That would be all the servers right now. Raid's have not been implemented and I have a really hard time imagining a whole lot of people who could do raids with 20+ people on screen plus another 3-5 mobs or more and spell effects etc...
On paper, on ideology, on goal, it is none of the servers! It actual "functionability" is irrelevant, it is there. The fact raiding doesn't work, yet is implemented, give you the worst of both worlds...none of the benefits from raiding, yet none of the benefits from been a raid-free setting.
Anyway, it would be too late now for that, raid-free was something that would have been required to happen by release, you can't implement such a thing after the customers label your product and turn away, nor after some other customer endorse it. So raid-free servers wouldn't even be desirable atm in Vanguard, it would have been wonderfull on Vanguard by release, but now, this is too late.
There would be a proper way to implement raid-free servers with an expansion, but instead of been simple and effective, it would be heavy in order to respect the existing customers while offering this in an adequate way, just envisionning the ramifications give me a headache. Raid-free servers are better left for a newer game, 1 that hasn't started.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I really dont need an apology from Brad. He did his best. He had tons of money, and several years, he took a HUGE leap of faith and a huge risk, and tried to build a world a lot of people would enjoy. And he did not hit the mark... I am not angry at a man for trying, its more that most would do. Most just sit at home saying "I can do the best game EVAH!" but they would not dare to risk their time or their money, or to be indebted for the rest of their lives to do so. No, I dont want an apology from Brad... I want one from the hundred or so of fanatic crazed fans that has been EXTREMLY abusive for the last two years, doing their best to silence ANY voice of concern, or honest attempt to help the game by pointing out flaws that needed work. Where in the sevens hells did Vanguard find so many stupid, arrogant, abusive fanatics that were intent on stopping ANY attempt at improving the game, at helping Brad find that mark. Pointing out flaws, bugs, problems and anything that could make the game less than succesful, but instead walk into a solid wall of abuse and people telling those that try to help to"Shut up and stop the hate. go back to WoW" Those people.... those that think they are the "best, most loyal fans in the world", destroyed the game whole lot more than anyone else, be it Brad or hater. Second, I want an apology from the people having forum communities, both vanguards betaforum, sites like this one and anywhere else, that let those diehard fanatics roam freely, say whatever they wanted and call people by whatever name, but then silence or in worst case ban anyone who dared to stand up tot he wall of abuse and answer them. I cant even begin to figure out why a game have a beta, when its not allowed to discuss the game in the beta forum. ANY attempt to point out more that bug reports, to try to discuss the flaws of the game during beta was met with the exact same wall of abuse, completly pointless and hurting the game immensly... But again, anyone defending vanguard could say whatever they wanted... If someone responded in the same tone... Not so lucky. The people that honstely tried to help the game spent months, up to to years, doing their best to reach the ears of Sigil, but in the end.. having no support form anywhere, and constantly having to defend years of experience against a wall of mindless, brainless abuse. Not discussion, not argumentation.. insults. People just gave up... In the end those that helped just turned on the same abuse, it was the only discussion that worked, it was the only argumentation happening... "Yomomma" jokes. So from Brad...? no, not at all. he did an honest attempt. I want it from the people that think silence is for the good of MMO development. That trying to shut up the development process will help the MMO genre. Those that never want to hear the new ideas and new sollutions, and is willing to go to any length to kill any kind of discussion. You... and the forum moderators that defend you.. hurt game evolution and quality more than anything else right now. MMOs are dying in a sea of conformity, and its greatest fans are killing them.
You speak out of my heart! I could not have said it better!
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
"I think the biggest things that are hurting the game right now are: ... 2. Underpopulated servers. ... In summary, had a lot of the above not occurred then I think Vanguard would be nearing 300k or 400k and not 200k."
OK, I'm confused, how can you have empty servers and be nearing 200,000 subscribers ? They have 12 servers and if you figure 1/5 play at peak, that 3,000+ people per server during prime time. That not a underpopulated server. Are all the fan so loyal that they are subscribed but not playing to fund development?
I really dont need an apology from Brad. He did his best. He had tons of money, and several years, he took a HUGE leap of faith and a huge risk, and tried to build a world a lot of people would enjoy. And he did not hit the mark... I am not angry at a man for trying, its more that most would do. Most just sit at home saying "I can do the best game EVAH!" but they would not dare to risk their time or their money, or to be indebted for the rest of their lives to do so. No, I dont want an apology from Brad... I want one from the hundred or so of fanatic crazed fans that has been EXTREMLY abusive for the last two years, doing their best to silence ANY voice of concern, or honest attempt to help the game by pointing out flaws that needed work. Where in the sevens hells did Vanguard find so many stupid, arrogant, abusive fanatics that were intent on stopping ANY attempt at improving the game, at helping Brad find that mark. Pointing out flaws, bugs, problems and anything that could make the game less than succesful, but instead walk into a solid wall of abuse and people telling those that try to help to"Shut up and stop the hate. go back to WoW" Those people.... those that think they are the "best, most loyal fans in the world", destroyed the game whole lot more than anyone else, be it Brad or hater. Second, I want an apology from the people having forum communities, both vanguards betaforum, sites like this one and anywhere else, that let those diehard fanatics roam freely, say whatever they wanted and call people by whatever name, but then silence or in worst case ban anyone who dared to stand up tot he wall of abuse and answer them. I cant even begin to figure out why a game have a beta, when its not allowed to discuss the game in the beta forum. ANY attempt to point out more that bug reports, to try to discuss the flaws of the game during beta was met with the exact same wall of abuse, completly pointless and hurting the game immensly... But again, anyone defending vanguard could say whatever they wanted... If someone responded in the same tone... Not so lucky. The people that honstely tried to help the game spent months, up to to years, doing their best to reach the ears of Sigil, but in the end.. having no support form anywhere, and constantly having to defend years of experience against a wall of mindless, brainless abuse. Not discussion, not argumentation.. insults. People just gave up... In the end those that helped just turned on the same abuse, it was the only discussion that worked, it was the only argumentation happening... "Yomomma" jokes. So from Brad...? no, not at all. he did an honest attempt. I want it from the people that think silence is for the good of MMO development. That trying to shut up the development process will help the MMO genre. Those that never want to hear the new ideas and new sollutions, and is willing to go to any length to kill any kind of discussion. You... and the forum moderators that defend you.. hurt game evolution and quality more than anything else right now. MMOs are dying in a sea of conformity, and its greatest fans are killing them.
Brad wanted yes men and butt kissers so that is exactly what he got. Brad could have silenced those outrageous fanatics on the beta boards but he didn't. He let the mods silence the others in disagreement with the fanatics. This tells me Brad WANTED butt kissing not honest opinions.
"I think the biggest things that are hurting the game right now are: ... 2. Underpopulated servers. ... In summary, had a lot of the above not occurred then I think Vanguard would be nearing 300k or 400k and not 200k."
OK, I'm confused, how can you have empty servers and be nearing 200,000 subscribers ? They have 12 servers and if you figure 1/5 play at peak, that 3,000+ people per server during prime time. That not a underpopulated server. Are all the fan so loyal that they are subscribed but not playing to fund development?
Because it isn't really near 200k subs. It's probably 200k accounts (which would include Friend Keys because soon as you use the key you have an account).
And I think they made the servers ideally for 4-6k at peak times. I know during Open Beta the servers hit 6500 at times. They were a bit unstable at those numbers but lose 500-1000 people and they were fairly stable.
Originally posted by smg77 After reading that post you can almost feel Smedley's foot on Brad's neck...
It's only there because Brad went running back to SOE like a abused and battered wife. You get what you ask for in the end. To bad most of the vanbois were to busy going around kissing brad's butt during beta. You might of had a change of course but these idiots couldn't get enough brown nosing in to realize the crap this game was going to become at launch. As Stoney said this is what Brad wanted and he got it.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
I wouldn't. I think they screwed up a potentially good game. But who cares, Age Of Conan just started Beta sign ups today! Maybe somebody will get it right.
Ya Age of Conan the game where you can kill up to 4 npcs with one or two swipes of your sword shoud be fun for all of 5 minutes . Personally i dont think theres anything wrong with vanguard it runs great on my brand new computer you know the same type of computer your going to need to play Age of Conan on anything above the lowest settings
I really dont need an apology from Brad. He did his best. He had tons of money, and several years, he took a HUGE leap of faith and a huge risk, and tried to build a world a lot of people would enjoy. And he did not hit the mark... I am not angry at a man for trying, its more that most would do. Most just sit at home saying "I can do the best game EVAH!" but they would not dare to risk their time or their money, or to be indebted for the rest of their lives to do so. No, I dont want an apology from Brad... I want one from the hundred or so of fanatic crazed fans that has been EXTREMLY abusive for the last two years, doing their best to silence ANY voice of concern, or honest attempt to help the game by pointing out flaws that needed work. Where in the sevens hells did Vanguard find so many stupid, arrogant, abusive fanatics that were intent on stopping ANY attempt at improving the game, at helping Brad find that mark. Pointing out flaws, bugs, problems and anything that could make the game less than succesful, but instead walk into a solid wall of abuse and people telling those that try to help to"Shut up and stop the hate. go back to WoW" Those people.... those that think they are the "best, most loyal fans in the world", destroyed the game whole lot more than anyone else, be it Brad or hater. Second, I want an apology from the people having forum communities, both vanguards betaforum, sites like this one and anywhere else, that let those diehard fanatics roam freely, say whatever they wanted and call people by whatever name, but then silence or in worst case ban anyone who dared to stand up tot he wall of abuse and answer them. I cant even begin to figure out why a game have a beta, when its not allowed to discuss the game in the beta forum. ANY attempt to point out more that bug reports, to try to discuss the flaws of the game during beta was met with the exact same wall of abuse, completly pointless and hurting the game immensly... But again, anyone defending vanguard could say whatever they wanted... If someone responded in the same tone... Not so lucky. The people that honstely tried to help the game spent months, up to to years, doing their best to reach the ears of Sigil, but in the end.. having no support form anywhere, and constantly having to defend years of experience against a wall of mindless, brainless abuse. Not discussion, not argumentation.. insults. People just gave up... In the end those that helped just turned on the same abuse, it was the only discussion that worked, it was the only argumentation happening... "Yomomma" jokes. So from Brad...? no, not at all. he did an honest attempt. I want it from the people that think silence is for the good of MMO development. That trying to shut up the development process will help the MMO genre. Those that never want to hear the new ideas and new sollutions, and is willing to go to any length to kill any kind of discussion. You... and the forum moderators that defend you.. hurt game evolution and quality more than anything else right now. MMOs are dying in a sea of conformity, and its greatest fans are killing them.
Brad wanted yes men and butt kissers so that is exactly what he got. Brad could have silenced those outrageous fanatics on the beta boards but he didn't. He let the mods silence the others in disagreement with the fanatics. This tells me Brad WANTED butt kissing not honest opinions. Heck, even the apology is written on a site that does not grant access to the masses to post. Again, the whole apology reminds me of being drunk in a bar and complaining about what went wrong to your friends and then calling it an apology. They own a company and their own web space where they could have just as easily apologized to the "public" if that was the intent.
Lets say they sold 150k subs as mentioned, that's 150k x $50 or 7.5 million in revenues. That's a tidy sum of money for an "unfinished" product. Now lets go further and say only 20% found the game unplayable to them. That's $1,500,000 bilked out of the pockets of people that could not play even with the recommended specifications.
What about the subscribers as myself that can play and enjoy the game aside from the huge amount of bugs and lag? Were still effected. People find it strange that I can have negative posts and still play the game. I picked up that attitude when I was a Certified Technician and often tested buggy hardware before I would recommend it to the customer base. "Working" is not the same as "Working as intended". In essence, I know a few people that play VG that won't recommend it to other people because they honestly don't want to want up spending hours trying to get those people around the massive bugs.
Speaking of an ironic technical issue, the Nvidia Drivers that I have used on all 5 of our systems since November of 2006 had to be rolled back to one from almost a year ago. Mind you, the drivers worked fine on the card with all applications and games with the exception of VG. The answer of course being that the just released game was too far advanced for the newer drivers to handle?
In my case, My significant other and I play the game. Our son tried it out and likes it after playing 5 years of EQ-1/EQ-2. Mind you, those games play well on his system. Today however I'm upgrading his system to be able to handle VG. But that's not all, I have two friends that don't have the resources to upgrade that won't be playing the game after 5 years of playing other games online with us. The funny thing is, I'm the type of friend that feels if I recommend something, I have to follow through and I know I can't upgrade their systems, so I can't recommend that.
To close with, does anyone honestly buy into the line that 3 months will make it work as intended? Does anyone honestly believe that the high end hardware that runs the game decently will be cheap 3 months from now? If 5+ years and $35 million dollars got us to here, how would 3 months and some more subs get us to there?
Personally i dont think theres anything wrong with vanguard it runs great on my brand new computer you know the same type of computer your going to need to play Age of Conan on anything above the lowest settings
Of course, there is nothing wrong with Vanguard. Your puter runs VG perfectly, you have not had any bugs whatsoever, and oh, before I forget, you are having loads of fun.
I mean, Brad has posted many issues about the game, but heck.. what does he know? If "you" say there are no issues, who is Brad, lol? All the rosy balloony stuff you have advertised about the game is right, everyone else is wrong.
CONTRIBUTE INTO THE GAMING INDUSTRY! STOP PAYING FOR BORING COPYCATS, UNFINISHED BUGFESTS AND CRANKY JUNKWARE. BE A RESPONSIBLE GAMER!
I wouldn't. I think they screwed up a potentially good game. But who cares, Age Of Conan just started Beta sign ups today! Maybe somebody will get it right.
Ya Age of Conan the game where you can kill up to 4 npcs with one or two swipes of your sword shoud be fun for all of 5 minutes . Personally i dont think theres anything wrong with vanguard it runs great on my brand new computer you know the same type of computer your going to need to play Age of Conan on anything above the lowest settings
But then again, I can run EQ-2 at High Quality as well as LoTR at high quality on all three of my gaming machines with no difficulty while running VG at 5-15 FPS, so who knows how Conan would run. That new machine also won't prevent a single bug or add a single bit of missing content to the game.
Regarding server population, I did a little math in another thread (The Death Spiral thread). that showed there are roughly 42,500 characters over level 20 across all servers and about 4500 crafters above level 20 across all servers.
So less than 50,000 people at level 20. What lvl would you be after 3 months if you were active?
You then think, of this 50,000 how many have cancelled? How many are alts? ( I have 3 characters over 20 on my account).
Lets say about half of those characters from the database, where I got my numbers, have cancelled. That's not unreasonable, considering multiple characters per account. In fact I'd say its probably a lot more than half, but lets be generous.
25,000 people left. Now, I only play weekends and a few hours in the evening during the week, and I have 4 characters that take up spots in this demographic - (Three adv. over 20, and a crafter over 20). I'm by no means casual, but I'm not hard core either - I know people who have multiple level 50s at this point. So lets say the average ACTIVE account has 2 characters over 20, (adv, craft, whatever) and divide again. 12,500 left.
And of the 12,500 who still play, how many are losing their motivation to log in? In my guild alone, which has about 50 unique members, there are times when I'm the ONLY person online out of those 50. On weekends, even. They are still subscribers, but they don't play much. 1/50 is 2%. Not encouraging numbers.
Lets say that half of those 12,500 play daily. Across 12 servers is 520 people per server, and thats if everyone's online at the same time. Add in that the world is huge and the time it takes to get from place to place, and it is really no mystery why all of Telon is empty, empty.
If I didn't have a perma-trio of myself, my boyfriend, and my boxed cleric, I'd have quit long ago. Because of our perma-trio I've been able to explore a lot of the content and NOT have to stand around looking for a ________- for hours before I could do something. But the novelty is wearing off really quick for me too, andthats 3 more accounts that we can move from column A to column B.
Vanguard needs -
Merge the servers Double mount speed Additional local teleporters And no more new content until the current content is FUNCTIONAL. And then it has a chance.
Just my 2 cents.
Gaming? That's not gaming! That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
I wouldn't. I think they screwed up a potentially good game. But who cares, Age Of Conan just started Beta sign ups today! Maybe somebody will get it right.
Ya Age of Conan the game where you can kill up to 4 npcs with one or two swipes of your sword shoud be fun for all of 5 minutes . Personally i dont think theres anything wrong with vanguard it runs great on my brand new computer you know the same type of computer your going to need to play Age of Conan on anything above the lowest settings
You just proved in a few lines, that you know a lot less about AoC, than the worst kind of hater about VG. All the footage of AoC were played in low level areas by high level characters. The game features heal over time type of healing only, no magical instant life-bar regen. What does that mean? It means combat will be long enough, but still tense. It is not an arcade game, fellow, it uses a uniques system to fire off feats, all this to achieve two goals : get rid of button smashing, and get rid of "the interface game".
Also, a dev posted specs of his computer, that runs AoC fine, and the computer was not a behemoth rig. Ofcource Brad promised the skies and delivered jack as well, so they could be lying, but having seen what Turbine did with lotro gfx wise, it is safe to say good graphics is doable on a system 6 months old. It is not the polygon count that matters, it's the quality.
But don't let me ruin it for you, go and enjoy your interface game, but if you want to add something about AoC at least get the facts right.
Regarding server population, I did a little math in another thread (The Death Spiral thread). that showed there are roughly 42,500 characters over level 20 across all servers and about 4500 crafters above level 20 across all servers. So less than 50,000 people at level 20. What lvl would you be after 3 months if you were active? You then think, of this 50,000 how many have cancelled?
How many are alts? ( I have 3 characters over 20 on my account). Lets say about half of those characters from the database, where I got my numbers, have cancelled. That's not unreasonable, considering multiple characters per account. In fact I'd say its probably a lot more than half, but lets be generous. 25,000 people left. Now, I only play weekends and a few hours in the evening during the week, and I have 4 characters that take up spots in this demographic - (Three adv. over 20, and a crafter over 20). I'm by no means casual, but I'm not hard core either - I know people who have multiple level 50s at this point. So lets say the average ACTIVE account has 2 characters over 20, (adv, craft, whatever) and divide again. 12,500 left. And of the 12,500 who still play, how many are losing their motivation to log in? In my guild alone, which has about 50 unique members, there are times when I'm the ONLY person online out of those 50. On weekends, even. They are still subscribers, but they don't play much. 1/50 is 2%. Not encouraging numbers. Lets say that half of those 12,500 play daily. Across 12 servers is 520 people per server, and thats if everyone's online at the same time. Add in that the world is huge and the time it takes to get from place to place, and it is really no mystery why all of Telon is empty, empty. If I didn't have a perma-trio of myself, my boyfriend, and my boxed cleric, I'd have quit long ago. Because of our perma-trio I've been able to explore a lot of the content and NOT have to stand around looking for a ________- for hours before I could do something. But the novelty is wearing off really quick for me too, andthats 3 more accounts that we can move from column A to column B.
Vanguard needs - Merge the servers
Double mount speed
Additional local teleporters
And no more new content until the current content is FUNCTIONAL.
And then it has a chance. Just my 2 cents.
To merge the servers would be to admit that they don't have the numbers Brad claims they do -- an incontrovertible admission that Vanguard is indeed a failure.
Oh I'm not saying that they WILL do it. Just that they SHOULD.
More likely than not, they will adjust travel times to make grouping possible and/or add to mount speeds or add teleporters (I think Qalia is fine really, you can get to Ahgram/Strandan from the Khal Docks and from there its not terribly far to get where you want to group.)
Having a local teleporter take you to any non KOS city on the continent? Would be nice. Something like that is sorely needed for low level players. Especially with how deserted some starting areas are. I created an alt last week and levelled to 18 without seeing another soul. No joke.
A global LFG channel is another fine idea.
Doubling mount speed is another fine idea. As things stand, investing in anything other than the very first horse is a waste of money, the speed increase is minimal. And if you play a class with a speed buff, the first horse is almost not worth bothering. My bard still doesn't have one, she runs just as fast without.
But if you could up your speed to 200% by having a mount? (That's not really unrealistic, do you know anyone who can run almost as fast as a horse? lol).
Then the mandatory cross-continental treks that the game imposes on you wouldn't be quite so daunting.
Another thing that needs fixing ASAP - LIKE BEFORE THEY TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE is the chunk problem. Chunk lines are worse than zones in traditional games, because you can't always see them, half the time they crash you, and if they don't crash you, they reset your settings (hoods come back on and such), torches, often drop you from a group, bug your combat UI, etc. Its awful. I honestly can't believe a game got to release with that sort of chunking issue. And there's a chunk line down the middle of Kojan that has a 50% chance to portal you out to BFE housing island and take a couple levels of your xp. Its happened to me seven times in the course of levelling up a few toons of Kojan origin, on four different computers, all of which far exceed the recommended specs for the game, can play on high quality, etc. That chunk line is the devil, and by far the worst one in the game, though there are others. I bug it daily -0 though usually just from the "Vanguard crashed, what were you doing?" screen. lol.
The above is unacceptable in any case, but combined with the tedious travel, its a wonder people can get together to group at all.
It really wouldn't take a lot to make this game playable. Even with the instability and performance issues, people would still be playing if on top of all the current problems the game wasn't designed to irritate and be a time sink. Let us get around, let us group, let us play, let us advance, and we'll still be here while you work out the kinks. But stifling everybody is going to make us get bored and leave before we ever see whatever it was your vision was going to be.
Gaming? That's not gaming! That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
It's interesting because there is currently an 11 page thread on SV bashing the fact that key posts often wind up on the FoH boards where only the select few can post a response. I guess we were not the only ones to pick up on the empty apology. So now, even people at SV are feeling the snub.
I would proudly add kudo's to MMORPG for being open enough to allow the views of so many people about so many topics without being tainted by the media hype.
He needs to stop with the apology and concentrate on fixing his game.
This is my feeling as well. How many times do you say you're sorry? Being sorry is one thing correcting a mistake is another. It's time to prove it. Let's make this thing right. Too much of these verbose explanations for the product begins to make me wonder if Vanguard is indeed about to see a major overhaul. After all Brad used passed tense when referring to his leadership.
Show some true leadership, take charge of the developers underneath and kick some tail into gear. I really do not want to read another short story as to why Vanguard was not what it should have been.
All I want is the truth Just gimme some truth John Lennon
The appology is nice in that it shows they are aware of their game's present deficiencies.
The game has some nice features and I like the look of the world. Unfortunately the performance is terrible and as others have said the issues relating to chunklines needs to be addressed.
I have a very good cable connection and a computer that easily exceeds recommended specs, yet the framerate is up and down and really distracts from the immersion of the game. And the other day I grouped with about 5 people and the game was so unresponsive, laggy and buggy (sound loops). There was a one to two second UI delay which really throws you off, especially when you're in a tight situation. All of these problems I experienced with a ping of 90, which isn't too bad.
The more I think about it, the more I think it's time to move on. Lack of performance and fun quests make the game feel more like a chore.
Yes, I'm currently at Zaraj arena needing THOUSANDS of coins to get the rewards. The only way to obtain these coins is :
- Single drops from level 39 2dot mobs that are few and far between and overcamped by level 50s.
- Rare drops from lvl 35-40 3-dot minotaurs. (Or a quest that gives you 10, after killing SEVENTY FIVE of these minotaurs).
- A couple other quests that give a reward of 10 for a lot of killing, lvl 40ish 3-4 dots.
- Arena events. (require a team.)
So unless you're a lvl 50, or have a full team, pretty much all you can do is farm spectators. After about 15 hours of doing that I now have 87 coins. I need 913 more for the weapon reward, another 950 for the mount, and countless more for the other rewards in the area that I haven't even thought about. You can start this questline at level 31.
Honestly, I find it hard to motivate to log in just to camp coins. But its either this or Faction Grinding @ Wardship for the armor series in my lvl range, which is just as unappealing esp. considering how non user friendly thestra is. The game has become work - probably why I'm not logging in lately.
Gaming? That's not gaming! That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
I enjoy the game for now and accept his apology. I feel this game has alot of potential and will continue to pay for it as an investment until i either lose interest or some thing that catchs my interest comes. I just hope this game realizes it's potential unlike SWG did.
Do i accept his apology? Sure, everyone is allowed some mistakes. At the same time, I Fully expect him to fix his mistakes, and compensate the numerous people who bought the game because he promised something it is not. I dont want my $100 back for buying the stupid ass CE that you dont even get to choose a cloak, what I do want is 3-6 months of free gameplay to compensate me for spending my money. To state your dilligently working on improving performance, but KNOWING all along that you built a system that is ahead of the technology is just flat out wrong.
ANY, and I mean ANY other profession out there that f-d up like Sigil did with this release would be held accountable and compensation demanded.
Burger king employee sells you a cheeseburger and hands you a hamburger, "Sorry, I didnt realize we didnt have cheese....next time you come, the technology will be there to provide cheese...have a nice day!"....would that fly? heck no
Garbage man picks up your garbage and accidently dumps it all over your lawn, "Sorry man, my bad, I take full responsibility...Ill make sure it dont happen again..have a nice day!"......mofo better be cleaning that up!
People dealing with customers mess up everyday, and that is expected, were all human, but no way we would let others walk all over us like Sigil is and get away with it. We are sheep though, and we will continue to flock to whatever herder appeals to us, without question.
I agree with you - apology is fine, but now compensate. You got our money for the box - thats fine. But charging a monthly fee for an unfinished game is ruffling a lot of feathers. Of course its a catch 22, because without the monthly fees coming in, I doubt they can stay afloat. Though money isn't the only way to compensate players, I'm sure if they put their heads together they could come up with something to give us that would - even a little bit- make us feel that they're trying to hold on to their customers.
Gaming? That's not gaming! That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
First, the entire text does not sound like an apology, its an explanation. Second, I dont need apologies from a millionaire game Developer.
Plus, the explanation is quite pointless, since the errors were obvious to all who really look at the game with open eyes anyway. The only service those words do, is have a final word against the blind fanboi menagerie.
The longer I think about the various aspects of the game, the more i get the feeling, they are in deep shit. The game has so many design "traps", problems that are in the very core of the game, I just can not see them remedied.
Take the size: the more the add teleport, the more the nullify the size. But if they dont... we keep the problems of travel we have.
Or: we have SO many quests, but ppl are not guided. So we find many players running over the world, taking a quest in East Thestra today and South Qualia tomorrow, because they cant get ahead with the others they found in East Thestra. I know that was intended. BUT: it somehow ruins the built up feeling for a world, if you need to travel over the world all the time instead of slowly expanding your impression of it. Take EQ2 as example. When I was new and in Antonica, Thundering Steppes was a mystery. (It was in launch days.) We just heard, there is said to be another part of the continent - somewhere. Until we built our strength to enter it and gradually fought our way into the Steppes. And thus with all new areas we opened. Here, you have SO MANY level 10-20 areas, you virtually travel over 80% of the world, it takes out that surprise/motivator I had in other MMOs to keep fighting and levelling a lot. I takes out the feeling you slowly built for a world, because you stay in one area and then move on to the next. I grew familiar with the world because I stayed in one area after another and so slowly expanded the world in my mind. Here... its all blurry and I feel no character of the various zones because i am meandering back and forth all over the world. How can that be solved without re-working the entire game?
Or the feeling you get less powerful than more powerful, coming from the fact that very early on the difficulty starts to rise. If you play EQ2 or WOW, you know those first 15 levels are quick and the real game starts then. You have that warm-up phase. Here, we get to business and death and slow levelling right away. Why? Well, there are more level 1-15 creatures over the world then I have ever seen in a MMO! The low levels make such a big part of the world and the many starter areas dont really help either.
Or finally: the soulless cities, lacking animation and "soul". A dev once said, the performance just does not allow it atm. So basically, we wont see city life, as we see it in EQ2 or WOW at all! The set all in that wonderful graphics and everything else was lost on the way.
Those and other things are deeply in the game, and will cause endless trouble. I just dont see any way to remedy those at all.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Haha the titel alone made me LOL, i mean it a game people, its not like he has ran of with your life savings or anything remotly close to something like that, ITS A GAME.
Comments
On paper, on ideology, on goal, it is none of the servers! It actual "functionability" is irrelevant, it is there. The fact raiding doesn't work, yet is implemented, give you the worst of both worlds...none of the benefits from raiding, yet none of the benefits from been a raid-free setting.
Anyway, it would be too late now for that, raid-free was something that would have been required to happen by release, you can't implement such a thing after the customers label your product and turn away, nor after some other customer endorse it. So raid-free servers wouldn't even be desirable atm in Vanguard, it would have been wonderfull on Vanguard by release, but now, this is too late.
There would be a proper way to implement raid-free servers with an expansion, but instead of been simple and effective, it would be heavy in order to respect the existing customers while offering this in an adequate way, just envisionning the ramifications give me a headache. Raid-free servers are better left for a newer game, 1 that hasn't started.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
You speak out of my heart! I could not have said it better!
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
OK, I'm confused, how can you have empty servers and be nearing 200,000 subscribers ? They have 12 servers and if you figure 1/5 play at peak, that 3,000+ people per server during prime time. That not a underpopulated server. Are all the fan so loyal that they are subscribed but not playing to fund development?
And I think they made the servers ideally for 4-6k at peak times. I know during Open Beta the servers hit 6500 at times. They were a bit unstable at those numbers but lose 500-1000 people and they were fairly stable.
It's only there because Brad went running back to SOE like a abused and battered wife. You get what you ask for in the end. To bad most of the vanbois were to busy going around kissing brad's butt during beta. You might of had a change of course but these idiots couldn't get enough brown nosing in to realize the crap this game was going to become at launch. As Stoney said this is what Brad wanted and he got it.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Game(s) I Am Currently Playing:
GW2 (+LoL and BF3)
Lets say they sold 150k subs as mentioned, that's 150k x $50 or 7.5 million in revenues. That's a tidy sum of money for an "unfinished" product. Now lets go further and say only 20% found the game unplayable to them. That's $1,500,000 bilked out of the pockets of people that could not play even with the recommended specifications.
What about the subscribers as myself that can play and enjoy the game aside from the huge amount of bugs and lag? Were still effected. People find it strange that I can have negative posts and still play the game. I picked up that attitude when I was a Certified Technician and often tested buggy hardware before I would recommend it to the customer base. "Working" is not the same as "Working as intended". In essence, I know a few people that play VG that won't recommend it to other people because they honestly don't want to want up spending hours trying to get those people around the massive bugs.
Speaking of an ironic technical issue, the Nvidia Drivers that I have used on all 5 of our systems since November of 2006 had to be rolled back to one from almost a year ago. Mind you, the drivers worked fine on the card with all applications and games with the exception of VG. The answer of course being that the just released game was too far advanced for the newer drivers to handle?
In my case, My significant other and I play the game. Our son tried it out and likes it after playing 5 years of EQ-1/EQ-2. Mind you, those games play well on his system. Today however I'm upgrading his system to be able to handle VG. But that's not all, I have two friends that don't have the resources to upgrade that won't be playing the game after 5 years of playing other games online with us. The funny thing is, I'm the type of friend that feels if I recommend something, I have to follow through and I know I can't upgrade their systems, so I can't recommend that.
To close with, does anyone honestly buy into the line that 3 months will make it work as intended? Does anyone honestly believe that the high end hardware that runs the game decently will be cheap 3 months from now? If 5+ years and $35 million dollars got us to here, how would 3 months and some more subs get us to there?
I mean, Brad has posted many issues about the game, but heck.. what does he know? If "you" say there are no issues, who is Brad, lol? All the rosy balloony stuff you have advertised about the game is right, everyone else is wrong.
CONTRIBUTE INTO THE GAMING INDUSTRY! STOP PAYING FOR BORING COPYCATS, UNFINISHED BUGFESTS AND CRANKY JUNKWARE. BE A RESPONSIBLE GAMER!
But then again, I can run EQ-2 at High Quality as well as LoTR at high quality on all three of my gaming machines with no difficulty while running VG at 5-15 FPS, so who knows how Conan would run. That new machine also won't prevent a single bug or add a single bit of missing content to the game.
Regarding server population, I did a little math in another thread (The Death Spiral thread). that showed there are roughly 42,500 characters over level 20 across all servers and about 4500 crafters above level 20 across all servers.
So less than 50,000 people at level 20. What lvl would you be after 3 months if you were active?
You then think, of this 50,000 how many have cancelled?
How many are alts? ( I have 3 characters over 20 on my account).
Lets say about half of those characters from the database, where I got my numbers, have cancelled. That's not unreasonable, considering multiple characters per account. In fact I'd say its probably a lot more than half, but lets be generous.
25,000 people left. Now, I only play weekends and a few hours in the evening during the week, and I have 4 characters that take up spots in this demographic - (Three adv. over 20, and a crafter over 20). I'm by no means casual, but I'm not hard core either - I know people who have multiple level 50s at this point. So lets say the average ACTIVE account has 2 characters over 20, (adv, craft, whatever) and divide again. 12,500 left.
And of the 12,500 who still play, how many are losing their motivation to log in? In my guild alone, which has about 50 unique members, there are times when I'm the ONLY person online out of those 50. On weekends, even. They are still subscribers, but they don't play much. 1/50 is 2%. Not encouraging numbers.
Lets say that half of those 12,500 play daily. Across 12 servers is 520 people per server, and thats if everyone's online at the same time. Add in that the world is huge and the time it takes to get from place to place, and it is really no mystery why all of Telon is empty, empty.
If I didn't have a perma-trio of myself, my boyfriend, and my boxed cleric, I'd have quit long ago. Because of our perma-trio I've been able to explore a lot of the content and NOT have to stand around looking for a ________- for hours before I could do something. But the novelty is wearing off really quick for me too, andthats 3 more accounts that we can move from column A to column B.
Vanguard needs -
Merge the servers
Double mount speed
Additional local teleporters
And no more new content until the current content is FUNCTIONAL.
And then it has a chance.
Just my 2 cents.
Gaming? That's not gaming!
That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
You just proved in a few lines, that you know a lot less about AoC, than the worst kind of hater about VG. All the footage of AoC were played in low level areas by high level characters. The game features heal over time type of healing only, no magical instant life-bar regen. What does that mean? It means combat will be long enough, but still tense. It is not an arcade game, fellow, it uses a uniques system to fire off feats, all this to achieve two goals : get rid of button smashing, and get rid of "the interface game".
Also, a dev posted specs of his computer, that runs AoC fine, and the computer was not a behemoth rig. Ofcource Brad promised the skies and delivered jack as well, so they could be lying, but having seen what Turbine did with lotro gfx wise, it is safe to say good graphics is doable on a system 6 months old. It is not the polygon count that matters, it's the quality.
But don't let me ruin it for you, go and enjoy your interface game, but if you want to add something about AoC at least get the facts right.
Oh I'm not saying that they WILL do it.
Just that they SHOULD.
More likely than not, they will adjust travel times to make grouping possible and/or add to mount speeds or add teleporters (I think Qalia is fine really, you can get to Ahgram/Strandan from the Khal Docks and from there its not terribly far to get where you want to group.)
Having a local teleporter take you to any non KOS city on the continent? Would be nice.
Something like that is sorely needed for low level players. Especially with how deserted some starting areas are. I created an alt last week and levelled to 18 without seeing another soul. No joke.
A global LFG channel is another fine idea.
Doubling mount speed is another fine idea. As things stand, investing in anything other than the very first horse is a waste of money, the speed increase is minimal. And if you play a class with a speed buff, the first horse is almost not worth bothering. My bard still doesn't have one, she runs just as fast without.
But if you could up your speed to 200% by having a mount?
(That's not really unrealistic, do you know anyone who can run almost as fast as a horse? lol).
Then the mandatory cross-continental treks that the game imposes on you wouldn't be quite so daunting.
Another thing that needs fixing ASAP - LIKE BEFORE THEY TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE is the chunk problem. Chunk lines are worse than zones in traditional games, because you can't always see them, half the time they crash you, and if they don't crash you, they reset your settings (hoods come back on and such), torches, often drop you from a group, bug your combat UI, etc. Its awful. I honestly can't believe a game got to release with that sort of chunking issue. And there's a chunk line down the middle of Kojan that has a 50% chance to portal you out to BFE housing island and take a couple levels of your xp. Its happened to me seven times in the course of levelling up a few toons of Kojan origin, on four different computers, all of which far exceed the recommended specs for the game, can play on high quality, etc. That chunk line is the devil, and by far the worst one in the game, though there are others. I bug it daily -0 though usually just from the "Vanguard crashed, what were you doing?" screen. lol.
The above is unacceptable in any case, but combined with the tedious travel, its a wonder people can get together to group at all.
It really wouldn't take a lot to make this game playable. Even with the instability and performance issues, people would still be playing if on top of all the current problems the game wasn't designed to irritate and be a time sink. Let us get around, let us group, let us play, let us advance, and we'll still be here while you work out the kinks. But stifling everybody is going to make us get bored and leave before we ever see whatever it was your vision was going to be.
Gaming? That's not gaming!
That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
I would proudly add kudo's to MMORPG for being open enough to allow the views of so many people about so many topics without being tainted by the media hype.
Show some true leadership, take charge of the developers underneath and kick some tail into gear. I really do not want to read another short story as to why Vanguard was not what it should have been.
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
John Lennon
The appology is nice in that it shows they are aware of their game's present deficiencies.
The game has some nice features and I like the look of the world. Unfortunately the performance is terrible and as others have said the issues relating to chunklines needs to be addressed.
I have a very good cable connection and a computer that easily exceeds recommended specs, yet the framerate is up and down and really distracts from the immersion of the game. And the other day I grouped with about 5 people and the game was so unresponsive, laggy and buggy (sound loops). There was a one to two second UI delay which really throws you off, especially when you're in a tight situation. All of these problems I experienced with a ping of 90, which isn't too bad.
The more I think about it, the more I think it's time to move on. Lack of performance and fun quests make the game feel more like a chore.
Chore, good word.
Yes, I'm currently at Zaraj arena needing THOUSANDS of coins to get the rewards.
The only way to obtain these coins is :
- Single drops from level 39 2dot mobs that are few and far between and overcamped by level 50s.
- Rare drops from lvl 35-40 3-dot minotaurs. (Or a quest that gives you 10, after killing SEVENTY FIVE of these minotaurs).
- A couple other quests that give a reward of 10 for a lot of killing, lvl 40ish 3-4 dots.
- Arena events. (require a team.)
So unless you're a lvl 50, or have a full team, pretty much all you can do is farm spectators. After about 15 hours of doing that I now have 87 coins. I need 913 more for the weapon reward, another 950 for the mount, and countless more for the other rewards in the area that I haven't even thought about. You can start this questline at level 31.
Honestly, I find it hard to motivate to log in just to camp coins. But its either this or Faction Grinding @ Wardship for the armor series in my lvl range, which is just as unappealing esp. considering how non user friendly thestra is. The game has become work - probably why I'm not logging in lately.
Gaming? That's not gaming!
That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
I enjoy the game for now and accept his apology. I feel this game has alot of potential and will continue to pay for it as an investment until i either lose interest or some thing that catchs my interest comes. I just hope this game realizes it's potential unlike SWG did.
Do i accept his apology? Sure, everyone is allowed some mistakes. At the same time, I Fully expect him to fix his mistakes, and compensate the numerous people who bought the game because he promised something it is not. I dont want my $100 back for buying the stupid ass CE that you dont even get to choose a cloak, what I do want is 3-6 months of free gameplay to compensate me for spending my money. To state your dilligently working on improving performance, but KNOWING all along that you built a system that is ahead of the technology is just flat out wrong.
ANY, and I mean ANY other profession out there that f-d up like Sigil did with this release would be held accountable and compensation demanded.
Burger king employee sells you a cheeseburger and hands you a hamburger, "Sorry, I didnt realize we didnt have cheese....next time you come, the technology will be there to provide cheese...have a nice day!"....would that fly? heck no
Garbage man picks up your garbage and accidently dumps it all over your lawn, "Sorry man, my bad, I take full responsibility...Ill make sure it dont happen again..have a nice day!"......mofo better be cleaning that up!
People dealing with customers mess up everyday, and that is expected, were all human, but no way we would let others walk all over us like Sigil is and get away with it. We are sheep though, and we will continue to flock to whatever herder appeals to us, without question.
I agree with you - apology is fine, but now compensate.
You got our money for the box - thats fine.
But charging a monthly fee for an unfinished game is ruffling a lot of feathers.
Of course its a catch 22, because without the monthly fees coming in, I doubt they can stay afloat. Though money isn't the only way to compensate players, I'm sure if they put their heads together they could come up with something to give us that would - even a little bit- make us feel that they're trying to hold on to their customers.
Gaming? That's not gaming!
That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
First, the entire text does not sound like an apology, its an explanation. Second, I dont need apologies from a millionaire game Developer.
Plus, the explanation is quite pointless, since the errors were obvious to all who really look at the game with open eyes anyway. The only service those words do, is have a final word against the blind fanboi menagerie.
The longer I think about the various aspects of the game, the more i get the feeling, they are in deep shit. The game has so many design "traps", problems that are in the very core of the game, I just can not see them remedied.
Take the size: the more the add teleport, the more the nullify the size. But if they dont... we keep the problems of travel we have.
Or: we have SO many quests, but ppl are not guided. So we find many players running over the world, taking a quest in East Thestra today and South Qualia tomorrow, because they cant get ahead with the others they found in East Thestra. I know that was intended. BUT: it somehow ruins the built up feeling for a world, if you need to travel over the world all the time instead of slowly expanding your impression of it. Take EQ2 as example. When I was new and in Antonica, Thundering Steppes was a mystery. (It was in launch days.) We just heard, there is said to be another part of the continent - somewhere. Until we built our strength to enter it and gradually fought our way into the Steppes. And thus with all new areas we opened. Here, you have SO MANY level 10-20 areas, you virtually travel over 80% of the world, it takes out that surprise/motivator I had in other MMOs to keep fighting and levelling a lot. I takes out the feeling you slowly built for a world, because you stay in one area and then move on to the next. I grew familiar with the world because I stayed in one area after another and so slowly expanded the world in my mind. Here... its all blurry and I feel no character of the various zones because i am meandering back and forth all over the world. How can that be solved without re-working the entire game?
Or the feeling you get less powerful than more powerful, coming from the fact that very early on the difficulty starts to rise. If you play EQ2 or WOW, you know those first 15 levels are quick and the real game starts then. You have that warm-up phase. Here, we get to business and death and slow levelling right away. Why? Well, there are more level 1-15 creatures over the world then I have ever seen in a MMO! The low levels make such a big part of the world and the many starter areas dont really help either.
Or finally: the soulless cities, lacking animation and "soul". A dev once said, the performance just does not allow it atm. So basically, we wont see city life, as we see it in EQ2 or WOW at all! The set all in that wonderful graphics and everything else was lost on the way.
Those and other things are deeply in the game, and will cause endless trouble. I just dont see any way to remedy those at all.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Haha the titel alone made me LOL, i mean it a game people, its not like he has ran of with your life savings or anything remotly close to something like that, ITS A GAME.