Pantheon's current playable area map

Kyleran

With the upcoming Jan 27th Pre-Alpha backer tesing someone over on reddit shared this map of playable area available.

It's surprisingly small and is only in a single zone.

I'm reminded of a video posted by Bazgrim about 4 years ago where he tried to convince folks that there were 10 zone either fully playable or developed far enough since the Devs had shared videos or let select streamers test in them.

Hard to believe they have so little done after almost 10 years of effort, but I guess that's what starting over 3 or 4 times gets you.

https://www.pantheonmmo.com/wp-content/uploads/20240124_IMG_AVPOrangeZone.png

Scot

Changing horses midstream is never a good idea, it is hard to tell how much of a step back each change created but doing so even once is potential a huge issue.

cheyane

That surely cannot be all there is, surely not. 

cheyane

https://palworld.th.gl

Look at how big this map is and I have only explored at level 21 one small area. Still have so much to explore.

blackthornn

Brad during a 2018 stream "we should have alpha by Xmas, beta soon after"

Joppa burning pantheon to the ground trying to change gear to chase every other game on the market. 

Joppa is a cancer thst needed to be cut out before Brad passed.  And I have a personal theory that his participation is what may have pushed old demons back to the forefront.  Just a theory.

Slapshot1188

Honestly that doesn't shock me nor do I think it's the worst thing.  Brad always pitched a small part of the game as what to start with and then build onto it.    I don't have any scale nor travel speed to understand how big the area actually is.

I think the best thing they could do would be to flesh out this area and make an actual game that could be played.  Even if only to level 14, it would go a loooong way towards making people feel better about the game.  Then release expanded areas every few months.

I'm not a backer (although I did originally back the failed Kickstarter) so my view is a bit skewed, but if they can get something playable out there, its far better than a blackhole of development that never leads anywhere.

Kyleran

Slapshot1188 said:

Honestly that doesn't shock me nor do I think it's the worst thing.  Brad always pitched a small part of the game as what to start with and then build onto it.    I don't have any scale nor travel speed to understand how big the area actually is.

I think the best thing they could do would be to flesh out this area and make an actual game that could be played.  Even if only to level 14, it would go a loooong way towards making people feel better about the game.  Then release expanded areas every few months.

I'm not a backer (although I did originally back the failed Kickstarter) so my view is a bit skewed, but if they can get something playable out there, its far better than a blackhole of development that never leads anywhere.

Recall that just before Brad passed he shared a plan which could have been put in place after the Project "Fallafel" work got done.

He even went so far as to say Pantheon already had 3 or 4 weeks worth of playable content which they could release in early access but he didn't want to go down that road.

I think if any of that was true back then it's all been tossed out the window now.

cheyane

This team had thrown out so much work it is criminal. They keep redoing and all the previous work is just discarded. That is such a  huge waste and if I was on the team I would be crying.

Kyleran

cheyane said:

This team had thrown out so much work it is criminal. They keep redoing and all the previous work is just discarded. That is such a  huge waste and if I was on the team I would be crying.

Much of the rework is a result of the Pantheon team always working to create a playable demo (rather than a playable game) in the early years hoping to lure in larger investors.

In recent years the team has come to accept the fact there will be no major angels to rescue them so now they are reworking things once again to align better with this new reality.

Xthos

Well, they may still have 10ish areas that are in different states of playability, but depending on what they are testing, it probably wouldn't make sense to let people go wild and be in a bunch of different areas and spread any problem reporting.

The progress is definitely a disappointment at this time either way.

Kyleran

Xthos said:

Well, they may still have 10ish areas that are in different states of playability, but depending on what they are testing, it probably wouldn't make sense to let people go wild and be in a bunch of different areas and spread any problem reporting.

The progress is definitely a disappointment at this time either way.

Right after Baz's video they did a major refactor and the graphics of all zones were reset to gray box placeholders which was readily apparent in future videos of said zones.

Regardless of any progress since, it all got tossed out the window with the yet another graphics refactor last year.

So they might have the basic bones still available, but yes, nothing remotely ready for even gray box testing I'd imagine.