[VG] Producer's Letter

[I'm Rich Bitch]

Those shots look great. How are the lower level populations? I might load it again to check it out.

[Plaeroma]

Originally Posted by Froofy-D

Damn those look really good. Especially this one, which is probably the best looking VG character shot I've seen. Reminds me a bit of some old Elric of Melnibone art, probably due to the runed sword.

I like this one a lot myself. In fact, I like most of the weapon graphics in the last few shots.

[Greezer]

Need the helm graphics to cover up the new horse chins...lol

Helms don't look bad though.

[Gilgamel]

Question: Anyone in a raiding guild give me a heads up on what the endgame is like. I know APW is the big draw, but I know people raiding like 5 nights a week and that seems strange. I could ask on the general forums but I figure more people could give me the kind of answer I want here.

[gurgi]

Are those handles?

[Arrr]

Originally Posted by Gilgamel

Question: Anyone in a raiding guild give me a heads up on what the endgame is like. I know APW is the big draw, but I know people raiding like 5 nights a week and that seems strange. I could ask on the general forums but I figure more people could give me the kind of answer I want here.

It's been pretty fun so far.

APW is 18 bosses, then there are 2 overland mobs, with 2 more coming in with the next GU (about a week).

The fights are more EQ1 or EQ2 than they are WoW. It's more about developing a strat than executing, in most cases (although Shylosia is a decent example of a fight that requires some execution). Along the same lines, most of the entertainment comes from guild vs guild conflict, shit-talking, competition, etc. In terms of complexity, the fights are definitely a step down from WoW's (although the devs stated that APW is sorta a "training wheels" dungeon for both them and us--so VG players can learn to raid, and so VG devs can more or less learn to make raids. Supposedly the one in development is intended to be significantly more difficult).

Loot is pretty mediocre. It's better than stuff you get from non-raiding, but not by enough. There's a mold system, which avoids some rampant deconning of loot, but not all of it (most bosses drop a mold and 1 or 2 items off of the table). There isn't a large degree of gear overlap between some classes, and it really shows. The best example would be the bloodmage: they get some fucking WEIRD gear that nobody else in the game would want, like +spell damage +healing. Also, item levels do NOT scale up throughout the dungeon, which leads to a very "meh" feeling when you're killing the last bosses.

Guilds raiding 5 days a week (or more) is pretty common for a non-casual guild. It's usually 4 days or so to keep timers down, then 1 or 2 for progression. Once guilds get done with the entrance wing (first 4 bosses), you can easily farm the rest in 3 days.

[Gilgamel]

What's the lore behind APW anyway? Seems strange that a game with so many interesting places would have it's first epic encounters in the same setting as season two of the wire.

[Bobleclair]

We actually farm all raid content (APW + 2 overlands) in 3 days but yeah raiding 5 days a week is normal when you are still learning strats.
And gear makes a difference, just you need 5 or 6 items at less to start noticing it, wich is normal for a starting dungeon. But i agree that many items were poorly designed and some class like clerics don't have enough gear choice unless they go for medium healer gear.
After GU4 they are starting the test on the next dungeon, wich is supposed to require APW and seeing how the devs improved in terms of scrypting at the end of APW (compare the first boss at entrance of APW to latest one like the dragon, core,...), it looks promising.

[Shinrai]

APW took the better part of a year with a dev team twice the size of the one they have now and that's with the re-use of existing art assets as I understand it. In the meantime they also need some non-raid endgame content if they want to retain their tiny subscribed base.

I'm sure they're capable, and committed, but I just don't believe they can generate quality content at a rate that's going to grow vanguard.

[Bobleclair]

What took so long with APW was not creating/tunning raid encounters, but creatings the tools to generate scrypted event and fixing all the performances bugs and skills inbalances, wich was done with the shrinked dev team.

New content should go live a lot faster now that they have all the tools for it and are nearly done with performances fixes (last fixes being GU4 bones reducing on face then on the unibody so they can hit the 24 players raid limit they wanted, wich i believe could work right now as anyways most guilds bring more than 18 to raids and experience little to no lag).

[Arrr]

btw, bob, what guild are you in?

[kcxiv]

Originally Posted by Bobleclair

What took so long with APW was not creating/tunning raid encounters, but creatings the tools to generate scrypted event and fixing all the performances bugs and skills inbalances, wich was done with the shrinked dev team.

New content should go live a lot faster now that they have all the tools for it and are nearly done with performances fixes (last fixes being GU4 bones reducing on face then on the unibody so they can hit the 24 players raid limit they wanted, wich i believe could work right now as anyways most guilds bring more than 18 to raids and experience little to no lag).

Yep, i know in BoW. Avarem had us testing bugs over and over, and even over again. They had us trying to beat mobs every way possible. They even told us to try to use exploits so they can correct it. The encounters were tuned fairly fast. They used to have us beat on unkillable mobs that didn't attack back to try to create lag anyways we could.

Alot of testing was put into APW to make sure it was pretty much bug free. You can ask any guild on the live servers that APW came out very very very polished.

[LISeru]

Originally Posted by Shinrai

APW took the better part of a year with a dev team twice the size of the one they have now and that's with the re-use of existing art assets as I understand it.

It was done by 2 devs (Avarem and Tiraslee) from late July until early December while the team was being downsized (which I imagine hinders productivity).

The actual zone has existed since Beta, but it was completely redone. Even the art and layout of the dungeon changed.

[Arrr]

a little birdy told me that the new raid zone just went into testing. Could see it within 2-3 months.

[Twobit Whore]

Sign if you would play on a "Hardcore" Vanguard Server (Read the rules before posting please)

This could turn it around?