[VG] Producer's Letter

[Draegan]

There's that P-word again.

[Grizzlebeard]

Originally Posted by jayrebb

I can't imagine anyone even putting an hour into VG soloing, the exp is just that terrible

Well, I soloed 27 through to 30 in CIS fear kiting the 4 dot Living Infineums and each kill, which took anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes depending on finisher procs, netted me 23-28k exp. Being able to solo two levels in a day is okay with me but I agree it is a pretty tedious way to level. Compare that to dungeon crawling in Dargun's last night where I netted two levels in about four hours and ended up with a gear upgrade and two yellow grafts for my abomination and you can see the attraction of party play straight away.

[Stosh]

Well, this thread and the holiday reactivation has suckered me back for another try. I originally had a halfling druid to around level 20 in beta 2.5, but stopped playing when the population in beta made it impossible to find a group.

So I rolled a halfling druid just now named Stoshetta on Seradon. When UPS delivers my EVGA 8800 GTS 512 stepup card tomorrow, I'm going to give the game another chance.

If anything, I'm curious as to how the druid has changed since beta. Feel free to send me a tell if you have a newbie character and want to group.

[Deris]

Did I miss this in another post?

India's Zapak set to buy Sony Online - report | Deals | Mergers & Acquisitions | Reuters


I guess this is why Hartsman left?

[Hathe]

I hope that's bogus, because that'd be complete bullshit if Sony sold out (literally) like that.

[Rezz]

Nah Deris, there was a thread on it that got ninja-locked once it appeared that it wasn't on the level.

[Bobleclair]

Yeah the india stuff is fake, been denied by nearly everyone at SoE.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Arrr

3. There's raid content now. I'm not there (yet), but I haven't heard anything but good things. Lots of bosses, good loot, challenge.

Not nearly as far in as BoW -- but raid bosses are *overall* pretty good so far. There are a few bosses that AFAIK are mistuned (e.g. Archon is a just easy). But fights like the General are pretty challenging.

I think a few of the non-boss nameds (Akym, R5) are a little too easy too -- but their loot isn't as good (though still nice to be sure) and I think they're in there to help smaller guilds - that couldn't form a full raid - get some stuff w/o always having to semi-pug it with another guild. So can't really argue with that.

My only problems with loot so far are:

-Not enough caster stuff has dropped (where not enough equals zero except for some spellbooks).

-Soulbound spellbooks. Had the druid spell drop off a boss and neither of our two druids was in the raid. So poof.

-Akym's dagger of non-leetness is a joke.

-Memories of Molten Core bosses dropping the same shit everytime. Fucking RNG. It seems like X-85 only drops the tank helm for us and the other guy only drops the melee bracers. I think all our tanks have the Helm of Agression.

[Laerazi]

Hmm, went to EBGames, Gamestop, and FYE at local mall, and none of them had Vanguard for less than $39.95.

Also, I tried activating a friend key and when I tried to start the downloader from the Station Launcher it craps out, saying !bundleVersion_undefined!...

Maybe I'll try next year.

[Menion]

Originally Posted by Laerazi

Hmm, went to EBGames, Gamestop, and FYE at local mall, and none of them had Vanguard for less than $39.95.

Also, I tried activating a friend key and when I tried to start the downloader from the Station Launcher it craps out, saying !bundleVersion_undefined!...

Maybe I'll try next year.

I had the same problem with the new station launcher. No matter what I did I could not get it to work with Vanguard. The below link is for the manual download. Have fun downloading 18.3 GB!

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Official Site

[Fratley]

VG is the only game I can bring myself to play anymore. At first I played because WoW bored me to tears and logging on for a couple hours to collect my several thousand from selling arena points just wasn't doing it for me (TBC raiding is a joke, stop kidding yourselves if you're still doing it). Then I kept playing through the 20s and 30s because the world design was excellent and I wanted to see everything it had to offer.

Then of course the ego took over and I had to be the best. Took about 12 days to hit 50 and get decent gear. The best stuff is mostly crafted so you can just buy it straight up upon hitting 48 if you have the cash. I spent a couple weeks shopping around for a guild and found my way into a good raiding guild.

Here's why VG raiding is awesome:
* It's in or out - no room for slackers like WoW. If you afk and make mistakes, it will be painfully obvious and you will be replaced immediately.
* Low barriers of entry - like I said, 12 days from 0-raid. Took no time at all to get the best item in almost every slot. This goes hand in hand with the "in or out" mentality. In WoW guilds were always worried about not being able to replace highly geared players, this simply isn't the case in VG.
* No death penalty. This is kind of funny, since it's so against "The Vision." Don't believe anything else - there are no death penalties in VG. You can rep the hell out of a boss until you figure it out and win. I couldn't possibly be the only person who thinks farming 2 hours for raid supplies is ridiculous.
* Interesting encounters. The 1-50 game in VG is pretty lame, nobody is going to argue otherwise. Every mob does the same thing and dies the same way. The only difference is the scenery and quest lines. Luckily VG took some notes from WoW and put in pretty heavily scripted encounters that take some experimentation to beat.
* Obscurity. Information on raid targets is low. It's up to your guild to figure them out. This increases satisfication significantly. I was actually excited about beating a boss last night, that only happened when we world firsted something in WoW.
* Difficulty Curve. There isn't a single pick up raid in the world who can't stumble their way through the very first boss of APW, however it ramps up quickly. There are probably 15 guilds that raid on Xeth and each one is working on a different area.
* Size. It's more fun to raid a huge zone than a 10 room instance, plain and simple. APW has probably 50 bosses if you count the minis. There is a lot to do. The quest line is kind of boring but there are a lot of quests involved for guilds to slowly work on. In addition, there are spawnable encounters if you meet the conditions.
* Surprisingly good class balance - the best raid will have approximately one of each class. The only thing you really "need" extra of are Bards (one for each group, which is great because the VG Bard is probably the best implemented class in history for minmaxers like myself) and maybe an extra cleric or two. It's pretty obvious when you are missing major buffs/debuffs.
* Great GM Support - major guilds are buddy-buddy with the GMs and they are willing to help when there are problems encountered.
* Itemization that matters - haha, just kidding, itemization is a joke in VG. Maybe it will prevent mudflation down the road, but it gives very little to work for besides getting bosses dead. Other negatives include absolutely ridiculous lag in some shards (usually when there are over 3 raids in a single shard) and too much trash between some POI.

[kcxiv]

Originally Posted by tad10

Not nearly as far in as BoW -- but raid bosses are *overall* pretty good so far. There are a few bosses that AFAIK are mistuned (e.g. Archon is a just easy). But fights like the General are pretty challenging.

I think a few of the non-boss nameds (Akym, R5) are a little too easy too -- but their loot isn't as good (though still nice to be sure) and I think they're in there to help smaller guilds - that couldn't form a full raid - get some stuff w/o always having to semi-pug it with another guild. So can't really argue with that.

My only problems with loot so far are:

-Not enough caster stuff has dropped (where not enough equals zero except for some spellbooks).

-Soulbound spellbooks. Had the druid spell drop off a boss and neither of our two druids was in the raid. So poof.

-Akym's dagger of non-leetness is a joke.

-Memories of Molten Core bosses dropping the same shit everytime. Fucking RNG. It seems like X-85 only drops the tank helm for us and the other guy only drops the melee bracers. I think all our tanks have the Helm of Agression.

Wait until you try Shylosia. She's fucking hard. We are kinda close, but not really. lol

[etchazz]

Originally Posted by Fratley

VG is the only game I can bring myself to play anymore. At first I played because WoW bored me to tears and logging on for a couple hours to collect my several thousand from selling arena points just wasn't doing it for me (TBC raiding is a joke, stop kidding yourselves if you're still doing it). Then I kept playing through the 20s and 30s because the world design was excellent and I wanted to see everything it had to offer.

Then of course the ego took over and I had to be the best. Took about 12 days to hit 50 and get decent gear. The best stuff is mostly crafted so you can just buy it straight up upon hitting 48 if you have the cash. I spent a couple weeks shopping around for a guild and found my way into a good raiding guild.

Here's why VG raiding is awesome:
* It's in or out - no room for slackers like WoW. If you afk and make mistakes, it will be painfully obvious and you will be replaced immediately.
* Low barriers of entry - like I said, 12 days from 0-raid. Took no time at all to get the best item in almost every slot. This goes hand in hand with the "in or out" mentality. In WoW guilds were always worried about not being able to replace highly geared players, this simply isn't the case in VG.
* No death penalty. This is kind of funny, since it's so against "The Vision." Don't believe anything else - there are no death penalties in VG. You can rep the hell out of a boss until you figure it out and win. I couldn't possibly be the only person who thinks farming 2 hours for raid supplies is ridiculous.
* Interesting encounters. The 1-50 game in VG is pretty lame, nobody is going to argue otherwise. Every mob does the same thing and dies the same way. The only difference is the scenery and quest lines. Luckily VG took some notes from WoW and put in pretty heavily scripted encounters that take some experimentation to beat.
* Obscurity. Information on raid targets is low. It's up to your guild to figure them out. This increases satisfication significantly. I was actually excited about beating a boss last night, that only happened when we world firsted something in WoW.
* Difficulty Curve. There isn't a single pick up raid in the world who can't stumble their way through the very first boss of APW, however it ramps up quickly. There are probably 15 guilds that raid on Xeth and each one is working on a different area.
* Size. It's more fun to raid a huge zone than a 10 room instance, plain and simple. APW has probably 50 bosses if you count the minis. There is a lot to do. The quest line is kind of boring but there are a lot of quests involved for guilds to slowly work on. In addition, there are spawnable encounters if you meet the conditions.
* Surprisingly good class balance - the best raid will have approximately one of each class. The only thing you really "need" extra of are Bards (one for each group, which is great because the VG Bard is probably the best implemented class in history for minmaxers like myself) and maybe an extra cleric or two. It's pretty obvious when you are missing major buffs/debuffs.
* Great GM Support - major guilds are buddy-buddy with the GMs and they are willing to help when there are problems encountered.
* Itemization that matters - haha, just kidding, itemization is a joke in VG. Maybe it will prevent mudflation down the road, but it gives very little to work for besides getting bosses dead. Other negatives include absolutely ridiculous lag in some shards (usually when there are over 3 raids in a single shard) and too much trash between some POI.

my biggest concern is that it took them almost a full year to put in one raid dungeon. how long is it going to take them to put in another? guilds will be clearing APW in no time and have it on farm status. they really need a bigger dev team to work on the game. some of the same bugs and broken quests are still there from launch. i am not going to pay money for a game if there is only going to be a new raid dungeon once per year. also, there are still no flying mounts in the game (questable mounts that is) and 2 of the classes that were supposed to be there at launch (zerker and inquisitor) are still not in the game. i wish sony would dump a lot more money and man power into this game and get it up to snuff. there should be at least 3 raid dungeons in the game right now.

[Wolfen]

Why play? Well, I have the Station Pass, so it's basically why not?

I decided to start a Druid first and see how I like it. I'll be in the game in a few days. UPS is burning my ass with their slow delivery. Is it me or has UPS really sucked lately? I can't play until the power supply gets here to power my vid card.

[Menion]

Just curious but what SOE games do you play to keep a Station Pass going?