Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

Arden said:

Let's be honest, there was more wrong with VG than just performance issues

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Like what? the combat was fine. The raids were fine, The layout of the map was fine. The performance was ass. The chunking thing sucked. The only thing i could say i hate, was fucking quest hubs, i fucking hate quest hubs. I played the living fuck out of it for 2 years. I quite enjoyed it until the 55 patch despite it running like ass.

Combat was pretty clunky. The combat mechanics were good but the engine was very sluggish. Try playing an asian mmo (or even wow) and you'll see what fluid combat feels like. I mean right now I am playing BDO (top tier combat system) and SWL (dogshit combat system), and VG combat is definitely on the sluggish SWL side of things by comparison.

Top tier isn't how I'd describe black desert. Spastic? Animu?

Opinions will be opinions.

Vanguard didn't have terrible feeling combat (a far cry from LOTR or Wildstar's terrible feel) but it released literally unfinished. And by unfinished, I mean there was a ton of just empty open areas or areas with no quests or areas without monster drops. If you got to 40+ in the first couple of months you were basically waiting for content to come out. This is similar to how Silithus in WoW released completely unitemized. Except that it wasn't just one zone; it was everything past the mid 30s. They fixed this in successive patches, and I did a few of the 40+ dungeons when they got implemented, but that was the real problem with Vanguard outside of its engine issues.

People will put up with load times between areas. It was all the completely unfinished shit and the complete lack of 40+ content for awhile that sank Vanguard's boat. The chunking time shit just kept people away after they quit from lack of "game" past 40.

If people had been able to do Tsang's Tomb quality content from 1-40 and then it dipped a little? Totally forgivable. But the vast majority of zones outside of Tsang's and Trengal (I'm mis-remembering that ruin's name) keep had a very plasticy/generic feel,, and the dungeons were lackluster on a good day. Here's looking at you whatever the "Gray" dungeon was when they finally added 40+ stuff and of course Dargun's for being the worst optimized in terms of power/levels out of any dungeon I have run across.

What killed it for me was PvP brokenness. Most specifically being 1 shot (by druids mostly), and bard AE song making you lose target on someone even if you had see invis. So to fight anyone who had a bard in group you had to write a target macro targetting their name and mash it in combat since every 1 second the invis song would pulse and you'd lose target.

Vanguard's dungeons were pretty awesome imo.

Dargun's Tomb had content from 30-45 iirc. Lizards first floor, giants down below, and undead dwarves at the bottom w/an epic questline rewarding a red weapon.

Rahz Inkur is one of my favorite dungeons of all-time.

APW (the raid dungeon) was lots of fun. Was able to mess around in Stiirhad before sunset. That place would have been leet if it was tuned and properly itemized (Syranoth had loot but nothing else).

Really looking forward to the Emu and see what they do with all he unused areas. The community was always top notch.

What's the over under on this having the same itemization that has plagued MMO's since after EQ1? Hey look, I got another Dagger of the Owl, but it's 5 levels higher and +1 better. I miss the way EQ did items, I feel like it was such a great way to add character and meaningfulness to the game, but even they have gone back and just added in the same thing. I'd be interested in seeing a way to develop weapons and armor through crafting improvements/sockets/reforging, so that if you like something, or if you've poured you heart and soul into getting something epic, you don't have to turn around and ditch it the second a new xpac drops.

sakkath said:

What killed it for me was PvP brokenness. Most specifically being 1 shot (by druids mostly), and bard AE song making you lose target on someone even if you had see invis. So to fight anyone who had a bard in group you had to write a target macro targetting their name and mash it in combat since every 1 second the invis song would pulse and you'd lose target.

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Heard the infamy system was fun tho

Utnayan said:

Now, what's new with this thing? I check in once every couple months to see if there is anything new, and I am not seeing much. And usually when the thread inevitably turns back to Vanguard or EQ itemization debate (Which also sucks) there isn't anything new and it's circle jerk time again for a few months.

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Oh c'mon if you didn't enjoy a good circle jerk from time to time you wouldn't post here

Oic that's pretty gay doing that lol

Locnar said:

Not really, people "banked" their infamy on mules. Have a very good few weeks and build up a ton of infamy, then have your alt kill you to steal it all and keep it safe.

All these games need a team of scumbags to find all the loopholes pre release and get them fixed. People dont "play as intended" much anymore. Except me, forever white knight.

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Anymore? Half the shitty systems we get in games are because developers have learned nobody will "play as intended" unless they are actually forced to.

People have never played as intended and never will. Finding a competitive edge is 98% of the fun in video games.

sakkath said:

Combat was pretty clunky. The combat mechanics were good but the engine was very sluggish. Try playing an asian mmo (or even wow) and you'll see what fluid combat feels like. I mean right now I am playing BDO (top tier combat system) and SWL (dogshit combat system), and VG combat is definitely on the sluggish SWL side of things by comparison.

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Black Desert is the best MMO that I can't recommend to anybody. It's p2w if you want to compete at a high level and it runs like dogshit, but the game is amazing. I've never actually enjoyed the combat gameplay of MMOs, they've been boring and stagnant since like 2006 and even then they didn't change much.

Combat style is definitely an aspect of a new MMO that I'm torn on. I still enjoy traditional target, auto attack, click/key abilities/spells drudgery, but BDO definitely showed me I enjoy the hell out of an action based style. More than anything I'd love a game that was actually focused solely around PVE content. I rarely enjoy PVP in most MMO's, even those that are focused almost exclusively on PVP. When PVP is good though, I just wish it wasn't so rare, at least for my tastes.

Utnayan said:

Vanguard sucked, pure and simple. If it hadn't sucked, it wouldn't be shut down with no ability to play. It sucked in beta, it sucked at launch, it sucked post launch. It was an awful game with one or two pockets of mediocre at best world building and side activities.

It sucked. Period. It will continue to suck, and is still sucking some power off some server somewhere and it isn't even running on said server just installed on said server.

This isn't a point for debate. It was an awful game, horribly mismanaged, leave it at that.

Now, what's new with this thing? I check in once every couple months to see if there is anything new, and I am not seeing much. And usually when the thread inevitably turns back to Vanguard or EQ itemization debate (Which also sucks) there isn't anything new and it's circle jerk time again for a few months.

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I can't argue against that at all, you are absolutely correct. I still liked the game in spite of all that, I wouldn't mind seeing it's few good parts get put to use in a new game, I could say that about several MMO's. I only bring up EQ itemization because it is one of the few examples I've personally experienced that is sort of close to what I would like to see. To be frank, I can't really articulate what I would like to see, nor do I think it would be anything that hasn't been hashed out on here at some point. I definitely don't want Vanguard or Everquest again. What I really want is for a game to come out, function properly (ie launch with no large glaring gameplay or performance issues), be legitimately good... for a long time not just the first 20 to 40 hours, and not be a giant pay to win mess. So, nothing we will see any time soon.

Groove said:

Vanguard's dungeons were pretty awesome imo.

Dargun's Tomb had content from 30-45 iirc. Lizards first floor, giants down below, and undead dwarves at the bottom w/an epic questline rewarding a red weapon.

Rahz Inkur is one of my favorite dungeons of all-time.

APW (the raid dungeon) was lots of fun. Was able to mess around in Stiirhad before sunset. That place would have been leet if it was tuned and properly itemized (Syranoth had loot but nothing else).

Really looking forward to the Emu and see what they do with all he unused areas. The community was always top notch.

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Biggest problem with Vanguards dungeons and what I think you'll see here is the lack of character. EQ dungeons were well planned out and had rooms that were themed with creatures that went well in them. Vanguard dungeons were so very generic and you'd come across a named dude that looked like base pop sitting in a hallway that looked like every other hallway. How many "rooms" or "camps" can you rattle off from EQ. Compare that to Vanguard.

I enjoyed VG's combat/classes though. The open world ended up being pretty linear for level progression because they never had the time to really fill it out. Chunking/Performance killed it for me at launch. I did come back a year later and play it to 50 though.

xzi said:

Black Desert is the best MMO that I can't recommend to anybody. It's p2w if you want to compete at a high level and it runs like dogshit, but the game is amazing. I've never actually enjoyed the combat gameplay of MMOs, they've been boring and stagnant since like 2006 and even then they didn't change much.

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BDO is fun for a single play through. Some really amazing looking shit in that game that can peak your interest. I dont know why it geeked me out so much, but when I was farming a Treant Belt and then all of a sudden a fucking sky scraper Treant just walks past me.. like .. I got all starry eyed. Pointless af, but the shit is just cool. The lore behind each and every POI in the game is cool and you can learn more about it just from advancing in that stupid mini game (not a fan of that btw).

The combat is ridiculously good, as well. At 56 I was so determined to get that damn belt, that I was farming the elite treants in the mountains almost perfectly. One wrong move, and it was game over. It only took a short while for me to get the belt from those Treants, so it was well worth playing my best.

If I could play a version of BDO with PVE in mind, with raid mobs that had mechanics that were actually avoidable, the mini game subbed out for Vanguards card game, gear drops that are similar to EverQuest and no cash shop, they'd have at minimum a 6 month sub out of me.

Vanguard had some overwhelming charm to it, thats about it. I could only make it to the 20's before just being fed up with the bugs, chunking, lack of population, lack of content etc. I feel like you guys that played it to its end game are just masochistic or something.