Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen's Brad McQuaid took part in a special AMA via /r/MMORPG earlier today. During the 'Ask Me Anything' event, Mr. McQuaid fielded a number of community questions including the team's vision for the end game, whether or not there will be instanced raids, how Visionary Realms plans to prevent 'early sunset' ala Vanguard, quest hubs, grind, live events, a player-driven economy and much more.
Question: Some games seem to be going the route where you are limited to certain abilities available to you at a time. For example Guild Wars 2 only allows so many weapon abilities and class abilities. The Secret World only allows something like 8 abilities on the hotbar. Are you taking that route with Pantheon?
Answer: You may be limited to a subset of your abilities for the next encounter, causing you to have to intelligently plan ahead and memorize the spells most effective against the upcoming enemy. Likewise you'll want to mem spells that counter the upcoming mobs abilities. Lastly, you may have some abilities that work synergistically with others in your group. But the key point here is that these tactical decisions can be made right before the actual encounter. Then, say you move on deeper in to the dungeon and are about to confront a different boss, with different abilities and a different disposition, it may make tactical sense to mem different abilities. So yes, you are limited to that extent (you cannot simply use any of your 80+ abilities whenever you wish) because planning for the battle ahead and doing so effectively is key to Pantheon.
Other topics of interest include:
- loot distribution
- mega-server technology
- thoughts on boxing vs botting
- objective-oriented AI
- racial homelands
- alpha / beta timeline
- world design for first or third person?
- Summoner class info (nope!)
- cross-race or cross-faction communication/interaction
- usefulness of crafted gear
- cosmetic items
- advanced combat animations
- completed landmass
- guilds
- MORE!
Check out the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen AMA over at /r/MMORPG.
