Grimseethe said:Ashes of creation and pax dei look really good and who knows what the riot MMO will be like.
I will always try this MMO even if it takes 5-10 years, but i feel like a majority will realise that old school MMOs are only appealing because new ones are so bad currently, but if some new ones were good, the interest in pantheon would go down.I personally hate EQ and anything older than wow.
Don't you mean '5-10 more years'? Because we're already at 9.5 years given this thing started in early 2014.
Vandraad said:Don't you mean '5-10 more years'? Because we're already at 9.5 years given this thing started in early 2014.
Someone who knows an awful lot about this game posted earlier in this thread and pointed out that Pantheon "has changed significantly since this whole thing started... then there were refactors, rebuilds, reworks, etc between then and now. The game now is not what it was." That refactor was the biggest change of any, a huge rewriting of much of the code, widely seen as basically 'starting over'. As you well know.
If VR had not done that, they likely would have finished the game that you bought into in 2014 by now. And almost certainly released a broken pile of glitches, that likely would have also gone out of business by now.
But if anyone prefers to have their investment pay off with a successful game that is most of what they started out to create, then they have to accept the changes that have been made as necessary for success. In which case "this thing" started around Oct of 2020.
I understand impatience. In my 20's (many decades ago) I couldn't have stuck with a project for 2 years, even if it meant I might get rich from it. Since then, I've learned that the Universe doesn't really care how I personally feel about when things 'should' happen. So I've learned patience.
I wish everyone else good luck in learning it for themselves.
Jothany said:Vandraad said:Don't you mean '5-10 more years'? Because we're already at 9.5 years given this thing started in early 2014.
Someone who knows an awful lot about this game posted earlier in this thread and pointed out that Pantheon "has changed significantly since this whole thing started... then there were refactors, rebuilds, reworks, etc between then and now. The game now is not what it was." That refactor was the biggest change of any, a huge rewriting of much of the code, widely seen as basically 'starting over'. As you well know.
If VR had not done that, they likely would have finished the game that you bought into in 2014 by now. And almost certainly released a broken pile of glitches, that likely would have also gone out of business by now.
But if anyone prefers to have their investment pay off with a successful game that is most of what they started out to create, then they have to accept the changes that have been made as necessary for success. In which case "this thing" started around Oct of 2020.
I understand impatience. In my 20's (many decades ago) I couldn't have stuck with a project for 2 years, even if it meant I might get rich from it. Since then, I've learned that the Universe doesn't really care how I personally feel about when things 'should' happen. So I've learned patience.
I wish everyone else good luck in learning it for themselves.
Aaand we're back to the argument that 'this thing' started in Oct 2020 because of the refactor. Just because VR threw out everything done between Feb 2014 and Oct 2020 does not, in any way, mean that it is irrelevant, that all that work, time and money did not happen. It did. Pantheon, this game, started it's development in early 2014 and no amount of restarts, refactors, do-overs, resets or whatnot will invalidate that. VR., or anybody for that matter, cannnot just change the start date because it makes them look better. 9.5 years in and counting. Period.
I have more or less quit gaming. So many bad/boring treadmill games have turned me to find other things with my freetime.
When Pantheon gets released, I will probably check it out, but my excitement for any release is gone. I am not sure they have shown me anything lately to make me think that will change.
Jothany said:... In which case "this thing" started around Oct of 2020.
...
IMO:
Oh? It did?
What about all of the:
Textures
Art
Music
Sound Effects
Particle Effects
Triggers
Navmesh
World Geometry
3D Models
Rigging
Animation
Lighting
Zone Layout
NPC Dialogue
Items
Spells
Skills
Lore
User Interface
Database Schema
DB Tables
DB Views
DB Queries
And absolutely every other thing related to Art, Content, Client and not-the-server related to Pantheon?
Did all of that disappear and was destroyed, deleted, or otherwise discarded on September 30th, 2020? And then they re-created ALL of that, again, from scratch, starting Oct 1, 2020?
It seems unlikely to me. The claim that this project started any time after 2014 is sophistry at best, and deliberate deception, at worst.
Consequently, Vandraad is right. This project, and ALL of the effort and resulting unique intellectual property that has been produced and gone into what is current today started in 2014. Their 10 year anniversary is coming up. Let them enjoy it. :)
It's also worth noting that ALL the money that was obtained from 2014 until today? It was based on the public design goals and public feature set at that moment. Which means ALL the money donated to the project was based on the design goals from 2014 to September 30, 2020, at least. Everyone who donated under those conditions would seem justified in being concerned that the project is no longer what they donated towards, at the time they donated.
There are some negative consequences to the project taking so long. Attempting to spin or hide those consequences does no-one any good, in the interests of transparency.
I started playing Embers Adrift a few days ago, inspired by some posts above. It seems quite similar conceptually to what Pantheon wants to do. Really want to do a side-by-side comparison of the two games with what I know of both so far. I think it will be interesting to see what concepts work in EA and which don't work so well, and apply that knowledge as suggestions to VR.
Despite some technical weakness, EA really feels "good" to play and makes me want to come back for more. Could be the "new and shiny" factor of course, but I think it has a lot to do with the old school gaming approach.
"If VR had not done that, they likely would have finished the game that you bought into in 2014 by now. And almost certainly released a broken pile of glitches, that likely would have also gone out of business by now." But they have to release something eventually or the result is the same. Too much patience and the company folds due to waning interest, funding, and/or many other reasons.
Jothany said:Becoda said:You should care. The longer a game takes to develop (as history has shown) the less likely it will be "high quality". You will be hard pressed to find a game with a 10 year dev cycle that was successful on release.
Games with long development times:
Elder Scrolls Online (7 years)
Darkfall Online (8 years)
Spore (8 years)
The Last Guardian (9 years)
Too Human (9 years)
Team Fortress 2 (9 years)
Final Fantasy XV (10 years)
Prey (11 years)
Diablo III (11 years)
Duke Nukem Forever (15 years)
If you were attempting to make us feel better by correlating development of Pantheon to Duke Nukem Forever or other failed games that were in developement hell forever and then turned out terrible I think it's not working.
EQBallzz said:Jothany said:Becoda said:You should care. The longer a game takes to develop (as history has shown) the less likely it will be "high quality". You will be hard pressed to find a game with a 10 year dev cycle that was successful on release.
Games with long development times:
Elder Scrolls Online (7 years)
Darkfall Online (8 years)
Spore (8 years)
The Last Guardian (9 years)
Too Human (9 years)
Team Fortress 2 (9 years)
Final Fantasy XV (10 years)
Prey (11 years)
Diablo III (11 years)
Duke Nukem Forever (15 years)
If you were attempting to make us feel better by correlating development of Pantheon to Duke Nukem Forever or other failed games that were in developement hell forever and then turned out terrible I think it's not working.
Most of those games were decent games, but you choose the one game that wasn't to make a point. There is no time limit on what it takes to make a good game, but you folks want to use that as the primary indicator of how Pantheon will turn out or as reason to say it that games that take long won't be good when there is NO proof of that.
Also, not having context and ONLY or PRIMARILY using time as an indicator of game development is a superficial and bordering on disingenuous argument. If you're not interested in learning about the full development of Pantheon and how that played a role in how long the game is taking then I can't take these arguments seriously. TONS of absolutely terrible games have been made in 'reasonable amount of time' and lots of games that have taken a long time have turned out to be decent. Again, context truly matters when discussing this, not time.
It seems like folks are going for the low hanging fruit to criticise instead of the sincere approach of researching this game's history to learn it was not an easy ride and still is not and easy ride for VR to get to this point. Yes, mistakes were made, but mistakes were made in MOST to EVERY game as they were being made. We just got to see and hear about VR's mistakes because it's a crowd funded game. I invite folks to read the history of their favorite games(if the company was brave enough to comment on it) and see that mistakes were made in their development, but they had the luxury of admitting to them AFTER the game was released.
You cannot discuss the real development of Pantheon with meme or Tweet-like comments and be fair or sincere. I really don't believe you can.
From wikipedia:
" ...
- History
-Development
EverQuest began as a concept by John Smedley in 1996. The original design is credited to Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, and Bill Trost. It was developed by Sony's 989 Studios and its early-1999 spin-off Verant Interactive ... Other key members of the development team included Bill Trost, who created the history, lore and major characters of Norrath (including EverQuest protagonist Firiona Vie), Geoffrey "GZ" Zatkin, who implemented the spell system, and artist Milo D. Cooper, who did the original character modeling in the game.
The start of beta testing was announced by Brad McQuaid in November 1997. " (note, not published, which is a different topic/subject)
There were not hundreds of developers, designers, or coders working on EQ1, prior to its launch in March 1999. At best? Less than 30. ( " ... EverQuest's team of roughly two dozen developers worked day and night to make their dream come true ... "
Just like Pantheon.
"You could also ask the surviving team members, to confirm the accuracy of that claim, if you believe pcgamer was lying."
Or we can try to ask the dead ones - maybe it is time for a seance. Pay enough money to the lady with the crystal ball and we can almost guarantee finally achieving the happy medium.
Jothany said:"Breaking the Internet" is a long article. Perhaps you could plz quote where they give actual numbers of people, and especially anything about their budget. The only mention of money I saw was that Smedley had "a few million" to start. I didn't see anything beyond that.
Beyond the fact that they left a direct quote, you can hold ctrl and press F to go directly to the text they quoted.
vjek said: Sure. From the article:" ... EverQuest's team of roughly two dozen developers worked day and night to make their dream come true ... " Just like Pantheon.
Thanks. I don't believe PC Gamer was lying, I just missed that it was a direct quote the first time I read it.
I still think you're comparing apples to oranges with your "just like Pantheon".
The EQ developers didn't have to run a company and all that it entails. That certainly lets the team leaders focus much more on the game rather than fundraising and doing PR.
Which points to another big difference, that all of the EQ devs were receiving steady paychecks from the day Smedley hired them. It's a lot easier to 'labor day and night' on a passion project when you don't have to worry about paying the bills and feeding your family.
The earliest years of Pantheon had many of its developers working for free. Up to today, some number of developers on Pantheon are part time, supporting themselves with other jobs. Whatever percentage that is now, it was larger the further back in time you go.
To my knowledge, Pantheon has never had two dozen developers working on the game at once. For many of the more recent years - and as recently as last year - the VR team has only had approximately 15 people actually developing the game. Today, they're just past 20 by my count.
The article mostly talks about those first couple years of laboring in anonymity. It leaves out any details of how significanly the project grew in the last year or so before release. Though I did notice that when they became Verant and were looking for new corporate sponsorship (funding) at that time, they had an offer on the table from Micro$oft, but turned it down in favor of an offer from Sony Online Entertainment. I'd guess they had the resources to grow a bit for that last year's push to release.
Finally, there's the much more overarching issue - IMO - of the sheer complexity of an MMO developed 20 years ago vs. today. The article mentioned "a 20 page design document" and later says "'Almost everything in that original design doc made its way into the game' Smedley boasts". I wonder how many pages of design docs Pantheon has...
Savanja said:I mean, we literally have some of those developers working on Pantheon. Making a game now versus then is NOT the same.
Setting aside the client (in this case, Unity), in your opinion, Savanja, which parts of the remaining two primary MMO components ( the server & the persistence layer) should take longer in 2023 than it did in 1997, and why?
I know I'll get flamed up and down, whatever. And I understand that this thread is primarily made for venting frustration, but it's not really constructive in any way. I don't know any of the devs of this game, but I can only imagine they want to punch their monitors reading through some of this stuff. While the complaints have some sort of legitimacy as the dev time for this game has been incredibly long, I do not think that detracts from the sincerity that is going into developing this game.