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Originally Posted by holymight  Vanguard was never a niche game. |
No, you're right. They have from the beginning been after mainstream appeal. The 500k sustained mantra has been thrown about for awhile now. I do. however, remember a time when the other half of the official line was that the immersive design philosophy was pivotal to the retention that could make the target number or even less very viable and profitable. I'm sure this is still the case, though I don't read all of Brad's posts anymore to know first hand. It just sounds like the old design approach has been systematically thrown out the window.
Maybe that is for the better. Maybe all those concepts really do suck in practice. It seems a bit subjective to me though, and last I checked FFXI has had many of them in place for years with the exact results that Sigil seemed to previously value: retention of players albeit in lesser amounts than the 500 pound warcraft gorilla. Or maybe it is all still in game and I don't know it. Someone mentioned that CR will not exist except on some novelty special rules server. Any vanboi want to counter that? What happened to the vision here? Has Brad admitted that his precious "dynamic death penalty" is actually inferior and superfluous? Did they replace it with xp debt? (Which is the stupidest and most grinding ass ideas for a death penalty in MMO's IMO. Make death sting or make it easy. Take a fucking stand. Debt is pretty much, "onoes, my numberz is bigger now, lol!") So anyway, yeah, is that little death mechanic tidbit true? Pretty telling if so. And don't pull the "it is only beta!" card either. The shit is due out in like 2 months and this is no time to be deciding on how the fuck death should function.