All Posts by MChavez

1 rent some land 50$ per month

2 split the land and rent those little spots as stores

3  balance those prices so at the end of the month you get enough to pay for next month's land fee + a little extra for you to put in your pockets.

there that is the basics of building a ingame mall

While I love everything you've got to say, this bit of advice right here is another thing that killed it for me in Second Life: malls.

Geez, I would say the majority of building types in Second Life are malls. Malls are everywhere. It is disgusting. I would say a good 70% of them are empty and never have much traffic. I had spent countless hours simply flying all over the place and all I ever saw was one stupid mall after another. And, for the most part, they were all selling the same things.

It is misleading to think one can simply create a mall and make money. This is why Second Life is littered with junk buildings like malls because dumb people seem to think all they have to do is buy a "mall in the box" item and set it up and they'll be rich. The end result: The shitty landscape that is the mainland areas of Second Life.

$50 a month for land will get you squat. Yeah, maybe you could put two houses (or more if you want people to live in tiny spaces) on the plot, but again, this is another blight upon the landscape of Second Life. The second most building type in SL are neighborhoods of various sizes. I must say that estate owners get this right by offering people a theme for their neighborhood living. However, on the mainland, there are countless number of "neighborhoods" which are uninhabited because again too many dumb people thought they could throw up a few houses and get rich. Now the landscape is littered with thousands of unused homes.

Oh and another thing I hated about Second Life: BAN LINES. Nothing was more infuriating than flying around and bumping into walls that either LL or users set up barring people from crossing a certain parcel of land. The sense of freedom SL offers is destroyed when happily flying around and constantly bumping into these quasi-invisible walls. Bad bad design move on LL's part. I am hoping a future virtual world does not follow this route. If anything, may the contents on said land invisible to me as I fly over, but don't throw up a wall just because some asshat doesn't want people to see his pron torture chamber in his house.

Originally posted by AzurePrower

Do I hate it because I expected there to be actual game play? No.

Do I hate it because you have to role play? No.

Do I hate it because it is one big virtual shopping mall? OH MY GOD YES. IT'S 10% ROLE PLAY. 90% PEOPLE TRYING TO SELL YOU CRAP!

Perhaps you missed the entire point of Second Life. The whole purpose is to build, create and be social. yes, people try to sell you "crap" - but what you don't realize is many of those people had a personal hand in designing the plethora of virtual goods for sale. This is a major aspect of Second Life. The whole point of Second Life is to be CREATIVE and SOCIAL.

If you lack creative skills, Second Life will seem kinda boring unless one can tap into the social side of the game. I was fortunate to be involved with both aspects designing and building art galleries.

There is actual game play in Second Life. There are plenty of scripted game systems within the virtual world. While the game mechanics may not be as sophisticated as a typical game, there are whole RPG systems where people dress up and act out RP.

But, that doesn't mean you "must" RP. My entire time in Second Life was me just being me. No RP involved.

Now, why I hate Second Life is because there is a serious lack of control over content outside of one's own land. What made me leave the game is that SL's virtual world is a complete mess. Much of the building going on in that world is done by amateurs who have poor taste or lack the skill to create anything half way decent. The amount of spam in the form of large, obnoxious rotating ad signs was simply overwhelming. Linden Labs allows its users to break down the land into tiny parcels which are only good enough to stack one of those rotating ads from the ground all the way up into the sky.

After I had invested $200 in some mainland (on the new continent), I was subsequently (as well as my other neighbors) attacked by those ad farmers with their griefing policy of buying up as much land as possible, sectioning it up into the smallest parcels possible and placing dozens of ads. If one doesn't like the ads, the griefers say to buy the land the ads are placed on. Of course, these griefers would massively jack up the price for these tiny parcels. Linden Labs offers no recourse for the legitimate user in protecting themselves from these ads. There I was building my space port for A. a massive art gallery and B. a dance club. When I realized there was nothing I could do about the invasion of those ad griefers, I decided to quit Second Life. Yes, I know I could have rented estate land, but I didn't want to have to follow another land owners rules. I could have also bought a much bigger parcel of land so that the ads on the edges of my property wouldn't have been so effective. But, then, I would have had to make an initial investment of $500 or more and I simply was not prepared to do so at the time. I wouldn't have made the money back except through monthly donations, but, alas, the project never really took off (after I had spent so much time making custom textures too!!).

I love the concept of the non-gaming virtual world like Second Life. Because SL can practically be anything, it can be considered an MMORPG (because there are massive people playing and there are a myriad of RPing going on within SL). While the ad griefing was what made me leave Second Life, I must say that if you are into art and music, Second Life is incredibly amazing for that. Artists of all types have flocked to Second Life. There are hundreds of art galleries, dance clubs, live music venues. There are real people playing real instruments via live streaming at practically all hours of the day. Second Life has a lot to offer the new user and is a great place to meet new people.

One day I will return to a virtual world, but I am personally waiting for a new one. I think LL has too much of a monopolistic control over the virtual world concept and they are too slow to implement features that will help users have more control over the world. They're too busying wooing people with feature after feature but not doing much to clean up their own world. I'm waiting for a new company to come around and offer a more modern virtual world (with high end graphics, etc) who can hopefully offer a better virtual world experience.

If I had a dollar for every one of these kinds of threads. But, then again, these threads (and reading them) are what convinced me to try the game again. There's something to be said about a passionate fan base. They helped lure me back in.

So far, I've got to say that the gaming experience has vastly improved. Population seems to be high and I'm always seeing people around the major quest hubs. Luckily this world is so big that I can find solace very easily when I want to.

Performance seems to be a tad better, especially in cities like Khal. Chunking is still there but for me it is a slight 1-2 second pause and then I'm moving on again. About the same as zoning into a building in LotRO or a raid dungeon in WoW.

Hitching is still an issue but I'm now playing VG on a two year old computer. I tend to play with higher graphical settings and thus accept a certain amount of hitching.

Honestly, if you liked VG before but hated all the bugs and problems, then you will like the game even more now with all of the improvements. The game is far from perfect, but it has come a long way in one year. People need to give VG a chance to breathe. Try it out, I'm sure you won't be disappointed. I am certainly a happy returning player. Wish I had never left and just stuck it out....

Originally posted by Nul1

Originally posted by varrius

Everything about this game is much better than anything I've played MMO wise.  It's really a shame it had all of those launch issues.  However, something is bothering me about it.  If I do all the work to get to level 50, are they going to close it down? 

I doubt EVERYTHING about this game is much better than anything else.

1)It's low on endgame content.

No, there is plenty of high level content, just not enough raid content.

2)Diplomacy is pretty useless. It's not really incorporated into the world.

Diplomacy is a great route to take for lore-addicts. However, it is an aspect of the game that seriously needs to be reworked. This is something that will be done in the future.

3)Some think crafting is useless since, named item drops have had their item level increased by 10!

How is crafting useless when people still need other types of equipment like parts for ships and houses?

4)Hitching

Of course, it is so easy to lay this criticism against VG. Got no response to that. But, its like taking a cheap shot at a blind person.

5)Character models are shit.

Highly disagree.

6)On screen character performance is shit.

Again, highly disagree. Character performance is fine on my 2 YEAR OLD computer.

7)Some animations are horrible.

I think the Dark Elves running animation is a bit stiff, but I just don't agree with people who claim that animations in VG are horrible. I completely disagree with you. This is a criticism that is not factual about the game, it is merely your own personal view.

8)Plenty enough bugs and broken quests.

I have returned to VG after taking one year off. So far, much of the bugs I remember are no longer present. Broken quests? Didn't come across one when I played a year ago and haven't come across one now. Again, another non-factual point about the game, just your personal view. I also guess there's no complimenting a development team that has been hard at work removing problems from the game. I guess there's no such thing as giving credit where credit is due.

9)Default UI is clunky and ugly.

Another personal opinion. Don't like the UI? Go into layout mode and change it? Still don't like it? Go and download a user developed UI. Practically every MMO has this same complaint. It goes both ways: either you like it or you don't.

10)Font is horrible.

Running out of things to complain about?

11)Helmets are mostly ugly.

Another personal viewpoint.

2)Normal mapping can sometimes make the world look unreal and ugly.

Yes, this is where most people complain about the so-called poor graphics of Vanguard. They are only poor if you don't have a decent machine to run them on. However, I'm on a two year old machine, running 1680x1050 on high performance, balanced rendering and normal mapping up to 100%. The world looks quite LOVELY to me.

13)Normal mapping is needed to keep mountains from looking like shit.

Another personal viewpoint. They look beautiful to me with or without normal mapping.

14)Clothing and textures are underwhelming.

ANOTHER personal viewpoint. I mean, don't you have any factual criticisms against the game? I think clothing looks very realistic...especially cloth. You can actually see the weaving  of the textiles in tents and robes and cloaks.  The  ground textures are the most realistic I've ever seen.  Rocks look like rocks, dirt and sand looks like dirt and sand. This is  such a broad topic since there are thousands of textures in the game. It is sad to know that you have personally observed every single one of them and have still come to your conclusion. Ah well....

FYI: I've been joining the game on and off since May07. I just recently canceled my account, and waiting for GU6 at least this time.

Originally posted by fawdown

I just added this to my Station Access acct last week and have got some good time in on it.  It wasn't that much of a hit at $20 for the discs.

The game isn't half bad.  It's not as polished as EQ2, and it has bugs, but the world is huge and diverse.  Actually I have not seen such diversity in a base release game without expansions anywhere else.  WoW even with expansion does not come close to the areas that VG has.

For me, it is a diversion once in a while when I want a change for a night, with something that's different, without having to add another subscription cost.  It is weak graphically and content-wise compared to EQ2 but the added things such as diplomacy, make it worth playing.

True. VG might not be as polished as EQ2 but EQ2 has had much more time to mature. I think graphically speaking, VG has the better graphics. Content-wise, unless you have your head stuck in the mud (not saying you), it is extremely difficult NOT to find content in Vanguard. There is simply too much of it. I think people who claim there is not enough content (again, not you) really haven't explored much of the world. It's like they move five feet, don't find a quest giver and complain that there is no content.

Now, while EQ2 might have more interesting content and way the hell more raiding content, again, EQ2 has time on its side. I am VERY MUCH hoping that SOE can turn around VG like they did with EQ2. EQ2 was a universally panned game until the Fay expansion when suddenly the entire industry looked up and recognized that SOE was finally doing something right with the game. Here's hoping the same works out for VG.

While I prefer VG over EQ2 (that massive world is just too much to ignore), I am hoping that both games thrive for many years to come.

PS: And to the guy who looked into the magic 8ball, I really do think yours is broken.

Who cares if it is Darkfall or Mortal Online. All I know is that this industry desperately needs a hardcore sandbox MMO.

Please take me away from all the carebears and the whiners. I am so sick of going from one linear MMO to another. I am bored of games that are designed for the casual crowd. Simply put, I am an addicted MMO gamer and I want something as hardcore and realistic as possible. I want a true virtual world, not just another game.

Originally posted by Torak

 

Originally posted by MChavez

Thanks for the responses. I personally think the trial island is a big waste of resources. However, something must be done to keep new players and if surrounding them around other new players helps, so be it. It is unfortunate that so many aspects of this game were developed with large populations in mind, hence the myriad of starting areas. From a cultural standpoint, I would hate to see these starting areas get wasted. At the very least, give the new player some reason to return home so they at least get an idea of where their character comes from and what their culture is like.

I agree.

 

The value of placing a starter area to level 5 is minimal at best. You are looking at 2 to 3 hours of gameplay. Hardly enough time to make a difference.

A better plan would be to just release a free trial as is. There are teleporters ingame now and continental chat. This pretty much eliminates the need to meet other avatars pixel to pixel.

But starter islands are one of those SOE traditions like raiding. They gotta put one in regardless of the fact it screws things up for already existing areas and it provides no real long term benefit.

Anyone remember that starter island from EQII? How about as far back as when you started on the pirate boat with Capt Feathersword yelling "Ah Hoy me hearties"...what happened there? They switched to racial starting areas....In fact they pulled out that entire starter thing with the citizanship quest and all of that. What a waste, spoken dialog and everything. I'm sure it wasn't cheap to make. And don't get me started on the amount of times they changed SWG starter areas. In the end, they always give you the option to just skip them.

What they should do is improve what they already have. Rewrite some of the opening quest or something. Move some of the NPC's around so they are more obvious in the starter areas. There is no need to invest all this time / effort / resources to something that is going to provide 2 to 3 hours of gameplay for a new player and ZERO for the current player when it basically already exist. They should be working on NEW content, new art, polishing...

 

While some people say that a trial would be too big of a download, I disagree. I bought this game via Direct2Drive and the file size is 6GB. While that is a big download, it took me maybe less than two hours to grab the file. However, there is the subsequent patching of the game which took about another hour. Are people going to be patient enough to wait  from 3-5 hours just to play a demo? I don't know.

I think a retooling of the low level areas would make more sense than developing a trial island. You are right. With riftways and chat, a new player is never alone. I keep thinking the same thing. There is so much already there that creating new land or a new starting area is kind of pointless. They should retool what they already have.

If anything, they should decrease the amount of starting areas, consolidate them. Why have two or three starting areas on Qalia when there's enough of a low level area around Khal alone that would easily accommodate them all? The same goes for Thestra. Martok is understandably Orc/Goblin and that works for them. Consolidate the Tanvu/Cai'al Brael starting areas. They could take much of that newbie area and retool the quests/mobs for higher level characters.

The greatest thing Vanguard has going for itself is its size. However, the utilization of the land sorely needs optimizing. I won't even go into the amount of wasted space up in the mountains. While it is not a waste in terms of exploration, there is absolutely zero content when exploring along the ridges and valleys of the games many mountain ranges.

But, yeah, anyway, like I said, I hope this move works out. If it brings more players to the game, so be it.

Thanks for the responses. I personally think the trial island is a big waste of resources. However, something must be done to keep new players and if surrounding them around other new players helps, so be it. It is unfortunate that so many aspects of this game were developed with large populations in mind, hence the myriad of starting areas. From a cultural standpoint, I would hate to see these starting areas get wasted. At the very least, give the new player some reason to return home so they at least get an idea of where their character comes from and what their culture is like.

All MMOs are grindy, including Vanguard. Much of Vanguard's grind to level 50 are hidden in quests so its not like you'll ever be forced to go random mob killing just to get exp. Plenty of dungeons and three massive continents at least give the player plenty of environment choices when grinding!

Originally posted by eric1000

 

Originally posted by MChavez

Go for LotRO. Why?

1. LotRO is easy.

2. LotRO is linear.

3. LotRO is beautiful.

4. LotRO is very casual friendly.

5. LotRO has a great community.

Why not EQ2?

1. EQ2 is dull...well, is the more boring game out of the two.

2. EQ2 can still be a system hog of a game.

3. Too much zoning in cities like Freeport.

4. Subscriptions and thus people playing this game are lower than LotRO. You'll find more people in LotRO.

5. Harder than LotRO, having to deal more with multiple mobs and needing groups at the lower levels.

 

In both games, I could not manage a character pass level 20. Both of these games are "yawners" to me. If you wanted a more serious fantasy game to devote yourself to, I'd suggest Vanguard...but it looks like you just want something to dick around in until WAR. In that case, I'd definitely go for LotRO.

 

Amazing, not a single toon past lvl 20 and he thinks he has enough experience to give these kinds of judgements.  That's like the local handyman advising you on brain surgery.

 

To the original poster.  For me EQ2 is the much better game but everyone is different.  Both have free trials, why not try them both and then make your own mind up.

Look if I had found either game interesting, I would have played far past level 20. But, neither of them held my interest. OH WELL. My opinion is just as valid as yours since this person is only looking for a game to fill up his time until WAR. He is going to realize well before level 20 which of the two he likes more. So, your criticism seems a bit moot to me. Don't get snooty with me because I didn't like the game you are suggesting.

Is it true that once this newbie isle is implemented, will all players have to start there including active subscribers who create alts?

If this is the case, what do they intend to do with all of the newbie areas in the world right now? There are quite a lot of starter areas that would effectively go to waste. What are the plans for them?

I realized yesterday wandering around northern Qalia how much space is given to mobs and quests for levels 1-12. IMHO, it is far too much for levels that a player can get through in one day of playing. I keep thinking about how higher level content would better utilize the space in which lower level mobs and quests currently occupy. It seems to me that the up and coming trial island will further exacerbate this problem. Have the devs come up with any solutions? Or even talked about this at all?

Busy playing Vanguard hoping DF doesn't meet the same fate whenever it launches....

Go for LotRO. Why?

1. LotRO is easy.

2. LotRO is linear.

3. LotRO is beautiful.

4. LotRO is very casual friendly.

5. LotRO has a great community.

Why not EQ2?

1. EQ2 is dull...well, is the more boring game out of the two.

2. EQ2 can still be a system hog of a game.

3. Too much zoning in cities like Freeport.

4. Subscriptions and thus people playing this game are lower than LotRO. You'll find more people in LotRO.

5. Harder than LotRO, having to deal more with multiple mobs and needing groups at the lower levels.

In both games, I could not manage a character pass level 20. Both of these games are "yawners" to me. If you wanted a more serious fantasy game to devote yourself to, I'd suggest Vanguard...but it looks like you just want something to dick around in until WAR. In that case, I'd definitely go for LotRO.

Come on, guys. Vanguard can't be the biggest flop? Really? It is still pushing forward. People are playing it. What about Mourning? Dark & Light? Earth & Beyond (loved it)? Auto Assault? AC2? Ryzom? All of these games failed and are not even running anymore save D&L. I would call these bigger flops than the massive debacle that was VG when it launched.

PVPers suck because of their need for balanced classes. Hey guys, ever hear of support classes? Go play some TF 2 for awhile.

PVEers suck because of their need to sanitized and make every aspect of a game casual. Look, nobody told you to get married a produce three ungrateful kids. Don't come ruin my game because of your need for convenience.

There, got that off my chest.

People are stupid. What more can I say? They are often contradictory and hypocritical. All activity is a waste of time. Simply living is a waste of time. Time, or at least the concept of it, marches on no matter what we do.

It pisses me off when I hear jocks say the same thing. Video games are a waste of time, but throwing around a ball isn't? Just because you're outside doesn't make your chosen activity any better than mine.

My family is the same way. They watch television, mostly stupid television. They can't understand why I prefer to stay home and play my games. They are incapable of understanding because they lack the kind of imagination and mental capacity required for games. Consider yourself enlightened! :)

I am not a passive participant in my hobby. I take an active role. Most people don't see that perspective. They think games are for kids and unless you are a kid, why would you play games? They don't understand the story aspect of games, the excitement generated from them, the adrenaline rush as well as the social aspects of gaming.

EDIT: Just to keep my family off my back, I will make time for them. I will try to watch a movie with them or watch some television from time to time.

Hey Beau, thanks for taking over the reigns of VoV. You and Troy were very instrumental in getting me back into VG. Listening to you guys talk about the game so passionately helped me decide to get back into the game. Been playing for two days and kicking myself for deleting my old characters. Well, at least this time, I will experience this game in a more laid back fashion as opposed to trying to reach level cap as quickly as I can. Anyway, going to go listen to VoV #36 now!!! Woot!