All Posts by Arioc

Massive = More then a handful of people can be in the same location at the same time and interact. Not just chat, or wait in a lobby to join an instance limited to 4 people.

HellGate, Guildwars, Diablo, Counterstrike are not in that category. Guildwars allows for a great many people to sit in town and interact, trade, form parties, so it walks that line, but the instances themselves are very limited. Diablo doesn't offer even that, you sit in a chat room, make a game with a handful of friends and join it, fight to the end of the level and end it. The world is not persistent, you're basically replaying the same level from start to finish with some randomization of layout, loot and creatures.

And yes you can distill that down to say that similar concepts appear in many recent MMO's but those are large persistent worlds where a good many players can gather and interact in the 3d environment.

Originally posted by Blomi

Just another still-born MMO made by westerners.  I don't understand how Asia can so out-do American/Euro designers in this genra...

Huh? Every Asian MMO I've played has been just as shallow if not more-so. They focus on graphics and repedative play far more then immursion, atmosphere or story. Eastern players simply grew up with differant games and have differant expectations and things they look for. They don't care as much about involved quests, affecting the world, or sandbox type play over time. THey don't want slow play-pace, they want lots of sparkaly rewards, pretty graphics and will grind to get them. It's not about right or wrong, it's about what you and your friends grew up with and want from a game now.

Also remember that alot of players in asia do so in cyber-cafes. Mmo's are not a solitary experience, they're a communal gathering where friends hang out... like a ton of lan-parties. In some respects it's more healthy, but it also means they want simpler rewards for simpler tasks and want to enjoy the comradery of playing with friends less then the escapism of immursive solo play.

Elikal I completly agree. Firstly it's the heavy instancing, I'm level 45 now over halfway into the game and only now am grouping with people as of level 39 (Sanctum). This partially due to the lack of group quests. So far I've gotten 99% solo quests I can hammer out myself easy and then 1 group quest for a named boss out in the field will drop in my lap. There's no drive to push people to dungeons, nor establish community centers.

WoW did an excellent job of pushing players to community hubs like dungeons. Scripted experiences they would be sure to do because they recieved a slew of quests with enticing rewards to accomplish them. THe rewards for most of my quests in instances have been sub-par to the loot from the bosses themselves. If I looked at the rewards for those quests I might have skipped them all together had I not found a group. Warcraft did a good job of providing 70% of the zones quests for the overland and 30% for the local or adjacent instance of that level range.

Also the way the world is chopped up dosn't help. There's no purpose to hang out in town, all items purchased from town are available elsewhere and drop armor often is better then anything from the stores.

Zones themselves are so heavily instanced that I rarly see 1 or 2 people run by me. I know there's alot of people online but the zones always feel barren.

Some of the flaw is in the zone layout and design, quest breakcrumbs and rewards don't push you twards the more memmorable locations and experiences. And the more interesting stuff dosn't begin till yer 1/2 way through the game. It's not like WoW were at level 20 you're in deadmines or blackfathom and already experiiencing a memmorable adventure.

Likewise these instances are few and spread apart level range wise as well. Some zones span 14 levels of play while some dungeons span.. 2? Sanctum is listed as 37-39.. sure you can go in after 40 but at that point you've already begun to item-farm the boss's for blue armor drops.

I also don't get a sense of an over-arching storyline or plot developing. Individual people are suffering individual problems I help with but I am not slowly uncovering a plot or drawing closer to some archeevils master plan. I just don't feel like I'm progressing in a story.

I've got a large ammount of information, which became too unweildy to search and sort in a single word document (as well as taking a while to open) so I moved it all over to a small web-site, wiki-esqe but simple enough to sort all the pages in a branching tree view on the left for easy catagorization. As the data flowed in I found I spent too much time trying to format the stuff in HTML to avoid the useless ammounts of code generated by WYSIWYG editors and their CSS tags.

Now I have a bunch of info, with tables and alot of custom artwork and concept art I've done I need to port to something that's less technical but just as robust for page layout. I guess I ultimatly need something that lets me keep the individual pages in RTF or DOC's so I can use advanced page layout, tables, and such to keep the pages looking pretty as well as readable.

I've done some extensive searching online and found some TreeNote and zNote programs which offer the ability to create collapsable trees of nodes and built in Rich Text editors to allow you to organize info, but the software felt very home-brew and the formatting was rather primitive (can't even wrap text around images).

Does anyone know of any software, or some sort of small wiki package that is quick to launch, allows for easy WYSIWYG sort of formatting and allows me to keep the info/pages organized in tree view on the left?

I don't know what software you guys use for your personal design documents, but mine has gone beyond the scope of easy handling in a single word DOC but I need the cross-reference ability to refer to other pages so I can't cut it up into completely isolated documents.

There's still time before release, so I'm waiting for more performance patches. I like the game, but the performance is the biggest reason I am hesitant to pick it up. The last patch really improved stability, and I was very impressed, however in some locations like the area you're sent to right after the level 1-19 island, I simply cannot play without horrid framerate, which makes the game unplayable and eventually locks up and crashes. I don't know if it's an issue of batch count due to an over-use of unique objects in an area, or what but on a less then 1 year old system with a nivida 8800 and 2gigs of ram I don't expect this sort of hitching. Again, it's beta so I'm not making any final descisions yet, hopeing for an optomization patch.

Originally posted by Torak

Here's how corporations work..

As long as everyone is making money, people get to keep their jobs. When something goes poorly, they sack it and everyone along with it. 

Last I heard, Sony stock was solid.  

100% Truth right there. No ammount of gamer idealism will ever change this.

I'd wager since SWG is still running and has a dev team Vanguard will be around for a while too and probably continue to get new content.

I think we can all agree that if you analyze any MMO you'll find gaps, flaws, bugs, and inconsistancies galore. Making giant worlds on a budget and deadline means corners will be cut. Sometimes they won't be immediatly obvious but every little shortcut will in time become visable as players run by the same locations over and over again during their years of play.

Initally I believe the posts to this thread were trying to explain what it was about the game that didn't appeal to them, or turned them off to the game. I tried myself to articulate why I couldn't get engrossed in the game, and of course there are those stalwart defenders who will take every opertunity to tout their favorite game of the moment. It happens in every game forum.

But reading over this thread I feel the topic has wandered into looking for flaws to justify why you didn't like the game. But it boils down to this, no game will be all things to all people. Even WoW with it's mass appeal dosn't appeal to everyone. A good majority of people yes, and for that they are a smashing success and will be remembered in the annals of history as one of the milestones.

Either by getting bored, not finding the same level of immursion as a childhood adventure, or craving something a bit less high fantasy, there will always be reasons some people are not turned on by one game or another. I believe we can all agree that some folks just don't like chocolate ice cream no matter how much the next person tries to convince them chocolate is the greatest flavor ever. :)

Graphics = Easy? You ARE a programmer...

I predict this project will crash and burn, burn in a grand inferno. But then, when everyone is weeping, prostrating themselves to false gods to understand why, it shall be reborn from it's own ashes, more glorious and amazing then it ever was. I bet a stick of chewing gum, some pocket lint, and 2 rusty pennies on it.

(I'd love to participate but it'd be a conflict of interest with where I work and they'd hunt me down and eat my liver. Then they'd hurt me. I wish you the best of luck!)

Ditto. I think part of it is the linier feel to the zones. Maybe the tiny detail on the characters makes them unremarkable and unnoticable. Every building is a fascade with no interior. I don't know if it's art per say, but the lack of energy in the animations also lends itself to the rather bland feeling I get also. Wish i could enjoy it, so many people are, but it just lacks some sort of visceral quality.

Maybe it's the small shapes and busy textures, or lack of radial flora in some areas. Maybe it's the lack of large details on the characters to make one pop from the other.

I'd like to pipe in on the budget issue. It's not true that small budgets create poor quality games. I've been part of teams with big budgets behind them that just didn't have the visual direction or art staff. Sometimes it's staffing, sometimes it's flaws in leadership. A small team with strong art and strong code and strong design and leadership can do more on a smaller budget then a big company with money to burn. So it's not the money but the staff. My 2 cents from my experience working in the industry.

I've tried the 14 day trial (or is it 7?) twice and both times tried differant classes, races etc to varry my experience but each time I just couldn't feel the urge to log on and play. Something was lacking and I can't put my finger on it. It just dosn't have the same energy in the animations, the same depth of contrast or something as other games like EQ2, WoW, GW... actually it reminds me alot of GW but.. Dang I can't even articulate what it is but something about the look and feel of the game just reads as "blah" to me. Maybe I've played too many MMO's but I just can't get drawn into this world at all.

Reading up on the game, I realize it's been out for a while in Korea and gone through several game updates where zones, classes and two player races have already been added. This american beta is simply a port of the existing korean game, with some changes made for the american version such as the Sharp Mind skill.

After playing this game for about a week I realize that level 1-15 is deceptivly easy and quick. Through courior quests, talk-to's and simple steps you are given a well balanced series of quests to level you up quickly with minimal actuall combat. As you work your way through the quests which train you the fundamental skills you begin to realize that each time you level you get AP points (Advancment Points) which go into your pool to be spent on increasing the rank of individual abilities like combat arts, spells etc. But that number is finite and you quickly invest your AP, spreading them thin rather then focusing, unaware that as you level your earlier levels provide you with 5AP, then 3AP, then 1AP per level..

At 15 you hit a wall, suddenly you've accomplished the menial quests and gained the basic attacks, and now are asked to fight creatures which wipe the floor with you. The magic quest which grants you your first spell isn't till after level 15, so unless you have cash to burn and know where to buy the spellbook you won't even know you should save AP for it.

After my first character I felt I must have spent my points poorly and gimped my character. So I rerolled and ran throught he newbie quests again, (easily done in a few hours). Once more from 15 on you get a few "kill 5 of X mob" quests but X mob either kills you or you win by the skin of your teeth. After you kill 5 of X you're left with the brilliant quest.. "Make level 20".

So from 15-20 you're grinding exp, cash for the insanly expensive novice armor and equipment sold at the blacksmith and generally grinding away in hopes of improving yourself.

As I spoke with other players and read up on the forums and on wiki's I realized that once you get the inital skills by 15, there aren't realy anymore skills to get. Sure there's maybe 1 or 2 more attacks, achieved through long quests much later on near level 25-30, however once you have your abilities you're stuck with it.

It does have sandbox elements but too few for my taste, and the world is much smaller then I suspected. Once I ran around the zones I realized how tiny the world was, made to feel distant only by the constant crawl speed they call a run.

I was disappointed at the lack of depth the game had. I would have chalked the sudden wall I hit at 15 to simply a bit of numbers imbalance, but would have toiled through it had I believed that getting some better gear through hours of grinding famor scrolls (rare drops off creatures -- specific to their type -- which can be turned in 10 at a time for sums of cash) if I felt there was alot more to discover and advance in.

However the american version is still Gen1, which means only humans, no paladins or dark knights, and fewer zones. I am not as familure with the asian mmo player base and perhaps this is simply the degree of depth they prefer in titles, not alot to achieve but get it all quick then choose what to do with it.

Sadly this isn't the game for me and dispiute it's cute nature, the camera collision was obnoxious, the limited view distance really made me feel a bit claustraphobic at times, as well as the need to run everywhere unless you luck out and the moongates are open to it at that time (something which only occures at night to a location based on the day of the week, not exactly something you'd wait for...)

Man I hope the bumps are specific to the color map and not a global coverage map like in Vanguard. I dislike how the coverage bump blends grass and stone together in the mid-ground and distance as if it were one material. Makes the world feel flat. If the bumps between snow and grass and rock and dirt differ you'll retain the seperation of elements. Of course that means more batch's and passes. But hell if WoW can do 4 layers with a spec map on each, they can do 4 with a bump on each.

I think the best example I can provide for how the UI is cumbersome is in agent missions. Once you recieve a mission (quest) you need to jump through both the missions windows and the agents window to navagate to the destination and back to the source. This seems to me like it could easily be simplified or all the waypoints given to you in the mission window (some simple ones they do, others you need to toggle between the agent window and the mission window to find the destinations).

Sure it's not a game breaker, but does it make the game better to have the player juggle several windows rather then simplify it into one location with clear links and buttons? Deffinitly a programmer inspired UI (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE! Damn analytical left brainers.

I made it to level 18 and hit a wall. Grey wolves go down in 3 hits. Yet white wolves and thusly dire anything are a fight that near kills me. There's no middle ground. Often I'll use a skill such as counter-attack only to have the mob stay at a distance also sitting in counterattack till one of ours fades or our stamina runs out.

I guess I find the combat too erratic, either the AI rushes you and you can use skills stratigicly, or you are being owned by the AI who is countering every skill you use. I've spoken with other melee players who echo my sentiments. Also there's no way to tell how hard a mob is without engaging it, and having it kill you in 2 hits. It seems like every mob even a weak spiderling knocks you down. And with EXP loss on death that's not too cool. I've run from mobs and they never break chase untill I zone into a house or into another zone. I really liked the game and it's sandbox feel at first but the wall of slow exp and no quests I can accomplish till 20, lack of cash comming in unless I grind the same 10 scroll quest over and over so I can't get any armor.. lets just say I'm thinikin of uninstalling. Or deleting and going magic user or archer. Melee seems to be pretty broked.

(Totally Offsubject here so ignore me if yer not into MMO art)

There's two differant types of height field types. One is called image atlasing, which creates tilesheets of tiles which are used on a grid to create blocky curves and pieces which fit together to create the illusion of no grid. Best example of this is in the War3 or Starcraft map editors. They have a tileset with several "corner" pieces as well as length pieces and blends. When painting the map the brush randomly picks 1 of 4 blend tiles to use to go from dirt/grass and grass/rock. Etc...  This method is very low requirments as you only load the atlas into ram and source from it. Each ZONE in Mabinogi has 1 or 2 atlas sheets based on the zones pallet.

The other type is called alpha masks, where you have a height field which is again broken into tiles but when painting it's more like photoshop layers. You are usualy limited to 4 layers per tile (depending how fine the tiles are chopped up, and how far out the programmers allow you to view) so it dosn't hurt performance with too many maps. Each texture is a color map, and each tile has it's own alpha mask. You ignore the tiles and just paint freehand, later going back to make sure you didn't accidentally paint into the edge of a tile with a 5th texture needlessly.

An example of this is World of Warcraft, notice that if the road runs by rocks, a common texture like the accent grass or something drops away in that tile. This is to maintain the 4 texture limit per tile for performance reasons.

Since you're i class for this stuff OP I thought you might find this interesting, it has nothing to do with the topic. :D

So far I've been playing for 4 days and enjoying myself. It does have a charm. However the limited view range (you can only see a few feet around you, then it fades to a 2d background) is a bit annoying.

1. I want to be able to click into the distance and have my toon run not have to use the minimap like an RTS becase it only renders whats immediatly around me.

2. There's really no way to duel-class in some aspects. Like I can't pull with a bow and switch to melee. Even when the creature gets into melee range my character auto-ranges each attack. Hitting W to swap to my melee set dosn't seem to work. Its a bit of a let down. Best way seems to either rush with smash or use ice bolt to pull.

3. I invested some AP earlier on into some skills I wish I hadent' as I didn't then realize that the skills got more AP expensive as they raised in rank, plus leveling was so fast the AP was flooding in. Then I seemed to hit a wall where I couldn't kill mobs above a certain type. I didn't know where to go next or why I was getting owned by 1 mob and could breeze through another.  This might just be class/mob balance so it's not a big deal. But money seems to come slowly and noobie armor is really expensive.

4. There is ALOT of clicking, even talking to 1 NPC they chop every bit of into into 12 pages of text I need to click through. I just want to advance the quest but I had to click through 20 pages during the magic lession quest. Yeesh. I'd rather have more text per page for less clicking.

5. The UI is very spartan, and limited to 10 hotkeys. Balance issues aside (like heal kits healing you for 1HP, woot). It is a charming game, just seems very raw still.

(On a side note I dunno what the OP is so jazzed about the terrain for, it's a low-rez tile system just like diablo2 but on a low-rez height field. Many of the terrain textures have obvious seems which make the ground look tiley. This is par for the asian MMO course, simmilarly found in Flyff, PrisonTale and other asian MMO's of that same calibur.)

Side note, I don't see any motion blurr or anti-aliasing options in the UI settings. There's dither but it dosn't create any sort of motion blurr effect as far as I can tell. All the models are very very low rez so it runs well on low-end systems as is common for asian games (lots of PC's in asia but many are 4-6 years older then todays standards, so to have a big user base the game companies over there tend to target lower specs).