I've been playing Vanguard since very early beta and there's a few things that have irritated the hell out of me, but have gone unchanged the entire time. Most of this post is asking for things to be "dumbed down" as the masochistic hardcore would call it. I'm not a wimp that plays only on Saturday afternoon's and wants to be level 50 a week from now - I lead a high end raiding guild on in EQ on The Rathe and spent over 350 days played in EQ throughout the 6 years I played. I like challenges, but I think some things have gone too far.
The first problem I have is how far mobs chase you when you try to run from them.
This is a screenshot I took last week in Shrine of the Eternal Flame. There's a huge camp of ashendrag's right where the red circle is, but it's out of clip plane distance for me. The screenshot is shortly after I ran from two level 24 2 dot mobs when I had full health. As you can see I'm almost dead. The problem is twofold. First, I'm a warrior and was significantly better geared than most people my level. Second, I had to use sprint just to make it where I did.
If I were any other class, or had average gear for my level I would have been dead in this situation. This is too unforgiving in my opinion. Had I stayed and fought and then decided to run when i realized it was a futile effort than this would be completely alright. But that's not what happened. I made a simple mistake and got 2 mobs instead of 1, and did everything right from there on out. I immediately ran, switched to defensive stance, and popped sprint and even then just BARELY lived. I counted the amount of time that it took me to run back to where I was when I started and it took me 42 seconds. Mobs just chase you too far.
The second thing that should have been done 6 months ago is a message indicating players are link dead in groups. Come on, I shouldn't even have to be asking for this. It's ridiculous that I have to put everyone that I group with on my friends list just to see the message which tells me they've gone offline.
Both broker's and the LFG tool needs to have better search tools. You can't search for specific stats, types of armor, or 2h weapons with brokers the way they are now. And as far as the LFG tool goes, it's pathetic. Especially considering how much hype was put into it. You can't even search what continent someone's on using it and you're just as well off using /who all lfg x to x level as you are using the tool.
A /who all friend command would also be nice to have. This is something the original EQ had and the friends social tab is not an adequate substitute. I don't want to have to bring up a new window every time I want to see which of my friends are online, and even then I don't want to have to scroll through the entire list to determine which of them are online or not.
And finally, travel times are ridiculous. If you want to travel between continents it takes you almost a solid hour unless you started right near a boat or that's where your final destination is. Hell, the run from Tursh alone to New Targonor takes 25 minutes. People don't even bother asking players on other continents to come to groups. Ever been in Trengal Keep and wanted to go group in Coterie Infineum Sanctuary? Yeah, me either. There needs to be even more dock locations.
Horses need to be faster as you get higher level too. A 20 speed increase from the level 10 horse to the level 30 horse is just stupid as the cost for them is almost a 100 fold increase. Nobody even bothers with the higher level mounts and they're acting as a horrible time sink right now as well.
