When a designer invents something retarded the excuse is always the same: the players are confused and the designer is right.

The designer obviously cannot waste his precious time to clarify the doubts and the critics of the players, of course, are all superficial and coming from misinterpretations. After some time everyone will understand the genius. Or not.

The fun part is that this process is purely reputation-driven. Nothing else. You can put the most idiotic idea ever in the mouth of a respected and well-known developer, and the majority of the players will start to drool. In particular if it’s filled with buzz-words and commonplaces. In particular if it’s completely devoid of details and full of positive adjectives. Today we have two different examples (or three if we included WoW’s Honor System) defining two different moments. The phase when the idea is still a blurred, vague concept but still accepted with lots of hype and unmotivated praises and the following phase, when the idea has to become real to collapse in a magnificent trainwreck for all to see. An alternation of unfounded promises and their consequence.

In the first case we have Brad McQuaid explaining a new form of instancing, in the second case we have the Combat Upgrade trainwreck that invested the “headless” SWG. Two parts (moments) of the exact same process.

In this second case, from devs to producers, there has been an insane work to release interviews, dev diaries, apologies and whatever you can fit in the pack. Probably because there was this need to teach again to the poor clueless players how the new system works. Because they are confused:

The first obvious issue that’s impacting our players is that it’s a fundamental change. Players, specifically our hardcore players who’ve been playing for 20 months, have to relearn how to play.

Because it is a new system, especially when you’re a veteran player and you have a whole lot of high-level skills you use in combat, it’s going to take you a while to use the new system.

(hint: “communication” means listening what others are saying, not preaching from a podium)

There’s this diffused arrogance, the players are stupid, they cannot see the magnificent ideas (nor the designers have time to explain them) behind some changes. So they just need tools to keep the herd under control while the shepherds lead it in the proper way. Babysitting the kiddy community. After some time the protests will settle down and everyone will get used to the new game (hint: peoples adapt and get used to just everything. This doesn’t make the result a good result).

This is when the game gets fucked up, under the eyes of the players. The promises full of adjectives do not hold anymore, the facts claim their concreteness and the only resort for the devs is to justify their work by denying the problems, denying alternatives, denying the critics. Well.. denying. And delaying (so that the players will adapt and shut up). They want the community asleep, sweet dreams while the money keep flowing, everyoneishappy and alseep. They chant lullabies and reassurances. Everything will be okay, there’s nothing wrong, all is working as intended.

Some games, instead, live still in the misty land of the hype, where everything is possible. Where every player can paint something in his head the way he likes. All perfect, nothing will go wrong, the premises are all wonderful. This is the first stage where the reputation of the developer becomes the whole depth of his ideas. That’s the value, nothing else. The source is the cause (which is a good principle, after all – till it lasts). And we have Brad McQuaid with the most blurred, indefinite (and derivative) game-concept of the history: “Vanguard – Saga of Heroes”. He has a very good reputation among those catassers that still represent the heart of the genre and his first resource and marketing target. The best he did wasn’t to create EverQuest, but to leave it with a perfect timing, unloading all those responsibilities before suffering their weight (Raph did the same with SWG, even if he didn’t come out really as a winner in the eyes of the players). He left at the peak, he cashed the praises and the glory and dodged all the consequent responibilities to become an “icon” of the nostalgia, a myth on his own, purified and exhalted by the censorship of the passing time. He’s not even anymore human. He’s a god called “Aradune Mithara”, the god that will bring back “the experience” to the players.

In the last days we got some more concrete informations about one of the systems that will appear in the game. As expected the majority of the fanboys loves it, while the minority that criticize those ideas is obviously confused. This system has been defined as “Advanced Encounter System” and is a rehash of some features of the instancing technology. My first comment isn’t that different from the opinion I have formed after reading through the “compiled version”:
“Incredible! They will be able to borrow all the problems of the private instances without any advantage! It’s a design miracle!”

The system is rather odd. Odd because it doesn’t make sense, it’s unjustified. It has already been defined as “private instancing, just in public” or “instances with spectators”. The basic idea is that the various groups entering a dungeon will follow different questlines and paths, as they choose. These paths will be based on different triggers, both common (kill “x” mobs, reach this place, pull the lever etc..) and uncommon (the actual AES, aka “spawn on demand”). In the design plan this means that these dungeons are always public. Vanguard will completely avoid the instancing technology so the world will always be shared and unique. In a dungeon you’ll find other groups already involved with various path/storylines. The schema will work like a theme park with different attractions, every group will follow its own itinerary and the choke points will be avoided by introducing this new form of “public instancing”.

At some point of the progress through a path, a mob will drop a special object that, if used, will spawn “privately” the special encounter. In order to prevent other groups to disrupt it:

A very limited subset of NPCs involved in an encounter route will be â