Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

This is the same problem with EQ1 right now: almost more zones than players.

If you are going to have a challenging dangerous world (which is all fun), I think it's important to sort of cram players together.  Expansions can come later.

It is generally true, but IMO the problem is worsened by two facts. First, there is no guiding quest-line or selections of quest-lines which ppl can follow to do quests along some overall storyline. That would keep people together despite the size. Also, the placement of the big cities is the worst possible. I still cant believe anyone could place them so far at the borders of everything thats going on! If they had made them social and commercial hubs like Ironforge for WOW, Qeynos for EQ2 or now Bree for LOTRO, ppl would meet and gather and at least loose the feeling of being lost all over.

Why they made the summon stone system as travel solution is beyond me. Thats plain stupid!

What they should have done woulde be placing teleporters into some cities and villages (similar as in Morrowind), so ppl teleport not everywhere but from city to city.

The add trainers for all classes everyhwere and reduce the auctioners to the 4 or 5 biggest cities so ppl gather there, best also offering XP bonus when ppl log out in a city tavern. And a selection of more social things, like fishing, camp fires asf, you get the idea.

Originally posted by Elikal

It is generally true, but IMO the problem is worsened by two facts. First, there is no guiding quest-line or selections of quest-lines which ppl can follow to do quests along some overall storyline. That would keep people together despite the size. Also, the placement of the big cities is the worst possible. I still cant believe anyone could place them so far at the borders of everything thats going on! If they had made them social and commercial hubs like Ironforge for WOW, Qeynos for EQ2 or now Bree for LOTRO, ppl would meet and gather and at least loose the feeling of being lost all over.

Why they made the summon stone system as travel solution is beyond me. Thats plain stupid!

What they should have done woulde be placing teleporters into some cities and villages (similar as in Morrowind), so ppl teleport not everywhere but from city to city.

The add trainers for all classes everyhwere and reduce the auctioners to the 4 or 5 biggest cities so ppl gather there, best also offering XP bonus when ppl log out in a city tavern. And a selection of more social things, like fishing, camp fires asf, you get the idea.

Let me give you an example from my recent LOTRO experiences. There is a region called Ered Luin, where Dwarfs and Elves are in an uneasy peace. They are played against each others by Goblins and a group of betraying Dwarfs. When you start as Elf or Dwarf in that region, you get several quest lines over that place that gradually reveal the whole story of the region, the plan to make a war between Dwarfs and Elves, behind which ultimately Saurons henchmen are, to weaken the alliance of Free People that oppose him. Not all quests have to do with that, but you gradually evolve an inner image of the region, the people in it and how it fits to the bigger picture. Then you get 1-2 instances in that area which are not big dungeons but minievents which drive the story and conclude the story-arc for you and your fiends with some scripts to tell a story.

In VG, the regions have little to no story, all lore is in diplomace, totall severed from adventure and essentially you get no feeling and inner image for the region and how it fits into the world whatsoever. In the end, all the dramatic looking places, like Trengal Keep feel hollow. Sure, the quests have some story, but it doesnt belong to anything coherent, nothing that really compelled me to feel the tragedy of whatever happend there. Ultimately it was just a ruin with mobs, nothing more, to me.

Perhaps you will be pleased to know that with a lvl 30 toon I have yet to find a lvl range that doesn't have multiple soloable quest lines. Although I am able to find groups everytime I play, the times I have chosen to solo, I have never had a lack of content. In fact, my quest journal is always full, to the point that I have to delete quests I know I will end up grabbing again and doing later, just to make room for the ones I want to do now.

The lack of content is mostly an issue for the end game atm, which I will admit I haven't seen yet. But, I am the target audience for this game (old mmo gamer, 2-3 hours a night, maybe more on weekends, looking for a different type of challenge from Wow/LotR), and it seems to me that they have kept just ahead of my leveling curve for the additional content. Therefore, I (the target demographic) will not experience a lack of soloable content in this game.

In fact, I'm so sure about my wild accusations that I will boldy predict based solely on my own personal experience with Vanguard that if one started a character today, played it 2 to 3 hours a night with maybe a weekend cram session every once in awhile, you could solo to 50 in Vanguard at this point.

You may have to travel around, talk to other players on various continents about where stuff is, but it is out there. It first was a challenge for me at lower levels but eventually I started to understand Vanguards' world and how the content is organized and began asking and sharing info with other players about their hunting grounds or quest lines they were working on.

But to the original point, I will fully admit the cherry quests and rewards are group based, and pesonally I like that. If I'm going to be in an mmorpg, I want my experience to be dependent on acting in concert with massive amounts of multiple players. To me, that's what makes it a mmorpg and not a solo-orpg.

The last point is...world isn't too tough to get around anymore, partly once you learn how the content is organized, partly because your travel times decrease based on progressively better mounts and carefully structured bind points and faction build ups.....

..... but mostly because the have porting stones now.

Originally posted by Elikal

Let me give you an example from my recent LOTRO experiences. There is a region called Ered Luin, where Dwarfs and Elves are in an uneasy peace. They are played against each others by Goblins and a group of betraying Dwarfs. When you start as Elf or Dwarf in that region, you get several quest lines over that place that gradually reveal the whole story of the region, the plan to make a war between Dwarfs and Elves, behind which ultimately Saurons henchmen are, to weaken the alliance of Free People that oppose him. Not all quests have to do with that, but you gradually evolve an inner image of the region, the people in it and how it fits to the bigger picture. Then you get 1-2 instances in that area which are not big dungeons but minievents which drive the story and conclude the story-arc for you and your fiends with some scripts to tell a story.

In VG, the regions have little to no story, all lore is in diplomace, totall severed from adventure and essentially you get no feeling and inner image for the region and how it fits into the world whatsoever. In the end, all the dramatic looking places, like Trengal Keep feel hollow. Sure, the quests have some story, but it doesnt belong to anything coherent, nothing that really compelled me to feel the tragedy of whatever happend there. Ultimately it was just a ruin with mobs, nothing more, to me.

Originally posted by WizardBlack

Excellent point. I think any MMO that cannot balance the size of the areas, the size of groups required to progress, the accessibility of lore, the physical capabilities of a particular server and the concurrent population expected on a server are going to fail. That balancing act alone can destory any MMO no matter how great the mechanics of the combat, the crafting, the graphics or anything else. And I would go so far as to say that many MMO's either fail outright, sputter out or fade and die from this fact.

It is a good point, but if you read my above post, you will see that arguably*, it does not apply to Vanguard.

-*To the flamers: I said it IS arguable, not that I will choose to engage in the argument - I already posted my position with my support opinions above.

And to Elikal. I'm not sure it would be a wise business decision to say, 'the way to fix Vanguard is making Vanguard like LotR'. If you want a linear progression where the game guides you through one major story arc you already have those choices, if you do want that type of game, Vanguard shouldn't be your choice. And I agree that Vanguard could do a better job of infusing the sandbox feeling in the earlier levels - but if you are like me, you won't spend long there.