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

Skanda said:

That is one hell of an apologetic post.

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Dang, is McMahon wearing a thong or what?

I do quest scripting at Blizzard and shit this thread up with mads

Cinge said:

Ignoring the rest of your "I only want people who fanboy for the game to come in here". His past does matter. Normally his personal life doesn't, but when that personal life effected the game(s) he was making and most likely lead to the first try of this game falling into oblivion, then yes it does matter. Only an idiot ignores history. Can people change sure, but that doesn't mean you just ignore their past and that's can exclude personal life. Everything is relevant, not just "now". The irony of your post is you said all that, and ended it with "Grow up".

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I get what you're saying. I really do! I dont care that people voice their opinion about whatever they want to in whatever thread. But there is a group of people that visit the thread and spew the same shit over, and over, and over. Its very unlikely that anyone on this forum doesnt know the full story of how Brad was a Chicken Fucker. So what exactly is the point of throwing shit at the wall everytime something interesting happens with the game? No one here is forgetting everything thats happened, but there is seriously not a single thing anyone can do to change those situations because they are the past. The only option a "reasonable" person could do at this point is not buy the products that Brad is associated with, or at the very least, be very critical about the game before they buy it.

Anything else reminds me of the group of people that scream from the roof tops that Trump is not their president.

Skanda said:

You would have had a point if he had just stopped with Vanguard. The problem is his fuck ups continued right into this project and haven't really stopped.

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And yet, people still work for him. They all know his past, yet they still are there trying to make a video game. No one on this board outside of Convo has anything really invested in it, maybe a few bucks from his kick starter or crowdfunding campaign, but thats on them, they also know about the past and they seemed to move on just fine.

Blitz said:

So, 4000 pages. That's too much.

Where does this game stand currently (or does it stand at all?), it's been a few months since I have checked.

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It looks good. Looks functional. Animations still weak but they've indicated those will change. Looks very likely that it will at least launch.

They key to all that stuff is the word "looks." Looks don't mean much. Ive played a lot of shitty games that look ok. Gameplay is king and it's the hardest part to nail. I'm going to stay pretty skeptical until i get a "hands on."

Daidraco said:

But there is a group of people that visit the thread and spew the same shit over, and over, and over.

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If you ignore them this becomes just another information thread, though sometimes you have blank pages.

Game needs good gameplay. But also an X factor that eq had. The parts of the zones or entire zones u got little glimpses of but u couldn't otherwise touch because u would get ur ass juiced. That sense of accomplishment you felt when you managed to lasso enough of a crew or get (slowly) powerful enough that you finally manage to see 'what's behind door number x'. But not just raids. Even regular dungeons or other open world areas need POIs like that. Dungeons that actually are big enough to have multiple areas of different level and difficulty , and the deeper you got in the more dangerous it was but that's where all the good stuff drops.
A few 'super sekret'' raid bosses or quests that have hidden goofy strats that would take stupid luck or other bogus crap to figure out, but the info may actually not be out there right away because not enuf people play to care/datamine. And it may not be as 'skill based' as doing a raid-dance, but it leaves people wondering and gossiping and rumor mongerjng and creating community about 'what to do to kill x'.

Let's face it , pantheon doesn't have the funding to have *great* gameplay. That comes from fluid animations, polish, class balance, button pushing that 'feels right' - these are all blizzard perennial traits and they require money and lots of manpower. Pantheon has neither. Given vanguard, there may be a few creative mechanics 'oh neat' novel ideas thrown in but this wont be the savior of the game.

Their only hope is bringing back that sense of mystery/wonder that mmos nowadays hardly ever have

I swear if they don't put some meaningless quest about someone falling i'm going to be really upset. @Convo I think we should have a contest, exclusive to this board, of the best quest script to be put in game.

I think you should find at guard near the city gates who fell during their watch and you have to collect 5 large rat skins and 2 snake fangs to make him a cast.

zzeris said:

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Thats one big boy... Indian owner just shook his head in disappointment lol.

Pasteton said:

Let's face it , pantheon doesn't have the funding to have *great* gameplay. That comes from fluid animations, polish, class balance, button pushing that 'feels right' - these are all blizzard perennial traits and they require money and lots of manpower. Pantheon has neither. Given vanguard, there may be a few creative mechanics 'oh neat' novel ideas thrown in but this wont be the savior of the game.

Their only hope is bringing back that sense of mystery/wonder that mmos nowadays hardly ever have

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This is what worries me the most about the game. I think what they should do (and I think are to a large extent) is stick to the basic game mechanics that we already know work and just create a new world around those. An updated EQ (game mechanic wise) set in a new world, if you will. I would play that game. What worries me, is when they want to start throwing in new mechanics. Acclimation for example. Is that really the best use of their limited resources? Do we even care about it? Seems gimmicky to me at this point and almost certain to be... meh.

Acclimation isnt that hard. There is literally a zone of influence that they put up in an area that equals a value. You enter Sol B and your value is 1, you go through spiders, you enter the second zone of influence and your value is 2. You go into Giants / Nagafen's Lair and now you're in another zone of influence with a value of 3. A value of one negates 15 fire resistance, a value of 2 negates 25 fire resistance, a value of 3 negates 50 fire resistance and increases the the application of Sunder upon the players weapon by 50%.

Acclimation has plenty of possibilities, a lot of potential, and the Sol B example is just a basic example. I personally think itll never see its full potential, but rest assured that its not taking away some huge amount of man hours.

I was able to code something very similar to Acclimation in the Unreal Engine in less than 10 minutes.

Since when has great gameplay required a lot of money? I've played tons of cheap games with great gameplay, including EQ itself. Much of what made EQ's gameplay compelling is already in place in Pantheon.

I agree with Pasteton that mystery should be a big part of Pantheon, as it was with EQ. We may never see a time where you can't look something up on a wiki, but it was ultimately the cooperative challenge that naturally gated content and created the sense of wonder in EQ. That can be achieved again by just putting those group and skill prerequisites in place and having a steep death penalty. When there is that risk in place, you can't just explore any place on a whim; you needed people to even lay eyes on a lot of areas, let alone mobs and their loot.

I remember when the first shots of ToV were posted online. That didn't take away the prestige and wonder when I finally was able to visit it myself.

You don't need a ton of money to have great gameplay. I can think of numerous relatively cheap titles that had great gameplay, as did EQ like Dullahan mentioned.

But I'm not sure you can tell if a game has great gameplay just by looking at it or reading about it. Gameplay is really a hands on experience.

If you want a pretty good indication of how good Pantheon's gameplay is, take a look at how often VR employees are playing it outside of work obligations...

Arden said:

You don't need a ton of money to have great gameplay. I can think of numerous relatively cheap titles that had great gameplay, as did EQ like Dullahan mentioned.

But I'm not sure you can tell if a game has great gameplay just by looking at it or reading about it. Gameplay is really a hands on experience.

If you want a pretty good indication of how good Pantheon's gameplay is, take a look at how often VR employees are playing it outside of work obligations...

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It's subjective, but for me with an MMO the most important thing is high risk (death penalty), highly cooperative (interdependent classes and content that demands classes from each role), strategic (requires planning), resource management, and then a varied experience in combat where you have to counter abilities, crowd control, deal with roamers and things of that sort. After that, it needs progression that makes upgrading rewarding (something most mmos fail miserably at). Those things make EQ enjoyable to this day. Most of that can already be seen in Pantheon, and they still plan on other layers on top of that.

Of course, we still don't know whether they will wimp out and make a weak death penalty, which would undermine everything else. Right now they're respawning in the zone, but they have said it's for testing purposes. I hope that's true, but I'm not convinced.

The term gameplay is subjective for sure. To me, all those things you mentioned are just mechanics. Mechanics definitely contribute to gameplay, but, for me, gameplay is the totality of what it actually feels like to sit down for a few hours and play the game.

Something like a comination of mechanics, art assets, animations, tactile feel, UI, controls, game flow, AI etc etc

Arden said:

The term gameplay is subjective for sure. To me, all those things you mentioned are just mechanics. Mechanics definitely contribute to gameplay, but, for me, gameplay is the totality of what it actually feels like to sit down for a few hours and play the game.

Something like a comination of mechanics, art assets, animations, tactile feel, UI, controls, game flow, AI etc etc

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I agree. By themselves, the things I listed are just mechanics, but together they do create the gameplay. Having spent a lot of time analyzing what I liked most about mmos, those were the elements that made EQ different and fun.

Honestly, Ive been comparing MMO's to the Matrix's Matrix. You have your paradise model that failed, which is WoW. Then you have your nightmare model that failed, which could be anything, but lets just say Darkfall. EverQuest wasnt quite what I would say is the modern model in the Matrix. But Im confident that if the group of us were adults back in 1999, we may not have a years worth of /played, but we would still have an unhealthy amount of playtime. Also, when I say "Failed" - Im speaking specifically about those Matrix Models and how they failed because they didnt keep the human mind entangled forever.

Its hard to ask for realism from a fantasy game, but I fully believe that the next MMO that comes out that adheres to the "Modern Matrix" philosophy is going to have a solid population of people that are going to play for a very long time. Because in a world of magic and dragons, its still believable. That is.. as long as the game isnt plagued by bugs, hardware issues, server issues, and a shitty development team.