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Is VG that bad?
NativeOne
Member UncommonPosts: 18
Hi.
I feel a bit stupid now.. Just bought VG and have played it one evening so far, my first impression is not so bad. The performance id quite bad, but the actual gameplay seems quite fun.. Am I all wrong or can someone tell me I got anything good coming? From reading the forum its not hard to see whats wrong, but is there anything good in there?
Comments
Vanguard is a good game and only going to get better. You can enhance performance by looking up some game specific performance tweaks and by playing with in game graphic adjustments. I have a low end machine for that game and have found that I can get good performance and OK graphics with settings in the high performance and most of the " sliders" cranked up to 75% or better. I do play with grass turned off however, but manage 20-30 fps. I bought some cheap ram off ebay which seemed to help alot..3gb and I have no stutter and chunk crossings have minimal impact.
Most of the crap you hear about Vanguard are either people that had their expectations set too high or SoE haters. Apparently many people didn't read or believe the fact that Sigil announced way ahead of time that the game will be launching incomplete, but that their was simply no other options. They still logged in and were surprised by the rough edges. My life experience has taught me that you average happy gamer doesn't post. What you read in these forums are the minority 1% ers that will pretty much dog on any game they currently aren't playing atm just to gain attention or act as some kind of self appointed consumer watchdogs. The bigger the hype on a game...the more folks like this feel the need to bring a game down.
Gameplay is pretty basic untill you reach lv 10 and buy a horse. At lv 10 you start to apply new attribute points and the game really begins to open up. Be sure to travel around to the different continents as soon as you get a chance and you will begin to understand the scope of the world you have entered....it's truely massive and downright mind boggleing at times.
I've been playing since a month before launch and having a great time. I plan on playing Vanguard for a very long time.
Contrary to what some would lead you to believe, this game is not a steaming pile of bovine excrement. Having said that, the game is not the greatest thing to hit the planet since sliced bread either. I would give it a 6 out of 10, maybe a 7 if I'm in a good mood and had a few beers in me. The landscape has some nice artwork, unfortunately a lot of places are empty. Reminds me of Horizons when it launched. Probably the one thing I can say positive about the game without throwing in any qualifiers is that the classes are fun to play, at least the ones I have played in beta and post-launch in which I think there have been 8. I think a nice job was done overall with the healer classes with my personal favorite being the disciple even though most would probably pick that class last among the healers. Now that I think about it, the mix of classes among the population seems to be better than what I am use to seeing, which is a whole bunch of whatever class is deemed uber.
The combat I have fun with, especially with my necromancer. However, for my personal tastes it is right on the edge of being too "labor intensive" if you know what I mean. I gave up console games 17 years ago because of Nintendo Thumb. As has been previously mentioned, performance can be an issue, but many that experience this issue can get at least some relief employing the remedies floating around. I personally have had problems only in the main cities where the framerates will drop down into the low teens sometimes. The one major gripe I have with performance since I have not been stricken by most of the issues others mention is crossing chunk lines. Takes anywhere from 10-30 seconds, which is too long (I am on dialup, so that doesn't help either).
To answer the OP's question whether there is something good just around the corner, that is difficult to say since the answer is dependent on how much work is accomplished with the game along with the individual's taste. Just like beta testing, not everyone is cut out for the task and this game is less than polished in its current state. If you have a certain temperament, than you can have a good time; if not, then you'll become frustrated and bitter.
Good luck and have fun.
I an not an SOE hater or a refugee from another game trying to bash Vanguard, but it will say this: Spend your money on something else. This game isn't the future, it's the past, a warmed over and rebuilt Everquest I with a graphics engine that will devour your computer and enough glitches to make your mouse complain about having to work this hard. The game is not growing, it is slowing down as people leave left and right and justifiably so. Read the reviews. GFW gave it a 3 out of 10.
And read about people leaving because they can't find a group anywhere in the world, and believe you me, you're not going to get very far in Telon without constant grouping.
The games fans will tell you it has potential and isn't finished yet and that no online game is every really finished. This is more unfinished than most. I made it through three months. It's nothing special. Give it a year or two and they might fix some things, but the foundation on this one is cracked. Wait for Age of Conan or Warhammer ... the experience is sure to be much more fun, and let's face, that's why we all play.
If you visit http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com or http://silkyvenom.com/forums/index.php there you will se more of both sides then here...
I you actually play the game and like it play it. It's not a bad game, it is not broken and it doesn't lack content (it actually have much content).
So if you can see through the bad things, mostly like the performance hog, you will ike the game. And if you haven't fell through a MMO game world, you haven't seen much yet
BUT if you want to play the falvot of the year, the MMO thats is the hit and played by 'everyone' you will be better off next door.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
Don't listen to the haters.
If you're enjoying the game, play it and have fun. Anyone who tells you not to play a game you're having fun with is a complete and total waste of space. After all, these are games. Games are played for fun. The problem is they're not having fun so they want to ruin your fun too, which makes no sense.
You're having fun playing the game, I'm having fun playing the game. If the haters don't like it, they can go to hell.
Honestly, why do they get so upset and spend so much time hating on a game they don't like? They need to just go play something else and let us have our fun.
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
40% of them will go 14 april, another 40% will go 24 april.
Some of them will come back and whine but hopefully at some other forum.
(Oh disclaimer, this statistic is made up.)
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
Thanks for the answers, kinda like I expected. I will give the game a chance, been playing WoW for a time and enjoyed it for a while, but after turning 70 it just lost the appeal to me, was tedious to work the instances and always follow the same routine. I have a small kid and have to be able to enjoy a game even if I can only play a short period.
What I forgot to ask was if its possible to play this game for, lets say 1-2 hours, and still get something done?
And is it possible to play solo later on? None of my usual gamingbuddies believed in VG and di not want to join, so I am without a guild and need to be able to play solo...
And the bugs everyone is crying about do not bother me that much if the gameplay is good and be bugs do not make the game unplayable... I remember the beginning of DAoC, that was bugged... but I still had great fun in that game
Since you got it try it out yourself.Only you can decide if it's a good game and is for your playstyle no one else can..allthough many will try
.Have fun....i hope....
You really should make up your own mind, and try the game. That said honestly i would advise against investing a large amount of time into the game.
Having played multiple charecters into the teens, and one to level 32/tailor 28, i find the gameplay to be a big weak point, along with the lack of community. I have cancelled my account, so take what i say with a grain of salt. My experience was ok at times, but i counted my friends list last night on my psi. I had 78 names on the list over 32 levels. For the last 2-3 weeks the average # of people on that list was around 6. Given the size of the world, and the amount of time invested in travelling, the lack of population is destroying the community. The side result is that if you like to group and explore, your going to have a hard time going anywhere but the most populated areas in the game to find groups, and doing so even then will require a larger time investment. The end result is that doing missives in a place like southwatch for 5-10 levels is really not fun.
From a gameplay standpoint, i would say its medocre at best. Quite honestly the Normal Mob AI is very poor. Encounter design is weak as well. usually at most you run into 1-2 scripted encoutners per dungeon/area. In most cases your group of 6 can pretty much destroy anything with no effort as long as the players have some ability. The scripted encounters are a good point, but compared to other recent MMO's the # is minimal, not even counting raid level events. Additionally the scripted events like final boss @ fortress, Tsang's tomb, pantheon are rather simplistic, and if you do it once, your never in any danger of failing ever again.
quests are generally fed ex, or whack a mole, As an example one dungeon/keep area has a main story line that basically revolves around you at step 1 killing 30 mobs of type x, at step 2, kiling 35 mobs of type Y, all the way up to step 6 which requires you to visit a shrine,and kill 50 mobs of type Z. With the changes to experience rates, you generally outlevel content before you can finish the harder/more obscure quests, thus trivializing content to a large extent. again,there are a few bright spots in the quest area, but they are very few and far between.
Given that sigil designed this game as a pve centric game, pvp is poor. The various races/classes are nice, but almost everyone is a generalist and there is no real defining need for any particular class or subclass. As a generalist arcane caster, frankly i was not all that attached to my class, because the druid or necromancer next to me could do the exact same things.
What i do like is that the basics are in place. As many people have stated the game has potential. The crafting system is one of the better ones around, the world is really fun to explore and adventure in, but in the end i just can not motivate myself to continue to play for "what if" or the "potential" that might come one day, and be bored with the tedious aspects of VG in the meantime.
I think you will see the same coming from wow, a game that has done most of the above things to a higher degree and better standard then vanguard. I am not saying wow was a game that was highly difficult, but generally WoW did a better effort with group content ,and quality of content then VG has, if you consider what wow had roughly 2-3 months after release.
I understand that with VG one of their design ideas was to make travel meaningful, but this has also made it very hard for friends to all stay together and do stuff as a group... They're going to need to do something about this (something substantial) in the near future or they are going to have serious subscription retention issues, I predict... far beyond anything having to do with performance or bugs.
C
You can not play Vanguard solo in all areas at any level. Some areas and quests can be done solo, even some of the group quests, if you plan ahead and keep your skill and equipment levels current. Those two aspects are key to doing anything by yourself. There are some mobs and areas, however, that probably just can't be done solo.
You can also accomplish things during small game sessions, if you plan what you are doing. You have to plan your activities to match your available time. If you simply log in without any set ideas, you WILL find yourself wasting your play time with little or no results. Don't log in and make a cross continent journey if you only have an hour available. I find that short game sessions are a great time to run diplomacy quests.
If you have a regular group, short sessions can net good returns on adventure experience. Solo, you must plan for longer sessions.
- How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
- I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?