Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Forum » General Discussion » Yay lamest game every going to follow in a even lower lvl then FFXI game play

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Originally posted by wyzwun

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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...

"Innovative combat system" really? Do you really believe that? I am sorry, imo any mmo that uses AUTO ATTACK in there combat engine should not use the word "Innovative" when describing it.  Let me help you out and re-write this 

“Vanguard has chosen to stick to the what everyone else is doing. Since EQ2 failed to steal FFXI skill chain system we have learned from that and are now incorporating that same system. It is called… “Heroic Encounters Part duex”

We understand players are tired of looking at logs and since we cannot animate our game on a level it would take for our players to recognize and respond to mob actions we have simple icons that will light up when a player has to do something… we call this perception. Doesn’t that sound cool!

The best source of information on our combat engine are the leaked beta vids and the videos we showed at E3, these videos show that we are only interested in following and not leading”

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I am not sure where to begin except maybe you have agenda and your just filling in the blanks to justify your hatred of the game.

While no one can actually say what Vanguard's combat system is like without playing it we can draw some conclusions from what they have written about it in Oloh's book and what we have learned about its development in beta.

In regards to any games combat failing if it has an autoattack system that would rule out almost all mmorpgs.  You might want to just stick to the kiddie FPS games if thats what your looking for. 

I will agree with you that Vanguard's combat design is more evolutionary than revolutionary.  EQ1's combat was essentially autoattack and get some cofee.  DAOC intoduced us to special attacks, reactionary attacks, chain attacks and positional attacks.  Shadowbane added stances.  FFXI added group special attacks.  EQ2 copied a lot of this and added mindless button mashing.  Vanguard copies all of the above hopefully except EQ2 and adds pereception.  You are right pereception is essentially what good players did when they percieved a mob making an attack by its animations.  Does that mean Vanguard will not have animations that lets us do the same thing.  Of course not.  What is added here is the icons and the mobs ability to percieve and counter player attacks.

While the design and the mechanics are taken from other games the point that should be gathered from reading through Oloh's combat diary is what they want to accomplish with combat.  They want planning, strategy, group skill, knowledge of the game and mobs to matter as to the outcome of battles.  Yes they plan to have an aoutoattack like all games but they also plan to have skilled groups fair much better in combat than poorly skilled groups.

In most all mmoprgs whether its daoc or wow skilled groups can gain expereince at 2-4 times faster than poor groups.  Vanguard wants to accomplish the same thing and reward skilled and well thought out play.  They don't want you to just turn on auto attack and walk away.  What we have learned from the dev posts and beta leaks is that group combat has been the major focus of beta for the last 8 months.  It appears they have tweaked group copmbat in many ways from complete revamps, to speeding up and slowing of combat, to pairing down skills, to increasinga nd decreasing the compxity involved.  Whats encouraging here is their desire to make group combat fun, challenging and require individual and group skill.  Most games companies would have long ago moved on to devloping the rest of the game rather than continuing to try to improve combat.  Sigil seems to understand that good combat is essential to a good game.

Am I concerned that Vanguards combat will turn into a senseless unskilled  button mashing  like EQ2.  Yes, I am.  But I am encouraged by what they are trying to accomplish and their commitment in beta into making combat play out as they have planned.  Will it work?  Who knows.  Is the combat innovative? Yes.  Is it more evolutionary than innovative.  Arguably, yes.  Is it fun, tactical, requires pl;anning and thought?  We don't know.  All we can do is look at their design and commitment and hope things work out as they have planned.

You can type over and over you hate the game and that it will stink.  You might end up being right but just because you want the game to be bad will not make it so.  We don't know what combat is like until we play it.  But we can get a good idea of its progress by the plan being used by the devs and their commitment to that plan in beta.  Vanguard may not be the game for you.  If not good luck and I hope they make a game you want to play .  But senseless babbling and hating offers nothing to the discussion except to make you look like an angry fool.

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Originally posted by dimaryp
One could argue, on a medical level that fun is in fact a fact.  Just like can argue that beauty is universal. Of course you can argue anything. ;)If one person says it isn't fun, that is one thing, but if everyone say it isn't fun, well...I was a tester for DDO.  It was a well written game, everyone said it was, that was never in question.  What started to happen to the testers, is they tried to like the game, I mean really tried.  It wasn't the bugs, yes there were some, it was just that is was boring, the game was boring.  This well thought out, very well put together game was boring.  I'm not going to go into why it was boring, but word got around that the game was boring, and come release, well, you can read the reviews.D

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you can defiantly argue anything, but in this case you are attempting to argue that a subjective term such as "fun" is actually a factual term because most or all people agree.

a fact is a fact because it has been proven so, and just because the majority might agree with you on something doesn't mean it is fact.

i am willing to bet that there are players from every single game out there that think their game is fun, some more than others obviously.

and even with DDO, i guarantee you there are people who have fun in that game and are not bored in the least bit, they think it is fun and that is their opinion.

but w/e if you are going to argue that a game is not fun or that it is boring and claim it is fact then i really don't know what els to say.

Just for fun and in a conversational way I want to drop a few thoughts about your points. I'm not attacking, just playing devils advicate

Looks like you put alot of thought into your post and obviously have a passion for it Take no offense, its all tongue in cheek.

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Originally posted by Zippy

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.

As a DAoC vet, I know that the reason the entire positional thing worked was the combat had a very slow tempo. What is the pacing like in VG?  

Also, that reference to EQII heroic opportunity system by someone else...that system, works well but turns combat in a button sequence game. You don't have to watch/worry about the actual combat, just watch the cooldowns on the speciels bar. (yuck 23 levels of that garbage) Are we looking at another "heroic opportunity button cooldown mash"?

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.

There's that fricking word again.......endgame. I'm assuming when you say "all the games attrations" you are referring to all the other levels or just the last one?

Here is the challenge question...will there be an interesting and engaging quest at low levels? Will I be challenged at level 3 or will I be sent out to kill 10 rats???

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.

I keep seeing this phrase in all the articles I read about VG, but what the hell does it mean? How? We need so meat on this. Could be interesting, but not enough details.

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

Hope it has a good sized population then....played DAoC lately? You are lucky to run into another player pre-50. The problem with an "epic sized world" is if enough people don't play the game, you have an epic sized problem for the community.

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.

Again, if travel is difficult and the world is huge and the sub base isn't as large as hoped for......that makes for a real problem now doesn't it? Or worse, what if the pops drop quickly because the game isn't that good? Within a few weeks/months you could find yourself literally alone in town. (again, see DAoC/auto assault/DDO/AC/Horizons/EQ)

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.

Thats what they all claim. Every last one of these jokers promise the moon and run off with the cash.

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.

Slow leveling does not equal FUN. (nor does fast leveling, but it goes faster creating the illusion of fun) If that was the case Lineage 2 would rule.

OK, so the promise slow leveling weee.....Lineage has C5 coming out. How is VG going to make a long level progression entertaining? If its not entertaining its not a "game" its a chore.

Will we get many kill task type quest ??? Or something with more depth and meaning??? Saying leveling will be slow is a Hollow. It means nothing. Lineage 2 is proof of that. Slow leveling with kill task is what the games PvE is based on, why isn't everyone busting down their door to play??? They all cry grind in Lineage 2 but then critize WoW for being to easy. What kind of morons are we in this "MMORPG community" anyway??? Its enough to drive a dev to drink lol.

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.

See the last point.

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.

I understand what you are saying but heres the angle I come from. Make the game. Have vision, scope, originality and fun, engaging gameplay. Trying to please everyone or focus on one group or another isn't going to work. Making it similar to this or just like that isnt going to work.  People here are very critical of Asian games for being similar but they totally fail to see our games are all similar as well.

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) All poorly implimented but all its features were mediorce and poorly implemented. oops, sorry 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.

EQII was the total victim of the complete lack of creativity in its art and gameplay. I loved the voiceovers though MMO's need more voiceovers and cut scenes.

For exmple, the whole group vs solo content in EQII. Select a badger, its alone you can fight it solo. Select a Gnoll, it auto selects 4 of them - thats your group content. To think, someone got paid to come up with that.

Hey, I'm an idiot, I need the game to prefigure out what mobs are group and what are solo. What the con system wasn't enough???

Back in the old days when we had to use "common sense". When we soloed we fought mobs of roughly equal level. When we grouped we fought mobs that where much higher level and thus NOT solo-able. (DUCK! Lighting bolt)

Point 16 brings us back to the question asked by Dimaryp, will the game be fun?  It is a very good question.  (the ironies of life, again, if its not the "fun" then its not a very good game) 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.

Unfun games fail. Simple as that.

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 Torak

Just for fun and in a conversational way I want to drop a few thoughts about your points. I'm not attacking, just playing devils advicate

Looks like you put alot of thought into your post and obviously have a passion for it Take no offense, its all tongue in cheek.

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Originally posted by Zippy

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.

As a DAoC vet, I know that the reason the entire positional thing worked was the combat had a very slow tempo. What is the pacing like in VG?  

Also, that reference to EQII heroic opportunity system by someone else...that system, works well but turns combat in a button sequence game. You don't have to watch/worry about the actual combat, just watch the cooldowns on the speciels bar. (yuck 23 levels of that garbage) Are we looking at another "heroic opportunity button cooldown mash"?

Supposedly Vanguards combat is supposed to be very slow similar to the speed of FFXI which would be slower than DAOC.  I have read various reports of them speeding it up and down.  But they want a slower pace and more time in ebtween swings so meaningfull choices can be made.

In regards to the heroic oppurtunities of EQ2.  I agree I hated them and i hated EQ2's combat.  It required almost no skill just mindless button mashing.  I don't know but hope Vangiuards combat system is different.  They have said they don't want people to button mash.  But I guess we have to just wait and see.  But I do share your fear.

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.

There's that fricking word again.......endgame. I'm assuming when you say "all the games attrations" you are referring to all the other levels or just the last one?

I am referring to the endgame at max level.  Now prior to endgame the devs have not spoken in a long time where the best loot will come from.  The orginal plan was the best loot would come from raids and crafted components at end game.  That evolved into their current plan of the some of the best loot will come from all areas of play.  Some from raids, from single group play, some from solo/casual dungeons, time contingous efforts, quests, crafting, diplomacy and I am sure otehr areas.  Now that the endgame philosphy has chamged they have not addressed how the best loot will be dropped while leveling up.  The old posts said raids but one would expectthat to change.

Here is the challenge question...will there be an interesting and engaging quest at low levels? Will I be challenged at level 3 or will I be sent out to kill 10 rats???

I don't know.  They really have not addressed the quests system much nor how we will be led around the world by game mechanics.  However they do it I hope they don't copy EQ2's system of quests ionvolving so much running and being spread out so far.  WoW's sytem of central quests hubs around smaller areas made the game flow much smoother.  One thing to note in this regard is major towns might not be meeting places for adventurers.  In rpevious games towns were used for buying, selling and quest giving.  Sigil has said towns will mainly be for Diplomats with outposts and vendors being placed near hunting spots.  Hopefully quest givers as well.

In regards to lower level quests many of the beta leaks have said there is little guidance or gameplay for lower levels in beta yet. Although Brad did say they added a lot of lower level content for beta 3.  Brad has said the plan has been to get the core systems working then add content for other play styles like solo mobs and then fill in the world with mobs and npcs.

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.

I keep seeing this phrase in all the articles I read about VG, but what the hell does it mean? How? We need so meat on this. Could be interesting, but not enough details.

What it simply means is adventurers mobs are generally found in dungeons and diplomats mobs will be found in cities.  Rather than cities being areas for adventurers to buy and sell and obtain quests they will be mainly dungeons for diplomats to test their will and charisma against the npcs that live there.

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

Hope it has a good sized population then....played DAoC lately? You are lucky to run into another player pre-50. The problem with an "epic sized world" is if enough people don't play the game, you have an epic sized problem for the community.

I have to agree with you 100% here.  Vanguard's ideas of player interaction. player dependency and group combat require a world full of players.  If the game tanks and population drops off one would only expect things to get worse with less players.  IMHO its essential the game is fun and polished at release or it will never recover.

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.

Again, if travel is difficult and the world is huge and the sub base isn't as large as hoped for......that makes for a real problem now doesn't it? Or worse, what if the pops drop quickly because the game isn't that good? Within a few weeks/months you could find yourself literally alone in town. (again, see DAoC/auto assault/DDO/AC/Horizons/EQ)

Like I said in my last remark, I agree.  It is essential that they release a fun and well ppolished game that will keep people playing.  If its bad it will tank bad and put a tremendous burden on the playerbase if the servers are empty.

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.

Thats what they all claim. Every last one of these jokers promise the moon and run off with the cash.

I can't disagree all game developers lie and promise everything under the sun.  Sigil has been refreshing in the sense that they have tried at least on appearances to be more honest and open with their community.  Brad is quite amazing in underhyping and under promising.  But it could all be just brilliant marketing.  Better IMO to doubt and mistrust anything a dev of any game said.

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.

Slow leveling does not equal FUN. (nor does fast leveling, but it goes faster creating the illusion of fun) If that was the case Lineage 2 would rule.

OK, so the promise slow leveling weee.....Lineage has C5 coming out. How is VG going to make a long level progression entertaining? If its not entertaining its not a "game" its a chore.

Will we get many kill task type quest ??? Or something with more depth and meaning??? Saying leveling will be slow is a Hollow. It means nothing. Lineage 2 is proof of that. Slow leveling with kill task is what the games PvE is based on, why isn't everyone busting down their door to play??? They all cry grind in Lineage 2 but then critize WoW for being to easy. What kind of morons are we in this "MMORPG community" anyway??? Its enough to drive a dev to drink lol.

Slow leveling adds many benefits IMO.  I played DAOC at release.  IMHO it had almost zero content at release but the slow leveling gave it time to add content.  The same for EQ.  Lots of otehr games have failed because leveling was to easy and fast and the devs did not then have time to create content.

That being said it brings up your point about L2.  I liked L2's leveling but I thought the game was lacking in fun and content at least at release.  L2 IMO was a shell of a game with little thought to fighting rather it was a grind without thought.  Every fight you do the same thing over and over again.  The question then is how do you make longer leveling fun.  I thought DAOC diod a betetr job with this at release.  It involves having a good fun combat system, interesting places to see, and being able to accomplish small goals.  I thought WoW did an excellent job with its quests system of providing small goals and keeping leveling ineteresting.  It would be inetresting to see how that would play out over a longer leveling cycle. 

But back to your point how do you make long leveling fun.  Grinding is out moded IMO thanks to newer games and I don't think people will enjoy purely grind anymore.  Which kind of brings up my point below in number 12 how do they lead us around the world.  Sigil has been very vague about this.  I believe this will be one of their biggest challenges and will determine if the game is fun for many people.

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.

See the last point.

I agree.

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.

I understand what you are saying but heres the angle I come from. Make the game. Have vision, scope, originality and fun, engaging gameplay. Trying to please everyone or focus on one group or another isn't going to work. Making it similar to this or just like that isnt going to work.  People here are very critical of Asian games for being similar but they totally fail to see our games are all similar as well.

Trying to appease evreyone is much simpler in theory than in doing it.  I really do like Sigil's ideas and well thought out plans.  These ideas working in practice will be much harder.  This is one of my biggest fears about this game.  They are trying to do so many things that are fairly complex and will take time to tweak and make work properly.  Which might explain why beta has lasted so long and will last so much longer.  I just wonder if they have enough time to do everything they want.  Making a simpler game that is more of a copycat with small tweaking which would have been so much easier.  But to make every part of the game so different than from what we have seen before makes me wonder if they are just trying to do to much.

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) All poorly implimented but all its features were mediorce and poorly implemented. oops, sorry 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.

EQII was the total victim of the complete lack of creativity in its art and gameplay. I loved the voiceovers though MMO's need more voiceovers and cut scenes.

I have to agree EQ2's artwork was terrible and its game world lacked any feeling of life.  If you look closely at Vanguards screenshots you may find the same blandness and lack of creativity.  I look at the screenshots and I often am reminded of EQ2.  Hopefully ti will look better in game.

For exmple, the whole group vs solo content in EQII. Select a badger, its alone you can fight it solo. Select a Gnoll, it auto selects 4 of them - thats your group content. To think, someone got paid to come up with that.

Hey, I'm an idiot, I need the game to prefigure out what mobs are group and what are solo. What the con system wasn't enough???

Back in the old days when we had to use "common sense". When we soloed we fought mobs of roughly equal level. When we grouped we fought mobs that where much higher level and thus NOT solo-able. (DUCK! Lighting bolt)

Point 16 brings us back to the question asked by Dimaryp, will the game be fun?  It is a very good question.  (the ironies of life, again, if its not the "fun" then its not a very good game) 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.

Unfun games fail. Simple as that.

It's amazing how many developers never grasp this simple concept.   Maybe they get caught up in perfecting all the otehr ideas and just lose sight of overall gameplay. I have my doubts whether or not Vanguard will be fun.  Hopefully I will be proven wrong.

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 dimaryp
I don't really remeber saying fun is fact or not.  You don't have to agree, but there are generally excepted "truth" if you will.  I'm not really sure where I am going with this, myabe it just a complaint against the generally poor showing of MMORPG in the last two years, or the lack of upcomming MMORPGs.  Others and myself are looking for a MMORPG, and we can't find one.  Some of us are trying to change current games, some have resigned to accepting their flawed games, and others have pinned there hopes on upcomming games.Myabe we are just vocal, but it seems to me, there are a lot of peope looking for a MMORPG.  Some of would settle for Mr. Right MMORPG now.

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its all good, i understand where you are coming from. there was another poster before you that sort of used fun in a factual context but it kind of evolved into a discussion between you and i.

but yeah, my point is that if some beta tester leaks info about a game saying it is not fun i am not going to all of a sudden assume that it will be unfun for me.

because what is fun for me is not necessarily what is fun fore someone els, i need to find out for myself if i will like the game. some people wont even give it a chance because some beta tester says its not fun and i think that is kind of silly.

again, there might be some if not alot of truth in what the beta leaker's say. but when they try to tell me that it is not fun, i just cant take their word for it....i am the type of person that needs to see it for himself.

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Originally posted by Zippy

Originally posted by Zippy

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.

Slow leveling does not equal FUN. (nor does fast leveling, but it goes faster creating the illusion of fun) If that was the case Lineage 2 would rule.

OK, so the promise slow leveling weee.....Lineage has C5 coming out. How is VG going to make a long level progression entertaining? If its not entertaining its not a "game" its a chore.

Will we get many kill task type quest ??? Or something with more depth and meaning??? Saying leveling will be slow is a Hollow. It means nothing. Lineage 2 is proof of that. Slow leveling with kill task is what the games PvE is based on, why isn't everyone busting down their door to play??? They all cry grind in Lineage 2 but then critize WoW for being to easy. What kind of morons are we in this "MMORPG community" anyway??? Its enough to drive a dev to drink lol.

Slow leveling adds many benefits IMO.  I played DAOC at release.  IMHO it had almost zero content at release but the slow leveling gave it time to add content.  The same for EQ.  Lots of otehr games have failed because leveling was to easy and fast and the devs did not then have time to create content.

That being said it brings up your point about L2.  I liked L2's leveling but I thought the game was lacking in fun and content at least at release.  L2 IMO was a shell of a game with little thought to fighting rather it was a grind without thought.  Every fight you do the same thing over and over again.  The question then is how do you make longer leveling fun.  I thought DAOC diod a betetr job with this at release.  It involves having a good fun combat system, interesting places to see, and being able to accomplish small goals.  I thought WoW did an excellent job with its quests system of providing small goals and keeping leveling ineteresting.  It would be inetresting to see how that would play out over a longer leveling cycle. 

But back to your point how do you make long leveling fun.  Grinding is out moded IMO thanks to newer games and I don't think people will enjoy purely grind anymore. We can pray  I don't think people ever did enjoy grinding, the games evolved from grind is all. Which kind of brings up my point below in number 12 how do they lead us around the world.  Sigil has been very vague about this.  I believe this will be one of their biggest challenges and will determine if the game is fun for many people.

I agree on the slow leveling. In fact Im one of the people who feel that the little number should be meaningless or HIDDEN from the player. However slow leveling only works if the rest of the game is thought out.

Personally I disagree with you on the DAoC and L2 comparison. I played both games about 1 year. I played DAoC pre-ToA and it was a torturous, hidiously slow grind. Litterally hours and days and weeks standing (no exaggeration) in the same spot killing the same damn mobs. I was insain with boredom. Thank the lord for mini-dings! The PvE was so hollow you could fill it with a creamy white filling. Combat so slow paced it hurt to watch. I loved it and hated it for one year lol. I was a great game in many respects. PvE and world design wasn't one of them.

L2 on the other hand, I thought had a much faster paced combat system. Good tempo, overwhelming ly beautiful world and lots of things to see. However the entire game was crippled and crushed by two things....the 100% player driven economy (which drove people to many extreams) AND, once again, the hollow grind. I endured it about a year. Yes endured, just like DAoC. L2 is a great game in many respects. PvE isn't one of them.

So, slow grinding did not help either of these two games. DAoC has been a ghost game for over 2 years now and L2 never really got off the ground (launched alittle over 2 years ago hmmm.......I see a timeline trend here lol.) the 1st generation "grind" ideal began to die about 2 and a half years ago.

All critiques of City of Heros aside, it did bring us one NEW radical design idea way back when it released. It was storyline/mission based. SHAZZAM! Believe it or not the world of MMO's changed. We wanted/expected more.

Why is it the portion of the game we spend the most time in (grind/level, whatever you want to call it) gets the LEAST amount of thought put into it? Have you ever played RFO? I would be ashamed if I was the designer of the PvE in that game.

I'm windowing back and forth between this forum and WoW right now (as we speak) and honestly its the same crap as L2 and DAoC. Kill random mobs for XP. Theres no heart, story or PURPOSE. WoW is a great game in many respects, PvE, PvP and Purpose isn't one of them. At least there was purpose in DAoC and L2. Playing capture the flag isn't purpose in a fantasy virtual world IMHO. I can play cature the flag in BF2 anytime I want

Yes, you have resorted to insults after losing yet another argument. Brad screwed up several classes, Warrior being number 1. The brutal truth is a near riot occured during PoP because Clerics were not grouping with warriors due to lack of snap aggro. I didn't roup with warriors, I played a Cleric. I also leveled to 63 with 10AA's, and have the orb from Emp during the very early PoP era, also proving beyond the shadow of a doupt, EQ1 is easier for a non-moron then WoW.

Give it up, Vanguard is going to be a huge flop in the arena of MMORPGs with a puny unimportant player base. You don't hit 1 million players now, it proves the game sucks. EQ1 sucked hard beyond belief. Classes filled very narrow niches. Classes were and still are broken. Long waits for groups occur and Vanguard will compound all these problems with long, dangerous journey times. Casuals are pissed, groupers are pissed, and raiders are pissed. Throw in the sizable anti-SOE crowd and you have an epic disaster.

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Originally posted by sebbonx

Yes, you have resorted to insults after losing yet another argument. Brad screwed up several classes, Warrior being number 1. The brutal truth is a near riot occured during PoP because Clerics were not grouping with warriors due to lack of snap aggro. I didn't roup with warriors, I played a Cleric. I also leveled to 63 with 10AA's, and have the orb from Emp during the very early PoP era, also proving beyond the shadow of a doupt, EQ1 is easier for a non-moron then WoW.

Give it up, Vanguard is going to be a huge flop in the arena of MMORPGs with a puny unimportant player base. You don't hit 1 million players now, it proves the game sucks. EQ1 sucked hard beyond belief. Classes filled very narrow niches. Classes were and still are broken. Long waits for groups occur and Vanguard will compound all these problems with long, dangerous journey times. Casuals are pissed, groupers are pissed, and raiders are pissed. Throw in the sizable anti-SOE crowd and you have an epic disaster.

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His post actually makes those claiming any MMORPG is hard look like idiots. Of course EQ1 is easier, there are exploits he obviously used to level that fast that have existed since day one in the game. They have not been fixed nor will be fixed. WoW takes longer to level in when people use obvious exploits to rapidly level to maximum in EQ1, exploits that were fixed or never existed in WoW. A hallmark of Brad designed games are bugs like these that are never fixed. The "AFK" leveling with pets is what really irks me though, not a cleric leveling that fast, he obviously was PLed or something by his guild to help on certain encounters or something, and it should not be possible! This is not possible in WoW. 

Calling any of these PVE games "hard" is laughable! Brad is avoiding PvP leveling because then actual skill might be required, something every player seems to avoid including your precious EQ1 type games. All it was was a giant time sink, not hard by any stretch. 12 days is actually a long time, a Cleric claims to have done it in 5 days in rpgexpert. That is laughable a game is so sad it can be exploited so easily.

Expect many flaws like this in Vanguard. Brad's hallmark is a lack of honest play testing and the lack of desire to fix loopholes.

the "exploit" you are referring to is called "power leveling" guilds power level clerics all the time in EQ, wow has the same problem only on a smaller scale.

yes power leveling isn't as bad in wow as it is in eq, but we are talking about witch game is harder to level up in, not witch game can power level a cleric faster.

try playing a cleric without being power leveled and see how long it takes you, its easy to power level a cleric because all they have to do is med+heal....really freaking difficult there buddy.

that is just stupid you use that as your argument to why you think wow is harder than eq....because you can be power leveled quicker? give me a freaking break! what a joke.

Leveling a druid to PL is hard in EQ1, give me a break! Rofl, thats the funniest thing I ever heard . A quad kiting, can't be killed once they have SoW character ? To funny, EQ1 is pathetic and full of exploits, not restricted to PLing. Vanguard will be the same, it's what Brad's games are known for. You can "AFK" level in WoW? Not possible, sorry. So EQ1 wins lamest game design ever anyone who thinks differently is .

I must have missed the part where you could PL in WoW without actually being in the same state as your PC while AFK leveling like EQ1 .

To find out how to afk level was as difficult as typing "Necromancer forum" in my search engine, whew, almost broke a sweat doing it. I can't help it most are to dumb to use every exploit in EQ1. After all, all that matters is the end game, the rest is a waste of time. You raid or your gear sucks, a Brad designed game is built that way.

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Originally posted by Heltern
Leveling a druid to PL is hard in EQ1, give me a break! Rofl, thats the funniest thing I ever heard . A quad kiting, can't be killed once they have SoW character ? To funny, EQ1 is pathetic and full of exploits, not restricted to PLing. Vanguard will be the same, it's what Brad's games are known for. You can "AFK" level in WoW? Not possible, sorry. So EQ1 wins lamest game design ever anyone who thinks differently is .
I must have missed the part where you could PL in WoW without actually being in the same state as your PC while AFK leveling like EQ1 .

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again, if you want to say that you can "exploit" in eq easier than in wow thats fine. but to use that as an excuse to why wow is harder is ....god forbid should actually play the game the way it is meant to be played.

without using "exploits" and actually playing the games the way they are meant to be played eq1 is way harder than wow, and yes i play wow and no longer play eq.

You obviously missed the part "end game is all that matters", and thats true of both EQ1 and WoW. It will be like that in Vanguard too, and if there is a buffing class, or you can AFK with a pet guarding you, it will be heavily exploited by the smart players.

Obviously the only hard game will be one with PvP as the only means of leveling. All PVE games are currently a joke to level in killing mindless mobs over and mind numbingly over again. You equate difficulty to time, that is not what difficulty is. A true PvP game would be hard as heck, or PvP servers with much ganking. That again describes many more servers in WoW then EQ1. Vanguard isn't planning on heavy PvP, that again equates to mind numbingly killing of stupid mobs.

you are hailing wow to be so much better that eq1 as far as it being harder and i disproved it, so now you want to say that only games that have pvp as a way to level up are hard?

w/e thats fine, I'm not comparing wow or eq to a pvp game. i was comparing two pve games and after i disproved your "wow is harder than eq" theory now you are trying to turn it into a pve vs pvp discussion.

BTW wow is not a pvp game (the way you described at least), in case you haven't played the game before it is a pve game first pvp second, you cant level up from just doing pvp and yeah you can get some gear from doing it but its not as good as the gear you can get from pve.

i would agree that a game where the only way to progress is to pvp would be harder that killing NPC's, i never said it wouldn't and if you refuse to play a pve game well that sure sucks for you because i don't know of any half decent mmorpg's being released with no pve monsters to kill, but good luck with that.

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Originally posted by baphamet

you are hailing wow to be so much better that eq1 as far as it being harder and i disproved it, so now you want to say that only games that have pvp as a way to level up are hard?

w/e thats fine, I'm not comparing wow or eq to a pvp game. i was comparing two pve games and after i disproved your "wow is harder than eq" theory now you are trying to turn it into a pve vs pvp discussion.

BTW wow is not a pvp game (the way you described at least), in case you haven't played the game before it is a pve game first pvp as a second thought, you cant level up from just doing pvp and yeah you can get some gear from doing it but its not as good as the gear you can get from pve.

i would agree that a game where the only way to progress is to pvp would be harder that killing NPC's, i never said it wouldn't and if you refuse to play a pve game well that sure sucks for you because i don't know of any half decent mmorpg's being released with no pve monsters to kill, but good luck with that.

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Originally posted by Kyoruto

Originally posted by baphamet
you are hailing wow to be so much better that eq1 as far as it being harder and i disproved it, so now you want to say that only games that have pvp as a way to level up are hard?
w/e thats fine, I'm not comparing wow or eq to a pvp game. i was comparing two pve games and after i disproved your "wow is harder than eq" theory now you are trying to turn it into a pve vs pvp discussion.
BTW wow is not a pvp game (the way you described at least), in case you haven't played the game before it is a pve game first pvp as a second thought, you cant level up from just doing pvp and yeah you can get some gear from doing it but its not as good as the gear you can get from pve.
i would agree that a game where the only way to progress is to pvp would be harder that killing NPC's, i never said it wouldn't and if you refuse to play a pve game well that sure sucks for you because i don't know of any half decent mmorpg's being released with no pve monsters to kill, but good luck with that.
There... I fixed it.

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that was exactly my point

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Originally posted by baphamet

you are hailing wow to be so much better that eq1 as far as it being harder and i disproved it, so now you want to say that only games that have pvp as a way to level up are hard?

w/e thats fine, I'm not comparing wow or eq to a pvp game. i was comparing two pve games and after i disproved your "wow is harder than eq" theory now you are trying to turn it into a pve vs pvp discussion.

BTW wow is not a pvp game (the way you described at least), in case you haven't played the game before it is a pve game first pvp second, you cant level up from just doing pvp and yeah you can get some gear from doing it but its not as good as the gear you can get from pve.

i would agree that a game where the only way to progress is to pvp would be harder that killing NPC's, i never said it wouldn't and if you refuse to play a pve game well that sure sucks for you because i don't know of any half decent mmorpg's being released with no pve monsters to kill, but good luck with that.

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Originally posted by sebbonx

Originally posted by baphamet
you are hailing wow to be so much better that eq1 as far as it being harder and i disproved it, so now you want to say that only games that have pvp as a way to level up are hard?
w/e thats fine, I'm not comparing wow or eq to a pvp game. i was comparing two pve games and after i disproved your "wow is harder than eq" theory now you are trying to turn it into a pve vs pvp discussion.
BTW wow is not a pvp game (the way you described at least), in case you haven't played the game before it is a pve game first pvp second, you cant level up from just doing pvp and yeah you can get some gear from doing it but its not as good as the gear you can get from pve.
i would agree that a game where the only way to progress is to pvp would be harder that killing NPC's, i never said it wouldn't and if you refuse to play a pve game well that sure sucks for you because i don't know of any half decent mmorpg's being released with no pve monsters to kill, but good luck with that.
Disapprove WoW is harder then EQ with a link to a character who leveled faster then I did to 60. BTW, it took me 5 days played, I win. Doesn't matter it may be what you consider an exploit, SOE and Brad didn't. Plus if it wasn't meant to happen why is it happening 7 years into the game? I suppose you will next defend AFK leveling, where, yes it is slow, but considering you play 24/7 and actually play like 10 minutes in a day, thats just fine. Just admit it, you got hit in the head with a hammer and as long as it's Brad that did it, it's okay.

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i don't care about exploits, i don't use them and i also don't consider being power leveled by a guild even playing the game. you act like you are so good and eq was so easy because you got power leveled by a powerful guild?

sorry, thats not playing the game thats just sitting there.....i already said why your logic is flawed ACTUALLY PLAYING EVERQUEST TAKES LONGER TO LEVEL THAN WOW DOES

why is that so hard for you to understand? again, i don't care if u can be power leveled in a game in 5 days, if you play the game like its meant to be played its harder to lvl up in than wow.

if you want to whine about exploits being in eq i really don't care, i am talking about the actual game not being power leveled in 5 days by a high end guild.

There are three broken classes in EQ1 that do in fact level faster then a WoW character. They are Necromancer, Mage, and Druid. Necromancer and Mage do not, only if you count time a player is not at the keyboard. It is not an exploit according to SOE, there is some danger involved because another player could drag a mob and you can die if your pet is moved to close to the mob and it is hit and not the character.

I was not PLed by an entire guild, it took one druid to do most of it!

Now that we are talking no exploits-play time!!!

Diretemus druid combine server 54th level 9 days played

Redeagle druid combine server 60th 13 days played

Flonne Necromancer 60th Combine server 10 days played

etc etc etc etc...

You don't think we are smart enough to look up actual play times?! YOU STUNK AT EQ1 I DIDN'T!!! THESE PEOPLE DON'T!! EVERYTHING IS EASY NOW, A CHALLENGING GAME MUST BE A FACTOR OF AT LEAST 5 TIMES MORE DIFFICULT THEN EQ1 TO BE A CHALLENGE! EQ1 WAS NOT HARD, YOU DIDN'T HAVE A CLUE ON WHAT YOU WERE DOING, JUST ADMIT IT!!!

You have been stomped, your lies exposed. EQplayers shows it all, now quit saying "EQ is harder then WoW" it has been proven you are WRONG.

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Originally posted by sebbonx

I was not PLed by an entire guild, it took one druid to do most of it!

Now that we are talking no exploits-play time!!!

Diretemus druid combine server 54th level 9 days played

Redeagle druid combine server 60th 13 days played

Flonne Necromancer 60th Combine server 10 days played

etc etc etc etc...

You don't think we are smart enough to look up actual play times?! YOU STUNK AT EQ1 I DIDN'T!!! THESE PEOPLE DON'T!! EVERYTHING IS EASY NOW, A CHALLENGING GAME MUST BE A FACTOR OF AT LEAST 5 TIMES MORE DIFFICULT THEN EQ1 TO BE A CHALLENGE! EQ1 WAS NOT HARD, YOU DIDN'T HAVE A CLUE ON WHAT YOU WERE DOING, JUST ADMIT IT!!!

You have been stomped, your lies exposed. EQplayers shows it all, now quit saying "EQ is harder then WoW" it has been proven you are WRONG.

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o.O

Didn't it used to be before they made a whole bunch of "Accessibility" patches/expansions?

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Originally posted by sebbonx

I was not PLed by an entire guild, it took one druid to do most of it!

Now that we are talking no exploits-play time!!!

Diretemus druid combine server 54th level 9 days played

Redeagle druid combine server 60th 13 days played

Flonne Necromancer 60th Combine server 10 days played

etc etc etc etc...

You don't think we are smart enough to look up actual play times?! YOU STUNK AT EQ1 I DIDN'T!!! THESE PEOPLE DON'T!! EVERYTHING IS EASY NOW, A CHALLENGING GAME MUST BE A FACTOR OF AT LEAST 5 TIMES MORE DIFFICULT THEN EQ1 TO BE A CHALLENGE! EQ1 WAS NOT HARD, YOU DIDN'T HAVE A CLUE ON WHAT YOU WERE DOING, JUST ADMIT IT!!!

You have been stomped, your lies exposed. EQplayers shows it all, now quit saying "EQ is harder then WoW" it has been proven you are WRONG.

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