I know in one other game I have pledged to, it says what stage of development they are in. Will there be any easily-discovered way of seeing if #PRF is in Pre-Alpha, Alpha, Beta?? It'd be nice if we had some sort of idea, I keep asking everyone.
Will alpha be in 3,6,12 months ?
Even if it just says right where your pledge/subscriptions are should be adequit. "Current Status: Pre-Alpha" Of course it'd be nice if there were an estimate on the next level of development, but wouldn't be expected.
Surely I wouldn't be the only one that'd love to see "Current Status: Pre Alpha. Next status update is guessed to be between 3months and 24months"
We do regular updates and a state of the game every so often when we have enough to show off plus we are very open with our plans and we have a pretty good FAQ that was put together with the help of our community, so please feel free to check it out, most of your answers are there: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/game/faqs/
If it is not there then it means we are not at that point yet or ready to discuss it, once we get there we will ;)
We have said many times on these forums, in podcasts and streams etc. that testing is not ready and will be hopefully announced early next year but that is still not set in stone. As we have also said before it is just too hard at this stage of development to give time frames or even estimations since being unable to meet them disappoints many people, so instead we just work our butts off and announce news when we have it, that won;t change until we get further into development or receive investor funding.
Also, this post has been moved to General Pantheon as it does not belong in News and Announcements, which is for VR staff only to post in, I just keep that section open so the community can reply to our news and announcements. ;)
ooh, my appologies for posting it in there, I just thought of it as a suggestion to improve an announcement but I can see how it's preferred for staff only.
I'm understand the game is not ready for testing, and I know that because I have watched all of the twiches. What I guess I was unsuccesfguly trying to say is:
If I were brand new to MMO's, and was told to come check this game out- how would I, a new gamer, know the game is in pre-alpha?
All I'm suggesting is a little bar at the top of the site saying what stage you're in, " Status: Pre-Aplha " forget the estimations of next stage lol.
Shayken said:I even double checked the FAQ section you linked and it doesn't mention it either
The time frames are there, just a bit outdated by what Kilsin posted. https://www.pantheonmmo.com/game/faqs/#q45
Reht said:
The time frames are there, just a bit outdated by what Kilsin posted. https://www.pantheonmmo.com/game/faqs/#q45
I moved on from 'time frames'.. I read that in the FAQ's and it does not say 'we are currently in pre-alpha phase'..
All I'm suggestsing is:
"we are in pre-alpha"
"we are in alpha"
"we are in beta"
up in the top right corner of the page or something.
nothign else! that's it lmao
They are not in any of those phases, if you go back and rewatch the first twitch stream they are in pre-pre-alpha.
Maybe when they get to those phases there will be something, until then , we must accept that the game is "in devlopement"
Crazzie said:Brought up a good point, having time line updates what was done gives a great guide to the team. It not only pushed for a approx date to follow, it also can detail what steps you took to get there.
Kilsin can manage this :)
Do you mean a timeline of their previous accomplishments ?
Because even I was wanting an guesstimates 3months-3 years.. it's SOMETHING.. however if it's more than 3 months, people may get a little irate- understandable but don't want any of that.. and if you straight up say 3 years, well than you may lose out on possible investors, so I understand keeping the future a mystery..
Crazzie said:Brought up a good point, having time line updates what was done gives a great guide to the team. It not only pushed for a approx date to follow, it also can detail what steps you took to get there.
Kilsin can manage this :)
Lol, are you trying to kill me with work man! ;)
Shayken said:ooooh, they're in PRE-pre alpha ? ok that I interpreted incorrectly, I guess. Good looking out Fulton!
Although, that kind of further backs up my case. I swore we were in pre-alpha and I've been on the forums daily for a couple weeks now. /sigh
Yes, we only call it pre-pre-alpha so it is clear to people that we are not in testing yet and are still on a dev server in building mode, there is no need to announce to everyone that we are in development as that should already be pretty obvious :)
When we get closer to pre-alpha testing we will announce it and it will be visible as to what stage of testing we will be in, although pre-alpha is only for a select group of people with those pledges it will still give everyone else an idea of where we are at, so I wouldn't worry too much, Shayken.
It is a pity (though I am glad) VR are not following the usual 'modern MMO' practices.... namely:
Reverse time-line:
Release +2 yrs: Major bug fixes announced (but not yet inplemented)
Release +1 yrs: 2nd Major update available ($50, inc lev-cap by 20 levels)
Release +6 mo: DLC available for $25 (1 critical bug-fix + 1 new OP class)
Release +1 mo: Pre-release 'bonus items' finally given out
Release Day : (really Open-Beta) either nVidia or ATI cards will crash game ... or both will.
Early Access : (really Closed-Beta) Gold farmers all start their characters. Patcher *will* crash... repeatedly
Open Beta : (really Alpha test) Gold farmers map out the world and identify loopholes.
Closed Beta : (really Proof of Concept) Game still has half of all NPCs talking Chinese
Release -2 mo: (ported into UTF char-sets) Code is translated into Chinglish.
Release -3 mo: (Bought the game code from Sth Korea) Game announced for release in 3 weks on MMORPG.com
This *is* the usual model isn't it? I knolw at least 3 AAA games that have followed it to the letter last/this year :)
Evoras said:Release -2 mo: (ported into UTF char-sets) Code is translated into Chinglish.
Release -3 mo: (Bought the game code from Sth Korea) Game announced for release in 3 weks on MMORPG.com
Now that's just wrong and insulting to Koreans...
It would be Korengrish since they are not Chinese.
I thought alpha would of started by now, they said start of this year times moving on.
Wish they where more upfront with the time frames and estimated month for alpha would be nice to know.
It sounds like they've changed their goals for pre-alpha recently which will of course affect their entire schedule and most likely push back any dates they were even thinking of releasing to the public.
I realize it can be frustrating but they really aren't under any obligation to publish dates. I suspect the damage from publishing dates and not meeting them would be more harmful than not publishing any dates at all.
I know it doesn't help when you feel things are being delayed past what you expect, or details not being communicated but in my experience with (non-software) projects of this size, there are probably only 2 dates that they have internally that have any meaning, a target date for the next stage of development (pre-alpha), and an absolute end target for release and even these dates will fluctuate probably by 1 year +- 6 months.
Kilsin said:We do regular updates and a state of the game every so often when we have enough to show off plus we are very open with our plans and we have a pretty good FAQ that was put together with the help of our community, so please feel free to check it out, most of your answers are there: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/game/faqs/
If it is not there then it means we are not at that point yet or ready to discuss it, once we get there we will ;)
We have said many times on these forums, in podcasts and streams etc. that testing is not ready and will be hopefully announced early next year but that is still not set in stone. As we have also said before it is just too hard at this stage of development to give time frames or even estimations since being unable to meet them disappoints many people, so instead we just work our butts off and announce news when we have it, that won;t change until we get further into development or receive investor funding.
Also, this post has been moved to General Pantheon as it does not belong in News and Announcements, which is for VR staff only to post in, I just keep that section open so the community can reply to our news and announcements. ;)
No disrespect intended, but the tone of this response has made me feel that I won't be contributing anymore to this game at this point. Once I see something besides "we're working our butts off, but we could do more with investor funding", I sense vaporware. Not where I want to be. I have $100 in this. I had planned to go to $300, but I'll wait until this seems more tangible.
I believe VR has been honest and up front with everything they are doing or have done. They have not only been listening to the community but have gone above and beyond to keep us in the loop of things going on. I apologize if things don't seem to be moving fast enough for you hackerssuck. I know that the majority of this community doesn't mind at all the time frame at this point being in agreement that they take all the time they need in order to deliver the awesome game that I know they will. I can understand wanting to know more but at this point in time what VR needs is our continued support. These guys are busting their a*s. The least we can do is keep showing our support. That's just my 2 cents...
hackerssuck said:Kilsin said:We do regular updates and a state of the game every so often when we have enough to show off plus we are very open with our plans and we have a pretty good FAQ that was put together with the help of our community, so please feel free to check it out, most of your answers are there: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/game/faqs/
If it is not there then it means we are not at that point yet or ready to discuss it, once we get there we will ;)
We have said many times on these forums, in podcasts and streams etc. that testing is not ready and will be hopefully announced early next year but that is still not set in stone. As we have also said before it is just too hard at this stage of development to give time frames or even estimations since being unable to meet them disappoints many people, so instead we just work our butts off and announce news when we have it, that won;t change until we get further into development or receive investor funding.
Also, this post has been moved to General Pantheon as it does not belong in News and Announcements, which is for VR staff only to post in, I just keep that section open so the community can reply to our news and announcements. ;)
No disrespect intended, but the tone of this response has made me feel that I won't be contributing anymore to this game at this point. Once I see something besides "we're working our butts off, but we could do more with investor funding", I sense vaporware. Not where I want to be. I have $100 in this. I had planned to go to $300, but I'll wait until this seems more tangible.
Too be fair, you redacted a critical part of the sentence in question. It reads perfectly well if you add in the context either side of your quote: "As we have also said before it is just too hard at this stage of development to give time frames or even estimations since being unable to meet them disappoints many people, so instead we just work our butts off and announce news when we have it, that won;t change until we get further into development or receive investor funding."
The crux of that sentence was about giving out timeframes/news and not chasing funding.
hackerssuck said:Kilsin said:We do regular updates and a state of the game every so often when we have enough to show off plus we are very open with our plans and we have a pretty good FAQ that was put together with the help of our community, so please feel free to check it out, most of your answers are there: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/game/faqs/
If it is not there then it means we are not at that point yet or ready to discuss it, once we get there we will ;)
We have said many times on these forums, in podcasts and streams etc. that testing is not ready and will be hopefully announced early next year but that is still not set in stone. As we have also said before it is just too hard at this stage of development to give time frames or even estimations since being unable to meet them disappoints many people, so instead we just work our butts off and announce news when we have it, that won;t change until we get further into development or receive investor funding.
Also, this post has been moved to General Pantheon as it does not belong in News and Announcements, which is for VR staff only to post in, I just keep that section open so the community can reply to our news and announcements. ;)
No disrespect intended, but the tone of this response has made me feel that I won't be contributing anymore to this game at this point. Once I see something besides "we're working our butts off, but we could do more with investor funding", I sense vaporware. Not where I want to be. I have $100 in this. I had planned to go to $300, but I'll wait until this seems more tangible.
No disrespect taken my friend, I meant it in the sense that if we had an investor drop a decent amount of money on us we could hire more staff to work faster and get more done, at the moment we are not struggling by any means and are all grateful for having such an amazing community that continues to support us and help us make the game that we all want to play, including us!
We have shown measurable progress over the last 2 years to the point of releasing two live streams in different areas with mechanics, features, and systems in place as a base structure, with or without investors we will continue to make progress, finish making this game and release it but it would happen faster if we had more money on board to help hire more staff is all I meant, that is also why subs and pledge sales are so important to us, they help us more than anything at this point, so thank you for your support! :)
Time always seems to flow differently for both observer and the observed. Hence my (hopefully) amusing poke at the 'modern MMO' development cycle above!
To that end, I would say the following to the Developers:
1. I, like all those on these forums I am sure, back the game concept to the hilt. We understand that the development process takes time, but are understandably excited about the possibility of any further information or released portions fo the game. (Very much like a 5 year old wishinhg for a sugar fix!) Please bear with us and our tantrums!
2. We know that the developers all have lives to live and that, for them, these are 'actual' jobs and not the entirity of their lives. Having said that, if you wanted to inject a morale boost into your team, yuo need do no more than point them at these forums to see the many supporters enthusing about the prospective game! Indeed, if they get bored while 'awaiting code to compile' they could do worse than come here to see what we are doing (or wishing they were doing).
3. By the time we get to Alpha/Beta they will have a solid bank of potential testers here waiting for the opportunity to run about in the game in order to test and break as much as possible in order to make Pantheon a better game.
Beyond this I would suggest they keep coffeine and pizza levels as high as possible while they work their (proverbial) backsides (thats 'arses' for you in USA) off!
Also do keep in mind, there are going to be massive breathroughs in videocards here in the upcoming year. If they released alpha today, I'd upgrade my pc and throw away a crap ton of money. So it's another way to maybe justifying the wait time.. Start throwing $50 a paycheck into the savings account to build a new pc and get a 4k monitor or 2 when the game releases. :)