Why all the nerd rage against Vanguard

holymight said:

I play just fine with sound on? I also don"t know anybody ingame that plays without sound.

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I play without sound, but correct, you don"t know me in-game.

I had to play without sound when I first started because I didn"t have a souped up gaming-type box. Then after enjoying the game and wanting more than 12 FPS (with everything low as possible and no sound), I decided to bite the bullet and rebuild my gaming box with a new motherboard, 8800 video card, dual core CPU, fast HD, 2 gigs RAM, and OEM vista.

Now its not unusual to get 55+ FPS in outdoor areas, towns are lower of course, ranging from 25 to 35. I don"t have every high end graphics turned on, but i do use complex terrain, which is so much nicer than simple terrain.

I still play without sound, yes, crazy eh? Why? because VG still requires a lot of resources to use my on-board hi def sound, which seriously cuts into my framerate, and I"d rather have better in game graphics than sound .... plus, I"m kinda used to it now, LOL.

I could go buy a sound card but right now, but I"d rather just hold tight and see what optimizations they continue to make over the next 6 months. This is one area they really need to work on ASAP.

I used to love the sound for Vanguard.. until I got wolf form. eeeeeeoooooooo

Sound cards are fairly cheap these days, I wouldn"t really consider a gaming system build without one. As long as you don"t group with a wolfformed druid, Vanguard"s sound is a must have IMO.

I just got done doing some testing. To understand this, be aware that as a sound device I am using a Plantronic Audio 550 .dsp USB headset. So I decided to test the sounds some.

I started the game, turned sound off, cranked most visuals to the max, closed the game, started the game again. Then I proceeded to run from Tursh to past the Northern Border while taking in some scenery. When I got to the Northern border, the game was rock solid. Using about 1070 at peak.

I changed sound to on. Closed the game, started the game again.

Went the other direction, back to Tursh. When I reached Coastal Graveyard, a few seconds before passing through Adyinn"s Watch my FPS went rock bottom (5-6) while I was getting a good 15+ before (keep in mind this is with cranked out graphics using a x1900xt). I had gone through that area before without having any problems. EDIT: Now that I remember, available physical memory went from 140 to 20 after chunking). I continued through Coastal graveyard, into Ocean"s watch. With the same very low FPS, I eventually crashed. When I came back I was right in front of the Tursh chunk line so I"m pretty sure I crashed while going into Tursh (confirmed after checking the log). Mem usage by the game was at 1148 before the crash.

What does that all mean? No that much to be honest, I was not going in the same direction both tests, etc. But all in all I covered a lot more distance, without problems, on the first try (even having half of the Tursh zone loaded at start) while sound was off. To be honest further isolation would require more time than I am willing to dedicate to this, at least for now.

Bolero said:

I used to love the sound for Vanguard.. until I got wolf form. eeeeeeoooooooo

Sound cards are fairly cheap these days, I wouldn"t really consider a gaming system build without one. As long as you don"t group with a wolfformed druid, Vanguard"s sound is a must have IMO.

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So, I finally fixed the wolf form howl. I had to duplicate the existing wolf and strip the "howl" sound from the model index. Sadly, it won"t get pushed until the end of the week with the rest of the art, but it is indeed "fixed". It used to be much worse when I accidentally flagged the howl sound as 2D, which meant it was heard at max volume for upwards of 300 meters away. I think it stayed like that for most of beta, I am surprised I didn"t get death threats it was so irritating.

Ayeshala said:

stuff

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It all means nothing because you didn"t perform a consistent test, you"ve introduced too many variables that fuck up your results. Do the same thing covering the same ground exactly and then see what the difference is.

......

One thing I hate is how dark your Avatar always looks, except maybe at 12 noon, when you can actually see his face, its really dark like the above screen.

Some of the best scenery I"ve seen is from Kojan.

Nino said:

So, I finally fixed the wolf form howl..

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While you"re at it, fix the spiders sound. The sound they make when you hit them is annoying as hell.

chackle said:

It all means nothing because you didn"t perform a consistent test, you"ve introduced too many variables that fuck up your results. Do the same thing covering the same ground exactly and then see what the difference is.

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Yes, I have said the same thing in the last paragraph of my post, thank you for reminding everyone though, it"s very appreciated.

I"ve supplied enough usable information as a paying customer; I will not be spending more time on this. It"s not my job. All they need to know is that certain configurations still have _large_ stability issues. Not just performance, but stability. I"ll play and if in a month or two I still have to close/restart the game every 2 hours to avoid crashing, I will cancel.

Not to say I don"t want to help, but I don"t have whole evenings to dedicate to this.

Not so much a gameplay suggestion, but:

I got into a group yesterday to mess around in the Valley of Heroes "dungeon?" and I was highly disappointed in the place. It"s a huge area with tons of potential, but it just seems like a bunch of random mobs set in place without any thought to it. There was maybe, 3 named mobs in the entire place despite the fact of how big it is. Christ, Jade Depths has more named mobs than what we encountered.

Get somebody to seed a few more named mobs in there to make it worth a little more than just a grind spot.

Dom Devore said:

Not so much a gameplay suggestion, but:

I got into a group yesterday to mess around in the Valley of Heroes "dungeon?" and I was highly disappointed in the place. It"s a huge area with tons of potential, but it just seems like a bunch of random mobs set in place without any thought to it. There was maybe, 3 named mobs in the entire place despite the fact of how big it is. Christ, Jade Depths has more named mobs than what we encountered.

Get somebody to seed a few more named mobs in there to make it worth a little more than just a grind spot.

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It has 16 named not associated with quests.

Yeah Vault of Heroes is listed as a "Standard" dungeon, which basically means it"s just a consolidation of mobs with maybe some names. But I remember there being quite a few.

We were in there for close to 3 hours and only found 4, and I"m sure we went over every square inch of the place.

Unless there"s some sort of spawning mechanism or the mobs simply werent up for some reason, I don"t see how the hell you guys are saying there"s that many.

So I bought this game just for shits and giggles. Basically to see what all the hubbub was about, after dropping it from my watch list 3 years after it was announced. Definitely lots of potential. A big problem though, is its lack of a "hook" early on. Not really much to entice the new player into sticking with the game.

I started a rogue on Kojan, and went through a few of the starter quests. Pretty much on basic par with what other games offer. A huge drawback from the lowbie experience is the incessant "the corpse has nothing for you" message on a straight 35 mob killing spree. And by nothing, I mean nothing. At all. Period. No lowbie vendor trash. No quest starter items. No coin. It was so frustrating, I actually logged out.

I"ll have another look once i"m in a bit more of a patient mood. But i"d highly suggest that Sigil put some more thought, and a lot more effort, into the games starting areas. I shouldn"t have to start class A in area B to find a fun experience right off the bat. Nor should I have to be running a quest just to get some trash loot to sell.

The fun needs to start as soon as the player logs into the game. Thats the hook that Vanguard is missing.

Rayne said:

The fun needs to start as soon as the player logs into the game. Thats the hook that Vanguard is missing.

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The fun started the instant I logged in for me /shrug.

If you started as a Half Elf or Kojani there is a reason you don"t get loots off the bat.

r.gun said:

If you started as a Half Elf or Kojani there is a reason you don"t get loots off the bat.

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Perhaps you care to expand on that? I wasn"t aware that certain class/race combinations were subject to some sort of loot penalty.

It"s not a loot penalty, it"s just there is a storyline that those two races follow and as far as I know (I may be wrong) you can"t loot any items before you finish the first questline.

r.gun said:

It"s not a loot penalty, it"s just there is a storyline that those two races follow and as far as I know (I may be wrong) you can"t loot any items before you finish the first questline.

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If you"re right, then thats the most retarded fucking thing i"ve ever heard of. I should be able to create a charcter of ANY class/race/region combination, log in, kill mobs for xp, and at least get vendor shit to sell. Without EVER picking up a quest. Who ever heard of that shit? Completing a quest line before you can get any loot from mobs?

The fucktard that dreamed that shit up should be taken out behind Sigil"s studios, and shot in the fucking head. Multiple times.