Why all the nerd rage against Vanguard

Ham n Cheese said:

Few things, the "penalty" in death is having to retrieve your corpse, lost durability from the death and experience. I don"t know another game that uses all 3, and I would say if your group couldn"t do an area with their gear on that they"ll be summoning to the altar for brutal exp loss.

Click to expand...

I"m never naked after a death. Binding, either your main gear or an alternate set, sort of solves that problem. I don"t find 7% exp loss brutal though. But I"d guess that 95% of all of my deaths are CR"d so it doesn"t come up much. I find 1% losses easy to ingnore.

You must be a crafter or whoring yourself out for cash. If I didn"t sell my old gear after I was done with it I"d be near broke after buy abilities. Let"s say you have to summon one corpse a day on average (just learning new dungeons, or raids, or for whatever reason), at the end of two weeks that"s a whole level you lost out on; if those were your only deaths. I don"t really have a complaint about the death system outside of all 3 being in the game, repairing is an annoying piece of shit in everygame and retrieving a corpse is just another timesink.

No I find crafting pretty boring in every game I play, including VG from what I"ve seen of it. I typically bind green (common) gear which you can get pretty cheap unless you are way above the level curve. Of course quest rewards are always soulbound so I get to keep a few blue items whether I like it or not.

I don"t mind repair costs in general but they are too high.

Maxxius said:

I was content to never address this topic again until I read your wall of spin. Now I understand. Despite the fact that WOW sold MILLIONS of copies of TBC in its first month, the reason why VG has sold only a paltry 100kish is because of the message! No more cherrypicked screenshots. No more handpicked released little blogs. No more NDA. People see exactly what they are getting. End result, the wrong message.

You have to be kidding me.

We warned you that the huge size of the world will make traveling a bitch and hence grouping impossible, but you didn"t care. We warned you that people just aren"t interested in games with death penalties anymore, but you didn"t care. We warned you that the unibody models look dumb and hence less appealing to potential subscribers, but you didn"t care. We warned you that steep leveling curves will only turn off alot of people, but you didn"t care. We warned you not to launch the game so near WOW"s TBC launch, but you didn"t care. We warned you that the casual player makes up for the large playing force, not the so called "hardcore" and hence your subscriptions will suck if you don"t cater to them, but you didn"t care. Until now.

Spin is irrelevant since the proof is in the subscriptions. Your outdated, dinosaur laid an egg, not because the wrong message is out there, but because the right message is.

You have a niche game now and nothing more. Any businessman would tell you your only real shot of grabbing a large audience is in the beginning, wow em now not later (pun intended). Your game hasn"t and that is it. At best you can continue to keep it as a niche game with possible small yet steady increases, but the window of opportunity is passing you by. And it will pass you by because you are too dam stubborn to listen to the market.

Sorry Brad, the reason is not the wrong message the reason is the product.

Click to expand...

I actually think Brad made an excellent job in the game design area.
People like you don"t like it, because it"s not your genre, I don"t like games with insta-travels and no death penalty, for example.
This game has been designed more for people like me than people like you.

The real problem is that people like me, cannot play it either, because it s bugged, bad performing and the client (and servers) keep crashing (oh and worse in-game customer service ever).
I really like the game, I am having lots of fun when I don"t crash.
Unfortunately that happens too often, and I am seriously thinking to give up.
I am playing still hoping that from tomorrow I won"t crash not a single time, but unfortunately that doesn"t happens and I don"t see any improvement after patches.
This issue will break the game. Fix IT.

So it has nothing to do with the game design, what you don"t like, someone will, as simple as that.
The common disaster factor though, is the awful stability and performance of the game.

If this is not sorted a.s.a.p. I predict that Vanguard will drop to 50K subscribers very soon, which is a shame, since the game is good and deserve much more credit than all this shit is taking at the moment.

stevemcqueen said:

So it has nothing to do with the game design, what you don"t like, someone will, as simple as that.
The common disaster factor though, is the awful stability and performance of the game.

Click to expand...

It"s really a double-edged sword. Sure there are people who like every design of the game, but how many? My guess is it"s not a lot. To be honest, I don"t have a problem with many of the philosophies of the game, it"s the poor implementation. Big world is great, long travel at certain points is fine. Running for 1-2 hours every day or so is not. Challenge and death is great! Losing exp, time, and money all at once is not.

Then on top of the game"s focus you have the issues you describe. So you take a niche market and give them a broken game that performs terribly and you are suddenly left with a niche of a niche.. and that doesn"t equal success for a huge budget production.

Can it be fixed? Possibly, if the powers that be wake up and smell the coffee. Prioritize what needs to be done to make the game work and then work on making what works more fun and accessible. Or you can just continue to gut classes completely, implement broken high level zones with no geometry and then give everyone double exp so they get there faster.

There is never going to be a game where ALL of the design decisions made will appease everyone. Its more of "How much of the dumb decisions can I live with and still play and have fun."

Twobit Whore said:

It"s really a double-edged sword. Sure there are people who like every design of the game, but how many? My guess is it"s not a lot. To be honest, I don"t have a problem with many of the philosophies of the game, it"s the poor implementation. Big world is great, long travel at certain points is fine. Running for 1-2 hours every day or so is not. Challenge and death is great! Losing exp, time, and money all at once is not.

Click to expand...

Problem is not losing everything, the idea is that you should no die.
The less you die, the less you loose, the more you gain, the better your character will progress and have an edge on others.
That"s the challenge for me.

Dieing and just releasing without losing anything doesn"t give me an edge on people who dies 50 times more than me, either because they are careless or just useless.
That would be a game without challenge, because everyone would be on the same level regardless of their quality as players.

I don"t like Death penalty because I am a masochist who like to die a lot and loose everything.
On the contrary I am confident that I am a good player, and I don"t plan too die too often.
That"s the point.

Now the big issue is do I like to die because the game suddenly crash and leave my corpse in an unaccesseable area or even worse stuck in a place where you cannot recover it?
Do I like to loose contact with a group which took me 1 hour to find?
Fuck no. Of course I don"t.
And that"s the issue, no matter how good the game design is, the crippling point is the stability (or lack of) of Vanguard.

Once all those issues will be sorted (if) we can talk about what works and what doesn"t in the game.
But at the moment any other discussion on design issues are totally redundant, because no one can play this game properly to judge if it"s good enough.

Mithrull said:

Your statement wasn"t that he should have expected some impact from releasing near TBC but rather that as of this date, he didn"t recognize its impact. Sounds like he does though, no?

Click to expand...

Are you that obtuse? My statement was quite clear. We told him not to launch when he did BECAUSE of the impact tbc would have. Apparently he recognizes the adverse impact NOW.

Maxxius said:

Are you that obtuse? My statement was quite clear. We told him not to launch when he did BECAUSE of the impact tbc would have. Apparently he recognizes the adverse impact NOW.

Click to expand...

Or maybe, just maybe, there were other factors involved int he decision.

stevemcqueen said:

. . .


So it has nothing to do with the game design, what you don"t like, someone will, as simple as that. . . .

Click to expand...

That is true. So millions like what I like and a 100kish like what you like. Fine. No issue there. But when Brad starts whining about how the wrong message is keeping his game at low numbers, I can"t help but roll my eyes.

Daelos said:

Or maybe, just maybe, there were other factors involved int he decision.

Click to expand...

Then let him be candid and come out and say SOE made him do it. Because whoever made the decision should be fired in all honesty.

Maxxius said:

That is true. So millions like what I like and a 100kish like what you like. Fine. No issue there.

Click to expand...

Yes the millions like you can play WoW, GW, EQ2, CoH and a million more other games.
Do you want to add Vanguard to this list? For what reason?
They are releasing Lotro shortly and War in few months so surely this millions of people are not starved of good games. I am.
Because there is not other game around, which comes close to what I like.
Only because Britney Spears sell millions of records, shall we all listen to "ops I did it again?" forever?
Or maybe records labels should never had given Metallica a record deal because the majority of people liked Bee Jees?
C"mon there is a market for everything, and you can make money out of everything as long you are clever or bold enough to give it a try.

The issue is that there is a part of the market (call it niche if you like) which is not covered because everyone is trying to de-trone WoW and make billions of easy bucks.
In fact it will make more commercial sense for Vanguard to be the only game to cater for this "niche" of players, because you ll have the monopoly of it.

And we are not talking about 100K.
There are tens of millions of players worldwide, even if the total of this niche is 10% surely the total amount of potential (not actual) customers can approach the million mark if not more.
There are lots of players like me who are playing games they don"t fully enjoy just for desperation.
I have 3 lvl 60 in WoW and 2 lvl 70 in EQ2, I gave my money to Blizzard and SoE, but that doesn"t mean I was entirely happy with their products.
If Vanguard gets it right, Sigil will get my money for the next 10 years.

On the other hand if they start to nerf Vanguard, just to make it more accessible to people like you, they will be screwd by WoW, War and AoC.
Do you realise that if this game goes your way, we will end up with EQ2 with housing?
That"s as simple as that.

At the moment this game tries to make everyone happy, in fact it is disappointing everyone.
Sigil need to choose which market they want to cater for, before everyone lose the little patience left.
That"s the real issue.

stevemcqueen said:

Yes the millions like you can play WoW, GW, EQ2, CoH and a million more other games.
Do you want to add Vanguard to this list? For what reason?
They are releasing Lotro shortly and War in few months so surely this millions of people are not starved of good games. I am.
Because there is not other game around, which comes close to what I like.
Only because Britney Spears sell millions of records, shall we all listen to "ops I did it again?" forever?
Or maybe records labels should never had given Metallica a record deal because the majority of people liked Bee Jees?
C"mon there is a market for everything, and you can make money out of everything as long you are clever or bold enough to give it a try.

The issue is that there is a part of the market (call it niche if you like) which is not covered because everyone is trying to de-trone WoW and make billions of easy bucks.
In fact it will make more commercial sense for Vanguard to be the only game to cater for this "niche" of players, because you ll have the monopoly of it.

And we are not talking about 100K.
There are tens of millions of players worldwide, even if the total of this niche is 10% surely the total amount of potential (not actual) customers can approach the million mark if not more.
There are lots of players like me who are playing games they don"t fully enjoy just for desperation.
I have 3 lvl 60 in WoW and 2 lvl 70 in EQ2, I gave my money to Blizzard and SoE, but that doesn"t mean I was entirely happy with their products.
If Vanguard gets it right, Sigil will get my money for the next 10 years.

On the other hand if they start to nerf Vanguard, just to make it more accessible to people like you, they will be screwd by WoW, War and AoC.
Do you realise that if this game goes your way, we will end up with EQ2 with housing?
That"s as simple as that.

At the moment this game tries to make everyone happy, in fact it is disappointing everyone.
Sigil need to choose which market they want to cater for.
That"s the real issue.

Click to expand...

Steve:

Great post and I agree with everything you said. Your niche deserves a good game and I really wish Vanguard was it. Here is hoping the kinks can be ironed out and it can continue to improve.

However, I think the scoffing that is happening right now is because Brad comes in here and actually has the gall to claim that his game is casual friendly and that he thinks the low subs (in comparison to industry standards) are because the wrong message got out.

I have never tried Vanguard, nor will I. I can tell it is not for me. However, I have seen dozens of people who have played claim that it is not casual friendly. So its puzzling where Brad is coming from saying that it is.

Also, Sigil seems to have designed a good niche game (albeit with bugs), but their budget was pretty big. I think that SOE has set subscription goals for this game that are a lot higher than 125k. So Brad is set with the task of increasing subs... thus he is preaching to the casual base in hopes he can win some. I don"t see it happening because there is no basis behind the game being friendly to casuals.

Druixx said:

Steve:

Great post and I agree with everything you said. Your niche deserves a good game and I really wish Vanguard was it. Here is hoping the kinks can be ironed out and it can continue to improve.

However, I think the scoffing that is happening right now is because Brad comes in here and actually has the gall to claim that his game is casual friendly and that he thinks the low subs (in comparison to industry standards) are because the wrong message got out.

I have never tried Vanguard, nor will I. I can tell it is not for me. However, I have seen dozens of people who have played claim that it is not casual friendly. So its puzzling where Brad is coming from saying that it is.

Also, Sigil seems to have designed a good niche game (albeit with bugs), but their budget was pretty big. I think that SOE has set subscription goals for this game that are a lot higher than 125k. So Brad is set with the task of increasing subs... thus he is preaching to the casual base in hopes he can win some. I don"t see it happening because there is no basis behind the game being friendly to casuals.

Click to expand...

That all depends what you mean by casual. If this means Wow type easymode, never die and be lv 70 in a month, then no. But im not a hardcore person myself and im finding the game qute playable and enjoyable. Maybe I wont be lv 50 anytime soom, but that does not really mattrer to me.

Define what casual friendly is to you. Maybe im missing something. Because I can easily log into this game for 2 hours a night and have fun, either solo or in a group.

Maxxius said:

Are you that obtuse? My statement was quite clear. We told him not to launch when he did BECAUSE of the impact tbc would have. Apparently he recognizes the adverse impact NOW.

Click to expand...

...

Now I understand. Despite the fact that WOW sold MILLIONS of copies of TBC in its first month, the reason why VG has sold only a paltry 100kish is because of the message!

Click to expand...

This is clear sarcasm which implies that Brad ignores the effect of the TBC launch and ascribes everything to an erroneous message. I think what happened is that you likely missed part of his wall of text, and now would like to make it appear as though you were saying something else which at least represents a realization that your sarcasm was off base. Repeating earlier predictions is both irrelevant to the above implication and rather irrelevant to their decision to launch anyway (naive to think that any game will push back its launch date if it has indeed run into financial problems because of some other game"s launch date).

Mkopec1 said:

That all depends what you mean by casual. If this means Wow type easymode, never die and be lv 70 in a month, then no. But im not a hardcore person myself and im finding the game qute playable and enjoyable. Maybe I wont be lv 50 anytime soom, but that does not really mattrer to me.

Define what casual friendly is to you. Maybe im missing something. Because I can easily log into this game for 2 hours a night and have fun, either solo or in a group.

Click to expand...

Come on man, you know people want max level as fast as they can, so they can get to raiding. They don"t care to explore the game and try out the lower level dungeons.

I was as hardcore as it gets in EQ. I played tons and tons of hours. With VG, i am trying out just about every Dungeon we come across thats my level. I am having fun with it. I don"t play 10 hours a day anymore. I play for a few hours at night, and i am level 31, actually close to 32. Just to let ya know, you can play it casually and still level at a decent rate. Well, til i get to raiding, then i will raid fairly hardcore. I just wont play half the day away.

Mkopec1 said:

That all depends what you mean by casual. If this means Wow type easymode, never die and be lv 70 in a month, then no. But im not a hardcore person myself and im finding the game qute playable and enjoyable. Maybe I wont be lv 50 anytime soom, but that does not really mattrer to me.

Define what casual friendly is to you. Maybe im missing something. Because I can easily log into this game for 2 hours a night and have fun, either solo or in a group.

Click to expand...

Like I said, I haven"t played it so I don"t know. I am only going off the opinions of most others on this board.

I won"t even attempt to put a definition to the term casual. I suspect there are "casual" players that can handle 3 death penalties, steep levelling curves, and bug problems. I don"t count myself among them, but more power to you.

But for Brad to think that he has legitimately catered to the casual audience seems to be misguided.

Druixx said:

Steve:

However, I think the scoffing that is happening right now is because Brad comes in here and actually has the gall to claim that his game is casual friendly and that he thinks the low subs (in comparison to industry standards) are because the wrong message got out.

Click to expand...

I agree with you mate, I am fully aware of that, in fact read my previous post and you will see that Brad gets lots of well deserved beating from me, exactly for this reason.


I like this game and I thinks Brad should stop spinning and keep working to fix the frikking memory leaks which are driving me nuts, before accusing us to scare potential customers away.
The game itself can do that pretty easily, no need for our help............

stevemcqueen said:

Yes the millions like you can play WoW, GW, EQ2, CoH and a million more other games.
Do you want to add Vanguard to this list? For what reason?

Click to expand...

No, but Brad sure as hell does. Why? Because millions of people paying to play your game is better than a group of 100k people who will NEVER be happy.

Just my opinion.