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So what's "oldschool" about Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen
Reklaw
Member UncommonPosts: 6,495
I read the faq, watched the video's but from what I read most things could fit almost any MMO before release.
Most things I also read do fit oldschool but it remains seen of goals will be met to impliment those feature's.
So I guess for me I have to wait till all goals are met before I personaly could classified this games as "oldschool"
How about you?
What makes you feel this game is truly oldschool or even can be become what many oldschool gamers long for?
Comments
Brad's Q&A sessions have been somewhat limited. However, if you are familiar with games and systems he's designed in the past such as in the original EQ and Vanguard it is clear it will be very challenging.
I loved Vanguard for what it was..and even more for what it could have been. But it's not a solo game. You have to have a good group to progress and a good Guild to really see the content.
It appears this will be even more group centric than that, which makes this not the game for me. I just don't have the time to invest any longer.
A little bit confused by your post.
You seem to be acknowledging that there are features of the game that are/would be old-school. So, I'm not sure why you're asking what you are.
It's like saying "What ingredients would make this pie a cherry pie? I've read the recipe, and I know it says to add cherry filling... but it remains to be seen if cherry filling is actually used. I guess I have to wait and see if the recipe is followed before I can call it a cherry pie".
Your contention seems to be more about whether they'll be implemented as described. In that case, the only honest answer is "no one knows, we have to wait, see and hope".
But, to list a few things that makes it more old-school..
- Strong emphasis on grouping throughout the game - not just end-game/raiding. Newer MMOs are far more about "Me" and treat "We" as something that's limited to end-game content and half-hearted incidental group content (FATEs, Rifts, etc). Even in the raids/dungeon area, they don't bring much "group cohesion" into it. There's no push for clear communication, or for bonds to be formed. It's more about throwing a bunch of random warm bodies together in a pre-determined configuration (healer, tank, dps dps, etc) so people can queue up and farm dungeons all day. It's a very cold and impersonal experience.
- Designed down-time as a means to foster a stronger sense of community and social ties. This is decidedly old-school, given the "go go go, faster faster faster" pacing of newer MMOs where people barely have any time to talk at all. Mechanics like this are an important part of what creates true in-game communities (not just "the people in your guild", etc). Hell, I'd say it's a crucial part. The Visionary folks definitely have the right of it on that.
- Open world design to allow more player interaction - including potential competition over contested content - something that's very important in community building as well. Believe it or not, it all comes back to player accountability and reputation, where a player's attitude and behavior has consequences, whether good or bad.
The way you conduct yourself in certain situations, where multiple people are after a given piece content, for example, ultimately influences the reputation you will gain within your server community. If you're cool, you'll become known on your server as a good person/player, and people will readily group with you. Act like a douche, and you'll find yourself having more and more trouble getting a group for anything, because your reputation will precede you. You don't have the safety and anonymity of being from another server to rely on, and hiding behind an alt character will only work for so long (a tiger can't change its stripes).
There's very limited use of instancing in Pantheon. Seems to be limited to players' personal questlines, etc. In a time where Instancing is King... yeah... speaks for itself.
- More classic combat/gameplay mechanics, with "Holy Trinity ++" type role creation...
- Their explained implementation of a combat system is derived quite clearly from old-school MMOs (FFXI, EQ1 and DAoC, I believe, are what he references as the source of inspiration). Slower pacing in the combat, with more focus on moment-to-moment strategy, rather than spamming the same key rotations over and over.
And so on.. There's a lot that makes it old-school.
GAME TENETS:
Well I'm asking for "your", forum posters opinion in what they/you feel gave them that oldschool feel already.
What I am saying is I am not just getting that feel.....yet. And if have already read tons of similar game faq's before a released game or even alpha state then you could understand I am somewhat sceptical towards it already calling oldschool.
But I do hope your list does make it into the live game.
I also hope Brad succeeds.
I loved Vanguard, especially the group mechanics and it's crafting/diplomacy system. Yet current times like today I just don't have that much time. I don't care if I max level in 3/6/12 months but if the game is focussed it's biggest content on meaningfull grouping to experiance most of the game then perhaps it aint the type of old school MMORPG I might be looking for.
Perhaps I've been to spoiled with SWG where I grouped just to have fun, sure we completed missions or failed them and sure we did them to get that meat/bone/hide or other type of loot or even xp so most of all we did so for all different reasons.
Had allot of play sessions just finding the right resource spot so while I was a very social character due to trade/guild/craft requests it also was a very solo profession due to the way the game gave me the freedom to play as I pleased.
To me that freedom is what makes a MMORPG feel oldschool because I feel today's MMO's are far too resctricted in what a player can do besides their combat skills/ability's. And anthing more or less forced to see most of it's content isn't my "oldschool"
And this might be that fibe I'm mising from Patheon: RotF.
But I am still interest into what other forum posters feel as oldschool from what they know now.
For me its about several things that I personally consider old school
1. Depth of world, little touches like languages, being discriminated or KOS in certain parts of the world. Things like Dark Elves not being allowed into a High Elven city. For me things like this matter, as small or annoying that things that this would be for some, most of my most cherished moments in EQ was being discriminated against because my character was an Erudite or being KOS in certain places. Now WoW certainly has these things as well one could say, but the lines are strongly drawn, there is no middle ground in WoW , you are either alliance or Horde and that is that, I loved the fact of having to deal with things like prices raised on me, being shooed out of churches because I worshipped a different god. Not being able to speak a certain language and having someone take out the time to teach it to me so I can understand it. Those things to me build what I call depth of world. As a roleplayer they are important touches, the icing for my cake, the ketchup for my french fries. Sure I could eat cake with no icing, but with icing its so much better. And I miss my icing.
2. A world so big that I can get lost. This is such a big deal to me, again adding to what I like to call depth of world. I can't stand the tunnel racers of today. Games like GW2 where the map literally looks like nothing more than a set of rooms!? Or FFXIV:ARR and SWTOR with their claustrophobic landscapes. I did not sign on to play a series of paths dispersed inbetwwen mountains or invisible walls. I am an explorer by nature, I want to see things. I want to climb mountains, I want to swim and I want to take a boat to those other lands overthere. In old school mmoRPG's (even Vanilla WoW) overthere meant something. Nowadays overthere is just the place you quicktravel to for a gold hit. They have been reduced to inconviences due to the go go go crowd!
3. A game I can break. "Oh I don't think I have time for a game that requires grouping". Guess what I didn't party up in EQ alot either. I leved by roleplaying an Erudite Paladin and saving people out in the wilderness (I leveled by fighting stragglers and saving people from trains). I'm an old school gamer. Part of that same generation who created the strategy guides for games like Street Figfhter 2. Part of the guys who figured out how to doublejump in City of Heroes. Who figured out how to do combos on the SNES version of SF2 that you couldn't do in the arcade. Part of the same group that will figure out how to solo in Pantheon, just to prove that we can. I like playing with my brains. I like proving people wrong, and I like figuring things out. For me figuring out how to solo in a "group game" is fun. Old school means for me playing the game how I want and not how you tell me to play it. Screw your dungeons, screw your raids, screw your gear grind, screw your goddamned free delivery service. Tell me there is a big ass monster over there that I can fight and I'm all over that. F your damn quests. I want to see shit and I want to fight shit that looks tough. Oh the elves that live in that cool ass tree city need help fighting a dragon? Oh hell yeah I'm there, lets fucking go! Let me explore and let me piss you off because I figured out how to do things that you cant. That is old school for me. "How the hell did you reach max level by soloing and not doing any dungeons?"
Because I'm a gamer you fool and real gamers figure things out.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Very well said
I do have one minor nit-pick... about something that's kind of ironic in a way.
You mention GW2 looking like a "set of rooms". The top down map may look like that, due to the way the world is created, and moreso, the way the map represents it (it's basically a top down, orthographic view of all the areas put together). If they'd approached rendering the zone maps as FFXI did, only showing the outlines of the actual geography, but not the squared-off borders around them, you wouldn't notice it as much. XI's world map doesn't distinguish zones or regions at all. It's just labels over general areas.
But when you're in the world and exploring Tyria, there's no feeling of being "boxed-in" at all. Its zones are freaking massive, very open, very diverse, and stuffed with places to go and see, find and reach. I've found so many random, out of the way places while I was on my way somewhere else, which aren't even indicated on the map. And those places can tend to be rather large tunnel/cave systems, etc. So, I wouldn't agree with your use of GW2 in terms of "poor map design". There are far better suited candidates for that, I think. IMO, it's one of the absolute best designed worlds I've seen in a looong time. I'd be happy if their world design followed the same ideas as GW2, with the same sense of scale, variety, dramatic changes in elevation (where appropriate), etc. Mix into that Visionary's desire to have things that are actually beneficial to player advancement hidden away in the world, and you've got an explorer's heaven in the making.
I'm right there with ya on ARR and SWTOR, though. Corridor heaven (or hell).
The irony I see in your remark is that Pantheon will be zone-based. So, like GW2 (and FFXI and EQ1), we will be playing in a "set of rooms", by definition. It really comes back to how well those areas are designed and how they disguise that fact. The concept art they've shown so far looks like there will definitely be a nice sense of scale.. places/things will actually seem massive (like the city of Archway, etc). Things that are huge like that inspire awe in me. I remember seeing places like Tower of Insolence for the first time in Lineage 2 and being amazed by it. I'd never seen a structure that huge in a game before, and you could actually go inside it... and it wasn't a separate zone.
There has only been two types of mmorpg's released ,so to say old school is a big time misuse of the term.
The two types of games are linear questing "Wow" and non linear questing "FFXI".
VERY few fall into the non linear questing and since there was no such thing as yellow markers and linear questing in the past,that is imo the "old school" type game.
You also need the open ended gaming,that means yo ucan go anywhere and are not directed to one specific dungeon at a time,you should be free to play outside dungeons or inside whatever you want,that is again "old school".
Vanilla Wow is NOT old school,Wow is the hand holding linear questing game of modern era be it on release or right now,it si the exact same game.
I highly doubt Pantheon will deliver on the OLD SCHOOL feel,imo and from what i have seen of all EQ type gaming which includes VG and Wow ect ect is linear questing,so modern type era gaming.
So imo NO Pantheon will not deliver an old school feel,just more of the same old,probably looking older following the lines of Lord British old looking game.Looking old and being old school are two totally different ideas.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
But ask em how they felt when they actually got it, bet they never had that feeling since in any game.
you didn't always know the spawn time window
factors affecting respawn ... last known kill (emphasis on KNOWN) and server retarts
for epic quest targets it was often a daily activity to check for mob spawns (at least for the EQ1 enchanter epic)
it took me 6 months to finish my epic quest
due to worldspawns being required, competition from other chanters doing their epics, long mob respawns (days/weeks)
EQ2 fan sites
Okay... in some cases you couldn't know. In most cases, you could.
Did people still do it, though? Yes. Did anyone force them to? No. They did it by choice.
And no one's claiming it has to be done to that extreme. There's a wide range of spawn conditions and windows they could work within.
Regarding your edit about taking 6 months to finish your Epic quest. Sounds about right for something that's supposed to be "epic". I know that term has been watered down to mean "you can do it in an afternoon" these days. But back then, calling something "epic" actually meant "epic". Rare gear was actually rare.
some guilds required you to have your epic as a condition to be part of their guild
but i agree w you
EQ2 fan sites
lol.. Then why are you here?
You're clearly not interested in the game.
You're clearly interested in presenting it in as negative a light as you can.
So why are you here? Why are you posting? Why are you even reading these threads?
Those are rhetorical questions. I already know why... You're one of those people who can't stand the thought of others having something they enjoy if you don't enjoy it also, and so you go out of your way to try and ruin it for them.
Too bad. Sucks to be you, I guess.
They're not valid concerns if they're about something that's germaine to the game in discussion or, further, are pure conjecture or hyperbole.
Again, it would be silly if you went to a gathering about some "surf and turf" restaurant, and started complaining that they were selling sea food "just like some other similar restaurant that used to be in the area some years back". It's completely ridiculous. You're complaining about a game being something it's intended to be, to the very same crowd it's intended to be for.
If you're interested in the game, then why do you insist on exaggerating or otherwise misrepresenting information about the game that's already been provided, as though it never was? For someone who claims to be "interested" in the game, you sure have demonstrated a penchant for posting things that are either hyperbole, conjecture, or just plain not true.
You've characterized this game, at least twice now, as being "just EQ1 revamped", and you hang that statement on things that are native to the genre itself, not just any one game. You cite the classes in another post. You cite rare spawns in this one. Neither of those things are exclusive to EQ1, but are a staple of old-school MMOs (and even some newer ones), which this game is being built around. Meanwhile, there's plenty of information demonstrating just how different from EQ1 it actually is in a number of ways. There is no way you can be genuinely interested in the game, have taken the time to educate yourself on it, and make a remark like "it's just EQ1 redone" with any degree of intellectual honesty.
Further - at least in the world I come from - people who are interested in something tend to want to portray and discuss it as accurately as they can, based on information that's known and not just what they assume, exaggerate or make up. You have yet to state anything about the game that's in any way honest, that isn't conjecture, or is otherwise grounded in the information released to date.
Example: There will be rare world spawns. That's basially all we know. You immediately take that and carry it to the worst possible example "camping for days, even weeks".... And why? So you can frame it in the worst possible light, as a "bad thing", to people who may not know better.
It has nothing to do with "others hinging their happiness on what others say". That's a ridiculous attempt at spinning what I said and nothing more. It has everything to do with calling out someone who, like yourself, is continuously misrepresenting the game to put it in a bad light, using conjecture or dishonest information to do so.
You can protest and say "but I am interested!" all day long. Your posts, and repeated attempts at misinforming or skewing others' perception of t he game based on that misinformation, paint a much different and far clearer picture.
You're not that shrewd.
If, by some off chance, you actually are at all genuinely interested in the game, then how about presenting us with something that we can actually discuss? How about making statements about things that have been confirmed? Or at the very least asking questions about information released, rather than making assumptions and running off to the worst possible extreme with it? You know... provide something we can actually discuss. Personally, I'd love to have that discussion. To date, however, all you've done is present information that can only be called out as being nonsense in one form or another.
If, however, you continue to try and misrepresent the game or pass off hyperbole or assumptions as "facts", I will continue to call you on it - because people looking into this game and trying to learn about or otherwise discuss it, should be getting accurate, honest information, not someone's twisted misinterpretations of it.
Yeah, the whole "you need "blah blah" to be in our guild" is a people thing, unfortunately. That will exist regardless of the game's design.
Even modern MMOs have that problem.
I've always just avoided those groups. Good People > Epic Gear in my book.... though sometimes you can have both, though it's rare.
riiight... i just want to know why they decided to use graphics from the era where everything was ugly 2000-2009
i guess thats old school
whats with the oldschool anyway? we can make great games by moving forward
What they've shown so far is more "proof of concept" stuff, using stand-in assets. It's common practice in game design to use stand-in assets like that, for prototyping, etc. I know in some cases, they use something called "whiteboxing", which is roughing out the level design using nothing but white blocks, because it's easier to resize, rotate or move those around and adjust until the level's flow/layout is right. If you start creating final assets for something that isn't final, and then drastic changes have to be made.. it can take a lot more time.
Nothing we've seen yet is final, other than concept artwork, etc.
I'd like to point out that they mentioned they are specifically looking to remove grinds so I would assume that would extend to things like camping Ragefire for the cleric epic. One of the tenants after all is that the path of least resistance should also be the most fun.
We don't know if "camping" will be in the game yet and the primary method to get loot and level. It hasn't specifically been stated anywhere as far as I know. There are instanced dungeons too that you can crawl through so you probably won't be camping in them. Modern MMOs have rare spawns too, they just aren't the focus of getting loot and such.
Someone might want to pose the question in the Kickstarter comments or QA of some sort.
If it requires huge time commitment for "endgame" so to speak then I see no problem with this. Only a small percentage of the population should be able to complete epic quests for example or clear the top end raids. I hope the game is accessible at lower levels without a huge time commitment, but I hope the endgame requires it.
I don't think they should rethink it at all. That's perfect in my opinion. I "finish" MMOs in 3 months or less nowadays rather than the 5+ years I spent playing Everquest. I do enjoy modern MMOs, but I still want a lot of the design principles of old school MMOs I see in Pantheon that were forgotten or abandoned in modern MMOs.
It is a niche game. They are aiming for EQ, Vanguard, and players who play challenging console games through to the end (like Dark Souls). I think the audience exists for what they are aiming for, though they still need to go about it better (their direction has improved the past week at least). They are getting the word out now to old school gamers who are spreading it via Twitch and Youtube. We'll see if the audience exists for it. They mentioned they are only aiming for ~20k subscribers instead of the usual 100k+ AAA MMOs tend to shoot for.
So far I see no other game, not even Vanguard (however didn't play it much) that will be as close to eq1 as Pantheon "plans" to be. Personally I am extremely excited for this game and have joined some of the community sites to get some more information. There is a lot of theory crafting going on about the game right now and it is true that we just don't know and will have to wait.
However everything I have read is that they are trying to return to the style of EQ group based game play which I think is the major factor. Yes there is some possibilities for some systems to not be in when it goes live, but that is because they wanna get the exploring, adventuring/combat completely right before they do anything else.
I think it will turn out to be a very eq1 based game but time will tell, but overall I think it will be the closest to "old school" eq1 game play then any other game we have seen short of DAoC.
Just my opinion of course