Vanguard Producer Wants Second Chance for First Impression

Allakhazam is featuring an interview with Vanguard producer Thom Terrazas where he addresses some of the early issues that made Vanguard so slow out of the gates. "Performance; Optimization; High System Requirements. Everyone may have a different name for it but at the end of the day, optimization challenges were the biggest hurdle faced at launch. We lost too many customers at launch due to the inability to run the game smoothly and we have been making huge improvements in this area in every update since. I can speak to this first hand actually: When I started playing at launch, I experienced some horrible "hitching" while moving from one area to another on what I consider an average gamers' computer. When I began to play more extensively a couple months later, I noticed some considerable improvements to my frame rate. Today, it is night and day superior than it was at launch. Optimizing the game has been one of our top priorities and in the last six months, we have made some considerable strides in improving the player's experience. If you haven't logged in recently or if you gave us a look in the beginning and haven't been back since, check it out now - I'll even flag your account for free for a period of time if you want to go in and prove me wrong."

Re:Easier said than done

[0123456]

Often you don't know where the problems will be until you put it under load.

That wasn't Vanguard's problem: the problem was that the content was barely half-complete at launch, with much of the content for one of the three islands simply missing.

The game at launch was actually great fun up to the teen levels, but then I pretty much hit a brick wall in terms of power relative to the mobs in the game, and the lack of content in the island I started on made progression difficult, to say the least.

The game should have been developed for at least another six months before release; sure, it would have cost SoE more money, but in the long run they'd have far more players than they do today.

I did actually give it a try in the 'free month' they gave to old players last year, but I didn't see much difference and they'd merged servers and renamed most of my characters, so that left me with little incentive to resubscribe.

Re:Lesson learned

[ProppaT]

I don't think it was necessarily their fault this time around. I believe I remember Brad saying that, at the time, they were forced to release or abandon because of venture capitalists. So, they released the game with hopes that they could 1) fix the performance issues (which turned from a problem to a major problem after 250k people hit their servers all at once) and 2) Hopefully add the higher level content as people got higher level.

As is the case with so many MMO's these days, people played obsessively, hit level 50 in less than 2 weeks (which ended up not being so hard seeing that the high level game wasn't properly tweaked) and bad mouthing the game for having no high level game play. 3 months after release, a large chunk of the issues with the game were fixed. The Shaman were still screwed, their vision was changed at least 3 times after release, but most other classes (I believe one of the stealth classes was still majorly screwed) were complete, just not balanced.

The problem with these games is that there's just so much that goes into them. Investors want a WoW cash cow overnight and it's just not feasable. It's like writing a new revision of D&D, working the kinks out, then having to write code for it and work all the kinks out of it. While (personally) I think WoW stinks and is pretty much the arcade shooter of MMO's (..."back in my day we walked 4 hours to find our corpse, uphill, blindfolded, fallen beneath the world, with no food or water..."...), Blizzard did a few things right that most companies forget about. If you want a million gamers to play your game, make sure there's a million gamers who can play your game, that want to play your game, without having to upgrade their computer. Not only does it make creating the game easier, it makes optimizing it easier and gives you less problems in the long run.

Anyway, long story short, give Vanguard another chance (or a first chance). Even in the early days, it was a well envisioned MMORPG. It's personally the first MMORPG that's really captured my attention since Everquest (and to a smaller degree DAoC).

The game is droll, doll wise.

[UziBeatle]

Granted. He is correct in asserting the game runs much smoother than at launch.

So what.

  I've been playing Vanguard for the past 2 months or so after a long away
period following that horrid launch.

  I have had fun, and am with healthy sized guild too.

  Bottom line is though , for style whores like me, the games armor / clothing
is dull and vapid beyond belief.
Example: Roll a caster. Get used to wearing the same smock for levels 10 thru cap level and
learn to love it. Sure, they change the textures on the smocks but that is all the caster gets
to pick from.
  Nothing remotely 'sexy' or different in the least to choose from. God forbid any cleavage ever show.

  People love to bash WoW but Blizzard did get one thing right. There is a fair variety of armor styles
one can choose and if you dont' mind 'gimping' the character you can diverge from the set look.
Yeah, true enough for the hardcore it is no option and everyone looks the same but for those that just
enjoy the game without worrying about capping their leet char to the max there are options with the 'look'.

    LOTRO, Lord of the Rings Online, recently added a great patch that introduced 'appearance armor'. Grand idea
but they foolishly limited the amount of armor/dress up outfits one can pick from or find.

Both of which are leaps and bounds above the mind frakingly dull armor in Vanguard.

Sony also forces every user to use ADMIN mode to launch the damn game.
SOny can shove it up their ass. I'm tired of that 'feature' and it is inexcusable practice.

  It was fun but I'm glad to cancel the account there and Age of Conan has them beat all to hell in the
artwork department in the landscape. As for the appearance of the toons themselves... yeah they are all
human characters and there are no cat or dog people,etc. Oh well, can't have everything now can we?
AOC armor appearance? Only time will tell. I will give them the time, unlike with Vanguard I expect
people will stay and the money will roll in to Funcom.

If in six months time they have not filled in the missing holes like armor style variety, and other dits
and dots then we can shelve it.

Age of Conan has everything going for it that Vanguard won't ever have .
Not because it was impossible to do,
but because SOny is running the game and has zero clue.
 

Re:Open Week

[MeanderingMind]

I think you, naturally, haven't been keeping up on WoW. That probably shows you're an intelligent individual, unlike myself.

It's been months since it was more efficient to grind than quest, and while each class has its nemesis and victim there isn't a single class that gets a free ride in PvP, or has it overly difficult. If you're referencing Arenas, it's certain class combinations that are overpowered rather than specific classes.

Just a friendly update.

Game Update 5

[LordKazan]

I type this while harvesting on my 50 ranger/45 carpenter in vanguard.

Game Update 5 is due soon and I have played around with it on the test server - it delivers a fairly large burst of optimizations and visual improvements. The games original problem is one man essentially: Brad McQuaid doesn't know how to manage his way out of a wet paper bag.

They have been working toward a relaunch since the moment Sony bought out Sigil and thus far have done a good job.

Anyone who liked the game but got driven away by bugs and performance issues should come around once Game Update 5 or Game Update 6 are pushed