Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[Kyanion]

Well, the website is offline now. So hopefully it's online in ~2 hours before I go to bed. Curious to check it out

Ooh can't wait!

[Azrile]

Well, the website is offline now. So hopefully it's online in ~2 hours before I go to bed. Curious to check it out

Remove any mention of KS or cash-shop
Add pre-order button.
Maybe a blog post about the amazing skills of the two new guys, similar to how they did for Teddy.

Not very hard to figure out.

I actually feel very stupid. I have been working all weekend on our save/load game system.. who would have thunk that building an actual game isn´t needed, you just need a website with a pre-order button.

[Kyanion]

The website is up xD!

Edited: soooo, they were forced to ask for donations to get ONE programmer.... now they have... 3?

Edited2:



*clap* I guess that at least those programmers were able to explain them how fucking stupid the MMO plan was =X

Lol so much for a MMO. "Host your own" lol give me a break.
Wow that design is fucking awful. The players wanted a MMO for the huge community/trading/crafting crap and they sure as hell wouldn't get that in a max-64 player experience.

[Azrile]

so um.. what is this.. it is like EQ-next

I laughed at this part

We’re tentatively aiming for 64 simultaneous connections as a baseline, but the exact number of allowed connections on each server will be determined by the server host.

I guess they finally realized they werent´making a MMORPG.

and here it is...

We have not determined a final price point for Exile. However we do plan to offer pre-launch discounts for early supporters who would like to participate in alpha and beta versions of the product.

but all-in-all I was wrong, unless they removed the pre-order button because I kept saying it would be there ( Hi Brax).

They aren´t even hosting the servers..you have to bring your own host?... and yeah.. 64 players...

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.

[Kyanion]

"We have not determined a final price point for Exile. However we do plan to offer pre-launch discounts for early supporters who would like to participate in alpha and beta versions of the product." heh, yeah I wonder if they'll give the game free to the backers who got duped multiple times now? NAHHHHH!

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Can't wait to see the Kool-Aid drinkers on the forums over there. You'd think they'd be pissed about this non-MMO 64 player crap. But we'll see.

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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."

So...infusion of new funding in the means of preorders long before the game is ready? Check!
Work on Toad while holding down our day jobs. AKA doing jack shit while 1 person knew how to code? Check!
Give me a break. TRANSPARENT my ass!

[Azrile]

Almost all of their older player ( Fornax et al) already jumped to that other game that is kinda the same thing, although I think the company actually hosts the servers. Can´t remember the name of it, but it had most of the systems like ToA had planned and was already functioning pretty well.

This smells a bit like Proctor deciding he wanted to do a ´zombie survival game´ because they are popular. You are just making a cheap clone of games that are already out there and will patches and content that you never will. Between Rust, EQ-next, and the one UO-dev game, there are already going to be plenty of these on the market where you host small amounts of people on your their own server... but ToA isn´t even providing the server... and will be done in 20 years..

[Kyanion]

"But part time development on an MMO would send the timeline through the stratosphere" You mean 12-14 years wasn't enough time to learn how to code and make a game?

[Deleted]

Mkay, let's start this shizzle.

As they settled into their roles as developers, it quickly became obvious that the demo wasn’t going to work for us as a foundation for the new design. The code base was written in Unity 4.6 and upgrading to 5.0 would change how some of the behind-the-scenes stuff worked. Sticking with 4.6 was out of the question; too many useful optimizations were promised in 5.0, with new networking features in the upcoming 5.1 version that we would need. The amount of retrofitting required to update the code base would require nearly as much work, and could come back to bite us later. Not to mention that the demo itself had been handled by a single programmer under a serious time crunch; it was not organized in a team-friendly manner.

But not all would be lost in sacrifice to progress; all of the graphical and sound assets and large sections of code could be salvaged and reused with a new, friendlier, foundation. Brax gave the greenlight, and our trio of intrepid programmers began their work in earnest.

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:

Brax laid out before us the skeleton of his plan; we would start with building ToA: Exile, a host-your-own survival sandbox RPG. Our first milestone would be a working client for our backers to test. Then we’d use small iterations to add new functions and features to it, getting feedback from our testers every step of the way. When we reached the point that we had a functioning game that was fun to play, we would submit it to Steam for Greenlighting and Early Access. We would continue the iterations, with more feedback from more testers, and continue development until we had a complete game we could be proud to officially release under the Forged Chaos and Trials of Ascension names.

The plan is indeed Steam Greenlight. Good fun!


And then this part that caught my attention:

Three races is a big order for a game that is supposed to be a scaled back version of a scaled back design. We’d need to carefully select which features we’d start with for each race that would give us the most bang for our buck. The rest would have to wait until after ToA: Exile release or when we moved onto the MMO. Each race needed progression and at least one other feature to make them unique and engaging.

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.

Human features that would be put on hold would include magic; land claiming and formal settlements, and a large chunk of skills.

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

Draconian features that will not likely be included for a while are: the frost breed, flight, breath weapons, and the ancient aura.

No flying dragons, kek.

[Azrile]

"But part time development on an MMO would send the timeline through the stratosphere" You mean 12-14 years wasn't enough time to learn how to code and make a game?

Here is the funny part. they think building this new game will be much easier? You are still going to have to do a lot of the heavy networking stuff... but now you are going to have to make it work when Proctor tries to host a server on his $150 laptop.

Game never gets made either way. They will have a dozen or so people buy into the alpha if it is cheap enough.. but not make any money to actually increase production. You still basically have 2 guys who never made a game before working on it after their real jobs.

I hate being wrong, I wonder how long they will hold-out before they add the pre-order.

[Azrile]

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.

They are absolutely bullshitting about Unity 4.6 and the upgrade to Unity 5. Unity 5 beta was available last summer and it takes almost nothing to transfer your game over. Most games were able to do it in a weekend. The biggest time was changing shaders over to PBR.. but that does not have to be done all at one time, you just change them as you work on them for some other reasons. But still, they had almost no graphics in their game, to completely switch to 5.0 shaders is probably an hour of work. There really was not much else that changed. Making 4.6 to 5.0 seem like some daunting task is just lying. The truth is none of them can touch what Teddy did, like I said before. They need to start over just because they probably already broke demo island.

Yeah, I think they aren´t realizing how many people are going to crush them on steam just because of their past.

Holy hell.. Humans can´t use magic or claim land.. dragons can´t... well. do anything...

It is just stupid.. again it shows how little Brax knows about making a game.. the stuff they are cutting is the easy stuff. except for maybe the settlement stuff.. but heck, with 64 players ( with luck) what is there to build...

[Kyanion]

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.

Heh, so no magic, no settlements/building creations, little skills. Yawn!

I LOVE how they think they're gonna go the Steam Greenlight route! I can't WAIT to bash that shit if it ever happens (which I don't ever see happening, not even fucking close.)

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It's amazing what you miss when you don't look at this thread for a while...

And my God is it ever fun to catch up.

Oh damn is it ever fun

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We want to put the "RPG" back in "MMORPG! and now It was Brax who decided we needed to drop the first “M” from “MMO” and scale back the size to something we could accomplish with a small team within a year or less.

So it is now a MORPG? And they want to do this in a year part time? LOL

[Azrile]

seriously? I missed the part where they said they want to have this done in a year... they said that.. haahaha

[Pizzaman199]

Don't know if any of you guys saw or not. But they're going to be bringing the store back in the future!

So we are going to have a special section of our future store with items that can only be purchased with Forged Chaos Credits.

So yeah, people who donated will still get their monocles and candles!

[Kyanion]

Don't know if any of you guys saw or not. But they're going to be bringing the store back in the future!



So yeah, people who donated will still get their monocles and candles!

Lol Forged Chaos Credits! Oh Boy!

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So, as I understand it, they're now making "ToA: Exile" which is basically a procedurally-generated island for up to 64 people that will be B2P, include as much stuff from the original plan as possible and will go up on Steam? As a scaled back version of a scaled back game?

Then while making this, they're gonna be making the MMO too, with funds from selling this (and it's micro-transactions)?

Ok.

Website is better than before at least.

Yeah I guess one small positive out of all of this, website seems improved.

[Azrile]

They are scaling back their scaled back stuff, none of which was ever made anyway.

In a few months they will scale back again to the point where they are working with Proctor trying to finish his space invaders game... but they will have pre-orders and a cash-shop all ready to go.

[lawow74]

What do these fools think is gonna happen? It's gonna go on Steam and all of a sudden the world will explode and fill with cries of AMG! ToA BEST GAEM EVAR! TAKE ALL MAH MONIES!!!! and they'll be able to hire the MMO Dream Team or some shit?

They'll be lucky to get something as functional as Demo Island back on the table, much less convince anyone it's worth paying money to access it! But I can just imagine all the little heartbroken dragon fanbois reading about 'no flying dragons'...

Also Azrile, the other similarly-structured game you were trying to think of is Shards Online.

[Kyanion]

What do these fools think is gonna happen? It's gonna go on Steam and all of a sudden the world will explode and fill with cries of AMG! ToA BEST GAEM EVAR! TAKE ALL MAH MONIES!!!! and they'll be able to hire the MMO Dream Team or some shit?

They'll be lucky to get something as functional as Demo Island back on the table, much less convince anyone it's worth paying money to access it! But I can just imagine all the little heartbroken dragon fanbois reading about 'no flying dragons'...

Also Azrile, the other similarly-structured game you were trying to think of is Shards Online.

Isnt there some game in the works (may be out already) where you can set up small servers like they are wanting to do with ToA that you can code basically how the world works? But the downside is that it is in that game's system/world.

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Is that Shards Online?

[Azrile]

There are a bunch of them like that. I think EQ Next is the same thing... there is a ´normal mmorpg´ but then you can have your own private server. Rust is like that.. I think Shards is like that.. Like I said, they are like Proctor with his zombie-survival game.. he is just looking at the game that are coming out now and trying to copy them. ToA is just doing the same crap as all these other games thinking it will get them past the greenlight.

Also, with all this transparency, they certainly didn´t mention where they wasted the other $37k.

[Pizzaman199]

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. :/

[Kyanion]

From LORD BRAX: Let's cut right to the topic I know many of you are wanting to know about -- How we are funding the FC staff. Simply put, every person on the team was offered and accepted a royalties contract the on sales of ToA: Exile. I am not going to discuss the details of those contracts but suffice to say the percentages offered far exceeded most of their expectations. Based on the sales of Exile, many will be asked to come on-board full time and will be offered equity in the company.


HAHAHAHA

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"This also means we're not working on Exile full time. We would all love to but the reality is we can't"

yet game wants to be out in a year? derp

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Wow they don't take long to have a new account shill post: "I must say I'm really happy with the choices you guys made!
I mean, except the "Exile" part, the name doesn't sound unique.
Overall, they seem pretty reasonable and realistic, plus the new payment system makes me happy haha
I just wish I had gotten an aplha pass before, seeing how close we seem to be from getting a hold of some ToA.

Best of luck to you all for making our dreams come true." Of course this account was created Aug 4, 2013 but the first post was right as the new forums came up!