Why all the nerd rage against Vanguard

Raglaum said:

I"d like to take the time to emphasis something Nino has mentioned on the boards (not directly replying to anyone here).

Playing on Highest Performance, in my opinion, doesn"t devalue you"re graphic experiance. You can further tweak things from there also if you want to test with graphical adjustments. The game play is 10X more smooth, I don"t really ever lag, I always hold 30-50fps, pretty much anywhere unless i"m grouped. ATI X850. Less texturing, yeah, looks a little more bland, yeah - but it"s still quite scenic.

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The problems I have are not related to the setting it seems. The diffrence in
fps is minimal between highest preformance and highest visual settings. Its a
question of how the grafix engine do things. Not even shadows affect my
preformance, its allways the same: Loading up black area with PCs frozen
around me (no ground, just sky or black), then 3 sec laters the basic world
suddenly appears (ground, trees), then 2-5 sec for stuff to randomly pop up
(tents/houses/rocks/etc) and finaly 5 sec for animations to begin. Ive also
noticed that textures on distant objects "flash" white now and then.

I remember reading something about tweaking the ini file, could someone link
that if anyone has it handy? Thanks in advance.

I completely agree about the beta boards. Holy moly that was a retard fest of epic proportions. Instead of giving feedback on the current game, it was mostly people bitching about issues from beta 2 (in october 2006) who haven"t played since the beginning of the year; people who couldn"t find a way to make a character attractive to them (for cybering) and the mouth breather standard of "FIRST!!!!1!" for the first half of any dev post.

Talk about ridiculous. I was surprised they didn"t put min level caps on people to make posts, that would have killed 90% of the retardery. "You must be level 5 to post" and the boards would have been a ghost town hah.

tad10 said:

Having a ton of fun dispite bugs...

Edit: Just to be clear if VG is buggy then the Tomb is like concentrated essence of bugginess that is contained in a vial made of crystalline solid bugholding material.

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The Tsang issue has been likely identified. Unsure of when it can be fixed, but its certainly annoying folks here at the office as well. Basically, avoid the elevators like the plague for the moment.

I"ll mention the lack of the monk / disciple weapons to the team that did the area. Perhaps they can put something in for the sword that transfers it into a martial weapon - no promises.

~Tagad

Faith said:

I remember reading something about tweaking the ini file, could someone link
that if anyone has it handy? Thanks in advance.

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defrag. setup static swapfile appropriate to your mem. And see the ini tweaks onVanguard Servers Community Message Board - Powered by vBulletinand hereMort"s Tweak Guide - The Cult of the Angry Goblin. This post isn"t super helpful but the link should have enough info for you.

Tagad Sigil said:

The Tsang issue has been likely identified. Unsure of when it can be fixed, but its certainly annoying folks here at the office as well. Basically, avoid the elevators like the plague for the moment.

I"ll mention the lack of the monk / disciple weapons to the team that did the area. Perhaps they can put something in for the sword that transfers it into a martial weapon - no promises.

~Tagad

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Tagad, since you are lurking here, and I had the impression that this was something that bothered you personally as well, could you adress the topic of feedback on beta boards?

Personally, I found the discussion there very very useless and just stopped going there. I was curious if you felt there were better way of obtaining feedback from fans, without having all the signal drowned out in the noise.

The idea of a level limit to post on the gameplay forum sounds like a great idea, expecially to cut out the people who felt that if the game didn"t suck their dick starting level1 then it was the developers fault.

Tagad Sigil said:

The Tsang issue has been likely identified. Unsure of when it can be fixed, but its certainly annoying folks here at the office as well. Basically, avoid the elevators like the plague for the moment.

I"ll mention the lack of the monk / disciple weapons to the team that did the area. Perhaps they can put something in for the sword that transfers it into a martial weapon - no promises.

~Tagad

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Crap that reminds me need to mention the elevators on my miniguide at the vg site. The elevators are pretty amusing and hard to avoid ;p

We simply relog and reform when necessary in the Tomb.

I"m not sure how you can change the sword as their are people who want it as-is (helped a gaming buddy get his Dakkar today - server first - seems like everyone else wanted Ulaar or the Axe). I"d be cheezy and just add a MNK/DSC specific NPC - Ancient Lao"Jin master or whatever in the Ruby room with whom you could trade moon/shadow/tree/pearl (or whatever) for an appropriate item. No need to muck up a good thing.

Cheers

Edit: I suggest Tewig, The Moss-Covered Blade.

Faith said:

The problems I have are not related to the setting it seems. The diffrence in
fps is minimal between highest preformance and highest visual settings. Its a
question of how the grafix engine do things. Not even shadows affect my
preformance, its allways the same: Loading up black area with PCs frozen
around me (no ground, just sky or black), then 3 sec laters the basic world
suddenly appears (ground, trees), then 2-5 sec for stuff to randomly pop up
(tents/houses/rocks/etc) and finaly 5 sec for animations to begin. Ive also
noticed that textures on distant objects "flash" white now and then.

I remember reading something about tweaking the ini file, could someone link
that if anyone has it handy? Thanks in advance.

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Like I mentioned, the post wasn"t directed at anyone.

Anyway, I agree with some of the things you"ve said, while I don"t quite understand some of your post I think some of the loading pauses and delays are sort of weird (I encounter some also).

To add to that, i"m not really digging how there"s no formal actor clip plane, unless i"m missing the boat for this, or minimal actor drawing distance is the default for highest performance. Takes me a short distance from being near mobs, before I even know they are there.

edited for clarity

Feedback information on content should honestly be restricted to those actually testing the content, as far as I"m concerned. The aesthetic either will or won"t agree with people; it depends on the people. The mechanics though can be extremely broken and stuff silly unbalanced and feedback based upon how the quest NPC in the first area didn"t spawn when the server came up, while useful in a general bug reporting way, shouldn"t spawn post after post about dev incompetence.

Much like the awesomeness of WoW forums where you have people who are level 13 joining in mechanic debates with completely clueless opinions, because they have had approximately 4 hours with said mechanics. Had the raid/design forum on the WoW boards required you to be level 60, wow... the topics there would have been MUCH cleaner. The same with the VG beta boards. If some form of the VGplayers setup was available to be used as a filter during beta to see where certain people were as sort of a broad basis for specific forum access, the process would have been streamlined 10 fold imo. Keeping sorcerers out of the Dread Knight forum because they don"t understand aggro yet like to add misleading information to hate generation debates is the sort of idea I"m talking about. Similarly, actual balancing conversations and topics would require you to have played the class at least up to the minimum level to know what the topic is about.

I could go on and on, but yeah, in the future (first expansion omg!) some form of filter would probably greatly enhance the information gathering and testing process vs. what went on in the beta forums.

tad10 said:

defrag. setup static swapfile appropriate to your mem. And see the ini tweaks onVanguard Servers Community Message Board - Powered by vBulletinand hereMort"s Tweak Guide - The Cult of the Angry Goblin. This post isn"t super helpful but the link should have enough info for you.

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Thanks Tad, Ill try it as soon as I get home from work

machineman said:

If you take the first 10 levels of WoW and the first 10 levels of Vanguard, and ask the, lets say 7 million players for whom WoW was the first MMO they"ve played, which do you think most would prefer?

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Clearly, most would prefer WoW. 7 million subscriptions means that more people in general prefer that game than any other that"s ever come out. But Vanguard is 3 days old, not two years, and WoW didn"t have 7 million subscibers after 72 hours.

I ended my post with "individual results may vary." I prefer Vanguard"s first 10 levels. They take longer, have more lore and background story, and are generally more engaging. My preference is mine, and doesn"t need to have majority agreement to validate it.

machineman said:

It"s not even a contest - the fit, finish, polish and fun of WoW is captivating the minute you begin playing.

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Not 3 days after it was released, I remember. I started an undead warrior, and I had lag spikes in noob village, about 1 out of every 5 copper nodes was bugged, I got lag spikes anywhere near other people, and Undercity was a slideshow. It got better, and I played for a year, but the first month of WoW came with patches aplenty.

machineman said:

Vanguard, after you stutter around to get your bearings, you can go start slaughtering stiff looking mobs w/ flat grey textures.

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We must be talking about two different Vanguards. The starting area for dwarves has some awesome visuals.

machineman said:

And don"t say the games are two different beasts - the first 10 levels the games are identical in terms of goal and gameplay.

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The games are two different beasts. WoW is faster and is built around a solo-centric model, where grouping really becomes important at the level cap and for l33t gear. Vanguard is group centric from around level 5 or 6. Yeah, you can solo in Vanguard, but nowhere as effectively and easily as WoW. And my friends and I are already noticing that people bond more in Vanguard because of grouping being important. I can recall maybe 5 people I grouped with in WoW for a whole year. Grouping in WoW before raiding was "group long enough to roll on blue drops or finish quest, bail on group" and I think we can all agree there. Vanguard is like old EQ1 in that good groups will matter, not just for quests and loot, but to make that exp bar move. So the games are different. The "get acquainted with the game" stuff is common across the entire spectrum, but that isn"t the whole game, which is what I was talking about.

machineman said:

Anyway, I can safely say they are not getting any subscription money from me... I am not interested in taking steps backwards, just to get a warm and fuzzy about years past.

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Vanguard isn"t a step backwards from WoW. It"s a step in an entirely different direction. And as I said before, individual results will vary. To me, I think Vanguard is superior to WoW for every aspect of gameplay I personally look for in an MMO, minus polish on the current product, but WoW has two years up on Vanguard, so that"s to be expected. So I can safely say that SOE/Sigil will be seeing my coin for a while, probably a long while, given the pace of Vanguard achievements, and figuring the separate achievement spheres of adventure, crafting and diplomacy.

Something just occurred to me thinking about the difference between WoW and Vanguard. Here"s an analogy for old EQ players:

WoW = Lake of Ill Omen->Overthere->Dreadlands->Karnors->Velks on your way to NToV.

Vanguard = dungeons->NToV.

And that was two totally different EQs. Same classes, but giving two completely different gaming experiences and resulting in different sorts of players. Not better, not worse, but totally different.

In Vanguard you have to group. Sure you can solo, but you are really wasting your time solo adventuring. The diplo and tradeskill spheres are better suited for soloing. The required grouping could make or break the game for people.

I"m not sure if vanguard is harder or not... Let me put it this way. By level 15 in Vanguard the group gameplay consists of going through a dungeon, managing aggro, trains, CC, etc. The same kind of gameplay you would see in other MMOs at the high level, you get to do at level 15 in Vanguard. By level 15 people have to really know their class.

Compare to level 15 of WoW where the gameplay consists of run to ! NPC, kill x mobs, return for reward. Easy enough for a child to do and you barely have to have any knowledge of game mechanics or even the class you play to do so.

Different game styles suited for different audiences. I"m not making any value judgment claiming that one is better than the other. I leveled in Blackburrow - upper guk - unrest - sol a - paw - lower guk - sol b. Never went the Lake of Ill Omen->Overthere->Dreadlands->Karnors->Velks route so I think you can guess which game style I prefer.

I have to admit, it pretty much ensures that I would never touch Vanguard if grouping is that important to levelling.

Dealing with group overhead every time you log in, just to level? I"d honestly consider that to be a frustrating waste of time. It also ensures that it is completely impossible to enjoy the game in short time blocks.

What you dislike, Sancus, I prefer.

Holy shit. Is this an honest difference in opinion? In a Vanguard thread? WTF.

But I do believe
"It also ensures that it is completely impossible to enjoy the game in short time blocks."
is false.

That"s why they have 2 other spheres: Diplomacy and Crafting, that are arguably just as engaging as the adventure sphere.

You need a solid group to level consistenly -- but you can do a lot in 2 to 3 hours. And yes there is some group drama. That"s life.

My group just spent the last three-four days in Jin"Ka Forest we now have three of the Tsang weapons (in addition to various other armor upgrades and etc) and are upgrading the weapons before moving on to CIS. That"s just not possible in that time frame w/o a solid group.

There is solo adventure content (exclusing Crafting/Dip which are great and interesting solo) but its not remotely as interesting as the group stuff. If you play solo and don"t like crafting and don"t like diplomacy WoW is probably the better MMO for you.

I found the process quite fun -- though farming wolves for symbols was a PITA -- and absolutely nothing like WoW at the level (18-22).

Bolero said:

In Vanguard you have to group. Sure you can solo, but you are really wasting your time solo adventuring. The diplo and tradeskill spheres are better suited for soloing. The required grouping could make or break the game for people.

I"m not sure if vanguard is harder or not... Let me put it this way. By level 15 in Vanguard the group gameplay consists of going through a dungeon, managing aggro, trains, CC, etc. The same kind of gameplay you would see in other MMOs at the high level, you get to do at level 15 in Vanguard. By level 15 people have to really know their class.

Compare to level 15 of WoW where the gameplay consists of run to ! NPC, kill x mobs, return for reward. Easy enough for a child to do and you barely have to have any knowledge of game mechanics or even the class you play to do so.

Different game styles suited for different audiences. I"m not making any value judgment claiming that one is better than the other. I leveled in Blackburrow - upper guk - unrest - sol a - paw - lower guk - sol b. Never went the Lake of Ill Omen->Overthere->Dreadlands->Karnors->Velks route so I think you can guess which game style I prefer.

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See, now I will defend WoW a bit here because there WAS that option IF you wanted it. You could go to Wailing Caverns at the appropriate level and have a fairly fun/difficult time, needing to CC or at least control aggro in some fashion. The problem, in my opinion, was that since leveling was so fast, and because of the whole shortest/easiest path complex, people went there higher than the intended level and plowed through it.

The difference I see in VG is that grouping is the more natural approach and you can solo IF you want to, the opposite of WoW. This is a simplified view though. My only point was WoW did have challenging and fun encounters also at low levels.

In WoW it was faster, safer, more efficient to Solo.
Why the fuck even bother grouping ?

In VG its a LOT more efficient to group.
Solo exists, but its severely inefficient after 15(will guess worse as you level).

Imo thats perfect balance, allow someone who logs for 15 mins to kill a few mobs.
But if you go for more than 30-45 mins, grouping, or even duo-trio is better.

Ossoi said:

I"ve been playing since yesterday, level 10 so far..

My intial impression is that VG is certainly better than this forum over the past 6months lead me to believe it would be, if I was anyone from Sigil I"d be the one mad with "nerd rage" at the constant bashing that I assume put many people off from even trying the game.

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I"ve been playing since launch on Tuesday. On Monday I was playing TBC and loving it. I picked up Vanguard on Tuesday on a whim I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting a train wreck, but this game caught my attention as soon as I started playing.