Originally posted by evilastro

My favourite was the Disciple. Was a pretty novel idea for a class, although I think WoW has copied it now with the Monk healer. Heals through damage, and can tank quite well. Very fun to play. Probably the best soloer in the game.

I'm fairly certain WoW copied their idea of the monk as healer from Guild Wars, not from Vanguard, though.

Also, nobody ever was sure what Monks are supposed to be. If you look at the corresponding Wikipedia page, this is all over the place. So D&D is just a weird melee class that somehow ends up being a dedicated mage killer, EQ started this fashion of fake death that Vanguard has copied, GW made them the only dedicated healer class (kind of like priests), WoW as already mentioned just throws 3 different options around (as with every other of their classes, though), in Lineage 2 Monks (called Tyrants after level 40) have been (past tense is very correct, because the current version now practically has the original richness of classes removed and is limited to the 8 classes present in Aion) a kind of melee glass cannon with some magic trickery.

In Vanguard, they can be tank-like (Drunken style), dps-like (Dragon style) or, in a separate class, even healer (Disciple). There was also a debuff variant (Harmonious), but I heard they removed that one. This pretty much reflects how nobody ever knew what Monks are really good for, so they just offer you every option thinkable off ...

Disciple have been the Vanguard version of solist godmode since the start of the game. Nothing ever changed about that.

I think the Blood Mage is a more unique approach in Vanguard. Dont think any other game will copy them too fast because you need this split between defensive and offensive target to do that.

I started as a healer player.

I have all healer classes at 30+ now. My old main was a Cleric, but I hardly touch him anymore. Unkillable, extreme defenses, but also very little dps output. Choosing War or Death as Affinity helps, but not too much.

Blood Mage is a very fun class, because you get strong advantages and special tricks, but also some crucial disadvantages. Awesome dps solo, but has to "tank" the opponents, while lifetapping them with non-instant lifetaps (that keep getting disrupted) and their CC is limited to root and a one-time charm (cant be applied a second time), both of which are also quite slow to cast.

Disciple is weird. It just never feels like a healer class. Its more a "I hit this, so I have healing to spare, who needs ?" class. No quickheals or immunities as such, half of all heals use Jin points instead of mana, not to mention every attack will throw healing around and oh yes, you have to use special sequences of attacks to put up most of your group buffs, and they are quite shorttimed, too. Best single target healer, but really no good class to heal squishies. Solo play ? Feels like godmode. Until you meet a mob that can just hit you that little bit harder than you can heal yourself. The difference between "easy opponent" and "impossible" is very, very abrupt for Disciple.

Shaman is plays VERY differently, depending upon what Totem you choose. In any case, Shamans are the best debuffers in the game, and they are the best mage healer thanks to a great quickheal that includes a 2 sec immunity.

Bear Shaman is the most popular choice. They are possibly even more unkillable than Disciple, thanks to Clericlike defenses in medium gear. Their dps is better than Cleric, but not really that high.

Wolf Shaman has less insane defenses, but better dps output, and they are the only healer with stealth.

Phoenix Shaman is possibly the best healer in the game, but gets mage-like "defenses" and is really squishy solo. They are the only healer class that has to kite tougher mobs.

Well, first of all - tanks are ALL *VERY* gear dependent in Vanguard. Dont play them on a freemium account or you'll be highly frustrated because blue gear just wont cut it and anything else will get mighty expensive quickly.

I play a DK and I wouldnt want to switch. Good dps output, a kickass area lifetap, a helpful pet at level 51, invisibility to bypass opponents, and the last class in the game that has an AoE attack thats not limited in respect to number of opponents that get hit. Just awesome.

War is best single target aggro. They have temporary buffs that allow to go beyond cap, such as for Mitigation. But they are the worst solist class - I would recomment making sure you have a second computer, and level a Cleric or Bear Shaman on that one for the buffs and healing. But you dont need to be a full second account, just get a free one. And get a cheap computer and run Vanguard on minimum settings. All you want to do on that account is /follow on your main and throw him a heal whenever they need it.

Pal is the area aggro guy. They also get true fear immunity (DK only gets a fake version that doesnt work on raidbosses). All in all the best of the tanks, except Pal is of course the lowest dps and handling multiple opponents solo is actually no fun because its troublesome to get healing spells off this way.

In the sum, just like with every other class, play what you enjoy playing.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Column: Revisiting Vanguard

I find this review near useless. Its just a huge wall of text, but I have no clue if the person in question even has played the game again. He doesnt mention anything specific and what he says about the game sounds very generic.

I dont remember any dungeon in the game that doesnt have quests. Scorpion-filled ? That sounds like the northern dungeon in the Temple of Dailuk area. But even that one IIRC has quests.

I dont feel there is a lack of highlevel content. Its more that as a european, one has a hard time finding a good guild for doing said content. Highlevel Vanguard is about raids, and there are MANY of those.

Vanguard would be in a much better shape if it had more players and thus more developers, but overall I dont mention bugs often and when I do, the customer service of SOE is extremely good - fast, friendly, competent.

Um ... no ?

Unless you manage to design a system thats so tough to master that true masters may even solo certain raidbosses, while the average player still struggles to kill the same opponents with a regular raid.

That would be a cool game. It would probably be worthwhile to play your class for years, just in order to get better and better at it. But I doubt anyone will ever come up with any such a system.

Certainly not WoW. I heard that in WoW its fashion that green drops from mobs replace the raid gear from previous versions. Talk about a truely awful design. So yeah, WoW obviously is extremely gear heavy and skill can thus no longer matter much in that game.

I can see people soloing raid bosses that are much below their level, though.

Vanguard.

Which I will probably play the next 5 years subbed.

Unless somebody comes along and give me a better game ... which seems highly unlikely.

If I can spare some time, Vanguard;

I'm kind of busy with reallife atm though.

I am already playing a "sub2win" game ?

Thats basically what the freemium model of SOE implies. You can check out the game as much as you want. But want to be actually effective ? You'll have to sub.

> The biggest reason people will tell you that diplomacy is required is because being a high level diplomat will greatly increase the speed at which you are able to gain faction in some of the more important end-game content where faction plays a major role.

Exactly.

Its faster to level diplomacy instead and do the same with diplomacy.

Also, you dont need anyone else for it, you can "solo" it.

I see very little that points to improvement right now.

Tons of games are released, but rarely any of them catches my interest. Most of them are just too shallow and lacking difficulty and gameplay quality.

I also dont get the demand for "new". As long as there is so much left to be desired about the old stuff, why dont get that old stuff right, first.

Of course I dont oppose new per se. But I oppose new for being new. New needs to be an innovation, an improvement; in most cases it just isnt, but actually a step backwards.

I'm a bit confused now if I'm considered an "old fart" or a "younger generation". I'm 40, but I dont play MMOs since that long. UO, EQ, DAoC, AO, WoW, EVE - I never played any of these "classics". I had a short intermezzo with Lineage 2, then since 2007 I play Vanguard, and I tried GW1 once for like a week or so, until I was completely bored out of my mind by it.

But I think Vanguard can qualify for rather old style. Thats what people write about it all the time, it would be "dated" and stuff. Dated ? How can a game be "dated" ? Graphics can, but graphics of Vanguard are actually still pretty nice. Not worse than for example SWTOR, from the screenshots I've seen.

Ugh.

Are you serious ?!?

I tolerate the "freemium" model of Vanguard simply because, as a subscriber, I get some of these "points" as well and can get the stuff other people pay for. Those things I really need, anyway.

And about respeccing, people shouldnt ever feel the need to respec at all in your game. Thats usually done to fix a problem with balancing. I heard in WoW its even done because people need to switch what role they play in a party. Thats kind of stupid, but whatever.

About playing a female character - about half of my characters are female. I play whatever I prefer. In many games, there is even an objective reason to play females. Such as better character pictures, or advantages in gameplay:

• Wizardry 8 has a lot of items that work only for female, but absolutely none that only work for male.
• Vampire: Bloodlines, the best race is Toreador. They start with a lot of social skills when its important, while in the end their power selection is maybe even more optimal for combat than those of the Brujah, the dedicated fighter race. And the female Toreador benefits from high Charisma / Seduction skills a lot more than the male one.
• TES 3: Morrowind, the female Breton gets a really beautiful face, while male Bretons look kinda strange.
• TES 4: Oblivion, again female Bretons are much better than males ones.

My "class" is "Altholic", really.

I play everything - tank, healer, dd, cc/support.

I even decided to start a druid and a rogue, recently. Just because those are playstyles I usually avoided.

So yeah, what is my "class" ? I just play whatever is fun.

And about my personality, I'm pretty medium there too. Maybe a bit more intellectual and chatty than the average person.

I think race should be an important decision about your character.

Not as important as class, but it should substantly modify your gaming experience. If you play an Elf Warrior, Gnome Warrior or Human Warrior, each time it should be a substantial difference. You should instantly have to take different aspects of the game into consideration and others should be unimportant or even nonexistent.

There should also be subraces, which have even less influence, but still shouldnt be just cosmetical.

In the hypotetical ideal game, race could for example specify:

- Looks, d'oh !

- Stat modifications. Not in a way that a race is clearly optimized for playing certain classes. Instead, it should modify the gaming experience. Humans traditionally are the "average" and get no stat modifications.

- Faction. So you are a Giant, so you have good faction with Gnomes, since they are the traditional ally of giants. Elves and Dwarves however dislike you. For saftely entering their cities, you better solve some questlines for them to gain the necessary faction. Maybe some race, say Orcs, has to do these quests with ALL races, while another race, say Gnome, never has to do them at all, but also never gets improved conditions either.

- Movement. Giants have a hard time to fit into small locations, and often have to duck or even crouch. Dwarves move a bit slower than other races, but their sprint ability lasts three times longer. Gnomes always have the ability to sneak, even if their class normally cant. And so on.

- Special abilities. Races can get special abilities that other races wont get. This is of course a huge factor to make races different. The most radical version of this is race dependent classes - the human warrior is now called a Gladiator, while the giant warrior is a Destroyer, and while they might still be from basic functionality be the same, they now dont share a single special ability.

- Other special stuff. For example a Feline race might need extra armor for their tail. Armor might be race dependent - the Giant simply cant use the gnomes armor. And so on and so forth.

- Lore. For example each race could get their own version of history.

I actually only need ONE game. One that is interesting enough that I can play it for the time being.

However, in order to keep the conditions in my game nice and tidy, I actually need a ***load of other games. Why ? Because otherwise the religion of greed (i.e. capitalism) will cause my company to increase their profits by increasing the price for the game.

So yeah, saturated market ? Thats great.

Originally posted by sketocafe

Originally posted by Torgrim
I boycotted this game as soon as I knew Cryptic was behind the wheel.

Please stop using that word incorrectly. Unless you wrote letters to all companies involved, told all your friends and family and generally tried to create a grass-roots movement to shed light on the behavior of cryptic, you didn't boycott anything. 

Um, no ?

To boycott something just means you intentionally dont do it.

You dont have to actively publish it and try to make other people boycott it as well.

For example I always explain why I strictly avoid SteamWorks, and I explain why I dont tolerate it, but I dont actively propagate people shouldnt do it - I just point out that its a huge hole in your computer security, and the people who made this system made it after being completely hacked.

Originally posted by Etherignis
GL with that boycotting.

What good luck would be needed there ? You just dont play it. Nothing else needed. Including no luck whatsoever.

Originally posted by SpottyGekko

For years, MMO publishers were stuck with a very difficult problem: monthly subscribers flatly resisted any increase in the sub rates, while their shareholders continually demanded better profits.

Newsflash: I dont give a crap about shareholders increasing demands for profit. Neither should you, if there is any sanity left in you.

A game is a bad deal ? Then those profit addicts can just play it themselves. Maybe that will cure them from their greed. End of story.

There is no "b2w". That makes no sense. B stands for "buy" and means you buy ONCE.

Its probably "p2w". Pay to Win means you constantly have to buy stuff to "win" the game.

And yeah, I dont support this attitude either.