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Originally posted by baphamet

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Originally posted by wyzwun

I think i read some place that Vanguard was a PVE centric game... this all goes back to old school DnD... who cares about balance, what matters is if that class is fun and if that class is needed in endgame, i never once thought to myself that a class was not needed in WoW, but i sure know that there are far to many warriors in WoW... that should be EVERY devs goal, to make sure that each class is fun and needed. My thinking should never be "im going to play a caster because there always the best"
I will say this, if Vanguard requires a healer or a support char to progress, if i have to wait an hour for the cleric to logon.. then yea, its a failure.
I am sure the above user seb is an MS warrior... i mean how much thinking does it take to spam MS lol.

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i dunno, rogues are pretty worthless in wow endgame...and yeah i play a rogue as one of my main characters. i agree with most of what you wrote though, each class should be fun and needed.

also in a game where 80% of the content is group-centric, one could assume that support classes are needed to progress (i.e tank,healers,dps,cc) not sure how that is making it a "failure" when the game is designed around grouping.

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What I am about to say does not directly apply to vanguard, just want to get that out of the way, I see no reason to make an mmo if you do not avoid the mistakes of the past. Now in regard to my current mmo, ffxi which I can say with complete confidence is more group centric then Vanguard (trust me on this). I feel that, FFXI just accentuated this problem in mmops… so much so to the point were all you see is 2 or 3 classes, running around.

I do not want to invest a year plus into a toon (like I did with my DRK in FFXI) and find out that it’s broken. I don’t want to work on an archetype to find out that it’s not effective or that guilds won’t want it in end game. This is unacceptable.

Im not a fan of WoW (for those who don’t know me) but I will say this, blizzard TRIES (IE Hunter) to balance the classes but were they fail is they don’t pay attention to the “fun” part.

Every class should have utility, I shouldn’t need a certain class to make another class not gimped. Classes that are designed to make up for the design flaws of a game should not exist.

FFXI should be looked at by game makers because A) the game has the worst class balance ive ever seen (see loldrg). B) Set the standard for how a story should be TOLD in a persistent gaming world.

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Originally posted by Kyoruto

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Originally posted by wyzwun

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Originally posted by DarkAngle

Ez you read, then you watch the full length gameply movies posted by VIP beta testers. Then you E-Mail them or IM them and you find out about the game. its simaply called exploring / reserch. 90% of all mmo's always include what type of / how the game play takes place. you might want to look into it i said it will hit a lower lvl then FFXI cause another party baseed MMO. The game it self is a basic EQII look alike rip off as i stated in the Hype thread.

1up.com, Youtube.com ( yes i know its poted in horrible state / shape cause it copied / pasted ), E3 movie ( yes i know it was a while ago but the game was being worked in for almost 2 years then ).

Look stuff up, just some they call a serch engine.

Hope my english wasn't too bad on this post.

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Your making generalizations. Sorry but like most people on this board, you do not discuss exactly HOW you came to your conclusion. As an mmo junkie I read these forums… and I see far too many posts like these, far to many “this is the way I see it and that’s that” threads.

In an MMOP the level range and the activities that take place during these level ranges are VASTLEY different. Speaking as a lvl75 end game toon in FFXI… I know. The reason I read your sad thread is because I saw “FFXI” in the title, so I come here to take a look… and see… I am rather amused.

So you come here and you say Vanguard is going to be pt dependant, I am sure not to the extent that FFXI is… and I am sure that Vanguard will have far better character class balance in place…because if you were educated you would u I am well aware that VG will have things to do (and plenty) besides… LEVELING.

I am one that has been rather critical of Sigil. But I look at the FACTS; I look at what I SEE. And frankly you (like most of the people on this board) are NOT educated enough on the facts to … well. fukn SPEAK. (I guess I am the communist now…)

IMO, FFXI is the JP translation of EQLive, its what they wanted… right now the only thing in common with ffxi is the chaining system that ffxi uses, allot of people have stolen that from ffxi, like EQ2 but no one has pulled it off as slick as ffxi…

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I know as far as the Pen and paper. I'm using that idea to more of an extent instead of *Spell + skill makes this strange skill = The damage* (which is dmg+dmg+special dmg= combo) I'm actually going to teak it in a more... Pleasing way. I also wish to make it into a MMORPG. With the same principles.

Also, I always love reading your posts wyzwun. Always fun with you smack people with facts.

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I just wish EA would let me play Earth and Beyond again... (lol)

Thanks for the kind words (there rather rare/ex on these forums) I think sometimes people read what I post and assume that I am making absolute assumptions towards “there game”… I want this game to succeed but I also want games like Tabua Rasa to do well also… its not about me trying to defend “my game”, as a consumer I want these games to be great because right now… this genre sucks. As a gamer I use to split my time between some genres… now all I play is FPS games… I just can’t stomach how static and unoriginal this genre has become…

I have high hopes that Vanguard might break this cycle, I really do. But as a consumer I have to hope that all of these up coming mmops give us as consumers a great selection of products… Out of all these good looking mmos… that are coming out in q4 or 07… one of em gota be great… I hope.

What I do not like, is this Hardcore crowd, people who think hardcore is about time spent but its all about time USED.

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Originally posted by krenalor

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Originally posted by sebbonx

Yes, we already knew that, this post is meaningless to the millions that already know-Vanguard is a flop.

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Right on, and man, holy cow 12 days played to 63rd and 10 AA's plus the key to Emp's room just as PoP was released is awesome. Guess you showed these WoW hating nerd boys the truth, EQ1 was a joke. Yea, and all those pet classes were played AFK often, witnessed it over and over again in EQ. Expect the same lack of ability to fix bugs and exploits in Vanguard as they had in EQ.

Course I bash Brad and every project he did for another reason. I love Warriors and he created a Wimptior due to lack of ability to design classes. While Druids quaded, a green could eat me and I was a raider!

As many of the same fanbois here bashed me when I complained how bad the Warrior in EQ stunk, and was told "Warriors just suck due to the nature of the beast", WoW proved them wrong as Warriors are RAAR in WoW. One of the pansies Mages played by a Vanguard fanboi got owned by me every chance I got. Now he bashes WoW because unless he can have an overpowered character that requires no thought to win, he can't beat my Warrior! You play those men in dresses, I like my tank in plate, and not the girly man Brad designs.

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Originally posted by DarkAngle
Holy shit, danm lots of geeks on here a man writes what he thinks of the game and i get a English topic.

That footage i on youtude, i know its from a camara taping. Its the char models that are all messed up so are the graphic's from the iup.com downloadable clips. There's a interview tape that shows the casting set up / party system.

The game is basicly party based without any kind of end game content.

well, hopefully i did on my english test this time please all don't grade me again. Failing on a online form's site really hurts :( . lol. maybe i'll take up some forums typing / logic classes. Anyone got a address to a online english course for proper forums grammer / structure course.

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I play Warriors plain and simple, and EQ1's sucked beyond belief. I hardly can believe the most popular class in MMORPGs has to be like EQ1's, oh yea they don't look at WoW. I don't care some dress wearer wants my character to suck at soloing, to bad. I have zero, zip, nada interest in boring raiding and if thats all Vanguard is-the holy trinity and raiding, expect the game to flop badly in this crowded market.

It's sad people don't get it, Steelwarrior was one of the most popular sites when EQ1 was popular. It died when WoW came out, the class with the largest player base after years of being crappola got a game to make it right, WoW. We left EQ1 in mass, and WoW heard us. They asked what class people were going to play and noted Warrior was listed on top. Have the class fun to solo, group, or raid or don't make the game!

I gotta admit, I am in the "very skeptical of Vanguard" camp. What bothers me about threads like this is I see many of you already charging on to the "ENDGAME" phrase.

The point of a virtual world is it has no endgame. Mathmatically speaking, yes, I understand that eventually you run out of numbers but thats all they are....numbers. Console games end. Single player games end. WoW got everyone on this "endgame" track and everyone bought into it.

Thats why MMO are loosing there charm and excitment...everyone has turned them into "what do you at endgame". Everyone zeros in on that f*cking endgame raid to get the uber loot. Then what? Whine that theres not enought ot do.

What about the rest of the game? Or are we gonna get capture the flag in this one to?

What happened to designs like the old AC where it didn't make a difference what level you where, it was fun to play all the damn time? There where quest at every level that you can only find in "endgame" nowadays. Now we gotta do the required level grind through 99% of the game to get to the "fun" part.

Do you see the beast we built over the last 5 years or am I just screaming in the woods???

Who gives a flying sh*t about the last level of the "endgame"? what about the rest of it?

BTW, I have no idea what the OP is trying to say. FFXI is not an "endgame" based game. Its a progressive mission/quest system that requires grouping (community). It has a flawed mechanic but the point of the game isn't to hit level cap.

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Originally posted by krenalor
I play Warriors plain and simple, and EQ1's sucked beyond belief. I hardly can believe the most popular class in MMORPGs has to be like EQ1's, oh yea they don't look at WoW. I don't care some dress wearer wants my character to suck at soloing, to bad. I have zero, zip, nada interest in boring raiding and if thats all Vanguard is-the holy trinity and raiding, expect the game to flop badly in this crowded market.

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yes we know, if the game isn't being made to please krenalor, the game will flop badly. even though your beloved wow is heavily raid/pvp grind-centric....yet you don't complain about that.

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Originally posted by Torak
I gotta admit, I am in the "very skeptical of Vanguard" camp. What bothers me about threads like this is I see many of you already charging on to the "ENDGAME" phrase.
The point of a virtual world is it has no endgame. Mathmatically speaking, yes, I understand that eventually you run out of numbers but thats all they are....numbers. Console games end. Single player games end. WoW got everyone on this "endgame" track and everyone bought into it.
Thats why MMO are loosing there charm and excitment...everyone has turned them into "what do you at endgame". Everyone zeros in on that f*cking endgame raid to get the uber loot. Then what? Whine that theres not enought ot do.
What about the rest of the game? Or are we gonna get capture the flag in this one to?
What happened to designs like the old AC where it didn't make a difference what level you where, it was fun to play all the damn time? There where quest at every level that you can only find in "endgame" nowadays. Now we gotta do the required level grind through 99% of the game to get to the "fun" part.
Do you see the beast we built over the last 5 years or am I just screaming in the woods???
Who gives a flying sh*t about the last level of the "endgame"? what about the rest of it?
BTW, I have no idea what the OP is trying to say. FFXI is not an "endgame" based game. Its a progressive mission/quest system that requires grouping (community). It has a flawed mechanic but the point of the game isn't to hit level cap.

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i feel your pain man, and agree totally. its mainly the fans that complain about endgame and if you read the information about vanguard it is quite obvious that there is tons of content before reaching "endgame".

as a matter of fact, this is one of the reasons I'm interested in vanguard, not only will it take alot longer to reach max level with your character, but there are three different spheres to max.

most people wont be reaching "endgame" anytime soon after release i will assure you, yeah you will always have those people that plow through content trying to be "the best" but that is their problem if they run out of stuff to do.

and you mention how wow has alot of emphasis on their endgame, and that is simply because they made it so easy to reach lvl 60. one sphere of vanguard is rumored to take longer to max than 1-60 in wow, so yeah one can assume that people wont be reaching max level real fast wondering "what the hell do i do now?"

granted, you will have the people that complain that it takes to long or that its "a grind" to get to max level, but for me its more about the adventure than getting to the "endgame".

but yeah, if its endgame you don't like....vanguard might be the game for you because it will take a while to get there...unlike wow where in a few months from starting the game you are max lvl and wondering what the hell to do next..

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Originally posted by baphamet

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Originally posted by krenalor
I play Warriors plain and simple, and EQ1's sucked beyond belief. I hardly can believe the most popular class in MMORPGs has to be like EQ1's, oh yea they don't look at WoW. I don't care some dress wearer wants my character to suck at soloing, to bad. I have zero, zip, nada interest in boring raiding and if thats all Vanguard is-the holy trinity and raiding, expect the game to flop badly in this crowded market.

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yes we know, if the game isn't being made to please krenalor, the game will flop badly. even though your beloved wow is heavily raid/pvp grind-centric....yet you don't complain about that.

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And if the dress wearers are doing "team mana-burn" or farming YK's solo to sell on ebay you aren't happy. Where do you get the idea I play WoW? I got to end game and quit, rofl. WoW is at least fun as a warrior and can be restarted on a new server without being totally gear dependant due to piss poor game design.

I wat to design a game and it will go like this:

Caster meets green (no exp mob)

Casts-fizzle, Casts-resists, Casts all but 5 damage resisted, mob dodges spell(!), fizzle, resist and then defend this style like Brad does making crappola melee characters. News flash-grocery store renta cop defeats special forces opponent trained to black belt level in 5 different martial arts beating him senseless with a salami! That makes as much sense as a green mob kicking a highly trained melee characters butt. You are just accepting of the crap because you like dress wearers.

I am far from alone in thinking Vangaurd will flop, many with WAY more qualifications than you think the same. Beta is not going well, and all you fanbois due is moan how great the game will be. Not in a full field it won't.

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Originally posted by krenalor

I am far from alone in thinking Vangaurd will flop, many with WAY more qualifications than you think the same. Beta is not going well, and all you fanbois due is moan how great the game will be. Not in a full field it won't.

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where did i get the idea you play wow?!?!..... you only rave about it in nearly every post you make. and what makes you think any gamer has more "qualifications" than me? because i disagree with you? thats one of the dumbest arguments i have ever read on this forum, and thats saying alot.

you say many people agree with you, and that is true but many people agree with me as well. what kills me is how you think your opinion is the be all end all of what a mmo should be, if you don't like it then surly it will flop.

also gg on avoiding the point i made, you said that vanguard will flop if it is raid-centric....so why is it that wow is raid-centric and yet millions of people still play it?

yes your logic is flawed, but if you want to continue to believe it, thats your prerogative but i will continue to call you out on it because i disagree.

hey baphamet,

LoL sorry if I came off sounding like a lunitic. It burns me up when I hear the word "endgame" when talking about MMO's.

Endgame is the end result of poor game design. (or lazy, depending how you look at it) By confining all the "good parts" until the last level, we have given the game companies a HUGE break. All they need to worry about is the last level which honestly keeps players occupied, what a month or two? Put in a bunch of basic kill task and wha-la next generation MMO.

I really hope something comes along soon that offers something new or at least reinvigorates the genre.

By the way, I play WoW. Its not a dirty word. Its fun, its fast. Sure it has no depth and I rag on it like a redheaded stepchild But I play it anyway. WTH else is there? EQII? I use to play Lineage 2 and you know something? Its not half bad either but does have a grind that brings people to their knees.

My all time favorite in terms of content is old AC. It never mattered what level you where as far as having enough interesting, challenging content went.

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Originally posted by Torak
hey baphamet,
LoL sorry if I came off sounding like a lunitic. It burns me up when I hear the word "endgame" when talking about MMO's.
Endgame is the end result of poor game design. (or lazy, depending how you look at it) By confining all the "good parts" until the last level, we have given the game companies a HUGE break. All they need to worry about is the last level which honestly keeps players occupied, what a month or two? Put in a bunch of basic kill task and wha-la next generation MMO.
I really hope something comes along soon that offers something new or at least reinvigorates the genre.
By the way, I play WoW. Its not a dirty word. Its fun, its fast. Sure it has no depth and I rag on it like a redheaded stepchild But I play it anyway. WTH else is there? EQII? I use to play Lineage 2 and you know something? Its not half bad either but does have a grind that brings people to their knees.
My all time favorite in terms of content is old AC. It never mattered what level you where as far as having enough interesting, challenging content went.

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i also play wow, and i share alot of the frustration you do. i will say that blizzard is doing alot to fix their endgame with their new expansion and I'm actually pretty exited about it.

but with wow it is truly all about endgame because you only spend 3-4 months (that is playing very conservative/casual) getting to max level.

and that is wow's demise, there is no way to advance your character beyond that other than getting item upgrades via raiding or pvp grind.

i would much rather play a game that takes a long time to run out of things to do (even though it is a grind) than play a game that i can reach max level in a month or two and then just do endgame BS the rest of the time.

now don't get me wrong, i don't mind endgame as much as some people do. but i have to feel that i am progressing with my toon, and not just by getting item upgrades via raiding or pvp grind....there has to be more than that for me to truly enjoy it, but that is just me.

I find it funny, how some of the people here complain about the grind in games like FFXI and L2 but then praise ... Vanguard, what from early beta reports is more of the same... just not on a as painful level.

People dislike FFXI and L2 because even for myself, at some point or another, i disliked the game and its hard ships. That is poor design. When ever someone hates something, the devs did something wrong. Go ask someone who finnished CoP in FFXI... if they didnt get pissed off at one point or another, I dont play these games to get upset... I dont want to be frustrated or idle... yea, im as "hardcore" as it gets and im done with this mind set... PERIOD. I dont believe that the shit that i was force feed in these games made me a better player, i think it made me bitter and jaded... to the point now when ever i see a fantasy mmo now i just cant take it serious.

all the leaked vids look bad, i fear this game will not be as DYNAMIC as i expect from a next gen game.

Bottom line, you dont really know what your asking for. We have to understand how "hard" is defined by these mmo dev labs, I have yet to play a "hard" (read ffxi and l2) mmo that was ... well "hard". That really made me think and react... ahem, DYNAMIC gameplay.

Way way, back when. This game was spoken of, it looked very dynamic, very ground breaking, I guess my doubt comes from the leaked beta vids...

I am in total shock when i see Sigil release these vids and i see people just eat it up... at some point, you have to look at something and call it what it is... you cant sit here and say "well its just beta", no thats just B.S.

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Originally posted by baphamet

i also play wow, and i share alot of the frustration you do. i will say that blizzard is doing alot to fix their endgame with their new expansion and I'm actually pretty exited about it.

but with wow it is truly all about endgame because you only spend 3-4 months (that is playing very conservative/casual) getting to max level.

and that is wow's demise, there is no way to advance your character beyond that other than getting item upgrades via raiding or pvp grind.

i would much rather play a game that takes a long time to run out of things to do (even though it is a grind) than play a game that i can reach max level in a month or two and then just do endgame BS the rest of the time.

now don't get me wrong, i don't mind endgame as much as some people do. but i have to feel that i am progressing with my toon, and not just by getting item upgrades via raiding or pvp grind....there has to be more than that for me to truly enjoy it, but that is just me.

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Originally posted by Kyoruto
Well, personally I liked FFXI, because to me that game was more... Social... I mean I played it with friends and I didn't care/notice the grind at all. I have seen much of the VG videos. Expect the ones with the mounts and riding the horses looks weird to me.

And one the point with "Well its just beta." I have to agree and not with that statement. When I was in WoW beta. Things were way more different then the release. The leveling wasn't as easy at the time. Which I liked, and feel kinda cheated now that the leveling is so much easier. Not to meantion they took a lot of things that were in beta out. Ultamitly it was still WoW, but everything I kinda knew (And was hoping for with the huge promises they made) and liked wasn't there. It was almost like a was playing a different game when my friends convinced me to get the game.

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I also beta tested ffxi. What i am saying is that, I have never seen a bad beta turn into a good live game. Once again talking in regards to beta 3 and on. Some beta's i was in (AA, FFXI, ,L1 , L2, WoW,  WWII, PS, EQOA, EQOA Frontiers and on and on) i have never seen a poor beta turn into a good live product... NEVER. (echo)

That is the point i try (way to hard) to get across to the VG Fanoi's.

I believe there is one thing we must all agree on, even though i am NOT in VG beta, it is obvious that the VANGUARD BETA IS NOT GOING WELL... IE ITS BAD. Going into beta 3... could they turn it around? Well, thats why i still read this forum lol.

In regards to angarr, i agree i like what blizzard did but getting rid of the 40 man riads, but thats kinda wrong. Now guilds will have to trim there rosters... ive always liked small raids, i dont see why a raid must be higher then 25 players...

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Originally posted by Amnesiac07
Quite possibly one of the most depressing posts I've ever read.  User info states he's 23 and lives in America.  I am pretty much in shock.

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I'm not we have a bunch of idiots graduating from American schools right now.

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Originally posted by dimaryp
I wouldn't say this is going to ba the lamest game, but what does the game really have going for it?

Better graphics?
Bigger world?
More classes?
High levels?
More envolved crafting?

You can say yes to all of this and then some.  Doesn't mean the game is going to be any good.
Doesn't mean it's going to be bad.

My questions really is, is it going to be fun?  It seems the beta testers are saying no.

It's a game, it should be fun.

D

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I can't answer your question as to whther the game will be fun or not but I can answer your question in regards to what features of VCanguard some people might find attractive..

At its core Vanguard's vision is to make a more challenging game, which incorporates risk vs reward and brings back a sense of community and reputation through game mechanics.  At the same time it attempts to appeal to all play styles whether solo, group or raid by offering rewards of the best loot across all play styles. 

I will give you a brief list of its features.

1.  Innovative combat system.  The combat system incorporates many of the features from other games particularly DAOC.  It adds reactionary attacks, positional attacks, chain attacks, stances, group chains along with its own innovation of being able to perceive mob attacks and mobs being able to perceive what you have in your attack queue as well.  The best source of combat information os Oloh's Book of Oloh. http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1901  It is a bit dated but it describes the philosophy of what they want with combat.  They want planning, thought, knowledge and individual and group skill to make a big difference in the outcome of fights.  Generally in my experience skilled groups can gain experience at 2-4 times that of normal players.  One would expect this to possibly be greater in Vanguard.

2.  Innovative Endgame   Rather than give raiders all the rewards.  The endgame is designed to rewards those that use all of the games attractions.  The best gear will come mainly from single group activities but will also come from solo/casual content, raid content, quests, crafting, diplomacy and other activities.  If you want the best gear you will have to do all the activities or trade for the items that come from play styles you do not want to do.  Hard to be fairer than that.

3.  Crafting  Supposedly there is skill in crafting.  Hopefully it will not turn into another EQ2.  Crafters will be able to build boats, houses, all furniture one sees in npc houses and stores and more.  Crafters will not get experience by making items but by doing work orders and quests, for npcs.  Crafters also have a planned role in supplying player city npcs with gear and in making player cities stronger.  But keep in mind that player built and run cities is not planned to be included at release.

4.  Diplomacy.  A war of wits between players.  Cities essentially become the dungeons of diplomats.  Gaining diplomatic skill allows one to gain faction and see parts of the game, npcs and quests that others will not be able to see.  Diplomats are also planned to have a role in helping run player cities and will be needed to obtain rights to build on land.

5.  Epic size of the game.  The world is supposed to be huge.

6.  Dynamic death penalty  Dying to different mobs will provide a different death penalty.  Each mob will be assigned a threat meter.  The higher the threat level the higher the probability of good loot and the greater the death penalty.  Some mobs will have no corpse runs, some will have some form of corpse runs and a few special mobs will have very hard corpse runs that will require perhaps killing the mob that you originally died to.  The idea is to implement risk vs reward.  If you want better loot you have to risk more.  The high threat mobs will be spread out across all play styles.  For raid content, single group content and in the casual/solo dungeons.

7.  Dungeons  The one thing I miss most about EQ is the dungeons.  Their size and scariness.  According to Oloh the dungeons in Vanguard are huge.  A small dungeon takes 2-4 hours to explore while the premiere dungeons could take weeks (they will have some kind in dungeon portal system to transport yoiu to areas you have already visited).

8.  Localized economies and bringing back Community  They want to encourage communities to form by isolating people in certain areas.  They plan to do this by not having any AH's, making death meaningful so player skill is important in picking group mates, and making travel slower.  Although they seem to have moved off the idea of slower travel and are also putting in caravans to allow people to move wherever their friends go (bind spot) while offline.  If the slow travel does more harm than good they promise to change it like many other ideas they have already changed because the orginal idea did not work.  The overall idea here is to make player reputation matter.  To make players dependent on each other by all three spheres being dependent.  How much progress they can make in bringing back community to a genre that’s games have long since abandoned the idea is certainly questionable.  I remeber when EQ was released one would know most of the players your level.  Many would be desireable to group with and many one would advoid at all costs because of their bad reputation.  In a sense they are trying to turn the clock back and make player reputation matter again.

9.  Planning  Sigil are planners.  They think out everything they do and often discuss it with the community.  They claim to have the next seven years of the games development planned out.  Including all new continents, towns, villages, dungeons, raising of the cap levels and so on. They usually have back up plans for ideas that might fail. I have played so many games where the developers have randomly thrown ideas, game mechanics and features together with little thought as to how they might mesh together.  Its refreshing to see an academic approach being made towards a games development.  One might argue that they are using this same academic approach into how they are building their beta with layered stages of content.  Using this 1st year of beta to work on and hopefully perfect the core game systems of combat, crafting and diplomacy.  Then adding the rest of the content and populating the world in the second year of beta.

10.  Communication  Bar none the best communication I have ever seen by a development team.  The amount of posts by Brad on the forums is simply amazing.  One must wonder if he sleeps.  But what is more impressive is their approach to hyping this game.  Most development companies promise everything under the sun.  brad has done his best to under hype this game and under promise.  If there is doubt a feature will make it into release he doesn't talk about it or if he does he states the likelihood he sees of these features making it by release.  A very good role model for other game developers.  It is refreshing to see some honesty in such a dishonest business.

11.  Slow leveling  Rather than making a game just like every other game where its a two to four week race to max level.  Vanguard promises to bring back slower leveling and give meaning to a persons level.  rather than having everyone having at least one maxed lvl character a month after release they would like a high lvl character to have earned that level.  How this will play out I don't know.  The example he gave in beta was a player who took 60 days to reach max level.  While at retail I am sure it would be much faster hopefully this speaks to their intent.  While many hardcore people hope the leveling will be slower it will probably be in the middle with average players taking 40 days played and skilled players taking 10-15 days played to reach max level.

12.  How do we level  We really do not know this.  Brad has promised that there will be game mechanics to encourage us to move around and that true camping will be significantly slower.  How they will accomplish this? I don't know.  I know they plan for players to learn some combat abilities and skills by watching different mobs use these abilities during fights encouraging players to move around to get different skills.  I would expect that quest experience somewhat similar to WoW's might be involved as well to encourage fighting in different areas.  Factions rewards and other ideas could lead us around as well. This to me is a very significant point.  How the devs lead us around the world will have a great effect on peoples enjoyment of the game and its something we don't know.  I am not sure if its fully fleshed out or something that they just are not ready to talk about yet.  But be there have been lots of cryptic dev quotes about how we will be led around by the game mechanics.

13.  Layered design of the beta.  One of the interesting aspects of the beta that has been revealed by the devs has been their focus.  They have primarily spent the last 6 months of beta tweaking and revamping group combat.  Combat IMHO is the key to any good game and it appears they realize that if the combat is bad everything else will fail.  They have also spent a good deal of the beta tweaking and revamping the other core systems of crafting, diplomacy and harvesting.  They have said they don't plan to add other content such as solo content, raid content, filling in the world with mobs and npcs until they have group combat perfected.  It appears they must be happy with it now that they are moving on to beta 3.  Beta 3 should be a telling point of this game.  It is easy to make excuses for the game up to this point as the only part of the game they have focused on is the corse systems.  But as they add more content and the core systems become finalized those who get invited to beta 3 should get a pretty good idea how well this game will turn out.

14.  vanguard is not for everyone.  Its focus is group play and risk vs reward.  While they say they want to eliminate many of the tedious game mechanics of the past while providing challenging content this game will simply not be the game for everyone.  Will it be a niche game?  Maybe.  If the game is good and fun to play people will most likely play it regardless of their preferred play style.  If its not fun most likely then it will be a niche game.  What’s most impressive to me here are the attempts of Sigil in its endgame design, new death penalty and overall philosophy to appeal to players of all sides without dumbing down the game.  I did not think such a thing would be possible but I am highly impressed with what we have been told about these systems.  There is no game that will make everyone happy and no play style that is better than others.  I respect people that like Vanguard just as much as I respect people that don't like Vanguard.  No ones play style is betetr than anyone elses.  I hope all of the new games are good and everyone gets a game to play.  Many people are so focused on putting down anyone who disagrees with their play style.  Its very sad. 

15.  Vanguard is not just for the hardcore  Many people put down Vanguard saying its just for hardcore players.  Hardcore players think of Vanguard as their last hope because it offers challenge.  But if one looks closely at the games design it is being designed to make all play styles happy.  Raiders, single group players, solo players, crafters, questers and more.  It is easy to stereotype people and games.  But it seems the more that is reveealed abiout Vanguards design the more it appears their philosphy is one of inclusion but not at the expense of dumbing down the game.  Keep in mind these ideas and designs they have given us are much easier to talk about in theory than in practice.  When implenting these designs I would guess it will be much tougher to make everyone happy.

16.  Ambition  Vanguard is a very ambitious project which appears to be tryting to be in some ways everything for everyone.  One has to wonder if they are spreading themselves to thin here by trying to do to much.  The buiggest failing of EQ2 is that it did so many so many things and had so many ideas (mainly stolen from otehr games) but all its features were mediorce and poorly implemented.  One has to wonder if Vanguard may fall victim to same problem of having to many ideas and to mcuh content to actually be able to implement those ideas well.  Maybe its juts to big a game.  On this same line of thinking I also have doubts as to the level of quality control possible in such a huge game.  Myabe I am just getting EQ2 flashbacks but its much easier to polish asmaller simpler game than such a huge epic game.

Point 16 brings us back to the question asked by Dimaryp, will the game be fun?  It is a very good question.  I am sure Vanguard will be complex, be epic in size, have lots of content, have building and construction, risk vs reward, a complex copmbat sytem buit again will the game be fun.  As much as I love the design of Vanguard, the open communication by the devs, the complexity of the game and so much more I still have doubts about whether or not the game will be fun.  Given Sigil's layered approach to beta I am not sure we can even answer this question yet in beta as most of the content and polish will not be there for quite sometime.  In most games we can play a beta for a day and have a pretty good idea is the game game fun and will it succeeed.  because this game is so huge and complex I don't think we can make this judgment for quite sometime.  But its certainly a legitimate question and something we should all be concerned about.

The thread below has all the recent Vanguard information, including previews, E3 coverage, all the videos, class information and more.  Regardless of whtehr Vanguard is the game you want to play I hope you find the game you are looking for. 

http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread

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Originally posted by wyzwun

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Originally posted by Kyoruto
Well, personally I liked FFXI, because to me that game was more... Social... I mean I played it with friends and I didn't care/notice the grind at all. I have seen much of the VG videos. Expect the ones with the mounts and riding the horses looks weird to me.

And one the point with "Well its just beta." I have to agree and not with that statement. When I was in WoW beta. Things were way more different then the release. The leveling wasn't as easy at the time. Which I liked, and feel kinda cheated now that the leveling is so much easier. Not to meantion they took a lot of things that were in beta out. Ultamitly it was still WoW, but everything I kinda knew (And was hoping for with the huge promises they made) and liked wasn't there. It was almost like a was playing a different game when my friends convinced me to get the game.

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I also beta tested ffxi. What i am saying is that, I have never seen a bad beta turn into a good live game. Once again talking in regards to beta 3 and on. Some beta's i was in (AA, FFXI, ,L1 , L2, WoW,  WWII, PS, EQOA, EQOA Frontiers and on and on) i have never seen a poor beta turn into a good live product... NEVER. (echo)

That is the point i try (way to hard) to get across to the VG Fanoi's.

I believe there is one thing we must all agree on, even though i am NOT in VG beta, it is obvious that the VANGUARD BETA IS NOT GOING WELL... IE ITS BAD. Going into beta 3... could they turn it around? Well, thats why i still read this forum lol.

In regards to angarr, i agree i like what blizzard did but getting rid of the 40 man riads, but thats kinda wrong. Now guilds will have to trim there rosters... ive always liked small raids, i dont see why a raid must be higher then 25 players...

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Originally posted by Zippy

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Originally posted by dimaryp
I wouldn't say this is going to ba the lamest game, but what does the game really have going for it?

Better graphics?
Bigger world?
More classes?
High levels?
More envolved crafting?

You can say yes to all of this and then some.  Doesn't mean the game is going to be any good.
Doesn't mean it's going to be bad.

My questions really is, is it going to be fun?  It seems the beta testers are saying no.

It's a game, it should be fun.

D

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I can't answer your question as to whther the game will be fun or not but I can answer your question in regards to what features of VCanguard some people might find attractive..

At its core Vanguard's vision is to make a more challenging game, which incorporates risk vs reward and brings back a sense of community and reputation through game mechanics.  At the same time it attempts to appeal to all play styles whether solo, group or raid by offering rewards of the best loot across all play styles. 

I will give you a brief list of its features.

1.  Innovative combat system.  The combat system incorporates many of the features from other games particularly DAOC.  It adds reactionary attacks, positional attacks, chain attacks, stances, group chains along with its own innovation of being able to perceive mob attacks and mobs being able to perceive what you have in your attack queue as well.  The best source of combat information os Oloh's Book of Oloh. http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1901  It is a bit dated but it describes the philosophy of what they want with combat.  They want planning, thought, knowledge and individual and group skill to make a big difference in the outcome of fights.  Generally in my experience skilled groups can gain experience at 2-4 times that of normal players.  One would expect this to possibly be greater in Vanguard.

2.  Innovative Endgame   Rather than give raiders all the rewards.  The endgame is designed to rewards those that use all of the games attractions.  The best gear will come mainly from single group activities but will also come from solo/casual content, raid content, quests, crafting, diplomacy and other activities.  If you want the best gear you will have to do all the activities or trade for the items that come from play styles you do not want to do.  Hard to be fairer than that.

3.  Crafting  Supposedly there is skill in crafting.  Hopefully it will not turn into another EQ2.  Crafters will be able to build boats, houses, all furniture one sees in npc houses and stores and more.  Crafters will not get experience by making items but by doing work orders and quests, for npcs.  Crafters also have a planned role in supplying player city npcs with gear and in making player cities stronger.  But keep in mind that player built and run cities is not planned to be included at release.

4.  Diplomacy.  A war of wits between players.  Cities essentially become the dungeons of diplomats.  Gaining diplomatic skill allows one to gain faction and see parts of the game, npcs and quests that others will not be able to see.  Diplomats are also planned to have a role in helping run player cities and will be needed to obtain rights to build on land.

5.  Epic size of the game.  The world is supposed to be huge.

6.  Dynamic death penalty  Dying to different mobs will provide a different death penalty.  Each mob will be assigned a threat meter.  The higher the threat level the higher the probability of good loot and the greater the death penalty.  Some mobs will have no corpse runs, some will have some form of corpse runs and a few special mobs will have very hard corpse runs that will require perhaps killing the mob that you originally died to.  The idea is to implement risk vs reward.  If you want better loot you have to risk more.  The high threat mobs will be spread out across all play styles.  For raid content, single group content and in the casual/solo dungeons.

7.  Dungeons  The one thing I miss most about EQ is the dungeons.  Their size and scariness.  According to Oloh the dungeons in Vanguard are huge.  A small dungeon takes 2-4 hours to explore while the premiere dungeons could take weeks (they will have some kind in dungeon portal system to transport yoiu to areas you have already visited).

8.  Localized economies and bringing back Community  They want to encourage communities to form by isolating people in certain areas.  They plan to do this by not having any AH's, making death meaningful so player skill is important in picking group mates, and making travel slower.  Although they seem to have moved off the idea of slower travel and are also putting in caravans to allow people to move wherever their friends go (bind spot) while offline.  If the slow travel does more harm than good they promise to change it like many other ideas they have already changed because the orginal idea did not work.  The overall idea here is to make player reputation matter.  To make players dependent on each other by all three spheres being dependent.  How much progress they can make in bringing back community to a genre that’s games have long since abandoned the idea is certainly questionable.  I remeber when EQ was released one would know most of the players your level.  Many would be desireable to group with and many one would advoid at all costs because of their bad reputation.  In a sense they are trying to turn the clock back and make player reputation matter again.

9.  Planning  Sigil are planners.  They think out everything they do and often discuss it with the community.  They claim to have the next seven years of the games development planned out.  Including all new continents, towns, villages, dungeons, raising of the cap levels and so on. They usually have back up plans for ideas that might fail. I have played so many games where the developers have randomly thrown ideas, game mechanics and features together with little thought as to how they might mesh together.  Its refreshing to see an academic approach being made towards a games development.  One might argue that they are using this same academic approach into how they are building their beta with layered stages of content.  Using this 1st year of beta to work on and hopefully perfect the core game systems of combat, crafting and diplomacy.  Then adding the rest of the content and populating the world in the second year of beta.

10.  Communication  Bar none the best communication I have ever seen by a development team.  The amount of posts by Brad on the forums is simply amazing.  One must wonder if he sleeps.  But what is more impressive is their approach to hyping this game.  Most development companies promise everything under the sun.  brad has done his best to under hype this game and under promise.  If there is doubt a feature will make it into release he doesn't talk about it or if he does he states the likelihood he sees of these features making it by release.  A very good role model for other game developers.  It is refreshing to see some honesty in such a dishonest business.

11.  Slow leveling  Rather than making a game just like every other game where its a two to four week race to max level.  Vanguard promises to bring back slower leveling and give meaning to a persons level.  rather than having everyone having at least one maxed lvl character a month after release they would like a high lvl character to have earned that level.  How this will play out I don't know.  The example he gave in beta was a player who took 60 days to reach max level.  While at retail I am sure it would be much faster hopefully this speaks to their intent.  While many hardcore people hope the leveling will be slower it will probably be in the middle with average players taking 40 days played and skilled players taking 10-15 days played to reach max level.

12.  How do we level  We really do not know this.  Brad has promised that there will be game mechanics to encourage us to move around and that true camping will be significantly slower.  How they will accomplish this? I don't know.  I know they plan for players to learn some combat abilities and skills by watching different mobs use these abilities during fights encouraging players to move around to get different skills.  I would expect that quest experience somewhat similar to WoW's might be involved as well to encourage fighting in different areas.  Factions rewards and other ideas could lead us around as well. This to me is a very significant point.  How the devs lead us around the world will have a great effect on peoples enjoyment of the game and its something we don't know.  I am not sure if its fully fleshed out or something that they just are not ready to talk about yet.  But be there have been lots of cryptic dev quotes about how we will be led around by the game mechanics.

13.  Layered design of the beta.  One of the interesting aspects of the beta that has been revealed by the devs has been their focus.  They have primarily spent the last 6 months of beta tweaking and revamping group combat.  Combat IMHO is the key to any good game and it appears they realize that if the combat is bad everything else will fail.  They have also spent a good deal of the beta tweaking and revamping the other core systems of crafting, diplomacy and harvesting.  They have said they don't plan to add other content such as solo content, raid content, filling in the world with mobs and npcs until they have group combat perfected.  It appears they must be happy with it now that they are moving on to beta 3.  Beta 3 should be a telling point of this game.  It is easy to make excuses for the game up to this point as the only part of the game they have focused on is the corse systems.  But as they add more content and the core systems become finalized those who get invited to beta 3 should get a pretty good idea how well this game will turn out.

14.  vanguard is not for everyone.  Its focus is group play and risk vs reward.  While they say they want to eliminate many of the tedious game mechanics of the past while providing challenging content this game will simply not be the game for everyone.  Will it be a niche game?  Maybe.  If the game is good and fun to play people will most likely play it regardless of their preferred play style.  If its not fun most likely then it will be a niche game.  What’s most impressive to me here are the attempts of Sigil in its endgame design, new death penalty and overall philosophy to appeal to players of all sides without dumbing down the game.  I did not think such a thing would be possible but I am highly impressed with what we have been told about these systems.  There is no game that will make everyone happy and no play style that is better than others.  I respect people that like Vanguard just as much as I respect people that don't like Vanguard.  No ones play style is betetr than anyone elses.  I hope all of the new games are good and everyone gets a game to play.  Many people are so focused on putting down anyone who disagrees with their play style.  Its very sad. 

15.  Vanguard is not just for the hardcore  Many people put down Vanguard saying its just for hardcore players.  Hardcore players think of Vanguard as their last hope because it offers challenge.  But if one looks closely at the games design it is being designed to make all play styles happy.  Raiders, single group players, solo players, crafters, questers and more.  It is easy to stereotype people and games.  But it seems the more that is reveealed abiout Vanguards design the more it appears their philosphy is one of inclusion but not at the expense of dumbing down the game.  Keep in mind these ideas and designs they have given us are much easier to talk about in theory than in practice.  When implenting these designs I would guess it will be much tougher to make everyone happy.

16.  Ambition  Vanguard is a very ambitious project which appears to be tryting to be in some ways everything for everyone.  One has to wonder if they are spreading themselves to thin here by trying to do to much.  The buiggest failing of EQ2 is that it did so many so many things and had so many ideas (mainly stolen from otehr games) but all its features were mediorce and poorly implemented.  One has to wonder if Vanguard may fall victim to same problem of having to many ideas and to mcuh content to actually be able to implement those ideas well.  Maybe its juts to big a game.  On this same line of thinking I also have doubts as to the level of quality control possible in such a huge game.  Myabe I am just getting EQ2 flashbacks but its much easier to polish asmaller simpler game than such a huge epic game.

Point 16 brings us back to the question asked by Dimaryp, will the game be fun?  It is a very good question.  I am sure Vanguard will be complex, be epic in size, have lots of content, have building and construction, risk vs reward, a complex copmbat sytem buit again will the game be fun.  As much as I love the design of Vanguard, the open communication by the devs, the complexity of the game and so much more I still have doubts about whether or not the game will be fun.  Given Sigil's layered approach to beta I am not sure we can even answer this question yet in beta as most of the content and polish will not be there for quite sometime.  In most games we can play a beta for a day and have a pretty good idea is the game game fun and will it succeeed.  because this game is so huge and complex I don't think we can make this judgment for quite sometime.  But its certainly a legitimate question and something we should all be concerned about.

The thread below has all the recent Vanguard information, including previews, E3 coverage, all the videos, class information and more.  Regardless of whtehr Vanguard is the game you want to play I hope you find the game you are looking for. 

http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread

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I dont have time to go through all of this, so im going to single out the combat... lol.

I really fail to understand, this all worked for me BEFORE E3...

If EvE was actually fun... if the act of combat was interesting i would be playing that. w/o question, the econ in EvE is what every mmo dev should strive to achieve....

Oh and you forgot to list some little game called Tabula Rasa... you know, the best looking, most polished and by god the most orginal mmo that we saw at E3... oh did i mention its made by god himself... Lord British?

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Originally posted by dimaryp
BTW, everyone of my arguements against the points are probably flawed, it's not really the point for me to be right. 

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I'm glad you realize alot of the points you made are flawed, that way i don't have to point them out to you. also whether it is "fun" or not will most defiantly depend on a persons point of view, "fun" is a subjective view and should not be used as fact in any argument.

so yeah you are right, we are going to have to wait and see for ourselves if the game is fun or not. there might be some truth in what the beta leaker's have said, but i sure as hell are not going to take their word for it.

i am going to see it for myself, and decide whether or not i think it is fun.