Thank you for putting out this content, Bob. As a P99 enjoyer yet someone who doesn't have their hand on the pulse of new releases, I appreciate having your insight. Ultimately i'll make my own determination eventually, but having watched you for years, you are a pretty great filter for me to determine if something is worth my time. Thanks.
This is the game's foundation you're playing. While a foundation is just the beginning in which the game will be developed upon. With that said, the foundation is decent and will improve imo. I find myself having fun dungeon crawling with my group of friends that I play with, and I am looking forward to more diffiult PVE and deeper gameplay.
I think thats kinda the point? We had 15 years of thousands of games trying to, "Innovate" and "Improve" these games by removing all the things that make them worlds. MMO's have been stagnant as fuck the last few decades. Its been WoW and FF14 + a few short lived failed games for 15 years. Pantheon, EverCraft, and Monsters & Memories has reignited the excitement in a huge group of MMO gamers.
Also your big mistake playing these games is trying to do all the things. You dont have to craft, you dont have to gather. If you want to fight and do quests, fight and do quests. Get your gear that way and supplement with purchased gear from crafters. These games are about having roles - not being all the things. You will fail miserably trying to be everything as you level.
What are these games doing different? Pantheon is just exactly the same as many indie MMO's either out or in development. It's no less generic than the games you mention. It is not even a classic MMO and many of the systems come from either survival games or modern MMO's. The numbers these games have, outside of M&M because that is still a mystery, are not good. Players, Classic MMO players, have rejected the MMO design that these games are incorporating.
@@Ssliasil The thing I have mainly been doing while playing, not just this time but before, is the gathering and crafting. I'm am not trying to do everything, just part of the gameplay. The issue is the loop is bad.
If the point is being even slower and worse than everquest I’m not sure what market they’re even targeting. If the original audience of mmos find it too slow I think they missed the mark.
I think most MMOs don't have a target audience they're trying to appeal to, or at least don't understand them. Many MMOs that are being developed lack a vision, hence why they just copy mechanics from each other. People who like EQ P99 mostly do for nostalgia reasons over sensible ones. Nostalgia makes the grinds and tedium more bearable. What actually keeps a player's interest in any game is incidental exploration and incidental rewards for doing so. Everquest didn't feed you information, and scouring the internet didn't always guarantee the answer you were looking for (back then). There was mystery in the world that fed curiosity, which in turn made players engaged. Now we live in an era of datamined roadmaps and entire wikis that remove the fog that once made a world feel magical. Even EQ P99 eventually feels formulaic rather than organic when the path for best experience become the new norm, and the tiers of armors being so well documented that it becomes a linear task checklist. The other half of the equation is the M's in MMOs. People have graduated away from conventional typing (like old EQ) toward more voice comms like discord. Sadly this breaks immersion in the game world as people prioritize out of game communications rather than in-game ones. It is the reason the in-game world can feel dead even with 100s of people around you. A possible solution would be integrating a voice comm in game via character positioning or something similar, but even then it wouldn't really rival pre existing comms that most players are already a part of. Everquest's quest system with bracketed [trigger words] also helped to create an avenue of player interaction. It forced normalizing typing rather than clicking (and not reading) and allowed other players to see the actions their fellow players were taking around them. Camps were very much a staple to EQ. Letting players create their own areas (and name them) was part of the fun of wandering through zones in EQ. MMOs today opt for instances and pre titled areas on built in maps. It may provide clarity, but like I said earlier, the magic is gone. Worse still when mobs are level capped by region. No excitement, no danger, just slog. The approach of making things more digestible was started by WoW, and every MMO since has followed suit. It gives a flash in the pan fun experience (Theme park MMO). Yes, everything is clearly laid out for the player to understand and made easily approachable, but when the "problem" is so simplified that anyone can "beat" it, the player actually gets discouraged from doing so. (mainly because the solution is already revealed to them and the only thing left is just doing it..aka grind and tedium) . EQ allowed multiple solutions to problems (Group compositions were VERY flexible and had a wide array of tools to get jobs done) but didn't hold your hand or force you to find the "right " one. I see the same problems happening time and again with new MMOs over and over ad nauseum. They don't design a living world. They design a rigid board game and wonder why people aren't interested long term...or even initially.
Saying EA, Pantheon, M&M are copying each other, and that it's a bad thing, is insane to me. We've had 2 decades of MMO's building off of WoW's framework and slowly being diluted to the point where MMORPGs have completely lost the RPG and are essentially P2W lobby games. I'm glad that there are a few different options that do the old school MMO gameplay loop and design well. I wish they'd get more funding and population, but I understand this is a very niche genre. These games don't need to change anything, they just need to be completely build, funded, and released as a full game with a healthy population. If you don't like the gameplay loop, then you're not the audience these games are made for. As someone who was too young to fully get into EQ, someone who considers classic WoW the best game ever made, someone who fell deeply in love with Embers Adrift, I love Pantheon. I recently started playing it after giving up hope. I pledged back in 2017 or 2018 and slowly lost interest after all of the drama and art direction shift, but after playing this game, I see that the foundation is exactly what I hoped it would be. I just hope it doesn't die before it's finished.
I can’t say I’ve payed any of these recent MMOs. Everything you outlined sounds to be spot on and makes perfect sense. I can’t imagine a good argument in favor of any of the gripes you mentioned. Why have a blue mob that is patently too hard to solo when the message and “con” system is intended to tell you whether you can beat it? Why limit skill craft ability based on character level? Why make people fight for scarce resource nodes? It sounds like pointless additions that were meant to “increase difficulty” but all they effectively did was increase frustration and boredom. From the looks, developers need to listen to your video
You know it's bad when the biggest EQ fans who have been following this project for 10+ years have NO INTEREST in early access testing. I have a "pathfinder" pledge, and I have not bothered to log into this game once. My guess is crafting & gathering is not a priority for VR, considering crafting in EverQuest was bad and gathering was non-existent. That skinning timer is crazy. It pains me to see the animations still appear to be unity asset store quality- swinging the axe, running, all of the animations are lacking the most basic principles of animation. There is no anticipation or lead up, the animations suddenly jerk into action, don't properly loop or transition, everything feels janky. There's a reason many people didn't like Luclin models, and a big part of it was the animations. It has been 10+ years and millions of dollars and VR has failed to execute anything. They are trying to build out an entire world, when they should have been focused on building out a single zone, first.. What ever happened to Project Faerthale? I've spent countless hours following the developer streams, newsletters, etc- the more I see, the more disappointed I become. I would be genuinely surprised if VR ever develops Pantheon to a point where I am eager to log in. It seems like recently after some bad press and TH-cam coverage, and in anticipation for an EA release, VR has only just now started to do what they have should have been doing 10 years ago. Too little, too late, hang it up. No one asked for this. They get caught up on all this BS like the "perception system" and they talk about it for 10 years but it never gets anywhere, and no one wanted it in the first place. No one backed the project because they wanted the perception system. Lol. It actually causes me physical pain to think about Pantheon.
Hey my friend, Would love to understand how our system in Eternal Tombs can be improved. We've designed our system to avoid some of the pitfalls you've mentioned: having ALOT of nodes (maybe we need more?), 300+ slot inventory system, quest rewards, and allowing most harvestable and craftables to be droppable. We hope by having these things, it allows people to gather who want to gather without going home, buy without harvesting, and harvest/craft when you want to. From a design standpoint, we feel like we've addressed every player scenario. Maybe we missed the point and need an overhaul? Love to hear ideas.
@@triunestudio Hey mate. I confess I have not played the last couple of tests. Sounds good from what you say. More interactions with nodes as opposed to spending lots of time just running around looking is a big help.
This is way too negative without merit. You're making too many assumptions about other people and focusing on a small portion of a product to extrapolate into way too much and then present it as fact. I remember you from doing some P99 videos back in the day and you seemed grounded and reasonable so I found this video quite surprising. I would think you would be exactly the kind of person that would understand the appeal of something like P99 and realize that this game is essentially trying to be original EverQuest with modern graphics and a few system improvements, which I certainly want. Not a single thing you mentioned in this video persuaded me.
Looks like a really low budget free to play MMO. I think many years ago when they couldn't secure investors to fund Brads vision, it was never going to work.
@@Section.9 Real investment. It's clear as hell this project hasn't received the investment Brad aimed for. Look at how long it's taken to get to this point. 10 years for something that's miles behind OG EQ1, EQ2 and VG:SoH.
I think this is a very fair and insightful critique of not only Pantheon, but also the broader MMO industry. I haven't really enjoyed any new MMO in the past 15 years. I value immersion in these types of games and the artificial barriers set up to create a time sink are mostly immersion breaking for me. I haven't tried Pantheon out yet, and I do want to give it a fair shot if I find myself with more free time. I'm curious, what is your opinion on games like Pax Dei? It sounds like you are looking for a more pure sandbox experience. I'm in this sort of catch 22 scenario where I want more immersion that often comes from a sandbox, but I also do not have a lot of free time to enjoy those types of games.
MY fav MMO is Classic EQ up to Velious. When the development started on games like this we were told these would be spiritual successors but ultimately have turned out nothing like those classics. I was hoping for the wave of indie MMO's to have the same design philosophy and depth of combat and immersion as EQ but with different lore and some maybe more modern sensibilities. Pax Dei didn't really do it for me. It was too much a survival/PvP game than a RPG.
@micahjoshua8827 I don't think I'm familiar with that either. What is WIP? I viewed this video as insightful because it matches how I've felt about MMOs for a long time. So it is insightful towards my experience towards the broader industry. Again, I haven't tried out Pantheon yet and definitely will before I come to any conclusions.
Let's be honest all modern MMOs are basically single-player games with a shared world. How many of you started a new modern MMO to get tired of it after 2-3 weeks. Why do most people stop playing these modern MMOs after one month? Num 1 there is no feeling of community. Num 2 You get rewarded with too much gear making rewards not exciting. Num 3 A lot of the content you can do it solo making Grouping not existent. Num 4 Too easy to level making levelling a character meaningless. Number 5 Making it Super easy to teleport all over the World Map removing the magic of exploration and making the world Small. Well, Pantheon has addressed all these issues that's all I care.
If you enjoy old school MMO's like Everquest then by all means give Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen a try...chances are that it will be your cup of tea. There, saved you 23 and a half minutes of hearing this guy whine about how he doesn't like the game.
@@SuperBitsandBob If a one time 40 dollar purchase is make or break for someone then playing games isn't something that person should be doing. At least it isn't a monthly fee.
@ its more about picking where you spend your money. I wouldn’t tell someone to buy this game just in case you might like it. It’s not responsible as someone making a video talking about it.
I cannot fathom how some people think this, this game fails to capture EverQuest magic on almost every level. Even Vanilla WoW was closer to EQ than this.
If you play a game like 7 Days to Die, you go from the humility of cowering in the corner of a shack at night to mowing down hundreds of zombies from a fortress---that you built. In alot of ways I think the survival genre of organic progression has supplanted what EverQuest was back in the day.
Wth kind of a take is this? It’s a group focused adventure game and you just decided to only focus on crafting quests What about trying different classes? Group comps? Different dungeons? It’s not just nodes
Bob the quest on scavenger you can get upgraded tool which are faster than the bog standard you start off with mate. Eventually you get tool with +1st or dex ect
Yeah I did those quests a few months ago. It's no excuse still for the gathering system to be generic horseshit though. It's just like playing Embers all over again.
@@SuperBitsandBob The biggest issue I have which you highlighted too is they are sticking stuff behind a levelling wall I have already made my feeling clear about this but it appears they are going with that which imo is a major floor too man. I feel their team might be far to small to make important changes to get things right. I guess only time will tell. Game still looks dog shit though right lol?
@@WayneTwitch But this isn’t old skool gameplay. That’s the point. It more like a modern MMO than EQ, UO, AC etc. I’m guessing you’ve never played an old skool mmo though.
@@WayneTwitch How is it like EQ? Gathering loop? No. Crafting? Nothing like it really. Building a resource to use an attack? No. Cooldown numbers ticking down? No. Chevron mobs? No. Burning down blue mobs easy because of loads of cooldown abilities thus no challenge? No. Level based caps for crafting skills? No. I could go on. Have you played any P99? The two games can be compared very accurately right now as P99 is very accurate to up to Velious EQ.
I just want EQ with modern graphics. If it fulfills that role, I'll play it. Those MMO's were moreso chat rooms, if you don't socialize, you'll hate old school EQ, but I miss making friends like through groups. That really doesn't happen where everything is streamlined nowadays, such as WoW (which I love WoW, still play it, but it doesn't fulfill that niche).
Fetch quest, especially ones not streamlined to not go smoothly, sounds like the opposite of these games visions. But I’m not surprised, McQuaid passed 5 years ago this month. The Anderson brothers haven’t headed what became Ember’s Adrift for some years too and the whole vision went with them (RIP Saga of Lucimia). I backed the Kickstarter for Pantheon ten years ago, and maybe I’ll play it eventually but the game has looked worse over time. As much as I love EQ, these new ones seem to be missing something.
Pantheon needs community support and additional funding. They decided to address core performance issues which could impact raiding (VINL) and performance (the art overhaul) which ultimately makes their game highly performant. They have their art and creative pipelines in place. I think people should support this game because if they can sell a few million copies or even a few 100,000 copies at launch I believe we will see all of their strategic positioning to add content pay off. I hate the UI though. Instead of judging the game for being generic, I view it is as a great framework in which a game could be built - they are just about $2 million short of building it... personally I hope they get more funding and big community support to keep the genre alive.
No.... Supporting something just for the sake of supporting it is ridiculous. The game is creatively bankrupt. They saw that MnM was making magic with the painted art style and decided to suddenly overhaul their own art style. Pantheon is all derivative
People need to have a reason to pay for it beyond they need our support. I couldn't in good conscience tell someone to spend their money on a game based on something that is currently not available. Too much money has been burned on promises in early access games.
@@MYLITTLENINJA757 I am buying the game December 13th, can't wait. Looks awesome. They are doing a creative approach for every bit of the game. So players need to work together for just about everything. Like a smith can have his components enhanced by a jeweler. BTW, crafting is not capped by current level. They kept it uncapped, so you can do crafting/gathering, without adventuring, if that's your thing.
Plenty of games are released without me supporting them. The idea that I donate money to a for profit business panhandling is ludicrous. And, quite honestly, what I am seeing being put forth is lackluster. If they need money there are ways to seek investors etc. If they are unable to find investors there is probably a good reason.
I agree with your take. I haven't even played this but from all the gameplay I watch the main gameplay loop is boring af. Without that it's just a shell of a game. I've played a bit of M&M and EverCraft and those two seem to have a much better gameplay loop even in their early states.
This looks horrific. If they they even us old school players are going to sit through 20s gather times they're insane. Just watching how long it took to skin those mobs made me want to quit for you!
@@CestPasFaux-kt9zq LOL you're defending this catastrophic waste of time? Don't worry, I won't be wasting my life in this game if it launches looking like this. It looks like a carbon copy of Vanguard which failed miserably all those years ago.
I think you nailed it about p99 and people coming back because you can twink. When I think about it it's a big factor for me. Though now last time I was on it was a graveyard so that's why I haven't been back. Why they didn't merge the servers yet and start a new one seems odd
I have zero desire to run around in loops trying to level and gather at the same time. F that. I played EQ in 99 and never thought of doing anything boring. I plan on just playing my class, leveling up by soloing and grouping, and experiencing all the fun content. Exploring and conquering dungeons, leveling, acquiring rare loot etc is what i plan on doing. Running around for hours killing lv 1 mobs while trying to find nodes to gather, mine, etc to make bags and armor i can just buy or find in the wild is boring af in ANY MMORPG.
I occasionally go back and play DAoC on a private server, but the nostalgia is the only thing truly fueling my fun. I loved the game as a kid, but even I recognize that it's very clunky by modern day standards. What chance does pantheon have when it feels old and clunky, but doesn't have any nostalgia fueling it?
I'm looking for a slower game. If I wanted a spam fest, I would play WOW. I don't wish for mobs that die in less than 10 seconds; I want complex mobs that depend on more than one rotation and group synergy to control and kill. Resources are too abundant in many MMOs, flooding the market and becoming worthless. Crafting is best left to buffs, such as potions, foods and armor, and weapon buffs. I am a huge fan of crafting, but it has many downsides in an MMO, as it has to compete with world drops. This slowdown can lead to more time for community interaction. Not saying that Pantheon will deliver this but the blueprint is there. Embers Adrift could have been something more, but they limited the scope of magic classes and fantasy, which leaves it very generic. Pantheon is working on the perception and acclimation systems that should make the world feel more than just a combat simulator.
I think pantheon as a mmorpg is going in the right direction. I enjoy playtesting and look forward to see what will happen and when during early access...
The most tone deaf analysis of an early access pre-alpha game I have ever listened to. Never have understood why people who do not like these types of games ever waste time to review them. I mean every video you have done has had the same negative beat to it about crafting and gathering and being generic. Clearly this is not for you. Go play a crafting focused game that is based on realistic gathering and refining. I enjoy this type of game as do the folks I see running around daily in testing.
I think your new player experiance, and the following criticism are good feedback and fair to share. I've been playing the game, on and off, since 2018 so many of your concerns are things that I know are a work in progress, but that is something VR can do a better job of making clear to new players. In the very least, and this was something you didn't touch on much in your video (not necessarily your fault), but Pantheon EA isn't early launch. It's more of a traditional EA that is more inline with apha/beta testing. I think they need to look at the focus on the direction given to new players and lessen the emphasis on crafting and gathering. There is still plenty of work to do and the game is still a couple years away from a full 1.0 release so it might be worth checking back in on at some point.
Pantheon has been on life support for awhile now. They're not launching on Steam EA because the game is ready for EA. They're doing it because they need the money. The game will be DOA. They won't get the players they need to pay for more development.
Let me try to summarize what is so wrong about this review of the game. First of all, he speaks as if he knows nothing about the intended design of the game. I dont think i heard him mention one time anything about "this is how it currently works, but this is whats planned for how it will work in the future." Because he didnt do any due diligence to read material about the games design and feature roadmap. Second, he criticizes things like gathering being too slow with very little context of thought to how improved tools, skill raises, and future mechanics such as profession skills and group gathering will affect the pacing of the game. There is potentially even going to be mini games implemented that turn gathering and crafting into interactive affairs. What is currently in the game is only representative of the base line gathering functionality and them tuning it to be appropriate with the layers of systems that are going to be piled on top of it. His adventuring skills must not be very good, as he claims he cannot find resource nodes, but they are strewn all over the world. If you play during peak US hours on a full server then yeah a lot of them may have been recently gathered and on a respawn timer, but by no means is there any scenario where you cant go out and look for a specific resource and find at least some of it. And besides, unless youre just into the crafting thing, there is no actual need requiring you to partake in gathering at all. Its a voluntary activity that can be bypassed by simply engaging in the player economy to purchase weapons, gear, and food that other players have made. Everything about the games design reinforces this. And the crafting system will be based off of the rarity of the materials used. So to make the best gear, you will have to go get the rarest resources. There will be players who make that their job is being rare resource collectors. Combat is very much true to spirit of classic EQ, but with a modern spin. Its an amazing balance that scratches the itch of my childhood memories playing EQ, while providing a more streamlined experience that is very engaging, strategic, and difficult. From the way this person talks it seems as if they have never even engaged in group content even once. Go do something like the Goblin Caves while theyre yellow/red cons and come back and tell me with a straight face it wasn't engaging and thought provoking. The way encounter design is handled, and how the aggro systems work are already just as good as some AAA titles. Layered on top of all of that is the class structure and how their different abilities and capabilities over lap. There is a boat load of replayability in just going through the same dungeons again with different combinations of classes in a group. I am pushing 200-300 hours in this game in the last 9 months and i have STILL yet to experience all of the content that's already inside the game. And when i log in, the social tab even in its rudimentary form makes creating full groups within 5-15 minutes incredibly easy. Playing the game solo is not the intended focus of the game. All of the footage in this video is just you standing around in the same newbie area whacking single mobs. No exciting group combat with 3-4 enemies and crowd control and close calls of healing going on. This is about as vanilla slow poke of a perspective on the game that's possible to produce. You have mischaracterized almost every aspect of the game to your audience, and its not only a disservice to this game, but to the MMO genre as a whole. How do you expect new projects to come out and innovate and grow the genre without giving them a fair shake and running people off. There are fair criticism of the current state of the game and how long its development has taken. But its design framework and roadmap of features is unmatched anywhere else in the MMO space. From monster traits, dispositions, climate acclimation, the perception system, CLIMBING, and much more. I didn't hear you mention any of those things that this foundational build of the game is designed around.
1. The game costs money and is going into EA soon. I pointed out what players get now for their money. Gamers are fed up of promises. 2. I believe I mentioned tools and skill gains increasing gathering speed. Other games have this. It's not alchemy. It is still to slow of a base speed irrespective. 3. There is absolutely no way that there are enough nodes to support an EA (assuming anyone bothers). There were times when I hit autorun and had no node interactions for some time. I...hit...autorun. There are nodes yes but it does not even support a handful of players out gathering. The newbie quests require you to do it. You could just ignore them I guess, but why would you. They are part of the introduction and should be viewed from a new player perspective, not a veteran. 4. While you have childhood memories of playing EQ I have memories from just the other day of playing classic EQ on P99. The combat has some strategy and nuance yes, but it feels nothing like EQ. Classic WoW had some strategy and nuance as well. This feels more like that. I am confident to state now, looking at your posts, that you are a shill who just wants people to invest in it for your own sake based on your own emotional or financial investment in the project. For my part. I never said it was a bad game. I said I enjoy the gameplay loop, but that it badly implemented. I also said it is not a classic MMO, which it is not (all MMO's have some strategy to their combat, even modern ones. This is not an exclusive trait to classic MMO's and doesn't automatically qualify a game as such). I have also played the game for some time previously and not just what you see in these recent videos. Anyway it is what it is. It'll live or die based on how people feel when they play it.
Such a shame. This was a massive hopeful launch for me, but sadly, I believe the death of Brad McQuaid had a massive effect on the development quality.
I would imagine it is. I wont put money into it, but im not counting it out. It's too early in my book, theres just too little content out at the moment? Alot of important elements just havent been implemented or fleshed out.
Too much technical jank and not enough fun jank. We need more fun jank that lets players do things. Old games in general were more like that, even old FPS games had stuff like that, stuff that they took away later that made the games more fun. They should hire you actually Bob, you know MMOs as good or better than anybody, that's for sure!
Hhmmm. I don't feel like this is a gathering crafting game at all. I think the idea that becoming a master crafter is a rare and difficult thing. The idea is to group together and take a camp or do a dungeon with people. Get to know people force yourselves to get to know people. Make friends. Level up. It does that.
Wow, a lot of detractors in the comments resort to the same old straw man arguments instead of addressing your grievances with the game. It’s because they don’t have a ground to stand on. If these ‘classic mmos’ annoy everquest fans, I don’t think they have a future. No amount of ignorance is bliss will change that. These developers really don’t understand the genre.
This is what happens when people not involved with the game in any way make content. I mean really ... the chevrons are simply visual indicators for group mobs. Take a few minutes and actually learn what's going on and upcoming before you trash a pre alpha game lol.
I said that in the video. I know what it is for. We have seen it very recently in Embers Adrift and previously in Vanguard. This is what happens when someone leaves a comment without listening to it properly.
@SuperBitsandBob oh no I listened. Your statement was that it was a copy that indicated tough mobs. There was no statement made saying the icon was to show group mobs vs solo mobs. The entire game is based on eq and vanguard so seeing things come from vg is not at all surprising. As for all the issues you have with the gathering and crafting, they know it's not right. Right now you can do everything. They will be limiting it to 1 crafting and gathering down the road and doing another pass over the entire crafting system. So it won't be near as bad as it is now. This is testing so it's wide open currently All in all, the game is in pre alpha. Expecting finished and or polished content is at least a year away, likely more. Bashing games before they have a chance will not help us get the games we want. Instead try giving feedback to make it better because they are listening
@@Enitzu2850 That is what it does though. It just artificially makes them harder. So making it even less like EQ by only allowing you to have one gathering and crafting skill. Again almost exactly like another indie MMO game currently available. Great. Also the game has been in development for more than 10 years. I am afraid that doesn't wash for many players. Grossly mismanaging the project and starting again doesn't give you chances.
@SuperBitsandBob it sounds like you really just want eq with updated graphics. I mean I would too honestly but that'll probably never happen. Even if it did, the constant flow of TLPs burned me out long ago. I'm not arguing that this game hasn't been mismanagement. For the first 5 or so years it was a literal shit show. But they are moving at a steady pace and for what it is now, it's not bad. It's still got a ways to go of course but the bones are there
100% .. Endlessly generic and requires the players to have a tight group of friends that play together and make their own fun ... this is literally just intended as a chat room with some graphics
I don't know this game, have no horse in this race, and quite frankly all MMOs look about this level boring to me, but considering that you have what appears to be 3 total skills on your toolbar, I think you probably aren't being very rigorous in your review and analysis of the game. This video tells me a lot more about your channel and the dedication you have for the content you create, than it tells me anything about this game. PS I did my best to make this criticism constructive even if it seems a little blunt.
It's boring and generic if you're coming from wow or ff14 it's going to feel painfully slow. To original eq eqoa players the game is great even in its early stages
No one said anything about WoW or FF14. Most of us on this channel still play classic EQ (up to Velious) on P99, Asheron's Call etc. Lot's of original EQ players here not connecting with it at all.
FF14 lol - launch the game - launch matchmaking - spam 9 spells over 20 min in dungeon with random pugs - loop yeah Pantheon is more generic for sure. Joker
@@CestPasFaux-kt9zq Are you slow? I'm not saying a prefer FF14 I have over 30 hours into Pantheon and come from EQOA. I'm saying for people who prefer "flashy" MMOs with fast paced content will likely not be as stimulated by the slower paced game.
I realize you are eager to defend to game, I am too. But if you did not play an original MMO you will likely not understand the flow of the game. That's all I'm saying. So tone your sensitive ass down a notch.
@@zakowski4043 dude I played EQ and have at least 1600 hours on pantheon. I love pantheon But you cannot say if you come from FF14 , pantheon will be boring and generic FF14 is boring and generic
would you play a text-only copy of project1999? copy in the way the systems work, not a copy of the world. i want to create something new but i dont have a handle on 3d modeling, im a programmer. think 90s MUD
All that anyone wanted Pantheon to be was EverQuest but with updated graphics and UI Edit: Seems to me that you think this is a Survival Crafting game for whatever reason. This is an EverQuest successor, you should look that up first rofl
It's not a launch. It's still being developed. EA doesnt mean full game. Quests are still being worked. And I. Fact those quest are only in place to at people aware. By no means is any of it complete. EA means testing.
@@SuperBitsandBobnot really It has been really tested since January where they open pre alpha for all pledger You have no clue about this game Go ashes of creation it is for you
The animations bug the living hell out of me, Never Winter Nights from 2002 has cooler combat animations 10x than this game. Wont play, (and neither will enough people to keep the game alive, believe me or dont) if the game continues to look like this in 2024
It's one thing they constantly add. The big issue here is they want all of their races in first. No point in going hard on animations if the models get changed and mess up all that animation work. Spell effect changes are very prevalent though. Some spell effects are coming along nicely.
I had no hair on my balls when I heard about this game. 20 years later I still have no hair, but this game looks like ass. What were they doing all those years?
Do not listen to nay sayers, if EQ is what you are here for you will find it in pantheon. These ppl bad mouthing the game are the same shameful ppl that said the game was vaporware
Then you run the issue of is this mob a red con because it's for a group of 6 or is it because it's level 50 and going to chomp us? Cons tell you the level of the mob. Yeah they use a Chevron for now but it's no different than wow using the gold dragon portrait.
@ it should be red con because it has +2 levels meaning +2 hp and attack level modifiers. you formulate your grouping pattern based on a linear representation of hp in hp out which is a color con. chevrons confuse this linearity and introduce an unknown into a fairly easy to understand formula
I'm not sure why you feel forced to craft. The crafting quests as they are right now are more or less just an introduction into crafting, and the crafting quests only lead to harder crafting quests. They don't gatekeep you from accessing other non crafting related quests/content as you seem to suggest. The crafting quests also appear to be placeholder and are a means of giving the players gathering tools quickly for playtest purposes. I can definitely agree with you in the sense that the game is a tad bit generic at the moment, but its also not done yet, and it doesnt sound like you've experienced enough of the game to leave an informed review.
I believe it! Until very recently I was playing on a TLP, with the classic graphics on and thought EQ looked better than what I'm seeing here. But chalked it up to nostalgia on my part.
@ozymandias3540 nope...EQ graphics are more immersive like I can see farther distances in almost a zoomed in vision if that makes sense. The new graphics used in these mmos makes it feel really weird on the eyes.
Um, you mention when it goes into early access - you know it technically already is right? When you need like 100 pelts to make a head, hand, body, leg, foot bit of armour.... either you're killing like mice and trying to sew them together or its just wasting your life For me it feels a lot like they downloaded a template, theres a unity template for an MMO, that includes, networking etc, and certainly pantheon screams of that template (Id like to hope not), MnM doesnt feel like they used that template, but at least with MnM there are more nodes, they are much behind pantheon in time, and there and the quests, but there are way more classes, and poential things in the making, Pantheon doesnt show signs of being a lot more than it currently is PS you tried brigher shores..
I've got no problem with the gameplay loop, or how generic it is. I enjoy the simplicity of it. Allowing myself to veg out while listening to music in the background is meditative for me. My biggest issue is the art style.
The first version of their game sucked. They burned so much money from investors. This iteration you're playing is merely to prevent them from being sued, so they can claim they designed a game.
Games trash this is 2024 not 2004. It looks like EQ sadly it will fail. Gamers are fed up with crap they want BOOM!!!! Oh Yeah!!! not some ancient looking game that you have to push your toon off a cliff to get moving.
It truly is sad seeing the sorry state that P:RotF is currently in. They have a rich 25 years of EQ game design to learn and get inspiration from and yet they seem to gravitate to all the past game design flaws.
@@micahjoshua8827 Apparently he has streamed Pantheon in the past. However, every time he is playing solo, running around killing trash mobs, and picking flowers. I don't think he's gotten a single character above level 10. It doesn't seem like he's grouped up once or entered any dungeons. Pantheon's solo experience is terrible, but it's terrible because just about every aspect of the game is designed with social play in mind. Playing in groups is where the game really shines. If all I did in game was run around harvesting and leveling my crafting, I'd probably think Embers Adrift was better too.
Yeah it's sad, this game will never be good. Grinding gear games is the only developers I trust atm, Path of exile 2 looks like it might be pretty good. Then maybe EQ3 will surprise us eventually but I'm not holding out any hope.
cant find things to harvest never had a issue with it there spots you can climb to that are full off them and nice things to discover graphic wise it aint new world or any other game true they had to make some loss totaly agree quests are maybe not worth it but then things still change and EA does not mean its tech ready everything is still open to change maybe group with some folk and try to see the fun sounds like you guys start playing a game with negativity you cant change this system for any mmo reason is its part of mmo
@@SuperBitsandBob realy i never had that problem neither did the folks grouped with me there is a army farming them that could be the problem i can agree on that
@@GameReaver85 yes and how many hours did you play where did you climb to did you do any dungeons because if you did play 24/7 you cant never seen it all
Thank you for putting out this content, Bob. As a P99 enjoyer yet someone who doesn't have their hand on the pulse of new releases, I appreciate having your insight. Ultimately i'll make my own determination eventually, but having watched you for years, you are a pretty great filter for me to determine if something is worth my time. Thanks.
Okay, solo life is boring. What about grouping and dungeon crawling?
This is the game's foundation you're playing. While a foundation is just the beginning in which the game will be developed upon. With that said, the foundation is decent and will improve imo. I find myself having fun dungeon crawling with my group of friends that I play with, and I am looking forward to more diffiult PVE and deeper gameplay.
I think thats kinda the point?
We had 15 years of thousands of games trying to, "Innovate" and "Improve" these games by removing all the things that make them worlds.
MMO's have been stagnant as fuck the last few decades. Its been WoW and FF14 + a few short lived failed games for 15 years.
Pantheon, EverCraft, and Monsters & Memories has reignited the excitement in a huge group of MMO gamers.
Also your big mistake playing these games is trying to do all the things. You dont have to craft, you dont have to gather. If you want to fight and do quests, fight and do quests. Get your gear that way and supplement with purchased gear from crafters. These games are about having roles - not being all the things. You will fail miserably trying to be everything as you level.
What are these games doing different? Pantheon is just exactly the same as many indie MMO's either out or in development. It's no less generic than the games you mention. It is not even a classic MMO and many of the systems come from either survival games or modern MMO's. The numbers these games have, outside of M&M because that is still a mystery, are not good. Players, Classic MMO players, have rejected the MMO design that these games are incorporating.
@@Ssliasil The thing I have mainly been doing while playing, not just this time but before, is the gathering and crafting. I'm am not trying to do everything, just part of the gameplay. The issue is the loop is bad.
@@SuperBitsandBob the basic game loop was only recently implemented
If the point is being even slower and worse than everquest I’m not sure what market they’re even targeting. If the original audience of mmos find it too slow I think they missed the mark.
I think most MMOs don't have a target audience they're trying to appeal to, or at least don't understand them. Many MMOs that are being developed lack a vision, hence why they just copy mechanics from each other. People who like EQ P99 mostly do for nostalgia reasons over sensible ones. Nostalgia makes the grinds and tedium more bearable.
What actually keeps a player's interest in any game is incidental exploration and incidental rewards for doing so. Everquest didn't feed you information, and scouring the internet didn't always guarantee the answer you were looking for (back then). There was mystery in the world that fed curiosity, which in turn made players engaged. Now we live in an era of datamined roadmaps and entire wikis that remove the fog that once made a world feel magical. Even EQ P99 eventually feels formulaic rather than organic when the path for best experience become the new norm, and the tiers of armors being so well documented that it becomes a linear task checklist.
The other half of the equation is the M's in MMOs. People have graduated away from conventional typing (like old EQ) toward more voice comms like discord. Sadly this breaks immersion in the game world as people prioritize out of game communications rather than in-game ones. It is the reason the in-game world can feel dead even with 100s of people around you. A possible solution would be integrating a voice comm in game via character positioning or something similar, but even then it wouldn't really rival pre existing comms that most players are already a part of. Everquest's quest system with bracketed [trigger words] also helped to create an avenue of player interaction. It forced normalizing typing rather than clicking (and not reading) and allowed other players to see the actions their fellow players were taking around them.
Camps were very much a staple to EQ. Letting players create their own areas (and name them) was part of the fun of wandering through zones in EQ. MMOs today opt for instances and pre titled areas on built in maps. It may provide clarity, but like I said earlier, the magic is gone. Worse still when mobs are level capped by region. No excitement, no danger, just slog.
The approach of making things more digestible was started by WoW, and every MMO since has followed suit. It gives a flash in the pan fun experience (Theme park MMO). Yes, everything is clearly laid out for the player to understand and made easily approachable, but when the "problem" is so simplified that anyone can "beat" it, the player actually gets discouraged from doing so. (mainly because the solution is already revealed to them and the only thing left is just doing it..aka grind and tedium) . EQ allowed multiple solutions to problems (Group compositions were VERY flexible and had a wide array of tools to get jobs done) but didn't hold your hand or force you to find the "right " one.
I see the same problems happening time and again with new MMOs over and over ad nauseum. They don't design a living world. They design a rigid board game and wonder why people aren't interested long term...or even initially.
Saying EA, Pantheon, M&M are copying each other, and that it's a bad thing, is insane to me. We've had 2 decades of MMO's building off of WoW's framework and slowly being diluted to the point where MMORPGs have completely lost the RPG and are essentially P2W lobby games.
I'm glad that there are a few different options that do the old school MMO gameplay loop and design well. I wish they'd get more funding and population, but I understand this is a very niche genre. These games don't need to change anything, they just need to be completely build, funded, and released as a full game with a healthy population. If you don't like the gameplay loop, then you're not the audience these games are made for.
As someone who was too young to fully get into EQ, someone who considers classic WoW the best game ever made, someone who fell deeply in love with Embers Adrift, I love Pantheon. I recently started playing it after giving up hope. I pledged back in 2017 or 2018 and slowly lost interest after all of the drama and art direction shift, but after playing this game, I see that the foundation is exactly what I hoped it would be. I just hope it doesn't die before it's finished.
I can’t say I’ve payed any of these recent MMOs. Everything you outlined sounds to be spot on and makes perfect sense. I can’t imagine a good argument in favor of any of the gripes you mentioned.
Why have a blue mob that is patently too hard to solo when the message and “con” system is intended to tell you whether you can beat it?
Why limit skill craft ability based on character level?
Why make people fight for scarce resource nodes?
It sounds like pointless additions that were meant to “increase difficulty” but all they effectively did was increase frustration and boredom. From the looks, developers need to listen to your video
You know it's bad when the biggest EQ fans who have been following this project for 10+ years have NO INTEREST in early access testing. I have a "pathfinder" pledge, and I have not bothered to log into this game once. My guess is crafting & gathering is not a priority for VR, considering crafting in EverQuest was bad and gathering was non-existent. That skinning timer is crazy. It pains me to see the animations still appear to be unity asset store quality- swinging the axe, running, all of the animations are lacking the most basic principles of animation. There is no anticipation or lead up, the animations suddenly jerk into action, don't properly loop or transition, everything feels janky. There's a reason many people didn't like Luclin models, and a big part of it was the animations. It has been 10+ years and millions of dollars and VR has failed to execute anything. They are trying to build out an entire world, when they should have been focused on building out a single zone, first.. What ever happened to Project Faerthale? I've spent countless hours following the developer streams, newsletters, etc- the more I see, the more disappointed I become. I would be genuinely surprised if VR ever develops Pantheon to a point where I am eager to log in. It seems like recently after some bad press and TH-cam coverage, and in anticipation for an EA release, VR has only just now started to do what they have should have been doing 10 years ago. Too little, too late, hang it up. No one asked for this. They get caught up on all this BS like the "perception system" and they talk about it for 10 years but it never gets anywhere, and no one wanted it in the first place. No one backed the project because they wanted the perception system. Lol. It actually causes me physical pain to think about Pantheon.
The perception system has been greatly loved by all. It’s not implemented yet but if you don’t want it play any other mmo 🤷🏾♂️
Hey my friend,
Would love to understand how our system in Eternal Tombs can be improved. We've designed our system to avoid some of the pitfalls you've mentioned: having ALOT of nodes (maybe we need more?), 300+ slot inventory system, quest rewards, and allowing most harvestable and craftables to be droppable. We hope by having these things, it allows people to gather who want to gather without going home, buy without harvesting, and harvest/craft when you want to. From a design standpoint, we feel like we've addressed every player scenario. Maybe we missed the point and need an overhaul? Love to hear ideas.
@@triunestudio Hey mate. I confess I have not played the last couple of tests. Sounds good from what you say. More interactions with nodes as opposed to spending lots of time just running around looking is a big help.
@@SuperBitsandBob Perfect. Well whenever you get into the next tests, don't hesitate to throw us some feedback! Thanks for the response.
This is way too negative without merit. You're making too many assumptions about other people and focusing on a small portion of a product to extrapolate into way too much and then present it as fact. I remember you from doing some P99 videos back in the day and you seemed grounded and reasonable so I found this video quite surprising. I would think you would be exactly the kind of person that would understand the appeal of something like P99 and realize that this game is essentially trying to be original EverQuest with modern graphics and a few system improvements, which I certainly want. Not a single thing you mentioned in this video persuaded me.
Looks like a really low budget free to play MMO. I think many years ago when they couldn't secure investors to fund Brads vision, it was never going to work.
They did secure investors. That's why it's working now.
@@Section.9 Real investment. It's clear as hell this project hasn't received the investment Brad aimed for. Look at how long it's taken to get to this point. 10 years for something that's miles behind OG EQ1, EQ2 and VG:SoH.
I think this is a very fair and insightful critique of not only Pantheon, but also the broader MMO industry. I haven't really enjoyed any new MMO in the past 15 years. I value immersion in these types of games and the artificial barriers set up to create a time sink are mostly immersion breaking for me. I haven't tried Pantheon out yet, and I do want to give it a fair shot if I find myself with more free time.
I'm curious, what is your opinion on games like Pax Dei? It sounds like you are looking for a more pure sandbox experience. I'm in this sort of catch 22 scenario where I want more immersion that often comes from a sandbox, but I also do not have a lot of free time to enjoy those types of games.
MY fav MMO is Classic EQ up to Velious. When the development started on games like this we were told these would be spiritual successors but ultimately have turned out nothing like those classics. I was hoping for the wave of indie MMO's to have the same design philosophy and depth of combat and immersion as EQ but with different lore and some maybe more modern sensibilities.
Pax Dei didn't really do it for me. It was too much a survival/PvP game than a RPG.
I disagree. This isn't very insightful at all. He apparently has spent no time doing his homework on the WIP systems of the game.
@micahjoshua8827 I don't think I'm familiar with that either. What is WIP? I viewed this video as insightful because it matches how I've felt about MMOs for a long time. So it is insightful towards my experience towards the broader industry. Again, I haven't tried out Pantheon yet and definitely will before I come to any conclusions.
Let's be honest all modern MMOs are basically single-player games with a shared world. How many of you started a new modern MMO to get tired of it after 2-3 weeks. Why do most people stop playing these modern MMOs after one month?
Num 1 there is no feeling of community.
Num 2 You get rewarded with too much gear making rewards not exciting.
Num 3 A lot of the content you can do it solo making Grouping not existent.
Num 4 Too easy to level making levelling a character meaningless.
Number 5 Making it Super easy to teleport all over the World Map removing the magic of exploration and making the world Small.
Well, Pantheon has addressed all these issues that's all I care.
the discord community is toxic garbage so far too
If you enjoy old school MMO's like Everquest then by all means give Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen a try...chances are that it will be your cup of tea. There, saved you 23 and a half minutes of hearing this guy whine about how he doesn't like the game.
And it will only cost you money to see if it is your cup of tea. What can go wrong.
@@SuperBitsandBob If a one time 40 dollar purchase is make or break for someone then playing games isn't something that person should be doing. At least it isn't a monthly fee.
@ its more about picking where you spend your money. I wouldn’t tell someone to buy this game just in case you might like it. It’s not responsible as someone making a video talking about it.
love Pantheon, gets the EQ formula correct.
How so? It is no longer anything like classic EverQuest. Unless you are referring to whatever the hell it is that EQ is today.
I cannot fathom how some people think this, this game fails to capture EverQuest magic on almost every level. Even Vanilla WoW was closer to EQ than this.
@@lvsoad22probably because they played it how it’s intended instead of just gathering nodes
I still cry for Vanguard: Saga Of Heroes :)
Vanguard was so good 😅
It was a buggy mess and Brad launched it too soon. That's how the first iteration of Pantheon would have ended up.
Thanks, Bob. Have a good day!
If you play a game like 7 Days to Die, you go from the humility of cowering in the corner of a shack at night to mowing down hundreds of zombies from a fortress---that you built. In alot of ways I think the survival genre of organic progression has supplanted what EverQuest was back in the day.
Wth kind of a take is this?
It’s a group focused adventure game and you just decided to only focus on crafting quests
What about trying different classes? Group comps? Different dungeons?
It’s not just nodes
Choices are great.
Bob the quest on scavenger you can get upgraded tool which are faster than the bog standard you start off with mate. Eventually you get tool with +1st or dex ect
Yeah I did those quests a few months ago. It's no excuse still for the gathering system to be generic horseshit though. It's just like playing Embers all over again.
@@SuperBitsandBob The biggest issue I have which you highlighted too is they are sticking stuff behind a levelling wall I have already made my feeling clear about this but it appears they are going with that which imo is a major floor too man. I feel their team might be far to small to make important changes to get things right. I guess only time will tell. Game still looks dog shit though right lol?
@@WayneTwitch But this isn’t old skool gameplay. That’s the point. It more like a modern MMO than EQ, UO, AC etc. I’m guessing you’ve never played an old skool mmo though.
Then leave and shut up
@@WayneTwitch How is it like EQ? Gathering loop? No. Crafting? Nothing like it really. Building a resource to use an attack? No. Cooldown numbers ticking down? No. Chevron mobs? No. Burning down blue mobs easy because of loads of cooldown abilities thus no challenge? No. Level based caps for crafting skills? No. I could go on. Have you played any P99? The two games can be compared very accurately right now as P99 is very accurate to up to Velious EQ.
Yes thank you. One of the biggest hurdles to EQ is the barrier to entry is so stupid, and the horrible UI makes it unplayable
What a huge disappointment. I was really hoping that this was going to work out years ago when Brad was involved.
Brad would have killed it, like he did with Vanguard.
I just want EQ with modern graphics. If it fulfills that role, I'll play it. Those MMO's were moreso chat rooms, if you don't socialize, you'll hate old school EQ, but I miss making friends like through groups. That really doesn't happen where everything is streamlined nowadays, such as WoW (which I love WoW, still play it, but it doesn't fulfill that niche).
Fetch quest, especially ones not streamlined to not go smoothly, sounds like the opposite of these games visions. But I’m not surprised, McQuaid passed 5 years ago this month. The Anderson brothers haven’t headed what became Ember’s Adrift for some years too and the whole vision went with them (RIP Saga of Lucimia). I backed the Kickstarter for Pantheon ten years ago, and maybe I’ll play it eventually but the game has looked worse over time. As much as I love EQ, these new ones seem to be missing something.
Pantheon needs community support and additional funding. They decided to address core performance issues which could impact raiding (VINL) and performance (the art overhaul) which ultimately makes their game highly performant. They have their art and creative pipelines in place. I think people should support this game because if they can sell a few million copies or even a few 100,000 copies at launch I believe we will see all of their strategic positioning to add content pay off. I hate the UI though. Instead of judging the game for being generic, I view it is as a great framework in which a game could be built - they are just about $2 million short of building it... personally I hope they get more funding and big community support to keep the genre alive.
No.... Supporting something just for the sake of supporting it is ridiculous. The game is creatively bankrupt. They saw that MnM was making magic with the painted art style and decided to suddenly overhaul their own art style. Pantheon is all derivative
People need to have a reason to pay for it beyond they need our support. I couldn't in good conscience tell someone to spend their money on a game based on something that is currently not available. Too much money has been burned on promises in early access games.
@@SuperBitsandBob I swear, it's the same type of people that cry about Embers Adrift needing support.
@@MYLITTLENINJA757 I am buying the game December 13th, can't wait. Looks awesome. They are doing a creative approach for every bit of the game. So players need to work together for just about everything. Like a smith can have his components enhanced by a jeweler. BTW, crafting is not capped by current level. They kept it uncapped, so you can do crafting/gathering, without adventuring, if that's your thing.
Plenty of games are released without me supporting them. The idea that I donate money to a for profit business panhandling is ludicrous. And, quite honestly, what I am seeing being put forth is lackluster. If they need money there are ways to seek investors etc. If they are unable to find investors there is probably a good reason.
I agree with your take. I haven't even played this but from all the gameplay I watch the main gameplay loop is boring af. Without that it's just a shell of a game.
I've played a bit of M&M and EverCraft and those two seem to have a much better gameplay loop even in their early states.
this is really good feedback for this beta game that is actively looking to improve itself
Pantheon is a wonderful game! Nothing beats the dungeon crawl in this game.
This game is not a solo game! Get a group!
This looks horrific.
If they they even us old school players are going to sit through 20s gather times they're insane.
Just watching how long it took to skin those mobs made me want to quit for you!
You noob
He has the lvl 1 tool
You are a fast food player. Do not go to this game it is not for you
Go bdo or throne and liberty
@@CestPasFaux-kt9zq LOL you're defending this catastrophic waste of time?
Don't worry, I won't be wasting my life in this game if it launches looking like this.
It looks like a carbon copy of Vanguard which failed miserably all those years ago.
I saw they posted a video about their elementals the other day... Literally looks STRAIGHT out of wow. The creativity in this game died so long ago.
I think you nailed it about p99 and people coming back because you can twink. When I think about it it's a big factor for me. Though now last time I was on it was a graveyard so that's why I haven't been back. Why they didn't merge the servers yet and start a new one seems odd
10 years of development for this? DAMN
Incorrect.
@@Section.9 how is this a incorrect statement.
@@Section.9 It's true
I have zero desire to run around in loops trying to level and gather at the same time. F that. I played EQ in 99 and never thought of doing anything boring.
I plan on just playing my class, leveling up by soloing and grouping, and experiencing all the fun content. Exploring and conquering dungeons, leveling, acquiring rare loot etc is what i plan on doing.
Running around for hours killing lv 1 mobs while trying to find nodes to gather, mine, etc to make bags and armor i can just buy or find in the wild is boring af in ANY MMORPG.
I occasionally go back and play DAoC on a private server, but the nostalgia is the only thing truly fueling my fun. I loved the game as a kid, but even I recognize that it's very clunky by modern day standards.
What chance does pantheon have when it feels old and clunky, but doesn't have any nostalgia fueling it?
Patheon died, when Brad passed...
100%
Brad would have killed it like he did with Vanguard. Sorry. But not sorry.
I'm looking for a slower game. If I wanted a spam fest, I would play WOW. I don't wish for mobs that die in less than 10 seconds; I want complex mobs that depend on more than one rotation and group synergy to control and kill. Resources are too abundant in many MMOs, flooding the market and becoming worthless. Crafting is best left to buffs, such as potions, foods and armor, and weapon buffs. I am a huge fan of crafting, but it has many downsides in an MMO, as it has to compete with world drops. This slowdown can lead to more time for community interaction. Not saying that Pantheon will deliver this but the blueprint is there. Embers Adrift could have been something more, but they limited the scope of magic classes and fantasy, which leaves it very generic. Pantheon is working on the perception and acclimation systems that should make the world feel more than just a combat simulator.
I love this game. Not for everyone I guess.
I think pantheon as a mmorpg is going in the right direction. I enjoy playtesting and look forward to see what will happen and when during early access...
its going no where. its just another EQ clone and a shit one
The most tone deaf analysis of an early access pre-alpha game I have ever listened to. Never have understood why people who do not like these types of games ever waste time to review them. I mean every video you have done has had the same negative beat to it about crafting and gathering and being generic. Clearly this is not for you. Go play a crafting focused game that is based on realistic gathering and refining. I enjoy this type of game as do the folks I see running around daily in testing.
Very difficult to listen to. So inaccurate in almost every way.
I think your new player experiance, and the following criticism are good feedback and fair to share. I've been playing the game, on and off, since 2018 so many of your concerns are things that I know are a work in progress, but that is something VR can do a better job of making clear to new players. In the very least, and this was something you didn't touch on much in your video (not necessarily your fault), but Pantheon EA isn't early launch. It's more of a traditional EA that is more inline with apha/beta testing. I think they need to look at the focus on the direction given to new players and lessen the emphasis on crafting and gathering. There is still plenty of work to do and the game is still a couple years away from a full 1.0 release so it might be worth checking back in on at some point.
Pantheon has been on life support for awhile now. They're not launching on Steam EA because the game is ready for EA. They're doing it because they need the money. The game will be DOA. They won't get the players they need to pay for more development.
Let me try to summarize what is so wrong about this review of the game.
First of all, he speaks as if he knows nothing about the intended design of the game. I dont think i heard him mention one time anything about "this is how it currently works, but this is whats planned for how it will work in the future." Because he didnt do any due diligence to read material about the games design and feature roadmap.
Second, he criticizes things like gathering being too slow with very little context of thought to how improved tools, skill raises, and future mechanics such as profession skills and group gathering will affect the pacing of the game. There is potentially even going to be mini games implemented that turn gathering and crafting into interactive affairs. What is currently in the game is only representative of the base line gathering functionality and them tuning it to be appropriate with the layers of systems that are going to be piled on top of it.
His adventuring skills must not be very good, as he claims he cannot find resource nodes, but they are strewn all over the world. If you play during peak US hours on a full server then yeah a lot of them may have been recently gathered and on a respawn timer, but by no means is there any scenario where you cant go out and look for a specific resource and find at least some of it. And besides, unless youre just into the crafting thing, there is no actual need requiring you to partake in gathering at all. Its a voluntary activity that can be bypassed by simply engaging in the player economy to purchase weapons, gear, and food that other players have made. Everything about the games design reinforces this. And the crafting system will be based off of the rarity of the materials used. So to make the best gear, you will have to go get the rarest resources. There will be players who make that their job is being rare resource collectors.
Combat is very much true to spirit of classic EQ, but with a modern spin. Its an amazing balance that scratches the itch of my childhood memories playing EQ, while providing a more streamlined experience that is very engaging, strategic, and difficult. From the way this person talks it seems as if they have never even engaged in group content even once. Go do something like the Goblin Caves while theyre yellow/red cons and come back and tell me with a straight face it wasn't engaging and thought provoking. The way encounter design is handled, and how the aggro systems work are already just as good as some AAA titles. Layered on top of all of that is the class structure and how their different abilities and capabilities over lap. There is a boat load of replayability in just going through the same dungeons again with different combinations of classes in a group.
I am pushing 200-300 hours in this game in the last 9 months and i have STILL yet to experience all of the content that's already inside the game. And when i log in, the social tab even in its rudimentary form makes creating full groups within 5-15 minutes incredibly easy.
Playing the game solo is not the intended focus of the game. All of the footage in this video is just you standing around in the same newbie area whacking single mobs. No exciting group combat with 3-4 enemies and crowd control and close calls of healing going on. This is about as vanilla slow poke of a perspective on the game that's possible to produce.
You have mischaracterized almost every aspect of the game to your audience, and its not only a disservice to this game, but to the MMO genre as a whole. How do you expect new projects to come out and innovate and grow the genre without giving them a fair shake and running people off.
There are fair criticism of the current state of the game and how long its development has taken. But its design framework and roadmap of features is unmatched anywhere else in the MMO space. From monster traits, dispositions, climate acclimation, the perception system, CLIMBING, and much more. I didn't hear you mention any of those things that this foundational build of the game is designed around.
1. The game costs money and is going into EA soon. I pointed out what players get now for their money. Gamers are fed up of promises.
2. I believe I mentioned tools and skill gains increasing gathering speed. Other games have this. It's not alchemy. It is still to slow of a base speed irrespective.
3. There is absolutely no way that there are enough nodes to support an EA (assuming anyone bothers). There were times when I hit autorun and had no node interactions for some time. I...hit...autorun. There are nodes yes but it does not even support a handful of players out gathering. The newbie quests require you to do it. You could just ignore them I guess, but why would you. They are part of the introduction and should be viewed from a new player perspective, not a veteran.
4. While you have childhood memories of playing EQ I have memories from just the other day of playing classic EQ on P99. The combat has some strategy and nuance yes, but it feels nothing like EQ. Classic WoW had some strategy and nuance as well. This feels more like that.
I am confident to state now, looking at your posts, that you are a shill who just wants people to invest in it for your own sake based on your own emotional or financial investment in the project.
For my part. I never said it was a bad game. I said I enjoy the gameplay loop, but that it badly implemented. I also said it is not a classic MMO, which it is not (all MMO's have some strategy to their combat, even modern ones. This is not an exclusive trait to classic MMO's and doesn't automatically qualify a game as such). I have also played the game for some time previously and not just what you see in these recent videos.
Anyway it is what it is. It'll live or die based on how people feel when they play it.
Such a shame. This was a massive hopeful launch for me, but sadly, I believe the death of Brad McQuaid had a massive effect on the development quality.
It’s all based off his design doc
I would imagine it is. I wont put money into it, but im not counting it out. It's too early in my book, theres just too little content out at the moment? Alot of important elements just havent been implemented or fleshed out.
I like Monsters and Memories and Evercraft way better honestly...but just playing this for now.
Too much technical jank and not enough fun jank. We need more fun jank that lets players do things. Old games in general were more like that, even old FPS games had stuff like that, stuff that they took away later that made the games more fun. They should hire you actually Bob, you know MMOs as good or better than anybody, that's for sure!
Honestly the whole crafting and building genre has turned every genre into grinding stone and wood. disgusting practice
Hhmmm. I don't feel like this is a gathering crafting game at all. I think the idea that becoming a master crafter is a rare and difficult thing. The idea is to group together and take a camp or do a dungeon with people. Get to know people force yourselves to get to know people. Make friends. Level up. It does that.
Without the perception system it really does seem like just another game
The UI design kind of reminds me of Dark Age of Camelot for some reason.
This looks better than The War Within.
Wow, a lot of detractors in the comments resort to the same old straw man arguments instead of addressing your grievances with the game. It’s because they don’t have a ground to stand on.
If these ‘classic mmos’ annoy everquest fans, I don’t think they have a future. No amount of ignorance is bliss will change that. These developers really don’t understand the genre.
This is what happens when people not involved with the game in any way make content. I mean really ... the chevrons are simply visual indicators for group mobs. Take a few minutes and actually learn what's going on and upcoming before you trash a pre alpha game lol.
I said that in the video. I know what it is for. We have seen it very recently in Embers Adrift and previously in Vanguard. This is what happens when someone leaves a comment without listening to it properly.
@SuperBitsandBob oh no I listened. Your statement was that it was a copy that indicated tough mobs. There was no statement made saying the icon was to show group mobs vs solo mobs. The entire game is based on eq and vanguard so seeing things come from vg is not at all surprising.
As for all the issues you have with the gathering and crafting, they know it's not right. Right now you can do everything. They will be limiting it to 1 crafting and gathering down the road and doing another pass over the entire crafting system. So it won't be near as bad as it is now. This is testing so it's wide open currently
All in all, the game is in pre alpha. Expecting finished and or polished content is at least a year away, likely more. Bashing games before they have a chance will not help us get the games we want. Instead try giving feedback to make it better because they are listening
@@Enitzu2850 That is what it does though. It just artificially makes them harder.
So making it even less like EQ by only allowing you to have one gathering and crafting skill. Again almost exactly like another indie MMO game currently available. Great.
Also the game has been in development for more than 10 years. I am afraid that doesn't wash for many players. Grossly mismanaging the project and starting again doesn't give you chances.
@SuperBitsandBob it sounds like you really just want eq with updated graphics. I mean I would too honestly but that'll probably never happen. Even if it did, the constant flow of TLPs burned me out long ago.
I'm not arguing that this game hasn't been mismanagement. For the first 5 or so years it was a literal shit show. But they are moving at a steady pace and for what it is now, it's not bad. It's still got a ways to go of course but the bones are there
Wow your lazy can't even get a group
this is still alpha/beta and its very enjoyable
The game is in development for 12 years. stop making excuses.
@@laoch5658not really but ok
100% .. Endlessly generic and requires the players to have a tight group of friends that play together and make their own fun ... this is literally just intended as a chat room with some graphics
dang your the first of like the old timer gamers that said something bad about this
Allot of them are afraid of being attacked by the over zealous community, this game is dreadfully generic and has regressed over the years.
@@JoshuaKoitzsch i mean imo I really dont think eq is all that great either, even that all the old time games talk so great about it
I don't know this game, have no horse in this race, and quite frankly all MMOs look about this level boring to me, but considering that you have what appears to be 3 total skills on your toolbar, I think you probably aren't being very rigorous in your review and analysis of the game.
This video tells me a lot more about your channel and the dedication you have for the content you create, than it tells me anything about this game.
PS I did my best to make this criticism constructive even if it seems a little blunt.
skellingtons!
Everyone is entitled to their opinions and not everyone likes the same things I would definitely say Try it out see if you like it or not.
wait how are you able to play? Doesn't it come out on December 13?
If you pledged the 50$ you can play now and unlimited Since the 25th october until 1st December + EA
6:15 thats suppose to be a charge?
It's boring and generic if you're coming from wow or ff14 it's going to feel painfully slow. To original eq eqoa players the game is great even in its early stages
No one said anything about WoW or FF14. Most of us on this channel still play classic EQ (up to Velious) on P99, Asheron's Call etc. Lot's of original EQ players here not connecting with it at all.
FF14 lol
- launch the game
- launch matchmaking
- spam 9 spells over 20 min in dungeon with random pugs
- loop
yeah Pantheon is more generic for sure.
Joker
@@CestPasFaux-kt9zq Are you slow? I'm not saying a prefer FF14 I have over 30 hours into Pantheon and come from EQOA. I'm saying for people who prefer "flashy" MMOs with fast paced content will likely not be as stimulated by the slower paced game.
I realize you are eager to defend to game, I am too. But if you did not play an original MMO you will likely not understand the flow of the game. That's all I'm saying. So tone your sensitive ass down a notch.
@@zakowski4043 dude I played EQ and have at least 1600 hours on pantheon. I love pantheon
But you cannot say if you come from FF14 , pantheon will be boring and generic
FF14 is boring and generic
Check out Monsters and Memories and EverCraft.
What are you looking for??? Do you want to actually mine ore? VR? I thin your expectations are a bit unrealistic
would you play a text-only copy of project1999? copy in the way the systems work, not a copy of the world. i want to create something new but i dont have a handle on 3d modeling, im a programmer. think 90s MUD
Wow 10 years and these are the graphics?! wtf they should have updated and brought back Vanguard
If that's all you need I hear the cartoon network is good.
an ogre enchanter....explains all i need to know lol
Classes aren’t race locked right now but will be for EA launch
@yokohl6997 *whoosh* right over your head pal. Don't know why you even replied 😂
All that anyone wanted Pantheon to be was EverQuest but with updated graphics and UI
Edit: Seems to me that you think this is a Survival Crafting game for whatever reason. This is an EverQuest successor, you should look that up first rofl
And I'm sure all 12 of those people could keep an entire MMO afloat on their own.
It's not a launch. It's still being developed. EA doesnt mean full game. Quests are still being worked. And I. Fact those quest are only in place to at people aware. By no means is any of it complete. EA means testing.
I am aware of the terminology. The game has been in "testing" now for over a decade.
@@SuperBitsandBobnot really
It has been really tested since January where they open pre alpha for all pledger
You have no clue about this game
Go ashes of creation it is for you
This video... if this is anything, it's definitely not it.
Is Bazgrim still MIA? tsk tsk
The animations bug the living hell out of me, Never Winter Nights from 2002 has cooler combat animations 10x than this game. Wont play, (and neither will enough people to keep the game alive, believe me or dont) if the game continues to look like this in 2024
It's one thing they constantly add. The big issue here is they want all of their races in first. No point in going hard on animations if the models get changed and mess up all that animation work.
Spell effect changes are very prevalent though. Some spell effects are coming along nicely.
they are going to wipe your progress in EA too... Pledges don't get steam keys, It's not looking good, the community is real toxic too
I had no hair on my balls when I heard about this game. 20 years later I still have no hair, but this game looks like ass. What were they doing all those years?
Do not listen to nay sayers, if EQ is what you are here for you will find it in pantheon. These ppl bad mouthing the game are the same shameful ppl that said the game was vaporware
Could you please provide evidence to support your claims, specifically breaking down the key elements of Pantheon and how they compare to EverQuest?
rather than chevrons elite mobs should just con higher..use one system for understanding difficulty.. simplicity is key..
Then you run the issue of is this mob a red con because it's for a group of 6 or is it because it's level 50 and going to chomp us? Cons tell you the level of the mob. Yeah they use a Chevron for now but it's no different than wow using the gold dragon portrait.
@ it should be red con because it has +2 levels meaning +2 hp and attack level modifiers. you formulate your grouping pattern based on a linear representation of hp in hp out which is a color con. chevrons confuse this linearity and introduce an unknown into a fairly easy to understand formula
The graphics look like garbage, it’s taken them 10+ years to get this far, Pantheon is vaporware.
I'm not sure why you feel forced to craft. The crafting quests as they are right now are more or less just an introduction into crafting, and the crafting quests only lead to harder crafting quests. They don't gatekeep you from accessing other non crafting related quests/content as you seem to suggest. The crafting quests also appear to be placeholder and are a means of giving the players gathering tools quickly for playtest purposes. I can definitely agree with you in the sense that the game is a tad bit generic at the moment, but its also not done yet, and it doesnt sound like you've experienced enough of the game to leave an informed review.
for a 2024 MMO game just looks slow and clunky.
I play Everquest classic on Quarm and it runs better than this. I tried explaining that to people how clunky everything is, and they disagreed lol.
I believe it! Until very recently I was playing on a TLP, with the classic graphics on and thought EQ looked better than what I'm seeing here. But chalked it up to nostalgia on my part.
@ozymandias3540 nope...EQ graphics are more immersive like I can see farther distances in almost a zoomed in vision if that makes sense. The new graphics used in these mmos makes it feel really weird on the eyes.
@WayneTwitch trim your neck beard beta...reeeee
@@WayneTwitch And yet still manages to look worse than EQ which is a 25 year old game. Go figure.
This mmo caught my eye lol. But all those new korean mmos are boring as hell and all of them look the same. Like throne and liberty, etc etc.
So it is a better grafix version of an older game, Take my money...
Generic MMORPG X, is what this garbage is.
A noob who has no clue about this game
Exactly dude. This guy doesn't know anything about the intended WIP design of the game.
This game is painfully generic and dull, why play this game when you can play Wow?
@ go wow then
Bye
Um, you mention when it goes into early access - you know it technically already is right?
When you need like 100 pelts to make a head, hand, body, leg, foot bit of armour.... either you're killing like mice and trying to sew them together or its just wasting your life
For me it feels a lot like they downloaded a template, theres a unity template for an MMO, that includes, networking etc, and certainly pantheon screams of that template (Id like to hope not), MnM doesnt feel like they used that template, but at least with MnM there are more nodes, they are much behind pantheon in time, and there and the quests, but there are way more classes, and poential things in the making, Pantheon doesnt show signs of being a lot more than it currently is
PS you tried brigher shores..
I might try and stream it tomorrow.
I've got no problem with the gameplay loop, or how generic it is. I enjoy the simplicity of it. Allowing myself to veg out while listening to music in the background is meditative for me. My biggest issue is the art style.
garbage, just stick to eq. And enchanters were never soloing bosses or dungeons in kunark, necromancers did.
The first version of their game sucked. They burned so much money from investors. This iteration you're playing is merely to prevent them from being sued, so they can claim they designed a game.
uninformed take.
Games trash this is 2024 not 2004. It looks like EQ sadly it will fail. Gamers are fed up with crap they want BOOM!!!! Oh Yeah!!! not some ancient looking game that you have to push your toon off a cliff to get moving.
It truly is sad seeing the sorry state that P:RotF is currently in. They have a rich 25 years of EQ game design to learn and get inspiration from and yet they seem to gravitate to all the past game design flaws.
Guy leveled to 3 as a solo player and has deluded himself into thinking he now knows the entire game.
What a joke.
And is deceiving his viewers in the process.
@@micahjoshua8827 Apparently he has streamed Pantheon in the past. However, every time he is playing solo, running around killing trash mobs, and picking flowers.
I don't think he's gotten a single character above level 10. It doesn't seem like he's grouped up once or entered any dungeons.
Pantheon's solo experience is terrible, but it's terrible because just about every aspect of the game is designed with social play in mind. Playing in groups is where the game really shines. If all I did in game was run around harvesting and leveling my crafting, I'd probably think Embers Adrift was better too.
Try ashes of creation. It’s similar to eq and is lots of fun best mmo potential in years
Enjoy your cash shop
Yeah it's sad, this game will never be good. Grinding gear games is the only developers I trust atm, Path of exile 2 looks like it might be pretty good. Then maybe EQ3 will surprise us eventually but I'm not holding out any hope.
Ashes looks and plays x10 better then Pantheon
cant find things to harvest never had a issue with it there spots you can climb to that are full off them and nice things to discover graphic wise it aint new world or any other game true they had to make some loss totaly agree quests are maybe not worth it but then things still change and EA does not mean its tech ready everything is still open to change maybe group with some folk and try to see the fun sounds like you guys start playing a game with negativity you cant change this system for any mmo reason is its part of mmo
Nope. Did lots of exploring before. There are not spots that are "full of them".
There's as many nodes as there are punctuation marks in your paragraph.
@@SuperBitsandBob realy i never had that problem neither did the folks grouped with me there is a army farming them that could be the problem i can agree on that
@@GameReaver85 yes and how many hours did you play where did you climb to did you do any dungeons because if you did play 24/7 you cant never seen it all
I saw so many mining nodes just sitting out of bounds mocking all the game testers.
vanguard looks better than this and it game out in 2007
I’m seeing a massive about of copium huffing in these comments…lol
Amount*
It’s not cope - there’s a ton of people that play and enjoy the game.
Not an MMO but I think you would like Dark and Darker, would be surprised if you haven't already played it but never seen it on any of your streams.