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

Arden

Blackwing Lair Raider
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Not at all true. I have spent countless hours playing Slay the Spire and even back on the old EQ emulators and enjoy the shit out of them despite the horrible graphics. Would it be great if this had smooth animations like Wow with graphics like BDO? Of course. But to say a game is basically unplayable because it stiff is garbage.

There's a difference between horrible or outdated graphics and poor gameplay/animation. EQ graphics are certainly outdated, but the gameplay and animations in EQ have always been smooth as butter. Super Mario Brothers on the NES Classic has outdated graphics, but the gameplay and animations are still great.

Poor gameplay and animation are a big part of what made VG unpalatable for a lot of people- including me. So far, it appears like those same things are going to be a killer for Pantheon too. It's pretty easy to look the other way at subpar graphics, but not too many people are going to ignore jerky, stiff, uncoordinated animations/gameplay. It just makes a game not fun.
 
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Mick

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A lack luster stream for me. I am glad the next stream will not be with Cohh.
 
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forensic

Molten Core Raider
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just to go back to harsh penalties, open world racing, forced grouping and other things from their rose colored past, while having shitty environments, shitty combat and just boring everything else, well I feel nothing but pity.

What we are expecting is
1. good gameplay that builds on EQ and Vanguard
2. good lore/world building

Everything else can be mediocre, but if they deliver on these, they can be successful with a small audience. The lore sells the world which is why people still play tabletop D&D to this day even if they are using cardboard tokens as their "graphics". You don't need perfect graphics if you deliver in other areas.
 
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tyen

EQ in a browser wait time: ____
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"Good Lore" was ruined before they even started because Vhalen
 

Valderen

Space Pirate
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I will most likely try the game when it comes out because I try out most MMO.

That's said, I'm not the target audience. This looks like EQ1 with nicer graphics. I played EQ1 more than any other game ever by a LONG shot, but l got bored of it 15 years ago, and I didn't get bored of it because of the graphics, I got bored of it because of the gameplay.

As I said I'll most likely try because I am so desperate for any MMO at this point, and it should provide a month or so of entertainment as you discover a new world....if I can past the slow pace of combat which looks so boring.
 

zzeris

King Turd of Shit Hill
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As they said in the past, animations would be tweaked much further along. They have made some progress though, but a ways to go on that front.

This is where animations were 2 years ago.


This is right on point. Sure, there has been progress and I applaud and expect to see such after two years. Where are the other zones though? Why are the animations still the same? I know that Unity helps create assets very quickly. I know the world building can be done faster than the old days. But...they still can't get the animations right. The first video and second are very, very similar outside of some graphical upgrades.

The die-hard defenders may talk about "I just want a graphically updated EQ". Brad seems to want more and it seems really far off. I don't really care about graphics but the game still seems to have the same issues as 2 years ago. That's not a good sign since there is so much work involved. How can they fix bugs, maintain server load, etc if they still can't change animation problems two years later? That seems much more important than flame animations added to Brad's sword TBH.
 

Kharzette

Watcher of Overs
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Unity doesn't do jack for animations other than some handy retargeting IF you have your skeleton set up just the way they want. Animations really aren't important to making stuff work. Basic placeholders are just fine until all the timing stuff is nailed down in the design. Doing animations early can lead you into doing really stupid things like animation driven combat, which leads to fun stuff like certain classes or races or genders attacking at different speeds.

This is D&D style dice roll combat. The stuff in the text window is what really matters.
 
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Wynn

Golden Knight of the Realm
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Bad animations can still fuck a game over, people like their avatars to not look retarded--just see how many of the EQ TLP crowd refuse to play with the Luclin era models. The number one reason I hear for that refusal isn't that the models are bad (they are), but moreso that they have very bad animations--animations that haven't been fixed or updated in 16+ years.

I'd agree animations aren't important in pre-alpha but good animations are important overall so I hope they get them all smoothed out.

I've followed a lot of MMOs through the development cycles though, and realistically until you have a broadly open "beta", it's very hard to predict what's going to change/get fixed before release and what isn't.
 

Wynn

Golden Knight of the Realm
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116
It's silly to say you don't care how it looks. I mean common. It could be the second coming of MMO god but if it was stick figures that shit would not fly. Strawman, but you get my point. I also prefer gameplay above eye candy, but when your character runs around with a stick up his ass and does the 3 same moves everytime it gets stale, no matter how fun it is.

MMOs are usually like Cutting Edge graphics - 3 years if not worse in my experience. For a lot of business reasons if no others it's not shocking, MMOs often have a lot of players in the same place, lot of concurrent spell effects and etc. If your overall engine/graphics are so high consumption that it prices a lot of casual gamers out of being able to run your game you have a major problem. That's actually one of the things that contributed to EQ2 losing so spectacularly to WoW, is the fact WoW in 2004/2005 could run on a potato, EQ2 barely ran on strong PCs.

While not an MMO it's in the same broad RPG genre, Diablo 3 is still fairly popular and a lot of D3 clones exist (like Path of Exile) that have dated graphics and do quite well.
 

zzeris

King Turd of Shit Hill
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This is D&D style dice roll combat. The stuff in the text window is what really matters.

EQ and the games after it would not have taken off if this was true. Pretty ignorant statement of what most MMO people want.
 

mkopec

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I will most likely try the game when it comes out because I try out most MMO.

That's said, I'm not the target audience. This looks like EQ1 with nicer graphics. I played EQ1 more than any other game ever by a LONG shot, but l got bored of it 15 years ago, and I didn't get bored of it because of the graphics, I got bored of it because of the gameplay.

As I said I'll most likely try because I am so desperate for any MMO at this point, and it should provide a month or so of entertainment as you discover a new world....if I can past the slow pace of combat which looks so boring.

Games like EQ do not rely on gameplay to engage the player, but player interactions during the gameplay. Most MMOs since have been straying away from this formula, basically making everything solo, including grouping and even raiding. (Grup finder, raid finder.)

You ask anyone why they play, for instance, progression EQ servers every year, and most will tell you that its because of the player interactions and the drama it causes that makes the game fun.
 

Siliconemelons

Avatar of War Slayer
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thanks for the link- they have advanced a lot - it looks way more "real" than the first little 5min group vid they did. animations look fine, they will get fleshed out at the end I am sure...and if not..eh
 
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Cinge

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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So what you're saying is things haven't improved? When you can't even concede the obvious, it makes you look irrational, not me.

This is one of the most popular pantheon threads on the internet, so it's the only reason I post on this forum.

I did say things improved, I just said it looked no where close to 2 years worth of improvement(from that previous video to the stream looks like 4-6 months of work), like wtf has been going on for 2 years? Tell your employers to get cracking. And you should just come out like Convo did, no point in hiding anymore.
 
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