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

  • Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and give us your nominations!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
A

Arctic_Slicer_sl

shitlord
155
0
Falwell_sl said:
If there had been more than mere surface research of past successful asks, much of this would have never occurred. That's extremely troubling.
Click to expand...
They actually probably would been best served by following a kickstarter campaign from start to finish. You can look at other campaigns that are already complete and see how much money they pulled in at various tiers and what the pledge rewards were but it wouldn't be sufficient to really see how the whole kickstarter process works from the initial hype to the viral marketing to the final push.

At this point not much else we can do but see how this next month turns out and how much more information they put out about the game.
 
A

Aeiouy_sl

shitlord
217
0
Troy_Costisick_sl said:
Yeah, I think the world will start with one continent, and that's okay. This is a different type of project from EQ or VG. The world can't be too huge because they don't have the budget for that. When it comes to continents/zones, I'd much rather them focus on making a few well designed ones than a lot of 'em which may or may not be designed well since they had so many to do.
Click to expand...
This is something else I wanted to say something about. From the very beginning this was laid out as a highly targeted, highly focused, and limited in scope game to launch.

Yet people keep listing all sorts of stuff it MUST have to launch or complain about it not having enough. To me seven classes sounds like too many for what they want to do come launch time. That is certainly debatable. My point though is people all have their own list of must haves. When we combine all those together you have a bloated mess that will never properly launch with even the most generous funding outcome.

I just think the thing needs to be laser focused and extremely limited , while delivering on a couple key areas. This to me means, no pvp for a launch game regardless of funding (I pretty much only pvp these days so that hurts me), essentially no crafting at all etc. it means a tight combat system with a relatively limited number of classes and races. Build dungeons and group content. When I see talk of diplomacy, or other non core features I just see see things blowing up.

To me this is one concern based on players wants but also from what the devs have said. To make this work the game needs to be limited and focused. Obviously that is a tough sell for fund raising but I already see things getting out of control on both sides of things. To me there should literally be no design/development work done on non core elements until all those elements are locked in stone and polished to the moon. Only then if time and money all do you look at extending beyond that.

I am not sure how many people are actually ready to accept the reality of such a game, though. If you went through this thread and compiled all the things people think are important for this hardcore niche mmog you would probably need twenty million plus dollars to make it. I just wonder if people are really ready to accept the sacrifices and limits this game likely needs to have to reach a launch status.
 
C

Creslin

Trakanon Raider
2,505
1,151
It should be 5 good classes with like 3-4 distinct well done races. There is no need for 6 shades of elf and human. And the world should be skyrim-esque, we don't need swamps and deserts and mountains and plains and moonscape and aquatic all at once.

I have no confidence tho, we have seen 0 decent actual ingame art. No real concept of how classes will actually work and little info about the world.
 
F

fuffalo_sl

shitlord
30
0
Aeiouy_sl said:
They have addressed their further funding plans on KS.
Click to expand...
I'm going to assume you're talking about this update:

This has come up in a few places so we want to make sure we address this. Our project starts with Kickstarter but that is not the end of it. If we get funded the campaign will continue on our website while we continue game development. When we sat down to look at what we wanted in the game we first had to consider our resources and what we would do with the money you all donate. What we came up with is a list of features that we feel are required to produce the core experience while allowing you to continue to back us like so many other projects have.

We believe that there is room for this type of game in the industry and, while we would all love to get everything at the minimum fund price, we know it will take more to include all of them. So please do not fret over those stretch goals because the opportunity to get them is not going away and neither is our need for your support. So lets consider this a call to arms we need everyone, who is willing, to rise up and get the word out on every social front you can. Lets ring the bells and bang the drums, separate we are but a lowly design team and some backers, together we are the heroes of Pantheon and the time has come for us to rise and make Terminus real.

Salim Grant, Director of Development
Click to expand...
This doesn't fill in the blanks at all. How much do they need to fund their barebones game. If they plan to get it all through KS and their website, what happens if they don't get enough money? How much is enough money? Do they have a backup plan?

These should not be difficult. An answer like: "We figure 2 million dollars will get us the barebones of the game, and we think we will have no trouble raising that through KS and our website." or "We think the game will cost 10 million dollars to make. We hope to raise 2 million dollars through fans, and will work with publishers to secure the other 8 million." I'm not looking for a full financial plan, I'm simply looking for something that implies they've at least thought about the fact that if they got the 800k and nothing more, they would burn through it in less than a year and would require a lot more or the game would never get finished.

If this was a case of a group of trusted people who would be willing to work for free, everything would make a lot more sense. However they were pretty explicit that they currently meet once a week in a garage. This means they don't even have basic funding for an office, for people to quit their jobs, etc. 800k will not get them very far whatsoever if it's expected 10+ people will live off the money.

The reason people are pulling their funding is because as the days go on, it's becoming apparent this KS is a cash grab and that no actual work has gone in to this project. They're waiting for us to pay their rent before they even start. Before you flip out, no I don't plan to pull my funding, but I understand why others are.
 
Jimbolini

Jimbolini

Semi-pro Monopoly player
2,607
991
Totally off the subject for a moment before the day of debate begins....

God damn that Star Citizen is doing a lot of things right! (They launched new guild features yesterday and pretty cool)

Now , back to the new tiers.
 
A

Arctic_Slicer_sl

shitlord
155
0
Troy_Costisick_sl said:
These are good additions. I hope these make a difference for them.
Click to expand...
There is already backers in those tiers and they only been up for like 15 mins. I'm glad to see they are following our advice when it comes to add/updating tier rewards. Hopefully they'll take our suggestions about class/race information and other game mechanics and start posting it on the kickstarter page. They have a real chance at turning this whole campaign around if they stay the ball going forward.
 
C

Creslin

Trakanon Raider
2,505
1,151
fuffalo_sl said:
I'm going to assume you're talking about this update:



This doesn't fill in the blanks at all. How much do they need to fund their barebones game. If they plan to get it all through KS and their website, what happens if they don't get enough money? How much is enough money? Do they have a backup plan?

These should not be difficult. An answer like: "We figure 2 million dollars will get us the barebones of the game, and we think we will have no trouble raising that through KS and our website." or "We think the game will cost 10 million dollars to make. We hope to raise 2 million dollars through fans, and will work with publishers to secure the other 8 million." I'm not looking for a full financial plan, I'm simply looking for something that implies they've at least thought about the fact that if they got the 800k and nothing more, they would burn through it in less than a year and would require a lot more or the game would never get finished.

If this was a case of a group of trusted people who would be willing to work for free, everything would make a lot more sense. However they were pretty explicit that they currently meet once a week in a garage. This means they don't even have basic funding for an office, for people to quit their jobs, etc. 800k will not get them very far whatsoever if it's expected 10+ people will live off the money.

The reason people are pulling their funding is because as the days go on, it's becoming apparent this KS is a cash grab and that no actual work has gone in to this project. They're waiting for us to pay their rent before they even start. Before you flip out, no I don't plan to pull my funding, but I understand why others are.
Click to expand...
It's a big problem for me that they don't seem to really want to work hard on this until they get funding. It's not working for free, it's working for a startup with a small team all of who presumably own some stake in the company. So if it succeeds they stand to profit then. It's laughable to call it pro bono work like they did earlier.

They want all the profit, with none of the risk and want us to fund it from my perspective.
 
Rogosh

Rogosh

Lord Nagafen Raider
897
232
Falwell_sl said:
My pledge is still in and I probably won't pull it. However, the lack of preparation and foresight here is extremely disconcerting. If I can't trust these guys to look far enough ahead to anticipate many of these problems, how can I trust them to handle upwards of a million tender of our money?

If there had been more than mere surface research of past successful asks, much of this would have never occurred. That's extremely troubling.
Click to expand...
This is exactly how I feel, I just wish they would put more time into it and really show us what they want to do. Right now it has more smoke and mirrors than pony ponytail has with EQN.
 
T

Troy_Costisick_sl

shitlord
437
0
They add another $150k worth of backer slots or so, so it's a start. I still feel like they need a few more and the guild pledges clearly need to be reworked.
 
I

Irongut_sl

shitlord
82
0
Aeiouy_sl said:
This is something else I wanted to say something about. From the very beginning this was laid out as a highly targeted, highly focused, and limited in scope game to launch.

Yet people keep listing all sorts of stuff it MUST have to launch or complain about it not having enough. To me seven classes sounds like too many for what they want to do come launch time. That is certainly debatable. My point though is people all have their own list of must haves. When we combine all those together you have a bloated mess that will never properly launch with even the most generous funding outcome.

I just think the thing needs to be laser focused and extremely limited , while delivering on a couple key areas. This to me means, no pvp for a launch game regardless of funding (I pretty much only pvp these days so that hurts me), essentially no crafting at all etc. it means a tight combat system with a relatively limited number of classes and races. Build dungeons and group content. When I see talk of diplomacy, or other non core features I just see see things blowing up.

To me this is one concern based on players wants but also from what the devs have said. To make this work the game needs to be limited and focused. Obviously that is a tough sell for fund raising but I already see things getting out of control on both sides of things. To me there should literally be no design/development work done on non core elements until all those elements are locked in stone and polished to the moon. Only then if time and money all do you look at extending beyond that.

I am not sure how many people are actually ready to accept the reality of such a game, though. If you went through this thread and compiled all the things people think are important for this hardcore niche mmog you would probably need twenty million plus dollars to make it. I just wonder if people are really ready to accept the sacrifices and limits this game likely needs to have to reach a launch status.
Click to expand...
If you are making a game for a small, targeted group - it shouldn't be hard to put together a targeted, tight and focused Kickstarter.

This is a debacle because what we do see is a sloppy mess. This should represent the very best, focused ideas of the project in order to get people to donate money. They've got tosell the ideaand you can't do that if most of the idea isn't even written. This is a new paradigm, not the old school tease and reveal style of promoting a game. You show your cards and get people to hop on board.

We should have not seen a kickstarter until VS had a solid design doc, and a working prototype. Prototyping a game is a must and allows developers to nail down core gameplay aspects without worrying about costly resources, like art assets. You use the money from additional crowdfunding and venture capital to pay for that costly stuff, because what you have shown so far merits additional dollars...

Notice that I'm not telling VS what I think should be in the game, just that they are not getting any money until I see that they can even deliver a game worth playing.
 
A

Arctic_Slicer_sl

shitlord
155
0
Troy_Costisick_sl said:
They add another $150k worth of backer slots or so, so it's a start. I still feel like they need a few more and the guild pledges clearly need to be reworked.
Click to expand...
The latest chart shows the guild tiers getting many more rewards now. The $2000 tier is actually a really good deal; it's essentially paragon's pledge x10 at a 20% discount with the added guild benefits.
 
N

Nobody_sl

shitlord
80
0
Typo on the $375 pledge.

Says it includes paragon and pathfinder, and "all tiers above them"

Design a dungeon and meet the team for $375? Pretty sweet deal...
 
A

Aleatha

Silver Knight of the Realm
96
0
Nobody_sl said:
Typo on the $375 pledge.

Says it includes paragon and pathfinder, and "all tiers above them"

Design a dungeon and meet the team for $375? Pretty sweet deal...
Click to expand...
Not the best wording but it is obvious what they meant. Thinking about upping to the $375 tier but like most, still pretty wary of the lack of any real details.
 
Tauro

Tauro

Bronze Knight of the Realm
371
26
Well, they should stop reworking/adding pledge tiers, they are good enough now. At ~50 backers a day it doesnt even matter, they wont get funded anyway.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.