Quote:
Originally Posted by Kendrick  long list of goals that were not archieved |
So you wanted to make it bigger and better than anything. You certainly managed to make it bigger, but size doesn't mean much, if it's nothing but empty space. Did you make it better? Nope, the feeling you get from playing isn't much different to other games. Sure, there is stuff like diplomacy, but if that was a stand-alone game, it would fail. People don't play Vanguard because of diplomacy.
In my opinion your modular approach had to fail. You just tried to copy features from other games and expected that mix to work. There is more to it though. The way you analyze the problems makes me think that you don't see what the real problem is. My favorite comparison is snare and fear. Both are abilities that are more or less useful on their own, but together they give you a whole new set of options. That was a small example to show the bigger picture. Gameplay-features need to work together for more than just the addition of components. It's that sort of chemistry that's missing from Vanguard.
Huge world plus tons of races plus tons of classes plus excel-sheet class ballance and a few NPCs to kill alone is
not the way it works. Reducing MMOs to just that is a clear mistake. Designing the game with the goal to make it a one way street without any chance to deviate from the main path nor think outside the box is a recipe for disaster.
It's the gameplay that sucks, don't you see it? Your game is missing both, the intellectual as well as the social challenge and that's why it's a failure. Gameplay was such a minor factor in the equation, that you could even completely replace it during the Beta. The poor performance is just the final nail in the coffin and if you think that hardware will catch on, you are wrong again. Even the hardcore fanbois will have a tough time waiting that long and the playerbase will thin out along the way and with them the cashflow will thin out too. All you can rely on is a playerbase of people who came from even worse games like SWG for example. They might see an improvement even if in reality there is none and they might still have hope, because they know how much a game can change within a few patches although they should know that it's unlikely that the really good stuff that should have been there in the first place gets patched in later. How many second chances does Sigil want to have?
Vanguard as it is now is just a huge more or less fluid 3D world with a "hotfix" as gameplay. In a way, it's the legitimate next generation follow-up to Luclin. Cudos to Brad and his Luclin dev-team, they continued right where they left. Not the ideal way to show continuity though....
