Nino...One of the upsides of VG.

[Miele]

Originally Posted by Aradune Mithara

...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...

I take it out of context, but I found this funny, I want to see one day what happens if you go "all out" (take it as a joke, no offense meant!)
I personally appreciate your approach to the current VG issues, if resolved in a timely manner I'm sure VG will gain subs, good luck for the future.

[QforQ]

Originally Posted by Aradune Mithara

Explaination

Thank you very much for your time Brad, I appreciate that you have taken the time to communicate to the community and tell us what has been going on over the years behind the scenes.

Perhaps someday you could post on VGPlayers what you have planned for the rest of the year? Something more indepth than the In the Works page?

Besides that...I'd love to hear anything like a wish-date of when Vanguard's expansion may come out.

And besides all that, I hope you guys are working with SOE to come up with better and more marketing plans for the game. Right now the marketing has been a bit general and the print ads for the game don't really do the game justice. I love the artwork but they dont really tell the consumer what Vanguard is(An MMORPG, etc etc) and they could accomplish a lot more, much more efficiently, for much cheaper than a 3pg foldout.

That's about all I have to say,
QforQ
A Vanguard Affiliate Fansite Operator

[kcxiv]

Originally Posted by Aradune Mithara

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.

Yep, and most of us hope he does too. Ok, all of us.

[Daelos]

Aradune - make trial keys freely available. I have used all mine, and have at least 5-6 friends eager to try the game, but they want a trial first.

Especially now that you've restricted what a trial account to do to limit goldselling etc, it's a no brainer

[The Hiram Key]

Originally Posted by Aradune Mithara

Giant wall of mostly spinless text

Holy shit did Brad take the red pill or what ? Glad to see you are finally coming around to the idea that is not all about "getting the message out" and marketing. Very refreshing.

[Neric]

Originally Posted by Aradune Mithara

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.

So in 3 months (counting from release) Vanguard will be finally as ready as you intended it to be? Guess you got a nice challenge there

Had I a time machine, I would go back and do a LOT of things differently, but then life doesn't work that way.

How about an MMO based on the Timemachine with instanced missions way back in history? Maybe that would be a cool idea to burn another 30 million with. Sorry, I forgot that you won't get anymore credit in the industry. So never mind...

I do fully admit my writing style is verbose and I made a significant effort to hype the game...

Oh, really?

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

1. Performance. We simply asked too much of the engine.

Ok, that's a no brainer.

2. Underpopulated servers.

If the game is a failure it will lead to underpopulated servers. I mean eventually nobody will be playing anymore and that's the ultimate form of underpopulation. How about merging some servers...like one month after release?

Lacking subscribers is just one aspect of underpopulation. Making everything too huge is another. People get lost in your gigantic seamless world of "nothing" and travel times certainly don't improve the situation. The current state of EQ is a nice comparison. After 13 (?) expansions, the world has gotten so huge and there are so many newbie areas that the eight lowlevel characters that get started every week may never meet each other in the same dungeon. Compare that to 120 players in Unrest back in the old days when people didn't have the option to go somewhere else.

3. Launching so close to TBC. I never thought we were going to...

Hey buddy, I warned you about that one (yes, you can look it up on this very forum), but at the same you had no chance. Blizzard was waiting for you, so they could time TBC to bust your ass. That's not surprising at all, because it's the single most obvious and best move that they could have made in that situation. Everything else would be underestimating their intelligence.

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

....and you decided it would be a good idea to try to please both groups.

Fact is that many people left EQ, because you had already tried to please everyone and now you wanted to lure them back with the very same concept. How naive....

You still don't realize that EQ was already the best thing that you could ever archive and by trying to improve on it, you made things worse and worse and worse. Yes, it's unlikely that the first attempt at something is the best attempt, but think of Chris Moneymaker and the World Series of Poker. You can be sure that he won't win it again. Like him you are a one-hit-wonder and that's why you should stick to your original successful concept that got you where you are.

Being stubborn is ok, if you insist on the correct opinion. How often do I have to remind you about this very fact? Nobody wants to drink Coke "new formula" and nobody wants to play Brad "new formula" games! Realize it and you made a step in the right direction.

...gonna skip the rest of your posting, because the main points have been commented on already.

[Dashal]

Well Neric you're coming off as quite petty and obnoxious here. I though that was a very informative and spin free post by Brad.

Originally Posted by Neric

Fact is that many people left EQ, because you had already tried to please everyone and now you wanted to lure them back with the very same concept. How naive....

You still don't realize that EQ was already the best thing that you could ever archive and by trying to improve on it, you made things worse and worse and worse. Yes, it's unlikely that the first attempt at something is the best attempt, but think of Chris Moneymaker and the World Series of Poker. You can be sure that he won't win it again. Like him you are a one-hit-wonder and that's why you should stick to your original successful concept that got you where you are.

I'd really like to see the numbers on who wants another EQ. I think the glory day EQ'ers are in the realm of the hardcore PvPers now. A small but vocal group. Not sure how you'd get those numbers short of making another game like it, but it would be interesting.

[kohl]

A few things that stood out from Brad's post~

Originally Posted by Aradune Mithara

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

1. Performance. We simply asked too much of the engine.

So the quandary here is that the engine isn't designed to do what VG is trying to do. Therefore, it will never be truly optimized. This means you are simply hoping that new, emerging technology will be able to "brute-force" acceptable performance out of the game.
How are players supposed to do basic things like have an ingame celebration or have holiday events (Christmas, etc) involving lots of PCs/NPCs in one location?

Originally Posted by Aradune Mithara

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.

Even on a populated server, LFG is always an issue. I'm not sure how even the best LFG tools can solve the problem of not enough players being around.
Regardless, I will say that the meeting stones in WoW are a real godsend. I'm sure people will disagree, but the fact is - once I've put together a group of players for an instance, the ability to summon people who are really far away or bring in a replacement (with some acceptable inconvenience) takes unnecessary tedium from the game.

Originally Posted by Aradune Mithara

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.

"Relatively quickly", followed by more over-the-top hype. Physics cards, RTS elements, ship combat? "Relatively quickly"?
I realize you guys have a lot of long-term vision for the game and there is nothing wrong with sharing some of that, but speaking the way you do about all of these grand visions would probably best be served once you can point to solid and tangible improvement in the core game that launched.

[machineman]

Originally Posted by xregg

After putting on shadws full blast and testing things out i noticed about a 10fps drop. Groups outside are now around 30-38avg fps in groups. Havnt been in any dungeons with shadows full blast but I would assume they will be higher fps.

I have a question about hdr and bloom. Can they work together or is it only one that can work on at a time. Also is anti-aliasing able to work with hdr? I also tried fiddiling with the aa but it seems even when i try to force it it doesnt seem to be doing anything.

Why do people keep posting screenies that are somehow supposed to show off Vanguard, when they look far WORSE that LotRO, and and hardware that's twice as old and 10x cheaper...

[Geaux]

i still want to know this...

Originally Posted by Geaux

what was the plan for sub growth post release? how are new players a year into release supposed to enjoy the game when theres nobody to group with? its already a problem and the game is seemingly at its subscriber peak. its hard enough to jump into somewhat successful games and find groups for early content(eq2/wow) 1 year post release but those games have an option to realistically solo to cap and "catch up".

people keep saying they will wait for the game to be polished and fixed but to me thats already to late. only an expansion on the level of EoF will bring in enough new players to enjoy the apparent good points of VG, the mid lvl dungeons. with the amount of races and classes VG already has i cant see adding any to that to encourage vets to reroll to supplement the low lvl pop.

sure performance will get better over time but its not going to be all in one go. its going to be a slow process making it harder for new players who finally got that upgrade to enjoy the game when everything is so spread out. none of the fixes, performance, LFG, polish, ect...will get a large enough number of people to start VG at the same time to make the newbie and mid lvl game playable.

this is the #1 reason release is so key. long term growth is ultimately stunted by bad releases. you have the people who currently enjoy the game who may be run off by the changes, and the new players who cant find a group to play the group centric game.

[Neric]

Originally Posted by Dashal

Well Neric you're coming off as quite petty and obnoxious here. I though that was a very informative and spin free post by Brad.

Yes it was, but everything he finally "realized" had been told to him before on this very board. He shouldn't act like this outcome totally surprised him and he was just unfortunate.

[Draegan]

This thread is gonna go places. Can't wait.

[Braen]

Originally Posted by Neric

Yes it was, but everything he finally "realized" had been told to him before on this very board. He shouldn't act like this outcome totally surprised him and he was just unfortunate.

Still, you took another opertunity to hit a dev when he is down. You show great class there. Hiram even said he appreciated it while you take another pot shot.

Sometimes there is no pleasing some people, you complain about something, the dev comes clean and you complain about his coming clean. Bitching for bitching sake.

I don't play Vanguard. I am not a blind vanboi anymore, my blinders are off. The game has potential but it isn't enough for me to play even though I currently have the Station Access until they raise their price then I am going to only subscribe to EQ2.

[Shinrai]

Originally Posted by Mkopec1

IMO combat in VG was solid. and like Kreug said, healers were cool to play in VG rather than a buff/healbot like they were in other games.

Actually a vanguard cleric is amazingly like an EQ cleric barring a bunch of +combat skills that have now been nerfed into irrelevancy, a yaulp equivalent (the mana tap hit), a huge number of buffs (single target, yuck) and three heals, fast, slow and over time. Even get the special "cleric brand" armor which has the same high AC numbers but mitigates like papier mache.

Autoattack, hit specials as they refresh and time your heals... radical.

Even better because from 20-50 most of the spells are higher level variants of existing spells.

I was going to try a disciple, but they got flattened by the nerf hammer soon after launch.

[Malakie Torsade]

Originally Posted by HolyMight

It also has scripted boss fights if that is your thing.

Serious question.

Doesn't killing bosses who are, for all intents and purposes, the same as all the other mobs get boring as hell? That seriously is a huge immersion breaker for me and is something I hated in EQ. Sure, the 10th time you've run through dungeon_X they are (mostly) trivial, but at least the unique bosses give the dungeon some personality and a tactics mix-up. To me, getting a named and having it be a_froglok_02 but with slightly higher DPS is incredibly disappointing.

Also, at 50, are the dungeons full of mostly identical trash or do they have different abilities? In other words, are the hard dungeons difficult because of mob abilities or mostly from sheer volume due to respawns/pathers?