LordBenji

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Posts posted by LordBenji

  1. Posted · Edited by LordBenji

    1 hour ago, ShiEksdee said:

    I too think it's more poor development choices (but with a healthy dose of some shady practices). After all, a game of this undertaking by highly inexperienced devs who are also few in number? Not IMPOSSIBLE to pull off, but near it. It's the trying to pass off actual images found online as their own concept art and other revelations that make it point more towards "shady". But blind followers claimed this was normal (it isn't by the way) and they'd "rather have them spend time on actual dev than conceptual art anyway" when BY THE WAY, conceptual art IS part of development and can very well be a crucial step in making smart choices when developing a game's areas. Now I agree you can cut and paste images from online to have "mood board", as long as you just use these things for referencing to make designs in-game..........but........

    They tried to pass it off as their OWN conceptual art. NOT COOL. I really grow wary of teams that leak this sort of deception, especially so early on.

    I also find it highly incompetent that they'd splurge all the backers' moneys on a fancy office while obviously pouring very little into actual development. And the tracker thing? Very deceiving as well. It lead people to believe that the tracker's tasks were direct in proximity with release date and that has now turned out to NOT be the case.

    And promising better/more updates AFTER Town Square..........well, that's good and fine, but don't stay mum in the meanwhile while your backers set out to rot. This whole thing stinks of terrible and unprofessional practices, misappropriated funds, and a pinch of things that are quite shady from a development standpoint. No means did I say scam, but IT IS SHADY and UNDERSTANDABLE that people may think it is a scam because of this shadiness  and there's no denying that it's a shady mess when the proof is there to stare you in the face. Unless of course you're a blind as a bat follower. And by blind I mean someone who likes to pick and choose what problems to ignore and pretend aren't there.

     

    I understand that this is your opinion, and I also love your word selections like "shady", "highly incompetent", or "terrible and unprofessional".

    Yes it is clear they are not very experienced in the game development industry, since it's their first game they're actually developing. I haven't personally made a background check for each developers but I'm not bothered spending time on that. I can't say they've been the best or made the best choices, that simply isn't true and we all know that.

    I'm not going to defend what they've done with the concept art. It is true they have took real images to put it in a collage. But it simply doesn't bother me enough to rant about it. Maybe it's not normal, but who cares? After all they'll just create something based on that picture, it's just for reference as far as I know.

    As for what they do with the backer's money, I'm not sure that they'd spend all their money just to upgrade their office. They've raised about $800k according to the Dev Blog #010 at that time, and they were ready to move in an office so that they could work more efficiently and hire more developers. As to fancy, well it sure does look good, but it doesn't necessarily mean it was all that expensive. Plus it's smaller than you think, it just looks like one main room, with a few other rooms, and don't forget it's a rented space.

    And for the tracker, I understand it lacks a lot of information, and it may mislead people into thinking that the various progress bars are directly proportional to the time it could take to be completed. I also want to bring up that not everyone necessarily know what's going on in the background of each tasks. It may seem useless at this point when you just see one task visually idle for over a month. But I know that when working on a task, even when it's in testing, it also implies a ton of work. We all say there's bugs, but depending how deep it is, it's not as easy as some people think it is. Ah the perks of working on a heavily modified Unreal Engine. Plus upgrading versions may cause unforeseen issues. What can we do, it's their choice and they were not satisfied with what the game engine had to offer.

    But again, I understand you stand on a different view of things and your opinion differs from mine. But I think it only comes to where you draw the line whether you care or not about certain decisions being made. But hey, let me list you some things that made me upset but still decided to move on.

    Oh dear delays. I've seen those guesstimates, but I decided to live with it since it wasn't really any official dates. Then I was happy about the first date, and when I saw it was delayed, oh I started being a bit more skeptical, but still decided to give them a chance since it was their first official date being delayed. Then the second official one. At that point, I was like screw it, I'll take dates or estimations with a grain of salt. So now that's why I keep saying it'll come out when it's ready and in a playable state. No matter how many times they'll say soon, I just don't even care anymore.

    Le crime video. Boy that moment in history was so toxic I had to stay away from the Discord for a little while. It did leave me with mixed feelings, since they used assets that was a few years old, so many placeholders, and the driving physics (which I knew wouldn't reflect what they aim to do). I knew a lot of things wasn't perfect, and I also knew they wanted to show a gun play video for over a year and just showcase a few features. But again, I moved on.

    Public relations. Yep, the way they communicate to us. Well okay sure Beach_Ball did his best and answered as many Q as possible and helped with account support. But still, I think they could improve their communication in a much better way. For now, it just seems like a mess of Discord messages lost in the general chat, Twitch clips that I'm sure not everyone is interested to look into, and forum replies here and there on the forum. So my idea is that they could gather valuable information, certain updates, bugs they find or fixed, in a dedicated thread on forum and channel on Discord. They could also do a Q&A dedicated channel on Discord too.

    Yeah I know, long post, but I wanted to give my feedback on it.

  2. Posted

    11 hours ago, Hsmith24 said:

    i love trying to piss people off omegalul

     

    wikipedia, great source

     

    Hold on. *Opens my list of people to accidentally reverse with my van and blame them for being in my blind spot.* Alright you'll have a privileged spot there mate. Also if your purpose is to irritate people in here, that is called trolling, which isn't very appreciated in here.

    And of course Wikipedia is a wonderful source, it helped me out in so many cases! But some people call it the lost encyclopedia, which I don't blame them.

  3. Posted

    On 9/26/2018 at 3:57 PM, Hsmith24 said:

    No, Rockstar said it took around 11 years for them to make, I think it was more actually but you are wrong either way

     

    Erm, source? I mean I haven't seen any game in my existence that took that long to develop.

    "Preliminary work on Grand Theft Auto V began after Grand Theft Auto IV's release in April 2008 full development lasted approximately three years."

    Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Grand_Theft_Auto_V#Development

  4. Posted

    There's a couple things that tickles me with what you said. Let me explain it to you.

    2 hours ago, rabban98 said:

    i think more then 50% of us who buy identity start thinking [...]

    More than 50%? I'm really questioning your reasoning behind that exaggerated number. Who bought? Did you mean who pledged?

    2 hours ago, rabban98 said:

    the game never gonna realise

    Never say never. Unless you have a very strong argument to prove your point. For now, I see progress, which leads me to believe it will eventually release.

    2 hours ago, rabban98 said:

    they just want to scam us

    I feel like the word "scam" is being overly used. The definition of scam often implies fraudulent acts in order to get money, to trick people in a dishonest way. Whether you think they are fooling us or not is your own opinion, but I don't consider this as a scam. Maybe they have overly used words like soon or imminent, which has led some people to think it is a scam. Or maybe they have put new items in the store that some people think of a cash grab opportunity. I mean is it suspicious? Perhaps, but I don't let all those things alarm me as some other people do.

    3 hours ago, rabban98 said:

    look at updates, last was 10 july, did u know why they dident update more?

    Because of the way the task tracker is made, there's nothing to visually change to represent those updates. I'm sure you've been missing a lot of information, especially if you don't use Discord.

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    Motown shortly said after that the bug with voice connection is fixed.

    To sum it up, the testing phase is basically finding and fixing undesirable bugs that would leave a game breaking experience. It also implies thoroughly testing each features to see if any other bugs would arise. Some bugs are much more deeper than others and can take more time to pin point the source.

    3 hours ago, rabban98 said:

    because they have said in all their updates "we are really really close no we JUST NEED TO FIX THIS AND THIS AND THIS, 

    I just explained it in more details, but I think the frustration just hit you. Game development in a small team like Asylum will have hurdles.

    3 hours ago, rabban98 said:

    JUST LOOK WHAT THEY UPDATED? A NEW WEBSITE WITH SHOP!! WITH A F***ING SHOP GUYS SO U CAN SPEND MORE MONEY FOR NOTHING, USELESS I HOPE SOMEONE UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS PHATETIC 

    Please tell me why is it such a problem to have a shop? They've always said they wanted to add micro transactions for cosmetic items. And you don't spend money for nothing, you spend money mainly to support the development of this game, and to receive pledge rewards. It might be useless for you, but for a supporter like me, it's a good opportunity to help Asylum out.

    But anyways. I'm not to the point of finding all of this pathetic, nor will I ask for a refund. Yes I've been upset with certain things, like the crime video and the two delays that happened. Yes they could have shown more updates on the forum instead of posting some messages mostly on the general Discord channel. But I don't let these things put me down.

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    9 hours ago, wiebley said:

    it's been 'soon' for 6 months... Imagine the wait for a 'we're developing it now'! Unfortunately I think they are developing module 2 now unless I am mistaken so in all honesty, 2020? 

     

    There's nothing wrong to work on some assets for module 2. Artists make art stuff, which is already done on Town Square. I mean they can add more but it's stuff that isn't needed for TS to release.

    4 hours ago, TOPGUNGUY123 said:

    well that's odd beacuase I was told by a moderator which I wont mention by name that said the only issues they are dealing with were the elevator and designing apartments. they also had a issue with server crashes that has mostly been resolved. when did Motown post that? I see it says today but I mean did you find it in a photo form somewhere or was that on the discord today? 

     

    That was posted by the Community manager on the 26th of September (2018). Also he mentioned later that the voice connectivity issue is fixed (which was really quick according to timestamps), and that the furniture bug should be fixed relatively soon(tm).

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    And from what I know, there is (or was?) issues with elevators, apartments. The one with chairs apparently is older than I thought, and is a deep bug which will take more time to fix.

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  6. Posted

    Module is broken at its current state, which is why the Q&A + Gameplay stream in Discord announcements was delayed for a week (yep, you heard me, delay).

    NmnxuqK.png

    Now I wonder if you'd still enjoy Town Square if it was released now, or would you prefer that those issues are fixed?

  13. Posted

    On 9/20/2018 at 9:04 PM, mm96631 said:

    I also backed on kickstarter way back in the middle of 2016. I also requested a refund lately. I just simply cannot see anything close to a finished open world gameplay with all the jobs and all the different activities that promote interaction being completed anytime soon. I simply don't see how that is possible, there is still an entire world that needs added in, and with all the different things we were supposed to be able to do I was picturing something at least the size of a DayZ or even a GTA5 map.

     

    Wait wait wait, hold on a second. I'll disregard the fact you mentioned the wrong year of Kickstarter, but okay about the whole game with jobs and activities in the open world. I get it if you're unsatisfied with the large time frame it would take to release such big game. But in my opinion, it would be impossible to release within 3-4 years with a small team starting from around 5 developers slowly growing up to around 20. Also what takes time is the programming, not level designing. But they haven't got to hire someone for laying out assets on the whole map.

    4 hours ago, mm96631 said:

    At this point we have one single town block that still has not been released because of one single user interface bug, and no real information on what it is or what is taking so long to fix it.

    More like multiple critical bugs that absolutely requires fixing, and lots of heavy feature testing to make sure fixing one bug didn't create a few more. It's not just that bug deeper down the game engine. They went through a bug causing the database to crash with inventory system, the elevators were wonky but it got fixed, and more recently they mentioned about a bug concerning sitting down... Quite odd they didn't see it before to be honest. Although, we're very limited to what information they're giving us, since it's a matter of what John or Motown says and that moderators share (mostly on Discord).

    5 hours ago, mm96631 said:

    Also, don't forget the fact that back then it was supposed to be a playable game by now.

    We all know they missed it and underestimated the amount of work needed. Probably shouldn't have put any optimistic estimations.

    5 hours ago, mm96631 said:

    It is already known that they have ran into problems previously and started completely over again. This tells me they are not planning ahead correctly and the further they get into the project, and the more stuff they try to integrate and tie together the more likely they are to run into similar issues.

    Yep, it's known they have redone TS 3 times, UI 2 times, and how many times for character models, no clue. And what's wrong to restart something you don't like how it ended up at the beginning? Well okay I get it, they've redone it a few times, which costs lots of time and resources. But I think it was just on the visual side of things, since they've mentioned about how the original version of TS was flat and dull.

    I won't deny that they might have not planned correctly at first, because we all know they've done mistakes, and it's a learning curve. But for the issues, I'm not sure what you're talking about to be honest. They've only changed the visual layout of Town Square as far as I known. Sure they'll encounter issues when integrating different systems together, but that's irrelevant to TS being redone or their planning.

    5 hours ago, mm96631 said:

    We are also expected to believe they are handing out steam keys early and at different times to reduce the load on their servers. If that is going to cause an issue for the servers, then how are these servers ever going to power a game like this?

    The website itself seems to be on GoDaddy, but unsure about some other features. Game servers are different and shouldn't be affected.

    5 hours ago, mm96631 said:

    It is not out of the realm of possibilities that they have hit yet another roadblock and are hoping that everyone will redeem their keys so they don't have to give every one refunds when they come clean about it, is it?

    It's possible to not claim the key too, and ask a refund... 

    5 hours ago, mm96631 said:

    Meanwhile, every other game on steam is capable of refunds.

    Yeah but there's some policies and conditions in order to be able to be refunded. Although, I never really tried to refund a Steam game that was purchased from an external store.

    4 hours ago, mm96631 said:

    The purchases were not made through steam, surely there is a way to issue a refund via original payment method and block the users key/game from working.

    If you purchased the game from PayPal, it's not under Asylum's control, plus they're inconsistent with how refunds are handled. Plus it was clearly said that once the keys are claimed on your Steam account, it's permanent.

    3 hours ago, mm96631 said:

    I can read. That is the BS answer I am talking about. They could still refund through the original payment provider and ban/block that user from accessing the game. Furthermore, even if it is impossible, that does not take away the fact that it looks like a sneaky trap. 

    I'm not gonna argue with you, you believe what you want. For me this has scam and failure written all over it.

    Banning or blocking a user seem to be a lame way to prevent someone from accessing the game after issuing a refund. But that's just my thought. Also why do you think it's a trap? If you claim the key, it's because you want access to the module/game. If you don't want it for whatever reason, and request a refund, it would be more wise to not touch the key.

    Oh and one last thing, do you want to know the real definition of scam and failure? Nine to Five... Enough said.

  14. Posted

    24 minutes ago, Kevin15673 said:

    After I sign into steam to link my account, it just says that wwwidentityrpg.com’s server IP address could not be found, and I have tried on multiple browsers.

     

    It seems to be a server side issue from the looks of it. Nothing we can do about it unfortunately.

    22 minutes ago, LightBringer said:

    Been getting a lot of reports today about that. I’m not too educated on the specifics of it but I believe it has to do with the office’s power being out. There were 2 devastating tornados that ran right through the borders of the town and power went out everywhere. 

     

    I'm not too sure how the tornado affected the servers. I was looking at the power outage map and it doesn't seem that Asylum Office is in it.

    REzmBoB.png

    23 minutes ago, Kevin15673 said:

    Well it's kinda odd that that one branch of the website doesn't work, but the rest of it does.

     

    I looked up the identityrpg domain and it seems like it's from GoDaddy, which is a hosting company. I'm not sure about certain other functionalities of the website like Steam login.

  15. Posted

    I can understand both point of views.

    I'm myself a pledger since the end of 2016, and when I looked at the project, I was interested to support them so it could become a great game. I pretty much devoured all bits of information they were giving us, then I put it aside and only checked from time to time to see what's going on. Then I've started becoming more active on the forum, and found out about the Discord. Then I've checked the stream clips, looking at those that I'm interested into and so far I wasn't upset.

    But let's get to the point, they kept saying things were getting close, but I didn't really mind, since everything was subject to change and they didn't make anything official. When they released the crime video, I was like oh boy. Lots of people were disappointed, and I did have mixed feelings about it. Another time, I was in the voice channel talking with LightBringer and one of the dev blog just came out and it was about the first release date being pushed back. I was like oh no... I knew a lot of people would be really upset and so did I. I started being a bit sketchy about it but I decided to still wait. And when they said they couldn't release it yet and put the task tracker, I was like alright, I'm not caring anymore about those time frames. I'll just wait like a good boy and keep telling myself it'll be out when it's ready.

    Once it'll be out, then I'll probably start recording clips where I give my opinion, what I like or dislike. I'll probably mess around and see if I can find bugs too. 

  17. Posted

    I'm glad to see people being still enthusiast about Identity. I personally have been very generous towards the developers with the loyal pledges I've done through time. I've seen quite a lot of events in the past, good or bad, but I'm still here.

    I'm not saying developers are perfect, nobody is. Things has been very slow at the beginning, and as they got more and more people working on Identity, they thought things were going great, but clearly underestimated the load of work required to finish the module. I was a bit disappointed when those two delays happened, but I just want them to take their time. Sure a lot of young people will put a lot of pressure, but I think they don't have the same standards.

    On 9/13/2018 at 3:52 PM, LightBringer said:

    I would be lying if I said I never once though about leaving, taking a break, etc. from the game and community.

    I can understand it can be rough to deal with community at times. But I think you've been doing a great job. I personally would be sad to see you go...

    Sometimes too much negative vibes can really affect a person. But please stay strong Light!

    On 9/15/2018 at 7:03 PM, Jinx said:

    FINISH it to YOUR standards, STOP giving out deadlines and the best of luck in your endeavours.

    ^ Words. They've said in a long time they wanted to work on the game at their own pace, without being dictated or given deadlines. Hope they don't announce official dates anymore. I don't mind guesstimates, but people often tend to consider those as "official" and will rant about more delays as soon as it's not being met.

    On 9/15/2018 at 9:14 PM, dagtag said:

    next time, [...]

    Hmm I may have missed something there buddy. Was I too late to see someone who's post got hidden/removed?

    16 hours ago, wiebley said:

    If I were to commission a painting... I wouldn't thank the artist for telling me that it's almost finished for 6 months with no evidence, or for showing me loads of different paints that could be on my painting, or if my artist was selling a load of other shit before they had finished the original painting. 

    "With no evidence", what do you mean? I've seen the stream video and it definitely shut some mouths and changed the mind of some others. And that was within 3 months and a half. And if you don't want to thank the artist (or the developers in this case), it's up to you. I personally thank them and want them to keep on going. And I don't mind about the extra stuff being sold. Sure it's pricey, but you have to remember they are pledge rewards.

    16 hours ago, wiebley said:

    It's getting to the stage where he may write another one called 'The Identity Delusion'. It would feature extracts from all the fanboys on this forum against all the people living in the real world. It will be a thrilling read!

    You say "fanboys", I say "people who are supporting the devs". I've seen quite a lot on the forum and on Discord especially. And it's much much more than just fanboys and people who live in the real world. What about the people utterly upset who trolls and just want reactions from others and doesn't bother to read anything? And the people who exaggerate things and laugh at others? And the ones who's being very patient and tolerant, regardless of the mistakes done by Asylum? And the ones still being skeptical but asking questions without letting their emotions take control of their mouth? Of course I could add more to the list but anyways.

    Hope you'll enjoy reading that novel, if it'll release.

  18. Posted

    15 hours ago, Goose said:

    Don't worry about it, it won't show in your library for 5 more years.

    (or maybe 3-4 years if we're lucky)

     

    That is solely your guesstimate, and a really exaggerated one. We'll see about that one... The game will take years to release, but the keys we have are for the module. It wouldn't make any sense for a module to be shown after 5 years.

    11 hours ago, Goose said:

    I'm not being negative, I'm being realist.

    Even the die hard fans have said that until this game is completely DONE (not just the running around simulator which is Town Square) is going to take a couple of years and will come around in 2020-2021.

    This is the problem with you, you just label everyone that aren't blindly happy and hyped as being negative and shit when I'm just stating facts.

     

    Again, realist in what way? I'm not trying to put you down, but can you provide us any concrete arguments?

    Also I find it pretty optimistic to say 2020 for a full release. I've seen games with a few developers working on it, struggling to get out of Alpha stage... But personally I don't want to put any guesstimates for the full game release since we haven't even got the first module, and I just say it'll be out when it'll be ready.

  20. Posted

    On 9/13/2018 at 2:04 PM, dagtag said:

    The other modules have a big chance to be completed sooner, i mean they did remake this first module twice XD. If they dont have huge bumps like this in future development these other modules should turn up rather quick in comparison.

     

    I think they have remade the module three times. And the UI two times, but correct me if I'm wrong. Also the beginning was very slow when they had low budget and didn't have many talented artists at their disposal. Things should definitely speed up with the two other modules, and I personally wouldn't see those taking 3 years each.

    1 hour ago, Katie said:

    Things do take a long time to happen. I've been around for a long time but I don't feel they're really behind schedule, I was surprised and impressed to see that the keys were going out.

     

    A game of this scale will definitely take years to develop. Although, they did miss two official release dates of Town Square. I personally don't count the other estimations since they were just either a year or a month. A date has to include an actual day. Also, it's been almost 5 months since the task tracker has been released. I'll just say they really underestimated the amount of work to be done in that time frame.

    I'm also glad they released the keys. Hope they can finally manage to get rid of those annoying bugs and finish that last task, which is taking weeks.

  21. Posted

    4 hours ago, mm96631 said:

    Yes i absolutely do. This makes about as much sense to me as religion. Do the math. 3 years for a Town Square. How long will it take to produce a playable game? Have fun designing your apartment for the next 5 years. I've lost faith and have zero interest in even playing it.

     

    Someone may not understand the fact they've rebuilt Town Square 3 times at least (perhaps low budget, low quality), and that they're not solely working on Town Square, but the base of the game too, once that is done, the rest will go at a higher pace. Just remember Town Square is basically done, at least visually.

  22. Posted

    Things like houses/mansions won't be available in the store and will be only bought with in game money. Although, pledge rewards are meant to be unique, but sure you'll find very similar items in the full game.

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    9 hours ago, Goose said:

    Ok, so we got people above calling others idiots but you decide to criticize him for insulting someone and completely neglect everyone else.

    Hmm, might it be because he's not praising the developers like everyone else does? Can't be..

     

    It's just ridiculous that people argue with each other, trying to say "it means this, oh no it doesn't, stop being that", blah blah blah you should get the point. When it reaches to the point where people "attack" or insult others who "praise" the developers, it has gotten too toxic.

    We have different opinions and thoughts. And it's a bit like religions, it's okay to have one, but please don't stick it into someone else's you know what. If you don't believe a single word from the developers, so be it. I actually don't believe any dates anymore, and I just say to myself, it'll come out when it'll be ready.

    Also I don't feel the need to quote everyone else... Not because they praise or not the developers, but because either I want to say my opinion about what someone have said, or give information. 

    • Like 2