Why all the nerd rage against Vanguard

yerm · Mar 13, 2007

There"s a big and noticeable difference, in eq, between someone squeezing by and simply not sucking, and somebody who is good.

If I group with hilyen, I get twice the xp as if I group with some other gimp bard, period. All 4 other people the same, having one person with a class who can compensate different ways play well just throttles things. If I then group with 4 other competent people, especially ones I"m in vent with, shit gets done that no gimps will touch. I"ll group with one main and an army of bots and knock off tormax, and then group with better geared puggers and be assraped in lower bot.

Sure, there"s a massive difference between a complete tard who wanders add like into adds, tests shit like dispel out of boredom/stupidity, keeps forgetting to turn auto attack on... and the average shmuck. That does NOT mean, though, that the average shmuck is anywhere close to a good, competent, experienced and serious player.

It also makes a huge difference when a guild is just a handful of core awesome players, and when the guild is loaded with a solid member base. There was a very noticeable difference between when roi was clearing plane of air in original, and zerging chardok ass end of kunark, even though most of those poair people were still around for the most part. Shit like fennin and xegony our first time with low 50s went smoother for us than pre ele mobs, I think largely because the cattle had either dropped off, hadn"t joined yet..., or weren"t flagged.

Sithro_foh · Mar 13, 2007

Yermum Onceme said:
There"s a big and noticeable difference, in eq, between someone squeezing by and simply not sucking, and somebody who is good.

If I group with hilyen, I get twice the xp as if I group with some other gimp bard, period. All 4 other people the same, having one person with a class who can compensate different ways play well just throttles things. If I then group with 4 other competent people, especially ones I"m in vent with, shit gets done that no gimps will touch. I"ll group with one main and an army of bots and knock off tormax, and then group with better geared puggers and be assraped in lower bot.

Sure, there"s a massive difference between a complete tard who wanders add like into adds, tests shit like dispel out of boredom/stupidity, keeps forgetting to turn auto attack on... and the average shmuck. That does NOT mean, though, that the average shmuck is anywhere close to a good, competent, experienced and serious player.

It also makes a huge difference when a guild is just a handful of core awesome players, and when the guild is loaded with a solid member base. There was a very noticeable difference between when roi was clearing plane of air in original, and zerging chardok ass end of kunark, even though most of those poair people were still around for the most part. Shit like fennin and xegony our first time with low 50s went smoother for us than pre ele mobs, I think largely because the cattle had either dropped off, hadn"t joined yet..., or weren"t flagged.

Heh, I raided with a guild like that on the Tunare server. Raids were at most, about 30 people. Usually, there would be around 20 or less, all non-elemental geared people.

I remember when people shit themselves when we killed the Behemoth in Po... Plne of... I forget the name. The one with all of the machines.

We used to regularly kill Innoruuk with around 20 people, then go after the Maistro. In fact, I have his robe, still.

But, this guild worked like a well oiled machine. Everyone knew what they were doing to a T. They also knew their classes, too. The bard (who was the guild leader) was able to pull in a way that no one could figure out in one particular place. I know many rival guilds (who were much bigger) tried like hell to figure it out.

To be honest, being around people that had gotten so good made me damned nervous. But they were really nice.

Rangoth · Mar 13, 2007

This is all true.

I don"t think anyone is doubting(god I hope not) that you can tell the difference between a skilled player and a non-skilled player(whatever the definition of skill may be for you), because you can. It"s not even up for debate as far as I"m concerned.

And as far as the "we were all n00bs once" statements, I agree...to an extent. I also think there is a certain nature level of skill some posses over others, but please don"t take my comment and derail the thread. I do think that most people are capable of learning, and I"m obviously exlcuding "joe-short bus" in my statement. Some learn by doing, others by watching, some guys you tell them the right way once and never need to again, some people you instruct daily and they still forget. But most people can learn.

The complaint I have with WoW(not sure how this thread turned this way) is the same as many others, grouping actually slows you down during the leveling process. So then people hit the top, and have no idea how to function in a group, because lets face it...most people run the sub-60 dungeons when they are a bit above their intended level/gear. This is a major contributing factor to why the mass of the player base(which is a casual playerbase) is not considered "good". They play casual, they don"t need to group to do so, so they never learn group mechanics.

I would LOVE to work for an MMO company just because of the type of statistics I would actually get to learn about. How many people play? How often do the majority play? How often do the majority do instance X? How many times do they die inside and where? What is the avg gear level? Fuck, there are so many things we take for granted because we started our MMO careers on the most difficult/semi-original/group based game. Many of the things we do are literally second nature; where as most of the WoW community(my speculation here) plays like they would warcraft III DotA or whatever with their hero.

In the end it"s all opinion, but for me I like the group games(even more so when certain classes arnt low on the desire list which VG seemed to nail). The whole reason, again for me, that I play these games over any others are that I greatly enjoy the social aspects, meeting people that can be your friends and networking. Who knows when the old guild mate might need a job and I can help him, or I travel to another country and meet up with someone for lunch. Especially after 8 years of doing this shit I"m really not motivated by the Breastplate of Assglowing anymore.

Xianthe_foh · Mar 13, 2007

Twobit Whore said:
Yes, some of those skills could make you more successful than others, but they aren"t something that every person in the group needed. A good puller could time spawns and watch other groups to "steal" mobs as you put it (which isn"t going to win you any community awards if you are talking about PUGS - which we are). That said, there is certainly more than just knowing your class, but these things only come with time and experience in a given game.. like knowing agro ranges when running across a dangerous zone etc. You can"t teach that, people just have to learn it from trial and error. Others have covered that though, and it"s easy to forget the trouble you went through to learn it when it seems like second nature to you now.

I guess the point would be, there is a difference in stupid and inexperienced.

I"d also like to add one more thing to my experiences of group games vs solo oriented leveling games: basic communication skills. Whether it is because they can"t type and play at the same time, don"t care, like using the mouse, don"t read whatever... I have gotten more groups in WoW where no one even says anything in group chat or just stands there and disbands. You ask questions like "hello?" and nothin".

Now of course I did see this in Eq1 we usually figured they were asian and couldn"t communicate, but the principle is the same. You can"t get past a certain level in grouping games very easily or without notice of others if you can"t listen or tell someone you need to AFK or whatever.

I am sure the same % of folks try the other games have this issue but in WoW as you said until you get to the harder instances or eng game they aren"t weeded out.

I don"t think the player base is less mature per se in WoW at all and I do think all this can be overcome with a good friends list and guild, but not everything is so easy to teach. I have been teachin my dad how to play Diablo II over the phone and it is a nightmare, mind you he has a medical degree and uses computers, but ya, if I ever get him straight in D2 I"m sure he would want to try WoW and he would be exactly like this type I"m describing - non communicative and doesn"t follow instructions. But he would probably do ok if I dropped him off in a wow newb area.

He wouldn"t even be able to get a few levels in a game like FFXI or VG though. He would simply die so much he would delevel or stay very low level.

kcxiv_foh · Mar 13, 2007

Draegan said:
Good thing about WOW is that there are a shit load of people playing. It"s easy to get a list of good people to play with. I"ve havn"t been without a guild in ages so I can"t speak from recent experience, but since leveling up a new toon recently, I"ve done a few PUGs in SM, some suck, some don"t.

However this is a VG thread. Because there are so FEW people to play with you tend to remember people you are playing with. And because the leveling curve is so much higher compared to WOW you tend to stick around the same people level wise. This could create a sense of community. However for me, it"s a false sense of community. Because these people vary in skill. They arn"t my friends. But it"s easier to weed through them because there arn"t as many.

It"s a numbers game.

There is not to few people to play with per server. There is just not as many servers. I think there is plenty of people in the game per server. At least in the area"s i have been in.

Mkopec1_foh · Mar 13, 2007

kcxiv said:
There is not to few people to play with per server. There is just not as many servers. I think there is plenty of people in the game per server. At least in the area"s i have been in.

Yeah, the areas for the teens and then the 20"s have always had a shit load of people whenever I played. And this is even in Quelia the lesser populated continent than Thestra.

The Hiram Key_foh · Mar 13, 2007

Gnome Eater said:
You are seriously dumb if you think you can judge a game by what hugely biased people post about it on a message board.

That only applies to the people posting negative things amirite ?!?!!

Zehnpai · Mar 13, 2007

Ssinurn said:
He wouldn"t even be able to get a few levels in a game like FFXI or VG though. He would simply die so much he would delevel or stay very low level.

On the other hand, he might figure it out but quit in disgust at the bullshit mechanics and huge time requirements and no matter how nice or fun a person he may be to game with, he won"t bother because WoW isn"t nearly as much of a hassle but offers even more challenge and people to play with.

That"s one of many issues I have with VanGuard...was one of the main reasons I quit EQ and refused to pay for EQ2 and quit around lvl 23. I was, and still am, sick and tired of this "lol it weeds out bad players!" syndrome. First off, high end guilds do a very effective job of weeding out bad players. Sure I have to put up with some really bad players at end game. Then again, I prefer that to having to put up with really bad players at level 15.

Know why? Because if I have to put up with bad players at max level, there"s a ton of other shit I can do. I can simply say, "Sorry, but you guys suck" and go PvP or craft or level up a twink or whatever. In EQ? Sorry, you"re stuck with those suck-ass guys because there is shit else to do and you need experience. At least in WoW you are never forced to put up with the retards. Unlike VG where I had to put up with a paladinwho couldn"t figure out how to use auto-attack for several painful hours because I needed a tank.

Anyways...

EQ weeded out -far- more people who were good gamers and quality fun to be around, but simply did not have the play time then it did bad players. Period.

WoW is starting to go down that path too. Hopefully they un-retard these flagging and consumables requirements. Seeing too many friends getting left behind because they simply don"t have the time to farm 60 felweed, 20 mana thistle, 50 dreaming glory, 30 ancient lichen, 10 terocone, 5 nightmare vine, 15 arcane dust, 20 netherbloom, 70~100 gold per night to raid. And don"t get me started on farming 36 primal fire and water for a set of fucking resist gear for SSC. Or the 100 heroic badges for fire resist gear.

Earth to fucking developers...you"ve lost touch with gamers.

...

This rant brought to you by the cumulative effects of having to stay up until 5 am farming mats just so we can fucking raid. 8(

Zehnpai · Mar 13, 2007

Oh, and for the record, if you sucked shit and couldn"t get a group in EQ, all you did was reroll a druid and solo, problem solved. lvl 50 druids in eq are as to lvl 70"s in WoW who have never been inside an instance.

Personally, I wish they would just get rid of green loot in WoW. You either do dungeons for the good loot every so many levels or you get painfully hindered in your leveling pace.

Sithro_foh · Mar 13, 2007

Zehn - Vhex, quit yer bitchin".

Stevon_foh · Mar 13, 2007

Twobit Whore said:
I believe he is talking about pulling a mob, getting some adds, knowing you can"t win and trying to flee. Mount does no good here unless they very recently made it so you can cast your mount in combat.

That"s essentially what I meant Twobit. Running through an area out of combat and gaining agro is one thing (even then depending on mob type it can be tricky, but I"ve ran through level 30 areas at level 12ish and survived, just takes good survival skills ;D).

Escaping in combat is much more difficult if not impossible in many situations.

Zehnpai · Mar 13, 2007

I can"t, I"d explode. 8(

Stevon_foh · Mar 13, 2007

Jovec said:
A Vanguard failure could be a blessing in disguise for the MMO industry. Here is how I see it...

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.

I guess I can see that there might be some example of what would be necessary to "beat" WoW, but I think it"s simpler than that.

There"s basically two perspectives, or approaches, to building an MMO for success. The first is you can take the WoW approach and build a high quality, artistic, accessible and story reach game and go head to head. The thing here is you better be able to build a game as good as Blizzard did and improve on where they are weak (namely I"d say in the graphic style area and add more story). LOTRO is the only game on the horizon that has a chance of doing this right now.

Or you can build a niche game that appeals to a specific segment. The danger here is that WoW appeals to a very wide audience with something to offer everyone. Building a niche game that can compete requires doing a great job at what you"ve built and being sure to not miss the things that drove people away from other niche games in the past. I think this is where Vanguard has failed. First it was released too early and either because of that, or simply due to other factors, quality is poor in a number of areas. Secondly I think it"s failed because it"s not addressed the things that many players hate, such as "excessive" timesinks, relative lack of player power and other issues. WoW appeals to high end raiding guilds because it"s addressed these issues and still delivers a highly challenging high end game.

Maybe there"s room for a widely different approach but I have my doubts. Blizzard hit the formula pretty well regardless of the vocal minority complaints.

Stevon_foh · Mar 13, 2007

kcxiv said:
One thing about VG i have absolutely loved is every pick up group i have been in has been great. Everyone knew exactly what to do, and i have had 0 dumbasses that didnt know how to play. I remember my first UBRS run, and wow, that shit was horrible.

I"d bet that"s more a function of the "chaff" being filtered out. That is, most of the unskilled players are not around anymore. That"s not a criticism, but an observation. Vanguard is hardly the kind of game novice MMO players would succeed in.

Nattac_foh · Mar 13, 2007

Zehn - Vhex said:
WoW is starting to go down that path too. Hopefully they un-retard these flagging and consumables requirements. Seeing too many friends getting left behind because they simply don"t have the time to farm 60 felweed, 20 mana thistle, 50 dreaming glory, 30 ancient lichen, 10 terocone, 5 nightmare vine, 15 arcane dust, 20 netherbloom, 70~100 gold per night to raid. And don"t get me started on farming 36 primal fire and water for a set of fucking resist gear for SSC. Or the 100 heroic badges for fire resist gear.

(

I heard their gonna make consumables less needed.. atleast thats what i heard/hope =/ sorry for derailin abit

Xianthe_foh · Mar 13, 2007

Zehn - Vhex said:
On the other hand, he might figure it out but quit in disgust at the bullshit mechanics and huge time requirements and no matter how nice or fun a person he may be to game with, he won"t bother because WoW isn"t nearly as much of a hassle but offers even more challenge and people to play with.

That"s one of many issues I have with VanGuard...was one of the main reasons I quit EQ and refused to pay for EQ2 and quit around lvl 23. I was, and still am, sick and tired of this "lol it weeds out bad players!" syndrome. First off, high end guilds do a very effective job of weeding out bad players. Sure I have to put up with some really bad players at end game. Then again, I prefer that to having to put up with really bad players at level 15.

Yea and you totally glossed over the sentence where I said this is solved in wow with a friends list and a good guild....

Look there are bad things about every MMO and as a habitual player of MMOs, there are certain "fixes" that I can only get in certain games. I"m pointing out one of wow"s flaws (to me) but no where in there did I say it sucked or I don"t play. I have an active account.

I"m normal and I get mad and log just like anyone else in a game like VG or FFXI if I have had a run of bad groups, but I"m loving the hell out of my Blood Mage playstyle currently, and it is a fix I can"t get anywhere else at the moment. That doesn"t mean I"m "LOL OMG ITZ THE BESTEST GAME EVARZ" You seem to lump everyone into.

Also I am still chilling with some of the same folks from back in EQ1 on Ayonae Ro but it is really nice to get into a good PUG in a game and meet new folks. Not that you can"t do that anywhere else, but I have to say in my 2.5 years in EQ2 FoH I rarely met or talked to anyone outside of guild. It is just too easy to get comfortable and not put yourself out there. That"s a flaw of a guild centered MMO. In EQ1, when it took me a while to find my final home, I had to PUG a ton and met so many people in various guilds on our server. I miss that, and I"m getting that now.

Stevon_foh · Mar 13, 2007

LadyVex said:
I"m pretty sure it refers to retards who post thinnly veiled insults just to make themselves feel better about themselves.

Oh shit, I was right:

From Urbandictionary-

"A person who acts hard and talks alot of shit online."

Haha. Well the FoH board is the home of the E-thug from what I"ve seen. It probably started here =D

Shinrai_foh · Mar 13, 2007

If Vanguard was absolutely bug free, which it isn"t, it would still be a fairly unexciting game with limited potential to get enough subs to fund development. The lore is dull, the world is huge but unremarkable, the mechanics are pretty much "stock" and the gaming model is firmly back in the "slaughter mobs until bored" category.

While Vanguard cost less than WoW the current subscriber numbers and strongly negative word of mouth must still be regarded as a dismal failure given the money and experience that was available for development.

I"m still playing, but I"m not very impressed.

Sithro_foh · Mar 13, 2007

The biggest reason I don"t want to play WoW is the constant upgrades you get armor wise. I actually watched my friend, week by week, and every week he"d look different. I kind of like the "fight through a dungeon to get a decent piece of gear" element that EQ had.

EQII had that element, the only problem was that the gear didn"t really do much. Hell, I faught from like level 1 - 30 in my starting gear. :/

Stevon_foh · Mar 13, 2007

Twobit Whore said:
I think one of the main things that contributed to it is how many core systems got revamped multiple times or scrapped altogether. Combat went through several major revisions, from turn-based to super fast action. Harvesting used to be a clone of combat, where you "fought" the resource. Spending months on these systems only to change them a few months before release means that basically the game that was released was in beta less than half of the time beta was actually going on.

The beginning of the fall was when they nerfed player damage. Then dramatically increased mob defense (and dps.) Talk about extremes. In 2 patches (or so) the game went from dynamic and fun to slow and painful.

I just don"t quite get where making players relatively weak is in any way fun. Such as the whole concept of "even level" as the intended solo target. I"m making somewhat of a blanket statement but in general it"s losing sight on what motivates people.

While I was playing VG at release it really felt that everyone was simply "working" their way through those levels. There was no real excitement or exclamations of "wow cool" or even much excitement over new weapons... it was just the process of getting somewhere. Probably a lot of this is the lack of any real underlying lore or story that ties things together, such as with Vellious, for example.

Anyway that"s my perception of when I was there, others will, I"m sure, feel differently.

Why all the nerd rage against Vanguard

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