I like fast paced combat that ramps up the adds, and which keeps me on the edge of my seat, forcing me to think on my feet. I like mobs that will get pissed off when I'm beating up on their buddy, and which will attack. I like the challenge of being in an area where I have to be aware of my surroundings at all times because of a wandering mob that might get into range and attack. Those kinds of things add to immersion for me.
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
I like fast paced combat that ramps up the adds, and which keeps me on the edge of my seat, forcing me to think on my feet. I like mobs that will get pissed off when I'm beating up on their buddy, and which will attack. I like the challenge of being in an area where I have to be aware of my surroundings at all times because of a wandering mob that might get into range and attack. Those kinds of things add to immersion for me.
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
My highest character was the Raki, who got to level 11, if I remember correctly. I never saw any combat like that at all. If I had, my opinion of the game might have been a bit more positive.
All I ever saw was either the dead and somewhat insulting combat of the newbie areas, and the occasional slight improvement as I moved along, but nothing was even close to the combat that I experience on a constant basis in CoH/CoV. It's a shame, too. The first levels should be when a game tries to hook a player, and this game just didn't provide it for me at all.
I like fast paced combat that ramps up the adds, and which keeps me on the edge of my seat, forcing me to think on my feet. I like mobs that will get pissed off when I'm beating up on their buddy, and which will attack. I like the challenge of being in an area where I have to be aware of my surroundings at all times because of a wandering mob that might get into range and attack. Those kinds of things add to immersion for me.
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
I made it to level 20 and I was still using the same 3 attacks for my rogue as I was at level 10
I have played so many games based on the Unreal engine and it has always been utilized very effectively. It is a remarkable engine! But I could never have imagined that this great engine could be pulled down into such a miserable, sloppy, messy state like in VG.
So they did it because they tried to push the limits such as rendering distance?!? Well, I wish they never bothered, because they failed miserably! What a horrible stuttering hitch fest! And for what? Bland surroundings, lifeless cities, hypnotized NPCs, barbie doll models on top of realistic backgrounds, terribly inconsistent fps, disasterous chunk loading that doesn't even have a loading screen so you never know what hit you, etc. etc.
I agree with some of the posters here. Epic must have really regretted their decision. I think, this by far is the worst utilisation of the Unreal engine! I am glad it is there tho, for other devs planning to base their game on this engine to learn "how not" to utilise it. There should be a textbook on this.
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Do believe this would be a stock or unmodified unreal 3 engine Clearly see bump maps and the wet look, I don't even see how you would need to modify this for anything other then the draw distance.. Volumetric clouds back there as well as the subtle glow shadowing and shading. It is like , did they even use this engine ? Or any Unreal engine ? You can even look at Gears of War on the 360 , that has almost every special effect that the engine produces , and it is running on a console. Doesn't make sense on how "proffessionals" can butcher something that already can do the task at hand. Also , Look in your Sony/vanguard dir and look inside the "skins" folder. Hmm "xbox2" LOL, nice job on cleaning up the evidence of a console port >.< .
I'd just like to correct a few mistakes I've seen in this thread - sorry for not mentioning your names.
"Sigil's answer to the lack of environmental shadows, was that the current 3D cards still don't handle them. So you need to software render all the shadows and this is a huge performance hit. When you software render the shadows a lot of work also needs to be done to adapt the textures for this."
Current hardware can do 'environmental' shadows in pixel or vertex shaders.
How couldn't it? Hundreds of games have 'environmental' shadows.
In my opinion using shadow maps is the best idea (an approach that renders character and environment shadows in the same pass, and uses constant time no matter how many shadows are on screen). This comes at the cost of shadow quality - but this is negligable if perspective transforms and other methods are used.
"Lineage 2 develeopers had No problem using the Unreal 1 engine. "
The developers didn't, but quite a few players did. When it was initially released it had memory leaks and to play in sieges smoothly you needed 1GB (which at the time was a lot).
"As for Lineage 2, it is using the unreal 2.5 engine, which was released in 2005 (unreal 2 engine was 2003)."
Lineage 2 uses the unreal 2.0 engine. Lineage 2 was released October 1, 2003 (according to Wikipedia).
I like fast paced combat that ramps up the adds, and which keeps me on the edge of my seat, forcing me to think on my feet. I like mobs that will get pissed off when I'm beating up on their buddy, and which will attack. I like the challenge of being in an area where I have to be aware of my surroundings at all times because of a wandering mob that might get into range and attack. Those kinds of things add to immersion for me.
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
My highest character was the Raki, who got to level 11, if I remember correctly. I never saw any combat like that at all. If I had, my opinion of the game might have been a bit more positive.
All I ever saw was either the dead and somewhat insulting combat of the newbie areas, and the occasional slight improvement as I moved along, but nothing was even close to the combat that I experience on a constant basis in CoH/CoV. It's a shame, too. The first levels should be when a game tries to hook a player, and this game just didn't provide it for me at all.
That kind of combat has been my experience after level 6 on every character. Let me tell you one of my recent experiences.
I have a dark elf rogue on the varking Team pvp server. Now on every quest after level 6 or so it is in areas where different types of bandits are. They have camps everywhere, and all of them are red aggro mobs. They have ones that stand guard, wanderers who seem to have a random way of looking around and guards that wander a certain path. For one quest you have to kill a certain guy who has a key, then you have to open chests with said key. Very fun to do as a rogue as you can just sneak into the tents provided you are the correct level and open the chests.
The mobs are always wandering, aggroing, adding. You have to be very careful when soloing and watch your distance to other mobs constantly to make sure you don't get an add which will send you to the nearest altar.
Another quest had me running up a road to get to a Dragonweir outpost past all of these wandering bandits where even sneaking it was a challenge to get past. Then you get to this part in the road where there are 2 groups of around 30 bandits each, one on either side of the road. It's nearly impossible to sneak past them, and if you aggro any of these guys the entire group of 30 bandits will hunt you down and kill you. I died like 5 times to these bastids till I figured out how to get past them without aggroing!
This is just 2 out of dozens of quests I got past level 6, all of which you have to deal with these different types of aggroing bandits. Really unsure of what zone you had found these passive easy mobs which you say won't even attack you when you are fighting their buddies.
I'd just like to correct a few mistakes I've seen in this thread - sorry for not mentioning your names.
"Sigil's answer to the lack of environmental shadows, was that the current 3D cards still don't handle them. So you need to software render all the shadows and this is a huge performance hit. When you software render the shadows a lot of work also needs to be done to adapt the textures for this."
Current hardware can do 'environmental' shadows in pixel or vertex shaders.
How couldn't it? Hundreds of games have 'environmental' shadows.
In my opinion using shadow maps is the best idea (an approach that renders character and environment shadows in the same pass, and uses constant time no matter how many shadows are on screen). This comes at the cost of shadow quality - but this is negligable if perspective transforms and other methods are used.
"Lineage 2 develeopers had No problem using the Unreal 1 engine. "
The developers didn't, but quite a few players did. When it was initially released it had memory leaks and to play in sieges smoothly you needed 1GB (which at the time was a lot).
"As for Lineage 2, it is using the unreal 2.5 engine, which was released in 2005 (unreal 2 engine was 2003)."
Lineage 2 uses the unreal 2.0 engine. Lineage 2 was released October 1, 2003 (according to Wikipedia).
you missed the point of what i'm saying. Lineage 2 as a game design made a solid plan of how the they could incorporate their ideas using the unreal engine. Memory leaks have nothing to with the engine, that is a coding issue on how the graphics are dumped out of the cache.
The problem is the game design of Vanguard was poorly thought out for today's hardware. OK it is a game of the future, could you have released an update patch in the future when more systems where improved.
Another thing about bump mapping now with dx9, it is pointless. With dx10 you will have a platform that can do that mapping with properly coded textures, Again poor game concept and vision for the future.
I like fast paced combat that ramps up the adds, and which keeps me on the edge of my seat, forcing me to think on my feet. I like mobs that will get pissed off when I'm beating up on their buddy, and which will attack. I like the challenge of being in an area where I have to be aware of my surroundings at all times because of a wandering mob that might get into range and attack. Those kinds of things add to immersion for me.
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
My highest character was the Raki, who got to level 11, if I remember correctly. I never saw any combat like that at all. If I had, my opinion of the game might have been a bit more positive.
All I ever saw was either the dead and somewhat insulting combat of the newbie areas, and the occasional slight improvement as I moved along, but nothing was even close to the combat that I experience on a constant basis in CoH/CoV. It's a shame, too. The first levels should be when a game tries to hook a player, and this game just didn't provide it for me at all.
That kind of combat has been my experience after level 6 on every character. Let me tell you one of my recent experiences.
I have a dark elf rogue on the varking Team pvp server. Now on every quest after level 6 or so it is in areas where different types of bandits are. They have camps everywhere, and all of them are red aggro mobs. They have ones that stand guard, wanderers who seem to have a random way of looking around and guards that wander a certain path. For one quest you have to kill a certain guy who has a key, then you have to open chests with said key. Very fun to do as a rogue as you can just sneak into the tents provided you are the correct level and open the chests.
The mobs are always wandering, aggroing, adding. You have to be very careful when soloing and watch your distance to other mobs constantly to make sure you don't get an add which will send you to the nearest altar.
Another quest had me running up a road to get to a Dragonweir outpost past all of these wandering bandits where even sneaking it was a challenge to get past. Then you get to this part in the road where there are 2 groups of around 30 bandits each, one on either side of the road. It's nearly impossible to sneak past them, and if you aggro any of these guys the entire group of 30 bandits will hunt you down and kill you. I died like 5 times to these bastids till I figured out how to get past them without aggroing!
This is just 2 out of dozens of quests I got past level 6, all of which you have to deal with these different types of aggroing bandits. Really unsure of what zone you had found these passive easy mobs which you say won't even attack you when you are fighting their buddies.
I like fast paced combat that ramps up the adds, and which keeps me on the edge of my seat, forcing me to think on my feet. I like mobs that will get pissed off when I'm beating up on their buddy, and which will attack. I like the challenge of being in an area where I have to be aware of my surroundings at all times because of a wandering mob that might get into range and attack. Those kinds of things add to immersion for me.
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
My highest character was the Raki, who got to level 11, if I remember correctly. I never saw any combat like that at all. If I had, my opinion of the game might have been a bit more positive.
All I ever saw was either the dead and somewhat insulting combat of the newbie areas, and the occasional slight improvement as I moved along, but nothing was even close to the combat that I experience on a constant basis in CoH/CoV. It's a shame, too. The first levels should be when a game tries to hook a player, and this game just didn't provide it for me at all.
That kind of combat has been my experience after level 6 on every character. Let me tell you one of my recent experiences.
---snip---
This is just 2 out of dozens of quests I got past level 6, all of which you have to deal with these different types of aggroing bandits. Really unsure of what zone you had found these passive easy mobs which you say won't even attack you when you are fighting their buddies.
Maybe it was just the Raki area, then, because I don't really remember any combat that consistently offered anything like that.
The Half Elves started to show more and more aggro mobs over time, but with the Raki, I really didn't see any sort of combat on par with CoH/CoV, or which got my blood flowing as I played.
I even tried downloading Fraps and making a movie of my Brute in CoV to give an idea of what I wanted to see in Vanguard combat-wise, but the file ended up being way huge, so I couldn't upload it anywhere. Serves me right for not really knowing what I'm doing with video captures. Hehe.
I made it to early- or mid-teens on two characters, and I found the combat very repetitive the entire time on both.
But it's not about adds (or lack thereof). It's about NOTHING HAPPENING during the fight. You stand in your spot, the enemy stands in his spot, and you both use the same 2 or three attacks over and over until one of you keels over. Maybe it's different for some of the classes I never played, but I would argue that combat needs to be interesting for EVERY class.
Both WoW and CoH do a lot better, and did better when they launched. How Vanguard can claim to be "next generation" with such static, mind-numbing combat is beyond me.
Maybe it was just the Raki area, then, because I don't really remember any combat that consistently offered anything like that.
The Half Elves started to show more and more aggro mobs over time, but with the Raki, I really didn't see any sort of combat on par with CoH/CoV, or which got my blood flowing as I played.
I even tried downloading Fraps and making a movie of my Brute in CoV to give an idea of what I wanted to see in Vanguard combat-wise, but the file ended up being way huge, so I couldn't upload it anywhere. Serves me right for not really knowing what I'm doing with video captures. Hehe.
Try making a Dark Elf if you play again. It's a challenge and a half to get to level 10 soloing. I absolutely loved it.
And to the last poster, plenty was going on during my fights. But then, I play warrior almost exclusively. You can't just spam the same 3 attacks; if you do, you won't get far. You have to pay attention, and you only have a small window of opportunity to get your finishers and rescues off.
So many people say Vanguard combat is boring without any direct comparisons to any other game. If you do make direct comparisons, Vanguard is as good as or better than the combat systems of any other MMORPG. But most people only played for 10 minutes, saw that their computer couldn't even come close to handling it on lowest settings, and now troll the forums as though they gave it a real college try. Some childrens children.
Maybe it was just the Raki area, then, because I don't really remember any combat that consistently offered anything like that.
The Half Elves started to show more and more aggro mobs over time, but with the Raki, I really didn't see any sort of combat on par with CoH/CoV, or which got my blood flowing as I played.
I even tried downloading Fraps and making a movie of my Brute in CoV to give an idea of what I wanted to see in Vanguard combat-wise, but the file ended up being way huge, so I couldn't upload it anywhere. Serves me right for not really knowing what I'm doing with video captures. Hehe.
Try making a Dark Elf if you play again. It's a challenge and a half to get to level 10 soloing. I absolutely loved it.
Near the end of my trial, I remade a Dark Elf. I think some of my entries above talk about it. I got her up to about 5 or 6 in that one day, too.
It's not a bad little area to start in, but they seriously need to reconsider the deaf, dumb and blind mobs in the newbie areas. It doesn't do anyone any favors if they don't start learning things like aggro management and tactics from the very first level. I hated the newbie quests for that reason-- there was no challenge to any of them.
I made it to early- or mid-teens on two characters, and I found the combat very repetitive the entire time on both.
But it's not about adds (or lack thereof). It's about NOTHING HAPPENING during the fight. You stand in your spot, the enemy stands in his spot, and you both use the same 2 or three attacks over and over until one of you keels over. Maybe it's different for some of the classes I never played, but I would argue that combat needs to be interesting for EVERY class.
Both WoW and CoH do a lot better, and did better when they launched. How Vanguard can claim to be "next generation" with such static, mind-numbing combat is beyond me.
Basically you can do what you just described in pretty much any MMO. It has to do with whether you use the system as it is given or not.
For instance, I play City of Heroes as well as Vanguard. In that game I could simply click my Hurricane Kick (MA Scrapper) and Brawl buttons on even-level mobs. I would propably win too but it would be boring and take quite a while.
In Vanguard you can do the same, or you can utilize what powers you have. For instance, as a Rogue you have powers that deal more damage or has added effects based on where you attack from (front / side / rear) and you have moves that make the mob stand still for a short period of time. That's a small element (and not unique to Vanguard).
Some powers also have small Weakness icons on them (small symbols with a '+' on the left hand side). These powers will add a state to the mob, by following up with a move that takes advantage of this state will give an advantage (these follow-ups should have the same icon, but without the little '+' sign). For instance, if you use a power that has '+Blinding' you will have a window of opportunity where any power launched that has 'Blinding' on it will cause the mob to loose its visual reference (again, making it a lot easier to escape from, maneuver around/behind or similar). There are a very large amount of states. This becomes even more interesting in parties as you might have weaknesses that you can't exploit effectively on your own.
Furthermore you will have Reaction Moves in Vanguard, again you do not need to use these, but you can.
A Finishing Move becomes available following a Critical Hit from one of your other powers. You must use this move when the opportunity arises, if you use another power, the opportunity is lost.
A Counterattack Move becomes available following a successful parry or dodge (depends on the power). Some characters have defensive Powers that allows them a guaranteed parry/dodge which then allows them to set up the mob for a nasty amount of damage and/or extra abilities.
A Counterspell Move will allow you to interrupt other spellcasters, provided you are sufficiently proficient in identifying the spell the opponent is using. If your character can't identify the spell, he/she can't counter it.
A Rescue Move is a power that becomes available when your Defensive Target reaches a very low amount of Health. By using this type of power, you will shift the aggressive attitude (aggro) of your Offensive Target away from your Defensive Target and make the monster attack you instead. These moves always have a set amount of time in which they work, so you must have a valid follow-up plan, either your friend should move away (still keeping an eye on wandering mobs), you or another party member should heal him, or you should use your most powerful attacks in an attempt to shut down the mob immediately.
The various classes have different moves in two or more of the above categories and will have more than one power in one or more of the categories. For instance, a level 14 Rogue will have 5 Finishing Moves all of which will do different things, some might only be usable from behind, another will stun the opponent, a third will ensure that the mob generates a higher money drop and so on.
Also, since there are so many stuns/holds in the game and that you can cast all spells while moving (walking), you will often have a very dynamic setup in combat once you get past the "nooby - now, let's show you how you fight" areas.
Now I'm tired, it's 02:09 AM here in Denmark and that's all I could remember just off the top of my head.
I like fast paced combat that ramps up the adds, and which keeps me on the edge of my seat, forcing me to think on my feet. I like mobs that will get pissed off when I'm beating up on their buddy, and which will attack. I like the challenge of being in an area where I have to be aware of my surroundings at all times because of a wandering mob that might get into range and attack. Those kinds of things add to immersion for me.
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
My highest character was the Raki, who got to level 11, if I remember correctly. I never saw any combat like that at all. If I had, my opinion of the game might have been a bit more positive.
All I ever saw was either the dead and somewhat insulting combat of the newbie areas, and the occasional slight improvement as I moved along, but nothing was even close to the combat that I experience on a constant basis in CoH/CoV. It's a shame, too. The first levels should be when a game tries to hook a player, and this game just didn't provide it for me at all.
That kind of combat has been my experience after level 6 on every character. Let me tell you one of my recent experiences.
---snip---
This is just 2 out of dozens of quests I got past level 6, all of which you have to deal with these different types of aggroing bandits. Really unsure of what zone you had found these passive easy mobs which you say won't even attack you when you are fighting their buddies.
Maybe it was just the Raki area, then, because I don't really remember any combat that consistently offered anything like that.
The Half Elves started to show more and more aggro mobs over time, but with the Raki, I really didn't see any sort of combat on par with CoH/CoV, or which got my blood flowing as I played.
I even tried downloading Fraps and making a movie of my Brute in CoV to give an idea of what I wanted to see in Vanguard combat-wise, but the file ended up being way huge, so I couldn't upload it anywhere. Serves me right for not really knowing what I'm doing with video captures. Hehe.
I did find more agro mobs around Khal as a paladin which I got to level 15. Of course the other extreme kicks in. Yes you have to be careful in some areas because of adds. But if you make a mistake and draw adds, you might as well just stand there and die or run as far as you can in the direction of the altar. There is no way to escape. At least in EQ1 you could zone if you had a bad pull. But the sprint ability is/was totally useless for escape. The leash on mobs was so long that you could make one swing on a mob, hit sprint and still die.
It was an all or nothing affair that was annoying.
_____________________________ Currently Playing: LOTRO; DDO Played: AC2, AO, Auto Assault, CoX, DAoC, DDO, Earth&Beyond, EQ1, EQ2, EVE, Fallen Earth, Jumpgate, Roma Victor, Second Life, SWG, V:SoH, WoW, World War II Online.
Games I'm watching: Infinity: The Quest for Earth, Force of Arms.
Every single thing you mentioned illustrates how this game vastly overreaches its grasp.
Not one of those moves is represented by a visual cue in the game world. It is all just an exercise in little flashing icons. This is exactly what I mean by combat where NOTHING HAPPENS. (Excluded, of course, are positional attacks, which are a bare minimum requirement for any MMOG these days.)
A lot of these ideas are good ones and might make for interesting gameplay -- but only if I can see the effects reflected in the actions of the characters on the screen.
Try making a Dark Elf if you play again. It's a challenge and a half to get to level 10 soloing. I absolutely loved it.
Near the end of my trial, I remade a Dark Elf. I think some of my entries above talk about it. I got her up to about 5 or 6 in that one day, too.
It's not a bad little area to start in, but they seriously need to reconsider the deaf, dumb and blind mobs in the newbie areas. It doesn't do anyone any favors if they don't start learning things like aggro management and tactics from the very first level. I hated the newbie quests for that reason-- there was no challenge to any of them.
Well, I think that is a double edged sword: if you make the beginning mobs to hard people would also complain. I found it a good balance if you keep playing a character. The difficulty ramps up pretty quick and by level 10 you better know what you're doing if you want to progress and not alienate hordes of people who you got wiped because of mistakes.
I'd just like to correct a few mistakes I've seen in this thread - sorry for not mentioning your names.
"Sigil's answer to the lack of environmental shadows, was that the current 3D cards still don't handle them. So you need to software render all the shadows and this is a huge performance hit. When you software render the shadows a lot of work also needs to be done to adapt the textures for this."
Current hardware can do 'environmental' shadows in pixel or vertex shaders.
How couldn't it? Hundreds of games have 'environmental' shadows.
In my opinion using shadow maps is the best idea (an approach that renders character and environment shadows in the same pass, and uses constant time no matter how many shadows are on screen). This comes at the cost of shadow quality - but this is negligable if perspective transforms and other methods are used.
"Lineage 2 develeopers had No problem using the Unreal 1 engine. "
The developers didn't, but quite a few players did. When it was initially released it had memory leaks and to play in sieges smoothly you needed 1GB (which at the time was a lot).
"As for Lineage 2, it is using the unreal 2.5 engine, which was released in 2005 (unreal 2 engine was 2003)."
Lineage 2 uses the unreal 2.0 engine. Lineage 2 was released October 1, 2003 (according to Wikipedia).
you missed the point of what i'm saying. Lineage 2 as a game design made a solid plan of how the they could incorporate their ideas using the unreal engine. Memory leaks have nothing to with the engine, that is a coding issue on how the graphics are dumped out of the cache.
The problem is the game design of Vanguard was poorly thought out for today's hardware. OK it is a game of the future, could you have released an update patch in the future when more systems where improved.
Another thing about bump mapping now with dx9, it is pointless. With dx10 you will have a platform that can do that mapping with properly coded textures, Again poor game concept and vision for the future.
I agree totally with the questioning of this statement by Suttonian. Environmental Shadows are used in a mass of titles on the market supported in "Hardware" by almost ALL Direct X 9.0, 9.0b and 9.0c compatible graphics hardware. The prior statement was technically and utterly incorrect whether Sigil stated it in Vanguards defence or not. However with the unoptimizations in vanguards engine it is more than likely it was left out due to the fact that performance would depreciate from unstable, to unplayable.
Also of note is that the Unreal 2.5 engine is merely a library extentsion of the Unreal 2 code. It is not a totally rebuilt / reworked engine from the ground up...so some of its technicalities are indeed even now around four years old.
I would also like to point out a few simple facts....
If Vanguard was designed for the future and its desired hardware platform is right now more "expensive" than anticipated at the time of its "early launch"...then this is an extremely poor misdirection from the real issues at hand. Secondly it isnt helping its own cause...
Those real issues are engine unoptimizations, and poor implementation of code. Fact!
Why....
1 The Application is not natively Multi-Threaded nor does it fully take advantage of Dual Core Architecture...This technology is available now and there are a substantial number of people using it....Vanguard doesnt support it "Yet", you would think a game made for the "future" would utilize this at a code level by running in multiple threads in hardware over dual CPU's, premature release or not. This really does throw statements on other postings made by Mr McQuaid further into question...
2 The Application does not support SLI or Crossfire technologies in hardware "yet". However the above points regarding Dual Core platforms also apply here. If the application was truly desinged for the future and that is the catalyst of its current performance problems then why not support these performance boosting technologies NOW. Surely with other gameing applications out there already supporting these technologies (Including certain current MMORPG beta's) doesnt this make vanguards arguments on performance needing "future" more "powerful hardware" utterly insignificant....it isnt even utilizing at an code level what is there now....mmmm
3 Vanguard still does not fully support Anti-Aliasing nor certain advanced lighting routines (Environment Drop Shadows) etc. "Anti-Aliasing" has been used on gaming engines for years...so have advanced lighting techniques through hardware Pixel and Vertex shaders, surely an application that is built around a "future proof solid engine" will support these technologies "now". Otherwise how can it be argued that it needs even "more powerful hardware" at this point in time when the code it is based upon isnt supporting "current technologies" in hardware, Regardless of what the engine is capable of and indeed this does expose many more questions on the state of the engine and its abilities. Vanguard performs poorly currently on a massively wide variety of hardware, what will happen when i turn on Anti-Aliasing? it will surely be unplayable, yet is this my fault? Is this a fault of my hardware that supports this technology and many other advanced technology routines in "other games" in "hardware"? Shall i buy brand new hardware over the system i purchased a month ago to stand a chance with vanguard?
To use the argument of requireing hardware to be mainstream that currently is regarded as highend and enthusiast hardware is slightly embarrasing for an application such as vanguard when the above points are exposed, would you not agree?
Honestly the bottomline here is that the hardware argument / point of view is just simply either "mis-direction" or a "mute point". Vanguard uses an engine that while being stretched in its capabilities is at its core a three year old engine. The engine in its "Vanguard form" is missing, optimization badly! its missing any serious pre-live bug checking by the appearence of the support forums! it has memory leaks! It has vast amounts of Driver Incompatibility and Inconsistency! No amount of future hardware is going to make that go away...and that indeed the code is the area where MOST of the work needs to be done. Nothing an End user of the application can do. With that in mind Vanguard is only embarrasing itself by claiming that it is so advanced it needs the hardware market to take its course.........it doesnt even fully support what is there....
Mr McQuaid, i think its about time the paying subscribers of this game were owed a set of updates and plans on how Sigil games is going to focus over the next few months on game optimizations and performance purely? If Sigil games have indeed attempted something with an engine that just was simply not fit for purpose in this environment, or whether "optimizations" and "changes" your dev team have put in place seem to have "Complicated" matters then i suggest you staret thinking problematically and hire in some third party help if required because no amount of "New Content Developments" and "Cheaper High End Hardware" can cover up poor code routines and an unoptimized engine...
1 The Application is not natively Multi-Threaded nor does it fully take advantage of Dual Core Architecture...This technology is available now and there are a substantial number of people using it....Vanguard doesnt support it "Yet", you would think a game made for the "future" would utilize this at a code level by running in multiple threads in hardware over dual CPU's, premature release or not. This really does throw statements on other postings made by Mr McQuaid further into question...
2 The Application does not support SLI or Crossfire technologies in hardware "yet". However the above points regarding Dual Core platforms also apply here. If the application was truly desinged for the future and that is the catalyst of its current performance problems then why not support these performance boosting technologies NOW. Surely with other gameing applications out there already supporting these technologies (Including certain current MMORPG beta's) doesnt this make vanguards arguments on performance needing "future" more "powerful hardware" utterly insignificant....it isnt even utilizing at an code level what is there now....mmmm
3 Vanguard still does not fully support Anti-Aliasing nor certain advanced lighting routines (Environment Drop Shadows) etc. "Anti-Aliasing" has been used on gaming engines for years...so have advanced lighting techniques through hardware Pixel and Vertex shaders, surely an application that is built around a "future proof solid engine" will support these technologies "now". Otherwise how can it be argued that it needs even "more powerful hardware" at this point in time when the code it is based upon isnt supporting "current technologies" in hardware, Regardless of what the engine is capable of and indeed this does expose many more questions on the state of the engine and its abilities. Vanguard performs poorly currently on a massively wide variety of hardware, what will happen when i turn on Anti-Aliasing? it will surely be unplayable, yet is this my fault? Is this a fault of my hardware that supports this technology and many other advanced technology routines in "other games" in "hardware"? Shall i buy brand new hardware over the system i purchased a month ago to stand a chance with vanguard?
To use the argument of requireing hardware to be mainstream that currently is regarded as highend and enthusiast hardware is slightly embarrasing for an application such as vanguard when the above points are expose, would you not agree?
Welcome to MMORPG.com and these points you make are unavoidably excellent. They cannot be refuted and these are some of the core problems with Vanguard: Sloppy, unfinished code.
The game that IS there is excellent, if they can just button up the coding Vanguard will be a 10. As it stands it's about a 7 overall. Sigil really needs to organize their forces and fix the existing game and stop wasting time adding additional content.
Excellent post and thank you for adding facts and reasons instead of just unobjective blather.
Thank You Anarchy. and i must say i do agree with your sentiment there, Vanguard is at is Root abundant with great ideas and possibilities for gameplay. I have always stated this fact, tragically however, unoptimized code and an engine in need of some attention will kill any application dead, this certainly should be Sigils priority, above anything else, you could even argue is is the most revenue generating excercise they could embark upon at this current time because it will bring some trust in the developer from a very uncertain playerbase at this time and introduce solidity to the game. I do not actually play vanguard anymore, however i really do hope for its gamers and community that Sigil understand where it is they need to focus the mainstay of there man hours and time.
To the Original Poster - Thank You for your time and efforts in writing these reviews, i think you have tried incredibly hard to deliver a non biased "fresh eyes" review in terms of impact and it is the type of insight those whom havent yet visited the game could read and get a genuine impression of how the game currently stands. Which is really really refreshing in these forums. Well Done. I hope your hard work warrants a sticky at some point in the future.
Comments
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
My highest character was the Raki, who got to level 11, if I remember correctly. I never saw any combat like that at all. If I had, my opinion of the game might have been a bit more positive.
All I ever saw was either the dead and somewhat insulting combat of the newbie areas, and the occasional slight improvement as I moved along, but nothing was even close to the combat that I experience on a constant basis in CoH/CoV. It's a shame, too. The first levels should be when a game tries to hook a player, and this game just didn't provide it for me at all.
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
I made it to level 20 and I was still using the same 3 attacks for my rogue as I was at level 10I like pie !
I have played so many games based on the Unreal engine and it has always been utilized very effectively. It is a remarkable engine! But I could never have imagined that this great engine could be pulled down into such a miserable, sloppy, messy state like in VG.
So they did it because they tried to push the limits such as rendering distance?!? Well, I wish they never bothered, because they failed miserably! What a horrible stuttering hitch fest! And for what? Bland surroundings, lifeless cities, hypnotized NPCs, barbie doll models on top of realistic backgrounds, terribly inconsistent fps, disasterous chunk loading that doesn't even have a loading screen so you never know what hit you, etc. etc.
I agree with some of the posters here. Epic must have really regretted their decision. I think, this by far is the worst utilisation of the Unreal engine! I am glad it is there tho, for other devs planning to base their game on this engine to learn "how not" to utilise it. There should be a textbook on this.
CONTRIBUTE INTO THE GAMING INDUSTRY! STOP PAYING FOR BORING COPYCATS, UNFINISHED BUGFESTS AND CRANKY JUNKWARE. BE A RESPONSIBLE GAMER!
I like pie !
I like pie !
"Sigil's answer to the lack of environmental shadows, was that the current 3D cards still don't handle them. So you need to software render all the shadows and this is a huge performance hit. When you software render the shadows a lot of work also needs to be done to adapt the textures for this."
Current hardware can do 'environmental' shadows in pixel or vertex shaders.
How couldn't it? Hundreds of games have 'environmental' shadows.
In my opinion using shadow maps is the best idea (an approach that renders character and environment shadows in the same pass, and uses constant time no matter how many shadows are on screen). This comes at the cost of shadow quality - but this is negligable if perspective transforms and other methods are used.
"Lineage 2 develeopers had No problem using the Unreal 1 engine. "
The developers didn't, but quite a few players did. When it was initially released it had memory leaks and to play in sieges smoothly you needed 1GB (which at the time was a lot).
"As for Lineage 2, it is using the unreal 2.5 engine, which was released in 2005 (unreal 2 engine was 2003)."
Lineage 2 uses the unreal 2.0 engine. Lineage 2 was released October 1, 2003 (according to Wikipedia).
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
My highest character was the Raki, who got to level 11, if I remember correctly. I never saw any combat like that at all. If I had, my opinion of the game might have been a bit more positive.
All I ever saw was either the dead and somewhat insulting combat of the newbie areas, and the occasional slight improvement as I moved along, but nothing was even close to the combat that I experience on a constant basis in CoH/CoV. It's a shame, too. The first levels should be when a game tries to hook a player, and this game just didn't provide it for me at all.
That kind of combat has been my experience after level 6 on every character. Let me tell you one of my recent experiences.
I have a dark elf rogue on the varking Team pvp server. Now on every quest after level 6 or so it is in areas where different types of bandits are. They have camps everywhere, and all of them are red aggro mobs. They have ones that stand guard, wanderers who seem to have a random way of looking around and guards that wander a certain path. For one quest you have to kill a certain guy who has a key, then you have to open chests with said key. Very fun to do as a rogue as you can just sneak into the tents provided you are the correct level and open the chests.
The mobs are always wandering, aggroing, adding. You have to be very careful when soloing and watch your distance to other mobs constantly to make sure you don't get an add which will send you to the nearest altar.
Another quest had me running up a road to get to a Dragonweir outpost past all of these wandering bandits where even sneaking it was a challenge to get past. Then you get to this part in the road where there are 2 groups of around 30 bandits each, one on either side of the road. It's nearly impossible to sneak past them, and if you aggro any of these guys the entire group of 30 bandits will hunt you down and kill you. I died like 5 times to these bastids till I figured out how to get past them without aggroing!
This is just 2 out of dozens of quests I got past level 6, all of which you have to deal with these different types of aggroing bandits. Really unsure of what zone you had found these passive easy mobs which you say won't even attack you when you are fighting their buddies.
The problem is the game design of Vanguard was poorly thought out for today's hardware. OK it is a game of the future, could you have released an update patch in the future when more systems where improved.
Another thing about bump mapping now with dx9, it is pointless. With dx10 you will have a platform that can do that mapping with properly coded textures, Again poor game concept and vision for the future.
I like pie !
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
My highest character was the Raki, who got to level 11, if I remember correctly. I never saw any combat like that at all. If I had, my opinion of the game might have been a bit more positive.
All I ever saw was either the dead and somewhat insulting combat of the newbie areas, and the occasional slight improvement as I moved along, but nothing was even close to the combat that I experience on a constant basis in CoH/CoV. It's a shame, too. The first levels should be when a game tries to hook a player, and this game just didn't provide it for me at all.
That kind of combat has been my experience after level 6 on every character. Let me tell you one of my recent experiences.
I have a dark elf rogue on the varking Team pvp server. Now on every quest after level 6 or so it is in areas where different types of bandits are. They have camps everywhere, and all of them are red aggro mobs. They have ones that stand guard, wanderers who seem to have a random way of looking around and guards that wander a certain path. For one quest you have to kill a certain guy who has a key, then you have to open chests with said key. Very fun to do as a rogue as you can just sneak into the tents provided you are the correct level and open the chests.
The mobs are always wandering, aggroing, adding. You have to be very careful when soloing and watch your distance to other mobs constantly to make sure you don't get an add which will send you to the nearest altar.
Another quest had me running up a road to get to a Dragonweir outpost past all of these wandering bandits where even sneaking it was a challenge to get past. Then you get to this part in the road where there are 2 groups of around 30 bandits each, one on either side of the road. It's nearly impossible to sneak past them, and if you aggro any of these guys the entire group of 30 bandits will hunt you down and kill you. I died like 5 times to these bastids till I figured out how to get past them without aggroing!
This is just 2 out of dozens of quests I got past level 6, all of which you have to deal with these different types of aggroing bandits. Really unsure of what zone you had found these passive easy mobs which you say won't even attack you when you are fighting their buddies.
/bump so Lidane can read it
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
My highest character was the Raki, who got to level 11, if I remember correctly. I never saw any combat like that at all. If I had, my opinion of the game might have been a bit more positive.
All I ever saw was either the dead and somewhat insulting combat of the newbie areas, and the occasional slight improvement as I moved along, but nothing was even close to the combat that I experience on a constant basis in CoH/CoV. It's a shame, too. The first levels should be when a game tries to hook a player, and this game just didn't provide it for me at all.
That kind of combat has been my experience after level 6 on every character. Let me tell you one of my recent experiences.
---snip---This is just 2 out of dozens of quests I got past level 6, all of which you have to deal with these different types of aggroing bandits. Really unsure of what zone you had found these passive easy mobs which you say won't even attack you when you are fighting their buddies.
Maybe it was just the Raki area, then, because I don't really remember any combat that consistently offered anything like that.
The Half Elves started to show more and more aggro mobs over time, but with the Raki, I really didn't see any sort of combat on par with CoH/CoV, or which got my blood flowing as I played.
I even tried downloading Fraps and making a movie of my Brute in CoV to give an idea of what I wanted to see in Vanguard combat-wise, but the file ended up being way huge, so I couldn't upload it anywhere. Serves me right for not really knowing what I'm doing with video captures. Hehe.
But it's not about adds (or lack thereof). It's about NOTHING HAPPENING during the fight. You stand in your spot, the enemy stands in his spot, and you both use the same 2 or three attacks over and over until one of you keels over. Maybe it's different for some of the classes I never played, but I would argue that combat needs to be interesting for EVERY class.
Both WoW and CoH do a lot better, and did better when they launched. How Vanguard can claim to be "next generation" with such static, mind-numbing combat is beyond me.
Try making a Dark Elf if you play again. It's a challenge and a half to get to level 10 soloing. I absolutely loved it.
And to the last poster, plenty was going on during my fights. But then, I play warrior almost exclusively. You can't just spam the same 3 attacks; if you do, you won't get far. You have to pay attention, and you only have a small window of opportunity to get your finishers and rescues off.
So many people say Vanguard combat is boring without any direct comparisons to any other game. If you do make direct comparisons, Vanguard is as good as or better than the combat systems of any other MMORPG. But most people only played for 10 minutes, saw that their computer couldn't even come close to handling it on lowest settings, and now troll the forums as though they gave it a real college try. Some childrens children.
Try making a Dark Elf if you play again. It's a challenge and a half to get to level 10 soloing. I absolutely loved it.
Near the end of my trial, I remade a Dark Elf. I think some of my entries above talk about it. I got her up to about 5 or 6 in that one day, too.
It's not a bad little area to start in, but they seriously need to reconsider the deaf, dumb and blind mobs in the newbie areas. It doesn't do anyone any favors if they don't start learning things like aggro management and tactics from the very first level. I hated the newbie quests for that reason-- there was no challenge to any of them.
For instance, I play City of Heroes as well as Vanguard. In that game I could simply click my Hurricane Kick (MA Scrapper) and Brawl buttons on even-level mobs. I would propably win too but it would be boring and take quite a while.
In Vanguard you can do the same, or you can utilize what powers you have. For instance, as a Rogue you have powers that deal more damage or has added effects based on where you attack from (front / side / rear) and you have moves that make the mob stand still for a short period of time. That's a small element (and not unique to Vanguard).
Some powers also have small Weakness icons on them (small symbols with a '+' on the left hand side). These powers will add a state to the mob, by following up with a move that takes advantage of this state will give an advantage (these follow-ups should have the same icon, but without the little '+' sign). For instance, if you use a power that has '+Blinding' you will have a window of opportunity where any power launched that has 'Blinding' on it will cause the mob to loose its visual reference (again, making it a lot easier to escape from, maneuver around/behind or similar). There are a very large amount of states. This becomes even more interesting in parties as you might have weaknesses that you can't exploit effectively on your own.
Furthermore you will have Reaction Moves in Vanguard, again you do not need to use these, but you can.
A Finishing Move becomes available following a Critical Hit from one of your other powers. You must use this move when the opportunity arises, if you use another power, the opportunity is lost.
A Counterattack Move becomes available following a successful parry or dodge (depends on the power). Some characters have defensive Powers that allows them a guaranteed parry/dodge which then allows them to set up the mob for a nasty amount of damage and/or extra abilities.
A Counterspell Move will allow you to interrupt other spellcasters, provided you are sufficiently proficient in identifying the spell the opponent is using. If your character can't identify the spell, he/she can't counter it.
A Rescue Move is a power that becomes available when your Defensive Target reaches a very low amount of Health. By using this type of power, you will shift the aggressive attitude (aggro) of your Offensive Target away from your Defensive Target and make the monster attack you instead. These moves always have a set amount of time in which they work, so you must have a valid follow-up plan, either your friend should move away (still keeping an eye on wandering mobs), you or another party member should heal him, or you should use your most powerful attacks in an attempt to shut down the mob immediately.
The various classes have different moves in two or more of the above categories and will have more than one power in one or more of the categories. For instance, a level 14 Rogue will have 5 Finishing Moves all of which will do different things, some might only be usable from behind, another will stun the opponent, a third will ensure that the mob generates a higher money drop and so on.
Also, since there are so many stuns/holds in the game and that you can cast all spells while moving (walking), you will often have a very dynamic setup in combat once you get past the "nooby - now, let's show you how you fight" areas.
Now I'm tired, it's 02:09 AM here in Denmark and that's all I could remember just off the top of my head.
That's exactly how the combat is in Vanguard once you get to level 10 or so. What level did you get to?
My highest character was the Raki, who got to level 11, if I remember correctly. I never saw any combat like that at all. If I had, my opinion of the game might have been a bit more positive.
All I ever saw was either the dead and somewhat insulting combat of the newbie areas, and the occasional slight improvement as I moved along, but nothing was even close to the combat that I experience on a constant basis in CoH/CoV. It's a shame, too. The first levels should be when a game tries to hook a player, and this game just didn't provide it for me at all.
That kind of combat has been my experience after level 6 on every character. Let me tell you one of my recent experiences.
---snip---This is just 2 out of dozens of quests I got past level 6, all of which you have to deal with these different types of aggroing bandits. Really unsure of what zone you had found these passive easy mobs which you say won't even attack you when you are fighting their buddies.
Maybe it was just the Raki area, then, because I don't really remember any combat that consistently offered anything like that.
The Half Elves started to show more and more aggro mobs over time, but with the Raki, I really didn't see any sort of combat on par with CoH/CoV, or which got my blood flowing as I played.
I even tried downloading Fraps and making a movie of my Brute in CoV to give an idea of what I wanted to see in Vanguard combat-wise, but the file ended up being way huge, so I couldn't upload it anywhere. Serves me right for not really knowing what I'm doing with video captures. Hehe.
I did find more agro mobs around Khal as a paladin which I got to level 15. Of course the other extreme kicks in. Yes you have to be careful in some areas because of adds. But if you make a mistake and draw adds, you might as well just stand there and die or run as far as you can in the direction of the altar. There is no way to escape. At least in EQ1 you could zone if you had a bad pull. But the sprint ability is/was totally useless for escape. The leash on mobs was so long that you could make one swing on a mob, hit sprint and still die.
It was an all or nothing affair that was annoying.
_____________________________
Currently Playing: LOTRO; DDO
Played: AC2, AO, Auto Assault, CoX, DAoC, DDO, Earth&Beyond, EQ1, EQ2, EVE, Fallen Earth, Jumpgate, Roma Victor, Second Life, SWG, V:SoH, WoW, World War II Online.
Games I'm watching: Infinity: The Quest for Earth, Force of Arms.
Find the Truth: http://www.factcheck.org/
Every single thing you mentioned illustrates how this game vastly overreaches its grasp.
Not one of those moves is represented by a visual cue in the game world. It is all just an exercise in little flashing icons. This is exactly what I mean by combat where NOTHING HAPPENS. (Excluded, of course, are positional attacks, which are a bare minimum requirement for any MMOG these days.)
A lot of these ideas are good ones and might make for interesting gameplay -- but only if I can see the effects reflected in the actions of the characters on the screen.
If I want flashing icons, I'll play Bejeweled.
It's not a bad little area to start in, but they seriously need to reconsider the deaf, dumb and blind mobs in the newbie areas. It doesn't do anyone any favors if they don't start learning things like aggro management and tactics from the very first level. I hated the newbie quests for that reason-- there was no challenge to any of them.
Well, I think that is a double edged sword: if you make the beginning mobs to hard people would also complain. I found it a good balance if you keep playing a character. The difficulty ramps up pretty quick and by level 10 you better know what you're doing if you want to progress and not alienate hordes of people who you got wiped because of mistakes.
The problem is the game design of Vanguard was poorly thought out for today's hardware. OK it is a game of the future, could you have released an update patch in the future when more systems where improved.
Another thing about bump mapping now with dx9, it is pointless. With dx10 you will have a platform that can do that mapping with properly coded textures, Again poor game concept and vision for the future.
I agree totally with the questioning of this statement by Suttonian. Environmental Shadows are used in a mass of titles on the market supported in "Hardware" by almost ALL Direct X 9.0, 9.0b and 9.0c compatible graphics hardware. The prior statement was technically and utterly incorrect whether Sigil stated it in Vanguards defence or not. However with the unoptimizations in vanguards engine it is more than likely it was left out due to the fact that performance would depreciate from unstable, to unplayable.
Also of note is that the Unreal 2.5 engine is merely a library extentsion of the Unreal 2 code. It is not a totally rebuilt / reworked engine from the ground up...so some of its technicalities are indeed even now around four years old.
I would also like to point out a few simple facts....
If Vanguard was designed for the future and its desired hardware platform is right now more "expensive" than anticipated at the time of its "early launch"...then this is an extremely poor misdirection from the real issues at hand. Secondly it isnt helping its own cause...
Those real issues are engine unoptimizations, and poor implementation of code. Fact!
Why....
1 The Application is not natively Multi-Threaded nor does it fully take advantage of Dual Core Architecture...This technology is available now and there are a substantial number of people using it....Vanguard doesnt support it "Yet", you would think a game made for the "future" would utilize this at a code level by running in multiple threads in hardware over dual CPU's, premature release or not. This really does throw statements on other postings made by Mr McQuaid further into question...
2 The Application does not support SLI or Crossfire technologies in hardware "yet". However the above points regarding Dual Core platforms also apply here. If the application was truly desinged for the future and that is the catalyst of its current performance problems then why not support these performance boosting technologies NOW. Surely with other gameing applications out there already supporting these technologies (Including certain current MMORPG beta's) doesnt this make vanguards arguments on performance needing "future" more "powerful hardware" utterly insignificant....it isnt even utilizing at an code level what is there now....mmmm
3 Vanguard still does not fully support Anti-Aliasing nor certain advanced lighting routines (Environment Drop Shadows) etc. "Anti-Aliasing" has been used on gaming engines for years...so have advanced lighting techniques through hardware Pixel and Vertex shaders, surely an application that is built around a "future proof solid engine" will support these technologies "now". Otherwise how can it be argued that it needs even "more powerful hardware" at this point in time when the code it is based upon isnt supporting "current technologies" in hardware, Regardless of what the engine is capable of and indeed this does expose many more questions on the state of the engine and its abilities. Vanguard performs poorly currently on a massively wide variety of hardware, what will happen when i turn on Anti-Aliasing? it will surely be unplayable, yet is this my fault? Is this a fault of my hardware that supports this technology and many other advanced technology routines in "other games" in "hardware"? Shall i buy brand new hardware over the system i purchased a month ago to stand a chance with vanguard?
To use the argument of requireing hardware to be mainstream that currently is regarded as highend and enthusiast hardware is slightly embarrasing for an application such as vanguard when the above points are exposed, would you not agree?
Honestly the bottomline here is that the hardware argument / point of view is just simply either "mis-direction" or a "mute point". Vanguard uses an engine that while being stretched in its capabilities is at its core a three year old engine. The engine in its "Vanguard form" is missing, optimization badly! its missing any serious pre-live bug checking by the appearence of the support forums! it has memory leaks! It has vast amounts of Driver Incompatibility and Inconsistency! No amount of future hardware is going to make that go away...and that indeed the code is the area where MOST of the work needs to be done. Nothing an End user of the application can do. With that in mind Vanguard is only embarrasing itself by claiming that it is so advanced it needs the hardware market to take its course.........it doesnt even fully support what is there....
Mr McQuaid, i think its about time the paying subscribers of this game were owed a set of updates and plans on how Sigil games is going to focus over the next few months on game optimizations and performance purely? If Sigil games have indeed attempted something with an engine that just was simply not fit for purpose in this environment, or whether "optimizations" and "changes" your dev team have put in place seem to have "Complicated" matters then i suggest you staret thinking problematically and hire in some third party help if required because no amount of "New Content Developments" and "Cheaper High End Hardware" can cover up poor code routines and an unoptimized engine...
Mag
Welcome to MMORPG.com and these points you make are unavoidably excellent. They cannot be refuted and these are some of the core problems with Vanguard: Sloppy, unfinished code.
The game that IS there is excellent, if they can just button up the coding Vanguard will be a 10. As it stands it's about a 7 overall. Sigil really needs to organize their forces and fix the existing game and stop wasting time adding additional content.
Excellent post and thank you for adding facts and reasons instead of just unobjective blather.
Thank You Anarchy. and i must say i do agree with your sentiment there, Vanguard is at is Root abundant with great ideas and possibilities for gameplay. I have always stated this fact, tragically however, unoptimized code and an engine in need of some attention will kill any application dead, this certainly should be Sigils priority, above anything else, you could even argue is is the most revenue generating excercise they could embark upon at this current time because it will bring some trust in the developer from a very uncertain playerbase at this time and introduce solidity to the game. I do not actually play vanguard anymore, however i really do hope for its gamers and community that Sigil understand where it is they need to focus the mainstay of there man hours and time.
To the Original Poster - Thank You for your time and efforts in writing these reviews, i think you have tried incredibly hard to deliver a non biased "fresh eyes" review in terms of impact and it is the type of insight those whom havent yet visited the game could read and get a genuine impression of how the game currently stands. Which is really really refreshing in these forums. Well Done. I hope your hard work warrants a sticky at some point in the future.
Mag