February 2007
- [Design] Personal virtual worlds Lachek Butalek
- [Design] Personal virtual worlds Mike Rozak
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Nick Koranda
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Raph Koster
- [ALL PLEASE READ - FROM MODERATOR] Nick Koranda
- [Design] Avoiding the uncanny valley: cartoons and animals Mike Rozak
- stock market mechanisms in muds Johnicholas Hines
- stock market mechanisms in muds John Buehler
- stock market mechanisms in muds Acius
- stock market mechanisms in muds Daniel James
- stock market mechanisms in muds Matt Chatterley
- stock market mechanisms in muds Johnicholas Hines
- stock market mechanisms in muds Chapman, Greg
- Imaginary Realities mirror Richard Tew
- Imaginary Realities mirror Michael Hartman
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Peter Harkins
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Phillip Lenhardt
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Morris Cox
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? John Bertoglio
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Morris Cox
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Jeremy Noetzelman
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Alex Arnon
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? Squid
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Ghilardi Filippo
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Darryl Woodford
- stock market mechanisms in muds Raph Koster
- [DESIGN] AJAX Client/Servers? John Bertoglio
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personal virtual worlds] Mike Rozak
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] Michael Sellers
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personal virtual worlds] Caliban Darklock
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] John Buehler
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] Michael Sellers
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] Jeffrey Kesselman
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds] Caliban Darklock
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [wasPersonalvirtual worlds] Dave Scheffer
- [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personal virtual worlds] Jeffrey Kesselman
- Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives Ghilardi Filippo
- [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience Mike Rozak
- stock market mechanisms in muds Matt Chatterley
- stock market mechanisms in muds Peter Keeler
- stock market mechanisms in muds Johnicholas Hines
- [MUD-Dev2] Michael Sellers
- [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience Jeffrey Kesselman
- Mailing List Alternatives (was Old MUD-Dev mailing list archives) Morgan Ramsay
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Lachek Butalek
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Jeffrey Kesselman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
Lachek Butalek wrote:
> Hard to say without knowing what flaws you saw with the game. Care to
> elaborate on that?
These are my initial impressions of Vanguard. Be aware that I'm probably not
in their target market:
The fundamental flaws in vanguard are:
1) Been there, done that. I've played many-many DikuMMORPGs and CRPGs where
you run around killing monsters and making armor.
2) Been there, done that, with better specific implimentations, such as WoW.
3) Vanguard's unique-selling points (ships, vistas, flying mounts, diplomacy
game) are not immediately accessible and/or demonstrated to the user. (I'll
go into more detail below.)
3a) Although I haven't played with it much, the diplomacy game feels like
it's bolted on. (More below.)
4) Vanguard's eye candy (shiny/bumpy surfaces, long vistas, and trees),
whose purpose is immersion, is completely ruined by the wooden nature of the
NPCs, including their lack of recorded audio, AI, movement, etc. It's
further ruined by static monsters standing around a killing field. In movie
terms, the design error is like producing a movie with excellent special
effects, but lousy acting.
5) Because of said failures and an early/negative release, Vanguard is
looking to be a niche game... but niche games don't get shelf space, and 7
gig downloads don't get downloaded by too many people, especially if they
just want to have a quick look. (At 100 kBytes/sec, 7 gig = 20 hours).
My initial experience:
I create a fox character (as described in my setup rant) and end up in a
valley. Several things are wrong about the valley:
1) It's a valley! Where are my sweeping vistas that are USPs for vanguard?
2) Whoever created the valley doesn't actually know what a real valley looks
like. Oblivion did a much better job of making their valleys look like
valleys, and their mountains look like mountains, not rounded heighfields.
(From now on, unless I say so, just assume that Oblivion did a much better
job of everything, and EQ2/WoW merely did a better job of everything.)
3) This valley has elves standing around... that's all they do. Some of them
are shopkeepers, trainers, etc, but they all look exactly the same, aren't
standing in front of shops that would give away their profession, aren't
standing near any building except a gazebo, and did I mention: they just
stand around. They look real (except that they don't move), and it's very
obvious that they're vending machines.
4) I talk to a shopkeeper for a quest, and he (or she?) spew some standard
pre-recorded nonesense about "Are you lost?" or "If you only knew the power
I had" that has nothing to do with the quest. The NPC then displays some
small text next to them that describes the quest. I don't even bother to
read the quest backstory because (a) I have no emotional attachment or
belief in these vending-machine NPCs, (b) I don't care about the ugly
valley, and (c) I've killed too many foozles already in other MMORPGs. Any
work put into quest backstory is nullified. To me, the game is just a poorly
modelled terrain with monsters standing around and waiting to be be killed;
it has no meaning.
5) Of course, my quests are to kill foozles, but not in any new and unique
way. The valley is filled with foozles that are just standing around and
waiting for me to walk up to them and attack. (This particular scenario was
stretched to the limit with the second character I created, where the NPCs
claim "We're trapped by these monsters and can't get out!", but I can walk
through a huge valley-floor of 100's of demons/gargoyles without them ever
raising a finger.)
6) When I finally get out of the valley and into a "city", it has the same
problems with NPCs standing around, except that there are 50+ NPCs,
all-alike, standing around, pretending to be shop-keepers in front of
non-existant shops. I can't tell which is which.
7) For my second character, I do a short diplomacy training tutorial. The
game mechanics seem interesting, but it's not really integrated into the NPC
interaction. Instead, the game is abstracted into a card game, and described
as a card game... Why didn't they abstract combat into a card game too? When
I enter combat with a monster, does the monster stand still and pull out a
card table, asking me to select which card to play?
8) I could spend pages and pages describing a lot of nits that add up to
fairly signficant issues in the end.
... eventually ...
My third character was a halfling. That startup zone was much better than
the other two I tried, but EQII/WoW still have done a better job. And while
hobbit holes with round doors are expected, they're a little bit cliche, as
well as the elven "city" being in giant tree from the first character.
Even my short stay in the hobbit village uncovered sillyness: One NPC wanted
some will-o-whisps killed for their fairy dust. Another one wanted them
killed because they were scaring his cow (which was wanding nonchalently
among the wisps). I got annoyed when WoW made me kill blue harpies, then
green ones, then red ones. I got really annoyed killing the exact same
monster in the exact same killing fields.
Again, my opinion:
1) Everyone who plays vanguard has killed more than enough foozles in their
life, and cast more than enough fireballs. While monster killing might still
exist in the game, it should NOT be part of the first 30 minutes of
experience. As a general rule, monster killing should be a significantly
smaller part of the game than it has been in previous MMORPGs, because (a)
most players have long gotten bored with it, and (b) Vanguard has all sorts
of nifty new USPs that players haven't gotten bored with.
2) Within the first 30 minutes, I should have seen an awe-inspiring vista. I
have yet to see one. My first two characters appeared in impossiblly-deep
valleys. Even the halfling village (a cliche clone of hobbitton) seems to be
in a shallow valley.
3) Within the first 30 minutes, I should have been given an inflatable raft
and started enjoying Vanguard's USP ships. (Or better yet, I could have
built my raft using vanguard's crafting system, which I haven't been
introduced to yet. Supposedly crafting is half a USP.)
4) Within the first 30 minutes, I should have had a ride on a flying beasty,
even if it was an inflatable raft filled with helium. Again, show me the
USP! You don't have to give me the dragon mount right away, but show me the
potential. This is important for every game, but INCREDIBLY important for a
downloaded game. In download games, you only have 15-30 minutes to hook a
players, 20 hours of which have already been taken up by downloading
vanguard!
5) If Vanguard had spent only half the money on the combat sub-game (which
includes monster models, spell effects, combat skills, etc.) and put the
other half of the money into dipomacy, they'd actually have a unique and
interesting feature. (Oblivion's "diplomacy" game wasn't very impressive
either.)
6) NPCs should be signficiantly improved, as per Oblivion.
I'm sure I could ramble on further, but this is plenty. Why the reviews and
rants didn't point out these flaws is beyond me. Maybe I'm expecting
something that a MMORPG isn't supposed/expected to deliver. - [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] cruise
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Jeffrey Kesselman
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Jeffrey Kesselman
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] cruise
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Sean Howard
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Jeffrey Kesselman
- genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard] Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Jeffrey Kesselman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants cruise
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Dana V. Baldwin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Amanda Walker
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Dave Scheffer
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Phillip Lenhardt
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Caliban Darklock
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Vincent Archer
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Michael Sellers
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Caliban Darklock
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Dana V. Baldwin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Caliban Darklock
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Michael Hartman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Dana V. Baldwin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Vincent Archer
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Michael Hartman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Matt Chatterley
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Damion Schubert
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Amanda Walker
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [TECH DESIGN] Next Generation Infrastructure Phillip Lenhardt
- [TECH DESIGN] Next Generation Infrastructure Lachek Butalek
- [TECH DESIGN] Next Generation Infrastructure Jeffrey Kesselman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Amanda Walker
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Amanda Walker
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Daniel James
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Richard A. Bartle
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Phillip Lenhardt
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants John Buehler
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Sean Howard
- Re:[Humor] MMORPG Cliches (was " A rant against MMORPG installs and initialuserexperience") Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants Mike Rozak
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Michael Sellers
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Raph Koster
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Adam Martin
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Jon Leonard
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Jeffrey Kesselman
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Raph Koster
- [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience Vincent Archer
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system Michael Sellers
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system cruise
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Michael Sellers
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem John Buehler
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Lachek Butalek
- [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem Raph Koster
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant for Vanguard DANIEL Harman
- [OFF-TOPIC] A rant for Vanguard Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry (Was: A rant for Vanguard) Nick Koranda
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Sean Howard
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Morgan Ramsay
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Caliban Darklock
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Jeffrey Kesselman
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Adam Martin
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Industry Christopher Allen
- [DESIGN] Music Industry teaching the Game Michael Sellers
- [OFF-TOPIC] GDC (and hello all) Raph Koster