Ashes of Creation

Vanguard had the best group experience for me personally. MASSIVE dungeons that had to be crawled to get to various key areas and seldomly did you "camp" because the "crawl" was time consuming and you wanted to move to different spots killing place holders etc. Plus many had sprawling quest lines and key bosses that you needed to kill as well as ground base quest items and rare drops from parts of the dungoen.

The more i think of it there hasn't been a game close to capturing that level of engaging dungoens especially across the leveling field. Most areas you could level 7-10 levels in that area and there were amazing gear tied to epic quest lines. Never enjoyed leveling an alt in an MMO then in VG due to multiple amazing paths to level with some good grinds and extremely meaningful gear progression. We were the server first clears across that entire area under ground (VT?) that had epic quest line across probably 11-14 lvls. The reward lasted well into raiding at max level and when you saw someone with it you know they were dedicated players.

Only different but equal alt experience was old school EQ probably Kunark time giving your twink monk a fungi and TS staff and just going ape shit early levels.

Fuck i miss Vangiard, only pray AOC recaptures some of that old school joy.

VG Bards were legit and the world as janky as it was, was quite enjoyable.

turbo said:

Vanguard had the best group experience for me personally. MASSIVE dungeons that had to be crawled to get to various key areas and seldomly did you "camp" because the "crawl" was time consuming and you wanted to move to different spots killing place holders etc. Plus many had sprawling quest lines and key bosses that you needed to kill as well as ground base quest items and rare drops from parts of the dungoen.

The more i think of it there hasn't been a game close to capturing that level of engaging dungoens especially across the leveling field. Most areas you could level 7-10 levels in that area and there were amazing gear tied to epic quest lines. Never enjoyed leveling an alt in an MMO then in VG due to multiple amazing paths to level with some good grinds and extremely meaningful gear progression. We were the server first clears across that entire area under ground (VT?) that had epic quest line across probably 11-14 lvls. The reward lasted well into raiding at max level and when you saw someone with it you know they were dedicated players.

Only different but equal alt experience was old school EQ probably Kunark time giving your twink monk a fungi and TS staff and just going ape shit early levels.

Fuck i miss Vangiard, only pray AOC recaptures some of that old school joy.

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Thats something I really picked up on in the first dungeon area I did. You had to keep pace with super solid execution or get overwhelmed. Solo'ing through it as a psionicist was no simple task.

I always find it interesting when people reference Vanguard's class design as the optimal base model for any new MMO game going forward. Though VG did launch, it was pretty obvious how untested and unbalanced much of the game was and AFAIR, never really went through any of the usual fixes and class balancing that occurs in every other MMO as it matures.

When certain classes are mostly broken and OP as fuck, of course they'll be fun to play, but that doesn't mean they're good for the game. At least one that's supposed to last longer than a few months anyway.

Vinjin said:

I always find it interesting when people reference Vanguard's class design as the optimal base model for any new MMO game going forward. Though VG did launch, it was pretty obvious how untested and unbalanced much of the game was and AFAIR, never really went through any of the usual fixes and class balancing that occurs in every other MMO as it matures.

When certain classes are mostly broken and OP as fuck, of course they'll be fun to play, but that doesn't mean they're good for the game. At least one that's supposed to last longer than a few months anyway.

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Vanguard had solid class ideas that stretched across several games that came after it. The Disciple inspired classes in Rift and WoW for example. The Chloromancer was heavily praised in Rift and there is a cult following in WoW with that version of the Discipline Priest. Unfortunately for all those good ideas, there is a massive steaming pile of crap on top of all of them and that is the rest of Vanguard. Which clouds and disguises anything good that came from that game.

Wish they had the bard/sorc/vita "gypsy" class in this one. If that Archeage relaunch wasnt such a mega drugbox, it mighta been good.

mkopec said:

Well thats the problem with "balance" and PVE mmos. Like WTF is balance anyway? As we discussed above, who gives a shit that one class is 3 KPS and another is 1? Who cares that one class can solo and other cannot and is more tailored to group content? Who cars that some DPS class is 100 more DPS then the next? You start to balance shit on a spreadsheet and you end up with stale bullshit weve been getting for 15 yrs now. Broken OP is one thing, sure ill agree. I never played vanguard past like lv 20 so IDK, but this whole "balance and PVE MMO" is just a dumb idea in general. First they need to work on "Is it fun to play xxx class" then go from there. Because I can tell you a fully homogenized mmo, say, like WOW became, after 1.12 is just bland and stale.

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Because everyone is a meta chaser now, or because hard content caps how many people you can bring

In EQ1, bringing sub-optimal classes on raids was no big deal because you could have like 80 people just zerging

But when you are player capped, one DPS class that does 1/3rd the DPS of another class is a liability. You could be the most skilled player in the world, but if the class is hardcode gimped, you can only elevate it so far and people question why the class exists. I firmly believe you should be able to pick any class and be perfectly viable. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t have niche roles, but that should just be a smaller subset of balance and still feel rewarding to play

I don't disagree with anything you're saying. I believe the challenge in class balance only matters when MMOs become designed around soloing because at that point, every class needs to be able to a) tank/kite, b) DPS, and c) heal. In some way, shape or form, every class basically needs ways to do all of the above.

It's only those MMOs that are designed around grouping and player interdependence that developers can design classes for different roles as you described. Sure, bring the glass cannon wizard to boost DPS but make sure you've got other, tankier types to heal and protect them. Shamans and druids are both known for decent healing effectiveness that are achieved in different ways than say, clerics, but both also bring a ton of utility as well that make the overall experience for the group even better and more effective. And so on and so forth.

Unfortunately, one of the main problems with the latter design is that it requires more of a time commitment by the player, something that today's typical instant-gratification gamer just isn't interested in. That's not a knock. It's just a reality. Even for myself, as much as I'd love a true spiritual successor to my first love in EQ, I also fully acknowledge that I just don't have the patience for that shit as I once had, although that typically has more to do with the people playing these days than it does with the game itself.

This is a big reason why I think developers of these types of games are basically in an impossible situation. I'll be very curious to see how AoC will handle it.

WoW’s balance was a function of player limits. Like bringing a King’s buff paladin. That paladin was suboptimal and literally all they brought to the table was a raid buff. So another player lost a slot to a mandatory buff bot.

Or take class stacking. Remember those raids where they would just stack 15 rogues or whatever because the DPS gains blew all other classes out of the water?

I am all for utility classes (hell, I played an engineer warlock in WoW, the mmo equivalent of a Swiss Army knife). But at a certain point you want to avoid “we need X or this shit isn’t getting beat”

Not saying VG was perfect but 20 years of MMO's and no game had a more unique feel to each and every class. Almost all of them brought different but powerful things to the table while really maintaining good balance in different areas without the horrible spread sheet design mentioned above.

Granted they nerfed a few of the awesome things but I'll always look at my main (sorc) as the best class i've ever player. Chaos volley was a true art form that required coordinated efforts from your team to reach top performance but it was so rewarding. (Those who didn't play basically every time you cast the spell it increased in damage and damage done to you and you 100% could one shot yourself...no 1hp limit etc. Ramping up CV and having shaman rotations w/ runic shield (?) and other divine/immunity options to eek out those super bomb nukes to win a fight were just so satisfying. No afk healing in VG when one spell took a sorc from 100% to 5% health haha.

Blood mage was another top end design that just felt so good. Each healer had pro's and con's but felt so unique and nice areas. I 2boxed a blood mage with my sorc and by far and large the funnest MMO experience I've had. Classes weren't a mass APM contest but had alot of strategy to them and oh shit clicks could spell disaster as most classes had branching mechanics that rewarded quick strategical play but not fully focused on pounding 22 hot keys.

World and classes of VG were second to none, just very sad it had such a rocky start and had the technical issues that it did. Its the last MMO i've played that didn't feel on rails or "spread sheet" balanced. Also the only game faction grinding was so critical but didn't seem like a chore and integrated so well into the massive areas.

Also while it sucked, man kiting end mass end game grind (wasn't a fan too much of the sheer craziness) as a sorc was one of those things that there was such a thin line between perfection and dying in 0.01 seconds. Was a game within itself, the pantheon challenges and all that felt so epic and just...'real" content? God I only AoC can capture that authentic and real feeling opposed to the same garbage/rail shit with a pretty wrapper we keep getting. Of any old MMO that i think taking 80% of the old game and just updating it for a 2022 game I think VG would age so well for those of us that are older gamers.

Neranja said:

It's only a challenge when you pair these two things together:

• limits in player count (e.g. group, raid, instance limits)
• dps checks and enrage timers

For example, in WoW dps checks and enrage timers really came up with Burning Crusade. Before that you just could bring more healers or tanks (e.g. Vaelsastrasz). 40 man raids in WoW Classic were a social experience, the 25 man versions were tuned for performance.

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The performance of the game has been shit for fucking ever. Though I have to give it to the original devs for designing the foundation to such a long standing engine.

turbo said:

Not saying VG was perfect but 20 years of MMO's and no game had a more unique feel to each and every class. Almost all of them brought different but powerful things to the table while really maintaining good balance in different areas without the horrible spread sheet design mentioned above.

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Yeah, Vanguard had many flaws, but class design was not one of them.

Cybsled said:

The only people against any instanced pve content were ebayers and Uber guilds that wanted to control everything.

As for heavy group required, you need a balance. Too much and people quit from frustration because they can’t make any progress without a group and getting groups is hard. Too little and people feel disconnected from the Playerbase

I quit FF11 years back because my friends outleveled me since I was at work more, then it took me an hour as a DPS to find a shit tier group that took 15 minutes to kill a crab as part of an xp grind group, if I log in to play, I want to play, not sit in the virtual equivalent of a DMV line

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Actually I didn't care for instancing for a few reason. There was a lack of danger. Lack of needing to find a safe area to rest. The need to keep moving. Needing to rely on others outside your group.

The drawbacks were what you stated, and then some.

IF I had to choose instanced vs non instanced, I would choose non instanced ever so slightly.

I would argue that non-instanced was less dangerous in highly camped areas, like Sebilis or Lower Guk. It was so fucking camped that you could typically never see a single mob in most areas. The most "danger" was someone training stuff on you. Plus in EQ1, most of the danger was losing a corpse, but even over time that got diluted so long as you could find a friendly necromancer to summon your corpse.