SOE to own VG - Sigil fires employees

[Faelor]

Originally Posted by tad10

I'm still not sure if there are any level 50 crafters in the game).

*butts in* Just to clarify, there are 50 crafters around. My guild actually have a few. We had the first 50/50/500 (max in all spheres) Alright, I'm done with the derail.

[Arbuste]

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.

I stopped playing 90% because of the grind. Not really the XP grind. But the uninteresting quest grind, the retarded quest mechanic that forces you to complete some quests once for each group member and the faction grind. I didn't go far in Diplomacy and Crafting, but it doesn't take long to see that it's 100% grind as well.
You forgot shitty performances as an obvious reasons why people would quit.cAnd I agree that the storyline / world were uninspiring and not coherent pretty often.
But most people who bought the game probably didn't even get close to 40+.

[chackle]

We've had a tonne of guildies leave because of the grind. CW broke most of them, they did that and then saw the same sort of thing with Gorg/RI/TH and decided it just flat out wasn't fun. A lot of them from what I hear rolled up alts and just enjoy the lower end content on different classes.

RI is driving me nuts at the moment, 4000000000000 bags to go!

[Twobit Whore]

I frankly never understood the 100% retarded idea that almost every quest you do in a group can only update for one person at a time.

I remember back in beta, doing a guild group with Jerrith when he still worked there and we went to Cainsworth. There was a quest to get some thing from a named ghost but to spawn the 'event' you had to get a rare ass drop from a limited number of wolf spawns. It was literally like a 1% drop rate and the entire place had maybe a dozen wolves. You could spend 4-5 hours easy just to get the event trigger. So we get lucky and get it then do the event thing. At the end we kill the final one and the shackle drops.. and it drops one. 5 other people with the quest couldn't do shit except grind on limited spawns for a rare drop for 3-6 hours or so.. each. So for a whole group to complete that quest you are looking at 1-2 days /played. And this was a level 25ish area! I never went back there after that night.

Yeah maybe the game doesn't force you to grind, but if you want to complete anything halfway interesting it sure as hell does.

[Shinrai]

We did Cairnsworth and ran into exactly that. To start with it's the typical vanguard dungeon, boring corridors combined with a whole 1-3 mob models filling the whole place. It's also tiny with bad aggro and pathing (especially the prisoners).

We had four quests, the found quest that spawns the "hunter" and three quests to find relics that can drop off any mob. In 3 visits (and this is a dungeon that is so small as to be boring after one) we find zero of the three tokens and one of the boss drops. We spawn the boss and it leads onto another farming quest, which of course we are not going to do because I'd rather quit the game than farm 5 more drops there. In all that time no names or loot of note other than something no one wanted off the spawned boss.

Seriously, at level 24 with having visited every level appropriate premium dungeon, I'm less than impressed. I've seen nothing that can match blackburrow, crush, karnors or guk. And it's not even in the same league as WoW's dungeons and clever scripting. Names are hopelessly rare, loot is boring and inferior to what may be purchsed off the broker (which at least is much like EQ) and the dungeons are repetitive to the extreme. Even thinking about the ant hive dungeon, which is endless corridors with endless ants, puts me to sleep.

Vanguard would be an alright game if they fixed the bugs, made it more playable on lower spec machines, made diplomacy and crafting actually fun, made loot more interesting... but it would still be average at best. It would also be good if they could give the cities a reason for existing (New Targonor is the largest, most pointless waste of art assets I've ever seen). Heck, even the landscape is pointless with it's love of insane and abrupt slopes and its lack of variation.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

I frankly never understood the 100% retarded idea that almost every quest you do in a group can only update for one person at a time.

Oh /agree. True group quests should update for all. The Karrus Hakrel Obsiderru quests are particularly obnoxious in this regard.

Def an example of "bad" grind.

[Ladro Liscio]

Originally Posted by tad10

Oh /agree. True group quests should update for all. The Karrus Hakrel Obsiderru quests are particularly obnoxious in this regard.

Def an example of "bad" grind.

But guys... your reward for theses quests is the XP you gain while "finding" the quest component! /rolleyes.

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

. . . .
Yeah maybe the game doesn't force you to grind, but if you want to complete anything halfway interesting it sure as hell does.

But that's the way it was in EQ. Tis why I absolutely despised questing there. And I dam well knew it would be the same crap in VG. I have problems with the collection quests in WOW too. They can be a pain when you try to do them in a group. In LOTRO at least if all have the same collection quest and an item drops most can loot it (don't know why not all, seems kind of odd and random).

[holydevil]

Originally Posted by Arbuste

I stopped playing 90% because of the grind. Not really the XP grind. But the uninteresting quest grind, the retarded quest mechanic that forces you to complete some quests once for each group member and the faction grind. I didn't go far in Diplomacy and Crafting, but it doesn't take long to see that it's 100% grind as well.
You forgot shitty performances as an obvious reasons why people would quit.cAnd I agree that the storyline / world were uninspiring and not coherent pretty often.
But most people who bought the game probably didn't even get close to 40+.

I stopped playing because the game wasn't innovative at all. At level 25+ it felt just like group grinding in Lower Guk, or Old Sebilis. It was nice at first, but the nostalgia didn't last forever. Vanguard was a WOW interface with an EQ-like grind.

I agree about crafting, what a piece of shit. Honestly, in retrospect this crafting should have been a huge red flag for us. The way Brad would talk about it, or harvesting as these big and fun parts of the game. He clearly didn't craft or harvest for any long period of time. Anyone who played with those aspects of the game knew that they weren't "fun" or "special" or anything positive.

Man, he's just bad. I feel as if Brad perpetrated a fraud against the MMORPG community.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Ladro Liscio

But guys... your reward for theses quests is the XP you gain while "finding" the quest component! /rolleyes.

Heh. Actually there are a lot of interesting group quests with the one person udpate mechanic that are just fun too do, they just aren't fun to do 6 times especially since you've outleveled the place by time you've done number 3 ;p

* * *

Shin there are, IMHO of course, good dungeons which are better, or as good as their WoW equivalents with interesting loot and names that aren't particularly rare at or prior to your current level (Stronghold, Magi, Ark, Tsang, CIS). But obviously YMMV there are people who hate Tsang and its quests or think CIS is too grindy, in any event if you don't like it now you're not going to like it later -- I'm surprised you made it to 24.

I do kinda agree with your boring loot comment -- as I've commented before there are too many nameds (I kinda boggled at your rare named comment) dropping too much mediocre loot and not enough nameds dropping the really good stuff.

There is interesting loot in the game: Xenn items (about 20 levels beyond where you are and now soulbound so no help there), various Heroic drops and Legendaries but the legendaries you get from quests, there are very few mobs that drop Heroics (most heroics come from lenthy questchains or grinding or very occasionally crafting) and the Xenn items, though very cool, are a grind.

[Elsebet]

One of my larger concerns in VG is end-game. Obviously there isn't much of it yet but I'm curious about their implementation of it considering the stance against instancing. From my experiences so far with AES encounters, I'm very worried if they plan to create raids with it since GM's seem to have no power to despawn/fix those encounters when they bug out (and often do). Secondly, if all raiding is contested, I wonder when (or if) they will address the playtime issue.

When we raided in WoW, even though we were in Naxx, our guild rarely saw the world spawns since guilds with high populations during the day would slay them in the early afternoons. I'm not going to argue the point of more time = more reward since that's obviously a truism, I mean I work out 1 hour a day and don't ever expect to be as fit as the guys/gals there 3-4 hours a day. However, I have the same opportunity, the gym machines don't disappear after the "hardcores" use them.

Variety is the key here. I just want to see avoided the scenario of having scheduled raid times with nothing spawned to raid that day, or potentially for weeks while the resident high playtime guilds farm the content.

[tomodachi]

Back when the initial rumor of an SoE acquisition leaked, LFG (the source)
also leaked SoE would announce a server merge the week following the
acquisition announcement.

Did this ever come to pass?

I was initially waiting to hear this before resubbing, but I frankly look less
and less positively toward resubbing the longer I'm not playing.

[Deathwing]

Gotta agree with Digits, your posts look pretty stupid. Almost as annoying as eVesiage's sig.

[Seths]

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.

I disagree. In a guild of around 50 EQ1 players that was one of the oldest on Torv so we were very familiar with the "grind" involved in games we are now down to something like 25 active members. Most of our players left over the grind 30+. Those of us still playing are very tempted to throw in the towel too given that out of the 2 different factions of gaming style in Sigil the "make them grind and ignore their bitching" side seems to have won out and gotten the jobs at SoE.

Grinding is boring plain and simple, and while there can be a place for it, when it becomes the bread and butter go-to play of a Developer to be used in every aspect of the game it's time to move on for me. We all are trying to give them the benefit of the doubt with a few weeks to see what, if any, changes might come down the pipe. If things head in the direction of throwing grinds at the players then we're just going to cancel and move on to something else.

[Dashal]

I made 50 fairly quick, I was the first Disc on my server to hit it. And also had a lot of fun along the way, mainly due to a regular group with Vent. The grinding did take it's toll though. I havent had time to play in the past few weeks due to personal reasons, and honestly I havent been missing the game much at all, just the people.

The people I group with get on too late for me to join them on work days, and there is no reason to log on for me other than socialize with them.