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Elimination of junk loot and ~80% of quests.

Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 3:13 pm
by nosferum
If I could wish Vanguard:SOH into being rather than you having to spend thousands of hours resurrecting it, I would have the below poofed into being.

Remove junk loot
Junk loot (e.g.: Long Tortoise Tooth) seems like more work than its worth, so I'd remove it. What would we lose? We'd lose immersion and sources of money. To add immersion to a game, there are methods that I think would take the same amount of development time and actually get noticed far more than would junk loot. The status quo just fills a player's limited inventory and requires developers to create items that everyone know is of virtually no emotional interest to players. As for a vector of adding money into the economy, mobs can simply drop the coin or quests can significantly up their money rewards. One of the advantages would be a reduction in burden on the server, but I've no idea if it would be significant.

Eliminate most Adventuring quests
While I recognize that adventuring quests help push players out into world areas that might otherwise go underappreciated and underused, I think the quest-driven Adventuring in Vanguard (and perhaps most major MMOs since 2001) resulted in more harm than good. I suspect it dramatically diminished player-originated planning and play. That most of the adventuring gear--and some of its money and experience--is derived form quests rather than the mobs or world loci (e.g.: treasure chests) incentivizes players to look for quests to drive their plans rather than making plans themselves. It also drives players to look for the next quest rather than possibly staying in an area for its other inherent positive qualities. Given that, I'd destroy perhaps 80% of the quests. No, I've no plan which would go and which would stay, nor which metric one might apply. Those few quests that remain would pay out a lot more money (to offset the loss of money from the shunted quests and from the above removal of junk items). As for all of the loot formerly introduced via the quests, I suppose they would simply be added to mob drop tables. I have not seriously considered possible complications from this portion of the change.

Remove ~40% of Class Abilities
Please tell me I'm not the only one who thought Vanguard: SOH suffered from overburden of abundance: in this case class abilities. To even use your compliment of abilities requires such an unfolded UI of buttons such than you not only abandon visual immersion but simply expect to feel swamped by options. More than that, the status quo risks class roll overlap. Vanguard somehow avoided major overlap of class abilities (my opinion, and good on the developers) but if there is a problem, it can largely be addressed by reducing each class' ground.

Shrink All Cities About 60%
Exhibit A: the popularity of New Targanor. I suspect that world design--and city design--is still based on the woefully out-dated approach called a Buildings-first paradigm. It's as if a writer writes a description of the look and feel of a place, then an artist draws something that would look cool in a movie or a poster, and then maybe someone considers how the space would be used by players. I'll diverge to reality for a moment. In the US, the early 1970s featured a major social struggle by city dwellers against city design which focused on large and new buildings and streets rather than concerning themselves first with how citizens would actually use a space. This sea change has filtered considerably into architecture and interior design, but sadly not into PC game development (just look at Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen). There's no point building a giant space which players find too tedious to run through. Shrink it and they will come.

Let a Developer Have Fun Creating More Diplomacy
I assume that any creator could flesh out Diplomacy in many directions that players would enjoy. I trust your vision. Let it rip.


//edit - fixed erroneous lack of percentage sign in the subject line//

Re: Elimination of junk loot and ~80% of quests.

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2018 4:17 pm
by Glenzig
I agree on the quests. Not necessarily on the junk loot. I just don't see the point in combing through the DB to clear out junk loot.
I wholeheartedly disagree with the point on city size. If anything some cities could stand to be bigger. With as many quick travel options VG has, I don't see the problem with running around a city for a few minutes. If anything, it only adds to the playability for me.

Re: Elimination of junk loot and ~80% of quests.

Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2018 3:11 pm
by wheema
I read through Nosferum's post and in my head, screamed NOOooooooo!!!! numerous times. Vangaurd is like no other game and it should remain that way. Altering the game, especially as significantly as you're suggesting, would be dishonoring it imo. Devs... PLEASE DON'T.

Re: Elimination of junk loot and ~80% of quests.

Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2018 3:36 pm
by Jakkal
We're not.

Re: Elimination of junk loot and ~80% of quests.

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:21 am
by dhew
I basically disagree with all of these recommendations. 😂

Especially the quests. I like the way Vanguard does quests. Most are not completely hard to figure out, but some can be. I like that they give objectives that you have to find yourself most of the time. It’s not like other games where you move from indicator to indicator mindlessly.

Re: Elimination of junk loot and ~80% of quests.

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:22 am
by dhew
Have you done diplomacy to it’s fullest extent? It’s a huge amount of work. I’m all for adding more, but it’s already s giant web of content.

Re: Elimination of junk loot and ~80% of quests.

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 8:35 am
by Kinshi
Remove junk loot - waste of time, if anything have some vendor that buys it for a cpl copper and let it get processed out that way.

Eliminate most Adventuring quests - NO, NO for the love of God NO! What, make the entire game just some mindless grind whatever thing over and over and over w/o even the barest hit of purpose other than the XP/loot? The quest are what gives some level of story to the game, take them away, and you may as well make the game into PUBG.

Remove ~40% of Class Abilities: I think you are looking at this wrongly. Most of the class abilities are newer versions of themselves, and many are passive, triggered or reactions, not direct push a button thus occupy little space at all on the toolbar. At any rate, you are free to ignore the abilities you don't care for, which is far easier for developers, and does not impact the people who like ALL their abilities.

Shrink All Cities About 60%: This I sort of agree with because these massive cities ultimately became a waste of space (Aghram I am looking right at you).

I would however, use the regained space and make them into player housing plots instead, rather than have them solely in these weird, awkward locations they are so often found now, and then populate those areas with more harvest-able resources and creatures.

Re: Elimination of junk loot and ~80% of quests.

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 12:22 pm
by OncaLupe
We are recreating Vanguard, and all it's sub parts. Our goal is to have it extremely close to how it was just before sunset.

Junk/Trash Loot will stay. Items were collected during Live, so we don't have to create anything. Trash loot requires players to either ignore them and lose money, or spend time traveling back to a city/outpost to sell it. Removing them would require re-balancing rewards as well as allowing people to grind out money drops as long as they wanted.

Adventuring Quests will stay. (And hopefully get some more to fill in spaces) As mentioned by others, this is a major part of the immersion as well as backstory of the world. Removing them leaves players without direction.

Class Abilities will stay. Classes do overlap some, which is part of what makes VG good. This lets groups not require a specific class to handle some things, especially raids. Players are able to adapt better to situations with more options. Reducing abilities would not only force classes to very narrow roles, but also make combat just hitting the exact same button each time over and over.

We can't modify the client (which contains the terrain and cities), so Cities will stay as they are. Even if we could modify the terrain/cities, that'd be a major discussion on what we'd change and how.

Re: Elimination of junk loot and ~80% of quests.

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 4:18 pm
by Rehlioc
It is too bad you can't modify the cities. Not that I want them smaller I would prefer player housing (perhaps rooms at an inn like EQ2) to be implemented in cities so that they have an actual vibrant population. Sad to hear that it seems like this would be impossible.