Last week, wesummarized a sometimes prickly Q&A session between the fans and the developers ofPantheon: Rise of the Fallen. As promised, the answers shared during that tête à têtehave continued on with yet another series of insights to share. So as before, here are some of the highlights:
- Crafting is coming, but will have a “first chair and second chair arrangement” instead of relying on one dev to handle the entire system. To that point, it is “largely designed” and needs more fleshing out of its depth and rewards.
- “We are evaluating several options for long-term revenue,” reads an answer about monetization,” but for now, the revenue model remains a simple purchase-once-and-play model during Early Access.”
- There are no plans to scale back the scope of the sandbox’s world, even with the length of time its taken to build out Badia de Cara, but the devs also concede that “some areas less central to the core gameplay and story may need to be deferred until after launch.” That said, zone development is almost always done with other feature launches in mind, and the team is “almost always working on two zones at once.”
- When asked about using AI tools in the game’s development, the response was that Visionary Realms is not anti-AI except when it comes to created artwork. “AI may potentially be used as a tool and creativity force multiplier to accelerate repetitive tasks or to more efficiently realize a human conceived concept. But I am not interested in art born from silicon,” reads a quoted statement from CEO Chris Rowan.
- Finally, the devs reassure that it is still using original design documents from Brad McQuaid written in 2014 and 2015 as a North Star for the MMO’s design to this day.
Other answers discuss reasonable timelines for addressing bugs, the Unity engine, who the target audience is forPantheon, and the vague promise of possibly doing developer livestreams again.
