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If Vanguard had been released in it's current state
parmenion
Member Posts: 260
I think it would have been a moderate success, the difference between it's potential and the reality of current playability is far closer than it was a year ago.
I really haven't run into any bugs over the last monthish I've been playing for free, and the performance is so much more viable for my aging rig now. The class system is definately one of the most satisfying of any MMO even if I'd personally change some stuff around, but everyone has personal opinions on how they'd fine-tune this or that class and I really enjoy the grouping mechanics, actual roles and responsbilities is so much more satisfying than a mindless zerg with only DPS or primitive "healz" as qualifiers.
After seeing the dumbed down depths to which some of the more recent MMO releases have sunk (inferior WoW quest grind clones with no abilities just point and hold mouse button, that's it, without even much pointing required as just 1 example) it's nice to find sufficient engine performance in a game that has more than a handful of abilities for your character.
I'll be re-subbing and see how it goes, there's a pretty comprehensive retune of my current class in the works and I definitely want to see how that turns out.
Be interested to hear how other free month players are finding it, responses seem pretty upbeat so far, apparently rabid +/- is no longer the only mode for vanguard posters.
Comments
I predict it would sell >200k copies
Merge servers in 6 months.
Fire half the dev team.
Or, it could have been so damn good that I would become a VG-fanboy and AoC's and WAR's release date closing would make me feel a bit worried.
So i guess will just have to wait and see what thier final released products are like
This I agree with. The classes are very nicely divided and skilled out.
It wouldn't make any difference cause the core list of things that people have a problem with this game still arn't fixed.
Examples, please?
Bite me, Turbine.
I guess it would be a decent success now.
Still - it has also lost in many areas.
Like the too high xp in the adventuring sphere. People have leveled from 1 to 50 in a single week ! And thats not the record.
And the really stupid "bind on equip" and worse "bind on pickup" crap. Just because WoW has it doesnt make it a good idea.
The different between Vanguard now and at launch is enormous. Bug fixes and performance enhancements have delivered huge gameplay improvements. I think if the game was launched as it is today I would be a much bigger success because of these improvemements. It's not completely 'polished' but there aren't any game-breaking issues anymore that would drive people away like it did a year ago.
This the Adamantine I used to harvest with in Southwatch?
Hypnus
Bind on Pickup you say?
Bind on Pickup you say?
They actually didn't go with Bind on Pickup. They did go with Bind on Equip, which I don't like, but it's a helluva lot better than Bind on Pickup. So yes, you can loot nice items and either deconstruct, sell or give to somebody else.
Well, yes - most rare and heroic drops are bind on pickup. In fact, they indended to make them all bind on pickup, but sometimes an item slipped through. Only those items, and drops before that change, can be rare and "only" be bind on equip.
Which means you can often only deconstruct them, because you cant use them on that character anyway.
Even worse, even situations where it doesnt make sense at all, like these missive quests - the result is rare, so - *bang* ! - its soulbound. So now you're actually angry if the result of a missive is rare, because then its often worthless to you and only gives a lowly dust ... of which many are really not very useful.
Same for crafting gear. At least now with the changed system, its no longer typical you do endlessly gray and light blue batches.
Lesser quality drops, and crafted gear, is bind on equip. Not much better.
The results where obvious: most people dont want to buy high quality gear that isnt maxlevel, except maybe a good weapon or a good chestpiece. Its a useless waste of money for them, as they cant resell the item.
And I have to say - if it would have been this way before I started playing, I wouldnt have started either.
so first of all, boe and bop were not created in WoW, everything any game ever does was NOT created in WoW, WoW has taken aspects of OTHER games and used and improved upon them, don't make yourself look stupid by assuming WoW invented everything.
secondly, BoP and BoE are great, it prevents twinking to an extent, it prevents farming of mobs and many other things I don't feel are necessary to explain.
I've been playing for a month, and don't have a 50 yet, so unless you're talking about 6 guys that group together everday, play for 14 hours a day without showering, no girlfriends and eat hot pockets with a microwave + refrigerater next to their desk, which is a hybrid toilet, then I think the xp curve is just about right.
The different between Vanguard now and at launch is enormous. Bug fixes and performance enhancements have delivered huge gameplay improvements. I think if the game was launched as it is today I would be a much bigger success because of these improvemements. It's not completely 'polished' but there aren't any game-breaking issues anymore that would drive people away like it did a year ago.
- Boring clases
- Boring races
- Animals races don't have tails and look like humans with a different texture
- Ugly bland graphics
- Ugly character models
- Big empty world
- It's not easy to egt into the game which puts 99% of people off
- Bad voice acting
- Boring quests
- Quests are few and far between
- Broken economy
- Hackers everywhere
- Corpse runs are tedious and boring, aleast in WOW you couldn't die running to your corpse but it's just a pointless timesink
- The PVP is crap
- Unbalanced classes
- The world feels lifeless
- The characters feel lifeless with no expressions just look like dolls
- Combat animations are sooo poor
- Spell effects are poor
- No helmets
etc etc.
I could go on forever, when i came back to the game with a 21 day thing in late december i saw no changes what so ever apart from my FPS gone up by 10 now to 40 but i'm using crossfire 3870 when i was using a x1950xtx before so no suprise there......... every time i turned around it went all stuttery lol.
I dunno you fans keep saying how much it's changed but tbh it hasn't changed one bit, still a pile of crap and if it launched today it still wouldn't have anyone playing. Only problem now is when you start a new character you wont see anyone for days and you'll quit by then cause it's boring playing on your own.
Pointless speculation.
Once a MMORPG launches bad, and V:SoH launched VERY bad, it is over.
Game can limp along with all the other SOE All-Access-Pass losers, but it will never achieve the status of a real AAA MMORPG.
MMORPG customers simply won't invest the TIME necessary to find out, once again, if a previously unnaceptable game is now 'ok'.
And it does not help that Brad slammed SOE for years and continually boasted about how great Sigil and the 'Vision' were. Then promptly sold out to SOE, betraying the entire staff of Sigil and all of the loyal supporters of V:SoH.
Game deserves to die.
So let it be written.
So let it be done.
There are examples of games that had a bad launch and did come back. Eve is such a game. It had an aweful launch and was crap for most of the first year. But the devs kept at it fixing bugs and refining it and it more then any game has been growing month after month consistently.
So can vanguard come back, sure it can. Will it come back that remains to be seen and while it would be nice is rather rare and the devs will need to be very good to make it happen.
So there is some while there is life there is hope!!
---
Ethion
How are you only getting 40FPS w/X-fired 3870s?!?!?!? Somethings not right there.
With a single 3870, i stay at 55-75FPS everywhere i go... except coming into crowded areas / towns etc and it will drop to 40 briefly then jump back up. If i turn OFF vsync and tripple buffer im at 117-120FPS in the open ... but alot of image tearing if i turn to fast ... so use use tripple buffer./vysc so it looks better. And this is at high settings and 6X AA ...
So with 2 3870's i would think youd do at least the same ... somethings not set right or out of whack if your struggling to get 40FPS w/. X-fired 3870's. A single card runs VG flawlessly....
Not to mention ... my old 1950pro 512 got 25-30 on avg.. so if your only getting 10FPS increase from 2 of these when 1 would yield bit better than 25FPS increase or so ... yea again .. something bad wrong there.
I have seen a couple of tech forum threads where people said that having twin video card setups (crossfire/sli) has actually hurt vanguards performance and turning off some mode in the settings fixes it. This is all second hand though as I don't have either of those setups.
That may well be the case .... no other reason that a single one should do twice as well as a Xfire config.
Doesn't matter whether it was released in it current state or a highly polished one. The situation would be the same, people would hate it, people would love it and in the end people would play it. It wouldn't kill WoW and some would hate it because SOE was involved.
So in the end nothing would change.
""But Coyote, you could learn! You only prefer keyboard and mouse because that's all you've ever known!" You might say right before you hug a rainforest and walk in sandals to your drum circle where you're trying to raise group consciousness of ladybugs or whatever it is you dirty goddamn hippies do when you're not busy smoking pot and smelling bad."
Coyote's Howling: Death of the Computer
Vanguard doesn't have SLi support, so automatically, anyone running a single card will have better performance than someone running in SLi, since the game doesn't recognize the dual setup.
Unfortunately nowadays people seem to want dumbed down repetitive content where they can get their [Uber Sword of Noob Slaying] with minimal effort. Gone are the days of camping spawns so you could get the rare items that very few people had.
Vanguard's landscape is dull in many areas but the major cities are incredible especially New Targ. The game was cursed from the beginning due to performance and while it has improved, it's still not a smooth running game by any stretch of the imagination. I prefer outdoor dungeons and no instances it encourages communication between raid groups and helps build a more close knit community. But that's just me.
Due to WoW's success it will be a long time before we have a true sandbox game again.
That's because most of the people who might have spent 8+ hours a day camping that Uber Sword are now saddled with more adult things, like mortgages, families, and jobs. Who wants to sit there in one spot for weeks on end to camp one sword anymore? That's tedious.
Judging by the market now, people would rather get into a game and just play rather than spend all their time travelling somewhere, or trying to get a group together, or camping that one spawn point for days on end.
If Vanguard was just launched today it would most likely retain more subscribers, a lot more. While the game wouldn't be called a smooth launch by any means, it would have been much more tolerable instead of game stopping. I speculate that the box sales would have continued to climb instead of hitting the bargain bin inside a couple months. The market still have a large vacuum waiting to be filled.
That would lead to more developers being retained which would lead to more projects being assigned. Vanguard would potentially be talking about future expansion packs instead of still grinding wheels on fixing core systems.
All of the above is assuming most of the Sigil team was still employed and not the skeleton crew the game has right now. I don't think there is enough staff right now to support what the game needs in a decent time frame so it is a moot question.
I'll keep my eyes peeled. But I honestly don't remember seeing a single bind on pickup item on any mob. Soulbound yes, and they've soulbound some stuff I wish they didn't. I don't think I'd miss seeing a bind on pick-up either because I have confirmation on for both soulbound looting and bind on equip.