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Who is to blame for VG's lackluster performance?
Arclan
Member UncommonPosts: 1,550
A quote in another thread got me to thinking.
Originally posted by aspekx
...as screwy as (vanguard) was it actually had some rather imaginative / innovative bits to it...
Oh I totally agree. The game's UI was ground breaking. I blame Microsoft for VG's plight. They lacked faith and pulled funding. SOE took over the game, yay, but under some conditions. Conditions that, I feel, alienated VG from the very fans it was originally intended to please.
/edit, oops i mispelled McQuaid. Sowwy.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
Comments
Sigil, not just Brad McQuaid. Brad may have sucked at running the show, but the code for the game was apparently a disaster. You can't blame microsoft for cutting funding, and SoE worked their assess off while receiving little income to improve the game. SoE could have handled things a little differently in the last couple of years, but it wouldnt have made a big impact.
99% Brad/Sigil, 1% SoE
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Everyone remembers the (unconfirmed) stories about parking lot firings and bad management, but no one recalls other details like how funding promised by Microsoft didn't come through, cutting development short.
There was so many things that went wrong that a book could be written about it all. Office affairs, parking lot firings, MS pulling funding for Xbox development, horrible coding, and massive changes to the core of the game in beta. The one thing I have always wanted to know though was how much SOE paid to acquire it all.
I would say their is blame to go around for everyone.
Microsoft got tired of delays and couldn't stomach that mmos often go over budget and are delayed, so they lost faith and wanted to cut ties.
Sigil/Brad - They were behind where they probably promised, which yes doesn't mean a lot in mmos, but they were behind. They also supposedly had some jumbled bad code, and they were a little too ambitious with polygon counts and such that caused a lot of the hitching at release SoE said.
SoE - They helped, but they could of offered more support early on, to help avoid the release state that turned many off. Then they pretty much abandoned it, after they promised a relaunch that didn't happen, before they abandoned it for a long time.
So blame for everyone, and yes they cut down on some of the old school aspects and made experience faster and less penalties for things, probably among many other things, been a long time.
I had a brand new computer that was a top end gaming machine, so I didn't have a horrible time playing through the bugs/lag, so I wasn't as jaded as some. Vanguard is in my top 5 mmos, they had a lot of nice systems (crafting/harvesting/diplomacy/pve/world etc...).
I would go back and play Vanguard now, but I just don't see the type of commitment that would keep me playing, and I know it is a catch 22, no people, no development, but if they even said if we get 'x' number of new people, we will scale development with population or something, then it may spark some kind of growth, who knows?
VG was the last mmo that I played for a long time, nothing since...All new stuff feels shallow, mostly flash and graphics and not enough depth.
I wish someone would write a book! Remember to that it appeared as though the main motivation SOE had in grabbing Vanguard was so it wouldn't compete against EverQuest 2.
After a while they kept it around as a value add for their station pass.
Although the project was mismanaged I think it all came apart when Microsoft decided to pull funding for the Xbox. The game was far from complete, and was basically forced into release.
MS pulled funding because after almost a year of development sigil had nothing but video clips to show for it. I remember a post from one of the ex developers talking about almost the entire game was made in 9 months after soe came in and had deadlines.
I think there is only one person to blame for VG. He may of had great ideas but he did now have the skills required to run a whole team and see a game through.
Pretty much this. While the buck stops with Brad, he wasn't the only one to blame at Sigil.
I vote other.
Combat, absolutely one of the worst and slowest combats in any game I ever played. It literally looks like the animations are stuck in slow-mo.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I think the push for high end specs was partially to blame. I guess that means Sigil & Brad are to blame, but they weren't alone in their thinking. There was an ironic philosophy about tech back then. I remember it from the id software days of DOOM and Quake. There were extreme system requirements and it seemed average people could not play the game without an expensive upgrade- maybe even a whole new computer. These extreme requirements may have affected how system resources were used and how things were coded, but I don't know enough to say so with certainty. Like others, I've also heard over the years that the code was horrible.
The extreme system requirements thing had happened with EQ2 too. I remember not being able to run it on all but the lowest of settings and even then it was a slideshow in the cities.
So at that time I stuck with EQ1 and then... WoW, which ran just fine on my system at the time.
When Vanguard sputtered to life, I didn't even attempt to buy it. I wasn't going to go through the same thing I went through with EQ2. I think I stuck with CoH at the time.
_____________________________
"Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
Exactly this. They assumed that people like you would upgrade, since many people were willing to do that to play EQ1. They didn't anticipate that A. people were burnt out from upgrading and B. there were other MMO options that required less tech to play (WoW).
Only to stupid people. No one else was picking up Vanguard. Its only chance of release after microsoft dumped it was SoE. If they were worried about the competition they would have just let it become vaporware.
I guess you were in a coma for the 18 months where they made the game playable and added content? SoE supported Vanguard. Players did not.
Shrug.
I know for myself, I picked up the game because my system specs were just above the requirement. Went to play the game and it was unplayable. Tried to do some config changes and nothing worked. Quit it and never looked back.
Lacklustre launch: Brad/Sigil for failing to execute.
Lacklustre performance to date: SOE, for failing to promote and develop what they had.
It as safer for SOE to snag it than let it hang out there, and potentially be scooped up by someone else. It wasn't a forgone conclusion that it was vaporware.
Moreover, SOE could have purchased it, and completed the project before releasing it, as opposed to seeing that it clearly wasn't done, and releasing it anyway.
They made marginal improvements, including adding in content that was almost complete, and should have been in on release. They only very recently have done any actual improvement or content additions, aside from merging servers.
Vanguard was this low cost expenditure for them that they could have as part of station pass. Hell, how many Fan Faire's were there that had not a single panel or presentation on Vanguard.
I honestly think the only reason they have recently started doing anything to it is to further test the waters of F2P, before EQN launches.
[edited for grammar]
i definitely agree with this. i started playing back a few years ago, it was in november the year they brought the reindeer flying mount for free into the game for the first time (not sure if that happened more than once). the game had a lot of really neat ideas, even simple things such as separate simultaneous offensive and defensive targeting. i think its biggest flaw and turn-off were the steep system requirements at the time, and the fact that it wasn't until several years after the launch that consumers could get SSD's to finally rid the game of the majority of the stuttering that was present on even the best systems.
the skill chains and reactive abilities were fantastic, especially with classes like the disciple where you can do offensive chains to do group aoe heals and such. it was a really neat system that i'd like to see implemented in other games. the only game that really came close that i've played was the shaman in warhammer online, but as i recall it didn't have skill chains, you essentially built up "healing power" through offensive abilities and i believe you could also build "damage power" through healing abilities, so it was a battle of balancing the two to your advantage.
i think my other complaint with vanguard was the fact that while the art style was good, the draw distance was fantastic and overall i really liked the graphics, the game landscaping didn't flow very well. what i mean is, trees and rocks and such looked like they were just stuck there. in other games they look like they're a part of the world, but in vanguard it was like the rest of the world was a watercolor painting with actual pieces of rock sitting on top of the paper, out of place and for no reason. however, i will say that the world design in terms of cliffs, valleys and zone design was very solid. unfortunately i never explored the whole world and didn't play the game for long due to performance issues and the low population, but i did explore a fair bit with that flying mount before it was gone and it was a beautiful game.
Well isnt that already very well documented now ?
Sigil Games is to blame for being too inexperienced and not making good contracts with Microsoft.
SOE basically was sympathetic, but didnt had the budget to save Vanguard. They probably also didnt really liked the idea of having a concurrence to their EQ2, even if Vanguard was conceptionally superior.
There are also a couple other problems, such as too high graphic demands. But overall Vanguard could have been a huge success if they had received full funding and would have been able to release on schedule, instead of at least half a year too early.