Joppa_VR
Pantheon Team
- 31
- 22
Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO
- Thread starter gogojira_sl
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Joppa_VR
Pantheon Team
- 31
- 22
We have a full-time concept artist in Taylor. Monty is our Lead Environment Artist. He and I tag-team Pantheon's art direction until we are able to bring on a full-time Art Director.
Joppa_VR
Pantheon Team
- 31
- 22
1) Will put 1 & 2 together to say we don't have a definitive answer yet on either. Feedback here would be very helpful, we're getting a lot of it on the official site as well which is great.
2) No cash shops.
3)Verylight instancing, if at all - likely only being used for certain key story/Lore related quests. No plans currently to have instancing in adventure areas, dungeons or raids.
Joppa_VR
Pantheon Team
- 31
- 22
Feign Death will be returning to Pantheon and I hope to see dynamic pulling strategies emerge as well. We already have trains happening in our internal builds - just need to push the "death matters" button so we'll be afraid of them now.
Joppa_VR
Pantheon Team
- 31
- 22
Yes, but not as much as you might think. We'll be going into a lot more detail about classes next week and I'm really hoping to see some solid think-tanking starting up then.
Arden
Blackwing Lair Raider
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Thanks for the response. Great to hear no cash shops and no instancing in adventure zones/dungeons. Here's my feedback on locked encounters and raid size limits. Don't do it. If you want to limit an encounter, find ways to "encourage" the limitation without hard coding restrictions into the game. It will take a little more work, but hard coded restrictions will do nothing but detract from the game. As far as locked encounters- terrible idea. They are another version of over restrictive mechanics used in an attempt to limit "bad player behavior." I can't emphasize enough how important it is that you guys find alternative ways to address these issues. I.e. Don't be lazy and just code in limitations.
Muligan
Trakanon Raider
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You'll get a +1 for using a Keith painting for an profile pic.
How volatile is the team? To elaborate, how much turnover and/or people picking up things or walking away? Do you feel like you guys are a legitimate company or do you feel like this is really informal still yet? Are there meetings still? Delegation of duties?
To me, regardless of the state of your business you act and poise yourself as if you were the best. I'm just not feeling that with Pantheon.
How volatile is the team? To elaborate, how much turnover and/or people picking up things or walking away? Do you feel like you guys are a legitimate company or do you feel like this is really informal still yet? Are there meetings still? Delegation of duties?
To me, regardless of the state of your business you act and poise yourself as if you were the best. I'm just not feeling that with Pantheon.
Convo
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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tad10
Elisha Dushku
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No. I (we're) questioning why you're not making the game the way it should be made: one or two zones, work on combat/classes, iterate until combat and classes are fun - make lots more zones.
Joppa_VR
Pantheon Team
- 31
- 22
Bruman
Golden Squire
- 1,154
- 0
Very against locked encounters here as well. I'd much rather see all contributors get exp than lock it. But more than that, I think it should be up to the in-game community to decide social norms and how to play. Give people room to be jerks, and let them develop reputations because of it.
I think instancing for story/lore related quests, generally to do a sort of in-game cinematic, are fine - much like how SWTOR and GW2 did it (what I played of those games, at least). Keep them away from bosses and dungeons, and I think we're good.
As a monk, I love hearing this. I hated how WoW started the trend of measuring pulls, and linking mobs together permanently. And FD is just great to explore with too (with such a high risk of getting nuked in the wrong spot)
1. Excellent! Adding variance to things sounds like a good addition.1) Quest functionality and style will be much more in line with EQ1 (loot whenever, turn-ins later, repeatable, etc.) But there will be variance. Some quests will only be completed once. Some quests may only be open/active for a certain period of time, etc. We want to keep what worked well and build a bit of depth/nuance into it where we can.
2) We're not solid on this one yet, though my leaning is more towards Classic EQ. However, one thing I would like to explore is dynamic NPC response in these interactions. Not truly dynamic, of course, but I'd like for the NPC to react differently if he asks you a question and you get it wrong. Or, he presents you with two paths that are mutually exclusive - if you go down one, the other may never be open to you again.
3) Yes on the quest journal, though we'd like to keep it minimalistic and give the player the ability to write in their own notes.
4) It depends on the quest, but the majority of quests will be tuned more towards the physical/prestige reward of completion, not experience gain. Still being discussed, feedback here is very helpful to us right now.
5) Encumbrance is making a return to some degree, nothing concrete to share yet. We're exploring a vision skill, want to bring back a sense of racial identity through the way you see the world. Languages will be important again, as will research and reagents. I'll share more as I think of them.
6) Vendors will sell to others what you sell to them, absolutely.
7) Current Wiki is accurate with a few changes pending shortly, can't say more right now.
8) If there's an official name for the development process we're using, I'm not aware of itI will do some research on the ones you mentioned though.
2. SoA has a pretty involved questing system, with just full text talking back and forth - although it seems kinda overly ambitious.
3. Cool
4. Excellent - that's what it should be, in my opinion. Quests as experience make the means for leveling, and we've all seen how that kills group play. People need to be encouraged to further their character by playing together slaughtering monsters.
5. Excellent
6. Excellent
7. Hopefully the staff changes are positive at least
Thanks again for another great round of answers.
Joppa_VR
Pantheon Team
- 31
- 22
Ahh yes, forgot to respond to this one.
Icompletelyagree with you. Vanguard has taught all of us how unimportant big, beautiful worlds can be when the player experience is a mess.
So I straddle that line. We need to be making advancements in our world building and our tech, and we are. The newest video showed some of that off pre-Unity 5, which in and of itself will make another significant difference in quality.
But while that is going on, the arguablymoreimportant thing is also going on. I'm making local builds of our small testing zone every time our programmers push new data through, and I'm testing combat, UI/ability responsiveness, enemy AI, group dynamics, etc. I'm also asking more paradigmatic questions like: Does it feel good to fight something? Does it look good to fight something? Is it satisfying to kill something? Is combat/recovery paced appropriately? What's broken? etc. etc. This is why I'm able to say things like I'm currently unsatisfied with the performance of combat with a full group, because I've been testing it and it needs to improve.
The paradigm you are describing is fundamental to Pantheon's success, but I respectfully disagree that it is mutually exclusive to incremental progress in other areas of development.
Vitality
ＨＵＳＴＬＥ
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I don't think someone from inside the game with passionate bias towards their product has the ability to adequately guage whether their game is fun or not for someone else paradigm wise.
Get some of us in game to help test.
You've got balls to come here and post about it concisely so it's the least we can do.
Get some of us in game to help test.
You've got balls to come here and post about it concisely so it's the least we can do.
Reht
Molten Core Raider
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- 317
I am curious to how it's not as much as we might think. Originally there were less classes and each class had two archetypes, now you have added more classes that appear to be single archetypes. I asked similar questions about the class direction when the changes first occurred, well before your time, and it was never addressed.
Joppa_VR
Pantheon Team
- 31
- 22
I hear you. Our top priority is getting to Alpha 1 so we can do just that.
But, I'm not so passionate about Pantheon that I can't tell someone when something sucks. I actually take my ability to do that really seriously - the game needs as much internal critique as possible for the external critiques to be valued. But yes, we need many more eyes and minds, through forum feedback and in-game soon enough.
Joppa_VR
Pantheon Team
- 31
- 22
You're right, a lot of class changes were done before I came along. I've been focused on them for over a month now, researching what they were originally and working to solidify the direction of each, including the new ones. I'll say this for now: they appear to be single archetypes because we haven't unfolded the finalized specializations yet, or how specialization will work in Pantheon. More to come soon.
Reht
Molten Core Raider
- 1,115
- 317
So what you are saying is that they have in fact changed as much as we thought
Thanks Joppa, i appreciate the answers. Looking forward to the updated class info.
ZyyzYzzy
RIP USA
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Vitality
ＨＵＳＴＬＥ
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Bruman
Golden Squire
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If these aren't there in at least some easter egg fashion, I'll have to withdraw my $0 in donations I've made.