Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Whoopsy daisy... dead again, or - why am I too carebearish for VG?
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
Somehow I must be either masochist, you know these guys who got a good beat up and come back ask for more, or as Padme said about Anakin I say about VG "there is still good in him". It. So am I Luke not giving up Vader, despite all the evil Darth Vanguard has? Prolly so.
I know my Disciple lives on quite well. But you know, kinda all other classes I played is death death death. Its what bugs me, call me a carebear. You know I am 36, I have work and Rl duties, so cutting away time for a MMO isnt something I can shake off easy, it means dedication. The greatest time in my MMO live I have spent in EQ2. So I am NO WOW fanboy, ok?
Still, while I feel in some overland places, especially in the areas of the first 10 levels difficulty is ok. Then it goes haywire. Not always. But recently. I tried my rogue, went to Qalia with my lv 14 rongue to do the solo quests in this Karavi - ratmen - places. God, it was an ORGY of repeated death. Oh there was an add to the left DEAD. Oh, some grey mob saw through my stealth and I had half adozen of them on my arse DEATH. Oh some add from below I cant attack through the wall but he can DEATH. Oh these ratmen follow me longer than my 45 seconds sprint lasts DEATH. Oh I just used my 5 min timed sprint 2 min ago DEATH. Oh noes ther repop was faster than I could kill the mob DEATH. Oh noes we got a roamer DEATH. ad nauseam
Today I played my ranger, and I wanted to duo those solo/small group quests at Veskals. I dunno, but it all went the friggin same. Death death death.
Now I know some say I am too dumb or I shouldnt care. You know, I played a DOZEN MMOs, and while I am no uber player I know what I can and I know I held my ground in EQ2, CoH, DAoC, a few months WOW, Linage 2 (YES), SWG and some minor ones. All perfect well.
Just VG... I know some places are good and nicely balanced. But all in all things like the CONSTANTLY breaking invis/sneak, still sub par ingame map, Corpse runs/XP loss, uber repop, the fact roamers often fill the entire dungeon with no chance to pull to save spots, and most of all the 100% unforgiving combat. You get one add you're dead. Its just how fast one tiny mistake just kills you in this game which so often infuriates me. Or how mobs follow you ENDLESS over the entire frigging world! It all just all too often sums up to a day of frustration. I mean you know I have played computer games 20 years, and I really have my share of difficult games trust me, but some places and experiences in VG are just a tad to much for grinding my teeth in sleep atm.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
You want loot? Go kill some npcs, you wanna visit hades? come find ME, and dont forget to bring coins for the ferryman,
I got sick of dying over and over with my little dwarf wizard,so I rerolled a healer and never looked back
Yes, its the fault of VG, that you die.
I don't mind dying, and I don't mind harsh death penalties - as long as the death was fair. If I die as the result of a mistake I have made, then so be it. However, if my death was due to an insane re-spawn rate, or as the result of mobs seeing through stealth when they really shouldn't, or due to an over populated and poorly designed zone, then I am going to scream bloody murder and I will not be ashamed. And I don't think you should be ashamed, either.
Carebear
Pronunciation: 'ker'ber
Function: noun
Etymology: Duris-Speak, from Old Sojourn
Date: 1996
1: a cute cuddly bear, marketed for young boys and girls.
2: a derogatory term for a computer game player that can't abide setbacks, used by unemployed and unemployable computer games players that have no life apart from the virtual world.
Its as you said. Its not you, you have done all that in other games. No, you died from bad design....
Maybe Vanguard is not the game for you.
I don't understand why you are dying so much. Maybe you are just doing quests to high level for yourself. Although rogues are squshy and hard to solo but a great group class. I have done alts 1-20 solo with 1-2 deaths total. I think it is quite hard to die even if one is not paying attention.
Again Vanguard might not be for you. IMO the biggest problem with Vanguard is mobs are to easy and provide no challenge (outside of APW). Full groups can mow through all mobs easy. 2-3 person groups can do every dungeon, boss, quest and content in the game with the exception of lucent medals and apw,
Leveling in vanguard is super fast and comparable to WoW with people being able to solo to 50 in 5-15 days played.
There is no death penalty. One can recover lost XP in 1-5 kills.
Vanguard is a game that is god at its core. The classes are wonderful. So many unique classes that actually require skill and good play. Fantasticldone combat system. Wonderful and unique crafting system. Tons of dungeons that if ever finished would be fantastic. But it has a number of problems. Mainly.
1. Content and mobs are to easy. Players power exceeds mob power by way to much. Leveling si to fast. One outlevels most areas long before completing quests.
2. There are few signpots or tutorials for new players to learn how to play the game or where to find quest hubs.
3. SOE SOE's approach to developing the game is simply to do nothing. No new content has been started since they took over in May. They have finished content that was in development last April like APW, brotherhood system, LFG system but they have not added one thing themselves other than removing EE, making leveling easier and adding rest expereince. Unless you count the ctd and perfomance bugs they introduced in May that took them 3 months to fix as content thats all they have done. Absent APW the game was much better last April but if Sigil had remained in charge we would have seen APW go live in June.
4. The game is still simply unfinished. Almost every area, dungeon, town, piece of artwork, questline is half finished. The game needs another year or two of develeopment to be a polished product. If they had a normal sized development team maybe sooner. But they barely have enough people now working on the game to keep the servers up.
5. Hardware requirements. The game simply requires to big a computer which means 90% of MMO players cannot play the game without serious performance issues.
6. But Vanguard's biggest problem is its reputation. It is a very good game but it has a terrible reputation. Add in being connected with SOE and I can see why people stay away.
But despite all those flaws I would argue that Vanguard is the best and most fun MMO on the market. the classes, the combat and the crafting are to good. Add in APW and now there is some actual content to play for the next few months. Although it is a shame when one looks at Vanguard as it could have been such a great game.
You know what makes me laugh?
All the "hard core" players that like a cruel game yet twink out their newbies so they can trash 5 mobs at +2 levels on a solo rampage. These same players usually hack on others who are LFG at level 12 or so, saying "solo at level 12, there's no need for a group" and things of that nature. Fact is, this game is rather tough if you are wearing level appropriate gear of less than uncommon quality. There are some situations where the design is amiss, but in other areas it's just tactically brutal (solo or in a group).
Vanguard isn't any more difficult than any other MMO as far as combat goes. The AI and combat are almost identical as any other game. I can't speak for many of the classes, but it was easy to solo on the dps casters I have tried so far.
The problems I have seen in the newbie areas are insane respawn rates and monsters existing under the world geometry.
I found several areas that I could kill something and before I could run up to loot the corpse it would respawn right on top of itself. The same thing held true for resource nodes.
Monsters stuck under the world are a pain in the ass and they follow you forever. Most of the time you get the "can't see target" error message.
I can easily see those as problems for someone starting out.
Although I enjoyed VG for a while, anyone playing the game has to understand and accept that it is still in beta. It is not finished mechanically or content-wise. When SOE is finally done fixing this game (assuming it does happen at some point in the distant future), I have to believe it will be very different than it is today.
My advice to the OP is to do the following if you don't like dying so much while soloing. Roll a Necro, a DK, or a Cleric. Start harvesting as much as you can. Sell what you get and buy a full set of blue armor / weapons with the money you get. From this point, you should die much less. That worked for me.
There is no reason to twink you character in vanguard. The quest gear and drops are quite overpowered. the game is super easy which results in players being greatly overpowered compared to the mobs they fight.
To do this you do not have to do many quests. Do the HL quests and you will be set with great gear and a +30 dps weapon by level 23. Do the CIS questline and you have +36 dps red weapn, plus a ring earring and cape. With a good group you can knock it out in less than 4 hours. From there go do wardship if you want armor or Dargun's for the weapon quest. Then to Graystone for another weapon quest. By the time your done with those its NN and RI are your 50 and your decked out. At 50 then you might feel the need to twink yourself with some crafted gear. But before 50 there is no need. Levels and gear is way to easy to get.
Vanguard is not a hardcore game. Far from it. It is a casual easy game dressed in a hardcore reputation. The only thing hardcore about VG is the lack of information for new players.
There is no reason to twink you character in vanguard. The quest gear and drops are quite overpowered. the game is super easy which results in players being greatly overpowered compared to the mobs they fight.
To do this you do not have to do many quests. Do the HL quests and you will be set with great gear and a +30 dps weapon by level 23. Do the CIS questline and you have +36 dps red weapn, plus a ring earring and cape. With a good group you can knock it out in less than 4 hours. From there go do wardship if you want armor or Dargun's for the weapon quest. Then to Graystone for another weapon quest. By the time your done with those its NN and RI are your 50 and your decked out. At 50 then you might feel the need to twink yourself with some crafted gear. But before 50 there is no need. Levels and gear is way to easy to get.
Vanguard is not a hardcore game. Far from it. It is a casual easy game dressed in a hardcore reputation. The only thing hardcore about VG is the lack of information for new players.
It's true that it's far too easy, at least with a good balanced group with players that now their class and work together. It's even easier if you use Teamspeak/Ventrilo. Me and my buddies went through Graystone and were never even close to a wipe, only a couple of occasional deaths from the triggerhappy sorcerer. No matter how many bad pulls we did we could always CC mobs to only have one or two to handle at the same time.Sure, it was a little bit challenging until we were equal level as the mobs, but after that it was just plain farming.
There is no reason to twink you character in vanguard. The quest gear and drops are quite overpowered. the game is super easy which results in players being greatly overpowered compared to the mobs they fight.
To do this you do not have to do many quests. Do the HL quests and you will be set with great gear and a +30 dps weapon by level 23. Do the CIS questline and you have +36 dps red weapn, plus a ring earring and cape. With a good group you can knock it out in less than 4 hours. From there go do wardship if you want armor or Dargun's for the weapon quest. Then to Graystone for another weapon quest. By the time your done with those its NN and RI are your 50 and your decked out. At 50 then you might feel the need to twink yourself with some crafted gear. But before 50 there is no need. Levels and gear is way to easy to get.
Vanguard is not a hardcore game. Far from it. It is a casual easy game dressed in a hardcore reputation. The only thing hardcore about VG is the lack of information for new players.
Correct, i wore the HL (Hunter's League) armor until around lvl 40, and never died much. And i lvld to 50 in 12 playtime days. The game is not hard (but cleric is also a very easy class)
Guys you are still not getting the point I'm afraid.
Yes the 1v1 fight vs a 2dotted mob is easy, not harder than other games. Actually might be even easier. And it's pretty fast. You can kill a 2dotted mob in a 5-10 seconds. The point is simple: Awareness.
You have to be aware of the mobs around you and their respawn rate. If you are grinding it usually doesn't matter, because you choose a spot with easy one by one pulls. But if you're questing you mostly get into a situation where you need to pick something from a camp full of mobs with amazing respawn rate. That's not a bad design, that's called a challenging content. Some guy was saying here the minimap is bugged, because it doesn't show harvesting nodes. It's not bugged, it is supposed to make you explore and look for things.
That's why the game IS more challenging than any other. Questing is faster than grinding so IT"S MORE CHALLENGING. One mistake, you will probably die. Most of the mobs will chase you for a minute, and you usually end up pulling even more mobs if you run away.
It's an option for you to quest and to improve faster than people that do not care and grind all the way up. You need to pull at the right moment, you need to know when the mobs will respawn around you, you need to know how many of mobs you can handle at the same time. This is the reason why the game is really challenging for newcomers. They are used to watch TV and quest at the same time. Simply not possible here.
REALITY CHECK
In my opinion, the game is challenging, but no more so than many other MMOs out there and less so than some for a variety of reasons. The most challenging part of VG is that some of it is still broken, doesn't exist yet, or is in a state of being fixed. Unfortunately, a new player would probably not know what's broken vs. what's that way by design.
Again, the game as it is today is not the same as it will be or should be. It's getting closer, but it is still not there.
your assumption is that anyone who comes to play vanguard and has issues is some kind of mouth breathing 15 year old.
your assumption is that anyone who comes to play vanguard and has issues is some kind of mouth breathing 15 year old.
What's wrong on watching a TV while playing a video game? I do that quite often frankly while I grind. It's interesting tho you took it so personally.
REALITY CHECK
your assumption is that anyone who comes to play vanguard and has issues is some kind of mouth breathing 15 year old.
What's wrong on watching a TV while playing a video game? I do that quite often frankly while I grind. It's interesting tho you took it so personally.
nothing wrong with it.but you like to assume that anyone who has an issue is obviously at fault.
nice try at twisting it back at me though,8/10
This is still a discusion completely off-topic from the OPs post. Yes, the game becomes much easier the higher you level. Yes, the game is easier if you use voice chat. Yes the game is easier if you play in a static group. NO, the game is not easy when you only have 5 buttons to mash and no gear.
Congrats on conquering GS. My static group has created our own challenges in later levels since the game is easier than we had hoped. These two things have something in common. Neither of them have anything to do with the OP.
I started playing on the 24th of December...made a warrior and got him to 17 while solo...died 5 times. Then I got into a group and died 10 times in an hour (I always die more in groups than I ever do solo...there are some terrible people playing these games).
Rolled a ranger to see what they are like...level 20 now...all solo and I've died 3 times.
MMOs aren't hard. Learn what your class can do and play to it's strengths. If it's getting to hard...RUN! No sense getting killed needlessly.
It takes a bit of trial and error to learn how to not die from respawns and avoid chain pulls etc. when soloing. And sometimes you just can't avoid it.
First it's important to try to get an overview of the mobs in the area to see if there are any roamers, and if so to study their path. If it's possible to get the roamer alone it's good to take him out and see how long time it takes for him to respawn. If there are any named mobs in the area you also need to pay some extra attention. Depending on the level and dots of the named it might be possible to kill him (depending also on what class you are playing). Named mobs often have a longer respawn timer, so if you get him you don't have to worry for maybe an hour or two (or even more).
Then you need to figure out how the mobs are linked. One common setup is 3 mobs standing pretty close to eachother, but in a certain interval one of them will move away far enough fom the others so you can pull it alone. Then you can move on to take the other two (and if you can't handle two mobs at once try another area, or just kill the ones you can solo).
Pay attention to how long it takes for the group of mobs to respawn and always try to take the fight to an area you recently cleared and you will do fine.
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze
Those mobs are in higher level zones like Cragwind Ridge or Tar Jarashir and it's a special burrowing ability that is almost impossible to notice, but is usually 2 dotted only.
The respawn rate is harsh, but the game is harsh. Yes I was dying all the time with my first caster type class (Psionicist) which is great in kiting and controling other mobs, but that can die in 4-5 seconds in melee. It's not a bug, it's intent.
REALITY CHECK
do you even play Vanguard? I can take you to dozens of places in the lowbie areas alone where respawn is nearly instantaneous or where there are mobs under the world or in rocks that sneak attack you , usually when you are engaged in battel with another mob.To answer you question: Yes.
I know that some dungeons have a very quick respawn rate since they are designed for groups = faster progress. Venturing to a place like that on your own or with a small group short of DPS = trouble. It's been a while since I played a character in a < lvl 20 area since they only allow 8 characters/account so I can't remember if there's a problem with the respawn in general.
I'm not sure it is really that bad overall. I'm sure their are areas that might need fixing esp some dungeons where mobs tend to chain agro sometimes.
But my lvl 46 rogue has a 14 kill ratio to death which isn't great but then this character played from launch and a number of those deaths were just straight up bugs or due to changes in stealth over time. And soloing with a rogue has got to be one of the toughest classes to solo.
I think you just need to move on when you encounter an area with issues that make it hard to do or impossible. Bug it for sure but don't continue to bloody yourself if it is futile...
---
Ethion