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Do you really like F2P ?
delete5230
Member EpicPosts: 7,081
I was one finger away from re-subbing to Vanguard. SWTOR is garbage as far as community with its Voice acting solo play. I played around with my old favorite WoW only to find it's a dungeon finder lobby game with no community aspect. I could not last three weeks. Other mmo's that I enjoyed or would like to play are D&D Online,EQ2 and LOTRO but they went F2P.....Vanguard was the last hope for a community driven mmo, at least in my books.
As far as Vanguard and it's low population.....SOE never advertised this mmo. What they did was offer free time to past players of SOE games only, and that was when Vanguard was still broken. Very few past players even received notification of free play time. And by only offering it to past players of SOE products, all this did was give the same few players the exact same thing !.....
This is not advertisement. It was just cheap !......99% of mmo players still don't even know what Vanguard is. At one time Vanguard was hyped with a window of about one year and even then only for Hardcore mmo players like us ever knew.
It's the developers responsibility to rally the community, not a few fans trying to sync players to play at the same time. In the past three years, thousands of players started and quit after just a few weeks of play. Never at the same time, only to find no community. Reaction's were always the same. " Good game but no one to play with " or " They fixed the game but no one to play with " SOE never even really tried !
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE IMPACT OF COMMUNITY IF VANGUARD GOES F2P ?
For me, I'll be honest. Vanguard's quest are boring with the kill 10 rat's quest, you know old school out dated material. BUT and I stress BUT....Vanguard was made to be community driven. Mob's are hard to solo. Dungeons took hours, classes were great but hard to master. This is what Vanguard is all about !
If gone F2P, developers will dumb down game play, instance dungeons and sell packages that most will not buy.
How can you expect to get groups to do the hard content like the famous Dungeons if they were on a package deal in a cash shop ?....Do you think a good Guild would help if players still don't have Khegor's End, Chrysol Mines, Tomb or Lord Tsang, Temple of Dailuk, Lord Tsangs tomb, Ruins of Treengal Keep?....Do you think if you even make it to level 30 you can find players to do duo content in zones like The Lost Canyon or The Deep Swamp ?...Sure SOE will dumb down zones to play solo. But that's what you get with a F2P game all solo content.....Do you think scramming in a chat channel would yield a group when everything is a package ?
You know that friend you made, the one that you really click with ?...Well he does not have that package, he can't go !
Well, your getting what you asked for... F2P.... have fun !.....Just remember SOE caused the community problem. Not the players !!!!
Comments
You just really felt like ranting did you?
At least the game will have some players, ive subbed to vanguard many times and i can count on both hands how many players i met during my stay.
Personally I wish they had spent the money from the F2P conversion (because it isn't cheap) on delivering a meaningful expansion to the game and a development of it's core systems and lore. Anything that can actually be played, rather then just shopped for.
It would have brought back and retained as many subs and given real meaningful content. All that most want really want to see is new life in the game.
Shiny hats and whatever, anything that allows you to develop your character (which after all is the only real 'winning' condition of a PvE game) without playing the actual game are a bad thing IMO. It's a triumph of shopping over gaming and a sad road for VG to be walkiing down.
Some people want IMVU, I want play to achieve games.
Just remember that it's the developers responsibility to bring players, not a hand full of people here on mmorpg.com to start a topic "lets all play at the same time".
Can I give you some homework ?
1) Ask 5 at random people if they know what World of Warcraft is.
2) Ask the same random 5 people what Vanguard is.
We all know what the answers to both questions would be !
So have fun trying to find others with the same package deals you have....And enjoy playing Vanguard with a lot of players on the screen, all playing solo, only to find Vanguard dead at level 20 because now it cost money.
Well at least they will give you the Spider Cave for free...... it's standard F2P practice to give a few Carrot-on-a-stick !
Why do you think that is? It's because word of warcraft is accessible to everyone. Vanguard is not. In vanguard it is even difficult to solo at level 20 and with no players to group with the game is not worth a sub. I find it hard trying to find others NOW.
It's always the developers responsibility to bring players together not the people.....Blame SOE's marketing... they never even tried !!!
Dude, the game would never have even launched if it weren't for SOE, blame microsoft for pulling out mid way through developement.
Sure, you could blame Microsoft, just like people blame SOE, but why is it everyone forgets those that are really to blame for the POS that was/is V:SoH,.....Brad McQuaid and Sigil Games.
But feel free to carry on blaming the publisher's while the actual Dev team get a pass.
A creative person is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.
Yeah I like it going F2P. If only so that I get to revisit Telon. I would never have subbed again for this game. The development has been stagnant for too many years.
There are many many poeple with what I feel is/are incorrect assumptions around what Free To Play means for an existiing title.
The assumptions are all over the map and I wonder why ?
Take DDO for example. DDO is/was the example of F2P done right and it is a very successful game at this point ( with a full expansion coming this summer ). It brought life into a dead game and DDO is a really good experience these days ( of course with a bit outdated graphics engine and character models ) but truly a deep deep experience.
The community in DDO is fine ( goods / bads ) just like any game. Luckily DDO in particular is not a "shallow/easy game" for the most part, so the "rif-raff" % is likely reduced. I see vanguard in the same category. The gameplay is relaxing, slower paced yet very immersive... something I don't think the Mc-MMO crowd would want anyway.
Vanguard f2p I really don't see much changing about the core gameplay of the game simply because it is a niche game with a niche style.
Now that said, SOE has been known to screw up even the most obvious/easy things... It never ceases to amaze me how SOE seems to just "not get it" LOL.