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New Content Coming To Vanguard
Allakhazam spoke with Salim Grant, lead designer for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, about a variety of new content coming to the fantasy MMO. Grant says that the update will be free, and it will include two new dungeons, a revamp of the buff system, and balance changes.
"Both of these dungeons are going to have a group component and a raid component that you unlock. As we get closer to releasing these dungeons we will be releasing new features like AA, item enhancement, and increasing our level cap. ... We will also be merging as many buffs as we can into a single buff with one icon to help make going through your buffs a little easier. These buffs will be upgrades to their previous buffs as well. Some classes like Dread Knight will be getting something kind of different that plays off of their DC ability and we have a cool ability planned for rogues. Necros and druids will see upgrades to their pets as well. We are also using this chance to hopefully fix some of the power issues we have with our game. The way some of our formulas work is not very expansive and we are looking to fix some of these things while making some of our stat mods a little more valuable."
Allow me to illustrate why this is a question worth asking, for those that never played Vanguard or dropped it after the first 10 minutes, like so many did:
Vanguard features three kinds of "leveling systems". One fighting, one crafting, one diplomacy. All three are supposedly allowing you to independently reach their respective maximum levels, i.e. you were supposedly able to become a master diplomat without having to resort to violence. You were supposedly able to become a master crafter without the need to go on raids for receipe drops.
So far the theory.
The reality is more like whatever you can craft will be outmatched by a drop. This is by itself not yet a complete backbreaker, but they made it so that the rarest item you could craft from the rarest resource can't hold a candle against an uncommon drop (read: One that you get in about three hours of slaughtering).
You may imagine for yourself how much demand there is for crafted goods. Essentially, the only thing that's in any kind of demand are bags and horseshoes because, you guessed it, they don't drop like candy.
So I thought, let's drop that idea and turn to diplomacy. That was at least a clever new idea. It's a bit like playing a trading card game in an MMO, but hey, it's something different. It also starts off quite nice, some neat tutorial quests, a main town quest line, then you're sent off to some other part and then... you hit the wall. You cannot do your quests because your gear does not provide enough influence (that dictates whether you can at all engage in a diplomacy contest with an NPC) to do any of your quests. Yet you only get new gear from quests, as rather rare drops or crafted from even rarer resources (and again, the crafted gear can't hold a candle to the drops). The drops in turn drop from the mob you cannot engage in diplomacy with. How this hen-and-egg problem is solved? Well, certain combination of race/class do have a different quest line that supplies them with gear with a hint more influence in the relevant area, so they can actually tackle this quest... in other words, it works kinda-sorta for certain races/classes, it's impossible for others. Personally, I'd consider this broken.
So the two features Van touted as "new and excitingly different" are broken and/or ridiculously pointless. What's left is a standard plain vanilla fantasy MMO with a balance I don't even want to start about. And the big news is new content for some classes for their fighting power? Wake me when something happens that gives me a reason to come back to Vanguard, i.e. something I can't have already, and better, in other fantasy MMOs.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In general, the poster has many valid points, but:
Crafting is not completely borked. Sure, it's fallen into niches or into status items (like having a galleon now), but there remain areas for which a crafter is essential. A few examples (and sadly, there are only a few) are guild halls and houses, particularly GHs for the guild buffs. Specialized gear, such as spell countering gear for casters, can pretty much only be crafted and is essential for critical raid battles ... try killing Kotasoth without being able to counter his heals. Focuses are critical, too -- my cleric has almost a full set of APW armor and it's caused my healing focus so much I'm checking into using a focus instead of a shield to get my healing focus back over the cap. All of these get into the fourth line of progression -- harvesting -- which has been widely overlooked these days because of dropped items. If you want your specialized gear, you have to do a lot of harvesting to get the rare and ultra-rare resources and dusts to make these, or have the plat to buy them off the exchange (if they are available). Some of the best APW gear is crafted gear as well, based on materials you need to harvest off of APW mobs.
We can be thankful at least that Sony hasn't completely screwed crafting like they did in Star Wars Galaxies -- once it was both essential and an artform that required a great deal of skill, now it's a joke.
I can't say much for diplomacy, other than using the VGTact.com resource, but again it's essential to the game. Adventurers, crafters and even diplos can all benefit from civic diplomacy buffs and we have a number of level 50 diplos in our guild to make sure the adventuring buffs are up before beginning any raid. Diplo buffs are another way of gaining some prestige -- at least enough to push you over the limit you need if you're relatively close. Again, VGTact.com also has information on locations and quests to help level you up.
These two definitely need attention, like making more raid gear drops targeted at these professions and making the items Bind On Equip, not Soulbound, but more importantly attention needs to be paid to the main ideas behind the classes. They've been ignored for too long.