Vanguard's serious problem is the fans?

[Itzena]

Reposting this here in a new thread, as suggested

Ok Hearless, here's the scoop. No, I'm not going to break the NDA and go into specifics about what the game has, shouldn't have or needs.

But I will tell you what's primarily wrong with beta right now. You may find it's not what the typical critics would think.

These are from my own personal notes that I keep, yet refuse to post Itbecause of the assholes in that beta.

This is one excerpt:

======================

The forums take peaks of highs and lows. You can literally sense people trying to like this game. People trying suspiciously hard to find something to write about on the forums that's positive. Unfortunately, these recounts are absent of any detail and hardly convince me that there is something more I haven't gotten to see that will change my perspective drastically.

I often wondered why that is. I have drawn the conclusion that people are afraid to speak constructively based on the firing squad that sits there refreshing the screen every minute to see who would dare speak when not spoken to.

They default to debating about MMOG's in general as a result. This indicates strongly that people do see a barren and shapeless world before them, even though they dare not admit it publically. I get the sense they are thrilled for an opportunity to mold this game into what they want it to be. Egos run rampant in this regard and several of the more vocal beta players are insistent upon getting their ideas burned into the blueprint. Especially when these people notice that the ink isn't even dry on that blueprint.

I dare say, the imagined wonderful Vanguard they testify about on the forums, is a contrived line of bullshit used as a means to suck up to developers in order to get their own ideas written into the design. If the design was there, they would just be testing. But considering it's not, this leaves an opportunity for the wannabe-game-designer, to gain a captive audience.

And captives we are. Many an unhappy tester has been silenced regularly by these fanatics who put any and every comment under their own jaded microscopes. Unfortunately this activity goes unchecked by any form of moderation. Subsequently, what you get is nothing but chastisement by the regular fanbois who seek to mold this game the way they see fit. Anyone pointing out the existing flaws, is summarily lynched, tarred and feathered, despite the validity of their concerns.

Even a developer was called on the carpet by beta players as recent as two weeks ago. The disrespect and rudeness of the regular, vocal dissenters of MMOG-today, ruthlessly bit into this poor guy like a pack of wolves. Just as the animals they are, at the first smell of blood, they all wanted a piece of him. The crime? The mere suggestion that corpse runs were not a fun factor and should be removed to a lesser penalty then what currently exists in Vanguard right now. What did Brad do? He basically apologized for his staff's outburst.

There is also a curious hatred for World of Warcraft, specifically. Curious, because much of what World of Warcraft has done was based on the original Everquest design and expounded from there. It's certainly ironic how these fanbois will rip apart anything WoW, yet praise, anything Everquest.

To the detriment of Vanguard, they will protest any implementation that even remotely resembles a mechanic within World of Warcraft. Good or bad, it doesn't matter. If it's something within WoW, they want it O-U-T. Likewise, if you are from WoW, they want YOU out, too. They've already succeeded in driving out many of those testers. They're long gone and I can't say I blame them.

I can't help, considering all that, but feel pity for Brad McQuaid. Here's a man who started out with a "vision" and held an open forum for years before beta, allowing others to share his space and ideas.

Yet something happened between then and now. Something worth pitying the man over. His leniency and viewpoints were thrown back in his face from disgruntled game-junkies from all over the virtual world spectrum. Vanguard is where many of the disgruntled and disbanded landed to bum a free meal. In the process, they are now trying to steal the keys to his house and his car and have already taken over his computer. The only thing left is to just hand over the code because they've already gotten into his game.

How can you not feel sorry for a man who now sits out on his own front steps, wondering if he should call the police or the psycho ward to rid them off of his property?

The game may very well be lifeless due to the fact that he doesn't know himself anymore, what it is he should do.

The void in his game speaks volumes towards the fact that he fears developing it the way it needs to be done.

Let's face it, this is a very capable man. He's demonstrated that with his history. A man who created Everquest, wrote the design for the lands, the characters, the events, etc. He's not stupid by any means. Yet his new world reflects a man who fears even adding the simplest mapping feature, for instance. A feature, so subetly done this past week, but was met with OUTRAGE by touted old-school gamers. How can a man function under that kind of idiotic pressure?

Vanguard's progress is evidence that he can't. His FAQ is constantly thrown in his face. An FAQ that was written years ago and probably has been totally reconsidered based on the fact that under 100 people are logging into his beta daily. It's not because the game doesn't have potential. It's more probably because normal people don't have time, nor energy, to put up with the nuts in that place and that's the truth!

Note to the clueless FAQ-touter: That page was taken down last week. Without fanfare or notice, it was quietly swept off the internet and replaced by the infamous "page not found" message. You have to get the impression that MAYBE this guy has finally realized SOMETHING?

While realization is the first step and is a good thing, he still has yet to rid himself of the crackpot company he has allowed in there.

My suggestion is to close beta entirely. Shut it down and use the excuse that time is now needed due to the change of publishers from Microsoft to Sony Online Entertainment. Say that hardware restructuring needs to be done and don't hold Vanguard to any reappearance date. Shut down the forums with a simple message that you will be back up after the transition is complete.

Dump all your beta testers to date and start fresh after you're back online and have something done to offer them.

Put in the ideas you have wanted to add and improve without having to get "permission" from your existing, suicidal fan-base.

Maybe then you can go back to enjoying what you do best - designing games.

[Exmonk]

The type of behavior on the forums described is accurate, though I don't think dumping the beta testers will change anything. They just need to wait a long time before sending out the next batch, make it large enough to drown out the smaller numbers of beta testers now.

[serwal]

Just showed this to a friend of mine who is in the beta. He says he agrees with it pretty much whole-heartedly. Vanguard is based on alot of poorly thought out mechanics and any attempts to improve them are met with fierce resistance. You merely hint that you're disatisfied with any aspect of the game and you're told that, "Maybe VanGuard isn't the game for you and you should go back to World of Moroncraft" and other such witty comments.

He said OOC chat in the game isn't much better. He ended up turning it off one night when somebody said the game would be so much better if there was at least a 4 minute downtime inbetween every fight so they could chat more often...and people started agreeing.

[Cuppycake]

I agree with this totally. The amount of asskissing that occurs on the VG beta forums is astounding. You have dozens of posts a week that are negative regarding the game's core mechanics and then a slew of vanbois responding with their repetitive "fuck anything that isn't a part of The Vision" mentality. There are a lot of genuine, well-thought out, constructive posts that encourage change to add an element of fun into the game...but once the asskissing patrol gets ahold of the thread it turns into a 'lets prove the OP wrong' deal.

Fuck that. I'd rather play with some b.net kiddies than that shit. =P

[Exmonk]

If anyone here wants to give VG a serious go with a pre-arranged group to give solid feedback and hopefully enjoy it without having to group with masochists PM me and we can work out a class arrangement with some times (not too often because lets face it atm we'd almost all rather be playing something else).

[Neric]

Vanguard fans show a strong affinity to purity and pain. They hate maps, teleports, gate spells and SoW. They love long corpse runs and huge experience penalties. When they log out they only to do it because the next ironman competition is about to start. They don't play for adrenaline, all they want is endorphine.

I would say that this sort of people can interfere with the development of a game.....if devs would listen to them...

In any case, such a masorchistic playerbase is tough to find and even tougher to maintain. You have to come up with new and creative ways of torture with every patch to keep them happy and that ain't easy. It may even be impossible, because adding immersion while keeping the game pure and without fancy features seems paradox.

[Arbitrary]

Brad was cultivating the "hey man, then maybe this game isn't for you" attitude since the getgo and some of that even had rubbed off on these boards for a while.

Glad to see it biting him in the ass.

[Jessie]

Mmmm, interesting.

[Hachima]

I think a lot of the vocal fans honestly love tedium It reminds me of a roomate I had in college. He was into medieval role playing. He would act out battles with swords and other weapons. He would even make his own chainmail armor by hammering out each ring from metal wire. It took hours upon hours just to make a small piece.

It reminds me exactly of the mindset a lot of the people that love Vanguard have and are vocal about wanting mass tedium.

Maybe there should just be a RP server with 1/4 the exp gain as normal servers and a bunch of modern "next gen" MMO features removed.

[Faranor]

There's a few things wrong with the Vanguard beta and one of the problems is pretty accurately described above by the OP.

What isn't wrong though, is the game itself. If you play the game and test what is in right now and what is supposed to be tested, you will get "Oloh-ish" reviews. I have played several classes now and while there needs to be serious bug fixing and tweaking done, most classes are functioning fine and are great fun. The world is beautiful and will be really really huge at release considering the small part we saw isn't even 1/4 of the total landmass (and don't forget the oceans which will be explorable by boat as well).

The main problem however is two-fold. First it's the horrible crowd that took the initial outlines and rumours of Vanguard and turned that into gospel, not to be touched again, ever- because it's the TRUE VISION...... and everybody who thinks otherwise is a heretic or a moron and shouldn't bother playing the game.

Sigil has recognized this problem and is now actively monitoring the boards for the ".... this game is not for you " comments. Too late, but nothing that a few posts by Brad couldn't stop.. he is the "bringer of the VISION" afterall. He should use his demi-god status to shut those idiots up. Most will bend and take the new word as gospel and some will leave. /shrug.

The other problem is a second group of testers who can't seem to grasp the fact that their favorite class/tradeskill/spell/etc is not implemented yet and keep harping on the boards about unknown (possible future) features. Hey, it's early beta, not everything is in.. test what's there and be objective, you might even like another class then ranger if forced to play one.

Since I'm in beta the game has improved tremendously. I have a AMD 3500+ (2200 mhz), 2 gig ram, geforce 6800 ge 256 mb and a normal 160 gig SATA hd, 7200 rpm. I play on high settings, most fluff turned on and I get around 20 fps in towns and 35-ish fps indoors and out in the fields. If I switch to medium it gets better and if I turn things off like grass and HDR I get even better performance. (when I started i got around 20 fps tops with low settings, max 7-8 in towns).

The graphics, specially the skies, weather and lighting are gorgeous. The music is very well done. Gameplay as far as abilities are implemented ,is great.

Does it need work? Yeah sure. Overland population, bugfixes, finishing the diplomacy and cafting spheres, several classes need to be added, spells need tweaking etc etc. But the tech work is not keeping me from logging in. It's the majority of the present testers that does. Can't stand to group again with a moron who thinks that snare is basically a cheat if the mob has no counter measure ... or one who thinks it's a cheat to fight for more than a day/night cycle because that's not humanly possible ...

I still have confidence that the dev team can pull this off and make Vanguard a very good and beautiful game. But please, please.. shut down the forums, it will make the world a better place.

[Zehn - Vhex]

This thread is just full of NDA breaking goodness. I say we get Brad in here to say, "Y'know what, fuck it. Post away, maybe then we can get some honest opinions without the vanboi's mucking everything up."

[fucker]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

This thread is just full of NDA breaking goodness. I say we get Brad in here to say, "Y'know what, fuck it. Post away, maybe then we can get some honest opinions without the vanboi's mucking everything up."

reading the news we getting from beta, this would be a blessing for Brad

[Larion]

I can't really comment on what the result of the vanguard testing will be i think it does still have a "chance", but it is sure at this point not really impressive. The world IS huge no doubt, but the feel for the world currently hardly exists.
It just does not feel alive at all yet although its partially pretty it needs a lot of more work.

[Tancred]

Originally Posted by Faranor

Can't stand to group again with a moron who thinks that snare is basically a cheat if the mob has no counter measure ... or one who thinks it's a cheat to fight for more than a day/night cycle because that's not humanly possible ...

Aaaaahahahahahahahahahaha

That's. . .beautiful. SO what if it's not humanly possible? I'm not human - I'm a fucking HERO!

[redav]

Must be a PC thing, the PS3 boards are nothing like that.