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.

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

[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.

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