Starting to get concerned that my 300 dollars was wasted. That the money is being mismanaged and the leadership at VR may be the problem.
The delays, lack of information, and really poor quality of released content I've seen so far have me a bit concerned.
Reading more into the history of some of the people affiliated with VR has not helped my mood either.
Can we just relax please?
If everybody gets up in arms Everytime VR post anything other than an Alpha release date, then they are just going to stop telling us anything.
This is the first time VR has even mentioned a timeline for PA5 (which we already knew of a PA5). So really, this is more insightful than any other letter so far as far as when PA5 is and then Alpha.
Your money was a gamble. VR owes you nothing. You knew the risk when you bought your pledge. And if you've done you're homework, then you already know the people you put your faith and money into. And you still did it.
Now, if you will CALM down and stop the knee jerk reactions to not being told alpha is next month, you'd realize you were right to trust in pantheon. Stop riding the emotional rollercoaster and go play classic while you wait.
I know your feeling, I went through the whole EQN drama and it left a bad taste in my mouth with regards to early access of games.
While it may seem like it is taking forever, it is important to remember, MMO's do not normally even get announced as early as Pantheon did in its development lifecycle. Let alone, let you see the inner workings of it and have a chance at playing in pre-alpha or alpha stages or early access. Sure it is becoming a more common practice these days, but it is still fairly early on in terms of a "MMO" game in development.
So, sit tight and be patient and play something else to fill your time, while they finish putting this game together for us. If we rush them it can lead to flopped releases like VG.
Caine said:Concidering Brad has been delivering MMOs for 20 years, I think you are jumping the gun here. This isn't Star Citizen.
it's not if, but when and how special is it?
That reminds me... I've got a real funny meme about Chris and SC. Its too raunchy to share here though.
philo said:People should be able to voice their opinion without others telling them to calm down or to go play something else.
Saying you have faith in VR is good but don't dismiss others concerns so quickly. They may be more valid than you realize.
He voiced his opinion, we voiced ours. Goes both ways.
He didn't give any substinance to his post other than knee jerk emotional response.
We gave good advice to calm down. And going to play another game is also, solid advice as it helps ease the time.
philo said:People should be able to voice their opinion without others telling them to calm down or to go play something else.
Saying you have faith in VR is good but don't dismiss others concerns so quickly. They may be more valid than you realize.
Since when did advising someone to calm down become a bad thing? I didnt say they couldnt voice their opinion. Just gave them some advice on how to handle this period of the games development.
Caine said:Concidering Brad has been delivering MMOs for 20 years, I think you are jumping the gun here. This isn't Star Citizen.
I don't mean to split hairs here, but saying 'Brad has been delivering MMOs for 20 years' is quite a stretch of the truth. The fact is he delivered 1 successful MMO. ONE. In 1999.
Vandraad said:Caine said:Concidering Brad has been delivering MMOs for 20 years, I think you are jumping the gun here. This isn't Star Citizen.
I don't mean to split hairs here, but saying 'Brad has been delivering MMOs for 20 years' is quite a stretch of the truth. The fact is he delivered 1 successful MMO. ONE. In 1999.
Personally, I put VG's demise squarly on SOE and their rush to release to start milking it.
I do sympathize. Almost all of us would have preferred faster progress. Almost all of us would have preferred a more detailed roadmap.
Having alpha start this year would have been nice.
Having a definitive roadmap of when alpha will will start and how long it will take and how long between alpha and beta and ...would have been nice.
But that isn't going to happen and we have the choice of staying and hoping and meanwhile getting our entertainment from the forums - or leaving or taking a break for 6 months so we don't go crazy fixating on the timing week by week and month by month.
VR faces three manifest dangers in this regard.
1. Things take too long and progress becomes too murky and obscure. Most of the core supporters give up and leave. New investors walk away and old investors write it off as a loss. Game is never released.
2. Game is pushed to alpha or beta or full release too soon. Word spreads that it is a buggy, poorly implemented, piece of crap. Yes that can happen as early as alpha - far more than five or 10 years ago word gets out despite any NDAs about how the game looks and potential investors and pledgers and those of us already here react poorly. Game dies. Back in the day that was most likely to happen after a rushed and premature release as with Vanguard but today the concern VR has about premature alpha is not irrational.
3. VR caves in to pressure and releases more detailed timelines. Timelines are not met. Which can indicate failure on their part but. less obviously, can be a sign of things going well. Gain some nice new funding and hire 10 people and the long-term outlook is rosier. Short term things go more slowly as you bring new people up to speed and allocate the new resources. People react very badly to missed deadlines and the dreaded word "vaporware" gains traction. Supporters bail out and game is never released.
The OP is focused on point 1. VR does not discount it but sees points 2 and 3 as very troubling dangers that must be averted at almost any cost.
philo said:People should be able to voice their opinion without others telling them to calm down or to go play something else.
Saying you have faith in VR is good but don't dismiss others concerns so quickly. They may be more valid than you realize.
He brought it here so people can see his opinion and give their own. At least that's why I would post here. Just because there are differing opinions doesn't mean it's wrong or right. Some people are telling him to relax and some are saying go play something else. While it isn't much different than being funded by a big company the people who have invested in the game would like to see their return eventually. Even though we aren't guaranteed to ever see it, that's not the point.
Me I'm fine with it taking awhile as I know patience and taking their time will make the game better. I can't blame someone for being upset at this point either. I'm on the positive side of the fence though and try to stay there. After Vanguard I learned my lesson. But I can't argue that the OP has a legitimate gripe because there hasn't been much released in quite some time.
I think the people saying go play something else are just giving him options instead of worrying about how the game is progressing to just play something that passes the time that's all.
arazons said:Personally, I put VG's demise squarly on SOE and their rush to release to start milking it.
Not entirely how it went. Microsoft gutted and restaffed their Online division so they could focus on their Vbox 360 titles with the new console that was just released. That meant pushing out or rushing their current PC titles to term. Sigil Games with Pantheon now in late Pre-Alpha to early Alpha decided to break affiliation at a loss and SoE later picked them up but only with a 6 month extention. The game was too grandiose for such a schedule and was released with missing content and an unoptimized Unreal 2 Engine which was bad enough as is for the time period.
I blamed Brad for a long time over the game but as I looked more into it, I discovered my blame was not based on knowing the full scope of what had happened and instead joining the mob criticism as it were.
If I was just a gamer, and had no frame of reference other than watching games get developed and then released from the outside, I wouldn't be very confident about Pantheon right now either. There's been just a trickle of information, here and there, and while progress is being shown in that communication, I don't think it's really being seen that way if that makes any sense whatsoever. So, I can totally empathize with how Caffieneinjected and others feel right now.
But, I'm not just a gamer. In my lifetime, I've worked for a massive software company, that makes all sorts of products - including some games. I've been a writer, albeit on a small scale, creating original stories and essays. If I go back far enough, I've been a builder, participating in the creation of content for a game world shared by many players. And of course, I have played and watched the development of many, many MMORPGs - and even been lucky enough to talk to some of their creators face to face. Through the sum of that experience, I've learned that developing and launching a product as large and complicated as an MMORPG is not a smooth and easy path, at all. The team can't simply follow a plan from start to finish and check off a few boxes and have anything that's worthy of being launched. In terms of design, ideas have to be tried, tested, reworked, tested again, scrapped, started over, and mutated until they actually achieve the results that were hoped for in the first place. In terms of art, artists have to spend countless hours envisioning, sculpting, coloring, and animating all of the objects that go into the game world - and *then* they have to make sure all of those things actually fit and look right when they're placed in the world together. Content creators don't simply slap together zones and pound out compelling and interesting narratives in a matter of days. A single encounter in a dungeon might take hours of thought and planning, days of scripting, and then weeks of tweaking in response to test feedback.
And honestly? When I think about it that way, VR is doing a really good job with what they have to work with - as good as, or better than many of the development teams I've worked with in the past.
I absolutely respect and empathize with the people that are worried. I don't think you're wrong for voicing those fears. I know that the people at VR would love to show more, to finish faster, because they want to see this world created just as much as we do. But they also want it to really be something good, and polished, and worthy of both us and them. And I have to respect that too.
I think Pantheon will launch, and give many of us what we've been looking for in an MMORPG. I don't think our money has been wasted. To be honest, I feel a lot more confident about it than I do about many other crowdfunded games. It won't be perfect, and it won't ever happen as fast as anyone really wants it to, but it will happen - at least, that's what I believe.
Janus said:arazons said:Personally, I put VG's demise squarly on SOE and their rush to release to start milking it.
Not entirely how it went. Microsoft gutted and restaffed their Online division so they could focus on their Vbox 360 titles with the new console that was just released. That meant pushing out or rushing their current PC titles to term. Sigil Games with Pantheon now in late Pre-Alpha to early Alpha decided to break affiliation at a loss and SoE later picked them up but only with a 6 month extention. The game was too grandiose for such a schedule and was released with missing content and an unoptimized Unreal 2 Engine which was bad enough as is for the time period.
I blamed Brad for a long time over the game but as I looked more into it, I discovered my blame was not based on knowing the full scope of what had happened and instead joining the mob criticism as it were.
Oh I know MSFT borked them, but it was ultimately SOE who pushed it out too soon. SOE having been a major player in the space, since the mmo-space was defined, should have known better. But who am I kidding, I cant remember an EQ1 expansion launch that didnt ever involve problems and days of down time. Maybe SOE is too broad of a target, maybe I should have said Smed.
Yeah I remember Microsoft being a big part of the problem not SoE. Vanguard was full of problems. But the world, the content that was there was great. The realism, and the vision Brad had were all there. It just wasn't finished. Because they were rushed. I'm not rushing them. If it takes 2-3 more years to see Pantheon release I'm okay with that. My contribution pledge was made knowing it might be a few years.
Just have to have faith in Brad. Despite VG being buggy and rushed the landscape, and the vision was there and it was amazing. The Pantheon area in VG was so detailed and incredible. I even went through the Stiirhad castle they had developed and hadn't put mobs in yet and it was unbelievable. Lot of nice things about VG that if you take into consideration they were rushed, it's easy to tell that the developing team did an amazing job. And had they had the time to make it how they wanted it then we would probably still be playing it.
Caffeineinjected said: To clarify my post has very little to do with speed of development.
It was stated a few times that the game would release regardless. They said it has enough funding to release but may release like EQ1 did where they failed to release Kunark and Velious and instead made them expansions. What I realistically see is all game mechanics, classes, abililities etc., all in but without the 3rd continent. I could be wrong though and depends on how quickly they can push out zones after they get the creation templates and toolkits finished from PF.
So those who are aware of the process aren't worried about whether it releases or not, just about how complete it will be on release.
Caffeineinjected said: To clarify my post has very little to do with speed of development.
So then what does it have to do with? You seem to have gutted your own argument.
Car guys have a saying. Speed is a matter of money. How fast do you want to go? Software development is the same. The more money you have, the more people you can hire. The more people you can hire, the faster the code gets developed (typically). Vidionary Realms is *VERY* small in terms of size for an AAA style MMO. They, literally, have less than 50 developers, even with recent hires. World of Warcraft, for example, had HUNDREDS, and it still took around five years to develop. Given that Pantheon development essentially started over in 2016, I would say that they are about the place that you would expect them to be in their development cycle.
That said, something that needs to be re-iterated, both alpha and beta, in addition to the pre-alpha phases, are scripted testing phases, *NOT* early access. While there may be a short "public beta" towards the end of the beta cycle, the rest will all be testing specific things at specific times, not a "hop on and do anything that you want" free-for-all. In addition, when "go-live" happens, the characters created and levelled up throughout alpha and beta will be wiped.
I pledged more than you. I say this not to make myself sound superior to you in some way, but to point that out when I say that I am not worried about how long it is taking to develop the game or in fear of them closing shop before it gets released. I'm not sure what unsubstantiated rumors are being bandied about claiming Brad is doing something nefarious with the cash or what hobbies he has that you mentioned, but if you have proof of some sort of malfeasance, let's get it out in the open. Not some half-baked rumor that you pulled out of thin air. Let's hear what he supposedly did and what his supposed "recreational activities" are that give you concern. If you don't have proof of your accusations, they are just a fart in the wind, and worth about as much. Based on the unfounded rumors that you're trying to spread, it sounds to me like you are doing nothing more than trying to stir the pot in an effort to drive people away with unfounded accusations and false information.
Just go with considering your donation wasted. Expect nothing to come of it and you can only be plesantly surprised.
Stirring the pot/publicly stirring up negativity via fear mongering can only harm, nothing good comes from posts like these. There is no recourse even if they did just stop development today and declare bankruptcy or failure, your money is gone and you'd only really have yourself to blame. No point in wasting energy on negative emotion over this.
arazons said:Vandraad said:Caine said:Concidering Brad has been delivering MMOs for 20 years, I think you are jumping the gun here. This isn't Star Citizen.
I don't mean to split hairs here, but saying 'Brad has been delivering MMOs for 20 years' is quite a stretch of the truth. The fact is he delivered 1 successful MMO. ONE. In 1999.
Personally, I put VG's demise squarly on SOE and their rush to release to start milking it.
You can put it SOE and MS
The point is this isn't Brad's (B-Rad...lol) first rodeo. There was a series of pitfals in the past. There are pitfals in the furture as well. But I not betting against VR. There is too much inhouse talent. You can argue that developement is taking longer in an effort to avoid the pitfalls of the past.
Correction: Brad made the best mmorpg of all time with easily the best gaming community of all time (the vast majority of whom do not use forums). No question. Anything else is pure nonsense as far as I’m concerned. Pantheon; it’s happening - just takes time. There is Classic WoW in the meantime (yes I know it’s very boring in comparison to what those of us are used to, but it’ll do (for now)).
PF is basically going to be the finished game for that major zone. And it's coming very soon. It's taking so long becuase they are finalizing underlying systems that only need to be designed once. At that point they just start to replicate that out among the rest of the game and that part will come much faster per zone since the tech is already in place.
This game is going to come together very quickly towards the end of Alpha.