Raidil said: First thing I noticed which is interesting when they entered the dungeon was at Roenick was damaging Nathan with some poison fumes I don't know if that was supposed to happen or not.
If you mean "Hungry Fumes", it's not a poison a PC used or released, it's the blue crystals. They are poisonous and they belong to the Climate system. Climate makes your environment sometimes hostile (cold, heat, atmospheric pressure, poisonous gas etc.) and you need some form of counter-measures to be able to stand against it (looted 'glyphs' can do the job). Even with a lower tier anti-poison glyph, you take damage when getting too close to the blue crystals if I understood everything correctly.
The Rogue is fine IMO. Apparently, EQ rogues were meant to be a cc class but weren't fleshed out enough at release so they jacked up the DPS. Rogues are currently quite interesting and are more appealing than just a pure DPS class.
The Wizard needs a redesign if possible but only if something better can be done. Atm nuking fire or ice is just so lame. They're all about damage but they're not that great at damage. How do you play a wizard well? How can a wizard be engaging?
I enjoyed the stream. It was fun watching the group take on a few extra mobs and winning, while also wiping to silly mistakes.
I like the way everything is looking so far. The shaman looks fun and interesting to play.
I am not too worried about the class balance at this stage of the development but i feel like it will be one of the most talked about and divisive topics going forward. Should X class have access to Y ability or should the damage or healing output of a certain class be modified etc. It certainly is important to get right but not until later phases of testing.
Great to see the basic systems and gameplay so far. Keep up the great work.
Just to clarify on the wizard Therek has clarified that he was focused on mana management and consistent damage. He stated that he could have been pulling a lot more damage but it would have lead to more downtime and would have most likely slowed down progression since they were limited on time. He also stated that he was trying to show off the spells he had for the community and that frost and arcane spells were less about damage burst and more about their utility implications. The group didn't have an enchanter which would have helped with resource management potentially allowing him to burst more without worrying about conservation issues.
Under the circumstances, his playstyle really highlighted the principles of decision-making, resource management, and understanding the basic principle of tradeoffs. I personally thought all that was abundantly clear and obvious when watching him play.
The only thing that I really noticed that was negative was boss tuning and how easy they looked to take down in comparison to normal mobs. Joppa did state that they were aware of this issue and also agreed that bosses weren't tunned to the level that they would like.
The shaman looked fine for the most part Bazgrim and Roneick did a good job at showing off the different play styles the same class could have when two were in the same group. The only issue I kinda noticed was debuffing and I think Joppa stated that they were aware of how it felt internally and were potentially looking at increasing numbers or looking at the mastery system for those abilities.
The dire lord looked fine to me, but I don't really tank enough to claim I could make a critical judgment based on observation alone.
The rogue I was impressed with. It is nice to see that other classes are able to provide decent CC depending on the person playing. Minus has experience playing rogues in different MMOs and had previous experience playing a rouge in Pantheon. It was nice that he referenced the need for proper positioning and having to be mindful of environmental effects so he could remain in stealth to be able to CC. I think the fact that he remained so mindful and cautious of the environment so he could perform his role as CC really speaks to his skill as a player.
The other thing that I think was nice was communication within the party. I know that some people might find this annoying but when you are in a dangerous environment and you are constantly on the move you have to communicate. Sure they could have found a place to camp and reduced the need for communication but that really wouldn't have made a good stream. I think that Minus did a good job at communicating pulls and keeping people mindful of the potential for respawns.
Overall I thought the stream was good and decently demonstrated the type of game Pantheon is striving to be and the decision making that is involved when playing. I still haven't watched the 3hour videos released by each content creator on youtube, but they are on my list when time permits.
Per the boss fight.
Keep in mind that EVD is more of an advertising tool for non-gamers and not a proper difficulty scale. Basically, you can’t make it too hard or the Publisher noobs would just get rofl-stomped. If those 4 couldn’t handle it pretty easily with likely more than 10,000 hours of MMO game time between them then a true noob would have no chance.
Trasak said:Per the boss fight.
Keep in mind that EVD is more of an advertising tool for non-gamers and not a proper difficulty scale. Basically, you can’t make it too hard or the Publisher noobs would just get rofl-stomped. If those 4 couldn’t handle it pretty easily with likely more than 10,000 hours of MMO game time between them then a true noob would have no chance.
The difficulty was specifically turned up for our session though to be a better representation of how challenging Pantheon can be. They kind of missed the mark on the three bosses there, but after talking to Joppa afterward, Saicred only had a couple hours to spend tuning up the difficulty of the dungeon. So in that respect, it's actually pretty impressive. Because the regular mobs were quite challenging (not perfect, but pretty close) and the difficulty ratio between the different types of bosses (end boss, mini boss, and named) felt about right - they all just needed to be dialed up equally... Joppa and Saicred agreed with this. For more context, we broke this all down in PantheonPlusYou after the stream: https://youtu.be/BcA4bZlBbsY
Doford said:The Rogue is fine IMO. Apparently, EQ rogues were meant to be a cc class but weren't fleshed out enough at release so they jacked up the DPS. Rogues are currently quite interesting and are more appealing than just a pure DPS class.
The Wizard needs a redesign if possible but only if something better can be done. Atm nuking fire or ice is just so lame. They're all about damage but they're not that great at damage. How do you play a wizard well? How can a wizard be engaging?
I enjoyed the stream. It was fun watching the group take on a few extra mobs and winning, while also wiping to silly mistakes.
Correct. Here is the direct link and quote from an old interview with Bill Trost.
https://web.archive.org/web/20000831234926/http://www.everlore.com/news/Interview_BT.asp
Bryan Reynolds: All right. Here is a really good one about rogues that really needs to be answered. Lot of people are upset about it. Why can’t rogues pick the locks in Befallen. This has been a mystery since the first time I went to Befallen.
Bill Trost: That’s a situation where it just wasn’t intended for you to be able to pick those locks. It’s by design. You’re supposed to get the keys in that method. We didn’t want anyone to take another route, we wanted that particular zone to be linear in that way.
Bryan Reynolds: Another question is, how rogues disarm traps. Where are they ?
Bill Trost: That was just a fault in the development originally in Everquest. Traps just weren’t fully realized the way we originally intended them. Ideally we should really relieve those, but because rogues have been enhanced in other ways. We have more concentrated on making rogues a more assassin type class. They are more combat oriented than we originally envisioned them to be.
// {14.56}
Bryan Reynolds: I know I’ve seen a lot of comments about it. When they take out the disarm and arm, don’t think about it as something you should have, it hasn’t really been implemented, but rogues have been buffed up in other ways.
Things I noticed. (Sorry for misspellings, darn autocorrect)
The fort before the dungeon. A nicely done place for investors to peruse. I thought Joppa's armor was great. Something to aspire to. I will always wish Shaman got ring mail. So much cooler looking than heavy leather. (Hint hint)
The dungeon was dark. I watched on my iPad and it was very dark. I think Joppa said the group should have explored more, but they were very mob oriented. I wonder what was hidden. Light sources will be important. Can torches get thrown on the ground to illuminate? A shield with an illumination enchantment is gonna be needed! Is there a race with Infravision?
Experience for level 20 in a dungeon was small. I know this was hastily tuned so no big worries but if at L20 I'm fighting snakes for 9exp. I won't be impressed. Seems to be off. The fights were all pretty short. There's been lots of comments about this before. The adds when fighting boss mobs went down quickly. But the group said they really studied up for the dungeon. I didn't hear Roenec say he was debuffing at all. Shaman buffing/debuffs...will they be useful/necessary? A group of 5- L20 without a lot of armor went through the dungeon pretty easily. Yes there was one bad pull.
Bazgrim was health/low on mana a lot, but battle med was not in game, so that's a thing. Canni was working. Forgot the new name. Healing was a full time job for Baz. I liked Bazgrim's comments a lot. I've watched his video twice. Good stuff. Bazgrim's dwarf was to short to look out the window! Ha, but really that might be too short.
I liked that an imperfect group was able to do the dungeon successfully. I've seldom been in a perfect group in mmos.
The dungeon layout was awesome. Tight and twisty, and places where it opened up. Blue crystals everywhere. Different levels to the dungeon physically. Jumping down all those levels was cool. Looking down from the swingy bridge...Awesome. Places too high for L20. You can go back for more exploring. Yay!
I thought Minus did a great job leading, calling out mobs etc. I really wanted them to explore more. I'd be the guy saying wait what's over here. I've got a torch, look here. The Rogue really did a sweet job on cc and it was impressive. Great job on that VR. Voice chat is gonna be mandatory, I have to learn how to use discord, or hopefull there will be in game chat.
Drops.. Darn there was some great ideas. Bazgrim had two different shields he could have used. He picked the one with wisdom, but I could see having the one with endurance too.
The spells. There are so many great ideas VR. Good job again.
I have not been following updates much in the last year with Pantheon but stopped in after a year away and saw the March stream. Looks promising but I really hope that there is a spell that casters get that they can buff the group with that has a long duration so you are not blind indoors without gimping yourself by needing to carry a torch to see. Its like needing to eat in games, its a throwback to "purist" themes in games along with corpse runs, etc. It always seems like a good idea on paper, until you have to deal with it over and over for a long period of time and then it becomes a pain in the ass and detracts from the game. if you want to make the environment dark to hide objectcs etc. just throw them into the perception pool to be found.
It doesnt make the game a bigger challenge and there is a reason most modern games that are really popular do not include these detractors anymore. There are plenty of ways to keep the game challenging and difficult without overdoing it on pita features.
Also I would imagine a rogue that lives and moves in the shadows, would develop a far better nightsight/darksight and be able to see in the dark and shadows better than other classes, they really should not need to move in the Terminus world carrying a light source or if they do run into near blindness situations, it should be a very rare instince where they are hindered by the dark.
That poisonous aura should also change to a different display so that it doesnt diminish display. It was very annoying to see their screens go so drastically green, maybe make the visual a bit less intrusive and still show a light border around the screen to show the climate impact.
Questaar said:Things I noticed. (Sorry for misspellings, darn autocorrect)
The fort before the dungeon. A nicely done place for investors to peruse. I thought Joppa's armor was great. Something to aspire to. I will always wish Shaman got ring mail. So much cooler looking than heavy leather. (Hint hint)
The dungeon was dark. I watched on my iPad and it was very dark. I think Joppa said the group should have explored more, but they were very mob oriented. I wonder what was hidden. Light sources will be important. Can torches get thrown on the ground to illuminate? A shield with an illumination enchantment is gonna be needed! Is there a race with Infravision?
I was pleased with most everything in the streams (still have 2 to watch), balance I know will come, no concern there, we also have to remember it’s basically these guys first time playing these chars.
I was more interested in the same thing as Questaar here, the lighting and light source’s. This is PVEnviroment, they have emphasized Environment on that many times…. The Darkness it great, and being able to light it is great (looking), but I think they have a lost of missed opportunity’s here to get that as part of the “environment”.
The player loosing his light into his bag while mining. That’s was just wrong… the burning torch shouldn’t have gone back into the bag, that needs to drop on the ground (and he need to remember to pick it back up when he leaves,… he would as he wouldn’t have any light ) Climbing needs a light solution. Darkness is part of the environment just as much as the poision crystals, seemed to be neglected.
Another thing with the darkness… Those Glowing name tags over the mobs floating around in the darkness, seemed no difference to me than a glowing “!” over an NPC. What’s the since in being dark if the Mob has a neon sign over it’s head? You look down that dark passage and even though the mob was back hiding in the dark you see his name floating around. I don’t think that should be THAT easy… Maybe no name until one of the party members has seen(targeted) it, Maybe the need to throw a light source down the passage (then the names would show)
Seemed to be just token darkness and not really taken seriously.
Zorkon said:I was pleased with most everything in the streams (still have 2 to watch), balance I know will come, no concern there, we also have to remember it’s basically these guys first time playing these chars.
I was more interested in the same thing as Questaar here, the lighting and light source’s. This is PVEnviroment, they have emphasized Environment on that many times…. The Darkness it great, and being able to light it is great (looking), but I think they have a lost of missed opportunity’s here to get that as part of the “environment”.
The player loosing his light into his bag while mining. That’s was just wrong… the burning torch shouldn’t have gone back into the bag, that needs to drop on the ground (and he need to remember to pick it back up when he leaves,… he would as he wouldn’t have any light ) Climbing needs a light solution. Darkness is part of the environment just as much as the poision crystals, seemed to be neglected.
...
About the difficulty: From what I saw, the group was mostly fighting lvl 17-19ish mobs, while they were lvl 20. While it took some time to kill those mobs, that was often because only one DPS was actively fighting (Therek), since Minus was keeping mobs stunned/mezed. When he could actually join into a fight, the mobs melted very quickly. IMO, these mobs still seemed too easy - but of course I do not know how things are supposed to scale in Pantheon with player level vs. mob levels.
And we have to consider the other factors (evaluation build, people who never played Pantheon (or a MMO) before, incomplete skill sets and missing gear for a lot of slots). With these, the difficulty probably was set correctly in the end. Except for the bosses, as was mentioned already.
About the light sources: I also felt that the torch going off during mining or climbing felt off. This will hopefully be corrected somehow. I also wondered if damage will cancel climbing...was that the reason why they couldn't climb past crystals? It seemed like they had enough endurance left.
I like the way the darkness works in the stream. It seems right that an environment like that would be dark and gloomy like it was here. And there are plenty of ways to work around that through game mechanics, without breaking immersion and maintaining that high fantasy setting.
Just spitballing here...
Having wizards being able to cast some sort of magelight spell.
Rogues being able to coat their weapons with luminescent homemade goo.
Druids being able to channel the moonspirits, so that they themselves would become slighty luminous.
Summoner having a spell that conjures forth lightstones that can be equipped.
Talisman of the Raccoon from a shaman as group or single buff, for improved nightvision. (Owl might sound cooler :-))
And so forth an so on... Imagination sets the limits.
Oh, I also had a problem with the nameplates over the mobs as others here have mentioned. Couldn't tell you exactly what it was, but it just didn't sit right with me. Edit: Think it has to do with the health bar and the show of lvl. Personally do not need that.
Raidil said: It said Roenick damage nathen in red which was different from the crystals damaging and it only happen at the start ish of them in the dungeon
Mystery solved. I watched the stream again, it is definitely Hungry Fumes. Therefore it is crystal damage. Why a player name appaears as origin of the damage is unclear to me, perhaps the one who came first close to the crystal, not sure.
I didnt see the whole thing yet. Nice to see nathan napalm ! and baz of course. what I liked was...
what I liked was....
I didnt get through the whole thing, but nathan refering to the corpses "there's some cloth armor over here" - repeatedly. and hearing " some nice pally stuff, if we had a pally" *snicker* and the body laid there, and the pause: "I could get the spell upgrade or the armor-" and the discussion," the spell upgrade would be better for the other person- oh yeah, sounds good".
Such a natural and effortless example of NBG in live action, it was downright wholesome.
Raidil said: And from what I can tell the wizards need a nice little boost and power.