Another lead designer leaves sigil.

[Rythonn]

Originally Posted by etchazz

who the fuck are you? that's like bob dylan going on a msg board to discuss his music and people flaming him, telling him he doesn't know a thing about writing lyrics.

That is about the dumbest thing I have ever heard. So every single song Bob Dylan ever sung was the best fucking song ever we are just idiots for not liking all of them? All because I don't build houses or cars or video games or movies... doesn't mean I can't tell you if they suck. Best chef in the world can slap shit on a plate, that doesn't make it taste good.

2 pages back there is a DDO thread asking if it sucks or not. Still in beta and still under NDA, but no one seemed to care about all the NDA breakers saying it sucked ass. Nor did we see anyone say, "But it is still in beta!" Hmm wonder what is different in this thread?

[Zehn - Vhex]

Because DDO's NDA didn't say you couldn't talk about it?

[Itzena]

Originally Posted by chu

"Don't worry guys. It's still beta! Am I right?!"


Don't fall for that shit yet again.

Amusingly, it's mostly the people who were flaming Blizzard for using that line that are defending Sigil.

[Neric]

Originally Posted by etchazz

that's like going to disney world before it was built when it was still a swamp and go around telling people "hey, disney world sucks." no fucking shit it sucks, IT AINT FUCKING BUILT YET!

When I wrote here right after E3 that the game is going to be crap everyone one told me that it was way too early for such a statement because the game wasn't even in Beta yet. Now it is in Beta and it is crap, but people want to tell me that it's way too early for such a statement because the game hasn't been released yet. I wonder what happens when it gets released. Will you tell me that it is still too early to judge it before the first major patch or maybe even before the first expansion?

When will you finally realize that the game has conceptual problems that can't just be patched away? It's the blueprints that suck, not the implementation.

[Angrier]

heh you guys got trolled by etchaz's first and only post

[Gnome Eater]

Originally Posted by Neric

Now it is in Beta and it is crap, but people want to tell me that it's way too early for such a statement because the game hasn't been released yet.

No, people want to tell you that you are making absolutely unsupported statements based on conjucters upon a list of changes and rumours by people who by definition cannot be trusted since they broke an NDA.

You might disagree with the NDA, but those who signed it and are trustworthy might all agree with you that Vanguard is the shittiest game ever, but they signed to keep their mouths shut.

As such, you are making this statement based on leaks from people who are by definition untrustworthy, and a few patch messages who got leaked, without having any idea about the scope and implenetation of those changes.

[Hachima]

I think the term "It's still beta" it just a cheap cop out. I've beta tested almost every MMO that has come out in the last 10 years. From my experience if it sucks in beta count on it sucking in release too until you actully see it fixed first hand. If there is a current flaw obviously there is something wrong with the original idea.

I played WoW early on in F&F beta when there were extreme level caps and you could only play once race. I had so many positive things to say about it and was dying for the NDA to be lifted so I could talk about it. It was the same for almost everyone in the test and there was hardly a bad comment to be heard. Of course this is all about pre raid content which can be a whole different topic. But for the time non raid content is whatwas being tested, and most likely the same thing being focused on in Vanguard right now.

Sure WoW alpha had flaws in it's early stages. The best weapon in the game came from fishing at one point. And it took me less than an hour to design a bot to fish. I forget the exact posistion on bots but at the time even a dev posted source to an auto leveling bot. Just to test what people could come up with at the time. Anyway point is sure there was a design flaw in how items came into the game, however the game was still a ton of fun.

I loved the philosophy WoW devs had on the game. At any given moment they would ask themselves "Am I having fun at this instant" If the answer was no they tried to fix whatever it was that wasn't making the game fun.

If it's true there are many people not having fun in Vanguard and they are having problems getting people to even log on to test it maybe they should take this approach. If people are stuck traveling immense ammounts of time just to find a town/stuff to do are they really having fun?

When EQ first started they could get away with this problem. There weren't really any alternatives so people put up with a lot of crap because there was still some good stuff to experience in the game.

This really isn't an option in today's market. If people aren't having fun in your game there are soo many alternatives out there that they are going to leave your game and do something else.

I have 5 active MMO subsciptions I pay for and several beta accounts for other games. I have Oblivion sitting here to play for my 360 and haven't even started. Plenty of other games I'd love to play play too. Unfortunately there just isn't enough time for them all. My whole day is 100% free time so I imagine anyone with a full time job values their free time even more.

If Vanguard doesn't have many players logging on there must be other games out there they enjoy playing more. What will Vanguard offer that insures me that my time spent online is productive? Or will I spend hours traveling around the huge world? Spend hours trying to find a group?

That is one thing that killed FFXI for me. You basically had to group no matter what at higher levels. I was a well geared Red Mage that was one of the most highly desired classes for exp groups at teh time. I am also fluent in Japanese and had the opportunity to join either Japanese groups or English groups. However I still spent hours trying to get a group formed. This was mainly due to a flay in that if someone was even 3 levels out of range from you exp was screwed up.

There are many other things that game design can do to waste my time. If any game has too much of that I'm not going to stay around.


Just one other thing I'd like to add. I really like EQ2's approach to large areas especialy DoF. You can make a large area and add a fast travel system to it and still give the player the impression it's a large area. They do this by making the flight path non direct and you fly around the area at a fast speed. When you watch that for a while you get a sense of how big the area is and at the same time get to your desination in a fairly fast amount of time.

[Gnome Eater]

Originally Posted by Hachima

I loved the philosophy WoW devs had on the game. At any given moment they would ask themselves "Am I having fun at this instant" If the answer was no they tried to fix whatever it was that wasn't making the game fun.

I want to add, that I agree with this 100%. WoW pre-raiding is perhaps the best MMORPG experience I have had, expecially with a group of competent players.

[xilsharn]

Whatever you do that you have 100% free time, please hire me.

[Lenaldo]

Originally Posted by Gnome Eater

I want to add, that I agree with this 100%. WoW pre-raiding is perhaps the best MMORPG experience I have had, expecially with a group of competent players.

problem being that even playing very casually it does not take more than a few months to hit that 60 mark and then the game becomes quite stale.

The biggest problem I am having with playing a newbie char again is that there really arnt that many people doing groups. The first time around I plvled as fast as possible to 60. Skipped a lot of content and just did what was best exp. Now that I am bored with being 60 and trying a newbie, i have realized that I cant do all the content as much as I would like because everyone else is out soloing their way to 60.

I will agree that I have not had as much fun in any mmoprg lvling up as I have in WoW. But to be honest, I had a LOT more fun gearing up in EQ than I have so far in WoW. I dont buy the argument that running instances is not identicle to camping mobs in EQ. It is the same concept. Do a somewhat-static spawn a few hundred times hoping for a drop. Do you know how much fun it was running undead strath 1000 times when you only needed 1 item that drops off of the baron? Absolutely horrid. I'd rather be sitting at the AM camp in lguk and pull mobs all day in a relatively static group than have to find a new one every 45mins. At least this way I can guarentee a chance that my mob will be killed(re: postman).

I dunno. Running instances 10000 times has had the same affect on me as sitting at a camp. The only difference is I could do lguk for months getting drops and running the same instance gets old quite fast. At least with lguk I would camp one spot of the dungeon for a few days before moving to another. With instances you do the whole thing everytime and it gets quite borring.

[Anyen]

"Don't worry guys. It's still beta! Am I right?!"

Gee, there's still at least another 6 months before release. That's half a year. But you're right.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Lenaldo

Stuff.

Apples and oranges.

Of course I'd rather just sit on top of the Baron's spot and punk his ass every 33 minutes in the vague hope that the loot I want drops. Everybody does. It's more a problem with the loot system though then the methodology. The problem is that in WoW, instances don't take into account what people have and who is present. Simply put, Nef shouldn't drop a stormrage BP if the three druids on the raid already have it. Darkmaster Gandling shouldn't drop a shadowcraft hat if there are no rogues present. Etc...

Besides, you probably weren't around for the days when the Lguk Lord/AM/Hand list was 9 hours long unless you were an enchanter. After 4 weeks of camping an SMR I gave up and sold PBB's for 100 a pop until I had enough to buy one in EC. Do you know how annoying it is farming 200 PBB's...let alone trying to sell that many? 8(

[Zaniel]

Originally Posted by Lenaldo

I dunno. Running instances 10000 times has had the same affect on me as sitting at a camp. The only difference is I could do lguk for months getting drops and running the same instance gets old quite fast. At least with lguk I would camp one spot of the dungeon for a few days before moving to another. With instances you do the whole thing everytime and it gets quite borring.

To each their own I guess but my final Strath run was still fun, grinding out my 300th AA sitting at tables in PoFire was not. Then again being a warrior in WoW had substantially more interesting things to do than being a mage in EQ.

[Cybsled]

The only difference is I could do lguk for months getting drops since I could watch TV or play playstation, with me only having to press the auto-attack button every 5 minutes or so

There, fixed it for ya.

Honestly, I think people have convinced themselves that camping wasnt boring because they did stuff that had nothing to do with the game to keep themselves occupied. Talk about random crap, play a video game, watch tv, browse the internet, read a book. Spawns generally had a long respawn time as well, so it's not like you were chain killing mobs nonstop. And given that most of the mechanics in EQ only required you to press a single button once, then maybe an extra button every few seconds (taunt, flying kick) unless you were a caster, you didnt really need to devote your full attention to the game.

Yes, instance runs can get stale and boring after running them 1000 times. That's true of anything. You listen to a song too much, you play de_dust2 too many times, you play complex with grenade launchers too many times...then it gets a bit tiring. However, sometimes variety is all thats needed to cure the "blahs". Camping gets tiring because of the distinct lack of variety. If you werent the puller, you sat in the same spot literally for hours.

At least with an instance run, I have a chance to score some cash or maybe snag a nice world drop along the way. I think that was part of the reason people liked Seb...it was really the first dungeon in EQ to introduce valuable random drops to the trash.

[forge]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

The problem is that in WoW, instances don't take into account what people have and who is present. Simply put, Nef shouldn't drop a stormrage BP if the three druids on the raid already have it. Darkmaster Gandling shouldn't drop a shadowcraft hat if there are no rogues present. Etc...

That's just another feature that would make mmo's better. Quick someone take notes! But then some bean counters going to say, "Hey guys wasn't the point to waste as much of their time as possible?". Clearly from past threads we know this code is currently in wow, just not "turned on".