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It should be rocking
sri_rishabh
Member Posts: 56
Here is long detailed response from one of the developers 'Wigin' from VG forums giving idea about changes to itemization, dungeons . Looks to be treat for dungeon lovers.This goone rock really
Quoted from 'Wigin'
Here's a wall of text about rails, itemization, and Vanguard for anyone that is interested.
We are very mindful of "rails" because guiding playings is very important but exploring every corner of a game is very rewarding and important to what we want from Vanguard. The team is very much in agreement about how much hand holding and how much "rails" we want into game.
For instance the 1-10 areas are very high on the hand holding scale, they are designed to show all of the mechanics of the game to a new player and be short enough that an experienced player can get through them before becoming bored with the game.
11-20 is designed to start taking the training wheels off. We stop teaching game mechanics and start giving players more abilities and start developing the class to show the uniqueness of Vanguard. We also start pointing players to dungeons as an option to soloing so that players are nudged into the social aspect of the game while still allowing for players who want to solo and do their own quests at their own pace if thats what they want to do.
After level 20 the area's that we revamped we done in such a way as to create a flowing or "railed" experience within the chunk. If you go to one of the revamped chunks you should be given a planned experience of the story of the area. If the story or the quests are not to your liking there are always other area's to visit. We also left enough chunks alone that if you want a more free flowing experience you are free to visit old content. After finishing a chunk a lot of the time a hand off quest will be given but players will also be able to visit a Riftstone and see all of the other area's of the game they can explore.
Throughout the entire revamping of the game we attempted to "normalize" a lot of the items so that every area was viable and each type of player would be able to find something to do.
When playing go adventuring after the next patch they should have a fairly good idea of a risk/reward of what they are doing.
All of the solo quests of the revamped content gives rewards of the similar quality. This gear is in a lot of places better than what players used to get. This should free solo players from feeling that they HAVE to do URT/Hunter's League/CIS quests because the gear is so much better. They are still there for anyone that wants a larger story arc but they should feel much less required.
Group quests give better rewards than solo quests. This should hopefully edge players into doing group content instead of just playing solo. We want players to be social and by giving better rewards for group content we hope to make players want to play together.
We also itemized thousands of named Overland NPCs. If you see a named NPC and kill it for the most part expect a reward. There are however some NPC's that were intentionally left out of itemization since they are involved in quests or have very fast respawns.
In addition we redid dungeon itemization for almost every sub 50 dungeon. This was done so that every single dungeon is a viable option to adventure in. Dungeon gear is going to be some of the best for the level. This will become especially apparent when killing 5 and 6 dot Dungeon NPCs. This gear is harder to obtain but it should be worth it.
See you all in Telon.
Comments
This doesn't mean they need to kill the starter areas and place an Npc int he new starting areas everyone is forced into, explaining some ridiculous story of why all the races are now bunched together.
It has ruined a lot of lore and I mean a lot.
Wiggin is one of the good guys, as are most of the Devs, they just don't play the game enough to realise how much these changes effect the game overall. They are mostly new (last year or so) and have no idea that these changes are ultimately ruining the gaming experience for so many Vets that continued to keep this game running while they ignored us for 2 yrs.
I hope they realise what a mistake this is and change it before it is to late.
Edit: Always include a link to your source, so others can read the "whole" story and make up their own mind. http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=57822
I'm not sure how changes to the starter area would affect any Vet to the game. Do Vets typically re-do starter zones???
Not all changes are going to ruin the game and providing a solid starter zone for new players is a good thing. New players won't know "the old ways" and if the changes are done well, then that's good.
good point, but wth is up with the forums lately i can almost never get them to come up in under a couple of minutes, let alone login.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
Thanks for the suggestion to link the source..will keep that in mind.
Regarding the starter areas, I totally agree that that change is probably not ideal. The point is VG as such was not going anywhere , all these changes will at least give it a chance. Maybe it works. From Wigin mail, it looks that they are sincere and probably give a lot of cheer players who like to play in areas and dungeons normally not visited.
We will not always get whatever we want but IMO we will be getting a lot of things to cheer for
Apart from the fact I personally have 4 accounts filled with 12 characters per account and they all had to start somewhere overt he 5 years that I have been a subscribing member...It is about the game as a whole, Vets know more than anyone how important it is to preserve the Lore of this game, it is truly awesome, some of the starting areas were so detailed in their story telling, the symphony music and the characteristics and nature of the surrounding race, your race. It made you feel a part of your homeland.
There were reasons Orcs and Goblins didn't associate with Kojani and other races, there is detailed and in depth story behind all that explaining why. As with all the other races and their history.
The areas themselves were graphically fitting to their race and habitat as were the animals and mobs attacking or laying wait for someone to trespass or impede on their territory.
So much is going to be lost here, it is extremely sad to see it get changed.
To answer your question, Yes. A lot of Vets in vanguard roll multiple characters and I assure your many of us have a ton of alts from all different races. Three questions marks (?) don't make you question any more important than one, it comes across as over dramatised at best.
These changes did not need to happen, read the forums and play the game (play it more if you just started out or are new to VG) and you will see why. Raise questions about it being removed in region chat and see what responses you get from the loyal community.
The forums are pretty bad and need a revamp quite urgently, this has been addressed by the SOE team and hopefully something will happen soon(tm).
Everyone has trouble logging in and staying logged in, sometimes it can be better to just browse as a quest if you are just there to read up on current events.
I hope you are right.
We have been fed these "sincere" lies many times before and a lot of us are very wary. None of us can make sense of such a big change to the game at a level that didn't need it, the lower levels were actually the best part of Vanguard (well 1-50 content was the best by far) but taking away all that lore just seems like such a massive waste.
+1
I could not agree more and being a 2 account holder though I have never maxed out any of my toons I too have 12 toons on both accouts and one has a lvl 44 cleric and the other has 45 warrior I recently returned and had to start on the starter isle as its easy to get everything up to lvl 10 quickly but the story is poor. I'm still subbing to see what happens when the game goes F2P and I hope they do not do what they did to EQI and make all the gear shit!!! and look the same if they do then I'm going to pull the plug and never return.
Bandit.
Asbo
There was too much low level content in the game, it makes sense to turn some of it into higher level content and spread it out through all the levels.
Besides, most vets took exactly the same path through the game anyways because a series of rewards (IoD, HL, URT, CIS, etc) had significantly better gear than anywhere else.
Your personal story and your personal account with your toons is irrelevant. It's irrelevant because your account and other vets account barely kept this game afloat... while helping to keep the game running which is commendable (*pats you on the back).. everybody including your grandma wanted to see content updates for this game, and a future for it, rather than life support.
To get new players into the game, there has to be some changes. What you and your 300 strong bretheren thinks about what makes this game the awesomest compared to generic mmo_001 is irrelevant. it's not drawing the crowd.. then you can moan about how you don't want the WoW kiddies into your perfect community and ruining it with these changes but the fact is... people want content updates and a VG that is thriving with a future rather than life support. Listening to you and players like you won't get the job done. Money has to come in before money can be put into the game.
Oh and don't use words such as "lots of vets" when the game bearly breaks 400 players on a perfect day.
I find it funny that you think F2P is the "God all mighty golden answer" to "saving" Vanguard.
Vanguard was never on life support, ever. If you choose to listen to rumours they will end up making you post things on forums as fact and make you look stupid in the process.
Updates alone, would of brought a lot of subs back in, F2P was not needed but it will help to bring free loaders into the game who whinge and bitch about the game and eventually get the Devs to change it into a game that it was not designed to be (like what is happening now), once changed into that game (a generic EQ clone like everything else out there) players will leave the game for something more modern and supported.
Vanguard is 5 yrs old but much better than half of what is on offer today, supported and given content, it will grow even more without F2P. F2Pers are already whinging that it isn't F2P enough and they can't play a multi million dollar MMO for free, asking why there are so many restrictions...it's ridiculous to watch.
I called it in another thread but I will repeat it here, F2P is not the answer to any MMO games problems and will be short lived, free loaders are ruining our MMO industry and soon enough, it will be the players who pay that will control what games we get.
400? link your source to show that number...did you take into account players with multiple accounts not logged in? I was talking about support, not how many people there are to play with logged in. There are accounts from vets that don't play but still keep multiple accounts active to support the game, you have no way of counting those.
First. I already made a post stating that F2P won't bring VG back on the map. My prediction would be around 1200 players give or take at any given time online. And that's being extremely generous. So you are not really replying to any points i've made regarding my views on F2P and VG
Second: I don't need any developer making it official through blogging, interviews or otherwise to know VG was on life support. All I needed to see is what happened to the game. The content that was scrapped like AA levels, the class revamping and a lot of reworked/updated content that was stopped indefinitely. The whole crew working on VG being reduced to zero and the downgrade of overseas and domestic servers to cut costs to an absolute minimum so the few subs the game did have, didn't turn into a deep hole of a money sink. These are not third hand rumors but something I've whitnessed personally which you can disagree with to your hearts content. That's not even mentioning the lack of VG prescence on SoE fairs up until recently
Third: Don't mention multiple accounts and vets that passively support the game but never log in since you don't have any quantifiable numbers to even bring that into an argument.
Last but not least. My comment was aimed at the upcoming changes to the content. Not how F2P is the end all be all. The content has to be reworked to get players. The current content is not tickling anybodys fancy. If it did it wouldn't have less than between 200 to 400 players online at any given time. If you want links to those numbers, then I've already made 2 posts doing headcounts throughout primetimes of both EU and US on the US server plus numbers from last year with comparisons. And that's counting double xp weekends as well. All accompanied by screenshots. Your unquantifiable passive open accounts is irrelevant since neither you or I know if we are talking about 10 accounts 25 accounts or 50000 (yes I'm using hyperbole).
I get you are a diehard fan of Vanguard and you don't like change. That's fine I get it
I loved Vanguard. I think the classes in that game are simply awesome and a whole lot of fun to play. What I didn't like was being able to macro so many skills to 1 button, but oh well. The healers in that game are actually a ton of fun to play.
Loved this game. Spent 9 months in beta and we all knew when we heard the launch day the game was no where near ready it clearly needed another year. This game had so much potential but due to being rushed out it did not do too well. Too bad too I loved this game. I had max crafting on my dread knight. Also the bard in this game was awesome I wish more games had bards and were like VG's. So much fun times in this game. I might come back and check it out again.
I have to agree with both sides of the argument. As cliche as that is theres just not a right or a wrong here from my view.
Its hard when you have dedicated a lot of time to a game to watch the impending changes coming knowing that there isnt anything you can do about it. I watched this happen to SWG, and SOE is notorious for these kind of things so it is understandable to be concerned. And that game wasnt even doing that badly at the time as far as subscribers go. While changes are unavoidable in any MMO, you just have to hope they dont change the spirit of the game, and embrace the changes that do come and at least give them a chance before throwing your hands up.
I came to Vanguard recently because I tired of EQ2 and the over simplification of the game. Now if this happens in Vanguard as well when Im just getting my feet wet I will be disapointed.
While FTP model is an obvious and viable choice for Vanguard, let the devs not forget that this a niche game. SWG was a niche game. Dont shoot for an audience that is not going to be interested in the merits of your game, instead emphasize the merits of your game by making them better. Otherwise you're left with a game without a soul.
There is a fine line to balance and I hope the people in charge do better than what SOE has done in the past of balancing it.
Stil waiting for the 2 faction server to return. Until then, I might as well be playing EQ2.