this thread

Yeah I really don't think there are any fake posters left over there, you can tell by the amount of forum views, views on youtube threads and just the general sense of apathy over there. There is no hype, just a small forum of like 10 'devs' and about 12-15 'posters' on the forums. That is so sad.

Only a few months ago they had shitloads of people posting, tons of views on threads/videos and generated some 'hype' on a few sites. Fast forward to after the KS and they have next to nothing.

[Bodoh]

Then later they admit they have no coding skills but STILL tried to get more money out of people. Except that whole part about no coding skills came AFTER fleecing 60k+ out of people.

No 'good' guy does that shit.

Lots of idea-guy who post MMO requests do this.


Examples. Greed Monger. The bastards who posts looking for serious people for MMO on Unity, Unreal and Gamedev forums.


Some of them are welfare cheats, same like James Proctor.


It's like saying:
Hey, I'm on welfare, and instead of taking a job at McDonalds or Chipotle, I want to lazy around all day being lead developer of a MMO, or do screw-up modelling jobs and poor art-jobs.

Then the moderators of the Unity and Unreal forums, same, having no portfolio, would ban anyone who criticize against them. That's why the Unity jobs forum is locked and no further replies are allowed.

[Taojnhy]

Some of them are welfare cheats, same like James Proctor.


It's like saying:
Hey, I'm on welfare, and instead of taking a job at McDonalds or Chipotle, I want to lazy around all day being lead developer of a MMO, or do screw-up modelling jobs and poor art-jobs.

I want to clear something up, because I've seen this come up a few times now: disability isn't the same as welfare. In order to receive disability, one must be able to medically prove that they cannot be gainfully employed in typical jobs that their disability wouldn't prevent. While there certainly are people who cheat this, it's a tougher system to cheat than most; in fact there are lawyers who specifically specialize in disability hearings to try to get denials for disability overturned.

While I do not care about Proctor in particular, am not defending him and am not at all impressed with him, the frequent misuse of "welfare" has been rubbing me wrong a bit.

[Kelimbror]

And to Tao's point, it's probably a better idea to avoid discussing the nature of welfare or disability fraud within the context of this thread. I understand if something is illegitimately occurring it is a civil duty to call attention to it, but I'm not sure MMO-C is the best context in which to do so.

[Kyanion]

And to Tao's point, it's probably a better idea to avoid discussing the nature of welfare or disability fraud within the context of this thread. I understand if something is illegitimately occurring it is a civil duty to call attention to it, but I'm not sure MMO-C is the best context in which to do so.

Yeah the discussion of one person that may or may not be cheating a system is really irrelevant to the thread at hand. We're discussing games that try to scam people through crowdfunding/hype/etc and not totally the shady shit people do.

[Bodoh]

Yeah, that's fine.

Back to the topic...


Leaving bread-crumbs.


Usually James would immediately pop-up on the forums, contest them, rage about how good his amateur coding skills are.
James is unusually quiet.


Hey James?
How's your new city-life multi-player game going about?


Can you give a mid-month progress report?
Can you release the source-code for Greed Monger?

[lawow74]

He already made his big showy defense about the City Life game and basically said he can 'work on it as time permits' which is Proctorspeak for 'Play around at coding it when I don't feel like imitating a beanbag chair'.

I expect the next time he needs an ego boost he'll slap together an update and act like it was a breakthrough in development that took herculean effort to achieve.

And when people lambast him he'll blame any shortcomings on everything but himself. As usual.

[Azrile]

Yeah, I still think Brax scammed you guys. it is all fun and games to play around, but when you start taking other people´s money while misrepresenting yourself, then it is a scam. Brax did that whole ´eagle flying using waypoints´ etc post last summer just to convince people he knew how to code, then when it all falls apart he denied ever trying to say he could do anything. Now they are back to make dev posts about discovering this new fangled thing called raycasting.... And are seriously modeling ´cubes´ as if it is an achievement?

[Bodoh]

This is another gem:


http://store.steampowered.com/app/290650/


This 'game' is created by Jason Welge, someone who is well known by the Kickstarter and Unreal development community as a fraud.

Lets look shall we? The sixth post down is Jason welge, details of his fraud in gaining assets created for this 'game' are given in detail:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...ht=Jason+welge

We then have his criminal conviction of Grand Theft Property (more than $300 but less than $5000): http://openpasts.com/PublicRecord/JA.../1301215733989

With his Kickstarter attempts listed here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/7547109/created

It is rumoured the kickstarters were a means of gaining legal fees, this however, isn't fact, but the timing is very 'unfortunate' as pointed out here: https://twitter.com/BroTeamPill/stat...91041420783617

A great collection of photos by Bro Team Pill demonstrating how Jasons loves deceit and thinks everyone can be fooled by words that come out of his mouth: https://twitter.com/broteampill/stat...83967048355841

A lot of good links here too:
http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInActi...paigns_starts/

But what does all this have to do with the game? Well simple, the game is as bad as his reputation, enemies spawn 2 feet away from you, the animations and 'game feel' just don't exist and it is obvious Jason has no knowledge of game design whatsoever.

I say this a lot but never have I meant this with such passion. It's the worst attempt at a game I have ever played. A great video by 'Jim Sterling' demonstrates this:

YouTube™ Video: TIME RAMESSIDE (A NEW RECKONING) - Somehow Made WORSE Since Early Access
Views: 80,098
I originally played this game (twice) in Early Access Squirt. Beyond all comprehension, the game has actually been made worse in the move to final release. Boggles the damn mind.

Along with 'Unit Lost':

YouTube™ Video: Times Ramesside (A New Reckoning) - The WORST GAME EVER MADE. EVER. SERIOUSLY. EVER.
Views: 9,908
No but seriously, this game is absolutely awful. The story, such as it is, is completely laughable and written in nothing but broken English, the art used as a backdrop is uniformly terrible, any...

Neither are being bad just for the video either (notice how they both get to the same point and no further), the 'game' is actually that 'difficult' to play, as mentioned earlier, enemies follow no set rules, they just do what they feel like and the players sense of direction just doesn't exist, you have no idea of what to do or where to go.

The forums are full of censorship too, try bring up anything negative and it will be deleted and you yourself, banned. Luckily I expected this and archived the posts before they were deleted, look for yourself and make your own mind up as to whether he was right or wrong to delete these threads:

https://archive.is/8mbGR
https://archive.is/i5VTE - A post informing consumers of deletion of the EA forums. (Which got me banned)
http://i.imgur.com/JxoqbQz.png - Proof of my ban. (since lifted, the day after)
https://archive.is/Tc1ot - The 'developer' denying banning or deleting any form of censoring on the forums after I was banned.

Sorry that this wasn't an indepth review about the game but when the game isn't there in the first place, and the developer is a known fraud, I would rather inform you of this and let other people/the videos I provided demonstrate the games quality.

EDIT: The games cinematic annoyed me, it looked familiar but I couldn't place it until it clicked, its the Unreal Engine 4 tech demo, but reskinned! Here is the video comparing the two (thanks to Shinmai for providing a more appropriate video):

YouTube™ Video: Left 2 Rot vs UE4 PS4 tech demo
Views: 459
just a quick comparison

Here is proof I brought this up in the forums, only for it to be removed (the last post): https://archive.is/GQlmX

Second edit: Now banned from the forum for showing evidence of the developer being blacklisted: http://imgur.com/6Gnn0d8

As you can see, he likes to think that people are idiots, and that only his word is golden, not those that have actual proof of his misdealings.

EDIT #2: According to community member Bisonfan95, the game doesn't have an ending and instead, simply loops back to the first level upon entering what is presumed to be the final section. I archived the forum topic as this is the second time I have seen this thread, the first was deleted before I even thought to archive it.

Topic here: https://archive.is/Qp67Z a direct link to the youtube video he posted (incase it is needed) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-z9U9pye9w and the llink to his review he mentions here: http://steamcommunity.com/id/jpfmb/recommended/290650)

[Kelimbror]

This is another gem:

Geez....this is bad. And then I see several of my friends own this game. Was it on sale for pennies or in a bundle? I think the only reason people have it is for trading cards.