WALL OF TEXT
Kylax said:
Guzrog,
What type of character do you play and why did you choose that character for Vanguard? Do you have any buddies that you play with on a constant basis? What is the one thing or change at this point in your VG career that would make you stop playing all together?
I ask these because it sounds like you are an honest to goodness mmorpg player that"s trying something new and not trying to put a spin on things.
I haven"t stopped playing completely however I am logging in less and when I do its for less time. As many have said, its become very hard to find a group at times. In regards to friends, I have 2 close friends that I also happen to work with in the same closed office (just the 3 of us so we sit around talking about gaming or MMO"s all day.) Both of them are seasoned mmo players and started VG shortly after I did and they"re also logging on and staying on a bit less. I won"t mention their issues as they aren"t mine. I play a Bard at the moment which is level 29, (which has known FPS issues due to bugs with the class, see awesome), I have had the same issues (performance wise) regardless of my class choice though as I"ve taken a necromancer to 16 or so and a disciple to 26. I"ll say flat out I think the disciple class is more or less fine especially now that they"ve fixed the bugs with bonds, the fact is 99% of them don"t know how to fucking play or even realize they have passive buffs and heals because they weren"t trained at an NPC. Of course there are some class bugs, which every single class has, but from a playability standpoint I think they"re pretty solid. The fact is theres almost no good disciples period.
I started with Talisman which started at release, and has quite a few quality players from these boards and their previous guilds and people we"ve picked up along the way. No pieces of shit in the guild etc. everyones really cool albeit everyones really fucking frustrated. Each day the active list of people slips then slips some more as each day passes into another. A good example is we cleaned up the guild around the beginning of March, basically anyone that had not logged in since the beginning of February. Now another month has passed, and we have 10 or so of any given class but monk, druid and rogues, and of those 10, probably 5-7 haven"t logged in for 2-3 weeks. Went off on a tangent there but it does reflect my point.
The main things causing me to log on less are the lack of groups when I get on, and while I didn"t mention it above the lack of meaningful solo content that genuinely makes you feel like you are progressing. I didn"t mention it because if there was a healthy population to group with, I wouldn"t be looking at the solo content so closely. The content is there but its not near as fleshed out and straight up grinding mobs isn"t even close to efficient. There are days I like to go into the woods and just kill shit. Albeit this is rare, on these days I"m finding myself firing up WOW and playing a newbie BE Mage for 20-45 minutes as opposed to taking my bard (whom I love to group with) into the woods or attempting to solo. I realize Bard isn"t the god of solo classes however if VG is trying to be the catch all Brad is touting, the progression isn"t even remotely comparable unless you are a Necromancer, but thats to be expected.
Don"t get me wrong, I do not want soloing to be at the level progression wise of grouping by any means but right now it feels as if you are wasting your time soloing in comparison to the fleshed out grouping and (IMO) SOLID dungeon experience. (Enjoyment + experience points) I can say that when I do get a group the quality is generally top notch and I"ve only ran into one real piece of shit, Bertlll on Flamehammer, and I"ve only had 2 bad pickup groups of probably 50 I"ve been a part of.
Just for disclaimer purposes I"ll add that I have no issues with the various nerfs and so on that I"ve seen and experienced. That shit is expected at the release of a game, especially Vanguard, MMORPGS are constantly in a state of balance from a class standpoint, and if you anticipated anything different at the release of a game... especially Vanguard, you are blind to the reality of these games. You go with the flow or you quit.
Right now I have no intention of quitting, but playing less? Better believe it, and that never bodes well for me.