Why all the nerd rage against Vanguard

Rayne_foh

shitlord
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Aradune Mithara said:
Also things liketeleporters, experience rates, better LFG tools, etc. are all being looked at and you will see changes soon. I don"t have the details yet, but we are listening and the game will get better and the areas where we messed up (large world, but too hard to find a group, etc.) will be addressed.
I can hear the rumble of 100k+ "hardcore" vanbois growling in the distance.

Seriously though, i"m sure you"ll get those who will accuse you of "WoWifying" Vanguard. But if it gets more people playing, it"ll be worth the tradeoff. Falling 30-50% below the expected turnout is pretty serious. Perhaps next year i"ll be in a better position to give it another go.
 

tjac_foh

shitlord
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Aradune Mithara said:
I believe I said . . .blah blah blah
For paying to float an incomplete game, we should all be shareholders instead of subscribers.

My guess is that VG"s incompletion and steep system requirements are going to condemn it to a low player population and prevent it from reaching any of the beautiful potential it has.

I know you come and and say your spin, but I play the game. I see my friends list lighting up less and less, I see a very empty game from 35+, and I see changes that introduce as much broken and rushed adjustments as anything positive.

After a really good first month, I"m disappointed and losing interest. My subscription is cancelled. It"s unlikely that I"ll renew. I feel like too much of a sucker.
 

xregg_foh

shitlord
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I am all for making it easier to find your buddys and get to them. I loved WoW"s travel system it was as close to perfect as it gets.

I would like to see a different map system also. When I started I couldnt even tell where the hell I was. Long travel times and unclear maps has to confuse and discourage new players. Hell it makes me sigh and ive been around a bit.
 

Twobit_sl

shitlord
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Aradune Mithara said:
I believe I said it needed 200k-300k to be successful, and that I hoped to see 500k after the game was out 1 year, which would make it very profitable. So far we are in the mid 150s which is less than I would have hoped, but still good and still growing.

I have said we released 2-3 months early and that releasing near BC was a mistake, but there was nothing we could do about it. That doesn"t mean we were perfect in our development -- we made mistakes -- I talked about in the NYT about how hard it was to manage and organize a team of 100 people when we were used to to EQ 1 (which had about 25 people). So yes, it was harder to schedule and remain as focused and efficient.We also had the switch from MSFT to SOE which slowed us down and caused us to start beta too early.
While the candor about "150k subs" is certainly appreciated, without breakdowns of how many of those are active, how many are people reportedly being billed after cancellation, and how many are just riding out the last of paid time.. on top of how many just stuck it on the station pass and are/aren"t playing (which I know we won"t see) then numbers are almost meaningless except to say it isn"t doing as well as you hoped, and it *could* be doing worse than it seems. None of that matters really, I just want to know when exactly you started beta, because I seem to remember it being around October of 2005 and nearly half a year a laterthisoccured. Which clearly states that
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is currently in a closed beta phase. The game will remain available via Fileplanet for existing beta testers during the transition to SOE. New information will be sent out to testers as the changeover occurs.
Why do you insist on placing the blame on things that clearly are not at fault, especially when it is likely those things are what saved your sinking ship in the first place? SOE didn"t make you start beta early, the switch didn"t make you start beta early. You already started beta! Now, if you want to come out and say Microsoft pushed you into beta too soon and wasn"t pleased with the progress 6 months later, then dropped you, that"s fine. Even though many people would argue that MSGS is one of the best studios to work under, at least it would be burning a bridge that you already crossed.
 

kcxiv_foh

shitlord
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Locithon said:
Yea they fixed it finally in the patch yesterday. Once you kill them you get a choice whether or not to sacrifice your cloak of the pantheon for some random loot. Our whole group did it and we got a total of 3 Legendary weapons. I myself got a snazzy 45dps dagger. You can even go back after you"ve done that and complete the trials again for a second cloak. Which we did today.
Nice, may work on that tonight or tomorrow. Should be fun. Even though i am a little above the level range now.
 

kcxiv_foh

shitlord
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Twobit Whore said:
Why do you insist on placing the blame on things that clearly are not at fault, especially when it is likely those things are what saved your sinking ship in the first place? SOE didn"t make you start beta early, the switch didn"t make you start beta early. You already started beta! Now, if you want to come out and say Microsoft pushed you into beta too soon and wasn"t pleased with the progress 6 months later, then dropped you, that"s fine. Even though many people would argue that MSGS is one of the best studios to work under, at least it would be burning a bridge that you already crossed.
I dont think he is putting the blame on anything. shit happens, and they had to deal with it. He"s not going to, nor does he have to give the real details on shit like that.
 

woqqqa_foh

shitlord
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kcxiv said:
I dont think he is putting the blame on anything. shit happens, and they had to deal with it. He"s not going to, nor does he have to give the real details on shit like that.
Sure he"s not obliged to do anything, but I think we can all agree that the early days of Vanguard haven"t exactly been a PR success. So if people have questions, I don"t see what Brad would have to lose by being forthcoming.
 

Twobit_sl

shitlord
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kcxiv said:
I dont think he is putting the blame on anything. shit happens, and they had to deal with it. He"s not going to, nor does he have to give the real details on shit like that.
He doesn"t have to give details, but he doesn"t have to use doublespeak or give false information either. Personally, I was just curious as to why he would say moving to SOE caused beta to start early, when beta started 6+ months prior.
 

Gaereth_foh

shitlord
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One of the things that bothers me about this whole VG release and its issues is that the main issues, the things Brad talks about as mistakes and things that will be changing, are things anyone with an ounce of sense was saying 6-8months ago.

All of those folks got brushed off, told it was beta, told we couldn"t see the whole picture, etc, etc, etc, or told to go back to WOW because perhaps this game isn"t for you. It bothers me because most of those things were brought up repeatedly everywhere. On the VG forums, in the beta forums and on damn near anywhere people could post about the game.

Its a bit like telling your kid to not put their hand on the stove because its hot. You know it will be bad if they do, you know what the outcome will be if they touch it, but you watch them continue to eye the burner with some sort of maniacal intensity that doesn"t allow them to look away. Then...they touch it and look at you with shock because...well...it was hot.

Duh.
 

Lyenae_foh

shitlord
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Locithon said:
how you really expect us to raid? I"ve been seeing that GM"s are turning everyone in the raid into a skele so they get more than 3-5 fps. And thats" w/no other guilds there camping for the mob. Since raid mobs apparently will be fought over, can you seriously expect people to tackle a raid mob while getting 1-2 fps? Are there solutions coming down the pipe for this sort of thing?.
This is a problem EQ2 had and never solved. Everytime you raid you have/had to drop your settings to to rock bottom.

It was quite possibly the lamest thing I"ve ever seen.
 
I put together a lower end machine that would run VG fine at like 1600x1200 or below and also took out gamepc.com assembly and burn in. I don"t think you can get under $2k for a Vanguard machine without, like I had mentioned, using egghead or some such and buying all the components yourself. You can probably save $300-$500 bucks doing that. So maybe $1500 or so if you like to shop a lot, $2k if you don"t, and then under $2.5k if you want them to burn it in and want a higher end machine. I put in slower memory, although it"s still not *that* slow. The CPU should be fine. I found a cheaper motherboard, put in a smaller hard drive but still a fast one, assuming this would be primarily a gaming machine and not one also used to store a lot of other data. Lastly, I configured it with a lesser power supply, but one that I"m sure is sufficient. The only question I have is the video card -- I"d still splurge for an x1950 (or even 8800) if you can afford it because you get a lot of payoff for having a faster video card with VG. I took out the xfi card, which will make it a bit slower but save some money, and I used 32 bit XP to save a bit, which again will make it slightly slower but not a ton slower. Also, using 32 bit XP you have much better compatibility with drivers.

1 x Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13 GHz) Dual Core Retail - $278.00
1 x Zalman CNPS8000 Cooler for Socket-775 / AM2 - $58.00
1 x Asus P5B Intel P965 Retail - $185.00
1 x Kingston DDR2-667 2 GB - $505.00
1 x Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000 RPM OEM - $228.00
1 x Sony AW-Q170AB Black Dual Layer DVD ? RW / CD-RW OEM - $85.00
2 x Sapphire Radeon X1650 Pro PCIe 256MB Retail - $320.00
1 x I-Star S-10000LB Black EATX Full-Tower - $135.00
1 x Seasonic S12 500W Power Supply - $130.00
1 x Microsoft Windows XP Home OEM with Vista Upgrade - $125.00
1 x 1 Year Parts and Labor Standard Warranty Included Free - $0.00
1 x Self-Assembly Of System (Install Performed By You) - $0.00



Subtotal Price (Excludes Discounts, Taxes or Shipping) - $2,049.00


Here"s the same box but with an x1950 which I think is worth the extra money IMHO:

1 x Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13 GHz) Dual Core Retail - $278.00
1 x Zalman CNPS8000 Cooler for Socket-775 / AM2 - $58.00
1 x Asus P5B Intel P965 Retail - $185.00
1 x Kingston DDR2-667 2 GB - $505.00
1 x Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000 RPM OEM - $228.00
1 x Sony AW-Q170AB Black Dual Layer DVD ? RW / CD-RW OEM - $85.00
2 x Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro PCIe 256 MB Retail - $530.00
1 x I-Star S-10000LB Black EATX Full-Tower - $135.00
1 x Seasonic S12 500W Power Supply - $130.00
1 x Microsoft Windows XP Home OEM with Vista Upgrade - $125.00
1 x 1 Year Parts and Labor Standard Warranty Included Free - $0.00
1 x Self-Assembly Of System (Install Performed By You) - $0.00



Subtotal Price (Excludes Discounts, Taxes or Shipping) - $2,259.00


and then a more uber machine that will give you screaming fps. Included an SLI motherboard, but only one GPU because VG doesn"t fully support SLI yet, but when it does, you could add another 8800. I left the memory speed at ddr2-800 because I didn"t see an Nvidia motherboard that supported faster memory. I also put it back to XP 64 and made it 4gb which does help a bit and will help more in the future.

1 x Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.67 GHz) Dual Core Retail - $638.00
1 x Zalman CNPS8000 Cooler for Socket-775 / AM2 - $58.00
1 x Asus P5N32-E SLI Nvidia nForce 680i SLI Retail - $398.00
2 x Corsair XMS DDR2-800 2 GB EPP TwinX Pack - $676.00
1 x Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB 7,200 RPM OEM - $262.00
1 x Sony AW-Q170AB Black Dual Layer DVD ? RW / CD-RW OEM - $85.00
2 x XFX GeForce 8800 GTX XXX Edition 768 MB Retail - $1,776.00
1 x Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio OEM - $90.00
1 x Lian Li V1200B Plus II Black EATX Full-Tower - $298.00
1 x Silverstone ST75F 750W Power Supply - $198.00
1 x Microsoft Windows XP Professional (64-bit) OEM with Vista Upgrade - $198.00
1 x 1 Year Parts and Labor Standard Warranty Included Free - $0.00
1 x Self-Assembly Of System (Install Performed By You) - $0.00



Subtotal Price (Excludes Discounts, Taxes or Shipping) - $4,677.00

and then my total dream machine which is really looking towards the future. Quad core won"t help much now, but will in the future. Same with SLI. Kept the memory at 800 because I still don"t see an nvidia motherboard that supports faster. Bigger hard drive, not as fast rpm wise, but more cache. Pimped out the case some and upped the horsepower of the power supply just because I like plenty of power.

1 x Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4 GHz) Quad Core Retail - $1,085.00
1 x Zalman CNPS8000 Cooler for Socket-775 / AM2 - $58.00
1 x Asus Striker Extreme Nvidia nForce 680i SLI Retail - $495.00
2 x Corsair XMS DDR2-800 2 GB EPP TwinX Pack - $676.00
1 x Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB 7,200 RPM OEM - $262.00
1 x Sony AW-Q170AB Black Dual Layer DVD ? RW / CD-RW OEM - $85.00
2 x XFX GeForce 8800 GTX XXX Edition 768 MB Retail - $1,776.00
1 x Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio OEM - $90.00
1 x Silverstone Temjin SST-TJ07 Black EATX Full-Tower - $375.00
1 x Seasonic S12-HT 650W Power Supply - $198.00
1 x Microsoft Windows XP Professional (64-bit) OEM with Vista Upgrade - $198.00
1 x 1 Year Parts and Labor Standard Warranty Included Free - $0.00
1 x Self-Assembly Of System (Install Performed By You) - $0.00



Subtotal Price (Excludes Discounts, Taxes or Shipping) - $5,298.00


Then the uber ATI machine. Granted it will be a bit slower because ATI I don"t think is shipping their next gen dx10 cards yet (right now Nvidia has them beat). But you can put faster memory in, etc. The motherboard says it will only support ddr2-800 but searching on the net people have said they"ve put 1066 memory in it, so I did here. I went quad core just to be extreme 4 gigs of RAM although I think you can go more. But again having an 8 gig machine that I"m typing on right now, there just aren"t enough 64 bit apps to use it all. You"d think there"s be a 64bit Adobe Primiere for editing HD video, but there"s not yet -- I couldn"t find any significant software that was 64bit and therefore could access more than 2gb of memory, although I"m sure we will soon with Vista 64 out.

1 x Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4 GHz) Quad Core Retail - $1,085.00
1 x Zalman CNPS8000 Cooler for Socket-775 / AM2 - $58.00
1 x Asus P5B Deluxe Intel P965 Retail - $268.00
2 x Corsair XMS DDR2-1066 2 GB EPP TwinX Pack - $970.00
1 x Western Digital Raptor X 150GB 10,000 RPM OEM - $374.00
1 x Sony AW-Q170AB Black Dual Layer DVD ? RW / CD-RW OEM - $85.00
1 x Sapphire Radeon X1950 XT 256 MB Retail - $312.00
1 x Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Retail - $120.00
1 x Coolermaster Stacker 832 Black EATX Full-Tower - $338.00
1 x Enermax Galaxy 850W Power Supply - $320.00
1 x Microsoft Windows XP Professional (64-bit) OEM with Vista Upgrade - $198.00
1 x 1 Year Parts and Labor Standard Warranty Included Free - $0.00
1 x Self-Assembly Of System (Install Performed By You) - $0.00



Subtotal Price (Excludes Discounts, Taxes or Shipping) - $4,128.00

Again, I"m sure one could save a lot on any of these systems by using newegg or some other site and buying all of the components seperately and then building the machine oneself.
 

kcxiv_foh

shitlord
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Most people here can build them by theirselves for alot less then any of them prices.


It is pretty easy to build them. ITs like putting a damn 100 peice puzzle together.
 
Twobit Whore said:
He doesn"t have to give details, but he doesn"t have to use doublespeak or give false information either. Personally, I was just curious as to why he would say moving to SOE caused beta to start early, when beta started 6+ months prior.
No, I"m saying when we had an earlier release date with MSFT we therefore started beta earlier.
 

woqqqa_foh

shitlord
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And the post above by Mister McQuaid shows exactly why consoles are likely to dominate gaming for quite a long time, exceptions like WoW nonwithstanding. (not meaning to offend, but much greater cost of entry has always been the PC gaming industry"s Achilles" Heel)
 
Locithon said:
I"m just wondering Brad how you really expect us to raid? I"ve been seeing that GM"s are turning everyone in the raid into a skele so they get more than 3-5 fps. And thats" w/no other guilds there camping for the mob. Since raid mobs apparently will be fought over, can you seriously expect people to tackle a raid mob while getting 1-2 fps? Are there solutions coming down the pipe for this sort of thing?

Because when you say you can get 30 fps in most situations, that"s assuming there"s a single group. Performance comes to a halt though with 24 people, even on highest performance.

Not to be all negative though, our guild just finished the entire Pantheon of the Ancients trials and I have to say it"s the best dungeon i"ve seen in VG yet. Hopefully the endgame single man dungeons are going to be this good.
The plan, as I understand it, is to use lower poly/texture LOD models of player and NPC characters (especially PCs) when too many players and mobs are in your view. The visual quality will go down, but at least you will have framerate.
 
Darus Grey said:
Brad, I have a serious question.

Is there anyone on your team who is the equivalent of an economist?
If the answer is no, you really should consider it. If its yes, I don"t think they"re doing a good job(and I hate being mean saying that, but I consider myself an expert in this field, and theres some simply mind boggling issues.)

Theres been some changes that really make me question your guys issues with crafting vs world drop quality.
It often seems to me whoever is making these changes from a "balance" standpoint is ignoring or at least not factoring highly the economic impacts of these changes.

The way the economy on most servers is heading, world drops keep lowering in price, but the value of rare crafting materials keeps *rising* as more competition levels up competing for the same scarce resource pools.

This was already creating a large disparity in the perceived value of crafted goods.
As a weaponsmith, sure I could until 2 patches ago make "the best" weapons ingame. Often at 10-20x the price to *make* it compared to a world drop/quest its with maybe 5% less overall damage.
Thats one of those things that seems balanced on paper(comparing a heroic crafted weapon to a heroic world one), but in reality the scarcity of resources to make them is driving prices through the roof and significantly lowering thier overall value.

The recent change monday in the T4/T5 upgrade recipes made it even worse, leatherworkers and mineralolgists got particulary , for lack of a better word- screwed.
Adding the requirement of *another* rare secondary component, basically doubled the cost to make many items.

In the case of LW and MIN it raised the minimum costs to make the items by so much that they now have no value on the market, they"re simply to expensive for what you get.

Its also having a spiraling effect on those resources, the rare secondaries are now climbing higher in price, and will continue to do so for forseeable future.

This again is continuing to widen the already large gap in the power < - > cost disparity between crafted and world drops, as crafted goods will continue to become even more expensive to make/buy, well world drops can only get cheaper over time as more drop.

I would seriously urge your team to consider the economic impact of many of these changes, from my perspective it seems more like a "throw it in, see what happens" approach, vs anyone putting in thought on the longterm economic effects of some of these changes.
I think it would be great to have a RL economist on staff -- it"s just a matter of budget. MMOG economies mirror RL economies in many ways, although not all, and having that insight would be very nice.
 
Rayne said:
I can hear the rumble of 100k+ "hardcore" vanbois growling in the distance.

Seriously though, i"m sure you"ll get those who will accuse you of "WoWifying" Vanguard. But if it gets more people playing, it"ll be worth the tradeoff. Falling 30-50% below the expected turnout is pretty serious. Perhaps next year i"ll be in a better position to give it another go.
Plus I still truly believe that casual, core, and hardcore can co-exist and even be interdependent in an MMOG. I think VG made a good stab at it and will get even better at it, and future MMOGs will do even better.
 

woqqqa_foh

shitlord
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And seeing as you"re on at the moment, Aradune...is it possible to purchase the Vanguard soundtrack separately from the collector"s edition of the game? I"d like to buy a friend a copy.