I do like Brad but i feel the entire MMORPG team at SOE is not creative enough.TYhey just keep churning out the same old same old.
Vanguard was actuall ya very good game,hard to beleive we can insult that game when imo it was released buggy but still miles better than most games we see now.However VG was basically Brad's vision of how to make EQ or EQ2 a tad better.I woudl rather see a whole new train of thoguht on creativity,than trying to trweak EQ or EQ2.
However i can see the justice,i am biased towards FFXI's core design and if i had a choice i would copy and tweak that design,so i do understand Brad's decisions.We also need to realize that copying Eq or Eq2 at the time was not a bad thing,Wow was stealiong ideas form both games a couple years after it launched.
Anyhoot,i would love to see Brad in charge of a game,but allow him to be creative,don't try to mak eanother Ev erquest,that design is worn out.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I don't care if he is a failure or the lord of game developers until a concept is dangled in front of me. If he does try something that is unique or atleast offers a nice collection of features I may be interested but I don't give a dam about his pedigree.
You don't need big names to do something I'd be interested in. That goes for programmers and artist too. Infact I'm sure I'd prefer a higher number of competent developers working on a game than developers who worked on many other MMOs and as such demand a bloated salary or cut.
Wait .. you want a game from a guy whose best work is a flop?
How do you know his next work won't be
a) too ambitious
b) shipping too early,
c) forced to be wowified?
^This
Mark Jacobs is in the same boat yet so many are pretending otherwise.
I really don't get all this hype for tired, old game designers. Brad has a few more sucesses under his belt, but Mark Jacobs is still a one-trick pony, IMO. Both are legends in their own minds, however.
There's an old saying in software development: The first success is a fluke, the second is a gift, and the third gives you enough credibility to be able to negotiate a fourth.
Brad also had a style which meant unneccasary hardship and raid only for a select few.he also rather listen to few hardcore over general populace while at EQ.if he brings that same mentality to EQnext it will flop.maybe he has changed over the years hopefully.if not then SoE should drop him
1. was too ambitious 2. shipped 12 months too early 3. was forced to undergo WOWification prior to launch
So the game flopped, but if you take out the WoWification I think more would be playing it today.
So I'd really like another original Brad game; like EQ. I know I know, EQ was the result of a lot of very talented people working their tail off; not the 9 to 5 jokers we have today. But Brad had a big influence on major gameplay decisions.
On Brad's web site, he mentiones joining the EQ1 team two months ago. If so, that's cool. Hope he works on EQN, too, because I get more jaded every day and doubt EQN will be anything other than the flavor of the month.
Wait .. you want a game from a guy whose best work is a flop?
Originally posted by hercules Brad also had a style which meant unneccasary hardship and raid only for a select few.he also rather listen to few hardcore over general populace while at EQ.if he brings that same mentality to EQnext it will flop.maybe he has changed over the years hopefully.if not then SoE should drop him
Maybe you never played everquest when brad was running it. Mcquaid was never a good boss, but he knew how to make games.
vanila everquest, kunark and velious were EPIC. Didn't matter if you were a roleplayer, casual or raider. If you think eqnext will flop guess what buddy gamers like ME are willing to shell out 40+ dollars a month for a game like everquest in 2013.
You don't need 7 million subs to be successful.If SoE can grab back the 500k players they had when everquest was king of the hill, they can charge 40-50 dollar a month subs and guess what WE WILL PAY IT
Wait .. you want a game from a guy whose best work is a flop?
How do you know his next work won't be
a) too ambitious
b) shipping too early,
c) forced to be wowified?
^This
Mark Jacobs is in the same boat yet so many are pretending otherwise.
Nobody knows this.There is nothing wreong with VG it does everything Wow does and more,so it proves gaming is sheer luck and marketing.
No game since Wow has maintained success,except maybe Eve but just like Wow it had no competition aside from Wow versus Eq2.
Technically VG surpasses most every game,which was imo Brad's purpose,to rival the best game out ther in EQ but doing it a tad better.
It is simple economics,EQ fanbois are there to stay,Wow fanbois are there to stay,it doesn't matter ifVG is 10x better,the fanbois will stay in their game.
Myself and probably a small minority will play other games based on merit and not weather we are a fan of Blizzard or not.
As of late devs are not doing anything better,they are simpl;y finding new marketinmg techniques to sell whjat is imo inferior products.They uise anything from different pay models to elaborate wording,to make their game sound better than it is.
I don't play VG,however i did and i do recognize it as a top 3 game of all time behind Eq2 and FFXI,for sheer scope of design.All three of these games brought the industry everything that exists,no other game has introduced anything aside from Blizzard and their group finder idea,which is not saying not much because the rest of the game does not encourage grouping,so a mute point.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Wait .. you want a game from a guy whose best work is a flop?
How do you know his next work won't be
a) too ambitious
b) shipping too early,
c) forced to be wowified?
^This
Mark Jacobs is in the same boat yet so many are pretending otherwise.
Nobody knows this.There is nothing wreong with VG it does everything Wow does and more,so it proves gaming is sheer luck and marketing. Vanguard itself proves this statement wrong, there was/is a lot wrong with Vanguard
No game since Wow has maintained success,except maybe Eve but just like Wow it had no competition aside from Wow versus Eq2. Since WoW? wtf are you smoking? EVE launched in 2003, which was before WoW launched in 2004
Technically VG surpasses most every game,which was imo Brad's purpose,to rival the best game out ther in EQ but doing it a tad better. Techinically, Vanguard is shite, which is why so many players had issue's with it.
I don't play VG,however i did and i do recognize it as a top 3 game of all time behind Eq2 and FFXI,for sheer scope of design.All three of these games brought the industry everything that exists,no other game has introduced anything aside from Blizzard and their group finder idea,which is not saying not much because the rest of the game does not encourage grouping,so a mute point. Top 3 flops of all time maybe, and by the way, it is Moot, not mute.
A creative person is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.
History lesson? Is it time for a history lesson, dear? *holds rubber duck to ear* IT IS.
Brad McQuaid. A brief history.
Once upon a time, there was a boy named Brad. He represented the creative vision which defined the era of greatest success for the original Everquest. He was loved by many, hated by a few, but respected by all. Time passed, and EQ1 lost its sparkle. People began to move on. Y'know, because death to the Midgardian dogs, long live Hibernia.
About then, EQ2 and WoW slammed against each other, launching nearly at the same time. And the two games began to borrow from each other. It was pretty awesome to watch them both take turns copying each other's QoL changes within one month. Oh, the joys of innovation. And many of the EQ diehards began to comment, "This porridge is too WoW." Actually, that part never happened. As I recall, and I do recall pretty well, most of the complaints for early EQ2 were about terrible performance on even high-end rigs, inability to solo even while questing, and overly harsh dungeon lock-out mechanics.
But the masses cried for something different! And by masses, I mean a tiny minority of dissatisfied EQ1 vets.
God, where the Hell am I going with this. *holds rubber duck up to ear* Explain what they really wanted? I thought they were just bitter and didn't move on when the genre did . . . Oh, there was more?
Oh, right. One day, their savior returned! Brad McQuaid, waving a feathered hat (I think he did that a few times), at the helm of now-defunct Sigil Games. Come, Brad said, come my faithful followers, and I will take you on a wondrous journey. POLITICS. EXPLORATION. DUNGEONS. BOATS. DID I MENTION BOATS. IT'S 2013, AND STILL NOBODY HAS GIVEN US BOATS. EVEN DARKFALL PROMISED BOATS. GOD DAMN IT.
Where was I? Yes. People wanted many of these features. I would have been all in if the boats thing materialized, but what people mostly wanted was this:
Wait, I think I need to explain to you what many newer players don't get. Many of EQ1's "features" were nightmarishly frustrating by today's standards. You had to run back to your body naked (while Karma Chameleon played in the background. OK, I made that part up. What, you've never heard of it? L2Spotify) to get your gear from your corpse, for example. And if you didn't, you eventually lost your gear. Joy. You also had to compete for rare spawns with different players in the same (originally) completely non-instanced world. Oh, did I mention the random aggressive mobs roaming leveling areas which completely destroyed you in the space of roughly seven seconds? Newer players look at a game like that and wonder, "How can anybody be nostalgic for that kind of experience?"
But this kind of design had a few benefits. It smashed the playerbase together in a way that newer games didn't. The danger and potentially crushing penalties of the game forced people to rely on each other. In the name of avoiding frustration, many newer games essentially let players play the entire game either solo or with their guild, avoiding the random intermingling. That's what these players really wanted: a game with a sense of community, bound by shared struggle. A large world full of exploration was icing.
But problems . . . so many problems. It's a big, long, hard, agonizing, painful jump from the world of designer/producer (even lead) to CEO. Ask Bill Roper. A big problem is that you have these people with great design or production chops. And then, while their own talents get wasted, they struggle (often unsuccessfully because this isn't part of their skill set) to appeal to investors to garner continued funding, etc. etc. And y'know what? Maybe the guys who actually do end up leading production or design aren't that good. Happens . . . a lot. That's what happens when you have a great designer create a strategic vision as CEO, then entrust it to people with a tiny fraction of their experience to implement. In the many post-mortems that examined Vanguard's early collapse, failures of leadership ranked high.
Here's a little hint. Vanguard was in production forever-and-a-half. I think the final tally was a lil over five years. Out of that, nearly the entire game which people played at launch was made during the last ohhhh . . . I think around 20 months was the number I recall. They had that much wasted development time. I wonder how good the game was when it launched . . .
I'm boring them? *puts rubber duck to ear* Cut to what chase? Why are you such a backseat poster?
Ok, lets fast-forward. IT LAUNCHED. And OH GOD, THE HORROR. I would list the myriad agonies of the Vanguard launch, but . . . well . . . nahhh. "Terrible performance and ten-million bugs" will be your short version.
Long story short, Sigil Games was gone in a few months, and almost all of the players left. And SOE took it over. And people didn't come back. And SOE made it playable by slowly fixing most of the bugs. And people still didn't come back. And it went F2P. And people still didn't come back. And every few months, some blogger writes about why they play Vanguard. And by play, they mean "have played for the last two weeks". And two weeks later, they've stopped playing.
But for reasons beyond the comprehension of mortal men, some people still hold out hope. Their whispers in forgotten tongues can still be heard on the wind,
"The Brad shall save us."
"The Brad shall rise again."
And secretly, I think, the Brad thinks to himself, "I'm much happier clocking in, being a designer on someone else's dollar, and going home. Leave me alone, crazy forum-posters. And especially you, crazy redditers."
But once every second full moon, he retires to a room warded by the forbidden symbols of the heretics, and he mutters to himself, "I hear your whispers, my loyal followers. The children of Marr shall rise again!" And his girlfriend hears him muttering from the laundry room, and she almost wishes she had dated Mark Jacobs instead.
May the Brad forgive me.
That's almost everything apart from the drug problems and the alleged, 'fishing around in other peoples desks to look for painkillers', story...oh and the the, 'snorting coke of a laptop bag while everyone else gets fired in the parking lot', tale, how could I forget that?
Back in the day, MMOs were so totally rock and roll mannnnnnnn..
You complain that you get Fireball II after Fireball I. LOL. One of the advantages of Vanguard is exactly that you get a lot of abilities and have to think what to use when.
You complain that you get "standard quests". Yeah, right. There are thousands of quests in Vanguard. Sure, there are boring ones, like these stupid Missives that make you question what you get a penalty for. But the larger questlines like United Race of Thestra are early level and they are anything but "standard". Or the Misthaven Crossing quest, which have been in the game since release. Or another really early level example, I still really havent figured out this Khelgar's End questline, theres so much stuff to do there, I never finished all quests of that dungeon on any character. I also remember various early level dungeons, none of them was "standard", they all had original content like having to find a portal etc.
You complain that a game that has a huge gameworld and thousands of quests would be "grindy". There are indeed SOME grind quests, but there is no grind whatsoever that you are required to do. All grinds at levelup can be done within one or two days, with a good group (with PUGs it can take weeks and longer, though, if they are really awful ones and one has trouble to get one at all).
You complain that a game from 2007 follows the Trinity. Just for the record, this complaint is stupid in 2013, too. Some people object to the Trinity. Other people dont. See the corresponding threads. GW2 proved in my eyes again that the Trinity is a great idea, because without it, games get trivialized. Also, you dont need to have a group at all in Vanguard, let alone a Trinity one. You can do many things solo in Vanguard, depending upon your class choice even easier dungeons.
In short, your posting is simply stupid.
Originally posted by Kurush [...] Vanguard was in production forever-and-a-half. I think the final tally was a lil over five years. [...]
As a programmer, I always cringe violently when I read such statements. God, how often does one have to repeat this ? ALL serious commercial games take 5 years to develop. Some are really quick and maybe take only 4. MMOs ? Not so much.
Its simple. Why do games like WoW require 40 millions of initial investment ? Because you have hundreds of people working on this game for years. Why do people never get this into their head ?
But noooo, this stupid "it took ages, i.e. 5 years, to make!" argument is what you get in every discussion again and again. No matter which game the person in question is talking about. Yeah, guys, thats normal ! Whats not so normal is that game companies recently picked up the bad habit of announcing their games early.
Writing "the game took ages, i.e. 5 years, to develop" is as serious as writing "that athlete is really slow, he needs almost 10 seconds to run 100 meters".
[...] My problem is that I can not play a mmorpg no matter how good, that will never get expansions or serious continuous development. [...]
Thats another really funny statement that turns an actual (huge!) advantage of Vanguard into a disadvantage.
The advantage of Vanguard is that its a seamless world. That however makes it very hard for developers to do an expansion, ever. Thus it was decided very early on that they just add to the game itself through patches, instead of making expansions.
We have a two classes of players game now, thanks to f2p, but you dont have to invest over a hundred euro or dollar like, for example, in WoW, just in order to play the complete game.
Originally posted by Wizardry
Vanguard was actuall ya very good game,hard to beleive we can insult that game when imo it was released buggy but still miles better than most games we see now.However VG was basically Brad's vision of how to make EQ or EQ2 a tad better.I woudl rather see a whole new train of thoguht on creativity,than trying to trweak EQ or EQ2.
I rather see an idea finally done right, than "new" ideas which arent actually fun.
MMOs, to me, are games I want to play continously for years. That implies I rather want time tested concepts in them, not shallow quickies I'll grow tired of after two or three months.
Like this stupid "the Trinity is boring" rage that was fashion some months ago, thanks to GW2.
You complain that you get Fireball II after Fireball I. LOL. One of the advantages of Vanguard is exactly that you get a lot of abilities and have to think what to use when.
You complain that you get "standard quests". Yeah, right. There are thousands of quests in Vanguard. Sure, there are boring ones, like these stupid Missives that make you question what you get a penalty for. But the larger questlines like United Race of Thestra are early level and they are anything but "standard". Or the Misthaven Crossing quest, which have been in the game since release. Or another really early level example, I still really havent figured out this Khelgar's End questline, theres so much stuff to do there, I never finished all quests of that dungeon on any character. I also remember various early level dungeons, none of them was "standard", they all had original content like having to find a portal etc.
You complain that a game that has a huge gameworld and thousands of quests would be "grindy". There are indeed SOME grind quests, but there is no grind whatsoever that you are required to do. All grinds at levelup can be done within one or two days, with a good group (with PUGs it can take weeks and longer, though, if they are really awful ones and one has trouble to get one at all).
You complain that a game from 2007 follows the Trinity. Just for the record, this complaint is stupid in 2013, too. Some people object to the Trinity. Other people dont. See the corresponding threads. GW2 proved in my eyes again that the Trinity is a great idea, because without it, games get trivialized. Also, you dont need to have a group at all in Vanguard, let alone a Trinity one. You can do many things solo in Vanguard, depending upon your class choice even easier dungeons.
In short, your posting is simply stupid.
Copying abilities or having many versions of them does not equate to having many different abilities. They're just copies. Fireball I, II and III are all one ability! Just like many of the races were just slight variations of each other. But hey, some poster gets to say "Huge variety of races and classes" ... Come now, likely not even half of the people who read that will fall for it.
Psionist was the only character I played to just short of level cap. There was really just one effective build for it, and if you didn't use it you were an idiot. Every Psionist was pretty much a copy of the next. Talk about cookie-cutters, eh? "Have to think what to use when" ... give me a break; I don't know what your background in gaming is but, for me, this game was pretty much no-brainer through 'n' through.
The quests are generic. The difference is, quests that require you to kill X amount of Y, in Vanguard you are required to kill 5-10 times the usual amount. One quest is more or less the same as the next. They have no personality. Sooner or later you'll be skipping all the walls of text that explain why you're doing it, because you know the quest is not going to get any better if you read all that.
In trinity games, especially the ones with "hard trinity", players don't have to think. You need a healer, tank and DPS, everything else is extra. That is essentially the entire playbook for all the content in the game: Boring. If everyone does what they're assigned to do, nothing interesting ever happens. Combat becomes formulaic and trivial.
And what about the padded level cap, hmm? Or the contrived crafting mini-games?
Vanguard is big, sure, but where is the innovation? Where is "Brad's genius"?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Vanguard was boring as hell, even when the players deemed "this is how it should've released". I didn't find anything new or exciting in it. t was so generic.
Strict holy trinity combat, uninspired quests, grindy as hell, re-occuring abilities (Fireball I, Fireball II, Fireball III -syndrome), seemingly arbitrary level-cap which caused the classes to have "filler level-ups" from which they received essentially nothing, fragmented player base across many starting and leveling areas, annoying mini-games for crafting coupled with pretty standard resource gathering both made "bot resistant" because they were so unappealing you actually wanted to use one, very poorly optimized and ugly with characters that looked like they were made from plastic.
That enough?
Even if it had had the funding to release in the state it was intended I doubt it wouldn't have made much of an impact at all. Why would anyone thing Brad is some sort of a messiah?
I would LOVE a spiritual successor to Vanguard. I think the design concepts were way ahead of their time and unfortunately, the technology and the time/money weren't there for the project... an argument can be made for talent as well though that is easy to understand when you're sort of pioneering and doing things that haven't really been done much before.
Originally posted by hercules Brad also had a style which meant unneccasary hardship and raid only for a select few.he also rather listen to few hardcore over general populace while at EQ.if he brings that same mentality to EQnext it will flop.maybe he has changed over the years hopefully.if not then SoE should drop him
I would rather listen to someone who is goin to play my game for 3 years then to someone thats goin to play my game for 3 weeks.
Comments
Not saying the management isnt incompetent, but you can find these posts about any MMORPG developer. Or any company.
I do like Brad but i feel the entire MMORPG team at SOE is not creative enough.TYhey just keep churning out the same old same old.
Vanguard was actuall ya very good game,hard to beleive we can insult that game when imo it was released buggy but still miles better than most games we see now.However VG was basically Brad's vision of how to make EQ or EQ2 a tad better.I woudl rather see a whole new train of thoguht on creativity,than trying to trweak EQ or EQ2.
However i can see the justice,i am biased towards FFXI's core design and if i had a choice i would copy and tweak that design,so i do understand Brad's decisions.We also need to realize that copying Eq or Eq2 at the time was not a bad thing,Wow was stealiong ideas form both games a couple years after it launched.
Anyhoot,i would love to see Brad in charge of a game,but allow him to be creative,don't try to mak eanother Ev erquest,that design is worn out.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
huh?
Started with EQ
Then a big sci fi sandbox
console exclusive MMORPG
a mmo shooter
then the first real themepark (along with WoW)
family-oriented, casual mmo
spy/stealh MMO in the works (cancelled)
actiony superhero MMO
sequel to the mmo shooter
and now a fantasy sandbox
Yeah, there is some overlap but the portfolio is very diverse overall. that is one of their problems actually.
And the everquest design isnt worn out, many people want to see a return to it instead of another eq2/wow/lotro/swtor/rift
You like FFXI, thats EQ design. thats what needs to come back IMO.
^This
Mark Jacobs is in the same boat yet so many are pretending otherwise.
I don't care if he is a failure or the lord of game developers until a concept is dangled in front of me. If he does try something that is unique or atleast offers a nice collection of features I may be interested but I don't give a dam about his pedigree.
You don't need big names to do something I'd be interested in. That goes for programmers and artist too. Infact I'm sure I'd prefer a higher number of competent developers working on a game than developers who worked on many other MMOs and as such demand a bloated salary or cut.
I really don't get all this hype for tired, old game designers. Brad has a few more sucesses under his belt, but Mark Jacobs is still a one-trick pony, IMO. Both are legends in their own minds, however.
There's an old saying in software development: The first success is a fluke, the second is a gift, and the third gives you enough credibility to be able to negotiate a fourth.
Everquest was a flop?
Maybe you never played everquest when brad was running it. Mcquaid was never a good boss, but he knew how to make games.
vanila everquest, kunark and velious were EPIC. Didn't matter if you were a roleplayer, casual or raider. If you think eqnext will flop guess what buddy gamers like ME are willing to shell out 40+ dollars a month for a game like everquest in 2013.
You don't need 7 million subs to be successful.If SoE can grab back the 500k players they had when everquest was king of the hill, they can charge 40-50 dollar a month subs and guess what WE WILL PAY IT
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
It was epic
But he has a ton of great single player games under his belt too.
Nobody knows this.There is nothing wreong with VG it does everything Wow does and more,so it proves gaming is sheer luck and marketing.
No game since Wow has maintained success,except maybe Eve but just like Wow it had no competition aside from Wow versus Eq2.
Technically VG surpasses most every game,which was imo Brad's purpose,to rival the best game out ther in EQ but doing it a tad better.
It is simple economics,EQ fanbois are there to stay,Wow fanbois are there to stay,it doesn't matter ifVG is 10x better,the fanbois will stay in their game.
Myself and probably a small minority will play other games based on merit and not weather we are a fan of Blizzard or not.
As of late devs are not doing anything better,they are simpl;y finding new marketinmg techniques to sell whjat is imo inferior products.They uise anything from different pay models to elaborate wording,to make their game sound better than it is.
I don't play VG,however i did and i do recognize it as a top 3 game of all time behind Eq2 and FFXI,for sheer scope of design.All three of these games brought the industry everything that exists,no other game has introduced anything aside from Blizzard and their group finder idea,which is not saying not much because the rest of the game does not encourage grouping,so a mute point.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
So your "no mmo since wow has had sustained success" statement is true anyway.
Well unless you count gw1 as a mmo.
A creative person is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.
That's almost everything apart from the drug problems and the alleged, 'fishing around in other peoples desks to look for painkillers', story...oh and the the, 'snorting coke of a laptop bag while everyone else gets fired in the parking lot', tale, how could I forget that?
Back in the day, MMOs were so totally rock and roll mannnnnnnn..
This looks like a job for....The Riviera Kid!
Of your argument ? Yes, its completely silly.
Of your point ? No, for you dont have one.
You complain that you get Fireball II after Fireball I. LOL. One of the advantages of Vanguard is exactly that you get a lot of abilities and have to think what to use when.
You complain that you get "standard quests". Yeah, right. There are thousands of quests in Vanguard. Sure, there are boring ones, like these stupid Missives that make you question what you get a penalty for. But the larger questlines like United Race of Thestra are early level and they are anything but "standard". Or the Misthaven Crossing quest, which have been in the game since release. Or another really early level example, I still really havent figured out this Khelgar's End questline, theres so much stuff to do there, I never finished all quests of that dungeon on any character. I also remember various early level dungeons, none of them was "standard", they all had original content like having to find a portal etc.
You complain that a game that has a huge gameworld and thousands of quests would be "grindy". There are indeed SOME grind quests, but there is no grind whatsoever that you are required to do. All grinds at levelup can be done within one or two days, with a good group (with PUGs it can take weeks and longer, though, if they are really awful ones and one has trouble to get one at all).
You complain that a game from 2007 follows the Trinity. Just for the record, this complaint is stupid in 2013, too. Some people object to the Trinity. Other people dont. See the corresponding threads. GW2 proved in my eyes again that the Trinity is a great idea, because without it, games get trivialized. Also, you dont need to have a group at all in Vanguard, let alone a Trinity one. You can do many things solo in Vanguard, depending upon your class choice even easier dungeons.
In short, your posting is simply stupid.
As a programmer, I always cringe violently when I read such statements. God, how often does one have to repeat this ? ALL serious commercial games take 5 years to develop. Some are really quick and maybe take only 4. MMOs ? Not so much.
Its simple. Why do games like WoW require 40 millions of initial investment ? Because you have hundreds of people working on this game for years. Why do people never get this into their head ?
But noooo, this stupid "it took ages, i.e. 5 years, to make!" argument is what you get in every discussion again and again. No matter which game the person in question is talking about. Yeah, guys, thats normal ! Whats not so normal is that game companies recently picked up the bad habit of announcing their games early.
Writing "the game took ages, i.e. 5 years, to develop" is as serious as writing "that athlete is really slow, he needs almost 10 seconds to run 100 meters".
Thats another really funny statement that turns an actual (huge!) advantage of Vanguard into a disadvantage.
The advantage of Vanguard is that its a seamless world. That however makes it very hard for developers to do an expansion, ever. Thus it was decided very early on that they just add to the game itself through patches, instead of making expansions.
We have a two classes of players game now, thanks to f2p, but you dont have to invest over a hundred euro or dollar like, for example, in WoW, just in order to play the complete game.
I rather see an idea finally done right, than "new" ideas which arent actually fun.
MMOs, to me, are games I want to play continously for years. That implies I rather want time tested concepts in them, not shallow quickies I'll grow tired of after two or three months.
Like this stupid "the Trinity is boring" rage that was fashion some months ago, thanks to GW2.
Copying abilities or having many versions of them does not equate to having many different abilities. They're just copies. Fireball I, II and III are all one ability! Just like many of the races were just slight variations of each other. But hey, some poster gets to say "Huge variety of races and classes" ... Come now, likely not even half of the people who read that will fall for it.
Psionist was the only character I played to just short of level cap. There was really just one effective build for it, and if you didn't use it you were an idiot. Every Psionist was pretty much a copy of the next. Talk about cookie-cutters, eh? "Have to think what to use when" ... give me a break; I don't know what your background in gaming is but, for me, this game was pretty much no-brainer through 'n' through.
The quests are generic. The difference is, quests that require you to kill X amount of Y, in Vanguard you are required to kill 5-10 times the usual amount. One quest is more or less the same as the next. They have no personality. Sooner or later you'll be skipping all the walls of text that explain why you're doing it, because you know the quest is not going to get any better if you read all that.
In trinity games, especially the ones with "hard trinity", players don't have to think. You need a healer, tank and DPS, everything else is extra. That is essentially the entire playbook for all the content in the game: Boring. If everyone does what they're assigned to do, nothing interesting ever happens. Combat becomes formulaic and trivial.
And what about the padded level cap, hmm? Or the contrived crafting mini-games?
Vanguard is big, sure, but where is the innovation? Where is "Brad's genius"?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Correct, thats why nobody claimed any such thing.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/subjective
+1
I would rather listen to someone who is goin to play my game for 3 years then to someone thats goin to play my game for 3 weeks.
Bringer of Eternal Darkness and Despair, but also a Nutritious way to start your Morning.
Games Played: Too Many
GW2 is pretty successful, selling millions of boxes, and consistently ranked high on xfire.
Not as successful as WOW .. but still a success.