Surely this will be nothing new, but trying to contribute.
After playing various games over the years, there seems to have been a huge focus on fast reaction and preditable rotation of abilities. Everything i needed to know about a class was documented in a paragraph about optimized gameplay (exagerated) and anyone who didnt know that sucked. Strategy or forethought was significantly less important than just executing on optimal play. Everything becomes somewhat monotonous untill they redesign your class and eliminated the value of all your experience up to that point. Some games were so trasperent, you coud fully simulate and optimize all abilities without playing the game.
I am hoping that this game will accomplish the following for abilitiy / spell usage:
1. Superiority of Strategy - being smart about managing the performance of your character and its resources has significant benefits and can compensate for gear. This may require that there is less button spam and more time to think between actions. .. each action being more significant. Each action has tradeoff decision to make .. . Damage per second, damager per Mana or Resource, damage certainty (resists), Aggro / Threat production, Enemy vulnerabilities / strengths, What classes im playing with, Location and positioning, length of encounter.
2. Class interdependance - my class cant do everything, i need others to succeed at most anything worth doing. The broader the class is in abilities and roles, the more shallow .. and vice versa.
3. Flexibility in Gameplay - Classes should be able to play with difference styles and still be effective, there is not an expected rotation built into the design. This doesnt mean that abilities cant synergize, but it should be more complex and situationally dependant.
4. Conversation - Gameplay should allow for some conversation. Not suggesting that people should be able to have a full conversation while doing the most difficult parts of the game, but at least for conquered content, players shouldnt have to sacrifice being social to be effective.
5. Mystery - not suggesting that the code behind the game should be so convoluted that no one truely understands how the game works, .. but hiding some precise details to encourage discovery. Optional transperency is not what i mean. If optional information is available, then i have to look at it to be compeditive, even if i would prefer to figure it out on my own.
You should really watch some of their streams and interviews. They pretty much mention everything above and how important it is for them to add into the game or focus on.
The whole idea behind Pantheons creation was to bring some nostalgia back from games like EQ, EQ2, and Vanguard. Grouping up, meeting new people, friendly community, chatting and having a good laugh. They don't want it to be fast paced, and they want you to focus on grouping. This game will not be for everyone. And that has been stated. If you don't like grouping, this game may not be for you, but I highly suggest anyone tries it first.
I'm not quite sure what they are doing about our hotbar yet. I've heard as much as them only allowing us to use 8 abilities on our hotbar. But we will have more skills learned than just 8. So you'll have to change abilities ahead of time knowing where you're going, which mobs you'll be fighting, who will be in your party with you, etc...
I don't know how much "Mystery" they intend to add specifically. But, one thing I know for sure, exploration is a huge part of Pantheon. A large world to immerse oneself in, with secrets, and hidden locations or hidden quests with hidden treasures. Hopefully that will be enough mystery for you :)
Hope that answers some of your questions at the very least. I still recommend you watch those streams. Older streams to the newest ones show the amount of progress made on the game (which is a lot and so beautiful to look at). And they team also answers questions from the community. Many of which have the same concerns you do! Brad's AMA on reddit is also big because he's the guy creating the big "grand idea" (as he likes to call it). This is pretty much the game he has in mind and people asked a lot of questions on there as well which he goes in-depth about. Brad's blog posts on this website is huge as well! He goes into great detail about many issues with MMO's today and how Pantheon is going to be different and why. He basically lets us inside his mind to show us how he sees Pantheon being created and why he wants it to be that way. They are probably the most interesting to read because it's coming straight from the guy with the big idea for what this game is suppose to be.
Hope that helps!
It looks like you will mostly get what you hope for...
1. 13.1.1 Does Pantheon use tab-targeting and auto-attack or a more ‘action’ focused combat system?
We realize that some MMOs have used a more ‘action’ oriented combat system, where you click on different buttons to attack, swing your sword, dodge, etc. With Pantheon, combat will still be action-packed and require close attention, using tactics, as well as reacting to what mobs and other players may be doing. In fact, so much will be going on that you will not want to have to worry about whether you are swinging your sword or not -- you will be casting spells, assuming stances, countering or deflecting your opponent’s moves and spells, and more. Additionally, while you can either click directly on a mob or simply use the tab key to change targets, there will also be a subset of spells where you can target the ground (for example, some area-of-effect spells).
Pantheon does indeed use a class based system and those classes do fulfill roles especially in group and raid contexts. There will also be opportunities to focus each class on more specific and specialized roles, especially at higher levels. That said, because we feel it’s important that classes fulfill distinct roles, creating interdependence is vital to a fulfilling social and cooperative experience. If everyone is the same, this simply cannot be achieved. Likewise, if every class is absolutely unique, grouping can become overly complicated and, in some cases, certain classes could be less desirable to have in a group than others. To avoid this, Pantheon will use a quaternity system consisting of tank, healer, DPS, and crowd-control.
Pantheon is a traditional level based system with skills and abilities that are unlocked and practiced as you level up. Some customization and specialization will be present, but never to the point where a warrior ceases to be a warrior.
4. 1.3 Will there be a lot of downtime while playing Pantheon?
This is also a tricky question to answer because ‘too much’ downtime is subjective. We feel our target audience does enjoy some downtime, whether it’s to take a bio break or to do some socializing. But we also feel situations with too much downtime or repetition can be boring, even for our specific audience, and we will endeavor to avoid it.
5. From Aradune: (https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2229/exportable-chat-logs-parsing-etc/view/page/2 )
"My general thoughts:
1. Parsing the information we send to the client is fine -- if you can parse it and data mine the information and it's of use to you, I've no issue with that.
2. On the other hand, I'm not a fan of creating a UI API where third parties can plug UI or parsing or data mining into the game client and either a. get more information than the other player who is not using the plug-in or b. get more information than what we intend the player to have or c. both.
3. I do want a customizable UI to a degree, and to allow players to set things up in a way that works for them personally. But I think this can be acheived without true plug-ins and APIs.
4. We are making an even bigger effort with Pantheon than we did with EQ and VG to keep the client as DUMB as possible, sending as little information over as possible and avoiding absolute positional data (using relative positional data when we can). We don't want it to be easy to data mine where mobs spawn, or what the stats of items that drop in a zone are, or where other players and NPCs are relative to your position. Some of this is unavoidable, but a lot is. Heh, this goes back to ShowEQ -- anyone remember that?"
Welcome Dwendrox, it is nice to see you contributing, unfortunately a lot of this has already been answered or discussed in the official FAQ, by a VR Staff member or on these forums as Baz kindly demonstrated, so I will have to close this thread to help consolidate information, please feel free to use the search function for any of those topics and jump in to discuss them until your heart is content. :)