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Lost in non fun world aka Telon
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
This is going to be a rant. I apologize for loosing my manners, but it has to be.
Over the past 3 days, while still sceptical, I felt this game growing on me. Sure, things I were used to were not in it or very different. But, I was about to accept it. Even the corpse runs, which I had feared and loathed I had made my peace with.
But the last 5 hours have been a nightmare and NOT FUN AT ALL.
I got lv 9 and went to Tanvu, getting quests. So far, so good. As Monk. I was quite content with the class.
I have spent ******* 2 hours running around in the city finding basic stuff like shops, trainers and horse vendors, many things in vain. I just gave up finding a horse vendor. My calls in shout and OOC helped NOTHING. None either knew or cared. Ok, after I was slighly pissed (people kept spamming the shout about idiotic private debates instead of either help or STFU, but no.
Ok, I thought, make a few of the quests. Dam... I went around those frigging mountains for 3 godsforsaken hours seeking some masters to the east. In the end someone told me he was in the south, so the journal entry was a plain lie.
Folks, I have NO PROB with exploration and challange. But walking around 5 friggin hours finding NOTHING and getting nowhere was not fun, not difficult, not challenging, it was boring and frustrating. Then I was not mildly pissed, I was TOTALLY pissed. Folks, this game needs some working quest waypoints. DONT TELL ME YOU DONT WANT THEM, CAUSE JUST FUKKING DONT LOOK AT THEM! I dont care, you can walk blindfolded backwarts if you need a big challenge, but wandering in circles hours and hours is just plain boring and frustrating. I just would LOVE to know if quest waypoints and DETAILLED city maps are going to come or not?
And you hardcore folks, before you call me a carebear: I played computer games when most of you wet your diapers! I played games where I wrote down 50 papes with quests before the ingame journal existed, I drew many 100s of maps on chequered paper when Ultima and Wizardry were NEW, and dammit I played all those REALLY hardcore games in times when even making a game run on that tiny 640 KB RAM was a challange! Before internet made solutions easy, so dont you tell ME about hardcore gaming! I did it 1980 and 1990, but there passed 27 frigging years and I want a friggin map and a frigging journal, which REALLY tells me who gave me the quest and where to go, and not EAST, when its SOUTH on a continent of that dam size!
/rant off
PS: I really mean it well. I want to play this game, cause it has many stunning good stuff, but when I spent my entire saturday evening, MY precious spare time 5 hours for NADA I have the RIGHT to be PISSED. Take it or leave it, I dont the heck care.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
There ARE waypoints. They're in a separate tab in the quest log, and selecting one will mark it on the compass so you can see which way to go. I'm not sure about specific quests, but all of the ones I did that had "go to X location" had waypoint markers available to show me which direction I need to start walking.
Sorry to sound like an ass, but thats what beta is for, to tidy up problems like these.
1. There aren't always waypoints for every quest, and a lot of them are still bugged. For me the quest waypoints stopped working reliably after having completed the level 1-5 quests.
2. I had the same problem with a shaman class quest. And I heard so many others asking on the general chat where these mobs were. The quest only says somewhere southeast of Halgarad. It's a 30 minute timed quest. After laboriously crisscrossing the area se of Halgarad for half an hour and having the quest fail (requiring me to restart the chain) I just gave up on it and moved on. Bug repped it. Later I heard on chat someone scoff and say they run into those mobs all the time nw of Halgarad. Quest says se, mobs are apparently nw.
Personally it doesn't aggravate or irritate me - it is beta and I'm not paying for it. But with an imminent launch date, the fact that I'm finding and reporting so many problems is discouraging.
Of course both could be beta issues and they have been reported. I hope they will be fixed because damn noone likes to run around searching for hours in the wrong place.
Secondly, I had come across these same issues more than once and all have been diligently reported (been in beta for what seems like forever (probably around a year or so) and a great many of the reported issues have not been addressed in that time. Most of you probably do not know but they had taken complete 1/3s of the world off line to retool everything from the towns to the quests and the npcs. Since they were brought back up many things were completely ignored, others broken further.
Finally, the true beta is over. Most likely sigil (as with every company I have ever beta tested a product for) will probably dump a whole bunch of stuff into the game come launch but none of it tested, and a good amount of it broken. Sigil is rushing the release, plain and simple. Another 6 months, maybe a year in beta and it might have a chance at becoming a good game. Instead they are going with the common SOE mantra of release now fix later. With EQ2 it seems to have worked... eq2 today plays like a much better game than what was released 2 some odd years ago. SWG on the other hand well.... lol, do I really need to go there?
I understand that the production and development of mmo's is a very costly venture. I also understand, probably more than some, that beta tests are costly to run. However with that said Sigil should not have brought in beta testers when they did or perhaps they should have not outsourced things like trees which cost them a pretty penny (although it is the one redeeming part of the graphics engine imo.) Or perhaps they should have budgeted their time better and instead of running to different forums (here for example) McQuaid and company should have spent their time coding a working stable game.
At this stage of the mmo genre's life cycle one would assume that people, namely devs, would have taken a look at what wow did versus other games that have been released. Yes WoW had its problems but the majority of those had been hardware issues (several million people went beyond even their expectations) the game was stable and apart from pvp honor was feature complete. Vanguard is releasing very incomplete, quite buggy, and rather than being a "hardcore game" is one of tedium and repetitiveness.
**Please note that I detest wow and the community there, And out of the year and 2 months or so that it has been out my account has been cancelled for 9 of those months. I only mention that it was released in a state far better than any other game in the genre.
Also, I have never been a fan of Brad McQuaid (known him since eq beta) and although I was very thorough and diligent in my bug reporting during the time that I played the beta, vanguard is... well... meh. Not the great hope he puffed it out to be, and not complete trash on the level of dark and light, but close
**Final note, all of the above is my opinion. Trolling and flaming only makes me giggle
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
I hear so much about broken quests, it sounds to me that the developers are disorganized, and unable to track what is going on. Perhaps the changes are coming in so fast, and they never took time up front to track the quests. I know, I know, hard work and perseverence pay off in the long run, but laziness pays off now.
Firstoff, developers, create your game maps, and post a big print of them on your office walls. Come up with a coding system, either numeric, or a combination of alpha/numeric. Assign each quest a code, either by race, class, general, level, etc, kind of like the Dewey decimal system. For example, quest for elves could start off with the letter "E". On your computer, record the quest ID number and write down the quest description the players will receive, as well as starting and endpoints. Now, glue that quest ID number on a push pin, and place it on the map, both on the location the quest is received from, and where the quest is resolved from. Push pins come in a variety of colors, use these colors as part of your tracking system. Use different opaque overlays to differentiate between solo, group, and raid areas of your map. The wall map should be placed where everyone can see it. Don't tell me that it's too hard, or there are too many quests to track. There are 22 letters of the alphabet, and literally zillions of numbers, plus all those push pin colors. Trust me, you are incapable of designing a game in which there are too many quests to track. Don't talk to me about cost, you are about to spend millions of dollars on developement, a few hundred dollars of supplies at Office Max is nothing.
Now you can look at your world map, and see how many quests originate in an area, and how many are resolved in an area. When you update the game/quest, you can go to the map and see if anything in the quest/description has to be changed. Dropped a solo quest deep into a raid area, it should stand out visually on your world map. Changed an area from solo to raid, go see what quests have to change.
This is just an example of how to get organized. A game shouldn't have the problem with telling you to go southwest to resolve a quest that lies to the northwest. Just as poor graphics should not be equated with high difficulty (though not done by Vanguard, I've seen developers use poor graphics to enhance difficulty), misleading quest directions should not be used to enhance difficulty.
Poor planning up front will lead to a mess. Proper planning prevents piss poor performance. If a game's performance is piss poor, and years of developement money has been pissed down the toilet, it is because management performed poorly in command, control, and coordination. Perhaps this is what Microsoft saw, and perhaps SOE has pushed for release trying to get Sigil management to get their act together. Developers, don't let that mis-manager be you.
I understand that they didn't want players to use their map that much, and I can appreciate what they're trying to do. However, over the past few weeks I have become incredibly fed up with the useless mapping system.
You wouldn't take a trip with an outdated map, why would you travel the world of Telon without an up-to-date map?
When I explore a town, I want to be able to mark down the location of vendors. I want to mark down points of interest. It's downright absurd that towns don't have more specific, mini-maps of their layouts. Hell, when I take a trip to a different city, I can walk around and pick up a map of the local area.
This is one of those problems that is in serious need of being addressed before release. It's my opinion that if there aren't some serious additions/enhancements to the navigational features, that they'll lose a lot of potential players early on.
Wandering around lost in areas you've already explored is not challenging, exciting, or interesting. It's downright aggravating.
Lastly, I also can relate to the OP in one other sense. Asking the community for assistance seems so bi-polar. Some days I log on, everyone is very friendly and helpful. Other times, I ask a simple question (Where is x?) and I'm flamed by arrogant tards for several minutes, usually with an array of "Stfu", "Go back to WoW", "lern2play", "Look for yourself n00b".
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
eqnext.wikia.com
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Guess you didn't notice some of the quests have wrong directions or so vague its not funny.
Quest Giver: I need you to go East and kill 6 Blood Nose Wart Hogs. You will know them, they look like your mom.
Player1: You know my mom?
Quest Giver: ...
Player: Dad? Hell with it. I will be back. (Travels East, looks for Mom.... errr Warthogs, finds none.)
Player: /Shout anyone know where to find these Warthogs?
Vanboy: Go back to WoW noob
Vanboy2: Its in the quest text loser!
<Player1 looks at quest text. "Go East">
Rare spawn nice person: They are on the next continent over to the East for some $%#* reason. Come on, I will give you a lift over on my boat.
Guess you didn't notice some of the quests have wrong directions or so vague its not funny.
Quest Giver: I need you to go East and kill 6 Blood Nose Wart Hogs. You will know them, they look like your mom.
Player1: You know my mom?
Quest Giver: ...
Player: Dad? Hell with it. I will be back. (Travels East, looks for Mom.... errr Warthogs, finds none.)
Player: /Shout anyone know where to find these Warthogs?
Vanboy: Go back to WoW noob
Vanboy2: Its in the quest text loser!
<Player1 looks at quest text. "Go East">
Rare spawn nice person: They are on the next continent over to the East for some $%#* reason. Come on, I will give you a lift over on my boat.
/agree
...Let's hope some/most/all of the people spouting nothing but "GO back to WoW n00b!" will not be in the game after it launches. That's a really bad attitude to have about people.
I think you're onto something there. One thing I found odd was that you could provide feedback at the end of every quest you finished which would surely be tagged directly to that quest, but if you had to abandon a quest because it was bugged there was no prompt for feedback. You could 'ug' report it but they would all just to into one huge generic quest bug bin and they'd have to read through all of them.
If they'd simply allowed you to provide feedback when abandoning quests I'm sure they'd be able to identify major problems sooner. They would see the massive number of negative reports listed against particular quests and be able to deal with them more efficiently.
Or gave them boat rides when the GMs gave me one while I was on my Crimson Fellowship Character. What fun is a gm character and a boat if you can take players for a ride. And sorry to everyone who I accidently crashed into a shore line full of hostile mobs.
Thanks again for lettin me screw around with the boats GM-Vertyn, they were fun, but a pain in the ass to steer.
Np. I posted the same on the official forum - as long as they exist.
I know it is not the usual style I try to write in, but I thoght they had to realize how I felt playing the game atm.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Np. I posted the same on the official forum - as long as they exist.
I know it is not the usual style I try to write in, but I thoght they had to realize how I felt playing the game atm.
He is asking if you used the quest feedback from the game i think. This is what i do when i find quest confusing... I send a quest feedback form.eqnext.wikia.com
This is a KO criteria for me. Although I do hope you've been a lil' bit exaggerating? After all VG sounded like a pretty good game but in the end the community makes and breaks a game.
This is a KO criteria for me. Although I do hope you've been a lil' bit exaggerating? After all VG sounded like a pretty good game but in the end the community makes and breaks a game.
He's not exaggerating.
I've noticed this kind of anti-social defensiveness in other games which haven't quite lived up to expectations.
I actually did find the same problem on the VG chat channels. You say that you can't find something and end up being flamed for 5 minutes rather than getting a helpful one-line, "You'l find it blah blah blah".
I suspect, though, that the arrogant tards aren't representative of the Vanguard community. But being arrogant tards they're just more vocal.
I don't think I've seen it in any mmos I've played but they were always good in muds - noob channels. Create a chat channel where 1-15s can safely ask what might be stupid questions and otherwise restrict the channel to helpful and more experienced volunteer players.
Cos frankly the arrogant tards don't do anything to encourage players to stay and probably lack the insight to ever realise what they're doing is counter-productive.
Well tbh, I wrote all this and other thing because I am deeply split. I am reall unsure if I shall play VG or not. I hav so great moments, and then so deep falls. I find myself running in cities over and over to find things. And I admit, my sense of direction and my 3d memory is not good. So after going back to a character I played 2-3 days ago the last, I totally forgot 70% of all places.
On top, many quests dont even tell you who gave you the quest, or they have a name, but I can for the good savior not recall who Alphonase was and where the heck he was standing. So I get my quests, log back to char 3 days later and I am totally lost. The direction given in the text is mostly relative to the quest giver, but what does it help if I forgot who gave me the quest? Besides the fact that "go east" in a landscape with deadly mobs and real death penalities is a bit much coming together. Besides, 80% of my deaths were from lag spikes. It is not that I can't play. 80% of the time the game plays more or less fluid, but there are those ugly stuttering and lag spike and and boss mob has me by the ass. Really, the improved FPS and stability a lot in RELATIVE term, in absolue - what I expect from a game - is not reached by far! No I am no technician to tell how likely it is stability and fps will really improve in a short time.
Keep in mind release is 30th, with preordering folks being in the game at 26th or 27th. So the game must be pressed on DVDs at around 20th to be shipped in time! So we are not even a week away from the "final" version that goes into the shops, folks!
Adding to that Kojan does not seem to have a working binding system, I did not find a way to bind myself anywhere that Halfelf starter city in Kojan. What was the name? SEE, thats just another small thing: the names blink for a few secs and are gone. In many places I can not see the name of the place I am at, which adds more to the confusion.
Maybe guards should have more direction options, like in EQ2, where you ask for a name, but also can ask for specific shops and trainers and you get an equivalent of the glowy trail.
Really, I am so unsure. VG has big catchy moments, but also so deeply annoying and frustrating parts. If we were in beta 3 or so, I would not even bother to post here, but we are close to release. And the statement of those who are in beta much longer, telling us they reported this a year ago already does not REALLY help me gain trust.
EDIT: Oh and since we are in the bitching and complainig already: I found soloing MUCH easier. With the fast respawn I have totally NO time to talk about strategy often, and everyone running around, mages playing tanks, healers playing tanks also, tanks waiting in the 2nd row, ppls running like ants in directions. But on top of all: its nigh impossible to FIND a group. I got actually 5 groups who told me, "oh we dont take monks, we already have one and monks are too weak to tank anyway". At that same evening I wandered around the 5 hours - so you get the drift why I was so pissed. I dunno, why in every place I was ppl kept solo camping rare mobs instead of getting into a group. I was often the only one who really started groups, and ppl were surprised as if they never had heard of grouping!
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Heh - I had that same problem. I go to log a bug report and think 'oh crud, where am I?' and have to run out of the area and back in to see that "You have entered XXX" msg.
And I know how you feel - the game has a lot going for it, but I'm not convinced the overall package will be fun (for me) at release.
This is a KO criteria for me. Although I do hope you've been a lil' bit exaggerating? After all VG sounded like a pretty good game but in the end the community makes and breaks a game.
Agree, that is why i quitted WoW.
eqnext.wikia.com
This is a KO criteria for me. Although I do hope you've been a lil' bit exaggerating? After all VG sounded like a pretty good game but in the end the community makes and breaks a game.
He's not exaggerating.
On that night, ppl were spamming the shout and OOC if nvidia or ati was better, or if wow sukked or not and if VG was an EQ2 clone or not.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Apparently they expected me to do 1 quest at a time, return to the quest giver and turn it in. Heaven forbid they mark on my map where the quest giver is, or allow me to add my own waypoints to my map.
I suppose my character who grew up in this starting town could have gotten amensia and completely forgetten where everyone is...
but yes, any attempts to make the game easier tend to get flamed by people who think that maps are the devil, the death penalty should fry your motherboard for screwing up, and the only people who play wow are still learning to tie their own shoes.