Why all the nerd rage against Vanguard?

[The Hiram Key]

Originally Posted by Malakie Torsade

PS : Stop responding to Hiram and he will go away.

If thinking or saying that helps you get through the night, more power to you.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Draegan

We were until you just went ahead and said his name. Here he comes..

Heh you called it.

[Vaxxx]

I think for the majority of people playing a game graphics and most animations really don't mean as much as game play after a short time.

Vanguards graphics are fine, I have a decent computer and run at around 30-45 fps. Are there bad textures models in the game, yup, do I really care about them, nope. that isn't to give Sigil a free pass, but honestly it's like that for almost any game.

And the best graphics does not make the best game, I played and beat all of Oblivion, and thought it looked really good, by the end I really didn't like the game because of it's elements.

Why is this for mmo's well I will use an example my brother told me the other day.

He played a necro in EQ all the way up, as everybody knows the animations in that game, well they kind of sucked. He told me he played a necro/magic user in EQII, said the first time he saw the cool staff flipping animation he thought "this is what I'm talking about" by the 10,000 time he just wanted to turn the stupid animation off and have his old crapy EQ animation that resembled a slightly drunk person hitting a Pinata, back.

Oh and one other thing, people try and say that Vanguard is going for the realistic look. Maybe devs have said that but really it just looks like a video game, it has good textures and bad, some parts look really bright and cartoony, some parts do like kind of realistic and some just look bad. To me it's just Vanguards style that in my opinion works at conveying their sense of their world.

I mean what look was original EQ, sorta quasi realistic, I have no idea, I just classify it as a video game and go from there.

[Digits]

Simple, yet stylish animations win out over any fancy thing you can create any day of the week. Sigil tried to be too all encompassing with their shit, having fancy twirling blades and dramatic movements for fist fighting when all anyone really wants is just something that makes you go 'Fucking ouch' the first time you see and not get tired of seeing some drawn out thing after that. It's like they didn't learn the lesson from Final Fantasy 7 with the summoning animations. It's not only a giant pain to get animations working right, you also can't have people getting bored of them after a few hours.

I think DAoC had about the most advanced animations I want to see in a game. There was bunches of cool stuff, like leaps and twirls, but it was very short and to the point. People didn't throw their hands up in the air over their heads after a combo attack or anything like that. Another thing is that more complex animations means it a bigger pain to get them to quickly return to the natural pose.

What the fuck is this thread about anyway.

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by tad10

Heh you called it.

I deserve to win a cookie or something.

[The Hiram Key]

Originally Posted by tad10

Heh you called it.

Who is trolling now Tad ? Heres some logic for ya !

Main Entry: hyp·o·crite
Pronunciation: 'hi-p&-"krit
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English ypocrite, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin hypocrita, from Greek hypokritEs actor, hypocrite, from hypokrinesthai
1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

[Reggie]

So yeah, its all small penises, small paychecks, small video cards, and small little inner-boys with their fragile ego that are keeping the vg nerd rage going. (besides Tad feeding the tards like its a 3rd grade recess)

Seriously, how can it get to the argument level it is? 'I like this, don't like that.' 'Hey have fun with it.' 'Not for me.'

I guess if I couldn't afford a sufficient/new gaming rig with my six figure salary I would be diggin into VG whenever I could while playing my old MMO.

How about a nice new thread with consolidated and organized nerd rage now that we have such a comprehensive knowledge base to pull from.

[Danth]

Originally Posted by Malakie Torsade

I have a serious question for the people who like VG's graphics. Have you played for any real length of time (actually played, not walked by a guy who had the icon on his desktop) any non-MMOs with more realistic graphics; ie Dark Messiah, Oblivion, Half-Life 2, Prey, Battlefield 2, etc.?

The reason I ask is it seems that if you generally stick to MMOs, Vanguard looks great to you. If you play other non-MMOs which go for the realistic look, it doesn't. I'm curious to see how true that is.

I really don't get the "I can't go back to those graphics" mentality either. After playing Oblivion and Dark Messiah several months ago, I loaded up Fallout 2 and Gothic 1 (~8-10 year old games.) While the difference in graphical quality was noticeable (to put it mildly,) it wasn't something that bothered me in the slightest. If you honestly feel that way, I'd strongly suggest you stay away from non-MMOs.

I like Vanguard's graphics. I don't like it for its quality; I was happy when games were played at 640x480x256. I like Vanguard's graphics because stuff looks normal for the most part. I liked early EQ for much the same reason, and I liked WoW up until I reached the upper levels and stuff started becomming increasingly outlandish. My wife shares my opinion for the most part. I remember when Blizzard changed the WoW Druid's Wildheart shoulders graphic (this must have been early 2005), my wifey actually cried because the new model looked so bad (dead stuffed birds mounted on plaques). Poor wifey.

Yeah, I'm boring and want normal-looking stuff in fantasy games. I play a human and always pick the same class and the same plain-as-vanilla name. Maybe I'm a stick in the mud, but I am what I am. Vanguard's graphic design suits my preferences quite well thus far.


If I have a complaint about Vanguard's graphics, its that many buildings and locations have severe problems with scale (New Targonor is horrible for this). This is a problem with most newer games, though.


Danth

[Guiness]

Originally Posted by Danth

If I have a complaint about Vanguard's graphics, its that many buildings and locations have severe problems with scale (New Targonor is horrible for this). This is a problem with most newer games, though.

I appreciate the "epic" scale of what is to be the hub port city of Telon, that place is just fucking crazy gigantic. True story, I had a guildmate yesterday lost trying to find the lift down into the mountain to the port proper for over an hour, and this guy is not a normally directionally challenged player.

I will say this though, the city was hopping yesterday. It was pretty cool seeing all the "foreign" races (I had not seen an orc or goblin player character before), kind of like Plane of Knowledge with 60% less gay.

[Neric]

I don't get this discussion. There are people who are happy with fancy graphics and there are people who are not. There is no compromise and neither side can prove the other right or wrong.

Also this stuff about animations is ridiculous. Some like 'em, some don't. The question is not if the animations are good enough to live with, it is if the animations can be improved or not. If they can be improved, you should ask when.

[kcxiv]

Originally Posted by Neric

I don't get this discussion. There are people who are happy with fancy graphics and there are people who are not. There is no compromise and neither side can prove the other right or wrong.

Also this stuff about animations is ridiculous. Some like 'em, some don't. The question is not if the animations are good enough to live with, it is if the animations can be improved or not. If they can be improved, you should ask when.

To me i think they are ok, they are just basic fighting animations. I havent paid much attention to other classes. I am a Dread Knight and the ones we have are fine. The way DE's look in Heavy Armor is pretty damn awesome i think.

[Nino]

I've been fairly vocal about trying to get the animations improved and changed as needed. One of the things that people couldn't stand was the 'shout' animation that looked bad and lasted way too long. In the next art push we have six new 'War Cry' animations of varying lengths and styles to replace the shouts. I've reassigned them to the Warrior, Dread Knight, and Paladin already, but you won't see them until we patch the files. We also added a very simple blow gun animation for the Rogue. The Rogue has several blow dart abilities that were being tossed at the target. Now it looks much better. I realize these are little changes, but hopefully they add up. We could still stand to do a pass on removing some of the pauses and trimming some of the dead space in our weapon swings, but it isn't the first priority right now. We are still creating NPCs at a constant pace and the animation people are busy. We have a dozen or so new creatures coming with the next push; some cool stuff.

[Digits]

No one's expecting you to fix the animations in one fell swoop, and as a matter of fact waiting until you get every single animation fix would be the worst thing you can do. If you do a handful of animations per patch you get to see how people react and if they like the way you're going. If they don't, you only have a handful of items to fix as opposed to a gigantic slew of awkwardly placed arms and the like.

If in 3 months you still haven't made quality animations that flow, or aren't making it appear as though you aren't going through every last one that isn't top notch then you will see some epicly justified bitching.

[Camerous]

I have been wondering this and figured why not ask.. Is Telon actually a world or just a flat plain? What I mean by that is like in UO I could sail to the far west and eventually come back to the far east of the map because it was a "real" world and all real worlds are round. EQ and WoW are not "real" worlds in the sense that you can't travel in one direction and come back to where you started at. They are just flat planes and so not "real" in the context of what it takes to be a world.

Just a little aside :-)

Also

Originally Posted by Neric

I don't get this discussion. There are people who are happy with fancy graphics and there are people who are not. There is no compromise and neither side can prove the other right or wrong.

Also this stuff about animations is ridiculous. Some like 'em, some don't. The question is not if the animations are good enough to live with, it is if the animations can be improved or not. If they can be improved, you should ask when.

I agree with this completely Neric. I think the animations are just ok but could really use some tweaking. I loved the animations in DAoC also, as someone mentioned earlier, and would love to see some similar stuff put in VG. I could watch a person on a Keep raid and know what styles they were using and how to better counter them just by the animations they were doing.

[rinthea]

Originally Posted by Nino

I've been fairly vocal about trying to get the animations improved and changed as needed. One of the things that people couldn't stand was the 'shout' animation that looked bad and lasted way too long. In the next art push we have six new 'War Cry' animations of varying lengths and styles to replace the shouts. I've reassigned them to the Warrior, Dread Knight, and Paladin already, but you won't see them until we patch the files. We also added a very simple blow gun animation for the Rogue. The Rogue has several blow dart abilities that were being tossed at the target. Now it looks much better. I realize these are little changes, but hopefully they add up. We could still stand to do a pass on removing some of the pauses and trimming some of the dead space in our weapon swings, but it isn't the first priority right now. We are still creating NPCs at a constant pace and the animation people are busy. We have a dozen or so new creatures coming with the next push; some cool stuff.

I dont know if its planned in the upcomming rogue changes. But some of the rogue animations are so delayed it really does make it hard to play the class sometimes. Again, I dont know if its intended, but playing a rogue, its necessary to time your attacks around your auto attacks. The easiest way to do this is by watching the animations.
The worst offender at the moment is Shank. Which is a shame, because its actually usable now with the changes. You cast shank and you get a big freeze up and no animation updates for a few seconds, then a burst of numbers on your screen. It would be good if this could be looked at because timing abilities from your combat log isnt much fun. A blow dart animation for some stuff is nice. But I'd much rather prefer more focus on animations that keep pace with combat.