Ruinar said:This new art update really brought the community out of the wood work
Sweety said:Crazzie said:Is this project still a thing? 2012 here lads and still waiting for some alpha announcement.
Just curious, how did you follow this since 2012? The earliest most of us knew about it was in 2014 when the Kickstarter launched.
The very exact day Brad announced it privately. Yeah been around that long.
lotuss79 - for the reasons you say - alpha in the near future is not possible. Or desirable.
On the other hand a timeline, while risky, is possible and may be desirable.
They could, if they wished, say at any time that they hope but do not promise that pre-alpha will end by X and that they hope but do not promse that it will then take Y months to get to alpha.
They will not do so unless the recent firestorm is worse than I guess and they need to take this risk to stop a significant sag in pledge revenue.
dorotea said:lotuss79 - for the reasons you say - alpha in the near future is not possible. Or desirable.
On the other hand a timeline, while risky, is possible and may be desirable.
They could, if they wished, say at any time that they hope but do not promise that pre-alpha will end by X and that they hope but do not promse that it will then take Y months to get to alpha.
They will not do so unless the recent firestorm is worse than I guess and they need to take this risk to stop a significant sag in pledge revenue.
This is it exactly. The fact there is no news is what concerns me the most. Look at any of the other failed kickstarter MMO's and Pantheon now seems to be following a similar pattern in many ways with radio silence on development goals. The opposite of this for so many years was what made me so confident in the project but a MMO with a limited budget can only go back to the drawing board so many times...
“They can’t possibly show the game in its current state to the large number of alpha pledgers anytime soon. Probably ever.”
It is that last line that makes me think that alpha may be desirable much sooner rather than later.
Does anyone think many new pledges are still coming in? Last year they announced that 2.5 mil. or so came in from investors. How long will that last? To wait for “almost finished” before alpha may well deny some 10,000 pledgers from ever even seeing the game.
There are; three classes missing, mounts that may or may not last, environment conditions, whole land areas and dungeons still waiting, perception, and an entire ‘water world’ to be developed.
Personally, I would rather see some of what has been done than not seeing anything at all. Bumping up to pre-alpha doesn’t seem to be worth the risk/reward at the moment.
Pantheon may remain just a vision, it would be nice to allow thousands of pledges to see something before the last server is turned off.
Who knows, if it has the flavor and feel we have been waiting/hoping for, a pre-mature alpha may generate more interest. It seems to be getting to the point that there is little to lose.
Final note: I appreciate the generally reasoned debate in the forums. Disagreement is fine, I’m not into ‘discord’. Thanks.
They have officially pivoted from their original audience. What they are working on now bares no resemblance to Pantheon anymore.
Im afraid to say that with almost 100% certainty they have no intention of getting the thousands of Alpha and Beta pledgers into the game that they pledged for.
All the people who have no clue what they're talking about and continue to congratulate VR will find out soon enough.
I think im in agreement with you Inselberg, the climbing system, acclimation system, perception system etc, it was all a just distraction from actually building out this game.
They have squandered a decade of time and millions of dollars and now they've decided to turn it into a quick cash grab.
lotuss79 said:They have officially pivoted from their original audience. What they are working on now bares no resemblance to Pantheon anymore.
Im afraid to say that with almost 100% certainty they have no intention of getting the thousands of Alpha and Beta pledgers into the game that they pledged for.
All the people who have no clue what they're talking about and continue to congratulate VR will find out soon enough.
I think im in agreement with you Inselberg, the climbing system, acclimation system, perception system etc, it was all a just distraction from actually building out this game.
They have squandered a decade of time and millions of dollars and now they've decided to turn it into a quick cash grab.
How hard is it to understand that there were serious performance problems and a desire to change the art style?
If you don't think the old art style was already outdated and looked bad, go watch the "Shaman refresh video" it's in a close up view and you'll quickly realize that no one would have written home about it. AAA graphics would be amazing, of course. I'd love it, you'd love it, VR would love it. They simply don't have the resources.
If you haven't looked at the new screenshots, I suggest you do. They are significantly better looking than the reveal video, showing that VR is hearing all this feedback and working on developing something that everyone will still love.
But seriously man, every post you make is nonsense, you have absolutely no proof to back up any of your doom and gloom, so just relax and wait to see if the game is something you want to play or not as more is revealed. A graphics change doesn't signal the end of the mfing world.
Not to worry, you'll get your proof soon enough.
I have seen the new screenshots. And just like the old screen shots, the actual gameplay does not look anywhere near as good as the screenshots do.
"Serious performance problems" and a "desire to change art style" are two very different things.
I completely agree there was a desire to change art style, and along with it gameplay, and customer base.
It was absolutely not a performance problem with the old graphics. I have experienced this myself. And when you look at pre-alpha session streams over the past year with hundreds of players in the zone did you ever once see any of those streamers have a single "performance issue" of any kind?
Thats just a pretext for the actual reason for this change.
lotuss79 said:Not to worry, you'll get your proof soon enough.
I have seen the new screenshots. And just like the old screen shots, the actual gameplay does not look anywhere near as good as the screenshots do.
"Serious performance problems" and a "desire to change art style" are two very different things.
I completely agree there was a desire to change art style, and along with it gameplay, and customer base.
It was absolutely not a performance problem with the old graphics. I have experienced this myself. And when you look at pre-alpha session streams over the past year with hundreds of players in the zone did you ever once see any of those streamers have a single "performance issue" of any kind?
Thats just a pretext for the actual reason for this change.
I don't know what to tell you. I like the new art style, I'm excited to see more. Lots of people are. The new screenshots on reddit have been very well received. Hopefully they put out some gameplay video this week so that people can get a better taste for it. Hopefully you and the other 2 guys that keep making hundreds of negative posts like it too. Or at least 1 or 2 of you, so there's a lot less negativity to read through every time I log in.
"Thats just a pretext for the actual reason for this change."
Harsh.
Disliking the change is fair - I certainly dislike it myself. Saying that there is no need for the change in terms of enabling better performance is fair. Possibly wrong given that the goal is not to have a small pre-alpha perform well but is to develop to where a large alpha will perform well, but possibly not wrong.
But it is harsh to accuse them of outright lying as to the reason for a change unless there is some basis for the claim. I see no reason at this point not to assume that they did it for the reasons stated - to save money and to speed development, and all Gods know we NEED much faster development. I see no reason at this point not to assume that the new approach helps performance compared to the old approach if they say it does.
Never attribute to malice what can adaquately be explained by incompetence is an old and very valid truism. I do not call them incompetent but I certainly assume that they can be wrong and often *will* be wrong. The past history of development proves that beyond any possible doubt. But I would not go so far as to call their started reasons a pretext. In fact my primary concern at this point is that they were telling the truth in the part of their explanation that referred to appealing to a more contemporary audience. That scares me a whole lot more than the thought that the looks will not be as realistic as I want.
Prevenge said: ... The new screenshots on reddit have been very well received. ...
Well, maybe not so much.
(these 8+ year old forums would blow up if I tried to post that here)
I have no interest in the visuals of the game. I played Everquest 1, and have my own private custom eqemu server now. It's very easy to host your own, if anyone is interested, now that eqemu is open source.
I don't care about graphics, never have. Hell, I played Dwarf Fortress for over 10 years in ASCII mode, because the gameplay was without peer.
I would play a low latency grouping-required MMO with primitives (cylinder, cone, donut, pyramid, sphere, cube, hell, even TTFs) as actors.
The response from reddit has not been overwhelmingly positive, from what I've read over the past 3 weeks since the new art style was revealed.
Prevenge: Hopefully you and the other 2 guys that keep making hundreds of negative posts like it too. Or at least 1 or 2 of you, so there's a lot less negativity to read through every time I log in.
Wow, I mean! Really? Talk about fake news. You know there are just as many negative views as positive. Man, this isnt worth a rebuttal.
Reddit and these forums aren't the biggest indicator to me. It is the lukewarm (or absent) reception from content creators who have been the biggest champions of Pantheon. It is the lack of excitement for 24/7 testing in the content creator sphere. Not that the VIPs are allowed to talk about it, but I mean I hear no excitement at all. I don't know what is going on right now but the feeling is discouragement and oppressive silence. Brushing it off as a few negative nancys on Reddit and the Forums doesn't feel right to me. But maybe that is a little too existential or melodramatic. In the end; it is just a game and money is just money (at least when you spent it so long ago). But if I take my feelings in the narrow context of the Pantheon community things feel grim.
Also, the new screenshots didn't make me feel any better about the cartoony models. Sure the environments look alright but that wolf looks like Saturday morning cartoons; even the snarling one.
Hey Dorotea, i would say that removing most of the texture and lowering the resolution couldn't help But improve performance, but there was really no performance issue that needed improving in the first place.
Its almost like a byproduct.
What there numerous reasons sound like to me is someone who needs to make multiple excuses for why they are doing what they are doing. For example, 'i can't go because im sick, And my aunt is visiting from out of town, And my dog is sick too, And my car is in the shop, etc.'
There is really one overarching reason why this change is being made imo.
As for the other reasons, saving money and speeding up development, man i wish they weren't 10 years into the development cycle and facing money issues and now needing to hit this panic button.
I would just add, yes, we need to wait till more official info comes from VR about the new direction of the game, beyond just the graphics. It will be eye opening.
lotuss79 said:
I would just add, yes, we need to wait till more official info comes from VR about the new direction of the game, beyond just the graphics. It will be eye opening.
@lotuss79
I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time you have said things are going to be shaken up soon. I guess the post on massivelyop.com/reddit/mmorpg explains where you were coming from.
Not sure how I feel about it, but it sounds like they aren't niixxing the mmo part, just adding a different mode. So not a complete direction change...just a tangent.
Oh well, I guess we are indeed about to have our eyes opened, at least your absolute conviction about a direction change makes sense now. Cheers