Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes: The Riftway
Szark
News ManagerMember Posts: 4,420
The Vanguard official site has update with information on the Riftway, a series of portals linking the remote corners of Telon.
A forgotten power has returned to Telon. Ancient riftstones have come to life with their potent magic having been lost since the days of the Cataclysm. Channeling great energies from altars scattered across the world travelers are now able to venture forth via interlinking networks spanning all of Telon... Welcome to the Riftway!
The Riftway is divided into three separate networks; these networks are connected through riftstones located at altars all around the world. Not all altars have active riftstones, however.
In order to use the Riftway you must have a riftway shard in your inventory, these shards can be found on any general goods vendor and are relatively inexpensive.
Once you have purchased a shard you must establish a link between at least two riftstones on the same network. In order to activate a riftstone for future use you must travel to its location and click on it. Once you have at least two riftstones active you may travel between them, each time you travel you lose one riftway shard.
Read about the history of the Riftway and how to use it here.
Comments
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
I can see millions of people leaving WoW now thanks to this new goodies.
A note for Sigil and SoE though:
PEOPLE CANNOT PLAY THE FRIKKING GAME BECAUSE ONLY 5% OF THE PLAYER BASE OWN A COMPUTER THAT CAN RUN IT!!!!
(/end caplock mode)
Will they ever get the message?
Obviously not, since they are focusing in transforming Vanguard in EQ2.1 (AKA EQ2 without instances), instead of doing something drastic for the bad performance.
Good luck with that.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Agent_X7 AKA J Star
[/URL]
Notice: The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com or its management.
oh gee. this game has so much potential, but.... oh never mind.
Look, they introduced PoK Books....
If you understood what I just said, kudos.
Hi! My name is paper. Nerf scissors, rock is fine.
MMORPG = Mostly Men Online Roleplaying Girls
http://www.MichaelLuckhardt.com
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze
Yup. In one fell swoop SoE nuked the class defining ability of Druids. There must have been 30+ spells for porting yourself and groups. Only real way for Druids to make a bit of extra Plat. Made pretty much useless in an instant. Not to mention obliviating any need for Druid Binding in the field. Man, PoK sucked the heart out of the game.
wow SOE gets blamed for everything done to a game even when its not them doing it.........
This sounds like a welcome change. The world is huge, travel shouldn't be such a chore. It's not challenging sitting on a horse, it's tedious. Challenge should be real challenge, not unending patience. Kudos to Sigil for keeping up with updates and trying to make things better.
There is so much potential with V. I hope they keep adding to it. I'd like to go back someday to a much improved game.
I think they locked themselves in a box for 5 years and ignored what other games were doing and what gamers wanted.
I'll repeat what I said in somewhat less caustic venues: Riftways are implemented in one the least travel-dimishing ways they could be. That is to say, they do not eliminate the meaningfulness of travel, for those that like to travel, and certainly do not eliminate the necessity of traveling normally between rift points at least once.
My original notion of travel in Vanguard was that it would be entirely possible and indeed necessary to gain significant level in one's home continent without traveling to other continents, and that the game would be fundamentally region-based. Both of these expectations have not materialized to the extent that I thought they would. Travel between major points is relatively safe and easy even for low-level characters, as long as there are no faction disagreements. Intercontinental travel is necessary for some leveling and some quests, and is essential at some point for anyone starting in the Kojan "continent". Worldwide guild, chat channels, and tells have made long-distance travel desirable and frequent.
Operationally speaking, the original notion of sea travel by ships has not materialized as scheduled, and the major fudged-in placeholder is restricted by severe server-side instability in one of the unavoidable travel bottlenecks (New Targonor). Under the circumstances, some assistance in travel is welcome.
Repeatedly covering the same ground to get from one point of interest to another is not meaningful travel and is not immersion. I still intend to travel cross-country to see the sights, find out what is there, and have time to think about what to do next. I am glad to have a speedier way to get to a distant guild event, for example, without taking as much time out from my other activities.
Oh I got it. And I just canceled. Saw this before somewhere.. saw the ramifications. No thanks. Moving along. And no you can't have my stuff...
Poldano.. is that a long winded approach to saying Sigil screwed the pooch?
Not everyone wants instant porting and honestly I was drawn to VG because it didn't start out doing what every other MMO has done. There are plenty of games out there already with meaningless travel.
All they ahd to do was make travel meaningful and expand lfg tools. They never even managed to make grouping much more worthwhile than soloing. Soloing in Vanguard hands everything the players needs to them on a plate.
They might also have done something to give those groups of players, who move through games together, a reason to split up and group with others. Much of Vanguard's grouping fiasco has been that guilds stick together and much of EQs great grouping rate was because people didn't have those set groups. There could have been incentives introduced to make people feel grouping with new people was worthwhile. They didn't even consider that I believe.
They could also have done more to aid what I first said; making travel fun and interesting by adding trials and 'occurances' along the way. Pre-beta there was always talk of giant sea creatures andf bands of roving goblins that would attack travellers and give parties a reason to stick together. Sigil always said their usual 'that is definitely something we would like to see' but did it ever materialise? No.
They only had themselves to blame and now they have taken the easy way out by going for the PoK option. They have chickened out of challennge and immersion and have gone for convenience and boredom.
Maybe I don't need to say this but I cancelled my account the day they announced riftways were in. They'd only tested them for 3 days max on the test servers; why even test them?
I saw the quest system and I sighed. A little disappointment was evident with me.
I saw the broker and I began to think Vanguard is truly not the game Brad hyped.
I saw the riftway network and I knew all my hopes for a real game were over.
Vanguard shjould have been the best game ever and that makes me sad.
.
Pfft. I played a Druid. Porting wasn't the defining ability of the class. I'd say it was quad kiting, since that got me a whole bunch of levels when I played. Heh.
The fact that I could port myself and my friends/guildies pretty much anywhere in the world was convenient, which is why I chose that class. I hated the long travel in EQ, so anything to help alleviate it was a good thing. Occasionally, I'd take time out to port others if they needed it, but overall, the constant spam tells for ports I'd get was annoying. I was glad when they put in the PoK books. After that, I'd just SOW people, point them towards the books, and get back to playing with my friends.
As for binding in the field, it was still useful if I was in an area that was more than one zone away from a book, or if I was farming an area for XP. I'd bind, kite mobs around until all of my bags were full of loot, then gate out to sell and bank. Then it was back out to wherever I was fighting.
The only people who really got screwed when the PoK books went in, IMO, were people who spent all their time porting people around for money, or who charged ridiculous prices for ports. As for me, it made my life a lot simpler.
You still have to explore to new areas and questlocations. Portals are only meant to make the roads you travel regurarly less timeconsuming. With perfectly safe roads between cities where people use autorun, those journeys are as meaningfull as being stuck in traffic on your way home back from work.
You might as well complain that they nerfed the autorun skill.
Lol, you didn't test them, but you complain. The riftways are no easy point to point hopping. You will very well run, ride and fly to reach the one which will take you where your group or target is waiting. The world is just too big for all but 24/7 players to play more than to travel. You might have to cross a full continent to get to the one you need, but hey, just complain, you know it all, do you?
The riftways are a good addition. You will have to travel hours and hours before you even can use all of them.
Bleh, it really doesnt matter if they have these stones in now, hell the population per server is so small now, its hard to even find 6 people around ur level on the same continent LFG.
Beginning WoWification process .......Now.
Here is a quote from Tim Buckley at CTRL+ALT+DEL this morning.
Obviously one person's challenge and sense of realism is another person's waste of time, but if there are going to be multiple MMOs on the market, why do all of them have to turn into World of Warcraft? Not all of us want our hands held straight to level 60.
I think it says what most MMO players are thinking.
Critical thinking is a desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and hatred for every kind of imposture.
Lol, you didn't test them, but you complain. The riftways are no easy point to point hopping. You will very well run, ride and fly to reach the one which will take you where your group or target is waiting. The world is just too big for all but 24/7 players to play more than to travel. You might have to cross a full continent to get to the one you need, but hey, just complain, you know it all, do you?
The riftways are a good addition. You will have to travel hours and hours before you even can use all of them.
I didn't need to test them. It is pretty obvious what they are.
I liked the travel. It could get a little tedious when quests would have me running back and forth from city to city (crafting quests did that in an abundance) but that was more of a problem with the quest design than a flaw with the mechanics. I enjoyed travel. It was immersive. I had to get somewhere to do something. The game was not all about the end result anymore.
Saying that the world is too big for players to get together is a moot argument because Sigil did little to help foster community by any other means. They saw a problem, saw players whining that they had to run for 10 minutes and, because they can't manage their finances, decided on the quick and easy solution to keep everyone happy and playing.
The Riftway is unimaginative and bland. The fact that you have to travel to the stones to use them the first time isn't really a facet that needs pointed out. You know you won't have to travel there the second time.
Sigil never explored the problem of grouping fully enough. They started with a pathetic LFG tool, coupled with a game that was solo friendly, and wondered why people weren't getting together. There are bigger problems that travel in Vanguard. The Riftway Stones, in themself, won't solve the group problems because the origibal hold backs are still in place. The Riftway Stones just become easy travel for the guild groups that are already grouping together.
.
Cheers!
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
John Lennon
Yup. In one fell swoop SoE nuked the class defining ability of Druids. There must have been 30+ spells for porting yourself and groups. Only real way for Druids to make a bit of extra Plat. Made pretty much useless in an instant. Not to mention obliviating any need for Druid Binding in the field. Man, PoK sucked the heart out of the game.
Are you sure you are talking about the game I play as a Druid character? To the best of my knowledge, no class in Vanguard has a true teleporting ability, and it is against Sigil's policy to make that ability a monopoly of one class. The nearest thing is evacuation capability, which is actually shared among offensive caster classes. Evac can be used to speed travel through the countryside, but it operates only within the same "chunk". Evac can be used to get to a riftway altar quicker, but in that sense riftways complement it and actually make it more useful.