Vanguard: Round 1 - FIGHT!

[Morat20]

With all of those caveats in place, I'd suggest you're really after a single player game. Perhaps a SP game with integrated MSN-style chat. Ot alt-tab between them.

One thing I've thought I'd really like to see is where the game defaults to solo, but you can bring friends along if you like. If you're solo there are X mobs with Y abilities, and those numbers and abilities scale upward as you add extra players, as do the drops. That to me would be perfect. I like the interaction in MMOGs, even though it often puts me in direct contact with total morons, but I don't like the forced grouping. MMOs are different from lobby games in that you can run into people while out in the world. A lobby game could also have forced grouping and it would still just be a lobby game.

City of Heroes does that. In fact, people exploit it by bringing a bunch of friends, zoning into the instance, then having their friends bail. As long as they don't leave, the mission is set for X number of players -- a lot more XP, if you can handle the mission.

[Calantus]

That sounds fine to me. :P

[Azazel]

Aside from the models in Diablo (solo-based, lobby but you can group) and GW (group-based, lobby but you can go in with bots), nearly everything in WoW bar the instances fits that description.

I don't have a problem with the current balance really. I'd like some instances tuned for duos or three people moreso than pure solo.

[Trippy]

Aside from the models in Diablo (solo-based, lobby but you can group) and GW (group-based, lobby but you can go in with bots), nearly everything in WoW bar the instances fits that description.

I don't have a problem with the current balance really. I'd like some instances tuned for duos or three people moreso than pure solo.

All the Alliance-side sub-40 instances were/are doable with a trio (all about the same level(s) as the instance mobs). RFK and SFK were/are doable as well. I never got beyond the high 30s so I can't comment on the later instances.

[Azazel]

It depends on your class makeup a lot, but now that you mention it I do remember three of us crawling slowly through the east wing of SM, with my Pally as healer (and tank) to two mages' DPS. No way we could have done (completed) the Abbey though.

[Trippy]

It depends on your class makeup a lot, but now that you mention it I do remember three of us crawling slowly through the east wing of SM, with my Pally as healer (and tank) to two mages' DPS. No way we could have done (completed) the Abbey though.

It wasn't that picky as long as you had a tank, healing, and enough DPS to kill bosses (assuming you got that far). I did all the previously mentioned instances with Warrior/Priest/Mage, Paladin/Rogue/Warlock, and Paladin/Druid/Warlock. I did a few of them with the small guild I was in with Warrior/Priest/Warlock as well.

[Falconeer]

Latest news: now all quests, including simple collect ones, give something around 5% XP.

Looks like leveling went from horribly slow to ridiculously fast.

Some are happy, some aren't.

[Azazel]

That's the thing, I'd like some duo/trio stuff not tuned directly to a variant of the holy trinity, or the tank/healer dynamic, anyway.

As for VG, there are people unhappy with anything made easier instead of harder? Unpossible~!

[Venkman]

Interesting update Falconeer. It might mean that Sigil is finally realizing just how not big the hardcore audience is. And honestly, while those folks will scream and cry about XP rate increases, the only ones that will quit over that will be those you don't want in the game anyway. XP rate increase means only good things in this age of WoW and GW.

When BC isn't the price of a full game, I'll jump in and play another character up through the ranks, most likely. I should mention, in playing WoW 1-58 (with a few alts up to maybe 20s), my hunter got a single blue drop from some random basilisk in Stranglethorn. That was it for blue drops. One.

$39.99 I saw recently. And it's about a full-game worth of content. You're actually right at the level where you could start BC (minimum level to enter the Outlands is 58).

The point about blues/greens drops isn't the color though. It's funny how color alone can inflate the price on the AH, but that's irrelevant. I went to the Outlands with 3/4 Purple gear, and have already replaced half of it with green stuff I've gotten from Quests. One stat alone has been really enhanced by BC for me. I entered BC with +180 spell damage and just shy of level 66 have +320. From green stuff. Most mob drops are also pretty good, but I sell those on the AH. I prefer gear-by-quest.

[Sky]

With all of those caveats in place, I'd suggest you're really after a single player game. Perhaps a SP game with integrated MSN-style chat. Ot alt-tab between them.

I'd suggest you stifle that fucking shit, Edith.

[Nebu]

Not to start an argument or anything, but to be honest Sky, I don't know why you play mmog's.  You don't like to chat.  You have no desire to group.  You're too casual to be competitive with other people.  You don't seem to care for the world thing. 

What keeps attracting you to mmog's? You seem against all the major reasons to play them and without those features, I think we can all agree mmog's are inferior as games.

[Glazius]

With all of those caveats in place, I'd suggest you're really after a single player game. Perhaps a SP game with integrated MSN-style chat. Ot alt-tab between them.

One thing I've thought I'd really like to see is where the game defaults to solo, but you can bring friends along if you like. If you're solo there are X mobs with Y abilities, and those numbers and abilities scale upward as you add extra players, as do the drops. That to me would be perfect. I like the interaction in MMOGs, even though it often puts me in direct contact with total morons, but I don't like the forced grouping. MMOs are different from lobby games in that you can run into people while out in the world. A lobby game could also have forced grouping and it would still just be a lobby game.

City of Heroes does that. In fact, people exploit it by bringing a bunch of friends, zoning into the instance, then having their friends bail. As long as they don't leave, the mission is set for X number of players -- a lot more XP, if you can handle the mission.

That only lasts for so long. Mission groups spawn as the player group comes within some distance of their "spawn nodes", and that rate is affected by how many players are grouped in the instance and its connected zone. So you have to scout the entire map with a full group before you commence to bootin'.

(Overworld nodes spawn as a player's "awareness range" comes within reach of their nodes, as long as no other player's "sight range" includes those nodes, and the node rolls a random number of players to determine its spawn size.)

Further, archvillains, which are "balanced" around requiring six players to hammer into submission, will spawn as elite bosses, which are designed as a tough fight for a solo player who pulls out all the stops, if the mission's set on a low difficulty and/or there aren't enough players in the group.

Task forces are an exception to this rule: they require some minimum group size to start and the archvillains are always archvillains. But then, that's group-locked at the start, in contrast to a quest which you can get solo but which needs a group to complete.

--GF

[Der Helm]

Latest news: now all quests, including simple collect ones, give something around 5% XP.

Looks like leveling went from horribly slow to ridiculously fast.

Some are happy, some aren't.

This would make me try the game.

But I am wondering, I could change my Planetside  subscription to the station pass thingy.

Would I still have to buy an account key for vanguard ? Or could I just download it and start grinding playing ?

[Sky]

Not to start an argument or anything, but to be honest Sky, I don't know why you play mmog's.  You don't like to chat.  You have no desire to group.  You're too casual to be competitive with other people.  You don't seem to care for the world thing. 

What keeps attracting you to mmog's? You seem against all the major reasons to play them and without those features, I think we can all agree mmog's are inferior as games.

Nah, I like the world. It's mostly for the exploration, and no other genre really has the amount of content and variety of classes that mmogs have. Mmogs like EQ2 and WoW have come a long way, and I'd rank at least those as superior to the last couple Elder Scrolls games. I still like the Gothic series better, but it's also a finite experience.

And I don't totally dislike grouping, if I have time for it I'll group some. It's the utter cockblocking of non-groupers that is really the only thing I dislike about modern mmo.

Glazius makes some good points on mmo scaling.

[Ixxit]

I think in general people put too much emphasis on raw  leveling speed as opposed to what they are doing while they are gaining levels.   I think a well designed modern mmo will give  a nice balance of questing, exloration and other activities which will ultimately lead to moving on to new areas in the game (towns, dungeons, outposts etc.)  This gives a nice flow to the game and the player feels that they are making progress whether or not they are gain 1 level per  gaming session or three levels per gaming session.  Is it WoW's fast leveling speed that  gives it pretty much universal appeal  or is it the fact that the player is constantly moving through the gameword doing meaningful stuff?

In mmos, problems start to arise though when the player is forced  into grinding mobs just to gain a level or two so they are able to continue the activities mentioned above.  WoW and EQ II do a great job  of managing this flow.  The first 12 levels or so of Vanguard also do a great job; but then you find yourself looking over a grand canyon filled with trash mobs that you have to fight through just to continue with the 'fun stuff' on the other side.

A couple of you guys have mentioned the '5' or '30' minute rule for mmos.  Here's my rule:

When I first started playing EQII I started taking screenshots every 15 minutes or so to chronicle my journies in Norath.  After a few months I opened the folder in an image browser and looked at the images in sequence.  It was pretty cool because the progression of screenshots told the story of my character, the places he visited, the quests and adventures he had and the lore he learned about the world.  Sure it read like a cheesy fantasy novel in spots,  but it was interesting nonetheless.

I think in this manner, a  well put together game will tell an intersting story.   Conversly a problematic game, even though it tells a story, there will be parts composed of picture after picture of some repetative activity.  The story is less intersting because in chapters 5-8 the character is killing troll whelps so that someday they will be able to complete the noble task they were assigned to "obliterate 20 troll enforcers and bring me their gizzards as proof" that they were assigned in chapter 4.


As it stands, this is Vanguard's problem.  If it takes a year or three months   to reach level 50 who cares.  It really doesn't matter if you get 5 % for this or 1%.  Just make the journey to get there flow and not truncated by exructiating periods of gameplay that has been historically proven to be undesireable.

[Venkman]

Unless you're talking about a dedicated end-gamer, most MMO players use "leveling speed" as sort of a catch-all term to describe pacing in a number of areas:

• Abilities- How long are you stuck with your current ability set before the next one comes along. Note how things changed from the early EQ1 days when you got new abilities every 4-6 levels vs now getting stuff every other level or quicker when those levels themselves come quicker in the same time frame of play.
  
• Raw Capability- Mostly gear and other stat adjustments. How fast do these upgrades come and how meaningful are they.
  
• Travel- How much traveling are you doing between places as part of your character growth. This includes traveling to spawn, traveling to a group, traveling WITH the group, and death recovery (traveling back up the XP chain, traveling back to location, etc)
  

We know bots who hit 60 with half their gear slots empty so they can be sold to players who want to raid, or farm for cash/goods to RMT. This is not the norm. Only to them does just "leveling speed" matter, and they are either not a statistically large enough group for which to design an entire game or are conducting illegal activities you don't want to make more efficient anyway.

[WindupAtheist]

I hate this game, and the guy who made it.  I hate the players and I hate their fun.  I hope they either lower the XP to 1% of what it is now, or raise it by 6000%.  I hope they add a bug that deletes characters.  I hope some catass shoots himself over the game, and dies in a pile of his own feces.  I just want to watch a train-wreck.

[Morat20]

I hate this game, and the guy who made it.  I hate the players and I hate their fun.  I hope they either lower the XP to 1% of what it is now, or raise it by 6000%.  I hope they add a bug that deletes characters.  I hope some catass shoots himself over the game, and dies in a pile of his own feces.  I just want to watch a train-wreck.

Cheer up. We still have SWG to kick around.

[Stephen Zepp]

I think in general people put too much emphasis on raw  leveling speed as opposed to what they are doing while they are gaining levels.   I think a well designed modern mmo will give  a nice balance of questing, exloration and other activities which will ultimately lead to moving on to new areas in the game (towns, dungeons, outposts etc.)  This gives a nice flow to the game and the player feels that they are making progress whether or not they are gain 1 level per  gaming session or three levels per gaming session.  Is it WoW's fast leveling speed that  gives it pretty much universal appeal  or is it the fact that the player is constantly moving through the gameword doing meaningful stuff?

In mmos, problems start to arise though when the player is forced  into grinding mobs just to gain a level or two so they are able to continue the activities mentioned above.  WoW and EQ II do a great job  of managing this flow.  The first 12 levels or so of Vanguard also do a great job; but then you find yourself looking over a grand canyon filled with trash mobs that you have to fight through just to continue with the 'fun stuff' on the other side.

Amen...this has been discussed here in the past, but the generaltional leap in games in my opinion would be that:

--there is no "end game" that you want to reach fast
--each advancement (and more importantly, the effort to reach that advancement) is just as fun/interesting as the next.

In other words--and paraphrased from many many posters here (Haemish comes to mind)--grind is a subjective thing in the mind of a player. If the game is fun from level 1, and just as fun (although possibly in different ways) at level 1,223,456, then there is no grind--there is simply playing.

Now, the obvious issue here is that different people find different things fun. If you still have to whack 1000 foozles to get the experience/farming power to harvest the crafting components you need to make the bricks to build the buildings that allow you sell stuff, and your goal is to sell stuff cause that's fun to you, then the game hasn't evolved to this hypothetical "next generation of evolution" I'm suggesting.

[Falconeer]

This would make me try the game.

But I am wondering, I could change my Planetside  subscription to the station pass thingy.

Would I still have to buy an account key for vanguard ? Or could I just download it and start grinding playing ?

You have to buy the game. The Station pass saves you te monthly fee but no matter the game (EQ1, EQ2, Matrix Online, Vanguard) you still have to own a key to start playing.

[shiznitz]

Latest news: now all quests, including simple collect ones, give something around 5% XP.

Looks like leveling went from horribly slow to ridiculously fast.

Some are happy, some aren't.

This would make me try the game.

But I am wondering, I could change my Planetside  subscription to the station pass thingy.

Would I still have to buy an account key for vanguard ? Or could I just download it and start grinding playing ?

You have to buy a box or digital download.

This quest exp change is interesting. Of course, last night I did a dungeon crawl with some guildies so didn;t experience it. Some quest exp rewards > 10% of a level. This will be toned down, but it is a move in the right direction. However, this makes grouping and dungeon crawls just SUCK in comparison. They need to boost group exp a lot or much of the group content will be ignored.

Also, one of the Ten Ton Hammer guys has a 49 necro. He will be the first level 50 and it hasn't even been a month.

If the exp boost is permanent, Sigil's single biggest mistake from a business standpoint is going to be the hardware requirements to play. My dad just bought a brand new run of the mill Dell (2GB ram, Nvidia 7300 vid card) for ~$800 and VG is probably unplayable on it, although I don't know for sure. This is the kind of machine parents will be buying for their kids this year.

[Falconeer]

It will be more than playable on that machine.
It runs fine (at highest performance, of course) on my office's old amd 3000+ with 2 gigs ram and a 10$ worth ati 9550.

It won't be flashy but it'll definitely run (at an higher setting than my office crappy rig).

[Riggswolfe]

I hate this game, and the guy who made it.  I hate the players and I hate their fun.  I hope they either lower the XP to 1% of what it is now, or raise it by 6000%.  I hope they add a bug that deletes characters.  I hope some catass shoots himself over the game, and dies in a pile of his own feces.  I just want to watch a train-wreck.

Cheer up. We still have SWG to kick around.

And don't forget UO!

[Calantus]

I think in general people put too much emphasis on raw  leveling speed as opposed to what they are doing while they are gaining levels.   I think a well designed modern mmo will give  a nice balance of questing, exloration and other activities which will ultimately lead to moving on to new areas in the game (towns, dungeons, outposts etc.)  This gives a nice flow to the game and the player feels that they are making progress whether or not they are gain 1 level per  gaming session or three levels per gaming session.  Is it WoW's fast leveling speed that  gives it pretty much universal appeal  or is it the fact that the player is constantly moving through the gameword doing meaningful stuff?

Raw leveling speed is often used as a measurement because it is closely related to how much grinding you have to do. If a game has 50-60 levels and takes for example twice as long as WoW to hit max level there are 2 conclusions: the game has twice as many quests, or the game has a whole lotta grinding. The second is the more likely of the 2. Personally I don't care how long it takes to hit 60 in a new game if it's quests all the way. If it's grinding... the less I have to do the better.

[Der Helm]

You have to buy the game. The Station pass saves you te monthly fee but no matter the game (EQ1, EQ2, Matrix Online, Vanguard) you still have to own a key to start playing.

Damm.

Well, I found an advertising on the station homepage that spoke of some kind of compliation. The ad said gave the impression that all Station games would be included, but I could not find it in the "store". Since I am mildly interested in the other games I am tempted to buy this. If I could find it.

[Margalis]

Stephen is correct. Levelling up is not in itself grinding. The grind only comes in when you find yourself thinking "fuck, I have to kill 100 more of these fucking lizards to get my next spell??"

Levelling speed is a factor because slower speed means you need more content. But 'content' is very broad. A combat system that is fun could be 'content.'

[Secundo]

This is a quote from a post on Silky Venom forums made by Tagad, a sigil employee:

Guys I wanted to pop in here and say a few things about the quest exp reward tweaks.

We were simply over zealous and didn't test enough internally before turning that live.

I sincerely appologize to everyone that feels like they were cheated because they saw others advance at a much faster rate - when they had worked very hard to attain their levels. To those of you that experienced the increased experience, well, consider it a gift

The quest reward numbers were tuned down yesterday when we finally got a chance to look into the issues. After further review today, the values were reduced slightly again - this change will go live this weekend. The values are still higher than the original experience values - but they should no longer be obscene.

~Tagad

I knew it was too good to be true when I thought to myself that it was actually viable to solo now..


About the vgplayers numbers; I myself have 7 alts with 1 at lvl16 and the rest are 8-14. I see lots and lots of alts being made so I think that the only number worth paying any attention to is the one for lvls 15+. That was around 40k atm?

[Azazel]

With all of those caveats in place, I'd suggest you're really after a single player game. Perhaps a SP game with integrated MSN-style chat. Ot alt-tab between them.

I'd suggest you stifle that fucking shit, Edith.

que? I was being somewhat serious, based on the "I want everything in my MMO to be soloable" criteria you laid down.
If you're making threats over the intarwebs, then I suggest you get real, homegirl.

[Hound]

This is a quote from a post on Silky Venom forums made by Tagad, a sigil employee:

Guys I wanted to pop in here and say a few things about the quest exp reward tweaks.

We were simply over zealous and didn't test enough internally before turning that live.

I sincerely appologize to everyone that feels like they were cheated because they saw others advance at a much faster rate - when they had worked very hard to attain their levels. To those of you that experienced the increased experience, well, consider it a gift

The quest reward numbers were tuned down yesterday when we finally got a chance to look into the issues. After further review today, the values were reduced slightly again - this change will go live this weekend. The values are still higher than the original experience values - but they should no longer be obscene.

~Tagad

I knew it was too good to be true when I thought to myself that it was actually viable to solo now..


About the vgplayers numbers; I myself have 7 alts with 1 at lvl16 and the rest are 8-14. I see lots and lots of alts being made so I think that the only number worth paying any attention to is the one for lvls 15+. That was around 40k atm?

And here I thought they had just tweaked up the exp for the weekend to counter the LoTRO stress test 
 
When a game becomes work I expect a paycheck or I look for the cancel feature, hell for that matter when I start dreading the ride to work I start polishing up the resume. Life is too short to spend it on activities that suck. Also I agree on the 15 plus numbers, game out his long most players have at least one 15+. End of the month is going is coming up and it is going to be interesting watching the growth rate there next month.

[Sky]

With all of those caveats in place, I'd suggest you're really after a single player game. Perhaps a SP game with integrated MSN-style chat. Ot alt-tab between them.

I'd suggest you stifle that fucking shit, Edith.

que? I was being somewhat serious, based on the "I want everything in my MMO to be soloable" criteria you laid down.
If you're making threats over the intarwebs, then I suggest you get real, homegirl.

I wasn't making threats. I was just issuing a general stfu because it's a tired old reply that every solo-oriented mmo player is more than tired of hearing trotted out.

I don't understand why the fact that a game is online and populated by lots of people means I need to scrounge up a bunch of people every time I want to play it. I can go shop at walmart without sitting in the parking lot buying the stuff on the curb before I find enough people to allow me to shop inside. Bad analogy, but I really don't get the whole 'must group to do dungeons (or wait until they're trivial)'.

The only people I see solo play 'hurting' are the Vantards who get upset that other people got experience at a faster rate, hurting their feeling because, goshdarnit, they /earned/ that exp walking ten miles in the snow uphill. It's just a game and I want to have fun playing without being tied to finding a group all the time, why can't I like the games without liking the need to waste time finding a good group to do anything more than overland questing (which I also like)?

[Hellinar]

Not to start an argument or anything, but to be honest Sky, I don't know why you play mmog's.  You don't like to chat.  You have no desire to group.  You're too casual to be competitive with other people.  You don't seem to care for the world thing. 

What keeps attracting you to mmog's? You seem against all the major reasons to play them and without those features, I think we can all agree mmog's are inferior as games.

I play my WoW Hunter as the strong, silent, backwoods type. Focussed on Exploration, Hunting and Leatherworking. For that character type, rare conversation makes a lot of sense. But what social interactions there are become very significant. Interacting occasionally with other people is very different from never interacting with other people.

Guys I wanted to pop in here and say a few things about the quest exp reward tweaks.

We were simply over zealous and didn't test enough internally before turning that live.

~Tagad

Despite all the experience at Sigil, they still come across as a bunch of amateurs at times. Why pull a number out your ass and apply it? How hard would it be to write some code that upped experience gain every day until they got where they wanted to be? And at this point I will pull out my favorite mantra again. If they don’t want level 50’s in a month, then soft cap the experience gain. Don’t wreck the play experience of the majority to head off a few rabid players. Average leveling speed should be tied to what is fun for your average player. If you want to limit max leveling speed, use a separate mechanism for that.

[Venkman]

I sincerely appologize to everyone that feels like they were cheated because they saw others advance at a much faster rate

Christ. You know it's time to run from a freakin' game when you've got to make an apology like this. " they saw others advance at a much faster rate". What sort of special form of narcissistic sadism does it take for someone to be pissed off about another player advancing faster using legitimate means. Waa! It took me 6 hours to level and therefore the game can never change for anyone else or I'll feel slighted. Dude! You made your fucking level already, how do you sleep better at night by worrying how fast others do it?!.

I love VG not because of the game but because of these sorts of comments. Yea, these comments are in every game. But only in VG and only from Sigil would they not only get an official serious reply, but one steeped in apologetics.

This is not the sort of thing they should be worried about. They should actually be trying to figure out how to make the game more fun so it attracts more players.

[Raguel]

This is not the sort of thing they should be worried about. They should actually be trying to figure out how to make the game more fun so it attracts more players.

One of the reasons why I won't bother with this game (although I am curious about things like diplomacy and the perception system) is  that Sigil, but especially Brad, always gave me the impression they were far more concerned about speed of leveling/item acquisition than they were about the game being fun.

[SnakeCharmer]

Latest news: now all quests, including simple collect ones, give something around 5% XP.

Looks like leveling went from horribly slow to ridiculously fast.

Some are happy, some aren't.

I dont get it.  I absolutely DON'T get it. 

Why are people bitching about xp being adjusted.  It's a GOOD thing.  How can someone sit there with a straight face and say "Why yes, I want it to take me 3 days to ding a level"?  Are these people sick?  Are they all the dom's bitch, and like getting smacked around all day?  "Unnacceptable.  My guildy leveled 2 levels in 8 hours and was disgusted and quit the game".

 Seriously.

What. The.  Fuck.  Is.  Wrong.  With.  These.  People?

[Margalis]

As I have said many times, most MMOPRG players are passive-aggressive brats. It is one big competition for a lot of people. That's why they get upset at things like this.

Sigil is trying to focus on making things slow because their plan was always have fewer subs for longer. Problem is that entire strategy is flawed. WOW has a ton of subs and is still going strong. Vanguard has people getting fed up and quitting daily (from the boards I have been reading) and the sub numbers are a lot lower than they thought. It looks like they might not even have a quarter of the subs they were counting on.