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

I don't give a shit what Brad produces. I will support him. Its not really about Everquest, although I was addicted to that like a fucking crack head. I played it so much, and so hard, and so many hours, I burned out after our guild took down Quarm (17th guild overall to kill him which I'm proud of), and yes, I know he had long since left. I was playing about 14 hours a day at the time, and when we killed Quarm, I just knew, that was it. I was done. And aside from a couple "pop in's", I never returned.

What I remember is after all that shit went down with the "parking lot" and Vanguard going down in flames and Brad being shit to basically everyone, I send him an email. Nothing big, but I just said, "fuck it man, I saw what you tried to do and it didn't work. Shit happens but honestly, your game was fucking brilliance. Props to you for trying". I send it knowing I would never get a response. Not from a dude that big ya know. But here's the thing. It wasn't 2 days and he personally emailed me back thanking me for my support etc...I was fucking blown away. I JUMPED out of my chair and screamed at my wife that BRAD FUCKING MCQUAID has just responded to me. A fucking nobody. But he took time out of his night to respond to my email.
You just don't see that shit anymore. Brad cares about games and Brad cares about the people who play them. That's some ol' school shit. It just doesn't happen anymore. I will support that shit because its important. It fucking matters. It may seem stupid to some people but the older I get the more I realize that its that kind of shit in life that makes a difference. SO there ya go.............

pointyboot_sl said:

I'm sure I'll get tomatoes thrown at me but I think vanilla WoW got the correct balance on solo/group content. There were many quest line scattered throughout the world that required grouping. There's that whole instancing thing but communities were still very much involved. I dinged far more in groups than I did solo.

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Way too much quest grind in Vanilla WoW. Beta 5 VG was a little better (less quests, but still had hubs).

Which reminds me: for the love of God, let mobs drop quest items even if you're not on the quest. The single worst part of the quest grind is backflagging people because they are on different stages of the quest and even though you're ready to kill A_Big_Boss for his head they can't get the A_Big_Boss' head unless they complete all six parts of the earlier quests in the questline. -_-

Sithro_sl said:

Eh, I think levels should be done away with completely. Make a new character, twink it all you want, so long as you know how to play it.

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The good thing about the kickstarter is that it will, hopefully do away with a few questions, concerns, comments, or other BS

-instancing (yes/no, 50/50)
-levels (probably yes)
-flying mounts (no)
-raiding (??)
-group size
-Initial classes
-Stretch classes
-Super stretch classes
-Initial races
-Stretch races
-Super stretch races
-Other stretch goals (PvP), etc.

Make flying mounts the 500 million dollar stretch goal.

Dahkoht_sl said:

Make flying mounts the 500 million dollar stretch goal.

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Now that would be amusing.

Tuco_sl said:

Star Citizen will probably hit 500 million if they keep cranking out spaceship commercials.

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No joke. The amount of money some people have invested in that already is mind blowing.

Stretch classes is probably pretty high on the worst ideas of all time list.

I think one thing I don't like about many modern mmo's is stat inflation. I like the gear-as-a-carrot mechanic but I don't see any reason there needs to be some "gear reset" when new content comes out. I've put lots of hours into NWN series persistent worlds and my favorites always have you with a +2 sword feeling BAMF. Better I think are systems in which a certain piece of gear can change your play style slightly, like certain clickies of EQ.

But my big question (and I apologize if I missed it) is raiding. Can we expect groups to band together to take down mobs too strong for a group of 5 or so? At max level?

Just wanted to say, my cats still haven't figure out where the birds are in my house. That's how good the bird "ambiance" sounds are in Vanguard. Thanks for that Brad. Do it again in Pantheon.

No flying mounts, just give everyone wings and let them glide short distances, have glide be on a long cooldown

Tuco_sl said:

Yeah. I don't even like the idea of new classes being stuffed into expansions. It makes sense if there's a gap that needs to be filled but I've never seen an xpac class that wasn't just a hybrid of existing types.

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Classes are the absolute core of your game. And generally, i would think, the game is designed to have a balance between all current classes. So to say a class might not make it into the game because they dont get enough money would in theory throw everything out of whack. or cheapen the feel of every other class.

I dont like the idea of stretch goals at all, unless its purely cosmetic things or a way to add more content on release, bumping stuff up from content patches.

Let's not be foolish about it though, stretch goals have been kickstarter's bread and butter.

If there's a stretch goal to have your own NPC in game, Wizardhawk will live on forever.

pointyboot_sl said:

I think one thing I don't like about many modern mmo's is stat inflation. I like the gear-as-a-carrot mechanic but I don't see any reason there needs to be some "gear reset" when new content comes out. I've put lots of hours into NWN series persistent worlds and my favorites always have you with a +2 sword feeling BAMF. Better I think are systems in which a certain piece of gear can change your play style slightly, like certain clickies of EQ.

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I'd like to see a reduction in item mudflation as well.

An example of a typical MMO is a level 20 mob drops a +20 HP items, but when an expansion comes out, level 15 mobs in the expansion drop +20 HP items and level 20 expansion mobs drop + 25 HP items. This is artifical, developer induced mudflation. It does cause players to flock to the new expansion -which is the point of artificial mudlflation- but it just leaves the previous content and items mostly worthless and unused. Even if the expansion mobs are more difficult, I don't think the items should necessarily be better. Exceptions can be made for extremely difficult dungeons/mob that are atypical, but artificially expanding items shouldn't be the rule for expansion itemization, and I'll explain why.

You don't want to design a gaming environment where the only content worth playing is new content. Right? If you do, players will run out of things to do while waiting for the new expansion. Keeping old world content viable by not artificially mudflating items in expansions will give players a larger, legitimate content pool. Yes, people can get bored with old content, but in my experience players go where the best XP and loot is, which is typically a MMOs latest expansion. Adding expansion content that is equal, level for level, will give players more overall options by not eliminate previous options of legitimate content.

Unfortunately, EverQuest suffered from this type of artificial inflation. I'd like to see this practice completely eliminated in Pantheon.

Saban_sl said:

I dont like the idea of stretch goals at all, unless its purely cosmetic things or a way to add more content on release, bumping stuff up from content patches.

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I'd like to see 16+ classes in at launch, seems a bit much though given their limited resources. What has to be in at release are at least 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 1 Melee DPS, 1 Magic DPS, CC and probably a Puller/Buffer/Utility class. So using EQ classes: Warrior, Cleric, Rogue or Ranger, Wizard or Magician, Enchanter then either Bard or Monk.

I don't see any problem with stretch classes for a kickstarter if all classes are designed at the same time (so Shaman, Necro, BST, BloodMage, etc are designed together with the release classes) and then release these other classes as soon as possible after the game goes live (if stretch goals aren't met). Sure it sucks if you want to play a Necro, but if it's a successful launch then NewCo should have the money to add the class you really want relatively soon. And you can use the 20th level Magician you don't really want to twink your Necro when that class becomes available.

Aradune_sl said:

The creator of Sebiilis (and many other classic zones) recently joined the team. We asked him to make his first Pantheon dungeon make Sebilis look like a pre-school. He smiled and nodded.

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this is the best news i've heard on the MMO front in almost a decade. this has been my point of contention with the instance vs. non instance argument from the very beginning. if you make dungeons large enough, then there is no need for instancing. make sprawling dungeons that can easily accommodate 100 players or more, make 3 or 4 of these dungeons for each level group, make all the loot in each dungeon comparable, and you can easily spread the population out enough that no one feels left out or has to be placed on a waiting list. it really is a simple solution, and instancing has become the norm in modern MMO's because it's just the industry being lazy and instead of having to come up with several awesome dungeons (like seb), they can just do one and make copies of it for everyone to play in and segregate the player base.