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Originally Posted by Gamblor I'd say the completely generic feel to a good portion of Brownnan's Stead doesnt exactly inspire newbies to keep testing. Or the fact that every newbie "dungeon" in a 10 mile radius of that godawful town is the exact same hole in the ground with different turns and maybe a goblin instead of a spider. |
Don't worry, they won't believe it until they see it....although one could claim that there is enough evidence out already. We got the screenshots, we got the movies and we even got a few Beta-"reviews". All of this is enough to draw pretty good conclusions. Mine goes like this:
The problem with Vanguard is the size. The world is huge and because of that they decided not to populate it by hand, they decided to do it with an algorithm. To cover the wide open space they also introduced generic dungeons made from texture modules, pretty much like LDoN, just less complex. The outcome is that the whole game reminds me of SWG where they also generated yard trash for you to keep you busy.
Players who want to explore an unknown mystic world will be disappointed, because they cannot follow the path of an artist or a dungeonmaster skillfully leading them on their journey, they can only follow the path of the mathematician who came up with the algorithm to optimize playtime vs. progress.
This is a common problem for the whole game. It all started with the generic body types, when someone decided that it would be too expensive to create unique bodies and armor for every single race, it continued with the world population algorithm and it ended (for now) with the generic dungeons to fill the open meaningless areas. Vanguard is for the most part just a generic shortcut to save manpower.
The only real unique stuff in this game are the towns and the few high level dungeons. In this area the game has probably more to offer than EQ (with just Lower Guk and Sol B). So once you reach the higher levels, the game gets probably a lot better.
Basically it wouldn't be too difficult to get things back on track. All they have to do is to dump the shortcuts and use the talent of their employees. They were seeking people with a background in fantasy games, so why not make use of that? Whenever they thought that the engine could do the work for them, that's where they have to start all over and do it by hand. The 3D world is there, so the stage is set. Now all they have to do is to write the screenplay.
It's not too late and that's why I wouldn't write them off yet.