to the OP: i recently picked up Vanguard and i can tell you there are many many bugs they have yet to fix but it is getting better. due to terrible programing (on Sigils part not SOE) we have numerous bugs and terrible latency (lag). they are slowly fixing this but it really should never have been this bad in the first place. the latest update does sound interesting ( anti hitching code and racial mounts) but there is a long way to go before this is even close to any game around.
the potential is huge and the road is long but there is light at the end of the tunnel for this game.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds -Solid non level based game -Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
To the OP, nice post - you've highlighted some of VGs strong points which make it a unique game in the market place.
I'll take your chellenge though as to why VG is not the best MMO - heres why Im leaving the game at the end of this month:
My $15 VG subscription buys me a team of 10-20 Devs working on content for me. My $15 EvE sub buys me a team of 300+ (granted these are not all Devs) working on expansions, balance, content etc. My Conan sub will buy me something around the 200 mark aswell.
Whats in VG is GREAT, but what else will go in over the next 12 months? imo not much
to the OP: i recently picked up Vanguard and i can tell you there are many many bugs they have yet to fix but it is getting better. due to terrible programing (on Sigils part not SOE) we have numerous bugs and terrible latency (lag). they are slowly fixing this but it really should never have been this bad in the first place. the latest update does sound interesting ( anti hitching code and racial mounts) but there is a long way to go before this is even close to any game around.
the potential is huge and the road is long but there is light at the end of the tunnel for this game.
Any game? Seriously you play vanguard and think it is a long way from being close to any game. Can you name some of these games, and give some reasons maybe? Or do you really think that bugs/performance at all ruin your experience so much that that alone is enough to make it "not even close" to any other game?
That is the reason I quit when I did, this game was a buggy mess. Even though I liked the game I felt it was a waste of my time due to the amount of bugs etc. Since coming back during the holidays I have had my share of bugs (I play a lot), but I am confident in the dev's as they have been fixing these, and I am happy with the responses I have gotten from all of my petitions.
Originally posted by FischerBlack
To the OP, nice post - you've highlighted some of VGs strong points which make it a unique game in the market place. I'll take your chellenge though as to why VG is not the best MMO - heres why Im leaving the game at the end of this month: My $15 VG subscription buys me a team of 10-20 Devs working on content for me. My $15 EvE sub buys me a team of 300+ (granted these are not all Devs) working on expansions, balance, content etc. My Conan sub will buy me something around the 200 mark aswell. Whats in VG is GREAT, but what else will go in over the next 12 months? imo not much
I'll take my 10-20 devs over your 300. I played AoC beta for 3 months, followed that game since it was announced and I still say I would take 5 of my SOE dev's to your 200 Funcom dev's.
Then again I've never been a fan of arcade hack and slash games, battlegrounds pvp, linear worlds, or their version of balance and content.
I wonder how many developers FFXI had when I played it, they hit a million subscriptions I remember and we weren't getting half the content updates Vanguard was. Took two years for chains of promethia to come out, and a lot of us were pretty bored farming Nhidhogg because we had completed everything else on the server.
Considering what has gone in in just the last 6 months: APW, several overland encounters, flying mounts, improved riftways. and many class revamps (which actually weren't a complete disaster). I am confident the trend will only get better over the next 12 months.
Someone in the other thread said that Sigil had created all of these things already, and sony just pushed them out with a few minor fixes. So did Sigil not release these, or for that matter of fact Sony because it might cause bugs? hahaha
Considering all the boss fight scripts were designed by current developers, and have spawned versions bearing the names of those devs I would say that just isn't too plausible.
I also haven't seen where the exact number of dev's the team has has been posted, it might be considerably higher than 20 by now I don't think sony is releasing that information.
Whow. "This game has only 4 hairstyles, therefore its a failure." Really an interesting logic...
Well....thats not entirely accurate.
Each race / sex only has access to 4 right now but many of them are unique to each race / sex. There are several repeats but there are more then 4 total.
In beta you had acces to all of them no matter what race you picked, that was nice. Hopefully we get that back when they revamp it.
The rest of that posters points are just gobly gook.
7. A necessity to have melee in nearly every fight meaning there is no way to get around all area or cone effects by substituting other classes. how is that any good?
8. Important gear progression needed for all classes in order to advance in raid progression. yeah, gear progression!!!! and then, raid progression!!!! sure that is fun... no, it isnt.
10. Mobs that require the completion of an event to be spawned (often in a timed manner). wow, scripted encounters!!! that sure is something exclusive of vanguard, if at least it was a good idea...
Balance 15 Wonderfully balanced classes classes = big fail
for PvE content. separation PVE from PVP = epic fail
Where everyone CAN solo yet you said you always need a melee class...
vanguard is not a bad game. in fact, it is probably the best fantasy game on the market. but class&level based games are a big nono for me.
if it wasnt for EVE and ATITD, this would be the best mmorpg. but old UO and SWG were better also.
- Whats true: every class is valueable for a group.
Warrior/Paladin/Dread Knight: Each of them is a fullfeatured Tank, with different focus
Rogue: Massive DPS without an Aggro Problem, Crit Buff, Evac
Monk: Massive DPS, Fake Death
Ranger: Various buffs, Ranged damage, Kiting
Bard: Massive increase of Party DPS, various tools including CC
Cleric/Shaman: Traditional Healers and Buffers in various subclasses (5 for Cleric, 3 for Shaman)
Disciple: Melee DPS Healer with Fake Death and strong single target healing
Blood Mage: Magic DPS Healer with Damage Tricks
Sorcerer: DPS Specialist, Dispel Specialist; a bad deaggro, so often sucks in party in harder dungeons.
Druid: Magic DPS, Backup Healer, Kiting Specialist, best class to "claim" mobs thanks to their pheomenon abilities.
Psionicist: Crowd Control Specialist, Special Buffs (Mana Regen, Time Trick etc)
Necromancer: Summon, DoTs, Fake Death, Fear etc etc etc
- What is NOT true is that they can all solo equally well. They can solo - one better, others not so much.
Warrior: Probably worst of all. No Steath/Invis/Runspeed/Snare/... what they can is take quite a beating and they have really good DPS in offensive, but thats it.
Paladin: Bottom DPS of all Melee classes, but otherwise fine.
Dread Knight: Like Paladin, but thanks to better dps and their mass lifetap ability, they are substantly better, especially against groups of lower opponents.
Rogue: Being the Sneak specialist and having a runspeed selfbuff they are good at picking fights specifically, but solo they cant use sneak during the fight.
Monk: Ok they hardly every die because of Fake Death, and they have massive DPS, but their bad defense and lack of healing makes it impossible to kill the occasional extra hard opponent.
Ranger: One of the kings of soloing thanks to runspeed, snare, and ranged damage specialist (ranged damage sucks, though), but also massive dps in melee (much better than ranged, but rangers have to way to control aggro when in group).
Bard: Not that great dps on their own. Still they can kite, have great CC, and basically can kill everything.
Cleric: Probably the hardest to kill class of all, especially the Preservation affinity. Not as good defense as Tanks of course, but far superior healing. Doesnt do much damage, though.
Shaman: Another kiter. Defense is not where Clerics are, but can use Shield. Bear Shamans are very tough and still have better dps than Clerics; in fact they are great as backup tanks because they can keep aggro that well. Wolf and Phoenix Shamans can kite and have better dps than Bear.
Disciple: Another solo king. Not as good defense as Cleric, but amazing one target healing, in this case the target is the Disciple himself. And they have quite good dps as well.
Blood Mage: Best Healer DPS, a lot of tricks, but awful CC and can only tank the mob with his lifetaps.
Sorcerer: Best solo DPS, invisibility, sleep; also levitate / waterbreathing etc through summoned rings
Druid: Almost as good DPS as Sorcerer, can also heal, has snare, runspeed buff, and special abilities with "phenomeon" points. Has now a simple and limited "invis".
Psionicist: CC class with "infinite" mana and invisibility.
Necromancer: The solist king. Amazing DPS, tanker summon, can snare and fear, can drain health, can fake death, has invis vs undead (self only), ...
- Also, in raids some classes are not as good as others
Warrior/Paladin/Dread Knight: All differences are definitely gone in a raid. Raid tanks will stay in their own group and cant buff the melee dps group, wont waste their time with healing spells or selfhealing abilities, etc.
Rogue: Raw and best Melee DPS
Monk: Downright required for their amazing ability to separate mobs with Fake Death, also second best Melee DPS.
Ranger: One of the sucker classes for raids. Medium DPS at best because they cant really melee for the lack of any serious aggro control.
Bard: Required, 1 for each group, mainly for their extreme buffing of dps. May partly replace Psionicist if none in raid.
Cleric: Can buff melee dps groups very well. Also generally wanted for their good, tank-like survivability.
Shaman: All 3 subclasses wanted for their buffs. Especially Phoenix for the magic dps group and Bear for the melee dps group.
Disciple: Another set of buffs, amazing tank healer, fake death class (not useful for pulling, but good enough for good chances at surviving a raid party wipe).
Blood Mage: Almost required for their ability to take away 15% from the damage dealt on a tank. Also can heal group with their crit finishers and has another HP buff.
Sorcerer: See Ranger. No aggro control = bad dps compared to Rogue / Monk.
Druid: Emergency Healing, nice buffs, otherwise like Sorcerer
Psionicist: Amazing buffs, great at CC in various places.
Necromancer: Good dps, fake death, absolutely required for their "necromeat" spell that allows to buff tanks with extra HP.
In the sum, required are:
1. Any tank, ideally 3 of them (needed for some places)
2. Preferably at least one of every healer class, ideally 2 for every group
3. Monk
4. Bards (preferably one per group)
5. Necromancer
6. Psionicist
While not so good are:
1. Ranger
2. Sorcerer
Both cannot use their damage because of lack of aggro control.
the potential is huge and the road is long but there is light at the end of the tunnel for this game.
Any game? ...
Originally posted by FischerBlack
To the OP, nice post - you've highlighted some of VGs strong points which make it a unique game in the market place. I'll take your chellenge though as to why VG is not the best MMO - heres why Im leaving the game at the end of this month: My $15 VG subscription buys me a team of 10-20 Devs working on content for me. My $15 EvE sub buys me a team of 300+ (granted these are not all Devs) working on expansions, balance, content etc. My Conan sub will buy me something around the 200 mark aswell. Whats in VG is GREAT, but what else will go in over the next 12 months? imo not much
I'll take my 10-20 devs over your 300. I played AoC beta for 3 months, followed that game since it was announced and I still say I would take 5 of my SOE dev's to your 200 Funcom dev's.
Then again I've never been a fan of arcade hack and slash games, battlegrounds pvp, linear worlds, or their version of balance and content.
I wonder how many developers FFXI had when I played it, they hit a million subscriptions I remember and we weren't getting half the content updates Vanguard was. Took two years for chains of promethia to come out, and a lot of us were pretty bored farming Nhidhogg because we had completed everything else on the server.
Considering what has gone in in just the last 6 months: APW, several overland encounters, flying mounts, improved riftways. and many class revamps (which actually weren't a complete disaster). I am confident the trend will only get better over the next 12 months.
Someone in the other thread said that Sigil had created all of these things already, and sony just pushed them out with a few minor fixes. So did Sigil not release these, or for that matter of fact Sony because it might cause bugs? hahaha
Considering all the boss fight scripts were designed by current developers, and have spawned versions bearing the names of those devs I would say that just isn't too plausible.
I also haven't seen where the exact number of dev's the team has has been posted, it might be considerably higher than 20 by now I don't think sony is releasing that information.
I agree that what has gone in over the last 6 months has been fantastic. APW and the griff quest in particular is challenging and rich content, and some of the best PvE fun Ive ever had. My problem is that as a rational observer I can't escape the feeling that the bowl is running dry for future content rollout. I don't think the next 6 months will be anywhere near as fruitfull as the previous 6. I don't have proof of this - its just my opinion. I'm seeing an over-use of timesinks in place of geniune content additions, and I think the trend will continue.
I want my guild to be busy during 2008 because there is awesome stuff for us to kill/conquer, not because Dressla has a superifical lock to drop 1 egg per week.
A good friend of mine is a 50 Diplomat. I wish they would add more diplo content they have been promising it "forever" but considering forever is a little over a year, I wouldn't say its a broken promise in the world of MMO vocabulary just yet.
Other games have a seamless world, but I would say most are tiny worlds by comparison, with a fraction of the detail.
They have released more content in the past 6 months than they ever did when they had a larger staff. They release content faster than FFXI ever did, more free content than EQ or EQ2 ever did.
Diplomacy is a card game I will give you that, but to say that there is a multitude of games with better combat, classes, and customizations please if you could provide an example of these games. I think that would only be fair.
Those who say VG is dead, are nothing but spoiled gamers who are either new to the genre or have no memory of what MMO's used to be like. Look back at whatever game you are playing now and ask yourself if it did not have similar moments. But your point is lost on me, because I find the game multitudes better than it ever was, and better than any game on the market.
Diplomacy is just an odd twist on removing the content side of quests and putting 50 more levels into the game. It is overly simplistic in that once you have a decent deck built, you never really loose. It is just an exercise in repeating the same strategy over and over. The concept of diplomacy is brilliant and even some of the execution is nice, but it does lack and it is abandoned currently. Saying it might get fixed in the future doesn't count for much.
Vangaurds world isn't as huge as everyone keeps saying it is. It is just well layed out, doesn't contain static barriers between zone lines and uses long range views. It is surely the strongest asset of the game by far, but it isn't gigantic when compared to say WoW for example. The game world gives the feeling of grand size and that is what is important.
VG has released 1 raid dungeon, a few quests and some class balances over the past YEAR. This is all stuff that has been in works for a long time. Cutting it down to a time frame that implies it was all done in a few months is misleading. Saying it released more free content than EQ/EQ2 is silly considering the stupid amounts of things SOE tried to charge money for as a premium service. Over the past year VG has cut about 80% of its staff, fixed performance and released a very small amount of content. Considering they are out of content that was being worked on by the much larger sigil team, time will only tell what they can accomplish.
LOTRO, WOW, EQ2 all have better character customization than VG. VG classes are strong standing on their own, but no more so than WoW/LOTRO, there are just more of them, but they are static. Anyone can customize their characters in those other games to where their characters are much different than the next guy. WoWs 9 classes play like 20+ different classes easily. As for combat, VG doesn't really excel above the competition at all. It is the basic agro mob, push a few specials rinse/repeat. I actually found the combat to be easy, but most solo content is. What I was unimpressed by was the dungeon combat. Any full group of people mowed through the mobs and named mobs just seemed to be more of the same with just more HPs. The only real challenge was when an extra pack of roamers would join into the combat.
I am not a spoiled gamer and certainly not new. You being dismissive of anyone that might not agree with your views in such a way leads me to believe you are not hear to debate your ideas, but rather preach them.
People are not spoiled because other games offer more content, fixes, polish and functionality. Thats what consumers want and people who don't accept less doesn't make them bad gamers. Good for you that you find VG the best game on the market, but honestly most of your strong points match up exactly to what other games offer. Some of them are questionable at best and some are actual weaknesses of the game. You also ignore lots of what is missing in the game or just doesn't deliver where other games do. You rationalize things by assuming teams sizes might be bigger or things might get changed, etc. It is what it is, but to answer your question about other games, no I don't think most games I have played were in the state VG was in its first year, except maybe SWG, but that game had crazy amounts of fun factor.
Vanguard is an ok game that will appeal to a segment of people who are looking for a different feel than most games offer and overall it offers much less of it in quantity, variety and quality. Vanguard is maturing to a point where it might have done really well if it was released today, but lets be honest. It is a year later, the dev team is ravaged and the odds that the game will grow to get more resources is questionable at best. The company operating it has a history of mothballing and downsizing their products to keep things profitable.
Oh, but there was alot of major bug squashing, alot of performance increases and content added the first months after release.
Just not enough in your opinion.
I made a post about my thougth about this, unless my thougths have changed the last months, the post would contained something about that Sigil should have moved focus from bugs and performance into content and fluff already somewhere in march/april. Performance was quite good, the difference from launch and end march is probably bigger then the difference beetween march and today.
Obviously not in the opinion of the vast majority of the other 200k+ subscribers either.
I don't think that even though you said it that you do believe that all people that left the game left because of performance issues and I don't think so either.
But whatever supports your argument, or?
Well, I included the lack of promised game content alongside my mentioning of promised performance increases. I didn't single out bug squashing and performance issues.
True, I don't (not even remotely) understand why I thougth you was refering to only performance.
7. A necessity to have melee in nearly every fight meaning there is no way to get around all area or cone effects by substituting other classes. how is that any good?
Couple reasons off the top of my head:
1. It means that melee actually are not largely excluded as they are in most end games.
2. It allows for more complex and difficult fights, having to deal with all sorts of damage and effects on multiple people rather than just the tank, or the person who pulls aggro. A welcome change from the classic tank, heal, and nuke "bot" raiding that most "raiding" games feature.
posted by apertotes
8. Important gear progression needed for all classes in order to advance in raid progression. yeah, gear progression!!!! and then, raid progression!!!! sure that is fun... no, it isnt.
It is for the thousands of players who played MMO's like Everquest 1. It is the core of what end game MMO worlds have been about for years, and it is done very nicely in Vanguard.
Might not be fun for you, but for classic MMO enthusiasts it is a big reason why we play.
Originally posted by apertotes
10. Mobs that require the completion of an event to be spawned (often in a timed manner). wow, scripted encounters!!! that sure is something exclusive of vanguard, if at least it was a good idea...
Not something that is exclusive to Vanguard, we just do it better than most. Also not available in all games.
Originally posted by apertotes
O Balance 15 Wonderfully balanced classes classes = big fail
for PvE content. separation PVE from PVP = epic fail
Yes when I think of all the wonderful games that have no classes....
Seeing as how not everyone likes PvP, I would say it is an epic win.
Originally posted by apertotes
Where everyone CAN solo yet you said you always need a melee class...
No I said for raiding you need a melee for most fights. A melee, not meaning a specific class= balance. Just as you need A caster, and A healer, and *shocker* A tank. Most any will do.
Most end game fights in other games are caster(nuker), tank, and healer based with a heavy preference set on one or two classes in each archetype.
Originally posted by AdamantineRed Response by Murugan
PvE class balance: - Whats true: every class is valueable for a group..... (goes on to explain every class, no need to argue that since it was in defense of vanguard, however I disagree somewhat on many classes how you described them) - Also, in raids some classes are not as good as others Warrior/Paladin/Dread Knight: All differences are definitely gone in a raid. Raid tanks will stay in their own group and cant buff the melee dps group, wont waste their time with healing spells or selfhealing abilities, etc.
Not true Warriors for example can give buffs to melee group or caster group with their buff that greatly increases either's damage. They are also not all required to be in a main tank group as cross raid heals are rather easy.
Differences are very noticable, and different fights are much easier with different tanks due to their class specific abilities. Rogue: Raw and best Melee DPS Best is such a strong word... Monk: Downright required for their amazing ability to separate mobs with Fake Death, also second best Melee DPS. Necros have FD as well, any necro worth their salt can split pull. They are better solo split pullers than monks, where monks only really have an advantage in two puller situations due to their more frequent and more reliable fd. Ranger: One of the sucker classes for raids. Medium DPS at best because they cant really melee for the lack of any serious aggro control.
Ranger raid balance is something that is being worked on. However they are still useful in raids for stance removal, and their buffs. Also many melee rangers I know do very respectable damage (despite their lack of a useful deaggro, they just need to give more time to build hate at start). Ranged rangers while doing less damage avoid all ae effects, so I would not say are useless.
Bard: Required, 1 for each group, mainly for their extreme buffing of dps. May partly replace Psionicist if none in raid. Nice to have one in every group, only required on 3 fights and that is debatable (I just know I would rather have them).
Cleric: Can buff melee dps groups very well. Also generally wanted for their good, tank-like survivability. Shaman: All 3 subclasses wanted for their buffs. Especially Phoenix for the magic dps group and Bear for the melee dps group. Their buffs are raid wide, and are not needed to be in any specific group unlike bards. Disciple: Another set of buffs, amazing tank healer, fake death class (not useful for pulling, but good enough for good chances at surviving a raid party wipe). Blood Mage: Almost required for their ability to take away 15% from the damage dealt on a tank. Also can heal group with their crit finishers and has another HP buff. Sorcerer: See Ranger. No aggro control = bad dps compared to Rogue / Monk. Druid: Emergency Healing, nice buffs, otherwise like Sorcerer Psionicist: Amazing buffs, great at CC in various places. Necromancer: Good dps, fake death, absolutely required for their "necromeat" spell that allows to buff tanks with extra HP.
Again Necros are not required, all casters also have useful mezzes which you did not mention. In the sum, required are: 1. Any tank, ideally 3 of them (needed for some places) 2. Preferably at least one of every healer class, ideally 2 for every group No wonder you need 3 bards, if you have 2 healers in every group. 3. Monk (not really) 4. Bards (preferably one per group) Preferred and needed are different 5. Necromancer 6. Psionicist see above While not so good are: 1. Ranger 2. Sorcerer Not as good for some fights, better than some for others. Both are getting buffs in near future to make them more equal, but hardly left out of end game as other classes in nearly every MMO.
Also somewhere I saw a comment asking how every class can solo if Melee are needed for everyfight. I said that they were needed for raid fights, and every class can solo. Some better than others (for example those who perform better in groups/raids are generally less adept to soloing) but it is nonetheless possible to solo with each, and very easy to find a group/raid with any class.
Murugan I play Vanguard too and am well versed in the game and it is broke and unfinished. Sure it has some seriously great features not found in any other MMORPG's but you know what those features alone will not get people to play the game.
As I have stated I recently went back to playing WoW after I stopped playing my first free month after its launch. To me it just wasn't my game. No matter what I did I could not get into it. So I kept playing SWG and played EQ2 for a bit. SWG was destroyed by the NGE and I hated the lack of clothing options in EQ2 and gave up on the game(silly reason I know to stop playing...but what can I say it is important to me in an MMORPG). Then Vanguard was came along. I started playing it.
The game brought back that magic feeling I use to get when I played AC. You know the one. I was hooked from day one. I was like OMG this game - this game is the game I have been waiting for. I swa the potential in it right away when others were quick to bash it. I know what this game could be.
Which brings me to my whole point. Do you know why people bash the bejeezes out of Vanguard. It isn't because it has lousy graphics. It's not the game play. Its not the host of classes and races. It's not the large sorta seamless world. It's not that it has lots of ways for travel (which include flying mounts). Nope...it is none of that. What it is is really quite simple. When you compare this games performance with other games Vanguards needs improvement. Granted SOE is working on it and they have succeeded in getting it to run better, but that is not enough and they need to concentrate on making it a priority. Second. Bugs...persistent bugs that have been in since day one. If I have to I will go through and list bugs I know have been here since day one, like falling through the world, getting caught on objects and or getting stuck between objects or invisible attacking MOBs or MOBS that can attack you but you can't attack them because you get the "mob is out of range" message and etc, etc, etc,
What about broken, borked, poorly written and poorly implemented quest that are still in the game?
What about the lack of underwater scenery and quest. Want to talk about polished product. Look no further than WoW to see how water should be done. How the underwater areas should be as important as the land above. What about the lousy swim animations we have in Vanguard. Can it really be that hard to get better animations in the game?
The barren waters in Vanguard. 95% of the waters in VG have nothing in them. Absolutely nothing.
Here is what 60% of World of Warcrafts underwaters look like. Some are full of flora and fauna.
How about Cragwind area or the Northern Reaches and why they and other areas look so slapped together and poorly crafted compared to places like Three Rivers and such? Why does Cragwind have this feel of being slapped together in a hurry and then just tossed into the game? Why? Because it is not finished and it was haphazzardly created to get it into the game. When a player comes across these areas...you scratch you head and think...so this is Cragwind...why did I come to such a boring place. It is boring and it is poorly done. There is nothing and I mean nothing there that says...look at this place and the magic of it....nothing. It is a large empty cave with NPC's just tossed itno it randomly who hand out assinine boring kill quest and fetch quest. On top of that the Cragwind area is so compressed and full of MOBs that you are literally stumbling over one set of MOB's for one particular quest that are butted up against MOB's for a different quest.
It's a real shame that SOE neglects to polish Vanguard the way Blizzard has polished World of Warcraft. If Vanguard were as finished a product as WoW is we wouldn't even be discussing this now would we because Vanguard would be a very popular game.
Set adrift in Bootybay! Help! There are sharks in the waters!
Taela you are burned out on the game. I know it, because i was it twice.
Take it for what it is or yopu burn out fast. Sure, i want the customization from AoC, i want a rich environtment above and below the water surface. I want SOE to throw in 10.000.000 dollar and fix it. But it wont happen. The devs do anything they can to make it playable and it is playable. It has good and almost unique features tbh. Take it for what it is. An early birth that left intensive care just a few weeks ago.
Years back when the WOW hipe was on its peak everyone and his cousin posted screens from his gnome watching the sunset on Azeroth. When i played i couldnt find a piece of beach to watch the sunset without getting aggro from crabs and fishmen.
Taela you are burned out on the game. I know it, because i was it twice. Take it for what it is or yopu burn out fast. Sure, i want the customization from AoC, i want a rich environtment above and below the water surface. I want SOE to throw in 10.000.000 dollar and fix it. But it wont happen. The devs do anything they can to make it playable and it is playable. It has good and almost unique features tbh. Take it for what it is. An early birth that left intensive care just a few weeks ago.
Years back when the WOW hipe was on its peak everyone and his cousin posted screens from his gnome watching the sunset on Azeroth. When i played i couldnt find a piece of beach to watch the sunset without getting aggro from crabs and fishmen.
That's just it...they should if that is what it takes to make it a finished game that will get people to play it.
Murugan I play Vanguard too and am well versed in the game and it is broke and unfinished. Sure it has some seriously great features not found in any other MMORPG's but you know what those features alone will not get people to play the game. As I have stated I recently went back to playing WoW after I stopped playing my first free month after its launch. To me it just wasn't my game. No matter what I did I could not get into it. So I kept playing SWG and played EQ2 for a bit. SWG was destroyed by the NGE and I hated the lack of clothing options in EQ2 and gave up on the game(silly reason I know to stop playing...but what can I say it is important to me in an MMORPG). Then Vanguard was came along. I started playing it. The game brought back that magic feeling I use to get when I played AC. You know the one. I was hooked from day one. I was like OMG this game - this game is the game I have been waiting for. I swa the potential in it right away when others were quick to bash it. I know what this game could be. Which brings me to my whole point. Do you know why people bash the bejeezes out of Vanguard. It isn't because it has lousy graphics. It's not the game play. Its not the host of classes and races. It's not the large sorta seamless world. It's not that it has lots of ways for travel (which include flying mounts). Nope...it is none of that. What it is is really quite simple. When you compare this games performance with other games Vanguards needs improvement. Granted SOE is working on it and they have succeeded in getting it to run better, but that is not enough and they need to concentrate on making it a priority. Second. Bugs...persistent bugs that have been in since day one. If I have to I will go through and list bugs I know have been here since day one, like falling through the world, getting caught on objects and or getting stuck between objects or invisible attacking MOBs or MOBS that can attack you but you can't attack them because you get the "mob is out of range" message and etc, etc, etc, What about broken, borked, poorly written and poorly implemented quest that are still in the game? What about the lack of underwater scenery and quest. Want to talk about polished product. Look no further than WoW to see how water should be done. How the underwater areas should be as important as the land above. What about the lousy swim animations we have in Vanguard. Can it really be that hard to get better animations in the game? The barren waters in Vanguard. 95% of the waters in VG have nothing in them. Absolutely nothing. Here is what 60% of World of Warcrafts underwaters look like. Some are full of flora and fauna. How about Cragwind area or the Northern Reaches and why they and other areas look so slapped together and poorly crafted compared to places like Three Rivers and such? Why does Cragwind have this feel of being slapped together in a hurry and then just tossed into the game? Why? Because it is not finished and it was haphazzardly created to get it into the game. When a player comes across these areas...you scratch you head and think...so this is Cragwind...why did I come to such a boring place. It is boring and it is poorly done. There is nothing and I mean nothing there that says...look at this place and the magic of it....nothing. It is a large empty cave with NPC's just tossed itno it randomly who hand out assinine boring kill quest and fetch quest. On top of that the Cragwind area is so compressed and full of MOBs that you are literally stumbling over one set of MOB's for one particular quest that are butted up against MOB's for a different quest. It's a real shame that SOE neglects to polish Vanguard the way Blizzard has polished World of Warcraft. If Vanguard were as finished a product as WoW is we wouldn't even be discussing this now would we because Vanguard would be a very popular game. Set adrift in Bootybay! Help! There are sharks in the waters!
WoW has been out for a while, and I believe they are adding sea content to this game very soon. I also don't know if I personally would call WoW's sea content truly that since they are all basically land quests that venture into shallow waters (by foot). I would say Vanguard has more sea content since we actually have boats, and islands you can sail out to. I would love for Vanguard to have sea monsters, and wish it was in now. I am not so worried about it though because of the ease it could be implemented, and that since Galleons have been announced it would only make perfect sense that such content would be implemented then (in other words the not too distant future).
If you like another game more than Vanguard then by all means there is nothing wrong with that, that was not the point of this post. We get a lot of posts on this forum bashing our game, since I pay ~30 dollars a month for this game I take exception to some of it.
This thread has shown that the reasons people give for not playing VG go beyond performance or certain broken quests (there are also many very entertaining, and enjoyable quests, more than I ever found interesting in World of Warcraft).
The fact that you play Vanguard too, and are well versed in many of its aspects does not give you any more of a justication to call this game broke and unfinished than mine does to declare it is perfect and without flaws. This thread was intended to give a place for those looking for a new game (the only reason I can think anyone would individual game forums on mmorpg rather than vgplayers), a consolidated point in which they can see the games argued strong points, vs. its argued flaws from which they can make their own decision based off of.
Declarations like this game is broken or unfinished, are nothing more than the misfortunate rantings of those who no longer choose to play it, and while they shouldn't affect someone's usually entirely 2nd hand opinion (the definitive declarations themselves and not the often times substantial reasons behind saying it) of what this game is like they do. (if that didn't give you a headache, nothing will)
So I am gonna have to ask you to take that attitude elsewhere =P (no offense, and the rest of the post was a good read, I just take offense to someone saying I pay to play a broke and unfinished game).
The problem with VG is that it has such a horrible reputation with a lot of gamers. They could fix everything about the game, and there'd still be a large population who wouldn't touch it -- some because of the launch, some because they feel the game has completely moved away from the original vision, and some because it's a SOE game.
If they had 10 million to throw around, they'd most likely be throwing it at the Agency or some other new and promising game. I'm guessing they're still trying to break even on this game. If it still isn't in the black, how on earth could they justify spending another $10 million to "fix" it?
Anwho, all the above is just speculation on my part. Take it for what it's worth.
Taela you are burned out on the game. I know it, because i was it twice. Take it for what it is or yopu burn out fast. Sure, i want the customization from AoC, i want a rich environtment above and below the water surface. I want SOE to throw in 10.000.000 dollar and fix it. But it wont happen. The devs do anything they can to make it playable and it is playable. It has good and almost unique features tbh. Take it for what it is. An early birth that left intensive care just a few weeks ago.
Years back when the WOW hipe was on its peak everyone and his cousin posted screens from his gnome watching the sunset on Azeroth. When i played i couldnt find a piece of beach to watch the sunset without getting aggro from crabs and fishmen.
That's just it...they should if that is what it takes to make it a finished game that will get people to play it.
If you watch SOE developemtn very close you will recognize that they started to do cross development. I am an EQ2 vertran. Trust me, i know what i am talikng about. In EQ2 suddenly "The Agency" quests apeared. Suddenly there was a new skill "Investigation" and quest about the gnome sspying the DI'Zok. The new Kurnak expansion zones are zones but are also based on vanguard chunk technology. Vanguard got buffed with EQ2 technology and well known and balanced game play knowledge.
Its alos obvious that the vanguard devs dont do all on their own. I bet they give some jobs to a different department of SOE and have to wait till its done. The chances are very high that the current charater revamp is done by the SOE SOGA group in asia. They have experience how to do this.
For "The Agency" SOE licenced the unreal 3 engine. Not to far away from the unreal 2.5 engine from vanguard. Sooner or later there will be synergism. Technology and tools will merge. Vanguard runs now smooth on a medicore dualcore and after GU5 anti-hitching probably really smooth. This game has a bright future imho.
Vanguard had a bad launch, it was buggy people left us in droves. The game is now playable and its population is recovered from its worst days, not only that but I plan to argue that it is better than your game. Heck I'll even let you make a case for games not released yet, hype away! Convince me I'm wrong, and that I should sub your game. Or at least put up or shut up and leave our forum with your derails. (this is not in order of importance to me)
Player Created Structures Not just created, but with stages that show for example a crane. These structures take a considerable amount of effort to make as well, especially as they get larger such as Guild halls, Caravels and the upcoming Galleon ships. You can also decorate these houses with about as much detail as you can housing in say EQ2. Vanguard may have player created structures, but it doesn't have the freedom that player structures have in Star Wars Galaxies. From what I remember reading, you are limited to certain areas where you can place your housing. Are your houses instanced in Vanguard? Can you set up your own shop in your own house? Can you use any item from your inventory as decoration items in your house? FFA PVP We got it, it's called Sartok. Wait a second don't all pvp games have FFA servers pretty much? No, FFA means no safe spots, no limits, no rule Free-for-all. SWG lacks a PvP only server, but it does have open world PvP with no instanced PvP. PvP can happen anywhere at anytime. Free-for-all PvP can happen through Guild Wars. There's also possible plans to make cross-server PvP where people from all 26 servers can battle against each other. Complex Mob Scripts Containing: 1. Add spawns, both timed, percentage, random, and curse based. 2. Damage shields, drains, lifetaps, riposte's, immunities, beneficial incoming damage (such as healed by arcane damage etc.), varied resistances, cones (frontal, behind, side), circular aoe's (with varied ranges) both based on the mob and the players (requiring specific spacing in between raid members) 3. Stances and Enchantments which must be removed (sometimes taking multiple classes/casts) 4. Environmental spawns and effects such as blades, poison vents, traps, and plenty of obstacles and props that can and in some cases must be utilized in any successful strategy. 5. Charming, stunning, knock back, tossing (a throw over the bosses shoulder), instant death abilities, aggro loss and wipe, refresh increase, energy/endurance cost increase, casting time increase, and the ability to summon people at range. 6. Abilities and attacks that are not limited to the top of the aggro list (meaning affecting people other than the tank), such as curses that affect people above a certain level on the aggro list, or turn and slap attacks where they will attack someone else high on their aggro list then swap back to the tank. 7. A necessity to have melee in nearly every fight meaning there is no way to get around all area or cone effects by substituting other classes. 8. Important gear progression needed for all classes in order to advance in raid progression. 9. Animations, and NPC warnings that must be paid attention to in order to defeat certain content. 10. Mobs that require the completion of an event to be spawned (often in a timed manner). Over the last 8 months, SWG has had a lot of variation added to NPC's and their abilities, especially in the recent Heroic Encounters. More often then not, you can't just run in and open up on the NPC and expect that it'll die, doing that will likely kill you or others in your group. SWG still needs work done on this to improve the diversity with NPC's and creatures and if what you list true, then VG may have SWG beaten in this department. 18 Man Raiding SWG maxes out with 8 person groups, and that's the limit for instances. However, in PvP it's rather normal for groups form both sides to work together against the opposite faction. There's talk by the Devs to make it possible to combine groups together to create "meta groups" Exploit System Similar to group "skillchains", sympathetic actions etc. Basically ordering skills with others in order to achieve more damage. This too plays an important part in SWG. If you plan things right and have certain professions work together to do abilities together in a certain order you can achieve much better results then just firing everything off as they become available. Balance 15 Wonderfully balanced classes for PvE content. Okay this one is opinion, but it is the first game I could say this about, what about you? Where every class is wanted from 1-end game? Where everyone CAN solo, and where there are multiple classes for every role and no one class is must have for everything. And where multiple classes are not simply clones of each other, but play very differently (my vote for most varied healer classes in any fantasy MMO) Many classes also have several styles or affinities that they can choose from giving further variety. SWG do with some work in this department. Spy has a hard time in PvE due to them relying on cloaking as a defense...and cloaking loses agro on NPCs. But for the most parts, every profession has its own role in combat. Chunk System Rather than zones you have chunks, allowing for a load free world (although there is a slight hang during chunking sometimes, you are generally immune from damage during it and it is very short on most connections). This was a cause of a lot of bugs and lag early on, however Sony (the ones who ruined this game ) have done a lot to improve it, and are still perfecting it. I love the system however regardless of that occasional hang. While traveling on the same planet, it's quite possible to travel without ever seeing a load screen in SWG. Crossing zones on planets isn't noticeable either. Traveling between planets does create a load screen though. 3 Spheres of Advencement Diplomacy, Adventuring and Crafting. All which are a considerable "grind" (if you want to use that term), and have considerable amounts of content. Crafting abilities in SWG are their own profession, they're not secondary to combat professions. There are alternative grinds once you hit the max level of 90 as a combat (or crafter) character, such as your Pilot skills or your GCW ranks (which is a grind that never ends due to rank decay). Mounted, Air, and Sea Player Controlled Travel You can have several land mounts (including upcoming race faction specific mounts 36 in all) , a nice boat , and Flying mounts both of the short term rentable variety, and the uber OMG insane quest line reward ultimate accomplishment type. Although it started with nothing, SWG does have a rather large variety of ground mounts in the form of both creatures and vehicles. Although I wouldn't call them mounts, you also have the option to have 6 different Space ships. 2 of those ships can be POB ships which you can decorate just like a house on the ground, and they can also be manned by your group in various roles. A Large World I would say its easily as big or bigger than most on the market. Fully open to travel with flying open mounts too. I dunno if it'd be the biggest, it'll be pretty hard to challenge SWG to world size. There's 12 different planets, 11 space zones, around 23 different instances and a space station. An Average of added substantial content, at all levels of the game at least every quarter Something any good MMO should strive for, however many do not. Or no longer do. SWG has been getting new content about every 2 months in the form of Chapters. They've also started Game Updates which happen about every 3-4 weeks (on a seperate cycle to Chapters) which includes profession specific content for professions that are in the focus of that Update.
riginally posted by MuruganResponses by Obraik, Responses by Murugan
Vanguard had a bad launch, it was buggy people left us in droves. The game is now playable and its population is recovered from its worst days, not only that but I plan to argue that it is better than your game. Heck I'll even let you make a case for games not released yet, hype away! Convince me I'm wrong, and that I should sub your game. Or at least put up or shut up and leave our forum with your derails. (this is not in order of importance to me)
Player Created Structures Not just created, but with stages that show for example a crane. These structures take a considerable amount of effort to make as well, especially as they get larger such as Guild halls, Caravels and the upcoming Galleon ships. You can also decorate these houses with about as much detail as you can housing in say EQ2. Vanguard may have player created structures, but it doesn't have the freedom that player structures have in Star Wars Galaxies. From what I remember reading, you are limited to certain areas where you can place your housing. Are your houses instanced in Vanguard? Can you set up your own shop in your own house? Can you use any item from your inventory as decoration items in your house?
Thanks for asking, our houses are not instanced. We do not have shops but a broker system. No we cannot use any item however we have various options when placing items, and have many many player created, vendor, and dropped items to choose from when decorating our guild halls and houses. Including ones that affect all other spheres of game play. While placing of buildings is limited to spaces with plots, there are both housing islands (not instanced) as well as plots found throughout areas you will see in your adventures from 1-50. FFA PVP We got it, it's called Sartok. Wait a second don't all pvp games have FFA servers pretty much? No, FFA means no safe spots, no limits, no rule Free-for-all. SWG lacks a PvP only server, but it does have open world PvP with no instanced PvP. PvP can happen anywhere at anytime. Free-for-all PvP can happen through Guild Wars. There's also possible plans to make cross-server PvP where people from all 26 servers can battle against each other.
Vanguard does not have instanced PvP either, its not PvP only it is PvP FFA meaning in cities, in dungeons, in your very own home! We do not have cross server PvP in our game yet, and I do not know of any being planned. In fact there lies the weakness many see in Vanguard PvP as there is not a fight waiting around every corner. Many others would state it as a strength as the feeling of never being safe, while at the same time not having to generally fend off 10 gankers a minute with no safe haven to retreat to is a nice thing on a FFA server such as Sartok. Complex Mob Scripts Containing: 1. Add spawns, both timed, percentage, random, and curse based. 2. Damage shields, drains, lifetaps, riposte's, immunities, beneficial incoming damage (such as healed by arcane damage etc.), varied resistances, cones (frontal, behind, side), circular aoe's (with varied ranges) both based on the mob and the players (requiring specific spacing in between raid members) 3. Stances and Enchantments which must be removed (sometimes taking multiple classes/casts) 4. Environmental spawns and effects such as blades, poison vents, traps, and plenty of obstacles and props that can and in some cases must be utilized in any successful strategy. 5. Charming, stunning, knock back, tossing (a throw over the bosses shoulder), instant death abilities, aggro loss and wipe, refresh increase, energy/endurance cost increase, casting time increase, and the ability to summon people at range. 6. Abilities and attacks that are not limited to the top of the aggro list (meaning affecting people other than the tank), such as curses that affect people above a certain level on the aggro list, or turn and slap attacks where they will attack someone else high on their aggro list then swap back to the tank. 7. A necessity to have melee in nearly every fight meaning there is no way to get around all area or cone effects by substituting other classes. 8. Important gear progression needed for all classes in order to advance in raid progression. 9. Animations, and NPC warnings that must be paid attention to in order to defeat certain content. 10. Mobs that require the completion of an event to be spawned (often in a timed manner). Over the last 8 months, SWG has had a lot of variation added to NPC's and their abilities, especially in the recent Heroic Encounters. More often then not, you can't just run in and open up on the NPC and expect that it'll die, doing that will likely kill you or others in your group. SWG still needs work done on this to improve the diversity with NPC's and creatures and if what you list true, then VG may have SWG beaten in this department.
Oh it is true and the dev's have said repeatedly that they have more tricks up their sleeves, I am glad to hear that SWG is improving in this department. 18 Man Raiding SWG maxes out with 8 person groups, and that's the limit for instances. However, in PvP it's rather normal for groups form both sides to work together against the opposite faction. There's talk by the Devs to make it possible to combine groups together to create "meta groups"
I don't see why SOE could not implement this in SWG they have done it pretty easily in virtually all their other MMO's, raid pvp'ing in an open world is in my opinion the top echelon of pvp in any mmo, too bad so few feature it. While Sartok is sparsely populated this does occur there as well. Exploit System Similar to group "skillchains", sympathetic actions etc. Basically ordering skills with others in order to achieve more damage. This too plays an important part in SWG. If you plan things right and have certain professions work together to do abilities together in a certain order you can achieve much better results then just firing everything off as they become available.
I could not play a game without some sort of sympathetic actions system, I am a firm believer that what makes content in MMO's exciting is cooperation or interaction with others, anything else might as well be played by a macro. Balance 15 Wonderfully balanced classes for PvE content. Okay this one is opinion, but it is the first game I could say this about, what about you? Where every class is wanted from 1-end game? Where everyone CAN solo, and where there are multiple classes for every role and no one class is must have for everything. And where multiple classes are not simply clones of each other, but play very differently (my vote for most varied healer classes in any fantasy MMO) Many classes also have several styles or affinities that they can choose from giving further variety. SWG do with some work in this department. Spy has a hard time in PvE due to them relying on cloaking as a defense...and cloaking loses agro on NPCs. But for the most parts, every profession has its own role in combat. That is really rare, and SWG is lucky if it has general class balance, most MMO's have horrible balance in my opinion. This is most evident in end game heavy MMO's (mostly fantasy) where raiding is often times heavily dependent on a few classes while excluding many others.
Chunk System Rather than zones you have chunks, allowing for a load free world (although there is a slight hang during chunking sometimes, you are generally immune from damage during it and it is very short on most connections). This was a cause of a lot of bugs and lag early on, however Sony (the ones who ruined this game ) have done a lot to improve it, and are still perfecting it. I love the system however regardless of that occasional hang. While traveling on the same planet, it's quite possible to travel without ever seeing a load screen in SWG. Crossing zones on planets isn't noticeable either. Traveling between planets does create a load screen though.
In all fairness traveling cross continent does the same in Vanguard. However I prefer it to zoning in other games, or the general lack of content and complexity in most with an "open world". 3 Spheres of Advencement Diplomacy, Adventuring and Crafting. All which are a considerable "grind" (if you want to use that term), and have considerable amounts of content. Crafting abilities in SWG are their own profession, they're not secondary to combat professions. There are alternative grinds once you hit the max level of 90 as a combat (or crafter) character, such as your Pilot skills or your GCW ranks (which is a grind that never ends due to rank decay).
Pilot skills sounds like a neat system, I like crafting/diplomacy/adventuring being tied to one character though. Then again I come from FFXI and wish classes were instead jobs which could be changed on your main character (I happen to like Murugan, and no matter how much my alts try they can't compete). Mounted, Air, and Sea Player Controlled Travel You can have several land mounts (including upcoming race faction specific mounts 36 in all) , a nice boat , and Flying mounts both of the short term rentable variety, and the uber OMG insane quest line reward ultimate accomplishment type. Although it started with nothing, SWG does have a rather large variety of ground mounts in the form of both creatures and vehicles. Although I wouldn't call them mounts, you also have the option to have 6 different Space ships. 2 of those ships can be POB ships which you can decorate just like a house on the ground, and they can also be manned by your group in various roles. Vanguard has 2 (soon to be 3 hopefully) flying mounts (with several variations each), 36 land mounts as I said, 3 types of ships (with 3 variations each), I know several people who simply collect as many mounts as possible (and plan to get many race mounts as well). That is very cool that your group can help man your ship in SWG, while I don't think that is needed in a fantasy game like Vanguard I hope that Galleons will have a similar role as the focus of group/raid content once/if sea monsters are introduced.
A Large World I would say its easily as big or bigger than most on the market. Fully open to travel with flying open mounts too. I dunno if it'd be the biggest, it'll be pretty hard to challenge SWG to world size. There's 12 different planets, 11 space zones, around 23 different instances and a space station.
I said big, and bigger than most. We don't have multiple expansions yet, though I still think we have a pretty respectable size when you consider the non instanced dungeons and all landmass (I know I wouldn't want to even travel it by land mount, talk about hours spent traveling). An Average of added substantial content, at all levels of the game at least every quarter Something any good MMO should strive for, however many do not. Or no longer do. SWG has been getting new content about every 2 months in the form of Chapters. They've also started Game Updates which happen about every 3-4 weeks (on a seperate cycle to Chapters) which includes profession specific content for professions that are in the focus of that Update.
Glad to see vanguard isn't the only "dead" game that is updating, I said it before and I'll say it again I am confident in SOE's share of the marketplace. Quality over quantity will win out in the end, and I think Sony will rule the market within a few years (on their existing games). Only time will tell, regardless cross game cooperation and their strategy of consolidation and survival keeps me confident that they won't let Vanguard die.
Great post, I tried SWG and it wasn't for me (I started way late admitingly), but nonetheless it sounds like a good and improving game. Comparing it to Vanguard is Comparing apples to oranges, I like oranges but I support people's right to eat apples.
I think it is one of the best fantasy p2p mmorpgs atm.
Problem might be that it is too similar to eq2/wow/lotro. A player that has played one of those games for long time might not join any similar game simply because he is fed up with such style and would like something new. I have shown VG to couple of my friends that play WoW and their comment was not that it has bad quests (are they any different than in those other games really?) not a single negative word about graphics, performance etc. (they don't know SOE as they are typical guys who started with WoW and have no knowledge about other mmorpgs). They said that the game was too similar to WoW. Why should I play WoW with different graphics when I already play such game and enjoy it was a comment I got.
But biggest problem is of course bad reputation. Some people just won't admit the game is ok and as good as other big titles right now. Might be because they expected a lot more at the release (ok, wow client was pretty polished but they had so many problems with servers. We couldn't log in, we had to wait in ques ... ).
And of course there are SOE haters.
I'd recommend eq2/ffxi/wow/lotro/vg equally to anyone wanting to try pve mmorpg.
Pvp is something completely different though. Vanguard wasn't really made for pvp gamers. There is some fun to be had on free for all pvp server. But that is it.
Due to 3 continental brokers, player shops make no sense in vanguard. Housing and boats need a revamp. The housing areas are deserted and dead. If a housing area (one or more of them) would be known as living towns then player shops would make more sense.
They are deserted, because crafters have to work in outposts for faction. Kojan people are forced to leave their home continent to advance in crafting. Those mechanics prevent living towns with crafter facillities and a pub/town hall/temple/what-ever. The lack of decay doesnt force people to go shopping regular. Once at level cap you only need a mender. Has SWG still decay ?
Vanguard is a good game these days. I think it is one of the best fantasy p2p mmorpgs atm.
Problem might be that it is too similar to eq2/wow/lotro. A player that has played one of those games for long time might not join any similar game simply because he is fed up with such style and would like something new. I have shown VG to couple of my friends that play WoW and their comment was not that it has bad quests (are they any different than in those other games really?) not a single negative word about graphics, performance etc. (they don't know SOE as they are typical guys who started with WoW and have no knowledge about other mmorpgs). They said that the game was too similar to WoW. Why should I play WoW with different graphics when I already play such game and enjoy it was a comment I got.
But biggest problem is of course bad reputation. Some people just won't admit the game is ok and as good as other big titles right now. Might be because they expected a lot more at the release (ok, wow client was pretty polished but they had so many problems with servers. We couldn't log in, we had to wait in ques ... ).
And of course there are SOE haters. I'd recommend eq2/ffxi/wow/lotro/vg equally to anyone wanting to try pve mmorpg. Pvp is something completely different though. Vanguard wasn't really made for pvp gamers. There is some fun to be had on free for all pvp server. But that is it.
Vanguard in my opinion is the furthest away you can get from WoW in a fantasy MMO. My guess is WoW is the only fantasy MMO many of them have played, if they played Vanguard through they would see it is vastly different from WoW and anyone who has played Vanguard through and says otherwise is a dolt (at least in my opinion =P)
Due to 3 continental brokers, player shops make no sense in vanguard. Housing and boats need a revamp. The housing areas are deserted and dead. If a housing area (one or more of them) would be known as living towns then player shops would make more sense.
They are deserted, because crafters have to work in outposts for faction. Kojan people are forced to leave their home continent to advance in crafting. Those mechanics prevent living towns with crafter facillities and a pub/town hall/temple/what-ever. The lack of decay doesnt force people to go shopping regular. Once at level cap you only need a mender. Has SWG still decay ?
A lot of people have been asking for decay, I am personally against it. With sillius being the lead dev and crafting lead, I think that crafters have plenty in this game. The best loot in the game requires crafters, and while you don't have to replace the same piece of armor (yuck I would hate this in a fantasy MMO for my uber weapon of rareness to fall apart after a month or two) I wouldn't say crafters are exactly out of work. There are always alts, and those still progressing through their itemization.
I would venture to say that at most maybe a select few have the best crafted gear in the game already. So I think the problem of their being a ceiling or lack of demand for crafters who continue to progress isn't really present in Vanguard currently.
I stopped reading right there. False statement. Everyone knows Sigil were the ones that made a crappy game. Sony is just trying to make it better. Vanguard still sucks and so does your fanboism.
/played-mmorpgs
Total time played:9125 Days, 21 Hours, 29 Minutes, 27 Seconds Time played this level: 39 Days, 1 Hour, 24 Minutes, 5 Seconds
Vanguard had a bad launch, it was buggy people left us in droves. The game is now playable and its population is recovered from its worst days, not only that but I plan to argue that it is better than your game. Heck I'll even let you make a case for games not released yet, hype away! Convince me I'm wrong, and that I should sub your game. Or at least put up or shut up and leave our forum with your derails. (this is not in order of importance to me)
Player Created Structures Not just created, but with stages that show for example a crane. These structures take a considerable amount of effort to make as well, especially as they get larger such as Guild halls, Caravels and the upcoming Galleon ships. You can also decorate these houses with about as much detail as you can housing in say EQ2. Vanguard may have player created structures, but it doesn't have the freedom that player structures have in Star Wars Galaxies. From what I remember reading, you are limited to certain areas where you can place your housing. Are your houses instanced in Vanguard? Can you set up your own shop in your own house? Can you use any item from your inventory as decoration items in your house? One of SWG strengths has always been its houseing. Next to it, Vanguard is the only other game that even comes close to rivaling it. SWG you don't exactly have "total" freedom either, you can only set up houses on specific planets not all of them. So housing placement has its restrictions there as well. The only real "benefit" SWG has over VG that matters is the ability to build player cities. I'm not sure what impact they have in SWG anymore these days. FFA PVP We got it, it's called Sartok. Wait a second don't all pvp games have FFA servers pretty much? No, FFA means no safe spots, no limits, no rule Free-for-all. SWG lacks a PvP only server, but it does have open world PvP with no instanced PvP. PvP can happen anywhere at anytime. Free-for-all PvP can happen through Guild Wars. There's also possible plans to make cross-server PvP where people from all 26 servers can battle against each other. SWG was designed to have a heavy PvP element, VG wasn't. The original intention was to put the GCW in the hands of the player community on every server....but they changed that dynamic so many times now. Complex Mob Scripts Containing: 1. Add spawns, both timed, percentage, random, and curse based. 2. Damage shields, drains, lifetaps, riposte's, immunities, beneficial incoming damage (such as healed by arcane damage etc.), varied resistances, cones (frontal, behind, side), circular aoe's (with varied ranges) both based on the mob and the players (requiring specific spacing in between raid members) 3. Stances and Enchantments which must be removed (sometimes taking multiple classes/casts) 4. Environmental spawns and effects such as blades, poison vents, traps, and plenty of obstacles and props that can and in some cases must be utilized in any successful strategy. 5. Charming, stunning, knock back, tossing (a throw over the bosses shoulder), instant death abilities, aggro loss and wipe, refresh increase, energy/endurance cost increase, casting time increase, and the ability to summon people at range. 6. Abilities and attacks that are not limited to the top of the aggro list (meaning affecting people other than the tank), such as curses that affect people above a certain level on the aggro list, or turn and slap attacks where they will attack someone else high on their aggro list then swap back to the tank. 7. A necessity to have melee in nearly every fight meaning there is no way to get around all area or cone effects by substituting other classes. 8. Important gear progression needed for all classes in order to advance in raid progression. 9. Animations, and NPC warnings that must be paid attention to in order to defeat certain content. 10. Mobs that require the completion of an event to be spawned (often in a timed manner). Over the last 8 months, SWG has had a lot of variation added to NPC's and their abilities, especially in the recent Heroic Encounters. More often then not, you can't just run in and open up on the NPC and expect that it'll die, doing that will likely kill you or others in your group. SWG still needs work done on this to improve the diversity with NPC's and creatures and if what you list true, then VG may have SWG beaten in this department. 18 Man Raiding SWG maxes out with 8 person groups, and that's the limit for instances. However, in PvP it's rather normal for groups form both sides to work together against the opposite faction. There's talk by the Devs to make it possible to combine groups together to create "meta groups" Hooray, both games are raid centric. Both games were intended to be sandboxes, both ended up raiders. Players : 0 , SOE : 2. Who likes raiding anyway? Exploit System Similar to group "skillchains", sympathetic actions etc. Basically ordering skills with others in order to achieve more damage. This too plays an important part in SWG. If you plan things right and have certain professions work together to do abilities together in a certain order you can achieve much better results then just firing everything off as they become available. VG system runs a lot better then SWG's. I'm not sure what the original intention was with SWG system as its been through several major changes...I'll have to log on one of these days and see whats up with that. In the past, especially before and right after NGE, the SWG specials system was a mess. Some professions didn't even work right. But both are basically hotkey / timer mashers anyway. I like VG's system better. Balance 15 Wonderfully balanced classes for PvE content. Okay this one is opinion, but it is the first game I could say this about, what about you? Where every class is wanted from 1-end game? Where everyone CAN solo, and where there are multiple classes for every role and no one class is must have for everything. And where multiple classes are not simply clones of each other, but play very differently (my vote for most varied healer classes in any fantasy MMO) Many classes also have several styles or affinities that they can choose from giving further variety. SWG do with some work in this department. Spy has a hard time in PvE due to them relying on cloaking as a defense...and cloaking loses agro on NPCs. But for the most parts, every profession has its own role in combat. No MMO has "balance" according to the communities. VG was intended as a PvE based game and "balance" has a different meaning. I don't know what you would compare it to anyway to get a sence of balance. FFXI is a group centric game, its balanced according to their design philosophy...can you solo? Hell no. Your not supposted to. It all depends what the intention of the design is. SWG was always a bit weird in this area especially when it had all of those professions. CU tried to line them up into catagories but that obviously didn't work to well....The only thing I recall was as a smuggler, groups needed me to slice into locked doors and such. Other then that....there was the endless b*tching about Jedis and Bounty Hunters and who was more uber. I don't think Smugglers can slice anymore so that eliminated any need for that guy in a group...My roots never worked right in any version of the combat. Chunk System Rather than zones you have chunks, allowing for a load free world (although there is a slight hang during chunking sometimes, you are generally immune from damage during it and it is very short on most connections). This was a cause of a lot of bugs and lag early on, however Sony (the ones who ruined this game ) have done a lot to improve it, and are still perfecting it. I love the system however regardless of that occasional hang. While traveling on the same planet, it's quite possible to travel without ever seeing a load screen in SWG. Crossing zones on planets isn't noticeable either. Traveling between planets does create a load screen though. SWG has "zones" anytime you leave a planet you are "zoning" somewhere else. Flash load screen, your in space....flash load screen, your on a new planet. The seemless planets are nice though. There is no game that is truely "seemless". 3 Spheres of Advencement Diplomacy, Adventuring and Crafting. All which are a considerable "grind" (if you want to use that term), and have considerable amounts of content. Crafting abilities in SWG are their own profession, they're not secondary to combat professions. There are alternative grinds once you hit the max level of 90 as a combat (or crafter) character, such as your Pilot skills or your GCW ranks (which is a grind that never ends due to rank decay). Both have nice alternitives when compared to other games. SWG has a nice space portion...they added in a year and a half or so after launch....crafting, dunno, crafting is crafting, I'm no fan of it in any game. You assemble junk. As long as I can sell it I don't care how its done, faster is better IMHO. I'm not into watching sliders in front of workstations. The one thing SWG did have but mangled time and time again was the entertainer. Yeah, yeah, go ahead and make fun of me, I had a master entertainer also pre-NGE (among other toons) and I didn't AFK / Macro him like all the vets did. I actually played it. I'm stupid like that...but it was fun...in a manly sort of way mind you damn it. But what else is out there? LotR's lol...you can grind or...you can grind. WoW? Kill mobs or don't play. GW, same thing...fight or shut it off. There are only a very small handful of games that have any real alternitives to combat centric gameplay. VG is one of them. The sad truth is MMO players today don't want that sort of thing anymore. They want the linear and directed gameplay like WoW. If the goal or objective isn't clearly spelled out for them they don't know what to do. Mounted, Air, and Sea Player Controlled Travel You can have several land mounts (including upcoming race faction specific mounts 36 in all) , a nice boat , and Flying mounts both of the short term rentable variety, and the uber OMG insane quest line reward ultimate accomplishment type. Although it started with nothing, SWG does have a rather large variety of ground mounts in the form of both creatures and vehicles. Although I wouldn't call them mounts, you also have the option to have 6 different Space ships. 2 of those ships can be POB ships which you can decorate just like a house on the ground, and they can also be manned by your group in various roles. Another strength of SWG that was built up over many years (and partially ripped down a few years ago) If I recall, at launch SWG had Zero mounts and vehicles. A Large World I would say its easily as big or bigger than most on the market. Fully open to travel with flying open mounts too. I dunno if it'd be the biggest, it'll be pretty hard to challenge SWG to world size. There's 12 different planets, 11 space zones, around 23 different instances and a space station. How old is SWG? 2003 launch? I would expect any MMO out that period of time to literally be busting with areas and content. SWG didn't have half of what it does now after its first year. It didn't even have space after its first year. It use to be called "Ground Wars". An Average of added substantial content, at all levels of the game at least every quarter Something any good MMO should strive for, however many do not. Or no longer do. SWG has been getting new content about every 2 months in the form of Chapters. They've also started Game Updates which happen about every 3-4 weeks (on a seperate cycle to Chapters) which includes profession specific content for professions that are in the focus of that Update. Early on, SWG updates were a mess / unpredictable and sparatic especially before and at the beginning of NGE. It wasn't until these new devs started this chapter system that things really started flowing smoothly.
I guess you know your game is in trouble when Obraik comes out to kick at it!!!!
SWG has had over 5 years and 2 major revamps to get to the point its at now. I still don't get why they took out most of that GCW stuff. I liked my scout walker and stormtroopers.
Comments
to the OP: i recently picked up Vanguard and i can tell you there are many many bugs they have yet to fix but it is getting better. due to terrible programing (on Sigils part not SOE) we have numerous bugs and terrible latency (lag). they are slowly fixing this but it really should never have been this bad in the first place. the latest update does sound interesting ( anti hitching code and racial mounts) but there is a long way to go before this is even close to any game around.
the potential is huge and the road is long but there is light at the end of the tunnel for this game.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
To the OP, nice post - you've highlighted some of VGs strong points which make it a unique game in the market place.
I'll take your chellenge though as to why VG is not the best MMO - heres why Im leaving the game at the end of this month:
My $15 VG subscription buys me a team of 10-20 Devs working on content for me. My $15 EvE sub buys me a team of 300+ (granted these are not all Devs) working on expansions, balance, content etc. My Conan sub will buy me something around the 200 mark aswell.
Whats in VG is GREAT, but what else will go in over the next 12 months? imo not much
Any game? Seriously you play vanguard and think it is a long way from being close to any game. Can you name some of these games, and give some reasons maybe? Or do you really think that bugs/performance at all ruin your experience so much that that alone is enough to make it "not even close" to any other game?
That is the reason I quit when I did, this game was a buggy mess. Even though I liked the game I felt it was a waste of my time due to the amount of bugs etc. Since coming back during the holidays I have had my share of bugs (I play a lot), but I am confident in the dev's as they have been fixing these, and I am happy with the responses I have gotten from all of my petitions.
I'll take my 10-20 devs over your 300. I played AoC beta for 3 months, followed that game since it was announced and I still say I would take 5 of my SOE dev's to your 200 Funcom dev's.
Then again I've never been a fan of arcade hack and slash games, battlegrounds pvp, linear worlds, or their version of balance and content.
I wonder how many developers FFXI had when I played it, they hit a million subscriptions I remember and we weren't getting half the content updates Vanguard was. Took two years for chains of promethia to come out, and a lot of us were pretty bored farming Nhidhogg because we had completed everything else on the server.
Considering what has gone in in just the last 6 months: APW, several overland encounters, flying mounts, improved riftways. and many class revamps (which actually weren't a complete disaster). I am confident the trend will only get better over the next 12 months.
Someone in the other thread said that Sigil had created all of these things already, and sony just pushed them out with a few minor fixes. So did Sigil not release these, or for that matter of fact Sony because it might cause bugs? hahaha
Considering all the boss fight scripts were designed by current developers, and have spawned versions bearing the names of those devs I would say that just isn't too plausible.
I also haven't seen where the exact number of dev's the team has has been posted, it might be considerably higher than 20 by now I don't think sony is releasing that information.
http://xivpads.com/?1595680
http://guildwork.com/users/murugan
Well....thats not entirely accurate.
Each race / sex only has access to 4 right now but many of them are unique to each race / sex. There are several repeats but there are more then 4 total.
In beta you had acces to all of them no matter what race you picked, that was nice. Hopefully we get that back when they revamp it.
The rest of that posters points are just gobly gook.
vanguard is not a bad game. in fact, it is probably the best fantasy game on the market. but class&level based games are a big nono for me.
if it wasnt for EVE and ATITD, this would be the best mmorpg. but old UO and SWG were better also.
PvE class balance:
- Whats true: every class is valueable for a group.
Warrior/Paladin/Dread Knight: Each of them is a fullfeatured Tank, with different focus
Rogue: Massive DPS without an Aggro Problem, Crit Buff, Evac
Monk: Massive DPS, Fake Death
Ranger: Various buffs, Ranged damage, Kiting
Bard: Massive increase of Party DPS, various tools including CC
Cleric/Shaman: Traditional Healers and Buffers in various subclasses (5 for Cleric, 3 for Shaman)
Disciple: Melee DPS Healer with Fake Death and strong single target healing
Blood Mage: Magic DPS Healer with Damage Tricks
Sorcerer: DPS Specialist, Dispel Specialist; a bad deaggro, so often sucks in party in harder dungeons.
Druid: Magic DPS, Backup Healer, Kiting Specialist, best class to "claim" mobs thanks to their pheomenon abilities.
Psionicist: Crowd Control Specialist, Special Buffs (Mana Regen, Time Trick etc)
Necromancer: Summon, DoTs, Fake Death, Fear etc etc etc
- What is NOT true is that they can all solo equally well. They can solo - one better, others not so much.
Warrior: Probably worst of all. No Steath/Invis/Runspeed/Snare/... what they can is take quite a beating and they have really good DPS in offensive, but thats it.
Paladin: Bottom DPS of all Melee classes, but otherwise fine.
Dread Knight: Like Paladin, but thanks to better dps and their mass lifetap ability, they are substantly better, especially against groups of lower opponents.
Rogue: Being the Sneak specialist and having a runspeed selfbuff they are good at picking fights specifically, but solo they cant use sneak during the fight.
Monk: Ok they hardly every die because of Fake Death, and they have massive DPS, but their bad defense and lack of healing makes it impossible to kill the occasional extra hard opponent.
Ranger: One of the kings of soloing thanks to runspeed, snare, and ranged damage specialist (ranged damage sucks, though), but also massive dps in melee (much better than ranged, but rangers have to way to control aggro when in group).
Bard: Not that great dps on their own. Still they can kite, have great CC, and basically can kill everything.
Cleric: Probably the hardest to kill class of all, especially the Preservation affinity. Not as good defense as Tanks of course, but far superior healing. Doesnt do much damage, though.
Shaman: Another kiter. Defense is not where Clerics are, but can use Shield. Bear Shamans are very tough and still have better dps than Clerics; in fact they are great as backup tanks because they can keep aggro that well. Wolf and Phoenix Shamans can kite and have better dps than Bear.
Disciple: Another solo king. Not as good defense as Cleric, but amazing one target healing, in this case the target is the Disciple himself. And they have quite good dps as well.
Blood Mage: Best Healer DPS, a lot of tricks, but awful CC and can only tank the mob with his lifetaps.
Sorcerer: Best solo DPS, invisibility, sleep; also levitate / waterbreathing etc through summoned rings
Druid: Almost as good DPS as Sorcerer, can also heal, has snare, runspeed buff, and special abilities with "phenomeon" points. Has now a simple and limited "invis".
Psionicist: CC class with "infinite" mana and invisibility.
Necromancer: The solist king. Amazing DPS, tanker summon, can snare and fear, can drain health, can fake death, has invis vs undead (self only), ...
- Also, in raids some classes are not as good as others
Warrior/Paladin/Dread Knight: All differences are definitely gone in a raid. Raid tanks will stay in their own group and cant buff the melee dps group, wont waste their time with healing spells or selfhealing abilities, etc.
Rogue: Raw and best Melee DPS
Monk: Downright required for their amazing ability to separate mobs with Fake Death, also second best Melee DPS.
Ranger: One of the sucker classes for raids. Medium DPS at best because they cant really melee for the lack of any serious aggro control.
Bard: Required, 1 for each group, mainly for their extreme buffing of dps. May partly replace Psionicist if none in raid.
Cleric: Can buff melee dps groups very well. Also generally wanted for their good, tank-like survivability.
Shaman: All 3 subclasses wanted for their buffs. Especially Phoenix for the magic dps group and Bear for the melee dps group.
Disciple: Another set of buffs, amazing tank healer, fake death class (not useful for pulling, but good enough for good chances at surviving a raid party wipe).
Blood Mage: Almost required for their ability to take away 15% from the damage dealt on a tank. Also can heal group with their crit finishers and has another HP buff.
Sorcerer: See Ranger. No aggro control = bad dps compared to Rogue / Monk.
Druid: Emergency Healing, nice buffs, otherwise like Sorcerer
Psionicist: Amazing buffs, great at CC in various places.
Necromancer: Good dps, fake death, absolutely required for their "necromeat" spell that allows to buff tanks with extra HP.
In the sum, required are:
1. Any tank, ideally 3 of them (needed for some places)
2. Preferably at least one of every healer class, ideally 2 for every group
3. Monk
4. Bards (preferably one per group)
5. Necromancer
6. Psionicist
While not so good are:
1. Ranger
2. Sorcerer
Both cannot use their damage because of lack of aggro control.
Any game? ...
I'll take my 10-20 devs over your 300. I played AoC beta for 3 months, followed that game since it was announced and I still say I would take 5 of my SOE dev's to your 200 Funcom dev's.
Then again I've never been a fan of arcade hack and slash games, battlegrounds pvp, linear worlds, or their version of balance and content.
I wonder how many developers FFXI had when I played it, they hit a million subscriptions I remember and we weren't getting half the content updates Vanguard was. Took two years for chains of promethia to come out, and a lot of us were pretty bored farming Nhidhogg because we had completed everything else on the server.
Considering what has gone in in just the last 6 months: APW, several overland encounters, flying mounts, improved riftways. and many class revamps (which actually weren't a complete disaster). I am confident the trend will only get better over the next 12 months.
Someone in the other thread said that Sigil had created all of these things already, and sony just pushed them out with a few minor fixes. So did Sigil not release these, or for that matter of fact Sony because it might cause bugs? hahaha
Considering all the boss fight scripts were designed by current developers, and have spawned versions bearing the names of those devs I would say that just isn't too plausible.
I also haven't seen where the exact number of dev's the team has has been posted, it might be considerably higher than 20 by now I don't think sony is releasing that information.
I agree that what has gone in over the last 6 months has been fantastic. APW and the griff quest in particular is challenging and rich content, and some of the best PvE fun Ive ever had. My problem is that as a rational observer I can't escape the feeling that the bowl is running dry for future content rollout. I don't think the next 6 months will be anywhere near as fruitfull as the previous 6. I don't have proof of this - its just my opinion. I'm seeing an over-use of timesinks in place of geniune content additions, and I think the trend will continue.
I want my guild to be busy during 2008 because there is awesome stuff for us to kill/conquer, not because Dressla has a superifical lock to drop 1 egg per week.
Vangaurds world isn't as huge as everyone keeps saying it is. It is just well layed out, doesn't contain static barriers between zone lines and uses long range views. It is surely the strongest asset of the game by far, but it isn't gigantic when compared to say WoW for example. The game world gives the feeling of grand size and that is what is important.
VG has released 1 raid dungeon, a few quests and some class balances over the past YEAR. This is all stuff that has been in works for a long time. Cutting it down to a time frame that implies it was all done in a few months is misleading. Saying it released more free content than EQ/EQ2 is silly considering the stupid amounts of things SOE tried to charge money for as a premium service. Over the past year VG has cut about 80% of its staff, fixed performance and released a very small amount of content. Considering they are out of content that was being worked on by the much larger sigil team, time will only tell what they can accomplish.
LOTRO, WOW, EQ2 all have better character customization than VG. VG classes are strong standing on their own, but no more so than WoW/LOTRO, there are just more of them, but they are static. Anyone can customize their characters in those other games to where their characters are much different than the next guy. WoWs 9 classes play like 20+ different classes easily. As for combat, VG doesn't really excel above the competition at all. It is the basic agro mob, push a few specials rinse/repeat. I actually found the combat to be easy, but most solo content is. What I was unimpressed by was the dungeon combat. Any full group of people mowed through the mobs and named mobs just seemed to be more of the same with just more HPs. The only real challenge was when an extra pack of roamers would join into the combat.
I am not a spoiled gamer and certainly not new. You being dismissive of anyone that might not agree with your views in such a way leads me to believe you are not hear to debate your ideas, but rather preach them.
People are not spoiled because other games offer more content, fixes, polish and functionality. Thats what consumers want and people who don't accept less doesn't make them bad gamers. Good for you that you find VG the best game on the market, but honestly most of your strong points match up exactly to what other games offer. Some of them are questionable at best and some are actual weaknesses of the game. You also ignore lots of what is missing in the game or just doesn't deliver where other games do. You rationalize things by assuming teams sizes might be bigger or things might get changed, etc. It is what it is, but to answer your question about other games, no I don't think most games I have played were in the state VG was in its first year, except maybe SWG, but that game had crazy amounts of fun factor.
Vanguard is an ok game that will appeal to a segment of people who are looking for a different feel than most games offer and overall it offers much less of it in quantity, variety and quality. Vanguard is maturing to a point where it might have done really well if it was released today, but lets be honest. It is a year later, the dev team is ravaged and the odds that the game will grow to get more resources is questionable at best. The company operating it has a history of mothballing and downsizing their products to keep things profitable.
Obviously not in the opinion of the vast majority of the other 200k+ subscribers either.
I don't think that even though you said it that you do believe that all people that left the game left because of performance issues and I don't think so either.
But whatever supports your argument, or?
Well, I included the lack of promised game content alongside my mentioning of promised performance increases. I didn't single out bug squashing and performance issues.
True, I don't (not even remotely) understand why I thougth you was refering to only performance.
So I guess my post was moot here.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
Couple reasons off the top of my head:
1. It means that melee actually are not largely excluded as they are in most end games.
2. It allows for more complex and difficult fights, having to deal with all sorts of damage and effects on multiple people rather than just the tank, or the person who pulls aggro. A welcome change from the classic tank, heal, and nuke "bot" raiding that most "raiding" games feature.
It is for the thousands of players who played MMO's like Everquest 1. It is the core of what end game MMO worlds have been about for years, and it is done very nicely in Vanguard.
Might not be fun for you, but for classic MMO enthusiasts it is a big reason why we play.
Not something that is exclusive to Vanguard, we just do it better than most. Also not available in all games.
Yes when I think of all the wonderful games that have no classes....
Seeing as how not everyone likes PvP, I would say it is an epic win.
No I said for raiding you need a melee for most fights. A melee, not meaning a specific class= balance. Just as you need A caster, and A healer, and *shocker* A tank. Most any will do.Most end game fights in other games are caster(nuker), tank, and healer based with a heavy preference set on one or two classes in each archetype.
http://xivpads.com/?1595680
http://guildwork.com/users/murugan
Also somewhere I saw a comment asking how every class can solo if Melee are needed for everyfight. I said that they were needed for raid fights, and every class can solo. Some better than others (for example those who perform better in groups/raids are generally less adept to soloing) but it is nonetheless possible to solo with each, and very easy to find a group/raid with any class.
http://xivpads.com/?1595680
http://guildwork.com/users/murugan
Murugan I play Vanguard too and am well versed in the game and it is broke and unfinished. Sure it has some seriously great features not found in any other MMORPG's but you know what those features alone will not get people to play the game.
As I have stated I recently went back to playing WoW after I stopped playing my first free month after its launch. To me it just wasn't my game. No matter what I did I could not get into it. So I kept playing SWG and played EQ2 for a bit. SWG was destroyed by the NGE and I hated the lack of clothing options in EQ2 and gave up on the game(silly reason I know to stop playing...but what can I say it is important to me in an MMORPG). Then Vanguard was came along. I started playing it.
The game brought back that magic feeling I use to get when I played AC. You know the one. I was hooked from day one. I was like OMG this game - this game is the game I have been waiting for. I swa the potential in it right away when others were quick to bash it. I know what this game could be.
Which brings me to my whole point. Do you know why people bash the bejeezes out of Vanguard. It isn't because it has lousy graphics. It's not the game play. Its not the host of classes and races. It's not the large sorta seamless world. It's not that it has lots of ways for travel (which include flying mounts). Nope...it is none of that. What it is is really quite simple. When you compare this games performance with other games Vanguards needs improvement. Granted SOE is working on it and they have succeeded in getting it to run better, but that is not enough and they need to concentrate on making it a priority. Second. Bugs...persistent bugs that have been in since day one. If I have to I will go through and list bugs I know have been here since day one, like falling through the world, getting caught on objects and or getting stuck between objects or invisible attacking MOBs or MOBS that can attack you but you can't attack them because you get the "mob is out of range" message and etc, etc, etc,
What about broken, borked, poorly written and poorly implemented quest that are still in the game?
What about the lack of underwater scenery and quest. Want to talk about polished product. Look no further than WoW to see how water should be done. How the underwater areas should be as important as the land above. What about the lousy swim animations we have in Vanguard. Can it really be that hard to get better animations in the game?
The barren waters in Vanguard. 95% of the waters in VG have nothing in them. Absolutely nothing.
Here is what 60% of World of Warcrafts underwaters look like. Some are full of flora and fauna.
How about Cragwind area or the Northern Reaches and why they and other areas look so slapped together and poorly crafted compared to places like Three Rivers and such? Why does Cragwind have this feel of being slapped together in a hurry and then just tossed into the game? Why? Because it is not finished and it was haphazzardly created to get it into the game. When a player comes across these areas...you scratch you head and think...so this is Cragwind...why did I come to such a boring place. It is boring and it is poorly done. There is nothing and I mean nothing there that says...look at this place and the magic of it....nothing. It is a large empty cave with NPC's just tossed itno it randomly who hand out assinine boring kill quest and fetch quest. On top of that the Cragwind area is so compressed and full of MOBs that you are literally stumbling over one set of MOB's for one particular quest that are butted up against MOB's for a different quest.
It's a real shame that SOE neglects to polish Vanguard the way Blizzard has polished World of Warcraft. If Vanguard were as finished a product as WoW is we wouldn't even be discussing this now would we because Vanguard would be a very popular game.
Set adrift in Bootybay! Help! There are sharks in the waters!
Taela you are burned out on the game. I know it, because i was it twice.
Take it for what it is or yopu burn out fast. Sure, i want the customization from AoC, i want a rich environtment above and below the water surface. I want SOE to throw in 10.000.000 dollar and fix it. But it wont happen. The devs do anything they can to make it playable and it is playable. It has good and almost unique features tbh. Take it for what it is. An early birth that left intensive care just a few weeks ago.
Years back when the WOW hipe was on its peak everyone and his cousin posted screens from his gnome watching the sunset on Azeroth. When i played i couldnt find a piece of beach to watch the sunset without getting aggro from crabs and fishmen.
That's just it...they should if that is what it takes to make it a finished game that will get people to play it.
WoW has been out for a while, and I believe they are adding sea content to this game very soon. I also don't know if I personally would call WoW's sea content truly that since they are all basically land quests that venture into shallow waters (by foot). I would say Vanguard has more sea content since we actually have boats, and islands you can sail out to. I would love for Vanguard to have sea monsters, and wish it was in now. I am not so worried about it though because of the ease it could be implemented, and that since Galleons have been announced it would only make perfect sense that such content would be implemented then (in other words the not too distant future).
If you like another game more than Vanguard then by all means there is nothing wrong with that, that was not the point of this post. We get a lot of posts on this forum bashing our game, since I pay ~30 dollars a month for this game I take exception to some of it.
This thread has shown that the reasons people give for not playing VG go beyond performance or certain broken quests (there are also many very entertaining, and enjoyable quests, more than I ever found interesting in World of Warcraft).
The fact that you play Vanguard too, and are well versed in many of its aspects does not give you any more of a justication to call this game broke and unfinished than mine does to declare it is perfect and without flaws. This thread was intended to give a place for those looking for a new game (the only reason I can think anyone would individual game forums on mmorpg rather than vgplayers), a consolidated point in which they can see the games argued strong points, vs. its argued flaws from which they can make their own decision based off of.
Declarations like this game is broken or unfinished, are nothing more than the misfortunate rantings of those who no longer choose to play it, and while they shouldn't affect someone's usually entirely 2nd hand opinion (the definitive declarations themselves and not the often times substantial reasons behind saying it) of what this game is like they do. (if that didn't give you a headache, nothing will)
So I am gonna have to ask you to take that attitude elsewhere =P (no offense, and the rest of the post was a good read, I just take offense to someone saying I pay to play a broke and unfinished game).
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The problem with VG is that it has such a horrible reputation with a lot of gamers. They could fix everything about the game, and there'd still be a large population who wouldn't touch it -- some because of the launch, some because they feel the game has completely moved away from the original vision, and some because it's a SOE game.
If they had 10 million to throw around, they'd most likely be throwing it at the Agency or some other new and promising game. I'm guessing they're still trying to break even on this game. If it still isn't in the black, how on earth could they justify spending another $10 million to "fix" it?
Anwho, all the above is just speculation on my part. Take it for what it's worth.
That's just it...they should if that is what it takes to make it a finished game that will get people to play it.
If you watch SOE developemtn very close you will recognize that they started to do cross development. I am an EQ2 vertran. Trust me, i know what i am talikng about. In EQ2 suddenly "The Agency" quests apeared. Suddenly there was a new skill "Investigation" and quest about the gnome sspying the DI'Zok. The new Kurnak expansion zones are zones but are also based on vanguard chunk technology. Vanguard got buffed with EQ2 technology and well known and balanced game play knowledge.Its alos obvious that the vanguard devs dont do all on their own. I bet they give some jobs to a different department of SOE and have to wait till its done. The chances are very high that the current charater revamp is done by the SOE SOGA group in asia. They have experience how to do this.
For "The Agency" SOE licenced the unreal 3 engine. Not to far away from the unreal 2.5 engine from vanguard. Sooner or later there will be synergism. Technology and tools will merge. Vanguard runs now smooth on a medicore dualcore and after GU5 anti-hitching probably really smooth. This game has a bright future imho.
Great post, I tried SWG and it wasn't for me (I started way late admitingly), but nonetheless it sounds like a good and improving game. Comparing it to Vanguard is Comparing apples to oranges, I like oranges but I support people's right to eat apples.
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Vanguard is a good game these days.
I think it is one of the best fantasy p2p mmorpgs atm.
Problem might be that it is too similar to eq2/wow/lotro. A player that has played one of those games for long time might not join any similar game simply because he is fed up with such style and would like something new. I have shown VG to couple of my friends that play WoW and their comment was not that it has bad quests (are they any different than in those other games really?) not a single negative word about graphics, performance etc. (they don't know SOE as they are typical guys who started with WoW and have no knowledge about other mmorpgs). They said that the game was too similar to WoW. Why should I play WoW with different graphics when I already play such game and enjoy it was a comment I got.
But biggest problem is of course bad reputation. Some people just won't admit the game is ok and as good as other big titles right now. Might be because they expected a lot more at the release (ok, wow client was pretty polished but they had so many problems with servers. We couldn't log in, we had to wait in ques ... ).
And of course there are SOE haters.
I'd recommend eq2/ffxi/wow/lotro/vg equally to anyone wanting to try pve mmorpg.
Pvp is something completely different though. Vanguard wasn't really made for pvp gamers. There is some fun to be had on free for all pvp server. But that is it.
No, not instanced.Due to 3 continental brokers, player shops make no sense in vanguard. Housing and boats need a revamp. The housing areas are deserted and dead. If a housing area (one or more of them) would be known as living towns then player shops would make more sense.
They are deserted, because crafters have to work in outposts for faction. Kojan people are forced to leave their home continent to advance in crafting. Those mechanics prevent living towns with crafter facillities and a pub/town hall/temple/what-ever. The lack of decay doesnt force people to go shopping regular. Once at level cap you only need a mender. Has SWG still decay ?
Vanguard in my opinion is the furthest away you can get from WoW in a fantasy MMO. My guess is WoW is the only fantasy MMO many of them have played, if they played Vanguard through they would see it is vastly different from WoW and anyone who has played Vanguard through and says otherwise is a dolt (at least in my opinion =P)
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No, not instanced.Due to 3 continental brokers, player shops make no sense in vanguard. Housing and boats need a revamp. The housing areas are deserted and dead. If a housing area (one or more of them) would be known as living towns then player shops would make more sense.
They are deserted, because crafters have to work in outposts for faction. Kojan people are forced to leave their home continent to advance in crafting. Those mechanics prevent living towns with crafter facillities and a pub/town hall/temple/what-ever. The lack of decay doesnt force people to go shopping regular. Once at level cap you only need a mender. Has SWG still decay ?
A lot of people have been asking for decay, I am personally against it. With sillius being the lead dev and crafting lead, I think that crafters have plenty in this game. The best loot in the game requires crafters, and while you don't have to replace the same piece of armor (yuck I would hate this in a fantasy MMO for my uber weapon of rareness to fall apart after a month or two) I wouldn't say crafters are exactly out of work. There are always alts, and those still progressing through their itemization.
I would venture to say that at most maybe a select few have the best crafted gear in the game already. So I think the problem of their being a ceiling or lack of demand for crafters who continue to progress isn't really present in Vanguard currently.
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"Sony (the ones who ruined this game
)"
I stopped reading right there. False statement. Everyone knows Sigil were the ones that made a crappy game. Sony is just trying to make it better. Vanguard still sucks and so does your fanboism.
Total time played: 9125 Days, 21 Hours, 29 Minutes, 27 Seconds
Time played this level: 39 Days, 1 Hour, 24 Minutes, 5 Seconds
I guess you know your game is in trouble when Obraik comes out to kick at it!!!!
SWG has had over 5 years and 2 major revamps to get to the point its at now. I still don't get why they took out most of that GCW stuff. I liked my scout walker and stormtroopers.