I think it is just because the world is not fnished yet. I base this on the fact that the oceans are completely empty. There is nothing in them. I think the land content is the same.
The underwater parts really remind me of first-gen MMOs. I was thinking about DAOC's TOA, and how that's the one thing that was really good about it. They showed how nice a populated underwater landscape can be. All sorts of seaweed, coral, fish, etc.
That's a hell of a lot of content for them to be working on post-release, though. Unless they've got some huge art patch they're sitting on, just trying to finish up, I think it'd be a lot longer than six months before anything like that makes it in game. More likely, they don't even have the resources to do it at all
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
If you think about it though, the world is so large to incorporate some of the huge aspects of the game that players just haven't gotten to yet. There are roughly 5,000+ plots of land for players to build houses. Thats a very large amount of space just for housing. Also, player cities will be built. This game world needs to be big and in some places barren to allow room for all of this.
E8400@ 4.0Ghz ~ Saphire HD 4870 ~ 6GB DDR2@ 860MhZ
If you think about it though, the world is so large to incorporate some of the huge aspects of the game that players just haven't gotten to yet. There are roughly 5,000+ plots of land for players to build houses. Thats a very large amount of space just for housing. Also, player cities will be built. This game world needs to be big and in some places barren to allow room for all of this.
Are you saying that you think my post was a complaint about the gameworld being too big? Or am I misunderstanding?
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Yeah, I have no idea. I was just posting this against some of the other people here saying its full of nothing. But to reply to your post, I would have to agree. Yes, your right, the game does lack some major areas that could include huge monuments for no apparent reason or a some cool artwork.
E8400@ 4.0Ghz ~ Saphire HD 4870 ~ 6GB DDR2@ 860MhZ
Obviously there is a place for future work to be added. But are we in that future? No. Are we close to it? No. Stop thinking about the future, you pay 15$ a month now, meaning the world should be dense enough now. Space is only good as long as it has it's uses, if space is there only to make your travel time longer, then it's only a miserable attempt to make the game feel epic and hard, but it's not real.
Imho any space that exists should be filled with content. When adding new content add new places, so the overall density of the world is the same. When I experienced it the world wasn't dense enough.
The days of UO and EQ are gone folks, the industry needs to redefine hard. Hard content doesn't mean a lot of time spent, obviously Sigil doesn't know that though.
random obviously wears a helmet because thats pretty much retarded, the game just released for christ sake. Any ways do you think if people didn't pay 15$ a month for WoW they would still update the game? uh no they wouldnt,or any other mainstream mmo, it takes money. I'm willing to pay 15$ a month for the future of this game. You also say stop thinking about the future, name one game that hasn't changed from its release- Oh you can't.
Here is my thoughts... when you look at mobs past lvl say 5 they all pretty much turn into red aggro type mobs correct?......well what happens when you put 300 aggro mobs close to each other to fill space in the world.... you hit one mob and better start running cause your gonna have the god damn mafia after your ass ... this is one of many reasons it seems empty but to me it feels more real i dont expect to go out into the woods or the desert and expect to see 600 deer or 900 scorpians thats just stupid so stop bitching if you dont like it dont pay for it pretty damn simple if you ask me
I dont know about you guys, but Id rather have a big world with 1-2 critters in the near vicinity, then 10 times smaller world and with 5-7 critters around me. WoW is a bright example of having a "packed" feeling, the world is fairly small and packed with mobs and animals. Its way too small and crowded.
With Vanguard, the world is big, so I get an epic feeling. Travel takes time, exploring landmarks, whether interactive or cosmetic is fun. And Ive seen critters attacking other critters.
As you can see, there is ambience in the world, critters move around, sometimes predators attack grasseaters, sometimes u see a mysterious landmark, sometimes u meet NPC that will give u a quest. Those pieces are spread out so you have to actualy look for them.
Obviously there is a place for future work to be added. But are we in that future? No. Are we close to it? No. Stop thinking about the future, you pay 15$ a month now, meaning the world should be dense enough now. Space is only good as long as it has it's uses, if space is there only to make your travel time longer, then it's only a miserable attempt to make the game feel epic and hard, but it's not real.
Imho any space that exists should be filled with content. When adding new content add new places, so the overall density of the world is the same. When I experienced it the world wasn't dense enough.
The days of UO and EQ are gone folks, the industry needs to redefine hard. Hard content doesn't mean a lot of time spent, obviously Sigil doesn't know that though.
random obviously wears a helmet because thats pretty much retarded, the game just released for christ sake. Any ways do you think if people didn't pay 15$ a month for WoW they would still update the game? uh no they wouldnt,or any other mainstream mmo, it takes money. I'm willing to pay 15$ a month for the future of this game. You also say stop thinking about the future, name one game that hasn't changed from its release- Oh you can't. I appreciate you looking at my post, however when reading it next time please do not use the brute(raw) force method for analyzing the content.
I shall explain it more specifically, for the weaker ones:
The world should be dense, the formula is not really that hard, having three main factors : map size, content amount, average player load. If a world isn't dense enough, then it's incomplete : either there is too much space, with no use, or too little implemented content. Now, when adding new content, you can add the new space as well, keeping the same density. Of course some like the exploring part of the world, but remember once again, hard does not equal long time to achieve. Anything that can be done with investing only time is not hard, these old notions must be redefined, lest we'll have very boring games on our hands.
When did I say that they don't need the monthly 15$ to be able to evolve? I said no such thing. As a complete product, a game should feel complete at all times. Having a lot of unutilized space in the game, just for the purpose of it being epic with a potential, simply translates to an incomplete product. So in short, at the present time it is incomplete, no one gives a rats ass what will happen few months later. I have run out of patience, I will no longer pay for any game that is incomplete.
Potential is just that, it might be achieved, and right now, the logical facts do not point towards the conclusion, that Sigil will have at all times both an evolving and a complete game.
Evolving means, that in point A the game is complete, and they add some features, then the game reaches point B and still is complete. Incomplete means, the game is in point A, and is missing a limb. It can evolve to point B, but it will not have regrown the missing limb, thus it is still incomplete.
If it is at point A, incomplete, and in order to become complete they must use the resources that would be needed for evolving, to repair the incompleteness. This all translates to the customer paying 15$ a month until point A reaches completion, whereas point A should have been complete from the 50$. All basic maths, right?
So anyway you put it, they are in debt, and I mean hard cash debt.
Solution (and how it all fits): Make a smaller, but denser world, that is complete, and uprgrade space as you add content.
The catch: the team thought by having a huge space to traverse, the game would become more hardcore, but for me, hard is not wasting time -- talk about design flaw. This is why I said, the concepts that UO and EQ came up with should be long forgotten, bring on real 3rd gen!!!
If there are people that like the concepts of UO and EQ1, why should they be forgotten? There are plenty of other games out there for those, like you, who don't like these concepts! But there are people that want games where you don't get spoon-fed everything all the time, please let us have our games as well. There is no conflict between these games, they complement each other.
Random 11: If there are people that like the concepts of UO and EQ1, why should they be forgotten? There are plenty of other games out there for those, like you, who don't like these concepts! But there are people that want games where you don't get spoon-fed everything all the time, please let us have our games as well. There is no conflict between these games, they complement each other.
Look, I like those games as well, but VG tried to make it all on a grand scale, and I think that has design limitations. I was very very much looking forward to this game, put a lot of faith in it.
But not only did it have design flaws, as I see it, but it is an incomplete game, and my arguments just pose why I will not support it with money, I want a good industry.
And no, no 3rd gen game is out there, and they might not even come this year...
I dont know about you guys, but Id rather have a big world with 1-2 critters in the near vicinity, then 10 times smaller world and with 5-7 critters around me. WoW is a bright example of having a "packed" feeling, the world is fairly small and packed with mobs and animals. Its way too small and crowded.
With Vanguard, the world is big, so I get an epic feeling. Travel takes time, exploring landmarks, whether interactive or cosmetic is fun. And Ive seen critters attacking other critters.
As you can see, there is ambience in the world, critters move around, sometimes predators attack grasseaters, sometimes u see a mysterious landmark, sometimes u meet NPC that will give u a quest. Those pieces are spread out so you have to actualy look for them.
Gonna have to disagree, WoW's world isn't too packed or crowded. There are many sprawling landscapes in WoW, such as savanah-like plains of the The Barrens, the deserts of Tanaris & Sithilius, & big empty wasteland of Desolace.There's certainly packed zones like the cities, like Orgrimmar, but it sure does feel alive, something VG failed in this aspect. The graphics are yes, stylish and cartoony but its still amazing how they made amazing atmosphere in all the zones such as Ashenvale. I'm not even a loyal WoW fanatic but you can still see how its zone designs are far superior to VG's blandness. The landscape is just virtually too much empty space and not enough interesting landmarks so it gives this dead, lifeless feel to it. (IMO) But VG's music is quality though I gotta say.
I must dissagree a bit wit some of the posts here, while I agree some of the landscape is a bit barren and bland. If they made it "Dense" with life it would take 2x 8800 GTX in sli to thier knees getting 5fps on high settings.
Untill they optomize thier engine a bit more i would not want to even imagine the lag it would cause if they made it more dense.
I must dissagree a bit wit some of the posts here, while I agree some of the landscape is a bit barren and bland. If they made it "Dense" with life it would take 2x 8800 GTX in sli to thier knees getting 5fps on high settings. Untill they optomize thier engine a bit more i would not want to even imagine the lag it would cause if they made it more dense.
The whole thing can be brought back to the simple fact, that Sigil programmers know jack. They have the license for an engine with the best efficiency, best net code, and best moddability out there, created by a real genius (Tim Sweeney), and this is all they could accomplish in years. So it not being dense enough in small proportions is truly an issue any dev team has to tackle.
But I wasn't refering to that kind of dense, I mean WoW kind of dense, but not exactly. I will not post the whole thing again.
Anyone can run around and look for places where there aren't any people so you can take a screenshot of them. Like every other game, there are some places where there's lots of people, and there are some places where there's very few people. Vanguard having a huge game-world just means that there are more of both places.
someone please post some good looking screens of a busy town please.
Its not busy with NPCs...but Veskal's Exchange has its bursts of activity. I have never seen this area without some type of player activity. Its a busy place .... Some NPC's and quests/ You cannot see the NPC's in the picture but they are there in the camps and buildings ... Nearby outlaw camp and spider caves ... also their is more stuff to the north but i have not been up there yet ...there are some mines where i saw some player activity..... Kaon's rush to the south which is a haven for player activity and experience... Empty...ok whatever ... lots of stuff to do and see.
Obviously there is a place for future work to be added. But are we in that future? No. Are we close to it? No. Stop thinking about the future, you pay 15$ a month now, meaning the world should be dense enough now. Space is only good as long as it has it's uses, if space is there only to make your travel time longer, then it's only a miserable attempt to make the game feel epic and hard, but it's not real.
Imho any space that exists should be filled with content. When adding new content add new places, so the overall density of the world is the same. When I experienced it the world wasn't dense enough.
The days of UO and EQ are gone folks, the industry needs to redefine hard. Hard content doesn't mean a lot of time spent, obviously Sigil doesn't know that though.
random obviously wears a helmet because thats pretty much retarded, the game just released for christ sake. Any ways do you think if people didn't pay 15$ a month for WoW they would still update the game? uh no they wouldnt,or any other mainstream mmo, it takes money. I'm willing to pay 15$ a month for the future of this game. You also say stop thinking about the future, name one game that hasn't changed from its release- Oh you can't.
I appreciate you looking at my post, however when reading it next time please do not use the brute(raw) force method for analyzing the content.
I shall explain it more specifically, for the weaker ones:
The world should be dense, the formula is not really that hard, having three main factors : map size, content amount, average player load. If a world isn't dense enough, then it's incomplete : either there is too much space, with no use, or too little implemented content. Now, when adding new content, you can add the new space as well, keeping the same density. Of course some like the exploring part of the world, but remember once again, hard does not equal long time to achieve. Anything that can be done with investing only time is not hard, these old notions must be redefined, lest we'll have very boring games on our hands.
Not counting the random number of general spawns in an area ... Lomshir in Qalia is a populated area .... we have a populated beach to the north with turles, crab like creatures and squd things...to the south are the lions, the corrupted black ink thingies, doggies and scorpions ... to the east not very far are a group of horse thieves and other brigands who are part of a larger quest .
Further up the beach away from the town are the undead surrounding the ruins and finally the beached boat ... under that boat is a massive underground complex with a temple and assorted monsters ...
I travel a bit more and i discover the horse track which leads me to .... vast open areas that i have yet to explore ... but they have mobs in them ... random hunters and the other assorted monster and whatnot ... there are spaces i can hide but overall i can have a good time just hunting these creatures ... More quests lead me to the port city of Khal and the surrounding area..
Now this area is not empty to say the least .. There are more outlaws and roaming monsters here and there ... there is a nearby cave system that has monsters in it that are far beyond my level but it seems deep and full of killable fodder for the average adventurer.
There seem to be alot of caravaans and camps in this area so there is more then enough to kill in this area. Empty? no i dont think so.
I travel south of the city (cause im KOS in the city) and I run into more thieves and quests that lead me to more thieves ... OK .. so I continue south to look around...
I run into a river with a port town ... NPC's giving out quest ... I breeze over these and it seems it has something to do with refugees needing help from a hoard of enemies on their tail...I take note of that and move on south ... run into more groups of random monsters here and there ....
A note i must state is the roads are mostly safe ... and free of mobs ... unless someone has trained them in that area.
I run through the area called Jathred's twist by road ... I do not see anything cause i stick to the roads and dont really stop to take a look over the hilltops that i see...so i keep going...I see some red monsters around.
Finally I move west to some type of forest area and a I see large ruins in the distance ...
I am really trying to understand what empty means.
When did I say that they don't need the monthly 15$ to be able to evolve? I said no such thing. As a complete product, a game should feel complete at all times. Having a lot of unutilized space in the game, just for the purpose of it being epic with a potential, simply translates to an incomplete product. So in short, at the present time it is incomplete, no one gives a rats ass what will happen few months later. I have run out of patience, I will no longer pay for any game that is incomplete.
Potential is just that, it might be achieved, and right now, the logical facts do not point towards the conclusion, that Sigil will have at all times both an evolving and a complete game.
Evolving means, that in point A the game is complete, and they add some features, then the game reaches point B and still is complete. Incomplete means, the game is in point A, and is missing a limb. It can evolve to point B, but it will not have regrown the missing limb, thus it is still incomplete.
If it is at point A, incomplete, and in order to become complete they must use the resources that would be needed for evolving, to repair the incompleteness. This all translates to the customer paying 15$ a month until point A reaches completion, whereas point A should have been complete from the 50$. All basic maths, right?
So anyway you put it, they are in debt, and I mean hard cash debt.
Solution (and how it all fits): Make a smaller, but denser world, that is complete, and uprgrade space as you add content.
The catch: the team thought by having a huge space to traverse, the game would become more hardcore, but for me, hard is not wasting time -- talk about design flaw. This is why I said, the concepts that UO and EQ came up with should be long forgotten, bring on real 3rd gen!!!
Solution (and how it all fits): Make a smaller, but denser world, that is complete, and uprgrade space as you add content.
The catch: the team thought by having a huge space to traverse, the game would become more hardcore, but for me, hard is not wasting time -- talk about design flaw. This is why I said, the concepts that UO and EQ came up with should be long forgotten, bring on real 3rd gen!!!
Better solution (IMHO): Stick with the big gameworld, just make sure that players can either
A) Traverse it quickly (e.g. Moongates, recall runes, public transit, whatever)
or
Don't need to traverse that much of it, that often (Once you get to each new area, there's no reason to run back and forth to an old one. All necesseties being in all major areas)
And, make sure you have enough players to populate a server. I don;t know what sort of tech limits there might be, but I'm pretty sure Vanguard is not too big to hold enough players to keep it feeling crowded. A lot of areas already are. Which reminds me, how this even got to be about player crowding, I don't know. It sure wasn't what I was talking about.
Like I keep saying, I don't think big is the problem. A smaller Vanguard world would still feel just as lacking. So the number one solution is really a matter of better game design. Which I could go on and on about, but why bother...
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I've seen a lot of posts say that Vanguard feels empty because it's so big. Not even sure which one to reply to, so just wanted to start a new topic to argue the point. Let's say you have a game area with five Points of Interest. It shouldn't matter how much open wilderness is between those five points, each of them can still be interesting. I'd say, even more so, if they're not clumped together like part of an amusement part. It seems to me, it should make the game feel more alive, to have lots of wilderness between handcrafted POIs. The problem is when you have lots of wilderness, and NO points of interest. Or none that are all that interesting. Now, maybe it's because I'm still a newbie, but that seems to be Vanguard's problem to me. It's not that the world is too big. It's that it doesn't even have the handcrafted little parts that a well-crafted smaller gameworld would have. A well-crafted gameworld of any size would have. I'll get even more specific. Let's say you have a desert, the best example of boring wilderness. You can either have a huge desert, with a big fancy pharoah's ruins tucked away in the middle, or you can have a pharoah's ruins that is pretty much the whole desert. I'd greatly prefer the first option, but either way can be fun. The second will just be a more shallow feeling sort of fun. I just hate to see a big desert with no fancy epic ruins at all. That's when it'd feel dead boring. There's no reason big should have to mean empty. Which is how Vanguard feels to me, at least so far.
Some areas are still incomplete. The areas just west of Khal were pretty empty in beta but now are teeming with mobs. Almost too many. I don't expect that any of the sparse areas are really meant to be that way.
Originally posted by Invidious Some areas are still incomplete. The areas just west of Khal were pretty empty in beta but now are teeming with mobs. Almost too many. I don't expect that any of the sparse areas are really meant to be that way.
Tried to log in a bit ago, to find that my main's logged in an area that's down. Crashed chunk? I dunno, but I decided to start an alt while waiting. High Elf this time.
And to me, the High Elf starter lands look like the most complete area I've been in, so far. Almost filled up my quest quota even - never even came close before. And the woods are pretty nice - really noticed the lack of reflective water though, it'd make a huge difference there. Plus throw in some dynamic lighting and fog effects to top it off, and it'd be the first part of the game that I could even call finished. Hell, even all shiny and epic feeling.
Now compare to the other places I tried. First Tanvu - it's ok. Some nice touches, but seemed kind of boring. Then Martok. Geez, don't even know where to start, seemed terribly unfinished, but at the time, I just thought it was terribly crappy. Then the Wood Elf lands - like Tanvu, some nice touches, but IMHO, seemed like it still needs quite a bit of work.
Finally, after three bad to mediocre starter impressions, one that's almost decent. How can people even argue about the quality of the content, when one area is so much more finished and well done than another? I really hope they get to some serious polishing SOON, because I can't get over how many players they must be losing. Maybe they should tell new players which races they recommend starting with, while they scramble to finish the others.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
i think the point some of us are making is vangaurd is more closly related to real life then say wow. cities are cities but if you tavel a desert its open and not much there like it should be.. weather or not you want to dispute this this fact deserts are barren of all things including lots of life.. and some of you may say " oh this is a game" well shut up no one cares
For the first time tonight I saw 3 people in the same place; the caverns where you do the Essence of Flame quest for the goblins, in which I saw my team-mate DK, and another group of a druid/psi. Another 7 rogue tried to attack us later,but he died.
Generally,it seems that the FFA PvP server area I'm in (Martok) is fairly active at night,but dead quiet during the day. And by fairly active I mean I may see a person every 5-20 minutes somewhere,instead of not seeing anyone most of the time in the day. Shout channel is also fairly active,but mostly with people killing each other. Seems fairly helpful as well.
I like the interior of the caverns we were working our way through; in fact,it came as quite a surprise that to kill the Wyrm Shade we had to look up,and up.....and up,and fight all the way up there to find & kill it! That was impressive. And this is only a level 6-8 place,too. Seamless dungeons rock!
Still,I'd still like to see a more player-populated feel to the VG landscape,but maybe it will come....
I would much rather be in a huge world where you see people mostly in urban areas and hardly anyone when you go far out in the wilds. As opposed to a small world where everyone is stuffed shoulder to shoulder and fighting over the same resources, mobs, etc.
Comments
The underwater parts really remind me of first-gen MMOs. I was thinking about DAOC's TOA, and how that's the one thing that was really good about it. They showed how nice a populated underwater landscape can be. All sorts of seaweed, coral, fish, etc.
That's a hell of a lot of content for them to be working on post-release, though. Unless they've got some huge art patch they're sitting on, just trying to finish up, I think it'd be a lot longer than six months before anything like that makes it in game. More likely, they don't even have the resources to do it at all
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
E8400@ 4.0Ghz ~ Saphire HD 4870 ~ 6GB DDR2@ 860MhZ
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
E8400@ 4.0Ghz ~ Saphire HD 4870 ~ 6GB DDR2@ 860MhZ
With Vanguard, the world is big, so I get an epic feeling. Travel takes time, exploring landmarks, whether interactive or cosmetic is fun. And Ive seen critters attacking other critters.
Here are some vids I took during my adventuring:
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/88856/vgclient-2007-02-03-23-57-21-68-DUEL-avi.html - good quality funny mock duel
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/88981/vgclient-2007-02-05-21-29-28-14-avi.html - awesome landscape
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/88991/vgclient-2007-02-08-22-25-14-45-avi.html - short HQ clip, healing animation
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/88992/vgclient-2007-02-18-00-21-32-31-avi.html - fighting a big monkey (yeti)
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/88993/vgclient-2007-02-20-01-17-19-21-avi.html - short HQ clip, amazing desert landscape
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/88996/vgclient-2007-02-20-01-19-50-78-avi.html - 1minute HQ file, traveling, fighting, great landscape
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/88998/vgclient-2007-02-20-01-21-31-96-avi.html - short HQ clip, amazing landscape
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/89003/vgclient-2007-02-20-01-22-46-65-avi.html - long HQ clip, traveling, amazing landscape, harvesting
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/89004/vgclient-2007-02-20-01-27-18-39-avi.html - medium length clip, traveling, great landscape
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/89007/vgclient-2007-02-20-01-31-41-40-avi.html - short HQ clip, amazing landscape
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/89009/vgclient-2007-02-20-01-32-33-23-avi.html - short HQ clip, gazelle
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/89025/vgclient-2007-02-20-01-33-53-06-avi.html - huge HQ clip, Phoenix quest
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/89043/vgclient-2007-02-20-01-48-40-31-avi.html - average HQ clip, beach, funny crabs that dig themeselves into the sand
http://www.sharebigfile.com/file/89045/vgclient-2007-02-20-01-53-07-07-avi.html - long HQ clip, forest
As you can see, there is ambience in the world, critters move around, sometimes predators attack grasseaters, sometimes u see a mysterious landmark, sometimes u meet NPC that will give u a quest. Those pieces are spread out so you have to actualy look for them.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I shall explain it more specifically, for the weaker ones:
The world should be dense, the formula is not really that hard, having three main factors : map size, content amount, average player load. If a world isn't dense enough, then it's incomplete : either there is too much space, with no use, or too little implemented content. Now, when adding new content, you can add the new space as well, keeping the same density. Of course some like the exploring part of the world, but remember once again, hard does not equal long time to achieve. Anything that can be done with investing only time is not hard, these old notions must be redefined, lest we'll have very boring games on our hands.
When did I say that they don't need the monthly 15$ to be able to evolve? I said no such thing. As a complete product, a game should feel complete at all times. Having a lot of unutilized space in the game, just for the purpose of it being epic with a potential, simply translates to an incomplete product. So in short, at the present time it is incomplete, no one gives a rats ass what will happen few months later. I have run out of patience, I will no longer pay for any game that is incomplete.
Potential is just that, it might be achieved, and right now, the logical facts do not point towards the conclusion, that Sigil will have at all times both an evolving and a complete game.
Evolving means, that in point A the game is complete, and they add some features, then the game reaches point B and still is complete. Incomplete means, the game is in point A, and is missing a limb. It can evolve to point B, but it will not have regrown the missing limb, thus it is still incomplete.
If it is at point A, incomplete, and in order to become complete they must use the resources that would be needed for evolving, to repair the incompleteness. This all translates to the customer paying 15$ a month until point A reaches completion, whereas point A should have been complete from the 50$. All basic maths, right?
So anyway you put it, they are in debt, and I mean hard cash debt.
Solution (and how it all fits): Make a smaller, but denser world, that is complete, and uprgrade space as you add content.
The catch: the team thought by having a huge space to traverse, the game would become more hardcore, but for me, hard is not wasting time -- talk about design flaw. This is why I said, the concepts that UO and EQ came up with should be long forgotten, bring on real 3rd gen!!!
Random 11:
If there are people that like the concepts of UO and EQ1, why should they be forgotten? There are plenty of other games out there for those, like you, who don't like these concepts! But there are people that want games where you don't get spoon-fed everything all the time, please let us have our games as well. There is no conflict between these games, they complement each other.
But not only did it have design flaws, as I see it, but it is an incomplete game, and my arguments just pose why I will not support it with money, I want a good industry.
And no, no 3rd gen game is out there, and they might not even come this year...
I must dissagree a bit wit some of the posts here, while I agree some of the landscape is a bit barren and bland. If they made it "Dense" with life it would take 2x 8800 GTX in sli to thier knees getting 5fps on high settings.
Untill they optomize thier engine a bit more i would not want to even imagine the lag it would cause if they made it more dense.
But I wasn't refering to that kind of dense, I mean WoW kind of dense, but not exactly. I will not post the whole thing again.
Its not busy with NPCs...but Veskal's Exchange has its bursts of activity. I have never seen this area without some type of player activity. Its a busy place .... Some NPC's and quests/ You cannot see the NPC's in the picture but they are there in the camps and buildings ... Nearby outlaw camp and spider caves ... also their is more stuff to the north but i have not been up there yet ...there are some mines where i saw some player activity..... Kaon's rush to the south which is a haven for player activity and experience... Empty...ok whatever ... lots of stuff to do and see.
Do we have to handhold you all over the world?
I appreciate you looking at my post, however when reading it next time please do not use the brute(raw) force method for analyzing the content.
I shall explain it more specifically, for the weaker ones:
The world should be dense, the formula is not really that hard, having three main factors : map size, content amount, average player load. If a world isn't dense enough, then it's incomplete : either there is too much space, with no use, or too little implemented content. Now, when adding new content, you can add the new space as well, keeping the same density. Of course some like the exploring part of the world, but remember once again, hard does not equal long time to achieve. Anything that can be done with investing only time is not hard, these old notions must be redefined, lest we'll have very boring games on our hands.
Not counting the random number of general spawns in an area ... Lomshir in Qalia is a populated area .... we have a populated beach to the north with turles, crab like creatures and squd things...to the south are the lions, the corrupted black ink thingies, doggies and scorpions ... to the east not very far are a group of horse thieves and other brigands who are part of a larger quest .
Further up the beach away from the town are the undead surrounding the ruins and finally the beached boat ... under that boat is a massive underground complex with a temple and assorted monsters ...
I travel a bit more and i discover the horse track which leads me to .... vast open areas that i have yet to explore ... but they have mobs in them ... random hunters and the other assorted monster and whatnot ... there are spaces i can hide but overall i can have a good time just hunting these creatures ... More quests lead me to the port city of Khal and the surrounding area..
Now this area is not empty to say the least .. There are more outlaws and roaming monsters here and there ... there is a nearby cave system that has monsters in it that are far beyond my level but it seems deep and full of killable fodder for the average adventurer.
There seem to be alot of caravaans and camps in this area so there is more then enough to kill in this area. Empty? no i dont think so.
I travel south of the city (cause im KOS in the city) and I run into more thieves and quests that lead me to more thieves ... OK .. so I continue south to look around...
I run into a river with a port town ... NPC's giving out quest ... I breeze over these and it seems it has something to do with refugees needing help from a hoard of enemies on their tail...I take note of that and move on south ... run into more groups of random monsters here and there ....
A note i must state is the roads are mostly safe ... and free of mobs ... unless someone has trained them in that area.
I run through the area called Jathred's twist by road ... I do not see anything cause i stick to the roads and dont really stop to take a look over the hilltops that i see...so i keep going...I see some red monsters around.
Finally I move west to some type of forest area and a I see large ruins in the distance ...
I am really trying to understand what empty means.
When did I say that they don't need the monthly 15$ to be able to evolve? I said no such thing. As a complete product, a game should feel complete at all times. Having a lot of unutilized space in the game, just for the purpose of it being epic with a potential, simply translates to an incomplete product. So in short, at the present time it is incomplete, no one gives a rats ass what will happen few months later. I have run out of patience, I will no longer pay for any game that is incomplete.
Potential is just that, it might be achieved, and right now, the logical facts do not point towards the conclusion, that Sigil will have at all times both an evolving and a complete game.
Evolving means, that in point A the game is complete, and they add some features, then the game reaches point B and still is complete. Incomplete means, the game is in point A, and is missing a limb. It can evolve to point B, but it will not have regrown the missing limb, thus it is still incomplete.
If it is at point A, incomplete, and in order to become complete they must use the resources that would be needed for evolving, to repair the incompleteness. This all translates to the customer paying 15$ a month until point A reaches completion, whereas point A should have been complete from the 50$. All basic maths, right?
So anyway you put it, they are in debt, and I mean hard cash debt.
Solution (and how it all fits): Make a smaller, but denser world, that is complete, and uprgrade space as you add content.
The catch: the team thought by having a huge space to traverse, the game would become more hardcore, but for me, hard is not wasting time -- talk about design flaw. This is why I said, the concepts that UO and EQ came up with should be long forgotten, bring on real 3rd gen!!!
Better solution (IMHO): Stick with the big gameworld, just make sure that players can either
A) Traverse it quickly (e.g. Moongates, recall runes, public transit, whatever)
or
And, make sure you have enough players to populate a server. I don;t know what sort of tech limits there might be, but I'm pretty sure Vanguard is not too big to hold enough players to keep it feeling crowded. A lot of areas already are. Which reminds me, how this even got to be about player crowding, I don't know. It sure wasn't what I was talking about.
Like I keep saying, I don't think big is the problem. A smaller Vanguard world would still feel just as lacking. So the number one solution is really a matter of better game design. Which I could go on and on about, but why bother...
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Some areas are still incomplete. The areas just west of Khal were pretty empty in beta but now are teeming with mobs. Almost too many. I don't expect that any of the sparse areas are really meant to be that way.
Tried to log in a bit ago, to find that my main's logged in an area that's down. Crashed chunk? I dunno, but I decided to start an alt while waiting. High Elf this time.
And to me, the High Elf starter lands look like the most complete area I've been in, so far. Almost filled up my quest quota even - never even came close before. And the woods are pretty nice - really noticed the lack of reflective water though, it'd make a huge difference there. Plus throw in some dynamic lighting and fog effects to top it off, and it'd be the first part of the game that I could even call finished. Hell, even all shiny and epic feeling.
Now compare to the other places I tried. First Tanvu - it's ok. Some nice touches, but seemed kind of boring. Then Martok. Geez, don't even know where to start, seemed terribly unfinished, but at the time, I just thought it was terribly crappy. Then the Wood Elf lands - like Tanvu, some nice touches, but IMHO, seemed like it still needs quite a bit of work.
Finally, after three bad to mediocre starter impressions, one that's almost decent. How can people even argue about the quality of the content, when one area is so much more finished and well done than another? I really hope they get to some serious polishing SOON, because I can't get over how many players they must be losing. Maybe they should tell new players which races they recommend starting with, while they scramble to finish the others.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
For the first time tonight I saw 3 people in the same place; the caverns where you do the Essence of Flame quest for the goblins, in which I saw my team-mate DK, and another group of a druid/psi. Another 7 rogue tried to attack us later,but he died.
Generally,it seems that the FFA PvP server area I'm in (Martok) is fairly active at night,but dead quiet during the day. And by fairly active I mean I may see a person every 5-20 minutes somewhere,instead of not seeing anyone most of the time in the day. Shout channel is also fairly active,but mostly with people killing each other. Seems fairly helpful as well.
I like the interior of the caverns we were working our way through; in fact,it came as quite a surprise that to kill the Wyrm Shade we had to look up,and up.....and up,and fight all the way up there to find & kill it! That was impressive. And this is only a level 6-8 place,too. Seamless dungeons rock!
Still,I'd still like to see a more player-populated feel to the VG landscape,but maybe it will come....