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Why can't VG do what LOTRO does?
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
I am currently subscribed to both LOTRO and VG, to satisfy my diverse MMO tastes, and I generally am fond of both games. However, what I dont understand is: why can Turbine/Codemasters, who are considerably smaller make BIG addons every 6-8 weeks for LOTRO and VG with the big and rich SOE makes so litte additions and changes? (The vast changes in the patch are still arbitrary things like "skill XYZ makes now 14 dmg instead of 18, fireball spell 8576 is now lv 48 instead of 46 and such crap.) So why? Why is progress with the big and rich Sony so slow, when LOTRO can fire big, great updates in such a fast speed?
I mean, seriously, balancing classes is nice and well, but you can balance a game to death! I really dont think its THAT big matter for VGs survival if generic attack No. 74983 makes 26 dmg or 28 and the patch notes of VG are still FULL of such crap. In the same time SOE made a single raid instance LOTRO got an entire new region, housing and whatnot! I sometimes wonder if SOE has only 5 devs now working on VG and it has entered SWG-mode now??
Read my lips, Sony: the speed of changes is WAY TOO SLOW.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
I think the biggest complaint about Vanguard has been the bugs. Therefore that has been where the development has taken place. On the other hand LOTR was released fairly bug free.
I think Vanguard has got tons of content for under lvl 50. I have been playing for a year and still have not seen it all. It was the content for lvl 50 that was needed. Therefore Vanguard concentrated on impelementing a raid dungoen. This feat should not be trivialized. Raids did not exsist before so all of the rule sets for raids had to be designed. They also chose to impelement the raid dungeon (APW) as an instance. This was another technology that did not exsist in the game before. Just recently the developers impelemnted new code which removed the lag problems in the instanced raid dungeon.
I am actually very impressed with the direction and determination that SOE has followed in recent months. I have been in other games where the developers refused to face up to major bugs and class imbalances and instead introduced fluffy new content to appease the users.
I do not play LOTR, but the one complaint I have heard is that the world is too small for some people. It makes sense that that game would therefore introduce new content and areas and leave the game engine alone.
I dont know much about the class balancing in LOTR, but I know all games generally have this issue. WoW is still constantly tweaking the class balance.
(edited for poor spelling)
That's a little silly thread, but anyway. The question is simple. The amount of workers is connected with the amount of subscribers. The more players the more workers.
That's the only reason why I would like to see a bit more people coming to VG, so they can afford a bit bigger team to add content.
REALITY CHECK
LoTR i couldnt even get to level 6 in the free trial the game is boring , bland and uninteresting Plus am happy to pay for vanguard the way it is right now , they added APW raid dungeon i could careless if i even see the inside of it in the next year , there so much to do in vanguard why would I really care what they add am not in a race to see anything
Nobody outside Turbine really knows how many subscribers LotRO has for sure but I'd guess from tid-bits of information I've picked up by playing both games, it's 10-20 times as many as Vanguard. So simply put, they have more money to invest in quality expansions.
the monthly, bimonthly updates is a thing Turbine has been doing for years and their engine was built with it in mind. I remember back when AC was new (and it still gets them I am to understand) each and every month, there would be some story line advancement or senario going on. The Shadow Invasion was one I went through and you actually wondered if your 'hamlet' was the one that was going to get wiped off the map (one did btw).
They have always looked to build the dynamic world where things are rarely really static, I'm glad to hear they are again successful with LotRO in that manner.
Even if Vanguard had the same number of developers as LOTRO, the pacing of new content still wouldn't be the same.
There's consequences to being the "second most expensive MMO ever", with a giant world, three spheres, 19 races and 15 classes. Obviously Vanguard's content is pretty pricey to produce, evident through an original 100-person strong payroll.
It's been a year and there's no word of an expansion pack. Little optimistic to even expect one considering the small team that does exist had to cease working on things like Diplomacy just to get APW out the door. I highly doubt they're capable of devoting any amount of resources to a shelf expansion pack. And the Game Updates...they're nothing compared to LOTRO's content updates, or even EQII's adventure packs.
But as others have said, SOE won't devote any manpower to Vanguard, not when it isn't making enough money to justify it.
Turbine has a reputation to up hold. When I played AC you could always look forward to the monthly content patch. VG has come a long way and has a long way to go, I think, until SOE considers it profitable enough to warrant putting more resources into it. This being said I feel that VGs day will come.
""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
Simple.
It's really easy to update tiny, low-res, low-poly, instanced, simplistic garbage with more tiny, low-res, low-poly, instanced, simplistic garbage.
Bite me, Turbine.
cus SOE arn't going to dedicate lots of developers on this game when theres sooo little playing so they transfer alot of them over to their current/future projects.
The reason is that Vanguard is running on a skeleton crew of developers. SOE bought it cheap and they aren't planning on really doing anything with it. Welcome to the Station Pass Life-Support System.
I'm sure it's very time consuming changing things created by Sigil. Imagine you are presented with a problem that must be adressed. First you have to translate this language (which is mispelled, full of grammatical errors AND in a language you're not familiar with) and interpret what was intended (because the person who created it is no longer available to provide insight), then move on to the best way to fix it or recreate it.
Now imagine that someone dropped a folder with 1200 of these problems on your desk.
I'm sure some of the more trivial things are just "case closed" issues. Something that's quick to fix so you can get it behind you and move on. Whittling down the list sometimes helps your outlook of your workload.
If you plan to stick with VG, expect very slow progress. Expecting anything else will definitely leave you disappointed.
Simply put its SOE. Vanguard, during development, was a nearly doomed title and SOE has basically had to develop the game from a pre-beta state to a releasable state while the game was live. While I looked in on it over the holiday period the only thing I noticed that had changed was some improvements to stability. Everything else was horrid, imo.
LoTRO on the other hand released in an extremely stable state. The developers at turbine (Codemasters does some localization work) have had nothing but additions and minor bug corrections to do. The largest differences are in how the game was developed and tested.
I was in both beta tests. Here is LoTRO, in a nutshell. They released, to the testers, Breeland. No North Downs, no Forsaken Inn, no Elf lands, no dorf lands, no hobbit lands. No Angmar, no Trollshaws, nothing except Breeland. Then came the shire and the land between the shire and bree. Still nothing to the North and nothing on the farside of Breeland. Then came the Lonelands and their endless boar quests. Then came the North Downs, then the Trollshaws, then the elf and dorf starting lands, then the misty mountains and about a week or so from release Angmar. Everything was, except for angmar, pounded on and tested excessively before Turbine moved on to the next area.
Vanguard on the other hand was a complete and utter clusterfu** from the first time I entered into beta. Everything was thrown together haphazardly with no cohesive structure to tie one area to the next. Hell, there still isn't a cohesive story as to why the hell any character would want to adventure in those lands rather than just fall on their swords. Sigil knew they were in trouble and took a large portion of the world offline for "retooling". Then came the news about MS pulling out and Brad running to his buddies at SOE begging them to save his ass.
The development team at Turbine was in constant discussion with us, their testers. They took our feedback made changes to the game that we inspired, or told us why they thought one way was better than another. The flipside of the coin was Sigil. Communication from the developers completely shut down once they took down a large part of the gameworld. Bugs were no longer addressed and most of the bugs that were in release had been in the beta for a year or longer. Testers grew disenfranchised as the silence continued and, unlike the beta test in lotro, Vanguard was a ghost town. Those of you that have played the game know how large the game world is. Imagine that game world with 15-20 people, at most!
Sigil and by design, SOE, are incapable of doing what Turbine does. Turbine actually discusses things with their playerbase. They take the suggestions from the playerbase and try to make the game something that the players want to play. SOE on the other hand can care less what the playerbase thinks. They will tell you what you like and to hell with you if you disagree. And if you disagree enough they will just forum ban you rather than engage in a discussion.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
thanks for that LOL.
VG is buggy, needs a big computer but it has MUCH more to propose than a repetitive bashing, and 4 boring classes.
"And if you disagree enough they will just forum ban you"
Completely WRONG
Told what i think about VG AND last extension of EQ2 on OFFICIAL forums, explained why etc on official SOE Contact (community )
No banishment at all, very nice people; cool and they let you SAY what you want: i have permanent contacts with SOE , nice contacts. nice people nice contacts, productor himself talks directly to players on forums.
Completely WRONG
1° never beeing banished or something else, NEVER. Never had a problem with SOE, they always answer, by PM etc. I'm in contact with EU community manager since 4 months, each week we talk by PM. Never had 1 pb, even when i said and wrote on official forums ROK wasn't interesting, no more no less than a wow like extension.
2° SOE is really working on this game and i can say TRial is approaching. April or MAYBE march (cf PM from SOE)
--------------------------------
never had problems with SOE, Mythic/GOA, CM/Turbine/ or Funcom or Blizzard etc etc etc. NEVER. They are ALL professionals. All of them.
The pbs you can have ? Only with some players, specially with fanboys and hateboys.
Yeah, actually out of all the soe games I've played, VG Devs were the nicest and most helpful to me. It's quite odd, as I've had bad customer service with soe in the past, but this seems to not be case with (current) VG. They were basically falling over themselves, trying to help me and answer my questions. Like I said before, quite odd.
Elikal no offence ment but didnt you start a thread a month ago about how in over 4 years of gaming you have never got one character to max level , Now personally i find your topic kinda strange coming from someone who admits that they haven't even done the orginal content that came with vanguard . Now they have added APW as everyone already knows which is massive dungeon. You might want to max lev one of your characters and at least do the content thats there before you complain about getting more , don't you think
Just seems to me like you complain about the smallest little things and your really one of the more talented writers that post here. Did you know that PC gamer magazine is looking for the next big game reviewer , go check it out at PCGamer.com , you have till Feb 10 to submit a 150 word review of the game Peggle . Whatever game that is am not sure never heard of it But honestly you do have a flare for the written word, give it a go who knows you might have fun for once
But alas. I would have liked to see it grow and expand on the VG basic game. As they say, I felt it has potential. But unlike others, I also think VG needs MUCH more than just tech polish and bug fixing. Its way too sterile and "boring" in too many ways as it is, in terms of story telling and animated world design. But it doesnt seem we can expect anything now in that term, sadly.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Elikal no offence ment but didnt you start a thread a month ago about how in over 4 years of gaming you have never got one character to max level , Now personally i find your topic kinda strange coming from someone who admits that they haven't even done the orginal content that came with vanguard . Now they have added APW as everyone already knows which is massive dungeon. You might want to max lev one of your characters and at least do the content thats there before you complain about getting more , don't you think
Just seems to me like you complain about the smallest little things and your really one of the more talented writers that post here. Did you know that PC gamer magazine is looking for the next big game reviewer , go check it out at PCGamer.com , you have till Feb 10 to submit a 150 word review of the game Peggle . Whatever game that is am not sure never heard of it But honestly you do have a flare for the written word, give it a go who knows you might have fun for once
Where to begin... first, it seems an odd critic of my critic to say I should have a max level char before I can have a valid opinion of a game, really. But I am quite happy to see you are such a vivid fan of my writings that you memorize everything I say - even tho I really dont see how that is connected to this topic.
Second, I didnt ask for VG doing exactly the same, like adding new landmasses, but I find VGs existing lands are very sterile, both in terms of quests and lore as in animated world design and other things. I just find much of the VG world sterile and barren, it doesnt emotionally catch me, no matter how nice it looks, and there would have been much much more to add into the existing places, instead of mere skill juggling back and forth. My impression is just the run VG now with a minimal crew. Recall those interview with one of the former VG devs? He said Smed was quite angered what "crap" Sigil sold him - whatever that says about Smed, for me thats a hint VG has gone into SWG mode of minimal crew work, alas.
I mean, generally speaking (not personally to you) I understand in an era where masses watch Big Brother in TV and cheap soaps, many have a kind of underdeveloped sense of storytelling, and maybe the expectations of such people are not very high. Computer games seldom were on par with novels, granted, but the incoherent tossed together world and region lore, storytelling and dramatization of stories we see in Vanguard really is a new low, which is just based on the spilled out fact it was created in one year by people who never before made a MMO. Still, you cant seriously tell me VG is NOT VERY lacking in any professional terms of storytelling, EVEN for a computer game!
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
For a game to be a contender in the market, there must be a balance of solo, group, and raid content. While VG has more than enough mid-level group content, there certainly isn't enough content to satisfy a diverse player base.
Likewise, 1 raid dungeon is only going to keep raiders happy for so long. Before you take a swing with "nobody has killed the dragon yet", that's true, but it will die probably within the next month and then APW will be conquered. How long until the next raid dungeon? 6 months? Another year? And if they are working so hard on another raid dungeon, then what of the high level group content or solo content that non-raiders are calling for?
I'm guessing that the dev team is too small to focus on anything aside from 1 "big project" every 6 months, and that first 1 will be the trial and newbie area revamp. Then what playstyle benefits from the next "big project"? Raiders, soloers, groupers? Low levels, mid levels, high levels? Adventurers, crafters, diplomats? These are the questions that subscribers ask and SOE refuses to answer. Hell, they may not even know yet themselves. They may only start talking about future additions after the trial is live.
As I've said before, expect slow progress. If you are unhappy with what you're getting now, expect it to stay that way for several months. If you group primarily and SOEs next "big project" is another raid zone, you could be looking at 1 year+ until content is added to compliment your playstyle. Same goes for all other playstyles
Myself i tryed diplo didnt like it much , but my guild was getting the hall plot , so i did my part and helped out and tryed a bunch of the diplo quests and there is a story there and its all connected , i think its the way the lore is presented in vanguard is the major flaw because if you dont do diplo there basicly isnt one just a bunch of random stories like you said
I used to ride through places before i did diplo and it was just 3 rivers a little village , now after doing diplo i ride through there and i know the people and thier storys , i know the struggles and hardships that they face. Yes there only npc's standing around but now at least in my mind i can make it seem alive and thats all i really need a game to supply me the rest my imagination can supply
The lore is there you just have to work a little harder to find it than most games LoTR has no choice but to add content as fast as they do its a linear mmo based on a series of books they wouldnt keep anyone playing if they didnt do that ,but what happens when they get to the end of the book The game has very limited replayablity unless you like doing the same content over and over Great game i think they did i good job making it but nothing i would pay for
LoTRo is the perfect contrast to VG in so many ways.
There is a bit of hope for the "vanguardians". SoE licenced the U3 engine and i guess The Agency will run on this engine. There will be U3 tools and SoE inhouse tools. At some point it might happen that SoE will port vanguard to the U3 engine. Just like Funcom ports the dated AO to their new v2.0 engine at the moment.
Neither game has nearly as many instances as most current games do. AC has instanced dungeons but they are all public.
LOTRO has some simplistic play, I'll give you that. AC is anything but simplistic.
I dont know what your problem with Turbine is, but you obviously have NO clue about there games. Maybe your pissed about AC2 which yes, it could have been handled much better.
No them games have full development teams working on them, Vanguard has about 3 people.
LoTR and Turbine are doing a good job. I don't expect to see VG being able to provide updates or content near as fast as LoTR probably ever. There are several reasons for this.
LoTR has;
A larger development team
A smaller game world that is much more focused
A massive amount of off the shelf lore plus players come into the game knowing the lore
VG by contrast
Lots of Bugs and Performance issues. Game was released in beta state at best.
The world is huge and isn't well populated with content and lore. Higher lvl stuff feels thrown in.
VG development tools are in probably worse state then the game.
Game isn't making enough money to get a large development team.
So I'm expecting VG to improve slowly. On the other had the scope of VG is much larger then LoTR and if they can fix the content issues, bugs, and performance which they appear to be working through then VG would be a fantastic platform to build on for years to come.
I think this year will be key for VG. They will relaunch the game later this year with the trial island not sure how much they will put into the relaunch but it will be something. As a result they will either see a gain in subs that will cause the dev team to grow and the game to start developing more quickly. Or the subs will not grow and the game will sit on life support going nowhere with minor updates and content adds. I'm pretty sure we will know for sure which way Soe is going to go with this before long.
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Ethion