Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

spronk_sl said:

being in a startup is very, very different than being in a regular company. i'd guess most of these guys are used to the company mentality, where you are told what to do and when you don't have anything to do you just goof off. in a startup everyone wears multiple hats, and there is no such thing as down time, ever. it can become this beautiful thing where communication happens in small little bursts, and everyone just has this natural feeling of what is the most important thing to get done that day. Any good VC/angel investor can tell the difference within 30 minutes of visiting a startup based on how people are working and what has gotten done.

It does require one or two extraordinary leaders who can multitask like AIs and shepherd every single person to make sure the entire company is humming like a ferrari. These qualities are very rare, and most people will fail at it. Its also pretty much impossible for someone who has had a long career to do it right, you basically need someone who is young, doesn't "know better", but has the innate natural talent. The CEO job has fuck all to do with it btw, the CEO job is usually the older guy who looks good in a suit and has tons and tons of business connections which you use for money, getting products, hiring, PR, political connections, etc.

Click to expand...

There's another important difference as well. Because so many people have to wear so many different hats, a startup needs to have a very clearly focused thing they're going after. That's why you see so many startups that have this seemingly idiotically micro focus on one tiny problem. If you only have a team of 5 people, you can't make a swiss army knife, you need to make either a knife, or a file, or a can opener, or whatever. If you try to make ALL THE THINGS, you will make NONE of them. You can have a team of people working their asses off, but if you aren't extremely clear on what the short/medium/long term goals of the company are, you can wind up spending hours on things that are not that important, and then suddenly find a forum full of people asking how you spent 2 months and have nothing to show for it. Believe me, really hard working people can bust their asses and have nothing to seemingly show for it if the project isn't focused or gets randomized by a lot of changing priorities/ideas.

Gecko_sl said:

The only real question I'd like answered is who was leading the technical/development side and why on earth did the team have so few actual programmers versus so many game designers? A startup not streamlined just seems a recipe for disaster.

Click to expand...

This is actually very simple. You have to design the systems that will be in place before you can ask a coder to create them in code. A coder on a team doesn't just sit down and start coding systems free-hand. You need to have detailed documents on exactly how you want things to work, look, data structures for the DB, etc. Before coding ever starts, there are usually mountains of design docs created. You don't just say "Make me a combat system" and turn them loose!

Kirun_sl said:

Really? I mean...really? They seriously felt they had a "solid" concept working? There was hardly anything to show, how could they rationalize it to themselves that their concept was "solid", especially after the KS failed to fund?

Click to expand...

You do understand the term "concept" don't you? Things on paper. Ideas written down in documents. I didn't say they had a prototype, or a game, or a demo. I said they had a concept that worked for them, and they were moving forward on it.

Elidroth_sl said:

You do understand the term "concept" don't you? Things on paper. Ideas written down in documents. I didn't say they had a prototype, or a game, or a demo. I said they had a concept that worked for them, and they were moving forward on it.

Click to expand...

I think it's generous to say they even had a concept. It was the wild west. Also, they did not sell it as such, they pretended they were in "full on development mode". The design phase is not the development phase in any software shop I've ever been a part of and I've been doing software development (albeit in a different space) for 10 years.

Khane_sl said:

The design phase is not the development phase in any software shop I've ever been a part of and I've been doing software development (albeit in a different space) for 10 years.

Click to expand...

Absolutely correct initially. Often though, once a generous amount of design is completed, the design and development phases run concurrently.

Elidroth_sl said:

Absolutely correct initially. Often though, once a generous amount of design is completed, the design and development phases run concurrently.

Click to expand...

Well of course, it's inevitable that assumptions are made during design that are found to be inadequate or unworkable once development begins and so you tweak the design as needed. But it didn't even seem like they were in a proof of concept stage (generally done during mid-late design phase) so putting up a banner saying "Pantheon is in full on development mode" to create funding is a bold faced lie.

Elidroth_sl said:

Something Pantheon related

Click to expand...

How's about another EQ1 Progression Server? That would take my mind off of this for a while at least

I don't know if development mode is a lie.... depends on what they were developing. Essentially they were developing a carrot at the end of the stick and sadly, people are still following it.

Frenzic_sl said:

How's about another EQ1 Progression Server? That would take my mind off of this for a while at least

Click to expand...

It's something we've discussed for sure. No details yet though

Pantheon forums are gold. Even in light of Salim, Vu and Tony all saying that Brad took more money, (Salim even saying 3x's what he made) there are still people on the forums that don't believe it.

Multisync said: Without knowing all the details its going to be very hard to say who was getting paid how much and at this point its all hearsay from everyone and since its all hearsay it means nothing as anyone could/can say what they want.



The only way to know for certain who got paid what and what and where else all the money went would be to look at the books and that will never happen so what we need to stop doing is all the finger pointing, name calling and people bashing and decide who and what we are going to back or if we are just going to call it and stop supporting. If you decide to stop supporting then you need to stop posting crap on here as it does nothing for those that want to believe in this project and the people trying to make it happen.

Click to expand...

I mean wtf does it take for people to wake up? Nothing concrete and only hearsay? We're talking about the most informed people in relation to this topic. There is nothing more concrete that can legally be shown at this point.

kudos_sl said:

How do they have a design if they were having the community make shit up as they went? Come on now.... This is pantheon we are talking about. You're forgetting about the apprentice developers.

Click to expand...

I won't even go into that whole Apprentice Developer thing. I will say this though, just because the community submitted an idea, doesn't mean they submitted ALL the ideas, or that any of them would actually be implemented.

Elidroth_sl said:

It's something we've discussed for sure. No details yet though

Click to expand...

You tease

Elidroth_sl said:

You do understand the term "concept" don't you? Things on paper. Ideas written down in documents. I didn't say they had a prototype, or a game, or a demo. I said they had a concept that worked for them, and they were moving forward on it.

Click to expand...

Were all of these things "top secret"? Before you ask people for money, it's wise to let them in on said "concept". We saw almost nothing in terms of documents, art, combat systems, mechanics, etc. If these things were so readily available, as you claim to believe they were, why weren't they shown?

Kirun_sl said:

Were all of these things "top secret"? Before you ask people for money, it's wise to let them in on said "concept". We saw almost nothing in terms of documents, art, combat systems, mechanics, etc. If these things were so readily available, as you claim to believe they were, why weren't they shown?

Click to expand...

I've seen people in this community design more MMO game systems/lore/mechanics in their spare time than what Brad's entire team showed proof of.

Kirun_sl said:

Were all of these things "top secret"? Before you ask people for money, it's wise to let them in on said "concept". We saw almost nothing in terms of documents, art, combat systems, mechanics, etc. If these things were so readily available, as you claim to believe they were, why weren't they shown?

Click to expand...

Yeah if Brad had some ground breaking ideas they certainly weren't shown to the public. I can understand trying to play that close to the vest if you have ideas like that but in that case KS is not the route to go unless you have an obscene amount of clout to pull it off -- which Brad obviously didn't.

Elidroth_sl said:

This is actually very simple. You have to design the systems that will be in place before you can ask a coder to create them in code. A coder on a team doesn't just sit down and start coding systems free-hand. You need to have detailed documents on exactly how you want things to work, look, data structures for the DB, etc. Before coding ever starts, there are usually mountains of design docs created. You don't just say "Make me a combat system" and turn them loose!

Click to expand...

This is true. but we've heard over and over that the team actually came together sometime between July and September of 2013. By now, those kinds of documents should have been created, right?

McCheese_sl said:

I've seen people in this community design more MMO game systems/lore/mechanics in their spare time than what Brad's entire team showed proof of.

Click to expand...

I think there is a drastic difference between what you and I think of with respect to designing an MMO system. The example below is the design doc for the Mercenary Advancement System. Keep in mind, this is a VERY SMALL system really, and quite simple. Regardless, this should give you an idea of what's involved. Sorry about the formatting. A lot gets lost coming from a Word doc to the forum system.




Overview

In order to provide more variety and improvement for player mercenaries, a system of advancement where players can purchase new passive abilities for their mercenaries will be implemented, functioning in a similar fashion as the Alternate Advancement system for players.
Experience

Upon a successful kill of an NPC, players share the experience earned with any mercenaries active within their group. Currently this experience is simply lost, but moving forward, we will track and store this experience on the player. This will always be 'on' when a player has a mercenary in group, and will not be a toggle. There should be a maximum number of stored ability points, at which point all new experience gained would be lost.
The mercenary's experience gained for a kill will be standard experience for a group member without any race or class experience bonuses.
The experience needed to gain a 'Mercenary Advancement Point' is the owner's (real level, non-shrouded) experience needed for the next level without race and class modifiers (but including the LEVEL_EXP_MODS.EXP_NEEDED_MOD) multiplied by MERCENARY_LEVEL_MOD.EXP_NEEDED_MOD. Pseudo-code formula: XP Needed for Next Point = (Owner's Main Level) ^ 3 * 1000 * LEVEL_EXP_MODS.EXP_NEEDED_MOD * MERCENARY_LEVEL_MOD.EXP_NEEDED_MOD.
When a player accumulates enough 'Merc Experience', they will be awarded an ability point which may be used to acquire new passive abilities for their stable of mercenaries. These points and abilities will be stored upon the character, and will be available to all of the mercenaries owned by the player. As an example, any tank abilities acquired will be applied to any tank mercenary owned by the player, as well as any new tank mercenary the player may acquire in the future.
Categories

Merc Abilities will be broken down into 5 distinct categories. Players may spend points however they wish, including purchasing abilities for class types they do not own:
? General - Abilities which are useful across all merc types
? Tank - Abilities which are only useful for the tanking mercenary
? Healer - Abilities which are only useful for the healing mercenary
? Melee Damage - Abilities which are only useful for the melee damage mercenary
? Caster Damage - Abilities which are only useful for the spell caster damage mercenary

User Interface

The UI elements for Merc Abilities will be shown as a new tab in the Alternate Advancement window. This tab will have drop-down menu filters to refine the display of abilities making them easier to navigate for players. These filters should include the capacity to show all abilities, all abilities available for a given class type, only those abilities available, and only those abilities already acquired. Clicking on any ability should display the description the same way the standard AA window functions. The new tab should have the same columns as the normal AA tabs:
? Title - Name of the Ability
? Cur/Max - Current and Maximum rank available for this ability
? Cost - The point cost to purchase the next available rank
? Category - Merc Category Type (Tank, Healer, DPS, etc)


Database Requirements

New tables will be required for the database to contain the new data. These tables should be similar to those used for the Alternate Advancement system.
EQDV.MERCENARY_ABILITIES

Field NameData TypeDescription.

ABILITY_IDNumberPrimary Key - Used to various systems to identify the ability.

NAMETextNOT EXPORTED. Comment field for designers

DESCRIPTIONTextNOT EXPORTED. Comment field for designers

NAME_STRING_IDNumberID of the text string referenced from EQDV.DATABASE_STRINGS

DESC_STRING_IDNumberID of the text string referenced from EQDV.DATABASE_STRINGS

COSTNumberCost to purchase the ability

GROUP_IDNumberID used to group similar abilities into a line

GROUP_RANKNumberID used to define specific rank within the group.

REQ_GROUP_IDNumberID used as a requirement identifier to purchase

REQ_GROUP_RANKNumberID used to define specific rank of REQ_GROUP_ID required to purchase

TYPENumberUsed to define the ability type. This will be referenced by the new EQDV.MERCENARIES_ABILITY_TYPE.

LEVEL_MINNumberThis is the minimum player level required to purchase the ability

REQ_ASSOCIATION_IDNumberThis ID references requirement associations within the EQDV.AA_ASSOCIATIONS table.

REFUNDNumberAny positive number refunds this many points to the player's mercenary point count. 0 & -1 are treated equally.

BETA_ONLYNumberUsed to define which servers to export. 0 - Export to Live, Non-Zero - Export to Beta Only.

QUEST_ABILITYFlagAny non-zero indicates this ability may only be acquired via the pc.add_quest_aa




EQDV.MERCENARY_ABILITY_EFFECTS

Field NameTypeDescription

IDNumberPrimary Key - Used by the design to create a single number primary key.

ABILITY_IDNumberUnique Key Combination - Used by various systems to identify the effects used by the ability defined in EQDV.MERCENARY_ABILITIES

EFFECT_IDNumberID used to define which spell effect from

BASE_EFFECT_1NumberEffect parameter 1 data for Spell Effect ID selected

BASE_EFFECT_2NumberEffect parameter 2 data for Spell Effect ID selected

LEVEL_EFFECT_MODNumberReferences EQDV.SPELL_LEVELMODS

EFFECT_CAPNumberFunctions the same as the EFFECT_CAP field in SPELL_DEF

SLOTNumberUnique Key Combination - Effect slot for spell data sorting purposes and order of operation.



EQDV.MERCENARY_ABILITY_TYPE

Field NameTypeDescription

MERC_TYPENumberPrimary Key - Defines the type of mercenary ability.

DESCRIPTIONTextNOT EXPORTED - This describes the type of mercenary ability referenced by MERC_TYPE

CATEGORY_IDNumberReferences a newly created DATABASE_STRING_TYPE specifically for Merc AA Categories

EQDV.MERCENARY_LEVEL_MOD

Field NameTypeDescription

PC_LEVELNumberPrimary Key - References the level for the experience mod

EXP_NEEDED_MODNumberModifier to determine the amount of experience required to attain a new Mercenary Ability Point for a given level.



EQDV.MERCENARY_AA_EXPERIENCE_CAPS

FIELD NAMETYPEDescription

PLAYER_LEVELNumberPrimary Key - Defines the player level to apply the specified cap on stored Merc AA points

CAPNumberDefines the maximum stored number of Merc AA points for the level.


Existing Table Changes

EQDV.MERCENARIES

Add the following new column.
Field NameTypeDescription

TypeNumberUsed to reference the mercenary type as defined by EQDV.MERCENARY_ABILITY_TYPE


Additional Caveats

This feature should be locked to having the expansion. This means that Merc Experience will not be added for players that don't have the expansion and mercenaries will not accrue Mercenary Advancement Points. Additionally, if for some reason they lose the expansion, they will not lose any points that they earned or spent. They will no longer gain the benefits of the spent points nor will they be able to spend any un-spent points as well. If they re-gain access to the expansion, then everything will return to normal behavior.

McCheese_sl said:

I've seen people in this community design more MMO game systems/lore/mechanics in their spare time than what Brad's entire team showed proof of.

Click to expand...

Wow, not even an entire 2 page word document that spells out 6 database tables. What a rush. That's a joke right Elidroth? I appreciate what you are trying to do, defend some of your friends, but they can't and shouldn't be defended. I doubt you'd argue this is a black mark on everyone involved's resume.