Originally posted by Ethian

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by Ethian

Does Vanguard have anything similar to RIFTs artifact system?  I mean are there things around the world to find to make you want to explore all the ends of the world? Finding new mobs to fight is great but what other reasons are there in Vanguard to want to explore the world? 

No, not to my knowledge.

However, it's not really about "finding new mobs to kill" but more about discovering a world. Now, you might not be able to fight in every area you discover but there are definitely places that inspire further exploration.

I have to say, for me, the winning moments were:

being in a desert area and finding what appeared to be a mine only to explore and discover that the miners had broken through to a forgotten area that borders a beautiful oasis of foliage as well as some sort of "forgotten" bathhouse/temple area.

Or discovering the "haunted mansion' which I desperately tried to go through though I eventually fell in the first room as it is more of a group area or high level player area.

It's about discovering the world and the stories implied behind that world.

In some ways, even though it's a theme park game it plays more like a sandbox game.

So take that for what it's worth.

edit: to one of your questions:

well, I did discover an ancient tower at the top of a remote island that had a gooey livng blob inside it. upoin clicking on the blob I discovered it was "cheese" and usable by the player.

Still looked like an oozey moving blob though! ; )

How much cooler would those trips have been if theres always a chance to find items around the world?  Even hidden items such as chests or random loot. I hope we see more games expand on their world exploration concepts to allow the players to interact with objects and find things rather then riding around all night until its time for bed lol

 I don't really know how to answer this because there is motivation to explore. The want and need to explore.

It sounds to me like you are looking for shinies.

Is it not enough to discover a new dungeon and make your way through it? Even fight a boss monster at the end and possibly get a nice piece of gear? Or if not, just to see something neat that you never saw before?

This is an older game and as such it's more about the world being a world, not necessarily a reward dispenser.

I played Rift and comprarably, Vanguard's world destroy's Rift's world as Rift's world doesn't seem like a world to me. Vanguard's does. And it's much larger than Rift's.

I think you really need to see it first hand because you won't look at Rift's world the same way. Vanguard's world is HUGE! Enormous! There are so many hidden places that I doubt a good many players have ever seen them all. Heck, I'm discovering new things in places that I had previously been in.

And though this isn't prevalent in all its dungeons and caves, exploration can yield some pretty neat things.

Another example:

Though there is a quest that will lead you here, I discovered a tower, on my own where a quest giver asked me to go inside and try to find somehting (it's been a while so I don't remember what).

I went down and didn't see anything. Later I realized that maybe I was letting my experience with other mmo's dictate how I thought about the dungeons in this game. So again I went down and after some old school clicking around I opened a secret passage in the wall.

All of this was because of my love of exploration.

I'm sorry but I just can't relate to being rewarded with a concrete reward of some sort every time I do something. the intangible reward of discovering something new and interesting is more interesting to my palate. though in the interest of full disclosure I was never interested in collecting things so I completely ignored rift's collection system. Same with EQ2 for that matter. I never liked collecting stamps or coins in real life so collecting things in games never did it for me. I do understand that players like this type of thing. I'm not blind to that.

I still think you should try the game and see for yourself. You could just as well reward yourself with a cool screenshot for your travel log. After all, exploring in the real world yields about the same thing. In any case, reading your other post it sounds to me that Vanguard isn't the game for you. There is limited pvp as it's a pve game and you aren't rewarded in a concrete way for exploring. I really don't think it's your game but at some point you should try it nevertheless.

Originally posted by AG-Vuk

Originally posted by Ethian

What a shame man. Although RIFT is just another themepark MMO they really got the world exploration right. I love hunting for hidden artifacts around the world, some of them are actually real hard to find. On top of that I'm on an open pvp server which makes exploration even more exciting. In a world the size of Vanguards its too bad they didnt add some sort of incentive for people to explore. Even an achievment system would have been better then nothing imo. Not too mention no pvp kind of ruins things for me.

I have to admit I'm abit biased because I enjoy pvp, so for me to enjoy Vanguard I'd need something other then questing and exploring to find yet more mobs to kill. Unfortionately running around in a world and sight seeing with no meaning other then to see new things doesn't do it for me. I've heard the crafting and diplomacy is fun though. I may eventually end up giving Vanguard a serious go, who knows :-D

 Now , I haven't played in a long time , so if there's a current player playing he can correct this. There is PvP , it's consentual between players , and there were to be zones that upon entry. I believe there were/are arenas or marked areas for PvP. That was the plan once the PvP server was shut down. Incidently it was shut because they could get a handle on a teleportation hack, and the requisit ganking that occurred, unbalanced skills.  Frankly the Devs were never interested in the PvP servers to begin with too many issues and problems , too little resources.

There are arenas for pvp but for the most part it's a pve game at this point.

Thanks for the post Sovrath. Exactly the type of info I was looking for. I'm not exactly looking for shinies so to speak. I was hoping to get a players feed-back about exploring in Vanguard. Although it doesn't have pvp I'm sure the world itself makes up for that.

Another thing I was curious about is the crafting. Gathering resources is another form of exploration for me.Are there more rare resources to find in the world or is leveling up crafting a grind of gathering resources and simply making the same things over and over?

Originally posted by Ethian

Thanks for the post Sovrath. Exactly the type of info I was looking for. I'm not exactly looking for shinies so to speak. I was hoping to get a players feed-back about exploring in Vanguard. Although it doesn't have pvp I'm sure the world itself makes up for that.

 

Another thing I was curious about is the crafting. Gathering resources is another form of exploration for me.Are there more rare resources to find in the world or is leveling up crafting a grind of gathering resources and simply making the same things over and over?

I will have to apologize as I didn't mean "shinies" as a negative thing necessarily. Just "items/rewards".

Personally I don't craft "but" from what I've tried and seen, crafting in Vanguard is much more involved than other games I've tried.

It's an actual process! Also, it seems that requires things from other disciplines. You can craft a boat or a house! How cool is that. And the boats look neat.

Other than that, crafting seems a bit involved. I'm sure other players can comment on how involved.

I havent done a hole lot of crafting in Vanguard but I will agree it is very involved. So it gathering for that matter. It's always fun to start chopping a tree and watch it fall down so you can collect the wood. Anyways, I figured I'd post this link maybe it can help you a bit.

http://vanguard.wikia.com/wiki/Crafting

My favorite piece of exploring is when I came upon an old castle, and the NPC's had their own armor you could earn by doing missions for them. Totally off the map, not in any quest, just a huge dungeon with a full set of armor and quests to go along, out in the middle of nowhere. You earned tokens by doing quests, and could buy armor with them. Just something out there to stumble upon. Fun!

Is a solo player able to run a dungeon by himself if he comes across one in the world? I understand some dungeons are meant for groups but from the stories I've heard soloing dungeons is also a possiblity?

Originally posted by Ethian

Is a solo player able to run a dungeon by himself if he comes across one in the world? I understand some dungeons are meant for groups but from the stories I've heard soloing dungeons is also a possiblity?

 With a Psionicist, anything is possible!

Originally posted by Ethian

Is a solo player able to run a dungeon by himself if he comes across one in the world? I understand some dungeons are meant for groups but from the stories I've heard soloing dungeons is also a possiblity?

I think it depends on the class and or level.

I've run through dungeons lower than my level to see them. There are dungeons in the world that one can do solo if you are careful.

Expect to die a bit in Vanguard unlike some other games. Seriously I've gone levels in Lord of the Rings where I never died.

Vanguard? All sorts of things. here is a fun one. I recently discovered a cave in an area where the mobs were a bit harder but because I was higher in level I could take them on one by one.

Well, I discovered that besides the regular mobs roaming around there were also mobs "under" the tunnels of this cave complex.

I didn't die but I had to play very well in order to get through it.

As I mentioned above (I think I did) there is a sort of creepy haunted house that is very neat. unfortunatley with good playing I was only able to get inside the foyer and then was destroyed. I'll go back when I have more levels so I can see the whole thing.

Originally posted by Ethian

Is a solo player able to run a dungeon by himself if he comes across one in the world? I understand some dungeons are meant for groups but from the stories I've heard soloing dungeons is also a possiblity?

Rangers for the win. You can solo the world with a ranger. Atleast for the most part lol. If you can kite it, you can kill it. Within reason that is.

So I've decided to hold off on Vanguard for now and stick with RIFT. Although rift really isnt all that different from other themepark MMOs it really does it right by combining all the good things from past MMOs into a polished and solid experience. I may as well admit the pvp and artifact exploration keeping me there for now ;-)

I will keep my eyes on Vanguard though as I plan to take the dive sometime in the near future. Perhaps even this winter I'll give it a serious go, hopefully by then the population will have increased abit as word gets out of possible future updates.

Good luck out there and thanks for all the info! 

since this is on the topic, what kind of gameplay / exploration is available through the ships that are available?  Are there interesting areas out in the middle of hte ocean or is the point of a ship just to get to the other continent?  I played back at launch and they promised a whole lot around ships, but i'm not sure how much actually made it in...

There are islands with additional quests even dungeons - however, you are usually not lead to them, you will also hardly find any walkthrough about them on the internet, you actually have to find them and learn the tactics by yourself!

Indeed, for a crafter, you can find rare resources, which are valuable and may improve the item you're crafting. The crafting is a process, a minigame, not just a casting bar going from here !¬¬¬¬¬¬¬65%       !   to here, you have action points and the item you create has 4 quality levels. The more you try to polish the final product, the more complications you may get (broken tool, minor injuries...) which cost you action points. (and indeed if you run out of them, you actually break the item and lose the resources) The system is not abstract, it's realistic. During crafting you add special powders that might improve certain part of the item (I guess that was..., let's say, adopted by Rift as well). For crafting, you have a special inventory panel with trousers, chests, gloves,... that may improve certain crafting attribute (4 attributes, and about 20 crafting skills) --- different builds for crafters exist, from defensive builds that rather rely on quality B and C end result with less complications, to the most offensive crafter builds that don't care if they break 5 items out of 10 if those other 5 are an A quality, and of course, everything in between.

You improve your crafting--mostly--by doing work orders. NPC gives you an order to do something, supplies you with resources, and you create it for him. The better quality you make it, the more reward you get -- so this isn't like the usual MMORPG, where you have to craft a hundred times the same boots only to later vendor them when you're improving your crafting tier.

Same goes for diplomacy, an actual card minigame with special attributes (and attitudes based on the type of parley), lots of different cards that you collect (and may find by exploring the huge world) and its special inventory panel. Same goes for your mount - you can add barding, saddlebags, etc, and on the top of that, everything I mentioned is craftable--from diplomacy, crafting, adventuring gear, throught mount equipment to 15 different ship designs and lots of house types, castles, guild halls, etc. This game has more depth than EVE Online.

Not sure about the EvE online comment but from what I've read about Vanguard its defiently a notch above most other MMOs. Part of me wanted to cancel my RIFT sub and dive into Vanguard but I'm not sure I;d be able to convince my g/f to come with me. PvP is the major thing in Vanguard that I'd miss. Running around in a world without any threat from real players just doesnt feel the same for me unfortionately. My g/f as well enjoys pvp