Stevon said:
2. The player should be able to play, productively, based on the players schedule not everyone elses. Here"s where Vanguard has a real problem. First, most players will form certain group attachments at some point (unless they simply hate or ineffective at dealing with others). In Vanguard if you end up falling behind your "friends" it"s very likely you will find it more and more difficult to find groups. And unfortunately grouping is THE most effective way to advance, bar none. The solution here is obvious, the game needs to provide more solo friendly content, if for nothing else than to help those left behind catch up.
3. Punishment is not motivating. Vanguard takes punishment to the next level. If you are failing an encounter, so solo or duo, and you want to escape... good luck. Running away is rarely an option as pretty much any mob can chase you down. Then where does that leave you? With a corpse recovery (why this is back I"ll never understand) and exp loss. And a lot of frustration.
I wanted to disagree with your two points above based on my personal experience.
1. I"m pretty much soloing entirely rather than grouping. Why? I like it better, and it"s a lot of fun in this game. There is little need to group if you don"t want to. There are multiple, different areas with quests intended for each range of 2 to 3 levels - and you can choose different areas from different continents. You can"t just grind exp as a soloer, however - you do quests at the same time, which all require you to kill mobs that can be soloed.
So when you kill 10 each of mob X Y and Z, or 25 of a particular mob, or you harvest 12 each of 6 different types of flowers, or whatever - each of those quests, if at or above your level, will basically double the exp you got from killing the mobs needed to complete the quest. And then there will be second or third level quests from the same quest NPCs after you hand in the first ones, and the new quests are about one level higher than the first quests, which is just about right, since you should have earned a level by doing the first round.
On average, I get 3 to 4 percent exp from one of these adventure quests, if I do whe even con or higher ones. Usually, you can do 20 or more of these quests in each area, and they are all based on level appropriate mobs. So when you max out an area by doing all its quests, you"ve usually also out leveled the area. This questing appears very well synchronized to leveling, and it provides a steady stream of questing intended to level you past that area, and onto the next area.
And you figure out what area to go to next because at least one quest from the current area will tell you to go deliver something to a NPC elsewhere in the world. When you max out on quests, you do that final quest to find the NPC in some remote place, and surprise, there are 20+ more quests you can do for your next stage of leveling, and so on. I"ve had no problem progressing to level 32 now by doing exactly this - and it has been very fun and interesting.
While soloing and enjoying myself gaining at least 2 or 3 levels per week, I also see people complaining about not being able to find groups in the server channels. Why don"t these people do what I do, which is put up a LFG tag while doing the solo quests in an area? When I do that, I eventually always get a group offer, and am not just sitting around stressing about why I don"t have a group. Also, I think grouping in VG is much like in every other game I"ve played - some people are just better at getting groups than others. And this is usually because some people are good at leadership and putting groups together, and others aren"t. But I sincerely believe that VG has room for both types. Just do solo quests until you can find a group, and your time will always be fully occupied and you"ll get great exp at the same time.
2. Regarding this comment: "Running away is rarely an option as pretty much any mob can chase you down" - I"m sorry, I very strongly disagree and don"t understand how you can see the situation like this. You can buy a 30 speed horse beginning at level 10, for only 12 silver. You should have no problem saving two or three times that much just selling the stuff that drops from what you kill as you are leveling up to ten. And you don"t even have any death penalty until level 7 - so at most you are talking about being on foot and having trouble outrunning mobs between levels 7 and 10. Even then, I"ve had no problem, and cannot recall a single death I"ve taken, by using the "sprint" ability to get away from the nub trash mobs - "sprint" will out run all of them, every one as I recall.
My character is from Kojan, and I went to Thestra and ran across the entire continent doing my shaman class quest at level 15. In doing so, I did not take one death, not one, while outrunning mobs up to level 40 in the zones I ran through with my level 10 30 speed quest horse. That includes running though the gates of Trengal Keep at level 15 with all mobs up - it was scary and had me on the edge of my seat, but I didn"t die and had no problem outrunning the mobs.
It is just surprising to me reading some of these comments, it feels like I"m playing a different game from other posters.
Thanks