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Quite happy
Adamantine
Member RarePosts: 5,085
Game Features and Summary
IMHO:
Pro:
+ high challenge, your have to mind your environment, you have to adjust your equipment and skills
+ complex dynamic combat system with dual targeting; sounds like you have to learn your skills
+ classic "static" classes with lots of abilities and clearly defined group roles
+ open world, little if any instancing, no "on rails" gameplay, quests are high quality questlines and not obligatory
Neg:
- mostly player driven economy (so - no auction house ? You have to sit around with offers ? I dont like that. I thought the focus was supposed to be adventure and combat ? This is the opposite. I hope you can at least log off for trading)
- class based travel (eh, annoying way to force certain classes on you. I just hope a lot of classes get some kind of teleportation then, and each of them a different teleportation net)
- visible loot (no fun items from obscure mobs ? I'm a bit disappointed)
- factions (this can be implemented very well, with fun questlines to get access to new areas for your character - but to be honest, I'm rather weary of this, factions in Vanguard have been a PITA quite often and other MMOs arent better)
- not many levels (I dont really care too much about that one, but I dont see the advantage of it either)
- community feedback (can be a good or a bad thing, devs should react to bug reports and certainly shall review player suggestions, but dont make the game easier and easier over time. Less is sometimes more ! The small dev team of Vanguard lacked making new highlevel content, but the game also stayed at a certain challenge level, unlike so many other)
- No word on classes ... from what we've seen during the kickstarter, it seems its rather more EQ classes than VG classes. The most important thing I missed with classes from VG was the concept of primary and secondary task, which isnt mentioned anywhere here. Your cleric had to heal, but also you could offtank and you could put up a good dynamic buff for which you needed a critical hit, and there was debuff attacks as well, and you had an ability on a long recast that would raise your dps momentarily, and you had a short recast ability to raise your group dps every minute for 10 seconds, and so on. And you had a specialization (deity/belief) that would give you special stuff, like I was death and got a lot of magic spells, like a strong accuracy debuff, strong magic attack spells, a special stance that would boost my magic dps but diminish my healing, the ability to gain health from corpses, etc. I really, really dont want to play a dumb EQ style cleric that really only heals.
- No word on gold sellers ... I hope they install some good defenses against those.
If nothing else, this is a lot closer to my ideas of a great MMO than any MMO in a long time.
I'm especially happy the idea of only having a small number of skills seems to be gone. Though the link in the article, which however is a year old, speaks of having to choose a subset of your skills. Hmmmm I dont know if I like the sound of that. I was massively bored by Guild Wars very, very quickly. So hopefully we can choose a lot more than just 8 skills from our ability list.
Comments
The small subset of skills would be more similar to EQ's spell gems in that you could only have 8 spells memorized out of your spellbook at launch. Arguably, it adds more to the game as you have to strategize how you will approach the upcoming fight rather than having everything spell available. To my knowledge, that original idea hasn't changed.
I'm fairly active over at the Pantheon boards and there's a monthly roundtable discussion thread under the News/Annoucement subforum where questions can be posed to the development team. I'll provide the link to it, but if you can't access it, let me know and I'll post your question.
https://www.pantheonrotf.com/forums/topic/1564/round-table-discussion-questions
Hmm, 4 short lines on the positives, and 8 or so much longer lines on the negatives translates to "Quite Happy?"
You sure about 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
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"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
Adamantine,
Again, I'm not affiliated with the development team, but I've been following the project pre-Kickstarter - I'll try to clarify your negatives a bit.
Player Driven Economy: It could be a positive/negative depending on your views. I tend to agree that I like to adventure more than sell my wares, but many people loved the EC tunnel bartering/haggling in EQ. There has been some previous discussion on regional trading/auction houses versus a game-wide auction house; however, I haven't heard anything as of late.
Class Based Travel: Again, more akin to Druid/Wizard porting in EQ. It is not as much meant to be a nuisance as to make the world feel larger/immersive by not having riftstones throughout the world that will take you anywhere in a click + 5 silver.
Visible Loot: Means basically that if a Ghoul Lord is equipped with a Short Sword of the Ykesha, you'll see it and know. I'm all for that design
Not many levels: Not sure where this has been read, but I have heard nothing suggesting that it will be fewer levels. Instead, the discussion that I've heard/seen is that it will be similar to an EQesque max level of 50 while requiring other systems to advance as well such as the Rights of Passage system.
Community Feedback: An example here, I was one of many who raised issue with the Cash Shop providing in-game advantages that went against the vision of the Development team. It was reviewed and removed. Listening to community feedback is a good thing. From all indications, the community feedback that is received will be to improve upon the vision of an Old-School MMO, not to cater to an instant gratification crowd.
No word on Classes: I agree with this point and I have asked in the Roundtable Discussions Thread I linked above about where the current class design stands - hopefully it will be answered on the next Roundtable. In the Kickstarter, there were two paths that all classes had and could choose between.
Goldsellers: In complete agreement, I don't want them and I hope there is a good defense.