Some things may be reiterated or I just haven't personally heard them before as I certainly haven't consumed every letter written about the development of the game, but I really am glad to hear him clarifying some aspects of the design philosophy, such as how much time the game should demand of you or how much downtime is too much downtime. It sounds like his vision aligns pretty well with the game I'm looking forward to playing in both of those regards.
There was a lot of great discussions that took place around Pantheon. I was excited to hear that the team understands how important it is to transition from early kickstarter hype to showcasing the game and letting it speak for itself. That's an important mentality shift in development and it appears that it's already taken place within their dev team. Reading in between the lines, that means that Pantheon is eager to get this game in to Alpha as well. I'm speculating by saying PA5 is mainly to test out the Alpha state of the game before the Alpha testers get their hands on it. I'm sure the testing population will spike for Alpha and it's important to roll out a functional game at that point. With that in mind, I don't see a large amount of downtime between PA5 and Alpha.
Brad touched on the concept of overpowered classes slightly. Him and the interviewer joked on Rangers being "OP" but I truley feel that the discussion of "meta's" was true. I appreciate that all classes that are fulfilling a role will be able to execute that role with equal capability but different execution paths. This means that classes should not be overpowered because it would limit the need for that class to be saught after. This is a critical part of a game that showcases the development teams capability of making difficult decisions. The more unbalanced the game is then the less capable the development team's execution is. Execution is the workhorse of a leaders vision.
Excellent interview.
went to the podacters youtube site, its confusing af, nothing is in order, episode labels are off to the side and cannot be read. HAd to find out what episode it was by going toanother side. Difficult to get around
Hopefully therer is a direct link on the pantheon nreddit site,