All Posts by Adamantine

You are asking for a long article there, no surprise nobody wants to write that much stuff.

I would say Vanguard is very fun now.

Well, the best race for DK is, from what I've heard, actually Qalian Human. Thats because of their extra strong special ability. High damage immunity for 10 sec is a real lifesaver if things go hard. The 10% damage bonus from being human doesnt hurt either.

About skilling, I dont know. +5 Str and +5 Con are of course nobrainers. The last 4 points are much harder; maybe +4 Int for aggro and drain health would be a good choice.

Personally, I would absolutely choose Darkelf for a DK. But thats simply because of style. Objectively, they arent such a great candidate.

Vanguard has higher hardware requirements than LotRO. Theres nothing to fix there.

Models have been redone since GU4, which was 2 months ago or so. Since then, everyone looks exactly the same, which is a shame.

What we will get again, therefore, is character customization, not new models. I hope it will be introduced with GU6.

I recently stumbled over some information about GW2 and I was highly disappointed.

They have humans and 4 other races. But these other races are not, like one would expect, Elf / Dwarf / Orc / Halfling or some such. Or ok, they have something like Elf / Dwarf / Orc / Halfling, except they found some ugly names for them and changed their looks much to the disadvantage.

I'm all for new creative classes and races, but I dont want to miss the standards.

I myself am sure that the real good MMO is yet to be made. All existing ones are only steps towards it, at best - or just stupid boring IP moneymakers, like LotRO and AoC.

Well - I agree that Vanguard mainly only misses a playerbase. There are a lot of newbies around now, though. Hopefully we'll get even more.

But the higher ranks - many of them are on the leave now. Not because the game is bad or anything - just because they did everything that could be done in Vanguard. There are only like two douzen devs or some such working on the game, and they keep focusing on fine balancing and fixing the game - therefore theres not that much new content released.

And thats what is missing, new content on highlevel.

Vanguard would need 200k players and 100 or more devs working on the game - then it would prosper, and new content could be released at the speed that highlevels manage the existing content. We could have our fourth continent, we could get every part of the existing continents filled, we could get the Berserker class, etc.

I myself are completely busy, I want all my 8 character slots to maxlevel, and I want to get my army of 6 crafters, and a maxlevel diplomat, etc. But others only want to play one character, and after a year theres really not much left to do.

I would not stay in a game that doesnt ban both goldbuyers and goldsellers the moment they are detected.

It destroys the game, it makes market prices go crazy, and it frustrates everyone who plays fairly.

Anyone care to explain what "quest system" actually is ?

I would understand if he would actually just ask for the quests and their quality.

But "quest system" ??

For all I know, ALL these games listed there use the exactly same quest system:

1. Find the quest giver
2. Solve the quest
3. Hand in

Theres the possibiliy to make the whole thing dynamic, like, for example, in www.citadelofsorcery.com/, where quests are part of some storyline you create yourself.

Best solist class:

That really depends upon what you want.

- Necromancer can kill a lot of mobs. But if the opponent is really tough, he has to rely on fear. If the opponent cannot be feared either, all the Necro can do is Evac or Fake Death, then return with a group.

- Dread Knight is tough, can kill even (at least some) 6-dots, and works great against groups of opponents as well. He also has some nice tools, such as a shorttimed invis + runspeed (cant keep that up all the time). On the downside, this isnt exacty a top dps class.

- Disciple. Again almost impossible to kill class, not bad dps, and an instant Fake Death, though not as reliable as the Monks.

- Cleric. Another nearly unkillable class. If the opponent has stun, though, or silence, the Cleric will have a hard time. Additionally, the dps of Clerics is the worst in the whole game.

- Other good solists are all classes but Warrior, Monk, and Rogue. Each requires their special strategy, though, and many of them rely on kiting, which needs the room for it.

Best group class:

??? This is a contradictional question. It is a GROUP, not a single class. And in Vanguard, all classes work well in groups. You need any tank, one or better two healers, a bard and two dps for a good group.

What can be said, though, is that Monk and Bard really start to shine only in groups. Solo, the Monk is rather weak, and the Bard has to kite harder opponents. In a group, the Monk is the best puller of all, and the Bard causes an insane dps increase.

Best allround class:

There are no true allrounders in Vanguard. Declaring a "best" is therefore misleading. Some classes have a more generalist approach, though (Necromancer, Druid).

Strong Classes with decent soloability and with lots of diverse skills:

- Dread Knight: Invis, Runspeed, Drain Health, Shadowstep. And a full featured tank. Maybe not the most diverse class in this collection, but definitely a very good solist.

- Ranger: bow and twoweapon figthing. Runspeed. Best ranged attacks (but seen absolutely, bows are weak in Vanguard), massive melee dps (but problems in respect to deaggro).

- Bard: a toolbox with a ton of options.

- Cleric: Especially the Death affinity comes with a couple of options - basically you are healer/tank/mage. Dont get me wrong, you wont be able to compete in dps with real tanks, but you will have quite some.

- Disciple: Very complex and complicated class, also very strong solo - good dps + insane healing, and if nothing else works anymore, an instant Fake Death as well, and very good in group (dedicated tank healer, good group heals)

- Druid: Another toolbag class, with healing additional to very good dps

- Psionicist: probably best mage buffer in game, best crowd controller in game, works on "infinite" mana and got a recent hefty upgrade in dps.

- Necromancer: Solist god with DoTs, Tank Summon, Fear, Drain Life, Fake Death etc etc etc

Yeah, as if changing one element would changing anything about the thing.

Changing from elves and orcs to, lets say, Vulcans and Klingons, will of course totally change the game experience.

I'm very, very, very far from "being sick" of them. I want them to be done right. Which is far from what we have now - a world of stupid WoW clones, with very few exceptions in between.

Meh. No pancakes ? I leave !

Actually CRPGs are never about roleplaying. At best you get some choices, do you want to be good or evil. But its not like you could actually pick a role and play it. The computer wont care about your actions and your communication. Other players would, sure, but the computer and therefore the game itself wont.

Originally posted by Teiraa

 

The main issue with VG performance is, that you need a good computer to run it.
But you can play LotRo with an old computer (something like GeForce 6600 or 6800) at low/med setting and still have quite beautiful graphics.

 

Sorry I have no idea how Vanguard would run today with a GF6800.

The IMHO best combat system ever so far is in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Main reason why I stay in that game.

Originally posted by Consensus

once upon a time rpg's where turn based. then someone decided to add the dimension of time to make it 1000% more interesting. this caught on and became the standard so much that only few turn based rpgies are now made and are laughed at. [...]

Its the crucial difference between shooters and roleplaying games that the first have shallow, reflex based rulesystems, while the later have complex, but "slower" (not necessarily turn based, but abilities have various timers on them - cast timer, cooldown timer, and sometimes also recast timer) rulesystems.

If you prefer shooter, so be it. I dont.

Originally posted by sbanting

doesn't this make it the forth? :P

It was in the general discussion, not this subforum.

Originally posted by Duilyon

 

Vanguard:

 

Pros:

1. Huge open world

2. Boats!

3. Customizable houses!

4. Lots of classes / races to choose from!

5. Quests are sometimes funny and well written

6. Crafting is very complicated and fun

7. flying mounts that you can use anywhere

8. awesome dungeon design

Cons:

1. Performance issues

2. many of the races look the same and have the same body models.

3. Many animations are awkward and are not realistic

4. Graphics and areas are not interesting at all

5. It has a huge world but much of it is empty and without content

Performance, I think while there are still areas with problems, in general performance is fine. Cities, raids and dungeons are a different issue, but I can run max quality when soloing outside with hardly any issue, on an old GeForce 7950 (no, single chip, not the dual chip version).

Well yes, all elves have the same body model. As have all human races (of where there are no less than 6, though possibly the barbarian races have a different basic model). But no other race shares body model with any other race. And do you really need a different body model for the elves or humans ? I certainly dont. Its just intuitive that they have the same basics.

Animations + Graphics + Empty world: Sorry, I disagree. The only really empty spots are the housing areas, and that will obviously never change. Underwater theres only little content, but the continents are quite filled now.

The main disadvantage of Vanguard is still the missing trial and the lack of players.

The main advantage of Vanguard is the complex and interesting and, for Group PvE, well balanced classes. Solo PvE isnt that balanced, even if everybody can do Solo PvE (thats not true for a lot of other games, such as EQ), and certainly PvP sucks, at least from what I've heard about it.

Originally posted by nethervoid

Even gear based games rely on skill.  Nobody can just log 10000 hours and have the best gear.  You still have to have the skill to get it.

Exactly.

If gear is no factor in gaming, then whats the point of getting it ? I certainly want gear to matter.

And I guess if sucka in great gear meets killa in awful gear, killa would probably still kick his ***. Especially if sucka is in an awful guild and killa is in a great one, so killa wont stay THAT much behind in gear, actually.

These 3:

1. www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/169377
2. www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/184628
3. www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/182553

Lets hope we get some new players in return out of this.