SOE to own VG - Sigil fires employees

[woqqqa]

Originally Posted by Fammaden

Incidentally, this is intrinsically relevant to VG, and not even really that much of a derail as far as threads this large go. If I have those rose colored glasses, and many others have posted here and elsewhere to the same effect, then there is in fact a subset of people who might welcome back that sort of world design. The fact is that many of these things have been deliberately designed out of modern MMO's.

Sigil knew this, we told them, and they tried to bank on it. Remember when they launched the new "Set Yourself Free" motto? I don't even think most sane people even really respect the finer points of the vision™ as much as they were willing to put up with it if the game world turned out to bring back that feeling of wide open freedom. EQ had that near sandbox aspect while still burying you in static content. Any game that could deliver something similar right now that was reasonably polished and complete could garner a niche crowd without question. Many people would probably put up with steep grinds and harsh penalties again, not because they like those things but as long as they could do them in a world that drew players in and let them loose like old Norrath did.

I'm not so sure. I agree with you that there's a market out there for a large open-ended world, but I think that no one's willing to put up with too much of a grind anymore. Whether it's the core audience getting older, or just the effect of the newer, less grindy games, people seem to tolerate a lot less of it. A game with a wide open world and heavy grind would hemorrhage players after the first month or so (once the grind started to kick in). I don't think you'd find too many people willing to make that trade-off. As for a wide open world with more "reasonable" gameplay, I think it could do a lot better than just a niche (depending on when it released), but it would definitely have its share of devoted followers, no doubt.

[Antarius]

FD splitting mobs in Molten Core was the shit. How were we supposed to know you "weren't" supposed to be able to do it.

[Neric]

Originally Posted by Fammaden

Remember when they launched the new "Set Yourself Free" motto?

Every thinking person must have realized immediately that this motto was fake, because it contradicts the game mechanics.

Sure, there are numerous ways to waste your time, but none of them will enable you to dodge the grind. It is the freedom to do a lot and nothing at the same time.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Neric

Every thinking person must have realized immediately that this motto was fake, because it contradicts the game mechanics.

Sure, there are numerous ways to waste your time, but none of them will enable you to dodge the grind. It is the freedom to do a lot and nothing at the same time.

I remember when Brad tried to spin the motto as it just meant you were free to run anywhere that you could see because there were no zone walls.

[woqqqa]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

I remember when Brad tried to spin the motto as it just meant you were free to run anywhere that you could see because there were no zone walls.

ROFL

[tad10]

Originally Posted by woqqqa

I'm not so sure. I agree with you that there's a market out there for a large open-ended world, but I think that no one's willing to put up with too much of a grind anymore. Whether it's the core audience getting older, or just the effect of the newer, less grindy games, people seem to tolerate a lot less of it. A game with a wide open world and heavy grind would hemorrhage players after the first month or so (once the grind started to kick in). I don't think you'd find too many people willing to make that trade-off. As for a wide open world with more "reasonable" gameplay, I think it could do a lot better than just a niche (depending on when it released), but it would definitely have its share of devoted followers, no doubt.

/agree with Fam /disagree with you. The majority of people who left VG did not leave VG because of the grind (will maybe some 38+ crafters did -- but thats because 38+ VG crafting is arguably the worst grind ever invented in any game ever. I'm still not sure if there are any level 50 crafters in the game). People left VG because of bugs, lack of 40+/raid content, lack of a coherent and continued storyline and yes because of the lack of EQ-like freedom that Fam discussed.

I do not pretend that there is a large market for the kind of game but there is a market.

[woqqqa]

Originally Posted by tad10

/agree with Fam /disagree with you. The majority of people who left VG did not leave VG because of the grind (will maybe some 38+ crafters did -- but thats because 38+ VG crafting is arguably the worst grind ever invented in any game ever. I'm still not sure if there are any level 50 crafters in the game). People left VG because of bugs, lack of 40+/raid content, lack of a coherent and continued storyline and yes because of the lack of EQ-like freedom that Fam discussed.

I do not pretend that there is a large market for the kind of game but there is a market.

The majority of Vanguard players who already stuck around left because of frustration with bugs and lack of content later on, sure. But how many people that bought the game even stayed past the first month? It's that first wave of people leaving I'm referring to.

Also, this was in reference more to a hypothetical open game with a heavy grind than anything Vanguard specific. (see the post I original replied to)

[Faltigoth]

Originally Posted by tad10

/agree with Fam /disagree with you. The majority of people who left VG did not leave VG because of the grind (will maybe some 38+ crafters did -- but thats because 38+ VG crafting is arguably the worst grind ever invented in any game ever. I'm still not sure if there are any level 50 crafters in the game). People left VG because of bugs, lack of 40+/raid content, lack of a coherent and continued storyline and yes because of the lack of EQ-like freedom that Fam discussed.

I do not pretend that there is a large market for the kind of game but there is a market.

Don't forget the crushingly horrible performance on many mid-range and even top range computers. I would reckon that claimed more of Vanguard's subscribers than anything else -- considering every one of its competitors runs damn near perfectly on 3/4 year old machines.

[Nairbog]

Vanguard is not a grind unless you make it one. In my opinion, "grinding" is defined by doing the same content over and over again to level up to where you can experience new content. The breadth of content at any given level (except the high end) means you shouldn't be grinding unless you choose not to travel and experience new content. Admittedly, this was unnecessarily tedious to do at launch without the riftways. I think lack of instant travel of some kind hurt them more than anything at launch.

A lot of the complaints about the world (compared to say EQ) was that everything looked the same. This is true to an extent for certain regions of the game world (central thestra, and a good amount of Qalia) but now with riftways its easy to go somewhere that's significantly different aesthetically. I wonder how many players who ended up quitting Vanguard only saw the breadbasket of Thestra and formed their opinion of the game based on that.

[Shinrai]

Couldn't disagree more, it is quite obvious that the grind of meaningless repetition is deeply woven into Vanguards gameplay.

In WoW group quests give group rewards, in Vanguard you generally have to perform the event fully for each member. So instead of killing named X and taking proof of the deed you have to kill named X and his 5 respawns.

Quests quickly devolve into horrific collectathon's. In a large number of cases the dungeon will be thoroughly explored, or even outlevelled, before even a small number of the group have completed the quests. And let's not even get into crafting and diplomacy which offer virtually no gameplay apart from appalling amounts of repetition from an extremely limited pool of actions.

[Sinter1]

Originally Posted by Neric

Remarkable, truely remarkable. You take my comment on the EQ Kunark area to turn it into kicking someone when he is down. Quite interesting that you didn't say the same about the statement I commented on.

How about you go and fuck yourself? That would certainly make you feel better about your shitty existance.

What? I was more talking about how you take yet another stab at Mcquaid. You sir fail at reading comprehension 101.

[Nairbog]

Originally Posted by Shinrai

Couldn't disagree more, it is quite obvious that the grind of meaningless repetition is deeply woven into Vanguards gameplay.

In WoW group quests give group rewards, in Vanguard you generally have to perform the event fully for each member. So instead of killing named X and taking proof of the deed you have to kill named X and his 5 respawns.

Quests quickly devolve into horrific collectathon's. In a large number of cases the dungeon will be thoroughly explored, or even outlevelled, before even a small number of the group have completed the quests. And let's not even get into crafting and diplomacy which offer virtually no gameplay apart from appalling amounts of repetition from an extremely limited pool of actions.

My point is that while there are "grindy" aspects of the game and quests, you don't have to do them. There is more than enough content to just say "wow, this quest looks shitty, I'm not going to do it." Personally, when I "do" a dungeon, I'll grab all the quests for it, go through it all and explore it, and whatever I finish, I finish. Whatever I don't, I delete from my journal and move on to another area. I had said before that one of VG's main problems is quality control on their content, some of the designers made fun content and others were lazy and made grindy content. I'm curious as to what dungeon quest lines are "necessary" (up till 35 or so where admittedly, content quality goes down on average) that you outlevel before completing them.

[Nairbog]

Since I know some of you saved this... can someone PM me the employee testimony about the two factions in Sigil? I've only seen people talk about it, I think you can tell from my post history that I'm not about to go spreading it over the net since I play and enjoy Vanguard, just want to see for my own personal use.

[Drauk]

Originally Posted by Antarius

FD splitting mobs in Molten Core was the shit. How were we supposed to know you "weren't" supposed to be able to do it.

As far as i know FD never really worked on splitting linked mobs. What CQ did was using a combination of freeze trap and FD to break linking script. You must admit that is much cheesier than simply using FD.

[Antarius]

Originally Posted by Drauk

As far as i know FD never really worked on splitting linked mobs. What CQ did was using a combination of freeze trap and FD to break linking script. You must admit that is much cheesier than simply using FD.

It was far more than conquest doing it, You gotta remember that the initial double firelord pull was downright brutal to the majority of guilds that were doing it in a smattering of ubrs gear, at best, when dm hadn't even come out yet. And the 2 giant + firelord pull was just as bad.

Pretty much everyone was doing it, and we had 1 hunter that could pull it off reliably, and another 3 hunters that tried for 2 entire nights (5+ hours of wiping) and still couldn't figure it out. On night we actually got them to split with an eye of killrog /boggle.

The short period of time where split pulling wasn't working AND they still had the "harder" trash pulls was an extremely frusterating time, although to derail a bit, that frusteration has nothing on what the past 2 months of raiding have been.