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

Khane_sl said:

Oof, why are they posting screenshots of proofs of concept and some dude playing around with new tools (to him) in Unity?

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Because despite how excited people are about the possibility of what a Brad MMO could bring not many people seem to realize just how amateur this whole project & Kickstarter is. See how in the above post he's talking about Guk? That's because they know that people loved Guk; expect them to reference Guk at every possibility when discussing their dungeon design.

Convo_sl said:

yea, I don't doubt what they plan to do.. It's just better they wait and present those things when done. I appreciate that they are trying to include us in so early but sometimes it can do more harm than good. When Brad talks about dungeons that make Seb look small he gets my interest, so when I see something that makes Seb look huge.. I get the wrong message.. I know it's not intentional but it opens them up to unnecessary criticism.

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This is Brad's fault more than that actual dungeon cocept screenshot. He should have learned not to use silly analogies to create hype before his team has even started designing anything.

Things he should be saying "We have a lot of exciting ideas, we are striving to implement dungeon designs that rival some of our fanbase's favorites. We want to recapture the feeling that dungeons like Sebilis and Guk gave a player and the level ranges and encounters that can happen when you have larger, non linear dungeons"

Instead he says silly stuff like "We're gonna make Sebilis look like a pre-school"

jilena_sl said:

That seems crazy. I mean to each their own but EQ2 was so gd ugly and clunky and horrible at release. I've never been able to get into that game. I don't think I've managed to stomach it past like level 30 ever. Maybe it gets better later in the game I dunno.

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I guess that just shows everyone has their preferences. While i'm sure it is the minority preference I would choose EQII visually over WoW. EQII always felt a little more real to me allowing me to get more deeply immersed into the game. However, I never felt they used it to their full potential. Most of what they created was bland. They hit some bright spots with armor, weapons, and especially some landscapes, they could have used their engine much better.

That being said, while I didn't prefer WoW's direction I thought it was very true to their universe and it was execute well. Just not my taste...

Trathos_sl said:

Basically my view on this...I try to stay away from the elistest mindset, but then again, it should be like real life. In real life, promotions and things arent just handed too you. They have to be earned. WoW became a game with almost 0 challenge, and once you have no challenge, you have nothing to strive for, and that means you have no reason to play the game...(at least that's how I saw it).

For example, we bust our ass and kill 25 heroic lei shen when its current. Then the next patch, they nerf all the bosses etc. people just go in and do what you just did even easier. I'm not even going to touch on the whole lfr thing...needless to say, my hope is this game can fullfill that hardcore niche in gaming for me again. Since no other games are going that way at the moment, I might as well give money to try to get it in this one.

For those worried about the game not turning out how you like, well you lose what....$45 bucks if you do that tier? That's literally nothing...I spend that in like one outing at the bar. If you can't afford that...you need to look into a better job...just my opinion.

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What's funny about this is that I have extremely mixed feelings mostly based on how "challenge" is defined. I only raided in WoW through vanilla naxx. Raiding is not really my thing and I'm more into small group content/social whatever. The thing is, that with that experience I can say there was NOTHING in vanilla-velious EQ that I ever encountered that could compare to that in difficulty. No I didn't experience all of the top end content through velious but I'm pretty confident that there were no encounters in EQ and its first 2 expansions that were on par with naxx in vanilla WoW. Just from my experience with EQ in general. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

I also feel that WoW classes are HARDER to play WoW than most of their EQ equivalents. I think there was skill required in managing resources as a few people have hit on in earlier posts. However aside from that where is the actual "challenge" in EQ?

This PC Gamer thing they keep mentioning and implying they've been holding off on more info because of it (being timing or exclusivity), better be something very nice. Can't be anything like we have a warrior and here's a generic plate armor guy. They've built it up like building up waiting for the KS to launch because of working on it since Sept.

Hoping this could turn it around for the Kickstarter..........

Voldeth_sl said:

Because despite how excited people are about the possibility of what a Brad MMO could bring not many people seem to realize just how amateur this whole project & Kickstarter is. See how in the above post he's talking about Guk? That's because they know that people loved Guk; expect them to reference Guk at every possibility when discussing their dungeon design.

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Looking at the screen shot you know what I thought would have been cool if they could have (i'm sure it is too early for this suggestion) reconstructed Guk or Sebilis with this new engine. IF he's going to play around, I would have liked to have seen them literally walk through an upgraded dungeon and maybe shown it from a parallel perspective. Maybe side by side Guk EQ1 vs Guk Unity just to show them "Hey, you thought I did good stuff then, look at what I can do now with this new engine!"

Khane_sl said:

This is Brad's fault more than that actual dungeon cocept screenshot. He should have learned not to use silly analogies to create hype before his team has even started designing anything.

Things he should be saying "We have a lot of exciting ideas, we are striving to implement dungeon designs that rival some of our fanbase's favorites. We want to recapture the feeling that dungeons like Sebilis and Guk gave a player and the level ranges and encounters that can happen when you have larger, non linear dungeons"

Instead he says silly stuff like "We're gonna make Sebilis look like a pre-school"

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I don't mind him expressing his vision for the game.. Hell he has probably thought of stuff In the last week that he wants to add. That's fine, he's excited and a lot of us are too. I just want it to be congruent when I see it. that's all and in the future I hope that's what we get.

You're right tho. The details also need to get better but we have been reassured they would so it's a wait and see.

pjp is shaping up pretty nice gogojira

jilena_sl said:

What's funny about this is that I have extremely mixed feelings mostly based on how "challenge" is defined.

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I played EQ for the better part of a decade - nothing that Brad was part of designing was difficult. The only 'difficult' raids came afterwards (OMM, Performer event, Sendaii, etc). I quit before APW came out in Vanguard but nothing in that game was difficult either, especially not when compared to WoW raids. Difficulty was not what EQ did, that doesn't mean it wasn't an amazing game for it's other aspects.

In terms of EQ/WoW balance. My preference is for Pantheon to have less WoW in it than Vanguard does. When Brad talks about his target audience, I'm assuming he means people who actually liked EQ more than WoW.

Voldeth_sl said:

I played EQ for the better part of a decade - nothing that Brad was part of designing was difficult. The only 'difficult' raids came afterwards (OMM, Performer event, Sendaii, etc). I quit before APW came out in Vanguard but nothing in that game was difficult either, especially not when compared to WoW raids. Difficulty was not what EQ did, that doesn't mean it wasn't an amazing game for it's other aspects.

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Should we really rage some folks and go arm-chair mode? How do you make challenging? I'm not a fan of the DDR type...

Lysis-Brad said Pantheon would be a little VG, a little new and a lot EQ.

mkopec_sl said:

Is it just me or has this kickstarter been going backwards today?

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Several times today it would be lower than I had last checked. (Biggest one was when the 10k backed out.)

jilena_sl said:

What's funny about this is that I have extremely mixed feelings mostly based on how "challenge" is defined. I only raided in WoW through vanilla naxx. Raiding is not really my thing and I'm more into small group content/social whatever. The thing is, that with that experience I can say there was NOTHING in vanilla-velious EQ that I ever encountered that could compare to that in difficulty. No I didn't experience all of the top end content through velious but I'm pretty confident that there were no encounters in EQ and its first 2 expansions that were on par with naxx in vanilla WoW. Just from my experience with EQ in general. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

I also feel that WoW classes are HARDER to play WoW than most of their EQ equivalents. I think there was skill required in managing resources as a few people have hit on in earlier posts. However aside from that where is the actual "challenge" in EQ?

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Don't get me wrong, WoW from what I remember in Vanilla had its moments...but most of the bosses felt tough soly because they were so incredibly buggy back then, and not at all tuned correctly. I mean look at c'thun....there is absolutely nothing mechanically difficult about that fight...(my opinion of course)...and yet people struggled on it...same with MC Ragnaros. I think part of it too, people just werent as good of players back then. They didnt have a ton of addons to track things (you didnt have that in Eq either by the way), and you didnt have the internet resources like you have today to find out how to kill a boss and read the exact strat beforehand.

I guess looking back, eq was just better for me from the experience personally. Vanilla WoW was great, but I always felt the community was best in Everquest. Most players were so new, you had to work together to figure anything out. When I mention hardcore I guess I miss a lot of the tedious things like corpse runs lol. It got old sometimes, but I look back, and I had so much fun, that I didnt mind that stuff back then. I just loved working together with people to get even the most mundane tasks completed. (Not to mention the imfamous trolls in WoW today didn't really exist back then...at least not nearly as much).

I guess its unfair for me to compare raiding back then to now, as raiding has certainly become a lot more difficult today (like my example of doing 25 heroic lei shen and all his mechanics...to say...Ragnaros in MC..even with addons).

I still believe they can do a mix of both though and bring back that nostalgic feeling of the old and mix it with the difficult raid mechanics of today...especially considering players are just generally better players now adays.

Voldeth_sl said:

Because despite how excited people are about the possibility of what a Brad MMO could bring not many people seem to realize just how amateur this whole project & Kickstarter is. See how in the above post he's talking about Guk? That's because they know that people loved Guk; expect them to reference Guk at every possibility when discussing their dungeon design.

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That's really the rub on this whole project. It honestly just feels like someone ate a bowl full of everquest related fun facts and then shit out the partially digested pieces onto a kick starter page, picked random dollar amounts out of a hat for tiers of support, and then threw random bits of work someone usually gets paid to do as rewards (design items, design encounters, name areas, etc).

If anything is making me regret what I have pledged to this game it's the absolute amateurish nature of the kickstarter page, videos, and complete disorganization of of all information. The information that is in a semi useful format, is rendered useless by being generic drivel (i.e. cleric reveal).

I'll wait a bit and see if they seem to be getting their shit together before withdrawing support but so far this whole thing feels like something a bunch of guys came up with sitting at denny's one night after smoking way too much ganja. DUDE WE SHOULD MAKE A GAME. omg dude totally. SHOULD I GET THE SUPERBIRD OR THE MOONS OVER MY HAMMY? huh? DUDE I'M SERIOUS LIKE LET'S MAKE A GAME. LIKE EVERQUEST. uhhh we need money and we're all unemployed?! HELLO DUDE HAVEN'T YOU HEARD OF KICKSTARTER?!? oh yeah I think I heard about that people like give you money or something right? DEFINITELY GETTING THE MOONS OVER MY HAMMY. shut up beavis we're trying to have a conversation here. ANYWAY LET'S START THE KICKSTARTER NEXT WEEK I'LL GO POST ON SOME MESSAGE BOARDS AND RALLY THE FANBOYS!

mkopec_sl said:

Is it just me or has this kickstarter been going backwards today?

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Yes. I noticed that a couple times. Not just the 10k pledge either.

And gogo I couldn't help but post my concerns in that thread on your site. Too many folks telling Ben "it's great keep it up". The last thing the KS site needs is more full updates like that one.

mkopec_sl said:

Is it just me or has this kickstarter been going backwards today?

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It's been going up (albeit slowly all day). Like others have said, the biggest hit was the person taking back the 10k pledge earlier in the day.

Muligan_sl said:

I guess that just shows everyone has their preferences. While i'm sure it is the minority preference I would choose EQII visually over WoW. EQII always felt a little more real to me allowing me to get more deeply immersed into the game. However, I never felt they used it to their full potential. Most of what they created was bland. They hit some bright spots with armor, weapons, and especially some landscapes, they could have used their engine much better.

That being said, while I didn't prefer WoW's direction I thought it was very true to their universe and it was execute well. Just not my taste...

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I think some of the Fay zones added later looked awesome. A lot of the look of EQ2 that was terrible was initial character models, armor, etc. All of the characters looking like the same exact model with different heads and scaling was pretty terrible too. There were definitely things that were awesome it's just the game as a whole felt so clunky compared to how polished and smooth WoW felt.