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Jquik
Member Posts: 130
I, like many others started playing VG at release, (or was it beta?) same thing.
So when I finally created my character and joined the game the first thing I noticed as a Lvl 1 Bard is that I did not have a weapon. What? A bard without a weapon or an instrument? For my first quest I was to gather some type of plant stalk. Shouldn't be too hard to gather without a weapon right? Wrong. 90% of the time the plant turns into a mob you must fight off with your fists. let's just say with luck on your side you can only take the mob to about 40% hp before you die. So after a wasted 15-20 minutes of running the plants that turned into mobs into the guards I finally gathered my 7th Kiyo Stalk.
Before turning in the quest i realized I can't see this quest NPC's name. However I can if i look away with him. I later fixed this problem but had to change settings on my graphics card. Anti-aliasing was causing a huge invisible box to be placed in the middle of the screen. It looked as if 2 player names cant be seen next to another. Your name above your players head will cover any next that would be in front of it even if you check the "hide your player name box". In the case of hiding your name the area on the screen is just blacked out instead of actually hiding it. Does not seem like much effort was put into the options and especially the UI.
After messing with the option I realized how bad the graphics were and decided to turn the graphics on Ultra High along with anisotropic filtering to x16 (Running a Quadcore 2.4/ 4GB Ram/ 8600 GTS/ XP). The graphics still looked horrible for what I expected on Ultra High, not to mention my computer was having sudden 1 second lags every time I looked in a different direction. Rain seemed to be the biggest factor in this.
Once I was actually ready to give the combat a try I noticed the main thing I disliked at release was untouched. The combat animations are so kiddie-like. No effort was put into making the animations smooth nor in timing your hit with the animation. Your damage will pop up a second after your sword strikes. The archer animations were even worse.
Now I've played every atleast semi-popular MMORPG on the market right now and I can compare this best with EQ2. It seems that everything is the same in these 2 games except for the fact that EQ2 does it much, much better. The Ultra High graphics actually looked amazing. I was even able to run the game on Ultra high excluding a few lighting and shadow effects here and there.
So to sum it up, as I expected, not much changed in Vanguard, atleast in the areas that matter (Gameplay/Combat animations/Graphics/Bugs).
Comments
obviously a troll post made to scare people away from the best MMO on the market.
Everyone knows VG is FIXED.
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze
I understand how you feel Kenze, here is a great game. Stopped plpaying VG and are in for this fulltime.
http://www.ikariam.com/
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
I started playing VG month ago (retired wow) and I love it.
I will stay with VG even when the new games like AOC, warhammer, aion will be released. They just cant offer me the complexity and diversity like VG can.
Honestly mate0377, how can you know that?
I love VG too, and play this game and EQ2 and intend to keep playing them. But at the same time I feel I really have to at least try AoC and maybe Warhammer. At least Conan looks promising to me, but they have not even launched yet, so it is a little difficult to tell if they have such a deep world as VG has.
I have tired to respond to troll posts like the OPs, but to me VG was good from the get go, but buggy!, now it is better and has much better performance. I have a rather low end system for playing VG but I have never had any problems, but I guess I am just lucky?
posts like these just make me wonder if people really just make stuff up an post it... Honestly I've never seen anything like this. You do start with a weapon and starting fresh I've never seen any of these types of issues...
VG has plenty of real issues without the need to come up with complete garbage...
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Ethion
I will add to the OP.
I too resubbed VG this week, had to DL it again as my mate still has my discs
andI have to say I was quite amazed at some of the bugs and general poor design still with VG.
I made a new toon to try the start out, within 5 mins I found my character stuck in a tent like structure round a campfire, then I crashed which saved me having to "/stuck yes".
Some NPC's have strange polygon issues which cause a part of their body to streatch out in a pointed style, normaly their hands/arms.
I saw one NPC in the Qualia (sp) starting zone whos head scarf/hat bobbed up and down out of sync with the NPC, it looked most odd. When I had killed it the hat stayed suspended in mid air, and the scarf wrap stretched to the floor.
I logged my shaman to have a play with that, and upon returning to one of the outposts in the forest I fell into a what at first seemed to be a trap, a big hole with steep sides just feet outside of the OP fence. My charceter was jumping up and down like a looney and so I had to "/stuck yes". What nutter allowed that sort of terrian?
The animations, as mentioned, are still awful. There is no other word to describe them. The combat is wooden and out of sync. I had the displeasure of renting a gryphon, I say displeasure because it moved with all the grace and charm of a robot with a blown fuse, very poor indeed.
Wood Elf city tree walkways, still get stuck on the odd bit of vine/root that tangles round them. you have to jump over it. Lazy, poor terrain generation.
Quite often it begins to rain, well I can hear it but not always see it. On the one occasion that I did see it, it was very hard to see.
The dreadful lack of terrain shadows! I can't impress upon you how artificial and gaudy the world looks. I didn't think much of it at release, but since then I have been spoiled by LoTRO and Tabual Rasa both of which have fantastic lighting and shadowing. Even WoW puts VG to humiliating shame in this department.
The water effects are just, well missing. Again Lotro, and even Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 (2004) has better water effects!
I noted that completing a quest that shares a "waypoint" with another quest in my log deleted that waypoint from the remaining quest. I had to abandon it and find the quest giver to retake it so I could locate the items I needed.
Character creation options seem to have been slimmed down, not that I ever recall a huge lvl of diversity anyway.
ok, the above issues are not "game breaking", but some of them really do destroy the suspension of disbelief. Some of them are really inexscusable for a game released in 2007, which all in all have left me some what underwhelmed. One of the things that really immerses me in a game is the graphics/animations.
Asside from that, in the small amount of time I have been logged in I have only seen the odd crafter here and there and almost no-one else ( hal and Xeth ) and only seen "Low" listed for the populations on all servers.
I'm not "bashing" the game, just relating some issues I have come accross.
i am running quadcore and 2 bfg 8800's and 4 gig of ram and it runs like a dream my wife comp is duelcore 1 bfg 8800 and 4 gig of ram and still nothing like you have said has happend to us.
Strange ppl are saying with my duo core 2.66 and 8800 card with 4 gb I run the game,did these ppl even play the game at release or even a year later?
did they even check what the reccomended specs for this game were?
I really wished VG did work but anyone that hide's behind "hmm yeah it work's ok for me"is either fooling themselve's or is playing now that the population is so low they cant give an honest opinion,so which is it?
I was looking forward to VG so much and tried it on 2 system's and it still wasnt fun to play even on balanced.
I am sorry for the rant but I cant respect a post that like's to state there is nothing wrong with this game's preformance.
If someone had came up to me in 1980 when I was on my Atari 2600 and said we will be playing games with thousands of people at the same time.I guess my response would have been,"but I only have 2 joysticks"
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/235780/page/8
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze
i am running quadcore and 2 bfg 8800's and 4 gig of ram and it runs like a dream my wife comp is duelcore 1 bfg 8800 and 4 gig of ram and still nothing like you have said has happend to us.
Hmm, I find it strange that you assume I am having performance issues. I do not see how a quad core or 4 gigs of RAM are going to resolve any of the issues I raised, namely poor terrain design in places such as pits that you cant get out off, lacklusture animations, poorly synchronised combat etc, lack of enviromental shadows etcFor the record I am running;
Intel Core2 E6700
Nvidia 8800gts
2gig corsair RAM
I can run VG on my secondary comp (P4 3.2, 2gigs of RAM, 8500 Gx card) which is over 3 years old, with very little problems. My FPS drops in cities and thats the only real problem I have had. I have run across 2 buggy quest in the last month. In fact I hit more issues in SWG with that comp...Its hard to say with EQII as no one is ever playing on my server (crushbone, which my toons where rolled over into after the last server consolidation) so its hard to say.
Granted I can only run VG on medium settings with that PC but as stated, the difference between medium and high isn't all that great. I play on high settings with my main comp and its hardly noticeable to me.
The only real terrain issues I have is I can see from under the world at certain angles in some places. Thats about it, nothing any more unusual then that. You wanna experience some aggravating terrain? Play GW, you stuck on every damn thing.
Now remember, I'm the same guy who trolled and ripped this game to pieces over performance prior to the performance improvements and actually advocated players contact the BBB after the rotten launch this game had. I also hinted at the issues this game was going to have while I was in beta and the fine posters here on this site flamed me time and again that I was wrong and I was a hater of the game.
As far as the OP's post goes...I gotta ask...why are you wasting time here? You are in Conan beta.....
Talk about a day late and 2 dollars short.
No thunderbolt revelations there bro...
The game has issues, but nothing gamebreaking for those who like the gameplay. This is a valid opinion. It is one of the rare games that make you feel like you are in an online world.
But that because the engine doesnt use more then one core and the graphics libs are still build for nvidia3 cards. So the single CPU has to do all the work. But EQ2 is still a playable game performance wise
So far GU5 is working pretty well. I have been playing on test and for me it has helped reduce hitching quite a bit but there is still some. According to the devs this is not all the changes to address hitching so there is still hope for even more improvements. Some people are however reporting significant problems. Hopefully something that can be fixed without breaking the antihitching stuff. For some reason my computer seems to not be having any problems with the test server version.
I'm still hoping to see them eliminate hitching with this update. In my opinion that would be the single greatest improvement in VG since release.
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Ethion
But that because the engine doesnt use more then one core and the graphics libs are still build for nvidia3 cards. So the single CPU has to do all the work. But EQ2 is still a playable game performance wise
First off, no.VG's graphics aren't even in EQ2's league IMO. If you turned both game's setting's to maximum then obviously EQ2 is going to get less FPS due to better graphics/animations/lighting effects etc.
I didn't lag in Qeynos harbor but you know why you did? More people play the game and thats the most populated zone in the game. I rarely saw anyone when playing VG.
But that because the engine doesnt use more then one core and the graphics libs are still build for nvidia3 cards. So the single CPU has to do all the work. But EQ2 is still a playable game performance wise
First off, no.VG's graphics aren't even in EQ2's league IMO. If you turned both game's setting's to maximum then obviously EQ2 is going to get less FPS due to better graphics/animations/lighting effects etc.
I didn't lag in Qeynos harbor but you know why you did? More people play the game and thats the most populated zone in the game. I rarely saw anyone when playing VG.
EQ2's graphics are good for when the game came out but seriously they are not as nearly as good as VG. Now I'd maybe agree that EQ2's artwork is better meaning how they take advantage of their graphics capabilities. They do a very good job with that and the animations are better. But the technical capabilities of VGs graphics are far better.
EQ2 is also somewhat handicaped by their old design and they are severely cpu bound. It is simply impossible to play EQ2 on the highest graphics quality and eq2 is unable to render large numbers of players in the same area with good quality. Instead they become functional but ugly blob models... Go look at the eq2 forums there is a reference to one of the eq2 developers who talks about the engine limitations and how they expected CPUs to keep getting faster and designed the game to use the CPU to do many graphics calculations to be compatable with older cards. Now they need to redesign the engine to make it work with newer graphics hardware since that wasn't build in and it is a very big project that may never happen.
VG has some issues for sure but I can play VG with maxed settings with a dozen or more other players around and get better fps then I can with eq2 on one notch above medium settings and even then I have to turn off floral displacement. Floral displacement will turn some areas into single digit fps zones like enchanted lands. Floral displacement on, fps drops to 10-15, turn it off and it jumps up to 35-40. All this is on 1920x1200.
I have a pretty top end system with quad core, 8800gtx, 4gb ram, etc.
If the VG devs fix the hitching issue then the VG engine will be superior in every way to EQ2. Which isn't to say it will be better yet. They still need to fix the animations, and redo some of the art. Kahl is a nice example of what can be done with some talent redoing the artwork in an area.
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Ethion
Frankly I don't care if VG is ever fixed. I played in the beta and three months into the live game and was a "true believer" I then left...then after six months and constant reassurances from the ranger team lead that things were about to be redone for my favorite class..I payed for a month to retry.The class was still broken as the devs seem to have zero understanding of the class.I have moved on...and not looking back.
LOL a "true believer".
Its a game man. Not a religion.
LOL
But that because the engine doesnt use more then one core and the graphics libs are still build for nvidia3 cards. So the single CPU has to do all the work. But EQ2 is still a playable game performance wise
First off, no.VG's graphics aren't even in EQ2's league IMO. If you turned both game's setting's to maximum then obviously EQ2 is going to get less FPS due to better graphics/animations/lighting effects etc.
I didn't lag in Qeynos harbor but you know why you did? More people play the game and thats the most populated zone in the game. I rarely saw anyone when playing VG.
Hey, i didnt bash EQ2. Its just about performance. And fps wise vanguard is way ahead of EQ2.Better graphics/animations are in the eye of the beholder. From a technical point of view it doesnt matter. It takes as much CPU cycles to render a "bad" animation then to render a "good" animation. Its about processing data, not how good or bad they look on the screen. The CPU and GPU doesnt care about the quality of the data.
I agree. Vanguards lighting is weak. EQ2's too. I d wish it had the lighting of LotRo. Oh, and EQ2 still drops shadows for some reasons.
I personally dont care to much about lag. Online games will always have some lag sometimes. Vanguard has crowded areas too. Just it has no such main hubs like qeynos harbor. Thats because the traveling is different in vanguard.
What i wish most for vanguard is a FSAA sampling and fashion slots
Even the few bugs still in the game, VG is best MMO currently on the market. Complete freedom, beautiful realistic looking world, non linear game play are the strong sides of the game.
Where themepark games try to hide that they are copying WOW, games like Mortal Online and Darkfall make no attempt to hide their inspiration
______\m/_____
LordOfDarkDesire
I held on to my hope (longer than I should have) and gritted my teeth at the mismanagement by SOE. I really gave Sony a clean slate with this game. I was willing to give them a chance to repair the ill will I held about their running of an MMO. They failed spectacularly. Their goal is to make money, and thats fine, but making money is their ONLY goal. I don't think SOE even likes or understands MMOs or MMO players.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Give a fish a man and he will eat for a month!
Well, thankfully AoC is around the corner, and will be what Vanguard SHOULD have and PROMISED to be!
Contray to the popular Trolls - Age of Conan is NOT all INSTANCED nor does it require GRINDING. You can Solo all the way to 80 if that is your prefrence.
I played Vanguard ALOT, and it dissapointment GREATLY!! I have only played the PVP Beta weekend so far for Age of Conan, and I must say I had more fun in 5 mins playing Age of Conan, than the 10 months I gave to Vanguard!
Maybe AoC is fun. But read your frist sentence again. Are you sure ? Whatever was promissed by Sigil has nothing in common with AoC. Absolutely nothing. Even if AoC turns out to be superior to vanguard its a completely different game. If you think AoC will be the game Sigil promissed you are up for a rude awakening.