[VG] The Current State of Vanguard

[shadowed]

Hi guys,

I wanted to continue the discussion about Vanguard that got derailed in the other thread and eventually rickshawed. I don't post very often, but I'm going to quote the last relevent post in that thread and ask for some other opinions on the current state of the game.

Originally Posted by Gilgamel

So back to Vanguard. I'm up to level 45, and I'm still enjoying myself. The game has a sense of massiveness and scale that nothing I've played can match, except for maybe EQ at release. It is legitimately huge. Many of the encounters and dungeons are well done. I only wish there was a legitimate development staff to fix the bugs and let the game progress at some kind of realistic pace. I find myself trying not to get too excited because I don't want to invest too much time into the game when it appears to be pretty clear dev support simply is not there. With that said I think anyone who hasn't tried it and enjoyed original EQ should give it a try. It is actually a very good game, and I haven't had any problems getting groups together at any level despite playing far into the night. While there are certainly some bugs I still do not understand the massive hatred so many here seem to have for the game.

The reason I'm interested is I started playing Vanguard last week for the since time beta... and I've gotten up to a level 25 bloodmage now. My sentiments on the game mirror Gil's, but I wanted to hear if anyone else is enjoying the game currently or recently left and what they don't like about it (that list can be pretty long for me sometimes).

Thanks, later.

[Kobalt]

no derails
~faille

[realadxm]

no derails
~faille

[realadxm]

no derails
~faille

[Faille]

If you've got no interest in discussing vanguard, stay out of this thread.

[Arrr]

On the topic of raiding, it's been pretty brutal lately. They broke a LOT of things with GU4 and it was a complete clusterfuck. Buffs were basically completely broken and there was some awful server-side lag for 3-4 days.

and the patch itself did some really stupid shit. To get to the end boss in APW, you need to complete a quest and kill a mob (with no loot!) named Core Processor. and for months, core processor was broken. but they buffed him accordingly, and it was a decently challenging fight even in that state. with GU4, they fixed the script. the problem? he's not killable anymore. I don't mean "waah, my guild can't kill him" type unkillable. I mean he's by far the hardest fight in the game now, to such an unreasonable degree that even the best guilds in the game wouldn't be able to take him. and so certain guilds get to farm the dragon to their heart's content, but nobody else can get to him. cockblocks ftw!

overall, morale is very low in the raiding community. a lot of guilds are recruiting because people outrightly quit after GU4 came out.

[Darkko]

I started playing my bard again on seradon last week. I think when i loaded him back up he was lvl 25. By the following friday he was 37 and the entire time was a blast. I found a large casual guild which made it alot more fun. The guild always had at least 15 people on and the LFG window always had people available so getting groups wasn't difficult. The population seemed pretty decent as well, I always saw people running around in different zones, even ones far out of the way. There were a few bugs i ran into but none of them were game breaking most were just annoying and easily fixable.
One thing i had fun doing was in River Valley, there are these repeatable flower collection quests. I would basically make loops around the zone collecting the flowers and harvesting trees as well. I would do this for like 3-4 hours so i had like 30-35 turn ins ready. Then i would head back to the camp, pop a 100% xp potion+ another 10% xp consumable and turn them all in. I was getting like 110,000 xp a turn in and was easily getting 2 levels every time i did that.

Vanguard is deff more fun if you can find a good casual guild or friends to level up with. With the veteran rewards and dungeons leveling is actually fun.

[Aria]

I want to try it again since I was one of "those guys" that followed the game since it was first fluffed up as the next major MMO.. but everytime I do I'm left disappointed. I just remember making a wolf warrior and going through the landscape there and it was just boring and bland looking. Have they done anything to fix the way certain places look? How optimized is the game now with GU4?

Another question is what is level progression like? Is it basically a solo adventure to endcap like WoW and other games, or is there forced grouping? Instancing along the way? I'm basically looking for some legitimate reasons to try it

[Nebulous]

I have a level 50 bloodmage that I stopped playing about 10 months ago. The reason you see so much hatred for this game is because of the truely colossal squandering of potential that occurred here. This game had so much going for it prior to release, its shame to see it like this.

Vanguard could have easily been a 2 million sub game if it weren't for a few very poor decisions. Vanguard was released way before it was ready, it was possibly the most unfinished mmo ever to be released. Combined with the fact that it required huge system specs which shut out any casual players, what you got was a buggy, barely playable, unfinished game-world.

The bottom line is Vanguard needed another 18-24 months of development, but the money was gone, Brad was out of time, and Sony was too short-sighted to see the longterm payoff of a polished Vanguard. In an alternate universe where VG got its development extension and the required specs weren't based on 2010 technology, this game is competing with WoW for its pve playerbase, sitting pretty with several million subs. No doubt in my mind.

[machineman]

So, how is the performance? It was just so choppy even on high end hardware, combat was like bad claymation.

I just don't remember it being fun, ever... regardless of bug fixing, so I am curious if they made honest to goodness changes to the combat, interface, or game mechanics somehow.

I was in early beta all the way thru 30 days after release, for frame of reference.

[Cowbell]

Nebulous=Aradune ?

[Blackulaa]

I actually fired it up again myself. If you go into it saying I'm playing a game, and will enjoy it for what it is, you'll be surprised. It's like finding out the ugliest girl in high school is cute now. Not model hot, but you'd date. I will keep playing, the exploration is really fun, and like said above absolutely HUGE.

The performance increase I'm very impressed by. I have a stick down on my ram, so running 1.5 till Im motivated to go to the stor and haven't a hiccup. Still just freezes while chunking for 2 sec. But like I said, stick down.

[Teclis_Saphery]

I too started up again a month or two ago. And I must say I really enjoy the game now, I get that old EQ feeling from it.
It must be one of the "Unsolved Mysteries" but I have not crashed a single time to desktop yet, and I'm running those dreaded 8800gtx which had so much trouble in the beginning.

And the worst part of it all is, you can actually find groups now, and the pugs aren't bad at all. Seems like people actually listens in this game.

For those who have an itch about trying again, I would recommend giving it a go. Take it easy and don't overexpect and I'm sure you'll enjoy it alot more now then first time around.

-Tecliz

[Lewstelamon]

I played at release, then gave it another go about 5~ months ago. They had fixed tons of performance issues and such, so that was fine for me(wasn't really bad in the beginning). My problem is it.. just kinda felt stale. I made it up to 34 or somesuch, but as an example...

I played with a group of people, so we'd have people to do dungeons and stuff, we went through some mines around um, 20? i want to say, and it was alright, good exp, etc.. but there were like 3 different wings and I don't think we saw a single named just things like that, I mean sure maybe they had a few hour spawn time and had been killed, but we did several dungeons leveling up and I think only ran into one named?(the Queen in the hive).

Also, Nebulous hit the nail on the head. I really tried to get into this both times, but it just kinda feels.. not quite there. Also, when I played and talking to others in game, it seemed(which may be the case) that while Sony had bought it, they had hardly any devs actually working on it so it was just sitting not really doing anything, and if that is the case then it is too late for the game to even pull an EQ2.

So much potential lost, and not much on the horizon

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Blackulaa

I actually fired it up again myself. If you go into it saying I'm playing a game, and will enjoy it for what it is, you'll be surprised. It's like finding out the ugliest girl in high school is cute now. Not model hot, but you'd date. I will keep playing, the exploration is really fun, and like said above absolutely HUGE.

The performance increase I'm very impressed by. I have a stick down on my ram, so running 1.5 till Im motivated to go to the stor and haven't a hiccup. Still just freezes while chunking for 2 sec. But like I said, stick down.

If they ever fixed how bad the models animate during combat, I'd try it out again. When I last played, when you entered into combat, you bent at the waist. That's a fighting no-no. Also, as some of the devs that worked on VG have stated on these boards, the models animate so poorly because the animations were hand drawn by someone who previously only had experience animating 2D models (and none in 3D). I really hate some of the animations in VG. Other than that, the game seemed played the last time I tried (three months ago).

Do they plan on fixing the bend at the waist or the animations (or have they done so already)?