Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Forum » General Discussion » So I tried Vanguard - it is interesting and different

We all complain about the dearth of good MMO's, so i just downloaded Vanguard for the 14 day free trial and tried it for a couple of days... Regarding populations, while it is ny no means a ghost town, it should be packed, it really is a worthy title, from what i have experienced so far. I rolled on Saradon and it seems to have a fair number of people in newb zone, I understand there are many more higher level characters, understandably.

Seriously, I cannot understand why a ton of people are  not playing it...is it because they had a rough launch a couple years ago?

1. A ton of interesting classes

2. A ton of interesting races

3. Missions have intersting dialog, PvE, so far seems very solid

4. World looks great and is massive

5. Mature community

6. Much more of a 'fantasy simulation'

7. Explore...this game does not pack mobs in, it is meant to be a bit more realistic, you can explore and really see some amazing scenes, i love that

8. Crafting and dilpomacy are real class choices and you can spend a tone of time in those areas

9. Lots and lots to do-

Here is a picture of the newb area. Check out the stormy sky.

The character models are just Ok, but play the game for 20 minutes and you will not care-

Anyway, my .02.

 I played the trial for around 20 min and uninstalled it.

I keep coming back to check up on this game. It really is a good game. Though the one thing that keeps me away is the awful character models and animations. If they could fix those, I would be back in no time. Unfortunately, until then I just can't get into it.
 

For some of you, char models and animations may not be a big deal. But for me it's all about immersion. And hell, half the reason why you want that new armor piece is because it'll look awesome on your char. Hard to do when your char looks pretty bad to begin with.
 

And just to give you an example of what I mean, go to the farm by the Halflings starting area and fight the Pumpkin Horrors (or whatever those pumpkin headed guys are called). Man the punching animations are terrible. It just makes me cringe.
 

/Crosses fingers they fix this in the future
 

Rumpleman
 

I play from Beta to 3 months in. The game was complete garbage back in those days. I'm glad you're enjoying it and perhaps, I'll give it a second spin later on.

Vanguard is indeed a fun game. The pvp server is pretty harsh. Last time I turned on my account and hooked up with a few people. We went out and crushed some equal level people in pvp. 5 minutes after clearing the area, about 10 max level druids showed up and nuked the hell out of us. So it kinda sucks that its ffa sometimes can not get a fair fight. But other than that I was thrilled with it.

Originally posted by Ponico

I play from Beta to 3 months in. The game was complete garbage back in those days. I'm glad you're enjoying it and perhaps, I'll give it a second spin later on.

A lot has changed and a lot has remained the same.  It is fun to play for a while, but friends lists just diminish too fast for me.  I played it (for the second time) and liked it from around May to July this year.  But I noticed my friends lists just disappeared over those 3 months and I really didn't see a reason to continue.  I did have fun for 3 months though.  Seriously, no complaints.

Why do people leave? I mean this is a far deeper game than what we have out there right now, at least in terms of the big AAA developers. Not tried EQ2, but I hear that is a solid PvE game as well.

Why do people leave? Well for me it was because I played this game on release and it was a steamy pile. Crap was broken, servers went down every hour or so which also reset everything you did in the last hour (both xp/item earned and they had the first to discover an area markers that would reset which was extra annoying since only one person on the server could claim any one marker)

Maybe now that is has been years later they have fixed some of the issues, but I'm sure some still remain. Also when a company releases that poorly and you feel like you are literally being ripped off then you are never ever going to give that company another dime.

Now if they refunded the money I spent buying a box copy, and gave me 2 months free. I would try it for those 2 months, but other then that I will never touch it again.

Immersion is key and ugly models and terrible animation sucks the life right out of any game.  I couldn't care less how it might play.  If it looks like a$$, in my mind it plays like a$$ as well, since I have to look at the game while I'm playing it;)

Mount and Blade is a perfect example.  The game has some very interesting concepts, but the animation is SOOOOOO BAD, its too hard to play.  Cruddy presentation overrides everything.  I can't play a pretty game that plays like crap either....hello AOC=)

 Is a good game to play with friends, but my friends don't play it :-/ 

Fabulous game. Great community.

The only real problem is the difficulty in getting others (especially those who played at launch and were burned by that awful, awful experience) to subscribe.

I play'd Vanguard for around 2 months, and while it was a great game there where a few things holding it back. (at least in my opinion)

It wasn't guided enough. Which normaly i'm fine with none guided games BUT only if they have enough of a player base that if yuo have a question you know where to go.

Example : FFXI wasn't guided at all, but there where enough people that you could say "Duh i'm a noob where do I go after lvl 10"

this game didn't have that.

Second, really really rough launch, which is why there isn't much of a player base.

and last. the graphics, while they are pretty good. I honestly couldn't get into the style. it was very dark and the water just was terrible.

I will keep a vanguard account for as long as the game exists or until a similar game comes along that I think is better.

I have chosen to vote with my wallet so that perhaps at some point either soe will give more resources or that other devs will see the merit in a game world like this.

Just like everyone else, I tried it at launch, and was sorely disappointed to say the least. Since then (mainly due to having a full Station account - for extra character slots in EQ2) I would check up on it from time to time. The last time, I actually enjoyed it quite immensely, but had to quit due to not wanting to pay the $30/mo for the full Station account, and still wanting to play EQ2. Now it has been a while since then, I haven't had any Station access $15 or $30 for quite some time, and there is really nothing else out there that I enjoy while waiting for TOR to release. I think I may very well give it another shot, at least for a while.

In regards to the character modeling, I agree that they could be a bit more polished. My main issue with the appearance of characters is in the regards to weapons not scaling appropriately for the halflings. It drove me insane to have my halfling ranger's bow be submersed halfway into the ground while holding it out and shooting due to the simple fact that it was twice as long as he was tall (the same size it was for an elf ranger.) But, if it is playable, and interesting - with loads to do in all areas (solo, group, crafting, diplomacy, etc...) then I can swallow some graphical shortcomings regarding the characters. Even though I am one of those people who will sometimes use crappier gear just because i like the appearance more (gotta love EQ2's appearance slots, lol.)

Originally posted by Elreic

Why do people leave? I mean this is a far deeper game than what we have out there right now, at least in terms of the big AAA developers. Not tried EQ2, but I hear that is a solid PvE game as well.

Because the endgame is lacking.  Everybody who logs into VG for the first time goes "oooh" "ahhh" because of the pretty graphics and interesting classes/races.  But that goes away after awhile, especially when you get near the top levels.  Part of playing a MMO has to do with knowing the game is being developed and has enough content for you to continue playing.  Vanguard's content releases are slow, has no expansion on the horizon, and the size of the dev team is in single digits.

There are things they need to improve on but unfortunately ever since Brad/Sigil failed to launch a solid game at release time, it has never recovered the player trust, never recovered the public's view of the game.  This is coming from someone who stuck with the game for a full year after launch, saw many broken promises, saw the dev team get chopped down, saw the changing direction of the "new" dev team.

It's a fun game to play for awhile, especially if you're in between MMO's and just want something to play for a bit.  But as you play more, you will notice the lack of development in many aspects of the game, and how many good ideas were never fully developed or realized.  You'll notice the lore of the game i s confusing and disconnected.  You'll find something's lacking but often you'll ask why but can't really grasp it.  But hey, like I said it's probably a fun game to play for awhile.  Your mileage may vary.

 I think Vanguard is an awesome MMO but the biggest problem for me is that EU servers have no people on them :/

Wrong post :/

Yes to the OP,the reason is probably the lack of hype and there for the lack of players.You have to realize there is not a lot of players out there to make a game happen.The majority of gamers right now all started in WOW,so they expect everything to be just like wow,or they think the game is not done right.So most of hose people that tried VG were probably already bored WOW gamers ,or the other people known as game hoppers.they are looking to finish a game fast and move on,they are not really MMORPG players they are just crowd followers and hype followers.Like i said they are not really joining games for the long stay,they want a quick fix,this is also why F2P games can survive ,they offer that ease of starting and that quick fix.

Personally i realize how good VG is and how great it could have been,my problem was that i had several FFXI accounts i was already playing and i was also playing EQ2,so i really had no time or desire to play an unpopulated VG.In saying that i id have 3 players all of witch at least level 20,so i still had some fun and enjoyed the game.There is not many games out there that could tie VG's shoe laces,honestly it is that far advanced over most games.Another major down side was the high demands for a system to play the game,that really eliminates a large % of players.

IMO any game that comes along will have to draw players from other games,if it does not carry the hype,it probably does not have much of a chance to succeed.Unlike when WOW came out,there was not 10 million new gamers looking for a home.If we are lucky there is maybe 1-2 million new gamers every year,but that has to spread across several games,so that's why you need to steal from other games.Wow is the game most are stealing from,as it is older now and most of the kids got their fix by finishing the max level and got bored of pvp.WOW is a VERY simplistic game,so those many millions of gamers will not be easily persuaded if that next game is not just as easy for them to play,they want everything in the game to play the same way,so they have no learning curve.

All in all,VG really did not have much of a chance,there was too many games drawing the player base,really leaving VG with VERY few gamers who really wanted to find a new home,most were just trying it out.

I think Vanguard is a very good game.  I hear people talking about how bad the characters, animation and armor looks and I'm just clueless as to what people are really comparing it too.  I guess you could compare it to some of the asian games which do have great looking models but compared to eq2 or LoTR I think VG looks way better.  I'm playing LoTR and EQ2 right now.  I think EQ2 is ok but god playing LoTR the models, animations and armor are all painful to me.  The world in LoTR I think looks great.  I think the buildings and stuff look really good too.  

If I ranked these 3 games I'd put VG at the top in almost every catagory.  I think I would put LoTR and EQ2 on top for buildings.  For some reason I don't much like the buildings in VG but thats really a minor thing which is probably a lot just me.

Now I'd say lineage 2, Aion, FF all look graphically better then all these games.  However the gameplay in those games in my opinion is pretty poor.  Lots of grinding, forced PvP, kinda restrictive gameplay, and I found them boring...

Wow is a different beast and I liked the graphics in wow once I got over the cartoon nature of the game.  I think wow is a very good game.  I just don't like the fact that the game is only endgame.  If you play wow you basically get to run solo till near max level and even then if you don't have good gear it is hard to get a group.  But that's not hugely different then other games that have been out awhile.

John

Originally posted by rumpleman

I keep coming back to check up on this game. It really is a good game. Though the one thing that keeps me away is the awful character models and animations. If they could fix those, I would be back in no time. Unfortunately, until then I just can't get into it.
 

For some of you, char models and animations may not be a big deal. But for me it's all about immersion. And hell, half the reason why you want that new armor piece is because it'll look awesome on your char. Hard to do when your char looks pretty bad to begin with.
 

And just to give you an example of what I mean, go to the farm by the Halflings starting area and fight the Pumpkin Horrors (or whatever those pumpkin headed guys are called). Man the punching animations are terrible. It just makes me cringe.
 

/Crosses fingers they fix this in the future
 

Rumpleman
 

I totally agree, espescially annimations are distressingly awfull

I dont know why people complain about how bad the launch was. IMO I never really saw anything changed other than some class balancing and some minor bug fixes. But back when it first released was the best times I've had. There was PEOPLE in the game. Compare it to now, just barely (resubbed a month ago). They even slim down some very nice caves/dungeons. And the very extremely horrible silver/gold sigil crap from crafting. The beginning was the best time for me.

Reasons why players left? Numerous reasons and they add up to inevitably give the game a next to bare population

- Bad launch (Although most games have em, making this game was slated to be more of a niche game, you lose players to an already supposively smaller gaming population, it will sting.)

- An immense amount of bugs at launch and overtime. Of course bugs will never be fixed 100% in anygame but major game mechanic bugs were in the game even to this date although not as major as they were a year ago.

- No endgame at launch. I was one of the first players to hit 50 (3rd WW) and yes with the way the game is I do regret playing as hard as I did. But at the end, there was zero raiding, no epic questlines, nothing. It sat like this until Novemeber when APW was launched. Until then you had only Rahz, ToT, or Swamp to do in the high end and it was terrible, VG was dying fast as even casuals were getting 50 and realizing it was bad (this is noted that APW was still in testing).

- The final buyout of Sigil to SOE. Yes I know SOE had some say in the game from the start, but people have vendettas against SOE so it chipped a small bit away.

- Server Merges. They have to happen for obvious reasons. People like em, people hate em. People leave over them, not alot but still with a game taking blow by blow, it still hurts.

- Death of PVP. Vanguard was never meant for PVP but even still they are players who want to get into a PVE heavy game with some PVP on the side. They even couldn't get their small helping. Lets not get into the population of the PVP server today, its absolutely rediculous.

- Skeleton Dev Team. I have been playing since Beta 2, the team is 1/12th of what it used to be, and trust me, it used to be a nice sized team. The focus of the game has changed drastically as they continue to cut devs off or devs jumped ship to better opportunities. This also goes in play of switching Lead Producer a whopping 3 times in 2.5 Years (From Hasium, Phantom, to Silius (who isn't really in the role just a fill in)). You look at the game level 1 - 49 and its great, you look at the game 50 - 55 and you tell me what happened.

- Next to no advertisement. This is more in line of an SOE trait. They don't heavily market their games as much as they should, maybe because they have too many. But Vanguard never got any form of heavy advertisement that it should have. All it lived off of was the hype it generated during development. Although Silius stated they did advertisement. Look at the advertisement LOTR and Aion are getting (I chose those 2 because they are the next best examples aside dropping the WoW bomb).

- Raid Game is limited. Extremely limited. VG was supposed to bring back EQ style of play. With that it must include raids. Ancient Port Warehouse (the game's only raid dungeon) was launched in Novement 2007. Its nearly 2 years and no other raid dungeon has made it. Do the math. Also with a grand total of count em (Jagund, PW, Dresla, Nerksawl, Fengrot, Physik, Rinipin, Yerkj, Nimaa, Slim, Guar, Karax, and Varking) 14 overland raid mobs. Most guilds (even casuals) clear out roughly 90% of all raid content in 2-3 days of 4 hour raiding. Or asides the fact that Pota has made APW obsolete.

- Group content degrades as you reach higher levels. I'll let you be the personal judge for this. I'll repeat myself, the level 1 - 49 game of VG is on track of a good game. Lvl 50 - 55 content is in the opposite direction. Shores of Darkness and Pota type content are one of the main reasons why today VG is still losing players. If you're not raiding, your options are limited to SoD, BoD, Pota, and Virak (with Hilsbury on the way I don't think will change the mold). However if you want the BEST stuff, you do pota. You do not have to raid period to have top shelf gear, just farm the stuff (which mind you takes a good while).

- Diplomacy/Crafting were not taken to the next level as they should have. I'll admit, these two spheres were one of the highlights of VG's prescence in the industry. However lets be real, they got slapped in the face when they started dropping devs left and right. The entire Diplo dev team is gone aside Jansen and Silius is the only one left from the crafting team. In my opinion, diplo/crafting to this date compared to a year or so ago, are now just something to fill your time.

- And the final but most notciable. Vanguard does not have a SUSTAINABLE population. Now I have frequent on these boards about why VG isn't in the position it should be, and this has got to be the #1 reason.The game simply does not have a good enough retention rate for it to go into the positive ranks. It goes down, new patch, goes up, then dies back down, rinse and repeat. The development team/SOE simply have not found the right formula of decisions to feed into the game's momentum. They will release one good patch, then follow it with weird decisions in non-broken game mechanics. Right now, the end-game population is taking hits slowly because of the Pota grind and no new raid content that works. And as many posted before, if your friends stop playing, your will to continue play slowly die out with it. Look at Seradon, they lost 2 of their oldest guilds in Forgotten Horde and Trinity. When looking at the game, you have to look at it a full 360 and take everything into account and you can then see why VG is in its current state. Yes, VG may have the graphics and the concept, but the main deciding factor to games these days is good content and good support. If you can't muster both of those elements then you are bound for failure. VG may still be fun to some, but VG is starting to become a dated trend and newer games will learn off of VG's mistakes and apply their concepts in a much safer manner.

Take this post for what its worth.

This game, to me, seems like an ideal candidate for a F2P model. Only for the reason that it fails to draw in and maintain a decent pop. And this suggestion is not based on the quality of the game, which is one of the best imho.

It is obivious that SOE has no seriuos intention of developing this game with any conviction. As after more than two years the added extras and bug fixes is what ,say Funcom ,do in a single patch.

The other day i heard that the main dev was temporarily re-assigned to another project from the already minimal number of devs working on it, all the while SOE is taking a monthly sub from the players and diverting this sub to the development of their other games.

With even a year's dedicated development this game would be able to compete at the highest lvls in the MMO world, but for some reason SOE does not want to invest the require man power to acheive this, then why not make it free to play to at least boost the population and then get some return on their in game shops.

I am sitting here wanting to re-sub to this wonderful game, the only thing stopping me is the population, and i guess there are many 1000s like me. Make it free to play and it will no dobut see the pop it requires.

.

Originally posted by Mardy

But as you play more, you will notice the lack of development in many aspects of the game, and how many good ideas were never fully developed or realized.

And yet it has more good ideas realized than most other MMO's.

Above all there are no motorcycles and mobile disco machines.