Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen November 2018 Newsletter

This month’s official newsletter for Visionary Realms’ upcoming MMORPG Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen announces a new pledge drive that should help expand the team with a number of experienced developers. And apart from that, the newsletter talks about the upcoming Pre-Alpha 4 phase, describes Pantheon’s unique perception-based quest system, and shares a bit of lore.

Here’s an overview:

Making video games is not a task for the faint of heart. It’s a cutthroat business that has traditionally left large segments of the development community looking over their shoulders and keeping an eye open for their next opportunity. Visionary Realms is not only creating a game that is community based and community focused, but we are also creating a company in that same vein – focused on building a long term home with a common goal. There have been several high profile shake ups in the gaming world recently and, thanks to your help, we hope to bring some of those affected into our fold. Many of you have already pledged to the game and without you, we wouldn’t be here today, but for those looking for a way to help – or those who have in the past asked what else they can do to show support – we have a new pledge drive active to help us raise additional funds to help grow the team. Now, these aren’t your normal game pledges with a litany of rewards, testing access and forum access, but a special earmarked pledge that will help increase the speed with which we can bring Pantheon to release. As always, we deeply appreciate your support and enthusiasm, you are truly the greatest community in gaming. In the spirit of Thanksgiving here in the States and Canada, every single one of us at Visionary Realms is deeply thankful for each one of you.

November’s Newsletter is packed with content that is sure to interest every segment of our community. Under Wraps serves up a hearty feast of information about Pre-Alpha 4, our newest team member, plans to expand the team further and even a special sneak peek that will leave you as full as a second helping of stuffing. Those that love game design are in for a treat as Chris ‘Joppa’ Perkins dishes up an inside look at the inspiration for the perception system in our newest feature – Behind the Design. The main course of this month’s newsletter is an incredible tale from Justin Gerhart that highlights the lore of Pantheon and will leave you salivating at the chance to take a bite of Faerthale. We wrap it up the with perfect desert, and our longest running feature, this month’s Community Spotlight: Deadshade.

And a look at the perception system:

The Inspiration

The trend of most modern MMOs is to deliver story and quest content to players in a highly linear and directive way. The familiar format generally goes something like: travel to new area, find the hub within the new area where quests are dispensed and gather them all, follow minimap to various quest objectives and do as many as possible in one run before returning back for the grand turn-in. Then do the follow-up quests or move to the next new area and repeat. This rhythm has become synonymous with “the best way to level” and even pre-raid item progression, given that players are often able to go from level 1 to max level using the gear they acquire through quest-leveling alone.

But this formula has also conditioned players to see the game world in a very different way. The grand worlds MMO players inhabit have become less things to be explored for the sake of adventure and discovery. Instead, they have become more like the line connecting two points on a map – if the points are all that matter then the only good line is a short one! And if the points are already determined for me and shown to me, what am I actually discovering? Many of you are familiar with this experience and the mindset it creates, as was I.

The inspiration for the Perception system actually came when I was on a trip into one of the major cities of an MMO I was playing a few years back. I couldn’t tell you why I was in the city, but for some reason my objective-based mentality lifted long enough for me to feel the urge to explore a bit without a destination in mind. So I took my eyes off the minimap and started looking at the world. I let the sights and sounds lead me and they brought me to a part of the city I had never been before.

When I got there, I looked up above me and saw a captivating sight: a network of beautiful, mechanized, metallic constellations that spanned the entire ceiling. They were intricately detailed and fascinating to watch – I spent several minutes running to different parts of the massive room to take it all in. And then a desire hit me, a strong sense that just by rite of being here at this moment I wanted to engage with what I was seeing. The art and level design had done their jobs beautifully – the sight had become an experience and I naturally wanted to engage with what I had found, to know what it was… to know why it was.

Then I remembered… I don’t have a quest for this. After spending a few minutes looking around for quest-givers, I realized there was nothing more I could do here except look at it. A familiar disappointment and boredom set in, my eyes returned to the minimap and I left.

But a seed of an idea was planted under those constellations: there has to be a way to design a quest system that allows for these moments of discovery. A system that gives players tools to find something when they feel like looking, not when they’re told to. A system that could begin to unfold the what and the why of those constellations simply because a player found it and wanted to know more.

And to be truly immersive and expansive, the system would need to work with simple, mundane things as much as it did with grand points of interest. To make the game world feel like more than a line connecting two points, players need to always know that just over that little hill or around that tree could be a discovery that makes it worth looking.

This is what inspired the Perception system – a moment of disappointment mingled with the whisper of a better way. And now, that whisper has grown into the grand idea of how we plan to handle quest and story content in Pantheon.