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

Watching that latest live stream. Joppa is right about level disparity within the same dungeon being good design. It was always cool to me to make my way into a dungeon like Lower Guk or Sol B for the first time and seeing players 10-15 levels higher than me in there. It added to the fear of the whole experience.

I just remember thinking that if red-con mobs that can wreck my shit are here by the entrance, WTH are those players that are deeper in fighting and how difficult is it to even get there.

Not to mention the winding, confusing, maze-like nature of those dungeons where one wrong turn could send you basically into instant death followed by the inevitable "oh shit" realization of how you were going to get your corpse back. Especially for melee classes who would have to hoof it.

Good times.

24 seems a little low. Any serious raiding guild will simply have less players in their guild. 30 or 36 is better.

Lunis said:

24 seems a little low. Any serious raiding guild will simply have less players in their guild. 30 or 36 is better.

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They did mention 12 player dungeons, and possible 40 man raids.

Vinjin said:

Watching that latest live stream. Joppa is right about level disparity within the same dungeon being good design. It was always cool to me to make my way into a dungeon like Lower Guk or Sol B for the first time and seeing players 10-15 levels higher than me in there. It added to the fear of the whole experience.

I just remember thinking that if red-con mobs that can wreck my shit are here by the entrance, WTH are those players that are deeper in fighting and how difficult is it to even get there.

Not to mention the winding, confusing, maze-like nature of those dungeons where one wrong turn could send you basically into instant death followed by the inevitable "oh shit" realization of how you were going to get your corpse back. Especially for melee classes who would have to hoof it.

Good times.

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Cuz Joppa has his head on straight and not up Activision's ass

Daidraco said:

Did anyone else enjoy Diplomacy...? I didnt even mess with it at launch, but came back a bit after they released the noobie island and started playing with it then. I liked it as a whole and Im curious if they are going to do something similar. I know they have the Perception system, but I can only find half baked answers about how that works.

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A lot of people did.. It was very CCG-ish before people started working them into video games. I didn't mess with it much, but then I was very focused on quest/adventuring content at the time..

Warmuth said:

At the point vanguard was at when it was shut down it was a worthwhile game. It would’ve been a successful game had people bothered to play it but no one that was burned by playing early would reconsider it and most everyone else had heard enough bad shit about it that they never bothered to try it. Despite the fact that I play mmos and prefer a more EQ style, even I never tried playing the game until shortly before it was killed off.

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VG really suffered from us using Unreal 2.5 though.. It was never intended to be a MMO engine, and forcing it into that box created much of the performance issues that plagued the game all the way to shutdown.

Elidroth said:

VG really suffered from us using Unreal 2.5 though.. It was never intended to be a MMO engine, and forcing it into that box created much of the performance issues that plagued the game all the way to shutdown.

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Yes, once I heard that they're using unity for Pantheon, that gave me a little PTSD. I don't know much about it, perhaps it can handle it fine? But I haven't seen a MMO with unity.

I'm happy with 24 man capped raids. I think they work well. It's enough players to be part of a big team, but small enough to tune encounters, make every member matter and deal with hardware limitations.


As I've been reading more about what info is available with classes for Pantheon, I haven't discovered too much about class synergy. It was a long time ago, but with VG, I'm pretty sure some classes debuffed mobs with weaknesses for brief periods in their rotations and if you as another class noticed you could use certain abilities to take advantage of that. I haven't noticed very much of that has made it through to Pantheon as of now from what I can see. Hopefully a little more of this goes through. It's fun, rewarding & increases the skill cap.

rinthea said:

Yes, once I heard that they're using unity for Pantheon, that gave me a little PTSD. I don't know much about it, perhaps it can handle it fine? But I haven't seen a MMO with unity.

I'm happy with 24 man capped raids. I think they work well. It's enough players to be part of a big team, but small enough to tune encounters, make every member matter and deal with hardware limitations.


As I've been reading more about what info is available with classes for Pantheon, I haven't discovered too much about class synergy. It was a long time ago, but with VG, I'm pretty sure some classes debuffed mobs with weaknesses for brief periods in their rotations and if you as another class noticed you could use certain abilities to take advantage of that. I haven't noticed very much of that has made it through to Pantheon as of now from what I can see. Hopefully a little more of this goes through. It's fun, rewarding & increases the skill cap.

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There is some synergy. The Shaman can make mobs drenched, the Druid auto crits on drenched mobs with it's lightning ability. Summoner can summon a behemoth that the Enchanter can charm. Druid has an innate ability that allows other healing classes to bounce their heals to additional targets, should really shine with Paladins. Paladins auto crit on stunned mobs, several classes including the Monk have lengthy stuns. There are other examples, but this kind of stuff is in the game and they plan to add more. They don't want combo chains, but they do want classes to have abilities enhanced by other classes if you are paying attention. I'm not sure it's going to blink and tell you when to use it like Vanguard or EQ2 did. I think you're going to really have to pay attention. Who knows how the final product looks though, still a work in progress, but they talk about class synergy a lot lately, it's something they want to do.

Oh so you clicked it

Love it every time tyen calls someone a nerd

DickTrickle said:

Love it every time tyen calls someone a nerd

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We're all nerds, buddy. Stop being uppity.

i enjoyed gwent a lot. they made a standalone spinoff of it too.

It's a shame really that VG couldn't receive the same treatment FFXIV did with their reboot. It had some good ideas, classes, etc. However, i'm not sure the game could have been relaunched with most of it fixed as the issues seemed to run pretty deep into the game itself. The engine, timing, performance to name a few were all an achilles heel to the game.

Maybe Pantheon can be that but I still think it's release is going to be too little too late. Maybe it will be a niche for some but who knows what the MMO market will be offering then or if anyone will even care. I'm keeping good thoughts though. We've been around this long, what's a couple more years?

Muligan said:

It's a shame really that VG couldn't receive the same treatment FFXIV did with their reboot. It had some good ideas, classes, etc. However, i'm not sure the game could have been relaunched with most of it fixed as the issues seemed to run pretty deep into the game itself. The engine, timing, performance to name a few were all an achilles heel to the game.

Maybe Pantheon can be that but I still think it's release is going to be too little too late. Maybe it will be a niche for some but who knows what the MMO market will be offering then or if anyone will even care. I'm keeping good thoughts though. We've been around this long, what's a couple more years?

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I think the time for this type of game is the next few years. Look at WoW classic, WoW has become so distorted from what it set out to be that Blizzard are being forced to re release Vanilla WoW. And they're doing it as a propper, big investment expansion like relaunch. This is not by choice, this is a forced reaction that goes against their product lineup, design philosophy and future product lineup. They are a big elephant that can't change directions fast enough to pivot like this.

What's going to happen, is WoW classic is going to get released and everyone from WoW is going to play it, because it's content & what else are they going to do. They're going to find it's dated as fuck and full of new shitty babysitting, dumbed down design choices. People will tire of it quickly. But at the same time, it's going to scratch that itch of what old style MMO's were about. Then people are going to look at what other options are available and it's the perfect lead in for a new game. Heck, classic WoW might even reinvigorate the community of WoW a little (if they don't kill the community by porting in modern anti social elements) and then these communities and friendships are going to be looking for places to go.

It's been a meme for years, that 'we've moved on from punishing playstyles' to modern spoonfed, unrewarding & antisocial playstyles. But it isn't true, it's an excuse developers & investors have used to justify their decisions. There will always be a space for challenge, reward & good social environments. It may not be as wide reaching as boring as fuck, dumbed down software that's designed as a replacement for hiring a babysitter, popping a valium or playing some slots. But there is a significant demand that can support games like this.