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Vanguard: Saga of Heroes: Milestones
Szark
News ManagerMember Posts: 4,420
Last month, the folks over at Vanguard promised to keep their community informed about what work that is being done to improve the game. Now, the Vanguard official site has been updated with two reports. One report details the milestones that they've reached and the other previews their goals for the next update.
Hey Everybody,
Here is the long awaited Milestone 1 wrap-up. Overall we made some pretty good progress. It was our first time with our new scheduling process and while we had a few hiccups, most things worked out fairly well. We will continue to tune the process to become more efficient as well as getting the post Milestones goals out to the community sooner than we did this time. Some of these features will be included in game Update 2. The contents for Game Update 2 will be announced as soon as it's pushed to QA.
Hasium
;)
Read the Milestone 1 Wrap up here.
Read the Milestone 2 Preview here.
Comments
The game is coming along well. SOE is making progress where SIGIL could not and left off. The game is in good hands, many are happy about it. The server mergers will also help a lot as well.
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
To be honest, we never will know if the progress would be the same if Sigil was still in control. Sigil had 120 employees, its now down to 50.
Good news as Vanguard is getting better and better. It's reaching the level it was promised to achieve, in despite of the van-haters sistematic pessimisism. Give Vanguard some time...
It is a question of fangs.
"Hello"
*blows into the mic*
"Is this thing even on?"
I had high hopes for this game in the beginning. I really enjoyed it the month I played mainly because of how different the crafting and debate system was. But at the time the lag was terrible and the graphics were less than what was to be expected. I'd like to thank SOE for forcing Sigil to release this game 2 months ahead of schedule. I'm still going to give Sigil credit for at least fighting their way through all that Sony BS to still make a decent game.
Yes, it is interesting to see that Sony forces Sigil to release too early, then takes credit for "saving" the game
Worse is that some people apparently believe that Sony is the "Good Guy" in this case, and not the root of the problem to begin with! 'Tis idle speculation, but I wonder how it would've gone if Microsoft had retained control... I know there are many Microsoft haters - possibly more than Sony haters - but they did well with Turbine producing AC.
<p align=center><a target=_blank href=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm><img border=0 src=http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/20.jpg></a></p>;
Is it just me is milestone 1 nd 2 pretty much the same?
Vanguard’s Milestone 1 goals.
- Performance / optimization increases
- Fix bugs
- Raid content
- Finish features that were almost complete before the SOE acquisition occurred.
Vanguard’s Milestone 2 goals.
Seems to me that they need more than, what was it? 50 people working on it?
give vanguard some more time? 5 years wasn't enough? dont worry, ill give them all the time they want lol. i still wont be going back lol.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
Who knows what Sigil would have done if they were able to do everything the way they wanted too. I'm sure Microsoft wouldn't have released something prior to being completed
.
I do think in someways that Sony did publish the game early knowing they'd have to step in later down the line to "save" the game. I probably was a marketing ploy since that's what all large corporations run on now. They have to do something to bring themselves back from what they did to SWG. EQ2 was a good start, but that only satisfied a small base of people.
I'll keep an eye on Vanguard, but I don't see me going back to try it out.
I fail to see how fixing bugs is considered milestones. Every MMO do that.
wait...
when did SoE acquire Sigil? I thought they only had Distrobution rights to Vanguard.
(and yes, I have been sleep under a rock for a while)
what rock were u under lol. been this way for a good couple months dude. personally I wouldnt stress it. its pretty much old news. and no one truly cares where this game is heading.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
so - has a date of when SOE would like to have the trial island available been mentioned at all yet?
SOE..........SWG.....ouch...still got a bruise..lol
SOE.........Vanguard......thats twice burned man.....so shame on me
Shamusx DragoVski
Founder - "Lost Sons of Feanor"
LOTRO
I love how they are creating a "Trial Island" like EQ2 has, which will include tweaked and improved art assets, with the goal of those tweaks and improvements "eventually" filtering into the rest of the game. They are out right admitting one of the top priorities is to be able to offer a free trial that is NOT representative of the performance and quality of the main game!
As others have noted, the Milestone 2 is basically the same as Milestone 1. In other words, they weren't even able to complete the very modest goals for Milestone 1 in time for the first update, so they've had to roll most of that into Milestone 2.
Even if you decide to trust that SOE has a game plan to actually "fix" Vanguard, it's clear they aren't willing to devote the assets needed to do so in a timely manner. If you were thinking "this game might be worth while checking out again in six months", better change that to "in a year".
I also find it unbelievable that their main focus is on creating a trial that may dupe people into thinking the game is much better than it is. Not just the dishonesty of it, but it shows that their goal is not to fix the game and then try to win subscribers based on the "game that could of been", but rather to try to milk as much cash as possible out of it in the near term, no matter how many bridges are burned in the process.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
Guys...
I really hate it how people with an opinion start sharing it as fact. Let me let everyone in on the truth.
SOE's parent company refused to give more time to Vanguard, and thus it launched. The upside to this is that now SOE's parent sees that these games need to be released when ready, and are taking that into consideration for The Agency's release.
The island was conceived initially SOLELY as a way to test the new art assets. Later it was decided that they could in fact turn this into a free trial, and thus further utilize the work they were putting into it.
The size of the team working on it is (about) the same size as the team working on Everquest 2. They've managed to make immense improvements to that game, and continue to put out solid expansions. I don't think Vanguard would be in a better situation with it's old team, as quite a bit of it was dedicated to future expansion content even while the game was unplayable for many people.
And finally, the "milestones" are more of an internal term, they're goals that the team is pushing to meet. It's not meant to be construed as each one being as some groundbreaking change, only to inform people of what their current goals are.
As a final note, stop being so negative. Find out the truth behind what you're saying before posting it as fact. This information I am giving comes from the developers, and Smed. You should do the same.
Thank you for your objectivity
You can interpret Trial Island one of two ways:
1) They're trialling the new pipeline to improve game performance, as a spinoff they will have a free trial area. Killing two birds with one stone
2) They want a free trial to get new people. The trial can't have the same graphics problems as the main game or it will turn people away, so they're optimising it first. These optimisations may or may not ever make it into the paid-for game.
I don't think it's really in Sony's interests to do the latter part of option 2. Sure they'll sell a few more accounts but then those people will quit and create even more bad PR - the last thing SOE needs.
If you're optimising game assets then it's going to be quicker and easier to just do it with one small set. An optimisation is made, game rebuilt and tested, changes made, etc. etc. Some of these will be changes an artist has to manually do and these will take an age to get back in game (if ever). Batch changes that can be done with a processing script could be 'easily' reapplied to all release graphics, once there are no problems with Trial Island.
Even these batch changes can cause problems though - maybe part of a model is made the wrong way, maybe it uses a different size texture, maybe only 90% of the model can be safely bump-mapped with the new change :P So even these ones could take a while to make it back in game.
So I'm going with (1) but I won't hold my breath.
Should have been done in beta not after launch
A lot should have been done to this game prior to launch. Sigil left Micro Soft because MS was tired of paying for no product. Still, SOE has made some progress on cleaning the mess and the game is coming along quite nicely.
Truly though. The difference between liking this game and hating it is in the rig. If you are not pushin some serious horsepower under the hood you will absolutely HATE this game. A very beefy system gets to enjoy the game a lot.
Once they get the server consolidation going this will games population will start to grow again.
Say hello, To the things you've left behind. They are more a part of your life now that you can't touch them.