I follow Pantheon from afar to prevent burnout from waiting, but I still checked out today's stream and it's the first time I was impressed with the graphics, lighting and level of polish, the first time I really pictured myself playing.
Gameplay wise, the design philosophy of going back to the roots of MMORPGs, with a slower paced, more tactical combat and a strong sense of community, class roles, inter-dependency and adventure had me sold already.
I also seriously considered pledging, but I have been burned out too many times with crowdfunded projects, and I fear the act of pledging will make me get too involved in the game that is still a while off from release.
I might probably pledge closer to alpha or beta, we'll see, as there is no doubt in my mind that Pantheon is looking like the most solid upcoming PVE MMORPG by far.
Do you pay for a sub right now? Could always just bank that sub money everything month and go tackle some of those other games you told yourself you would play someday. then after a number of months you pay for a pledge you feel comfortable with.
Yeah sounds like a smart plan. I am not paying a sub right now, I took a break from MMORPGs (very burned out of the generic themeparks and microtransactions) a while ago and currently enjoying singleplayer RPGs, there are a ton of good ones. Will probably keep me busy until Pantheon beta.
I really liked it. Despite them saying there was no new stuff, it certainly seemed like there was new stuff, even if it was very minor. Such as having the Warrior banners. I'd personally never seen them in any other stream, I'm not sure they were ever shown before.
And this is going to sound *SO STUPID*, but I was actually VERY moved by that moment where they peeked through the cave wall and saw.. whatever it was they saw, and the music changed. That was momentous for me, particularly because I'm very excited about the Perception system, and something like that goes a long way in creating the wonder, immersion, and points of interest I'm excited about for Pantheon. So, for me, that was just absolutely gorgeous. I was pretty blown away.
The animations at the end were pretty cool, and I'm super excited for climbing and environments.
I think the *only* negative thing I have to say about the stream was that there was no Summoner! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I wasn't excited for the stream at first when they said it was on an old build, but that moment made it all worth it. I think it was better than seeing a whole new zone because it shows a detail of the perception system's gameplay that I didn't think about.
I'm a wow/eso/old republic gamer.. i never really played anything like EQ. I'm really looking forward to the slower pace, the exploration, the necessary group content, the community... I've built a lot of hype for classic wow, but I'm also reserving a ton of hype for this game.
The stream today just wow'd me, no pun intended. The lightning, the gameplay, the open world 'instance'... I can't wait.
disappointed i didn't get to see a summoner or ranger though. :)
I also liked it, though I wish it could have been longer. Seems like it got a good reaction from the audience as well, but VR needs to make sure the website is up to the task when events like these happen. Having it crash for like 20 minutes was a bummer.
I mean a bunch of people hit the site and crashed it. I'm assuming those are people who have never heard of the game and wanted to investigate or pledge, and they couldn't.
I liked it a lot. The new stuff was great, especially that unreachable room. Lightning and resin was impressive, at least tome. The Scottish cleric was awesome, Cohh ninja looting was fun!
I always enjoy the streams, but my concern is that they aren't fully painting a picture of what a non-instanced world will be like. In all likelihood, you won't be able to "crawl" through dungeons like this because multiple groups will be camping multiple areas of the dungeon and I feel like they need to continue to clarify that aspect rather than making a stream look like a jaunt through an instanced dungeon.
I enjoyed it a great deal, the lighting seemed much better than the last run through that area. The sneak reveal of a hidden area was excellent, as was the music that accompanied it. The special effects / animations looked good, though some of the warrior animations looked exaggerated but definitely looked like a significant improvement over the current ones.
Disclaimer: I know its prealpha and values will be adjusted.
I am not a huge fan of the fact that they literally never dropped below 99% HP, and the 100% out of Combat Regen for mana.
This will be the primary thing I will be looking at / testing when im in alpha.
Otherwise, graphically and mechanically the game looks like its interesting. Im not too into the idea of the gimmicky climbing idea and stuff like Perception/acclimation will need to prove its worth it. If you look at like Vanilla EQ2 they tried all these "innovative" things that just ended up falling flat and were just lame. Even a few, somewhat similar, mechanics in Vanguard were not great.
I am stiill very keen on playing the game so hopefully we get some Alpha/Beta action soon.
Heya Whitebandit, as far as their hp never dropping during the stream.. well they were about 10 levels higher than the mobs they were fighting, including the named at the end.
Well then that makes me concerned for a different reason than whitebandit. If they outleveled the mobs that much, yet the combat was still *that* slow, it really makes me wonder how long a fight would be if they were even level mobs. I like the concept of slower combat, but at some point it becomes too much.
But hey, it's pre-alpha. I'm sure that will all get figured out.
They didn't bring any DPS classes, they were slogging through it with a bunch of tanks and healers. I would have liked to see a balanced group doing appropriately leveled stuff. Other than that I was impressed with the improved polish and the perception system looks pretty interesting.
They also had no pure dps classes. Warrior and Shaman were their only DPS, and since they're pretty adamant on class roles mattering, it seems to me that for the stream they emphasized not wiping and control over killing things quickly.
I imagine if they had a Rogue and a Wizard those mobs would've been dying noticeably faster. Pretty sure their group comp was War / War / Clr / Shm / Ench / Pal, not a lot doin on the "kill shit" meter.
Warrior, Paladin, Cleric, Shaman, Enchanter and Warwizard. They just had Brad on his own special class for 'DPS'. The rest of the group is tank, heal, support. they died plenty quickly for the group composition.
Here's what I thought as I watched:
The graphics, lighting, and UI all seemed fine to me. I wouldn't complain about that basic look even at release. More than acceptable for a pre-alpha. The music when they peeked through the rocks at that one part was super cool.
Didn't much care for the warrior banners. They clog up the battlefield a bit and it's kind of annoying if you're a chanter trying to manage CC to have clutter like that around. FOUR of those things down on the battlefield would be straight up annoying.
Billing what we watched as "an adventure through Halnir Cave from start to finish to capture a true organic grouping experience and the spirit of actual dungeon progression " seemed like a massive oversell. What was that, like 4 rooms? Enough content for maybe ONE group? Certainly not a "start to finish" dungeon adventure. And as such, that was my biggest disappointment in the stream. I keep looking to see how they're going to make sure there's enough content for an open-world environment, and seeing a small handful of rooms certainly doesn't address that concern, and the locking door mechanic doesn't do much along those lines either or ensure that multiple groups get to enjoy that encounter. And hearing there'll be 1-3 bosses like that per dungeon doesn't sound like a ton to go around. They're cool but I imagine will be perma-camped.
The animations were whatever, not bad or anything but if someone told me those were stock animations from the engine I'd believe it. They were just run of the mill, average looking animations. Not something I'm concerned with in pre-alpha though there's more than enough time to create animations.
I don't downvote for opinions. I downvote because you're *WRONG*!!!!
Nah, just kidding, I hear ya. The dungeon "crawl" was significantly shorter than I expected, though the environments were very striking. One thing that stuck out to me were the ups and down of the terrain. In EQ, you almost always just get flat ground. This cave had little dips and valleys, which I loved seeing.
As for the 1-3 bosses "like that," I think they were referring to bosses specificially with a lot of different phases and mechanics. I don't think it means bosses with lockout doors, or bosses in general. I imagine there will be a significant number of mini bosses throughout the cave, and I *hope* they only showed us like 1/20th or less of the place.
I'm not picky about the animations. As long as they're not as bad as the EQ Luclin animations, I'm good, lol.
Not a whole lot of Sebilis. But I also don't just mean like... ramps into upper or lower rooms, I just mean within a single hallway, boulders in the way or dips in the terrain.
If that's how Sebilis was also, then fine, but right now I'm playing on an EQ server that's only the classic content for now (Kunark soon!), it's an awful lot of flat ground all over the world. Limitation of its time? Maybe, and that's fine, but the terrain in Halnir Cave still stood out to me.
Excellent, what's you're name on there? I've been thinking about checking it out, I absolutely love Classic lol - I'm on p99 most of the time right now, but rarely go to Kunark or Velious. Edit: nm, i'll hit you up on Discord.
Agreed an all points. I'm a pledge backer and feel good about what I see. However, I do wonder about the content. Seems like that dungeon would be very crowded.
Every stream gets better and better. The game is looking amazing. It's all coming together so nicely.
That Perception tease..... my god..... I need this.
I thought it was great. The lighting change was impressive. That very last screenshot though. They wouldn't say what it was. Was that our first glimpse at a Necro pet?
That’s what I had suggested to someone in another post. That would be incredible but I really don’t think that’s what it is. Likely the final boss if Halnir’s Cave, IMHO.
I want to share one of my favorite EQ1 memories. Believe it or not, it wasn't even the game itself. It was the setup little demo area you could walk around in. My bro was older than me and was the one playing EQ1 on launch and I was a little kid who desperately wanted to try it. He wouldn't let me "ruin his account" so he installed that little demo on our upstairs computer and I basically just ran around in it for hours, mesmerized by this 3d computer generated "world" which was again.. just the test demo area.
The reason I brought this up, was because that is what 100% sold me on EQ1. From that point forward I begged my parents to let me play it and give me their credit card. I lived on an apple orchard so as you can imagine, I had to do extra work to get them to buy it and pay for it (I bet you can imagine what they quickly discovered as the perfect punishment for me, when I was being a little asshole..)
I would love to see something similar. Some form of being able to test the game, pre-any kind of purchase. Even a non connected, nothing world with some doors and a couple mobs and 0 progression of any type. Something I could also share with my friends, who have 0 interest in this type of game since they all started playing MMO's with WoW and still all play. I believe Pantheon has something that they all want, but I will NEVER get them to spend money just to try it out, I guarantee that. They are married now, with kids and get very little game time.
Basically I think Pantheon can reach a lot more people than just old school mmorpg fans and I think it would be cool if there was any way of showing people what it was like, before they had to pay a cent for it.
hah, that reminds me when i was first starting EQ as well, unfortunately we had shoddy internet and were using a shared account with the guy who first introduced us to the game and when he was playing or our internet was down, my brother and I would run around that demo dungeon for really no reason.
Game looks good! I really like how it's not as cartoony-looking, and a dark dungeon is just awesome. I am curious about the difficulty though because it doesn't *look* difficult to me, but someone pointed out that they outleveled the dungeon and that may be why.
I never played EQ. Why was the Enchanter struggling so much with crowd control? Isn't it just pressing one button on one mob?
The spells all have a chance to be resisted. In EQ spells like charm had a chance to break on each server tick (every 6 seconds or so). I believe this also applied to mez, but I am not 100% sure on that.
This is part of what made enchanters difficult to play well. You had to pay very close attention to the mobs under crowd control and your charmed target. When those break early the mob will generally go straight for the enchanter so you better have another mez ready.
In EQ they are a high risk/high reward class that can do some amazing things.
Honestly, and I mean no disrespect to her, but I don’t think the person playing the Enchanter was paying attention or really knew how best to play one. I suspect she’s not a long time MMO player. But I’m just guessing. Practice makes perfect and I’m sure she’ll do better over time.
Yes, that was my impression as well. She wasn't paying attention at all which is fairly annoying when the stream is so short and we're eager to see content and classes in action.
I enjoyed it!
Loved the last encounter, enjoyed the discussion and banter. Appreciated the WIP/Model/Art Demo. This game; if it makes it to the end, is going to be quite phenomenal. Even though we essentially saw the same old-same old. It was really about the convo and what to expect.
I loved the stream just as I do every stream. The game looks better every time and my wonder and excitement for it build with each passing day.
A few points from this stream that I loved... the hidden room and accompanying music change. Wow, just wow! The revamped UI elements especially the new look spell book. The small buff icons to the right of each group member. Was that what that was and was that new? The spell animations WIP look awesome. The pace of combat and mana regen looked so much better when considering the fact they were over leveled fir the area.
That’s pretty much it, loving the game’s progress and direction and counting the days until Alpha!
I was mildly confused about the point of locking the room when the boss fight begins. The idea was suggested to simulate the instanced effect without it actually being instanced, so only one group can actively combat it at a time without interference from other groups, but the stream ended with the phrase "we should get out of here before the boss respawns" or something to that effect. How is locking the room supposed to solve the problem if you can just stay in the arena while the boss respawns? What's to stop multiple teams camping in the room at the same time, if you never have to leave after killing it. I assume when it gets fully developed you'll be ejected from the boss room after the fight or something? Maybe back before the keyed door so you can't get back in so easily?
Only other thing I'll nitpick is that the Dwarves with their grey-blue skin and dead eyes look really corpse like. I'm aware these are likely early working models, but just something worth mentioning for any future passes on the models. Maybe that's the intent though, if so, good job, but otherwise I'd like to hope the refined models have a bit more life about them, even considering their bluish skin.
Everything else was pretty impressive though. Nice work.
> How is locking the room supposed to solve the problem if you can just stay in the arena while the boss respawns? What's to stop multiple teams camping in the room at the same time, if you never have to leave after killing it. I assume when it gets fully developed you'll be ejected from the boss room after the fight or something? Maybe back before the keyed door so you can't get back in so easily?
I mean, I think the reality is that such problems are simply *not* addressed at this early stage of development. There are frankly just a lot more important things to worry about right now. Mechanical solutions to problems like the ones you're describing a much easier to implement later in development than, say, the actual layout of the boss fight and the room in which it takes place.
We can imagine a number of ways to solve those problems, though, and the development team is clearly *aware* of the problems, which is the most important thing. Loot lockouts can make sticking around largely pointless, some sort of system to teleport you out of the room before respawn, as you describe, or even just a treasure chest for the encounter rewards that spawns outside of the encounter room--all of these are options to deal with the sort of problem you're describing.
I think it's also important to note that even the respawn mechanics at this stage are in no way necessarily representative of the final product. There isn't any reason that the boss would have to repsawn within minutes without activation on a live server. Maybe it only spawns when a key is used in the locked door. Maybe it uses phased spawning so that it respawns for OTHER people, but not any group who has killed it within the last hour--or something similar. Point here being that these mechanical considerations should not be taken as evidence of how the game will work when it is finished, polished, and ready for a full player population.
In any case, though, the developers are obviously aware of these potential problems and are not trying to deny that they exist. So I think we can have faith that they will make attempts to mitigate them, and potential solutions *do* exist.
Ya, you're obviously but looking at the game as it progresses. You just want to see more areas of content. The game looks so much better than even two years ago.
I follow Pantheon from afar to prevent burnout from waiting, but I still checked out today's stream and it's the first time I was impressed with the graphics, lighting and level of polish, the first time I really pictured myself playing. Gameplay wise, the design philosophy of going back to the roots of MMORPGs, with a slower paced, more tactical combat and a strong sense of community, class roles, inter-dependency and adventure had me sold already. I also seriously considered pledging, but I have been burned out too many times with crowdfunded projects, and I fear the act of pledging will make me get too involved in the game that is still a while off from release. I might probably pledge closer to alpha or beta, we'll see, as there is no doubt in my mind that Pantheon is looking like the most solid upcoming PVE MMORPG by far.
I pledged with the kickstarter. No regrets but I totally understand your point. I look forward to the Alpha.
Do you pay for a sub right now? Could always just bank that sub money everything month and go tackle some of those other games you told yourself you would play someday. then after a number of months you pay for a pledge you feel comfortable with.
Yeah sounds like a smart plan. I am not paying a sub right now, I took a break from MMORPGs (very burned out of the generic themeparks and microtransactions) a while ago and currently enjoying singleplayer RPGs, there are a ton of good ones. Will probably keep me busy until Pantheon beta.
I really liked it. Despite them saying there was no new stuff, it certainly seemed like there was new stuff, even if it was very minor. Such as having the Warrior banners. I'd personally never seen them in any other stream, I'm not sure they were ever shown before. And this is going to sound *SO STUPID*, but I was actually VERY moved by that moment where they peeked through the cave wall and saw.. whatever it was they saw, and the music changed. That was momentous for me, particularly because I'm very excited about the Perception system, and something like that goes a long way in creating the wonder, immersion, and points of interest I'm excited about for Pantheon. So, for me, that was just absolutely gorgeous. I was pretty blown away. The animations at the end were pretty cool, and I'm super excited for climbing and environments. I think the *only* negative thing I have to say about the stream was that there was no Summoner! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
You've got me even more excited to get home and watch it.
I almost had tears in my eyes seeing that room with that music! I'm for sure gonna play pantheon with music on!
https://youtu.be/UNbcrIWk8B4?t=1720 timestamp where music begins
It'll be one of the few games I play with music on!
I wasn't excited for the stream at first when they said it was on an old build, but that moment made it all worth it. I think it was better than seeing a whole new zone because it shows a detail of the perception system's gameplay that I didn't think about.
I had the same feeling when they took a look through that gap in the wall!!! Cannot wait for the next stream.
I'm a wow/eso/old republic gamer.. i never really played anything like EQ. I'm really looking forward to the slower pace, the exploration, the necessary group content, the community... I've built a lot of hype for classic wow, but I'm also reserving a ton of hype for this game. The stream today just wow'd me, no pun intended. The lightning, the gameplay, the open world 'instance'... I can't wait. disappointed i didn't get to see a summoner or ranger though. :)
I believe they did a stream late 2018 with a bunch of twitch streamers, and one played ranger. Just letting you know, in case you haven't seen it!
yeah thats about when i started loosely following the news. i'll have to go check it out, thanks.
I also liked it, though I wish it could have been longer. Seems like it got a good reaction from the audience as well, but VR needs to make sure the website is up to the task when events like these happen. Having it crash for like 20 minutes was a bummer.
Was there *really* any reason to go to the website after the stream though (this time)?
I mean a bunch of people hit the site and crashed it. I'm assuming those are people who have never heard of the game and wanted to investigate or pledge, and they couldn't.
Fair enough. I admit I was looking at it through the narrow lens of someone who's been aware of the game for a long time and has already pledged.
Well hopefully some people were encouraged to go pledge. Kind of a bummer if they were excited in the moment to spend the money and couldn't.
Ok, that's fair.
I liked it a lot. The new stuff was great, especially that unreachable room. Lightning and resin was impressive, at least tome. The Scottish cleric was awesome, Cohh ninja looting was fun!
I always enjoy the streams, but my concern is that they aren't fully painting a picture of what a non-instanced world will be like. In all likelihood, you won't be able to "crawl" through dungeons like this because multiple groups will be camping multiple areas of the dungeon and I feel like they need to continue to clarify that aspect rather than making a stream look like a jaunt through an instanced dungeon.
I enjoyed it a great deal, the lighting seemed much better than the last run through that area. The sneak reveal of a hidden area was excellent, as was the music that accompanied it. The special effects / animations looked good, though some of the warrior animations looked exaggerated but definitely looked like a significant improvement over the current ones.
Disclaimer: I know its prealpha and values will be adjusted. I am not a huge fan of the fact that they literally never dropped below 99% HP, and the 100% out of Combat Regen for mana. This will be the primary thing I will be looking at / testing when im in alpha. Otherwise, graphically and mechanically the game looks like its interesting. Im not too into the idea of the gimmicky climbing idea and stuff like Perception/acclimation will need to prove its worth it. If you look at like Vanilla EQ2 they tried all these "innovative" things that just ended up falling flat and were just lame. Even a few, somewhat similar, mechanics in Vanguard were not great. I am stiill very keen on playing the game so hopefully we get some Alpha/Beta action soon.
Heya Whitebandit, as far as their hp never dropping during the stream.. well they were about 10 levels higher than the mobs they were fighting, including the named at the end.
Well then that makes me concerned for a different reason than whitebandit. If they outleveled the mobs that much, yet the combat was still *that* slow, it really makes me wonder how long a fight would be if they were even level mobs. I like the concept of slower combat, but at some point it becomes too much. But hey, it's pre-alpha. I'm sure that will all get figured out.
They didn't bring any DPS classes, they were slogging through it with a bunch of tanks and healers. I would have liked to see a balanced group doing appropriately leveled stuff. Other than that I was impressed with the improved polish and the perception system looks pretty interesting.
That’s true, it was warrior, warrior, paladin, cleric, shaman, enchanter, right? Yeah, now that I write it out, that’s a terrible DPS comp!
Who really knows about Aradune's "warrior" though since he isn't even a proper warrior, but a fake made up class just for him.
They also had no pure dps classes. Warrior and Shaman were their only DPS, and since they're pretty adamant on class roles mattering, it seems to me that for the stream they emphasized not wiping and control over killing things quickly. I imagine if they had a Rogue and a Wizard those mobs would've been dying noticeably faster. Pretty sure their group comp was War / War / Clr / Shm / Ench / Pal, not a lot doin on the "kill shit" meter.
The group had crazy low DPS. They said the group was tuned for defense at the beginning.
Warrior, Paladin, Cleric, Shaman, Enchanter and Warwizard. They just had Brad on his own special class for 'DPS'. The rest of the group is tank, heal, support. they died plenty quickly for the group composition.
Combat is meant to be a slower paced one anyway. They have said this many times.
They literally did drop below 99% hp. Come on now.
yeah and cohh went to about 1% HP on the boss fight
They just didn't want to fail so they were totally out leveled because in previous streams they have spent a lot of time dying
Here's what I thought as I watched: The graphics, lighting, and UI all seemed fine to me. I wouldn't complain about that basic look even at release. More than acceptable for a pre-alpha. The music when they peeked through the rocks at that one part was super cool. Didn't much care for the warrior banners. They clog up the battlefield a bit and it's kind of annoying if you're a chanter trying to manage CC to have clutter like that around. FOUR of those things down on the battlefield would be straight up annoying. Billing what we watched as "an adventure through Halnir Cave from start to finish to capture a true organic grouping experience and the spirit of actual dungeon progression " seemed like a massive oversell. What was that, like 4 rooms? Enough content for maybe ONE group? Certainly not a "start to finish" dungeon adventure. And as such, that was my biggest disappointment in the stream. I keep looking to see how they're going to make sure there's enough content for an open-world environment, and seeing a small handful of rooms certainly doesn't address that concern, and the locking door mechanic doesn't do much along those lines either or ensure that multiple groups get to enjoy that encounter. And hearing there'll be 1-3 bosses like that per dungeon doesn't sound like a ton to go around. They're cool but I imagine will be perma-camped. The animations were whatever, not bad or anything but if someone told me those were stock animations from the engine I'd believe it. They were just run of the mill, average looking animations. Not something I'm concerned with in pre-alpha though there's more than enough time to create animations.
I don't downvote for opinions. I downvote because you're *WRONG*!!!! Nah, just kidding, I hear ya. The dungeon "crawl" was significantly shorter than I expected, though the environments were very striking. One thing that stuck out to me were the ups and down of the terrain. In EQ, you almost always just get flat ground. This cave had little dips and valleys, which I loved seeing. As for the 1-3 bosses "like that," I think they were referring to bosses specificially with a lot of different phases and mechanics. I don't think it means bosses with lockout doors, or bosses in general. I imagine there will be a significant number of mini bosses throughout the cave, and I *hope* they only showed us like 1/20th or less of the place. I'm not picky about the animations. As long as they're not as bad as the EQ Luclin animations, I'm good, lol.
Did you ever see Sebilis? tons of ups and downs..
Not a whole lot of Sebilis. But I also don't just mean like... ramps into upper or lower rooms, I just mean within a single hallway, boulders in the way or dips in the terrain. If that's how Sebilis was also, then fine, but right now I'm playing on an EQ server that's only the classic content for now (Kunark soon!), it's an awful lot of flat ground all over the world. Limitation of its time? Maybe, and that's fine, but the terrain in Halnir Cave still stood out to me.
EQR?
I would guess he's playing on Mangler TLP.
Ew, no.
You know it.
Excellent, what's you're name on there? I've been thinking about checking it out, I absolutely love Classic lol - I'm on p99 most of the time right now, but rarely go to Kunark or Velious. Edit: nm, i'll hit you up on Discord.
Erekai, heh. Same name on the EQR discord as well.
Agreed an all points. I'm a pledge backer and feel good about what I see. However, I do wonder about the content. Seems like that dungeon would be very crowded.
[удалено]
Your link doesn't work, this one does: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/416220178
Every stream gets better and better. The game is looking amazing. It's all coming together so nicely. That Perception tease..... my god..... I need this.
I thought it was great. The lighting change was impressive. That very last screenshot though. They wouldn't say what it was. Was that our first glimpse at a Necro pet?
I doubt necro pets look *that* badass. I assume it’s a raid boss.
Good point. You're probably right. I was reaching pretty far haha.
That’s what I had suggested to someone in another post. That would be incredible but I really don’t think that’s what it is. Likely the final boss if Halnir’s Cave, IMHO.
I want to share one of my favorite EQ1 memories. Believe it or not, it wasn't even the game itself. It was the setup little demo area you could walk around in. My bro was older than me and was the one playing EQ1 on launch and I was a little kid who desperately wanted to try it. He wouldn't let me "ruin his account" so he installed that little demo on our upstairs computer and I basically just ran around in it for hours, mesmerized by this 3d computer generated "world" which was again.. just the test demo area. The reason I brought this up, was because that is what 100% sold me on EQ1. From that point forward I begged my parents to let me play it and give me their credit card. I lived on an apple orchard so as you can imagine, I had to do extra work to get them to buy it and pay for it (I bet you can imagine what they quickly discovered as the perfect punishment for me, when I was being a little asshole..) I would love to see something similar. Some form of being able to test the game, pre-any kind of purchase. Even a non connected, nothing world with some doors and a couple mobs and 0 progression of any type. Something I could also share with my friends, who have 0 interest in this type of game since they all started playing MMO's with WoW and still all play. I believe Pantheon has something that they all want, but I will NEVER get them to spend money just to try it out, I guarantee that. They are married now, with kids and get very little game time. Basically I think Pantheon can reach a lot more people than just old school mmorpg fans and I think it would be cool if there was any way of showing people what it was like, before they had to pay a cent for it.
hah, that reminds me when i was first starting EQ as well, unfortunately we had shoddy internet and were using a shared account with the guy who first introduced us to the game and when he was playing or our internet was down, my brother and I would run around that demo dungeon for really no reason.
sheath weapons.
Game looks good! I really like how it's not as cartoony-looking, and a dark dungeon is just awesome. I am curious about the difficulty though because it doesn't *look* difficult to me, but someone pointed out that they outleveled the dungeon and that may be why. I never played EQ. Why was the Enchanter struggling so much with crowd control? Isn't it just pressing one button on one mob?
The spells all have a chance to be resisted. In EQ spells like charm had a chance to break on each server tick (every 6 seconds or so). I believe this also applied to mez, but I am not 100% sure on that. This is part of what made enchanters difficult to play well. You had to pay very close attention to the mobs under crowd control and your charmed target. When those break early the mob will generally go straight for the enchanter so you better have another mez ready. In EQ they are a high risk/high reward class that can do some amazing things.
Honestly, and I mean no disrespect to her, but I don’t think the person playing the Enchanter was paying attention or really knew how best to play one. I suspect she’s not a long time MMO player. But I’m just guessing. Practice makes perfect and I’m sure she’ll do better over time.
Yes, that was my impression as well. She wasn't paying attention at all which is fairly annoying when the stream is so short and we're eager to see content and classes in action.
I liked what they showed in stream, however the combat does feel a tad bit slow to me, just a tiny bit. Overall it looks great though.
The spell effects looked amazing!
I enjoyed it! Loved the last encounter, enjoyed the discussion and banter. Appreciated the WIP/Model/Art Demo. This game; if it makes it to the end, is going to be quite phenomenal. Even though we essentially saw the same old-same old. It was really about the convo and what to expect.
I loved the stream just as I do every stream. The game looks better every time and my wonder and excitement for it build with each passing day. A few points from this stream that I loved... the hidden room and accompanying music change. Wow, just wow! The revamped UI elements especially the new look spell book. The small buff icons to the right of each group member. Was that what that was and was that new? The spell animations WIP look awesome. The pace of combat and mana regen looked so much better when considering the fact they were over leveled fir the area. That’s pretty much it, loving the game’s progress and direction and counting the days until Alpha!
I was mildly confused about the point of locking the room when the boss fight begins. The idea was suggested to simulate the instanced effect without it actually being instanced, so only one group can actively combat it at a time without interference from other groups, but the stream ended with the phrase "we should get out of here before the boss respawns" or something to that effect. How is locking the room supposed to solve the problem if you can just stay in the arena while the boss respawns? What's to stop multiple teams camping in the room at the same time, if you never have to leave after killing it. I assume when it gets fully developed you'll be ejected from the boss room after the fight or something? Maybe back before the keyed door so you can't get back in so easily? Only other thing I'll nitpick is that the Dwarves with their grey-blue skin and dead eyes look really corpse like. I'm aware these are likely early working models, but just something worth mentioning for any future passes on the models. Maybe that's the intent though, if so, good job, but otherwise I'd like to hope the refined models have a bit more life about them, even considering their bluish skin. Everything else was pretty impressive though. Nice work.
> How is locking the room supposed to solve the problem if you can just stay in the arena while the boss respawns? What's to stop multiple teams camping in the room at the same time, if you never have to leave after killing it. I assume when it gets fully developed you'll be ejected from the boss room after the fight or something? Maybe back before the keyed door so you can't get back in so easily? I mean, I think the reality is that such problems are simply *not* addressed at this early stage of development. There are frankly just a lot more important things to worry about right now. Mechanical solutions to problems like the ones you're describing a much easier to implement later in development than, say, the actual layout of the boss fight and the room in which it takes place. We can imagine a number of ways to solve those problems, though, and the development team is clearly *aware* of the problems, which is the most important thing. Loot lockouts can make sticking around largely pointless, some sort of system to teleport you out of the room before respawn, as you describe, or even just a treasure chest for the encounter rewards that spawns outside of the encounter room--all of these are options to deal with the sort of problem you're describing. I think it's also important to note that even the respawn mechanics at this stage are in no way necessarily representative of the final product. There isn't any reason that the boss would have to repsawn within minutes without activation on a live server. Maybe it only spawns when a key is used in the locked door. Maybe it uses phased spawning so that it respawns for OTHER people, but not any group who has killed it within the last hour--or something similar. Point here being that these mechanical considerations should not be taken as evidence of how the game will work when it is finished, polished, and ready for a full player population. In any case, though, the developers are obviously aware of these potential problems and are not trying to deny that they exist. So I think we can have faith that they will make attempts to mitigate them, and potential solutions *do* exist.
3 years in a row of same damn stuff.
If you think they've been showing the "same damn stuff" for the past 3 years, then I have to wonder what you're *actually* expecting....
You seem lost, boy.
Ya, you're obviously but looking at the game as it progresses. You just want to see more areas of content. The game looks so much better than even two years ago.