Why all the nerd rage against Vanguard
- Thread starter Shonuff
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I agree. During the flying mount event in beta, I was surprised at just how much of the world was still locked off. I couldn"t even fly across Kojan because of locked islands, and there were plenty of areas that Icouldfly over that had no mobs whatsoever. Granted, that doesn"t mean there isn"t content in the finished areas, but if they spent all this time building this huge world and can"t even finish it all, it makes me wonder how much more fleshed out the game would be if they decided to size down on the scope of the world, and instead made sure there was plenty of content for all levels. Did they really need 19 races and 3 huge continents out of the gate?Dashal said:
But you see genius, there is more to a game than just raw content. Sure, Sigil could make a huge world and overlay a 10x10 grid and drop a mob at every intersection. Content!Mkopec1 said:
If your content is buggy, incomplete, unitemized, or just plan not there, then something is wrong. Even still, there is more than just content that must be allocated for. Something as simple as fishing? Cooking? Brewing? Alchemy? How do you have a game that relies on the player consuming food/drink and NOT have a method for them to craft it? Just inexcusable imo. Yeah, you can say something witty like "omgz dere iz no fud r dreenk! vg iz teh sux", but sadly, that would be about right.
First gen games, hell negative one gen games had it. Their precious predecessor, EQ, had it. MUDS had it. UO had it. Every single game I can think of barring DDO had first aid, fishing, cooking, or brewing, if not all of the above plus more!
Plenty of other things that go into making a complete package that other games included for less, in shorter time.
well even now WoW still has several zones that are part of the original land masses locked off
I don"t have problems with locked off chunks of land, but it does bug me that they don"t have more quest hubs and itemized bosses/dungeons in place
I don"t have problems with locked off chunks of land, but it does bug me that they don"t have more quest hubs and itemized bosses/dungeons in place
This post is great.Mkopec1 said:
LISTEN ASSHOLES, THEY HAVE TONS OF CONTENT! NOW I HAVEN"TSEENANY OF IT... BUT I"M SURE IT"S THERE!
PS. THIS GAME IS A BUGGY SHITHEAP.
With people like this on your side, you guys don"t really need Ut, et al.
Yeah yeah, we"ve heard it all before. You"re just a Vanguard hater. There"s plenty of content no one"s seen yet. Just yesterday I found this wandering ogre boss on one of the Kojan islands. (and people say Vanguard"s model work sucks...I nearly wet myself with fear)xmod2 said:
Read it again. He didn"t say he hasn"t seen any, he said that even a level 40 character has probably only seen 1/3 of it.xmod2 said:
From my experiences, there is a ton of content in all the level ranges (except 40+, which we all know they are working on). Not only that, but I find the content to be pretty good and I"ve rarely seen any bugged quest lines on Thestra. The nice thing, too, is the way their named spawn works. They still have place holders, but the placeholders despawn after a set amount of time and respawn with a chance to have the named up. Once the named it up, he stays up until being killed.
It might be just me, but I"m taking the game for what it"s worth and I"m not spending too much time getting upset about shit like "Brad promised us this" or "zomg, I fell through the world". And guess what? I"m having a really good time.
You"re honestly making the fact that Vanguard doesn"t have fucking COOKING into a major issue?Twobit Whore said:
The flames write themselves, I"m not even going to bother.
The ScaryBritney thing made me laugh my ass off though. What happened to her
Steroids.Duppin said:
HULK SMASH!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay, you better be gay, dude. (Seeing as she looks something like a mid 20s biker guy wearing lipstick)Eternal said:
If not, whaaaaaaa???
No, please bother. If you can make a logical argument why a MMORPGshould have food/drink be an integral part of your playing experience without any method of creating that food yourself, I am all ears.Duppin said:
Of course that is just one of many things I listed, and there are plenty more I could name. It"s more fun to pick a single word though and go from there.
Really though, it"s all about attention to detail. Something Sigil should have done more of from the beginning.
Jait
Molten Core Raider
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I don"t bother posting about Vanguard, think I have 5-6 posts total on the subject, so I"ll chime in for my token post a month. At this point you"re all basically funding a charity. It"s a terrible message to send to the industry:
Feel free to release a totally unfinished project, we"ll still buy it!
Derek Smart would be proud of you. He even used the *exact* same excuses.... Of course, if you"re the die-hard fanbois that thinks McQuaid is the second coming...more power to you. I can understand it, and good for you for supporting his vision. But if you"re a gamer that tries to look impartially, I have 0 sympathy. Because there"s no way to look at this game from all aspects and not include the words "dismal failure" in there somewhere.
I think Twobit Whore is a tramp too, but she raises a perfectly valid point. And it"s not the players or the posters sticking their foot in their mouth. It"s Mr. "My game is 3rd Gen, and yours isn"t. Neener Neener". So again, feel free to support him if you"re an apostle, or even if you have some faith this game will pan out. But it"s not exactly like this game was released yesterday, and it"s still at least a year from being an "acceptable" game to the general MMO community.
I wish most MMOs the best of luck. Any improvement is a bonus for the entire genre. But this is a step backwards....and sideways now that I think of it.
Feel free to release a totally unfinished project, we"ll still buy it!
Derek Smart would be proud of you. He even used the *exact* same excuses.... Of course, if you"re the die-hard fanbois that thinks McQuaid is the second coming...more power to you. I can understand it, and good for you for supporting his vision. But if you"re a gamer that tries to look impartially, I have 0 sympathy. Because there"s no way to look at this game from all aspects and not include the words "dismal failure" in there somewhere.
I think Twobit Whore is a tramp too, but she raises a perfectly valid point. And it"s not the players or the posters sticking their foot in their mouth. It"s Mr. "My game is 3rd Gen, and yours isn"t. Neener Neener". So again, feel free to support him if you"re an apostle, or even if you have some faith this game will pan out. But it"s not exactly like this game was released yesterday, and it"s still at least a year from being an "acceptable" game to the general MMO community.
I wish most MMOs the best of luck. Any improvement is a bonus for the entire genre. But this is a step backwards....and sideways now that I think of it.
I played from early 2nd phase beta(first wave of public invites to my knowledge) and as I cant recall anything bad I also cant say putting up with blizzards Circle of Imbalance all this time is good either.Drtyrm said:
They couldnt balance RoC, they couldnt balance TFT, and they for sure wont bring WoW/TBC to any balance level. But hey you can always reflect on Starcraft.
Hahaha. Thank you for taking the time to type up that inane response. You must fall under the "nerd rage" category for the thread"s title.rinthea said:
These posts always confuse me what MMO had a flawless release with plenty of content to eat up?Jait said:
If you haven"t picked up on the concept of a release being perhaps not flawless but still acceptable, I don"t know what to tell you.
DAoC was acceptable at launch but not great. Servers were stable and basic game features were in although occasionally buggy. Tradeskills were there but needed fleshing out. Realms ranged from not very complete to complete enough that only the cutting edge people will be seriously annoyed. You know, it wasn"t bad and stuff.
AO launched with a thud and that"s being generous. Servers were shit and basic game features were indecipherable because you couldn"t log-in and stay connected for consecutive minutes. The game was frankly a train-wreck for a million reasons but it struggled through anyhow. If it weren"t for the pretty cool customization stuff and a fresh feel, it probably would have never recovered. Hell, it probably never really did recover.
So, when people say a launch was bullshit they probably mean it wasn"t as good as some and yet was better than others. And when people bitch about a totally unfinished product, my guess is that they think it"s a totally unfinished piece of crap. You can disagree of course but I can"t really see claiming that this isn"t a potentially legitmate complaint.
DAoC was acceptable at launch but not great. Servers were stable and basic game features were in although occasionally buggy. Tradeskills were there but needed fleshing out. Realms ranged from not very complete to complete enough that only the cutting edge people will be seriously annoyed. You know, it wasn"t bad and stuff.
AO launched with a thud and that"s being generous. Servers were shit and basic game features were indecipherable because you couldn"t log-in and stay connected for consecutive minutes. The game was frankly a train-wreck for a million reasons but it struggled through anyhow. If it weren"t for the pretty cool customization stuff and a fresh feel, it probably would have never recovered. Hell, it probably never really did recover.
So, when people say a launch was bullshit they probably mean it wasn"t as good as some and yet was better than others. And when people bitch about a totally unfinished product, my guess is that they think it"s a totally unfinished piece of crap. You can disagree of course but I can"t really see claiming that this isn"t a potentially legitmate complaint.
I don"t think it sends that message exactly. Without a doubt VG has less subs now and will have less subs in the future due to being released too early. A lot of potential money and popularity is lost forever. I don"t think companies will try to copy that. Some may end up doing it anyways for various reasons, but I doubt that will be their goal.
After this example I agree with you Kolle, people aren"t going to be cut the slack they would have. Publishers wont write the "blank" checks based on a design document, some spin and a name. Games and experiences like VG are all part of the genre growing up to where there are realistic expectations and development cycles. Hopefully it doesn"t grow into the mutant that sports franchises has.
You would think after all the money that has been pissed away over the last 10 years the guys bankrolling this stuff would get wise. Doll out the cash based on milestones. Why sink 30 million into something if you spot a lemon at 5? In this regard I commend MGS.
Oh sorry, you didn"t get the instancing system done last month? Give us a good damned reason or we cut your funding and move onto the next shop that knows how to do it right. Oh the big bad "MMOs are hard to make" fairy stole your lunch money? Tough.
You would think after all the money that has been pissed away over the last 10 years the guys bankrolling this stuff would get wise. Doll out the cash based on milestones. Why sink 30 million into something if you spot a lemon at 5? In this regard I commend MGS.
Oh sorry, you didn"t get the instancing system done last month? Give us a good damned reason or we cut your funding and move onto the next shop that knows how to do it right. Oh the big bad "MMOs are hard to make" fairy stole your lunch money? Tough.
Jovec
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A Vanguard failure could be a blessing in disguise for the MMO industry. Here is how I see it...Jait said:
WoW is obviously the current undisputed king. If you want your game to compete with and beat WoW, you are going to need: 1) A WoW-like budget, 2) A WoW-like development schedule, and because of 1 and 2 and the danger of risking $50+ million dollars, you"ll be forced to have 3) WoW-like game design. There is the possibility that some game will dethrone WoW, but it"s much more likely WoW will peter-out as the playerbase gets bored over the years and yearns for something new.
In other words, to compete with and beat WoW, you have to match or outdo Blizzard at "being Blizzard" and that"s a very hard thing to do. And as their track record shows, they develop fun, polished and (relatively) bug-free games due to quality developers, proper budgets, long dev cycles, and (probably) effective management. Vanguard and EQ2 were caught off guard by WoW"s success, but it will be interesting to see how something like LoTRO does competing with WoW.
To my original point of a Vanguard failure being a blessing for the MMO genre, if Vanguard succeeds (even though I wouldn"t classify them as a direct competitor to WoW in terms of gameplay), it will reinforce the idea that you need 5 years and $50 million to make an MMO. That will limit creativity since it will be too costly to risk making anything else except WoW clones.Does anyone here think that CCP could have gotten the funding to make Eve from an EA or Ubisoft given it"s relatively complex gameplay and high learning barrier?No, they"d force them to make WoW in Space.
A Vanguard failure will hopefully mean that developers and publishers will let go of the notion of competing directly with WoW, and instead focus on smaller budget, niche MMOs. I"d rather see that $50 million spread across 5 MMOs that have the freedom to knowingly make design decisions that will limit potential sub counts, instead of choices designed to appeal to the greatest number of people. When they are multiple successful and profitable MMOs with subcounts ranging from 100k to 500k, designing "for the good of the game" might actually mean for the good of the game, instead of for the good of the bottom line.Think of what could be designed if the developers knew they only needed to attract 100K subs.Such a game could also easily break the $15/mo. ceiling for sub fees too. These are the games I"d be willing to pay $20 or $30 a month for, games that have a design that appeals to me.
Some examples:
- A pure raid based game, with no leveling up. Your first encounter in the game is an ass-raping boss, not a_moss_snake_01. Practically every dollar is spent on encounter design.
- "EQ1.5" (or perhaps VG as it was originally intended). A hard, group based game.
- A pure magic or pure melee MMO. An MMO with a complex magic system
- A perma-death MMO
- A MMO where not everyone has equal opportunity for accomplishment, and/or player decisions can actually impact other players (a quick example might be guilds fighting to crown their leader king, who can then make certain decisions the losing guild must obey like paying a tribute)
- A quest based MMO that isn"t dependent on kill/collect/camp style quests, but actual brain teasers and in-game/out-of-game research
- A MMO not based around killing, but entirely around questing, crafting, and politics
- Standalone MMOs that could be "linked together" - i.e. CCP provides Eve while another company provides FPS and RTS combat that can be integrated. (FPS assualts on larger ships, RTS battles for planets).
My points are being made from the abstract, and not from any personal desire to see Vanguard and the people behind it fail.
Eh, I don"t know if taking an MMORPG and breaking it into a bunch of mini-MMORPGs would be a good idea. The genre might be new, but people who play these games generally want the "whole package."
I do think it"s possible to challenge and dethrone WoW if someone wanted to. A company like Nintendo could simply come out with a Pokemon MMO, or something, which would instantly have a wide appeal due to a established fanbase (much like WoW had).
As for Vanguard, I think it can pull itself out of the rut it"s in if they stop making promises and work on what they have now. The game is there, it"s just very crude from lack of oven time. It was the same with EverQuest II, pretty much. Now, EverQuest II has turned into a really good game.
Vanguard"s core is there. It has adventuring, crafting, and diplomacy. They need to work on fixing, and balancing that out while fixing these bugs (which I hear they"re doing pretty well at). No more promises, just work on finishing what you have.
I do think it"s possible to challenge and dethrone WoW if someone wanted to. A company like Nintendo could simply come out with a Pokemon MMO, or something, which would instantly have a wide appeal due to a established fanbase (much like WoW had).
As for Vanguard, I think it can pull itself out of the rut it"s in if they stop making promises and work on what they have now. The game is there, it"s just very crude from lack of oven time. It was the same with EverQuest II, pretty much. Now, EverQuest II has turned into a really good game.
Vanguard"s core is there. It has adventuring, crafting, and diplomacy. They need to work on fixing, and balancing that out while fixing these bugs (which I hear they"re doing pretty well at). No more promises, just work on finishing what you have.