Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen’s April Producer’s Letter is out now, and there are new roadmap updates, including awaited progress on the network upgrades, an introduction to Techniques in the combat system, and growth.
With work on the game’s network key to the introduction of several features, significant progress on the backend has added to the updates in the roadmap. One of the things they are looking to do soon is to have the frontend crafting interface. These systems aren't ready yet but the backend improvements have set the stage for crafting to be available for playtesting soon.
Also updated this round include work on the zones, concept work on wildlife and enemy mobs in Wild’s End, and progress on the audio including audio hooks for day and night systems and some combat music transitions.
The design team is also working on using combat feedback from QA and have included a rundown of Techniques. Techniques are something new to the ability structure that reflects the decision to split core class abilities and weapons based attacks. This means that each class will have core abilities, they will also have an additional variety of abilities based on the weapon they wield. Techniques will be improved through use of the associated weapon.
Techniques use a resource for all classes that the team is now calling Readiness. Readiness will accrue over time as well as when you use your weapons to deal damage. You can store it to have the chance to use more powerful techniques or to use lower-cost ones in combos.
The Pantheon team wants to make it clear that using Techniques won't dilute class identity. The idea is to let players of the same class have the ability to differentiate themselves and play style. One example given is a rogue might consider using a hammer that can stun a target in case they want to do some crowd control.
For more on the Producer's letter, improvements, and additional developer commentary on everything from answering community questions to telling what the solo experience might be like, head to Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen.
