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

>comparing a game that will never release to games that sold millions

intelligentleman said:

and abuse your hall monitor status?

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Still hasn't figured out that I'm not a mod.

To be fair, some retards here do feel some moral imperative to attack anyone who says anything remotely positive about this game, which does tend to get as old as qwert's schtick.

Daidraco said:

What has really caught my attention is that through the play tests and similar, Ive noticed mobs seem very basic. At their core, its just +damage, +HP, +aggro linking behavior. Yet he has the audacity to bring up Dark Souls in his wall of text. Or better yet, how the "E" in "PVE" is going to be their main focus. I have yet to see a mob that is even remotely interesting. Thats going to be the nail in the coffin for me.

This is a hard line to walk around - because I dont want to go back to playing my UI. Nor do I want to play Wild Star-esque dance dance revolution. But fuck, I want to see a video of why a max level boss with 100 hp is more difficult than a lvl 5 Brown Bear with 500hp. All of these mobs Ive seen in these videos seem .... Lifeless? Pointless? Predictable? I mean, c'mon Brad. Im not against you, but I want to see better.

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For the game I'm looking for, I don't think better monster AI is what we're missing. Sometimes new/smart AI doesn't really enhance the experience in my opinion. I've played hundreds of MMORPGs and there's something about EverQuest combat that makes it, to me, the best that was ever implemented for an MMO. I might not play EQ's combat in a single player game but if you have class-roles and an MMO setting I know that this is what I need in an MMORPG. I believe the challenge is not how smart the AI, that was never the source of danger in EQ. It was the "Ooops" situation we get (a lull spell fizzling, puller mistakenly pulls the whole room, respawns, adds, trains, failing to snare a running away NPC...etc). I can't remember a session in EQ where we didn't get on our toes trying to survive an almost death scenario and what I love about EQ system is if we felt safe we've always pulled bigger from other places and pushed our luck. There's always this "MORE" option and that probably almost always end up bad but when you overcome it, it feels SO GOOD. In current games everything is perfectly designed where you really get no room in pushing your luck. We need that "Hey, how about we pull that room even know I know we might get respawns in a minute or two but hey we might just burn those two Orcs fast! Shall I pull?" that kind of option is not there and if it is; it's never a challenge because monsters die in a few hits in most MMORPGs now a day and they really hold no threat.

I've yet to get that kind of satisfaction in any other game. I sometimes wonder if there's anyone who has played EQ before PoP and disagrees of how good and addictive this whole combat system is. Yes it wasn't perfect but it's the best that I've ever tried. To this day, Agnar/Project99...etc are always as fun as I can ever remember. EverQuest combat mechanic is not "playing the UI" that mentality of whack-a-mole system came later on and probably specifically on games like WoW/Aion/Vanguard...etc when you needed to pay attention to your UI because a reaction is required (when your character dodges, or when you land a crit, or even worse that stupid combo system)... only in that case, with the trend of twitchy combat, you tend to really focus on fighting/looking at UI. in EQ it was more about "Let's control the situation, let's make sure healer doesn't die, let's look at our surrounding and make sure everything is okay." and of course you need to manage your resources because your mana/hp are precious and don't get back as easy as what we're now used to.

I personally don't care for better AI by monsters; I only care about implementing all those fucked up mechanics to bring back that kind of experience that I KNOW I like. Making something new is what fucked it up for me when it comes to new MMORPGs, they always come up with new mechancis and it's boring as fuck (for me!) but as for Pantheon if they stick to EQ flake-y and shitty combat mechanic, I know I'm in for a GOOD time. It's certain, there's no doubt about it.

Risk in EQ was designed around the concept of being overwhelmed. One never knew what you'd get with pick up groups so it was often wise to proceed with caution and pull/kill singles to a designated camp spot. It was then up to the players (not the game) to decide if they should stay within their comfort zone or to push the envelope by pulling more at once or tackling harder mobs/zones. That was the great thing about the design.

I totally agree that the real draw was getting in on "that" group where you quickly realize that singles are simply too slow. Without anyone even saying a word, watching the puller (often myself) pull doubles, then triples, then entire rooms and seeing everyone just do their job and mow shit down.

Not because it was easy, but because people were good.

And, of course, the REAL rush would come when shit just went completely unhinged and a pack of 8-10 adds suddenly show up for no reason. No panic. No fleeing. No one even typing. Just 6 people, each playing their class optimally, working together like a well-oiled machine to survive.

And when that last mob finally goes down and everyone finally sits to rest and med, and someone types "that was fucking awesome!".

That's what I want to play again.

Month after month the same fucking arguments, hahaha. Time freezes on this board. Actually it's probably just this thread.

Most popular fps game right now is PlayerUnknown Battleground, and it looks and plays like it was created by 1 person using an Unreal engine fps starter kit. Anyone who has played the indie mmo project gorgon, actually created by one person, would be ashamed. Movement is stiff and unnatural, syncing of player movement and position is poor, and the animations look like they came stock with very mediocre player models from the Unreal store. The game feels completely unoptimized, it has only 1 mode, and only a single map. Yet, it has a certain charm. It's just fun.

... and they just surpassed 400k concurrent players.

Pantheon, though in a different genre (but no less saturated), will do just fine.

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Dullahan said:

Most popular fps game right now is PlayerUnknown Battleground, and it looks and plays like it was created by 1 person using an Unreal engine fps starter kit. Anyone who has played the indie mmo project gorgon, actually created by one person, would be ashamed. Movement is stiff and unnatural, syncing of player movement and position is poor, and the animations look like they came stock with very mediocre player models from the Unreal store. The game feels completely unoptimized, it has only 1 mode, and only a single map. Yet, it has a certain charm. It's just fun.

... and they just surpassed 400k concurrent players.

Pantheon, though in a different genre (but no less saturated), will do just fine.

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Only if something about the gameplay is found to be completely captivating by the players. So far, Pantheon doesn't seem to have anything too captivating that they've shown. Also, different genre matters a lot. MMOs require a lot more time investment per sitting.

DickTrickle said:

Only if something about the gameplay is found to be completely captivating by the players. So far, Pantheon doesn't seem to have anything too captivating that they've shown. Also, different genre matters a lot. MMOs require a lot more time investment per sitting.

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That's the kicker, there are plenty of people who are already captivated by the apparent recreation of classic EQ just because of what they have seen, even if you don't see it, believe it or agree with it.

I wasnt referring to AI, though mobs dont have to be dumb as shit to recreate the "experience" that you're talking about either. I was throwing a blanket over the system as a whole. Take for example, the play test they did with that one streamer as the monk puller. They went into some heavy hitting content in some wizard tower that had NPC's researching in sections and more. The mobs hit hard as fuck and they appeared to be "unsteady" the entire time. Probably more so if they didnt have GM powers porting them back to their corpses.

What I was referring to was the bosses of the tower. They were so blended with the rest of the NPC's that I didnt even realize they were fighting a boss until after it was dead for some of them. They werent unique, didnt have a strategy and was just tank and spank. Tank and Spank is fine for some of this stuff but they cant all be that way. You dont have to change the way combat is handled just to make an encounter interesting. What if a boss could be interrupted, but if he gets off a cast, he shrinks one of the group members and he grows in stats and appearance by a percent. Once the whole group is shrunk, he morphs into a prince of hell that almost assuredly wipes your group. That sounds cool, and is challenging by itself. If we just look at their play through, they cleared the room of all adds and did a tank and spank. Booooorrrrinnnnggggg.

Make me play my class to my best. Communicate with my group that my interrupt is down. That my interrupt didnt land. Make me get that relief from being the last person not shrunk before the shit hits the fan.

Mobs don't need any kind of advanced AI to make combat enjoyable. There was already an abundance of variables that kept EQ combat fun and exciting, and that set it apart from what passes as mmorpg combat today. Resists, roamers, repops, offset spawn timers, threat and resource management, random class spawns and rare spawns - those are the things that made combat intense and satisfying to this day (at least on emulated servers).

Now, you add in a variety of mob dispositions (which they're doing) on top of all of that in a highly cooperative game with a steep death penalty, and that's a game I would gladly drop everything to play.

This game looks fresh and interesting I can't wait to play it and star citizen next year

BoozeCube said:

This discussion does come up every few months. I don't think it's the combat or AI or anything specific. I believe it's just the ability to fuck up and lose something. There is a bit of fear and discovery that makes the game exciting. There was a level of risk/reward that doesn't exists in today's games. Also in a game like WoW everything is spoiled and date mined months before it was ever released. So falling down holes in various zones in EQ wouldn't happen today because Streamy McFuckface has beta access showing you in real time every fucking bump in the ground, as well as every spell and ability every mob might throw at you.

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Streamy McFuckface is here for now and forever going forward, unfortunately. And now every dev, including Pantheon devs, want their own Streamy McFuckface because it gets a product into the eyes of so many viewers.