Hello Pantheon and VR,
Thank you for the upgraded website. It looks 10x better then the previous version. But I have some professional feedback. I hope no one takes this as me just complaining because if this was my game/business I would praise my workers for the great work they did rolling the new website out but then I would bring the webteam into my office and have a "next steps" talk. This would just be version 2.1 with more to come. Please note that I am basing this off my years of experience playing MMO's, my understanding of where the genre has come from to where it currently is, and my experience of being the owner of a large scale tech company (government type not video games) where my job was to teach old school Hamm radio operators who lived by maps and compasses (still good tools) and show them how gps/websites/chat functions ect could increase their ability to manage their job roles by 400% all while making their job half as difficult. It worked and it was and is still amazing. (where are you going with this..you ask).
Well this is just my opinion but I believe Pantheon can be the hidden little secret that sneaks up on the mmo genre kinda like Tesla has done to the big car companies, space exploration, and solar/battery green energy division. This is why, Pantheon has a core base of OLD school gamers that know what the mmo genre use to be in it's glory days. The feeling you use to have when you zoned into a new area and felt lost, overwhelmed, scared, and more. The new school will never feel that again from a non-Virtual Reality MMO. There are too many twitch streams, youtube walkthroughs and such available that while prepping for the launch people will already know so much about the game before hand that it will forever take away the real shock factor. But that doesn't mean it can't be fun for old and new. New school has amazing games as well like Dark Souls that show that they do not want everything easy mode and handed to them. Pantheon has a REAL chance to break away from this current horrible trend of cookie cutter mmo's that could deliver a game that becomes MORE then just EQ1 with a new combat system and pretty graphics. It can be the game that introduces the younger crowd into real teamwork that doesnt require an addon that yells at you what to do next but also allows old school players to not have to have cat like reflexes and 38 hot keys muscle memorized just to be wanted in a hardcore guild. This can be the EQ1 successor us old school always wanted but also be the community based dark souls style game younger players didn't know they needed in their lives. Hopeful thinking atleast but as someone who can see the openings in the markets, I believe there is room for Pantheon to be that game.
So with that lets talk how the website/forums is a good step in making that happen and some future changes that I believe need to be addressed. I am going to post them in order of importance (my opinion that is). I talked already long enough so will keep these next steps general and allow everyone else to chime in what features they think could be added to draw people into always wanting to know what is going on with pantheon, even if they can't be in game. I will also answer any questions in detail if asked in replies. Just want Pantheon to be successful.
Cellphone support:
I want to say congrats on making the website look amazing on an andriod phone ( I do not own an iphone so can't give an opinion). Clean, good use of highlighted words, ect. This actually works on all of your links as well for the website...but the forums..
Phone forums:
For all the praise I can give you about the website, it is the exact opposite for the forums. One of the worst I've ever seen. This needs to be cleaned up as soon as you guys can. For this game to have longterm support you have to make the game something people want to use their phones to check up on ALL the time. Most of all the modern MMO's have phone support in some type of way that connects them to the game. WoW is the best at it with the ability to check things online. People come back to games after long breaks just because they decide to check in one day via their phone bored waiting for their oil to be changed. Connecting is everything.
Not only are the words not aligned because the forum count for some reason is center stage, but when you go into a post it becomes a word wrap block of spam. It loses all of it's sentence structure and is unreadable. The website version of the forums looks 10x better and while some things I believe could change, they are minor. But old school uses their desktop/laptop and younger crowd use their phones to look at the forums. I watch my son scroll through forum post on his phone while running a raid at FFXIV. It is why Discord is so successful (hint hint..please make an official discord as you would increase your views/player base by 10-20% just by doing that alone. News updates poping up on every phone, twitch streams going live, announcements from the devs. I mean this needs to happen). I can give a masterclass on discord and would do one probono just because I know how amazing it can be and how much it would help the game I wanna play become successful. That is how big it is in the MMO market.
Here is what the phone forums looks like. Ugh
Screenshot of Format issues in a news annoucement that cuts off the promotion flyer due to coding not being universal for all forum platforms. It is also not possible to scroll over to see the rest of the image.
Website:
This is actually simple because its been the current trend for about 2 years now (most MMO's have switched) but websites are no longer the centered block format and now use the entire space of the screen because monitors are so large now that it gives a sense of atmosphere of the game by using the website to pull you in. To make this simple (not going to link here) but everyone go to Star Wars the Old republic website. Their front page (while old) was one of the first to really use this for videos (prior it was a large picture with a small video centered in the middle), because well their whole game is based off that single player story experience. But many other websites like ESO, WoW, heck even EQ2 have used a "widescreen" and "use the available space to tell a story" approach. This is actually a talked about strat in the information technology field (It's called Consumer Realism to Brand Virtualism).
The website while a massive upgrade looks like the top tier subscrition package for Enjin or guildlaunch based community sites. Don't get me wrong it actually took some pro's to make those community sites look that good so that is a praise as well as a negative. In the short I would make the video fit from end to end and put up a stactic design in the background as you scroll (black is fine but not in a block format. Make it like google where it changes every month (people love little changes like that). That is why the background for the Playstation 4 changes colors on the first of every month. To give you that small moment of "that's cool" feeling.
One other small change I would make for the short-term is I would make on the front page a "Podcast" button on the right side of the page to mirror the "Pledge Now" button (just use same color it looks sharp). It currently is the main source of real detail information out there for you guys and you are doing bi-monthly updates. While people will "hopefully" check the media page, having it buried under 2-3 clicks with how important it is in the games development state just does you guys a diservice. I think you will see a view count go up just by a simple button the main page.
I really hope that someone at VR reads this and sees that I don't mean it as a bash. I retired early and apparently bored so this spam above kinda comes out sometimes. Can't wait for Alpha. Nice job and keep up the good work.
Love to hear everyones thoughts and what you would like to see.
Future tank of sometype signing off.
This is all very solid advice. I know the team is well aware the forums are lackluster, and they've commented that new forums are in the works. They also have more "phases" incoming for this website to be updated. The main issue is probably "what is good enough" for the period of development they are in. By that, I mean it's a small team without a fullstack web developer, so time and resources have to be allocated most efficiently. The hype for this game is probably not going to start until the later stages of Alpha testing, that's still likely a year or two away. I imagine they'll want the website and forums to be close to a finalized state by that point, but they still have some time. Hopefully they'll consider the advice you offered.
Some great thoughts. Couldn't agree with your second paragraph more. I have high hopes that Pantheon will make is old-school players happy *and* modern gamers will realise, if we give them a chance, how awesome 'old-school' gameplay is.
I often cite Dark Souls as an indicator that a lot of 'modern' players *do* want a challenge and surely a lot of those people will also enjoy group social interaction and appreciate how group synergy compounds the challenge and fun.
Like you, I admit it might be I'm being optimistic as much as realistic, but I don't think that optimism is too overly relying on hope at all. I can't wait to find out.
This is an excellent post and I agree. The website is one of the best marketing tools that can be utilized, especially with a team that is supported heavily by crowdfunding. The Mobile version of the forums has annoyed me for years. I've had to edit many posts due to the block formatting that occurs. As Mathir said though, there are only so many resources that can go around, and the website refresh/facelift is a good start to put a positive forward face for the hype push that will be needed once Pantheon gets closer to launch. I do hope they'll review your suggestions though for the forums once/if the time comes for their facelift.
Pending said:...I'd just like to see all the information from the previous site style included in the new site style. Lore, Tenets, Features, Differences, FAQ, Class details, Race details, World Map Unless of course the entirety of the game has really changed, and the new site is completely accurate, and all the previously released information should be ignored. In that case, confirmation from a Visionary Realms employee of that new reality would be ideal.Love to hear everyones thoughts and what you would like to see.
Olympeus said:... I thought we were getting new forums? When is that coming?
Likely, soon. ;)
Olympeus said: Nice post, maybe VR needs to hire you. I thought we were getting new forums? When is that coming?
Honestly I would be willing to help, especially on discord pro bono. I know a website overhual is a huge undertaking but I am going to assume it was hired out (though it could be in house/open source as I do not see any business disclaimers for a forum/website host) and there is a contract between both parties with requirements/expectations. I notice things that are just layers of the website that should blend together and don't. For example under notifications it just says "username" replied to a "post" in general "discussion". It does not tell you what post (if you made multiple topics). This is pretty standard on all websites/forums now and should be for a major website as well.
Also things I notice that REALLY kill a game is basic search marketing. Examples. If you put the word "Pantheon" into Bing, Pantheon Rise of the Fallen doesn't appear until the begining of page two (Page 3 on a phone). On google, the most widely used it doesn't appear until halfway down on the second page of searches (page 4 on a phone). On youtube just putting Pantheon in the search bar gets you 12 videos until you find something related to this game. Obviously putting the full title gets you to content right away but the intent ALWAYS is to get your information at the top of the line no matter what. If someone doesnt remember the full name of a game or just heard basic info about it and go searching for it, you want them to see it right away and not feel like the game is so small that they had to do a lot of searching to find it. This is one of the MAIN reasons blizzard and other major gaming companies make "Dev" post multiple times a week, even if they are barely talking about something. It is just new content that forces the search algorithm to throw it into the top spots because "recent" news makes up 70% of a search critera for companies.
P.S. Autospell check is a winner as well for 95% of people. There are studies that show that people do not interact online as much as others as they are worried they will sound dumb and auto grammar/spellcheck has shown to get people who would only read normally get invovled with a conversation.