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"GAMING - VANGUARD"
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GAMING - VANGUARD
Total Articles:
3
Vanguard Online - a game I started playing in August of 2007.
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| | Vanguard - Biggest Piece Of Shit Since Dark Age Of Camelot
Posted: Aug 30, 2007, at 02:47 AM
Stored Under Topic: GAMING - VANGUARD -GUID-
Posted By: Infymus |  | |
I thought that I would try VANGUARD, Sony's latest game since I have tried Lord Of The Rings, World Of Warcraft, Dark Age Of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Ultima Online and EverQuest 1 and EverQuest 2.
I haven't seen a game this bad since trying to play Dark Age Of Camelot. It doesn't matter how good your game is, if your user interface sucks, the whole game will suck.
When I first got into game, there was no mouse-look. I spent an hour trying to figure out why there was no mouse move. Every MMOG uses RIGHT-MOUSE to move the camera around. LEFT-MOUSE is used to click on items in the world. RIGHT-MOUSE + LEFT-MOUSE = move forward. Due to some bug, I spent the first hour cursing that I had to physically bind my RIGHT-MOUSE to move mouse, and LEFT-MOUSE to move + click. So when I clicked an NPC, I'd move forward. It really sucked until someone told me to delete my user.ini file. That worked, but what a waste of time.
The user settings are absolutely and complete crap. There is NOTHING that allows you to tweak the game in fine detail with the interface like WOW, EQ2 or even LOTORO - a brand new game that has been out less time than Vanguard. The interface is terrible how it skews and moves around every time you switch out of the game. You can go into UI mode and then move stuff around, but if you alt-tab out of game and come back, you find that windows have moved all over.
There is NO AA or AF support. Everything looks jagged. The settings for graphical controls are very small and adjust dozens of things within one setting (low, middle, high, very high, ultra high). This is extremely stupid in that you can't just set one for one setting and another for another setting.
The graphical settings are few and far between in that I cannot tweak things down to the finest level, even in modifying the .INI files. If you set your outside AA/AF through your video card interface, textures, tags, nametags and a whole bunch other stuff starts flickering and appearing/disappearing.
There is NO setting for distance rendering of in game objects. You walk 10 feet away from something and it disappears - totally unrealistic. When things appear right before your face, it just sucks. Look at these two images:
Now I walk just a little forward and these bushes appear:
My god, I thought I was in Dark Age of Camelot all over again.
No thanks, if it takes over four plus hours just to get it tweaked, it isn't worth it. Even EQ2 being the graphical beast it is - was easier to set up, configure the interface and begin playing than this load of manure.
I couldn't even move items off my freaking task bar so I could arrange my palette. There was not a single area where you could modify your main use bar to move your skills around. You had to switch to a new bar, and add them manually. WTF is that all about?
Oh yeah, and at level 1 I was killed by a level 2 frog. There were level 2 npcs all over, but I couldn't take any of them. They would kill me before I could even get a fifth of their health down. When I rezzed, they put me at a rezz point. What is surrounding the rezz point? Level 2-4 fire ants, who promptly took me down again and again until I managed to run through them.
Quests? What quests, there wasn't anything to even tell me what to do. They put me out in the middle of this little tiny town and didn't even say TO START, DO THIS! oh no
No thanks SONY, what a waste of $54 bucks.
For now, this game is unplayble. Perhaps in six months, it will be better.
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| | Vanguard - Didn't I Cancel You Five Months Ago?
Posted: Jan 19, 2008, at 07:56 AM
Stored Under Topic: GAMING - VANGUARD -GUID-
Posted By: Infymus | | |
I had to clear some space off of my server last night, and what I moved were my archived games. For MMOG games, it can take as long as 12 hours to install and fully patch one if you do it from scratch - especially if you have what is called a "digital download". So I keep all of my MMOG games archived off on my main server, to save some room for myself - and to save me download headaches should I decide to go back for a while.
I moved my EQ2, VG (Vanguard) and LOTRO games back onto my game drive locally and ran the patcher system on all three. EQ2 won't let you patch if you haven't got an account. LOTORO updated fine. VG asked me for my username and password, and lo and behold, it came up.
That's odd, I cancelled. I looked through my emails and noted that indeed, I had received confirmation that I did cancel. I looked into my account online and for some reason, SONY had extended my credit date to 1/20/2008.
Intrigued by this, I logged in - thinking that, OK, it had been 5 months since I had last installed and tried this game. I figured perhaps I would expand my patience back out and see if I had done anything wrong in the first place.
They have improved the graphics and there is now a slider that allows you to set frill factor (bushes, trees, grass), but the limit was annoying as I could see the bushes and trees and grass unfold before my eyes. My rig is superior and I would like to see the limit extended 3 times what they offer.
I started a Dwarf Paladin and ended up on the top of some obscure mountain. The first quest giver wanted me to kill level 1 mobs, so I went to do that. Here I am paused to smile for the camera.
The interface is very tacky. I tried every combo that is available to you in other games to move the icons around. Shift- Alt- Alt+Shift- none of them worked. You have to press escape, go to the interface menu, click the interface open button, then move your items around. Highly annoying.
There are still some graphical problems. This guy was in a serious pickle.
They have not fixed the highly annoying bug where if you alt-tabbed out and back in, your entire interface was skewed. That is highly highly annoying to have your chat box, inventory boxes and so forth suddenly shifted - and then they are locked forcing you to again press ESC, toggle the interface, move them back, re-toggle and press OK. Comon SONY, fix that shit.
I seriously dislike how once you are in combat mode, you have to hit combat mode again to stop attacking. ESC will not get you out.
I spent over 10 minutes trying to find out how to re-arrange my hot keys. I could open my abilities, and drag-drop the ability onto the hot bar, but once it was there, I couldn't move it around. Finally I got into world chat and asked. Oooh, you have to hold it down for a while, THEN move it. Well duh
The snow effects are nice and so is the ambience. It quite reminds me of a cross between LOTRO and EQ2 graphic wise.
The attack system has no button queue attached to it. That means you have to mash down your attack buttons each time you want to attack, instead of hitting it once, hit it again and it will queue - meaning it will be used the next time it is available. Highly annoying.
Beat down time.
My level 1 Paladin has absolutely no healing except a 5 minute cool down "lay on of hands". Why give me a high level spell and not a low level spell? Uh, ok. No problem, maybe I'll get some healing later. In the early days of EQ2, you couldn't have healing until you were level 20.
I was dismayed that quest givers did not show up on the mini map. That can sure help to pinpoint where you need to go. In fact, the map didn't show anything of substance other than a couple of NPC targets and town locations.
I finished the first quest, turned it in, got some nice bracers and moved up to level 2. I then found the Paladin trainer and trained up two new skills, and picked up over a dozen new quests. Wow, I'm actually able to play this game - although I'm dismayed that after level 7, not only do you loose experience when you die - but you have to go and get your corpse - and possibly even drag your corpse to get it out of hot areas.
I headed off and completed a couple more quests, making level 3. Quest objects on the ground have no highlight to them making it difficult to spot them. Even so, once highlighted with the mouse, I was able to pick them up.
Before I knew it, I had played for over a half an hour without actually being annoyed.
Hmmm, after five months, they have made some significant improvements to this game making it somewhat playable now. I think I'll continue a little while until Warhammer comes out.
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After playing Vanguard the last couple of days, I feel like I've been thrown back to the old days of Asheron's Call, Ultima Online or Everquest I.
Vanguard still seems to have a lot of issues with the interface, game play, combat and more. When I bought a new 1h sword marked "Either", I could not equip it along side my shield or my weapon would just disappear. So I asked in general chat and confirmed it was a bug.
I fell through the world several times while I was exploring - and noticed there were a lot of graphic anomalies about. Bushes, trees, grass and other artifacts would flicker constantly around me. Even so, the world is beautifully done - and reminds me of Lord of the Rings and Everquest II all in one. The forests, roads, mountains and scenery are very well done - and are far more realistic than any other MMOG I have played.
Death, after level 7, is a real bitch. When you die, you leave your corpse behind and anything not bound to you stays on your corpse. This means you loose half your equipment and have to get your corpse back in order to get your crap back. You always end up at a resurrection point where you can spend cash and durability to bring your tombstone (corpse) back to where you are. Otherwise, run back to where you died (without your equipment, like no sword, no shield, I mean, WTF?) I do not understand this. Players have bitched about this kind of stupid pointless death shit for years - and gaming companies have finally come around. The current games - LOTRO, WOW, EQ2 - none of these have such huge sacrifices on death because it turns players off. If you are loosing experience to the point where you have to play for days to get it back - it gets old quick. Death is a huge issue in Vanguard - you do NOT want to die because the consequences are extreme.
Experience debt and loss of equipment is bullshit and the coders who thought it up should be flogged. Period.
So far I've made it to level 8 and found the great Dwarven city. It is about the same size as other cities and I found nothing of significance. Your usual stuff, brokers, bankers, mail boxes, trainers and quests.
I decided to go for a walk and the ambience was nice going from the high mountains down into the low valleys. It was just like Lord of the Rings Online in that trees went from pine to birch and oak - and the colors changed. Landscapes are beautiful.
Combat is still whack. I really hate that there is no key queue. You have to constantly watch your keys waiting for their refresh timers to expire. Some of the retaliation combo keys are built into your keyboard, meaning you can't get rid of them or move them around - they are stuck there, which is stupid because you're not going to click anything - you are going to move it to your hot bar and mash it there with keys 1 thru 0. At least it makes a noise when you've triggered a combo.
Stop target non MOB click doesn't work. If you click a mob, then click somewhere else, you are always targeting that mob unless you press escape, or target something else. Annoying as hell. The target circle around the mobs is annoyingly shaped - and is either on or off, and if off, you can't tell at all who you've targeted - so you always have it on.
I know that level 8 isn't much in the way of gaming to understand what keys make up your char, but so far I'm not impressed. I'm also not impressed at all with the UI and the horrid way it lets you move stuff around. You can't horizontal or vertical your bars change the size of the icons or the icon spacing. Comon, this game is brand new and this kind of shit was left out? I mean, I just don't get coders. MMOG games have been around for a long time. You would think that coders would take the best of games including the interfaces - and incorporate them. Alas, some coder who has never touched a female decides he is going to re-invent the wheel and whalla - you have a POS gaming interface and combat system.
The map just plain sucks. I've seen a lot of games, but this one is the biggest pile of shit I've ever seen. No quest markers for pickup or turning. Nothing at all of value except showing you were the towns are - and even that is extremely limited. I found myself heading out to the websites constantly looking for information because it wasn't on the map at all.
Feh, personally I don't see Vanguard as much value to the MMOG gamer looking for a new game. The VG forums are sparse with the technical assistance forum holding the most posts next to general. I just can't see this game lasting very long even with a 7.5 rating (Warcraft has a 9.5).
I'll play a little here and there but even WOW is a lot more fun than this.
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