Vanguard SoH - Preorder

Weeee...!

 

please tell me this is not like wow that it is something better ??? yes yes?

 

It has to be better...everything is better than WoW.

 

you actually have a point!

 

Death might be better than WoW. I'm still on the fence about that one.

Candy Mountain is definitely better than WoW.

 

let's just hope it doesn't turn out to be as successful (and backhanded) as WoW has been to players...

 

Note that when they say beta access, they mean phase 5 beta, stress test. It is currently in beta 3, so it will be awhile before any preorder people can play.

 

ok so are people going to get this or what?

 

I am guessing none of you got into the Beta.
I highly doubt any of you will really care for it. After level 6 game takes a hard nose dive.

 

Explain.

 

The hard grind kicks in way to soon. One of the smart things Blizzard did was allow leveling to be pretty easy early on. Hell there is barely any grind at all until 32+. Vanguard is complete take back to the first year of EQ. Lots of running to far off zones to fight in a specific area (usually very tough stuff that killed you often requiring lots more of long runs back to try and reach corpse without dying again). Its very nostalgic really, and part of me has missed it a little. So I won't completely count that against it alone, but for many who didn't start MMO'ing until CoH or WoW they just won't care for it at all.

I'll update the beta and pop into it a few more times to see if its gotten any better, but the lag was just sick in most zones and the game runs like a real dog for the quality of graphics it has.

This was a long list posted a little while back that had a long thread and everyone seemed to pretty much agree with it at the time.


1. Performance, in particular the hitching and stuttering. It *has* to be fixed by release. This topic has been beaten to death, and I know they're working on it, so I'll leave it at that.

2. Unibody character models. Another dead horse, but character appearance is a very important issue to many players.

3. Chunk population is dull. By this I mean the content progression is predictable and usually targetted at a specific and tight level range. I know that the mobs over the next hill will be 1-2 levels higher than the mobs on this hill. Where are the exciting mobs like EQ with the level 40 Mino Hero running around killing newbies and guards in Steamfont, or Spectres wiping out players in Oasis?

4. Lifeless cities/villages. NPCs seem like little more than quest and skill vending machines. Population centers seem to consist of a bunch of static NPCs standing around 24/7. The fact that you can't hear other player's interactions with NPCs really detracts from immersion. I liked hearing the occassional shout by the Priest of Chaos in EQ "Let this fool's death be a lesson to you all!", and it was a good way to discover quests, by overhearing dialog of someone else completing one.

5. Mob AI is poor. The AI in Vanguard is EQ level, at best. That doesn't cut it in this day and age. You need more to keep encounters interesting and fun. The AI in WoW is very basic, but they make up for it with extensive use of scripted encounters. I've seen very little scripted encounters in Vanguard, and in any case I believe they won't be as effective in an uninstanced world, so improving AI is the best option.

6. Mob abilities are lacking. There has been some progress in this area, but it's still lacking. In EQ by level 20 I'd been diseased, poisoned, paralyzed, feared, blinded, stunned, charmed, dotted and nuked. Each of those effects were very noticable and important. Mobs in Vanguard do stuff because I see icons appear on me, but it usually doesn't seem to do anything noticiable. It might be because everything it too well balanaced, so mobs that do dots have less melee damage so it all comes out the same in the end.

7. Combat is too UI focused. This is another topic that have been brought up many, many times. Vanguard's combat system is too whack-a-mole, and UI focused.

8. Quests are subpar. Having 99% of the quests be kill X of Y or gather X of Y doesn't cut it. It's a step back from the previous generation of games (EQ2 and WoW). At a minimum you need escort quests, protect NPC quests, timed challenges, etc. Ideally you'd want to introduce some new quest types to the genre. Additionally quests are too restricted by level.

9. Travel is boring. This relates to point 3. It is also is caused by too few POIs, and those POIs that do exist tend not to be very interesting. Usually a tent with a few mobs around it or a tower with a few mobs around it, etc. Where are the cool POIs like the Chessboard or the Aviak treefort in EQ? Qalia is a lot better than Thestra, but still not good enough.

10. Poor dungeon design. Dungeons tend to be linear with fast respawns, and a boss at the end. While this encourages crawling, it doesn't work well in a non-instanced world, because it leads to leap-frogging, racing and groups unavoidably training eachother. See Crushbone and Unrest for good examples of non-instanced dungeons that can support many groups without negative interactions between those groups.

11. Lack of hooks. Another topic that's been discussed at length. Minor improvements have been made, but not nearly enough.

12. Lack of goals. By goals I don't mean raid bosses, and get the best loot, I mean near term goals. My only goal in Vanguard is to level up. In EQ I always had one or two, near term, achievable goals, such as get acquiring a magic weapon, or getting a full set of bronze armor.

13. Lack of immersive details. This is an umbrella item for the lack of polish (and yes I do know it's beta), each thing is minor, but taken together it adds up. Things that EQ had 7 years ago, like mobs visibly wielding the weapons they dropped, or being able to drop items on the ground (you could affect the environment more in EQ than you can in Vanguard!). Also includes trees with no collision detection.

14. Telon is dull. There's chunk after chunk of rolling hills with sparse forest cover. In EQ you had the volcanic wasteland of Lavastorm, the green hills of Commonlands, and the dunes of Ro, all close to each other and available for exploration. The environments were intresting and made you always want to see what the next zone had to offer. In Vanguard I know the next chunk will be pretty much the same as the current chunk. The good news is Thestra was the worst of this problem and it's receiving a total revamp.

15. No innovation. Every couple of days there's another thread asking what is 3rd gen about Vanguard. Forget the generation semantics, but what people are looking for is some new cool innovations in gameplay. New forms of content, new mechanics, new class abilities, new types of quests, new something! Vanguard is utterly devoid of innovative ideas. Even if all the above 14 problems were fixed, it would just make the game competitive with what's already out there. Innovation is needed to take the genre to the next level.

 

I really hope Huxley is a good game. The videos I have seen somewhat discouraged me, as they just looked like quake death matches. Hopefully it will be well implemented and not just feel like an MMO quake game. Same goes for Enemy Territory. I'm hoping that game can resurrect some competitive play.

As for Vanguard, granted it is in beta, it sounds like EQ with sub-pretty graphics. Regardless of if it is in beta or not, bad gameplay will remain bad gameplay. We'll see though.

 

Anyone else get into the beta today?

 

I'll take that as a no.

Haven't had the chance to play it much yet, but I had to turn down all the graphic options to low...... it looks like crap and still plays like crap. The monk so far kicks ass though