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ToA: Exile
Caldicot
Member UncommonPosts: 455
Apparently they are scaling down ToA to become a host-your-own-server game with a maximum of 64 players instead of a full-fledged mmo. I dunno... not what I was hoping for but better than nothing I guess.
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. - Carl Sagan
Comments
We will see. Five months ago Brax had to contract an ex-employee to come back to teach him how to turn on the test server. Now he is designing plans where players can create their own server and bring in 64 friends.. despite the fact that they couldn´t get above 20 players on their own test server.... and that was with nothing going on, just people running around.
That is miraculous learning curve.. he has been at this for 12 years and just learned how to start up a server a few months ago, now he is going to put it on anyone´s home computer?
This is the same as always. Brax is just posting on forums and making a website.. there is no actual game that will ever be made.
People are tired of this GreedMonger / Trials of Ascension crap were people who have never made a game before decide to crowdfund and take pre-orders for a game that doesn´t exist. ToA spent $67,000 to create demo island and it was nothing more than what you ca get from Unity for a few dollars. Now they are starting over... but again with pre-orders and ways to collect money without doing anything.
I'm sorry but when I played in the demo it had over 30+ players, with base building, and gathering trees, and combat with dodging and attacking.... They still have a lot of money left over from the $67k and are using that to continue development. They don't have any kind of pre-orders in existence right now and won't put it on steam until its past a certain point. All backers from the store get EA to the game before its released to steam. They also had Raknar models working in-game and an adult dragon model ready for animations.
I'd look up the definition of fear mongering. Because that's exactly what you're trying to do and spreading misinformation.
Every video and live feed, the most ever shown was 2 or 3 other people. Now if you say they magically have 30.. that is great. But all the people who disappeared after playing ´demo island´ said the same thing.. less than 5 people on the map and you couldn´t do anything except run around as a spider or human... oh, and trees
Gathering trees - you mean trees that you can chop down.. here you go.. 20 minute video on how you can do it yourself in unity. It took this guy 20 minutes to do it WHILE he is explaining how to do it.. if he simply had done it himself, it is a 10 minute job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSbdzZVQWnI Also note the rest of this guys series.. teaches you how to do a ton of stuff.. heck.. if ToA devs would just follow along with that series like newbies, they would be 100 times as far along as they are now... oh wait.. they are stuck on upgrading nothing to Unity 5 ( psst, took huge games a weekend to upgrade).
Base Building - oh, you mean the generic building system that everyone and their mother is now downloading and using. Here you go, knock yourself out, you can buy it for like $50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baorOGOn6qM
Wait, what? You mean they didn´t spend all the $67,000 on the Kickstarter like they promised their fans. People donated to them specifically so they would launch a kick-ass kickstarter.. instead they completely botched the KS ( yet again).. and wait.. now you are saying they kept some of the money? So they kept this money back KNOWING they were going to fail the KS on purpose so they would have money to create a different game? Sounds a lot like GreedMonger.. But wait.. after the KS, Brax said they didn´t know what they were going to do.. so that makes you wonder what his plans were for the rest of the money....
And just to clarify this. When the KS launched.. Brax did not know how to turn on the game server.. The LEAD DEVELOPER did not know how to start the world up. He paid Teddy $30k to work on the game for a year.. Teddy made a lot of progress, and now all of that work is completely lost. On their new roadmap, they are back to ´ press W to move forward´... They are right back to where they were before Teddy started.. and that is NOTHING... you remember last winter, when they were selling eyepatches and dances in a cash-shop before they wrote a single line of code for the game?
I think you fail to realize how trivial some of this stuff is to do. Like Brax said a few months ago. He is not a game developer, he knows nothing about making a game. All he knows is how to post on forums and fake it while collecting money, hopefully to hire someone.. well guess what.. he did that last year.. $67,000 and they had Teddy.. and they completely wasted that money... again.. GreedMonger
They are struggling to get a character controller working? They are struggling ( almost a year now) to Upgrade to Unity 5?
Anyone who has ever used Unity would laugh at the notion that it takes a game 5 months to upgrade to Unity 5 while they are still literally working on their character controller.. which means they have absolutely nothing in the game.. what was there to upgrade? Upgrading to Unity 5 takes most games a few hours... really big games that were finished or nearly finished did it in a few days... ToA devs... 5 months...
These guys are never going to have a game. They are literally back to where someone would be the first hour they download Unity and now they are back to having nobody who ever worked on a game before. Brax registered the domain name back in 2001.. 14 years he has been making websites, posting on forums, begging for money. Let´s see... begging for an angel investor in 2005 for a million dollars. Kickstarter #1 for $750,000, Cash-shop which raised $67,000 which was then used to make a video for Kickstarter #2 which got up to about $25k before being cancelled. Now they are going to do Steam pre-orders, Early Access and I guess another Cash-shop. And after 14 years at this.. Brax still needed to hire an ex-employee to come back and teach him how to turn on the server. sad and pathetic.
Check out Life is Feudal.. pretty amazing that all the fans of ToA disappeared to that game, now suddenly Brax stops developing his MMORPG.. and instead wants to create a clone of that game.
Don´t worry, we will be here along the way.. ´ Press W to walk forward´... it might be awhile. This game is exactly like GreedMonger.. a lead develolper who does nothing but post on forums.
You probably should have looked up the term "vaporware".
Roflmao, “fearmongering” that’s a new one xD!
Dude, anyone with access to google and a little common sense will just avoid Trials of Ascension, it doesn’t matter if you have X or Y running amok “fearmongering” others against it or not… you and Forged Chaos need to understand that you just can’t snap your fingers and make shit vanish from the internet, for example:
http://massivelyop.com/2015/03/04/trials-of-ascension-cancels-second-kickstarter-campaign/
“One team member, who left days into the Kickstarter campaign, posted a behind-the-scenes explanation on the forums about what went wrong. He wrote that he blames the owners for poor decisions leading up to an ill-advised crowdfunding campaign.”
Yet the post quoted in the article is missing, in fact, all the posts made in the thread are GONE and the thread is now closed… actually!
http://s28.postimg.org/j7p56tfe5/Untitled.jpg
All the threads made around the second Kickstarter attempt were wiped clean and closed just to hide the amount of negative blow back they had and stuff like Teddy (their previous Programmer) saying that he had to go back to teach them how to turn on their own bloody servers xD! Yet they keep bragging about “transparency”, rofl!
Not enough? Let’s go back a little more then… back in 2013!
http://s8.postimg.org/cdsf6ntqd/image.jpg
“First, we have experience. No, we don’t have a launcher title under our belt (yet!) but we spent YEARS not just building a fully-functional prototype, but learning every angle of game development, from creating the pipelines and art/coding standards to proper testing methods (white, black, smoke, etc). We went to school, only it was at the school of hard knocks and I don’t for one second regret going through that process – as difficult and painful as it was at time – because we learned things firsthand that game creation schools could NEVER teach you.”
Yet in 2015…
http://trialsofascension.com/forum/t...d-future.4710/
"The three original founders are not qualified to build ToA by ourselves. How's that for a clear, blunt, and candid statement?"
http://trialsofascension.com/forum/t...-3#post-128810
"We told you the whole reason we were going to accept store donations after the first Kickstarter was because we didn't have what it took to get us there and we would be using your money to hire those that could."
… and that was before they even hired Teddy:
http://i1244.photobucket.com/albums/gg570/MyobiPT/Trials%20of%20Ascension/Forum%20Posts%20n%20Threads/Teddy2.jpg
http://i1244.photobucket.com/albums/gg570/MyobiPT/Trials%20of%20Ascension/Forum%20Posts%20n%20Threads/Teddy1.jpg
Like it or not, he flat out lied to his own community and later on that same community donated over 60,000$ to them under the belief that they could actually develop shit at all! It doesn’t matter if they actually intend to actually make a video game or just make some easy cash, they lied and deceived in order to make money, which is called scamming.
Shall I continue or is that enough of “fearmongering” for now? Because I’ve been digging around for quite a while now, they started back in 2001, therefore I got enough to write a fucking book about all of their bullshit…
Hate? Nha! You mistake hate with disgust. I would probably hate them if somehow I had felt for shit such as the “school of hard knocks” and donated over 1,000$ just to find out that the lead developer of the project couldn’t even turn his own servers by himself, since that wasn’t the case, I simply find it disgusting, the way people behind projects such as Trials of Ascension and Greed Monger pretend to be something they are not, doing things they can’t, while sucking up money from those who are naïve and ignorant enough to throw it at them.
Forged Chaos registered their website domain back in 2001, today, freaking July 2015 they are still stuck with nothing due [insert random excuses here] aiming to the most basic shit such as making characters “walk”: http://s11.postimg.org/grx5e18gz/screencapture_www_trialsofascension_com_roadmap.png
Sorry but that is just bloody hilarious… still I understand, it always comes to the “haters”/”trolls”/”lies!” crap, not much to argue against facts anyway.
Not a hater? Let's see.
You've trashed toa on the mmo-champ forums, i dunno, over 100 posts worth? I wouldn't be surprised if it was nearly 200+.
You specifically created an mmorpg account just to trash ToA here.
You specifically created a ToA forum account just to trash ToA there.
and God knows what other websites or youtube videos you may have made trashing ToA there.
It has gotten to the point that there can't even be anymore constructive conversations about the game because people like you attack ToA and its developers. It's like that 1 person who has that loud annoying voice that silences everyone else because of your untamed passionate hate towards ToA lol. So everyone just closes their mouth, shakes their head and walks away.
Haters gonna hate, plain and simple brah
Oh noes, you found out! It is true… I’m a hater lying troll hired by Blizzard to trash Trials of Ascension all around the intrawebz just to get my hands on yer code… yer code… yer code…
Sorry, it’s just hard to take that shit serious at this point, I mean seriously, you can’t be constructive because…. we “hate” trials of ascension? Oh dear lord… /facepalm
The real reason why you can’t be constructive it’s because you have no bloody arguments to argue against tanything of whats presented to you, thus why people like you are limited to pointing a finger and shouting “TROLL”/”HATER!”/”LIER!” and what not, take members such as Fornax and Android for example, they are the top financial supporters of Trials of Ascension, yet they came to this MMO-Champion “trashing” thread you speak of and kept a constructive & polite discussion about it, they brought some really good points that favored Trials of Ascension but they never really just closed their eyes about everything that’s wrong about it, thus why some of them ended up by turning their backs on the project.
Anyway, call if whatever it makes you feel better with yourself, trashing, hating, you name it! I don’t really mind it, after all, my point still stands, Forged Chaos is full of shit, they lied and mislead people into believing they had experience in video game development (as I shown on my previous post) and on top of that they accepted “donations” from the community to hire someone who could do what they claimed to be able to, independently of their ultimate goal, either be actually making a video game or just making some easy cash, that is still called a SCAMMING.
Yawn* Yet another great example of what I was just saying, more finger pointing and name calling, sorry, but the only thing I see around here is your lack of argumentation skills mate.
Unlike yourself and what you accuse me to do, I actually provide facts to back up my claims, I don’t know if you noticed but in my first post there are screenshots of Brax, the “lead developer” claiming to have experience in game-developing back in 2013, yet after the second Kickstarter failure he openly admitted to have none! That my friend is called lying, and when you accept money from someone under a lie such as that is called scamming, it’s that simple.
…but as they say “you can’t argue against facts”, thus why you keep ignoring them while trying to insult me, which is quite ironic, considering that I’m the one who is supposed to be the ranting child around here
Anyway, I’ll tell you what, you keep throwing those insults hoping that they might just stick one day, I’ll just be here ignoring your pointless posts until you actually feel like discussing about the “game” itself.
Ok - are you seeing me providing any 'evidence' or 'facts' about whether ToA is a legitimate game? Are you seeing me posting links or videos of ToA to make my claim that ToA is not a scam? NOPE!
Because this thread is about the new ToA Exile direction; it has NOTHING to do with whether ToA is a scam or whether this is some kind of debate about it. So why are you talking about it?
This is why I originally said 'haters gonna hate' because 'haters' don't care about anything other than trashing the game anywhere they can. I'm not saying it as an 'insult'. I'm saying it because THAT'S WHAT YOU ARE. Go ahead and look at my previous post; the facts are there and you don't have to take my word for it either; look it up yourself.
If you want to talk about whether ToA is a scam or whether the Dev's are fake then we can make a thread about it and have at it but guess what; this isn't the thread for it.
Dat logic mate…. *facepalm*, anyway…
…Guess what! This thread also ain’t about me, yet that’s all you keep talking about, are you really sure you are in the best position to accuse of me derailing the thread? Also take in mind that there is a huge difference from what I actually am to what you THINK I am and honestly I care very, VERY little about what you think I am =/
That said, this thread is about Trials of Ascension and that’s exactly what I was discussing, still if you really feel that I am bringing the thread off-topic, please just report me to the moderation team instead just throwing personal attacks around... "brah".
You're wrong actually. This thread isn't about "ToA" like it's some kind of broad general topic but instead it's about ToA's recent change and direction of the game (which is a big difference) but that didn't stop you from unleashing your ultimate irrefutable argument of ToA being a giant scam. You see the abbreviation "ToA" and that's your immediate knee-jerk response.
So i'm calling you out because, once again, you're here bashing ToA just like how you're bashing ToA everywhere else around the interwebs. That's why when you come up against a hater, there isn't anything anyone can say because at the end of the day we'll all be beating the same dead horse over and over again and having gotten nowhere.
Anywho - sorry if you're taking it as a "personal attack", didn't think you were so sensitive. Will you accept my sincerest apologies?
So on the lines of discussing Trial of Ascension's change over to this new system... I think it's a good move. I think it's the only way that they could actually produce a game at all. But that's just my personal opinion. But we need to give them time to work, to get all their features into the game, things like that. It's only been 2 months so far since they started development up again with their new team. And in that 2 months they've made a lot of progress. Several features have been discussed and explored on their forums and website, their community has grown by something like... 10 members if Elyssia has her facts straight, and the game itself has gotten through several benchmarks.
Wait... you mean those circles on the roadmap means that they're not finished?
Well then I guess in 2 full months of development time with a team of something like 11 members and I believe 4 actual devs, they've managed to get your character to.... walk. And that's it. Blisteringly fast pace they've got over there. This might actually be perfect timing for us. We'll be to the point of retirement when the game's finished. So we'll have all the time in the world to play it.
Oh! Of course this thread isn't about Trials of Ascension, is about Trials of Ascension new direction, a complete different subject! My deepest apologies, how could I be so blind! I'll get back to that right away then…
But first here, allow me to share with you the definition of “personal attack”:
“Making of an abusive remark on or relating to one's person instead of providing evidence when examining another person's claims or comments.”
@ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/personal_attack
As you may see, it has nothing to do with one’s sensibility, it’s just something you keep doing to compensate your lack of arguments, thus why some of your posts were already deleted by the moderation team, I suggest you to chill down a little before it starts happening again.
Anyway, back to the “real topic” then, this “new direction”, so instead of an indie team without any game developing experience wanting to do MMORPG (just the hardest and most expensive genre of game to develop) via the Kickstarter, now we have an indie team without any game development experience wanting to do yet another sandbox survival game via Steam…. Let’s ignore the large variety of sandbox survival games already existent on Steam made by EXPERIENCED developers with funds, games such as Rust, Ark, Grav, Life is Feudal, The Forest and so on…
…tell me, are you aware how Steam Green Light even works? From what I get, you pay 100$ to steam and they allow you to add your project to their Steam Greenlight list, once there ANYONE is allowed to vote thumbs up/down and post comments, once the game reaches the top 100 list by earning thousands of POSITIVE votes, it MIGHT be selected by Steam to become part of the Steam Store, only then it MIGHT give you some profit.
Now tell me, if Forged Chaos considers threads such as the one in MMO-Champion forum with around 10-20 people participating in an open discussion of Trials of Ascension a “problem”, how will they handle the Steam community? Unlike ToA forums & Kickstarter pages, Brax won’t be able to just censor all kind of negative feedback like he has been doing so far, plus usually Steam Community can be far harsher than anyone from MMO-Champion, plus they are far more. I honestly can’t wait to see that….
PS.: By the way, “unleashing your ultimate irrefutable argument of ToA being a giant scam.”, I’m glad that at least you are aware of it
This is now the 3rd or 4th different set of people they have working on the game. Every year they find a new round of volunteers, who take a few months to realize that the 3 stoogies actually have no clue how to make a game, then the entire dev team quits in mass and the 3 stoogies blame them for incompetence and are forced to start over from scratch. Sounds a lot like Greedmonger.
Same 3 lead ´developers´.. looking for Angel Investor, Kickstarter, Cash Shop for a game that didn´t exist, Kickstarter again, and now Steam.. and yet after registering the domain name 14 years ago, they still do not have anything even remotely playable.
These 3 guys couldn´t make a game of hopscotch if you gave them chalk. All they do is post on forums and get suckers to volunteer for a few months.
And as for trolling.. the thread at MMO-Champion has actually been entertaining, which is more than you can say for the non-game that will never get released ( 14 years and counting).
That’s yet another part of the “new direction”! The “transparency”… with was actually part of my first post, therefore I don’t understand how it was “off-topic” =/
@ http://trialsofascension.com/news/article/incoming-website-downtime-more#.VZqf4PlVjy0
… and I quote: “This update will also herald a new level of transparency between us, the team, and you all, the community. We’ll be sharing our development progress in weekly Community Updates, along with a team dev-blog to give you all insight into our inner workings (also weekly).”
After 14 years they finally reveal the real names behind this project and starting making “blogs” of the shit they are supposedly working on… yet they brag of “transparency”, meanwhile posts such as:
“Hey guys, Xanward here. Now that the Kickstarter has suddenly ended, I'm making this post. I had promised I would wait until after the Kickstarter ended, out of the work he was trying to do in salvaging the mess of a project.
A few days into the Kickstarter, I left the ToA team. During my time with ToA, I was leading the charge of our media relations, including press sites, anything else press release, streamer coverage, and our youtube network. I was first made aware of ToA during the last failed Kickstarter, and reading over the guide, I thought there were some incredibly impressive ideas. It certainly suffered from feature bloat, but, I thought that the owners would be able to cut back and roll out sections at a time so that the most important people here could play something - you, the community.
I see a lot of talk about how there is no hype for ToA. Why did we wait so late to have a stream put up? Why is there such a lack of transparency? The best answer I can give you to that is that I don't have a damn clue. Back in July of 2014, after the MMO-C thread brought to the media team's attention that we didn't have enough transparency, we had planned to have a blog post every other week talking about and showing what the team was working on, as well as a monthly video to showcase the progress we were making. It happened for about...a week or two. Then the ball was dropped. Not by the media team, mind you, but by the Owners. We were told that they didn't have enough time to do a monthly video or provide these updates. There wasn't much I could do, so I let the matter drop with a sour taste in my mouth. I don't understand why content is being hidden behind a paywall on our forums. It's not going to draw in more people. If anything, it's going to drive them away. It's a method that screams vaporware. "Oh, you want to see what we're working on? Give us $50 and you can see!" Of course, from the work Teddy has done, we're not a vaporware project.
This leads to another two points I want to address. 1. The team structure 2. The cash shop. #1. The team structure is lead by the three owners. Teddy (as far as I know) was the only paid team member. Everyone else was a volunteer. The media team members, of which a few dropped off volunteered to do the socials while I volunteered to do the press -- which I do professionally and have numerous connections in. Yevi as a volunteer was doing database work. Gassy as a volunteer was doing modeling. The owners, on the other hand, did as follows: Brax: Game design and sculpting the demo island, Varl: Lore, Loestri: Finances. There may have been a split between game design between the three, but I have no idea. As you'll notice the skillset of the owners is lacking towards building an mmo, but with the right leadership and talent it is possible to bring a volunteer team together to build a reduced-scope project and contract the missing pieces. However, there is delusion on the team. There seems to be an attitude that the ToA name and design characteristics itself will be enough to carry the project. The design sounds amazing, on paper. But as a game developer you need to draw in the project so that you can actually present something - especially when you are taking money. As part of this attitude, there is this weird focus on lore in some of the team members, using time that could be better spent doing other tasks that will actually help making the project succeed. Lore is great in a game, don't get me wrong, but it requires a game. Lore is read by something like 2-7% of a userbase, statistically. The ToA team has three people contributing to lore. Elyssia, Onedia, and Varl.
The second point I want to address is the cash shop. The prices within it were ridiculous. We're an unreleased title, and there's no reason why there should have been so many items at such high costs. It looks shady and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Especially when so much is promised to people that back the cash shop. Certainly, they're legally donations, but people expect something in return. So much time was spent hyping the cash shop to raise funds for the demo, and we were quite effective at that. But it only served to continue to milk our community, and it was a concern I brought up. If we continue to raise funds from our existing userbase, when the Kickstarter came around there would be no one to pledge unless there was a serious effort made. Optimally, I stated we needed to multiple our registered community by five in order hit an number that came close to feasible.
This brings me to the Kickstarter. Before Kickstarter, BLD and I had been working diligently on a streamlining and press partnership program. We had arranged for some large streamers and youtubers to cover ToA through our YT network, as well as other contacts, and we had mentioned that we needed to stream as much as possible in the week leading to, and especially during the Kickstarter. It would, at least attempt to make up for the lack of regular updates by the owners, expose ToA to new audiences, and hopefully raise our image that has already been dragged through the mud by our lack of transparency, as well as a few lies that came from the overzealous community of MMO-C. The day of the Kickstarter, an announcement that we'd be on IRC instead of streaming was made without BLD's and my knowing. Then we were told we would be unable to stream at that time. The kickstarter should have been postponed at that point, but the launch button was hit. It was then I saw a goal of $600,000, and I knew immediately that the Kickstarter would fail. That was $20,000 a day, and there was NO WAY we could hit that. We don't have the userbase. In our Kickstarter feedback in-house, I had suggested that we cut back the scope of the game extremely and use a kickstarter goal of 50-60K, and then as the funding goes up, have stretch goals to reinstate features. This feedback was ignored, and I feel like had we done that we could have actually been successful (if the streaming and media hadn't been ****** over.)
Ultimately, I feel like I have failed you guys as a community. I know there's nothing else I could have done, as it all comes down to the ownership. I apologize that your money was taken, and there is little to show for it, in the future-sense. I fear that under the current management, ToA will never see the light of day as it was promised to you.
I would also like to address the MMO-C community. I fear that I owe (most of you) some sort of apology. I fear I was misinformed when I first stepped foot in your community, and at the volunteer team had expected better. Azrile is correct that we attempted to implement changes in response to some of his points that had merit, but for the most part they were ignored here. I would like to address two of his points he enjoys commonly going back to. #1 Alexa data. The way Alexa traffic works on a website, is that in order to calculate it's numbers it requires users to have a browser plugin that uses the alexa api. There are quite a few of them, however, I don't know many people that actually use any. This is likely the weirdness in traffic that he was seeing. #2 Fake forum users. As far as I am aware, no one on the development team had ever partook in this activity, nor I do I believe any of our members did. You are welcome to state that writing styles are similar, but that's not much of an accusation. He mentioned that I personally had used alts (as well as called me a woman in marketing), so it's probably extremely baseless and I don't think anyone on the development team is classless enough to take part in that activity. On a note, some of their users tried to come here to actually discuss ToA, such as Myobi, and I feel he is owed a personal apology. I didn't partake in attacks against him, but there were good points brought up, and I don't enjoy when people are attacked for trying to facilitate discussion, even if you disagree with points they've made.
I fear that the volunteers have done what we could, and the owners may have had the best intentions, but at this point, I don't think ToA will see the light of day. And I apologize to both the ToA community and some of the MMO-C community for this. We both had our fair share of zealots, and I think we can agree that zealots are deplorable in any manner.
Ninja edit: I do want to say that I hope ToA does come around in some fashion in the future. I think the realistic vision is something that I would greatly enjoy playing.”
By Xenward ToA ex-media team leader
“Im under NDA so I cant talk about the other expenses, but ill shoot out this number since I was given permission and I think you guys deserve to know where your money was spent in a very specific way. I have nothing to hide.
I was paid 23,000 last year at a rate of initially 500/week, 4 months later increased to 700/week. This year I was payed again 700/wk untill 2/18. I Left FC one day before the KS campaign started because me and the three owners had some disagreements/trust issues. After I left, I still consulted with them over a few things like teaching Yevi/Brax how to turn on the servers and as well as fixing some left over bugs.
In total its been just about $28,500 pre-tax.
...ON a bit of a separate note though, I wish I could be streaming the demo to you all and have you all play the game, because when some people are saying the graphics are "from the 1900's" or something I just cringe thinking that they are unaware of the games current state. The demo itself is actually quite far I think considering the circumstances of me being the one programmer and only a year to develop. I would LOVE to go over EVERY SINGLE feature that is currently coded in the game, but I cant due to the NDA, and me not being part of FC anymore. In regards to the graphics though, I did a side by side comparison of ToA, and H1Z1.http://postimg.org/image/n9mt77dix/
In my opinion, its not that far off graphically. Their model is maybe a bit better? but overall? ...maybe I just don't see it? Have I just been looking at it too long? I don't think graphics are the problem here.
I talked to a fan in real life who I met at a local game development group I go to, who has been following the game for years. 2 days before KS I talked with him and asked what he thought of the Raknar race that walks on walls. He responded with (again, 2 days before kick-starter) "The Raknar is in game?" ... Raknar have been in game for at least 2 months now? So how is it that he doesn't know? There is just a huge lack in sharing and transparency into the development.
I'm honestly confused as to why people think the game looks like shit/has nothing in it/Same as 6 months ago with unity default X... when I go to MMO-C or something. (I know I shouldn't go there, but I cant help myself). I mean, I am not stupid, I am VERY honest with myself, and am not AT ALL afraid to admit that something I created sucks if it really does. But common, really? I am still convinced people are saying this game looks like shit because either their expectations were way to high for a demo, or they haven't got their hands on it. perhaps your asking how can I be so blissfully ignorant? I dont think its ignorance, because when we did testing with our 25+ testers, people were having fun. Its as simple as that.
Me and Kaoshae messed around with the melee combat just dueling for hours after a test. We left the servers on overnight as a thank you for helping record the KS video, and people stayed on ALL NIGHT building a maze structure, a giant palace, and other cool creations. People would stay after recordings and just **** around for hours. No one does that if the game is total shit. People play the raknar, go into a cave, crawl around on the ceiling and without fail, every person says "damn this is cool". Every single person.
So why is it that we cant convey that to the masses? Honestly this is partly what me & owners disagreed on was the amount of transparency, but that was not my job or my decision. I would love nothing more then to have the game be streamed on twitch, give a hundred+ people clients, and just go at it. (at this point there isnt much to lose?) And I don't even work for FC anymore, but to see people shit on what I did over the past year because they just don't know and assume the worst, damn...of course I want to fix that. (in case you are wondering, I cant "just do it" because I am under an NDA)
That being said, the demo is not a legendary piece of software that will magically change everyone's opinion, but I guess I just feel there are a lot of uninformed accusations which is mostly the fault of ToA PR and lack of transparency into the development. Some of you will hate the game no matter what, but I truly feel that some of you would have a change of mind if you saw a stream, or got your hands on it. Is it possible that the testers were all having fun because they were long time fans, and just enjoyed being part of the process? Maybe, but I really don't think so, and if that was the case, then shame on me for thinking otherwise and getting outside opinions. I would love to get informed feedback on what your think sucks so I can make it better in my next game. Its just sad to me though when people assume there is nothing there, because its not being shared well.
ALL that being said though, lack of transparency and not sharing is only one of the various reasons the KS is not looking so hot. To me though, tis just the one reason that I am most closely related to, so I care more about it? I already asked and there was no response, but Maybe Brax will lift my NDA and I will be able to share a little more in regards to the game itself. As he said in the OP, I personally feel the demo is far beyond what many games come to KS with; just need to show it.”
By Teddy ex-ToA Programmer
Are being deleted from Trials of Ascension forums together with all content considered “negative” towards the project, yet another great example of this "transparency" is a post made by Fornax, a member who supported financial this project quite a lot:
https://www.trialsofascension.com/forum/threads/questions-about-the-roadmap-tracker.4947/
Originally that wasn’t even a thread, it was a reply made by Fornax to another thread made by Bowen about the Roadmap, yet, I’m guessing due its “negative” content it was turned into a thread and locked shortly after. There is nothing transparent about this kind of behavior and certainly there ain’t anything “new” about it, and that’s exactly how they have been dealing with all kind of negative feedback towards the project since the very start of it, censor what they can and shout “troll!” and what they cannot.
Edited:
http://trialsofascension.com/news/article/dev-blog-4#.VZvD-vlVjy0
HIMLAD: "I have finished up the character animations. Here is a short video so you all can see. I am not quite happy with the blocking animations yet as just the arm moves. I am not sure if this was how it was before but I guess it will do for now."
http://s2.postimg.org/7dnm6rdk9/d_G59_Oq_S.png
"The curiosity in the new members of our team is understandable but rest assured that ToA is in good hands. Jason Sims and Geoff Maddox each have over 15 years of professional programming experience . They are both proficient in C#, Python, C++ and a variety of other languages and programs including Unity."
@ ;https://www.trialsofascension.com/forum/threads/were-continuing-development.4823/
Let me guess, your "professional programmer" was forced to format his computer, but he was so excited to keep working on Trials of Ascension that he forgot to activate his windows, am I right? Still isn’t it ILLEGAL to use unauthenticated software, especially when you are using it to develop a product to sell? Just askin.
Wow, what a funny slam on Myobi... ´you are obessed, you posted over 100 times in a thread on MMO-Champion´..
How about this. Brax registered a domain name 14 years ago, has made 1000s of posts, has done dozen of interviews, IRC chats, dozens of Youtube videos...Has now had 4 different websites for this game, has opened and closed 3 sets of forums for this game. Has gone through 3 or 4 different ´teams´ of developers who all quit after a few months.
And this week, the latest and newest video of the game is of a character running forward on a blank white world.
14 years of pretending to be a game developer, and that video is what the game is and what a ´professional´ game developer was able to produce using an illegal copy of Windows.
Just so everyone reading this thread knows, this gem of a character (Azrilee) was banned from mmorpg before for making outrageous flame threads about ToA. He posted under the username "Azrile" and was banned almost exactly 1 year ago.
So yeah, there you have it. Stand up guys eh? Let's believe EVERYTHING they say right? lol
Roflmao, yeah this coming from someone that just got multiple posts deleted by the moderation team in this very thread due flaming, dat hypocrisy has no bounds god damnit xD
Plus, have you notice? Every single post in this thread made by you is either personally directed to me or Azrile, you haven’t yet said a word about this “new direction” of Trials of Ascension, not to mention that so far it seems the only way you have to defend the project is by harassing anyone with a negative opinion towards it, you are not even trying to prove us wrong, by the contrary, you already even admited it to be a scam.
Edited: Also, as I shown you already Brax also lied about his experience in game developing, yet not only you keep trusting him and defending "his work" but you (as in, the community) threw him over 60,000$ in "donations"... just sayin.
I am not Azrile, I am just a fan of his from another forum.
His claims were outrageous. You mean like the post he made in a thread that said the ToA devs had no gamemaking skills and were scamming people by having a cash-shop that was selling virtual items in a game that didn´t exist. Shall we recap.
Dec 2013 - ToA opens cash shop and sells eyepatches, candles and dance moves
Feb 2014 - Teddy writes first line of code for the game.
Jan 2015 - Xansword and Teddy quit ToA in disgust at how horrible Brax did things. Brax admits he has no game making skills and had to pay Teddy extra to come back to even teach him how to turn on the servers.
Everything Azrile stated came to pass. The non-developers were not even able to get close to making a game capable of being supported on a Kickstarter. They spent $67,000 to produce a ´game´ that was not even able to reach $30k in KS pledges. How pathetic is that, spend so much money to advertise a KS, and not even make back half the money.
And to this day.. despite 14 years. Brax has still done no work on the game, has not used any of his own money and has not bothered to learn any game-making skills. All he does is posts on forums and begs for money. Exactly like Proctor from Greedmonger, they are like soulmates.
By the way Choch, I couldn’t help but to notice that from your 160 posts almost every single one of them is ToA related, with is quite funny considering your previous comment about my number of posts over MMO-Champion, mind if I ask you who are you exactly? I mean, there is no one by the name of Choch in ToA forum, I’m assuming that you must be Eroszabi considering the amount of hypocrisy & insults from the post you keep making, am I any close?
Anyway... mind explaining me this thing about the “ToA Raffles” now? Because this is what google tells me:
“1. a means of raising money by selling numbered tickets, one or some of which are subsequently drawn at random, the holder or holders of such tickets winning a prize.”
Doesn’t this goes against what Forged Chaos said about not trying to suck up any more money out of their community anymore? Just asking.
That is related to the change in Forged Chaos' development plans. There will be servers hosted by them first, then later player run servers. Eventually, over time the game will be upgraded to a full MMORPG.This plan allows the development team the time to develop the core game mechanics and allow backers to give the game a try while development continues towards the final goal of fully developing Trials of Ascension: Exile into the full MMORPG Trials of Ascension.
Their website has the latest info including weekly updates they are publishing now. Not all the new information is there yet, but they are working on that.
Eventually? Over time? Really now… Because according to Varl, they have been at this “game development thing” for the last 15 years ( Source: http://s1244.photobucket.com/user/MyobiPT/media/Trials of Ascension/Hero Engine Forum/ForgedChaosLLC.png.html?sort=4&o=2 ) and so far they don’t have ANYTHING even close to playable xD!
Plus, I suggest you to do a little research about MMORPG development, seriously!