[VG] The Current State of Vanguard

[Grizzlebeard]

Originally Posted by tad10

The little quests are fun. Doing the Martok dip spy quest.

I enjoyed the dark elf dip quest chain where you frame people and murder others. Culminates in you almost getting bumped off by the guy you were working for and has you running away to the horse farm area to continue. At that point they introduced writs or whatever and it went from being fun to being yet another grind. Still, I do accept it was very fun if you had a decent deck but ultimately demoralising if you went against an npc strong in an opposing dip tree. You generally excelled in one and were a little weaker in two others iirc but there was always one tree you ended up sucking in.

[Hatorade]

Originally Posted by tad10

Who leaves the sound on for dip? Anyway, it is grindy but with my current deck I can watch a movie while I'm parleying. But generally I'll stop when I'm out of rested xp for dip -- that's just masochism to continue at that point.

* * *

One of the big things missing from VG is the ability to duel other players with your dip decks.

Thats the point...no one does. You would think they would fix that shit.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Hatorade

Thats the point...no one does. You would think they would fix that shit.

Heh. Fixing any sound issues has got to be (and should be) the lowest priority in VG.

1. AAs
2. New content.
3. Hitching/Performance.
4. Everything else.

We'll see in a month or two whether this devotion to trial island was misguided (as I tend to think).

[egoslicer]

I'm not playing VG and have not really kept up with it at all, but I ran across this article from May and thought it was relevant. After a search, I didn't see it had been posted so..

The Grouchy Gamer » Blog Archive » A Vanguard Retrospective, Part One
The Grouchy Gamer » Blog Archive » A Vanguard Retrospective, Part Two
The Grouchy Gamer » Blog Archive » A Vanguard Retrospective, Part Three

[hauwk]

shit that was a great read. Tad, i'm hoping they do a big re-release when newb island is complete with free 30 day trails. The game today is just WAY better than it was at realease. Getting 30% of those back playing that they lost at release would be a welcome addition.

[etchazz]

Originally Posted by hauwk

shit that was a great read. Tad, i'm hoping they do a big re-release when newb island is complete with free 30 day trails. The game today is just WAY better than it was at realease. Getting 30% of those back playing that they lost at release would be a welcome addition.

man, people are still holding onto the hope that subs are coming back to vanguard? i don't see it happening. not with conan out right now and other MMO's on the horizon. the potential VG had will never be met. i haven't checked in on the game in a while now, but has there even been any new raid zones added since the warehouse? seems like expansions/revamps for the game come out way too slow. not that i blame the people working on the game, they probably don't have much more than a skeleton crew working on it. i just don't see sony ever putting the time, money or manpower into this game that it would take it make it work.

[Caocao]

Originally Posted by etchazz

man, people are still holding onto the hope that subs are coming back to vanguard? i don't see it happening. not with conan out right now and other MMO's on the horizon. the potential VG had will never be met. i haven't checked in on the game in a while now, but has there even been any new raid zones added since the warehouse? seems like expansions/revamps for the game come out way too slow. not that i blame the people working on the game, they probably don't have much more than a skeleton crew working on it. i just don't see sony ever putting the time, money or manpower into this game that it would take it make it work.

The people working on it now have some pretty good ideas. They're literally working w/ a skeleton crew though. I agree with all the games coming out, they will have a hard time with the newbie island idea. At the same time that's assuming they will come out w/ this any time soon.

[Etwynn]

Originally Posted by etchazz

man, people are still holding onto the hope that subs are coming back to vanguard? i don't see it happening. not with conan out right now and other MMO's on the horizon. the potential VG had will never be met. i haven't checked in on the game in a while now, but has there even been any new raid zones added since the warehouse? seems like expansions/revamps for the game come out way too slow. not that i blame the people working on the game, they probably don't have much more than a skeleton crew working on it. i just don't see sony ever putting the time, money or manpower into this game that it would take it make it work.

Based on the increased newbie activity in chat, and a lot of newbie forum posts, I'd say that we're getting a lot of new people right now. A large constituent of them comes from the "i upgraded my computer for AoC but that game blows" group.

I wouldn't say vanguard is on a skeleton crew. We're getting a new 6man, and a new raid dungeon very soon. This is in addition to new character models and a newbie/trial island. Based on the number of devs posting on the forums, there are at least 10 developers (probabably more since not all devs post) working on the game. That doesn't include community relations (3 employess: english, german, french), tech support, GMs (more than 8 based on a picture they posted a while ago), and quality assurance (at least 2 based on posts in the test forum). While it's not a huge team, it's a respectable number of devs. The team isn't getting downsized--when cylus quit he was eventually replaced by a new dev (Ichie). If anything, the team is growing because the two QA guys are definately new within the last few months. Basically, if Vanguard can pull off a steady growth rate it's possible that the game will see some new developers in the future. Considering that it's faring well despite the AoC launch, I think that the game will be safe during the Warhammer launch, but will probably suffer when darkfall (2008) and mortal online (summer 2009) are launched.

Edit: Ellyra just said some new artists are interning too. Say what you will about interns, but it is a good sign.

[MrGraham]

Yeah, just about every night I log in there's people talking about how they tried AoC and didn't like it and are trying Vanguard now because they heard about it a bunch while playing AoC.

Based purely off the regional chats, it sounds like the population has grown since I started playing.

Edit - Where can I find out what quests I should hit after lvl 10 diplomacy? I got the horse, barding, saddle bag, normal bag, diplo bag. Are there similar good rewards as I level up somewhere?

[Chrisb3]

Wow TWO QA guys now!?

[MrGraham]

Vanguard jokes never get old! Oh wait...

No idea why they're working on a newbie island, the newbie experience in Vanguard was not in need of an upgrade, for Kojani or Goblin anyways.

[Xitix]

Originally Posted by etchazz

I just don't see sony ever putting the time, money or manpower into this game that it would take it make it work.

Sony has failed to put the time, money and manpower required for any of it's MMOGs to become great games or even good games. They never seem to realize the game is a series of play sessions and too many crappy play sessions will kill off the player base. A game that runs like shit and has bugged quests is guaranteed to have lots of crappy play sessions.

It's not a developer or designer problem, it's that management doesn't give a shit about the players. A good working quest takes X resources, a pile of half assed quests X/4. That players waste X^10 time on bugged or crappy quests and don't get any rewards (enjoyment of the game) isn't taken into consideration. Same for general game quality and changes to improve player enjoyment. The joke is on them however - by failing to invest and letting management incomptence become ingrained they missed the real extent of the MMOG market. They missed out on billions in revenue they could have captured.

[etchazz]

I wouldn't say vanguard is on a skeleton crew. We're getting a new 6man, and a new raid dungeon very soon. This is in addition to new character models and a newbie/trial island. Based on the number of devs posting on the forums, there are at least 10 developers (probabably more since not all devs post) working on the game. That doesn't include community relations (3 employess: english, german, french), tech support, GMs (more than 8 based on a picture they posted a while ago), and quality assurance (at least 2 based on posts in the test forum). While it's not a huge team, it's a respectable number of devs. The team isn't getting downsized--when cylus quit he was eventually replaced by a new dev (Ichie). If anything, the team is growing because the two QA guys are definately new within the last few months. Basically, if Vanguard can pull off a steady growth rate it's possible that the game will see some new developers in the future. Considering that it's faring well despite the AoC launch, I think that the game will be safe during the Warhammer launch, but will probably suffer when darkfall (2008) and mortal online (summer 2009) are launched.

Edit: Ellyra just said some new artists are interning too. Say what you will about interns, but it is a good sign.[/quote]

define "soon" for these upcoming new raid zones and changes. that's always been the problem with VG, soon is a relative term and in vanguard, more often than not, soon is a year or more. APW came out last fall. i don't think one new raid zone every year or more is going to be enough to keep people playing this game. they need a huge expansion in the worst way, and more meaningful content. everything lvl 40+ just seems like an endless grind with no direction or meaning.

[hauwk]

Originally Posted by MrGraham

Yeah, just about every night I log in there's people talking about how they tried AoC and didn't like it and are trying Vanguard now because they heard about it a bunch while playing AoC.

Based purely off the regional chats, it sounds like the population has grown since I started playing.

Edit - Where can I find out what quests I should hit after lvl 10 diplomacy? I got the horse, barding, saddle bag, normal bag, diplo bag. Are there similar good rewards as I level up somewhere?

Which horse barding??

The barding you want is New Targoner Noble house barding. But I doubt you got it at lev 10. Im lev 10 diplo and I only have 4 coins. Google "diplo wiki" and start readin.

[Jaded]

not with conan out right now and other MMO's on the horizon.

AOC is having a hard time holding peoples' attention, if the folks I started it with are any indication at all. Anecdotal evidence, sure. But when out of the ten or so people you started with none are still playing the game less than a month after release that tells me something at least.

As for other MMOs coming out, I'm not up to date. What's on its way aside from Warhammer? That's the only one I've been following, and I doubt there's too much overlap between VG's audience and WAR's.