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

Sega Saturn or the six button Genesis controller still the best pad ever made.

A guy named Greg Pavich scored 100k to make NES cartridges of Cheetahmen II, which was a terrible, terrible, buggy mess of a NES game. It was one of the most drama intensive KS campaigns I've ever seen, because he didn't actually have the rights to the title, it came out that his production cost was like $45 per cartridge, then it came out it was actually $3 per cartridge, and he sold them for $65. People started asking what he needed 100k for, and he lied to people and it was crazy. Guess what? Old fucker overshot his funding goal by 100% to sell NES cartridges in 2013 for this..


Even though people pleaded not to donate to it because the guy was a well know con artist and that emulators of said game with all of the bugs fixed was readily available online for free.

So if someone marketed some retro plays all your old games 2 button console, would it receive funding? Yes.

Soygen_sl said:

Yes, but not for the equivalent of 800 grand. Brad should have set his sights and budget way lower.

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Bingo. The market is not there for 2-button console that will rival PS4, XBone, or even the original Wii. Likewise, the market is not there for a AAA-EQ clone. The market is niche as hell and the budget (and quality) will have to reflect that.

Huge world, lots of dungeons, tons of classes, well designed and balanced mechanics, lots of polish? These are the things of AAA budgets (and even then, most of them fail to accomplish all of those). What the EQ-cloneheads are going to get is something much smaller in scope. Because that is all the market will allow a development team the resources to create.

Kaines_sl said:

It saddens me to watch people like Merlin thrash around begging for the horse-and-buggy version of MMO's when we are in the internal-combustion-engine era. You keep gripping that buggy whip, Merlin. Someday it will be worth a ton as an antique relic.

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Looking back at the benefits of even anachronistic systems? Can sometimes provide pretty valuable insight into the future. Lets take the horse example; what way is a horse superior to cars? If you dismiss that out of hand, you'll miss the fact that horses run green AND the amount of bio-fuel it takes to run a horse is significantly less acreage per mile than even the most efficient hybrid currently. (Granted this is kind of comparing horses to both cars AND our chemical engineering tech..but meh). Still, the IDEA behind using bio-fuel? It's something that's a growing market now outside of ethanol (Which is bad). And the very concept of it was bound up in that archaic animal that people had written off. Who knows what else is bound up in the horse? (Like maybe the efficiency of a muscular drive system using new fibers vs combustion systems).

Anyway, ask Dumar, I'm a SUPER modernist. I fucking love technology and can't wait to toss out old stuff. I like being able to hop on the jet and be essentially the equivalent a god from the ancient world by zipping through the air at 600mph . Still though, examining WHY people liked those systems? Without dismissing them out of hand as being silly, might provide pretty valuable insight. As I said in my long posts earlier, EQ had some amazing little gems in it's game play that were never iterated on because WoW's design goal was "action" (And they did that VERY well...but it did leave out a lot of other directions the genre could grow.)

What is that you say? A game that was marketed as catering to the mmo-hipsters isn't pulling in the cash it needs to make it a reality? What crazy alternate universe is this?!

Also, that death penalty is basically EQ's from POP onward, minus the double zoning due to ancient architecture. Like... exactly the same except actually more harsh than EQ during POP's was.

This is the problem with the entire idea. (and, coupled with multiple missteps on the information angle) Target an audience that hearkens back to the "golden age" of mmos. Understand that even basic server technology isn't the same and you can actually make the game you wanted to from that extremely basic level. Realize that the people you intended to target are rabid anti-progression/regression/any type of change individuals who want a recreation of that golden age. And that the game you wanted to make doesn't actually mirror them, because technology has progressed to the point that you don't need to have archaic loading times or design decisions based around that archaic infrastructure in order to produce a game.

Step 3: Do not profit.

I don't follow this thread, as it looks/feels like every other EQ circlejerk thread ever with the same tired arguments both for and against modifications to that perceived golden age. But anyone with half a brain should have realized long ago that no matter what a kickstarter says, it won't be EQ: Reborn. If only from the zoning/pathing/serverside information progress alone, let alone thematic or mechanical updates. To quote myself from every dev thread in history: this isn't 1999 anymore.

So now we are quoting known scam artists here in an attempt to get everybody here to jump on the "it's a scam" band wagon?

Wow this thread has truly gone to shit.

Soygen_sl said:

I'm pretty sure POP was after EQ already sucked for most of the die-hards whining about this.

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True enough, but a majority of the "big" guilds that still played were still invested at that point. The 3k people that quit when Luclin was released apparently are the only backers for this game!

Soygen_sl said:

I'm pretty sure POP was after EQ already sucked for most of the die-hards whining about this.

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Agree and let's not forget this game is marketed to those people first.

mkopec_sl said:

Well I still think that if a retro EQ like game came out that was well made, I think it would do quite well. I think they are selling themselves short with >100K subs. I think it would do way more than that. especially in the cesspool we have these days of mmorpg games.

But it would have to be well done, not buggy. Think Vanguard but 99% better.

I think it would definitely spill over to the "wow crowds" and even if you got 1 out of 20 of those fools to play, it would be massive. Also dont underestimate the word of mouth in gaming. If a game is good, word spreads like wildfire.

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We will just have to agree to disagree on what the actual market for this type of game is.

In regards to the constant "it has to be done right" argument. The one thing people keep missing that in order to "do it right", the cost in development would still be so prohibative that the market return does not justify the cost. The costs of "doing it right" these days is so massive I don't think the market will bear those costs.

Bilbo Faggins_sl said:

So now we are quoting known scam artists here in an attempt to get everybody here to jump on the "it's a scam" band wagon?

Wow this thread has truly gone to shit.

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Nobody said this was a deliberate attempt to commit fraud. It is a scam in the sense that the money is not going toward future game development, nor to build a studio, nor to fund a tech demo, but to pay 9 designers for their previous "pro bono" efforts to write lore and dream up ideas, this was not admitted until yesterday and therefore people were misled for financial gain, I'm not sure what you'd prefer to call that. The kickstarter money was going to go to paying people for making the kickstarter. That isn't what people were being sold, and is asinine. I attribute that to incompitence and traditional Brad McQuaid bending of truths than actual malevolence. Likewise, referencing the Cheetah men II KS was in reference toward a discussion regarding the marketability of "retro gaming" items, not to state that Brad McQuaid was engaging in a premeditated attempt to steal money from people ala Greg Pavioch. keep up.

Kaines_sl said:

When most players engage in this entertainment, they want their playtime to be as efficient as possible. Riding a horse may be fun, but when the point isn't riding the horse, it's getting to the park to see your friends, people will still take the car. That's the point. You still think riding the horse is "fun", but the vast majority of the public has decided the horse is just a way to get to the "fun" and want a more efficient means of getting there.

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That's the thing, this was supposed to be a niche product for a specific audience. You know, the few folks that still want to take the horse. That argue for the point of most players makes the whole argument moot because doing it the way most players would like is not the goal here. (well, so we thought, but apparently Brad and his team actually dont know what they want to build).

I played WoW, TOR, EVE and GW2 within the last 6 months and I'd still appreciate a game with older design concepts. People do have the ability to play several games and see their good and bad sides, even if most posters tend to demonize anything that isnt their "main" game. Hell even Dumar plays every Wow expansion, that says it all really.

Arctic_Slicer_sl said:

Someone asked him about it and he answered the question. Game isn't in alpha yet; which is when most such systems would typically be tested in a game like this. He's simply giving his honest thoughts about such systems at this point in time and will do some testing during alpha to figure out what actually works for the game and what doesn't.

People are going apeshit over it because a few people on this forum are looking for any possible excuse to attack Brad and Pantheon; they like to take quotes out of context for the sole purpose of stirring the pot. There is a huge difference between constructive criticism and nonconstructive trolling; those people are in the latter category.

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Having radar and dungeon finder are huge, philosophical decisions, not little mechanics. If they want them, they'll have them. It's not like they're suddenly going to be TESTING a fucking radar window and finding they just can't pull it off successfully with current tech. It's not like they're going to test a system that instantly ports you to a dungeon instance and suddenly have some new insight on how that affects the world, travel and community.

Simply giving his honest thoughts on something that should have already been given honest thought in their MONTHS of figuring this shit out. They should have a concrete design in mind at this point, such that he can say "radar systems are/aren't in our current design, do/don't match our philosophy; will/won't be an implementation goal."

Instead, after this many months of work that Brad hopes to pay all his buddies for, and at the industry standard, the head of the project is basically saying he doesn't know, isn't sure, hasn't thought about it, asking us what to do, and then just giving his general thoughts on something?

So, he's just thinking out loud? And we're going to pay him for that?

Don't play the victim complex here, you ragedy, weeping cunt.

Lithose_sl said:

Anyway, ask Dumar, I'm a SUPER modernist. I fucking love technology and can't wait to toss out old stuff. I like being able to hop on the jet and be essentially the equivalent a god from the ancient world by zipping through the air at 600mph . Still though, examining WHY people liked those systems? Without dismissing them out of hand as being silly, might provide pretty valuable insight. As I said in my long posts earlier, EQ had some amazing little gems in it's game play that were never iterated on because WoW's design goal was "action" (And they did that VERY well...but it did leave out a lot of other directions the genre could grow.)

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I'm all for modernity when we discuss quality of life technologies like jet engines. What we're discussing here though is abstract systems, abstract rulesets and regulatory frameworks, whose rules can mostly be created independently, outside of technology (talking games in a general sense: all you needed to come up with chess was the pieces & a board). The 'quality of life' afforded by certain regulatory constructs is not the same 'quality of life' provided by the jet engine, and that's what many who push for 'modern innovations' and 'new gameplay' often sell it as, the equivalent.

There's a reason chess is still popular today. There's a reason poker is still popular today. And there's also a reason a real successor to EverQuest is still sought after today, and it has little to do with nostalgia. It has everything to do with those rulesets, the rules that made up the regulatory constructs that created the world, Norrath. Your analyses of the organic nature of the death penalty/cr risk was precisely what I'm talking about here. Removing that was not an 'advancement' in the genre the same way we advanced from buggies to jets.

A good game is a good game, regardless of when or under what technology it was created. Some of the best games are ancient; some of the absolute worst games are brand new. When you create these systems that have no risk, no punishment for bad play (however you want to define 'bad', strategically or twitch-ally), and little interaction or involvement required to succeed, this is not taking a jet engine instead of a buggy. This is just bad rules. After WoW is long gone, people will still be pining for an EQ successor, and the posts on this board are a good starting analysis as to why.

Kaines_sl said:

The costs of "doing it right" these days is so massive I don't think the market will bear those costs.

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While this KS is a mess and Brad should've handled this entire process MUCH better, he's not the root problem, the core of the problem. The root is mentioned in this quote.

The problem is the moneychangers. Kick them outta the temple.