SOE to own VG - Sigil fires employees

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Samflam

Was that the last thing you ever read about VG?
You have no one to blame but yourself.

Actually, he could blame Brad and Sigil and whoever did PR because a lot (and I mean a whole lot) of people had no idea that combat had changed from what it was in beta 0-2 to what it was in 3 to now.

With the NDA in place, no one could come out and say it and those who did were blasted as liars. "If they break the NDA then they are already proven to be liars so whatever else they say must be wrong" was a pretty common philosophy.

It wasn't until open beta that a lot of people found out how different the game was.. and that was a pretty short timeframe in the grand scheme of things.. so yeah, maybe someone really serious about the game should have known, but to the more casual observer who saw some interesting things once, and didn't see any contradictions to it until launch, it's hard to really blame them.

Of course this whole argument is stupid and is akin to blaming every person who bought the game for not knowing it was in a pay-to-beta state.

[Shutup]

Originally Posted by Locithon

Was it you that wrote that long article about VG while it was in either Beta 0 or Beta 1? About how if WoW felt like a "strode in the park" (or something close to that) then VG was like ice skating?

If it is then I blame you for my interest in the game, after I read that article I pretty much decided VG was the next MMO I would try. I'm PM'ing you my paypal information because I want my $55 dollars back.

Reading the original facts to Vanguard so many years ago I thought it was going to be the greatest thing since the car visor. I would have never guessed it would have turned into the pos that it is. Fuck Brad.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Kreugen

VG's best gameplay was its healers - it takes a good player to effectively handle beating on the mob and healing. Tanks have deaggro and temp buffs that they can put on defenisve targets, so tanking takes quite a bit of management as well. I'm not sure if the DPS classes are any more involved than EQ2's were, though. At least you have two kinds of energy plus chained attacks.

VG's major combat innovation is the defensive target. Which properly used allowed for interesting behavior with dps classes/tanks and healers. I play (or should I say played -- now...hmm) with a paladin who have a nice rescue that does 400% weapon damage -- so I'd pull aggro (drunken monk have instant aggro abilites) get rescued (as the paladin's dt) and repeat. Mob would drop very quickly. The DT also allowed healers to beat the crap out of the OT while still healing the MT. Frankly, any of the standard combat systems that have only one target (WoW/EQ/LOTRO and I suppose EQ2) -- should steal the concept.

VG has a lot of great ideas but execution has been so sloppy. Take the classes -- there's a lot of them -- there is decent differentation between them and they are now somewhat balanced in groups if not necessarily for solo play but to get to that balance a week or two after eelease they nerfed a bunch of classes. They nerfed Disciples from the best class in the game to the worst class in the game, buffed them a couple of months later to okay-but-not-great class. Nerfed Monks from the #2 DPS class and #2 tank to worst-by-far DPS and terrible off-tank. Buffed them a month or two after the nerf to okay-but-not-great DPS. Similiarly they nerfed Warriors, Blood Mages and Bards (and IIRC Shamans). All after release--all after people had leveled to the teens or twenties and gotten used to their class and its level or play. At each of these nerfs they lost people permananetly because each of these nerfs was mishandled. Even when everyone, including people who played the class agreed that some nerf was needed.

The disciple remains the single worst nerf in the game (even worse than the monk or bard nerf--and I play a monk) the problem --which every disciple would tell you--was they were criting far too much --90% of the time -- hell a single Disciple could take out 2 4-dots in Beta4.

Everyone knew they needed a nerf to crit rate, everyone (including all disciples) was expecting it. But instead of nerfing the crit rate to normal (the only problem) they nerfed crit rate, healing ability (which wasn't a problem) and damage (which also wasn't a problem). Disciples unlike every other healing class couldn't solo shit after the nerf and couldn't heal as well as the other healing classes after the nerf.

Similiary everyone knew that monks were tanking too well in beta -- we were getting 100% evasion at the high-end. But instead of just nerfing the evasion to something reasonble, they nerfed evasion, crit rate (which wasn't a problem) and damage (which also wasn't a problem). They also changed us (again after release) from doing excellant unarmed damaged (making the choice to use a weapon an actual choice) to doing crap unarmed damage (requring a weapon).

3 people I played with (1 regularly, 2 on and off) left primarily because of the nerfs (Disciple, Bard and Blood Mage respectively).

Of course there were also the bugs. Quest bugs, group bugs and worst of all the lost xp bug. But as bad as they were I only lost one person on my friends list due to bugs the rest of us soldiered on and got used to grouping 10 times before getting to the same chunk and doing the final regroup. However, I know my experience is probably atypical and that a number of people left in the first few weeks because of the bugs.

Finally, they lost a lot of level 50s in April and May because of someones decision to not push raid content in early. Everyone knows that there were test raids during beta4 (and I believe also beta3) so we all assumed that some type of buggy raiding would get put in by the time we hit 50. But when people started hitting 50 in droves in late March/April. There was no news about reaiing and seemingly nothing on the horizon. I lost 1 guy who I grouped with regularly because he was bored at 50 and I know every highend guild lost a lot of people (one poster from BoW noted that he'd lost 5 level 50s over the raiding issue).

Outside of the adventuring sphere -- VG lost people for similiarly bizarre post-release decisions. VG crafting is interesting -- far more interesting than WoW crafting or LOTOR crafting but the grind is unbelievable at the high-end. The first 50 adventures were in early March and there were a ton by late March/April. I don't think my server has a 50 crafter yet. There were no double-xp weekends for crafters (even though they were talked about and seemingly promised after the double xp adventure wekends), there are no missive boards or quests or anyway to get accelerated xp (and none were put in for crafting when they were being put in for adventuring in March and April), worse of all crafters couldn't even get xp for doing regular recipes once they've mastered them. So high-end crafting is 100% pure work order grind. All the crafters that were on my friends list disappeared around level 38 or so in crafting -- I guess they thought 20 hours to level by only doing work orders was a bit much.

Oh there were other issues (content too grindy after 40; started with too many PvE servers) -- but these are probably the major ones that pushed people away and lead to population declines which resulted in new players and old pugers being unable to find a group and leaving.

My point being that VG was always salvagable -- even after the oh-so buggy release -- but someone kept making the wrong decisions and each of these decisions cost VG more and more people.

It sucks because I had a lot of fun in VG -- but everytime someone I knew on my friends list left I absolutely understood why they did. And hell I only stayed a monk after the huge monk nerf because (a) I was looking forward to my cool soaring leap ability at 34 and (b) as a drunken monk --- even though I did no damage whatsoever (and I almost literally mean that -- there was a few days in Feb where I, like all monks, was doing less damage as a level 28 monk that I had at level 10 because of a nerf to direct damage) -- I could still FD to save my group from a wipe (necessary because our disciple had just left because of the disciple nerf) and I could still pull aggro for the pally/rescue trick.

If there is anything to learn from VG I say it is this:
-Get class balance right before you release.
-People can deal with a lot of bugs (short of game-stopping bugs like the lost xp bug or dupe bugs) post-release but can't deal with lack of level appropriate content or severe class nerfs.
-Lore matters
-Early pain (over crowded newbie areas) is much better than late pain (too few people on too large an area).
-Smaller is better--at least at first (VG should have released with only two continents Kojan and Qalia with more content packed onto those two continents)

Probably something else too.

* * *

On a happier note -- even if VG shuts down tomorrow I still had a very fun time for the two months of beta and four months of live that I played and I still think my money was well spent and I shout out to Roll, Saiq, Sin, Esco and Kex -- my main dudes as well as Darx (6th man winner), Nosi (sorry about the Disc nerf man -- I understand why you left) and hell even Jeebs (you big pot head) for all the times we grouped together in the Temple in the Sky, 7 brothers, Tsang, Skrawla Rock, CIS/RV, Pantheon, Zossyr, Karrus Hakrel, RP, Arena, Seawatch, Xenn, Greystone, Lost Cove, Ruin Falls and (even though it sucked as a POI) Tehatamani.

So a big fuck you to Hiram, 2bit, Obtenor and co. Yeah you're right when you said that Sigil's ship was gonna sink but you were wrong when you said that someone couldn't have fun with the game :-)

[Samflam]

Bah nevermind. I don't care;P

[Broham]

Originally Posted by Locithon

Was it you that wrote that long article about VG while it was in either Beta 0 or Beta 1? About how if WoW felt like a "strode in the park" (or something close to that) then VG was like ice skating?

If it is then I blame you for my interest in the game, after I read that article I pretty much decided VG was the next MMO I would try. I'm PM'ing you my paypal information because I want my $55 dollars back.

That right there is the most ridiculous statement I've seen on these boards in a long time. Oloh's write-up got a lot of folks interested in the game, not just you. It was not Oloh's decision to completely revamp how combat worked in the game two beta phases later.

There were plenty of NDA breaks here to tell you that combat changed -- don't be a tool.

[Oloh]

Originally Posted by Locithon

Was it you that wrote that long article about VG while it was in either Beta 0 or Beta 1? About how if WoW felt like a "strode in the park" (or something close to that) then VG was like ice skating?

Yeah, the Phase 0 and Phase 1 combat system was a lot different than from Phase 2 on. The system underwent a huge change when they modified the combat to be more fast paced in response to tester feedback. Many testers complained that the old system was too slow. I loved it the old system.

Basically, the original idea was that the mob was doing its own thing, and you got to see the attack before it lands, through your perception skill. So, you had a little "mob attack" window. Differnet mobs had differnet attack speeds.

Tanking the frogs in Three Rivers, for instance, was a perfect example. The frogs had claw, claw, bite and devour. Warriors had an ability called shield block that reduced damage by 75% for one attack. If you "wasted" a shield block on a claw or a bite, the devour would own you. If your perception was high enough, you could see when the frog was gonna devour, and shield block it to absorb a large part of the damage, which made healing a lot easier and the group more efficient.

Anyway, i use the term ice skating because it was a queued system, kinda like SWG a little bit, but you would "play" an ability, and if something came up in the meantime, you coudl swap it out at the last minute until the "round" resolved.

Kinda hard to explain, but it was the first thing that struck me as awesome about VG. It was slow, though, so it was a tradeoff. I think with some tweaking it can be a really sweet system for a future game. The thing that I would do, which I posted a lot on, is layer it over with a faster paced WoW type system, so that you have the speed and action, but also have the magic the gathering style "playing your hand."

Originally Posted by Locithon

If it is then I blame you for my interest in the game, after I read that article I pretty much decided VG was the next MMO I would try. I'm PM'ing you my paypal information because I want my $55 dollars back.

k

[Slick Willey]

ROFL -- Where is Vaclav? Remember that dude? Trying to tell everyone that you cannot make any judgments or opine on Vanguard until its released. Trying to tell everyone that "Vanguard will be released in Q1 2007" could mean in June 2007 and that it would not be released in January.

[Qhue]

The Ice Skating combat system was, unfortunately, too good to be true. It was partly implemented into the game and then people complained bitterly that it wasn't WoWish and instead of saying "hold on its not done yet..." or better yet "shut the fuck up!" they went and shitcanned the whole concept in favor of WoWism.

All because people felt that combat wasnt fast paced enough...instead it just got REALLY dull and button mashy.


The real tragedy is that there were several very good and 3rd generationish ideas that Vanguard had and which it subsequently betrayed on the road to release.

[Tabris]

Originally Posted by Asmadai

You're like that guy, who after WW2 is already over, all the concentration camps found, all the horror of the tyranny of Hitler known, who THEN tries to say 'I told you Hilter was a bad guy'.

I don't think there has been a person who you could actually tell 'I told you so' to on these boards in months. We realized he fucked up a while ago. The game has been out since late January....and it is halfway through May...

Welcome to the present.

So the lesson from this whole debacle is that Vanguard = Auschwitz?

[Braen]

Originally Posted by Slick Willey

ROFL -- Where is Vaclav? Remember that dude? Trying to tell everyone that you cannot make any judgments or opine on Vanguard until its released. Trying to tell everyone that "Vanguard will be released in Q1 2007" could mean in June 2007 and that it would not be released in January.

I believe he was banned a while ago.

[Miele]

Originally Posted by Lost Ranger

Umm yeah, dont listen to cuppy guys she really couldnt be more wrong heh. At level 20 you dont have to use all your abilities that is true.. but its fucking level 20 isnt it? Its not as bad for healers this is true (I have a 57 fury on my 2nd account) but you still need to be using most of your nukes/dots etc to be killing effectivly at end game. It is much, much worse for melee dps...

Anyone who has played melee dps to 60+ in EQ2 (maybe not bards, jait?) can tell you with experience that you HAVE to use most if not all of your combat arts to kill effectivly and cut back on downtime. I play a brigand and I cant think of very many combat arts that I can "not mash because they are trivial". If I told my group that I wasnt going to dispatch because it was trivial I would be removed and laughed at. If you dont know what brigands do we are the debuffer/dps/rogue class. We attack a mobs defenses, so other dps classes do more damage. If I use all my skills the mobs armor and resists are shot to shit. If I choose to be lazy and just use 1-2... the mob dies slower and as a result we all gain exp slower.

The problem with EQ2 combat is that there are way too many abilities that ARE NOT trivial. When fighting yellow mobs at 60+ you should see what I have to do. I have a whole list of shit they could do for us brigands so it doesnt look like we are playing the piano while grinding but that is for another thread.

P.S: Using macros can cut down on how many buttons you have to press during any given fight. That is a player-side fix though and doesnt address the fact that combat in EQ2 is pretty busted. Hopefully it is something they address.

Scouts have issues and I think SoE realized it, I also think that if they put out a scout revamp, people would go on a nerd rage fight "argh I have 5 skills less, you nerfed me" style.

We're talking about 24+ skills, not 10 and the main problem with EQ2 system for combat is that there is NO reason to NOT use the skill when it's available. Rangers that do not melee much, time specials inbetween autoattacks, but aside from that is button spamming.
Scouts play the UI, not the game. As a level 26 (not 70, I said 26) swashbuckler I found myself watching my hotbars for cooldowns rahter than watching the rest of the game. While enjoyable to a point, it gets old enough when you consider that you just stared at the hotbars for 50% or more of the time.

Fighters have it slightly better till the raids start, then it's kinda the same: either they use everything as it refreshes or they lose agro (for tanks). Non tanking fighters spam for e-peen reasons and to prove they are not deadweights.

Priests are ok to play, some redundant spells, but not that bad in the end. You can find a comfortable and efficient pace when not full healing and when it's full healing time, well, they are entertaining imo.

Casters are quite different among subclasses: enchanters even more different between the 2 of them. Illusionist with time compression are making scouts appear relaxing, coercers have a slower pace.
Sorcerers (warlock and wizards) have long casting time and they follow quite a semi-relaxed pattern, still they have quite an arsenal of spells to use.
Summoners are the more relaxing so to say, the pet does half the job on his own.

So scouts could use some consolidation and also fighters wouldn't cry too much if some skills would disappear.

A certain degree of skill is present when evaluating and comparing the performance of 2 player with equal gear and spells/arts, but it's more on a player vs bored-housewife level rather than something I'd discuss on these boards. You don't need any exceptional skills to play MMO hotbars aside from having a quick-enough finger, the challenge usually comes in form of scripts or attention span decline.

Honestly if an assassin is pulling 2k+ dps or 1,9k dps, I still think he's pulling his weight well enough, perfectionists may disagree here.

[Leid]

Wait until some disgruntled Sigil workers spill their guts about how things ran behind the scenes.

[Zarcath]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

The Safehouse Forums - View Single Post - McQuaid Calls it Quits

Very interesting 5 year old article. Seems to be coming back full circle.

Sounds about right and oddly enough the period of time for this reaccounting is exactly the period I was there for. I remember the good times prior to Luclin release, when all of CS had to work overtime to help QA test bugs and me and another end-game GM "wandered" into Ssra temple and broke the emperor encounter. Got yelled at by the dev for being there lol. Ah and then the time shortly after when they canned Ester. Seemed unwarranted though, I think she was just a scapegoat.

[Fury]

Originally Posted by spentmotiff

Amen to this. As Draegan said in one post "that game has been tainted by hate."

So much truth to that statement.

And Brad had a lot to do with it. Most especially by creating it with his followers, openly bashing other existing MMO's, as well as soon(ish) to be released games. And of course the famed, "This game might not be for you" catch phrase. Which quickly turned into, "Go back to WoW!", with the suble, "you pussyass wuss", behind it.

Tainted by hate, indeed.

[Cuppycake]

Originally Posted by Lost Ranger

Umm yeah, dont listen to cuppy guys she really couldnt be more wrong heh.

Yeah you're right. I'm totally wrong, and so are all the people who agree with me. Most of the people here on these boards who talk about EQ2 don't have a 60+ character...me included, but this is what I've experienced so far with leveling a character. Its just as important to me that the leveling process has good combat as the end game. *shrug*

Regardless if you say at level 60+ it gets better...that's a long way to go with too many abilities. Its not a new brilliant revelation that I just came up with that abilities need to be merged. Its pretty common thought.