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Vanguard is making the same mistakes as EQ2
ghoul31
Member Posts: 1,955
| How solo-friendly will Vanguard be? Will people be forced to group? | |
| Brad McQuaid: | They won't be forced to group per se, but grouping is definitely encouraged. Our designers are populating the world by dividing areas into three groups: casual, group, and raid. The majority of content will be group oriented, because the 'core' gamer (note I didn't say 'hard core' necessarily) is our primary target audience. We also want people to be able to participate in raids, but then also in shorter play sessions in our 'casual' areas. These areas will be soloable to some degree, but will likely yield the best results with small groups. We still feel very strongly that classes and player interdependence is necessary for community building. |
They are making the same mistake EQ2 made. They aren't making it solo friendly.
Comments
So, what your saying is that, you want to this game to turn out like WoW?
I hope Vanguard doesn't follow in that road.
Mistake is a relative term...
I don't believe it to be a mistake, but more so a choice. It's obviously not a choice that a lot of people agree with, but it's still one that a lot of people do agree with.
Honestly, I think it's about time that a developer had the balls to go for a specific idea of a game, and appease the people (the substantial number of people) that want the same. I would embrace VSOH telling a good size chunk of the MMO community that this game wasn't for them, and prune it with the others in mind alone. Rather than promising pretty much everything to everyone, and satsifying no one completely.
A successful game doesn't need to have a million copies sold. It only has to have 500,000 copies sold of people that love the game and stick with it for 5 years.....
-Feyshtey-
Solo friendly games are easier to play, easier to level, easier to get bored, and easier to quit. How many people have you heard say they would quit this game or that but they have too many friends there to leave? The community makes the game, and as much as I hate forced grouping, it does make for a stronger community and a longer term game for most people who stick with it.
Agree. That is why FFXI is holding strong with 500,000+ because of their community.
EQLive had forced grouping (pretty much, unless you were a necro or something) and was arguably the greatest MMORPG to date.
EQ2's biggest mistakes are mostly in the design of their artificial game world which seems linear and overly designed for the benefit of developers rather than players. If Vanguard gets it right, we won't see this kind of thing.
"Solo to farm. Group to level."
From what I understand from reading the official forums, you'll probably be able to solo, but it will be easier with a small group in the solo area (Ie 2 or 3 people)
I'm actually happy they're going this rout. I wanted to play WoW until I found out how un-social it is. I didn't like EQII because of the mechanics that stuck out like a sore thumb.
I seriously doubt it will be an EQ clone, but I do think it will be a lot like EQ. They even said they're not going for "revolution" but "evolution" of concepts that work.
Also!
No instancing! No zoning! And you can go pretty much anywere you can see!
If you want a solo game, there are plenty of them out there.
Go be a necromancer or druid or even a ranger in EQ if you want to solo, but dont expect to see the end game. The end game is for raiding guilds and solo characters dont mix in raiding guilds.
It's obvious this is yet another EQ Raiding game. I don't see why this guy didn't just say it.
Yes, it's a forced grouping game because if you don't group you can not see a large portion of the content and you will not be able to progress your character fully.
It's another designer who gives individual rewards for group efforts but at the same time offers the "individual player" nothing.
Solo is not easier then raiding, unless you make it easier.
Vanguard will not have nice solo options, still, it might be acceptable as an overall game, as long as I can play a solo game on the same computer and put Vanguard in a small window, I wont be waiting for a group, I wont build a group either, so if I cant box it, I wont play it unless for some reasons I would be popular and harassed to group, in which case as long as I am popular I will remain.
Vanguard is making a mistake on the solo aspect, it dont mean everything they make is a mistake.
I am waiting to see the specific servers rules and if I can avoid raiding altogether, if I cant, I wont even buy it.
Achievements, challenges and progression is what everyone want. WoW dumped it on every aspect. Grouping should not earn more XP, it should earn group uberness, nothing more, nothing less.
I am tired and sore to be repeating the same stuff, for some reason peoples are happy to have 1 aspect crush the others 5, as long as THEIR aspect is on the top, which lead to the PvP VS Raid heavt arguments we see all the time, althought they use differents words.
If Vanguard have 0 solo uberness dealt to soloers, then it have to be in a box where I play a real solo game and dont wait LFG or build groups, I am allergic to this. I pay to play.
If I cant run Vanguard at the same time as KOTOR3, then Vanguard is doomed as far as I am concern with such a stance.
Raiding is fun, as long as nobody but raiders need to raid. PvP is fun, as long as nobody but PvPers need to PvP.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I really like the fact that the devs are focussing on grouping in this game.
WoW is a pretty good game but the constant soloing is driving me nuts. As a lv 20 priest i shouldnt have to run around soloing shit. The whole point of the class is to stand back and heal team mates but thx to World of Solocraft im forced to solo cause little timmy keeps rejecting my group invites cause he gets a lot more xp killing solo. Also with no death penalty Timmy doesnt care about dieing hence whats the point of having a healer tag along to heal?? Then you have some guys complain about not being able to find healers for lv 40+ instance
. Its kind of hard to get your "HEALER" to lv 40 when you kill at a snail pace and all the other "UBER" damage dealers dont feel the need to group with you cause they feel you eat into their xp and then they complain about healers being scarce once its time for them to do an instance. In short, I havent logged into azeroth in a couple of days and at this rate dont think ill ever log back in again.
For those of you that havent played a healing class, you can just go ahead and ignore me cause chances are you wont know what its like......
You guys all need to read that more, it says encouraged. The people who group will get the advantage of the "hardcore" player. If you like playing a game to just solo, just go play a 1 player console game, dont complain about a game that will be great and taking a new approach. They are trying their best to get to another side of the game instead of just solo grinding, which is so boring, I would rather have a game where I can talk to people rather then a game like World of Warcraft where get bored because I can level so easily. It said 3 zones, "Casual" is most likely the soloing part. Not enough official information on the game is even released, how can you just assume this game is like Everquest (EQ).
So Ignorant
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I'll be happy if the 'encouraged' grouping doesen't force you to have x amount of players and a certain grouping of players to level effectively. That's the reason I'm quitting FFXI. If you don't have a tank of a certain race and job, and/or if you don't have a mage of certain race and job, expect alot of downtime, IF you can get a party going to begin with. I would really like the ability to group with 1-3 people and still be able to level effectively. Obviously, if you have a group of 5-7 you will kill more and kill faster, but I don't want to be penalized severely if someone has to log or D/Cs by having to stand around for hours on end hoping to find a replacement. I want to be able to keep going if someone needs to log or D/Cs, without the downtime of having to seek a replacement. I also want to be able to use small groups so that I could add a friend that logs on later.
I would really like to see soloable content for every level that you can get decent xp from. Doesen't have to be great, per se, just decent enough to make it worth the time to draw your weapon. If I'm waiting for a friend to log on, or awaiting a group invite, I want to be able to do something other than craft while waiting. In FFXI, unless you are a Beastmaster, there isn't ANY decent soloable mobs to fight after lvl 20-30 (depending on job..a white mage has a hard time soloing after level 5). However, there are mobs that con "too weak.." that can kick your arse, but you get nothing from it IF you defeat it. Hence, if you're seeking a group, and don't want to craft, you're literally stuck doing absolutely nothing.
I think the best way to handle Group vs Solo is to make the XP brackets so that there is several separate XP curves exist within the game depending on party makeup. Like having one for Solo, one for 2x, 3x, 4x......ect amount of ppl. As well as adjust drops for difficulty as well. Putting a restriction about frendly healing/helping negates the drop as well as the nearest source of loot might also be a good idea to slow down powerleveling.
Separate group and solo instances could be an option to allow a player to progress anytime they are on regardless of current availability of groups.
Mark My Words: This Game Will Either Become the Greatest MMO to date, Or Fall on It's Butt like EQ2 and WoW.
Vanguard seems like one of the best games that will be coming ot the MMO market. I like the Traveling, the long waits, and the hardships its what realy in turn makes the game fun, that is if your not the Hack and slash mob after mob lovin type of guy. I play online games to take me off to a Fantasy realm. Like in EQ1 I LOVED that game until POK came out. Made the game seem so much smaller, and took the challenge out of everything just about the only thing you had was masses of 14 year olds, runnin around getting the ubah loot even faster now. But still why I'm glad the creators of this game was like there Will be Little Teleportation mostly only in Dungeons. That part I liked. Mostly cause getting to the dungeon is half the fun least it should be. But then again this is all in my opinion on how i think this game should be. It looks killer looks like the development teams knows what they are doing, (for the love of god they are backed by microsoft) they gotta have their slop together, to get that financial backing. I'm not about graphics I only pray, that it doesnt end up looking like World of Gayness, all fingerpainted and looks like the team took exactly 11 seconds to decide that is what they were going for. But also dont want it to Have EQ2's graphics that is just unneccassary and laggy. (sorry tis late and my typing and spelling is awful right now) BUT HOWEVER back to the point. This game looks killer they are going in ALL right Directions. Soloing should only be part of the game. NOT the entire thing, If you want to solo the whole time Play Morrowwind. MMO's is made for what? WHAT IS THAT YOU SAY? MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLE-PLAYING GAME>? You cant be serious to complain that they encourage grouping.
They have the basic idea of what they want to do, I just hope they follow through with what they say. (Put up or shutup) AND THEY need to release MORE INFO. it takes like a solar eclipse and the word of the microsoft gods to get any info from these people.
But all in all Don't END UPP LIKE SOE Or i swear to god I'll give up on this whole online gaming scene thingamabob.
WOW is one of the most popular games out there now. Saying that it fell flat on its butt is nonsense.
And saying that if you want to solo, play a single player game is nonsense too. You can trade with other players, PVP against them, chat with them in general chat. You don't have to be in a group to be involved in the world.
IF you only have an hour to play, you don't want to spent 45 minutes finding a group. That is a total waste.
If you want to get the full experience of a MMORPG, you going to have to group with people. Getting a MMORPG so that you can play by yourself and not have a lot of contact with people is a waste. That is not what MMORPG are all about. It's about having fun with meetings friends and joining with them to defeat foes. Even if it takes a few hours, probably even more, just to accomplish a single task, it will be rewarding at the end.
WoW is designed for people that can't have long hours of playing. Good, but to me, I want a game that takes me hours to accomplish something. That includes asking people to join a group, travelling to a far away place, fighting a dangerous foe that takes skillful thinking to defeat, and return to recieve your reward.
I hope Vanguard doesn't follow in WoW footsteps and makes a game where you can take little effort to do something. I want Vanguard to follow in traditional MMORPG's where you have risk and reward.
And just to close this, the only reason why WoW is the most popular game out there, is because it is backed up with the company's reputation. All the hype that WoW is recieving throughout the years, is what is keeping WoW alive today.
reputation just gets people to buy the game, not to renew every month. And their subscribtions are going up, not down. Just looks at the comments on WOW on this site. Almost everyone loves it.
As for soloing, there in a huge thread on this in the general forum. And almost everyone in the thread supports have a solo option in a game.
You may enjoy spending the first hour of you game time each day SPamming LFG, but most people don't
Yes, reputation to BUY the game. But, when you have an easy game like WoW and not a lot of "content" not being put in the pass months, people's reputation towards Blizzard is going to wear out. Thus, people that are level 60 (there are a lot of them) are going to drop out.
Looking at this chart:
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html
They have successfully surpass all the MMORPG's in USA. Sooner or later, they could surpass even Lineage (I & II).
Why so many? Because of their popularity towards the company. Any game made by Blizzard is 100% guarantee going to sell like hotcakes.
Also, many people are not happy with Blizzard progress. From lack of content to server outages on weekends, they got their hands full. Have you went to Blizzard homepage and wonder why they are hiring a lot of people mostly for WoW? They are getting over worked and need more help.
If Blizzard would have delayed the release of WoW in American, for about a good month or two, these things wouldn't happen today.
I don't believe Blizzard failed (I'm a big fan of Blizzard for their past games), but they made a bad judgement. They had many, many months of beta testing and they knew many, or many hundreds of thousands of people were hyped about the game.
As time goes on, I really think Blizzard is going to pull out of this and I hope they can overcome anything down the road.
I already answered this question in my last post.
Also, you can look at the post called" I like to solo " in the main forum.
That will answer your question.
Why is it when a game isn't solo easy many soloers coming running forth to say they are making a mistake? do you REALLY think a company is so niave. They can look at the statistics, they have the experience, including Vanguard, many of its staff were in EQ 1. Why do you still continue to think that if you can't solo through a game its going to be a wash and no one is gonna be interested? And if so then why is no one bashing the hell out of EQ 1, there were very few classes that could truly excel at solo'ing, it was ALWAYS a grind doing it.
Give it a rest already, I have explained before the EQ 1 mmo group oriented model, apparently no one wants to accept it or beleive it that this type of conversations keep coming around. The game is made to interest old EQ 1 style play and its user base, deal with it. Its not a mistake, they chose their target audience, apparently they considered soloers not their priority for a client base, deal with it.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Keep telling yourself that while both companies continue to watch profit margins grow steadily.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Then why is EQ2 rushing to add more solo content in their game? Their main focus in their patches is to add more solo content. Why do you think that is? Because people are demanding it! And tons of people left the game because it lacked the ability to solo.
The makers of EQ2 realized they made a big mistake by not allowing people to solo!
Hopefully the makers of Vanguard will learn something from this disaster.
Lacked the ability to solo? Then I would sure like to know what I was doing all those times alone. I have no idea what they are doing honestly because the comments and feelings I see here about the game are NOT the feelings and attitudes I see from anyone I play with in the game. Perhaps they are just trying overly hard to satisfy a loud few, or perhaps they actually feel its an issue, regardless, the conversation was not about EQ 2, it was about Vanguard and I specifically referred to EQ 1, not 2.
And because they are actually trying to improve the game, which many other companys cannot claim at this moment, you have automatically assumed its because the majority felt the game was so hard and bad and you just couldn't play it solo? Disaster to who exactly? I don't see SOE laying sleepless at nights wondering if they can make payroll because their profits are in the red. I think you need to find some less dramatic perspective.
If Vanguard is anything less group oriented then EQ 2 was upon release I will be highly dissapointed in it.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World