Vanguard: Round 1 - FIGHT!

[Khaldun]

Here's my question, tied in somewhat to the initial questions.

What features of Vanguard have the potential to make it more "virtual world" and less "amusement park"? E.g., are there built in game mechanisms for generating an economy? Player housing? Dynamic spawns? World events or a landscape which changes in reaction to player actions?

[Miasma]

Well, there is an auction house and lots of gathering/crafting.  You have to get a house built for you by crafters and then purchase the plot of land and place it.  Crafters can also make and sell boats so that you can head out to sea.  I'm not sure what you mean by dynamic world spawns, there are quests where monsters/NPCs only spawn if you use an item.  The only landscape changing I can think of is the housing, and I suppose leaving your tombstones all over.

But whenever someone says "virtual world" my eyes sort of glaze over so I don't think I've bothered to read the latest of the shifting definitions for it so I can't tell you if Vanguard would qualify.  I doubt it.

[Belce]

I have gone down the diplomacy line a bit, have over 40 skill in it now, and this provides you with alot of the background of what is currently happening in Thrush when you start.  Seems consistent with Brad's approach, if you want this info you have to get it out. 

[Kitsune]

Well, there is an auction house and lots of gathering/crafting.  You have to get a house built for you by crafters and then purchase the plot of land and place it.  Crafters can also make and sell boats so that you can head out to sea.  I'm not sure what you mean by dynamic world spawns, there are quests where monsters/NPCs only spawn if you use an item.  The only landscape changing I can think of is the housing, and I suppose leaving your tombstones all over.

But whenever someone says "virtual world" my eyes sort of glaze over so I don't think I've bothered to read the latest of the shifting definitions for it so I can't tell you if Vanguard would qualify.  I doubt it.

Ah, boats.  Let's talk about this.  UO has boats, but UO also has compelling reasons to have boats.  Fishing up bottles and sea monsters and chests and going on treasure hunts and some land that couldn't be reached through any non-boaty means.

What does Vanguard let you do with a boat that couldn't be done without?

[Rithrin]

From the looks of it, there will be areas in the game reachable only by boat and/or flying mount. And boats seem to be much easier to afford. I don't have any real proof of boat/flying accessible only area, except that on the map the areas in between the major continents are labeled "Uncharted Waters" or somesuch. That lends itself to the idea there is stuff out there. But even if there isn't, I suppose it would make it very easy to travel to the other continents since you wouldn't have to wait for an NPC boat to ferry you - you'd just take off from whichever beach you were nearest.

[Belce]

They have indicated that there will be sea encounters for those sailing around in boats.

I found this close to a pirate camp during beta
http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o307/Belce99/ScreenShot_00000-1.jpg
from the air
http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o307/Belce99/ScreenShot_00024.jpg

In town they have something called Civic Diplomacy and if you are successful it improves your faction in some parts, says it advances events by a certain amount and provides you with a hour buff, for me so far the buff has been a 5% mitigation boost, not too bad for a warrior.   Will be interesting to see what the event advancements end up with in the future.  Also a successful parlay here does give you something that information brokers will be willing to buy as well. 

As part of the diplomacy quest series I did, I caused the death of a man and when I returned later with the body, my employer turned him into a zombie, my next quest was to parlay with the zombie to gather the information he refused earlier.  Does this count as dynamic spawn?  Not really I think, but I did some adventuring in a dungeon at a low lvl and we did get a boss to spawn after going back and forth through the area for a while and he dropped a nice sword for the warrior there. 

Each of the starter towns has a low lvl dungeon close by, doing quests in the area will eventually point you toward it for different reasons.  Each of the starter towns has at least a different story behind its quests.  As a Dark Elf, I had to kill Dark Elf slaves at first to prove I was of some value, as a barbarian in Qualia I had to do work to help keep the horses safe and healthy (we're a horse based society), as a Wood Elf it was working against a force corrupting the forest and as a human in Thrush, I was working on getting info or dealing with the recent aftermath of a disaster at the Mage Academy there. 

Certainly there are quests that take you by the nose and say, this is where you should be killing stuff to adventure, but there are also alot of quests that reveal the standard motivations, racial mores of your selected race.  For example the Dark Elf, there is the already mentioned kill slaves quest, the first one you get, later it is followed by a similiar one.  You are told that we give 'charms' for hunting to the people we trade with and are tasked to go out and retrieve a number of them because its fun.  Yeah, its typical inky, but I have never played a game before were it had been protrayed so stark. 

Since beta ended, I have been playing a different race, but with the warrior class I like.  Since last Friday, I have not yet encountered a broken quest, problems with pathing or poor stabilty, I have crashed my client only 3 times and one of those was to character select and the other I think due to my use of a beta command to clear memory cache. 

Death penelty: When I played Eq, the only corpse recovery that was a real undoable pain was Plane of Fear and then only if it happened during the break in.  Once the portal area was done, you had a corpse recovery as easy or easier than any other place in game.  I think that game enjoyment comes from overcoming challenges, by getting good consequences as opposed to bad ones.  Getting a good result is a peak, a bad result a trough.  A death penelty pulls the line down for the trough depending on what it is, some are worse than others.  A game with a decent death penelty has you look down into the trough after your success and the difference adds to the thrill of it.  Vanguard has a choice here and I am uncertain to how good it will work out.  You can recover your corpse, there are things in game that will help insure you have tools available should it be necessary.  You have soul bound containers, horses with containers, can choose to bind items for that eventuality.  Naked corpse recovery is a choice or bad planning for that event.  The other choice is to recover at the altar you respawn to for some money and item durablity.  The benefit of corpse recovery is getting some exp back and no hit on durability for your items.  When you do your recovery you can self drag your corpse to you within a reasonable distance or give permission to another to do so.  Also even though you have released, someone capable can rez you to your tombstone.  I understand that they can still rez you to your tombstone the next time you login as well. 

There was someone that posted on this forum that they would consider playing this game if they could do so in god mode with a flying mount and the weapon selection from Farcry.  I think another way of seeing tis is, I would be willing to play a game if it could be done on easy mode.  I remember working in a game store and selling a rpg to someone along with the walkthru book and a few days later thay would have it finished.  To me its a game experience similiar to buying furniture from Ikea and following the instructions.  Its true that person never did anything tedious like have to repeat an encounter or miss something important along the way and back track, but truly solving good puzzles or making your character enjoy some oppurtunities involves stuff that could be described as tedious.  As I mentioned earlier, peaks and troughs, getting to the top and looking down.  If you want to get to be the best in a game like basketball, baseball, football, hockey, etc you will do alot more tedious stuff for alot longer than any game would.  If you want to get a good job, tedious stuff there too, want to get a mate, well you have to do tedius stuff as well, brush teeth, other hygiene stuff, lots of other stuff, date, etc.  We do tedious stuff in game as we climb up slope to one get there and 2nd to prevent the failure.  Its an rpg and without tedious stuff to lay the groundwork for our success it just becomes 'I play in godmode'.  And in the long run, just like he said, it ain't long term.   IMO, a rpg that seeks to be fun has to have consequences, setting of goals, setbacks, prep for those goals and a good story. 

[Azazel]

There was someone that posted on this forum that they would consider playing this game if they could do so in god mode with a flying mount and the weapon selection from Farcry.  I think another way of seeing tis is, I would be willing to play a game if it could be done on easy mode.

That was me, but I think I should restate or clarify my context: I'm very happy thankyouverymuch playing WoW right now, but I wouldn't mind literally just exploring the world Vanguard has, with the whole "long draw distance" and "explore that house up there on the hill". However, I have no personal interest in starting up a new diku, nor in grinding the levels and so forth. Flying mount comes from thinking it'd be good to quickly travel from A-B, but why restrict yourself to walking real fast when you could fly and see some nice vistas.

The armament from Far Cry comes from, well, games like Far Cry. I'd prefer no mobs generally, but I'd enjoy some headshots on Elves from a mile away, or shooting Orc 1 with a grenade launcher. Shotgun to the zombie's head. So essentially, a bit of FPS daydreaming. Probably because Far Cry had such a nice set of outdoor areas to explore while shooting things, so I imagine Vanguard would provide the same nice outdoor areas to explore, and who can resist shooting zombies with shotguns? But I wouldn't be interested in combat except as a distraction to occasionally blow up passing wildlife while exploring the world.

To summarise:

Would like to explore their gameworld, but not interested in actually playing Vanguard. It's not an "easy-mode" thing at all.

[MistrOrnge]

Just managed to get the download done last night.  Lemme tell you that was a major pain in the ass.  3 days of downloading.  3 days of continuous downloading.  Major pain.
So I got on last night and set up two characters on seperate systems to try the game out.  Both are the Asian flavor race (sorry forget the name).  One is a psionicist and the other is a disciple.  Seemed like cool classes from the their description.
Played until I hit level 5 and had to go to bed for work this AM.  It was fun playing and the quests were ok if not too imaginative.  I got to one where for some reason I could not finish.  Both characters had similar issues where you were supposed to declare if you were good or evil and get a crystal or something and a mob was supposed to spawn and attack you.  Well I never got attacked.  Tried deleting the quest several times and logging out and back in without success.  Eventually I said screw it and went to look for other quests.
As a multi boxer I hate the /follow command.  The second character will follow reasonably well but their point of view rotates so they are looking behind themselves as the run.  Will make multi boxing very difficult.  I generally 6 box in EQ2 and the casters can't attack something they can't see and obviously a melee can't.  So you would have to adjust each character so they are turned to the mob you are attacking.  Mob is 1/4 dead by the time I can rotate my second character to attack.
Done very little exploring so far.  Did manage to find the diplomacy trainer and got trained up.  By the time I found him it was late and my brain was dead.
Will write more in a bit.

[Sky]

Its an rpg and without tedious stuff to lay the groundwork for our success it just becomes 'I play in godmode'.

Wow. I'm speechless.

Bring on the tedium!

I generally 6 box in EQ2

Ok, I'm double speechless now.

[rk47]

lol...boxers want to play a single player MMORPG too u know ;)
people like that should just play Baldur's Gate or something, I heard you can 6 box and get the other 3 or so chicks to make love to you if you talk to them right.

[HaemishM]

I generally 6 box in EQ2

Seek some fucking help. FOR THE CHILDREN!

[Alkiera]

I generally 6 box in EQ2

Seek some fucking help. FOR THE CHILDREN!

On second thought, never hang around any children, much less produce your own, kthx.

--
Alkiera

[MistrOrnge]

Nothing wrong with multi boxing.  Just a different way to play the game.  I always hated waiting on groups in EQ1.  So over time I added another system one at a time until now I am 6 boxing.
Duo boxing now in Vanguard to get the feel for the game.  It will make it easier later when I move out of the towns to have back up. 
The respawning NPCs in the exact same location seemed a little fake.   In an early quest you had to kill so many villagers to move forward.  You would kill the villager and a few moments later he would pop right back a the same spot. 
Test of Wisdom quest seemed pretty cool where you harvest a grub to catch a bird with a collar.  Was more interesting then the kill 6 of this type quests.
Still learning the controls and what I can or cannot do.  Being without any type of manual doesn't help either.

[Miasma]

How do you have six computers powerful enough to play EQ2?  What are they, rackmounted servers with a sealed custom cooling solution that vents to the outside?  You should post a picture, I have a morbid curiosity to see what your computer room looks like.

[Samwise]

[HaemishM]

Nothing wrong with multi boxing. 

Actually, yes there is something wrong with multiboxing. It's called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Just a different way to play the game. 

Yes, it's called EASY MODE. Now, I can certainly understand not wanting to group with the unwashed retard masses of an MMOG community, but paying for more than 1 subscription, let alone 6? You are enabling the continued shittiness of the MMOG medium.

EDIT: I would tell you never to breed, but I'm sure the massive amounts of radiation from all those monitors in close proximity will eventually render your testicles or ovaries inert anyway.

[Stephen Zepp]

Nothing wrong with multi boxing. 

Actually, yes there is something wrong with multiboxing. It's called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Just a different way to play the game. 

Yes, it's called EASY MODE. Now, I can certainly understand not wanting to group with the unwashed retard masses of an MMOG community, but paying for more than 1 subscription, let alone 6? You are enabling the continued shittiness of the MMOG medium.

EDIT: I would tell you never to breed, but I'm sure the massive amounts of radiation from all those monitors in close proximity will eventually render your testicles or ovaries inert anyway.

Haem, aren't you one of the ones that keep saying people shouldn't have to play games a certain way (the way the developers want them to, specifically)?

Why do you then turn around and bash on someone that plays a game the way they want?

[Azazel]

They can play the games however they like.










As long as it's one of the Haemish-approved ways.

[slog]

Mutli boxing in a PvE game doesn't matter.  In a PvP game it does, since games are not balanced for it.

[CassandraR]

Some of the storylines are kinda interesting but the actual gameplay barring the slightly fun diplomacy system is shit. I hope someone steals that and polishes it up then puts it into another game thats good.

[Margalis]

Mutli boxing in a PvE game doesn't matter.  In a PvP game it does, since games are not balanced for it.

I agree except that for many MMO players the game is competitive, just in a very passive-aggressive way. People constantly compare their progress to each other, and nobody wants to be losing out to a multi-boxer.

[Simond]

I generally 6 box in EQ2 and the casters can't attack something they can't see and obviously a melee can't.

You are Sam 'da Man' Deathwalker and I claim my (UK) five pounds.

(Link is semi-to-fully NWS, btw. Or sanity-safe, for that matter)

[Trippy]

As a multi boxer I hate the /follow command.  The second character will follow reasonably well but their point of view rotates so they are looking behind themselves as the run.  Will make multi boxing very difficult.  I generally 6 box in EQ2 and the casters can't attack something they can't see and obviously a melee can't.  So you would have to adjust each character so they are turned to the mob you are attacking.  Mob is 1/4 dead by the time I can rotate my second character to attack.

Wow 6-boxing is impressive, especially in something like EQ2 (multi-boxing in EQ was easy peasy). Is there a key to reset the view back to the default view? If so you can mash that quickly on your following character when you've stopped.

[Strazos]

In a Diku, if you find yourself needing to multi-box...maybe the game just isn't that good.

[Trippy]

In a Diku, if you find yourself needing to multi-box...maybe the game just isn't that good.

Or maybe the game is good but it requires a group to do some of things you want to do.

[squirrel]

I use 2 accounts in some games because the dikumud model makes levelling a second character at the same time a very small incremental effort. Thus I get to play 2 high level charactes that I'm interested in without having to repeat content or invest twice the time.

[Kitsune]

I laid hands on a ten day buddy pass and ran around for a while in the game.  I saw the seeds of potential goodness, but the game's clearly-unfinished state kept tripping it up.  The UI is simplistic, the game's mechanics are poorly explained for their complexity, and there's no polish on anything.  As it is, however, I consider Vanguard to be better than EQ or EQ2 at their release.  If they actually, y'know, finish the game, I think it'll be respecable.  It will never ever be competition to WoW, but it could be a solid contender when all's said and done.

[dusematic]

The game is good, I have run across a couple bugged quests, but nothing extreme or "unfinished."  The graphics are amazing, I really don't understand how anyone can say they're not.  Unless theyy just have a really bad PC.  There are a lot of good things I could say about the game, but ultimately it would be like pissing into the wind with this crowd.  If you're leery about trying it out, give it a month to sort things out.  But the game is perfectly playable, I haven't crashed once.  I like it. 

[Kitsune]

The graphics are good, I'd say at least as good as EQ2.  However, they also choke my geforce 7900 GT in a heartbeat in some places, indoor places, and there's very little excuse for that.  Half Life 2 looks stunningly beautiful and that runs like buttered glass, so any game that doesn't look as good or perform as well clearly has less-competent graphics coding. 
The sounds are good, the voice acting is bad; EQ2's voice acting is possibly its finest feature, more games should strive to have all dialogue voiced. 
Balance is FUBAR, I had a vulmane necromancer reach level 4 in under ten minutes by just walking through two quick quests, while a dark elf psionicist was receiving quests with more tedium and less reward.
The dark elf starting town sucks balls compared to Neriak.
I have yet to see a single tavern or home, apparently nobody even pretends to need to sleep or eat.
Dark elves have no kind of low-light vision; I went down into the town and was promptly blind until I lit a torch.
I regret not being able to choose a deity, it was a very nice touch of EQ.
The diplomacy stuff is interesting and fairly challenging at the later parts.
The diplomacy quests taught me a fair bit about the situation and temperament of the dark elves, but so far I know diddly about the other races, other continents, important history, or much of anything else at all.

[shiznitz]

I played for about 30 minutes last night with my level 7 vulmane druid. I knew I was going to get interrrupted by a phone call so I just explored the vulmane town more carefully than I had previously. Found two quests I had missed before. One actually involved catching baby pumas that were running around the town. I was amused. I saw 3 other players the whole time.

[Engels]

The lack of people on my particular server (Hillsbury) is a bit alarming. The place was all but barren at peak hours yesterday, in a level 8-17 area that during beta was crawling (the Lomshir - Khal corridor).  I think that between the bad press and the complete sony station registration fiasco at launch, all we have now is the beta testers spread out across the various servers.

Don't get me wrong; I'm enjoying playing the game, mostly because of a reunion with my old EQ buddies, but I'm getting a AC2 kinda feeling here. I also concur with everything that Kitsune said about Dark Elves and the 'living' environment. The voice acting seems to have been done overnight. I mean, one of the arabic voices is actually done by some heavily accented Swede and the female dark elf woman (there seems to be only one female voice for dark elves across the board) sounds like a snotty American ditz picked up out of a limo on prom night.

[HaemishM]

Nothing wrong with multi boxing. 

Actually, yes there is something wrong with multiboxing. It's called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Just a different way to play the game. 

Yes, it's called EASY MODE. Now, I can certainly understand not wanting to group with the unwashed retard masses of an MMOG community, but paying for more than 1 subscription, let alone 6? You are enabling the continued shittiness of the MMOG medium.

EDIT: I would tell you never to breed, but I'm sure the massive amounts of radiation from all those monitors in close proximity will eventually render your testicles or ovaries inert anyway.

Haem, aren't you one of the ones that keep saying people shouldn't have to play games a certain way (the way the developers want them to, specifically)?

Why do you then turn around and bash on someone that plays a game the way they want?

I tell people they can drink however they want, right up until they get so liquored up they are starting fights, crashing into trees and being general douchebags.

I never said he COULDN'T do such a thing. But the consequences of that type of obsessive compulsive behaviour are something he will have to deal with. One of those consequences is he will earn my continued, justified derision for being a fucktard. Another is that he will be paying a company X times (where X=6 in his case) the amount of money for a subscription just to keep the suck out of his game. That doesn't cause developers to remove the suck of things like forced grouping, it encourages them to put MORE of that stupid shit in the game. See, he wants to play a game where he can solo, but the developers make that nigh impossible. Instead of being a healthy mammal and telling the developers "Screw you guys, I'm going home," he pays them more money to remove the suck.

I shouldn't have to explain how buying 6 subscriptions is a fucktarded thing to do. I don't even like 2-boxing, but I can accept where it might be not so bad. But 6-boxing? That's just too much.

[Sky]

Haem, aren't you one of the ones that keep saying people shouldn't have to play games a certain way (the way the developers want them to, specifically)?

That's being forced to play the way developers want you to, and paying them 5x more to do it.

That's nucking futz.

[Stephen Zepp]

Nothing wrong with multi boxing. 

Actually, yes there is something wrong with multiboxing. It's called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Just a different way to play the game. 

Yes, it's called EASY MODE. Now, I can certainly understand not wanting to group with the unwashed retard masses of an MMOG community, but paying for more than 1 subscription, let alone 6? You are enabling the continued shittiness of the MMOG medium.

EDIT: I would tell you never to breed, but I'm sure the massive amounts of radiation from all those monitors in close proximity will eventually render your testicles or ovaries inert anyway.

Haem, aren't you one of the ones that keep saying people shouldn't have to play games a certain way (the way the developers want them to, specifically)?

Why do you then turn around and bash on someone that plays a game the way they want?

I tell people they can drink however they want, right up until they get so liquored up they are starting fights, crashing into trees and being general douchebags.

I never said he COULDN'T do such a thing. But the consequences of that type of obsessive compulsive behaviour are something he will have to deal with. One of those consequences is he will earn my continued, justified derision for being a fucktard. Another is that he will be paying a company X times (where X=6 in his case) the amount of money for a subscription just to keep the suck out of his game. That doesn't cause developers to remove the suck of things like forced grouping, it encourages them to put MORE of that stupid shit in the game. See, he wants to play a game where he can solo, but the developers make that nigh impossible. Instead of being a healthy mammal and telling the developers "Screw you guys, I'm going home," he pays them more money to remove the suck.

I shouldn't have to explain how buying 6 subscriptions is a fucktarded thing to do. I don't even like 2-boxing, but I can accept where it might be not so bad. But 6-boxing? That's just too much.

Whatever man. Maybe you should write up an article on "Haemish's approved methods for playing MMO's" so we can no longer be fucktards in your eyes.

[HaemishM]

Trust me, most of you motherfuckers would never make it through rule 2.