A company that cares for these changes, Chris is an arrogant fool who bulldozes his choices mind you its better than the idiot they have managing/supporting the EQ2 community, there all off to Rift anyway.
SOE didn't 'ruin' Vanguard. Sigil pushed it out too fast because they had money problems and the game wasn't finished.
Soe cut the funding which forced sigil to release the game. Even ignorning how the game launched SOE has owned vanguard for almost 4 years and the game is basically just in a state of being ready to release. I doubt you will find many vanguard players who applaud soes efforts with the game and don't feel upset with how they managed the game once they took over.
That's not true Daff. SOE never funded Vanguard's development; SOE just agreed to publish the game. That being said my problem with SOE is that I felt they should of offered to fund Vanguard's development to a more complete state or should not of agreed to publish it. SOE agreeing publishing Vanguard in the incomplete state that is was in was nothing but immoral and a continued illustration how they have no consideration for their player base or providing a working quality product. I agree with your over all sentiment about SOE, but it's important to be intellectually honest (not that I think you weren't being so, I think you were just mistaken).
Not to derail the thread, but yes soe funded the game when microsoft cut the funding. Once micorsoft cut funding sigil immediately cut a deal with soe, because there was no money to be had elsewhere. There is no mention anywhere or ever of anyone other than soe giving money to sigil after soe cut the project up to when soe purchased the sigil.
John Smedly told the NYTimes ''Microsoft had wanted to launch this thing in July of 2006,'' Mr. Smedley said. ''We felt like the game needed more time, and we have given it more time, but at some point enough is enough, and we have to ship the game and start generating revenue.''
Brad McQuaid told F13.net "After we split from Microsoft - because obviously we couldn't ship the game in an unready state - we had to go out and do something. Find money to make the game that we could and all dreamed about. We cut a deal pretty quickly so that we could get into SOE's E3 kiosk. We ended up having to meet payroll and to pay the bills."
Ex-sigil employee told F13.net "When the merger happened SOE embraced us, and spent a LOT of money on us right away. It felt really good."
I mean a fighting game, meant for consoles, is a groundbreaking MMO?
It has no crafting, no housing, no real incentives to form a guild and no point in PvP territorial control. All it has is a fighting game type combat and that has existed in non MMOs for decades.
Sorry but that does not make it groundbreaking.
While the term "groundbreaking" is subjective, DCUO is definitely a step forward in the MMO genre. There is territorial control, and there are reasons players should form guilds. The PvP (when it wasn't bugged the first 2 and a half weeks) is the best I've played apart from a shooter, and the major characters voice acting is extremely well done.
I haven't had this much fun with a combat system in an actual, non hub based MMO since Fallen Earth, and that was just a pseudo shooter, but it was just enough that it took skill to PvP and tactics to win.
Most MMOs have crafting, but it usually isn't very good, most MMOs don't have housing either. All MMOs have combat, and in comparison to DCUO, DCUO blows every MMO away with their style of combat in a fully open non instanced world, and that is a major accomplishment even if players that don't like the style of combat disagree.
Territorial control? Please elaborate on this one... what would be the point of a bunch of villains camping a specific place? There is no resource in this game that is concentrated in particular areas and which is worth holding. And even if there was there is no system to lay claim to such area so you would have to camp it 24/7 which is not reasonable.
So again, this leaves combat. There is nothing ground breaking of taking a fighter/arcade combat into an MMO setting. None, nada, zilch.
Only reason it has not been done before is because MMO spawned from MMORPGs and in an RPG combat has traditionally been about character skills/attributes, gear and dice rolls. The combat DCU uses just replaces that one with a fighter/arcade combat that again has existed for decades and is a matter of taste if you like or not. In any case it is nothing groundbreaking with it, it just replaces X (RPG combat) with Y (Fighter/Arcade combat).
I mean a fighting game, meant for consoles, is a groundbreaking MMO?
It has no crafting, no housing, no real incentives to form a guild and no point in PvP territorial control. All it has is a fighting game type combat and that has existed in non MMOs for decades.
Sorry but that does not make it groundbreaking.
While the term "groundbreaking" is subjective, DCUO is definitely a step forward in the MMO genre. There is territorial control, and there are reasons players should form guilds. The PvP (when it wasn't bugged the first 2 and a half weeks) is the best I've played apart from a shooter, and the major characters voice acting is extremely well done.
I haven't had this much fun with a combat system in an actual, non hub based MMO since Fallen Earth, and that was just a pseudo shooter, but it was just enough that it took skill to PvP and tactics to win.
Most MMOs have crafting, but it usually isn't very good, most MMOs don't have housing either. All MMOs have combat, and in comparison to DCUO, DCUO blows every MMO away with their style of combat in a fully open non instanced world, and that is a major accomplishment even if players that don't like the style of combat disagree.
Territorial control? Please elaborate on this one... what would be the point of a bunch of villains camping a specific place? There is no resource in this game that is concentrated in particular areas and which is worth holding. And even if there was there is no system to lay claim to such area so you would have to camp it 24/7 which is not reasonable.
So again, this leaves combat. There is nothing ground breaking of taking a fighter/arcade combat into an MMO setting. None, nada, zilch.
Only reason it has not been done before is because MMO spawned from MMORPGs and in an RPG combat has traditionally been about character skills/attributes, gear and dice rolls. The combat DCU uses just replaces that one with a fighter/arcade combat that again has existed for decades and is a matter of taste if you like or not. In any case it is nothing groundbreaking with it, it just replaces X (RPG combat) with Y (Fighter/Arcade combat).
The ring war is a territorial area in Metropolis (and this month they are adding one in gotham) that allows for heroes or villains to gain control of the area which will give them access to a specialized vendor for PvP items. They also receive marks of victory for holding this area. When they do not have control, the vendor is not available, and the other faction will have a boss there to protect it.
There aren't other MMORPGs like DCUO out there that don't revolve around hub based gameplay. In that same avenue, no game is "groundbreaking", not RIFT, not GW2, not SWTOR, Tera, or any other game that will likely come out for MMOs in the near future.
So while other genres have done this before, MMOs haven't. Thats what makes this game compelling and considerably "groundbreaking" for MMOs. Being able to bring in other genres of games, like MMORTS, MMO-Racing, MMOAction, when these games hit, and are solid and fun to play, they too will pave the way for new types of games. SO yes, some could consider an MMO-Action game as breaking new ground. In the words of Jack Ryder: YOU ARE WRONG! (it had to be done.)
I'll go ahead and give Sony credit for the update, sounds fairly beefy to me, (as a non-player of course). The reason I haven't bought the game for my PS3 yet (though I've been close several times) is the UI / grouping, and chat issues I keep seeing even fans of the game unhappy with.
I like to team in MMOs, that's why CoX has been on my harddrive since 2004, the grouping and LFG tool in that game is second to none I have played. The game itself is pretty good IMO, but the ease of drop in, get a team so easily keeps me playing here and there. Chat system is superior in that game too with the channels, color coding etc. No other game has it as good as CoX in those two regards IMO.
So..hearing that those two aspects of DCUO are well...terrible keeps me from buying. I'm concerned that they released a game in this day and age with broken chat, and STILL haven't fixed it. Taints the whole game for me.
Once those things are sorted out, I'll see you all in Gotham.
I figure by the time they fix some of these base issues, there will be plenty of content released as well, maybe even a sale on the game box, hehe.
Originally posted by Daffid011 Originally posted by popinjay SOE didn't 'ruin' Vanguard. Sigil pushed it out too fast because they had money problems and the game wasn't finished.
Soe cut the funding which forced sigil to release the game. Even ignorning how the game launched SOE has owned vanguard for almost 4 years and the game is basically just in a state of being ready to release. I doubt you will find many vanguard players who applaud soes efforts with the game and don't feel upset with how they managed the game once they took over. I was one who thought SOE did a much better fix-up job than Sigil, and I was a Vanguard player at launch and later after resubbing when SOE ran it.
When Vanguard launched, so much stuff was broken and buggy it was a crime. I doubt you've played it then because you wouldn't be assuming to speak for what Vanguard players would say about SOE. No company gives unlimited funding to a developer to just putter along.. they are all on a deadline and if they can't produce, that's it.
The game was in BAD shape during it's launch and reminded me a lot of how FFXIV is now. Diehards who were waiting for an all PvE game were really shocked and surprised at how it was. Crashes, falling through the world, skills didn't work, the whole Parley system was messed up.. tons of stuff. Please don't suppose to speak for Vanguard people when so many left in the first month it wasn't funny. And that wasn't SOE's fault.. Sigil had more than enough time to finish the game.
Once the game was in SOE's hand, they put competent people in there and contrary to what you are trying to say, more people found Vanguard to be considerably better AND they got updates if I recall. Anyone playing Vanguard after SOE took it over not realizing the vast imrovement is blind. They even added a newbie area and trial zone, which is fantastic to bring more players in.
As a matter of fact, do you know how many Vanguard players are saying to the MMO community just how good Vanguard is NOW because of SOE's fixing? But they can't get anyone to go back and try it anymore because the name is ruined at launch. Not that SOE ruined it.
All this "SOE am da Debil, herpa derp!" talk needs to stop, lol. People really need to get a grip.
The ring war is a territorial area in Metropolis (and this month they are adding one in gotham) that allows for heroes or villains to gain control of the area which will give them access to a specialized vendor for PvP items. They also receive marks of victory for holding this area. When they do not have control, the vendor is not available, and the other faction will have a boss there to protect it.
Tell him to think something like Halaa grounds from The Burning Crusade and it might make it easier to picture.
First off, I wasn't speaking for or about vanguard players while the game was under sigils ownership. I'm not sure how you keep misunderstanding what I write, but here it is again.
I was speaking specifically about players who stuck around after soe purchased the game. The 40k or so who are gone now.
I'm going to give you 2 facts and they are just that regardless of how anyone views soe or sigil.
1) Soe picked up the publishing/funding of vanguard after it had already failed while microsoft was in charge. It was a failed project at that point
2) Soe purchased vanguard after sigil and the game were failures. The game has never recovered and only declined.
SOE had 2 chances to make this thing work and failed with both chances. Those are facts.
If the game was so damn awful at release then soe should never have "saved" it in the first place unless they were going to comit the necessary resources to correct those problems.
If soe fixed the game up so great in the last 4 years more people would play it. Sigil failed with the 5 months they had post release, but they did a ton of updates and the majority of what soe finished up the first 2 years as content updates.
Even almost every single person working on vanguard was a sigil employee. Soe didn't send in the troops to save the game. FFS the last TWO senior producers have left the game without even so much as making a farewell post. They just fucking left without saying a word.
The ring war is a territorial area in Metropolis (and this month they are adding one in gotham) that allows for heroes or villains to gain control of the area which will give them access to a specialized vendor for PvP items. They also receive marks of victory for holding this area. When they do not have control, the vendor is not available, and the other faction will have a boss there to protect it.
Tell him to think something like Halaa grounds from The Burning Crusade and it might make it easier to picture.
I dont play WoW, nor did I enjoy themepark games but nice try, it shows that this games territorial PvP is like WoWs, which is awful. What it sounds like is nothing like real territorial control PvP.
Access to a vendor? Really?
For real territorial control you need to go back to UO and Asherons Call on the Darktide server. There you compete for everything to good leveling grounds to good vendors and, in AC, you could bind to places of particular interest. Entire guilds would fall or rise depending on what areas they could control.
This is rubish, compared to that and this game is nothing but an FPS/fighter game, packaged as an MMO. In 6 months it will join CoX, CO and other action-based MMOs with less than 100k subs.
Why? Because arcade combat is fun for only a short time before it gets repetetive.
The ring war is a territorial area in Metropolis (and this month they are adding one in gotham) that allows for heroes or villains to gain control of the area which will give them access to a specialized vendor for PvP items. They also receive marks of victory for holding this area. When they do not have control, the vendor is not available, and the other faction will have a boss there to protect it.
Tell him to think something like Halaa grounds from The Burning Crusade and it might make it easier to picture.
I dont play WoW, nor did I enjoy themepark games but nice try, it shows that this games territorial PvP is like WoWs, which is awful. What it sounds like is nothing like real territorial control PvP.
Access to a vendor? Really?
For real territorial control you need to go back to UO and Asherons Call on the Darktide server. There you compete for everything to good leveling grounds to good vendors and, in AC, you could bind to places of particular interest. Entire guilds would fall or rise depending on what areas they could control.
This is rubish, compared to that and this game is nothing but an FPS/fighter game, packaged as an MMO. In 6 months it will join CoX, CO and other action-based MMOs with less than 100k subs.
Why? Because arcade combat is fun for only a short time before it gets repetetive.
As much fun as it may be for some people to play 6 to 11 year old games with relatively low population servers and combat that requires absolutely no skill, it isn't fun for me. Skill based combat is never truly repetitive, even if the skill sets are narrow. FPS games don't have a tremendous amount of skill sets, yet, they entertain for countless hours because the combat can always change depending on the other players skill.
Most MMORPGs can be simplified into a macro, just spam the skills you need to use and click that macro when its time to use them. DCUO can't be done that way, you can't spam your combos with a macro and hope to win every battle, in fact that would be the best way to lose quickly and efficiently.
I gotta tell ya, right now every other MMOs combat is repetitive, because it all plays the same exact way and has for over 10 years, aside from DCUO which breaks from the norm and is fun and refreshing.
Some people want more sandbox style games, and I'll be happy to play one of those too when I find one good enough. Right now DCUO is my preferred game currently on the market, and its system outshines what other games are currently offering. Even with their crafting, and expanded world size, it means nothing to me if its boring and rehashed versions of what I've played for 10 years.
If you want to go back and play UO or AC by all means do so, won't hurt me at all, I'll be battling for control of my "vendors" for PvP gear in DCUO, and I'll be happy doing so.
The ring war is a territorial area in Metropolis (and this month they are adding one in gotham) that allows for heroes or villains to gain control of the area which will give them access to a specialized vendor for PvP items. They also receive marks of victory for holding this area. When they do not have control, the vendor is not available, and the other faction will have a boss there to protect it.
Tell him to think something like Halaa grounds from The Burning Crusade and it might make it easier to picture.
I dont play WoW, nor did I enjoy themepark games but nice try, it shows that this games territorial PvP is like WoWs, which is awful. What it sounds like is nothing like real territorial control PvP.
Access to a vendor? Really?
For real territorial control you need to go back to UO and Asherons Call on the Darktide server. There you compete for everything to good leveling grounds to good vendors and, in AC, you could bind to places of particular interest. Entire guilds would fall or rise depending on what areas they could control.
This is rubish, compared to that and this game is nothing but an FPS/fighter game, packaged as an MMO. In 6 months it will join CoX, CO and other action-based MMOs with less than 100k subs.
Why? Because arcade combat is fun for only a short time before it gets repetetive.
Actually, arcade combat has way more lasting appeal than regular MMO combat. Think of Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat. People were playing those things in the arcade religiously for years and the ONLY thing they consisted of was the arcade style combat.
People still buy arcade combat games that are in 2-D and have fun with them for a long time.
I think people get confused when the term arcade-combat is thrown around. It's not like a 2-D scroller or something like Contra.
Basically the combat in DCUO is the same as any other MMORPG (powers, weapons, stuns/CC, pet abilities), but without auto-fire, add in a whole bunch of combos which often do different things depending on the weapon used, tons of pull and push and knockdown type abilities, interaction with the environment with throwing things and healing/destruction barrels, different movement abilities, and blocking and dodging.
The only way that you could say that regular combat in MMO's is more exciting is if you think auto-fire is what makes for great combat.
DC may be ok, but darkfall is the worst shit ever made ....
Darkfall on paper is a really interesting groundbreaking game. In practice it's a horrible grind full of ganking.
If the Devs spent less time being stubborn on keeping the grind in place and more time developing territory control opportunities, the game would be really great (although graphically lacking at this point).
First off, I wasn't speaking for or about vanguard players while the game was under sigils ownership. I'm not sure how you keep misunderstanding what I write, but here it is again.
1) Soe picked up the publishing/funding of vanguard after it had already failed while microsoft was in charge. It was a failed project at that point
2) Soe purchased vanguard after sigil and the game were failures. The game has never recovered and only declined.
I was responding to another poster who was incorrectly claimed that SOE ruined Vanguard. If that's not what you are saying or agreeing with, then I'm not sure why you replied to that, but you seemed to be eager to run with the football he dropped.
You did insinuate that SOE somehow shorted Vanguard by not giving them funding, which wasn't true at all and in fact, they weren't obligated to. The reality was, they fixed the game up as best as anyone could and NO other company was willing to touch Vanguard after Sigil's mess after taking TOTAL control of the game. Their wasn't any reason any rational person would front money so someone else could be in the driver's seat. You don't do it, I don't do it so I'm not sure why you expect a capitalistic corportaion to.
The point is it is silly to want a good game to fail simply because someone hates the company. That's dumb.
The only thing dumber is when people support a badly failed game because they have this strange fixation and loyalty to a company beyond all reason.
Just who do you think was funding vanguard when microsoft stopped funding sigil?
That really is the question that never seems to get answered when people try to absolve soe from any responsibility.
Brad admits sigil was broke and then cut a deal with soe to pay the bills. Ex employees admit soe was spending money on the company. Smed said enough was enough and forced the game to release, but I guess that isn't enough?
The point is soe had 2 opportunities to make vanguard a success and failed with both attempts. We will never know what anyone else might have been able to accomplish, because soe was invovlved and the moment soe got involved they took the mantle of responsibility to make sure sigil did not have a repeat of the failure it did when microsoft was in charge.
Again, I'm not absolving sigil of their failures, because they most certainly did too. However soe wasn't just publisher in name alone. He who holds the purse strings makes the rules as they say.
Just who do you think was funding vanguard when microsoft stopped funding sigil?
I'm still not sure how this translates into what the other poster said about SOE "ruining Vanguard". I'm not sure how you keep missing your own point which clearly shows it wasn't SOE, but Microsoft who ruined Vanguard (if blame needs to be laid).
Think of a person who wants to start something and says they'll figure a way pay for the bills. Then they start on a project funded by Party A. The project goes on as planned, has MAJOR snags and flaws and is not ready when promised so Party A bails. This project is going to die horribly as a stillbirth.
Party B steps up to the plate and says "Ok, contrary to what we discussed and YOU said you'd do.. here's some money which I wasn't SUPPOSED to give to you, but here it is anyways." Party B then take the project over and fixes it up and put it in much more fantastic shape then when it released on it's own.
Again, people who are rooting for DCUO to fail in this thread (easy to spot) simply because SOE is the owner and funder of the game are sillybillies. It makes no sense to hope a perfectly good game flops because you don't like the company, anymore than someone blindly supports their 'favorite company' (like Mythic) when the product is simply horrible especially after several years of planning and a release of two years.
We've seen this stuff before in games like PS, TR, TCoS, Vindictus, DDO.
More twitch based combat engines dont make a game groundbreaking.
MMOs have never been about combat engines, sure most of the time were fighting something in a mmo but these games have always been about character progression and the mechanics available to our characters.
Combat has always taken a back seat in importance and today its no different.
What does DCUO do to make it groundbreaking when you take away its combat (which has been done before)?
Im not saying DCUO isnt fun but to toss around the word groundbreaking you better back it up.
Vanguard ( Sigil aka Verant ) Taken over by SOE ruined
I was there at Vanguard launch and I played for six months after that.
Please tell me how SOE ruined Vanguard, when no one else in the industry would touch the game because of the lag and stability problems? If anything, the devs actually stabilized the game to a point where it was playable and right now, it's in VERY good shape as compared to when it came out. I seriously doubt you played Vanguard at all, but you simply looked at the list of games SOE's now owns and figures they 'ruined it' as well.
SOE didn't 'ruin' Vanguard. Sigil pushed it out too fast because they had money problems and the game wasn't finished.
This is exactly what I mean about people wanting SOE to fail and will do anything to justify rooting against anything it makes. Now that doesn't make someone an evil person, just a hater.
I was there too, and on top of that was privy to a lot of what was going on at the time in-house. Sigil did not push the game to release early SOE did Sigil was begging for more time and money but SOE had a contract which when deadlines were not met basically let SOE steal full control of the game. To be fair to SOE though they were going to spend more money on the game, but then SONY dropped the hammer push it out or write it off. SOE pushed it out.. the game had a horrible release, and " rerelease " ( not a real rerelease but the attempt SOE made to pull more people back into the game ) Only recently has the game improved and that has more to do with empty servers than it does with fixes.
To OP: I love DC too.. And one thing I've learned is 90% of the people that bash it, cant play it very good because they have no gamer skills... they cant do the combos cause they are so used to tab, 1. 2. 3. 4 lmo
People keep saying it's a console port, and it does favor the console with the control scheme, but there's never been a game like it on the console nor on the PC, so saying it's typical of anything is just wrong.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance had a kinda similar feeling tho add the online feature and u have a very similar game.
To OP: I love DC too.. And one thing I've learned is 90% of the people that bash it, cant play it very good because they have no gamer skills... they cant do the combos cause they are so used to tab, 1. 2. 3. 4 lmo
While i do agree that most if not all MMORPGs require very little to no skill at all to use the skills do i fail to see how DC is different i did play with Gamepad and honestly i dont think its any difference if i tap 1/2/3/4 on a keyboard or Y/B/X/A on a gamepad...but maybe i am wrong and hitting keys on a gamepad in the right order is considered Gamer skills in today's time....
Just who do you think was funding vanguard when microsoft stopped funding sigil?
I'm still not sure how this translates into what the other poster said about SOE "ruining Vanguard". I'm not sure how you keep missing your own point which clearly shows it wasn't SOE, but Microsoft who ruined Vanguard (if blame needs to be laid).
Think of a person who wants to start something and says they'll figure a way pay for the bills. Then they start on a project funded by Party A. The project goes on as planned, has MAJOR snags and flaws and is not ready when promised so Party A bails. This project is going to die horribly as a stillbirth.
Party B steps up to the plate and says "Ok, contrary to what we discussed and YOU said you'd do.. here's some money which I wasn't SUPPOSED to give to you, but here it is anyways." Party B then take the project over and fixes it up and put it in much more fantastic shape then when it released on it's own.
Again, people who are rooting for DCUO to fail in this thread (easy to spot) simply because SOE is the owner and funder of the game are sillybillies. It makes no sense to hope a perfectly good game flops because you don't like the company, anymore than someone blindly supports their 'favorite company' (like Mythic) when the product is simply horrible especially after several years of planning and a release of two years.
I fully understand that sigil and microsoft failed. That is exactly why microsoft was cancelling the project. They had the wisdom to see that sigil was a failure and couldn't make the game work with the budget and time they were given. I'm really not missing anything about that point at all. It is crystal clear.
That being said, SOE took responsibility for the future of vanguard when they decided to "save" the game. Vanguard should have suffered either a quick release followed by an even quicker and painless death or simply never hit the market in the condition it was in. SOE stepped in took responsibility for the change in the games future by funding sigil. They made everything from the post-microsoft era possible which makes them responsible for how things turned out.
Repeat that a second time when soe purchased the game and didn't give it enough resources to recover. No excuses about it being to hard or whatever. They chose to buy the game and operate it and the outcome is entirely their responsibility.
In the end, soes partnership failed to change the outcome of the game... twice. Why should soe not share in that blame?
I can't speak for others on the forums, but I would love to have seen DCU be a massive success. Be super polished, fun and complete. I would love to have my expectations proven wrong and to see a company changing its reputation. SOE could be a major player in the market and there is a lot of talent there, but looking at what their A team has produced I just don't get that feeling. 5 years and 50 million dollars produced a console beat'em up game with a couple weeks worth of content that is trying to charge a subscription fee with promises of future content patches while the game still struggles with basic game features.
Honestly I am afraid that this game might set current standards even lower with how much is missing/lacking in the game. I don't want other companies to follow suit with tiny worlds, lacking content and limited features and expect $15 a month for what ammounts to basically a single player game with some co-op features.
To OP: I love DC too.. And one thing I've learned is 90% of the people that bash it, cant play it very good because they have no gamer skills... they cant do the combos cause they are so used to tab, 1. 2. 3. 4 lmo
That's right - Only the ub3r l33t will be left come tomorrow.
Comments
DCUO Needs:
Social System Fixed.
dc kick and replace with pugger Fixed.
Proper Mouse support with choice of play styles.
A company that cares for these changes, Chris is an arrogant fool who bulldozes his choices mind you its better than the idiot they have managing/supporting the EQ2 community, there all off to Rift anyway.
Not to derail the thread, but yes soe funded the game when microsoft cut the funding. Once micorsoft cut funding sigil immediately cut a deal with soe, because there was no money to be had elsewhere. There is no mention anywhere or ever of anyone other than soe giving money to sigil after soe cut the project up to when soe purchased the sigil.
John Smedly told the NYTimes ''Microsoft had wanted to launch this thing in July of 2006,'' Mr. Smedley said. ''We felt like the game needed more time, and we have given it more time, but at some point enough is enough, and we have to ship the game and start generating revenue.''
Brad McQuaid told F13.net "After we split from Microsoft - because obviously we couldn't ship the game in an unready state - we had to go out and do something. Find money to make the game that we could and all dreamed about. We cut a deal pretty quickly so that we could get into SOE's E3 kiosk. We ended up having to meet payroll and to pay the bills."
Ex-sigil employee told F13.net "When the merger happened SOE embraced us, and spent a LOT of money on us right away. It felt really good."
I agree with everything else you said.
Territorial control? Please elaborate on this one... what would be the point of a bunch of villains camping a specific place? There is no resource in this game that is concentrated in particular areas and which is worth holding. And even if there was there is no system to lay claim to such area so you would have to camp it 24/7 which is not reasonable.
So again, this leaves combat. There is nothing ground breaking of taking a fighter/arcade combat into an MMO setting. None, nada, zilch.
Only reason it has not been done before is because MMO spawned from MMORPGs and in an RPG combat has traditionally been about character skills/attributes, gear and dice rolls. The combat DCU uses just replaces that one with a fighter/arcade combat that again has existed for decades and is a matter of taste if you like or not. In any case it is nothing groundbreaking with it, it just replaces X (RPG combat) with Y (Fighter/Arcade combat).
My gaming blog
The ring war is a territorial area in Metropolis (and this month they are adding one in gotham) that allows for heroes or villains to gain control of the area which will give them access to a specialized vendor for PvP items. They also receive marks of victory for holding this area. When they do not have control, the vendor is not available, and the other faction will have a boss there to protect it.
There aren't other MMORPGs like DCUO out there that don't revolve around hub based gameplay. In that same avenue, no game is "groundbreaking", not RIFT, not GW2, not SWTOR, Tera, or any other game that will likely come out for MMOs in the near future.
So while other genres have done this before, MMOs haven't. Thats what makes this game compelling and considerably "groundbreaking" for MMOs. Being able to bring in other genres of games, like MMORTS, MMO-Racing, MMOAction, when these games hit, and are solid and fun to play, they too will pave the way for new types of games. SO yes, some could consider an MMO-Action game as breaking new ground. In the words of Jack Ryder: YOU ARE WRONG! (it had to be done.)
I'll go ahead and give Sony credit for the update, sounds fairly beefy to me, (as a non-player of course). The reason I haven't bought the game for my PS3 yet (though I've been close several times) is the UI / grouping, and chat issues I keep seeing even fans of the game unhappy with.
I like to team in MMOs, that's why CoX has been on my harddrive since 2004, the grouping and LFG tool in that game is second to none I have played. The game itself is pretty good IMO, but the ease of drop in, get a team so easily keeps me playing here and there. Chat system is superior in that game too with the channels, color coding etc. No other game has it as good as CoX in those two regards IMO.
So..hearing that those two aspects of DCUO are well...terrible keeps me from buying. I'm concerned that they released a game in this day and age with broken chat, and STILL haven't fixed it. Taints the whole game for me.
Once those things are sorted out, I'll see you all in Gotham.
I figure by the time they fix some of these base issues, there will be plenty of content released as well, maybe even a sale on the game box, hehe.
I was one who thought SOE did a much better fix-up job than Sigil, and I was a Vanguard player at launch and later after resubbing when SOE ran it.
When Vanguard launched, so much stuff was broken and buggy it was a crime. I doubt you've played it then because you wouldn't be assuming to speak for what Vanguard players would say about SOE. No company gives unlimited funding to a developer to just putter along.. they are all on a deadline and if they can't produce, that's it.
The game was in BAD shape during it's launch and reminded me a lot of how FFXIV is now. Diehards who were waiting for an all PvE game were really shocked and surprised at how it was. Crashes, falling through the world, skills didn't work, the whole Parley system was messed up.. tons of stuff. Please don't suppose to speak for Vanguard people when so many left in the first month it wasn't funny. And that wasn't SOE's fault.. Sigil had more than enough time to finish the game.
Once the game was in SOE's hand, they put competent people in there and contrary to what you are trying to say, more people found Vanguard to be considerably better AND they got updates if I recall. Anyone playing Vanguard after SOE took it over not realizing the vast imrovement is blind. They even added a newbie area and trial zone, which is fantastic to bring more players in.
As a matter of fact, do you know how many Vanguard players are saying to the MMO community just how good Vanguard is NOW because of SOE's fixing? But they can't get anyone to go back and try it anymore because the name is ruined at launch. Not that SOE ruined it.
All this "SOE am da Debil, herpa derp!" talk needs to stop, lol. People really need to get a grip.
"TO MICHAEL!"
"TO MICHAEL!"
First off, I wasn't speaking for or about vanguard players while the game was under sigils ownership. I'm not sure how you keep misunderstanding what I write, but here it is again.
I was speaking specifically about players who stuck around after soe purchased the game. The 40k or so who are gone now.
I'm going to give you 2 facts and they are just that regardless of how anyone views soe or sigil.
1) Soe picked up the publishing/funding of vanguard after it had already failed while microsoft was in charge. It was a failed project at that point
2) Soe purchased vanguard after sigil and the game were failures. The game has never recovered and only declined.
SOE had 2 chances to make this thing work and failed with both chances. Those are facts.
If the game was so damn awful at release then soe should never have "saved" it in the first place unless they were going to comit the necessary resources to correct those problems.
If soe fixed the game up so great in the last 4 years more people would play it. Sigil failed with the 5 months they had post release, but they did a ton of updates and the majority of what soe finished up the first 2 years as content updates.
Even almost every single person working on vanguard was a sigil employee. Soe didn't send in the troops to save the game. FFS the last TWO senior producers have left the game without even so much as making a farewell post. They just fucking left without saying a word.
I dont play WoW, nor did I enjoy themepark games but nice try, it shows that this games territorial PvP is like WoWs, which is awful. What it sounds like is nothing like real territorial control PvP.
Access to a vendor? Really?
For real territorial control you need to go back to UO and Asherons Call on the Darktide server. There you compete for everything to good leveling grounds to good vendors and, in AC, you could bind to places of particular interest. Entire guilds would fall or rise depending on what areas they could control.
This is rubish, compared to that and this game is nothing but an FPS/fighter game, packaged as an MMO. In 6 months it will join CoX, CO and other action-based MMOs with less than 100k subs.
Why? Because arcade combat is fun for only a short time before it gets repetetive.
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As much fun as it may be for some people to play 6 to 11 year old games with relatively low population servers and combat that requires absolutely no skill, it isn't fun for me. Skill based combat is never truly repetitive, even if the skill sets are narrow. FPS games don't have a tremendous amount of skill sets, yet, they entertain for countless hours because the combat can always change depending on the other players skill.
Most MMORPGs can be simplified into a macro, just spam the skills you need to use and click that macro when its time to use them. DCUO can't be done that way, you can't spam your combos with a macro and hope to win every battle, in fact that would be the best way to lose quickly and efficiently.
I gotta tell ya, right now every other MMOs combat is repetitive, because it all plays the same exact way and has for over 10 years, aside from DCUO which breaks from the norm and is fun and refreshing.
Some people want more sandbox style games, and I'll be happy to play one of those too when I find one good enough. Right now DCUO is my preferred game currently on the market, and its system outshines what other games are currently offering. Even with their crafting, and expanded world size, it means nothing to me if its boring and rehashed versions of what I've played for 10 years.
If you want to go back and play UO or AC by all means do so, won't hurt me at all, I'll be battling for control of my "vendors" for PvP gear in DCUO, and I'll be happy doing so.
Like Darkfall ?
DC may be ok, but darkfall is the worst shit ever made ....
Actually, arcade combat has way more lasting appeal than regular MMO combat. Think of Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat. People were playing those things in the arcade religiously for years and the ONLY thing they consisted of was the arcade style combat.
People still buy arcade combat games that are in 2-D and have fun with them for a long time.
I think people get confused when the term arcade-combat is thrown around. It's not like a 2-D scroller or something like Contra.
Basically the combat in DCUO is the same as any other MMORPG (powers, weapons, stuns/CC, pet abilities), but without auto-fire, add in a whole bunch of combos which often do different things depending on the weapon used, tons of pull and push and knockdown type abilities, interaction with the environment with throwing things and healing/destruction barrels, different movement abilities, and blocking and dodging.
The only way that you could say that regular combat in MMO's is more exciting is if you think auto-fire is what makes for great combat.
Darkfall on paper is a really interesting groundbreaking game. In practice it's a horrible grind full of ganking.
If the Devs spent less time being stubborn on keeping the grind in place and more time developing territory control opportunities, the game would be really great (although graphically lacking at this point).
It's so you can't even give a frame of reference in a previous game before someone says "Hey man, I didn't play WoW! Don't you dare insult me!" lol
Just mentioning Halaa as a point to compare was not insinuating that you are a WoW fanboi.
"TO MICHAEL!"
You did insinuate that SOE somehow shorted Vanguard by not giving them funding, which wasn't true at all and in fact, they weren't obligated to. The reality was, they fixed the game up as best as anyone could and NO other company was willing to touch Vanguard after Sigil's mess after taking TOTAL control of the game. Their wasn't any reason any rational person would front money so someone else could be in the driver's seat. You don't do it, I don't do it so I'm not sure why you expect a capitalistic corportaion to.
The point is it is silly to want a good game to fail simply because someone hates the company. That's dumb.
The only thing dumber is when people support a badly failed game because they have this strange fixation and loyalty to a company beyond all reason.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Just who do you think was funding vanguard when microsoft stopped funding sigil?
That really is the question that never seems to get answered when people try to absolve soe from any responsibility.
Brad admits sigil was broke and then cut a deal with soe to pay the bills. Ex employees admit soe was spending money on the company. Smed said enough was enough and forced the game to release, but I guess that isn't enough?
The point is soe had 2 opportunities to make vanguard a success and failed with both attempts. We will never know what anyone else might have been able to accomplish, because soe was invovlved and the moment soe got involved they took the mantle of responsibility to make sure sigil did not have a repeat of the failure it did when microsoft was in charge.
Again, I'm not absolving sigil of their failures, because they most certainly did too. However soe wasn't just publisher in name alone. He who holds the purse strings makes the rules as they say.
I'm still not sure how this translates into what the other poster said about SOE "ruining Vanguard". I'm not sure how you keep missing your own point which clearly shows it wasn't SOE, but Microsoft who ruined Vanguard (if blame needs to be laid).
Think of a person who wants to start something and says they'll figure a way pay for the bills. Then they start on a project funded by Party A. The project goes on as planned, has MAJOR snags and flaws and is not ready when promised so Party A bails. This project is going to die horribly as a stillbirth.
Party B steps up to the plate and says "Ok, contrary to what we discussed and YOU said you'd do.. here's some money which I wasn't SUPPOSED to give to you, but here it is anyways." Party B then take the project over and fixes it up and put it in much more fantastic shape then when it released on it's own.
Again, people who are rooting for DCUO to fail in this thread (easy to spot) simply because SOE is the owner and funder of the game are sillybillies. It makes no sense to hope a perfectly good game flops because you don't like the company, anymore than someone blindly supports their 'favorite company' (like Mythic) when the product is simply horrible especially after several years of planning and a release of two years.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Groundbreaking due to combat engines?
We've seen this stuff before in games like PS, TR, TCoS, Vindictus, DDO.
More twitch based combat engines dont make a game groundbreaking.
MMOs have never been about combat engines, sure most of the time were fighting something in a mmo but these games have always been about character progression and the mechanics available to our characters.
Combat has always taken a back seat in importance and today its no different.
What does DCUO do to make it groundbreaking when you take away its combat (which has been done before)?
Im not saying DCUO isnt fun but to toss around the word groundbreaking you better back it up.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
I was there too, and on top of that was privy to a lot of what was going on at the time in-house. Sigil did not push the game to release early SOE did Sigil was begging for more time and money but SOE had a contract which when deadlines were not met basically let SOE steal full control of the game. To be fair to SOE though they were going to spend more money on the game, but then SONY dropped the hammer push it out or write it off. SOE pushed it out.. the game had a horrible release, and " rerelease " ( not a real rerelease but the attempt SOE made to pull more people back into the game ) Only recently has the game improved and that has more to do with empty servers than it does with fixes.
To OP: I love DC too.. And one thing I've learned is 90% of the people that bash it, cant play it very good because they have no gamer skills... they cant do the combos cause they are so used to tab, 1. 2. 3. 4 lmo
Marvel Ultimate Alliance had a kinda similar feeling tho add the online feature and u have a very similar game.
Both even claim to be RPGs......
How is Darkfall and DCUO ground breaking?
I've played a ton of MMOs since 1996 haven't seen anything ground breaking since MERIDIAN59, EQ, and UO.
While i do agree that most if not all MMORPGs require very little to no skill at all to use the skills do i fail to see how DC is different i did play with Gamepad and honestly i dont think its any difference if i tap 1/2/3/4 on a keyboard or Y/B/X/A on a gamepad...but maybe i am wrong and hitting keys on a gamepad in the right order is considered Gamer skills in today's time....
I fully understand that sigil and microsoft failed. That is exactly why microsoft was cancelling the project. They had the wisdom to see that sigil was a failure and couldn't make the game work with the budget and time they were given. I'm really not missing anything about that point at all. It is crystal clear.
That being said, SOE took responsibility for the future of vanguard when they decided to "save" the game. Vanguard should have suffered either a quick release followed by an even quicker and painless death or simply never hit the market in the condition it was in. SOE stepped in took responsibility for the change in the games future by funding sigil. They made everything from the post-microsoft era possible which makes them responsible for how things turned out.
Repeat that a second time when soe purchased the game and didn't give it enough resources to recover. No excuses about it being to hard or whatever. They chose to buy the game and operate it and the outcome is entirely their responsibility.
In the end, soes partnership failed to change the outcome of the game... twice. Why should soe not share in that blame?
I can't speak for others on the forums, but I would love to have seen DCU be a massive success. Be super polished, fun and complete. I would love to have my expectations proven wrong and to see a company changing its reputation. SOE could be a major player in the market and there is a lot of talent there, but looking at what their A team has produced I just don't get that feeling. 5 years and 50 million dollars produced a console beat'em up game with a couple weeks worth of content that is trying to charge a subscription fee with promises of future content patches while the game still struggles with basic game features.
Honestly I am afraid that this game might set current standards even lower with how much is missing/lacking in the game. I don't want other companies to follow suit with tiny worlds, lacking content and limited features and expect $15 a month for what ammounts to basically a single player game with some co-op features.
That's right - Only the ub3r l33t will be left come tomorrow.