Why all the nerd rage against Vanguard

Kraks said:

Brad, you have by far the worst crafting system since EQ1. It requires 0 skill whatsoever, just a bunch of luck whether or not you run into 5 complications in a row at the end of a crafting session.

I would challenge you and the rest of Vanguard"s development team to actually come up with something creative, instead of a reverse EQ2 crafting clone. What you have in place is horrid, no fun whatsoever, and if it didn"t benefit my guild, I never would have started in the first place.

As for harvesting, its been done almost that exact same way before. Wait, you added harvesting groups! Who cares when the amount of nodes are so paltry that it costs more to buy the components than to buy the weapon itself. Component pieces should always be cheaper and more readily available than the end product, instead you have the opposite. I"d suggest doubling the amount of nodes, get rid of the rare/luck portion all together, and make the CRAFTING part the actual time consuming and challenging aspect of the system, not the complete luck of the draw whether you find the resources you need or not. If even 2 people are harvesting in the same "chunk" as one another, they will often find it very hard to continuously reap anything at all.



I thought the basis of your not instancing things was because transportation would be a problem, but now you are looking at ways to negate even that? How will this not turn into EQ1 all over again with 1 guild dominating an entire tier until the next expansion is released? If they can easily get anywhere, they can easily dominate a server. EQ1 was huge by PoP and it was still 1 guild that typically owned all of the spawns on each server.

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QFT Crafting totally sucks. it"s so poorly designed. They JUST put in color-coded WO"s...god.

How is harvesting fun? You click the node and you wait. WTH HOW IS THAT FUN!?!?!??! EXPLAIN

Mkopec1 said:

So he is not misleading anyone in this case? Amirite?

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I wouldn"t call it misleading. Its more like a lack of understanding. But on who"s part? Is it Sigil who doesn"t understand that thier target demographic is tremendously variable? Or everyone else that doesn"t understand that they are actually part of that tremendously variable demographic?

I"d have to say its the former. And the latter is saying they should make a choice. Expand the target demographic to be more inclusive, or narrow it further. And fix whats broken/buggy/unimplemented along the way as a matter of priority.

Stevon said:

It"s easy. Brad talks out each side of his mouth depending on who he"s trying to convince. He"ll say out one side, to forums and press, that Vanguard has something for everyone. Then out the other side he"ll justify the fact that it appeals to very few by saying "you can"t please everyone all the time" in whatever venacular he decides to use at the time.

Face it, Vanguard has NOTHING to appeal to the casual or the "uber" player. It"s content sucks. it"s a return to the days of EQ before they got smart and started instancing raid encounters. The difference this time is that there won"t be much competition.

If he wants to see this game recover he needs to wise up and own up to the mistakes he and his team have made. First recognize that it"s not that "this game won"t appeal to every casual player no matter what..." No, it"s that it won"t appeal to ANY casual player no matter what. Anyone with half a brain knows this game is the antithesis of a casual player game.

Then to top it off he"s got to stop hating Blizzard for stealing his cookies and realize that they are successful because they are smart. He can either learn from them (as he learned from D&D and others when he created EQ) and improve the game, or he can continue to feel obligated to justify why his vision is still "good" when everything points to it distinctly being "not good".

I"d like to come back to Vanguard but it"s got to be a new smarter Vanguard than what it is today. I seriously doubt that will occur however, I"m not sure he has it in him to make the required changes.

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Perfect post, thank you.

its a good post, to bad its by him. lol

kcxiv said:

its a good post, to bad its by him. lol

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"Shut up Beavis".

woqqqa said:

That seems to be a problem on MMO forums in general. He"s dealing with the other side of the coin over on Silky Venom, where apparently at least half the posters are still drinking the Kool-Aid.

Changing the game direction is very dangerous - Silky Venom

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See, this is where Sigil made the smart move with not hosting their own forums - all the affiliate site forums are just as bad as any "official" ones would have been, but SOE don"t have to pay for the bandwidth.

Maxxius said:

Mk of course it is a dumbed down game he is suggesting. THAT is what the market obviously wants. The market wants fast paced, battle.net type games now. You can still make your VG, but just don"t expect the numbers for it. The market is TELLING you they don"t want it. Any stockbroker, for example, will tell you to "never fight the tape." That isn"t to say that a 150k sub game can"t still remain profitable. The games I"m keeping my eye on now are LOTR (simply because I just love the storyline) and Warhammer. I suspect alot of others are too. We shall see come launch date. In the meantime I play WOW because it still entertains me.

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I agree with what you"re saying mostly, but there"s always going to be a market for a game like Vanguard, or EVE. Even if its a small subsection of the MMORPG market people do like these type of games. I think a major deal is that if this was any other company, any other person besides Brad, there wouldn"t be nearly the shit storm on these boards that goes on today. He along with everyone else has there vision of what a MMORGP should be like and he tried to sell a game to each of those different type of people instead of sticking to his vision. He mismanaged expections and so did the potential player base at the time thinking that he could deliver everything to everyone; too many chiefs not enough indians type of deal. That type of activity is just doomed for chaos and potential failure unless the reigns are brought in.

This part isn"t directed at you btw just in general. Its annoying to read threads about VG, and WoW and have people instantly fagging up threads about things that have been rehashed way too many times. Also, no one likes having something they enjoy doing being shit on, being told they are stupid for liking something. So you like instances, no exp loss CR"s, and extreme soloability, then maybe this game is not for you. Why do you care if this game or any game doesn"t have any features you like? This game isn"t for everyone, and neither is WoW, EVE, or any thing else for that matter. Go find something you enjoy and quit preaching the same message over and over, we get it already. No one enjoys far left/right wing politics and thats what this board and more specifically VG threads have turned into.

Itzena, I just read the first post because I assumed thats what you where talking about but I personally don"t see anything wrong with it. If they can fix the bugs and add a few tweaks, but not really change too much of their overall vision for the game I don"t see why they can"t add subscribers over time. While they might not ever manage 500k, I still feel that a healthy 150-300k over a few years time is pretty good. They wont be Blizzard rich, but I dont see anyone else that are. I know Brad said omgz we"re going to have 500k-1m subscribers eventually, but sometimes people are wrong...shocking isn"t it?

this thread is getting kinda icky. the vg bashers are starting to jack each other off.

Kolle said:

this thread is getting kinda icky. the vg bashers are starting to jack each other off.

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Think they already busted multiple times on one another.

In response to the post discussing what the market wants, I have to point out that Runescape is almost nothing but a long grind with slow-paced combat, a harsh death penalty, and bad graphics. It pulls in over 800K subscribers. Even accounting for its subscription price, it"s probably more successful than games like "Dungeons and Dragons Online" or "City of Heroes"

I think the real lesson here isn"t that any given type of game can or can"t flourish, it"s that a studio has to know its target user base and do a good job of appealing to those people. Runescape mostly attracts kids; WoW pulled in a huge number of non-gamers. Jagex and Blizzard both have a good idea of who they want their products to appeal to. The same can probably be said about CCP.

A studio also has to control its budget. A game can probably turn a profit with a 10K user base ("Aces High" still survives), but such a game can"t spend tens of millions on development. Vanguard"s huge budget requires a fairly large subscriber base just to recoup development costs.

Danth

Danth said:

In response to the post discussing what the market wants, I have to point out that Runescape is almost nothing but a long grind with slow-paced combat, a harsh death penalty, and bad graphics. It pulls in over 800K subscribers. Even accounting for its subscription price, it"s probably more successful than games like "Dungeons and Dragons Online" or "City of Heroes"

I think the real lesson here isn"t that any given type of game can or can"t flourish, it"sthat a studio has to know its target user baseand do a good job of appealing to those people. Runescape mostly attracts kids; WoW pulled in a huge number of non-gamers. Jagex and Blizzard both have a good idea of who they want their products to appeal to. The same can probably be said about CCP.

A studio also has to control its budget. A game can probably turn a profit with a 10K user base ("Aces High" still survives), but such a game can"t spend tens of millions on development. Vanguard"s huge budget requires a fairly large subscriber base just to recoup development costs.

Danth

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I agree with this post in particular with the bit marked in Red, I think that"s the real problem with Vanguard.
It stands too much in the middle and both parts are angry with Sigil because the game has not enough features that fully satisfy them.

stevemcqueen said:

I agree with this post in particular with the bit marked in Red, I think that"s the real problem with Vanguard.
It stands too much in the middle and both parts are angry with Sigil because the game has not enough features that fully satisfy them.

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Nahh, actually from what I saw its exactly how Bradley described it a while back, saying 20% solo 60% group and 20% raid.

From what I have seen in VG so far is most of the content tailored for groups, with a spattering of solo type content here and there.

And this is basically the carryover formula from EQ. In fact I think it has even more solo friendly content than EQ since basically all 2 dot mobs can be soloed.


I dont think it stands too much in the middle of anything. If you have a solid group of friends to play VG with, you will have a blast. and have acess to 80% of the games content.

Mkopec1 said:

Nahh, actually from what I saw its exactly how Bradley described it a while back, saying 20% solo 60% group and 20% raid.

From what I have seen in VG so far is most of the content tailored for groups, with a spattering of solo type content here and there.

And this is basically the carryover formula from EQ. In fact I think it has even more solo friendly content than EQ since basically all 2 dot mobs can be soloed.


I dont think it stands too much in the middle of anything. If you have a solid group of friends to play VG with, you will have a blast. and have acess to 80% of the games content.

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Sorry didn t get your reply.
What is gotta do the "standing in the middle" issue with the fact that if u group u get acccess of 80% of the content?

What we are saying is that this game doesn"t make happy neither the casual players nor the core players.
Both have game design issues againsts Sigil.
And that s why there is so much furore around this game.
Core players are firing nukes to Casual players and Sigil, and Casual players are retaliating with heavy artillery on Core players and Sigil.
That"s happening because Brad has never been really clear to which market this game is aimed for.
The 20-80-20 formula has nothing to do with Casual or Core, because both can prefer group or solo, we are talking about the death penalties and features like that.
That"s what divides players not if the game has more or less solo/group content.

stevemcqueen said:

That"s happening because Brad has never been really clear to which market this game is aimed for.

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Actually he has. Originally it was at the "core" player, but this was when he was still calling WoW a "beer and peanuts" game that wouldn"t see population growth after a year. Well, after eating crow there, he clearly had to reevaluate the target market.

stevemcqueen said:

Core players are firing nukes to Casual players and Sigil, and Casual players are retaliating with heavy artillery on Core and Sigil.

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Sounds like every other game. As if we never heard the old "casual vs hardcore" debates here for 6 yrs now.

It does not really matter for whom this game is really designed for. I think if you play this game for longer than a week you come to the conclusion yourself that this game is tailored for people which like to group rather than solo. Because all of the more compelling gear and content is all based around a solid group and dungeons. But if you are content in soloing the rare solo quest hubs and 2 dots, you can in fact solo to cap.

Phlean said:

. . . .
This part isn"t directed at you btw just in general. Its annoying to read threads about VG, and WoW and have people instantly fagging up threads about things that have been rehashed way too many times. Also, no one likes having something they enjoy doing being shit on, being told they are stupid for liking something. So you like instances, no exp loss CR"s, and extreme soloability, then maybe this game is not for you. Why do you care if this game or any game doesn"t have any features you like? This game isn"t for everyone, and neither is WoW, EVE, or any thing else for that matter. Go find something you enjoy and quit preaching the same message over and over, we get it already. No one enjoys far left/right wing politics and thats what this board and more specifically VG threads have turned into. . . .

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Hard to ignore the thread after Brad does his wall of text/spin in it. It begs for reaction, which is what it generated. Whether VG is or is not for me was never the issue. I just don"t care anymore what happens to the game. But when the spinmeister spins, I can"t help but reply.

stevemcqueen said:

The 20-80-20 formula has nothing to do with Casual or Core, because both can prefer group or solo, we are talking about the death penalties and features like that.
That"s what divides players not if the game has more or less solo/group content.

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brad you rock!! 120% content. uwu

stevemcqueen said:

Sorry didn t get your reply.
we are talking about the death penalties and features like that.
That"s what divides players not if the game has more or less solo/group content.

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Huh?

I thought VG handled death rather well no matter what type of player you are. It has a bit more sting than WoW, but by no means is it as strict as EQ was back in the day.

Either get your corpse and suffer 1% exp loss, or dont get it and suffer 7%.

Yeah, I really don"t see the big issue with the death penalty. It"s not like back in the day when you wiped at a late night raid and then had to stay up extra late to get your corpse because there was no way in hell you were getting it solo any time soon. If you"re running low on time, or it"s late just fucking summon your tombstone and be done with it. If you"ve got the time to spare, run back and get your corpse. Also, there are enough classes that can sneak, or invis that you could even get one of them to help and get your corpse out of dungeons in no time. I"ve helped countless people with tombstones on my Psionicist.

How about the cheap fucks who would rather die 4 times and take 4 hours doing it than just buying a 80pp coffin.

I never understood those dumbasses that would white knuckle the old logic handle, missing the critical thinking part.

Ahh well it"s an MMO, not a Nobel Laureate cookout.

Having played EQ before corpse summons" were available, yeah I would have to rate VG"s death penalty (sans bugs course) at defcon: Hello Kitty.

woqqqa said:

That"s damn funny. Also, is your avatar a zombie Ann Coulter? (picture"s a bit too small for me to be sure)

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Yes sir I believe so. It"s from a Photoshop Phriday a while back. Real freaky looking dude was shopped into all sorts of pictures. Got to disturb the hell outta some friends with em.


Edit: Here"s a link, god some of these are top notch.

That Creepy Bastard