Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Year in Review

The Vision

All year long Brad has told people that Vanguard will not be a game just for hardcore player or for casuals but will be targeted towards the core player or average player. Brad has said that you cannot stereotype players. Rather players simply like different types of game play, game features and game styles. This does not make any game style or preference superior to any other.

Brad has explained that Vanguard’s systems--from its endgame loot system to dynamic death penalty-- will attempt to offer something for most types of players and play styles. Vanguard will offer quest-directed game play for questers and group and solo play for those who prefer to adventure alone or with a partner. There will be content for solo players, group players and raiders. But the important point is that Vanguard is trying to reach out to most, if not all, play styles whether one is a quester, crafter, diplomat, raider, casual player, hardcore player, EQ1 fan, WoW player or something else. Sigil is trying to offer content for these different types of play styles while not watering down the challenge or infringing upon other styles of game play. Take a quick look at the end game plan. Everyone can play the end game as they wish. If a player doesn’t wish to engage in diplomacy, raiding or in soloing/casual content they don’t have to. They will still be rewarded playing the game how they want to play it. Players can simply play the game the way they want if it does not infringe upon other people’s enjoyment. That seems to be what Vanguard is all about: offering content choices for everyone.

For the longest time, no one listened to Brad McQuaid when he preached that Vanguard was not a hardcore game but a game for everyone. Rather, people stuck to their preconceptions of Vanguard. But slowly it has begun to dawn on people that Vanguard is not exactly the game they thought it would be. Many have become upset or disillusioned because Vanguard is quite different than what they decided it would be. They may be upset about Bind on Equip items, Trivial Loot Code, the endgame not being centered around raiding, the lack of corpse runs, inclusion of maps, quest-directed game play or something else. This has recently caused a great deal of backlash posts saying that Brad and Vanguard have “lost the vision.” I would strongly disagree and point out that if they had been listening they would have been aware that Brad and Sigil have talked about most if not all of these design decisions for years now. This is something that happens in just about every game, when a game does not turn out exactly as people want, they cry foul and raise a ruckus on the boards.

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read the full articel: http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=463

Let me just say, ......finaly i can  QFT

Afcourse I do realize this was all before release but still i think the biggest problem for Vanguard is/was most of it because of the community and how they kept misreading stuff or misleading stuff what actualy has been said to them for years for those the have followed the procces of Vanguard in hte making.

Originally posted by smg77
No amount of spin is going to save this sinking ship.

                            I know what you mean. Keep telling people...buy dimmit ships. All others take on water and sink.

        Caravels and sloops for the best prices to be found across all 3 continents. Buy cheap, bye smart, bye dimmit. Satisfaction guranteed or your money back.

Originally posted by random11 
One thing is clear, Brad's vision for VG started out the same way, and it is a filthy lie, that he didn't advertise it as a hardcore game, he might not have used the word, but he described it as such.

True.  I checked out Vanguard a year ago.  I remember one of the responses from the developers IN REGARD TO VG SOLO PLAY who basically said if you're not in a hardcore guild, then you shouldn't play the game. (I don't know if it was Brad M or not, not that it matters it was from a dev)

I stopped following the game at that point, but I had to admit I was impressed with the frank honesty.  It seemed they knew what they wanted to do and they were going to do it, naysayers be damned.   I knew I wouldn't touch the game with a 10-foot pole, but I imagined there were others who wanted to play it. 

I ignored the game for a year then when the release approached I went back out of curiosity and saw claims that the game was not meant to be for 'hardcore' players but what Brad M called 'core' players (which by his own definition were fairly hardcore).    Then they start talking about how much casual content the game has. 

I thought I'd wait until release for reviewers to check the game to see if the claims were true.  But now I'll never find out because of the massive implosion that occurred once the game hit retail. 

But for those who are trying to re-write histoy, Vanguard was marketed as a hardcore game BY SIGIL, not by reviewers.  The only ones they have to blame for the label are themselves.   

Originally posted by random11
There is some to talk about the vision tm, so here goes:

The real vision, and its birth: Brad had a vision for EQ1. He himself played UO so knew about the dominating game in the mmo world. He created a PvE centric true 3d enviroment to play. Of course we shall never know how good this vision was, as then it had no other game to compare it to. One thing is clear, Brad's vision for VG started out the same way, and it is a filthy lie, that he didn't advertise it as a hardcore game, he might not have used the word, but he described it as such. Brad's one hit wonder(questionable) Vision tm failed to evolve with the time, gamers, expectations, innovations. VG's cora gameplay mechanic is classic EQ, I see nothing new.

The vision as marketing ploy: not much to say about this, we all know all the spins it had, nothing proves that the vision is old if not outright dead, than the fact that they changed so many things after launch, core design choices. They dumbed down the game, then tried to restate the vision tm in retrospect.

The vision is not enough in this new dog eat dog world of mmos. They didn't do a proper market research before designing the game, and that is a huge mistake. Vision might be there, but there are loads of shitty visions, the good ones are the ones that are based on realism. Brad's realism was "we made eq1, so shut the fuck up". That won't sell games.

Would you please point out where he told it was a hardcore game??

To many MMOG players, you may already know about Vanguard and are either looking forward to it, or at least looking forward to getting into beta or checking out the game being played by someone else in beta, or perhaps even waiting to see how launch goes. To many other MMOG gamers, especially long time gamers, you're already active on our boards and avidly looking forward to the game. But then for many other MMOG gamers, there's a lot of about Vanguard you might not know about. Or, worse yet, you might have heard some rumors floating about that simply aren’t true. Perhaps you might have heard that it's yesterday’s game with nothing revolutionary or exciting, or only for hard core players with no lives, or that it's more about challenge and tedium than fun. Or, on the other hand, you may be playing in one of the current MMOGs and are looking for something new on the horizon. Well, if any of that’s true, our message and our efforts, whether interacting with people on our message boards, or releasing a series of screenshots or in-game videos, or doing interviews in magazines or on the web, may come as a bit of a surprise: yep, that’s right, this game was likely made for someone just like you. 

http://forums.vanguardsoh.com/showthread.php?t=78651

Originally posted by Reklaw

Would you please point out where he told it was a hardcore game??

 

Would you please bring back the Vanguard forums which he conveniently deleted?

Look, we're going to keep seeing these advertisements masquerading as forum posts because that is part of the marketing plan. Most people are not going t be taken in by it. Those that are will figure out their mistake soon enough.

Originally posted by Amathe

Originally posted by Reklaw

Would you please point out where he told it was a hardcore game??

 

Would you please bring back the Vanguard forums which he conveniently deleted?

Look, we're going to keep seeing these advertisements masquerading as forum posts because that is part of the marketing plan. Most people are not going t be taken in by it. Those that are will figure out their mistake soon enough.

You right, some people seem to put more value into things they THINK he meant or said then when they READ what he actualy said. They seem totaly ignorant about what is said in topic and continue to lie and twist words but when someone does point out what he (Brad) has written himself they still stay ignorant regardless what they are unable to face reality and seem to only see things their way.

And about the forum being deleted is also strange as its still online and you can try and click the link i put there and see for yourself. Is it active?....... NO! Are there pages gone, probebly yeah, who cares its a old not working forum, sure  wish they kept it active but they we can't have everything now can we  besides its still intresting to read some of the stuff that so crearly contradicts most things some  "haters" say, not all but most is pure BS caused by frustration by some of them.

I mostly agree with you random, though I got a different sense on how Brad and his boys were painting the vision back then. To me it seemed whenever he addressed a certain group of players his "vision" would change accordingly.

Last year most of the Vanguard faithfull were hardcore players or wanted EQ 3 in hardcore mode, so he would constantly be touting the hardcore elements of his vision but never going into any specifics. He'd address the solo players "Vanguard will have plenty for solo players ect ect ect the vision blah blah blah". He'd address the groupers "Vanguard is about grouping and grouping is encouraged ect ect ect the vision blah blah blah". He'd address raiders "Vanguard is not raidcentric but you'll have plenty of dungeons to keep you busy ect ect ect the vision blah blah blah".  When he addressed all three " Vanguard is 50% grouping, 30% solo and 20% raid ect ect ect the vision blah blah blah".

Don't quote me on those figures as I forgot but it seems grouping is bugged to hell and there's no-one to group with anyway. Raiding is out of the question since there is no raid content. Solo is the only option but that sounds more like hard work. Also you need a supercomputer with all the special tweaks to even have a prayer of completing a quest in a group, that's if you can find anyone to group with!

Vanguard was sold as EQ 3 for the next decade but on crack. It turned out to be EQ 1.3 for the next decades computers with last decades graphics engine on smack.

"You right, some people seem to put more value into things they THINK he meant or said then when they READ what he actualy said."

All right, let's assume everyone completely misunderstood him.  Let's assume everyone's memory is completely faulty.  Let's assume all this confusion was because everyone didn't get his message and all those reviewers, players and Forum readers just couldn't figure out the 'real' message that Brad M was trying to say.

Sounds like he did a pretty pathetically lousy job communicating if this many people got the wrong message from him. 

Which means he wasn't dishonest, just incompetent and so busy putting spin into the game his 'real' message was lost.  

And the end result is the same.

Originally posted by Agricola1

Last year most of the Vanguard faithfull were hardcore players or wanted EQ 3 in hardcore mode, so he would constantly be touting the hardcore elements of his vision but never going into any specifics. He'd address the solo players "Vanguard will have plenty for solo players ect ect ect the vision blah blah blah". He'd address the groupers "Vanguard is about grouping and grouping is encouraged ect ect ect the vision blah blah blah".

Let's give the OP the benefit of the doubt, let's say they actually believed all this spin and that they thought the game could be everything to everyone.

I guess this will be a lesson about over-reaching (or believing your own marketing) to the rest of the MMORPG industry. 

Somehow Brad's "vision" became very blurry along the way.

All this about catering to solo players is a lot of nonsense.  Solo play is only in the low levels. Once you get pass this all you see are missions with the word "Group" on top.  Sure looks pretty on paper but it's nothing like that in game.

Had this been true about gameplay for solo players as well as groups, people wouldn't of complained as this was one of the main complaints: having to group and the trouble of finding these groups.

Brad's vision, ha!

Originally posted by Reklaw

Would you please point out where he told it was a hardcore game??

 

To Brad's credit he did see the potential of even a small percentage of the WoW population coming over to VG and preached the non-hardcore speach early as seen here:

 http://forums.vanguardsoh.com/showthread.php?postid=212621

__________________________________________________________________________________________
Still not sure how to reply to these concerns, although they are certainly valid…

I'll try again: you will be able to solo. You will be able to solo more effectively in 'casual' areas than in group and raid areas. You will likely have difficulty soloing in group areas and extreme difficulty in raid areas (e.g. probably isn't going to happen). Will you be happy with the rate of advancement and downtime associated with soloing as opposed to teaming up with a few other players, especially of classes that compliment the one you've chosen? I don't know -- those are different lines for different people. Some of you may enjoy soloing in Vanguard, and some of you may find it too tedious or slow or not rewarding enough... Are we designing Vanguard as a solo-oriented game? No. The focus is on grouping. Does that mean we hate soloing and want to make it impossible? No, certainly not, but it will take a 'second seat' so to speak...

You will always be more efficient and encouraged to group, even in casual areas, although you won't need a large group. The casual areas are geared towards small groups and also designed such that one can achieve advancement in shorter contiguous chunks of gameplay, so these areas should be attractive not only to the more casual gamer, but even the hard core raid gamer who just has an hour or so to log on and wants to be able to move his character forward in some way…

I hesitate to make comparisons to other games, but I suppose I'd say, though while certainly not apples to apples, Vanguard 'soloing' will be much more akin to EQ 1 soloing than WoW soloing -- WoW is much more of a casual, solo oriented, quick leveling game than Vanguard is being designed to be, and this is on purpose of course. While we respect and enjoy WoW, 1. Vanguard is the type of game we truly love to play more ourselves and for a longer period of time, and 2. it wouldn't make sense to just make another WoW or EQ 2 or whatever – we need to differentiate ourselves, especially as the gamespace both grows and becomes more crowded with options.

We're trying to bring back that magic of early EQ 1 yet simultaneously take this genre into the next generation and offer a lot of new ideas and functionality and differing types of gameplay that will hopefully appeal to old school MUD and EQ 1 players as well as newer MMOG converts as well as core gamers who've not yet found an MMOG that's had the type of gameplay they truly enjoy.

That's pretty much all I can say at this point. Once we are into beta and you guys are able to play yourselves, you can each make your own judgment call on the topic of 'is Vanguard soloable or not?', not to mention 'do I enjoy Vanguard at all?', and each of you will have your own opinion and will be able to make your choice as to whether Vanguard will be your future home or not (of course, we certainly hope the vast majority of you choose to make Vanguard your new home for months and even years to come). But we also know that we can't (nor I think can anyone) make a game that is all things for all people.

Hope that helps,

Can't go into much detail other than to say that they function similarly, yet with WoW following quests in a more linear fashion is stressed much less so in Vanguard -- one of the big premises behind Vanguard is freedom -- quest if you want to, craft if you want to, parlay if you want to, hack-n-slash if you want to, own property, explore a seamless world via horse or ship - but have the freedom of choice to advance your character in a much less linear and controlled environment.

And I agree, the premise of more challenge, risk, less linearity, etc. won't appeal to everyone. WoW appeals to a lot of people for a lot of reasons, some of which are the more single player RPG aspects (the more linear, guided approach, the faster character advancemet, etc). But we've designed Vanguard to be different on purpose, to appeal to both old school MMOG players who enjoyed, say, early EQ, and we're also betting that some percentage of WoW players will or already do want a game more like Vanguard. And when you're talking about an MMOG gamespace that is now 5 million plus, thanks mostly to Blizzard as of late, we don't have to appeal to a huge percentage of WoW players to be very successful. Even 5 or 10% puts us at a number greater than what we had with EQ and nets us a very profitable 'niche'

And I think more choices for MMOG players is a good thing. More smaller focused MMOGs as opposed to MMOGs trying to appeal to most everyone should yield both more games but also games that more people are happy with overall, given the variety of playstyles and preferences that exist. This is why, while we respect and many of us enjoy WoW, Vanguard was designed from the beginning to be a very different game as opposed to a WoW clone with the goal of displacing or dethroning them. I think players want more choices and variety rather than more WoW or EQ clones.

Hi!

My two kronor.

I like the game. It is probably one of the last games in the genre I will play, and it is a good  game in that genre.

It lacks alot in inovation, but does, as did wow, add and compile alot of other games best into a fairly but not super game.

The thing is, for a game of today to live up to some of peoples expectations they must not do what WoW already done. It can never be the next game of this day with old gameplay and ideas because WoW have already summed up alot of the best from games of yesterday (eq, uo, daoc, lineage etc).

Vg adds only freedom (limited but still miles from wow) to the wow-mix and ofcourse the folks waiting for the next wow gets disapointed.

Hope my point is somewhat understandable... I just get fed up with all the moaning about games post-wow not giving what wow gave.. That game will come, but it will not be a improved wow...

(sorry for the strange row breaks.. at work and it's not my work to work it out, ehh.. ) 

Originally posted by Reklaw

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Year in Review

The Vision

All year long Brad has told people that Vanguard will not be a game just for hardcore player or for casuals but will be targeted towards the core player or average player. Brad has said that you cannot stereotype players. Rather players simply like different types of game play, game features and game styles. This does not make any game style or preference superior to any other.

Brad has explained that Vanguard’s systems--from its endgame loot system to dynamic death penalty-- will attempt to offer something for most types of players and play styles. Vanguard will offer quest-directed game play for questers and group and solo play for those who prefer to adventure alone or with a partner. There will be content for solo players, group players and raiders. But the important point is that Vanguard is trying to reach out to most, if not all, play styles whether one is a quester, crafter, diplomat, raider, casual player, hardcore player, EQ1 fan, WoW player or something else. Sigil is trying to offer content for these different types of play styles while not watering down the challenge or infringing upon other styles of game play. Take a quick look at the end game plan. Everyone can play the end game as they wish. If a player doesn’t wish to engage in diplomacy, raiding or in soloing/casual content they don’t have to. They will still be rewarded playing the game how they want to play it. Players can simply play the game the way they want if it does not infringe upon other people’s enjoyment. That seems to be what Vanguard is all about: offering content choices for everyone.

For the longest time, no one listened to Brad McQuaid when he preached that Vanguard was not a hardcore game but a game for everyone. Rather, people stuck to their preconceptions of Vanguard. But slowly it has begun to dawn on people that Vanguard is not exactly the game they thought it would be. Many have become upset or disillusioned because Vanguard is quite different than what they decided it would be. They may be upset about Bind on Equip items, Trivial Loot Code, the endgame not being centered around raiding, the lack of corpse runs, inclusion of maps, quest-directed game play or something else. This has recently caused a great deal of backlash posts saying that Brad and Vanguard have “lost the vision.” I would strongly disagree and point out that if they had been listening they would have been aware that Brad and Sigil have talked about most if not all of these design decisions for years now. This is something that happens in just about every game, when a game does not turn out exactly as people want, they cry foul and raise a ruckus on the boards.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

read the full articel: http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=463

Let me just say, ......finaly i can  QFT

Afcourse I do realize this was all before release but still i think the biggest problem for Vanguard is/was most of it because of the community and how they kept misreading stuff or misleading stuff what actualy has been said to them for years for those the have followed the procces of Vanguard in hte making.

I disagree. I didn't go into EQI thinking "Hey I want to be hardcore for the next 3 years", I just did it because I couldn't get enough of the game. I think if McQuaid had kept his mouth shut all together and just insured he had a polished working product by beta 4 then he would've not caught so much hell from casuals crying that it's not fast enough and hardcores screaming its too easy.

Maybe Lvl 20 for instance took longer than I wanted because I'm casual? If I hadn't had to grind due to lack of content or if I hadn't died multiple times due to skewered spawn times and bugs etc etc then I doubt I would've noticed. WOW and LoTRs weren't exactly what some people wanted but because they work and are fun alot of hardcores played them or are still playing them even though they are viewed as "casual" games.

Also limiting his posts to only FOH didn't help either. That pretty much says "Hardcore" even if your pushing the Sims Barbie Trailer game.

All right, let's assume everyone completely misunderstood him.  Let's assume everyone's memory is completely faulty.  Let's assume all this confusion was because everyone didn't get his message and all those reviewers, players and Forum readers just couldn't figure out the 'real' message that Brad M was trying to say.

Sounds like he did a pretty pathetically lousy job communicating if this many people got the wrong message from him. 

Well I understood him!!  The one thing that was made constantly clear was that Vanguard was aiming at all types of players. If Brad made a mistake it was under estimating the type of emotion that built up whilst his vision was being conceived. The "old" gamers were expecting something that filled the empty spot left by other great MMORPGs, EQ, SWG, AO, etc. Whilst newer gamers are more in tune with "instant gratification" style games. When Vanguard took it's own intermediate path the emotive eruption was amazing.

We should try and get rid of preconceived ideas, Vanguard is not any of the other games and it is unique to itself! The vision also is not lost; Telon is a beautiful and vast world with loads of choices and game styles and masses of room for growth. I am deliberately not talking about performance and bug issues here as that has been done so many times, just the essence of the game.

So many accuse Sigil of a diversity of shortcomings, but who actually has the backbone and resolution to do what Brad has done. These guys are at the forefront of amazing technology; they are not deliberately making mistakes. In the end they like us want a great game, but we also need to be flexible and realise the enormous amount of money they risk whilst doing so.