Doford said:As far as I know (or heard), they received a 7 figure investment to bring alpha by the end of the year.
It's true that they received a 7 figure investment, and true that VR - particularly Chris Rowan in the Dev's Roundtable - is hoping for Alpha this year.
I have no memory of VR saying the investment was FOR getting Alpha out this year.
But we CAN hope!
Jothany said:Doford said:As far as I know (or heard), they received a 7 figure investment to bring alpha by the end of the year.
It's true that they received a 7 figure investment, and true that VR - particularly Chris Rowan in the Dev's Roundtable - is hoping for Alpha this year.
I have no memory of VR saying the investment was FOR getting Alpha out this year.
But we CAN hope!
While it's not a guarantee that Alpha will come in 2021, the investment is intended to expedite the process: "The investment provides a runway for Visionary Realms to bring the hotly-anticipated Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen to its goals in 2021 and beyond. The studio plans to use the funds to continue the game’s development; begin preparations to support over 8,000 players already signed up for an alpha release of the game."
https://visionaryrealms.com/further-funding-acquired-for-pantheon-rise-of-the-fallen/
Bazgrim said:While it's not a guarantee that Alpha will come in 2021, the investment is intended to expedite the process: "The investment provides a runway for Visionary Realms to bring the hotly-anticipated Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen to its goals in 2021 and beyond. The studio plans to use the funds to continue the game’s development; begin preparations to support over 8,000 players already signed up for an alpha release of the game."
Well I certainly see how it could read that way. And with the Chris Rowan interview, I suppose that's as much of a 'forward looking statement' as we're likely to get from VR that they hope to get to Alpha this year.
It looks like you're correct, Doford :)
Thanks Baz
Chris Rowan said that they are using a traditional software release cycle, which means Alpha means Alpha. Alpha testing can said to be over when a game is feature complete. That doesn't mean content complete, or bug free. Therefore, the game will likely enter Alpha prior to being feature complete. From there you can work backwards. While we don't see everything they are working on, I feel like we do see the major systems within 6 months of being implimented, so we're not that far behind from what they are working on 'today'. And what we see today contains many features of the game.
That said, I think that it's likely we will in fact see Alpha this year. They did essentially start over for a second time in early/mid 2018 when they started un-hardcoding the game. By this fall, we're talking 3 years of this new development process and as of now almost all major systems they advertise are in, at least at a super basic level.
Can anyone think of major/advertised features that are not in the current game at all? And I don't mean systems that are not fleshed out (like crafting) - that is, advertised features that are totally absent. There are likely many behind the scenes (server/coding/workflow/etc) features that are still being worked on, but they don't really ever talk about that stuff so we can only speculate based on gameplay features.
Just my 2 copper..
I feel if we can infer from the streams of late, there are many of the systems in place and it is meant to be that way with wanting to influence investors to lay down the cashflow. I feel they can get one area well fleshed out and then cut and paste alot of info into other areas, then just do adjustments. They have spent alot of time making tools to make this kind of thing possible. I believe that Alpha WILL happen this year (maybe late summer) and possibly even beta at years end.
Maybe Im over estimating things or hopeful for more progression, but this is how I see things.
Vigi
bryanleo9 said: The fans have been asking for a roadmap showing progress, goals and what is being developed. We are still waiting for this. This request came about long ago but was more intense after the hard coding mistake was brought to light and much time lost.
Thanks for the shoutout. Hard to remember those things since all my posts get deleted quickly. And it wasn't a mistake.
Brad mentioned part of the success to EQ was the very long Beta. However, with the work being done so far I think Pantheon's Beta will be much different. Out of respect I do want to see a "long beta" but I realize that could be wishful thinking considering the groundwork already being done in the un-heard of and industry ground-breaking "Pre-Alpha" phases.
So I predict Alpha may actually fall within industry timelines, and Beta- I want to say 6 months but may only be 3 and...will be an almost seamless transition into live. If so, I would ask that the devs allow the beta's a day or two in live, as old characters to impress the newbies before their promised wipe. Or make it a GM event that newbies signing up on day 1 only get to see :) some creature killing all these higher level beta characters....hunting them down in newbie cities- heh.
Hmm, personally I think Alpha may well start this year. I think the only real barrier to it is whether VR can cope with 1000+ players and keeping the servers running, which is far from trivial, but also must be doable without the gargantuan effort of 'the old days' of server farms.
Beta I think may be quite a long one - though I guess it depends how much of the balancing is folded into Alpha.
Alpha should be for developing systems.
Beta should be for balancing, but balancing is a very big deal in an MMORPG, so might need to go on for some time.
If I were to stick my finger in the air, I would say, Alpha this year, Beta next year, release Holidays 2022 or early 2023. Things are moving on.
Kalok said:HemlockReaper said:Late 2022 would be a more realistic expectation for alpha, not that it couldn't be done sooner, but this is a small team, and 80-100 hour work weeks are not healthy.
They stated in one of the developer streams that alpha would be happening in 2021.
That's a pretty definitive statement, are you sure you didn't hear them say they would like to be in alpha in 2021? Do you have a link to the developer stream to which your referring?
HemlockReaper said:Kalok said:HemlockReaper said:Late 2022 would be a more realistic expectation for alpha, not that it couldn't be done sooner, but this is a small team, and 80-100 hour work weeks are not healthy.
They stated in one of the developer streams that alpha would be happening in 2021.
That's a pretty definitive statement, are you sure you didn't hear them say they would like to be in alpha in 2021? Do you have a link to the developer stream to which your referring?
Is this it? In the January roundtable, CEO Chris Rowen said: -
"It's no secret we're driving hard toward alpha in 2021... the company is throttled by available resources and with the right resources it's something that can definitely be accomplished.
There's really not that much more to do on the programming side. The code base is really, really solid. We need to get a few major systems in and then we need to switch out the network stack for scalability.
We do have quite a bit of world building to do still ... Jimmy Lane's pioneered this process using Houdini to semi-automate, or make more efficient, a lot of the world building. That's something that little companies like Visionary Realms don't typically do - that's big company stuff - and that's a big deal for us. It'll allow us to make more content or the target content faster or more cheaply or however you want to slice and dice it's a big win for us that's a real enabler.
But then another thing that we really have to consider is if we pull in ... 8000 people wanting to play this game and say 20 percent of them want to play at any one time, that's a lot to support that's a lot of processing power that's a lot of network bandwidth and it's a lot of server monitoring, which human beings necessarily have to do and there's got to be some customer service element to it too.
The community is just going to explode when we open up ... they're going to devour the content. The actual testing process it's going to be fantastic. We need people to be able to gather that data to break it up and be able to put it to use and not just have all this mass information and not know what to do with it we.
There's a lot we need to get ready, but, yeah, we're in a good place right now, a very good place with all the help from our pa testers and more recently the focus testing. We've got fantastic information and we've been able to build on that to prepare ourselves for alpha"
disposalist said:HemlockReaper said:Kalok said:HemlockReaper said:Late 2022 would be a more realistic expectation for alpha, not that it couldn't be done sooner, but this is a small team, and 80-100 hour work weeks are not healthy.
They stated in one of the developer streams that alpha would be happening in 2021.
That's a pretty definitive statement, are you sure you didn't hear them say they would like to be in alpha in 2021? Do you have a link to the developer stream to which your referring?
Is this it? In the January roundtable, CEO Chris Rowen said: -
"It's no secret we're driving hard toward alpha in 2021... the company is throttled by available resources and with the right resources it's something that can definitely be accomplished.
There's really not that much more to do on the programming side. The code base is really, really solid. We need to get a few major systems in and then we need to switch out the network stack for scalability.
We do have quite a bit of world building to do still ... Jimmy Lane's pioneered this process using Houdini to semi-automate, or make more efficient, a lot of the world building. That's something that little companies like Visionary Realms don't typically do - that's big company stuff - and that's a big deal for us. It'll allow us to make more content or the target content faster or more cheaply or however you want to slice and dice it's a big win for us that's a real enabler.
But then another thing that we really have to consider is if we pull in ... 8000 people wanting to play this game and say 20 percent of them want to play at any one time, that's a lot to support that's a lot of processing power that's a lot of network bandwidth and it's a lot of server monitoring, which human beings necessarily have to do and there's got to be some customer service element to it too.
The community is just going to explode when we open up ... they're going to devour the content. The actual testing process it's going to be fantastic. We need people to be able to gather that data to break it up and be able to put it to use and not just have all this mass information and not know what to do with it we.
There's a lot we need to get ready, but, yeah, we're in a good place right now, a very good place with all the help from our pa testers and more recently the focus testing. We've got fantastic information and we've been able to build on that to prepare ourselves for alpha"
Thanks
bryanleo9 said: The fans have been asking for a roadmap showing progress, goals and what is being developed. We are still waiting for this. This request came about long ago but was more intense after the hard coding mistake was brought to light and much time lost.
VR has answered that question. They said no. They have given their reasons more than once.
I'm sorry that's not the answer you were looking for, but really there's no reason you should be "waiting" for a another, different answer.
bryanleo9 said: The fans have been asking for a roadmap showing progress, goals and what is being developed. We are still waiting for this. This request came about long ago but was more intense after the hard coding mistake was brought to light and much time lost.
Also talked about in the Chris Rowen roundtable is the hard-coding. Briefly: It wasn't 'a mistake'. It's well worth a listen.
I am not so sure that the risks of a roadmap are greater than the risks of being perceived as the never-ending development project that is producing occasional hype but no real results, Which is how most people that even know about Pantheon perceive it.
Then again. the key question is whose perception does VR care about. The general gaming world doesn't much matter except to the extent a better general perception can produce more pledges and that well may be close to dry. We here don't matter either unless a higher level of hope can produce more pledge upgrades.
What matters is significant funding from investors and/or an agreement with a name developer (which in turn may lead to investment). So what I expect is, essentially, no significant information until they are ready to say when alpha will be. With alpha being do or die in terms of generating real interest from publishers and investors. If it is "die" that doesn't mean the game is dead it means the chances of a far more rapid development schedule are dead.
disposalist said:bryanleo9 said: The fans have been asking for a roadmap showing progress, goals and what is being developed. We are still waiting for this. This request came about long ago but was more intense after the hard coding mistake was brought to light and much time lost.Also talked about in the Chris Rowen roundtable is the hard-coding. Briefly: It wasn't 'a mistake'. It's well worth a listen.
LOL
I never said it was a "mistake". A mistake would mean they accidentally fell into a hole or something. They knew what they were doing.
I said it showed they were not working on making a game, just creating some sort of proof-of-concept for a game while they learned how to do stuff.
Five+ years polishing the "proof-of-concept", living off pledges, calling it a game.
5+ years they goofed around re-making the same zone over and over, tweaking functionality, tweaking lore, figuring out the engineering.
Five years learning how to use the tools, being paid to learn how to make stuff.
Nice work if you can get it.
zewtastic said:Five+ years polishing the "proof-of-concept", living off pledges, calling it a game.
5+ years they goofed around re-making the same zone over and over, tweaking functionality, tweaking lore, figuring out the engineering.
Five years learning how to use the tools, being paid to learn how to make stuff.
Nice work if you can get it.
That's pretty common in the gaming industry to be fair, although:
1. They are not announced until they are ready to go full production (or are cancelled before even being announced)
2. They are rarely crowded funded (Pantheon isn't the only one though)