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

Kreugen · Jan 7, 2014

The only thing I'm interested in hearing about this early is how the game will facilitate the formation of groups, if it's going to be as group-centric (group required?) as people seem to want it to be.

For example, if you require a group just to walk outside of the town gates, but you build a world that is massively spread out, uninstanced, with a dozen cities and limited methods of fast travel, you are basically fucking over your players right from the start and repeating all the mistakes of the past. If you want the game to be group-focused, you need basically the opposite of all of that. You need players funneled together, you need hubs where they can congregate and communicate, and you need powerful but intuitive group-finder tools. You can't just rely on everyone to bring friends and entire guilds over from other games and have a ready-made community right from the start. You can't rely on forums or other out of game networks. You need to promote cooperative play right in the game, and you need to make it easy for players to gather and form groups, or find replacements for groups without having to pack up and head back to town.

Seamless instancing (phasing) is pretty much the solution to all of this, but I'm not well versed on its limitations. Could you have every player (treating groups as a single entity) seeing their own mobs? Could you see all the players around you, plus whatever mob they are fighting? Instancing without looking like instancing, is what I'm going for here. You can see and communicate with everyone, you can help players out who are in battle, but you all get your own spawns.

Anyway, it could be beyond the scope of a limited budget. Maybe simple EQ2 style zone splitting would have to do. But for fuck's sake, don't think building some massive world and scattering your players all over the place with a huge travel time barrier and limited communication is going to work alongside a world that is supposed to be encouraging grouping. The two work against one another, badly.

shabushabu · Jan 7, 2014

Lithose_sl said:
This please. Seriously, fuck not having enough hot keys even when I'm using an esdf config AND every modifier. I'd love to hear thoughts on the direction you're going with this. Personally, I love the style of only being able to slot so many abilities, or having a very limited number of abilities--but maybe making those abilities do different things in different situations. Again, like drawing on TCG--where cards are not only used on their own, but also in combos and depending on what other cards are out. It can create a lot of variables from a small number of inputs. So the emphasis on using abilities is not spam, but rather how you use and exploit their strengths (IE Strategic, I'm going to whore that word out, a lot).

This goes with the multi-classing aspect, too. One of the things, for example, that League of Legends does pretty well is allowing for changes over time in the power of champions depending on other champions--so a champion that's underpowered one day, might become very strong if the meta changes and the champion he counters gets used more. It's hard(er) to do this in a PvE game, because you run the risk of the dreaded "bane weapon" syndrome. But if certain spells act different depending on who else is in the group, or what they are using or even what type of mobs your against or what spells they are using? It allows for you to make a lot of abilities, but still keep classes focused on one "archetype" and a very small subset of abilities at any one time--which also rewards experimentation (

For example--This dungeon has X, Y, Z special features, my group has A, B,C classes--So I have a few specific nuke spells that might be more effective in this type of group, than otherwise. Off the top of my head, say you're a wizard in a mostly melee group without support for mana regen ect. So you swap to more effecient spells and luckily you have a drop spell that does something special when melee hits the mob, so you slot that in too (And if you want to get real complex you can add in a lot more variables). I love games that really emphasize the strategic like that--I understand not everyone does, but I always thought in EQ it was a sign of a great player when they knew what spells they could and could not use depending on the group comp.

Easier said than done, I know--but it would be exciting if there were more strategic elements put back into these games and not simply a focus on how classes act within the tactical realms of just the fights.

Yes. Case in point... i have been playing eq2 and vanguard a bit of late and I would say with regards to abilities eq2 is what not to do and vanguard is what to do. Vanguard did not have too many combat skills but many skills that were ( temp buffs, utility, etc )... what i do NOT want to see is a limited skill setup where combat turns into a button mashing fest ( via macro-ing too many skills ( eq2 rift ) or just too few with little difference gw2, or eq2 where you have 100000000000 combat abilities that all do the same thing. What is interesting however about eq2 when it was group based, i never felt like there were too many skills but now as its really all solo to cap, ya its retarded.

Your selection of combat skills points directly to encounter complexity... If this game is really truly to be very group-centric as brad stated, I am less concerned about this issue because in that regard you have to have skills that add something to a grp ( until, heals, debuffs, buffs etc etc ).. ( and not just 1 or 2 like some of the new action games have... ) and those skills will be necessary to navigate and/or defeat encounters in a group setting..

Also you can differ this by class. D&D 3.5 does this very well. Wizard and Cleric have access to all spells ( divine, arcane ) and can put them all up on their bars if you choose, however if you prefer to have less abilities you can go Favored Soul / Sorcerer who pull from the divine and arcane spell pools yet you have to pick which ones you use/mem, benefit there being more "casts".

Also, i think it would be cool to have gear with spells on them yet at a lower power. It is one of the things that made D&D 3.5 great, that is the loot you get even as a warrior can have a buff/spell from the arcane pools which allows you to have some magic going on to help with navigation, combat etc.

Draegan_sl · Jan 7, 2014

Gecko_sl said:
I think you'll get plenty of criticism from people who donate. More so as they are invested.

Plus feedback from the people, ya know, paying for the game should be more important. That should be the core audience that it's being designed for right? The problem with open forums is you can have the Ut-TESO problem of people with a vested interest in shitting on the game just creating new accounts for no other purpose than to attack some designer or developer.

Shab, sounds like you are the man for Pantheon Junkies, mate.

You won't get the right criticism from people who donate. What'll happen is you'll have an arbitrary forum set up somewhere where only the hardcore of the hardcore go to post on a daily basis and any time someone thinks of disagreeing with a design point, they'll go fanboy crazy on the descenter.

bixxby · Jan 7, 2014

Level 1 dungeons please.

Mr Creed · Jan 7, 2014

That you have to beat to get to level 2.

Merlin_sl · Jan 7, 2014

Kreugen_sl said:
The only thing I'm interested in hearing about this early is how the game will facilitate the formation of groups, if it's going to be as group-centric (group required?) as people seem to want it to be.

For example, if you require a group just to walk outside of the town gates, but you build a world that is massively spread out, uninstanced, with a dozen cities and limited methods of fast travel, you are basically fucking over your players right from the start and repeating all the mistakes of the past.

You mean like EQ?

Kreugen_sl said:
If you want the game to be group-focused, you need basically the opposite of all of that. You need players funneled together, you need hubs where they can congregate and communicate, and you need powerful but intuitive group-finder tools. You can't just rely on everyone to bring friends and entire guilds over from other games and have a ready-made community right from the start. You can't rely on forums or other out of game networks. You need to promote cooperative play right in the game, and you need to make it easy for players to gather and form groups, or find replacements for groups without having to pack up and head back to town.

Seamless instancing (phasing) is pretty much the solution to all of this, but I'm not well versed on its limitations. Could you have every player (treating groups as a single entity) seeing their own mobs? Could you see all the players around you, plus whatever mob they are fighting? Instancing without looking like instancing, is what I'm going for here. You can see and communicate with everyone, you can help players out who are in battle, but you all get your own spawns.

Pretty much no to all of this

Kreugen_sl said:
Maybe simple EQ2 style zone splitting would have to do. But for fuck's sake, don't think building some massive world and scattering your players all over the place with a huge travel time barrier and limited communication is going to work alongside a world that is supposed to be encouraging grouping. The two work against one another, badly.

You mean like Everquest? That will never work and fuck over all your players? Really?

Creslin · Jan 7, 2014

EQ was not that massive. Basically the entire high level population was funneled running between lavastorm and guk. Thats like a 15 minute run at most. Kunark made it alot larger but since most high levels didnt have to leave kunark for groups ever it wasn't a major concern. By velious the spread had become a major problem which is why luclin did what it did.

If you make a game really massive like modern tech allows you need to let people travel to groups faster, especially if you don't use instances and are relying on people spreading themselves out when things get overcrowded.

Plus if you don't think about that stuff now you end up with big problems once the game starts to die down, forced grouping while leveling doesn't work well when there isn't anyone around to level with.

Abefroman · Jan 7, 2014

Was Crushbone considered a dungeon? Someone said level 1 dungeons and I couldn't agree more. Crushbone is where EQ really hooked me. Fuck you Ambassador D'vinn.

Kreugen · Jan 7, 2014

Everquest was a fairly small world, with only a handful of areas for any given level range that players gravitated to. And it suffered from massive overcrowding in those areas, especially at the high end, to the point where you could walk from one side of a dungeon to the other without encountering a single mob. And that was 15 years ago when MMOs were new to everyone.

If your position is "Everquest did it and Everquest is perfect", then there is nothing to discuss. I thought the idea was to make a game that is better than Everquest.

Aradune_sl · Jan 7, 2014

Creslin_sl said:
In the darkfall re-release closed beta everyone agreed it sucked and was retarded. But everyone still had the same opinion and it was an ecochamber so I guess your point still holds. That negativity did make them revamp a large part of the skill progression tho and it turned into one of the better level-less progression systems i have played in imo. Rest of the game was mostly dogshit but that part was good.

Mostly I think that devs dont really listen much to players no matter where they post.

Hrm?

Muligan · Jan 7, 2014

Wanted to chime in a couple of things that i've been going back and forth on.

First armor and armor customization. I've always been torn as I really liked having appearance slots al a EQII to set myself apart without impacting my gear. I can remember in EQ putting on resist gear and hating the appearance of my character but it was something necessary to be successful in raid situation. (This is coming from a guy who had a PvP guild called Looks Matter). However, I remember one aspect of EQ that really made me log in everyday and that was seeing people with noticeable gear. I probably couldn't name you a single piece of gear (with a handful of exceptions) from any game past EQ. In regards to EQ, I could probably recognize every piece up through the time I played. To me, it set people apart, armor was as much of a trophy and a testament of your character as anything. I will never forget on my way to Lower Guk for the first time, I ran into some guys traveling and there stood max level bard, cleric, paladin. I thought to myself, I want to be like those guys and it drove me to research the gear, dungeons, etc. So if the itemization is right, I would like to see gear without customizations but maybe meet in the middle by having decorative appearance slots such as capes, shoulders, helm enhancements. Essentially modifications or color additions to enhance the character and/or gear without drastic changes.

Secondly, spells (abilities). EQII drove me crazy with spells and abilities. If you think its bad now, there was a time when every spells had a different name and there was no way to sensibility determine the progression. To me, if you simplify character roles, you can simplify spells. Being able to build the hybrid, hybrid, or a hybrid so add so much mediocrity to the game. As a cleric, I need to be able to heal and if I can toss a little damage out to survive that's fine but in no way should I be a source of damage. I need to heal and buff. Define classes very simply and clearly and you don't need 400 spells per character. Honestly, I liked EQ. I had an entire book of spells but was limited to what I could use a one time. You would interchange based on situations and group make up but never the less I couldn't click on ever spell in my book.

Flobee · Jan 7, 2014

Draegan_sl said:
You won't get the right criticism from people who donate. What'll happen is you'll have an arbitrary forum set up somewhere where only the hardcore of the hardcore go to post on a daily basis and any time someone thinks of disagreeing with a design point, they'll go fanboy crazy on the descenter.

I agree with you on this, I've seen it quite a few times over the years in beta. However, sites like this one do exist, and punches aren't really pulled around here. Obviously, you're aware of this but I honestly think that we are the core audience for this game, so its safe to assume that input here will be weighed alongside official forums. Not doing so would, imo, be a mistake

Jimbolini · Jan 7, 2014

Obviously Mr. Mcquaid wants opinions.

That being said, I don't envy you going through them all for the next 3 years.

Aradune_sl · Jan 7, 2014

Khane_sl said:
Here is something I am interested in, and I don't know if this was asked/answered yet because this thread is moving too fast for me to keep up but.

Brad, what is the plan for when you are dropped into this new world? Will it be trial by fire with very little hand holding right out of the gate? Will the difficulty be readily apparent right at level 1 like it was in EQ or will you ease the player into the group-centric experience you want this game to have? As a new player it's very important to me (and I think a lot of other people) that we don't get frustrated right off the bat. EQ didn't have any competition so way back when I was forced to learn the hard way if I wanted to play an MMO. Now there are 30 other MMOs I can go play if I feel like I am banging my head against the wall.

Even in a group focused game I think it's important that the early levels (first 10-15 depending on leveling curve) can be soloed without having intricate knowledge of the content if so desired (I'm not talking faceroll easy, I'm talking if you use your abilities correctly you can do it with middle of the road type downtime). I think this lets a new player familiarize themselves with their own class better than having to jump into a group right away. It also gives a player a sense of what the class they are playing is capable of. After that I'm all for a game that becomes very hard to solo with high amounts of downtime that focuses more on grouping and socializing but the first few levels of a game are what hook me and I'm curious what the plan is for that.

The first X levels will be an introduction to the game, but you shouldn't feel you're trapped in a tutorial, because you're not. They will not be difficult for people who play MMOs. They probably will be if you've never played an MMO. We are assuming our target audience has either played MMOs or has played challenging games of some sort.

Flobee · Jan 7, 2014

Muligan_sl said:
Wanted to chime in a couple of things that i've been going back and forth on.
Honestly, I liked EQ. I had an entire book of spells but was limited to what I could use a one time. You would interchange based on situations and group make up but never the less I couldn't click on ever spell in my book.

Overall I agree with this post, however I wanted to comment on the above. Limited action sets in games like GW2/Wildstar etc. perform the same function as the spell book in EQ logically, but in practice it feels completely different. I believe this comes from a lack of differentiation between casters and melee characters. In GW2 every class has the exact same number of skills, on the same hotkeys, performing essentially the same functions regardless of the characters role. While in EQ the spell system was so much more broad, I can't think of another game that offers the level of utility EQ does. The best thing about this system IMO is that not every class uses it. It wasn't required for every class, this created differentiation between class archetypes. Each class had a unique playstyle (limited by the technology at the time obviously).

I think that the best option for controlling skill bloat is somewhere between the two styles. Creating a system where there is a limited action set for certain types of skills (spells) while providing a separate set of skills that are all usable at once ala WoW, EQ2 w/e. You would create a neat system where choice still matters, but a character is not completely limited to only their 8 skills of the action set or whatever.

Maybe something like melee skills are always usable, spells must be pre-selected. This is similar to modern day EQ, but done correctly I think it could be really deep and allow for a very different experience when playing different classes.

Or maybe im just vomiting on my keyboard

Jimbolini · Jan 7, 2014

Aradune_sl said:
The first X levels will be an introduction to the game, but you shouldn't feel you're trapped in a tutorial, because you're not. They will not be difficult for people who play MMOs. They probably will be if you've never played an MMO. We are assuming our target audience has either played MMOs or has played challenging games of some sort.

Is there a target demographic this game is looking at?

25-45 age
15-25 hours playtime per week?
etc?

Creslin · Jan 7, 2014

Flo, when you play DOTA (if you do) do you feel the same way? I felt the same way as you about GW2 but felt totally differently about DOTA, the skill systems on the surface as similar but in DOTA it always felt like there is massive differences between the classes (heroes). I think thats because in GW2 they designed it so you would have those 8 abilities that you used all the time, but in DOTA or EQ1 you had many/most of your abilities that were only used rarely and strategically.

Aradune_sl · Jan 7, 2014

Kreugen_sl said:
The only thing I'm interested in hearing about this early is how the game will facilitate the formation of groups, if it's going to be as group-centric (group required?) as people seem to want it to be.

For example, if you require a group just to walk outside of the town gates, but you build a world that is massively spread out, uninstanced, with a dozen cities and limited methods of fast travel, you are basically fucking over your players right from the start and repeating all the mistakes of the past. If you want the game to be group-focused, you need basically the opposite of all of that. You need players funneled together, you need hubs where they can congregate and communicate, and you need powerful but intuitive group-finder tools. You can't just rely on everyone to bring friends and entire guilds over from other games and have a ready-made community right from the start. You can't rely on forums or other out of game networks. You need to promote cooperative play right in the game, and you need to make it easy for players to gather and form groups, or find replacements for groups without having to pack up and head back to town.

Seamless instancing (phasing) is pretty much the solution to all of this, but I'm not well versed on its limitations. Could you have every player (treating groups as a single entity) seeing their own mobs? Could you see all the players around you, plus whatever mob they are fighting? Instancing without looking like instancing, is what I'm going for here. You can see and communicate with everyone, you can help players out who are in battle, but you all get your own spawns.

Anyway, it could be beyond the scope of a limited budget. Maybe simple EQ2 style zone splitting would have to do. But for fuck's sake, don't think building some massive world and scattering your players all over the place with a huge travel time barrier and limited communication is going to work alongside a world that is supposed to be encouraging grouping. The two work against one another, badly.

Lots of systems to help people find a group. Can't go into details yet, sorry.

Flobee · Jan 7, 2014

Haven't played DOTA but have played LoL and some other MOBA's I know what you mean. The big difference, I believe, is the fact that a game like DOTA is not asking me to grind mobs, or co-op vs AI. The structure of the games is very different. That being said, I would definitely be curious to see MOBA style classes in an MMO (EQN) but I'm not completely sold on the idea.

Of course, the design time, and focus, of creating a character with 4 skills versus a MMO class with 40+ skills is going to favor the quality of the 4 skill character I imagine. That may not be 100% true but MOBA characters definitely seem to be more focused and I have lower expectations on their flexibility. An MMO class requires depth since you are expected to put a lot of hours into it. A MOBA character generally fills a role and little more and if you get bored, you just play a different one. While maining a MOBA character can be fun long term, it just isnt the same IMO.

Aradune_sl · Jan 7, 2014

What do you guys feel about a spell/ability system where you have a fixed number of slots, so even if you know 100 spells, you can only mem a few at a time. Or, do you prefer the 'as long as I have mana' I can cast what I want?

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