Vanguard Saga Of Heroes - Player made screenshots released

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
There'll be PvP servers from the very beginning, for those who want to gank silly HS (human stupidity) monsters, see them driven before you and ... etc.

A few things:
1. To compete at all in PvP I'm sure you'll have to play boring wack-a-mole with the AI for dozens of hours. Yawn.
2. PvP in games that are based around PvE with the PvP tacked on as an afterthought always sucks. Making PvP balanced and fun takes a lot more work than just letting people hurt each other and I very much doubt that'll be a priority in Vanguard.
3. I doubt that they'll be all of the things like territorial conquest that makes PvP meaningful. You can't see your enemy driven before you when they repawn in a guard protected area and keep on attacking you no matter how many times you kill them.

[Harovan]

Vanguard will be a PvE focused game. In what way PvP will be implemented, I don't know, since it doesn't overly interest me.

At least in one matter, however, Vanguard seems to be better fit for PvP than other games: the structure of factions. In many MMOGs with a PvP part there is a good side and an evil side at war with each other. And mostly the evil side outnumbers the good by a long shot.

In VG there will be a lot more possible factions. It has three large continents, each inhabited by a number of different races. None of them is inherently good or evil. If implemented well, this could be a fun game of mini wars with treaties and alliances.

As for your third point, well, you certainly don't mean PvP with permadeath. Somewhere people will have to respawn. However, if an area is dominated by a winning faction, the losing faction tends not to return unlimited because 1) they'd just get owned again and 2) it gets expensive, because usually death has a penalty. I played EQ2 on PvP servers for a while, and even though the game did not show it, there was pretty clear to everyone, which faction owns which zone for any given moment.

[Bosh]

In VG there will be a lot more possible factions. It has three large continents, each inhabited by a number of different races. None of them is inherently good or evil. If implemented well, this could be a fun game of mini wars with treaties and alliances.

Well if people are forced to be on the same PvP team as their race then you'll have to be on the same team as a lot of *******s.
If people can choose who they want to kill and who they don't want to kill the backstory fictional factions probably won't mean much.

you certainly don't mean PvP with permadeath

I mean something along the lines of Eve.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Bosh


A few things:
1. To compete at all in PvP I'm sure you'll have to play boring wack-a-mole with the AI for dozens of hours. Yawn.
2. PvP in games that are based around PvE with the PvP tacked on as an afterthought always sucks. Making PvP balanced and fun takes a lot more work than just letting people hurt each other and I very much doubt that'll be a priority in Vanguard.
3. I doubt that they'll be all of the things like territorial conquest that makes PvP meaningful. You can't see your enemy driven before you when they repawn in a guard protected area and keep on attacking you no matter how many times you kill them.

You should try EVE, the amount of PvE needed can be quite limited.

JM

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Jon Miller


You should try EVE, the amount of PvE needed can be quite limited.

JM

I should, but I get lost so much its ridiculous in regular games, I'm sure if I played Eve I'd spent half of the time trying to get my bearings and take about 10 minutes trying to align myself when I get shot at

My brain just isn't wired right for space sim games

[DrSpike]

Well well well.

The NDA is now lifted and I spent a nice morning reading about VG. It's WoW!! Looks like those in charge are smart after all.

I'm sure Ralph will be along shortly to slap me down and say it's more group oriented and whilst not as challenging as he thought earlier still more challenging than WoW etc, but I'll pre-emptively ask can you really claim that VG adds a great deal?

It seems more of an evolution to me than a revolution - of course it's not necessarily a bad thing to release a beefed up WoW (quite sensible actually given they have almost 7 million subscribers) but it seems a far cry from the early expectations posted in VG threads here and elsewhere.

Looks like we will have to wait till at least Conan or Warhammer to see real advances in the genre.

[Harovan]

I have to admit I didn't play it for 4 weeks now, and rarely since the release of NWN2. As I mentioned above, I'm kind of tired of MMOGs as a whole at the moment.

If you can identify WoW in it, that's good for you and perhaps the game itself. It offers indeed a lot solo content and the quest system is similar. While you very well can solo (I solo'd a character into the twens with rare grouping), that isn't the true nature of the game, as the really juicy stuff you'll get only in groups, and doing quests requiring groups. The formula 20% solo, 60% group and 20% raid content looks more like 40/40/20 now. Whether that is good or bad I do not know, I tend to believe it's good. A lot has changed since Beta 2 when I joined it, though.

And yes, it is an evolution, I knew that since I saw it first. It's been EQ1 with prettier graphics and abysimal performance back when I joined, now it looks more like an EQ+WoW conglomerate.

[Asmodean]

I must admit that I am impressed - the game has a nice few twists to distinguish it from WoW. And the graphics are way different.

I actually miss the cartoony quality of the WoW graphics, but that is not a showstopper for me.

Once they have resolved the lag issues, I predict that this game has a nice future - nothing like WoW of course. A game the redefines the market for MMORPG's doesn't come along that often, but it will attract a decent following.

And let's remember: Even WoW was laggy in beta.

Asmodean

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
I have to admit I didn't play it for 4 weeks now, and rarely since the release of NWN2. As I mentioned above, I'm kind of tired of MMOGs as a whole at the moment.

If you can identify WoW in it, that's good for you and perhaps the game itself. It offers indeed a lot solo content and the quest system is similar. While you very well can solo (I solo'd a character into the twens with rare grouping), that isn't the true nature of the game, as the really juicy stuff you'll get only in groups, and doing quests requiring groups. The formula 20% solo, 60% group and 20% raid content looks more like 40/40/20 now. Whether that is good or bad I do not know, I tend to believe it's good. A lot has changed since Beta 2 when I joined it, though.

And yes, it is an evolution, I knew that since I saw it first. It's been EQ1 with prettier graphics and abysimal performance back when I joined, now it looks more like an EQ+WoW conglomerate.

The funny thing is the more of WoW that is in the game the more I'll probably just think may as well play WoW as I've already put 500 or so hours into that.

Plus, my machine wont run VG I think, and I'm not planning an upgrade till mid 2007.

I hear you on MMOs - I'm not that impressed at the last 2 years offerings and probably wont play another until something different to WoW comes out that I fancy playing.

Can't say I blame them ditching the approach it seemed they were going to take early on - I'd do the same if I were making an MMO. The people like yourself that really wanted a different game must be pissed though.

[Harovan]

VG will demand a state of the art computer, just as EQ2 did on release. When I got EQ2, I replaced my GeForce 5200 with a 6600, when I got into the VG beta last February, my 6600 had to struggle hard, I had 10-15 fps outdoors and 1-2 fps (no joke) in cities and dungeons. In May I replaced it with a 7800GTX, which runs it nicely, with at least 20fps. I have to turn down quality in favor of performance when I join groups, though, or in cities, which are awful laggy (sweet memories from EQ2). But EQ2 got the lags and choppiness under control quickly, and I am very sure so will Vanguard.

On your last sentence, I'd call it not "pissed". It was clear from the start, that you WILL be able to solo in VG. 2/3 of the quests in the first 20 levels are soloable too, although the higher you are, the worse are the quested rewards, because you have to considerably outlevel the quest to be able to solo it. It is still a group centered game if you want to play for the good stuff, just like EQ2 was on beginning, before they begun to hand out perks to casuals and destroyed the risk-reward balance. If it remains as it is, I'll be content. However I am not sure if I will play if from release. I'm not even sure if I'll play it at all.

[DrSpike]

So thinking back to your earlier posts on VG here and other threads...........is it just you that's changed or is the game not what you thought?

From my perspective it actually sounds good, but I don't see myself starting a new MMO unless it offers something really impressive.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by DrSpike
So thinking back to your earlier posts on VG here and other threads...........is it just you that's changed or is the game not what you thought?

The third explanation is, "or is your (DrSpike) first impression of the game not quite correct".

I think it's probably an equal part of all three.

[Asher]

VG will demand a state of the art computer, just as EQ2 did on release.

Vanguard will be about as successful as EQ2, ironically. Which is to say, not.

[Harovan]

Back in trolling mood, Asher? A few posts above you were still bragging that you were accepted into the beta.

If you measure "success" in million subscribers, it will be incredibly unsuccessful. According to Brad McQuaid it's aiming for 200-300 thousand subscribers, which I'm inclined to predict it will get.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph


The third explanation is, "or is your (DrSpike) first impression of the game not quite correct".

It could be that, but my impressions came from reading your posts.