Lots of new Vanguard info released, plus videos & screenshots

[Dashal]

Since Oct 12th there have been 6000 beta invites. Today is November 28th. That's not 5k+ per week over a period of months.

[nyx]

My friend logged in today and couldn't stop frothing about the changes that have gone in since they last played. They could actually walk around in Khal.

[Lyenae]

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

Quality idea? Try unfeasable. How many differant instances/random encounters are you going to devote to the ubiquitious run from Qeynos to Freeport? If a player makes the run ten times will it be differant each and every time? How differant? How much programming and content should be devoted to making travel, where the destination is the goal, exciting?

Adventuring is the goal fucktard. You already shoved your limited brain into a box right from the get go. If the game is only about the destination, you failed at making a believable world and you should have no important role in designing the future of MMO's.

Great, thanks. I just wanted to get over to my friends and have to go through a big production.

I didn't say you can't have teleports or other means of travel. My point is that it is fully possible to make traveling interesting each and every time.

And a good number of those thirty years of source material involves going to the back of the book and rolling up random encounters. Oh look, 10-1000 orcs.

Fuck.

Fuck what, I'm not talking about random encounter tables that your jerk off DM rolled on back when you were 12. There are tons of books that have fully developed encounters/scenarios that can happen while traveling. They are adventure independent.

The problem with MMO's these days is they are made by a bunch of fuckups who never once played table top.

[Aegorian]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

The problem with MMO's these days is they are made by a bunch of fuckups who never once played table top.

Salty much? Did a dev run over your fuckin puppy or what?

[Lyenae]

Originally Posted by Aegorian

Salty much? Did a dev run over your fuckin puppy or what?

Just got off work ;P

[vynde]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

The problem with MMO's these days is they are made by a bunch of fuckups who never once played table top.

now now you cant say that. brad has done tabletops and MUDs, yet VG can go either way

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Keluven

Wow, ok. Care to explain then how they invite 5000+ people a week (over the timescale of months) into beta...yet somehow theres never more than 800-1000 people on at any given time?

I'd love to hear where you think all those players are going, cause they arent staying in Banguard.

Protip: try using the phrase 'bleeding to death by attrition' in your reply.

Just a quick aside -- I loathe the current invite system: random guy from the message-board. One of the the big problems is that this system seems likely to give you folks who do not want to beta test the game. They want to play the game ahead of everyone else. The point of beta testing is for developers to get free guinea pigs (as opposed to paying $$$ for actual testers) to test their shit and the guinea pigs get to experience the content a little early -- giving them a head's up when the game goes live. But beta testing requires that you deal with a game in its unpolished, buggy, non-optimized state. And if you're picking from a_pool_of_random_fuckups you'll find a lot of folks who are not willing to deal with the game in such a state.

Non sequitur: Honestly, I wish Sigil/SOE hadn't given a Q1 date -- nothing fucks up an MMO more than rushing it (AO, SWG) and I think they're rushing it right now. With TBC coming out Jan 16, and everyone hitting level 70 and re-subs for TBC hitting boredom again in WoW no later than Q2 -- seems like late Q2 or Q3 would be a better release date. WTF else is coming out in 2007? Conan?

[Arbitrary]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

Adventuring is the goal fucktard. You already shoved your limited brain into a box right from the get go. If the game is only about the destination, you failed at making a believable world and you should have no important role in designing the future of MMO's.

I honestly do not even know what you are talking about.

Originally Posted by Lyenae

There are tons of books that have fully developed encounters/scenarios that can happen while traveling. They are adventure independent.

DM - Ok, so what are you guys doing?
Player - We'll book passage on a ship headed south down the continent
DM - Sure, you can do that. One night after a few days at sea everyone is woken out of bed by the alarm bell. GHOST PIRATE SHIP!!1111!
Player - Never saw that one coming.

That is totally better than advancing the story that caused the party to get on the boat in the first place. I eagerly await opportunities to spend my finite play time on encounters I would never have initiated in this glorious MMO you are envisioning.

[kedwyn]

I wouldn't mind traveling by foot if a certain percentage of the time you'd interact with some NPC spawned specifically for you that offers some sort of quest or some named baddie you can kill for good level appropriate loot. Perhaps similar to the AES system that Vanguard is now practically throwing out.

IT could be as simple as spwaning an NPC that only you can see (to avoid a clusterfuck of having a hundred of things no one else can interact with) or much more complicated even like bandits chasing someone down the road that you can help (obviously something others could see and participate in).

If developers take the time to craft world events like that it doesn't take much to make things interesting. Sure after 100 times it will get old but thats 98 more times that you can make the trip and keep it interesting.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

DM - Ok, so what are you guys doing?
Player - We'll book passage on a ship headed south down the continent
DM - Sure, you can do that. One night after a few days at sea everyone is woken out of bed by the alarm bell. GHOST PIRATE SHIP!!1111!
Player - Never saw that one coming.

That is totally better than advancing the story that caused the party to get on the boat in the first place. I eagerly await opportunities to spend my finite play time on encounters I would never have initiated in this glorious MMO you are envisioning.

Can't speak for the OP -- but I certainly like the "the journey is the reward" idea. While there is certainly a lot you can do the first time you are traveling into an area--riders on the road, monsters in the deep whatever-- I just don't see how you can do it in current gen MMOs when you're a high-level char running back and forth between far away zones.

You have Big City X, you have adventure zone Y -- in between X and Y are low/mid level zones A,B & C you spend a lot of time going between X (for supplies, AH, whatever) and Y (for XP, loot, whatever) and through A,B, & C. But everything in A,B, & C is just too low level to be either a challenge to you or to provide the kind of loot you want. If you have a bunch of high levels attack you mid-journey in either A,B or C -- how is the engine distinguishing between you and area-appropriate toons?

In some ways this is the zone problem all over again.

Maybe some future MMO will have dynamic zones whose mob levels & loot change relative to your level -- until then maybe WoW's solution was best -- make the downtime long enouch so that a person can hit the bathroom, then grab a bottle of absolut and get back to gaming.

Anyway, back to the "journey is the reward" there are some great tabletop examples: Terror on the Orient Express (CoC), various outdoor adventures in AD&D, etc. WoW has a few of these and had a potentially good quest along these lines with the black shield/shady rest inn quest-line but it was poorly done or unfinished.

[xmod2]

I agree after the first time (and even sometimes including the first time) it gets tedious. It was a big enough pain having to get all my alts out to Desolace to get the Cooking book after the first time.

The griffons are a good solution. If you want to make it more "interesting" have the griffon path between two locations be unlocked via a quest. The quest starts in one town and involves multiple locations along the way, scripted events, etc. Once you reach the other town your account is flagged as having completed that leg. In the future, your alts can either choose to perform the quest, or just visit the last NPC in the line to open the flight path. Shit, just have the paths open by default on their alts. Who cares? It's not fun to do the same shit 1000 times.

That seems like the easiest way to remove the tedium while keeping the adventure of travelling.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by xmod2

Who cares? It's not fun to do the same shit 1000 times.

That's the bottomline right? Barring an Ender's Game like AI (hey could happen) there will never be enough content in an MMO to stop the grind. so you have to decrease the tedium (griffons/teleports) whilst not totally blowing away the idea of travel (PoK).

Even if you add dynamic travel encounters -- after you've fought Black Bart 50 times on the way to Rock Ridge you'll want to kill yourself at time 51.

[rinthea]

Originally Posted by tad10

Non sequitur: Honestly, I wish Sigil/SOE hadn't given a Q1 date -- nothing fucks up an MMO more than rushing it (AO, SWG) and I think they're rushing it right now. With TBC coming out Jan 16, and everyone hitting level 70 and re-subs for TBC hitting boredom again in WoW no later than Q2 -- seems like late Q2 or Q3 would be a better release date. WTF else is coming out in 2007? Conan?

I dont think this can be used as an excuse. If you read between the lines, the microsoft deal was shut down because microsoft wanted it pushed out early to cash in and get some revenue back. Sigil wanted to keep it going. If its not finished (or as finished as you can expect a mmo at launch) by Q1 then it all in all was never going to be. Instead, if at launch its unfinished, you can claim they were too optimistic, promised too much and were underfunded. But rushing it out I dont think so, its been in development an eternity.

[Lyenae]

Originally Posted by xmod2

It's not fun to do the same shit 1000 times.

That holds true for other stuff than traveling, too. I got bored of WoW dungeons after the 3rd or 4th time going through them, alot the first time especially if they are very linear. Raid instances are no different. Traveling from A to B gets boring about the same amount of times as repeating a dungeon/raid. "Farm Status" is basically "Boring Status".

When you get bored you move on to a new game. It's unrealistic to expect 6 years worth of 'content' from a $50 game.

[Lyenae]

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

That is totally better than advancing the story that caused the party to get on the boat in the first place. I eagerly await opportunities to spend my finite play time on encounters I would never have initiated in this glorious MMO you are envisioning.

If you want to be railroaded with finite play time, then buy a PS2/PS3 and play a single player RPG bud.