Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO
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moonarchia
The Scientific Shitlord
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OneofOne
Silver Baronet of the Realm
- 6,645
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I only slept with one guild mate, though I got far less for it! She was *supposed* to not have her son for the weekend, but did, so we only had sex like once. Apparently that was enough for her to think I shouldn't have any other female friends in the game. I didn't have to delete my character, but damn was she crazy.
I'm a bit of a nice guy/sucker though, and I wouldn't ever be able to simply take cash and run. That's just fucked up /shrug
I'm a bit of a nice guy/sucker though, and I wouldn't ever be able to simply take cash and run. That's just fucked up /shrug
Khane
Got something right about marriage
- 19,837
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Eh, I fucked a broad in my WoW guild. She paid to fly out to me and we stayed in a hotel all weekend because I had just graduated college and was living in my parents basement (hah!). I was 22 and she was 34 I think? She had 3 kids, that much I knew. What I didn't know, which I found out about 6 months later through a friend who was jelly that her in game crush was bangin her at this point, was that she was not divorced like she said she was. She wasn't even separated, stupid whore. She was not much of a looker but had a nice body and fucked like a pro.Was my first and only ATM. I couldn't even look at her after I ATMd her and I've never done it since because that's disgusting. We had a lot of sex that weekend.
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ZyyzYzzy
RIP USA
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My ex gf once said she could distract me from FF7 if she gave me a BJ while playing.
She lost.
She lost.
This thread has gone from transgender bashing to guild penthouse stories. Where can it possibly go from here?
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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The problem so far (beyond the amateur hour Unity stuff) is that we don't have the slightest idea of what kind of game we could get (in an ideal world) from Pantheon. Beyond a game with fiery avengers in the hand of rangers and purple mushrooms.
And it's been a couple months since I've designed a MMO, so I'm going to scratch my itch here. It's the equivalent of jacking off into a used kleenex, but who cares.
(if the Pantheon team wants to steal my ideas, feel free. No strings attached, I hereby grant a permanent, universal, non-revocable free license for this intellectual piece of non-property)
So, you have a group-oriented, old-school-feeling game called Pantheon. What is it about?
Background: You begin as a youth of whatever race, born onto a plane in the infinite Multiverse (all zones). The tutorial intro basically smashes your old life: your drunk father kicks you out, or your whole family dies and the house is seized for back taxes, or you're kicked out of the Army for an incident, or whatever. You're led to an encounter in which you get to accomplish an impressive deed in front of witnesses, and you get to feel the confidence those witnesses get in you (even fleetingly before they die horribly). You can't change who you were, but you can become more. Much more.
Your character's class is based on the Elemental Affinities: Chaos/Order, Earth/Air, Water/Fire. You have an affinity value for each element. Your class is based on your two highest affinities (except for opposite ones; it takes the third highest instead of the second).
Order: Buff
Chaos: Debuff
Earth: Tanking
Water: Healing
Fire: Prolonged effects (dots)
Air: Splash effects (aoes)
Order+Earth would be "Stone": it's a class that combines buffing and tanking. So yes, 12 classes, 4 of which tank, 4 of which heal (including one who does both) and 5 of which are mainly support.
You have a deck of "cards". You can place 10 passive and 9 actives on your bar (the 1st active is always the autoattack for your weapon). You can equip 6 elemental card, 3 base class cards and 1 elite class card on both bars (6 elemental passives+5 elemental actives; 3 passive+3 actives base; 1 elite passive and 1 elite active). You get the elemental cards by levelling, you have to seek out the class cards in the world (later).
Each skill(card)'s effect depend on your level and elemental affinity (sum of both for class cards), you can improve your skills by levelling, getting more character affinity or gear with +elemental or class affinity.
The main levelling mechanic is Trials. Dynamic Events/Bosses that are aligned with an affinity or a class (events are elemental-based, bosses are class-based). Success of an Event gives you the opportunity to gain affinity. Elemental based trials give you 100% of their value in their main affinity, or 50% of their value to either of the two elements on both side of the element in the element wheel. For example, you win a low level Chaos Trial, you can take +10 Chaos, or choose +5 Air or +5 Fire. When you gain affinity, you lose 33% in the opposite affinity; if you took +10 Chaos, you'd lose 3 in Order at the same time.
Class Trials work the same except that both elements of the class have 100% of their value; the third choice at 50% is either the one between the two, or a random one to one of the sides in the wheel. If you don't want any of the choices... you lose the affinity gains. Your choice.
Note that you can strengthen your base affinities, or take on different affinities and thus "reroll" your class if you're dissatisfied with it.
All trials can also reward you with Faith. Faith happens when any intelligent entities witnesses your famous/infamous exploits. The more witness, the more Faith is gotten out of the Trial. That means that winning a Trial is only half the battle, winning the trial with as many surviving witnesses is important. And if you fail... you lose faith.
(you can also get some Faith outside of trials. You can fight bandits and impress them before slaughtering them. The more bandits in the fight, the higher the faith gotten from killing one you get. But that's small potatoes to trials - you need to kill bosses)
Faith gives you levels, which unlock elemental cards and increase stats. You can lose levels (and reduce your card effects), but can't lose cards/stat increases.
As you get more and more faith impressed into you, you change, take on the elemental aspects, and basically become a god. Visually, you take a skin related to your class, with boots/gloves/head/shoulders/weapon remaining visible. You're Stone, you look like a granite version of the Thing. You're Fog, you're a cloudy mass with just that equipment visible. And so on. Oh, and you take "of the Stones", "of the Void" etc at the end of your name. Makes it easier to guess your class for dummies.
This happens at about the level where most of the interesting trials require a group.
Class trials can also reward you with class card at random from the appropriate difficulty. Half the base class cards can be gotten from solo trials, half from small pantheon trials. A third of the elite can be from small pantheons, the rest from full pantheon trials.
Pantheon? That's what happens you get multiple gods working together. A pantheon is a group of different gods together. Small pantheons are 3-4 gods, full pantheons is 12 gods together (that's raids for you modern talk-challenged). See, the game's name is now justified.
In a pantheon, if two or more gods have the same class, all but one can "sub" as any other classes that aren't in the pantheon yet. Basically, this swaps your current bars to the class-version of that bar that you can build from your elemental cards, or any card of that class you got from that class' trials (you can get Stone cards from a Stone Trial, even if you were a Lightning god doing that). Affinities are swapped (you retain your current affinity levels for the effectivity of your new skills). So, if you have two Void gods (Chaos+Air, aoe debuffers with damaging and debilitating auras), one of them can decide to sub as a Stone god to tank. Gear is not class-restricted, but its efficiency for a given class varies.
Here you have. The outline of core game mechanic for a Pantheon: Rise of the fallen (whipping boy).
See, it wasn't too hard?
And it's been a couple months since I've designed a MMO, so I'm going to scratch my itch here. It's the equivalent of jacking off into a used kleenex, but who cares.
(if the Pantheon team wants to steal my ideas, feel free. No strings attached, I hereby grant a permanent, universal, non-revocable free license for this intellectual piece of non-property)
So, you have a group-oriented, old-school-feeling game called Pantheon. What is it about?
Background: You begin as a youth of whatever race, born onto a plane in the infinite Multiverse (all zones). The tutorial intro basically smashes your old life: your drunk father kicks you out, or your whole family dies and the house is seized for back taxes, or you're kicked out of the Army for an incident, or whatever. You're led to an encounter in which you get to accomplish an impressive deed in front of witnesses, and you get to feel the confidence those witnesses get in you (even fleetingly before they die horribly). You can't change who you were, but you can become more. Much more.
Your character's class is based on the Elemental Affinities: Chaos/Order, Earth/Air, Water/Fire. You have an affinity value for each element. Your class is based on your two highest affinities (except for opposite ones; it takes the third highest instead of the second).
Order: Buff
Chaos: Debuff
Earth: Tanking
Water: Healing
Fire: Prolonged effects (dots)
Air: Splash effects (aoes)
Order+Earth would be "Stone": it's a class that combines buffing and tanking. So yes, 12 classes, 4 of which tank, 4 of which heal (including one who does both) and 5 of which are mainly support.
You have a deck of "cards". You can place 10 passive and 9 actives on your bar (the 1st active is always the autoattack for your weapon). You can equip 6 elemental card, 3 base class cards and 1 elite class card on both bars (6 elemental passives+5 elemental actives; 3 passive+3 actives base; 1 elite passive and 1 elite active). You get the elemental cards by levelling, you have to seek out the class cards in the world (later).
Each skill(card)'s effect depend on your level and elemental affinity (sum of both for class cards), you can improve your skills by levelling, getting more character affinity or gear with +elemental or class affinity.
The main levelling mechanic is Trials. Dynamic Events/Bosses that are aligned with an affinity or a class (events are elemental-based, bosses are class-based). Success of an Event gives you the opportunity to gain affinity. Elemental based trials give you 100% of their value in their main affinity, or 50% of their value to either of the two elements on both side of the element in the element wheel. For example, you win a low level Chaos Trial, you can take +10 Chaos, or choose +5 Air or +5 Fire. When you gain affinity, you lose 33% in the opposite affinity; if you took +10 Chaos, you'd lose 3 in Order at the same time.
Class Trials work the same except that both elements of the class have 100% of their value; the third choice at 50% is either the one between the two, or a random one to one of the sides in the wheel. If you don't want any of the choices... you lose the affinity gains. Your choice.
Note that you can strengthen your base affinities, or take on different affinities and thus "reroll" your class if you're dissatisfied with it.
All trials can also reward you with Faith. Faith happens when any intelligent entities witnesses your famous/infamous exploits. The more witness, the more Faith is gotten out of the Trial. That means that winning a Trial is only half the battle, winning the trial with as many surviving witnesses is important. And if you fail... you lose faith.
(you can also get some Faith outside of trials. You can fight bandits and impress them before slaughtering them. The more bandits in the fight, the higher the faith gotten from killing one you get. But that's small potatoes to trials - you need to kill bosses)
Faith gives you levels, which unlock elemental cards and increase stats. You can lose levels (and reduce your card effects), but can't lose cards/stat increases.
As you get more and more faith impressed into you, you change, take on the elemental aspects, and basically become a god. Visually, you take a skin related to your class, with boots/gloves/head/shoulders/weapon remaining visible. You're Stone, you look like a granite version of the Thing. You're Fog, you're a cloudy mass with just that equipment visible. And so on. Oh, and you take "of the Stones", "of the Void" etc at the end of your name. Makes it easier to guess your class for dummies.
This happens at about the level where most of the interesting trials require a group.
Class trials can also reward you with class card at random from the appropriate difficulty. Half the base class cards can be gotten from solo trials, half from small pantheon trials. A third of the elite can be from small pantheons, the rest from full pantheon trials.
Pantheon? That's what happens you get multiple gods working together. A pantheon is a group of different gods together. Small pantheons are 3-4 gods, full pantheons is 12 gods together (that's raids for you modern talk-challenged). See, the game's name is now justified.
In a pantheon, if two or more gods have the same class, all but one can "sub" as any other classes that aren't in the pantheon yet. Basically, this swaps your current bars to the class-version of that bar that you can build from your elemental cards, or any card of that class you got from that class' trials (you can get Stone cards from a Stone Trial, even if you were a Lightning god doing that). Affinities are swapped (you retain your current affinity levels for the effectivity of your new skills). So, if you have two Void gods (Chaos+Air, aoe debuffers with damaging and debilitating auras), one of them can decide to sub as a Stone god to tank. Gear is not class-restricted, but its efficiency for a given class varies.
Here you have. The outline of core game mechanic for a Pantheon: Rise of the fallen (whipping boy).
See, it wasn't too hard?
Big Flex
Fitness Fascist
- 4,314
- 3,166
The longer this goes on and with each new MMO release that keeps my attention a maximum of two weeks the more I'm starting to warm to the idea of Richard Garriot's "selective multiplayer" model from SoTA as an alternative to the shitty current model of MMOs.
Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
- 2,380
- 276
I'm not sold on Garriot but "selective multiplayer" probably is going to be standard for the type of game the industry calls MMO (I wouldnt class them as such, but eh). Although between Garriot and Roberts I would (and did) hitch my cart to Star Citizen for my almost-mmo-but-actually-not-oneT gaming.
I just asked that in the EQN thread and apparently this is the only western MMO besides EQN that is in development (or rather, full-on development mode!). A sad state of affairs.
I just asked that in the EQN thread and apparently this is the only western MMO besides EQN that is in development (or rather, full-on development mode!). A sad state of affairs.
Erronius
Macho Ma'am
- 16,483
- 42,428
I'd just as soon see MMOs move away from the Raid-centric design altogether and focus on group/dungeon crap instead. It's kind of odd that one of the reasons I'd be tempted to try SotA in the first place is that I can't stand raid grind asshattery anymore. And before anyone says"just play with your friends and ignore the raids", there are a slew of issues with this from'less group content due to manpower being allocated elsewhere'to'many MMOs aren't designing group content as endgame or to be sustainable, they're designing that stuff to be transitory as people progress and they're terribad when you want purposely avoid raiding'and a fuckton of other shit in between.
This takes me back to the 14yo discussion - I don't think they're pussies, I think that they have a lot of similar tastes to what we have and the real question would be"why would I waste my time playing MMO X when I could be playing LOL with my friends". Those kids might absolutely LOVE to have a good MMO, but look at Pantheon - it's a good example of what I think has been wrong with MMO design. It looks like they're going to slap a whole bunch of shit into the framework of a game (PCs + NPCs + Zones = Profit?) but I haven't seen anything that would scream to me that they have an overarching goal. Are they going to be creating a game where players can create their own drama and content like EVE? No. Are they going to create a game where instead of logging in to fight Dragon X for the umpteenth time, a dragon spawns over your village and will completely obliterate it unless people log on to kill it, or at the very least drive it off, so that everything your guild has built over the last 12mo isn't erased? No. Are they going to create a game where kids and adults look at each other and say"Fuck, this game is gonna ROCK!"? Hell no. And Brad hasn't figured that out yet. He's just wanting to copy EQ1/VG and frankly that shit is played out. The last thing I want is some Devs just throwing shit together and trying to appeal to dem feels.
WoW was pretty good through vanilla, but I'd argue that it wasn't awesome simply in and of itself. I honestly think one of the reasons that Vanilla was so good is that people went into vanilla WoW the same way that people went into EQ1/UO/etc - you had a narrative, everything seemed 'new', and things were exciting. No one had been through the game yet, but once expansions started being released...the MMO groundhog-day malaise of solo/group/raid grinding set in and people started feeling like they were just rehashing the same shit over and over and over. So in essence, because it was new, vanilla seemed awesome. But you simply can't sustain the wonderment and awe all that long and depend on it to last.
I really believe that MMOs need to design not only in the long term, but that they also need to create systems, or larger integrated worlds. Slapping assets into zones and constantly trying to throw content in front of players isn't sustainable, and frankly it's boring as fuck. You need to design games with focus. If I want to create a sandbox MMO with world creation for players and also have open world PVP elements and emergent gameplay that is encouraged (within common sense limits), then FFS I would need to have that all designed out on paper well before I ever show up on Kickstarter. I think this goes for just about any idea out there, but I don't often see ideas like that where Devs and Studios are laying out how their game will play. Instead it's shit like"Yeah, we're going to have a bunch of [stuff] in game, so just trust us. Here's some screenshots"
This takes me back to the 14yo discussion - I don't think they're pussies, I think that they have a lot of similar tastes to what we have and the real question would be"why would I waste my time playing MMO X when I could be playing LOL with my friends". Those kids might absolutely LOVE to have a good MMO, but look at Pantheon - it's a good example of what I think has been wrong with MMO design. It looks like they're going to slap a whole bunch of shit into the framework of a game (PCs + NPCs + Zones = Profit?) but I haven't seen anything that would scream to me that they have an overarching goal. Are they going to be creating a game where players can create their own drama and content like EVE? No. Are they going to create a game where instead of logging in to fight Dragon X for the umpteenth time, a dragon spawns over your village and will completely obliterate it unless people log on to kill it, or at the very least drive it off, so that everything your guild has built over the last 12mo isn't erased? No. Are they going to create a game where kids and adults look at each other and say"Fuck, this game is gonna ROCK!"? Hell no. And Brad hasn't figured that out yet. He's just wanting to copy EQ1/VG and frankly that shit is played out. The last thing I want is some Devs just throwing shit together and trying to appeal to dem feels.
WoW was pretty good through vanilla, but I'd argue that it wasn't awesome simply in and of itself. I honestly think one of the reasons that Vanilla was so good is that people went into vanilla WoW the same way that people went into EQ1/UO/etc - you had a narrative, everything seemed 'new', and things were exciting. No one had been through the game yet, but once expansions started being released...the MMO groundhog-day malaise of solo/group/raid grinding set in and people started feeling like they were just rehashing the same shit over and over and over. So in essence, because it was new, vanilla seemed awesome. But you simply can't sustain the wonderment and awe all that long and depend on it to last.
I really believe that MMOs need to design not only in the long term, but that they also need to create systems, or larger integrated worlds. Slapping assets into zones and constantly trying to throw content in front of players isn't sustainable, and frankly it's boring as fuck. You need to design games with focus. If I want to create a sandbox MMO with world creation for players and also have open world PVP elements and emergent gameplay that is encouraged (within common sense limits), then FFS I would need to have that all designed out on paper well before I ever show up on Kickstarter. I think this goes for just about any idea out there, but I don't often see ideas like that where Devs and Studios are laying out how their game will play. Instead it's shit like"Yeah, we're going to have a bunch of [stuff] in game, so just trust us. Here's some screenshots"