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Vanguard Hardcore Server
Buccaneer
Member UncommonPosts: 654
Just a heads up to some of the old VG players, or people who are fed-up how MMO's have got easier over the years.
The lead dev Silius has started a poll on the offical boards regarding how many people would play VG like it was at launch. I've posted the links below.
http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=28188 The offical poll
http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=28170 The poll which got the offical one started.
Just wanted to know what you guy's and girls think.
Would you be tempted to play VG if the ruleset was more challenging.
Added a poll below.
EDIT: This was moved from The Pub to here. Sorry I wasn't trying to fill the board with the same discussion.
Comments
They nerfed it already?
Of course, it's what SOE does best. They did the same thing to classic EQ after consuming Verant.
This game hasn't been around long enough for this kind of question.
"Oh how I long for the good old days of Vanguard!"
See, it just sounds wrong.
Depends who you ask, but IMO yes.
Didn't they have this poll already?
most people voted no.. which is why we have 4 servers now..
I'd also like to know what they "nerfed" to make the game easier.
I hit 50 in VG at launch faster than I hit "end game" in WoW... you mean it got easier? I go back now and then to play but since I am not grinding levels.. I guess I don't notice.
I voted No but that is because I do not consider that ruleset to be challenging or to have any affect on challenge.
In fact I think its misleading to call it a "hardcore" server. Its just a masochist server. Sadism is not challenging. In fact Masochism and Sadism are easier to defeat because they have fixed, predictable behavior. They really aren't more hardcore in anyway they simply have a need to inflict or receive pain. They don't necessarily play more or have more dedication or more ability or anything else.
I don't like doing dangerous downhills when I am out mountain biking, yet I risk getting broken limbs or choked out when I do a BJJ tournament. And i have seen people twitching and foaming at the mouth before from chokes and near chokes. So while its rare it does happen. Am I suddenly softcore because I don't like unneccessary risks? Wrestling has very little risk of getting any broken limbs or choked out people barring a ref messing up or bad accident. If you think a collegiate wrestler is softcore compared to a BJJ guy then that is just plain silly, collegiate wrestlers are frigging crazy hardcore. You can't get more hardcore. Most of them are beats, literally, with just plain amazing dedication. Yet wrestling is arguably less "risky" than BJJ. This whole penalty thing as hardcore is just kind of silly.
Defeating the encounters on this server will not be any harder. The exact same strategies will work exactly the same on either one and requires the exact same amount of ability. The only difference is how masochistic the people on them are. "Beat me I have been bad. Oooo yeah that hurts so good"
Didn't they have this poll already?
most people voted no.. which is why we have 4 servers now..
I'd also like to know what they "nerfed" to make the game easier.
I hit 50 in VG at launch faster than I hit "end game" in WoW... you mean it got easier? I go back now and then to play but since I am not grinding levels.. I guess I don't notice.
I think the poll you mentioned was for the RP server just before the merge.
Since launch SOE and Sigil started the ball rolling, we have lost or gained.
Gained increase rate of XP gain, Gained Riftways (think EQ PoP books) and after Game Update 4 goes live the riftways will be trebbled. Gained rented flying mounts. Death penatly has been reduced, Double XP weekends and Holidays. WoW's rest XP. We have lost Equipment Expertise and gained BoE/BoP and after GU 4 every named mobs loot will be BoP and unable to deconstruct to dusts for crafting. Also after GU 4 evey named mob will have there names in capital letter's so you can see them better amongst the trash mobs. Faction has been removed, but it has been noted it will be improved and placed back at a later date. Just a few things, I'm sure there's more but cancelled a few months into the game and just recently came back.
I think alot of the people on the offical boards are more interested in challenging content, bringing back the immersion, being afraid of whats around the corner, more choice in how you define your character with elements like equipment expertise. I agree challenging does not equal tedium and alot of people are asking for challenging quests i.e EQ's epic quests without the long spawn timers, instead of faction grinding, kill x amount of mobs etc. I gather alot of people are fed-up with the tank and spank mobs of modern games (excluding raiding).
Didn't they have this poll already?
most people voted no.. which is why we have 4 servers now..
I'd also like to know what they "nerfed" to make the game easier.
I hit 50 in VG at launch faster than I hit "end game" in WoW... you mean it got easier? I go back now and then to play but since I am not grinding levels.. I guess I don't notice.
Since launch SOE and Sigil started the ball rolling, we have lost or gained.Gained increase rate of XP gain, Gained Riftways (think EQ PoP books) and after Game Update 4 goes live the riftways will be trebbled. Gained rented flying mounts. Death penatly has been reduced, Double XP weekends and Holidays. WoW's rest XP. We have lost Equipment Expertise and gained BoE/BoP and after GU 4 every named mobs loot will be BoP and unable to deconstruct to dusts for crafting. Also after GU 4 evey named mob will have there names in capital letter's so you can see them better amongst the trash mobs. Faction has been removed, but it has been noted it will be improved and placed back at a later date. Just a few things, I'm sure there's more but cancelled a few months into the game and just recently came back.
This whole thing is caused by the risk vs reward myth. Its completely stupid.
When they realize that risk is its own reward and there is a threshold on that reward and that everyone sees this to slightly different degrees then these things will make much more sense.
The fact is some people like the adrenaline or intensity of harsh things. Like I mentioned in my above post some people love a dangerous downhill on a mountain bike many people would never do that and think you are crazy. And remember people take those risk for NO OTHER REWARDS AT ALL.
I hate rollercoasters and always have. Many people love them because they give adrenaline with no risk at all. This idea that there is some rule or even any sense to this is complete crap.
All they need to do is offer low/medium/heavy risk servers and leave it at that. Then the only thing is to figure out which types would have which percentage of the population. We KNOW for a FACT that some people like high risk things. Whether its enough to support one VG servers I don't know but no question a few WoW server could get filled.
Frankly you don't even need server sets. DDO perma-death guilds prove that. But I guess they are the real hardcore not a bunch of pansy whiners who want someone else to do stuff for them so they can pretend to be hardcore. But even that is not "hardcore" its really a completely different playstyle for people with a very different mentality about there characters. The funny thing about DDO perma-death guilds is they understand on some level that what I am saying is completely true. They like the edge. But they could never continue in their guidls if they were progression oriented, they are essentially playing a different game. They are not "hardcore" they are different. When you take it to the perma-death extreme you come to realize this whole argument about hardcore is actually complete crap that misses the point entirely.
I think alot of the people on the offical boards are more interested in challenging content, bringing back the immersion, being afraid of whats around the corner, more choice in how you define your character with elements like equipment expertise. I agree challenging does not equal tedium and alot of people are asking for challenging quests i.e EQ's epic quests without the long spawn timers, instead of faction grinding, kill x amount of mobs etc. I gather alot of people are fed-up with the tank and spank mobs of modern games (excluding raiding).
I don't mean to say you are silly for using or even that the devs are silly. Its a term that has been seized by the adovcates for it. They seize the highground just like FFA pvp people do. Trying to appear tough. Its a typical male oriented tactic.But its tactic that simply doesn't work on me and so I attack the term itself because it is provbably silly. Once you agree to their terms you cede to them that they are the "real deal". But its all just a fiction to satisfy their e-peens and get male "street cred". But they are just posers and when they are called on it they usually just talk and have no real action. They try to win their point by belittling the other side in a passive aggressive way. They put the other point of view on the low ground by seizing the higher ground.
I don't mean you, I mean the advocates, in general, for this point of view.
But its tactic that simply doesn't work on me and so I attack the term itself because it is provbably silly. Once you agree to their terms you cede to them that they are the "real deal". But its all just a fiction to satisfy their e-peens and get male "street cred". But they are just posers and when they are called on it they usually just talk and have no real action. They try to win their point by belittling the other side in a passive aggressive way. They put the other point of view on the low ground by seizing the higher ground.
I don't mean you, I mean the advocates, in general, for this point of view.
No worries m8, I gathered it was aimed at the term hardcore.
In Software Enginerring you might call this process Requirement Illicitation, although these are really preferences not requirements. But either way one of the key parts of doing that is narrowing things down to small specific units.
Lets look at the original versus current VG; it had harsher Death Penalties and more travel time. Well i dislike both. I think they are both stupid in the context of vanguard (I do not dislike them in EvE, but I do in VG styke games). Some people love harsh death penalties, but hate to waste time in travel and do not find it immersive. Some people love the immersion of travel times but think harsh death penalties are just stupid. And of course there are people who love both.
So this poll is going to tell them very little about what their customers want its just a big nebulous ball string. If the majority of players are the 1-1 type you will get all kinds of confusing gray area discussion with all sorts of concerns smooshed together. And fot this yes/no poll thread a large majority of them may see very little gain from going back even though they voted yes. Maybe they want the travel times but the death penalty will.
The reason I attack that "hardcore" phrase is that another thing it does is imply that all these things are related. That people who love travel times also love harsh death penalties because of some common mentality. Well that is complete bup kiss.
Everyone always tries to portray themselves as if they are 1) toughers than the everyone who isn't in their group and 2) like their group is some kind of united majority.
There is no hardcore group. Its a myth. This Poll is a good idea but its terrible in its execution and sadly it is one of the reasons for the problems for VG.
What you actually have is a group of people who think they are all hardcore because they like a few out of some 10 or so features and they like those features taken to an extreme. Then they all get lumped together and no one has any idea how to satisfy them reasonably or in a consistent manner becasue they keep hearing stuff that is hard to figure out.
This is not the customers fault. All customers in all aspects of the Software market do this. Frankly most users are an annoying and contradictory pain in the ass. However its the developers JOB to illicit these things in a organized and useful manner, and this poll shows how bad and clueless many of the are about illictation. They just assume that all that stuff "fits" together and yet it really should be obvious by now that they do not necessarily all come together in an obvious consistuency.
I never found vanguard 'challenging',I still dont understand why people try to make out this was some kind of hardcore game. It just had a few ancient features bolted on which in this day and age arent needed.
Tedium and repetition do not = challenge.
step 1, release game with aggravating bugs and issues, before developers and beta testers say it's even close to launch-ready.
step 2, watch game begin to tank because it's busted all to hell.
step 3, instead of fixing serious bugs and issues that people have been highlighting for months or more, change the core game mechanics, oversimplify, "borrow" ideas from World of Warcraft.
What I don't get at this point is why can't they see what they're doing, and why can't they see that this doesn't work??
I agree, it's misleading to call it a hardcore server, there's nothing hardcore about playing a computer game. I only used hardcore due to the VG dev using it.I think alot of the people on the offical boards are more interested in challenging content, bringing back the immersion, being afraid of whats around the corner, more choice in how you define your character with elements like equipment expertise. I agree challenging does not equal tedium and alot of people are asking for challenging quests i.e EQ's epic quests without the long spawn timers, instead of faction grinding, kill x amount of mobs etc. I gather alot of people are fed-up with the tank and spank mobs of modern games (excluding raiding).
I don't mean to say you are silly for using or even that the devs are silly. Its a term that has been seized by the adovcates for it. They seize the highground just like FFA pvp people do. Trying to appear tough. Its a typical male oriented tactic.But its tactic that simply doesn't work on me and so I attack the term itself because it is provbably silly. Once you agree to their terms you cede to them that they are the "real deal". But its all just a fiction to satisfy their e-peens and get male "street cred". But they are just posers and when they are called on it they usually just talk and have no real action. They try to win their point by belittling the other side in a passive aggressive way. They put the other point of view on the low ground by seizing the higher ground.
I don't mean you, I mean the advocates, in general, for this point of view.
Tbh I think you're reading an awful lot into the term. Now I know what the term means to you, but I'm quite certain it doesn't have those connotations or manipulative intentions for many others who use it.
Are you casual or hardcore for example, may just mean do you play for 4 hours at a time generally, or 1? I'm a "casual" player by those definitions. I don't feel that the "hardcore" people are trying to say they're better than me, or that they're the real deal.
If my play-style was different, I'd have different in-game preferences too. I think good games have a nice mix of features for casual or hard-core players. Again, using my own definition for the term. For example, I like the CoH and CoV games. If I ever get a weekend where I can just play 'till my heart's content, I'll do a long task force, and go for some of the nice loot rewards at the end of that. However, since I usually don't have that much time to game, I do the missions that take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour to accomplish. I can still get sweet drops, but they occur randomly. If I don't want to wait for that, I go to the auction house and see what's up for bidding.
The idea to have different servers for people with different preferences, however, does work well in some games. I've played WoW and had to pick a "realm" that is set up for different play styles. It's not a bad idea, if it's done well, and really I think that's the key.
Also imagine this for a moment: Instead of dismantling entire games by changing core rules and mechanics, companies like SOE open up pilot servers with the new rule sets. Let people play the pilot for a few months, then get feedback. See how the populations shift, or not. Get feedback from the players about features that they like or don't on the different servers. Make sure players know that the pilot will only exist for a set time, and not beyond, so they can make an informed decision about playing in light of that.
When all is said and done, share the data with the players and ask them how they'd like it to best be incorporated into their gaming experience. Do they want to incorporate some of the new rulesets into the existing game? If so, how can that be done without screwing over people's previous accomplishments?
OR
Do they like to have the option of playing both rulesets? Casual on weeknights, hardcore on weekends.
This allows room for experimentation and growth, but players are an integral part of the process, and nobody gets the shaft.
This pilot model is utilized widely in other industries. I think it would have been a much superior model to what SOE has done in games like Vanguard and StarWars Galaxies.
This is similar to putting things out on test servers, but I'm suggesting the new rule-set servers be polished. So that is unlike "test."
Also, SOE has a habit of making token use of test servers. They don't really care about player feedback it seems, and certainly don't act on it. They may just put something on "test" for a couple of weeks, to say something ridiculous like "players on test are raving about the New Game Enhancements." What they omit is the term "mad." "Players are raving mad" would have been more accurate.
step 1, release game with aggravating bugs and issues, before developers and beta testers say it's even close to launch-ready.
step 2, watch game begin to tank because it's busted all to hell.
step 3, instead of fixing serious bugs and issues that people have been highlighting for months or more, change the core game mechanics, oversimplify, "borrow" ideas from World of Warcraft.
What I don't get at this point is why can't they see what they're doing, and why can't they see that this doesn't work??
Nail. Hammer. Hit.
As for Arc's question, it's the definition of insanity reworded. They keep doing the same stupid things expecting different results.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
I played Vanguard for a month back when it came out.
The most memorable thing about VG is the bugs.
People started leaving the game in droves. In an effort to stir up some interest, the devs implementing flying mount rentals.
I told a fellow guildy as we watched someone take off, 'no way in hell i'm getting on that death trap.'
Sure enough the early adopter hit a chunk line and fell to his death. He was so high up that it took him a minute to hit the ground. Negative xps.
When they opened up the rift gates, the gates would teleport you well enough, but occasionally teleport you to a spot hundreds of yards up in the air. Negative xps.
Anything that's good for the community but tbh Vanguard is a crap game so I'm not returning.
Kinda a poor poll in my opinion. Should have an option for people that are playing and want to play on the non hardcore servers....
---
Ethion
The model of release with bugs and use early revenues to fix them is no longer viable. To get high subscription yield, you now need high front end development investment. The early pioneer days are gone.
SOE is clinging to "Wright Brother" standards for MMO games. People expect airplanes to fly all the time now. Flying periodically for a half a minute just isn't good enough any longer. It's the same kind of thing with this game genre. Until SOE wakes up to this new reality, they're going to struggle and wonder why.
Didn't they have this poll already?
most people voted no.. which is why we have 4 servers now..
I'd also like to know what they "nerfed" to make the game easier.
I hit 50 in VG at launch faster than I hit "end game" in WoW... you mean it got easier? I go back now and then to play but since I am not grinding levels.. I guess I don't notice.
I think the poll you mentioned was for the RP server just before the merge.
Since launch SOE and Sigil started the ball rolling, we have lost or gained.
I'll apologize since my sarcarstic remark probably didn't translate well in text and I certainly wasn't trying to make any poster here feel odd..
What I was referring to.. was... launching the game period.
The original ruleset (bugs or not) was what the game launched with. So basicly every time a "cancel" button was pushed.. it was a "no" vote.
I also guess I could admit I played a cleric at launch.. but mostly because my guild only had a blood mage as a healer .. other than me. There wasn't much in the first few months I couldn't solo to be honest.
Healing mobs could be a pain... I remember fighting this one named healing mob while solo. About 45 minutes in we're both 100% health and power.. so I decided to just run off.
I don't think a "hard core" ruleset changes VG for *me*. What I like about the game to be honest is the classes. They feel a lot less nerfed than EQ2 classes (at least for me).
As you level up in Vanguard you in general do feel as tho your character is more powerful.. where in EQ2 that's not always the case.
The big issue I had was the bugs, lack of polish and so many things left unfinished. Really to many things were left in or not done than you could list. Which after time passes you begin to learn what was going on at sigil more of why Microsoft dropped them... but anyway..
I never asked for more xp.. less death penalty.. but what I really wanted was the bugs fixed and the game finished.
It took them what.. over a year to maybe add helms?
And someone is going to ask if I want a new rule set server?
Sounds a tad off... Did they ever get tails in? All the cats and such with no tails.. really bothered me too.
Looks like it's over at the offical VG forums. They have closed the poll.
Silius wrote:
It was a good turn out the poll got 383 /signed posts in the day that it was open. I can imagine the forums (offical VG forums) are going to get a bit hot over the next few days.
Wow. That was fast. I assumed the poll would stay up for a week before they closed it.
It will definitely be interesting to watch the VG forums over the next few days.
I've got a feeling a lot of the people who did not want to see this type of server were the ones kicking up the stink, which got the thread closed. Yesterday they got there hands slapped for sending the devs insulting PM's.
Silius wrote:
People whine for a hardcore server when they hate the GU4, just like NGE and pre-NGE servers fo SWG.
When the Hardcore server is live, whiners will still whine for more because the hpye for Hardcore server is going offboard and no official ruleset is yet to be released.
I love the idea but they should use the resource on something else in VG.
All canceled. Waiting on Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning.