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Returner Review: Weaknesses/Strengths & Opportunities/Threats
declaredemer
Member Posts: 2,698
I have had the opportunity to return to Vanguard, and I wanted to share with the community a brief review of Vanguard before I leave to country to escape the harsh winter. I have been playing extensive the past few days, and I done everything from crafting to grouping to soloing to harvesting to raiding.
Here are my thoughts.
STRENGTHS
- World
Telon is a majestic, magical, and extensive world with Song Sirens to different terrains to seas and various cities. The world feels alive. I love to visit, out of the blue, islands and traverse plains and grasslands on my mount. The world is brilliant, at least, I think so.
- Travel
Travel is both a strength and a weakness. It is a strength because of its variety. The world also supports travel because it is large. Gamers not only feel as if they are exploring the world, but they are indeed exploring the world. Every time I play Vanguard -yes, every time- I will discover camps, caves, and even dungeons I had not known existed.
- Community
The in-game community seems friendly, mature, and helpful most of the time. Vanguard players, I think, are a more sophisticated MMORPG gamer and appreciate details, depth, and desire a more complex MMORPG experience. In a word, linearity. Vanguard players probably do not want a linear game, and a raid-tiered end-game, discussed in threats, is going to only discourage new playres from joining and prevent current players from being subscribed.
WEAKNESSES
- Performance
Performance remains an issue, as you I have crashed while chunking. The game still glitches, or hitches, from time to time. You need these people to send you over fences because the fences might get stuck. Armor bugs exist in which your armor does not appear on your character.
- Travel
Vanguard's travel methods are ... strange. You can teleport from one end of the world to the other in the matter of an instant, yet other times it seems difficult to reach nearby places. The major boats that connect the cities do not work. And they should to add immersion. You can also rent birds to get from place to place. Travel still needs work, and it is either (1) too easy to get around or (2) too difficult to get around. A happy, sensible medium has not been achieved.
OPPORTUNITIES
- World Immersion
More Life, Human Activity, Enhanced Commerce
The world is huge, and can, at times, feel empty. It is OK to feel empty in certain sections, as the emptiness can be immersive. The world needs, however, travelling merchants on caravans and horses and wagons on the roads going from city to city. Players should be able to hitch a ride. Players should also be able to join the "travelling merchants guild" and trade, barter with these NPCs at discounted/favorable prices. It could be a crafters' only guild, could even get a guild channel for themselves. There should be merchant ships coming-and-going from cities. There should be more activity in the game to make it feel real and not static.
Dragons, Named Mobs
The world could use a dragon, if there is not one already. I mean a dragon that spawns once in a while, emerges from her den, in the north and a fire dragon that emerges from her den in the south. There should be a cyclops that is a rare mob that drops a rare item. I am not promoting farming of "phat leets," make it bind on pick-up. I am saying ... get a werewolf in there that just terrorizes a newbie area and new players want more experienced players to visit to slay it. Older players would have an incentive to help because the werewolf would drop an item.
Player Towns and Castles
Why not implement a system of player castles and taverns? I know I sound like I am getting carried away, but let players hire mercenaries to "guard" the castle. We need a player city. We need a player-elected mayor. We need spots for blacksmiths, apartments, traverns, barracks (probably controlled by mayor), etc. I am talking about a player town, village, and hamlet. It does not even have to be that advanced. I think loyal, active players would cherish a thing of that kind. There might even be one, and only one, player town and village.
New PvP Hero Race: Special Powers & Special Challenges
There should be "new classes" in terms of vampires and werewolves, a challenge and immersion class... something you can choose, and then earn, when you attain level 50. It would have limitations insofar that you would have to be indoors at night. Or you might transform on full moons or all nights. Yes. I think people would want an alt like this, and I think it would add to immerssion, and these would be fully PvP. They themselves could be a raid target with certain drops, even a part of a Quest. Add immersion. It is worth it and pays dividends and creates a fascinating, sometimes incomprehensible, world.
Use the world. It is the game's greatest strength.
- Customization
I believe a deeper dimension of character customization is needed for adventurers, and I am not referring to specialization or raid abilities. I mean earning new skills, or points, and players deciding which skills to acquire. It could be from enhanced run speed to an ability to freeze the enemy. It should be complex, deep, and rewarding.
THREATS
- PvP
Players like to PvP, and I think there is a PvP arena now or will be in the future? I know there are many PvP arenas. I do not care for PvP personally, so others are welcome to chime in. A few player castles, not many so you could concentrate PvP, maybe just one, would be great. NPC mercenaries to defend the castle, etc. This is an area I have not looked into, asked about, or anything at all recently. So just bear with me.
- Raid-Focus
I am doubtful, based on past and brief current experiences, that Vanguard players are "raiders." I think many are "immersion gamers." I think a raid-focus game is not going to attract raiders from other games, and I think it would only discourage new players from joining. I see a looming possibility of Vanguard's "end-game," basically, becoming a raid-tier system.
Vanguard has many strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Vanguard's opportunities are enormous when you consider its platform: a huge world, open, diverse, and interesting world. Developers could dramatically take Vanguard to the next level by harnessing Vanguard's strength (world) and implementing features that add levels of depth, complexity, and challenge to the game.
Comments
The SWOT analysis? Last time I saw that was back in my ORGA201 class...
Nice, thanks for the review. Sounds like the game itself has improved quite a bit from the state it was in during "beta" I myself beta tested and immediatly saw cause for alarm. Although I half to say, some of the classes in the game where the most enjoyable to play. Like I think one was called "shadow knight" Where he had a couple insta casts on enemys and could teleport to the back of an enemy and get a lethal attack from behind.
Your review sounds promising, but with all the MMO's currently going around and being hyped up, I dont know if I will go back, but I will certainly give a trial a chance. How unfortunant that if Vanguard had been a success, and not all the origional problems, it could be one of the best MMORPG's around to date. But now that the scar of failure is lingering, the game does not have very much financial support for "further development and improvement of game" So anything that is improved in the game takes quite a while.
Regardless, I loved the artwork in that game, and when I played it last, I had a mere radeon x850Xt, Now I am back and better than ever with a Radeon 4850, 4gigs, Q6600 OC'd, and ready to be blown away when I dont lag on max settings.
I was originally going to approach my analysis with, "the good, the bad, and the ugly." I did find, however, that the good has overwhelmed the bad, and there is nothing "ugly" I have found to Vanguard. Many opportunities exist for expanding on the immersion element to Vanguard, and I think it is a great way for Vanguard to distinguish itself from other MMORPGs on the market because most of them are really the same. Typically, eleves are humans made wonderful, you take a linear path to advance, and then you spend your nights raiding or PvPing.
Vanguard has the opportunity to be different from the current standard: (1) raid or (2) PvP. Entirely new concepts of classes, a pariah class, full PvP feature, and much more. Management of player-run towns to organized merchant guilds. Taking customization to greater depths. Player tools to defend a castle, instead of a simple instanced area; the castle area itself could be instanced for the sake of performance.
New ideas, new concepts and harnessing this vast world to get there.
Edit: I think Vanguard has advanced the crafting realm, and perhaps even diplomacy, to innovative and new and different dimensions that have previously existed. Some of that intellectual capital devoted to other areas would benefit the game: customization (adventure side), class concepts, lesser gods in terms of a player defending his lair (or castle), and so forth.
OP - your next assignment is to apply Porter's 5 forces to the market for faction ammo in EVE :P
Nice post. I especially agree with your point about the difficulty of travel being very arbitrary. Some cross-world trips are a breeze, while certain local journeys can be incredibly dangerous/time consuming.
Vanguard is a lot different from what they originally "envisioned" back in the day.
As long as VG is saddled with a small dev team, it will never realize it's potential. They just do not have the time to address everything that needs addressed. Plus the updates generally break as much as they fix. The group centric approach that the devs have decided to go won't be helping matters either given the small number of players.
I just came back too and was quite dissapointed. I left around GU4 and it seems some of the old bugs are back. I'm hitching more than when I left, but not as much as release, and there are some sloppy quality control bugs like invisible items. Also the new island is no better game play or higher quality design than the original starting areas.
I think Diplomacy and to a lesser extent Crafting in Vanguard are quite inovative, they make my list of must have ideas for any future MMO.
nice and fair review..declaredemer
i came back and i m currently playing it (needed a break from wow..
) ...and i m enjoying it very much...
regarding torak's post: travelling sometimes is a pain in the arse...but because of crashes.
personally i would have nothing against that if i would be able to increase the mount's speed at an earlier level...
another point (especially for me-because i m a fan of him) is that BROM did some work in this game...
Ummm the Group thing was one of the Perks of the game at launch... go play your solommo's and leave the rest alone...
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
Good analysis, OP. There are two perspectives I want to add.
(1) I dunno why VG never succeeded in creating cities or villages that feel alive. Places like Mos Eisley in SWG, Stormwind in WOW or even Bree in LOTRO. For some reason all those cities feel totally sterile and like a stage.
(2) Voiceovers. I totally hate to read all that stuff. Likely I am spoilt from EQ2.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Yes, making a big city feel alive and bustling is a major challenge. I've played several MMOs and have never seen that successfully accomplished. New Targonor and Leth Nurae are just too big. Khal on the other hand almost has 40 or more folks running around doing stuff. Some of the smaller villages like Tursh are very heavily populated.
In the past, I'd often find myself one of 3 or 4 people in all of New Targonor. But even now, with 20 or more running around the city is just too big to feel alive. The hubs, outposts and villages seem to be the place where people congregate.. I'm not sure how to succeed in attracting more people to major cities.
Yeah, I liked voiceovers in EQ2 as well.
Yes, making a big city feel alive and bustling is a major challenge. I've played several MMOs and have never seen that successfully accomplished. New Targonor and Leth Nurae are just too big. Khal on the other hand almost has 40 or more folks running around doing stuff. Some of the smaller villages like Tursh are very heavily populated.
In the past, I'd often find myself one of 3 or 4 people in all of New Targonor. But even now, with 20 or more running around the city is just too big to feel alive. The hubs, outposts and villages seem to be the place where people congregate.. I'm not sure how to succeed in attracting more people to major cities.
Yeah, I liked voiceovers in EQ2 as well.
It may not be fair to compare them But In POTBS you can turn on Npc's that just wander around the city. No name cant click them they just wander around (I think its all client side). It would be a quick easy way to make the citys feel more alive.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
Yes, making a big city feel alive and bustling is a major challenge. I've played several MMOs and have never seen that successfully accomplished. New Targonor and Leth Nurae are just too big. Khal on the other hand almost has 40 or more folks running around doing stuff. Some of the smaller villages like Tursh are very heavily populated.
In the past, I'd often find myself one of 3 or 4 people in all of New Targonor. But even now, with 20 or more running around the city is just too big to feel alive. The hubs, outposts and villages seem to be the place where people congregate.. I'm not sure how to succeed in attracting more people to major cities.
Yeah, I liked voiceovers in EQ2 as well.
IMHO, VG has a few reason why cities don't work out
Primarily - there is no real functional purpose to hanging out in a city. I will compare to SWG (pre NGE) you had the Doc buffs and the Ent buffs plus the spaceport and market to draw you back to hubs. In WoW you have the market and the trainers to draw you back. At some point you NEED to return to a city, not so in VG. Trainers are spead out throughout the world, the market is now globaly accessible from many points, no really player buff draw....no real social center.
Secondary - there are far to many and the pops are to low to support them all.
Classes
One of the game's great strengths are its classes. Every class is fun to play, and each has its own abilities. Classes are also tied-in with combat insofar that a abilities from one class complement and enhance the ability from another class. It is a great, and fun, class system.
When I left for Argentina, my harddrive was freaking fried somehow. And now with classes started, not sure if I will have any time to game. It is a pity because I was hoping to get back into Vanguard.
Shows that you've been away for quite a while. In every cityy(hub) that you go to in Vanguard, you'll see people, mostly at crafting stations, others just lurking around. And ofc, diplomacy quests.
The game population has been growing steadily the last few weeks and not only because of returning vets.
...
Classes & Combat
I not only discussed Classes as a strength of the game but mentioned the combat system. It was an oversight of mine not to include them in the original post. To err is human.
Travel: Incoherent System
As to travel, however, Vanguard has what I, and others, consider to be a strange travel system:
Vanguard's travel system has some interesting features as well:
Vanguard's travel system has immersion features to it and then it has features such as broken boats that totally undermine immersion.
Classes & Combat
I not only discussed Classes as a strength of the game but mentioned the combat system. It was an oversight of mine not to include them in the original post. To err is human.
Travel: Incoherent System
As to travel, however, Vanguard has what I, and others, consider to be a strange travel system:
Vanguard's travel system has some interesting features as well:
Vanguard's travel system has immersion features to it and then it has features such as broken boats that totally undermine immersion.
Boats arnt Broken just made useless by the stupid rifts and flyingmounts renters. and they are great as fishing points.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
Although I could play for free, at least until January 31st, I have decided not to.
I have given-up on all MMORPGs, and Vanguard in particular, because the game simply does not have enough staff or resources to take it to the level it needs to go. I see no point in myself playing/paying for a game and "hoping" that it continually gets upgrades, improvements that are consistent with its original vision.
I might return to MMORPGs over the summer, although I am planning a trip to China. We shall see.
Although I could play for free, at least until January 31st, I have decided not to.
I have given-up on all MMORPGs, and Vanguard in particular, because the game simply does not have enough staff or resources to take it to the level it needs to go. I see no point in myself playing/paying for a game and "hoping" that it continually gets upgrades, improvements that are consistent with its original vision.
I might return to MMORPGs over the summer, although I am planning a trip to China. We shall see.
This is pretty much how I feel about Vanguard too, I want it to be a good game. But with games like WoW which are constantly being upgraded and advanced, its hard to commit to a game like Vanguard when there just isnt enough support for it. Playing an MMO is a long term type of thing, I want to know the game is going to be updated and all resources available are being used to make the gaming experience better,
SOE needs to rethink their entire approach to the MMO genre imo.
Although I could play for free, at least until January 31st, I have decided not to.
I have given-up on all MMORPGs, and Vanguard in particular, because the game simply does not have enough staff or resources to take it to the level it needs to go. I see no point in myself playing/paying for a game and "hoping" that it continually gets upgrades, improvements that are consistent with its original vision.
I might return to MMORPGs over the summer, although I am planning a trip to China. We shall see.
This is pretty much how I feel about Vanguard too, I want it to be a good game. But with games like WoW which are constantly being upgraded and advanced, its hard to commit to a game like Vanguard when there just isnt enough support for it. Playing an MMO is a long term type of thing, I want to know the game is going to be updated and all resources available are being used to make the gaming experience better,
SOE needs to rethink their entire approach to the MMO genre imo.
In what ways is VG not being advanced enough for you? I've played continously for two years, so there was certainly a time when I felt I had done it all and was just waiting for new content. But the past few months have brought an enormous amount of new content and now I'm at a point where I have more to do that I have time for. AND on top of that, there is a level increase, AAs and a major new raid zone on test.
I would say your argument was valid last summer, but the dev team has really been doing a good job on advancing the game now that they worked through most of the major bug and performance issues.
Although I could play for free, at least until January 31st, I have decided not to.
I have given-up on all MMORPGs, and Vanguard in particular, because the game simply does not have enough staff or resources to take it to the level it needs to go. I see no point in myself playing/paying for a game and "hoping" that it continually gets upgrades, improvements that are consistent with its original vision.
I might return to MMORPGs over the summer, although I am planning a trip to China. We shall see.
This is pretty much how I feel about Vanguard too, I want it to be a good game. But with games like WoW which are constantly being upgraded and advanced, its hard to commit to a game like Vanguard when there just isnt enough support for it. Playing an MMO is a long term type of thing, I want to know the game is going to be updated and all resources available are being used to make the gaming experience better,
SOE needs to rethink their entire approach to the MMO genre imo.
In what ways is VG not being advanced enough for you? I've played continously for two years, so there was certainly a time when I felt I had done it all and was just waiting for new content. But the past few months have brought an enormous amount of new content and now I'm at a point where I have more to do that I have time for. AND on top of that, there is a level increase, AAs and a major new raid zone on test.
I would say your argument was valid last summer, but the dev team has really been doing a good job on advancing the game now that they worked through most of the major bug and performance issues.
I have a hard time trusting anyone who says they have played Everything in Vanguard. Im a explorer and I keep calling out areas lvl 50's have never hearda...
Now i can see the lvl 50 stuff getting explored but as stated that will soon change.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
I just started this game to check out the crafting and its great my one problem with it is it has weird bugs like your weapon displaying as something else.
I have sword and it displays as a hammer sometimes a spear other times.
The game is great but my one fear is its run by soe
I think everyone would agree soe at times does odd things like killing starwars then not willing to admit a mistake and fix it. So they would rather loose money then change. From playing this game for a week if they put some work in it they could really have a game that is great so I will hope they dedicate some more people to it.
thought your review was great
More Devs for vanguard is a Double Edge sword. they are needed to get Bug fixes and new content out but it will Increase SOE's Retarted Eye. In Anycase Vanguard is a great game and worthy of more people playing it. and as soon as they find what they did to bork the Chunk code and get that running smooth again all the better ;p
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams