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Zoneage
mxmissile
Member UncommonPosts: 275
Does anyone know if this game will be zone based? (eq, eq2,AO) In other words, will there be "waiting" screens when going from outside areas to cities, or heaven forbid OTHER outside areas?
Or (mostly) seemless? (WoW, AC1)
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seamless
it will be seamless, that means no instances, no zoning... please wait, so basically you can go from one end to the other without having to "zone". Which is probably the best thing its got going for itself right now IMO.
I imagine it will be like other seamless zoning where you might notice a slight stutter on a good machine. On a mid ranged machine you'll notice the zone.
Make a difference!
This will be even more seemless than World of Warcraft. In WoW, you had to zone when you went between the two major continents. Not only that, every Battleground or dungeon you went to, you had to zone in. The actual seemless zones you did have, were all boxed in. There were only 2 or 3 small passages to get into the zone. Impassible mountains blocked the way. This is not truely seemless.
In Star Wars Galaxies, that was almost completely seemless. The only problem is, there were multiple planets, and each planet had a loading time. Not only that, the entire planet wasn't a zone, so you had impassible cliffs for a zone boundary as well.
In Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, it actually IS seemless. From the time you log in, till you log out, there is no zoning what-so-ever. You do not zone for dunegons, you do not zone for going between continents, you do not even zone for going to a dungeon in the sky, you have to fly up there on a mount(which is not on rails).
Vanguard consists of 3 starting continents, and a 4th mystery continent called lothenland. Each continent is the size of all of World of Warcraft. That means that Vanguard's land space will be roughly 4 times larger than all of World of Warcraft. This is just the land though, roughly 80% of the World of Vanguard is water. That means that the actual world is 20 times larger than all of World of Warcraft. You will have to sail between the continents to get from one continent to another. You do not take a boat 500 feet out and then zone to the other continent, you will have to sail your own ship there, or purchase travel on a NPC/PC ship. There are also pirates/fighting, etc on ships. Ships can even be destroyed by other players on a PVP server. Because it would take 3 hours to go between continents however, Sigil decided that about 5-10 minutes out in the ocean would be teleport rings. Going through this ring would produce no loading screen, or time, it is still seemless. Either that teleport will be to a specific other ring about 5-10 minutes out from the other continent, or to a random place around the other continent. It has yet to be decided.
Vanguard offers REAL seemelessness.
This is a silly issue.
Once upon a time, in, say, the days of EQ1, you would try to zone and it would take a while to load. Sometimes it took an annoying amount of time.
But these days, even games that have zones load almost instantaneous. Plus the zones are much, much larger than they were back in EQ1.
So, for example, in WoW I can leave Stormwind and go all the way to Booty Bay and never zone once. That's a huge distance.
Add to this that there is no such thing as pure seamless. There is a zone wall, whether you see it or not, and it has an effect, albeit minor. As one poster poited out, how minor will depend on your computer.
The point being that annoying zone walls with "loading, please wait" are over, whether its Vanguard or any other major title. So touting the game as "seamless" is not much of a draw.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I stand corrected. Let me amend my post to say "The point being that annoying zone walls with "loading, please wait" are over, whether its Vanguard or any other major title except sucktastic SOE games. So touting the game as "seamless" is not much of a draw.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Cmon man, I thought you were past just being negative about Vanguard for no reason. Seamless world is a large factor with some folks. I myself don't care about loading screens, but some people care a lot. A huge seamless world, which is what Vanguard will be, is a huge draw for some.
And if you have a smoking computer, EQ2 is about as far from sucktastic as you can get. It's downright awesome.
Cmon man, I thought you were past just being negative about Vanguard for no reason. Seamless world is a large factor with some folks. I myself don't care about loading screens, but some people care a lot. A huge seamless world, which is what Vanguard will be, is a huge draw for some.
And if you have a smoking computer, EQ2 is about as far from sucktastic as you can get. It's downright awesome.
I'm honestly not negative about seamless worlds. They're fine. And you're right, if you are coming from a game (though there are few of them anymore) where loading screens are a big issue, it will be a refreshing change. I'm just saying that zone aggravations are much fewer today than they used to be in most games, so it's not that big a deal either way.
Btw, a year and a half ago, my computer was smoking! Now it's just better than average.
But there are only so many times I can go back to that well before my wife has a fit.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
While seemless is mostly positive, I want to pinpoint the main flaw it bring...
LAG.
If for any reason your computer has to load something, then you will lag. I don't know how well the game will perform in Vanguard, but by playing into CoV and comparing Mercy Island to Grandville, you will understand what I mean by lag.
I hope they have good ways around that, but I have good reasons to believe that LAG will be an issue.
Is LAG or PLEASE WAIT at keypoints better, it all depend on how you play and your playstyle. I personnally hate lag with a passion and it ruins my play session, while I can deal with Please Wait...so...it will depend on how well they handle the lag. This is a major feat to accomplish, because lag ruins a gameplay sessions for quite many players. I will log off from a game that LAG me too much, as it aggravated me, while I will go get something to drink while I "zone". If they handle this with no lag or little lag, all the better for Vanguard. But if the players lag, they will lose much more than gain with this seemless.
Players will prolly have to play with CLIP close and not seeing far to avoid lag, which is bearable, but wouldn't zoning be better than having very little sight area? Is it better to zone or to feel like you merely see at 10'?
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
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Don't click here...no2
what they mean by seamless is no 'zoning' at all, that means no instances either. the good thing about this is not that it saves you time zoning, as you said WoW zones load pretty much instantly anyway, but that it makes telon feel more like a world, which is what MMORPGs are all about, for me anyway.
as for the stutter, it will supposedly be ironed out by launch, and shouldn't be noticable by high end PCs at all, and barely noticable for the mid range ones.