Nov 24th Interview from MassivelyOP

Zarriya

http://massivelyop.com/2015/11/24/interview-pantheon-devs-on-funding-unity-and-the-launch-window/

 

CEO Chris Rowan, CCO Brad McQuaid, and Creative Director Chris Perkins answered questions about:

 - How finances are being handeled now versus before. "Our CFO (Tim Sullivan) is the only person at the company who holds the pursestrings."

 - target playerbase: "MMOs have moved away from a social and community-driven focus where cooperative play is rewarded. This has left a significant audience orphaned, and Pantheon is being developed for that audience."

  - Graphics is being moved from Unity store assets to Pantheon inspired art.

 - We are still on target for the release date. "With proper funding, we plan on releasing Pantheon in 2017."

 

Amathe

The team had answers to the questions. But they were rather dispiriting questions. 

Wizardry

The question about finances has already been dwelled upon far to often, i don't see anyone asking Chris Roberts who has control of 90+ million.To me that was a rude question directed directly at Brad.

Most all of the discussion was stuff we already know,nothing really too deep.
What bothers me is this 3 year plan,sounds too small to me to have the real depth a game needs.However it is doable if they keep it small as in total maps to start but put as much depth into the game and those maps as possible.

I am sure they have all mobs on the same menu system and just check off each's properties,however it vaults a game over the top when individual scripts are made for mobs.AI for example,to design several AI choices for mobs takes a ton of work.

I guess rather than beat around the bush,i just don't want to see an auto generated world with some mobs dotted around tied to quests,that would just be yet another Wow clone.I like the game's lore to come across in the layout and types of mobs and where you find them,etc etc,i like the game to look like some thought went into it and not just another assembly line game.

Sinist

Amathe said:

The team had answers to the questions. But they were rather dispiriting questions. 

Don't get me started on the complete ineptness of gaming journalism these days.

Zarriya

Amathe said:

The team had answers to the questions. But they were rather dispiriting questions. 

I actually liked the questions in the way that they weren't just trying to brown-nose the developers. I see that way too much. I agree that  a couple of questions that were more postive would have been nice-a little bit of balance. The questions were based on the top concerns some people have for Pantheon in forums. What I loved is that VRI was able to take these hard questions and turn them around to positives.

In short I feel VRI said:

 - The monetary support from people are being managed by a person with experience in Finance.
 - Yes we think a lot of people are going to want to play this type of game.
 - Yes we used unity store assets, but the game was early in development then - we are pushing forward with our own Pantheon art now.
 - and my favorite (to address concerns that it will not be made): "we will indeed ship this game, come hell or high water"

edited to correct asset statement.

Amathe

Zarriya said:

 - Yes we used unity stock art, but the game was early in development then - we are pushing forward with our own Pantheon art now.

Can someone explain this to me? Are they saying VRI took a pre-made piece of art like "Castle" that comes with the game engine and held it out as a Pantheon screenshot? Surely that can't be so. Brad has always had excellent artists on his teams. Why would they do that?   

Zarriya

Amathe said:

Zarriya said:

 - Yes we used unity stock art, but the game was early in development then - we are pushing forward with our own Pantheon art now.

Can someone explain this to me? Are they saying VRI took a pre-made piece of art like "Castle" that comes with the game engine and held it out as a Pantheon screenshot? Surely that can't be so. Brad has always had excellent artists on his teams. Why would they do that?   

Bah i wrote that too fast Amathe - thank you I should have wrote "assets from the unity store" and I am editing my post to reflect that.       This paragraph from the article explains it very well:

...It is a common misconception that Unity includes stock assets and/or textures that we are using in Pantheon’s development – Unity does not do the automatic “heavy lifting” that some think it does. Rather, it works as a focal point for third party tools and/or assets, which allows talented artists to create and sell assets through Unity’s Marketplace which developers can purchase and use for prototyping or in the final product. You can see this in many projects currently in development as it’s common practice. For the purpose of prototyping, purchasing assets from the Unity store made sense for us in the beginning of development. It allowed us to research and develop a structured, cohesive art pipeline and direction, while concurrently prototyping holistic aspects of gameplay and level design.

However, our goal has always been to create original, lore-inspired art. Therefore, at this point in development, we are using robust, state-of-the-art software for production of Pantheon-specific art, such as Maya, Zbrush, and Allegorithmic’s Substance Designer and Painter. The images [accompanying this interview] are some recent examples of the original artwork going into the game from our lead world builder, John Diasparra...

You are looking at a game very early in development and one of the things they are working on is art.  IMO its looking pretty nice.

Amathe

Thanks Zarriya. 

waynejr2

Sinist said:

Amathe said:

The team had answers to the questions. But they were rather dispiriting questions. 

Don't get me started on the complete ineptness of gaming journalism these days.

Sponsored Content or journalism?

Sinist

waynejr2 said:

Sinist said:

Amathe said:

The team had answers to the questions. But they were rather dispiriting questions. 

Don't get me started on the complete ineptness of gaming journalism these days.

Sponsored Content or journalism?

Both. While bias will always exist, even when it isn't sponsored content, it will either read like love mail or hate mail, but rarely do you see honest objective evaluations that try to minimize their own personal bias.

Adamantine

The interview is nice, but told me nothing new.