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Please bring back immersion

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:18 pm
by Gruff
Please bring back the shaman totem quests!

Can we get rid of all “no fly zones”? The point of the game is to have fun. If someone wants to skip the entrance of an outdoor dungeon, who really cares? Too many games are too busy trying to force players to play it a specific way or not at all, and too many players choose the “not at all” option.

Please open up the sea lanes and allow someone with a ship to sail from one continent to another without having to sail through a giant teleporter. The ship teleporters could still exist for those that want it

Please allow rented mounts to be rented for longer than 5 minutes. Perhaps a menu could be added so a mount can be rented for 5, 10, 15…60 minutes. They don’t have to be cheap and a 10 minute rental might cost more than twice a 5 minute rental. You could even have slower and faster rented mounts and flying mounts. Renting a race horse or the fastest griffin would not be cheap!

If travel rifts are present, please put them where they would have been build – in the larger cities and not out in the wilderness. If rental mounts are addressed, rifts probably won’t be needed so much.

Another future wish list item: Could folks who sell horses also lease them? A level 1 might not be able to buy a slow, wore out nag but maybe he could rent one. It could share code with the flying mount rentals making it easier to implement. I am thinking along the lines of the original starting ares. Newbie isle was interesting but lacked the flavor of the original starting areas. Also, could quest rewards for the original starting areas be upgraded to be on par with the common starting island?

Please restore the old uber quests and quest items like the red-labeled Lord Tsang quests and the other lower level “epic” type quest and quest rewards.

Please restore flying mount rental locations where they were logical, especially on islands. If on an island, flying mount rentals used to be on the side of the island closest to the continent or a nearby land mass. But a developer decided he didn’t like people flying very far so he reduced the rental time to 5 minutes and at the same time, moved the rental locations further away from the closest land mass. It was about the same time they added no fly zones and nerfed Lord Tsang quests and not contingently, about the time we took a multi-year break from the game.

Please get rid of level requirements for mounts, at least for starter horses. If you can afford a horse at level 1, why can’t you ride one?

Is it reasonable to reduce the number of chunks, say merge 2X2, 3X3 or even a 4X4 square chunk areas into single chunks? Computers are a whole lot faster today than they were in 2007… This might help reduce the server size chunk problem when boating up rivers and making ship travel more immersive.

Future Request: Itemization - this is a big request from a data standpoint but can we slowly leave behind the endless item stats a wee bit and one day start adding more items that serve a primary purpose? Vanguard suffered from the same issue that plagued similar games such as World of Warcraft and Everquest – most items are just a collection of stats and a graphic. Who would make a magic item that raises a lot of different things just a tiny amount? If you made a magic item, wouldn’t you do it with a specific purpose in mind? Would you make a pair of gauntlets that helped numerous stats an inconsequential amount or would you make something like a pair of gauntlets of strength or perhaps a pair of gloves that made your spells harder to resist? The two items I remember most in Vanguard were Journey Boots (you ran faster) and a cloak that let my ranger turn into a panther so he looked like his pet. A higher end necklace might let you travel underwater indefinitely while a lower level one might let you hold your breath a little longer.

Re: Please bring back immersion

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 4:04 am
by Gruff
One thing I forgot, if memory serves, the ant queen used to drop a pretty awesome chest piece but it was apparently removed from the game about the time that the Lord Tsang quest was nerfed. The armor piece was good enough to last a young toon to about level 30ish. Could that and similar items get re-added to the game?

Re: Please bring back immersion

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:59 am
by Jakkal
Gruff wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:18 pm Please bring back the shaman totem quests!
They're in game, just not public. I'm still waiting on the shaman abilities to be put in before we put the totem quests in. Players have a tendancy to forget that A. this emulator is being worked on as they play it, and B. not everything is in yet. So we're trying to mitigate getting tons of unnecessary bug reports. More info is available here: viewtopic.php?f=76&t=2232#p25765
Gruff wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:18 pm Can we get rid of all “no fly zones”? The point of the game is to have fun. If someone wants to skip the entrance of an outdoor dungeon, who really cares? Too many games are too busy trying to force players to play it a specific way or not at all, and too many players choose the “not at all” option.
I'm of mixed feelings about this, because, yes, no-fly zones are annoying. However, you'll find them less annoying when you, and your group, who prefer "immersion" are fighting your way through Tregal Keep to a named, just to have someone swoop in on a flying mount and take it from you. This was extremely common in RI where people would camp the named for days at a time trying to get the necro meat book. There are many dungeons where flying into them is not an option (Greystone, Vol Tuniel, Dargon's Tomb, Pantheon, etc) but for the above-world ones, it was a problem. And it will be a problem if we allow fliers there.

And I'm not really in the mood for debates like "put all the important mobs underground or out of reach" arguments. So I'm just going to leave it at that.
Gruff wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:18 pm Please open up the sea lanes and allow someone with a ship to sail from one continent to another without having to sail through a giant teleporter. The ship teleporters could still exist for those that want it
I don't even think this is possible.
Gruff wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:18 pm Please allow rented mounts to be rented for longer than 5 minutes. Perhaps a menu could be added so a mount can be rented for 5, 10, 15…60 minutes. They don’t have to be cheap and a 10 minute rental might cost more than twice a 5 minute rental. You could even have slower and faster rented mounts and flying mounts. Renting a race horse or the fastest griffin would not be cheap!
I'd like to get rid of rented mounts altogether, allow people to earn a low level flier, and put an hour long cooldown on it. Flying mounts make the game world smaller and allows people to bypass a lot of content. There are other means to get faster mounts that requires players to put in the effort for it. And that's the way VG is meant to be.
Gruff wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:18 pm If travel rifts are present, please put them where they would have been build – in the larger cities and not out in the wilderness. If rental mounts are addressed, rifts probably won’t be needed so much.
The rifts will not be moved.
Gruff wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:18 pm Another future wish list item: Could folks who sell horses also lease them? A level 1 might not be able to buy a slow, wore out nag but maybe he could rent one. It could share code with the flying mount rentals making it easier to implement.
It's a possibility, but with rental flying mounts, it's pointless. Plus you can just buy a horse at level 7.
Gruff wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:18 pm I am thinking along the lines of the original starting ares. Newbie isle was interesting but lacked the flavor of the original starting areas. Also, could quest rewards for the original starting areas be upgraded to be on par with the common starting island?
The Isle of Dawn has the best implemented questline of all the starter areas. It was an example of what the team could do if SOE/Sigil just let them do it. I would prefer to redo all the starter town quests to be more immersive, interesting, and involving like IOD's questline is. The others are boring as hell and aren't meaningful whatsoever to the area at all.

Other than that, I have worked on setting up the newbie starter gear for some towns to match that of IOD, esp since IOD's was nerfed pre-F2P. Dahknarg is an example of this since none of the original armor stats survived to the emulator. Tursh was done to some extent as well.

Gruff wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:18 pm Please restore the old uber quests and quest items like the red-labeled Lord Tsang quests and the other lower level “epic” type quest and quest rewards.
I don't know what you mean by 'red-labeled' quests. The Lord Tsang weapon quests are in.
Gruff wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:18 pm Please restore flying mount rental locations where they were logical, especially on islands. If on an island, flying mount rentals used to be on the side of the island closest to the continent or a nearby land mass. But a developer decided he didn’t like people flying very far so he reduced the rental time to 5 minutes and at the same time, moved the rental locations further away from the closest land mass. It was about the same time they added no fly zones and nerfed Lord Tsang quests and not contingently, about the time we took a multi-year break from the game.
Five minutes is plenty of time to get where you need to on any flyer. I doubt we'll move the locations of the rental mounts from live. They reduced the time becaues 10 minutes was too long and was contributing to players bypassing content.
Gruff wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:18 pm Please get rid of level requirements for mounts, at least for starter horses. If you can afford a horse at level 1, why can’t you ride one?
I might be in favor of this, just because I hate being slow.
Gruff wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:18 pm Is it reasonable to reduce the number of chunks, say merge 2X2, 3X3 or even a 4X4 square chunk areas into single chunks? Computers are a whole lot faster today than they were in 2007… This might help reduce the server size chunk problem when boating up rivers and making ship travel more immersive.
This is impossible.
Gruff wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:18 pm Future Request: Itemization - this is a big request from a data standpoint but can we slowly leave behind the endless item stats a wee bit and one day start adding more items that serve a primary purpose? Vanguard suffered from the same issue that plagued similar games such as World of Warcraft and Everquest – most items are just a collection of stats and a graphic. Who would make a magic item that raises a lot of different things just a tiny amount? If you made a magic item, wouldn’t you do it with a specific purpose in mind? Would you make a pair of gauntlets that helped numerous stats an inconsequential amount or would you make something like a pair of gauntlets of strength or perhaps a pair of gloves that made your spells harder to resist? The two items I remember most in Vanguard were Journey Boots (you ran faster) and a cloak that let my ranger turn into a panther so he looked like his pet. A higher end necklace might let you travel underwater indefinitely while a lower level one might let you hold your breath a little longer.
Uhm. Are you talking about crafted items or quested items? Crafted items already gave you a lot of control over the stats. And there was a stat pool amount on them so that if you added more stuff to it, it would divide the numbers between all the stats.

There were already items in game that let you do things like jump double height or breathe underwater.

If you're talking about quested items, especially raid items, yes we want them to have a ton of stats.

Re: Please bring back immersion

Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2018 2:21 pm
by Gruff
Jakkal wrote: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:59 am I'm of mixed feelings about this, because, yes, no-fly zones are annoying. However, you'll find them less annoying when you, and your group, who prefer "immersion" are fighting your way through Tregal Keep to a named, just to have someone swoop in on a flying mount and take it from you. This was extremely common in RI where people would camp the named for days at a time trying to get the necro meat book. There are many dungeons where flying into them is not an option (Greystone, Vol Tuniel, Dargon's Tomb, Pantheon, etc) but for the above-world ones, it was a problem. And it will be a problem if we allow fliers there.
I thought about that after I had posted. I can see where named stealing can be a problem. In practice, I never had anyone swoop in to steal a named but I got knocked off my mount more times than I can count. The number of the no fly zones seemed excessive and some caused more harm than good. Perhaps when the game is complete, the no fly zones can be reviewed and those deemed not really needed can be removed. I don't remember the outdoor area but one near Kaon's Rush or whatever it was called caused grief and I almost never saw anyone in that area.
Jakkal wrote: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:59 am I don't even think this is possible.
I am not familiar with the architecture of the game or even which language was used. The game appears to be largely data driven, so I assumed that if the missing ocean chunks between the land masses were added to the server's database then ships could sail through them. But if the outer ocean chunk boundaries are enforced at by the client then it might require a client change which is almost certainly not possible.
Jakkal wrote: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:59 am I'd like to get rid of rented mounts altogether, allow people to earn a low level flier, and put an hour long cool down on it. Flying mounts make the game world smaller and allows people to bypass a lot of content. There are other means to get faster mounts that requires players to put in the effort for it. And that's the way VG is meant to be.
I know about the unicorn/wolf mount quests - I did them for several characters (2-3 unicorns and a wolf for my dread knight). Clearly the world should not be made small but at the same time, traveling through the same areas for the umpteenth time when you have a limited amount of free time to play is not ideal. I am the guy who usually ignored rifts and traveled overland because I loved the immersion. I'd even sail a sloop up rivers. But my wife works a LOT and she hates traveling over land that she's already explored. Her free time is at a premium. Doing one of those mount quests required doing stuff, turn in the quest, going back out to the same area, kill more, turn in again, etc. An hour cool down on a mount without rental mounts would make that quest line a complete drag because you'd have to keep going back and forth over the same area repeatedly. That is not fun.

We built houses on an island. As you know, houses are shared for an entire account. My low level toons would gate to the house but when the rental time was cut from 10 minutes to 5 minutes, the rental flying mounts could not get our lower level characters back to areas on the continent within their level range. It wasn't a big deal if their gate was up but if not, they were stuck. We ended up scrapping our houses and moving.
Jakkal wrote: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:59 am It's a possibility, but with rental flying mounts, it's pointless. Plus you can just buy a horse at level 7.
I thought you had to be level 10 to buy a horse? But regardless, its not a priority. I just never understood the need to put a minimum level on a slow horse. I remember when the game first came out, we had a friend who made a character on a different continent who had to make the long trek to join us in Thestra. It took forever. I don't think the game had rifts at the time.
Jakkal wrote: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:59 am The Isle of Dawn has the best implemented questline of all the starter areas. It was an example of what the team could do if SOE/Sigil just let them do it. I would prefer to redo all the starter town quests to be more immersive, interesting, and involving like IOD's questline is. The others are boring as hell and aren't meaningful whatsoever to the area at all.
I agree about the quests. I said content but I meant environment. My favorite starting area is the dwarf lands, and its not because of the quests.
Jakkal wrote: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:59 am Other than that, I have worked on setting up the newbie starter gear for some towns to match that of IOD, esp since IOD's was nerfed pre-F2P. Dahknarg is an example of this since none of the original armor stats survived to the emulator. Tursh was done to some extent as well.
Outstanding! I guess I got burned out on IoD because once that was added, it was the only place my wife wanted to start new characters (for the IoD charm) - and we each had 2 accounts full of characters. Will characters who start at other locations be able to earn an isle of dawn charm? I saw a reward on the clicky item in the halfling starting area that creates the charm (string or rope) but I haven't seen the other components that are needed to create the charm.
Jakkal wrote: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:59 am I don't know what you mean by 'red-labeled' quests. The Lord Tsang weapon quests are in.
When I said red labeled, I meant the font color of the weapon names were red (legendary). Years ago, a close friend and co-worker started playing the game with us and we did the Lord Tsang quests together. After dying so many times, we finally got our legendary weapons. 3 days later, Sony lowered the level of the quest and made it far easier. At the same time, they replaced all existing Lord Tsang legendary weapons with the rewards that you'd get doing the easier version of the quest. Better blue weapons were for sale on the exchange for 25 silver. My friend got so pissed off that he quit the game for good while my wife and I took a 2 year break. The original Tsang quests were very difficult but the rewards were basically lower level epic (legendary) weapons that made all the frustration worthwhile and bestowed a sense of accomplishment (kind of like you were doing a lower level version of the epic weapon quests in early Everquest).
Jakkal wrote: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:59 am Five minutes is plenty of time to get where you need to on any flyer. I doubt we'll move the locations of the rental mounts from live. They reduced the time because 10 minutes was too long and was contributing to players bypassing content.
10 minutes is more time than needed but from experience, 5 minutes is not always enough. It depends on where you are flying from/to, especially if flying from or to certain islands. Personally, I'd rather fly longer and never use a rift. Experiencing content on the ground the first few times is great but traveling overland multiple times eventually becomes a real world time sink and it reduces the amount of time available for doing quests. Its at its worst when characters who want to play together are far apart.
Jakkal wrote: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:59 am Uhm. Are you talking about crafted items or quested items? Crafted items already gave you a lot of control over the stats. And there was a stat pool amount on them so that if you added more stuff to it, it would divide the numbers between all the stats.

There were already items in game that let you do things like jump double height or breathe underwater.

If you're talking about quested items, especially raid items, yes we want them to have a ton of stats.
I was talking about mid tier quested items and rare drop items. I know about customizing crafted gear. I see the need of a lot of stats on raid gear. The need for that comes from the large number of stats that the game tracks.

Re: Please bring back immersion

Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2018 5:33 pm
by Jakkal
I'm going to go through the whole post, I just want to point some stuff out real quick.

You are asking us to change some of the fundamental facets of VG so that it caters better to you, BUT, the problem is that VG already has tons of options for mounts and travel - they just don't appeal to you. Singular, you. We can't make any changes, let alone huge sweeping changes for any individual person. There are *a lot of alternatives* for the things you're pointing about.

1. There are a lot of faster mounts in game, but they need to be earned in some fashion. Yes, the Unicorn and Shadowhound are options at the late 20's. But so are bought horses if you don't feel like putting the effort into it (level 30 horse is only slightly less speed/stability than the Unicorn/Shadowhound). The Arena in Qalia has a camel. Also an alternative to the Shadowhound/Unicorn are the city faction mounts at level 30 which have the same stats as the unicorn and shadowhound.

2.You're talking to me about how much of a drag the Unicorn/Shadowhound quests would be - but guess what - I did them before the rifts existed. So I very well know that you spend the majority of your time on those quests traveling (Especially without a ship for the unicorn). But, this is WHY the rifts exist. Because you have the *option* to play immersive, or you can use the rifts to bypass. We can't give people unearned mounts or make things easier because these two options aren't the best for you.

3. I had a house in Bley's Bluff, one of the farthest away from the mainland. I never had a problem with rental flyers getting back to the mainland. And I played two main toons that had no speed buffs. Now if you're talking about getting it to a more convenient place - then again - there are options. But even with my level 20 toons in Bley's Bluff being forced to run through level 40's area - I made it. You also have regular recall. There are items in game that would teleport you to NT and TG. There's guild hall recall. Or, like you said, you could move your house. Most of the islands in Kojan had plenty of open housing lots and all of them put you within spitting distance of a lower level area. I realize it's an inconvenience to move a house since you lose most of the mats to create it, but that option is available for people unhappy with their situation. And the final option is to get a boat. Even a sloop was only a couple of plat on the exchange.

So basically what I'm saying is that if you don't like rifts, and if you don't like certain aspects of normal travel, and you don't want to do what other options are available, there's not much we can or will do about it. And I'm not saying this in a stern or strict tone, or a 'fuck you' kind of way. I'm just trying to lay it out that it would not be fair to the rest of the players for us to try to change things on this scale for one person. In fact, I think they'd be right pissed at us if we did it.

So what I'm saying is that I've heard your points about the way certain things were set up in the game, and we're not ignoring it. We're just not going to implement the suggestions.

Re: Please bring back immersion

Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2018 5:42 pm
by cgwars
I say we go old school vanguard, ditch the rifts, and rentable flying mounts (except on IoD) and allow for players to have to travel to where they need to go, increasing the importance of boats and higher quality mounts

Re: Please bring back immersion

Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2018 5:43 pm
by cgwars
Let those who complain, complain

Re: Please bring back immersion

Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2018 5:48 pm
by Jakkal
No, we can't get rid of the rifts. Vanguard is too big and has too few players. If you have a limited time to play and you end up waiting an hour just for a groupmate to get to you, then the game is bust. No one's going to play that.

We intend to mitigate some of the immersion issues by forcing players to unlock the riftways by physically going to them. This is what the original rift network setup did. Though the network was kind of a shitty implementation. (The three different networks). But this way you don't automatically unlock rifts just from hitting a level. You still have to hit the level, don't get me wrong, but you have to go physically unlock them.

We're also getting rid of the majority of those flying mounts that were just given away after F2P - like Randolph and the lockbox mounts. We'll still have them available for those that want them, but you have to earn them in some meaningful way (Such as you only get to buy them after earning a true flier).

It was the flying mounts that really killed ship usage. When only high end characters could get flying mounts, ships were used a lot by those working their way up. So I'd like to get it back to that.

Plus someday I intend to make a raid that requires you be on a ship. So there's that :)

Re: Please bring back immersion

Posted: Wed Jun 13, 2018 2:20 am
by Gruff
Jakkal wrote: Tue Jun 12, 2018 5:33 pm I'm going to go through the whole post, I just want to point some stuff out real quick.

You are asking us to change some of the fundamental facets of VG so that it caters better to you,...
No, I am not. That would be selfish and I am anything but selfish. I don't want any changes made specifically for me. If my post read that way then perhaps I should have proof read it better. That is one reason I hate text based communications. I merely gave examples why I made my suggestions - and they were simply suggestions. My mistake was typing my suggestions when I first found the site and without realizing that the post soliciting suggestions was 3 years old. Its a lot easier and cheaper to move a bathroom before you build a house then after, and this house is largely built. My wife and I had unicorns on 3 characters (each) and a shadow hound each. I was working on 2 more unicorns and another shadow hound when Sony announced they were pulling the plug on Vanguard at which point I cancelled all of my Sony accounts.
Jakkal wrote: Tue Jun 12, 2018 5:33 pm 2.You're talking to me about how much of a drag the Unicorn/Shadowhound quests would be - but guess what - I did them before the rifts existed. So I very well know that you spend the majority of your time on those quests traveling (Especially without a ship for the unicorn). But, this is WHY the rifts exist. Because you have the *option* to play immersive, or you can use the rifts to bypass. We can't give people unearned mounts or make things easier because these two options aren't the best for you.
I didn't ask for anything unearned. I merely pointed out that it'd be a shame to see rental mounts removed from the game when they are already there. I wasn't thinking about just myself. Thanks to a partially amputated foot, (unfortunately) I have more free time than my wife or any of my RL friends that used to play Vanguard. I hope to lure them all back to Vanguard and recruit others when the game is ready. The rental mounts was a primary selling point I used to lure friends away from WoW years ago because in VG, one had total control of rented flying mounts. In WoW, you had no real control. I hope to see a larger player base again and the rental mounts were popular. The best thing about them wasn't the travel speed - it was the view. From what I've seen, most of the folks on this site are old school, more hard core players that want a challenge and love immersion. I fit into that group. Besides getting lower level characters off our island, I mostly used rented mounts for the awesome view. Vanguard is a beautiful world. But they were also popular for people playing alts who have already explored the land they flew over. Not every would be returnee will have as much free time as hard core gamers.
Jakkal wrote: Tue Jun 12, 2018 5:33 pm 3. I had a house in Bley's Bluff, one of the farthest away from the mainland. I never had a problem with rental flyers getting back to the mainland. And I played two main toons that had no speed buffs. Now if you're talking about getting it to a more convenient place - then again - there are options. But even with my level 20 toons in Bley's Bluff being forced to run through level 40's area - I made it. You also have regular recall. There are items in game that would teleport you to NT and TG. There's guild hall recall. Or, like you said, you could move your house. Most of the islands in Kojan had plenty of open housing lots and all of them put you within spitting distance of a lower level area. I realize it's an inconvenience to move a house since you lose most of the mats to create it, but that option is available for people unhappy with their situation. And the final option is to get a boat. Even a sloop was only a couple of plat on the exchange.
I never checked out Kojan. I could build houses in Qalia and Thestra but I was still working on the Kojan house quests when Sony announced they were going to pull the plug. As I posted above, i failed to notice that suggestions were solicited 3 years ago. That ship has sailed. So I will withdraw all of my suggestions except to ask that you think long and hard before removing rental mounts from the game. They were a very popular feature.

Finally, this might not be the right place for this, but I can't help but wonder if I can help speed up bringing VG back to life. I am learning new a new computer languages so hopefully I can get on some projects where I can work from home. Going up and down 2 flights of stairs with a half foot is hard to do every day. But I do have some free hours in the evenings here and there. I am an electrical and computer engineer and a software developer with 31 years of experience. I know C#, C, VB.Net and numerous other languages as well as a lot of experience with databases and stored procedures as well as biomedical, medical, control theory, scientific and business applications, and even some online game development experience - but no MMRPG's. Ironically, I don't have a great deal of experience with websites or technologies such as Angular. I wouldn't want to consume resources (developer hours) bringing me up to speed though and I assume a lot of Vanguard is proprietary. Of course, I know how to copy and paste and can figure out how to write scripts provided documentation of the language used is available if its proprietary.

Re: Please bring back immersion

Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2018 10:03 pm
by John Adams
Ditch rifts and give Wizards "Translocate"! ~cha-ching~

/ooc WTS TL in POK!

oh, wrong game. sorry.