rofl @ Hero5937GX , what a sad little angry kid, want cannot stand the fact that not everyone shares his opinion.
You know Hero5937GX , that right now you are damaging the game more then you can ever imagine..
because with you l33t sp3ak d00d crap and insults, you make it sound only kiddies play this game, and the people who can actually compose a nice topic, do not.
so keep on vanboying all you want, you stabbing yourself in the back!
As long as he can understand that the game has flaws, I can sort of tolerate his post. It is just annoying to see people claiming something to be the greatest MMO ever when it hasn't sold more than 150k subs worldwide.
okay fine so you want complete sentences. jeez ok then. this is my realistic review of vanguard. gameplay: 9/9 plenty of quests to do. lots of exploring to do and the content is there if you take the time to enjoy it. lots of races and classes to choose from. there are boats and houses. you can even do diplomacy or questing and not even have to adventure. there are lot of options. if you try to grind and grind to get to level 50 as quickly as possible you will get bored. that applies to any mmos. Agreed graphics: 9/7+ simply the best graphics i have ever seen in any mmo to date. given the right system the view is absolutely fantastic. character models are pretty and animations are smooth. Partial agree, scenery/landscape's breathtaking, buildings are also very cool, when in high detail you see the decay from building, shame that when playing the game on performance that building look to shiny or new.(pitty there is so much dif. between performance/quality settings. Character don't look all that great, atleast humans don't look good (Barbie/Ken anyone) the creature-like humanoids do look good. Animations most of the time smooth, depending on what creature you fight, sometimes fighting "winged" creatures makes your attacks go stutter (not lag but the attack sequence is sort of choppy cause the animation needs to finish but gets interupted by attacks of the mob, hope it make sence;) ) For there art work i would give it a 9 but all in all i'm setteling with a 7+ cause it needs to be the full package. sound: 8/7+ pretty good sound although i turn mine off most of the time because i just do. but what is there is good. music is good if you listen to it and the ambient sound effects are there and help you get immersed in this vast world. Music is indeed very nice, but still have some perfomance issue with soundeffects especialy when dying because sometimes after respwn somehow it sounds like i'm in a sort of tunnel/cave eventhough i'm in a wide grass field or barren place. But it isn't game-breaking and think its something that will eventuely gets better. performance: 8/7 although many people complain that the game is unplayable, it is not true. like i said you need a good system to run this game. if you do, then you won't find any game breaking performance issues. you will get a slight pause if you are zoning into another zone because the game was made to zone without loading screens. i personally prefer this. Hard to judge performance, personaly i have less of a problem with zone-loads/chunks, personaly i would give it another few months to get to the point of getting a 8 or maybe even a 9, but no one can deny that the game does have some performance isseu's, not all isseus are related to Vanguard as we also are aware that drivers of g.cards/systems also need update/patches as like all new high end gear it always takes time to let those company's also adjust there software for coming games/programs, this has been the case ever since software/hardware was created. No one in his/her right mind can expect a system bought today that it can work for the 100% (some might be lucky to have the things they use on their pc maybe 100% working, but in reality we all know this also takes time. A quick look at NVidia's site would tell enough community: 10/9+ (ingame) everyone i met in game are helpful and friendly. i have an awesome guild and people i met are always trying to help or looking to group just to have fun. agree, i also conclude that chats in game are no where near as the were when the game was in beta last jan., In beta you heard lots and lots of people like the people we see bashing the game on the forums, shouting "game sucked","getting sick of this bs"Vanguard suxxor" " go back to wow" really anyoing kids stuff in chat, but actualy since release, well atleast after the first hugh patch the community seems very relaxed, enjoying the game and we hardly see chitchat about bugs, most conversations i see is about having fun, some bugs people just make jokes about. This can afcourse vary from realm to realm, experiance has tough me not to play on a US server reason: Lag/ Euro server very minimal lag mostly only when login it takes about 1/2 minutes to let the world load in no biggy unless someone is foolish enough to have logged out in agro area, afcourse isn't cool if someone has crashed and wakesup in a agro area and needs to wait for that 1/2min, but then again you can see it positive that when you die you have MORE time to play :P, cause a mmorpg isn't a job where you really have to worry about losing time in your progress cause its only a game even when someone spends a considereble time in that game we all know it is and will never be more then a game, so regardless how succesfull or not Vanguard will become its still a game and i can't shed a tear if it fails but i will have pleasure from it if it succeeds which i'm almost surten it will succeed. overall score: 9/7++ and climbing it is a great game given the good system to run it you will enjoy it alot. there are many many contents yet to be released and the game still has a lot of things to do. it will only get better. For me its a good game that might become great game(i only hope) well if not no big deal its a game and nothing more then a game and betting there will be more games of intrest if this one isn't the one i was hoping for. But the things i already saw in Vanguard i really have not seen before in any other mmorpg (makes me quit sure this game will climb from my 7++ to atleast getting a 9 in my book for what it is going to offer. Only time can tell. for those that stress out that everyone should download the trial version, i made a slight edit for you all. download vg trial, play it, love it, buy it. skipping k thx bai now since everyone seem to hate it and think it gives me less credibility. enjoy! So you see i'm one of those that really enjoy's Vanguard but also am realistic to know the game does have for some people performance isseu's, though they seem to become les almost every day, It als shows ingame that people are getting more convident in Vanguard as since a few day's we begin to see new/old guilds recruiting more and more people which mostly seems like a good thing in a mmorpg
oops forgot: OP ( Alexis101 ) very nice and detailed review, indeed worth a 9/10 for the review style
the only stench i smell is from people who don't even play the game, yet continue to come to this forum, spreading their negativism about a great game that deserves a lot of praise. now look around and see who brings more stench.
and no i have affiliation with anybody. so now not only do i get flamed for being a fanboi, having no intelligence, and etc i now am being flamed for practicing viral marketing.
come up with some reasonable and arguable comeback, in a short and precise form, and i might give you some time of day.
just don't spit super long pages of utter garbage/bs like the op did.
k thx bai
I truly hope you like VG as much as you say you do...at the very least, it will reduce the number of non-spelling buffoons in WAR and AoC by 1.
Very good and fair review Alexis101; will certainly help people decide if they want to try out VSoH. I myself am really having fun playing Vanguard but mainly due to the fact that ..
1. I have recently upgraded my machine.
2. I team constantly with a friend.
As has been stated many times performance must be the biggest issue, hopefully your review will help people decide if they can run Vanguard well enough to make the game enjoyable, it would also be well worth checking some of the affiliated sites for more info on this subject.
Teaming I have never had a problem with (have a level 20 cleric) but can fully understand how frustrating it must be not finding groups, as many quests are so group orientated. A good guild is very important but not always the answer as everyone is so spread out.
Will be interesting to see how Vanguard pans out, seems to be a two sided story at the moment, for some a vast, beautiful and exciting new world, but for many others a rather frustrating journey.
Would also be nice if some of those that can run Vanguard and are enjoying it would have a little more understanding for folk that have problems because without a doubt those problems are definitely there!
The guy has 21 posts, all in this thread if i'm not mistaken.
No way is this guy for real
Give over gang, if hes marketing, its for WoW, cause no one is going to want to play a game with people like this, lol.
h3's ju57 pl4yin9 y00 4ll 4 F00ls ... d00d!
EDIT: Almost forgot, great review! Probably the best I've read yet on any forum. How did you find the non-instancing? Was it ever a problem? Such as camping, kill stealing, etc?
I feel like my thread has been hijacked. Anyways...
First many thanks to all posters who have replied. Appreciate your feedback.
Die_Scream, to answer your question about instancing and lack thereof...
I personally prefer instancing. The only reason being is that by having an instance for major dungeons, I feel like I am part of a group of adventurers out to solve this problem or whatnot for the world and it makes me feel special to the world that I am in. It kills immersion for me when I go to a non-instanced dungeon and see bunch of other people camping boss mobs. Seeing the boss mobs get killed and respawn again over and over doesn't really feel immersive to me. And I don't like camping at all. I like the freedom that instancing gives me because at least, I won't ever have to worry about camping a certain spot in the dungeon, or compete with other people or groups who need the same quest and/or kills.
Having said that, lack of instancing also does bring some positives as well. I can find other people or groups that can help me or my group if we get in trouble. I can often times recruit them into my group. Many times in Dark Age of Camelot, I made a lot of friends whom I have met in the dungeons for example. I just happened to see them run by or they happened to run by me and help me out when I was in trouble. So both sides have posititives. I personally though prefer the relative freedom of not having to worry about competing with others to finish my quest though. Hence I prefer having instances in major dungeons.
As for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, the dungeons in here did not feel too crowded to a point where I couldn't finish my quests or get some exping flowing. Mostly people have been thoughtful and gracious to share the boss mob, and it seemed that most were well mannered enough that if someone got a certain spot first, they would either ask if they can share, merge groups, or they would just move along to another place. So it hasn't been much of a problem for me. I do think though, that if the game gets more populated and more people begin to hit higher levels, that there might definitely be a chance that people would be bickering about camping and not being able to finish quests, etc.
If I had considered the instance issue in my review of this game, I wouldn't really have put significant emphasis on it. I don't see it as either bad or good at this point. I just think it is a bit too early to tell. Many posters seemed to agree that lack of instancing alone makes this game inferior to other games that have instances. I don't agree with that, I would only go as far as saying that it would have been nicer to have instancing for major dungeons, but it is not a game breaking killer by any means.
Besides, it is not the biggest issue that this game is facing now anyway. Everyone seems to agree that this game has performance issues. THAT needs to be addressed immediately. Content for higher level people would be also as important, I would think.
Very good and fair review Alexis101; will certainly help people decide if they want to try out VSoH. I myself am really having fun playing Vanguard but mainly due to the fact that ..
1. I have recently upgraded my machine.
2. I team constantly with a friend.
As has been stated many times performance must be the biggest issue, hopefully your review will help people decide if they can run Vanguard well enough to make the game enjoyable, it would also be well worth checking some of the affiliated sites for more info on this subject.
Teaming I have never had a problem with (have a level 20 cleric) but can fully understand how frustrating it must be not finding groups, as many quests are so group orientated. A good guild is very important but not always the answer as everyone is so spread out.
Will be interesting to see how Vanguard pans out, seems to be a two sided story at the moment, for some a vast, beautiful and exciting new world, but for many others a rather frustrating journey.
Would also be nice if some of those that can run Vanguard and are enjoying it would have a little more understanding for folk that have problems because without a doubt those problems are definitely there!
Here's hoping for the future!
I am really glad that you have someone you know who also play the game with you on a regular basis. Since I started playing MMOs 7 years ago, I have never had anyone that I know personally in RL play the same game with me. That meant that I always had to rely on finding nice strangers online to get groups, make friends, etc. Over the years, I have kept in contact with a handful of really cool pepople that I have played with together. Most of them are still stuck playing World of Warcraft spread among dozens of realms they have over there, so it makes things a tad difficult for me. But the community in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes was nice enough that I had no trouble finding a nice guild and a few friends here and there.
Understanding the other side of the issue can be hard, but with that mutual understanding, it will help generate much better impression about the community as a whole. It can also help eliminate some problems I would think. It is just too bad that most of the time, discussions end up going back and forth about rather the game is great, or the game is bad. Not much middle ground here I guess.
As long as he can understand that the game has flaws, I can sort of tolerate his post. It is just annoying to see people claiming something to be the greatest MMO ever when it hasn't sold more than 150k subs worldwide.
To be perfectly fair, though, subscription numbers do not necessarily translate into "great game," any more than box office sales translate into "great movie." They CAN be related, and often are, but it is not a sure thing. There are lots of movies in the "all time box office top 100" that I would not ever see again, if I saw them once. Look at the #1 movie of all time after all -- Titanic. Such meaningless drivel I have never seen before, and I could barely bring myself to watch it once. Meanwhile lots of movies that never make much noise on the box office list, like "Searching for Bobbie Fischer", I can watch over and over again because they are great.
By the same token, I have played games that slipped in under the radar and were just amazing. The Saga of Ryzom, for example, buries most games I have ever played in many areas (the level of graphics relative to performance is just unbelievable, for example -- I have never seen a game that looked so good and performed so smoothly, even single player). And yet hardly anyone's ever heard of it, let alone ever played it. I would rate Ryzom as far above almost every other MMORPG that I have ever played. Or, for example, a lot of people would tell you COH is the best MMORPG on the market (and in many ways it is quite good), yet they have never been able to crack the 200k barrier.
Now, that doesn't mean that great games can't also have lots of subs -- surely they can. And as I say, they are often correlated. But to pretend that subs = quality is just to be misleading and inaccurate. After all apparently enough people still subscribe to SWG/NGE that it remains profitable to run it, and that's the worst POS on the market.
As long as he can understand that the game has flaws, I can sort of tolerate his post. It is just annoying to see people claiming something to be the greatest MMO ever when it hasn't sold more than 150k subs worldwide.
To be perfectly fair, though, subscription numbers do not necessarily translate into "great game," any more than box office sales translate into "great movie." They CAN be related, and often are, but it is not a sure thing. There are lots of movies in the "all time box office top 100" that I would not ever see again, if I saw them once. Look at the #1 movie of all time after all -- Titanic. Such meaningless drivel I have never seen before, and I could barely bring myself to watch it once. Meanwhile lots of movies that never make much noise on the box office list, like "Searching for Bobbie Fischer", I can watch over and over again because they are great.
By the same token, I have played games that slipped in under the radar and were just amazing. The Saga of Ryzom, for example, buries most games I have ever played in many areas (the level of graphics relative to performance is just unbelievable, for example -- I have never seen a game that looked so good and performed so smoothly, even single player). And yet hardly anyone's ever heard of it, let alone ever played it. I would rate Ryzom as far above almost every other MMORPG that I have ever played. Or, for example, a lot of people would tell you COH is the best MMORPG on the market (and in many ways it is quite good), yet they have never been able to crack the 200k barrier.
Now, that doesn't mean that great games can't also have lots of subs -- surely they can. And as I say, they are often correlated. But to pretend that subs = quality is just to be misleading and inaccurate. After all apparently enough people still subscribe to SWG/NGE that it remains profitable to run it, and that's the worst POS on the market.
C
I agree you with on the part that the subscription number does not automatically translate into a great game. A small niche game like EVE Online was actually a very good game for me, offering lots of content for anyone willing to think outside of the box. As a player in EVE, you could become anyone you want in the galaxy. Despite the lack of walking avatars, I think it is one of the best MMOs I have ever played. Some people will disagree with me of course, and that is fine. I am only speaking through my own personal experience, and I can't speak for anyone else. But I did like Titanic though.
Saga of Ryzom... I have never even tried that game, and I probably will not get a chance to do so. City of Heroes is what I am trying out now, and so far it is a game that I can say with confidence, that offers a lot of action with ease of gameplay and lots of humor. I also loved the character customization. That game, at this point, actually feels like a game, and not like grind or work. I am trying to approach that game as casual as possible so that I won't get burned out.
Hopefully, this serves more as an unbiased review of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. I previously posted on another thread as a reply post, but seeing as how lengthy this is, I decided to move it to a separate thread. I apologize for the inconvenience. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, at its core, is not a bad game. It has so many good things going for it. Most people can argue that this game offers nothing new, and they are right on most part. The basic user interface seems to be the same as any previous MMOs that were released. Combat feels the same, and many quests seem to be the standard Fed-Ex quests or Kill X and Bring Y number of Z. But it is hard not to notice how much ambition the developers at Sigil had for this game. The world is huge, and you can feel it when you are out in the wilderness. I, personally, play MMOs because I want to get away from the reality and bring some imaginations in me while being entertained at the same time. The vast world not only helps me feel immersed in the world, it makes me more excited to find out just what other stuff or content might be waiting for me across the other side of the horizon. Diplomacy system is also something new that Sigil introduced. Sure, it feels like a simple mini card game, but the point is that this mini card game works quite well. I personally got bored with it after a while, but if one spends considerable amount of time to keep track of the city status, he/she can contribute to the community by providing civic buffs for people. More success at diplomacy means more advanced cards, better diplomacy clothing, and whatnot. Speaking of clothing, I liked how this game had different sets of clothing for different occasions like combat or harvesting or diplomacy. It really makes it easier for people to give boosts to the necessary stats for each and every spheres in this game. By spheres, Vanguard has 3 different main spheres: Adventuring (combat), Crafting, and Diplomacy. Harvesting will probably go with crafting, but you do get a different set of clothing for harvesting. And of course, if you experiment with all of the spheres available in the game, then you will change your clothes more frequently too, so it reduces the boredom of staring at the same gear for a given period of time. And kudos to Sigil for making it quite easy to switch your gears on the fly, if the situatiion calls for it. I also liked how the combat, despite its slow pace and dullness, nevertheless featured some interesting features such as counterspells, chain attacks, counterattacks, and whatnot. And despite the fact that many people have complained about the difficulty of leveing their characters due to harsher death penalty and slower leveling curve, it seemed that many classes seemed more than capable of holding out on his/her own. Bard, which I played extensibly, wasn't just a buffbot or a songbot as it felt like to me in Dark Age of Camelot. Rather, it had lot of utilities that provided very useful buffs to the player and the group, such as faster run speed, ability to give group stealth, ability to breathe underwater, and the ability to fall slowly off the cliff, largely negating the need of grinding safefall. And this version of bard can actually dish out some damage too! The only disappointment that I had with the bard was the lack of showing the instruments you carried if you had it equipped (kinda like the helmet graphics not finished and not showing). But nevertheless, I liked the fact that I could still play my songs and have them active while I am fighting with my weapons. Crafting is also quite interesting as well. I really liked the fact that you didn't have to harvest vast amount of resources to use plainly for leveling in crafting, like it was in Everquest 2 or World of Warcraft. Rather, you ask an NPC to give you a set of work orders, which gives you the option to use your own harvested resources (which at refining stages, gives you a slight boost in quality) or use the provided resources. And as long as you did not utterly fail your work orders, you were given some sort of reward for your trouble. You do not need to be rich to start crafting at all, and one can easily spend the entire game session doing nothing but crafting, and make some levels and decent rewards on top of that. Having said this, Vanguard also has many problems, mostly because the developers were too overly ambitious with this game. I mentioned earlier about the sheer vastness of the world. It is all good, but due to the fact that Sigil ran out of money and released the game earlier than it wanted to, many of the contents seem to be unfinished. It is much easier to put small details into every bits and parts of the world had it been smaller, but with Vanguard, it is so big that I am sure the developers were overwhelmed. I did not find the intricate level of detail that I saw with World of Warcraft. In fact, the world looks quite good from the distance, but up close, the detail level is not as good, if not ugly at times. And many times, you will see barren lands, with no mobs and no NPCs for long stretches. And with that comes graphics. I thought the graphics in Vanguard was okay. Not fantastic but quite good. The problem is that the game is an extreme system hog, and even if you exceed the recommended system requirements indicated on the box, you will encounter some performance issues. My system is a pentium 4 3.2 Ghz with 2 GB RAM, NVidia GeForce 7800 GTX, Soundblaster Audigy with 300 GB of free hard drive space, running in Windows XP Service Pack 2. This is not the top of the line system by any means, but it performed very well with virtually zero graphical hitches or stuttering while playing other more graphically intensive MMOs like Everquest 2. With Vanguard however, at high performance setting, I more than often encountered severe stuttering and hitching, especially in towns or any areas that had good number of players or NPCs. Some towns like Hathor Zhi for the Dark Elves or Khal, the starting town for the Qalia humans, were worse than Cae'lal Brael, starting town for the Wood Elves and Raki. In those two bad towns, I more than often encountered FPS as low as than 10 FPS, making it very unenjoyable to move around and play. In the wilderness by myself though, my FPS was good, sometimes going over 60 FPS and running very smoothly. Then comes the sound. It seems like the game performs much better if you turn your sound off. It is at a degree that I have not encountered in any MMOs that I have previously played. And you won't really miss the sound too much at all, if you want to consider that a positive. The background music is a mixed blessing, as some areas feature very well orchestrated music like the ones being played in the Wood Elf/Raki area, or the kind of music that you can live without, like the ones I encountered in Martok, starting area for the green people on the continent of Kojan. And combat sounds were just okay, nothing special. It wasn't anything like Lineage2, where I absolutely had to turn the music on when fighting in the dungeons, because even though it was repetitive, it was blood pumping and gave some excitements to the whole combat. And sometimes I encountered some very bad hitches with the sound as well. When I was doing this quest called "The Taint of the Yukionna" in Kojan with a full group, I encountered numerous bad experiences with sound, the ones that sound like an untuned FM radio station that you will hear if you are in the remote area that is too far away to receive good FM signals. It did that continuously as I toggled the sound on and off, desperating trying to keep the sound on as much as I can tolerate. And with that experienece, the performance also seemed to take a slight dive, decreasing my average FPS by an average of about 5 to 10. Now as for combat animations, they were okay, but nothing to be excited about. The best melee combat animations that I personally have experienced was in Dark Age of Camelot, where the game offered numerous different styles with cool animations that can be used in different situations. Spell effects are generally consistent with what I have seen in other MMOs. But the animation isn't so bad as to make you feel completely bored with fighting mobs. It just could have been better. One could easily argue as to why this game is such a system hog if it does not offer a revolutionary quality graphics. From reading numerous forum posts, it seems that the game is, at the current state, not fully, or well optimized. There are many suggestions to tweak your .ini file to boost performance and whatnot. There are also numerous posts about Sigil's use of the Unreal 2.5 engine, which was not tweaked efficiently to run this game. I am sure, with time, that the developers will work on this issue to make the game run more stable. I do not think that it will happen overnight, and I believe that this will take months, if not a full year. As far as the bugs go, I did expect to see bugs, as most MMOs always have to combat this problem. Some games do better at presenting themselves as polished as possible. That was one aspect that I enjoyed World of Warcraft the most, as that game seemed to have very little performance issues or game-breaking bugs. In Vanguard, I did not encounter any severe bugs like the ones that were reported by other players in which they lost a whole level due to lag. However, I did encounter some annoying bugs such as the teleporters in Kojan porting me to the middle of the bay in Khal, Qualia, where I could not swim out of the water to set my foot on land. I had to constantly issue a command to get myself unstuck. There were more instances, such as when I turned on Anti-Aliasing (which the game does not support by the way) or made some suggested tweaks in the .ini file or with my Nvidia driver setting, that my screen either went blank or just showed plain jibberish that made everything in game unrecognizable. I do not think that I have encountered this degree of performance issues when I first played other MMOs. The only other game that I can compare to, at this point, is Anarchy Online. But since its troublesome launch, Anarchy Online is now a much better game. And then there is the grouping issue. Since the world is so large with numerous different starting areas for the game's numerous different races (which is a big plus and a nice addition by the way), it seemed a little more difficult to find groups easily. As I got higher and higher in adventuring levels, I noticed that most of the quests were better served in a group rather than solo. Often times, even if I used every LFG tools(if somewhat limited due to sheer size of the world and population spread) at my disposal, I simply could not get a group going. Of course, that was when I just went back to crafting to work on my work orders, but I wish the game featured a more advanced form of LFG tools, a simple yet quick way of traveling (like World of Warcraft and Everquest 2's flyers), and/or more teleporters that work within the continents, not just limited to intercontinental travel. Speaking of races, I was very pleased with the number of different races available, let alone the numerous different adventuring classes as well. The races all seem to have different purpose too, as they each had unique racial bonuses. Despite the disadvantage in having a huge world with races starting in many different starting areas, I feel that it is also positive to offer different kind of playing experience if you choose a different race, rather than say like Everquest 2, where the choice of starting city was just two, before the recent Echoes of Faydwer expansion. Of course, the character's physical customization could have been better. I liked the fact that there were lot of different physical features that you can adjust and change using the simple slider functions, but they didn't seem to make much difference once I was in the game. Furthermore, the lack of hairstyles were very disappointing, as I feel the hair styles is one of the most noticeable physical feature that can easily be distinguished from one to another. I do not expect the kind of customization that City of Heroes offered, but I did not want something as limited as Lineage2. However, despite the awfully simple and limited choices of character customization in Lineage2, its character models were at least, more beautiful than Vanguard's in my opinion. (Not simply because their character models were inspired from Asian Anime) My last gripe is with crafting. Positives were many, as I have indicated above. The fact that it actually required me to plan my strategy and adjust according to the numerous different complications made things more exciting too. I did mention about not having to harvest resources just to gain crafting levels previously, which is also good. But the complications seemed a little, too much random at times. I can understand getting lots of poors or moderates rather than seeing more excellents, but sometimes the randomness was a little too random for me to bear. I often encountered situations where certain complications that had nothing to do with a certain section of crafting, still resulted in poor progress for that section. For example, if I was already in stage 3 of the crafting session, where I was only working on utilities, why would a complication that penalizes tool progress and action point penalty result in poorer utility progress regardless? Why would some poor progress actually give me more progress than some moderate progress? I thought that didn't make sense at all. I am sure that all this difficulty and challenge of the crafting sphere become all worthwhile for people who have, or will put considerable amount of time and effort. There were some posts that I have read, which stated that the lack of complete item decay will eventually make crafting worthless. The items do decay with use, (even crafting armor takes some abuse after a while), but it was just a matter of going back to a general merchant to have it back at 100% with a nominal fee. My main effort was in trying to level up in carpentry and mineralogy to make boats and houses, and I hope that, at least for these professions, the demand will always be there. Speaking of housing and boats, that was also one of the things I really liked about this game. Being able to build your own house in the game seemed like an immersion booster, similar to how it was in Star Wars Galaxies. If the developers can deliver the sea content with possible sea monster encounters, than boats will serve much better purpose than a simple means of transportation. There is one small detail that I did not mention yet. Vanguard requires at least 17 GB of hard drive space to install. It seems a bit steeper than most MMOs out there currently, but with the vast size of the world that Vanguard is, I am not surprised. The absolute last part that I wlll cover is the in-game community. Needless to say, the community was, for the most part, very mature and very helpful. There were some instances where the general chat was filled with gripes about some bugs or how some other MMOs in the future will destroy Vanguard, etc. But they were only minor occurrences. Generally speaking, the community was very responsive, if there seemed to be enough people around. Speaking of player population, towards my last day of playing Vanguard, it seemed to be less populated than when I started. I do not have any sound evidence to back this opinion of mine, but it was just a general feeling I got. The guild that I belonged to, which consisted of people from many different parts of the world, had almost half of its rosters completely inactive for more than 3 weeks. In closing, I think Vanguard is an ambitious project that really needed more time in development. The room for growth and improvement are definitely there, given the huge size, 3 spheres, numerous different races and adventuring classes. It just seemed to be too much for Sigil to completely finish the content for all of them, on top of the graphic engine optimization that didn't seem to work out too well. I myself do not play this game anymore, as I was frustrated with the game performance and the fact that it was getting more difficult to easily hook up with groups. Perhaps I was too spoiled with the ease of finding groups in World of Warcraft or City of Heroes. But my stance is that, if the game is an MMORPG, driven and focused heavily on grouping dynamics, it should have offered much better choices and options to find people to group together. In my opinion. Vanguard is not a bad game, but it is not great either. What makes a great game is, without a doubt in my mind, a game with little to no enjoyment-squashing bugs and the contents / features that should have been there to begin with at release. Nevertheless, if the developers deliver what they have promised down the line, Vanguard is an ambitious project that just might well pave the way for the next generation MMORPGs. (But please do fix the game performance issue! WIthout that, there is no chance at achieving this goal!) My final score on Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is 7.0. Thank you for reading and any feedback or criticism is all welcome, as long as it is free of personal flaming.
Man, I've been looking for this thread after you took it away as a reply! I wanted to say that this is hands down the most objective review I have read on these forums since Vanguards release. Good effing job man!
Thanks for your kind words, Ted and everyone else.
It's sad that there are people that want to try this game out on a trial basis, but can't do it because buddy keys are so hard to come by. Maybe if they do it like World of Warcraft by selling 14-day trial version for less than $5? Would that actually help them or hurt them?
At this point they should be willing to do whetever they can to regain some subs. I do not think selling 14 day trials hurts you. At the same time put limits on it like you can only hit level 20 and reach 20 crafting and 100 diplomacy. If you do not put limits on it, then farmers will abuse it.
Comments
rofl @ Hero5937GX , what a sad little angry kid, want cannot stand the fact that not everyone shares his opinion.
You know Hero5937GX , that right now you are damaging the game more then you can ever imagine..
because with you l33t sp3ak d00d crap and insults, you make it sound only kiddies play this game, and the people who can actually compose a nice topic, do not.
so keep on vanboying all you want, you stabbing yourself in the back!
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
9/10 for trolling and effort, minus several million for complete stupidity.
Figure out who's getting graded on your own time.
the only stench i smell is from people who don't even play the game, yet continue to come to this forum, spreading their negativism about a great game that deserves a lot of praise. now look around and see who brings more stench.
and no i have affiliation with anybody. so now not only do i get flamed for being a fanboi, having no intelligence, and etc i now am being flamed for practicing viral marketing.
come up with some reasonable and arguable comeback, in a short and precise form, and i might give you some time of day.
just don't spit super long pages of utter garbage/bs like the op did.
k thx bai
I truly hope you like VG as much as you say you do...at the very least, it will reduce the number of non-spelling buffoons in WAR and AoC by 1.
1. I have recently upgraded my machine.
2. I team constantly with a friend.
As has been stated many times performance must be the biggest issue, hopefully your review will help people decide if they can run Vanguard well enough to make the game enjoyable, it would also be well worth checking some of the affiliated sites for more info on this subject.
Teaming I have never had a problem with (have a level 20 cleric) but can fully understand how frustrating it must be not finding groups, as many quests are so group orientated. A good guild is very important but not always the answer as everyone is so spread out.
Will be interesting to see how Vanguard pans out, seems to be a two sided story at the moment, for some a vast, beautiful and exciting new world, but for many others a rather frustrating journey.
Would also be nice if some of those that can run Vanguard and are enjoying it would have a little more understanding for folk that have problems because without a doubt those problems are definitely there!
Here's hoping for the future!
I think hero has killed a few potential subs by simply posting.
k thx bai?come on.not a good way to advertise your community.
I feel like my thread has been hijacked.
First many thanks to all posters who have replied. Appreciate your feedback.
Die_Scream, to answer your question about instancing and lack thereof...
I personally prefer instancing. The only reason being is that by having an instance for major dungeons, I feel like I am part of a group of adventurers out to solve this problem or whatnot for the world and it makes me feel special to the world that I am in. It kills immersion for me when I go to a non-instanced dungeon and see bunch of other people camping boss mobs. Seeing the boss mobs get killed and respawn again over and over doesn't really feel immersive to me. And I don't like camping at all. I like the freedom that instancing gives me because at least, I won't ever have to worry about camping a certain spot in the dungeon, or compete with other people or groups who need the same quest and/or kills.
Having said that, lack of instancing also does bring some positives as well. I can find other people or groups that can help me or my group if we get in trouble. I can often times recruit them into my group. Many times in Dark Age of Camelot, I made a lot of friends whom I have met in the dungeons for example. I just happened to see them run by or they happened to run by me and help me out when I was in trouble. So both sides have posititives. I personally though prefer the relative freedom of not having to worry about competing with others to finish my quest though. Hence I prefer having instances in major dungeons.
As for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, the dungeons in here did not feel too crowded to a point where I couldn't finish my quests or get some exping flowing. Mostly people have been thoughtful and gracious to share the boss mob, and it seemed that most were well mannered enough that if someone got a certain spot first, they would either ask if they can share, merge groups, or they would just move along to another place. So it hasn't been much of a problem for me. I do think though, that if the game gets more populated and more people begin to hit higher levels, that there might definitely be a chance that people would be bickering about camping and not being able to finish quests, etc.
If I had considered the instance issue in my review of this game, I wouldn't really have put significant emphasis on it. I don't see it as either bad or good at this point. I just think it is a bit too early to tell. Many posters seemed to agree that lack of instancing alone makes this game inferior to other games that have instances. I don't agree with that, I would only go as far as saying that it would have been nicer to have instancing for major dungeons, but it is not a game breaking killer by any means.
Besides, it is not the biggest issue that this game is facing now anyway. Everyone seems to agree that this game has performance issues. THAT needs to be addressed immediately. Content for higher level people would be also as important, I would think.
What do you think?
I am really glad that you have someone you know who also play the game with you on a regular basis. Since I started playing MMOs 7 years ago, I have never had anyone that I know personally in RL play the same game with me. That meant that I always had to rely on finding nice strangers online to get groups, make friends, etc. Over the years, I have kept in contact with a handful of really cool pepople that I have played with together. Most of them are still stuck playing World of Warcraft spread among dozens of realms they have over there, so it makes things a tad difficult for me. But the community in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes was nice enough that I had no trouble finding a nice guild and a few friends here and there.
Understanding the other side of the issue can be hard, but with that mutual understanding, it will help generate much better impression about the community as a whole. It can also help eliminate some problems I would think. It is just too bad that most of the time, discussions end up going back and forth about rather the game is great, or the game is bad. Not much middle ground here I guess.
Thanks for your feedback.
By the same token, I have played games that slipped in under the radar and were just amazing. The Saga of Ryzom, for example, buries most games I have ever played in many areas (the level of graphics relative to performance is just unbelievable, for example -- I have never seen a game that looked so good and performed so smoothly, even single player). And yet hardly anyone's ever heard of it, let alone ever played it. I would rate Ryzom as far above almost every other MMORPG that I have ever played. Or, for example, a lot of people would tell you COH is the best MMORPG on the market (and in many ways it is quite good), yet they have never been able to crack the 200k barrier.
Now, that doesn't mean that great games can't also have lots of subs -- surely they can. And as I say, they are often correlated. But to pretend that subs = quality is just to be misleading and inaccurate. After all apparently enough people still subscribe to SWG/NGE that it remains profitable to run it, and that's the worst POS on the market.
C
By the same token, I have played games that slipped in under the radar and were just amazing. The Saga of Ryzom, for example, buries most games I have ever played in many areas (the level of graphics relative to performance is just unbelievable, for example -- I have never seen a game that looked so good and performed so smoothly, even single player). And yet hardly anyone's ever heard of it, let alone ever played it. I would rate Ryzom as far above almost every other MMORPG that I have ever played. Or, for example, a lot of people would tell you COH is the best MMORPG on the market (and in many ways it is quite good), yet they have never been able to crack the 200k barrier.
Now, that doesn't mean that great games can't also have lots of subs -- surely they can. And as I say, they are often correlated. But to pretend that subs = quality is just to be misleading and inaccurate. After all apparently enough people still subscribe to SWG/NGE that it remains profitable to run it, and that's the worst POS on the market.
C
I agree you with on the part that the subscription number does not automatically translate into a great game. A small niche game like EVE Online was actually a very good game for me, offering lots of content for anyone willing to think outside of the box. As a player in EVE, you could become anyone you want in the galaxy. Despite the lack of walking avatars, I think it is one of the best MMOs I have ever played. Some people will disagree with me of course, and that is fine. I am only speaking through my own personal experience, and I can't speak for anyone else. But I did like Titanic though.
Saga of Ryzom... I have never even tried that game, and I probably will not get a chance to do so. City of Heroes is what I am trying out now, and so far it is a game that I can say with confidence, that offers a lot of action with ease of gameplay and lots of humor. I also loved the character customization. That game, at this point, actually feels like a game, and not like grind or work. I am trying to approach that game as casual as possible so that I won't get burned out.
Thanks for your kind words, Ted and everyone else.
It's sad that there are people that want to try this game out on a trial basis, but can't do it because buddy keys are so hard to come by. Maybe if they do it like World of Warcraft by selling 14-day trial version for less than $5? Would that actually help them or hurt them?