Vanguard Round 2 - Post Mortem

[shiznitz]

Decided to start a new thread with some nice screens of a guildmate's brand new house:







One has to admit this is pretty cool.

[Rithrin]

That is pretty neat. Though I wouldn't have gone for the lumberjack hunting cabin type of look. I assume you can buy/make furniture and put it inside?

[Hutch]

So, is there some NPC agency that parcels out land, or did your guildmate just pick a spot?

Is he going to have frequent visits from the local fauna and/or marauding goblin-types, or does building a house create a sort of clear zone?

[Sky]

I admit this part of Vanguard should be interesting to watch play out, given the blight the last couple of open-housing-building type games have had.

"In the ghetto..."

[shiznitz]

So, is there some NPC agency that parcels out land, or did your guildmate just pick a spot?

Is he going to have frequent visits from the local fauna and/or marauding goblin-types, or does building a house create a sort of clear zone?

There are plots scattered around the world. Some places have several plots. Some have one. There are no other plots within sight of this plot, for example. I do not know if there are mobs around his house. You can see a road in the background of one of the pics, though. The house is near New Targonor which is one of the Thestra continents port cities. He also has his own boat, so maybe he can anchor it right off his house.

I will ask him these questions.

[WayAbvPar]

That is pretty damned cool. I love the idea of having an isolated house with no others in sight; one of the many reasons I like huge game worlds (being a dirty explorer is another).

[Soln]

How do you know there's a lot?  There's a sign?  SWG lot placement still is pretty cool IMO.  There just needs to be something to kill houses when people leave, to avoid the inevitable sprawl and camping that happens.

[DataGod]

Im wondering if you can take it down and build a better nhouse as you advance? Plot size determines house size?

How many houses/account/toon?

I remember the virtual real estate agents in UO and SWG....

"This is a beautiful lot, on an island in the middle of the lake......yours for only 1m gp"

[shiznitz]

How do you know there's a lot?  There's a sign?  SWG lot placement still is pretty cool IMO.  There just needs to be something to kill houses when people leave, to avoid the inevitable sprawl and camping that happens.

Yes, there is a marker. No idea about how maintenance works. As far as plot size determining house size, I believe so. Certain plots cost a lot more than others.

[shiznitz]

My questions to my guildmate:

1) are there mobs in the vicinity?

2) can you anchor your ship close enough to shore to use from the house?

3) will there be other houses within site of yours?

His answers:

1) There are two dot mid 30's mobs in the swamp just to the north of my house...next chunk over.

2) Yes. I can park my boat right outside my house basically.

3) There is one plot to the east that I will likely be able to see. It is a ways off from my house, but will be in sight. My plot is very secluded, however. Very nice. There is a couple other plots in Tree of Sorrows that are awesome. One is on an island by itself. The island has 3 trees on it. The other is just east of mine, right by a chunk line though. That is why I didn't take that one.

[Sky]

At the very least, all the uberguilds and catasses will snap up all the decent plots post haste.

[Rithrin]

Actually, I'd think the uberguilds want to make sure all their houses are clustered together for maximum efficiency. With maybe a plot or two in other areas for quick access to whatever bonuses housing gives you.

[Simond]

At the very least, all the uberguilds and catasses will snap up all the decent plots post haste.

Psst. You spelt 'gold farmers' wrong. 

[Surlyboi]

Rang RANG!

[Simond]

Brad McQuaid: "Oops"

I believe I said it needed 200k-300k to be successful, and that I hoped to see 500k after the game was out 1 year, which would make it very profitable. So far we are in the mid 150s which is less than I would have hoped, but still good and still growing.

I have said we released 2-3 months early and that releasing near BC was a mistake, but there was nothing we could do about it. That doesn't mean we were perfect in our development -- we made mistakes -- I talked about in the NYT about how hard it was to manage and organize a team of 100 people when we were used to to EQ 1 (which had about 25 people). So yes, it was harder to schedule and remain as focused and efficient. We also had the switch from MSFT to SOE which slowed us down and caused us to start beta too early.

We also made the mistake of releasing a little early in terms of tech, e.g. we had hoped that computers would be cheaper that could run Vanguard by the time we launched. Time will fix this, but it is hurting us short term. In 20/20 hindsight we probably should have gone a bit lower tech and made a smaller world. But we really felt strongly from the very beginning that part of immersiveness in next gen MMOG was being seamless where you could travel wherever you wanted to, fly anywhere, be able to load any object in the world anywhere in the world, etc. Again, I think longer term as tech is increasing so rapidly, a lot of these problems will go away and having a seamless world with no instancing, ships and flying mounts, etc. will pay off.

I will apolgize for all of the above and the buck stops here. I won't, however, apologize for the team: they worked their asses off and continue to and truly believe in the game (as do I). That said, while I apologize for the mistakes, some of which we made and some of which were out of our hands, we also got the opportunity to make a very ambitious game, the game of our dreams, and were a start-up company that got a 30M+ budget, which is basically unheard of. So while VG does indeed have some issues, I know a lot of people are having fun with it, and a lot more will have fun with it in the future and call it a home. I am also proud to have been part of such an awesome team and to have been able to launch a second MMOG (not something a lot of people can say they have done). So, again, I do apologize for the shortcomings, but am also proud of the game and its potential, and am confident that while it is a successful game now (certainly not a WoW, but not a D&D online either) it will gain momentum as tech catches up, people tire of BC, etc. And also as we through both expansions and the live team add more really cool features to the game over the next year.

Also things like teleporters, experience rates, better LFG tools, etc. are all being looked at and you will see changes soon. I don't have the details yet, but we are listening and the game will get better and the areas where we messed up (large world, but too hard to find a group, etc.) will be addressed.

[Strazos]

Am I the only one who found it in poor taste for Brad to call out DDO like that?

Also, I don't buy the 150k he quotes.

[Lt.Dan]

Decided to start a new thread with some nice screens of a guildmate's brand new house:
One has to admit this is pretty cool.

I'm a bit of an apologist for Vanguard and I'm even still paying SOE to play basically twice a week while I let WoW rest XP accrue.  While I think there are some cool things in Vanguard, it's obvious from those pictures that housing aint it. 

That house looks like arse.  Dirt floor, the straw textures on the underside of the eaves, and no windows make it hard to get the least bit excited about.  The freebie room at the inn you get in EQ2 looks better.  Maybe if you were a Braveheart recreationist you might get a kick out of it but it doesn't get me thinking "ooooh need one of those". 

[Trippy]

Am I the only one who found it in poor taste for Brad to call out DDO like that?

Especially since DDO didn't have a $30+ million budget nor did it likely have nearly as big a team working on it as Vanguard does.

Also, I don't buy the 150k he quotes.

Yup Station Pass makes all subscription numbers coming from Station Pass games virtually meaningless.

[Abelian75]

Am I the only one who found it in poor taste for Brad to call out DDO like that?

Indeed.  Just like it was in poor taste when he called AoC "not a real MMO" or something (not an exact quote).  There was also a post recently on the silky venom forums where he used WoW's peak concurrency record (something like 650,000) and the fact that previous MMOs generally get around 25% peak concurrency to imply that they only had ~2.6 million subscribers and were apparently lying about their actual numbers, either oblivious to or ignoring the fact that spreading your customers around the world will ALWAYS lower peak concurrency percentage.

The guy is routinely unprofessional and frankly comes off as extremely bitter and jealous a lot of the time.  I think it's reasonable to assume that these comments are due to the fact that he's angry that he's been one-upped by Blizzard and will, I'd bet, be out-sold by both Turbine and Funcom this year.

Also, I don't buy the 150k he quotes.

Considering there are fewer than 150k characters (not players, mind you) above level 10 that have been created since VG's release, including cancelled accounts, alts, buddy accounts, etc?  Yeah, I have trouble believing it too.

[Trippy]

Am I the only one who found it in poor taste for Brad to call out DDO like that?

Indeed.  Just like it was in poor taste when he called AoC "not a real MMO" or something (not an exact quote).  There was also a post recently on the silky venom forums where he used WoW's peak concurrency record (something like 650,000) and the fact that previous MMOs generally get around 25% peak concurrency to imply that they only had ~2.6 million subscribers and were apparently lying about their actual numbers, either oblivious to or ignoring the fact that spreading your customers around the world will ALWAYS lower peak concurrency percentage.

660,000 (if that was the number Brad was quoting) is China-only.

[Engels]

Every time he opens his yap he sucks just a little bit more of my will to play his game. Here and there some bit of art and ingenuity shine through nontheless, enough to keep me active with my guild. Brad, if, for some reaons you're reading this, please stop talking. You're not people person. You never were. They hired Absor to replace you for a reason.

[Endie]

To go back to the OP, am I the only one who thinks that that house really sucks?  The textures in particular look like amateur hour, especially where surfaces meet: the breaks on the stones on the corner, for instance, don't match those next to them or above them.  The underside of the thatch is wierd, but the texture on the top looks like they've scaled it up by about 10 times, so that it's just over-large and blurry.  The inside is certainly a bit better, but the whole thing is almost identical to the quality of the freebie art set that comes with the multiverse demo world.

The location is nice, though: definitely appeals to the explorer in me. But, with the possible exception of the tree bark, is it any better than SWG?  I honestly don't think so, and the SWG graphics engine must be six or more years old, now.

Edit: Spotted Lt. Dan, so i am not alone.  "Looks a bit arse", funnily enough, was the exact phrase I was originally thinking of when I saw it.

[Simond]

That's got to be galling - "We hired Abashi because he's a better 'people person' than you"

Brad's still posting to that thread, by the way - one of his latest was basically "Even though VG is at half the subs we need and even through the concept of a large world with slow travel isn't working and even though people need to have parallel-chained Crays to run our game, even though - in short - pretty much every design decision I made was wrong...I wouldn't change any of the design decisions I made."

The hubris of the man is astonishing. Wonder how much longer he'll be running things at Sigil?

[slog]

I don' t get the house thing at all.  What can you do with it?

side note:  People on this and other forums are always complaining that developers don't say what they think on all they get from developers is marketing speak.  Now Brad comes along and says what he thinks and people call him "unprofessional."

By far I prefer the straight talk from Brad over the spin that I normally hear from most developers.

[Azazel]

The house looks ok to me. Especially in a MMO-context, as opposed, to, say the Sims.

As for McQuaid, candor is one thing, but dribbling absolute stupidity is another thing. I spent 10 minutes laughing my way through the link above reading about the costs of his suggested gaming rigs (and their prices!) to run Vanguard at decent settings. He's a little divorced from reality.

[ajax34i]

I think the consensus here is that "what he thinks" doesn't quite match reality.  He may fully believe what he says (I don't think he does), but that doesn't make it the truth, or fact.

Besides, I also think that, for these boards, the game's been judged as "crap", interest has passed, and now there's the wish that he'd just shut up and stop hogging the microphone.  We're a little bit like forum whores; we should stop reading boards and messages that we're not interested in.

[shiznitz]

Decided to start a new thread with some nice screens of a guildmate's brand new house:
One has to admit this is pretty cool.

I'm a bit of an apologist for Vanguard and I'm even still paying SOE to play basically twice a week while I let WoW rest XP accrue.  While I think there are some cool things in Vanguard, it's obvious from those pictures that housing aint it. 

That house looks like arse.  Dirt floor, the straw textures on the underside of the eaves, and no windows make it hard to get the least bit excited about.  The freebie room at the inn you get in EQ2 looks better.  Maybe if you were a Braveheart recreationist you might get a kick out of it but it doesn't get me thinking "ooooh need one of those". 

Here is a more expensive model that our guild shipwright recently placed:



His comments:

Have to say that I just LOVE this plot, not sure if you can see it, but I have my own personal Stonehenge, I'm across from the Ancient Port Warehouse, and I have no house that I can see from where I am at. The bulk of Traboh Island is in the center, behind the mountain, so I'm perfectly secluded.

I asked for inside screenshots.

Furniture recipes just entered the game Chests are not in yet either.

[WindupAtheist]

I'm interested.  Watching McQuaid go slowly mad cooped up in his Führerbunker is at least as amusing as the Neverending SWG Thread.

[Hutch]

Am I the only one who found it in poor taste for Brad to call out DDO like that?

I found it not in poor taste, but just lacking in perspective, to refer to Sigil as a "start-up", and in the same sentence mention their $30M budget.

side note:  People on this and other forums are always complaining that developers don't say what they think on all they get from developers is marketing speak.  Now Brad comes along and says what he thinks and people call him "unprofessional."

By far I prefer the straight talk from Brad over the spin that I normally hear from most developers.

You're not getting straight talk from Brad. Everything he posts on the boards is intended to influence people into either buying a box and/or continuing their subscription. He's walking market-speak. Which is fine, in and of itself, even when he's ham-fisted and inept about it. Taking shots at other games (WoW, DDO, etc) is what makes him unprofessional.

[Nyght]

We also made the mistake of releasing a little early in terms of tech, e.g. we had hoped that computers would be cheaper that could run Vanguard by the time we launched. Time will fix this, but it is hurting us short term. In 20/20 hindsight we probably should have gone a bit lower tech and made a smaller world. But we really felt strongly from the very beginning that part of immersiveness in next gen MMOG was being seamless where you could travel wherever you wanted to, fly anywhere, be able to load any object in the world anywhere in the world, etc. Again, I think longer term as tech is increasing so rapidly, a lot of these problems will go away and having a seamless world with no instancing, ships and flying mounts, etc. will pay off.

Of everything he said, this is likely the closest to the mark and reveals a small remaining hint of sanity.

If they can survive for a few years, this might pay off.

[Nija]

These housing screenshots are actually making me less interested in Vanguard. I didn't think that was possible. 

[Slayerik]

These housing screenshots are actually making me less interested in Vanguard. I didn't think that was possible. 

Opposite for me.

I went from snowball's chance in hell of ever buying it to 1% chance of purchase. I mean, I will never buy it but I want more housing in other games and something about the plot system takes me back to UO. And everyone knows how crazy I get about old UO :)

[shiznitz]

I am not trying to beat the house issue to death, but since it is one way that VG differs significantly from EQ2 and WoW I thought it was worth pointing out. The grind to collect resources for a house is significant, though. These two guildmates play every night for several hours and the second one spends 80% of his time crafting while the former does a lot of gathering while he adventures.

You cannot recall to your house. So, the more remote it is, the less likely you will actually be there.  Both guys admit they did it more just to do it then actually expecting to hang out there.

[eldaec]

better LFG tools, etc. are all being looked at

Another thing I never understand, why do mmog developers *always* get lfg tools wrong.

I mean, it's not hard or anything.

It's just a window with /who queries matched up with a status of ...

out of group - lfg flag on
out of group - lfg flag off
in group
in group and leading

THAT IS ALL YOU HAVE TO DO.

Shit like being able to flag 'looking for members - priests' is gravy.

How hard is it to have a window from where you can run /who queries.

CoH and EQ2 are the only mmogs I can remember that got it entirely right.

DAoC came close, but narrowly missed out on cigars.

SWG was classic. I could search for groupmates according to the type of music they like, but not on whether they are flagged lfg, or whether they can shoot a rifle. wtf?

[HaemishM]

I am not trying to beat the house issue to death, but since it is one way that VG differs significantly from EQ2 and WoW I thought it was worth pointing out. The grind to collect resources for a house is significant, though. These two guildmates play every night for several hours and the second one spends 80% of his time crafting while the former does a lot of gathering while he adventures.

You cannot recall to your house. So, the more remote it is, the less likely you will actually be there.  Both guys admit they did it more just to do it then actually expecting to hang out there.

So for all that work, you get to have a house that looks like Johnny Appleseed died there and you can't even recall to the house?

What... the... fuck?