Tag Archives: Vanguard

Vanguard: worst video from the E3

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I wasn’t expecting anything amazing but even Krone’s comments are better than what I saw.

The animations are awful. But really beyond what is even acceptable. Completely generic for every model. Horrible even if we compare them with games five years old or more.

The first scene really looks that lame. The character is standing like a wooden puppet in some sort of egyptian tomb with big, empty rooms and a few graffiti on the walls. Then he farts some glowy buffs (I’m not joking, he really stands there and then smokes comes out of the ass), enjoys the smell till he is able to resist and then attempts to run away. It’s obvious that noone warned him to be careful while handling a long sword, in fact while running he manages to amputate his poor leg. Repeatedly. Yeah, he runs and flings repeatedly this long sword against this leg, but at this point a big flashy caption appears on screen to instruct: “suspension of disbelief”. So I look with disbelief the character running past the corner and here the scene ends to move to another one where the character is standing in front of a giant scorpion. It’s combat!

Yeah, or maybe the characters is thinking to be somewhere else. It looks like the farts of before gave him some hallucinations. Instead of fighting the dangerous (sleeping) scorpion he… fishes. It’s true. He attempt to fish with his sword like if he’s thinking to have a pole in his hands (which would explain the carelessness of before). He tries to fish repeatedly while the scorpion keeps oscillating back and forth. Then he tries to fish again and fails, gets angry, kicks something, farts again (this while the damage numbers appear before the character even starts the action, speaking of synch). And this goes on forever at turns. The character fishes and the scorpion oscillates back. Rinse and repeat, each completely unaffected by the presence of the other.

The scene ends and a new one starts with another crazy guy running amok through a town in the country. The graphic engine tries to keep the pace but fails miserably. This guys keeps spastically running at an insane speed, amputating repeatedly his leg with a featureless axe. He runs and runs till we finally discover his urges. He was searching a tree to get some wood:

Yeah, ugliness of the model aside. look at the hands. Come on. Where was the animator looking when working on this? The left hand is completely off the handle of the axe and the movement of the arms is way too unnatural to be acceptable. You feel hurting just by watching it. Look at the movement of the shoulder on the second image. Well, assuming that there’s STILL a shoulder because that movement doesn’t look belonging to a human body…

Now I would suggest the devs to add some plasticity and dynamism to these models. There’s absolutely no sense of realism if all the limbs are rigidly set at 45 or 90 degrees and if every character just stand there like a wooden dummy. Add some variation and personality. Instead of having the axe absolutely perpendicular give it a more natural position, allow the body to relax some more and move because right now the only thing that these characters communicate is a sense of arthritis.

…

The rest of the video goes on and ends with another scene of combat between another farting character against some giant (and flying) beetles. Again what happens on screen doesn’t give any idea of what is going on. There are just this odd spell effect firing randomly with no animations and nothing else.

It’s vanguard of video games. World of Mummies would be a more appropriate title for all we know.

Some of the comments are precious:

Chantado:
Wow. Let’s hope that that video doesn’t illustrate the direction the game is heading as far as combat because it looks about as fun as when I was soloing those big cactus things, tigresses, and rhinos or whatever the fuck in the Overthere about 3 years ago.

Digo:
Side note:

Is it just me, or is fighting giant bugs, bats, and spiders getting REALLY REALLY OLD? I know they’re supposed to be the staple of every nerd’s fantasy world, but come on. Oh wow, another giant spider. Another giant cockroach.

Metranon:
also like others mentioned, compared to WoW the art looks good in the distance but animation is poor. When the character models were in combat there is no noticeable change to a more “ready stance” like in WoW, instead they just kind of stand there and swing their weapons like a robot.

Zistrix:
Man I am totally and utterly unimpressed with vanguard. Do we live in a world where nothing lives up to the hype? Shit, we all get to 60 in WoW and suddenly never want to play it again. Oops off topic..

It’s like they overhauled everquest with a new engine and added some realism elements that probably should of been out years ago. I can now run through realistic tall blades of grass at selos speed! wooo

What the fuck is vanguard? A training simulation for advanced pest control? I mean I understand the training necessary in case your pest spray mutates a beetle to the size of a jeep – what ARE you supposed to do?

Shit and we are back to luclin again fighting insects and small animals and everything that was probably never intended by this fantasy genre that these games violate in the rear with a large pole.

And the best one:

the world is shit. i’m going back to consoles.

Pump-up the hype!

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Vanguard on the X-box? So?

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Excuse me, this is a jump in the past. I just blame myself to not have reported the source.

See the date? One year ago.

I don’t have time to search Sigil’s forum but it was already known and confirmed that Vanguard was being developed for the new version of the X-box. Both by Microsoft repersentants and Brad McQuaid.

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Do they just rattle around like bingo balls until a slot opens up?

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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 รข

In the game space, “ideas are ten a penny”

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Taken from Vanguard’s boards. This is “Jon Grande” the guy who links Sigil to Microsoft:

As the guy who “bought” the Vanguard concept/pitch from Brad and Jeff – I can tell you that Slide was the closest to correct with his opinion. In the game space, for the most part “ideas are ten a penny” and the thing that matters the most is whether you can “deliver it on time, on budget”. The real challenge is proving that you have the abililty and know-how to do so.

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Cheap attack on Vanguard

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From a comment I wrote on Anyuzer’s boards:

—

I share the same opinion that the Microsoft dude posted on the Vanguard website, basically that both WoW and EQ2 will be fun for awhile, but ultimately they are both uninspiring and offer no advancements to the genre. The fact that Vanguard is being critical of these two games in such a confident manner gives me hope

Being critical, in particular with those arguments, is DAMN easy. Suggesting interesting and possible solutions, instead, is hard.

Vanguard tells you it has the solution, but it doesn’t tell you what is this solution. Being confident is one of the recurring qualities of vaporware.

It’s having doubts that makes your game stronger.

The complete self-consciousness they are trying to demonstrate is just a sign of a pimped up ego, full of gas.

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I do Vanguard’s comment

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I finally finished to write my long comment to Anyuzer’s article on his visit at Sigil. Following here:

—
So, my turn to comment. I read the whole article yesterday, during the night, but I was too tired to comment. It was long but it also flows easily and it wasn’t a boring read. Still shorter than my early and silly review/manifesto of World of Warcraft back in March (100kb vs 74kb of your article).

I like your approach to the whole thing, it’s obvious that the it is simply filled with “maybe” and shady impressions with nearly zero concrete informations. But I accept the point of view, you chose to show your emotional reaction to the whole thing and this could easily be more “informing” than just listing “facts”. What I mean is that the more interesting part of the whole thing you wrote was exactly your personal comments to stuff and your description of the peoples running the game. Where you don’t directly describe the game you are actually providing the most valuable infos on it. Instead the more you delve into the facts, the more the article becomes weak and less informative. I believe that this countersense is the main theme.

That said, I still have doubts on Brad about what you describe. You portrait him as the most passionate guy out there about this genre and I don’t have elements to prove it’s false but I still feel hard to believe to this. From him I only read a one-line message on this board, long ago, and a defensive post on Mud-Dev as an answer to Jeff Freeman that Brad considered similar to a personal attack. Nothing else. From this point of view I really find hard to consider Brad more passionate than, say, Raph. At least Raph is going to publish a book, has a personal site with thousands of essays about the genre and follows and contribute to various message boards and to the Mud-Dev mailing list. I know he is present in the community, I see his presence and despite he is high in the ranks I still see that he likes the confrontation, he likes to share ideas and stimulate a discussion.

Brad? Well, he could surely cultivate his passion to this genre alone or inside his personal community but to me this looks like a pesonal shrine to boost the ego. Brad as the creator of Everquest, Brad as a person of strong relevance and success. But not Brad as someone passionate for the genre or the industry. Beside himself.

I repeat, I’m commenting this because I consider the emotional impressions you wrote more interesting to “understand” the game and the company behind this. And Brad is the part of what you said I fail to “digest”. He surely is passionate about Sigil and Vanguard, but I won’t believe that he is passionate about something outside of himself. I’m sure he has a strong personality but I believe that it’s this part to lead the thing. And not a sincere passion for the genre. I never saw him active in the community outside the “majesty” role that he loves to embody here and there. I never saw him discussing with the players on their level or about something that isn’t again Brad, Everquest or Sigil. He is somewhere else, where I don’t believe the real passion exists.

Aside this, I have another general impression. About the game I think you followed another main theme describing it. It’s the whole line of thought that makes you list EQ, then WoW as a polish of EQ (which Tanandae refuses) and then Vanguard, as a new step. Or a new approach. From what you write I understand that you put the game on a “third level” (as third-gen mmorpg). There’s the level of the treadmill that EQ won and where WoW improved and there’s the VW approach of SWG and UO. It seems that Vanguard is chasing a third approach that is perhaps even a blend of the previous two. The game as an adventure. You underlined this on every part of your article, when describing the environment, when hinting a possible inventory system taking into consideration the weight and volume of stuff, when writing about the tradeskills, when explaining the design system of the quests etc…

It seems that Vanguard wants to re-discover the missing part of a fantasy world as an experience. Giving back the relevance to parts that aren’t directly tied to the combat or self-power gain (treadmill). So they are aiming to a breathing world and not a functional simulation of a game. Instead they want the game to immerse completely the player into a full experience. And it’s true: This is COMPLETELY NEW. Noone has ever tried this approach and it’s surely something that players from all over the world are awaiting. This isn’t about innovation. In fact this is something that is ALREADY in the roots of the genre. It’s about re-discovering the fantasy as a genre, outside the craptacular tight boundaries that EQ-clones built around it. It’s simply the main point that every single player is expressing in a way or another: we don’t accept that a whole genre CANNOT be express outside a more or less boring, pointless treadmill. There must be more. Already. Without the need to discover fancy or crazy solutions and borderline (broken) experiments like SWG. It’s a whole new approach even to “game design” because it’s not anymore about “creating”, it’s more near to “listening” the nature of the genre.

While from a side we design something and then we shove it into a genre, in this new approach we reverse the process. We observe the setting and we build the game as a portrait. Game mechanics become results and not causes. The experience becomes the focus and the game gains its own life outside an arid genre that has nothing anymore to say aside that its path is broken. I consider this as a break with the past.

But this brings to other kinds of doubts. This is Brad. Brad did EQ and EQ was a big success. If he is lucky he is able to capture the magic and reproduce it. This is his “credit”. We know that we have someone who is able to “deliver”. But hold here a moment. Deliver *what*?

EQ wasn’t innovation. EQ was way, way closer to what WoW is. A polish of something already available. EQ was just a 3D version of a Diku. Nothing else. EQ was “new” because it was in 3D. Its innovation wasn’t about game design, it was simply on the *tech level*.

So we have two completely different entities. EQ was a tech innovation, Vanguard is hinted as a *design innovation*. Well, this is where I start again to doubt. Brad isn’t *anymore* a guarantee because he NEVER innovated game design. This will require a deep (and humble) learning process that I find hard to believe happening to Brad. I explained my doubts about Brad above and the game you described in the article is too shady to produce any kind of concrete conclusion. Good or bad, it’s simply too early even to start to figure out an impression.

And this brings to my third and last point. As I wrote, your report is filled with “maybe” and shady ideas. There’s nothing you say about the game that isn’t followed by a disclaimer where you say that nothing is for sure. I know you write something this summer so you probably know how wonderful is the initial stage of an idea. You could aim to write a book and you know that the book will be the best ever. But it’s not easy when you have to actually start to delve between and inside the various parts. It’s a trick of the brain.

When you have a shady idea the impression you have is never realistic. The brain doesn’t observe directly just the shape of what you have, instead it sees and creates even what is still is hidden. The less you describe and define something, the more the brain will smooth the result, filling at best the missing parts. This means that the shady portait you did of the game and the ideas around it is seducing BECAUSE it is shady. Because EVERYONE reading your article (like I did here) will fill the missing part. Something so shady and insecure has already gained a strong definition in the minds of every reader. There are 10% of the shady infos you reported and the remaining 90% of dreams that every players have.

Your report becomes: “Vanguard will be wonderful because it will be the game of your dreams”. And the game of your dreams cannot be bad, right? This is the sense of your article. A failing-proof slogan.
—

Btw, I wonder if I should point Brad to my “dream mmorpg” ideas I’ve written in these months. In the world of “maybe” and wannabe designer they could become useful to someone beside myself (…)

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a-Vanguard

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Quoting Shild:

The last thing we want is another motherfucking Everquest clone. Speaking of, I think I smell something and it smells like Vanguard.

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Vanguard, on X-box and PC

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Microsoft has announced that Vanguard will support both X-box and PCs in a similar way to Final Fantasy XI. With an account you are able to play both versions, depending on your choice. The characters will exist in the same server/world, no matter of the hardware you decide to use.

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