Err ... the only thing thats "niche" about Vanguard is its low population.

Otherwise it was developed as an AAA title and thats exactly how it plays: powerful interface, detailed character generation, high graphics quality, huge gameworld with massive quest content, highly detailed classes, excellent and challenging combat, complex and worthwhile crafting, etc.

I dont know a single thing about Vanguard that is not mainstream in the best sense.

The only thing really missing in this game is better PvP.

thanks..fantastic read..i remember i could,nt get past lvl 3 unless i wanted to do random killings.all my quests were bugged,but has you say like conan ,vanguard turned out to be a fantastic game in the end.we could really do with someone other than SOE showing this game some much needed love..ty again for the great read m8.

Originally posted by Adamantine

Err ... the only thing thats "niche" about Vanguard is its low population.

Otherwise it was developed as an AAA title and thats exactly how it plays: powerful interface, detailed character generation, high graphics quality, huge gameworld with massive quest content, highly detailed classes, excellent and challenging combat, complex and worthwhile crafting, etc.

I dont know a single thing about Vanguard that is not mainstream in the best sense.

The only thing really missing in this game is better PvP.

 

My point on niche should have been:

Traditional DIKU-World style MMO, not a action/MMO hybrid or full themepark. Since everything since has become more "themepark or action oriented" I would call it niche from that standpoint.

And yes it annoys me that the gameplay of Vanguard seemingly is going away for a more console gaming experience.. :(

Okay, lets say it like this:

Mainstream is to me:

1. Easy accessibility, you can instantly play if you know this type of game and the interface is intuitive and powerful

2. Easy play, there arent oddities or worse bugs in the game that make gaming very complicated

3. Easy enjoyability, the efford to reward relation is obvious, again you only need to be a normal human to enjoy it

A good example for a non-mainstream game was, for example, The Temple of Elemental Evil by Troika Games (R.I.P.):

1. Very complicated rulesystem (a very faithfully implemented D&D 3.5), though obviously the same kind of rulesystem hasnt stopped Baldurs Gate, an otherwise very mainstream game, to be a huge success back when it was released.

2. Very odd behavior in many often very central aspects (for example: The whole game was extremely buggy at release. The ingame party NPCs behaved so odd in multiple respects that it was more worthwhile to mostly avoid them. The levelup was completely hardcore D&D and required tons of rerolling. The waysearch routine was extremely awful and literally had bugs like: in an open field, you clicked to move the party to the east; but the party started running WEST. In larger battles, you often would accidentaly click on fallen opponents and the game would interpret that as moving to the opponent and looting them, even if that makes no sense in the first place and loses the action for the combat round of that character. There was no way to specify the target location of a NPC without looting, thus it wasnt possible at all to move the party NPCs to locations with fallen opponents. The game lacked the basic feature of knowledge skills to identify objects without expensive spells, meaning you had to blow a ton of money to identify magic objects of low value. There was a hardcore mode but it was braindead. The rules to roll a character have been quite odd).

3. Very bad in respect to storytelling, the joy of the game was mainly in managing the hard battles.

With this definition of mainstream, Vanguard is very mainstream.

Yeah, I had a top of the line computer when Vanguard came out, so I didn't have nearly the problems that most did, and I didn't crash much or anything else...So I have never been that jaded about that part....Only when they said they were stopping pvp support, and the server died...Thats when I left.

I loved Vanguard, but its been so long that they let it sit, I really have my sites on other games, if they really and truely had a real commitment to Vanguard, I would look at going back (have to look at whats changed since I left).  I am not saying they don't, but one update in years doesn't make me forget the years of none.

Originally posted by Adamantine

Err ... the only thing thats "niche" about Vanguard is its low population.

Otherwise it was developed as an AAA title and thats exactly how it plays: powerful interface, detailed character generation, high graphics quality, huge gameworld with massive quest content, highly detailed classes, excellent and challenging combat, complex and worthwhile crafting, etc.

I dont know a single thing about Vanguard that is not mainstream in the best sense.

The only thing really missing in this game is better PvP.

 

 Well, the niche part was the slower experience that the game was supposed to have, which they sped up, and the crafting is also slower and more work than most themeparks...It was supposed to have more grind than most WoW+ themeparks had.

Originally posted by Elmoren

As a result of the poorly optimized graphical engine, MANY (probably 95%) of the users experienced problems with their systems and the display of the game.  Most grew frustrated, but being a proud group of people, we played with our settings, downloaded and re-downloaded drivers, and tried to tough it out.  Most of us were unsuccessful in doing so for more then a few weeks.  Other frustrating elements existed, server downtime, odd NPC behavior, quests and crafting not working as intended (or at all), some stats not working, or being reflected.  The list goes on and on.  Murphy's Law states; "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."  With that in mind, I classify Vanguard as having a Murphy's Launch. 

 

95%?! Give me a break, why do you have to make up such an absurd number? Maybe you should fact check before posting such nonsense? You made the number up. I hate when people go and write something and then they have to put in bogus numbers.......

It's not so un-optimized anymore. When I first played VG it was a glorified slide show even in un-populated areas. Now I can play it with every setting on max and it rarely lags unless I am in a crowded area (my system is hardly cutting edge). In fact, I actually think that VG looks and runs much better than EQ2.

Unfortunately, nice graphics don't quite make up for tedious, frustrating gameplay caused by low population, otherwise I would still be playing :/

Originally posted by Beacker

Originally posted by Elmoren

As a result of the poorly optimized graphical engine, MANY (probably 95%) of the users experienced problems with their systems and the display of the game.  Most grew frustrated, but being a proud group of people, we played with our settings, downloaded and re-downloaded drivers, and tried to tough it out.  Most of us were unsuccessful in doing so for more then a few weeks.  Other frustrating elements existed, server downtime, odd NPC behavior, quests and crafting not working as intended (or at all), some stats not working, or being reflected.  The list goes on and on.  Murphy's Law states; "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."  With that in mind, I classify Vanguard as having a Murphy's Launch. 

 

95%?! Give me a break, why do you have to make up such an absurd number? Maybe you should fact check before posting such nonsense? You made the number up. I hate when people go and write something and then they have to put in bogus numbers.......

You probably hate when people write something and make up bogus numbers (which I didn't do), almost as much as I hate when idiots who call someone out and don't bother to back it up either. 

Absurd number?  Really?  Go look at the Vanguard tech forums, or even the support area in general, and look at how many posts (or count the individual posters, if you're that bored) there are regarding graphical/hardware problems.  Then reference it against their sales.  Won't be too hard to figure out that nearly 100% of the people playing Vanguard when it was initially released experienced issues to one degree or another.  I was being gracious, if anything, with the 95%. 

Sure, it got better.  Or did it?  Seems to me the game is still dead - and the gameplay itself isn't the issue.
 

Vanguard to me suffered from the most devastating of MMO failures, it never felt like home.

I have revisisted some old games and for some that felt like a home coming and for others... all I saw was an old engine and failed game mechanics.

Vanguard was a bunch of ideas and 3D models thrown together but it lacked any sense of being a game, let alone a world. 

One of the examples in Vanguard of this was a LARGE port city filled with nothing. The city was gigantic but it felt empty and was hard and boring to navigate. But the greatest offender wassomething trivial. The docs were made up out of planks and nail that were FAR to large. Like many a 3D world, it seemed to have been designed by people who never set foot outside of a basement.

EQ2 has now redesigned one of its massive cities because while massive cities SOUND great, they are extremely difficult to pull off. 

Lotro The Shire is to me a good example of how it should be done. The entire Shire makes sense. Granted it is highly condensed but hobbits got short legs. The "cities" never feel to large or to small or to empty.

Compared to that, Vanguard just never gelled together. I can conjure some memories of the game but none that make me nostalgic at all.

To me, it was not the bugs themselves that stopped me playing. The game just never pulled me in. I was fighting a spread shit with rather poor graphics. 

Originally posted by Elmoren

Originally posted by Beacker

Originally posted by Elmoren

As a result of the poorly optimized graphical engine, MANY (probably 95%) of the users experienced problems with their systems and the display of the game.  Most grew frustrated, but being a proud group of people, we played with our settings, downloaded and re-downloaded drivers, and tried to tough it out.  Most of us were unsuccessful in doing so for more then a few weeks.  Other frustrating elements existed, server downtime, odd NPC behavior, quests and crafting not working as intended (or at all), some stats not working, or being reflected.  The list goes on and on.  Murphy's Law states; "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."  With that in mind, I classify Vanguard as having a Murphy's Launch. 

 

95%?! Give me a break, why do you have to make up such an absurd number? Maybe you should fact check before posting such nonsense? You made the number up. I hate when people go and write something and then they have to put in bogus numbers.......

You probably hate when people write something and make up bogus numbers (which I didn't do), almost as much as I hate when idiots who call someone out and don't bother to back it up either. 

Absurd number?  Really?  Go look at the Vanguard tech forums, or even the support area in general, and look at how many posts (or count the individual posters, if you're that bored) there are regarding graphical/hardware problems.  Then reference it against their sales.  Won't be too hard to figure out that nearly 100% of the people playing Vanguard when it was initially released experienced issues to one degree or another.  I was being gracious, if anything, with the 95%. 

Sure, it got better.  Or did it?  Seems to me the game is still dead - and the gameplay itself isn't the issue.
 

 

 Not everyone is going to post about it and you can't go by the forum posts/tech posts and sales and still say it is 95%. This is YOUR number you pulled out. Be more realistic next time...

Originally posted by allegria

It is very obvious that Vanguard even in current state, is not the game for you and would never have been. Just let it go its not for everyone. It is a niche game that did not even go after the same market WoW did.

Some of us ( have about 6 characters in VG ) with quite a bit of /played time there did see some amazing things that sadly may never be in MMOs again.

Everyone has their reasons for sticking with  / leaving games, I for one would tell you today or years ago, don't bother with Vanguard it is not your type of game. :)

If you believe the only people Vanguard is for, are the few hundred people that are currently playing it, then yeah you're right its not for me. 

At launch though, Vanguard was aimed at the "Core" gamer and marketed directly to us. Brad and Sigil expressedly desired several hundred thousand subscribers, not just several hundred. I don't mean to insult any sensibilities you have, but the game was built to be something I'd like, marketed to me as something I'd like, and I bought it and gave it a try. I reserve the right to deem it shitty, and not have you nor anyone else tell me my opinion matters any less than yours. I and the hundreds of thousands that either bought or consumed a trial key of Vanguard deserve just as much of an opinion about it as the 300 or so that will like it no matter what.

Alas, I'm sure even among the few hundred left, when someone vocally quits now they probably get the "its not for you" argument. I'd wager even when Vanguard is down to 19 players from 20, that person who quit is going to get the "its not for you" argument. 

Oh well though.