Pantheon progress report covers mail, market and combat formulas

Visionary Realms gave a status report on Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen's Combat and Progression Update in a February 6 post credited to Nephele, following up on the dev diary series the studio ran before the holidays and its more recent notes on how the Mastery system's design has shifted. The update is scheduled for spring in the northern hemisphere, fall in the southern.

Mail and market systems

The team finalized detailed technical requirements for the mail and market systems a few weeks before the post — the documentation programmers work from, covering not only player-facing functions but the needs of the customer service team and economic data tracking. Both systems will also carry item-related quality-of-life work, including item linking so players can show one another an item's details, and better item information in tooltips across the game. Programmers have started on the backend for both, with interface windows to follow, and both will be testable when the public test realm opens.

The market is launching deliberately narrow. The studio said it wants the interactions nearly everyone will use — listing an item, browsing listings — to be reliable and responsive with hundreds or thousands of players hitting them simultaneously. More advanced features are planned once the team is confident in stability and performance, including buy orders that other players can fill.

Combat formulas and skills

Much of the update's combat tuning centers on NPC data and a move to unified NPC templates, but the underlying formulas are changing too. The team finalized the math behind hit and miss, dodge, parry and block the week before the post, work it described as small-sounding but consequential enough for combat tuning and itemization to warrant substantial modeling. The goal is for avoidance events to stay meaningful without firing so often against higher-level opponents that a player feels unable to contribute; the studio said it wants groups to be able to attempt yellow-con NPCs and slightly above. The team said it is equally concerned with the other end, where content that turns blue should not immediately become trivial.

Several combat skills are being given more weight. Weapon and spell skills will contribute more directly to landing an attack and, at very high levels, will let a character bypass some of a target's avoidance. Dodge and parry will make a more measurable difference to incoming damage as they rise. The shield skill, which previously did nothing beyond permitting a shield to be equipped, will improve block chance, putting it on similar footing to dodge and parry. The studio said shields are getting a broader overhaul aimed at making them useful without being overpowering, and promised more detail in the following progress update. Actual values remain subject to internal playtesting and observation on the public test realm.

On classes, the team has spent several weeks working out how Mastery fits each class's progression, alongside a review of what skills classes have and how those skills function, and how class resources such as the Warrior's Battle Points are used. Some classes may see changes to the armor and weapons they can use and the levels at which heavier armor unlocks. The stated aim is for horizontal progression through skills and Mastery to matter as much as leveling and gear. The team said its focus for the previous two weeks was the tank classes, both because tanking is central to group play and because the three tanks' differing styles made a useful starting point for the rest of the roster. The team said tanks also need to function in both solo and group situations.