Now that you have sunken your teeth into the February newsletter, what were you most excited to read about? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters
If you missed it you can quickly catch up by clicking this link: http://www.pantheonmmo.com/newsletter/2018_february_intro/
Philo, of course! Oh, and the Ash/Ember color (aka colour, Big K) palettes. Wait, the additional lore hints (bravo Justin). No, the architecture. Oh, oh, and the dev’s thoughts on elves. Plus the concept art. Uh rangers!
You’ve left this bard so excited there are no words...no words VR!
Kudos & Thanks.
Lastly, constant work is being done on tuning and balancing the game as a whole. The Player vs. NPC power, stat distribution from levels 1-50 and how all of this plays into ability tuning, itemization - really, every aspect of the game is touched by this.
Would love to be a fly on the wall for those meetings.
Trasak
I was very excited to read that the Pre-Alpha is going well and so many people are getting involved and helping out!
Also, I was a huge jelly, because I'm not 'in' until Alpha and, apparently, it will be "some weeks" until Pre-Alpha 2 even starts, so "some weeks + some weeks" until I get to be involved. Doh!
It was lovely to read about the elves and the obvious enthusiasm and joy from the devs is really great to see.
Well done all!
What I want to know is... When will Justin be releasing some novellas or the like for us fans to read?!
Tough question. I'll go with the State of the Game over the Elf Interview (but it's close) and I'll say that the best part of the State of the Game was the bit about Rangers and Dire Lords coming into the game. I guess it's getting close to a year since we had the Monks come in, so I was starting to worry about some of the others being scratched. I wish they were working on Rangers and Druids rather than Rangers and Dire Lords, but I'll take it.
EDIT: Typo.
What I liked most were the parts that promised reveals for a new zone, new classes and more soon :)
What (positively) surprised me most was that there'll be continuing story(-lines? -quests?) for all level ranges. Have to re-read that part. So far it was my impression that Pantheon would be more in the line of EQ that it wouldn't have story arcs/quests. Maybe this is part (or implementation) of the "rites of passage" system that was discussed a long while ago?
Kilsin said:I did like the part about the elves,but my favorite part was they are working on release of other classes including the dire lord. Class info on the "missing" classes is really important to me .Now that you have sunken your teeth into the February newsletter, what were you most excited to read about? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters
If you missed it you can quickly catch up by clicking this link: http://www.pantheonmmo.com/newsletter/2018_february_intro/
Honestly, the news that pre-alpha 2 was still a few weeks off was the best news to me (hear me out on this). We all love hearing about new features, and new mechanics, but this takes TIME. And time is something I always appreciate the dev team taking. How often have we seen games release way too soon, with way too little testing.
I am in the Alhpa group, so I cant wait for when I can jump into the world, but seeing the full bredth of their testing, that theyre putting in the requisite time, THAT was the best thing to see. Getting tester feedback, but having the time to actually digest it, then discuss changes/solutions, and then implment them any improvements is by no means a quick and easy process. That it is being given due care speaks volumes to the committment to this game that the devs have (to me anyway).
Aside from that though, I am super pumped as others have said for any info I can get on the other classes. Knowing the full range of options out there (and not having to guess at design/builds) is gonna be awesome.
Kumu said:Philo, of course!
Aw shucks /blush
There are a few things that stood out to me. Ranged combat, Direlords, New zones coming soon! It was nice to hear confirmation that there will be a couple elven sub race options that allow players to choose between a wood elf or high elf type of race.
It makes me wonder what options there will be for other races? Human Barbarians? I know some people were hoping for a dark elf type of sub race. Hopefully Myr will satisfy the DE lovers.
The state of the game.
I am more interested in progress and how fast things are moving than in the lore - once testing gets down to alpha I'll have many hours to dive in so my main interest is when that is likely to happen (no I am not asking I know better - just explaining my answer).
The Combat System and ability design has taken a huge step forward with the hiring of Jason Weimann late last year. Since coming on the team, Jason has been hard at work revamping our Ability tool (the interface designers use to create the sophisticated abilities that our classes and NPCs will use) as well as creating the functionality for some of our more in-depth combat system mechanics. More information on those mechanics will be coming soon. With these elements in place, the differentiating aspects of our combat and class design will begin to take shape.
...
Our NPC AI is moving steadily forward, including our Disposition system (one of our differentiators). In a nutshell, Dispositions are designed to be a unique behavioral layer of AI that certain NPCs will have. These unique behavioral tendencies will need to be identified by players through observation and experience, and at times will require the skill of players trained in the Perception system. We currently have 6 Dispositions in and working: Angry, Alarmist, Pyrophobic, Predator, Sniper and Animal Lover.
In addition to our Dispositions, right now we are taking a closer look at NPC caster AI to fine tune their movement and arsenal selection during combat. We're asking questions like: how smart should their spell selection be? What spells should they prioritize and why? How often should they use ability combinations to stay at range, or get back to range?
These parts. Excited to see what other layers to combat are in the works as well as more info on dispositions. Really intrigued to find out what the other differentiators are/will be.
Hopefully you guys keep with having casters be very dangerous/hard. I actually liked that in the May stream from last year that the caster mob turned and one shot the wizard as it was explained that with proper preparation it could have been avoided. Keep people on their toes.
I liked the Loooong article on the elves. I liked the conversational nature of it with some nice Dev type tech-speak sprinkled in.
Mostly, I liked the layout of the Elf reveal from concept architecture and draftsman like drawings, to shapes and rough faces, to the colors and then- to the final completed rendering with nice chunks of text to read inbetween.
I did come away with some assumptions about the ranger class in general. With the talk about ferrets and the lynx does that mean rangers will have two pets? one for fighting/ambushing/patroling and another for stealing/searching/messaging? Or even be the vehicle for alerting to broad and vague perception que's? *the lynx's fur appears combed, there must be a kindred spirit out there* or * the ferret has a smooth pebble in its mouth, there maybe a stream nearby*
PAX EAST! I love that there will be a new zone revealed at PAX, cause I'll be right there to experience it firsthand :)
Although, there was also a little sentence on a tiny note in one single piece of concept art that gave me goosebumps for some reason: "Note that Elves are quick to maintain all they build, and preserve them well, therefore lichen and natural growth will be minimal, found in hard to reach places..." Seems like a very minor phrase, but the mental image of how this city will shine in the sun is breath-taking. And I just can't get enough of how much attention to detail there is in these renderings. I'm a huge sucker for details.
Not to mention the fact that also the mental image of a bunch of elves fervently scrubbing everything they own all day long just makes me laugh :P
My favorite part by default is the fact that pre-alpha is apparantly going well. Beyond that, I was really happy to see the sheer amount of love that is going into making elves/elvish buildings. Even if I usually don't pick elf in games, this continues to show the dedication that will be poured into whatever I do play.
If by favourite you mean the part that has me at the edge of my seat...It'd be the fact that rangers aren't planned to be exclusively ranged. Once you give a class the ability to be melee or ranged depending on the situation, balancing gets REALLY hard, as I have pointed out before in other threads on the ranger subforum. Good luck on remaking Aragorn, I'm excited and a bit scared to see how it turns out.
State of the game.
I want to know the progress the team is making each month. What is being done, where the focus is centered, etc... The lore part is only an added bonus. To be honest, I'm still on the fence about whether I believe such a small team, with limited funds and even experience, can really pull this game off. Heck, its been over a year since the new forums were supposed to be imminent and the main website info hasn't been updated in forever. It's scary looking at relatively simple things like that not being done and modernized like other games in development. So, I'm always interested to see or hear about just simple progress with this game so I know it might actually be a thing one day.
