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."

Comments

In other Sony Online Entertainment news...

[elrous0]

A company spokesperson is also promising fixes for the multitude of problems in "Star Wars Galaxies" that have plagued the MMORPG for the last five years. "This time you can trust us," said SOE director Constance Phuckup, citing the company's extensive experience in dealing with glitchey, poorly implmented, unbalanced MMORPG's.

Lesson learned

[nikanj]

Next time, optimize first, release second.

Re:Lesson learned

[subsoniq]

I think game companies are finally starting to figure this out (where MMO's are concerned). I was in the AoC open beta and had a lot of problems with the beta client (debugging code was compiled in and turned on), but I've heard from the early access people that the RTM client was smooth as silk, a huge improvement over the different beta clients and actually playable on machines 1-2 years old. And of course Mythic pushed back the release of Warhammer Online, which hopefully means they'll get it straight for a smooth launch.

Re:Lesson learned

[hedwards]

It surprises me that games developers wouldn't know that. I think that it's been standard practice in the OS world for a long time. Every time I update to current before the next branch happens on freebsd, there's always a note to people that think that current is slow. Largely because all the debugging code is still active by default and none of the compiler optimization flags are being used. I'm pretty sure that Windows is the same way, and I'd be shocked if the Linux kernel isn't as well.

It's just not particularly helpful to conduct a beta without having the debugging symbols compiled in. You'd be pretty much limited to finding balance issues, UI problems and general fun. None of which really matter if the game is regularly crashing.

Re:Lesson learned

[SatanicPuppy]

Well it's also finally come around that there are companies who have done it before...Both Mythic(DAoC) and Funcom(AO) have prior experience with long-running MMOs.

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).

Open Week

[everphilski]

Run an open week. I don't want to have to go out and purchase the game to "prove you wrong." I played the beta and was active in several forums, I was really hoping this was the game that could put my EverQuest addiction to rest. But sadly it was not. I still play EverQuest a few nights a week, and I'd like to move on but I haven't found a MMO that satisfies.

Vanguard made lots of promises but never really fulfilled them, and it's sad because on paper it really looked like a great game. Maybe they do now, but if you really want to prove it, have an open week where people can download the client and play for free, like an open beta. Yeah, there's a few logistical issues to work out but I'm sure Sony can take the load if prepared (I'm not being sarcastic...). If you want to bring us in, give us something to chew on. Everquest still gives out free month trials... the Trial of the Isle, which is essentially a month playing with the first three expansions on designated servers. The whole game, uncrippled. Something like that might help you prove your point.

Re:Open Week

[lewp]

I think any game that wants to be a competitive MMO nowadays needs to have some kind of free trial that doesn't involve shelling out for the game box first. The whole "first month free" is nice, but not if I have to actually buy the game to get it.

With other games you can check reviews and get a fairly clear picture of what's going on. MMOs aren't so easy because a) they take a lot more time to fully get into than a reviewer is likely to spend with the game and b) they're constantly changing. You need to let people get their feet wet with the game before expecting them to pay up.

Re:Open Week

[MrBandersnatch]

Sadly, Vanguard is dead and has been running on life support since a few weeks after launch. Due to the low subscriber base I strongly doubt it will EVER see an expansion, which would be the only way it can ever hope to GROW its subscriber base! But maybe it would have been worth going back except......

Age of Conan! Its actually GOOD and has delivered on many of the promises Vanguard was making. I'm not saying there aren't problems (only a few of which are major) but I've not had this much fun in an MMO since EQ.

Re:Open Week

[GeekDork]

The issue with segregated trials is that you will experience a vastly different community than on real live servers. For example, when I was still playing DAoC, a magazine for the mentally less endowed (no other way to say it more politely) had a trial offer. You could pretty much see the average intelligence drop to negative in the starting areas in the weeks after that. If I had started during that time, I'd have paid to make it stop.

Giving trial players too much influence on the live environment without paying for it on the other hand will make a lot of Chinese extremely happy.

All in all, it's a no-win situation. My idea would be something like a 2 or 3-week trial for a small amount of money, say, 5-7$, which is pretty affordable. People throw away a lot more money on trash food and bad movies on a daily basis. SOE also seems to be working on a new/alternative starting area, which could also be (ab)used as a trial area.

From the view of a returned player who played shortly after release, and then stopped for 10 months, I can say that the game has really improved a lot performance-wise, and has a rather mature and friendly community. Apart from that it's a perfectly normal MMO, with long-standing bugs that still need to be fixed since beta, class rebalancing with each update, surprise features, etc.

Re:Open Week

[Bieeanda]

That's what open betas have been used for, for years now. A bit of cross-marketing with FilePlanet (subscribe to our site and get into beta 'free'!) and everyone but the player wins.

Besides that, there are a couple of reasons why you're not likely to see downloadable demos for live MMOs:
First off, they want to move as many boxes as they can. That initial $50 outlay, when you take into account the tens of thousands of fanboys hoping to grab prime virtual land, loot or names, goes a long, long way to paying off development costs or server leases. That $50 also lets the ol' Sunk Costs fallacy come out to play. You can't return the game, so you're more likely to play the whole month, so you're more likely to climb over the learning curve and UI/AI quirks.
Second, when you start offering free trials of the live game, the gold farmers really start to come out of the woodwork. Between rotating IPs, MAC spoofing and proxies, nothing will block them for long. If you let them in with the rest of the players, your in-game economy is fucked from the very beginning. Free trials tend to manifest when the player-base has stabilized, or when the publisher's absolutely desperate for players, and the risk of disruptive farmers becomes tolerable or necessary.

Korean-style MMOs are a different matter, because they operate on a totally different sort of revenue model. Most of them are dedicated to coaxing real money out of the player for in-game items, and the actual in-game currency allows for little more than subsistence.

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.

Re:Opening doors

[MortimerV]

And here I was hoping that Vanguard was some kind of rhythm game MMO.

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.

Yeah

[dunezone]

And I want a second chance for a first impression with the girl I met last week. I just wasn't performing at top game compared to my competition, but since then I have optimized myself to run more efficiently and smooth. I had some issues moving from one subject to the next but I fixed those issues and now I have a new tool, playing it cool. Just prove me wrong.

About a week or two too late

[Knara]

This offer would have been a lot more attractive before Age of Conan released this weekend/yesterday. A little bit too late now, since anyone in the MMO scene who was looking for a new game is now busy running around AoC.

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.

Interesting inverse relationship

[sdhankin]

I've noticed that, with few exceptions (such as a new release), games with good gameplay, high popularity, and rare technical issues have long free trials (WoW has two weeks last time I checked.) Tabula Rasa just gave me a 3 day free trial. Vanguard has no free trial whatsoever.

I'd ask what games with short or nonexistent trials have to hide, but I think the answer is obvious. If Vanguard's producers really believe in their product, they should have no problem with letting folks play for free for a couple of weeks - get them involved, attached and hooked. If, on the other hand, they're afraid people will see the game in a bad light after playing that long, I guess a short trial (or none) makes sense.

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