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

Secrets_sl said:

Exactly my concerns. If they didn't nail the feel of their vision, it may be great on paper but we haven't seen anything. When we see an alpha I think it'd be a bit more fair to judge it, even then, most MMOs change for the worst once they get out of alpha.

Part of me wants to see the technical aspect of how they pulled it off (with Unity), which is generally unheard of outside of SotA and Crowfall.

Click to expand...

Well, I think the the fact that you can list two other pretty big KS successes means that it's far from unheard of nowadays. Plus, the Unity guys are working with these groups to make it possible - they want their engine to be the bees' knees after all. I'm sure it required a lot of work.

We had Joppa in here a while back, and I asked him something similar about that, about how it was playing, and he said it was still too laggy and needed polish, and that's what he had the team focusing on. He hasn't dipped his head in here for a long time though. I'm too lazy to re-read his posts, but here's at least his post history so you can peruse them and see if my memory is correct:Rerolled

Secrets_sl said:

That being said, yeah, I understand i'm on RR and you guys are hilarious. I'm just trying to see it from a logical perspective and I should be tossing business logic out the window when it comes to games.

Click to expand...

Careful, the last person who attempted that was Laura and it did not end well. But no, aside from a few really fucking stupid people, I think most people actually realize it'd be insanely dumb to try to build a MMO with a tiny team with barely any money by creating all unique art assets. But some people also have no interest in playing something with common art assets, as it just ruins "their immersion" or some shit I guess, I dunno.

Who keeps changing the thread title lol? It's by far the best thing about this thread

It's pretty evident that the Pantheon team has now veered away from using the Unity Store for their assets and have started working with their own unique models since. You won't find the assets seen used for the City of Throne Fast available for download. And if you think their environment is as simple as playing with unity you're sadly mistaken. In order to create the work they're showing now, you'd have to be fluent in software such as World Machine, Maya, Zbrush, Substance Designer, etc. Johns work is actually quite good.

Quineloe_sl said:

What's "globally renowned"?

Did he ever work outside the US?

Click to expand...

I just assumed Brad wrote that. /shrug

Bruman_sl said:

Well, I think the the fact that you can list two other pretty big KS successes means that it's far from unheard of nowadays. Plus, the Unity guys are working with these groups to make it possible - they want their engine to be the bees' knees after all. I'm sure it required a lot of work.

We had Joppa in here a while back, and I asked him something similar about that, about how it was playing, and he said it was still too laggy and needed polish, and that's what he had the team focusing on. He hasn't dipped his head in here for a long time though. I'm too lazy to re-read his posts, but here's at least his post history so you can peruse them and see if my memory is correct:Rerolled

Click to expand...

I've tried to build an MMO Framework using Unity and have had success with netcode and displaying data. The only reason I haven't pursued it is because of work time constraints and lack of unified way to do EQ-style navmeshes of areas without a ton of effort.

It's honestly not that hard to get the client stuff out of the way with Unity and it's moreso aligning server data to be interpreted by the client. Granted I used an existing framework (EQEmu/websockets) but still, it's very plausible to do in a short period of time.

If I had a team behind me, a direction, and a ton of free time, it may be doable in a short period of time.

Where's Ut's MMO???

Secrets_sl said:

unified way to do EQ-style navmeshes of areas

Click to expand...

Doesn't unity use that detour lib one of the crytek guys wrote? I've been modifying Unreal's implementation and alot of my googling landed in unity related pages.

It is all somewhat automagical in unreal. I'm modifying it for griddy xcom style pathing.

hodj_sl said:

I'll at least give the game its free month if it releases. I've done it with most recent MMOs.

But I don't think a metric of "We released the game" is the proper metric for "success".

Success is releasing the game, and then maintaining an active subscription base of, say, 150k users for 2-3 years, imho.

Click to expand...

One hundred and fifty thousand? For real?

Now let's get down to earth and consider that Wildstar, a game with a very large budget, AAA graphic engine and server engineering, amazing marketing and promotional videos, original and somewhat interesting gameplay, heavily group oriented and hardcore to the bones has pretty much failed at mantaining a third of that playerbase.

If 100k is required just to survive, without even considering a steady growth, I'd tell the Pantheon team to look for another job right away. They should mantain these subs thanks to... gameplay design I guess, but I'm failing to see any magnificent reason to pick Protf over any other game and at the same time I'm also interested in learning which are exactly the amazing design skill of their creative director, because I still have to find original stuff in his former contribution to the gaming landscape, which apparently is EQ, since he had pretty much no work done in VG at all (and yeah, probably even in EQ he didn't do that much). What is exactly this "Vision" this time around? Ideas on paper don't work, because as any D&D pen and paper dungeon master can tell you, it's very easy to have ideas about gaming mechanics, them being fun is a totally different story.

The gaming landscape has changed, now there are titles that rivals movies or tv series in story delivery and have amazing graphics/voice overs (think Dragon Age, The Witcher, Mass Effect, GTA V, etc.), have reached incredible technical levels *and* have multiplayer functions. They lack the persistant world, but nobody gives a fuck anymore in this gaming age, except a few nerds. Aside from the lobby city/spaceship, meeting people in the open world is seen more like a nuisance than an improvement in gameplay and these guys are telling me that they want to make a game where the pinnacle of gameplay is "do fuck all until you find another 4 or 5 people willing to (slowly) grind in front of the Karana Spires 2018 edition"? They need more than just a healthy dose of luck, they need a miracle right there, which is time traveling back to 1995 to restart EQ development.

I think that the only amazing contribution this game has given to the world is this thread, fuzzy trolls being the pinnacle of entertainment! This game reeks of desperation and it will lead to nothing, maybe just like EQ next, but that is more likely to happen (who knows in which bastard form?) and entertain people for a month or two while this won't see the light in a playable format anytime soon.

Speak for yourself. I personally don't even bother trying modern games. Since around Rift, modern themeparks don't even keep my interest for a week, let alone over a month. I'd much rather play a game that is harder, puts the multiplayer back in MMO, and strives to create a more believable fantasy experience than another shallow lobby game MMO.

You can argue over whether Pantheon will ever be that game all day, but regardless of which game recreates that experience, there are still a lot of people waiting on it... but you're obviously not one of them.

I think Pantheon could reasonably find 10-20k people who play it constantly, with maybe up to like 50k accounts of people that play the typical 1-3 month spurts here and there.

I pulled that number from thinking about how successful P99 is but mostly just pulled it out of my ass.

I think the comparison to Wildstar is off. I understand your point, but the game is still mostly 'collect bear asses solo' unless you explicitly opt in to some group content or hit max level. At which point noone liked the "hardcore" mode of group gameplay after they were enticed with all the themepark at the start.

Bruman_sl said:

I think Pantheon could reasonably find 10-20k people who play it constantly, with maybe up to like 50k accounts of people that play the typical 1-3 month spurts here and there.

I pulled that number from thinking about how successful P99 is but mostly just pulled it out of my ass.

I think the comparison to Wildstar is off. I understand your point, but the game is still mostly 'collect bear asses solo' unless you explicitly opt in to some group content or hit max level. At which point noone liked the "hardcore" mode of group gameplay after they were enticed with all the themepark at the start.

Click to expand...

What I meant is simply that people were driven away from Wildstar by the group content, not the levelling treadmill. Unpuggable dungeons from level 20 onwards, 40 men raids, attunement requiring good groups, etc.
This happened in a game that spent only on marketing and advertising more than Pantheon will have in total funding and that was polished and functioning for the most part (I'm not aware of any game breaking bugs).

Do you have any actual data to support this claim? I stopped playing because it wasn't my kind of setting and it was kind of blah starting out..

Miele_sl said:

What I meant is simply that people were driven away from Wildstar by the group content, not the levelling treadmill. Unpuggable dungeons from level 20 onwards, 40 men raids, attunement requiring good groups, etc.
This happened in a game that spent only on marketing and advertising more than Pantheon will have in total funding and that was polished and functioning for the most part (I'm not aware of any game breaking bugs).

Click to expand...

People were driven away from Wildstar because it was more of the same (gameplay wise) in an already crowded marketplace IMO. Better options existed, and players went there instead.

I bet there have been 10,000-20,000 people who have played p99 in the last 5 years. A (small) market exists for Pantheon. The difference between Wildstar's target market and Pantheon's is that Pantheon's has nowhere else to go.

Yeah, I think there's a market for Pantheon, but I don't know how it could ever pay the bills. Then again, Mortal Online is still going and has employees.

Developers make anywhere from $80k-120k (and up) in my market. 20k subs at $15/month (being generous) = $300k. After Brad and other non-devs' salary, you don't have money for developers.

Edit: That's senior devs, fwiw. You can get guys out of college at 35-40k (I started at 35k), but if they're worth their salt, they go up quick in pay typically.

Convo_sl said:

Do you have any actual data to support this claim? I stopped playing because it wasn't my kind of setting and it was kind of blah starting out..

Click to expand...

From here:

Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion - Page 533

I wouldn't use wildstar just explain anything. That game was down right shitty in every design element. It was hard content for all the wrong reasons.

Bruman_sl said:

Developers make anywhere from $80k-120k (and up) in my market. 20k subs at $15/month (being generous) = $300k. After Brad and other non-devs' salary, you don't have money for developers.

Click to expand...

Maybe Brad is planning on asking Hillary Clinton to host his servers on the cheap in an attic somewhere.