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.
I have a 8800 so i know what the graphics look like. There's nothing appealing about LOTRO its fun for a little bit because its easy but then you realize you want somthing from your gameplay and LOTRO doesnt have it.
Its just a new game you can't rag on it for its bugs because its trying somthing new and the system isn't perfected yet so its bugged. . . .
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.
Glad to hear. I am pleased the game works for you.
I found that my CTDs were increased with travel and chunking. So 20 mins is a very rough estimate. If we stayed in roughly the same spot from login our CTDs could be down to just one or two a sessions (usally about 3 hours). On the other hand if you did something like travel from Tanvu to Khal you'd pretty much be guaranteed a CTD right away. And then another one as you left Khal.
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.
I have a 8800 so i know what the graphics look like. There's nothing appealing about LOTRO its fun for a little bit because its easy but then you realize you want somthing from your gameplay and LOTRO doesnt have it.
Well, now you just changed the argument.
For what its worth, I found that LotRo's gameplay and VG's gameplay were really not all that much different once you got past the lower levels in lotRo. The main difference seems to be that LotRo ramps it up more slowly.
The CTD you are experiencing is most likely due to the client side memory leaks plaguing the game at the moment. It is on their top 10 list of bug fixes on the In The Works page so they are working on it.
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.
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).
When did I say anything about being optimistic? Personally, I couldnt care less about them fixing the CTD b/c I dont CTD. I dont run an 8800 and I dont consider my system high end. Its about two years old and I get fairly decent performance.
Im sorry you are so frustrated with the games relationship with your system, but in all truth, none of us current Vanguard players really care...I think your posts would be more appreciated on the MMO forum that you currently play.
Most of the people who will quit already have, and so we have ended up with a solid group of happy Vanguard players, and another group of angry trolls who feel like they have to force their opinions of Vanguard performance on us. I beleieve I speak for all of us in the happy Vanguard players group, that we are sick of trolls who think they are making a difference by ranting non stop on our boards.
Well the point is, your set up gives you CTD and mine doesn't. Even when i did have 1gb of ram i still didnt get CTD every session and i played for more then 3 hours each session traveling back n forth through the world. Im not going to lie LOTRO was fun for a little bit but got dull to me and i had RL friends that i played with and abandoned because i just couldnt invest my time into lotro. I would rather play DOTA.
I am another hold-out for Vanguard. I purchased the game despite being in the beta, realizing all the problems, and reading all the bad reviews. Perhaps it'll end up being a waste of my money, who knows. People gamble away more in casinos. But I'm banking on Sony fixing the problems and taking what is an overly-ambitious great start, and creating an enjoyable game. Normally, that last sentence would make me laugh, but they did manage to greatly improve upon EQ2 which is what I play right now. So I have a little faith that someone there knows what they're doing.
If you haven't figured it out by now, I find the game unplayable in it's current state (5-15 frames per second), but I am looking forward to eventually being able to play it. It's a much better spiritual successor to EQ than EQ2 is, and being an old EQ fan, I like that. I don't know about these undelivered promises people are ranting about, I mean even WoW didn't do all it promised right out of the gate. Things are bound to change from the original early design stages, in fact things can change at any time. I think if they worked on stability, squashing some major exploits, and optimizing code so that minimum spec can play at 20-30 fps without wretched graphics, they might actually win some people over. Easier said than done I suppose.
So, I'm not quite ready to bury Vanguard yet. I've been excited about it for years leading up to it release. I still am. It's a shame what happened to Brad and his employees, though I think some still have jobs at Sony. They had some rough times from what I read. It sounds like a case of too much ambition and not enough dollars to back it up. Reputation only gets you so far, and venture capital is not that easy to come by. In a way, Vanguard is a success in that it made it out the door and didn't get completely scrapped.
I'll be really disappointed if Sony twists into some other animal completely, but they've pretty much said they want to keep to Brad's vision. Proof is in the putting on that one. Anyway, I hope to see you other die hards in game sometime.
The CTD you are experiencing is most likely due to the client side memory leaks plaguing the game at the moment. It is on their top 10 list of bug fixes on the In The Works page so they are working on it.
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.
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).
When did I say anything about being optimistic? Personally, I couldnt care less about them fixing the CTD b/c I dont CTD. I dont run an 8800 and I dont consider my system high end. Its about two years old and I get fairly decent performance.
Im sorry you are so frustrated with the games relationship with your system, but in all truth, none of us current Vanguard players really care...I think your posts would be more appreciated on the MMO forum that you currently play.
Most of the people who will quit already have, and so we have ended up with a solid group of happy Vanguard players, and another group of angry trolls who feel like they have to force their opinions of Vanguard performance on us. I beleieve I speak for all of us in the happy Vanguard players group, that we are sick of trolls who think they are making a difference by ranting non stop on our boards.
I wasn't aware that there was any kind of "opinion filter" on this or any other board. As far as the "solid group of happy Vanguard players" they seem to be not well represented on any Vanguard board that I have seen. I am happy that they are happy and enjoy the game. But I fail to see how sharing my honest experience with the game impinges on their "happiness."
The sad part is that at one point I was accused of being a "vanboy." I didn't mind the title, but its a little disconcerting to see the vanboy patrol suddenly on my case.
Well the point is, your set up gives you CTD and mine doesn't. Even when i did have 1gb of ram i still didnt get CTD every session and i played for more then 3 hours each session traveling back n forth through the world. Im not going to lie LOTRO was fun for a little bit but got dull to me and i had RL friends that i played with and abandoned because i just couldnt invest my time into lotro. I would rather play DOTA.
The ironic part is that I spent good money to upgrade to the 8800 because the 6800 that I had couldn't handle the game. It turns out that I was out of the frying pan and into the fire. Both the guys I played with who add 8800s had the same trouble. There are several of us that play these and voted as a group to move on not only because of the 8800 problem but because some others were having similar trouble with other hardware. (Also one friend who wanted to play with us to start with found that he was completely shut out because of the system specs).
I don't know about these undelivered promises people are ranting about, I mean even WoW didn't do all it promised right out of the gate. Things are bound to change from the original early design stages, in fact things can change at any time.
I agree with you there. Sure a lot of VG's features turned out to be vaporware (fellowships, AES, flying mounts, player cities, ship combat, etc). But that is true of many MMO's that -- by their nature -- have to change and evolve. Anyone who plays WoW might remember hero classes and battleground seige weapons for example. Its just part of life.
VG might be a little different in that the product was obviously (and admittedly) pushed out into the marketplace before it was ready to avoid a bankruptcy. Unfortuneately, that resulted in the worst of both worlds with the game being poorly receieved and the company collapsing despite the cash infusion.
I don't know about these undelivered promises people are ranting about, I mean even WoW didn't do all it promised right out of the gate. Things are bound to change from the original early design stages, in fact things can change at any time.
I agree with you there. Sure a lot of VG's features turned out to be vaporware (fellowships, AES, flying mounts, player cities, ship combat, etc). But that is true of many MMO's that -- by their nature -- have to change and evolve. Anyone who plays WoW might remember hero classes and battleground seige weapons for example. Its just part of life.
ummm....... flying mounts are in, and player cities, ship and flying/ mounted combat and many other things were never promised for release but for EXPANSIONS and they said the game was already designed with that in mind NOT that they would be in for launch...EVER. So if sony really is keeping to the "vision" like they say, we could still see all that.
Just had to come out of lurking and quickly post that, so next time, know what your talking about before trying to cast a negative light on the game and also wasting my time, we already know the issues as does everyone else by now im sure, but for promises being undelivered i think there are relatively few and minor ones only.
Well...I was waiting for the usual flame fest and was surprised by the unusual number of supporting posts. I actualy don't know how to respond ! I've had so few supporting posts before ....lol
The majority of the trolls must be over in the Lotro forums bashing that game I guess. good riddence
The game breaking compatibility issues some people have with the game seem to be somewhat isoloated. I meet some who have alot of issues and others ( like myself ) who have had relatively few. Often...it seems like those with high end machines and the latest gear seem to have either the most difficulty or that high end gear doesn't perform as they are expecting it to. Roughly 1 in 10 of my guild members have experienced game breaking issues.
I play on an AMD 64 3500, nvid 6600 with 3gb of cheap ram ....with game set to high performance BUT with many of the graphical sliders cranked way up ..I manage 30+ fps outside of town and 15-20 fps in town. It wasn't untill recently that I started to crash to desktop about once a gaming session. This seems to happen early on and upon relog...doesn't happen again even after several hours online. Other than the crashing to desktop occasionaly and the chunk crossing issues...I don't come accross any bugs outside of the occasional " stuck " mob or something.
I just hope SoE will put in a free trial so all those people with a " wait and see" mentality can come try the game before commiting to a purchase.
Fix chunk crossings and compatibility issues
offer free 2 week trial....this is a must imo..particularly with this game and it's reputation
launch a new marketing push
and I think VG will begin to grow
I wouldn't mind a server merge, but with the people owning land and all....it could be a mess. I went through a server merge in Horizons and it was a mess for months afterwards. There is land ownership in Horizons also. How do you handle it when 5-6 people own the same plot as you do if the servers are merged?
Play Vanguard ! The game that sucks less than the rest !
Everything was find until I read the sentence above. That really made me chuckle ... and discredit your post lol.
With all due respect .... ya need develope a sense of humor then. It's just a cynical way of supporting my favorite online game. If VG did not suck less than the rest...then I would not be playing it. I would be playing whatever game DID suck less than the rest at the time...for me.
The majority of the trolls must be over in the Lotro forums bashing that game I guess. good riddence
It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside to know your thinking about me, BTW you'll never be rid of me until Brad is violated by a rampant male Elk in public whilst being forced to power level every game on the station pass.
I was joking about that last bit, I'd never force someone to power level SWG, I couldn't watch another creature suffer like that ....... OK maybe I could.
You know if it wasn't for Brad dicking up the development Vanguard could've gone a long way. If Brad was left as a PR man and somone like Smed (CEO) was patrolling the offices everyday to make sure the employees were at work and not banging eachother VG would be easily over 200k subs now. I'm a card carrying member of the SOE haters club, but when Smed has a vision he gets it done pronto with no coup de'tats in the office. Also he doesn't break into tears when hard decisions like firing people (or not hiring family members) need to be made, he probably breaks into laughter.
Still I don't see VG getting scratched anytime soon and it could take the same road as EVE with a bad launch but slowly gaining subs. The only trouble is that the SOE banner can be a bit of a millstone around the neck in that aspect, but it does seem to be clearing up preformance wise. However the new patches do seem to be taking a bad turn, I couldn't believe the DEV saying they'll allow NPCs to exploit aswell as players rather than fix it!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
Performance issues never bothered me. Ran stuff pretty low with only the bump mapping and up (seems to be the only one that actually makes or breaks the graphics anyway). Didnt care that quests were broken or i saw wierd npc bugs etc. It was the player base compared to the HUGE world. I started quite a bit after release you see. For a while I saw peopel my own level, but a couple weeks later everyone but the die hard fans quit. The last straw was when I was trying to find a Trengal Keep group. 7 hours of shouting and sending tells to players in the area (i hated to do it but i really wanted to group for something) yielded me one interested person. There was a group inside the keep but i was told they were a guild group. This was the most extreme case but it seemed to happen daily my last week in Vanguard.
Some might say go solo to reach the higher levels. I did for a while, but I played a rogue. We just weren't that great solo (or fun for that matter.. solo that is, loved to play in groups)
I still want to play this game and it frustrates me to no end. I've played rogue-like classes almost exclusively for years in mmos now. I still hold the vanguard rogue as my all time favorite. Unless i hear better things about the population or someone can reccomend a server with active players though i just can't justify reactivating my subscription
Originally posted by Thamoris The game breaking compatibility issues some people have with the game seem to be somewhat isoloated. I meet some who have alot of issues and others ( like myself ) who have had relatively few. Often...it seems like those with high end machines and the latest gear seem to have either the most difficulty or that high end gear doesn't perform as they are expecting it to. Roughly 1 in 10 of my guild members have experienced game breaking issues.
I really have to disagree with your characterization of them as isolated. As I mentioned on another thread I played with 9 RL friends and we were on skype most ofthe time we played. From the cursing, I became very aware of the performance problems people were having. Our hardware really ran the gamut from high end down to laptops.
For the most part everyone had performance issues. The low end machines tended to have problems associated with low frame rates. The high end machines tended to have CTDs. But in addition to that we had every freakish occurence in between including sound glitches, display errors and some just flat out strange behavior. Missing textures became a running joke. And at one point we had a moment when we realized that monay people we seeing a given texture as different colors at the same time and place (?!?). On another occassion, we had this thing were some of our party could only see certain members of the party but not others (but without any consistancy as to who it was). My favorite was the glitch that made it so some party members body parts where missing so that they look the invisible man (sadly the no hats bug prevented the player from having a fez and a pipe).
Still, our group toughed it out because we liked the game play. But by the middle of May it all became too much. But its really a disservice to say that its an isolated thing.
Originally posted by Thamoris The game breaking compatibility issues some people have with the game seem to be somewhat isoloated. I meet some who have alot of issues and others ( like myself ) who have had relatively few. Often...it seems like those with high end machines and the latest gear seem to have either the most difficulty or that high end gear doesn't perform as they are expecting it to. Roughly 1 in 10 of my guild members have experienced game breaking issues.
I really have to disagree with your characterization of them as isolated. As I mentioned on another thread I played with 9 RL friends and we were on skype most ofthe time we played. From the cursing, I became very aware of the performance problems people were having. Our hardware really ran the gamut from high end down to laptops.
For the most part everyone had performance issues. The low end machines tended to have problems associated with low frame rates. The high end machines tended to have CTDs. But in addition to that we had every freakish occurence in between including sound glitches, display errors and some just flat out strange behavior. Missing textures became a running joke. And at one point we had a moment when we realized that monay people we seeing a given texture as different colors at the same time and place (?!?). On another occassion, we had this thing were some of our party could only see certain members of the party but not others (but without any consistancy as to who it was). My favorite was the glitch that made it so some party members body parts where missing so that they look the invisible man (sadly the no hats bug prevented the player from having a fez and a pipe).
Still, our group toughed it out because we liked the game play. But by the middle of May it all became too much. But its really a disservice to say that its an isolated thing.
When?
Was this a week ago? month? two months?
I listen to and talk to hundreds of players in the game ...daily and I can tell you..If alot of people where having game breaking issues..I would know. Some do..maybe 10% on a bad day.
Originally posted by Thamoris The game breaking compatibility issues some people have with the game seem to be somewhat isoloated. I meet some who have alot of issues and others ( like myself ) who have had relatively few. Often...it seems like those with high end machines and the latest gear seem to have either the most difficulty or that high end gear doesn't perform as they are expecting it to. Roughly 1 in 10 of my guild members have experienced game breaking issues.
I really have to disagree with your characterization of them as isolated. As I mentioned on another thread I played with 9 RL friends and we were on skype most ofthe time we played. From the cursing, I became very aware of the performance problems people were having. Our hardware really ran the gamut from high end down to laptops.
For the most part everyone had performance issues. The low end machines tended to have problems associated with low frame rates. The high end machines tended to have CTDs. But in addition to that we had every freakish occurence in between including sound glitches, display errors and some just flat out strange behavior. Missing textures became a running joke. And at one point we had a moment when we realized that monay people we seeing a given texture as different colors at the same time and place (?!?). On another occassion, we had this thing were some of our party could only see certain members of the party but not others (but without any consistancy as to who it was). My favorite was the glitch that made it so some party members body parts where missing so that they look the invisible man (sadly the no hats bug prevented the player from having a fez and a pipe).
Still, our group toughed it out because we liked the game play. But by the middle of May it all became too much. But its really a disservice to say that its an isolated thing.
When?
Was this a week ago? month? two months?
I listen to and talk to hundreds of players in the game ...daily and I can tell you..If alot of people where having game breaking issues..I would know. Some do..maybe 10% on a bad day.
Unless of course the people that had game breaking issues, are no longer playing a game that's broken for them. If there was a lot of that going on, it'd certainly explain the low population issues Vanguard suffers, don't you think? Cause and effect. The both of you are correct.
Originally posted by Thamoris The game breaking compatibility issues some people have with the game seem to be somewhat isoloated. I meet some who have alot of issues and others ( like myself ) who have had relatively few. Often...it seems like those with high end machines and the latest gear seem to have either the most difficulty or that high end gear doesn't perform as they are expecting it to. Roughly 1 in 10 of my guild members have experienced game breaking issues.
I really have to disagree with your characterization of them as isolated. As I mentioned on another thread I played with 9 RL friends and we were on skype most ofthe time we played. From the cursing, I became very aware of the performance problems people were having. Our hardware really ran the gamut from high end down to laptops.
For the most part everyone had performance issues. The low end machines tended to have problems associated with low frame rates. The high end machines tended to have CTDs. But in addition to that we had every freakish occurence in between including sound glitches, display errors and some just flat out strange behavior. Missing textures became a running joke. And at one point we had a moment when we realized that monay people we seeing a given texture as different colors at the same time and place (?!?). On another occassion, we had this thing were some of our party could only see certain members of the party but not others (but without any consistancy as to who it was). My favorite was the glitch that made it so some party members body parts where missing so that they look the invisible man (sadly the no hats bug prevented the player from having a fez and a pipe).
Still, our group toughed it out because we liked the game play. But by the middle of May it all became too much. But its really a disservice to say that its an isolated thing.
When?
Was this a week ago? month? two months?
I listen to and talk to hundreds of players in the game ...daily and I can tell you..If alot of people where having game breaking issues..I would know. Some do..maybe 10% on a bad day.
Unless of course the people that had game breaking issues, are no longer playing a game that's broken for them. If there was a lot of that going on, it'd certainly explain the low population issues Vanguard suffers, don't you think? Cause and effect. The both of you are correct.
Not really.
I am right because I have played daily since open beta days. I make reference to ALL the people I've encountered or listened too in chats. Out of ALL those people...less than 10% were talking about major ..game breaking issues.
The whole thing has been greatly exaggerated....seriously...It has..I'm there..
The truth is..Vanguard really is a good mmorpg and it does perform much better now. Those who like sandbox style mmorpg's and open ended gameplay should give Vanguard a good 3 months. If ya don't ...I think many of yall are missing the opportunity to play a really good game that is only going to get better.
I want to first thank you for posting such a two-sided, neutral review of Vanguard. A friend and I were looking for a game to play and we have tried all of the other ones such as WoW, SWG, EQ2 and such but we wanted to give this game a try. We were looking for a trial, but I now know that no trial is offered, but I think you made up my mind for me. I run a mediocre PC so I think I can deal with the performance issues, all the other downsides to the game seem to be problems I think I can put aside and still enjoy the game. I wanted to come on this website and these forums to read reviews about Vanguard, I wanted to read ups and downs of the game and I didn't want to read immature arguments. I appreciate you making that so easy.
Thanks again.
P.S. What server do you play on? I will probably see you in a couple days.
I think that's more scary for the future prospect of this game.
If performance isnt really that bad and the subscription numbers have fallen as low as they have then the majority of people dont find Vanguard a very enjoyable game and are unlikely to in the future. Dont see SOE putting much effort into a game that just wont draw or retain people.
I play the game, and deal with performance issues like chunking, CTD's and the occasional death due to bug. I do think it's an issue as is the lack of content and the difficulties in finding groups. I stick with it because I love the game when I can get in good groups, to do so I have to avoid most of the areas in the game because only a very few are ever significantly populated. I find it a boring solo game, there's just no interesting quests or areas you can hope to take on solo. You can solo and solo well in this game, I just find it boring though. Crafting and diplomacy are both monotonous boring grindfests. The mix of classes and the ability to put just about any 6 character into a group and be succesful is the one bright spot in this game.
I want to first thank you for posting such a two-sided, neutral review of Vanguard. A friend and I were looking for a game to play and we have tried all of the other ones such as WoW, SWG, EQ2 and such but we wanted to give this game a try. We were looking for a trial, but I now know that no trial is offered, but I think you made up my mind for me. I run a mediocre PC so I think I can deal with the performance issues, all the other downsides to the game seem to be problems I think I can put aside and still enjoy the game. I wanted to come on this website and these forums to read reviews about Vanguard, I wanted to read ups and downs of the game and I didn't want to read immature arguments. I appreciate you making that so easy.
Thanks again.
P.S. What server do you play on? I will probably see you in a couple days.
Appreciate the kind words.
I play on the Thunderaxe server. Feel free to look us up if you two are interested in a mature and established guild to join. We play pretty casual for now. Someday we may organize and become more structured, but for now..till VG starts growing again we are remaining on the small side with about 30ish active members. visit www.lhguild.com/forums for details on our clan.
See ya in game...if not...enjoy youself no matter what server or game you play!
need rogues? I'm coming back soon as well and trying to find an active guild.
We don't care what school our members are in . We are pretty casual. No " official " guild hunts...ect...just what the members get going on their own. Most of the members playing have been with us for a couple of years though we do have a few that just joined us while in Vanguard. Turnover due to state of game has slowed down our guild aspirations alot. We where up to about 130 members in the first month but have dwindled down to mostly our " core " members. We are welcoming anyone that likes a casual guild and those who don't depend on the guild to entertain them. We are a " sandbox " guild...where the guild is what our members make of it....basically.
My copy should arrive tomorrow but im unsure which server to join. Im from the UK and want to join one with a good community and a fairly decent population. Any recommendations?
Comments
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.
I have a 8800 so i know what the graphics look like. There's nothing appealing about LOTRO its fun for a little bit because its easy but then you realize you want somthing from your gameplay and LOTRO doesnt have it.
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.
Glad to hear. I am pleased the game works for you.
I found that my CTDs were increased with travel and chunking. So 20 mins is a very rough estimate. If we stayed in roughly the same spot from login our CTDs could be down to just one or two a sessions (usally about 3 hours). On the other hand if you did something like travel from Tanvu to Khal you'd pretty much be guaranteed a CTD right away. And then another one as you left Khal.
BTW, I have 2 gigs of RAM.
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.
I have a 8800 so i know what the graphics look like. There's nothing appealing about LOTRO its fun for a little bit because its easy but then you realize you want somthing from your gameplay and LOTRO doesnt have it.
Well, now you just changed the argument.
For what its worth, I found that LotRo's gameplay and VG's gameplay were really not all that much different once you got past the lower levels in lotRo. The main difference seems to be that LotRo ramps it up more slowly.
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).
When did I say anything about being optimistic? Personally, I couldnt care less about them fixing the CTD b/c I dont CTD. I dont run an 8800 and I dont consider my system high end. Its about two years old and I get fairly decent performance.
Im sorry you are so frustrated with the games relationship with your system, but in all truth, none of us current Vanguard players really care...I think your posts would be more appreciated on the MMO forum that you currently play.
Most of the people who will quit already have, and so we have ended up with a solid group of happy Vanguard players, and another group of angry trolls who feel like they have to force their opinions of Vanguard performance on us. I beleieve I speak for all of us in the happy Vanguard players group, that we are sick of trolls who think they are making a difference by ranting non stop on our boards.
Well the point is, your set up gives you CTD and mine doesn't. Even when i did have 1gb of ram i still didnt get CTD every session and i played for more then 3 hours each session traveling back n forth through the world. Im not going to lie LOTRO was fun for a little bit but got dull to me and i had RL friends that i played with and abandoned because i just couldnt invest my time into lotro. I would rather play DOTA.
If you haven't figured it out by now, I find the game unplayable in it's current state (5-15 frames per second), but I am looking forward to eventually being able to play it. It's a much better spiritual successor to EQ than EQ2 is, and being an old EQ fan, I like that. I don't know about these undelivered promises people are ranting about, I mean even WoW didn't do all it promised right out of the gate. Things are bound to change from the original early design stages, in fact things can change at any time. I think if they worked on stability, squashing some major exploits, and optimizing code so that minimum spec can play at 20-30 fps without wretched graphics, they might actually win some people over. Easier said than done I suppose.
So, I'm not quite ready to bury Vanguard yet. I've been excited about it for years leading up to it release. I still am. It's a shame what happened to Brad and his employees, though I think some still have jobs at Sony. They had some rough times from what I read. It sounds like a case of too much ambition and not enough dollars to back it up. Reputation only gets you so far, and venture capital is not that easy to come by. In a way, Vanguard is a success in that it made it out the door and didn't get completely scrapped.
I'll be really disappointed if Sony twists into some other animal completely, but they've pretty much said they want to keep to Brad's vision. Proof is in the putting on that one. Anyway, I hope to see you other die hards in game sometime.
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).
When did I say anything about being optimistic? Personally, I couldnt care less about them fixing the CTD b/c I dont CTD. I dont run an 8800 and I dont consider my system high end. Its about two years old and I get fairly decent performance.
Im sorry you are so frustrated with the games relationship with your system, but in all truth, none of us current Vanguard players really care...I think your posts would be more appreciated on the MMO forum that you currently play.
Most of the people who will quit already have, and so we have ended up with a solid group of happy Vanguard players, and another group of angry trolls who feel like they have to force their opinions of Vanguard performance on us. I beleieve I speak for all of us in the happy Vanguard players group, that we are sick of trolls who think they are making a difference by ranting non stop on our boards.
I wasn't aware that there was any kind of "opinion filter" on this or any other board. As far as the "solid group of happy Vanguard players" they seem to be not well represented on any Vanguard board that I have seen. I am happy that they are happy and enjoy the game. But I fail to see how sharing my honest experience with the game impinges on their "happiness."
The sad part is that at one point I was accused of being a "vanboy." I didn't mind the title, but its a little disconcerting to see the vanboy patrol suddenly on my case.
The ironic part is that I spent good money to upgrade to the 8800 because the 6800 that I had couldn't handle the game. It turns out that I was out of the frying pan and into the fire. Both the guys I played with who add 8800s had the same trouble. There are several of us that play these and voted as a group to move on not only because of the 8800 problem but because some others were having similar trouble with other hardware. (Also one friend who wanted to play with us to start with found that he was completely shut out because of the system specs).
What's DOTA?
I agree with you there. Sure a lot of VG's features turned out to be vaporware (fellowships, AES, flying mounts, player cities, ship combat, etc). But that is true of many MMO's that -- by their nature -- have to change and evolve. Anyone who plays WoW might remember hero classes and battleground seige weapons for example. Its just part of life.
VG might be a little different in that the product was obviously (and admittedly) pushed out into the marketplace before it was ready to avoid a bankruptcy. Unfortuneately, that resulted in the worst of both worlds with the game being poorly receieved and the company collapsing despite the cash infusion.
I agree with you there. Sure a lot of VG's features turned out to be vaporware (fellowships, AES, flying mounts, player cities, ship combat, etc). But that is true of many MMO's that -- by their nature -- have to change and evolve. Anyone who plays WoW might remember hero classes and battleground seige weapons for example. Its just part of life.
ummm....... flying mounts are in, and player cities, ship and flying/ mounted combat and many other things were never promised for release but for EXPANSIONS and they said the game was already designed with that in mind NOT that they would be in for launch...EVER. So if sony really is keeping to the "vision" like they say, we could still see all that.
Just had to come out of lurking and quickly post that, so next time, know what your talking about before trying to cast a negative light on the game and also wasting my time, we already know the issues as does everyone else by now im sure, but for promises being undelivered i think there are relatively few and minor ones only.
~Dunadurium
"Silly rabbit, WoW's for kids"
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Well...I was waiting for the usual flame fest and was surprised by the unusual number of supporting posts. I actualy don't know how to respond ! I've had so few supporting posts before ....lol
The majority of the trolls must be over in the Lotro forums bashing that game I guess. good riddence
The game breaking compatibility issues some people have with the game seem to be somewhat isoloated. I meet some who have alot of issues and others ( like myself ) who have had relatively few. Often...it seems like those with high end machines and the latest gear seem to have either the most difficulty or that high end gear doesn't perform as they are expecting it to. Roughly 1 in 10 of my guild members have experienced game breaking issues.
I play on an AMD 64 3500, nvid 6600 with 3gb of cheap ram ....with game set to high performance BUT with many of the graphical sliders cranked way up ..I manage 30+ fps outside of town and 15-20 fps in town. It wasn't untill recently that I started to crash to desktop about once a gaming session. This seems to happen early on and upon relog...doesn't happen again even after several hours online. Other than the crashing to desktop occasionaly and the chunk crossing issues...I don't come accross any bugs outside of the occasional " stuck " mob or something.
I just hope SoE will put in a free trial so all those people with a " wait and see" mentality can come try the game before commiting to a purchase.
Fix chunk crossings and compatibility issues
offer free 2 week trial....this is a must imo..particularly with this game and it's reputation
launch a new marketing push
and I think VG will begin to grow
I wouldn't mind a server merge, but with the people owning land and all....it could be a mess. I went through a server merge in Horizons and it was a mess for months afterwards. There is land ownership in Horizons also. How do you handle it when 5-6 people own the same plot as you do if the servers are merged?
With all due respect .... ya need develope a sense of humor then. It's just a cynical way of supporting my favorite online game. If VG did not suck less than the rest...then I would not be playing it. I would be playing whatever game DID suck less than the rest at the time...for me.
It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside to know your thinking about me, BTW you'll never be rid of me until Brad is violated by a rampant male Elk in public whilst being forced to power level every game on the station pass.
I was joking about that last bit, I'd never force someone to power level SWG, I couldn't watch another creature suffer like that ....... OK maybe I could.
You know if it wasn't for Brad dicking up the development Vanguard could've gone a long way. If Brad was left as a PR man and somone like Smed (CEO) was patrolling the offices everyday to make sure the employees were at work and not banging eachother VG would be easily over 200k subs now. I'm a card carrying member of the SOE haters club, but when Smed has a vision he gets it done pronto with no coup de'tats in the office. Also he doesn't break into tears when hard decisions like firing people (or not hiring family members) need to be made, he probably breaks into laughter.
Still I don't see VG getting scratched anytime soon and it could take the same road as EVE with a bad launch but slowly gaining subs. The only trouble is that the SOE banner can be a bit of a millstone around the neck in that aspect, but it does seem to be clearing up preformance wise. However the new patches do seem to be taking a bad turn, I couldn't believe the DEV saying they'll allow NPCs to exploit aswell as players rather than fix it!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Performance issues never bothered me. Ran stuff pretty low with only the bump mapping and up (seems to be the only one that actually makes or breaks the graphics anyway). Didnt care that quests were broken or i saw wierd npc bugs etc. It was the player base compared to the HUGE world. I started quite a bit after release you see. For a while I saw peopel my own level, but a couple weeks later everyone but the die hard fans quit. The last straw was when I was trying to find a Trengal Keep group. 7 hours of shouting and sending tells to players in the area (i hated to do it but i really wanted to group for something) yielded me one interested person. There was a group inside the keep but i was told they were a guild group. This was the most extreme case but it seemed to happen daily my last week in Vanguard.
Some might say go solo to reach the higher levels. I did for a while, but I played a rogue. We just weren't that great solo (or fun for that matter.. solo that is, loved to play in groups)
I still want to play this game and it frustrates me to no end. I've played rogue-like classes almost exclusively for years in mmos now. I still hold the vanguard rogue as my all time favorite. Unless i hear better things about the population or someone can reccomend a server with active players though i just can't justify reactivating my subscription
I really have to disagree with your characterization of them as isolated. As I mentioned on another thread I played with 9 RL friends and we were on skype most ofthe time we played. From the cursing, I became very aware of the performance problems people were having. Our hardware really ran the gamut from high end down to laptops.
For the most part everyone had performance issues. The low end machines tended to have problems associated with low frame rates. The high end machines tended to have CTDs. But in addition to that we had every freakish occurence in between including sound glitches, display errors and some just flat out strange behavior. Missing textures became a running joke. And at one point we had a moment when we realized that monay people we seeing a given texture as different colors at the same time and place (?!?). On another occassion, we had this thing were some of our party could only see certain members of the party but not others (but without any consistancy as to who it was). My favorite was the glitch that made it so some party members body parts where missing so that they look the invisible man (sadly the no hats bug prevented the player from having a fez and a pipe).
Still, our group toughed it out because we liked the game play. But by the middle of May it all became too much. But its really a disservice to say that its an isolated thing.
I really have to disagree with your characterization of them as isolated. As I mentioned on another thread I played with 9 RL friends and we were on skype most ofthe time we played. From the cursing, I became very aware of the performance problems people were having. Our hardware really ran the gamut from high end down to laptops.
For the most part everyone had performance issues. The low end machines tended to have problems associated with low frame rates. The high end machines tended to have CTDs. But in addition to that we had every freakish occurence in between including sound glitches, display errors and some just flat out strange behavior. Missing textures became a running joke. And at one point we had a moment when we realized that monay people we seeing a given texture as different colors at the same time and place (?!?). On another occassion, we had this thing were some of our party could only see certain members of the party but not others (but without any consistancy as to who it was). My favorite was the glitch that made it so some party members body parts where missing so that they look the invisible man (sadly the no hats bug prevented the player from having a fez and a pipe).
Still, our group toughed it out because we liked the game play. But by the middle of May it all became too much. But its really a disservice to say that its an isolated thing.
When?
Was this a week ago? month? two months?
I listen to and talk to hundreds of players in the game ...daily and I can tell you..If alot of people where having game breaking issues..I would know. Some do..maybe 10% on a bad day.
I really have to disagree with your characterization of them as isolated. As I mentioned on another thread I played with 9 RL friends and we were on skype most ofthe time we played. From the cursing, I became very aware of the performance problems people were having. Our hardware really ran the gamut from high end down to laptops.
For the most part everyone had performance issues. The low end machines tended to have problems associated with low frame rates. The high end machines tended to have CTDs. But in addition to that we had every freakish occurence in between including sound glitches, display errors and some just flat out strange behavior. Missing textures became a running joke. And at one point we had a moment when we realized that monay people we seeing a given texture as different colors at the same time and place (?!?). On another occassion, we had this thing were some of our party could only see certain members of the party but not others (but without any consistancy as to who it was). My favorite was the glitch that made it so some party members body parts where missing so that they look the invisible man (sadly the no hats bug prevented the player from having a fez and a pipe).
Still, our group toughed it out because we liked the game play. But by the middle of May it all became too much. But its really a disservice to say that its an isolated thing.
When?
Was this a week ago? month? two months?
I listen to and talk to hundreds of players in the game ...daily and I can tell you..If alot of people where having game breaking issues..I would know. Some do..maybe 10% on a bad day.
Unless of course the people that had game breaking issues, are no longer playing a game that's broken for them. If there was a lot of that going on, it'd certainly explain the low population issues Vanguard suffers, don't you think? Cause and effect. The both of you are correct.I really have to disagree with your characterization of them as isolated. As I mentioned on another thread I played with 9 RL friends and we were on skype most ofthe time we played. From the cursing, I became very aware of the performance problems people were having. Our hardware really ran the gamut from high end down to laptops.
For the most part everyone had performance issues. The low end machines tended to have problems associated with low frame rates. The high end machines tended to have CTDs. But in addition to that we had every freakish occurence in between including sound glitches, display errors and some just flat out strange behavior. Missing textures became a running joke. And at one point we had a moment when we realized that monay people we seeing a given texture as different colors at the same time and place (?!?). On another occassion, we had this thing were some of our party could only see certain members of the party but not others (but without any consistancy as to who it was). My favorite was the glitch that made it so some party members body parts where missing so that they look the invisible man (sadly the no hats bug prevented the player from having a fez and a pipe).
Still, our group toughed it out because we liked the game play. But by the middle of May it all became too much. But its really a disservice to say that its an isolated thing.
When?
Was this a week ago? month? two months?
I listen to and talk to hundreds of players in the game ...daily and I can tell you..If alot of people where having game breaking issues..I would know. Some do..maybe 10% on a bad day.
Unless of course the people that had game breaking issues, are no longer playing a game that's broken for them. If there was a lot of that going on, it'd certainly explain the low population issues Vanguard suffers, don't you think? Cause and effect. The both of you are correct.Not really.
I am right because I have played daily since open beta days. I make reference to ALL the people I've encountered or listened too in chats. Out of ALL those people...less than 10% were talking about major ..game breaking issues.
The whole thing has been greatly exaggerated....seriously...It has..I'm there..
The truth is..Vanguard really is a good mmorpg and it does perform much better now. Those who like sandbox style mmorpg's and open ended gameplay should give Vanguard a good 3 months. If ya don't ...I think many of yall are missing the opportunity to play a really good game that is only going to get better.
I want to first thank you for posting such a two-sided, neutral review of Vanguard. A friend and I were looking for a game to play and we have tried all of the other ones such as WoW, SWG, EQ2 and such but we wanted to give this game a try. We were looking for a trial, but I now know that no trial is offered, but I think you made up my mind for me. I run a mediocre PC so I think I can deal with the performance issues, all the other downsides to the game seem to be problems I think I can put aside and still enjoy the game. I wanted to come on this website and these forums to read reviews about Vanguard, I wanted to read ups and downs of the game and I didn't want to read immature arguments. I appreciate you making that so easy.
Thanks again.
P.S. What server do you play on? I will probably see you in a couple days.
I think that's more scary for the future prospect of this game.
If performance isnt really that bad and the subscription numbers have fallen as low as they have then the majority of people dont find Vanguard a very enjoyable game and are unlikely to in the future. Dont see SOE putting much effort into a game that just wont draw or retain people.
I play the game, and deal with performance issues like chunking, CTD's and the occasional death due to bug. I do think it's an issue as is the lack of content and the difficulties in finding groups. I stick with it because I love the game when I can get in good groups, to do so I have to avoid most of the areas in the game because only a very few are ever significantly populated. I find it a boring solo game, there's just no interesting quests or areas you can hope to take on solo. You can solo and solo well in this game, I just find it boring though. Crafting and diplomacy are both monotonous boring grindfests. The mix of classes and the ability to put just about any 6 character into a group and be succesful is the one bright spot in this game.
Appreciate the kind words.
I play on the Thunderaxe server. Feel free to look us up if you two are interested in a mature and established guild to join. We play pretty casual for now. Someday we may organize and become more structured, but for now..till VG starts growing again we are remaining on the small side with about 30ish active members. visit www.lhguild.com/forums for details on our clan.
See ya in game...if not...enjoy youself no matter what server or game you play!