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I believe the purpose of these forums is to inform people about a game. I highly disagree with people saying,” try it for yourself”. It’s one thing for a person to have a game issue. It’s quite another for one hundred people to have the same issue. Can we not see how stupid this statement is? We as consumers need to protect each other from companies pushing out crappy products.
I made the mistake of buying this game without doing my research first. The issues of this game have nothing to do with my personal taste. The very core of this game is flawed. This is something people should be talking about. It shouldn’t be disregarded as biased information. I agree some reported bugs are personal taste, but many bugs in this game have nothing to do with personal taste.
One-fact remains gaming companies could give a crap about you. They are a company, and they are doing this to make money. I ask why defend a company pushing out a defective product? The people you should be caring about are the people that play these types of games. Why defend a game with very poor customer service, performance issues, and content? It’s the people who point out the issues in a game that creates change. The people who take what’s given to them is the reason why companies feel like they are allowed to take a dump in a box and call it an mmorpg.
Comments
There's room for needed improvement, but that also goes for all mmo's.
It is a well known fact that Vanguard is nowhere near finished*** this fact has been well documented and Sigil even stepped forward to comment on it, claiming that they were running out of money.
A very important thing to keep in mind when looking at Vanguard is that at the current stage it is in, you need to look past the bugs at the core gameplay. If you can do that, and see where this game will be when the bugs are fixed, you will see that not only is this a very deep involved game, but it is also one with a suprising amount of potential.
I Would like to know Yaztromo01, what about the core of this game makes you feel that it is flawed? I do not quite understand what you mean by that statement. What I see when I look at this game is a game with a lot of fixable bugs, but with it's core very firmly in place, not flawed in the least.
*** to elaborate on the term finished. This is a MMO. MMOs are (idealy) never finished. It is generally accepted however that once you start paying for the game, it should be mostly bug free, balanced, and full of content from bottom to top. What I meant when I used the term finished, was not finished in the "games complete, no more additional content ever" but finished in the sense of "Full Retail Version"
a very very very important note.
If you go into this game expecting it to be WoW, you'll be sorely dissapointed. As my friend put it, "WoW is the kindergarden of MMORPGs, anyone can play it well , even though when you get someone who knows what they're doing they're off at a level of their own." Vanguard is not WoW. It never will be WoW. What it reminds me of most is Everquest.
Also, If you find yourself forced to grind (read constant killing of mobs with no quest telling you to do so) that means you haven't found the quests you're supposed to be doing, especially in the earlier levels.
It is disingenuous to say that Vanguard has the typical level of problems of a newly released MMO. If people pick up Vanguard they need to be aware that no other game except perhaps those that are no longer avaiable had this level of bugs and performance problems.
If they are able to see past that then cool but let's keep it real. You are paying to beta test a product. It is potentially a very good product but it is beta testing.
It is disingenuous to say that Vanguard has the typical level of problems of a newly released MMO. If people pick up Vanguard they need to be aware that no other game except perhaps those that are no longer avaiable had this level of bugs and performance problems.
If they are able to see past that then cool but let's keep it real. You are paying to beta test a product. It is potentially a very good product but it is beta testing.
Yeah I think Brad was inspired by the movie Field of Dreams where a voice from the past said " If you build it they will come". And yes a lot of people came (Buggy code and rushed to market depite it being hailed as the game of games) but alot of people left feeling uninspire and feeling that their pockets had been picked as well. VG has a lot of room for improvements which over the course of a year should make this game better than it is now. I'll check back in a year myself just to give it a look see.
I dont mind most bugs in Vanguard myself. But some of them are really very bad. The issues with grouping and looting for example. But most of all the strange performance issues. If technical support starts advising to edit vgclient.ini instead of changing ingame options to improve performance, then there is something seriously wrong. You dont have to be a wizzkid to wonder why those advised changes for the ini file arent in the game as option in the first place.
At the moment I cant play with sound turned on. The framerate in cities will drop from 20+ to around 5fps if I turn the sound on. This is the case with the onboard audio and the Creative Audigy (newest drivers of course). You cant even chose which channels to turn on (only change volume)..its all or nothing.
The difference is that not every MMO has released with such widespread performance issues and bugs. On top of that, a self proclaimed 3rd generation MMORPG should be released better than any other MMORPG has before. No, it is obvious that Sigil knew that releasing an unfinished product is the norm and felt no remorse for releasing their unfinished. Having a few bugs at release is normal, having a ton of bugs + performance issues is not normal...it is crap.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR
Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
Accually those .ini changes aren't in a lot of released MMO's at first, and are usually added later. VG isn't the first MMO I've played that didn't have an option for FAA, triple buffer, Vsync, Trilinear filtering, cubemapping and such in the settings options of the UI when it was released. In fact one very popular game comes to mind, WoW.
I don't know why developers do this, and can't begin to speculate, but for some reason advanced graphical settings are left out at first even though they are in the game. Now this isn't indicative of every game, just some that I've played. VG, CoH, WoW, Lineage 2 just to name a few. Over the course of times options that aren't even coded in the game at release usually get added as the code is written to allow for the changes. In fact some games have features that are available to increase performance that are never included in the UI settings, but require you to adjust something in one of the games files; these are usually there to allow peope with lower end machines to get better performance. WoW just put some code in that would increase the speed of the UI for people with low end machines that were still getting poor enough performance that it was effecting their interface itself. You can't adjust this option in the settings window, but instead have to go about it in another way;much like the .ini tweaks for VG.
Eventually these options make it into the games, and if we were to use WoW as a reference for a time frame then it could be up to a year.
.ini tweaks are nothing new, I even had to make some changes in the settings file for Neverwinder nights to get it to run better on my old comp, and I was just slightly above the system requirements for that game.
Edit: Wait until games are shipped requiring you to have a sound card that supports Open AL; you wont be able to play with sound in those games even if you did get good FPS. Vista is gonna fubar a lot of systems in about a year or so.
It is disingenuous to say that Vanguard has the typical level of problems of a newly released MMO. If people pick up Vanguard they need to be aware that no other game except perhaps those that are no longer avaiable had this level of bugs and performance problems.
If they are able to see past that then cool but let's keep it real. You are paying to beta test a product. It is potentially a very good product but it is beta testing.
My personal experience of the VG release is it's better than UO better than EQ better than SWG better than Shadowbane better than EQ2 way better than Anarchy Online and way better than WoW server queues. I and the other 32 other guildies moved to VG are in game playing having fun etc without all the drama people are screaming about, so what exactly is the mythical perfect release we are supposed to be turning our rosy tinted spectacles on... Guild Wars maybe, that's a fun deathmatches with pretty chat instances game but barely an MMO for complexity depth or mechanics in my book.I could go on, but I think you get the drift. Every MMO, at release, has had posts just like this, saying something about performance issues making the game totally unplayable, and alluding to having been ripped off. Only thing missing is the internet lawyer archetype beating the class action lawsuit drum, and I'm sure that ones on it's way.
Yes, it's unfortunate that software ships in a halfassed state with an IOU that the fun or functionality will be patched in later. It's not the devs, though I'm sure there are lazy developers out there. Most pour their hearts and souls into these games, and truly want it to be the best. The unfortunate reality is that they have little to no say in almost all cases. These games cost multiple millions of dollars to create, which means selling your soul to the corporate devil. The trend is not entirely exclusive to software design, either. More and more companies are sending their production overseas for cheaper parts, and cheaper labor, which inevitably produces a cheaper product. And I'm not referring to cost when I say cheaper, either. It sucks, and we, the gamer, are largely to blame as a consumer for having allowed to trend to start in the first place.
That being said, some of these so called "performance issues" have nothing to do with the games themselves, but with poor interaction between hardware, drivers and software. There's just no way for developers to account for every single possible hardware configuration out there, or the drivers that run that hardware. Never mind the OS, which is also buggy, and doesn't always play well with others. Which is why consoles are gaining popularity, despite their rising costs, and overall shitty stables of games. When you buy an Xbox, Wii, or PS3, you know the game is going to work with it straight out of the box. Because every console is exactly the same. If we all had the exact same pc, with the same drivers, hardware, etc, and no way to alter the OS, I bet the number of "performance issue" posts would drop to almost nil.
Can you please explain what you mean by this?
Just not worth my time anymore.
VG is a cripple, and it is so for one simple reason: it does not meet the state, vision, goal that was promised. If a developer says the game will be XYZ when we release it, and it turns out not to be, then it is a flaw, and it is incomplete. Wether it can evolve is an entirely different matter.
VG has had a worse launch than most games, every review of the industry mentions that it is lacking, so time has come to stop denying this.
A client pays in cash, and in return expects a product, those who can see past the alleged bugs do not think of VG as a product, and do not think of Sigil as a company. For me VG was a product, and I decided I don't want it.
It doesn't matter if they were honest about their mistakes or not. If I go and kill john, confessing will not change my crime. Sigil saying they are aware, but need the community to see past the bugs to it's potential (to be reached in the future), but asking 15$ a month, is begging, no better.
It isn't.
Except if I go into a store that sells Vanguard and pick up the box - nowhere on the box does it say 'Unfinished product - released early because the money ran out'
It isn't. I spent several entire days worth of time with X position in queue on my monitor by this point in WoW's release, do please explain to me how that is better than the fun I am having in VG where I have encountered 1 lost tombstone which a GM returned to me, and one bugged quest, by level 30, and that's one hell of a lot of content we've been through (and so many more dungeons/quest lines we've not had time to squeeze in).
I could go on, but I think you get the drift. Every MMO, at release, has had posts just like this, saying something about performance issues making the game totally unplayable, and alluding to having been ripped off. Only thing missing is the internet lawyer archetype beating the class action lawsuit drum, and I'm sure that ones on it's way.
Yes, it's unfortunate that software ships in a halfassed state with an IOU that the fun or functionality will be patched in later. It's not the devs, though I'm sure there are lazy developers out there. Most pour their hearts and souls into these games, and truly want it to be the best. The unfortunate reality is that they have little to no say in almost all cases. These games cost multiple millions of dollars to create, which means selling your soul to the corporate devil. The trend is not entirely exclusive to software design, either. More and more companies are sending their production overseas for cheaper parts, and cheaper labor, which inevitably produces a cheaper product. And I'm not referring to cost when I say cheaper, either. It sucks, and we, the gamer, are largely to blame as a consumer for having allowed to trend to start in the first place.
That being said, some of these so called "performance issues" have nothing to do with the games themselves, but with poor interaction between hardware, drivers and software. There's just no way for developers to account for every single possible hardware configuration out there, or the drivers that run that hardware. Never mind the OS, which is also buggy, and doesn't always play well with others. Which is why consoles are gaining popularity, despite their rising costs, and overall shitty stables of games. When you buy an Xbox, Wii, or PS3, you know the game is going to work with it straight out of the box. Because every console is exactly the same. If we all had the exact same pc, with the same drivers, hardware, etc, and no way to alter the OS, I bet the number of "performance issue" posts would drop to almost nil.
A man on a forum only has his written word to rely on and build his reputation. When a person such as yourself takes that word, quotes in, changes words around to suit your argument, it is called plaigerizing and is very disrespectful, immature, and bad forum etiquette. I have reported you for this and I hope you burn for it. Arguing, disagreeing, even flaming is one thing; but making it seem like I said something other than what I wrote by changing what I said and then quoting it is very wrong.
To address your argument, most of those companies I never started a MMORPG from the very start. Only DDO did I start it from scratch, and it's release was relatively smooth. Most people with 3 yr old systems could play it without performance issues on almost max settings, there were minimal bugs, and a few quests that could be exploited that were shut down temporarily. That is the latest release and could be considered part of the 3rd generation like Vanguard and it didn't have any game breaking bugs that has been reported about Vanguard on these forums.
A self proclaimed 3rd generation MMORPG should set the bar higher for releasing a game closer to being bug free and low performance issues, but Vanguard didn't. Their release is arguably, by mmorpg.com forum users, one of the worse releases ever. That is not something that should be said about a 3rd generation MMORPG, no matter what other MMORPG companies have done.
On top of that, DAoC and earlier games that you claim were overly bug ridden were not released like you misquoted me saying, because it takes more than 2 or 3 MMORPGs to set the norm. The norm was still being set when DAoC was released and is part of the generation that set the norm of releasing buggy games.
With that said, software will have bugs when released...period. But there is a standard for releasing software and that standard is the release of software to where that software is not severely bug ridden and causes performance issues. Obviously games have a higher thresh hold on the amount of performance problems allowed since they are allowing thousands of people playing on one server, and also relies on bandwidth, but there is no excuse for poor program code which is what creates those bugs in the first place. Bugs are created from syntax or logic errors in the program code, which are both faults of the programmers. The code has to be severely flawed to have this many problems, which shows how inexperienced and unprofessional the Sigil Programmers are. WoW had problems because of the enormous amount of people trying to log onto one server. Blizzard could not have known this would have happened by using what is known from past MMORPG releases. You don't remember seeing pages and pages of complaints about gamebreaking bugs that Vanguard has had on the Wow forums, DAoC forums, or EQ 1 or 2 forums. I remember pages of complaints about performance issues on EQ2, but not pages of complaints about serious bug issues.
You are welcome to prove me wrong by providing me links to the pages of threads created cursing about the amount of bugs in the Mythic, Turbine, etc games; but my proof that Vanguard is substandard when it comes to releasing software...even game software is in these forums.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR
Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
CONTRIBUTE INTO THE GAMING INDUSTRY! STOP PAYING FOR BORING COPYCATS, UNFINISHED BUGFESTS AND CRANKY JUNKWARE. BE A RESPONSIBLE GAMER!
It is disingenuous to say that Vanguard has the typical level of problems of a newly released MMO. If people pick up Vanguard they need to be aware that no other game except perhaps those that are no longer avaiable had this level of bugs and performance problems.
If they are able to see past that then cool but let's keep it real. You are paying to beta test a product. It is potentially a very good product but it is beta testing.
Yeah I think Brad was inspired by the movie Field of Dreams where a voice from the past said " If you build it they will come". And yes a lot of people came (Buggy code and rushed to market depite it being hailed as the game of games) but alot of people left feeling uninspire and feeling that their pockets had been picked as well. VG has a lot of room for improvements which over the course of a year should make this game better than it is now. I'll check back in a year myself just to give it a look see.
/ agree
I have been really busy at work, so I am sorry if this response is late. Anyways, the main point is we need to look out for each other. I for one don’t like being treated as a third investor without seeing returns on my investment. I know some will say this game isn’t made for you so on and so forth, but if it isn’t made for the people who play than whom is it made for?
I know some people are die-hard fans of Vanguard, and I know some people love to hate this game. The fact is all I really look for in a game is a solid gaming experience.
If you didn't like the game, does not mean other's wont.
If you write a long "review" just how badly this game sucks, it might lose players that might have actually enjoyed playing it.
I play VG, I had since beta..It's improving and I like it..i ain't leaving it. There are some bugs here and there, I haven't encountered a lot of them but it didn't stop me..The community it self is doing already, I think the GM's had been trying to be helpful.
So it's not finished, we are all aware of that..But telling us that its bad, don't play it..keep the money, if I wanted financial advice I wouldn't ask a donkey to take care of them.
Most people can get 10 day trials anyway, to see if they like it or not..why take away from the game is someone didn't like it..Last I checked a lot of people hate wow..but soo many play it. It did have a crappy opening for a BC, it might have lost members..doesn't mean other's still don't enjoy it.
Same as EQ they had a horrid start with their expension, they lost me years ago but some plays still believe it's a good game..so Let them play it. You leave, you move on..thank goodness you saved your own money eh?
Yeah comparing movies don't help either... People have different taste like I said..I went to movies that people hated and liked them.. Some people hated lord of the rings..some people like them..you can't speak for others, only for yourself.
Guess what? The core of WoW is flawed. It's ugly. It's boringly, mind numbingly easy. I don't like the animations. So, according to me, the core is flawed. Is that how this works? I only get 60 fps. Something that looks like it was made in 1994 should run at at least 200. Yep, that's ridiculous, but so is the original post.
I played WoW for a few days a couple of weeks ago, trying it out post- TBC. Guess what? The second or third quest I did was bugged, and I couldn't do the turn in. or delete it and retry. I was stuck. Guess what else? That is the EXACT same number of bugged quests I've run into in Vanguard in 11 levels. It only took me 3 levels in WoW. So, what does this lead us to assume? Should I now go over to the WoW forum and incite a riot with a blindingly biased post about the fact that the game is broken?
There's a difference between providing good info, or responding to questions, and blatant misinformation. Opinion should be marked as such- and that's what 99.9% of everything here is. Opinion.
Bite me, Turbine.
It is disingenuous to say that Vanguard has the typical level of problems of a newly released MMO. If people pick up Vanguard they need to be aware that no other game except perhaps those that are no longer avaiable had this level of bugs and performance problems.
If they are able to see past that then cool but let's keep it real. You are paying to beta test a product. It is potentially a very good product but it is beta testing.
My personal experience of the VG release is it's better than UO better than EQ better than SWG better than Shadowbane better than EQ2 way better than Anarchy Online and way better than WoW server queues. I and the other 32 other guildies moved to VG are in game playing having fun etc without all the drama people are screaming about, so what exactly is the mythical perfect release we are supposed to be turning our rosy tinted spectacles on... Guild Wars maybe, that's a fun deathmatches with pretty chat instances game but barely an MMO for complexity depth or mechanics in my book.I don't think anyone expected a perfect release. Most would have settled for a release quality release.
Whether you like the game, hate the game, or couldn't care less about the game, you cannot honestly deny that the game was release months ahead of schedule due to Sigil's financial issues. That's common knowledge. Even the Devs freely admit it. So, if you can accept that as fact, then you could probably understand that the people would have liked to have seen the game released as it should have been when it was actually ready for release -- something we most likely will not see for another 5 or more months. In other words, they want to see the REAL Vanguard...the one from the ads.
Given the choice between the two...Vanguard as it is today and Vanguard as it was meant to be, which would you rather play?
The only difference is to fix this issue all you had to do was go to a less populated server. Problem solved.
And don't forget that the ONLY reason that this type of problem was occurring was because of the phenomonal success of WoW. No one could have predicted the type of success WoW would have, not even Blizzard. If Vanguard was having the type of success that WoW had in it's first couple months of existance, I guarantee that Vanguard would be having this same issue. As soon as Blizzard realized the problem they started adding additional servers and asked people to play on the less populated ones, but unfortunately many did not want to change servers. I can't blame them really, people wanted to play on the server they started with, but what else could Blizzard do? They had to have a way to limit the number of concurrent players on a server once it reached it's max. The only way to do that was thru a queue system where someone would have to leave before someone else could get in. A few servers were really bad, others it was only a minor annoyance. For the majority of servers, a queue was usually a rare occurence and when it did happen it was usually only a few minutes before you were in.
Vanguard isn't polished enough for me to continue playing at the moment. Yes in a few months it may well bloom into the polished fun game that it clearly isn't yet, and maybe it stay the same annoying pile of poo that it currently is. Then again, the reality is that out of my freebie month subscription it was too unstable for the first two weeks to be truly playable. Some of those stability issues continue, if I alt-tab to the desktop and back too many times it'll crash, if i exit the game and then re-run the game without rebooting it'll crash.
Does anyone have the same issue with running at super high quality video mode where the "far clipping plane" setting keeps decreasing to the point where you are wandering around in fog? If I just set this to high quality I can see for miles. Its annoying though as in Super- High if I want I can get a pretty average 140fps, dropping this down to high-q boosts the fps possible to in excess of 200, but to avoid screen "tearing" I've forced v-synch on in the video driver (60fps at 1920x1200 is good enough for me ). I guess you could say performance is not not an issue for me! What is an issue thought are the graphics. Yes the models are very detailed, but they are all so cutesy, OK so maybe with a little effort you can make your characters look grumpy, but threatening, unfortunately not.
Next on my agenda: There are two things that make a really goo mmorpg for me, the first is questing, the second is the whole social/grouping thing. The placement of quests looks rushed, its not coherent, and the starter areas for some races are too barren of quests, in fact some areas of the game are just too barren. I would personally have been happier with a smaller land mass at launch, but with more content on that land mass. How some people can say they enjoy the hour trudge to the start point for their next quest is beyond me. There is also the issue that because of the sheer size of the land masses getting groups together is already becoming a real issue. It can be very difficult to find sufficient players in close enough proximity of close enough levels to get grouping to complete tough/group quests. If its hard to do this now, I hope its not going to get harder now the initial rush of players has passed. Oh and what bores me to tears/sleep is endlessly grinding the same mobs over and over to get faction/whatever, any PVE that relies on that formula cant hold my attention for long.
Regards the in game social systems, and these comments are aimed at a large majority of MMOs, I cannot understand how/why these games put in so little effort into their social content. The first game to start offering it players a greater range of group/guild/tribe/faction tools should make an absolute killing. I don't want to have to rely on websites outside of the game (with my alt-tab prob in VSOH that's a BIG I don't want) to help guilds organise things. I want in game message boards, I want player elected town officials, white boards, built in voice chat (with guild and group / flexible channels), annotatable maps, ability to share screen shots IN-GAME). Sorry that's a major rant of mine, moving on.
I've seen comments from some people that they really like the lore in this game. Umm, I think I've missed some thing, either that or its another feature that is inconsistently implemented as I've come across very little true Lore in the areas I've been adventuring in.
I think the best new idea I've seen in the game is Diplomacy. I know not everyone seems to like this, but frankly compared to the normal MMORPG long 2-way conversations where you have to try not to make the wrong statement choice, this is an absolute winner.
Okay, I hope you can see that I'm not a hater, but nore am I a fan boy to this game. Maybe because of the issues I've had (at one stage I was trying to get SOE to put my account on hold until the game was more stable), I don't see VSOH as the great game it could possibly become. As Im no fanboy, I'm not prepared to pay subscriptions for this game in its current state. I may come back to the game at some future time, I've two buddy keys I could sneak in using in a couple of months I guess.
Im now at that point of trying to figure out what I am going to playing next, and bizarrely I while I am definitely giving up on VSOH PVE, I may just keep the subscription up for one month and devote myself to the PVP & TVT servers, since there is nothing else out there that's really inviting me in at the moment.....