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Dear Sigil do you think we're completely stupid?
Rekindle
Member UncommonPosts: 1,206
Call me completely arrogant but I would have budgeted this game at 28 million dollars and budgeted 2 million dollars to pay 1000 gamers to provide insight on what makes a game fun. Maybe even set some expectations on what the game will do and what it wont do. You offered a good solid Buick and produced a shoddy chevette. People can bash wow all they want but the grand case study results are in and gamers seem to like these two things the most:
They like a game that is fun to play
They like a game that will run on their computer and prefer a functioning game over a game that does not work with ultra realistic graphics at 0.5 fps: I coulda told ya that for 500k.
One of my favorite quotes from Brad just before beta 4 was "if you don't like questing in vanguard, don't do it". That was his response to feed back on the questing system. People were struggling to identify with Vanguard, to connect to the world and partake in the lore and hes telling them to avoid the one system that will make the connection between an inanimate world and "me" -- for what? to what end? Heaven forbid! Players were looking for an alternative to WoW's collect boar guts quests and to EQ's "welcome to our world now figure out what you want to do on your own" approach . When you figure out what they get with Vanguard please let me know? Apparantly its not questing for me.
Now we're all suposed to feel bad that the game is nose diving? The god father of gaming gets on forums and writes tirades on what was done and will be done. Sigil, there were lots of things about EQ that sucked but you failed to import anything that was good. EQ was the golden age of gaming and you had a chance to revive it and you conciously chose to avoid it.
WoW is a better spirtiual sucessor to Everquest than anything produced by SoE or Sigil. Thats a crying shame.
Yes there are some major and serious differences between gamers but I think we all can agree that we want it to work (today) and the game should have some type of fun factor (its typically the fun factor that makes or breaks a game. Just like with EQ2 it seems the dev's have tried to cover off on a lot of systems but they tend to let the fun factor and performance issues fall secondary to whatever.
Am I the only half wit idiot that could see that a major portion of the original Vanguard fanbase was the adult gamer crowd that emerged in a post EQ world? Am I the only one who saw that potential for this game HAD to wipe the floor with its competition?
I think this game is destined to fail now unless there are some changes. I think Sigil's leadership is disorganized, arrogant and place too much expectation on the gamer. I think their real push was the EQ heritiage and they blew that edge. I think their general attitude towards gamers is we are litle bags of cash that just need to be milked out of a couple bucks here and there.
If Vanguard were a car I'd be dead. There is 0 excuse to releasing half assed games. Everyone knows Vanguard was not ready and its pretty unethical to ask a paying customer to pay for unfinished work. Perhaps you were between a rock and a hard place on your release date. That does not undermine the choices, direction and attitudes that brought you to this point.
In closing i'll take the attitude of Brad and say: If you dont like posts that put Vanguard n a negative light, then dont read them.
To ask players to pay for this game, when there are so many alternatives is fubar. This game is everything not to do and should be studied for years to come.
What happened to the lore?
What happened to the emersion?
You think after a day of work and looking after 2 kids I want to come home to 4 fps and disconnects? What reality do you live in?
note: with all due respect to those actually enjoying the game.
Comments
Preach it brother. Totally agree with your righteous rant, and I want to warn you that shortly a few diehard VM's will show up bashing on you. Don't sweat it, they clock out soon. I think most of the people who agree with you are having fun right now playing other games but you are 100% dead on target.
Indeed.
Specially on the Graphics.
I believe WoW has one ALOT of it's fanbase through the creative use of a rather simple engine.
It runs like a dream on any computer bought within the last few years, yet looks unique and quite good.
Vanguard made my 2ghz computer crumble.
And it looked HORRIBLE when you turned the graphics down.
Which is the flaw of all engines who goes for "ZOMG WOW THAT'S SO REAL!!" when they meet the actual people..
Kinda like selling an F1 car to a familt with 4 kids... It roars, it's fast, but utterly useless.
And, ya, fun to play, a very very abstract point.
While different people find different htings fun (Hey that's why we need more than one game)
There's one thing that has proven to win over all other things:
Simplicity.
Easy to get into, hard to master. WoW again, using this to an extent. While it's not much to 'master' in the end, it's atleast very easy to use and any monkey could play it.
It's also extensive in the tutorial (As in, covers what you need to know without stopping you from the game.)
Compare to EvEs tutorial which the first 10-15 minutes is just text and clicking the UI,
quite crappy and boring.
As for Vanguard... I didn't even see an actual Tutorial, but rather just a pop-up window now and then. Confusing to say the least...
I wonder how they can't see these things when creating what they do..
Possibly because the ones pulling the strings got there through their company creation and ability to cheat anyone into giving them money, they still fully lack any sense of understand for the common man.
Which is why the winners in gaming (And ALL entertainment) are those who know who they're dealing with.
Vanguard (Read: SOE - who's ruined other fine games like SWG and EQ in the past..) fails on their relation to the customer, and hence, fail as a game too.
Sad when it had potential and economy..
But then again, if you're a sellout you're a sellout.
Played so far: 9Dragons, AO, AC, AC2, CoX, DAoC, DF, DnL, DR, DDO, Ent, EvE, EQ, EQ2, FoMK, FFO, Fury, GW, HG:L, HZ, L1, L2, M59, MU, NC1, NC2, PS, PT, R:O, RF:O, RYL, Ryzom, SL, SB, SW:G, TR, TCoS, MX:O, UO, VG, WAR, WoW...
It all sucked.
Well said. I could easily have gotten hooked on Vanguard if it had been functional and fun. Or even just fun with the promise of functionality to come.
I think as mmo business accumen goes, you are right on that this should be studied as the prime example of what not to do.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
Absolutely!!
However, they insist on forcing us to group and guild (zerg-raid) without carefully and thoughtfully implementing the aspects and features that the gaming population truly desires. People want to have fun now in a world that feels genuine and authentic without being forced to group, quest, craft, guild (zerg-raid). People want more genuinely in-depth character customization with options (choices). Further, people want content that is fun, quests that are meaningful (not questing to quest), and raiding that is not zerging. SIGIL somehow (in its arrogance I would suggest) implemented first generation features that ensure forced-gaming and resulted in frustration. Vanguard is a first generation game (with its frustrations) with demanding graphics that no one can enjoy or use.
A developer's vision is not as good (or profitable) as the gaming community's vision. Think outside of the box, generate ideas with gamers, and take this industry to a new level.
I think Vanguard will be a decent game once it's fixed up. I can't help but like Brad McQuaid, he had a good dream and he just run out of money. Until the game is a much better state though, we're allowed to poke fun at it
To illustrate my point I'll use a professional illustrator:p Here's a GU comic about EQ from the year 2000:
http://www.gucomics.com/comic/?cdate=20001026
And one from 2007.
http://www.gucomics.com/comic/?cdate=20070327
Seven years. Same old crap
But... ever hear the story of the ugly duckling?
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...
Don't sweat Brad's Viral Marketing team, word at the dinner table is they are having to impose some payroll cuts already.
Hopefully that means the VM team will go before what's left of the Dev team does, but who knows with Sigil.
As far as early EQ-1 goes, here's what I have to say having played since beta. If your an old fart like me, you can appreciate this. Ever go to a candy store and find some retro candy that you remember in the past. You quickly connect that memory to how good it was recalling maybe some special events that you enjoyed as a child. You slowly unwrap it as you recall fond memories of going to the nickel candy store on that shiny red stingray with your friends and sitting by the pond gorging yourselves with the treats. With sweet antisipation you think about long summer days and hanging with the gang. Then you pop it in your mouth, take a few chews and spit it out. Time has a way of making everything seem better than it was.
EQ was what it was. There are so many more games out there now and the "Oh my gosh, check this out" factor of looking at a "huge" fantasy land on an limited capacity PC is over. Bugs aside, that's a huge part of the problem, the game will never truly recreate what we remember as the "best of times". Problem is, that's how it was sold.
Something inside me rolled over and died when I read this from the OPs post....
But, you do make valid points on several areas. Like EQ2 which had a rough start, VG won't hit its prime for awhile I'm afraid.
You eat dinner with Brad? awesome...
Instead of sending these 'I heard from my monkey's uncle' posts, try doing something constructive like providing facts to your statements.
Its too bad that was never really cleared up for you. Despite my current frustrations and opinions on the game, I do try to keep my own facts straight. I recall reading several times Sigil indicating they were not trying to replace that first kiss.
i'm an older fart too, too old to be playing games. I thought Vanguard would classify me as the core gamer audience it was going for. I guess they expected most core gamers to have l33t systems like in teh old skoo (?)
Anyway, part of me wants to feel bad for this game's implementation. For some reason its more important to me that Brad and Co spent 5 years of their souls pouring into this game only for someone like me to come by and suggest they are out of touch. But somethign has to change in this Genre.
(Probably for the best) no one is ever going to believe hype ever again.
The game simply broke no new ground. i'm an old timer also, The old AC was hard, ya had to figure out your spells, run from town to town, better be damn good just to make that happen, and you could screw up a toon so badly you had to reroll.
Vg, while having a fresh slant on classes, gave me none of the old school hardness that was in the earlier games. This was why I tried it. I can deal with poor performance and bugs, hell that was a way of life back in the day, But don't promise me an old school feeling game and dish out a cookie cutter buy your spell after you lv , you can run down the road safely easy to play clone of whats been out for years.
Its too bad that was never really cleared up for you. Despite my current frustrations and opinions on the game, I do try to keep my own facts straight. I recall reading several times Sigil indicating they were not trying to replace that first kiss.
i'm an older fart too, too old to be playing games. I thought Vanguard would classify me as the core gamer audience it was going for. I guess they expected most core gamers to have l33t systems like in teh old skoo (?)
Anyway, part of me wants to feel bad for this game's implementation. For some reason its more important to me that Brad and Co spent 5 years of their souls pouring into this game only for someone like me to come by and suggest they are out of touch. But somethign has to change in this Genre.
(Probably for the best) no one is ever going to believe hype ever again.
With all respect intended, what game in it's early days had long corpse runs, tedious crafting, huge time sinks, slow leveling, long travel times, town factions that meant something, zone factions that were hard to build and easy to destroy in a huge world. Now who worked in designing those features for the first few expansions. There was no "Hardcore" gamers back then because you either played Everquest, or you did not.While no one would say that they were coping the early version concepts of EQ-1, we must remember that's where he thought gaming should be in regards to challenges and that's where the game was released. Already changes have been made along with changes in the works that adopt some of the changes that occurred in EQ-1/EQ-2.
I agree with you on the out of touch issue completely. The game feels like they mixed the two worlds of "old school" and "Casual School" and ticked off both users. It takes me forever to get to a place where I can then grind out say 10 quests in an hour and propel my level rapidly while being lead by the hand to the next area I should be hunting in with some quest to deliver something to the area that my level allows me to hunt in. Ahhh....but along the way, there will be some tripple up mobs 5 levels above me waiting to kill me so I can do a long corpse run and eventually make it to safety in that town; unless of course I land by the bind point in that town and decide to summon and loose 15 minutes of experience.
Then there are things like the Shaman Patron Quest where I travel to a new continent, attempt to find the main town, a tree town (sound familiar) in Kojin where I'm sent across the zone to meet with a Shaman who then sends me far into my old zone that I just left all to complete a "final" serious of quests that take me less than 20 minutes to accomplish. In other words, over 1.5 hours of running around to complete a class defining quest that ends in a 20 minute quest killing low level mobs. It felt like a "fast track" Epic quest.
smg77 you are my hero
As far as trying to merge the EQ generation and the mindless WoW generation, they did a pretty good job if you look at the game and not harp on the performance. Everyone wants a challenge, depth and nice graphics, yet everyone apparently threw their support behind WoW and this is what you will get for years to come. It's cute, everyone plays it but it doesnt have any of the elements people keep stating they want in an MMO to be a great game. So everyone is going to try to copy WoW. Also being number one does not make you the best.
There is not much in the way of new or innovative ideas for our genre of gaming; it's pretty much over and destined to be rehashes - plain and simple. I've tried soooo many MMOs and have always gone back to Norrath Parts 1 & 2 and still play there today as a regular. I threw WoW into the trash a year ago. TBC was a joke after waiting 2 years.... and it proved my point that there is not many places left for our genre to go. And I refuse to play Auto Assault or any form of GI Joe game (I gave up my GI Joes long ago).
I think Vanguard had the right ideas, and I hope SOE throws more cash behind it after some soul searching. I don't think they intended to release a game in this condition that would end up exactly as it has. As for me, (I'm sure I'll catch hell on this) I am sticking with EQ and EQ2 and then when those finally go dark, I'll find something else to do. I still think EQ2 rocks regardless of what y'all will say.
Good luck Vanguard, you'll need it.
I feel like the only non-old timer on this post...
I've tried to get into this game sooooo hard ( I accidently bought the 6month >< !!) and its just not happening. I'd be willing to go back to WoW to mindlessly kill 14 year olds. It was one of the joys in my life...but being a broke-ass college student I can't really afford to get a new MMO subscription going until I start working in the summer. BLEH GIVE ME MONEY OLD-TIMERS!
Maybe it will get better...
Amen, OP, Amen!
We move for a vote of no confidence in Brad McQaids development leadership. *prepares the tar and feathers*
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Recommended Specs (from inside the manual since they forgot to paste them on the outside of the box, odd don't ya think?)
-Windows 2000/xp/Vista (Rofl good luck with Vista)
-100% DX 9.0c Compatible Computer
-100% DX Compatible Mouse and Keyboard
-3.0 ghz intel or 3500 AMD Processor
-2 GB ram
-Vertex and pixel shader 2.0 compatible hardware with 256MB of texture memory
-DirectSound compatible audio hardware
-broadband internet connection
-16x DvD-ROM
-20 GB hard drive space
My computer meets or exceeds all of these recommended specs and unless i set it to ugly ass Lego land mode i get dog turd FPS, 10 on a good night at balanced.
Then Brad says that the game will get better once people can afford to buy more upgrades. . . . WTF ?
Why in the hell would any developer purposely make a game intending for the consumer to buy several hundred dollars worth of hardware just to play it. Sorry i will go buy a G-damned PS3 first cause it will be cheaper then buying the kind of equipment that brad thinks we all need to have to play this game.
MMOs should be lowest common denominator, never bleeding edge. You want to appeal to a broad base of players not a limited small few. I can understand iD and the Quake series of games or the Unreal games, those games are bleeding edge games, but you know what, even if they are bleeding edge they still make them playable on lower end systems. Vanguard is just not playable even on a system Sigil thinks should be able to run it well.
It boggles my mind to even comprehend the design decision to make Vanguard such a bitch to even play, this is not even getting into all the bugs, and Grind, and poor implementation, sad goal achievement, even worse community outreach (no central community forum). No with all those other things aside this game is CRAP to play on decent systems, this game makes you feel like you got a dog turd of a computer when it will play Graphically beasts of games on high detail with fantastic frame rates.
So yeah people are angry they wasted 50 bucks, or even worse 100 if they wanted the SE. People are angry they spent months if not years play testing and telling the developers to change things, only to be ignored in the end. Players are pissed that so many things that lured us all into believing the hype that Brad perpetrated on all of us got lost in the shuffle.
In the end i want a damned refund, but i know i won't get it and i won't even try to get one, in the end i feel as shafted as i did when Dark and Light came out. In the end i will not come back to Vanguard even if they fix all these issues, why ??? Because in the end the mentality that we the consumer have to suck it all up and get used to such a high disregard of respect towards its customers.
Vanguard, i hope, goes down in flames, i hope it leaves the MMO scene fast, but alas i know it will sputter around begging to be in the glory it could have been if a small amount of discretion had been used. I guess thats what you get when we make developers into rockstars and treat them like there more then just a dude behind a computer inputting code to make something we all can enjoy (hell even brad doesn't actually do any programming anymore).
dear Vanguard player,
you have asked whether we, here at Sigil, think you are stupid. in answer to your question we would like to point out that you bought this game didn't you? ..... 'nough said.
the Sigil mis-management team
PS: If you have any customer service issues, go to Helen Waite.
Dear Sigil mis-management team,
You missed me! Better luck next time. In the future, to get more canny MMORPG customers such as myself, I suggest you say NOTHING about the game prior to release. And do NOT have a beta test...or if you do then use beta testers that are wired to explode if they break the NDA.
With much love,
A jaded MMORPG player
Never be afraid of choices. More choices are always good things.
Hello all my fellow gamers,
I also am in agreement with the performace issues of the game, which are bar-none not acceptable in any genre of gaming, but more so of an MMORPG. I bought a new super computer for this game, which has a Dual-Core Proc, 2 GIGS high speed Ram, 2 HHD's running in Raid 0, and a Gefore 8800 GTS ( Not totally super, but for me it damn sure is )! When I pump the graphics up to Highest, and run into Anghram, It makes me for freakin Mad, that I want to.. Well It makes me very freakin mad, and I shouldnt tell you all what I would like to do to... Never mind. But to see my FPS Drop to turtle screwing speed tears me a new one!!! The game DOES look fantasic, and is very immersive in that respect, but to have such a damned drop in FPS is just screwy as hell.
Now on to what I do like about the game, which sure is NOT the questing aspect, but of how truely HUGE the world is. And the Flying mounts, and the boats. I love exploring in an MMORPG, and this game really opens that option up for me. I do not own a boat, or have a flying mount atm, but I truely find those to elements of the game truely intriguing!! I also feel this game has a huge potential for being a truely great game, if it is given enough time. I hope, I really do hope. But I do understand the negative aspects this game brings about, which have been listed in lenght and detail in past posts. I just wanted to put in my thoughts as well.
Take care all,
Eubel : server : Gelenia
Heres Hoping for more Solo content, More Meaningful quests, More Story and a revised coding of the game engine!!!