Vanguard chatter

[Abelian75]

But here is an MMO slant, if your RNG is truely random but when you look at a specific sample size you see streaks, is that process really random?  Meaning per user their streak chance is high but for your user base it just normalizes.  That's been my experience with most MMOs.  You can sense that some one took a shortcut and is using a predictable seed that while the entire solution is random the specific result is streaks of a non random nature.

This is actually a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

Yes, in actual randomness you see streaks.  If you didn't see streaks it wouldn't be random.  And no, nobody's using predictable seeds.  To think that is to misunderstood what a "seed" is.  Indeed, almost certainly the RNGs are seeded once, at server startup, and even if you used the same seed every startup nobody would be able to tell after the simulation had been running for a while due to the inherent randomness of player input into the simulation.

It's significant that this particular documented case of a failure in random selection in an MMO had absolutely nothing to do with the RNG, which was functioning perfectly, but with the use of the output.  RNGs are a solved problem when it comes to the level of fidelity required by an MMO.  They are best understood as being perfectly random, not "pseudo" random (which is at best a term that is misleading, at worst an utterly meaningless term), without any flaw that could ever be detected by players, due to the aforementioned inherent randomness caused by players.

You see streaks in real life, actual randomness (again, a dubious distinction at best) too.  They are what happens.

The key thing to keep in mind is that a loot system designed to cause random drops is not a system designed to give everyone an equal share of loot.  Maybe some designers in the past thought that's what it was supposed to do (I doubt any do now), but that is not what the system does.  If the goal of a loot system (or whatever) is to guarantee, or nearly guarantee, even distribution of output, then randomness will not fulfill that requirement, as that is not a property of random numbers.

p.s.  You don't have to write a RNG if you are making a game or other piece of software.  You can just use a preexisting one, which will be utterly perfect and without flaw given the limitations of the observers (players).  Like I said, solved problem.

p.p.s.  Your statement about the distinction between being "overall" random but not random per player doesn't really mean anything.  It isn't the set of results that is random or not random, it is the process.  Either it is random or not.  If you can't predict the next result with any more accuracy than rolling a die, it is random.  If you can, it is not.

For instance, is this sequence of numbers random?

1234567890

The answer is that the question is meaningless.  You have no idea what process was used to choose those numbers, and since processes are what is or is not random, the question can't be answered.

[tmp]

Those people don't NEED to stand up. They're not the problem. In fact, in any even marginally competent enviroment those people's bugs (and mistakes are inevietable) are caught and corrected early, and people whose work is not up to snuff are either retasked to something they CAN handle or replaced.

The coder's aren't to blame. And if they actually HAPPEN to be to blame, the only reason they got the chance to screw up so severely is because their project was designed and managed by flaming morons.

Oh -- and no one's blaming management, so much as they're blaming design.

It's been pretty much admitted at this point, that the whole thing was built from ground up in one year, by amateurs. If the management was so incompetent, why presume the people responsible for implementation weren't inept at similar level and as such able to negatively contribute to the whole mess?

If the design is to blame, then competent and responsible coder should at least be capable of telling when they are unable to do their work proper with the shit they're provided (or lack thereof) don't they? And if they _choose_ to go ahead and work from shit worth of material ... then part of responsibility becomes theirs, imo. Between being given chance to severely screw up and actually _taking_ that chance, is conscious decision of person who were given said opportunity, to seize it. And it's generally what we get accountable for, our decisions and actions based on these.

[Abelian75]

This is kind of a weird discussion.  There's no way for any outsiders to know if the engineers on the project were the greatest engineers ever or atrocious.  We have no idea what they were tasked with doing, how many there were, what timeframe they were given, etc.  You could have the best software engineer in the entire universe make a crappy game if they were given an unrealistic timeframe, and you could have the worst engineer in the world (well, a pretty bad one, at least) make a flawless game if given enough time.  Just because the game is buggy doesn't mean the engineers did a bad job.  Or more accurately, it doesn't mean that it's their fault they did a bad job.

I mean, it could be that they're awful, I don't know them.  Or it could be that they rule.  Who knows.

And some of this talk about "why didn't they speak up!?!" is a little weird, too.  This may be a job people love, but it's still just a job.  Every person on the project doesn't necessarily consider themselves hugely personally invested in the success or failure of the project.  I don't see anything wrong with someone simply wanting to do a good job on what they're working on, and leave the success or failure of the project as a whole to the people calling the shots (and making the money).

[Lantyssa]

For instance, is this sequence of numbers random?

1234567890

Not random. 

[Baldrake]

Look, a coder's job is pretty simple -- he's given a set of requirements (which can range from vague to VERY specific) and he writes code that meets them. Good coders write cleaner, more elegant code and can generate more robust solutions (there are generally a LOT of ways to handle any problem) from vaguer descriptions. Poor coders need more detailed requirements. And testing against those requirements is pretty easy.

I agree with much of what you've written in this thread, but this is stating things a little strongly.

Bill Curtis did some interesting work in the 80s looking at individual differences in programmers. He concluded that there is a 15-times productivity difference between the best and worst programmers out there. This really does make a big difference in what you can hope to achieve. You can have the best spec's in the world, but if your coders can't implement them, you're toast.

I once hear it said that part of why Will Wright can make great games is that he has the pick of the very best programmers who want to work with Will Wright. 

[Archimedian]

This is actually a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

Yes, in actual randomness you see streaks.  If you didn't see streaks it wouldn't be random.  And no, nobody's using predictable seeds.  To think that is to misunderstood what a "seed" is.  Indeed, almost certainly the RNGs are seeded once, at server startup, and even if you used the same seed every startup nobody would be able to tell after the simulation had been running for a while due to the inherent randomness of player input into the simulation.

It's significant that this particular documented case of a failure in random selection in an MMO had absolutely nothing to do with the RNG, which was functioning perfectly, but with the use of the output.  RNGs are a solved problem when it comes to the level of fidelity required by an MMO.  They are best understood as being perfectly random, not "pseudo" random (which is at best a term that is misleading, at worst an utterly meaningless term), without any flaw that could ever be detected by players, due to the aforementioned inherent randomness caused by players.

It's most likely that I consider the RNG system in it's entirety, meaning the generation and application to be one thing.  I mean a number as you state is meaningly less without it's interpretation, right?

I'll site it more from a system stand point:

9 players, each can roll from 1 to 9.  Player 1 always rolls 1s and player 2 always rolls 2s and so on.

If you looked at the subset of player 1, it is most definitely not random.  If you looked at your entire population it is most definitely random, in that after an infinite number of sequences you have an even distribution as you would expect.  It is what you want in theory out of an RNG system that through an entire population you have ensured even random distribution, any number has an equal chance as any other number of appearing.  It's a crude example but kind of proves my point.  In an RNG system while you expect streaks you do not expect streaks of streaks to the point of statistical impossibility.  I'll agree this most likely has nothing to do with the RNG used but with the application of such results.

[Archimedian]

...

[Abelian75]

It's most likely that I consider the RNG system in it's entirety, meaning the generation and application to be one thing.  I mean a number as you state is meaningly less without it's interpretation, right?

I'll site it more from a system stand point:

9 players, each can roll from 1 to 9.  Player 1 always rolls 1s and player 2 always rolls 2s and so on.

If you looked at the subset of player 1, it is most definitely not random.  If you looked at your entire population it is most definitely random, in that after an infinite number of sequences you have an even distribution as you would expect.  It is what you want in theory out of an RNG system that through an entire population you have ensured even random distribution, any number has an equal chance as any other number of appearing.  It's a crude example but kind of proves my point.  In an RNG system while you expect streaks you do not expect streaks of streaks to the point of statistical impossibility.  I'll agree this most likely has nothing to do with the RNG used but with the application of such results.

You are right that a random sequence (with even weights among the options) would give an even distribution after an infinite number of trials, but you're wrong to imply that observing such an even distribution implies that the sequence is random.  Counterexamples are pretty obvious.

Randomness is not a property of sequences or generation of sequences.  It's a perception.  If a man was sufficiently stupid, my generation of the infinite sequence 1212121212... would be random, entirely truly random, to him.  It isn't impossible that there exist events that are by nature unpredictable, even given infinite analysis by an infinitely intelligent being (whatever that means), but there's no reason to believe this is necessarily so.  It's possible every event in the universe is entirely deterministic, but that doesn't mean there is no such thing as randomness (in any important sense), because an event may still be random to a given observer.

Anyway, nothing you're saying is really incorrect, but I have a feeling some of the things you're silently referring to make it incorrect.  If you're referring to loot streaks, for instance, then you're incorrect.  The amount of data points any of the observers have are so small that any possible set of results does nothing to argue against the system working perfectly.  Do you have anything in mind in particular?

Edit to say:  Um, sorry for the derail.

[Margalis]

Without knowing more it's impossible to say. Coders can and do fuck things up royally, it's one thing to create isolated bugs but sometimes code quality is so bad that there is no way to fix it without clean rewrites.

One thing to keep in mind though is that management hires the coders, at least indirectly. A company that has good management and bad engineering doesn't really have good management, because part of the job of management is to make sure everything at the company is working.

As someone above said, good coders can be 15x as productive as mediocre ones. Hiring is key in an engineering org, and hiring is the job of management.

[Venkman]

What Margalis said. And so some extent what Baldrake said: though the efficiency of programmers assumes the task is clearly defined... and possible

If the management was so incompetent, why presume the people responsible for implementation weren't inept at similar level and as such able to negatively contribute to the whole mess?

Being an amateur and being inept are very different things. The former can be guided... unless the management is inept at doing so.

If the design is to blame, then competent and responsible coder should at least be capable of telling when they are unable to do their work proper with the shit they're provided

Design is not the production process. A coder is supposed to understand the "fun factor" of the total system and how well it integrates with all of the other systems being developed compartmentally?

[Modern Angel]

Design is not the production process. A coder is supposed to understand the "fun factor" of the total system and how well it integrates with all of the other systems being developed compartmentally?

This. You have a hundred coders each in charge of one set of things. Coder does avatar movement. He codes it and that motherfucker is GONE until it comes back buggy. QA finds the bug, management decides on the severity in order to prioritize. Coders test their work but once it goes into the big stewpot things will break and they may never know until they're told it's busted.

[shiznitz]

It's been pretty much admitted at this point, that the whole thing was built from ground up in one year, by amateurs.

If in fact that was the case, then color me impressed actually. The game had a lot of flaws, yes. But it did work. I could play it. There were group bugs and targeting bugs and geometry bugs and quest bugs, but I got two character into the high teens just fine. This bodes well for indie MMOs. Sigil pissed away $30M but if they actually made VG as it launched on the last $10M, think of what a truly dedicated team cojuld pull off. The Vanguard world is fucking massive. If the game had launched with half the landmass and that effort had been re-channeled into gameplay and bugs, it would have been a profitable 75-100k subscriber game.

[Morat20]

It's been pretty much admitted at this point, that the whole thing was built from ground up in one year, by amateurs. If the management was so incompetent, why presume the people responsible for implementation weren't inept at similar level and as such able to negatively contribute to the whole mess?

Because if the project was developed by a team of fully incompetent coders, it was because management hired a full team of incompetent coders. And then didn't fire them, replace them, move them to something they could handle, or in any way address the problem. (Also, as noted, amateur doesn't mean "incompetent"). If your management -- which runs from overall system design to just oversight positions -- sucks, it doesn't matter whether your coders are good are bad. It's going to suck.

If the design is to blame, then competent and responsible coder should at least be capable of telling when they are unable to do their work proper with the shit they're provided (or lack thereof) don't they?

Um, no. How is a coder, with a coder level perspective, supposed to know whether his work is "proper" or not next to the rest of the design? I know whether or not I met my requirements. I know if my work does the job I was told it needed to do. I know, on my projects, if the work fits the overall project because my projects are so small that I am ALSO one of the designers. I can keep the big picture in my head.

But if I'm Joe Coder doing Vanguard, and I'm told to that I need to code in movement along the following lines -- how I am supposed to judge (or heck, even know!) that those lines are flamingly stupid given the stuff the guys handling combat animations are doing? Coders on big projects generally have a good understanding of how their system works. They have a more general understanding (along with well defined interfaces) for how their system interacts with other systems directly. They probably have a vague "big picture" notion of how their systems interact with other systems indirectly.

Baldrake:
Oh, I don't disagree. I'm capable of far more elegant (and faster, and less buggy) work now than I was 5 years ago, and I've been truly lucky in having worked with some very gifted and experienced guys. I'm good, but I'm not now and probably never will be quite on their level. But my point was mostly blaming bad coders is stupid -- bad coders exist, but they're only going to hurt your game if you have bad management (which includes bad QA).

People rag on bad designers, bad developers, bad management for games because, well....bad coders get replaced. Bad code can be rewritten. Bad management, though, taints the project entirely. Bad managers don't notice bad coders. They make designs that can't be tested, doesn't work. They make decisions that affect the entire lifespan of a project. With good management, bad or unsuitable coders can be worked around (usually via replacement or retasking). Even the best coders can't do shit with bad management and bad design.

[Archimedian]

It's been pretty much admitted at this point, that the whole thing was built from ground up in one year, by amateurs.

If in fact that was the case, then color me impressed actually. The game had a lot of flaws, yes. But it did work. I could play it. There were group bugs and targeting bugs and geometry bugs and quest bugs, but I got two character into the high teens just fine. This bodes well for indie MMOs. Sigil pissed away $30M but if they actually made VG as it launched on the last $10M, think of what a truly dedicated team cojuld pull off. The Vanguard world is fucking massive. If the game had launched with half the landmass and that effort had been re-channeled into gameplay and bugs, it would have been a profitable 75-100k subscriber game.

I don't think skill level (amateur / pro) has much to do with out come.  Hell I know guys who've been working 20 years that I would still call amateurs (you haven't seen nepotism till you work in the financial IT world :) ).  I actually have never played vanguard only read a snippet and an interview of the failure of sigil from a financial stand point really.  I don't actually know if their game sucks (i would assume it does or did) or if the fundamental design EQ 1.5 has gone the way of the dodo and the "modern" gamer's tastes have shifted away from the 1998 diku model (I know my tastes have shifted) where any one who wants to relive the good old days will just fire up EQ.

It seems their code base at launch was a mess with memory leaks (and how this happens in modern programming escapes me), CTD which again is probably bad memory management, unfisnihed content and so on.  What we as gamers may never find out is if the market will actually ever support eq 1.5 game play.  It seems the days of forced grouping being a central component of your game are dead and gone.  Games with viable single player progression with additional / optional group content seem to thrive much better (I'll go with WoW, LotrO on this one) and perhaps trubines lack of "solo progression" in lotro is what's keeping what should be the grand daddy of all IPs from actually being a true WoW competitor (again I don't actually know lotros subs but from the number of servers I can surmise a few things).

I guess this really begs the question of any one who currently plays Vanguard, if you were to summarize the game itself (not bug improvements and the like) a year after release what would you compare it to and do you think it has mass market appeal.

Edit:  As to the RNG discussion, I don't have anything specific in mind but you know those anecdotal stories you always hear or experience :)

[tmp]

Design is not the production process. A coder is supposed to understand the "fun factor" of the total system and how well it integrates with all of the other systems being developed compartmentally?

I think the context of that went somewhat like "If the coder doesn't get clear instructions what to write, the designers are at fault for not providing good enough instructions. If the instructions are clear but the coder makes shitty code carrying them out, then it's just bug and it's responsibilty of QA to find it. Either way coder is not to blame."

I was addressing the former case, where it's not fault of the coder when they get too vague description of system they are supposed to convert into actual code. I don't expect the programmer to understand 'fun factor' etc of the whole thing combined, but i do expect them to be able to tell when provided information is vague to the point they have to second-guess what the designers meant while they write their part, rather than simply write what they're told to write. And in such situation to point that problem out.

[Kageru]

Fascinating discussion of software engineering.

Just to mention a couple of more things about diplomacy (which I found pretty damn boring). Each side has 4 resources (reason, flattery etc.) which power the cards you want to play and you'll have a deck focusing on one of those elements. They shake this up by having some conflicts where one of the resources is unavailable. This meant a number of cards could not be "powered" and you'd need to rebuild your deck. On the other hand some cards would give you an advantage in either points or power at a cost of giving the opponent power. If you could organize things so that cost in giving power to the enemy was in a disabled resource it was a huge gain.

The actual point system as to who was winning the conversation was decoupled from the "life" of the participants. No matter how large the difference the player losing the conversation lost one point of life at the end of each turn. Similarly at the end of each turn you might get some flavor text in a sidebar. They also changed it recently so cards drop off mobs.

I didn't get far but it seemed very repetitive given the NPC's would play similarly and the cards didn't have any dramatic effects like magic cards which can create complex interactions. As a result you'd make a deck strong against the target and then "grind" the deck.

grind... the one thing vanguard mastered. Don't even get me started on some of the mid level quests in this game, the designer who wrote them seriously needs to stop making games.

[Tale]

I've just played to level 10 after finding Vanguard in a bargain bin, and it was the best MMO newbie experience I've ever had.

I do not say that lightly, as I have been a detractor of Vanguard. I was a beta tester for months, gave it a good go, and it kept sucking. Later, Sigil's anal NDA enforcers kicked my guild out of beta because a disgruntled member emailed them pics of a private, passworded discussion forum for our Vanguard members (which was technically an NDA breach, but you can bet every other guild in beta had one). They let me back in later, but I found it unplayable - and then they launched.

Here in March 2008, the only complaint I have is occasional graphics hitching. Performance on a Core 2 Duo, 2Gb RAM and GeForce 8800 GTS has thankfully been good, except for that hitching. The gameplay has been incredibly fun. Here's why.

*** SPOILER ***
My newbie half-elf bard started on a beach in Kojan. I've never played a bard or started on Kojan before, so it was all new to me.

I find out I'm not actually a newbie - I'm a well-known officer in the Emperor's evil army, wearing some evil-looking black armour, and my first quest is to slaughter six innocent civilians. The next is to encourage my "cowardly" soldiers to participate in a massacre at a monastery. I reach level 3, thinking "WTF?".

I make it to the monastery's head monk, and he is too powerful to kill. He convinces me that I am not all bad, and offers me redemption. I awake without my armour, in front of another monk in a village. I am given quests where I must help other people, to teach me the benefits of doing good (later there are quests where I can rebel back to the dark side - it's not linear).

The monks turn out to be refugees living outside the Emperor's city. It's all very Jade Empire and has that kind of Oriental martial arts atmosphere (although I'm a bard, not a monk). Eventually I am sent into the city on a quest, and the Emperor's NPCs occasionally have lines like "Hey, don't I know you? I've seen your face."

By the time I'm level 8, I'm exploring the hills above the town. There's a fort full of bad monks and as I fight my way in, "you hear a woman crying", "the woman's cries get louder", etc. Eventually I find her, and figuring I'm saving her, I click to talk. She morphs into the leader of the bad monks and attacks, taking me completely by surprise and I'm lucky to win.

Combat actually feels satisfying now - the special move animations my character has are kind of cool.

Higher in the hills, I find a population of yetis living around an abandoned monastery. I fight my way into the building, open every door and eventually find one surviving monk. He offers me enlightenment in the form of three quests, the first of which is basically "kill 10 yetis". Yawn. But the second quest is "blow this horn, and fight what it summons" - a nasty big yeti that is a long fight. OK, that was more interesting.

Part three is facing the spirit of something something. Another fight? No, I'm teleported to the top of a mountain, where a giant levitating woman asks me a series of riddles. They are not easy. I figure them out and get a pass, and she teleports me back to the monk.

He sends me up the hill to his master, who is levitating in a tent. He says I must show faith. There's a bridge behind him that ends in mid-air (with a huge drop below), and to show my faith, I must jump off. Just before I land, I am teleported back to the monk, who congratulates me and gives me mucho XP. That was a truly great newbie quest.

Meanwhile, I've figured out bard songs. It's like an EverQuest bard, but with a vast improvement on "twisting" - you don't get songs at new levels, you get elements of songs: music, lyrics, pauses, etc. You have to compose your own songs with these elements, each of which has an effect, e.g. buffs, healing, damage shield, runspeed, haste. You can make a running-and-healing song, an all-healing song, a fighting song (buff, haste and damage shield), etc. So every bard will be different and the competence of the player at putting together the right song matters.

It will probably start to suck now, but this was a vast improvement on anything I've seen Vanguard do before.

One thing I didn't like was that they've implemented something called "riftways", which is basically a public teleportation system with an over-abundance of access points, open to everyone. This goes totally against Vanguard's original concept of crafted boats, flying mounts and caster spells being how you got around. I saw someone ask where to catch a boat, and everyone laughed: "just use the riftway, it's faster". Sorry, but I don't like weak solutions to travel - if I'm a newbie in a big world, it should feel big until I level up and overcome the travel barriers.

[Hutch]

Meanwhile, I've figured out bard songs. It's like an EverQuest bard, but with a vast improvement on "twisting" - you don't get songs at new levels, you get elements of songs: music, lyrics, pauses, etc. You have to compose your own songs with these elements, each of which has an effect, e.g. buffs, healing, damage shield, runspeed, haste. You can make a running-and-healing song, an all-healing song, a fighting song (buff, haste and damage shield), etc. So every bard will be different and the competence of the player at putting together the right song matters.

Wow. That actually sounds neat. I wouldn't mind playing a game with systems like that.

[Nebu]

I can say that I really enjoyed the first 20 levels of Vanguard.  After that... not so much.  Limited content, lines for spawns in the limited number of dungeons, repetitive questing, grindy xp curve, etc.   I did enjoy the class variety though. 

[Trippy]

lines for spawns in the limited number of dungeons

That's a feature -- it builds community.

[UnSub]

Dammit Tale, you've made me want to try Vangard. Now I feel dirty.

... any free trials anywhere?

[stu]

The Kojan noob area is actually pretty damn cool. I immediately felt like a heartless bastard after completing those quests.

My main was a Raki. Little guy was a cuddly badass. Been a year since I played, but I doubt I'll go back.

[Tale]

... any free trials anywhere?

Nothing except a 10-day buddy key that comes in the box. And that would mean you'd have to download all 20-ish gigabytes of Vanguard. I found the game for A$29.95 at EB Games.

[UnSub]

Wandering into EB will be a cheaper option - my dl limit is 20GB a month and my ISP (last I checked) charges a stupid amount if I go over.

But then I'll own a copy of Vangard. Hmm, dilemmas.

[Jerrith]

Meanwhile, I've figured out bard songs. It's like an EverQuest bard, but with a vast improvement on "twisting" - you don't get songs at new levels, you get elements of songs: music, lyrics, pauses, etc. You have to compose your own songs with these elements, each of which has an effect, e.g. buffs, healing, damage shield, runspeed, haste. You can make a running-and-healing song, an all-healing song, a fighting song (buff, haste and damage shield), etc. So every bard will be different and the competence of the player at putting together the right song matters.

Wow. That actually sounds neat. I wouldn't mind playing a game with systems like that.

I did the coding for the bard songs in Vanguard.  It's probably the system I'm most proud of having coded.  I think ability construction of this nature is a great concept I'd love to see more of in games.  Being able to create your own custom spells is really quite a bit of fun.  You might think that at max level, every bard would end up playing the same songs, however that's not the case at all.  Beyond the different strategies related to what you want to do (various buffs or debuffs, melee, ranged, or caster dps, etc) energy regeneration plays a significant role.  Each bard song component has an energy cost associated with it, and generally you end up using multiple "rests" that return energy to decrease the cost.  However, with appropriate buffs and specialized equipment, you can significantly reduce the number of rests you need, allowing you to use those slots for additional effective components. 

What I hope to see in a "next-gen" fantasy mmo is a magic system along these lines.  Let me tweak things like the mana cost and cast times of my abilities to better suit my playstyle.  I wouldn't say people should have to put everything together (which may be one of the flaws in the Vanguard system - all you got automatically created for you was a single level 1 song)...  Give out fireball.  For people interested let them break it apart into the components (say, things like "medium cast time", "sphere projectile", "fire damage", "medium mana cost") and mix and match their other components to create new spells.

[Tale]

I did the coding for the bard songs in Vanguard.  It's probably the system I'm most proud of having coded.  I think ability construction of this nature is a great concept I'd love to see more of in games.  Being able to create your own custom spells is really quite a bit of fun.

Well done. I like your ideas.

It made me think of the original magic system in Asheron's Call (1), where casters had to invent spells by combining reagents to see if they did anything together, meaning magic really was arcane and everyone had different magic - until someone wrote a bot that figured it out for you. Your system is more accessible than that.

SOE needs to add some more "combine them, noob" pointers though, because I was learning "Jagger/Richards melody of satisfaction" and thinking I can't get no hotbutton, until I found that if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need from Compose.

[Wershlak]

I played through the Kojan area twice. Once with a Bard and it was fun enough I did it again with a Bloodmage. The quests and feel of the area were top notch for MMO newb areas.

The bard songs were alot of fun unfortunately their combat abilities were boring and broken when I played at release. I imagine they've fixed a few things by now?

[shiznitz]

Lots of classes have been updatd in the last 10 months with more to come. I noticed that Druids got buffed quite a bit recently and that led me to log in again (Station Pass). I didn't play much but I have VG in the corner of my eye now.

[Signe]

It's down to 19.99 in shops now.  I'd play it now and then if it cost a tenner and had no subscription fees. 

What am I saying?  No, I wouldn't!

[Hutch]

What I hope to see in a "next-gen" fantasy mmo is a magic system along these lines.  Let me tweak things like the mana cost and cast times of my abilities to better suit my playstyle.  I wouldn't say people should have to put everything together (which may be one of the flaws in the Vanguard system - all you got automatically created for you was a single level 1 song)...  Give out fireball.  For people interested let them break it apart into the components (say, things like "medium cast time", "sphere projectile", "fire damage", "medium mana cost") and mix and match their other components to create new spells.

Ryzom had this. You could customize the stock spells, and "learn" new components so that you could work them in there and create new spells.

It's a good idea. Let every level 1 mage have "fireball", and let those users who are interested in customization have at it.

[Jerrith]

Ryzom had this. You could customize the stock spells, and "learn" new components so that you could work them in there and create new spells.

It's a good idea. Let every level 1 mage have "fireball", and let those users who are interested in customization have at it.

You're right, I'd forgotten about Ryzom.  Found an interesting guide to their system here: http://forums.ryzom.com/forum//archive/index.php/t-84.html.  From the description there, it sounds like they made touch range spells a little too viable. 

I'd probably workaround that by making a side effect of a skill (that casters get lots of, and melee combatants only get a little of) that makes the range cost equivalent  to 0 range for a distance based on how much skill you have.  With maxed skill, a melee character might get up to something like 5m for free (autoattack range) while a caster would get something like 20-30m for free (depending on how draw distances and movement rates are setup).  Range modifiers would then be bonuses on top of that. 

[Oarix]

Just wanted to chime in and say that after building my new mega-PC (2x 8800GT-SLI, 8G RAM, Vista 64.. yeah, I know.. way overboard), I decided on a whim to re-install Vanguard just to see how it behaved on my system since I have a Station Access Passs.  If you have the system for it, I can attest on how good this game looks.  Although I still don't really like the player models, the landscape looks incredible when you are able to jack up the clipping.   I stood outside a city and saw a tower so far out there across this desert that it was almost a spec.   I wondered how long it would take to make that trek, but being the lazy cuss that I am left that question up to the God's of Time wasting.

All in all, I walked through the city and was very impressed with the graphics.  So much so that I decided to give this game another go based on graphics alone. 

So if you've got the rig, I don't believe Vanguard will dissapoint.  I'll be able to speak more about gameplay once I actually get a chance to play the damn game. 

[ajax34i]

I'd probably workaround that by making a side effect of a skill (that casters get lots of, and melee combatants only get a little of) that makes the range cost equivalent  to 0 range for a distance based on how much skill you have.  With maxed skill, a melee character might get up to something like 5m for free (autoattack range) while a caster would get something like 20-30m for free (depending on how draw distances and movement rates are setup).  Range modifiers would then be bonuses on top of that. 

Depends on whether you want a class-based game or a skill-based game.  Not a game designer here, but if there are bricks, might as well brick everything, and make it skill-based.  Range could be a brick for spells or weapon attacks (that axe...  they could throw it). 

Also, I'd make the bricks....  bricks.  You want to design your own spell, here:  your spell is a 20-brick container, feel free to fill it to your hearts content with 5-dmg bricks and/or 5-ft bricks and/or 1%-weakness-to-fire bricks, go nuts.  No sliders, no specifying how much damage as an attribute, just fill your container with the same bricks that everyone else has access to.

Might not work though.

[Falconeer]

My newbie half-elf bard started on a beach in Kojan. I've never played a bard or started on Kojan before, so it was all new to me.

I find out I'm not actually a newbie - I'm a well-known officer in the Emperor's evil army, wearing some evil-looking black armour, and my first quest is to slaughter six innocent civilians. The next is to encourage my "cowardly" soldiers to participate in a massacre at a monastery. I reach level 3, thinking "WTF?".

I make it to the monastery's head monk, and he is too powerful to kill. He convinces me that I am not all bad, and offers me redemption. I awake without my armour, in front of another monk in a village. I am given quests where I must help other people, to teach me the benefits of doing good (later there are quests where I can rebel back to the dark side - it's not linear).

The monks turn out to be refugees living outside the Emperor's city. It's all very Jade Empire and has that kind of Oriental martial arts atmosphere (although I'm a bard, not a monk). Eventually I am sent into the city on a quest, and the Emperor's NPCs occasionally have lines like "Hey, don't I know you? I've seen your face."

By the time I'm level 8, I'm exploring the hills above the town. There's a fort full of bad monks and as I fight my way in, "you hear a woman crying", "the woman's cries get louder", etc. Eventually I find her, and figuring I'm saving her, I click to talk. She morphs into the leader of the bad monks and attacks, taking me completely by surprise and I'm lucky to win.

Combat actually feels satisfying now - the special move animations my character has are kind of cool.

Higher in the hills, I find a population of yetis living around an abandoned monastery. I fight my way into the building, open every door and eventually find one surviving monk. He offers me enlightenment in the form of three quests, the first of which is basically "kill 10 yetis". Yawn. But the second quest is "blow this horn, and fight what it summons" - a nasty big yeti that is a long fight. OK, that was more interesting.

Part three is facing the spirit of something something. Another fight? No, I'm teleported to the top of a mountain, where a giant levitating woman asks me a series of riddles. They are not easy. I figure them out and get a pass, and she teleports me back to the monk.

He sends me up the hill to his master, who is levitating in a tent. He says I must show faith. There's a bridge behind him that ends in mid-air (with a huge drop below), and to show my faith, I must jump off. Just before I land, I am teleported back to the monk, who congratulates me and gives me mucho XP. That was a truly great newbie quest.

Look carefully at the quoted text, Tale.

That is EXACTLY what happened to me in January 2007 during beta and that is why I kept praising (and being wrong) Vanguard for such a long time. That thing, that questline, that newbie experience, has been there for ages, since beta. Unfortunately, that is arguably the highlight of Vanguard. The other starting areas were not on par with it and from level 20 on things started going down...

I loved the idea of Vanguard and loved my first 10 levels. I hated what came after that, which is (maybe was): not much, not enough.


EDIT: Didn't mean to deflate your enthusiasm at all. I am just sad that the rest of the game couldn't be at the same level. But we all know why.

[cmlancas]

I still felt like if they could have changed the mid-20 to higher-40 game, VG could've retained enough subs to be somewhere along the lines of LOTRO. Diplomacy was fun during beta when it meant something; when I played, it was just a grindfest joke.

VG might not be complete crap now, though. Perhaps it's a comeback kid?