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

Montreseur said:

Hey, ex early pantheon dev here, kinda willing to talk about some stuff if you guys are interested.

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Do you really count as a dev if you never got paid for your work because Brad stole it from you?

yamikazo said:

Do you really count as a dev if you never got paid for your work because Brad stole it from you?

Click to expand...

Monty was after the money incident...if you look at some of the pics of them at the convention he is the long haired jesus looking dude.

Montreseur said:

Hey, ex early pantheon dev here, kinda willing to talk about some stuff if you guys are interested.

Click to expand...

Ex Dev?

Did Brad fire you in a parking lot?

Actually I remember you being on board, I think we posted in this thread about it. Why did you leave the team?

Montreseur said:

Hey, ex early pantheon dev here, kinda willing to talk about some stuff if you guys are interested.

Click to expand...

will it ever release

Montreseur said:

Hey, ex early pantheon dev here, kinda willing to talk about some stuff if you guys are interested.

Click to expand...

Sure, here's some interrogation..

• In your opinion, what drove the decision to drop the three continents milestones, one with each phase (pre-alpha, alpha, beta)?
• How many continents, zones per continent, or total zones, is/was the current launch goal?
• Repeatedly, VR has said they have solutions for max-level activities, open world concurrency, infinite resource taps, and similar chronic issues. Do they really have these solutions, or are they blowing smoke?
• Is project Farthall going to be done before EOY 2019, in your opinion?
• How many employees are currently/were employed by Visionary Realms?
• Given the dates have been pushed ahead by years, compared to their 2014/2015/2016 estimates, in your opinion, will Alpha and Beta durations be reduced to less than the original year+ for each phase?
• If you were around during the original Kickstarter, can you describe the transition (the loss of the original dev team) to the current dev team? What changes, if any, in the design document were memorable during this transition?
• In your opinion, what is the largest impediment to progress, currently? Content production? Art/Sound/Asset tasks? Mechanics implementation/tuning? QA resources?

Glad to have you here, Montreseur.

Montreseur said:

Hey, ex early pantheon dev here, kinda willing to talk about some stuff if you guys are interested.

Click to expand...

Welcome to the show!

This could be good.

You got screwed out of money, right?

And the question we've all been debating recently, how far are they along with development?

Montreseur said:

Hey, ex early pantheon dev here, kinda willing to talk about some stuff if you guys are interested.

Click to expand...

Do you have a favorite story of teh fallen?

If he can provide some proof it's him and he shits all over Pantheon (I mean, it can't be positive, right?), then how is that not a massive positive for this thread? And even if it's a troll, it surely has more content than Pantheon has produced in the last year.

Sorry for the slow responses here, I'll get to everything I can as I can.

Just some disclaimers- I have not worked on the project since October 2017, so I cannot speak past that. I started almost directly after the kickstarter failed, as a volunteer.

Why did you bail?

This would sort of be a long story, but I'll try to keep it short and to the point.

I was working a fulltime 3D job during the day(which started to become more and more involved as time went on). I was then coming home and still putting in 20-30 hours a week on Pantheon as the only environment artist for years. It really started to wear on me; and the salary I was making was justifying it less and less. As we did begin getting help in that department, I took a bit of a hiatus to relieve some of the burnout and get my work life balance back in order. Began talking with the team a few months later about how I wanted to move forward, and contribute and one day Chris Perkins just flat out stopped responding so I didn't pursue it anymore and went on to do other contracts (which worked out far, far better).

Leading up to that I had a lot of concerns about how we were doing things in the environment art area, my work was being undone as I moved to other areas. Which I understood to a degree, but not completely. A lot of what I developed initially was RnD and we needed to come up with a cohesive art pipeline; this did eventually come together as advancements in the engine happened and our developed tool set came together.

We started to get some REALLY good help, Bruno (Tech artist) was a god-send for the project, and having Jared on concept art was a really nice step. I do think they probably have a smooth art pipeline at this time, but probably still could use a lot of extra man hours.

Do you really count as a dev if you never got paid for your work because Brad stole it from you?

Initially I did come on as a volunteer as much of the early team did. As we started producing environments, and Daniel started to get a lot of the project functionality cleaned up, the game started to show far better and funding began coming in. Once we had funding and budgeting figured out, I was offered a salary, and was consistently paid the agreed amount from there on out. My software costs were also covered. I was never "screwed out of money" or paid any money for the rite to develop.



Ill get to more later.

I'm glad it wasn't a flat "unresolved ethical dilemma," at least.

Montreseur said:

I do think they probably have a smooth art pipeline at this time, but probably still could use a lot of extra man hours.

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That part is a good bit of what's killing me. Not that I don't appreciate the effort involved, but it seems like that IS the effort involved. More art showcase than game, now. (Still?)

And they "fix" the recent backlash with "We have seen the comments requesting more from our upcoming stream with CohhCarnage and you’ve been heard. The stream will start with a daring group adventure in Halnir Cave. Then the team will share never-before-seen art, concepts and animation we’ve been working on for Project Faerthale." Screenshots, concept art, revolving orcs. Got it.

I quit paying attention a while ago, looked again this week, and it feels like 2015 again. These screenshots and revolving orcs might hold promise of development? I know there's more than that, but not nearly enough. The then-joking 2025 release estimates look like wishful thinking, assuming it's anything more than three zones and two dungeons.

Montreseur said:

Hey, ex early pantheon dev here, kinda willing to talk about some stuff if you guys are interested.

Click to expand...

Tell us the hookers and blow stories!

Monty, what exactly is Brad's role in this project? He seems to give answers that are opposite of what Chris Perkins says most of the time. Is there a power struggle there at all? Is Brad kind of just a figurehead at this point used for name recognition? He seemed to admit he doesn't actually work on the project at all anymore in that Q&A a month back, but he does seem to meddle with all the "move the genre forward" concepts he keeps tossing out there. I'm guessing he's hands off and truly just turned the thing over to Chris?

Montreseur said:

Sorry for the slow responses here, I'll get to everything I can as I can.

Just some disclaimers- I have not worked on the project since October 2017, so I cannot speak past that. I started almost directly after the kickstarter failed, as a volunteer.

Why did you bail?

This would sort of be a long story, but I'll try to keep it short and to the point.

I was working a fulltime 3D job during the day(which started to become more and more involved as time went on). I was then coming home and still putting in 20-30 hours a week on Pantheon as the only environment artist for years. It really started to wear on me; and the salary I was making was justifying it less and less. As we did begin getting help in that department, I took a bit of a hiatus to relieve some of the burnout and get my work life balance back in order. Began talking with the team a few months later about how I wanted to move forward, and contribute and one day Chris Perkins just flat out stopped responding so I didn't pursue it anymore and went on to do other contracts (which worked out far, far better).

Leading up to that I had a lot of concerns about how we were doing things in the environment art area, my work was being undone as I moved to other areas. Which I understood to a degree, but not completely. A lot of what I developed initially was RnD and we needed to come up with a cohesive art pipeline; this did eventually come together as advancements in the engine happened and our developed tool set came together.

We started to get some REALLY good help, Bruno (Tech artist) was a god-send for the project, and having Jared on concept art was a really nice step. I do think they probably have a smooth art pipeline at this time, but probably still could use a lot of extra man hours.

Do you really count as a dev if you never got paid for your work because Brad stole it from you?

Initially I did come on as a volunteer as much of the early team did. As we started producing environments, and Daniel started to get a lot of the project functionality cleaned up, the game started to show far better and funding began coming in. Once we had funding and budgeting figured out, I was offered a salary, and was consistently paid the agreed amount from there on out. My software costs were also covered. I was never "screwed out of money" or paid any money for the rite to develop.



Ill get to more later.

Click to expand...

If you were on the team after the kickstarter were you there for the Laurene Wells era? What are your thoughts on fuzzy trolls? Has god blessed everything? Also, have you played Visions?