In my opinion, the only thing that really cripples this game is its map and user-friendliness. Simple things like a good map system do wonders for MMOs. That's one major thing that will probably always hold Vanguard back from being one of the greatest high fantasy MMOs of this generation. That, and a horrible release that resulted in very few devs working on the game to this day.

But seriously, I think if the maps were better and the UI was more user-friendly as to where you should go on quests, more players would be inclinced to keep playing after the free trial.

Yep. In fact, we all said that what... 2 years ago now? 3? I forget at this point.

I come back every time they have a free weekend, and they fail to fix the only big issues with the game every time. Nothing to be done anymore.

The horse has been beaten sir.

EVERYONE... absolutley everyoine uses Infomap.  Its a great map system....geesh

http://www.vginterface.com/downloads/info96-InfoMapAdvanced.html

Failed launch plain and simple no map or anything.

VG was always a game that was going to be massively critical on a good sized population its launch went bad (not for me personally) and it has never recovered.

Originally posted by morpin

EVERYONE... absolutley everyoine uses Infomap.  Its a great map system....geesh

http://www.vginterface.com/downloads/info96-InfoMapAdvanced.html

 

This is to be SOE's responsibility. I know what your thinking " you can download maps for WoW ". But the difference is that they already have good maps. Blizzard fixes their problem areas.  SOE plays the same crap with EQ2.

And absolutely any new player trying to decide on extending their subs, are not gonna do it !

I wish mmo vets would open their mind, and think beyond them selfs.

Originally posted by page

Originally posted by morpin

EVERYONE... absolutley everyoine uses Infomap.  Its a great map system....geesh

http://www.vginterface.com/downloads/info96-InfoMapAdvanced.html

 

This is to be SOE's responsibility. I know what your thinking " you can download maps for WoW ". But the difference is that they already have good maps. Blizzard fixes their problem areas.  SOE plays the same crap with EQ2.

And absolutely any new player trying to decide on extending their subs, are not gonna do it !

I wish mmo vets would open their mind, and think beyond them selfs.

WoW is WoW and Vanguard is Vanguard.  Most games have third party maps.

The Infomaps have been around since the beginning.  If you want good maps you get these maps, otherwise its just whining. If I didnt think beyond myself, I would not bother replying to people on these forums and giving out information.

only thing that ruin VG abit for me is the low population....and it needs to be high to support the landmass, even if they did put in fast travel.

maps never bothered me at all....really dislike the map in FE atm with marking where absolutely everything is. good game but their map ruin it abit for me.

Originally posted by page

Originally posted by morpin

EVERYONE... absolutley everyoine uses Infomap.  Its a great map system....geesh

http://www.vginterface.com/downloads/info96-InfoMapAdvanced.html

 

This is to be SOE's responsibility. I know what your thinking " you can download maps for WoW ". But the difference is that they already have good maps. Blizzard fixes their problem areas.  SOE plays the same crap with EQ2.

And absolutely any new player trying to decide on extending their subs, are not gonna do it !

I wish mmo vets would open their mind, and think beyond them selfs.

Eq2 has upgraded their map system a couple times.  The map in eq2 right now is pretty good.

Problem with vanguard is it is a great game that is too threatening to eq2 so SoE is just letting it run on minimal staff to keep it barely alive while not letting it steal players from their internally developed game eq2.

 meh combat in vanguard wasn't that smooth just like eq2, I refuse to have subpar combat in my games. Just another thing WoW spoiled people with. 

I tried this once ,I rolled char and did few quests and went to exploring rage ,and hey ho letsgo and my adventuring ended to invisible wall and thats it delete bye bye vanguard ,hi hi something else

If you ask me, I'd say one of the biggest things holding me back is ... Polish!!!

Make the character models look and animate nice, (on NPC and PC models), and that would help a ton.

I remember showing this game to a buddy of mine, and when he saw the nasty animations (swimming, punching etc...) and the ugly character models, he was immediately turned off. I can't blame him either. The look of your avatar is pretty important. It's why we strive for cool looking gear.

Take WoW as a comparison. Say what you will about the game, but boy it sure is polished.

Rumple

Originally posted by morpin

Originally posted by page

Originally posted by morpin

EVERYONE... absolutley everyoine uses Infomap.  Its a great map system....geesh

http://www.vginterface.com/downloads/info96-InfoMapAdvanced.html

 

This is to be SOE's responsibility. I know what your thinking " you can download maps for WoW ". But the difference is that they already have good maps. Blizzard fixes their problem areas.  SOE plays the same crap with EQ2.

And absolutely any new player trying to decide on extending their subs, are not gonna do it !

I wish mmo vets would open their mind, and think beyond them selfs.

 

WoW is WoW and Vanguard is Vanguard.  Most games have third party maps.

The Infomaps have been around since the beginning.  If you want good maps you get these maps, otherwise its just whining. If I didnt think beyond myself, I would not bother replying to people on these forums and giving out information.

 

I use InfoMap, and even so the maps are garbage. It's not Infomap's fault thought, they did well with what they had. The only thing infomap really does for me is show me where harvestables and rifts are. The map itself that they are customization is VERY poor, very low resolution, and the dots that indicate NPC locations are clunky and often overlap to the point where they are too vague to be able to tell anything. Beside this, many quests I get don't even have map locations to follow!

The difference between custom maps in Vanguard and more polished games like EQ2, WoW, LotRO is that with Vanguard they have nothing to work with. In EQ2 and others, the maps were already of decent quality - features like mob locations just make them so much better.

Originally posted by rumpleman

If you ask me, I'd say one of the biggest things holding me back is ... Polish!!!

Make the character models look and animate nice, (on NPC and PC models), and that would help a ton.

I remember showing this game to a buddy of mine, and when he saw the nasty animations (swimming, punching etc...) and the ugly character models, he was immediately turned off. I can't blame him either. The look of your avatar is pretty important. It's why we strive for cool looking gear.

Take WoW as a comparison. Say what you will about the game, but boy it sure is polished.

Rumple

See, I disagree about the models though. I'd take Vanguards realistic models over WoW's cartoony caricatures any day.

What are you talking about? The map isn't game breaking at all. You are such a whiner if you refuse to download an addon.

Wow is a game for dumbasses who need everything handed to them. Just go explore a lot. I played for a few weeks on Thestra and know my way around already.

Vanguard has it's issues, but the map is near the bottom of my list..

Lack of Alternate Advancement

Lack of Endgame

two i thought of off the top of my head.. I played the game 6 months, and you know what.. classes were TOP notch.

Originally posted by almalexius

What are you talking about? The map isn't game breaking at all. You are such a whiner if you refuse to download an addon.

Wow is a game for dumbasses who need everything handed to them. Just go explore a lot. I played for a few weeks on Thestra and know my way around already.

 

Vanguard is the game for dumb people. Really now, with 0.04% of the population of WoW, who is playing? Is it fun playing a "forced" grouping class with no one to group with? While you touted all those classes Vanguard has I gringed. Here we go again, three tank classes fighting for ONE group spot. My favorite class again gimped, Warrior, not allowed to solo and no groups?! What were the retarded Devs thinking? EQ1 was BAD, very bad. It had 0.55% at peak players of WoWs population with NO competition.  Then SOE bought the game, a big hint it was going no where. Half the people disappeared with that announcement because of SOE's piss poor rep. Then the launch! This game is in the trash heap and one of the biggest flops ever.

Now path 3.3 brings GAME WIDE grouping, with a bunch of ways to be grouped inside of 5 minutes! Those moron tools at SOE could have done that much easier, but Blizzard beats them to the punch yet again. Vanguard might be more fun if they did the same thing but for quest lines, I need a group for quest "A" and I am searching GAME wide to do it! Everyone with the quest active could receive notification and an instance to play. It won't happen, SOE won't bother with 40k people playing.

Originally posted by DiSpLiFF

 meh combat in vanguard wasn't that smooth just like eq2, I refuse to have subpar combat in my games. Just another thing WoW spoiled people with. 

I think you probably hit the nail a bit closer on the head than you realize.

I believe what Vanguard suffers from are several things and several things that unfortunately might have to do with a game like wow. This is not WoW bashing, I tyhink wow is a fine game and can go on about the things that it does well. However, with its polish and constant content updates it will invariably be referenced in comparison to new games that player try.

Vanguard is creaky. It has quirks. Though I feel the combat is fine and enjoy being able to plan out what I want to do (paladin/Dark Knight characters) It doesn't quite feel as smooth as other games.

I think a good many players, especially when they come from wow, are going to look at the new game and say "why should I play this over wow". They are not going to get that it has a massive world, is a bit more unforgiving on death, etc. They certainly aren't going to like the small bits of hitching here and there. Things aren't always laid out in the most convenient way. For example, in Khal, the trainers aren't all together in one neat little place. You just don't go to the trainer area and find your person. of course you can ask for directions and then learn that it is on the other side of the city for paladin.

There is one city that has a sort of large elevator that takes you to the deep part of the city. I always loved that city (can't remember the name) but felt the layout was very inconvenient.

And again. you are not always directed to quest hubs. sometimes you have to discover them. For me this is the draw of Vanguard. But as I've learned with my time in Aion, many players want to be specifically led to other quest hubs after they finish in the current quest hub.

And though I prefer the quasi realistic models (and espeically the world) to a game like wow, they do suffer from being a bit gooffy.

then you have the bad launch and all the issues and it doesn't look good for new players. It's a bit of a catch 22 as well. Players who would like to play Vanguard won't play it because there aren't enough players. And there aren't enough players because players aren't willing to try it.

I'm not huge on the SOE hate (I place a lot of the SWG nightmare on LucasArts and the crazy person who runs it), so I don't have a frothing rant to contribute. The StationPass may be life support for a game or community, but they only end up there after the company that made them drops them or goes under. So like it or lump it, SOE kept VHS, MXO and POTBS going for their respective communities when the other option was to shut the servers down and turn off the lights.

I played Vauguard at launch and then came back a year later. I liked it the second time around, I really did. I also dropped my sub after 2 months because there aren't enough people playing this game to make it fun. I would have loved to stay on board and roll, but it was like playing a single player game, one where you were very underpowered. After the launch VSH had, I couldn't convince anyone I knew to take a chance on the free trial even.

Originally posted by morpin

EVERYONE... absolutley everyoine uses Infomap.  Its a great map system....geesh

http://www.vginterface.com/downloads/info96-InfoMapAdvanced.html

 

Agreed.  An incredible map system.

What holds this game back...

1.low population

2.massive bugs,broken skills/mechanics/etc.

3.poor performance

4.lack of polish

5.lack of support from $oe