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Brad McQuaid back on the forums for an epic hit!
DJXeon
Member UncommonPosts: 553
Brad McQuaid, Sigil's chief executive returns to the forums - here are an extract of his posts:
VANGUARD Saga of Heros
[B][U]Ref:[/U][/B]
[B][U]2x exp weekends[/U][/B]
[B][/B]
Quite frankly, no BSing around, it's a preemptive attempt at giving players who have less time to play a boost and to give people something to look forward to and to keep subscribing. We want to do things that encourage people to keep subscribing. That said, I think it can be taken too far and it also allows people who already play a lot to advance that much more quickly. It definitely could be taken too far which is something we're aware of.
We continue to grow quite nicely in terms of subs and registered players. That said, we want to have special events like this and while churn and conversion is fine, we'd rather offer events like this ahead of time and not in reaction to a problem. That said, we don't want to over do it either, so I wouldn't consider double exp periods to happen that frequently. It's a cool thing to do occasionally, but can also easily be over done, and we're aware of that.
[B][U][I]Update 1[/I][/U][/B]
[B][/B]
Some issues just don't materialize until you go live. Remember, the game has only been out a little over a month. Some nerfs and tweaks are going to be necessary and happen with every MMOG both during beta and for a period of time following launch. That said, we've planned a lot better, given our experience making MMOGs in the past. I'm not going to say we're going to stop making tweaks in the future, or changes that some may consider a nerf -- after all, the long term health of the game is more important than the desires or wants of the individual. Making a more balanced game and our responsibilities as stewards of this evolving, virtual world and service mandates that we balance and tweak. That said, I think it's safe to say that these changes will happen less and less frequently as things settle down and reach more of an equilibrium.
But to be completely honest, in the future, whether it be a Live update or part of a major expansion, if we add significant content of mechanics to the game, undoubtedly we'll have to follow up with some tweaks again -- and some may be considered positive, and others unfortunately negative. These are just the facts of maintaining a service and a healthy MMOG for months and years. We don't like to nerf -- in fact we hate it. We certainly don't like upsetting people and will do our damndest to avoid them if at all possible. Heck, we play this game too, and many of us a LOT. But again, we have to look at the big picture and long term health of the game. While we love the fact that the game is out and we're in a live environment, and while we have a lot of cool plans for new features, classes, mechanics, areas to explore, updated areas, etc., which makes us excited and will continue to evolve Vanguard into an even more incredible game (like I've said, as cool as Vanguard is now (and yes, I realize there are issues and bugs), [B]the Vanguard of 2008 is going to smoke the Vanguard of 2007, and the Vanguard of 2009 smoke 2008. We have a LOT of cool stuff planned (city building, mounted combat, ship to ship combat, better AI and more interesting dungeon layouts and population, eventually user generated content and a more dynamic world, and so much more).[/B] But as these things get added, either by the live team or as part of a major expansion, while we'll do our best to test things on test servers, etc. they will be going live and problems will be exposed. And those problems will have to be addressed.
Sorry to go so long on this, but I really want to be up front and clear about this. Again, we hate nerfing or upsetting anyone, but from the very beginning, in the very first FAQ we put up about the game years ago, we made a commitment that the long term and overall health of the game means that overall players will enjoy a better game and a better service. Some people may be affected adversely, or perceive they are, but overall and over time our commitment to maintaining a great game and a great service will pay off.
The alternative would be to let issues stay untouched and cause problems... say a class or classes are unbalanced so people over time feel compelled to play the more powerful classes even though they would have preferred to play another class. Or we leave an exploit in so players feel compelled to advance more quickly in certain areas of the world or by doing certain things, leaving the rest of the world and the opportunities to advance neglected. Or we don't add to the game in fear that we may make mistakes and have to address them, upsetting some people. We can't do that. Arguably the greatest thing about MMOGs is that they continue to advance and evolve -- they're never truly done. What an exciting upside -- to participate in a game that offers more and more the months and even years that you play it. Making the game both deeper and broader is what we've planned for Vanguard for so long. But then we're not perfect either, and we will make mistakes -- hopefully less because of the experience we have making these games -- but then we're pretty ambitious as well, as so we'll likely make brand new mistakes. For that I'll apologize up front, but when we do make mistakes or when something goes live and doesn't work exactly like we'd planned, or what wasn't apparent on dev servers, or on test servers, we will then have to fix the problems in a live environment. Some fixes, hopefully most, will make the majority of players happy. But some will be perceived as negative [IMG]http://www.fohguild.org/forums/images/smilies/frown.gif[/IMG]
What you do have is our commitment to be available and to explain our decisions and to listen to all of you. Hopefully this will minimize 'nerfs' and when they do occur you'll at least know why -- you may agree or disagree -- but we will both explain and listen, because we owe you guys that and because from the beginning Sigil has always stood for being up front and not hiding things -- stealth nerfs and the like.
Thanks for listening and for your understanding and patience as we continue to build upon the foundation that is Vanguard and take it places not only have we planned and dreamed about for years now, but also places we haven't even thought of yet [IMG]http://www.fohguild.org/forums/images/smilies/smile.gif[/IMG]
[B][U][I]Teleportation Systems[/I][/U][/B]
[B][/B]
We're looking into adding some teleportation. We don't want to over do it and we want travel to still be meaningful, but as the game has become live, it has become apparent that some overland teleporation is necessary like you said for community building and keeping groups together and being able to travel long distances more quickly so you can get together with friends. Horses and other vehicles will remain important, but it is becoming clear that at times teleportation is appropriate. We'll then get the best of both worlds -- you'll be able to more quickly traverse long distances, but at the same time exploration will remain key and we keep the ability to add new content to the existing world.
To my knowledge, nothing is set in stone yet and there are still meetings figuring out the details. My preference is that they are not class based, but rather fixed locations (that we can move if necessary) that allow for teleportation. But again, that's just my preference. This is and always has been a team effort. The issue of teleportation should be determined fairly quickly and devs who play the game far more than me will weigh in as well and I'm sure we'll come up with some good solutions that, as I mentioned, help community building, help people find groups more easily, but still maintain a large world with meaningful travel. I don't think they are mutually exclusive and if you look up some of my old posts from very early beta, the fact that we might need some overland teleportation was always a plan B -- we just needed to get the game out so we could have a better and more clear idea of what is necessary so we don't go too far (nor not far enough). With any changes or additions like this you want to make sure the pendulum doesn't swing from one side to the other by over compensating for a problem.
[U][I][B]Ref: Zoning & Chunking[/B][/I][/U]
For many computers there is minimal to no chunking time. And this will become more and more true as people upgrade and as we fix bugs associated with chunking. Like I said, my systems with x1950s have virtually no chunking issues -- no falling through the world, and crossing over a chunk border is almost instantaneous. And that 90% will approach 100% over the next year as we continue to optimize, fix bugs, and better hardware becomes both available and cheaper. Having to artificial chokeways, as you put it, makes more a more immersive virtual world. Add to that all the advantages I listed in my long post and this forward thinking architecture will pay off more and more and the upsides eventually so out weigh any downsides that it will cease to be an issue. Planning and architecting for the future, which I think is essential when making an MMOG that should continue to look good, be flexible, be upgradeable, etc. for years to come I feel strongly is the way to go, despite the short term issues some players have (although again I do apologize they do sometimes occur to people, and depending on their set up, the fact that they happen more often to some than to others -- by no means am I being flippant or dismissive of the problems some people experience; rather, like with many aspects of designing an MMOG that is to last years and planning for the future and the technology that will become more and more available and accessible/affordable, this does mean that short term there will be some issues, and more issues for some people -- again, I think for most people the advantages already far outweigh the disadvantages and this will become more and more true as the months go by).
[U][B][I]Benefits of Chunking over Instancing[/I][/B][/U]
[B][I][/I][/B]
The entire world is seamless in the sense that it's one huge contiguous world. It's divided into grids that are 2km x 2km. There's really no other way to do it. EQoA on the PS/2 was similar except that the hardware on the PS/2 allowed for constant reading of the DVD as a separate process (something the PC still cannot do, sigh). So there was less of a 'chunking' issue with EQoA because of the PS/2's hardware. But the world was the same way, divided into a grid.
1. Immersion -- the whole world is really there. You're not limited in where you go unless we specifically need to block something for gameplay reasons -- but we don't need to block off part of the world for technical reasons.
2. View Distance -- even though you are in a 2k x 2k chunk, the programmers did major surgery to the Unreal engine and the chunks all around you are loaded up. So you can see 4-6km. This creates fantastic view distances which again helps with the immersion -- you really feel like you're part of a world.
3. Future View Distance -- Because the engine has been architected for the future, one of things we'll be able to do is when there is a 64bit client, you'll be able to load even more chunks into memory and see even farther. This will help a great deal when flying mounts become more and more key to higher level gameplay.
4. Advanced level of detail and portal technology. Because of the view distances, how level of detail (where there are several models of, say, a house, each less detailed, such that the farther away an art asset is, the lower detail model is displayed so your computer isn't crunching polygons that you can't even see). One of the things that needs to be done is, like WoW, LODs as well as any object that is coming into view needs to fade in and not pop in -- this is something that will be done when time permits. In any case we knew from the beginning that we wanted a world where you could not only see far, but where you could fly up above a major city and still have a framerate. This required, as I mentioned, a complete and extremely advanced portal and LOD system. This is why you can fly anywhere (unless blocked by framerate) and have been able to do so since before beta. Contrast this to WoW, where you can only fly in the new expansion areas.
5. Lots of room to expand the existing world. While expansions will be made (and are also easy to add -- we just create more chunks and attach them logically to existing chunks) and new islands and continents will pop up, the other advantage of a seamless world is that every square foot is there. It has always been very important to us that we keep the 'old world' updated and fresh even as expansions are added. This was a goal early on, as we messed up and allowed expansions in EQ 1 to make the old world obsolete. Not only didn't we update the content in the old world, we made it such that there was little to no reason to visit the old world because the items and such that you could obtain in expansions rendered the old world obsolete as well. Our commitment with Vanguard is to have a Live Team that keeps the old world up to date and interesting. And having a seamless world makes that easier in the sense that the Live Team won't only be updating and revising content in existing areas of the old world, but there is plenty of room to add complete new areas to the existing old world. When we laid out the world early on we made the choice to make things big. At the same time, we were aware of the dangers of a huge world becoming boring (ala SWG) because it's virtually impossible to fill every bit of the world with something interesting (a point of interest, a dungeon, a city, a village, etc.). So what we did is lay out the world with cities, dungeons, and POIs and then created corridors of content connecting them (often roads or other logical pathways for players to traverse). If you leave these corridors of content, there's still stuff to see, wandering NPCs, etc. But the detail isn't there. I've seen criticisms of this, but the alternative again is to go zone based and just have nothing there as opposed to land with less focused and custom content. In any case, the Live Team will be able to slowly but surely add POIs, dungeons, camps, and other interesting areas to those parts of the world that are more plain without having to deal with a zone based world and figure out what is going to connect to what. So they'll add more custom content and then create new corridors of content connecting the new or updated area to what is already there.
6. In the future (probably some time away) we do have the ability to add a z coordinate to chunks. Right now you can fly very high up into the sky, and you can also create an underground dungeon that goes deep into the ground. But if necessary, and I think it will eventually happen, we could add chunks under the world, creating an 'Underdark', and then we could also add chunks above the world, creating cities in the sky, or flying into these chunks could lead to alternate planes. I think of the MUD I used to play and they had the Norse Tree Yggdrasil that you could climb to reach places like Jotunheim. Something analogous could be done. Pretty cool, IMHO.
7. Because it's a seamless world, we need to be able to load up any art asset *anywhere*. By art asset I mean anything: an NPC, a PC, a building, a part of a dungeon, a statue, etc, etc. With a zone based world, take EQ 1, there was a global file that always loaded in (for example, for PCs since they could pop up anywhere). But there was also files with art assets unique to that zone. It would include buildings, NPCs, etc. In fact, if we wanted to use an NPC in more than one zone, we would either add it to both zone files or if it was used a lot, we'd put it in the global file. But the global file had to be kept small (especially back in those days when servers and PCs had much less memory, slower hard drives, etc). In fact, when loading a zone in EQ 1 (at least when I was there) you loaded *everything* into memory. When you zoned, you deleted all of the zone specific data and loaded in the specific data for the new zone (hence the 'loading please wait'). With Vanguard the architecture and the fact that PCs and servers have become that much more powerful, anything can be loaded anywhere. We don't have to worry about a local and global file. This has many advantages. One is that we can assign an item to refer to any art asset. That means if you were in southern Qalia in the depths of a dungeon and killed a rare NPC or just found an object laying around, as long as an item in the database referenced it, you could pick it up, put it in your inventory, take it all the way to the other side of the world (say an island for housing, or northern Thestra) and place it in your house. So that cool statue of a djinn from the City of Brass could be placed in your house on the other side of the world as a trophy. Pretty cool. And that's just the beginning. When player housing turns into player cities, players will be able to decorate their villages or cities with objects from anywhere in the world.
The seamless architecture of the Vanguard engine and the way Telon is put together I think is already very cool and has many advantages other MMOGs don't have and simply cannot do. And then in the future, we can take advantage of this architecture all the more and do some really crazy things. Just for example, our portal technology will allow us to create non-Euclidean dungeons that cannot be mapped, creating quite an adventure and some time to get used to the area and not get lost. Really, the possibilities are tremendous. The engine was really architected with hooks into it that will allow us to do some really crazy things in the future for years to come.
So, yes, there is some downside and some pauses when you chunk. Again, this will become less and less of an issue as PCs become more powerful, as things move to 64bit, as our NPC AI improves, etc. So the downsides will become less and less of an issue and the advantages more and more apparent than they already are. I already strongly believe what we have now is worth it, and that again will become more and more apparent over time. So many aspects of Vanguard were planned from the beginning thinking about the shape and layout of the world for literally years to come. I really think the future is very bright. It's really so much more than long views and being able to go to just about anywhere you can see, being able to fly far above the world, etc. If you are going from point a to point b it doesn't take *that* long, but at the same time with every square foot being there, adding to the existing world is sooo much easier.
[U][I][B]Priorities & Expansions[/B][/I][/U]
Like I've already posted, financial realities were such that we needed to release when we did. We did our best to get as much time as possible and we feel bad that the game could have used a few more months in beta. But what is done is done.
As we've always said, there will be a Live and Expansion team, with the Live team committed to updating, adding to, and refreshing the existing world. They will also be adding classes, new areas, new mobs, updating the AI, continue to optimize, etc. The first expansion is some time away and will add new land masses and include some major new features. The smaller stuff, while certainly important, will be added over time with patches.
Right now much of our focus is on bug fixing, balancing, etc. But that's not everybody. For example, while the design team is tweaking things, they are also adding new content, working on classes, etc. It's a balancing game -- how much effort do you put into bug fixes, tweaks, etc. vs. how many assets do you allocate to adding cool new things to the game. Right now, this soon after launch, there are more resources allocated to fixing things than how things will be a couple of months from now. But as you can see with our first major update we patched in, by no means are we only fixing things. We're doing our best to balance our resources and I think, overall, we're doing a decent job at it. Eventually more and more resources will be allocated to new mechanics, features, classes, NPCs, new areas in the existing world, etc. It will be a slow transition where as issues and bugs are addressed, more resources will be transitioned into new stuff and not just addressing bugs and other problematic issues. But it will happen.
'nuff said for now.
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Comments
The time for PR is just a bit over now.
I thought it was an interesting and informative read about VG. Yes, I played it and left, but I'm not so bitter that I can't appreciate the vision being planned. Of course he's gonna cheerlead, he has no other option. He wants the game to survive long enough to reach "the vision".
If he actually manages to pull some of this stuff off, I might return one day.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
/Agree
Though interesting, ultimatley the proof will be in the pudding..
While I appreciate what Vanguard's trying to do, I refuse to pay for an unfinished product.
Dutchess Zarraa Voltayre
Reborn/Zero Sum/Ancient Legacy/Jagged Legion/Feared/Nuke & Pave.
/Agree
Though interesting, ultimatley the proof will be in the pudding..
While I appreciate what Vanguard's trying to do, I refuse to pay for an unfinished product.
Since when has any mmorpg been finished on release?
granted it was released early as Brad feels bad about.
TwitchTV Partnered Streamer
MMORPG.com Spotlight Blog Writer
Co-Leader of Inquisition
Youtube Channel
The game is very playable with today's available technology - i think you are referring to players with older pc's
"When people don't know much about something, they tend to fill in the blanks the way they want them to be filled in. They are almost always disappointed." - Will Wright
The game is very playable with today's available technology - i think you are referring to players with older pc's
If you mean playable as in the game will start and run then yes I guess you could consider it playable. However 80% of the players Ive talked with in game and in my guild have to run the game on the lowest graphical setting for somewhat smooth gameplay. Nothing is optimized and the game has tons of video lag/chop at the default "balanced" setting and above.
___________________________________
Inquisition
website.http://inqguild.net/
forum.http://inq.cbhx.com/index.php
Current Game FFXIV (Cactuar)
Looking for 1 healer for 8 mans.
The game is very playable with today's available technology - i think you are referring to players with older pc's
If you mean playable as in the game will start and run then yes I guess you could consider it playable. However 80% of the players Ive talked with in game and in my guild have to run the game on the lowest graphical setting for somewhat smooth gameplay. Nothing is optimized and the game has tons of video lag/chop at the default "balanced" setting and above.
Ahh yes but your forgetting one very important thing..
It plays fine on Brads PC. So it must be ok. God forbid they actually test on different combinations
"When people don't know much about something, they tend to fill in the blanks the way they want them to be filled in. They are almost always disappointed." - Will Wright
I love the way he defends the chunck system over a zone system, im no expert on any of these systems, but in WoW I can be in 1 zone and see into another whats the difference of chuncks over zones.. any 1?
And surly the client can detect if an assist such as a status or a mob is viabale to a player and load/flush it as nesessary.... again the lazy programers come to the front.
bolded for anyone that misses it
No more Trivial MMO's, let's get serious "again". Make a world, not a game
What I listen to
The game is very playable with today's available technology - i think you are referring to players with older pc's
If you mean playable as in the game will start and run then yes I guess you could consider it playable. However 80% of the players Ive talked with in game and in my guild have to run the game on the lowest graphical setting for somewhat smooth gameplay. Nothing is optimized and the game has tons of video lag/chop at the default "balanced" setting and above.
QFMFT
Same deal with my guild. I didn't think a PC that was bought in the last year was considered an older PC to you or Brad? This game makes a good screen saver slide show if you want it to look good, but in the real world decent FPS counts for something. Asheron's Call has a seamless overworld and that game is 8 years old. Never got any stuttering or did my computer puke while running around like it did in this game. Think about it for God's sake man, the developer just told you the fix to your problem was to shell out even more money so you could play the game as advertised. I mean those system requirements we saw on the box must have been pulled out of a bull's ass because most of my guild had the same problems with a wide array of system builds ranging from very new to old.
But then again if the game actually was released 6 months to a year from now when it was supposed to, then maybe everyone would be using the technology needed to get acceptable performance, which is clearly not what was stated on the box.
It's good to know that he is sticking to his vision so much. He seems to be selling out everything to be trying to frantically hold onto any remaining fanboi who still thinks paying for beta 6 is an acceptable business practice. Double exp weekends is a sellout move because it reduces the difficulty of the game, which was the selling point for his target audience. The fact of the matter is the game is simply not fun, and he is compromising his values to try to hold people outside his target audience.
Teleportation is on the table because of another critical oversight at the development level. Once again he has realized the game isn't fun because of the travel times for many people. Having a large seamless overworld is awesome (when it doesn't make your PC puke), it was amazing in Asheron's Call again as an example. The main difference is a world as large as what AC had worked because the game was solo friendly. Forced grouping in a game with massive landmass and not enough population is a recipe for disaster. It's a lose-lose situation. The game should have been solo friendly, or he shouldn't have sold the idea of harsh travel times (something I actually like). You can't have it both ways, and this should have been picked up at the conceptual level.
I feel bad for the ultra hardcore players who signed on because of this vision, and played by the rules, and now get to pay 15$ a month to watch the game get watered down as they try to save people from leaving after the free month, people who the game was intended for in the first place.
TwitchTV Partnered Streamer
MMORPG.com Spotlight Blog Writer
Co-Leader of Inquisition
Youtube Channel
The game is very playable with today's available technology - i think you are referring to players with older pc's
If you mean playable as in the game will start and run then yes I guess you could consider it playable. However 80% of the players Ive talked with in game and in my guild have to run the game on the lowest graphical setting for somewhat smooth gameplay. Nothing is optimized and the game has tons of video lag/chop at the default "balanced" setting and above.
That includes me.
There is a BIG issue currently with the 8800s. Textures go missing at times which usually is followed by a crashing to desktop (with or without error) or a total reboot.
The thing is, I JUST built this computer. In fact, earlier this month - not for Vanguard, mind you, I just really needed an upgrade. But I can't get through a game session without crashing. And the REALLY bad thing is that your character doesn't stop. Even if you're standing still, your character will take off. Which usually has resulted in my logging in dead.
You fan boys can keep defending Vanguard and Brad all you want.
The truth of the matter is I gave them my money tried it out, and I'm not impressed.
It's an average product, nothing more nothing less.
I quit after a month.
Increasing subs huh, bet they had a huge drop off after the first month after initial subscribers found out how buggy it is.
He can do all the PR he wants, not going to fix the game which has serious problems at the moment.
All these nerfs they are doing at the moment are pretty braindead too. Nothing worse then alienating more players, those that can stand all the bugs.
typical idiotic response for nerfing
nerfing ticks people off
keep your customers and quit nerfing - if a balance has to be made do so by buffing, not by creating a situation where your character can do something today but can't tomorrow - zero immersion for the win
I got bored before I got through all of that but I saw the part about adding teleportation. Time for me to say, "I told ya so" because I predicted long, long ago on the Vanguard forum on this site that they would add teleportation or some form of very fast travel to the game. Vanguard fans told me I was nuts and didn't know what I was talking about.
But it was inevitable given certain facts about the nature of the game. It's a level based game, meaning you out-level certain areas and then crossing and re-crossing those areas becomes boring downtime. It's a game where the action doesn't happen during travel but rather travel is downtime on the way to the action.
Anyway, I knew they would have to add teleportion to the game and I predicted it. Vanguard fans were buying into the hype that vanguard would have "meaningfull" travel. I told them you can't have meaningfull travel in a game like that, all you can have is boring travel. I wonder if any of the people who told me how stupid I was remember that thread.
We just have to remember that these programs are still in beta and we are lucky to have the opportunity
to test this without paying every mon....
oh wait a minute...
never mind.