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

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JarekStorm_sl

shitlord
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Quaid_sl said:
Terrible argument.

You were in your starting zone in EQ for the first 8 levels... MAYBE. That's what? 7-9 hours gameplay? Out of how many hundreds of hours to max level?
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It still sucked, at least in Rift.

Maybe it'll be more like the Isle of Dawn in VG. That was not bad, but damn man, it lacks character. Starting cities add more depth and immersion than their weird planar lore. It's disappointing.
 
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Dumar_sl

shitlord
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Aeiouy_sl said:
Given that resources are limited, I would rather have seven more huge dungeons than ten other starting cities. Maybe trolls are relegated to a trash yard outside of town.
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Like I said, they don't have to all be huge Stormwind or Qeynos-sized cities. Give the trolls one fucking cave and a couple of npcs. 1-2 days work.
 
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Aeiouy_sl

shitlord
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In this interview they sound very high on cross server play from chat to actual gameplay. Speciality rule servers may be only exception. They collectively seem gung-ho on cross server play.
 
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Dumar_sl

shitlord
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Brad.. NO CROSS SERVER PLAY. Have you NOT heard our cries for the last 10 years!

That's it. I'm making a KS. Come one and all to the high fantasy world of Dumaria.
 
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Aeiouy_sl

shitlord
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Flc_sl said:
Give me a break, Convo. I know you really want this game to succeed, but I've read your posts and you're a smart guy - take off the McQuaid-colored goggles.

First, when it comes to clarity of vision, EQN is in a totally different ballpark than Pantheon. In fact, Brad should have looked hard at their SOE Live presentation and taken a page from that book. Regardless of what you think about the quality of EQN's design goals and ideas, they were presented brilliantly and in crystal-clear fashion. Ponytail came out and, with great passion, stated everything he and his team thought was wrong or underdeveloped with MMOs, translated those thoughts into "pillars" of how they wanted to evolve the genre (life of consequence, destructability, changing world, and evolving the core game) and then gave a specific example of each (emergent AI, voxels, rallying calls, and multi-classing/deck building/horizontal progression.)

The ironic thing is that Brad has always attempted to associate himself with being a visionary, but the thing is, there's no vision here. Or, best case scenario (and I don't know why we'd give him the benefit of the doubt by applying a best case scenario, but whatever), he's building the vision as he goes forward. All we heard in the beginning is he wanted something like EverQuest that had a lot of grouping. That was his pitch. And, oh yeah, he's Brad McQuaid.

This is far more than just a communication problem. This is a vision problem.

Imagine if he were pitching a sitcom. This is what it would be like:

"Hey guys, I'm writing a sitcom. It's going to be like Friends, but with a bit of Seinfeld."
"Ok, what's the plot?"
"..."
"Who are the characters?"
"Let me get back to you in 48 hours... (48 hours later) Ok, so there's a Ross and a Rachel, and a Chandler, but there's no Joey."
"But we love Joey, we really want a Joey character in the show. I'm not sure if we can give you money for this since there's no Joey."
"Just kidding guys, there IS a Joey. He's part of the Chandler character. See? Innovation! Vision!"

The way they handled the entire warrior/crusader thing is so indicative of the fact there hasn't been a vision at all. Someone with a vision sees complaints and says, "You know what, I hear you guys, but we made this decision because of X, Y, and Z." Or they might say, "You know everyone, our vision was X, Y, and Z, but you all make a good point. So we're going to find a way to incorporate warriors into that vision."

What they don't do is say, "Uhhh yeah... actually, that was part of our vision all along, guys! We just didn't reveal it yet! But here it is! Yeah! See, we're thinking really far ahead!"

And that's the issue. Not that they're adding things to the game as they go along. It's that they came into this with the fucking hubris that Brad's name alone would be enough to carry it, were totally unprepared, totally vision-less (from the guys who claim vision is everything), and are now pretending that their vision is far more concrete than it actually is (see: combat update) and hoping that everyone following them is too fucking stupid or naive to notice.

They're charlatans, preying on the nostalgia of their audience.
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Anyone thinks they just threw in warriors the night before announcing crusaders are seriously fooling themselves. It is like people want to believe the worst so bad they will try to convolute reality.
 
Muligan

Muligan

Trakanon Raider
3,253
916
Dumar_sl said:
Brad.. NO CROSS SERVER PLAY. Have you NOT heard our cries for the last 10 years!
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I see no reason for it if the server and community is healthy. Cross server place insists there will be queues and instances that people from each server would be teleported to another place. Unless there is some other cross-server functionality I am unaware of...

Give me a server of 3-5k people and let my server exist on its on. Just like in business, the only time you need someone else is when you are failing. Cross server play was just a way to supplement numbers when they are not there. Again, unless i'm missing something.
 
Mr Creed

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
2,394
287
Quaid_sl said:
Where are there 22 classes listed? I count 7.

Do you not know the difference between a class and a sub class/specialization? In Wow, is a feral druid a different class than a resto druid?

Do you not play MMORPGs? I don't get what's so difficult to understand here.
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It depends alot on what they mean with those subclasses though. I think EQ2 at first had you permanently pick one, same with TOR. We'll have to wait and see. And honestly I would prefer an informed choice at lvl5 (of 20, a quarter to cap) to the WoW spec back'n'forth crap. I just prefer permanent character development, there's always alts for the other classes/specs.
 
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Aeiouy_sl

shitlord
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Zefah_sl said:
When did they deny there was going to be a Warrior-like tank role? Did they come out and say that?

I've been following this quite a bit, and all I remember is that the initial class list didn't have "Warrior" in it and people freaked out. Is that where you're getting this whole thing or did I miss something?
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They never did. It is a baseless conspiracy with no evidence to support it.
 
Zefah

Zefah

<Gold Donor>
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Flc_sl said:
You don't find it the least bit curious that on one day they release a class list, over the next twenty four hours there are hundreds of kickstarter comments complaining about the lack of a non-faith-based warrior class, and then the next day they release a class update that is significantly different from the previous class updates and includes a sub-class for a non-faith-based warrior? (Which doesn't match the language in the lore-based portion of the class description that they had clearly written before?)

I don't mind that they're adding class specializations, but anyone who can't see that these guys were A) totally unprepared and B) making it up as they go, is totally blind.

That isn't to say they hadn't talked about some of these ideas over the past four months, but there's a big difference between a hazy, ephemeral "vision" that's a few ideas that have been discussed and a solid, concrete vision with fully fledged design documentation showing the actionable implications of that vision.

Given that "vision" is all these guys have going for them, since they don't have any actual work to show, it's depressing that even the vision is underdeveloped and a total mess.
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I could see why you'd be suspicious, but I also don't think it's an impossibility that they originally intended to release information on class specialization later on. I think their trickling information strategy has been shitty, and this may have just been another example of it backfiring.

I do think they've had plenty of discussions about this stuff before they launched the Kickstarter. I don't know what state that information is in and how it's been compiled, but I'm not going to just come to the conclusion that they are making shit up as they go along. That's a possibility, but we don't have any proof either way, so there's no reason to speak with such certainty about it.
 
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JarekStorm_sl

shitlord
116
0
Aeiouy_sl said:
In this interview they sound very high on cross server play from chat to actual gameplay. Speciality rule servers may be only exception. They collectively seem gung-ho on cross server play.
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Jesus, that's absolutely contrary to everything about building a community. How does grouping with people I'll never see again from some other server foster community?
 
Zefah

Zefah

<Gold Donor>
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Boozecube_sl said:
Thing is some of these fuckers are so far gone that you could some in with a hand written note from Brad himself saying he didn't have a goddamn clue what he was doing and they still wouldn't believe you. It isn't like someone from their own fucking team already explained they weren't holding anything back they really were making it up on the fly. But whatever desperation for a new MMO is an ugly thing.
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Really, dude? You're going to turn it into an US vs. THEM thing? You really are just in here to hate, flame, and troll, aren't you?
 
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Lysis

N00b
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I like the game they're describing, but the fundamental issues remain: Trust and a vague post-KS plan.

The more they flesh out the game, the more I question whether they can afford to build it. I would be better assured by less variety. It all sort of sounds like Brad's RTS city building, ship battles and pirate talk two weeks before he sold Sigil to SOE.
 
Quaid

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,859
8,265
Dumar_sl said:
Like I said, they don't have to all be huge Stormwind or Qeynos-sized cities. Give the trolls one fucking cave and a couple of npcs. 1-2 days work.
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that sounds totally awful man. Seriously though, aside from you preconceived notions about why Trolls should automatically hate Elves, what are the gameplay benefits of multiple starting cities?

I guess I could say they help enhance sense of character identity through unique architecture and flavor, and make early levels on an alt character more appealing. Oh, and theres the Qeynos->Freeport run situations to join your buddies that were kinda fun.

But does that outweigh the benefits of a single starting location which, among others:

1. helps focus development on a truly great newbie starting experience, instead of spreading resources.
2. allows players to adventure together starting from level 1
3. focuses population so the world feels full and alive to new players early on, even if/when population numbers dwindle

the trade offs aren't worth it, IMO
 
popsicledeath

popsicledeath

Potato del Grande
7,547
11,831
Dropped my $300 pledge and it was gone instantly. At least the pledging seems to be getting more action than last slots staying open for hours or days.
 
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Dumar_sl

shitlord
3,712
4
Muligan_sl said:
I see no reason for it if the server and community is healthy. Cross server place insists there will be queues and instances that people from each server would be teleported to another place. Unless there is some other cross-server functionality I am unaware of...

Give me a server of 3-5k people and let my server exist on its on. Just like in business, the only time you need someone else is when you are failing. Cross server play was just a way to supplement numbers when they are not there. Again, unless i'm missing something.
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It was a bandaid to fix a bandaid to fix a bandaid. Because Blizzard didn't wanna implement pvp that mattered, they made instanced BGs. When they made instanced BGs, it created server queues. To fix the server queues, they had to bandaid in x-server BGs. So you see, fixing one problem brought about several others. And the solution to those new problems caused more problems: it gutted the server community.

So yeah, their 'solutions' were awful because for every 1 thing they fixed, 2 or 3 other shitty problems sprang up. The end result? The death of the server community.

DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN. Brad. BRAD.
 
Zefah

Zefah

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Brad said in the interview that, while it would be dependent on the team size in the end, they'd consider 20,000 to 50,000 players a success. Just gives you an idea of the smaller scope they are planning for. Glad to hear it.
 
Quaid

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,859
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Zefah_sl said:
Brad said in the interview that, while it would be dependent on the team size in the end, they'd consider 20,000 to 50,000 players a success. Just gives you an idea of the smaller scope they are planning for. Glad to hear it.
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That's pretty in line with what they expected for EQ to be successful too
 
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