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VG will never be more than it is now
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
I admit, it is quite pointless to write this, because those who feel otherwise wont be persuaded and those in charge wont listen. But, it is an investment. In a year, it will give me quite a satisfaction to know I was right. And if by chance I will be wrong, I will rejoice because VG became a really good game against my own expectation.
I follow the several forums, the Dev posts and the discussions since launch. While VG has some really good moments after playing it since launch I feel... tired. I cant say it otherwise. I feel spent somehow. Hovering over the Vanguard icon on my screen already feels as if I played Vanguard years. I know, many stick to VG hoping for the many things they add and the great content to come. Things to animate the lifeless NPCs in the cities, things to make more interesting quests. Things to make grouping easier.
Call it a hunch, but tbh... I am coming to think most things will more or less stay as they are. VG is establishing its niche and more or less will stay there. It didnt start bad. But it didnt actually skyrocket either. And being part of Station they can run it endless with 5 Devs one day like SWG, and dont really have to admit if failure should become visible. I dont say that WILL happen. But it sure is a background where we wont see any earth-shattering changes. Like those lifeless NPCs in the cities, or the soulless feeling the game is filled with in so many ways. I dont want to elaborate; if you see it you know what I mean and if you dont, nothing I say will make you see it.
I think the main problem is IMVPO, the game Devs great success with EQ1 has made them arrogant. They have their vision and its down to take it or leave it. Lets take a look at what we have.
Is VG really new in any aspect? Well, if we really honestly look at it, it is more of the same. (I exclude Diplomacy, because I find this little card game unbelievable primitive and boring. Nuff said.) It is quite the same kind of MMO as we have seen so often before. Only here is more of it in numbers. But there is that arrogance of those Sigil-EQ1-Veteran Devs who have their 1999 concepts in mind and a difficulty to adapt, a difficulty to understand what gaming is 2007.
Take the caravan system. Brad McQuaid still claims it as the big solution to travelling and grouping. Back in 1999 in EQ1 communities were quite tight woven, back THEN it would have worked. The idea is nice, you logg off and when coming back to follow your friends. The point is, 2007 we dont HAVE such MMO communities as back then. Today, players are much more loosley connected that such a travel is meaningful. Once you log back next day, your caravan is likely disbanded and its members spread all over the world.
Or take the Fellowship system: the idea is some hard working people give their meagerly incoming XP AWAY to lazy bums? You really think that will happen? No, what WILL happen is, grinders make Fellowships and casual will make theirs, and the impact is low to zero on the entire problem of people levelling apart. The game which really made a novelty in that area was CoH were you could mentor down or sidekick a friend up to your level to make some quests together. THAT was a novelty and cool! The entire VG vision is so full of ideas which sound very cool on the table, but proof to be quite a waste of time in reality. Like migrating mobs in Dark & Light. It SOUNDED cool when I heard of it, but in real, seeking mobs for DAYS for your quest because they migrated somewhere else was not as cool as it sounded. Many of those game devs just get into some frenzy over such cool ideas and make it more and more complex until it is just totally clumsy. It was cool to make a different bag for crafting. But making THREE different kind of bags for harvested goods, tools and crafting ingrediences, is just pointless making it complex for the sake of complexity. Instead of spending time on useful things, like a guild window where you can see some REAL info about your guild members.
Or take crafting: The IDEA to prevent market spamming by introducing work orders was good. In reality it is quite lame, because now my level 9 artificer can craft exactly three things he can sell, arrows, bolts and staves. Not that I ever get XP after I made them once. Also, you have to level up quite far to make something useful for MUCH lower adventurer levels. Essentially, you dont craft things, you craft icons of things. And that entire click-orgy which is the crafting process... I have never seen something so dull and mind-numbing as that. Working in a 1930 car factory at an assembly line, pressing a red button ever 3 seconds must have been exciting compared to it. At least you could see some cars coming out of the factory somewhere. Here, its icons of lamps, icons of coffins, icons of daggers. Since its only icons, it doesnt really matter. They could have simplified the entire process by just making one work order rinse and repeat until lv 50. That would at least safe us the hassle to walk back to the work order NPC.
The TRUTH is, Sigil is now lost in a maze of balancing spells and stats. 3 points here and -4 point there, that is what is catching their attention now. Sure, its not totally unimportant. They are fixated on small things they fell in love with. But ask yourself: in the end of an evening, does it really bother you that your groupmate X got more mitigation or more stealth that you? What bothers people in the long run is the "feeling" of a world, the "heart" in the city life and the "soul" you feel in the quests. Instead we get mind-numbing quests with the most shallow quest text, not spoken with sound, barely animated in cities where NPCs are nailed to the ground and stand still like nauseated.
The TRUTH is, Telon is too big. Not in itself, but it was too much for Sigil to handle, too much to fill every city, village and quest hub with life, both with animations as with background stories and quest that give you a FEELING. I have no real faith we will see a fundamental change in that, that all overnight an update will make a deep, touching world out of a rather sterile one. Most of the Sigil Devs, reading interviews with them, are quite hardcorish folks, enjoying corpse runs in their underwear. They are the kind of gotten old students with the die hard, "look what gross hardships *I* can endure" bragging tone on them, and I dont see that folks making Telon into a world with "soul" and "magic". Look at their dungeons. That is what their dreamed of. Deadly HUGE caverns with 1000s of dangerous 4dot mobs to kill in a row. And if you manage to die down there, your bad luck. Instead of making SMALLER but more meaningful dungeons, dungeons with a FEELING, a background. One of my favorites was the Splitpaw Dungeon in EQ2, so if you knew that, you know what I mean.
Somehow I feel believing that the bigger the better is something very American, like in the Discovery reports about the biggest machines or the biggest bridges. I can almost hear Tim Tailor from "Home Improvement" grunting "hor hor... look how BIG our game is... hor hor." What is NOT in that game, alas is quality. Fun is not the quantity of time spent on anything, its the quality. Well, at least for me. Nothing I hear or read from the Devs now gives me any sign to hope they really are couragous to make a change, to learn from issues. I see game devs, who stick to a vision rooted in 1999, fixated on ideas and solutions a decade old, or older, eagerly defended by their 30 fanbois/girls. What I see is the attitude "the game is great but those who feel not content just didnt understand how good our game is." And VG is not a bad game. But it is not a great one either. It is just another missed opportunity, and likely one of the best missed chances for a good game we will see for many years to come. The game coming to the shelves now are mediocre from the start. It will take years for another great game which really capture the players like I once was captured by SWG or EQ2.
With is 100s of numbers and stats popping up, its overcomplicated way to approach everything, Vanguard is a very oldfashioned game in a shiny new engine and has NOTHING 3rd gen in it. It is not revolutionary, it is on the contrary quite retro. Surprise me. Show me that Devs are really willing to leave the old trails and think creative. I'd love to be proven wrong in the future, really. What I see however is a group of Devs anxiously close to tread paths of what was good and great 10 years ago.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
LOL, all those words and all you really had to say was:
Sigil bit off more then they could chew with this game.....
Allready in open beta people realised Vanguard is one big failure. It delivered nothing it promised , and what it delivered was simply badly designed , uninteresting , often frustrating. And all this toped by horrendous performance and bugs...and lack of interesting content
I posted and posted on this forums , because I just couldnt belive people dont realise that....
And people called me hater and basher ...
And where are this people now , not even 2 months after .
This game is not even bashed anymore. It is lamented!
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
This whole time I play a game without knowing whether or not the community should come to me, or I should go to the community. If Sigil thinks my attention will by captured long enough for them to finish making the game, then they are completely 'up their own'. So far up their own, in fact, that it will be impossible for them to see that my eyes are wandering to the greener pastures just over that small fence.
I cannot keep up with so-called in fact that I didn't have to say why!
Please Sigil if that is too late then admit it and turn around now so I can be pleased at the time I would thank you. Otherwise, let me speak and play a game that was overdue even by your humble reckoning. Sad to see it coming, devastating to play it through, excrutiating to forgive.
Until they change that one basic feature, Vanguard will never be more than it is now for me. They have so many many options, but they missed the most basic thing in their desire to "push the limits".
UO had chat bubbles. And is still ticking along, 9 years later.
WoW has chat buttles that are 'very reminicent' of UO.
I doubt anyone would say that chat bubbles hurt WoW's sales any ...
But to full fill that in 2007 this game is only finished to 1%. It lacks almost anything. You travel overland and will find ruins. But there is nothing. Just ruins. No story, no little (instanced) dungeon. A well done sandbox game could live without any quests if there are enough POI to feed fantasy. Nothing to see here, move on.
Crafting is, as you wrote, worth nothing. Everything that would support the idea of a great 3rd generation sandbox game is missing. Mosquito drop plate. Crafter have to grind ahead to be able to make anything useful. Nothing does degrade. I know that there was not always repair in game, so Sigils vision probably wasnt that bad at all. At some point in the future everyone is max level and well equiped. Who needs a crafter then ? What for did i grind through 6000+ workorders ? I wished some DEVs would have a look at Ryzoms world. Thats the only way a sandbox can be. No repair, crafting is useful all the time. Raws have to be prospected. The world has real seasons and raws depend on seasons. Oh, an the migration of animals is working 100% there. Not that this game is perfect, but the world of flora and fauna, gathering and crafting is in most parts.
If a game in future wants to be a success (beyond 1.000.000 active subs) it has to be very, very good. It must have everything for every playstyle. Lots of meaningful quests, lots of solo play, lots of exiting and instanced!!! group content and not instanced but contested content. A beautiful and very immersive environment. It has to pick the best our of everything that ever existed. This is not stealing, its just that everything already exists. Dont talk about innovation. The real innovations dont earn a living for 100 developers. Anyone ready to play a game without levels but aging over time ? Where skills are gained by age and key quests ? Not to many i guess
Tho achieve this it needs a clever and dedicated team of DEVs and money. Lots of money. But the mmo market is full of competition and so i again agree that there will be no great game out there for years or maybe for ever. People are scared to risk silly amounts of money. Which is very understandable.
Somehow its seems Vanguard opened up the 3rd generation. But in a different meaning. The 3rd generation is the end of the great mmo's. The 3rd generation are nice games to play for maybe 6 months and then move on to the next one.
Yup there it is.
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Life sucks, buy a helmet.
Nice to get some info about Vanguard.
Your lost right???
DnL forums is over in the hell wastelands where denial is king.
Just growing tired with all the constant hammering of hatred and bashing; some people seem to have nothing better to do with their lives (no better game to play and no better forum to post?
Some people don't like to see others having fun when they don't.
To the OP: nice post, thx for sharing. I agree: the number 1 priority for me is the world life/soul; what is the art team doing ? They are adding more of the same mobs in update #1
if they had only finished building it.... ..
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
You know, I must be missing something. I don't get why people are so ANGRY if VG turns out not to be the game for them? Heck, some folks are still playing Ultima Online and enjoying it...
I'm not only still enjoying VG, but I'm looking forward to settling in and being here a long, long time. In fact, I'm expecting to be pleased once it's been out long enough that the haters of wandered on to newer lands and we can get down to the serious business of building our community.
I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE DAY!!
Again to the OP: but I don't agree with your main point. Everything is here to show that the game will be more than it is now; I won't go into details, but if you look at it it is obvious that the game was planned to evolve from the ground up.
Look at EQ2: when it started out people left in masses, bashing it all over the forums. Unlike Vanguard,EQ2 was not planned to evolve in the same way (player run cities, castles, etc....) But the game still changed 1 year later and thousands came back to play it.
One thing that would drive most away from these boards is the whining. I mean honestly, you complaining guys are probably some of the most dreadful people to game with judging your attitudes.
The game will be more than it is today namely because the developers havent put the time required to undertake such a project into it. Im sure people have said the same thing about all of the other games out there. And people are still playing. As long as people are still having a good time on these games then the developers have done their job.
http://mentaltruancy.guildportal.com - Friendly Vanguard:Saga of Heroes Qalia based Guild.
I realised that the game was taking this direction 4 years ago, when Brad posted the "Vision".
That's why I am playing Vanguard happily, probably because I was one of the few that read enough about the game and knew what it was going to be.
How on earth there are so many people disappointed about Vanguard not being a mainstream game, is beyond me.
Yes Brad did a little bit of marketing, by spinning it a bit towards the casual players, but I never doubt that this game was going to be a niche, and that's because I did my research.
MMOs are not normal games, don't listen to the hype or you ll get burned. Do some research and make your own mind next time.
I agree the situation looks dire for Vanguard. However, I can not say that it will not be a great game because of what I have seen from EQ2. Plus, I think there is a good game in there somewhere.
They have a major uphill battle but the graphics quality and some interesting combat gameplay give me hope for it. SOE has a lot of money and will be able to support it financially until it starts a turn around. The problem is that I am not sure it will be a financial success because it was a game that was created for a different period in time. It reminds me of the Austin Powers movie when he woke up in the future. Vanguard is a game that is not quite compatible with the year 2007.
In it's current state Vanguard is a throwback to 1999. As a EQ1 Player I can appreciate that but I know that many people do not and even us old EQ1 guys have moved on to bigger and better things to do in our real life besides spend 20+ hours/day playing a video game.
Good or bad WoW has proven to the industry that people other than the "Nerd in Mom's basement eating meatloaf" crowd will pay a montly fee and play these types of games. WoW was able to take all the tedium out of these games and put in fun in a high quality, polished, product.
I am not sure how they will do it but I think they may somehow make Vanguard at least 2nd generation without compromising it's basic concepts. Financially, I can not see the game getting more than about a stable 50k subscriptions but it has the possibility to turn into one of the best kept secrets like EQ2 is now and sub could reach 200k+. Only time will tell.
I like pie !
Well here is what i think by the end of 2007 many good mmos will be on the market. PPL who never played vsoh will never try it just becuase there will be better ones out there to try with direct x 10 graphics and stuff. why will they even waste money and time with an mmo that claims to be a 3rd gen one when clearly it's 2nd gen at best. Even in a years time this game will still the same just with less bugs.
FFxi Retired
Coh/Cov Retired
Guild Wars/Retired
WOW/(11-23-04/1-6-07)
VSOH/ retired
AOC/retired that was fast
Waiting 4 DCUO ,and FFXIV
What most people fell for was Brads vision and seemingly inhuman effort in Beta (remember the crazy last week with HUGE patches and content?). But shortly after that? Nothing great. Some tweaks, some patches, lots of nerfs, lots of broken promises. I still like Vanguard (generaly speaking) but I lost faith in Sigil, Brad and his vision.
@OP:
Spot on bro! I even read your whole post, it really did reflect my feelings towards Vanguard. I wish people like you were the lead designers in Sigil who would realize where the priorities are.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
If Brad gets his act together and starts to actively fix his game just like he did in late beta then I see no reason why Vanguard should not follow EQ2's suit with thousands of returning customers. Will he get his act together? who knows.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
Good point but also think about this. Can you imagine someone new to the game coming into an empty world? You would have no one to play with plus you would have to deal with that torturous grind.
Hopefully, the companies that release the other games this year look at the Vanguard's failure. In reality they did everything wrong. Simply ask yourself if Vanguard did it then do the opposite. Mainly the following: