In SOE podcast #25, Brenlo made some comments regarding the latest producer letter. When I first heard his comments I really didn’t think anything of them because, well, I kind of agree with him. VG is going to have to make changes in order to appeal to more people. They will have to remove “frustrations” in order to see “new blood” in the game. I think even the old hardcore gamers would agree with this….although, I do think that animal is extinct, or close to it in MMOs.
Here’s what I didn’t agree with…that VG’s main frustration is the death penalty which is apparently something they are taking a serious look at. Jaye, our resident VG expert summarizes the death penalty view vary well:
If you die in Vanguard, you leave a tombstone at the point of death. Any gear you have on that?s not soulbound is left on the stone, and you lose some experience. If you can get back to your tombstone, you can loot it for your gear plus much of your lost experience. But you can also summon it at any altar, which gives you back your gear but you don?t get the exp. In all my 50 levels of playing, doing plenty of soloing and dungeon crawling, I have not had a time where I worried about dying, and believe me, I?ve taken plenty of chances. Steep would be rotting corpses, lost gear, (stolen gear!), and multi-night corpse recoveries. I endured all of those in Everquest. Vanguard is not Everquest.
Say it sister. So the issue is not the death penalty.
If you look at this thread in the forums, a reasonable argument once again turns into the old “hardcore” vs “causal” debate or the “hard” vs “easy” or the “old gamer” vs “new gamer”. Oy. Talk about missing the point completely. It’s not about young, old, hardcore, easy, jeese pick a buzzword….its about making a game that has some suck into one that doesn’t have any… and yes, the end product may not have you in mind personally.
Again, Jaye says it perfectly regarding why VG is not doing so well:
They left because they?d spend days and days trying to kill thousands of ants, click things, and do handstands to spawn the ant queen, only to find out that it wasn?t working/wasn?t in the game. They left because after having two consecutive double experience weekends, they had bumped into the edge of content, and discovered that there was a lot that was completely unfinished. They left because they were falling through the world, they were stuck in combat, they saw rampant hacks and duping, and they got tired of seeing something as simple as a door to the Beranid Hills quest hub be broken, months later. If you want to talk about things that are frustratingly difficult in Vanguard, the death penalty would be pretty far down on the list.
Say it again sister!
What everyone needs to concentrate on right now is making VG a better game. You have a producer that just asked all of you VG players to contribute to this new “vision” (/cringe). So, instead of bringing up the old, tired and useless debate of old, new, young, old, get up off you ass, get behind community leaders like Jaye and Troy and make Vanguard the game it needs to be.
D out.
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November 14th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
I actually got to said door for the Beranid Hills quest hub, and spent about 30 minutes trying to find a way to jump my way over the fence to get in and get the quests. Never did find a way in and it was extremely frustrating (of course this was several months ago – I would hope it’s fixed now!).
November 14th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Well said, Darren – and Jaye too.
I thought this was an odd focus as well – the death penalty in VG seems fine to me.
And Darren – stopping bogarting my “oy”.
November 15th, 2007 at 12:07 am
Yeah, as we near the year anniversary of Vanguard’s launch, there’s no more room for excuses or promises of what’s around the bend. It’s time to deliver. The fan base who actually stuck with this game through all of it’s troubles deserve more. Jaye’s commentary was spot-on. If SOE have half a lick of sense among them, they’ll listen to what these folks have to say and maybe even give their Vulmane and Rakis tails.
November 15th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Well said, thanks for commenting on this.
I think the main reason for the uproar was because it was more like a slap in the face to the faithful fans thats really have carried vanguard on ts shoulders keeping it alive.
November 15th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
“get up off you ass, get behind community leaders like Jaye and Troy and make Vanguard the game it needs to be.”
Don’t you mean “make Vanguard like every other game”? Seriously. If you move the mechanics too far away from what they are and towards something like WoW or EQ2 then it starts simply being those games with a different face and lore. Sort of like Star Trek and it’s various flavors… not all of them were as good as the original.
Awhile back someone said if they had to power to remove something from existence, they’d remove WoW because they think it was a detriment to the advancement of MMOs (I’m paraphrasing… liberally). I agree and agreed with him. Now that people have had WoW, they don’t seem to want the games to differ much from that model… even if they’re not playing WoW anymore for one of many reasons to dislike it, be burned out on it or hate Blizzard (heh).
By the way, losing gear on a corpse is almost a non-issue now since everything you equip gets soulbound.
November 16th, 2007 at 7:52 am
I defiantly think they’re making a mistake too. Just fix the game technically and keep it hardcore so it doesn’t alienate it’s very niche audience. It’s like SWG all over again omg!