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V:SoH - a year later...
Rihahn
Member Posts: 146
Hi all,
Here we are a year-ish after the release of V:SoH. A year ago I was in the beta, then bought the box on a lot of hype an promises, then about 3 weeks later stopped playing due to bugs, poor performance, and a general lack of ‘fun’ in the game.
As I’m currently between games and have been doing little more than supporting one old MMO that’s trying to resurrect itself (Horizons) and haunting the boards of a few other MMOs that are still in development, this last weekend I loaded V:SoH onto better hardware than I had a year ago and gave it an honest onceover.
The game comes on 2 DVDs and, therefore, takes a while to install. But, what will really kill you is the 3.5 hour patch cycle after the half hour install. So, as it was evening I left the patcher running overnight and would have breakfast in Telon.
The following morning I go to account management and discover there is about 7 days of free play time on my account, which is a pleasant surprise, then log into the game.
The first thing I do is delete my old characters – I figure after a year enough has changed that I should start fresh and see things through the eyes of a new player. So a few minutes later and I’m standing outside a large walled structure and surrounded by some kind of ooze-things – yes, my plans of world domination as a gnome cleric had begun.
Immediately things are kind of odd – two fellow gnomes who are quest givers appear for some time as two sets of disembodied eyes and wigs and a lot of things are textureless, so I wait for the world to finish rezzing in by grabbing my breakfast off the kitchen counter and bringing it back to my desk.
When I return the world of Telon has rendered fully and I turn about to see what I can see – objects on the edge of the clipping plane still flicker in and out annoyingly and as a big tree pops into view the game stutters for a few seconds… Must need to adjust my video settings.
The system I am now running V:SoH on is a 2.6 Ghz Core2Duo, Dual 8600GT video cards, 2 gigs of ram and 2 7200 rpm 320G sata-II HDs in raid 0… I built this machine because I bought into the “need better hardware for Crysis” a while back and this rig can run it at medium-high very smoothly.
Anyways, I open the video options and discover that the game is already on “medium” settings but some options aren’t enabled that I figure should be, so I fiddle with it for a bit and get things running fairly smooth at “medium” settings. One thing of note, turning off “hardware occlusion” gets rid of the annoying object flicker.
Ok, with the game playable and my breakfast eaten I venture into the world to seek my fame and fortune and sign up for my first quest. The quest system seems better now, more responsive, and this time the objects appear on cue and the critters I have to kill don’t fall through the world. I’m guessing they have fixed this, but it could also be that as I was the only person in the entire starting zone that the server didn’t have to work very hard.
I spend the next few hours running errands for NPCs too lazy to do things for themselves. I notice that with the graphics settings the way they are currently everything seems to have a uniform “mud” texture. So I head back into the graphics control panel and fiddle with things for another few minutes until I get smooth frame rate *and* a decent looking world.
Ok, back to the slaughter. During my first two hours in Telon I’ve seen a dozen messages flash across my chat window; 2 people selling things I won’t be able to use for 30 more levels, 4 people talking about the game, and 6 messages from gold-sellers… Believe it or not, the gold-spam actually made me feel good because if they’re still here, the game must have enough players to be profitable for them.
The combat animations are better now; more synchronized. The spell effects are still weak but I’ve heard that is a feature, not a problem.
And that’s all I’ve had time to look at so far. I’ll update this thread as I go for the morbidly curious… There are at least 6 more days I’ll be able to wander around Telon and see what changes a year has wrought.
Comments
One other thing to try is to disable SLI and see if that helps.
I have found, for instance, that LotRO peforms MUCH worse with SLI than without. And WoW is really bad with SLI enabled.
EQ2, however, seems to benefit from SLI.
Something to try on your system, in any case.
I considered stepping back into Vanguard recently as well. They sent a notification out, for a free month, that started in December....I never did reload, but I am very curious as to your thoughts.
There are so few games out there right now to choose from. Most are worn out and the same old story over and over.
If Vanguard could just get all those issues they had early on, resolved, I think quite a few might consider returning. Just wish they had listened to their players...sooner.
Anyway, I appreciate your post and your insight. Hope to hear more.
Thanks, I'll give that a shot this evening.
I'm also considering a return to VSOH, I left before the server merge than came back for a week after the merge. I still had a problem finding grps (L35 sorcerer). I have a couple of questions: have the non combat animations changed/fixed? I remember while running it felt appeared that my toon was in S L O W motion. Have they modified the LFG system?
thanks in advance.
I played just before christmas and the game hasn't seemed to change at all for all the reasons i hated it and people claiming better performance..... well it still stutters everything you turn around.
-----------------------------
SWG - PrePub9 Jedi mastered all professions - June 26th 2003 > Nov 15th 2005
EVE Online - 24 million SP - May 6th 2003 > Early 2005
PlanetSide - BR20 CR5 - May 23rd 2003 > Sept 2003
Thank you.
I'm trying to give as fair and balanced a report as possible and I hope I can continue to do so though the rest of the week.
In regards to the non-combat animations, I hadn't really noticed but I will endeavor to give them a once over this evening.
I tend to suffer from a bad case of "Uncanny Valley" in most of the spiffy-graphics games and find it very hard to get into the characters when they look like plastic people and move like there's a rake handle up their bum - so I try to ignore it and look at the game play and world design elements.
This is why, of all the MMOs I've played, I actually prefer the more cartoony look of, say, World of Warcraft or Mythos. It's easier for me to stop cringing and enjoy the game when the models aren't trying so hard to look "realistic"... That and when I play a game I try to get as far away from the "12 flavors of human" as possible, so the more alien or unusual the race the more likely I am to enjoy playing it. After all, I play a human an average of 24 hours a day, why would I want my escapist fantasy game to be more of the same?
Hopefully this gives a little background into how I view things and will explain my observations of the models and animation in V:SoH.
Post more!! I'm reading
I think Vanguard needs:
1. get rid of the equity broker (or whatever that npc is through which all buying and selling in a town is handled).
2. Lower the quest xp and raise the monster xp. Also, don't let players off so easily by letting them accept quests without even reading the details and providing them a detailed list of to-do items including a compass indicator.
3. Add some character to dungeons; they seemed like empty shells filled with "monsters." Add some story or depth to the dungeon inhabitants.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
You seem my type of player. just like old eq quests when you had to read the text to work out what to do next.
Yes exp is way too fast as it is. and again get rid of the broker...back to the old eq when we had to trade socially. God i would justlove them to redo everquest lol. well not redo it but make a game with the same combat mechanics etc.
1. Meh. Why get rid of the broker ? I fail to see the point. Especially since you give no reason.
2. Thats against what Vanguard wants to accomplish - that quests are worth more than mobs. If at all, I would ask for a reduction in adv xp in general.
3. Good idea.
If i assume right he was thinking along the lines of social trade, much like the trade channel but without just leaving things on a broker. Although in my post i had said yes to it, in retrospec thinking more into it i suppose with the amount of items one player sells these days it just wouldnt work without some type of broker. though i really do miss the old east common tunnels where we would all meet up and sell our wares! i am of course referring to the legend that was Everquest. If only someone had the vision and scope to actually take EQ and improve upon the origanal.
I'll also be looking forward to your posts Rihahn.
If the game has changed as much as this board in the past year, perhaps I'll give the free month a shot.
However, I still think that Vanguard's largest downfall was the fanboy, who just constantly belittled anyone, lied about performance issues, and attacked any/all criticism of the game. But it seems that age has gone.. so perhaps you'll be able to post constructive criticism peacefully
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
The free month ends on Jan. 20 as far as I can gleem from other forums. So if you want to give it another shot now is the time to do so.
As I had mentioned earlier I would try to update this forum thread as I journeyed through Telon. Well, I’ve not had a lot of time due to work constraints, but I have managed to spend a little time in Telon these last few days and have taken careful notes.
“Panthersn” had asked if the non-combat animations were fixed and if there were any changes to the ‘looking for group’ system.
The only character I’ve really seen is me – there hasn’t been anyone but me in the Gnomish starting area the times I’ve been on – but given that, the Gnome seems to be fairly connected to the ground for the run/walk cycle and the idle animations are fair I’d say.
I’ve not messed with the ‘LFG’ system yet, but I don’t know that many people use what is available given the number of “30-something class looking for group” messages in general chat I see when I’m on… So take that however you like.
There were a few points raised about experience. I did two levels; one just grinding and one using quests. Both worked out to take roughly the same amount of time given that I don’t know where any of the quest triggers are and have to spend a bit of time paging back and forth to the map. So if there was some disparity between ‘grind’ and ‘quest’ experience, it isn’t evident in the pre-level 10 game anymore.
I did get a chance to sample the death system first hand by attempting to run though a field of even-con MOBs to see what the agro system was like… MOBs do seem to move faster than players and once agro is achieved, I don’t think you can simply run away from the fight.
Anyways, I re-spawned where I first started the character and was able to fight my way back to where I died fairly easy.
All in all the game ran very smooth and looks very nice once you’ve spent the time to set it up for your specific hardware. The quests are well written and entertaining so far, though some liberties are taken with player knowledge - specifically in that V:SoH assumes players are familiar with general MMO concepts and doesn’t explain things like map use or inventory / equipment.
One example of the latter was that I’m used to playing a healer in WoW, which is a cloth-wearing class, so for the first 5 levels I was taking the cloth quest rewards and didn’t even think that the cleric class was a heavy armor wearer.
One graphical anomaly I noticed was during a quest where I had to find someone up on a hillside; the person needing to be found was *in* the hillside and only the name and the quest indicator was showing, and as I approached I too sunk into the hillside up to my neck. It’s been my experience that the starting areas for your players should have the most polish as it is the first few levels that either hook them or send them on their way. So to have a situation like this is fairly inexcusable to me – especially after a year of development.
But, it is easy to overlook these things and enjoy the overall ‘feeling’ of Telon. The game is quite immersive, even considering the over-use of shaders to make *everything* super-shiny which feels a bit over the top.
My next installment will hopefully see me past 10th level and a bit more active in the world outside the starting area.
I had so high hopes for Vanguard and I really really tried to love it. But 1 month after the release I could just not bare to log in to the game any more it was just plane boring but I did not admit that at the time. Don't think I will ever go back to the game. Bur great post anyway
I as well have been inbetween games, and decided to give Vanguard a try for the 1st time.
I followed the game pre-release and was excited about the potential, but just like many games potential doesn't make a quality-finished product. I didn't play the game upon release because a friend beat me to the purchase and warned me to stay clear because it was VERY buggy. I did so, but recently have been seeking a fun mmo to hold me over until my next big venture.
I decided to pick up Vanguard because it came down to 29.99, and you get a free 30 days in the box. What made me even interested was some recent post on the mmorpg.com forums about a recent patch that fixed many of the glaring issue's.
All that being said the game does have a few quirks, but I am able to play the game with max settings. The textures are amazing, but everything in the enviroment doesn't feel uniform . . . so I'm not sure why people rate the graphics so highly with game like lotro that win the graphics contest hands down. The music in the game is great, but the sound effects are nasty . . . just like the animations.
I'm not going to lay into the game, but I will say I enjoyed my time playing but will not be subscribing to the game. It was a great "extended" trial, but after playing for a month I don't see anything that says this is the mmo that will have content developed for it, and many months/years of enjoyment to come. So although I enjoy the game; the few bugs and lack of "legs" for the future will keep me from playing any longer. It's very sad because the game has more depth than any other mmo, but when everything is put in motion it just isn't a fluent product.
*** On a side note I work in a retailer where I get the game a few bucks cheaper. I shared my buddy key with a co-worker who also enjoyed the game. He decided he'd pick up the game to extend his free trial to decide if he wanted to stick with the game, but the game has been DISCONTINUED and will no longer be sold on the shelf . . . . at the largest electronic retailer in America . . . that speaks volumes for the future of the game imho. ****
I've had been playing VG since it came out and just recently quit because of the lack of players.
They have fixed most bugs and really streamlined the game with the last patch. They added "instanced" raiding. I played on the FFA PVP server so my insights are limited. But The only real reason i lost interest in the game is because of the lack of people now playing the game.
Its nothing like WoW in terms of completeness but its still a great game.
Most everyone playing the game now is a vet and therefore you will see hardly any "noobs" running around. Judge the game when you get to lvl 35-40.
I thnk the whole out of production thing is actually a great move by soe! by that i mean if it turns out to be what i would expect. They have stated many occasions that there will be a rerelease when the gme is at the right state. Yes i realise that just means a remarket, but actually changing the box to be more in line with the actual game can only be a good thing. This is just my own reasoning though i must admit aand i just hope they do continue with the product as if they didnt that would be a move to rival the star wars nge thingy. Imagine Soe leading all current subs into thinking the game will continue then pulling the rug from under them again...doe's anyone really think Soe will make the same mistake twice? Having read so many times about Mr smedley admitting to his mistake with NE and stating how he will not make the same mistake again. I really do think they have a lot to lose by doing this.