Vanguard - Brad speaks about Bazzar/NPC vendors

[Braen]

Originally posted by Jait
I like WoW system to be honest. Skinners are often bottom feeders (said with affection), coming to the battlefield when all is said and done. Miners work in dangerous situations to be sure, but their danger is the environment, not the creatures that inhabit the Mines. Umber Hulks show up, the Miners evac, and the Warriors go to work. When it's clear the Miners return. Same applies with the Forest and the Tree-Cutters and everything else.

Exactly like Brad seems to be thinking. You can't switch to adventurer mode and have all your fighting equipment in the outpost anyway so call your friends to come take care of them so you can work the mine some more... or hire other player/adventurers to protect you while you are mining. Creating a "class" of player mercs.

[Jait]

For clarity's sake I wasn't trying to imply that you can't do both in WoW, everyone knows you can. But it's far more lucrative when you need 20 of X right now, to run over to someone elses hunting grounds and start skinning the left-behind corpses. I just don't think they should need to be in the group to do it. We'll see how this pans out in Vanguard in the coming months. It's certainly an ambitious start, and that's good to see.

[Elgonn]

Originally posted by Braen
I think people need to get out of their heads that there are only parties of adventurers and Vanguard is trying to find a way to make tradeskillers more involded in the game other than, something fun to do in the down time.

Fun during downtime? Maybe if you were talking about WoW and people gathering mats.

Vanguard fun:
Log on
Join guild raid
Finish raid
Head back to town
Switch to tradeskiller
Find a group that is nearby and wants to gather the same crap you do and has an opening for X subset
Leave town and go gathering
Come back to town and possibly even craft as a team?

Fun during downtime my ass. Only a very few ever want to play a damn game as a menial laborer.

[Braen]

Originally posted by Elgonn
Fun during downtime? Maybe if you were talking about WoW and people gathering mats.

Vanguard fun:
Log on
Join guild raid
Finish raid
Head back to town
Switch to tradeskiller
Find a group that is nearby and wants to gather the same crap you do and has an opening for X subset
Leave town and go gathering
Come back to town and possibly even craft as a team?

Fun during downtime my ass. Only a very few ever want to play a damn game as a menial laborer.

Lots of people play EQ2.

[Elgonn]

EQ2 only tradeskilled like that back in Alpha and early Beta. Do you possibly think Vanguard will make it to Retail like that?

[Braen]

I was making a joke equating EQ2 to menial labor in general

And again. These are only general idea and FAQs about a large part of Vanguard. no one has played it and no one has seen it and the ones that have, aren't talking.

I am not trying to say either side is right or not. or to say that I perfer Vanguards or WoW or EQ2 or Horizons... I am just putting out information as I find it about Vanguard and if someone asks me something I see if I can come up with something the devs have said about it. People on here know I am a huge supporter of Brad and Vanguard.

[Slansin]

Exactly like Brad seems to be thinking. You can't switch to adventurer mode and have all your fighting equipment in the outpost anyway so call your friends to come take care of them so you can work the mine some more... or hire other player/adventurers to protect you while you are mining. Creating a "class" of player mercs.

People play for fun. I wouldn't find "Babysit the tradeskiller" fun, even if they paid me hard, American legal tender.

Nor would I find "Tag along with the adventurer" fun, if all I want to do is get some fucking ore.

And if I and my crack team of sploiters want to get some high-quality mineral from a high-level zone that nobody else goes to, not only am I sandwiching my dungeon-crawl with 20-minute runs (it's a BIG world, remember?), but once we've cleared it of whatever kobold-on-roids clan that controlled it, we have to run back to the outpost to swap into blue-collar mode, then run back to the dungeon YET AGAIN and pray shit hasn't respawned.

The best thing Sigil could do for MMO players is to make avatars move at the speed their owners actually run in place on a NES Power Pad-inspired peripheral that is packaged with the game.

The interface could have a window that tracks how many calories you've burned while running Aradune's treadmill. At least with a plan like this, Sigil would also be promoting fitness alongside their boring, giant-game-world-immersion, timesink.

[valarin]

haha amen slan..

i didn't think eq was much more then a mudd/ DnD rip off with bards tale 3 graphics....Not sure what's with the brad hero huggles all the time..

[Elgonn]

Originally posted by Slansin
People play for fun. I wouldn't find "Babysit the tradeskiller" fun, even if they paid me hard, American legal tender.

Anyone know where to find the Shadowbane developer quote about tradeskilling? Something like:

"PCs don't do menial labor. They hire NPCs to do it for them."

I remember the discussions years ago about it and I can't find the original developer posts.

[Eomer]

Considering that pretty much every major MMOG out right now, ESPECIALLY WoW, owes much of it's core gameplay elements to ones originally popularized (note I didn't say created) by EQ, I'd say that the praise of McQuaid and company is justified. EQ damn near singlehandedly made the MMOG genre a commercial success. I realize UO came first, but EQ blew it out of the water in terms of commercial and popular success (professional athletes admitting to playing it and so on).

[Heavens_Myst]

WoW's system is completely unacceptable. Becoming a "master" is simply way too easy and leads to everyone being a master something. Combined with nearly all tradeskill items being worse than common instance drops, or even random green drops, leads to pretty much no market for Tskillers. That is failure.

I'd much rather the skilling up system be genuinely unattractive for a good majority of the players so that the items made can actually be powerful and rare.

[Digo]

Originally posted by Slansin
The best thing Sigil could do for MMO players is to make avatars move at the speed their owners actually run in place on a NES Power Pad-inspired peripheral that is packaged with the game.

The interface could have a window that tracks how many calories you've burned while running Aradune's treadmill. At least with a plan like this, Sigil would also be promoting fitness alongside their boring, giant-game-world-immersion, timesink.

Hah. Gold.

I'm picturing some good screenshots. A white-skinned tradeskill "master" leading a column of dark-skinned "workers" across the hilltops in search of work.

[Sorran]

I swear to god, the more I see of the design for Vanguard, the more it's becoming obvious to me that Brad McQuaid is not expecting any real human beings at all to be involved playing it. His player base consists almost entirely of some sort of perfect, almost utopian MMOG player that simply doesn't exist.

His design seems to be based on the premise that every single player wants complete and total immersion the entire time. I'm sure every player would love that, but they won't take it at the expense of having everything in the game being a treadmill of boring stuff. Players want to have fun, as quickly and simply as possible. The more hoops you force them to jump through to have fun, the less actual fun they are going to have. Seriously, switching spheres to be able to tradeskill? Sure it may not be realistic or immersive to be able to equally adventure and tradeskill at any given time, but you know what? I don't bloody well care - it's a lot more fun than having to run back to an outpost and change into my Farmer John outfit anytime I want to some tradeskilling. And actually having to head back to Outpost to change adventuring gear because you discover that what you took with you to the dungeon wasn't the correct gear? Holy hell, please tell I'm missing something here, because shit like that simply isn't fun.

Exactly like Brad seems to be thinking. You can't switch to adventurer mode and have all your fighting equipment in the outpost anyway so call your friends to come take care of them so you can work the mine some more... or hire other player/adventurers to protect you while you are mining. Creating a "class" of player mercs.

If Brad is truly thinking this, he has, in all honesty, lost the plot. As Slansin pointed out, THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN. Maybe with the mythical MMOG player I mentioned above, but in the real world? Not gonna happen.

I'll heartily agree that a lot of the design ideas I've seen for Vanguard are great ideas, but I simply see them falling flat on their face when the rubber meets the road (ie. normal people actually start trying to play the game).

Love it or hate it, the success of WoW has shown us, more than anything else, that complexity in MMOGs has been the only barrier to entry for the mass market. Make it simple, make it fun and they will come. The complexity comes from the natural interaction from large groups of people playing together, and if your game design includes it, your end game, whatever form it may take.

Cheers,

Sorran.

[Jait]

Originally posted by Slansin
People play for fun. I wouldn't find "Babysit the tradeskiller" fun, even if they paid me hard, American legal tender.

Nor would I find "Tag along with the adventurer" fun, if all I want to do is get some fucking ore.

And if I and my crack team of sploiters want to get some high-quality mineral from a high-level zone that nobody else goes to, not only am I sandwiching my dungeon-crawl with 20-minute runs (it's a BIG world, remember?), but once we've cleared it of whatever kobold-on-roids clan that controlled it, we have to run back to the outpost to swap into blue-collar mode, then run back to the dungeon YET AGAIN and pray shit hasn't respawned.

The best thing Sigil could do for MMO players is to make avatars move at the speed their owners actually run in place on a NES Power Pad-inspired peripheral that is packaged with the game.

The interface could have a window that tracks how many calories you've burned while running Aradune's treadmill. At least with a plan like this, Sigil would also be promoting fitness alongside their boring, giant-game-world-immersion, timesink.

Really, that's quite amusing coming from the guild who pimped A Tale in the Desert on their home page.

[Duppin]

Originally posted by Jait
Really, that's quite amusing coming from the guild who pimped A Tale in the Desert on their home page.

You know something? Despite the fact that it was really slow paced, and not a "combat" game...

ATITD was sorta fun.

I know, I know.