Nino...One of the upsides of VG.

[Man0warr]

The one thing about VG I can't stand is objects popping up out of nowhere, rocks, fences, grass, etc. I've looked everywhere in the settings for something to increase the distance objects are loaded - it drives me crazy for some reason.

[Gaereth]

I would imagine the vast majority of folks don't know much about the depth of the targetting you can do via macroing and stuff. Last target, targettarget, focus, and then all the conditionals you can apply is damn nice.

[r.gun]

I think it's just the fact that it actually pops out of no where and doesn't fade. Every game, including WoW, has shit popping out of no where but they all fade in so it's not as obvious. They really gotta get on making shit fade in.

[Nairbog]

Originally Posted by Man0warr

The one thing about VG I can't stand is objects popping up out of nowhere, rocks, fences, grass, etc. I've looked everywhere in the settings for something to increase the distance objects are loaded - it drives me crazy for some reason.

Same here. I complained about this in beta quite a bit, and a dev finally responded and said it was one of his pet peeves and would get it fixed so we should see a slider (for how far you draw out objects) very soon. That was probably around 8 months ago, I wonder what happened.

[Nino]

Originally Posted by Nairbog

Same here. I complained about this in beta quite a bit, and a dev finally responded and said it was one of his pet peeves and would get it fixed so we should see a slider (for how far you draw out objects) very soon. That was probably around 8 months ago, I wonder what happened.

That was me. This is one of my pet peeves that still drives me crazy. Hopefully it well get fixed one day.

[Nairbog]

Thanks for the update.

[Witoubo]

Originally Posted by The Hiram Key

Okay, but how is Silky Venom any different then what the offical forums would look like ? Why push your "dirty laundry" off on someone else (fansite) in the name of community building ?

Those same people you refer to as "spec ed" are now posting on SV's site, and if Sigil had their own forums, they would be posting there. The signal to noise ratio over there seems about normal, so I will say "bzzz, wrong answer".

Is it the money ? The hastle ? The wounded pride from EQ1 forums ? Fear ? Unable to take responsibility for that which you have birthed ?

Surely someone has the inside poop on this, and I am not talking the "official response inside poop", I am talking the "the real reason" type poop.

And that, is a loot of poop.

I know the discussion has moved on a couple pages since you asked Hiram but beyond the problem of signal to noise official forums create a sense of entitlement to the people that post there. You can see it all over the WoW forums and in the old EQ forums.

"BLUE plz, my question is more important that everyone elses!"
"ARADUNE: Why did my corpse rot, it had 2 hours left on the timer!"

People posting on official forums feel they are speaking directly with the developers and are doing so with complete anonymity so they act like shit heads. It will usually end up being a net negative unless you have some very very diligent CMs and volunteer mods.

If you put the developer/player interface off onto affiliate sites you create a very different dynamic. Players appreciate when devs take time out to "visit" them on their forum. If you don't go out of your way to piss people off you generate a lot of good will (as evidenced by all the Nino and Tigole love around here). The sense of entitlement is gone because I'm no longer speaking directly to devs when I start a new post. I'm speaking to my peers and if a dev jumps in, cool.

Very smart decision IMO even if it has been a little poorly implemented in the case of Vanguard.

P.S. - Take Nino's leash off! edit: Never mind, I see he is posting again.
P.P.S - These forums need much more moderation so what happened to Nino doesn't happen again. The garden needs weeding Req!

[UnchainedAcolyte]

Originally Posted by Draegan

I played VG for a month after release as a rogue and druid. Can someone here please tell me what so different about combat in VG than all the other MMOs out there? It all seems the same to me. Tank, Aggro, Healing, Spamming buttons to do damage.

What makes VG combat different?

Fair question, Draegan.


I've played a rogue to 20, and I really enjoy the class due to the utility. Yes, primarily our function is DPS, but rogues also have a snare ability in the form of Knee Break (available at level 10 I think); short stuns (Blinding Flash - throwing flash powder in the face of an opponent); one long stun (Blackjack, 30 secs, but must be out of combat - allows for very limited crowd control); an increased dodging ability, increased parrying ability and Feint (basically a stun and minor debuff) which allows a backstab (even if in front of the opponent)/free attack to allow a rogue to off-tank for a limited period of time, especially if you switch to a good parrying dagger/dirk.

The rogue abilities don't heavily broaden until after your 10th level and into the teens, which is why it probably seemed very wash-rinse-repeat when it came to combat before 10.

In short, the rogue abilities allow for a lot of versatility when playing the class, and can be a very tactical class: stalking bonuses are gained due to length of time in stealth during combat. These bonuses increase DPS a reasonable percent as well as movement bonuses, so the player is encouraged to remain in stealth consistently during combat. However, if I'm aggroed to and attacked during combat, I become visible and lose those stalking bonuses and must start over. This forces me to balance my DPS with de-aggro abilities and off-tank or steal aggro/rescue only when truly necessary.

Item-based enhancements/abilties exist as well. For myself at 20 I can make/use poison for weapons to add a bit of extra DPS, and can make/use flechettes which allow for an area de-aggro of 50%. Poisoned darts/scrolls can also be made later on with additional abilities/effects. Items can have rare/uncommon versions made based on pickpocketing rare components for these from humanoid only NPC's.

If you couldn't tell, I like and enjoy playing the class, and like the class concept, since it's close to the AD&D rogue. They still have not added abilities like picking locks/disarming traps, but I know picking locks are slated to make it in at some point in the future.


EDIT: Good to see you, Nino.

[Zehn - Vhex]

As has been explained before, you then push your trash onto other sites. Sites that may or may not want to put up with it. One of the many reasons why you see comparatively less WoW bitching here (although by volume there is a ton more WoW griping) then VG bitching is if someone whines about WoW we can tell them to go post on the official forums since WoW devs sure as shit don't post here.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by UnchainedAcolyte

Fair question, Draegan.


I've played a rogue to 20, and I really enjoy the class due to the utility. Yes, primarily our function is DPS, but rogues also have a snare ability in the form of Knee Break (available at level 10 I think); short stuns (Blinding Flash - throwing flash powder in the face of an opponent); one long stun (Blackjack, 30 secs, but must be out of combat - allows for very limited crowd control); an increased dodging ability, increased parrying ability and Feint (basically a stun and minor debuff) which allows a backstab (even if in front of the opponent)/free attack to allow a rogue to off-tank for a limited period of time, especially if you switch to a good parrying dagger/dirk.

What game are you talking about again? That sounds vaguely familiar.. right down to the kidney shot and sap ability. Blind, crippling poison, evasion, feint.. yeah. Those mechanics are totally original!

[Seths]

I agree the class dynamics are a lot of fun. Some of the most fun I've been having lately (aside from giving in and getting semi-addicted to crafting) is grouping with some guildmates of mine. We had a Ranger, Cleric, Shaman, Druid, Bloodmage, Bard (me) all lvl 30s. We were over dinking around in Wardship of Sleeping Moon and factioning. We were pulling crazy pulls and getting tons of wandering adds on top of us. Something like 6-8 mobs in camp at once was our average, pausing only if we had no healer left with mana.

So the ranger would charm an add, I'd charm an add, mez an add, Druid pet tanked / kited, I tanked, ranger tanked, pets were all tanking their own mob... the 3 healers were healing anything and everything that moved. It was a flat out blast. The controlled chaos was something I haven't experienced in a long time since EQ1 in those rare groups of high end friends. Even that was nothing like this though.

It showed me that we didn't need a tank class as both the ranger and myself were holding up great. We didn't really need a mezzer since I could have skipped mezzing the single add I was keeping locked. Healers were a large part of our dps.

One thing I noticed was the changes to durability. A couple weeks ago the beatings I took in that 8 hour straight stretch of non stop fighting would have broken all my gear. I repaired once at the end and nothing was below like 50%. Even that didn't cost very much, I think maybe between 5-10 silver which I made in 20 minutes.

[Kaxmax]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

What game are you talking about again? That sounds vaguely familiar.. right down to the kidney shot and sap ability. Blind, crippling poison, evasion, feint.. yeah. Those mechanics are totally original!

To be fair, I seem to recall him saying he never played WoW. But yeah, basically listing a bunch of ablities that are almost identical to a WoW rogue is perhaps not the best way to show how different VG combat is.

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by UnchainedAcolyte

Rogue stuff.

What you described was class mechanics. Every game has different nuances when it comes to classes. Some good, some bad. For me VG did a pretty good job with the Bloodmage class. Some of their classes were very well planned (minus the shit-ton of bugs). Most of the classes are very generic in the Genre.

No one's told me what makes combat so much better than anything else. It all appear to be the same just tweaked to a different style i.e. faster or slower, less or more button mashing.

[Miele]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

You mean hit mana song and go afk? Let's be honest here, there wasn't that much to being a bard. Don't let that nostalgic appeal interfere with fact. For the first 5 years of EQ most classes hit one, maybe 2 buttons max. If you want to talk about how fun it is to exploit, every game has had their fair share and I fully agree. The biggest appeal to me of EQ was exploiting. But that was pretty much the only appeal. EQ classes were -incredibly simplistic- and for a long time combat in EQ was about as stupidly simple as you could get.

Sure you could raid like that or just press 11-22-33 for your whole existance, just like you can spam fireball, sinister strike etc.
But you could also do a lot of shit with a bard, like pulling a named from deep within a zone to the zone line, etc. that was fun. Exploiting faction in Chardok to pull nameds up, charming tons of trash and send them on the queen to solo her, pulling that ugly mob in the cave of plane of disease out in the open and kite him to death. I have a couple tons more examples.

EQ classes were simplistic for sure, melees even moreso, but in a way I remember *some* things of EQ that I really loved, like being able to try crazy shit without a group of assholes screaming that heroic content is made for groups and I shouldn't be able to solo or a developer saying that my buffs do not work in combat etc.

I had to swallow a lot of design decisions I didn't like from EQ1 and luckily I could also appreciate a lot that I liked, but removing the freedom to do funny stuff is my biggest gripe, although I'm not so dumb to not understand the reasons behind that.

[Aradune Mithara]

Originally Posted by Wolfen

Who exactly made Vanguard ship early? Was it Brad that made that decision? Or was it Smed and SOE telling him to launch or else?

If SOE ordered him to release it early, I'd have to give Brad a small break. If not, then he's getting what he deserves.

Had I had the financial resources, ability to place the product later, etc. I would have given us about 3 more months to get more polish in, more high level content in, and to distance ourselves from the WoW expansion.

That said, we knew the launch date for many months before we released. And we made a promise and we stuck to it. I understand why that date was given and why we had to stick to it and I don't blame anyone.

We made our own share of mistakes that took up time that in 20/20 hindsight would have made up for those 3 months perhaps. I do believe, again in hindsight, that we entered beta too early because of the release date we had with MSFT -- otherwise it would have been held off quite a while and a lot of time getting things working first operationally with MSFT and then again with SOE could have been avoided (e.g. would have only had to do all that once). Much of the roughness of our systems would have been worked out before people from outside Sigil and our publisher would have been able to have been addressed under that scenario as well. I've mentioned the pain in learning the hard way how different it is to manage a company of 100 people vs. a team of 23 was. We had a very experienced team, arguably the most, but it was still a team, from the designer all the way up to me, that had only made MMOGs that had lasted 3 years and taken 23 people, or expansions that had lasted one year.

Had I a time machine, I would go back and do a LOT of things differently, but then life doesn't work that way. We didn't repeat a lot of mistakes we'd already made, but made a lot of new ones given the team size, how ambitious the game was, and the fact that it took 5 years, not 3. Switching publishers, while necessary, also took a lot of time. It also took a lot more effort running the company from a non-creative standpoint than I had thought it would. With EQ, Smed and others handled the business side of things and I, my managers, and my team were able to focus on the game.

As Kendrick posted, we did scale back several times and significantly, but again looking back I probably would have scaled things back more so.

I do take issue with the assertion that I promised a bunch of stuff we didn't deliver. I do fully admit my writing style is verbose and I made a significant effort to hype the game, but at the same time I also made a huge effort to manage expectations and let people know what might not make it in release, what was an expansion idea, etc. Sure, that changed as we got farther along with development. You can look up my posts and look at old copies of the FAQ and see the scaling back that took place (both what Kendrick mentioned and other stuff). And thinking back on it, while I posted a lot of these changes, the FAQ should have been kept more up to date.

I will say I think we did a pretty darn good job overall. We released a game that is probably 80% of what we'd originally planned outside of sheer landmass. We did not completely re-design major systems in beta other than diplomacy -- we revised crafting and harvesting and made some tweaks to combat in terms of pace, how complex it became at what level, etc. But the notion that we threw a bunch of stuff out just isn't accurate -- again, some of the perception likely comes from starting beta when the game was really still in alpha. Probably the biggest features that didn't make it in that I think would have been very cool (or some variant thereof): AES fully realized, fellowships, caravans.

Again, had we a few more months I think the game would have been more polished. That is one of the biggest things WoW taught us, the importance of polish, AI, general accessibility, etc. Launching near TBC was nuts, but again something that couldn't be avoided. Switching publishers also took time, but we would have had a LOT less time to make the game had we not done so. MSFT underwent a lot of internal changes and had to focus on getting out the Xbox 360 -- switching to SOE was simply another change that reality dictated during this long 5 years.

I think the biggest things that are hurting the game right now are:

1. Performance. We simply asked too much of the engine. Tech becoming faster and cheaper will help us with this issue over the next 6 months, but that's 6 month's that *might* have been avoided. That, and we would have had more time to polish and fix bugs and get better and more complete high level content in (and maybe even a more workable AES). We did run into this a bit with EQ 1 being one of the first hardware only games, but not to this extent. Ideally, you launch with both a flexible engine that grows with you and also in a tech window that doesn't mean that a lot of your players feel the need to upgrade their machines significantly. Failing that ideal, however, I'll take the more flexible, planned for the long term tech, and bite the bullet for overshooting in terms of tech than the former (undershooting and/or launching with inflexible MMOG tech that isn't easily upgraded over the years to come).

2. Underpopulated servers. The reason we are enhancing the LFG system (other than it's always a good idea in general) is because it's too hard to find a group. One of the biggest reasons it's too hard to find a group is that we were overly worried the newbie yards would be over populated the first couple of weeks post-launch that we opened with too many servers. That's why we are working on better LFG tools, having to seriously consider overland teleports, etc. If a world at peak hours had 4-5k people on it, this wouldn't be nearly the problem it is.

3. Launching so close to TBC. I never thought we were going to, but Blizzard's launch date was a moving target and things could have worked out better there. Again, though, I think a decent percentage of WoW players are going to want a game like Vanguard (or any other MMOG this year) once they are burned out on the WoW expansion, so I think in the next 4-6 months this issue will become less and less as painful.

4. Marketing. There are two groups of ex-EQ 1, UO, DAoC, etc. players out there: the ones that look back fondly on the years they put into EQ 1 and those who don't -- either they're upset or, more often, they simply have had their lives change and they don't have the time to play another EQ 1. So when they heard about Vanguard and all of the EQ 1 people working on it they didn't even give it a chance -- they simply assumed Vanguard would be as hard core as EQ 1 (when it absolutely isn't). We totally underestimated that second group, and I think if we had got the message out that Vanguard was not just another EQ with all of its time sinks, tedium, leveling times, necessary raiding, need for contiguous time commitments, and somehow got that message clearly and strongly through to that second group we would have launched more strongly. This is another issue, however, we will survive, not just by changing the marketing message, but mainly through viral marketing. Those ex-EQ 1 players who *do* buy Vanguard, and enjoy it, *will* slowly but surely let that second group of people know that Vanguard does *not* equal EQ 1 with better graphics in the ways some people look back, sigh, and mutter 'never again', but that it *does* have the elements in it that made EQ 1 a great game (as well as many of the cooler UO/SWG elements, new systems like Diplomacy, greater immersion, etc.)

So a lot happened in the almost 5 years it took to make Vanguard. We made our share of new mistakes, we were a bit too ambitious in terms of world size and feature set, we were definitely too ambitious in terms of performance, we lost some time switching publishers, we still could have used another 3+ months of dev time, the market changed in general, we did lose some time learning how to organize and manage a 100 man team, and it would have been damn nice to have not launched almost right on top of the juggernaut that is WoW's expansion.

Certainly none of the above mistakes were planned for. Many/most were unexpected. Some of the mistakes were directly our fault, and some more indirectly and some totally beyond our control. I could write another one of my missives going into a lot more detail and maybe one day I will, but I will spare you my verbosity tonight. No matter what ,however, I was CEO and the buck stops here. None of the above do I use as an excuse as if life was unfair to us. We made some bad calls and were put into some bad situations. But I should have known better, planned better, and reacted better, so I take full responsibility. Most assuredly I cannot stress how proud I am of the Vanguard team, past and present, and all of the hard work, sweat, and tears that were put into the game. The team was and is incredible and it was an honor working with them. So regardless of screw-up or mistake, I take responsibility and apologize. The team should feel nothing but pride and a great sense of accomplishment.

That said, I still believe very strongly that we planned many or even most things correctly and that we launched a game that was 80+% the game we had planned to launch (again, other than totally reworking Diplomacy, tweaking some systems later in beta than I would have liked, and shrinking the world a LOT). And again I humbly but strongly stress all of the hooks and stubs that are in the engine, gameplay code, tools, etc -- they *will* pay off. While Vanguard stands on its own as a fun game, despite the bugs and performance issues that we all know exist and have been talked about in this thread and others, it's also set up such that we have years and years of cool features, content, land masses, etc. planned out in detail that will make the Vanguard of 2007, as cool as it is, pale in comparison to the Vanguard of 2008, 2009, etc. Relatively quickly, player run towns with an RTS element, ship and mounted combat, Diplomacy expanding to become more integral with factions, organizations, etc., user generated content, and so much more are really going to make this game shine. That, and even though it does require a lot of horsepower in terms of tech today, those issues will become less and less relevant as time goes by, with PCs getting so much faster and cheaper, RAM and bus speeds getting so much faster, graphics cards getting faster, physics cards, DX 10, utilizing Unreal 3.0 tech more and more, going into expansions with tools and tech that while still could use a lot of improvement are finally at a point where a lot of R&D won't be necessary and that time will be much more efficiently spent putting in content, features, etc.

And finally I still feel very strongly that going seamless will really pay off as the live team adds efficiently to the existing world, databases of items and such can be updated en masse to slow MUDflation and at the same time refresh the world and make it feel more dynamic, ship travel and exploring vast archipelagoes becomes more integral, planes with unique physics models appear miles up into the sky, non-Euclidean Portal technology is used to build unheard of dungeon layouts, Underdark-style 'chunks under chunks' are added, the ability to load any art asset anywhere is more fully realized, and yes even the controversial 'unibody' system allows us to create *that* many more item & armor sets, adding even stronger visual variety to player characters in such an item-centric economy... I still feel firmly that even if we were early and our system specs initially high that all of this tech will pay off big time, especially in the mid to long term, given a genre that thrives on newness and patching, that demands a game world that remains interesting and compelling for year after year.

Anyway, the pages and pages that I posted promoting Vanguard, to get the word out, was the truth as best as I knew it at the time and I updated it as soon as it was obvious something would work differently or not make it in by release. And anything I did miss was unintentional, but the buck still stops here. Where I wasn't clear, or where I failed to manage expectations -- all of that was my responsibility. So while apologetic wherever and however we failed, overall I have no regrets looking back at the 5 years Sigil has been around and look to the next 5 years with even more anticipation. A lot of new mistakes were made, but we took notes and have long memories.

In summary, had a lot of the above not occurred then I think Vanguard would be nearing 300k or 400k and not 200k. A lot of the above caused the game to start out more slowly than I had hoped, anticipated and planned for. But still looking at both sales and retention, the game is doing well, even if in a more ideal world it could be doing even better. The team continues to work their butts off, fixing bugs, optimizing, putting in content, tweaking and balancing, and we have our first expansion and where we want new live content to go planned out for when the timing is right to begin that endeavor. So while all of the above, this post-mortem of sorts, may come across as critical and looking back negatively (and not by accident -- much of this thread is doing just that, so this post is certainly not off topic), Vanguard is still far, far from a failure by any means. Few PC games, MMOGs or otherwise, do more than 100k units, and we surpassed that in a couple of weeks. So even with regrets, some kicking myself, and a lot of 'dammit, if only...' coming out of part of me, the rest of me is damn proud of what we have accomplished, and what we will and are accomplishing, and most importantly extremely honored to have worked with such a team and that so much of that team continues to march onward. Ultimately I am very grateful to God, MSFT, SOE, EQ, and so many other people and products for the opportunity to have been able to do this again. Few get to make even one successful MMOG, much less two. And fewer still given $8M to make the first one and over $30M to make the second.

*humbly bows*

ps. Glad many of you like Nino's style -- he is definitely more cut and dry than me and probably could have said all of this in one paragraph. I hope he and other dev team members are able and willing to continue to post.