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Some questions about current state of the game
someforumguy
Member RarePosts: 4,088
Hi, I have been playing Vanguard for about a month at release. I really enjoyed the start, but quit because of the many bugs back then. I would like to know if any of the things below have been changed for the best.
1. Area chunks (or whatever we used to call them). They were a major problem considering loading time or even a crash to desktop. The loading time was an issue if you were trying to flee from a mob for example. Is this still the same?
2. Crafting. I enjoyed crafting a lot. But the lack of variety (only workorders) made it also boring. There were a few crafting quests here and there, but no way similar amount as with Diplomacy for example. Have they added more crafting quests? (I dont mean the tier or style quests with this)
3. Grouping bugs. It used to take a lot of time to get everyone of a guild together for some groupquest because of the long travel times. On top of that it also was very difficult to make a group even after everyone arrived. People couldnt be invited (no they were not in other groups already) or couldnt be seen after using a portal etc. I wonder if they did something about the travel times and the bugs considered grouping.
These 3 points were together gamebreaking for me and made me quit the game. So I wonder if there has been improvement (be specific pls).
Comments
1) No CTD's when chucking, there is a little one-two second spike but no other issues related to it.
2) Lack of variety in Crafting? Did you fully experienced it? There are plenty of crafting quests if you bother to look for them.
3) Nothing groundbreaking, yeh ocassionally it bugs a little if someone for example get DC-ed it may not properly display him after (and must re-join) but nothing more.
REALITY CHECK
I quit after a couple of months and returned recently. I liked the game at release but yes it was buggy. It is in much better shape now, I have not crashed since returning and the overall performance is a lot better as well.
Now it truly feels like one of the true top MMORPGs, but it is not fully perfected yet. It still lacks some polish, but compared to launch it is now in great shape.
I bought the game in October to be honest only seen a couple of small small bugs, i have a soild FPS of about 60 in the out doors and only slow downs in the Cities.
I played the game in beta and 3 months live then left..I was delighted to see the original ownership leave and have been watching SOE's progress.I applaude SOE's efforts so far and am still waiting to see wheather they are really going to fix certain classes (rangers...allowing them to be full fledged bowmen and not just pull with a bow).This is "in the works" according to the dev's....but not yet implemented. And so....my subscription is "in the works" but not yet implemented.
One clue as to what SOE thinks of their progress......no free trial offers or marketing attempt to pull back former players ........ yet. That will happen, and will overtly signal their opinion of where they think they are with game development.
60 FPS ? Wow....I don't get anywhere near that. I get about a constant FPS of roughly 14 everywhere (cities and outdoors). I play on Balanced rendering and Med Low textures. Can anybody tell me what I need to improve ? My system specs are as follows:
Intel Celeron 3.2 GHz
2 GB Ram DDR2
ATI x1650 pro, 512 mb
Windows XP pro, SP2
1 and 3 That sounds promising. When I left they were already looking into that.
2 Well, back then there were mainly tier and continental style related crafting quests. Here and there a simple quest to get some nice crafting clothes. But only one crafting related quest that had a nice story to it. Captain Umbertroe was the name of that quest. Word of devs back then was that they would add more crafting related quests later on, but Diplomacy had more priority at the time.
This was still when they were adding the higher tiers of Diplomacy clothes.
So yes, Ive been crafting a lot and also had different toons to cover all crafting. I also learned all continental styles although back then only for Jewerly it really made a stat difference. I dont know if this has changed either.
Some wise words in there. Even if I find the game great at the moment I bet SOE wants the game to be really really polished before they go ahead with a free trial or try a relaunch. They can't afford anything half-assed this time around.
The cpu, i have heard bad things about Celerons. My guess would be change that.
You'd be much better off with an 8800gt...the new 256mb should be good and affordable. The 3850 has great performance for the money too.
3 is fixed
1 is semi fixed. You can still get dismounted etc but it is much rarer
You should read my "Impressions" and "Review" below
Dont mind the fanbois derailing it. I first wrote my impressions after my third resub attempt, then after that I wrote a review 
Read em and weep!
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/157685
and
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/158098
2. I understand that crafting is easier to progression in.
3. No grouping bugs. The only grouping bug that might appear is when the Group Leader has to clear the item being rolled on. It is very minor. Other than that, I am not aware of any grouping bugs. Riftways, boat travel, and rentable flying mounts have mitigated the travel times. I think, however, that travel requires a comprehensive examination.
If you have a good system to play Vanguard, and you enjoy 1) world immersion, 2) intense and fun combat, 3) diverse class system, 4) slower leveling, and 5) a death penalty with a slight sting, you should play the game. It sounds like most of your issues were performance, and I am confident it has improved for you but I am not by how much.
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
If you have a good system to play Vanguard, and you enjoy 1) world immersion, 2) intense and fun combat, 3) diverse class system, 4) slower leveling, and 5) a death penalty with a slight sting, you should play the game. It sounds like most of your issues were performance, and I am confident it has improved for you but I am not by how much.
And as some mentioned earlier the underlined text is already in alot of other mmos out there. If I were you I would not buy it outright. Try to get a buddy key. Im not sure if I have one for my account. How do I check?
Also you should check out some of the other mmos on the market. I would not recommend Vanguard at this point. Not sure if you have tried out Everquest 2 or Lord of the Rings online. They are both very good games, the graphics in Lotro is insane and the atmosphere is very good. Im enjoying that one so far, and guess what.... no bugs, no performance issues either woohoo!!!
Anyyway, take your time and do not rush this game. Just a small hint!
I just downloaded the free trail for LoTR just to check it out . I run vanguard and LoTR both every setting maxed at 1920x1200 and all tell you right now the graphics are no where near as nice as vanguards . they both ran good .but theres some ugly stuff in LoTR the trees are a joke , ya they look good from a distance and i mean along ways away actually everything in LoTR looks terrible once you get close to it But am having lots of fun taking screens of how bad they really are. you see the snow in that game ROFL world of warcrafts snow is better and well the gameplay , the animations everything is bad cant wait till my week is up all be posting some screens of both games every setting maxed just like all the haters did except this time vanguard's screens wont be staqged to make them look as bad as they can
I just downloaded the free trail for LoTR just to check it out . I run vanguard and LoTR both every setting maxed at 1920x1200 and all tell you right now the graphics are no where near as nice as vanguards . they both ran good .but theres some ugly stuff in LoTR the trees are a joke , ya they look good from a distance and i mean along ways away actually everything in LoTR looks terrible once you get close to it But am having lots of fun taking screens of how bad they really are. you see the snow in that game ROFL world of warcrafts snow is better and well the gameplay , the animations everything is bad cant wait till my week is up all be posting some screens of both games every setting maxed just like all the haters did except this time vanguard's screens wont be staqged to make them look as bad as they can
You downloaded the free trial which doesn't come with the high res graphics, you wasted that much time explaining trial graphics and you were clueless all along
One thing I can say about LOTRO is that is has superior character grahphics and animations, even though I cant stand either of these games. That and the graphics engine in LOTRO is far more stable and efficient.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
I just downloaded the free trail for LoTR just to check it out . I run vanguard and LoTR both every setting maxed at 1920x1200 and all tell you right now the graphics are no where near as nice as vanguards . they both ran good .but theres some ugly stuff in LoTR the trees are a joke , ya they look good from a distance and i mean along ways away actually everything in LoTR looks terrible once you get close to it But am having lots of fun taking screens of how bad they really are. you see the snow in that game ROFL world of warcrafts snow is better and well the gameplay , the animations everything is bad cant wait till my week is up all be posting some screens of both games every setting maxed just like all the haters did except this time vanguard's screens wont be staqged to make them look as bad as they can
You downloaded the free trial which doesn't come with the high res graphics, you wasted that much time explaining trial graphics and you were clueless all along
Well if you want to follow the links on this site you will see that it gives you the options to download both clients which i did and am running at 1920x1200 every setting maxed and that encludes 8x antialiasing and 16x anisotropic filtering ya the game runs great Am not saying there bad because there not but i got i little sick of people posting here on the vanguard forums with screens trying to tell me there better than vanguard's So i thought hell why not go check them out and like i said everything looks good till you get close to them like trees as soon as you get close to one you see there all sprites you know like the trees that where in deer hunter 6 years ago. There's a 100 other things i could pick apart just like people do to vanguard.
But over all there ok am not a real stickler for realism ive been playing games long enough to know that if you want to enjoy yourself your going to have to overlook a few things and that encludes vanguard
And character graphics and animations where not even close to been as good as vanguards My elf in LoTR dosent do anything different than my elf in vanguard. And the big insult about vanguard seems to be that the characters look like plastic and i agree they do abit but LOTR is exacly the same way . You leave them standing afk and they both do about the same thing stand there and blink and look around now when it came to jumping well lets just say my wife who dosent even game fell out of her chair laughing when she seen my LoTR Female elf jump talk about gay lol man i could go on and on about LoTR its the same as any game if your looking for faults there not that hard to find
What I like about Vanguard is the large open world, without the instancing that WoW, LoTRO and everyone is doing nowadays. I thought Vanguard has the best role playing, persistent world I had ever seen in an MMO.
I quit Vanguard about 2 months after launch because it was hard to find anyone to group with. Has this improved at all? Also, has the grind been eased at all?
I played Vanguard to I -believe- level 36 on my Pscionicist; it's been months since I left the game. However, I will say that having read a lot about the improvements made, the game seems like it's headed in the right direction.
Also, Vanguard was at its core never a BAD game. In fact, it was and very likely still is a good game, from launch. The reason I left was I just hadn't formed the sort of relationships I had hope to -- granted, I only played for a few months but I found the community, at least on the server I was on, to be lacking.
The Diplomacy community and Crafting community were excellent, but the adventuring community was in the pits, though I dabble in each sphere -- I was mainly an adventurer and finding people to group with was nigh impossible. It was very reminiscent of Ironforge drop-ins between raiding on WoW with my very tightly knit guild.
Ultimately, had I found people on Vanguard that I considered worth playing with I'd probably still be playing.
The classes had enough variety and balance to keep most critics to a low roar, and if you had/have a decent rig the game played/plays well.
My only other gripe about Vanguard was the random glitches that would cause you to fall into the world -- lose you tombstone, etc.
Aside from those random and rare annoyances, the game was solid -- even with its faults.
Some things I have noticed since I resubscribed couple days ago....
Characters still look like 12" tall GI JOE plastic manakins with un-articulate arms. If they fix this... I mean totatlly redo the characters! Give them some life! Instead of just stand there like a plastic statue. This would make me happy.
Character Animations are still slow sluggish and boring and not very well animated. Just terrible animations in my opinion.
You can't really notice chunking between zones anymore. They improved this tremendously.
To the best I can describe it... it still looks like your character is dolphin jumping while swimming to get air to breath.... very annoying looks stupid.
Not really much lag... good performance now.
Graphics performance is very nice! FPS has increased as well.
Grouping isn't very hard on Seradon.
Basically all that's really changed is the performance of the game servers. That's all I have notice so far.
Thanks all for the replies, Im happy to see that performance has been improved a lot and that those annoying grouping bugs have been mainly solved too. Ill check some other forums about the current crafting situation. Im considering now to resubscribe. Vanguard and Star Wars Galaxies are the only games atm that still have some kind of sandbox feeling to them imo.
I am also looking to switch mmos to a more sandbox style. SWG used to have it, and Vanguard would be a great option if there was a bigger community. Right now I'm waiting on it until hopefully more players come back, or new players try it. Perhaps at the re-launch of the game, if that ever happens, I'll come back to find a nice large playerbase. I think they should consolidate the servers again!
I just started playing again today and I have to say that the performance has been improved drastically on my computer (which is the same setup as it was at release). For the first time I can turn on sound in cities without turning VG into a slideshow
Also chunking is a lot faster. I have a good performance now without having to edit any .ini files. Ive noticed several new options in Graphics (character occlusion) and Audio (distance) concerning performance settings.
All my old characters have been moved from Infenium to Halgar (servermerge I think), but I started a new toon to make it easier to familiarize myself with the game again. Anyway, it is looking good so far
I also within the last week started playing again and i do agree with you that performance is alot better. However the population is very low and it is very hard to get a group. I have tried for 3 straight nights to get a group for TOD and nothing, nobody even around.
Not sure how long i will stay playing. I am someone who likes to group.