Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
10 reasons why I play Vanguard
Thamoris
Member UncommonPosts: 686
The following are 10 features that keep my playing Vanguard.....
1) size of the world ~ With over 1000 hours in game I have explored about 10% of the world of Telon
2) variety of adventure schools to train in ~ So far I have played Cleric, Shaman, Paladin, Necromancer, Ranger, Bard, and Death Knight and each of these schools has varied greatly in play style and abilities....I intend to play as many different schools as I can.
3) beautiful landscape ~ even on my 2yr old pos cpu I manage to find some great vistas to enjoy. I play on high performance but crank up many graphical sliders such as view distance and animation distance...allowing for some truely amazing views!
4) mounts ~ good variety of unique mounts from camels to unicorns to griffins. All of which have their own line of gear and armor.
5) multi equipment screens ~ I love this feature! I don't have to carry along crafting, harvesting or diplomacy gear because their is an equipment screen for each. If I am riding along and see a tin node I wish to mine...I simply stop, doulble click node and game changes my avatar to harvesting mode instantly. I also enjoy not only finding/making gear for adventure but also for crafting, harvesting and diplomacy...each has their own full line of gear to upgrade as you level giving me lots of reasons to shop !
6) combat ~ I really like the combat ! It's engaging enough to be interesting with the saves and rescues and specials available but not so engaging that I'm afraid one mistake will lead to death. Particularly true with a healing type school...less so with caster types which is why I play a Paladin a my main. Being a dad ...I need a little wiggle room in case my 2yr old decides to walk up and poke me in the eye while I play.
7) crafting ~ The workorder idea as a way of leveling without having to harvest is a big time saver. It also keeps people from having to make 100 bronze daggers and decon em to gain crafting xp. Keeps alot of crap off the player exchange as well. I find working with the crafting machines to be engaging. Crafting on different continents gives you different continent specific bonuses to the gear being crafted there. Nice touch imo. Weapons made on different continents also have their own unique look too.
8) special effects ~ in combat my sword of venom shows green veins on it when the poison part kicks in...the numerous effects I see while in battle are a pleasure to watch. It's not too much or too little...just right imo. The effects while crafting are cool too...smelter gets too hot ? big puff of black smoke and some flames shoot up....and my avatar will start to cough and choke on the smoke....again..nice touch
9) shape changing and pets ~ necros get an abonimation that hangs out with them..tanks for them in combat. Some schools and races can change shape into various animal forms. Necros can summon dead npcs to fight along side them while in combat. Your wizard types can summon a Pheonix ( sp?) as a pet. I haven't played one but seen them around and they look really cool
10) variety ~ the sheer variety of what you can do is what Iike the most. Each school and race have it's own unique line of abilities and play style. Each starting location provides a unique experience and enviroment. I intend to play as many different schools and races as I can handle.
I could go on about harvesting, boating and land ownership...their about 30 things I love about Vanguard but I said only 10 so I'll stick to that
To be fair...10 things I don't like about Vanguard
1) character creations ~ 1000 different ways to shape the nose but only 4-5 hairstyles? I don't like that. I can't even tell the difference from one nose to another..but can certainly see the difference in hair styles. I hate seeing characters that look just like my own.
2) gear ~ you can't tell what a piece of gear is going to look like till you equip it ( unless you've seen it before on someone else ) . Some gear binds upon equiping so if ya don't like the way it looks...yur out of luck. Can't sell it or give it away.
3) player pops ~ player populations are low. Though I'm not a big grouper I like a healthy player population just to have people around and to keep a healthy economy.
4) chat ui ~ chat UI drives me nuts sometimes. I chat alot in game at times and it's difficult to hunt and chat at the same time. Chat text lags a bit at times and it's easy to make a miss tell or something.
5) game bugs ~ Though I've had no game breaking bugs....crossing chunks makes ya pause for a few seconds and I do occasionly crash to desktop...both can be annoying and need to be fixed.
6) terrain ~ though in general I love the way the world looks ...I do not like the way boulders and such seem to have been glued in place...or set there. They are not blended well into the ground making for abrupt transitions from boulder to the ground. The same goes with the shoreline....not very realistic. It looks like the boulders and such where made with different tools than the rest of the world and then " placed ".
7) mob spawns ~ same exact mob spawns in the same exact spot every time. This predictability takes away from the immersion factor. This is particularly obvious in dungeon settings. This was done to allow for multiple groups to raid one dungeon, but still...I don't like.
8) travel ~ It can take a long time to get around. This can be annoying if one only has an hour or two to play. They may spend that whole time just traveling to where they want to hunt at. It also hurts the grouping factor as one pretty much can only group with whoever is in ones local area. Few groups will wait 30 min for you to ride a few kilometers to meet up with em.
9) official game forums ~ we need community forums ...bonds the community and should help the devs know what the players want to see in game
10) money ~ a life in adventure is a life of the poor. One must craft alot to make good coin. I have found that general adventuring will not make you rich. This kinda ties into low player pops because gear sells slowly on the player exchange...coin drops are low and quest rewards are low as well....or maybe...stuff on the player exchange is too expensive..eithe way...economy is out of wack
Play Vanguard ! The game that sucks less than the rest !
Comments
Heya,
this is funny..
So you enjoy the size of the world, but hate the travel,.
The landscape is beautiful, apart from rocks and stuff that are ugly.
Oh well that's not why I'm here,
I'm here to tell you that there ARE official forums
http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/forums/list.m
To be precise
Furthermore, I'll try VG the day I hear SOE go "Hey, look what we have here for you, free trial!"
Played so far: 9Dragons, AO, AC, AC2, CoX, DAoC, DF, DnL, DR, DDO, Ent, EvE, EQ, EQ2, FoMK, FFO, Fury, GW, HG:L, HZ, L1, L2, M59, MU, NC1, NC2, PS, PT, R:O, RF:O, RYL, Ryzom, SL, SB, SW:G, TR, TCoS, MX:O, UO, VG, WAR, WoW...
It all sucked.
Oh and the word in question is spelled 'phoenix'
I don't have to like every single detail of something in order to enjoy it as a whole. I enjoy the graphics in Vanguard as a whole...but I can pick apart some details that I don't like....which is what I did.
Enjoy the game, and the Forums now
Played so far: 9Dragons, AO, AC, AC2, CoX, DAoC, DF, DnL, DR, DDO, Ent, EvE, EQ, EQ2, FoMK, FFO, Fury, GW, HG:L, HZ, L1, L2, M59, MU, NC1, NC2, PS, PT, R:O, RF:O, RYL, Ryzom, SL, SB, SW:G, TR, TCoS, MX:O, UO, VG, WAR, WoW...
It all sucked.
IT makes me wanna try Vanguard
MMORPG's Under my belt:UO,EQ1,EQ2,SWG,L2,COH,COV,WoW,AC2,Shadowbane,DAOC,FFXI,GW,D&D,V:SOH,LOTR:O
Hey I agree with you, but......Bugs are huge and I have had a really crappy time with them. I guess what it comes down to is that I put more wait on your negative side than your positives. All I wanted was for this game to work and well....it doesn't. I also think they need to focus on classes not races. IMO there are far to many races. A lot of false promises too pissed me off, buddy system (or whatever it's called) is that in yet? The list goes on.....bottom line for me to many false promise and bugs are to major for me to enjoy the nice parts about this game. Shame cause I got maxed out toons on a server already, oh well the search continues.
AoC will be my next one and oh yeah, WAR is coming.
I have played Vanguard since closed beta 3. I really wanted to enjoy it, I loved the scenery, and enjoyed the necro and druid profession.
Once it was live i had the worst time with bugs. I had 2 characters lose levels. They crashed to desktop and when signing back in i lost all the experience I made in my session (lost 2 levels on one). Customer service was horrible. Never got back to me in some cases. I really tried to like the game but the bugs, crash to desktops finally made me quit the game.
I resubbed my station pass to play more EQ2 and try out the beastmaster profession in SWG. Tried to reload vanguard and everytime I try to download the patch, halfway through the download just stops. Maybe it is a sign?
Great post Tham couldn't have said it better myself. Hopefully now all these "haters" will wake up and understand that those of use enjoying the game do know its problems/issues but we just do not feel the need to expres it every single time we respond to a topic
.
what?, nothing about the amount of cheating in this game? actually you may be right....I can't decide where to put this myself, on good side or bad side of the VG story.
I will choose to have this as a plus for this game since for example I could explore the map in no time, and cut the running time from let's say 20 min in the past to 3 seconds now, or I could have this on "things I don't like in VG" since for example will be extremely difficult to pvp with a guy that is on steroids and has 500% speed increase.
Nice list. I agree with all of your good points. Those were largely the things that kept me playing for four months despite the bugs. Ultimately the thing that outweighed all of that for me was the CTDs.
The was a growing problem that I noticed as I leveled and that was that the quality of the quests and the quest locations seemed to get much weaker the higher I leveled. 1-10 was wonderfully done. 10-20 less so but still passable. But by the time I swung north of 20, the quests became very banal and repetitive. I also became disappointed with the degree of challenge -- especially from the "boss" mobs.
In any case, good post.
Ok, let me ask you then, with an 8800 you get a crash to desktop roughly every 20 mins (more if you travel between chunks). I'm heavily trafficed areas like cities that CTD rate can be as high as every 10 mins or so.
Is it fair to rag on it then?
Top post Thal. Have read many of your posts with respect only to see them flamed. I think you have hit the nail on the head.
As for above post...
With 8800 game crashes to desktop?.......Not the game's fault then is it? Drivers maybe? Other software conflicts?
I crash to desktop when X-FIRE is running. I don't blame the game. I close the program.
Game -on !!!
Of course, CTD could be caused by many things, but the texture cache leaks are definitely an issue for most people. I have heard of lots of issues with the 8800 drivers, especially on Vista.
CTD can sometimes be prevented by using the flush command that flushes the engine cache. This will flush the memory and therefore the leak can leak a little longer without reaching its maximum allocated space before crashing.
Be careful with the flush command. Use it sparingly or it could cause the game to freeze or other graphical errors.
Nice post to the OP, can't disagree with much here one sad point the negative 10. I am just wishing for a game where items are gained through adventure by the adventurer questing. And the money gained from items is used for repairs and buying in game items.
Take away the greed and the gold sellers and bring on a game with a community and people that want to have fun and achieve over time... and items are traded for items or given.
Oh well need to go calm down poiint 10 negative is what ruins most games at the moment
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
Ok, let me ask you then, with an 8800 you get a crash to desktop roughly every 20 mins (more if you travel between chunks). I'm heavily trafficed areas like cities that CTD rate can be as high as every 10 mins or so.
Is it fair to rag on it then?
I have a 8800 and my system doesn't crash to desktop. I have crashed but not in 20minute intervals. Its only like once a session because i dont restart my computer after closing the game the previous day. But whenever i restart my computer before i play i never crash. just because you have a 8800 isn't going to make this game run smoothly. you need ram and lots of it.
I have been a part of tons of beta's and tons of new games so thanks for the news flash. VSoH came out with WAY more bugs than normal to the point it wasn't playable at times. Having minor overlooks (bugs) I have no problem with, ****happens. VSoH had false promises which still remain true 6months later and the severity of the bugs were far to great.
So please don't tell me how games in the future will have bugs, seriously. Anyone thinking a game will come out flawlessly is a moron. That said, anyone who thinks the bugs in VSoH are the norm are bigger morons. I mean if it was so the norm then why did the whole team get fired, the game got dumped by 10's of thousands if not more, etc etc. I agree that this game is a disaster waiting for a remodel, if you don't see that your blind. It has the potential and who knows in 6 months it could be a totally different game, right now though, it is broken. If your having fun playing a broken game kudos to you champ, but I will play something I don't want to curse at and have some fun (or wait for something that will be worth another try). They should fix the MAJOR problems before releasing is my main point here....lol
I'm not in a position to assess fault. I played VG with 9 RL friends and we all had different hardware configurations. We all had significant CTD problems. But those with the 8800s seemed to be hit the worst.
Was it the "fault" of the 8800s of the game. In the end, it didn't make a difference. A CTD is still a CTD.
Now we are all playing LotRo (along with a 10th friend) and none of us are having CTD problems. So you can say its the 8800's fault for having an unusual driver or you can say its VGs fault for not supporting the card. It makes no difference to me when I can't play the game.
I'm not in a position to assess fault. I played VG with 9 RL friends and we all had different hardware configurations. We all had significant CTD problems. But those with the 8800s seemed to be hit the worst.
Was it the "fault" of the 8800s of the game. In the end, it didn't make a difference. A CTD is still a CTD.
Now we are all playing LotRo (along with a 10th friend) and none of us are having CTD problems. So you can say its the 8800's fault for having an unusual driver or you can say its VGs fault for not supporting the card. It makes no difference to me when I can't play the game.
LOTROs graphic engine design doesn't come close to VG PERIOD.For what its worth, the flush didn't seem to help. i found that I had to quit out of the game completely after chunking or teleporting or risk a CTD. Sometimes I could delay it by changing the texture settings. Sometimes not.
After several weeks of this -- and following one particularly frustrating experience in Khal -- I moved on to another MMO.
This was mainly because I am not as optomistic as you that SOE will fix this problem in the near term. After all, high end cards are only a small fraction of their player base and there are much bigger problems in the game to address. (Like making the game run well on mid range machines).
LOTROs graphic engine design doesn't come close to VG PERIOD.That would be a matter of opinion. On an 8800 with the high rez textures LotRos looks damn amazing. The water certianly looks better. (reflections, ripples, etc).
The art design is very different so to each his own. Personally, i much prefer the design of the LotRo budilings (both inside and out) but I perfer the Van character models.