Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Vanguard Producer’s Letter

Hey all,

It’s been a while since we had one of these, so we figured it was about time to give everyone a little more insight into what exactly is going on with Vanguard now and what will be happening over the course of the next couple of months.  So… let’s get right to it then!

State of the Game
As most folks probably already know, we’ve just recently started what we internally call a “win back program”.  As one might assume from the name, the goal is to bring back former players who for whatever reason quit the game. To that end, we’ve turned on all cancelled or closed accounts this month to let those players come back and see everything that has changed in Vanguard over the course of the last year and a half.

So far we’ve been really happy by the results and for anyone who has spent time in game lately, especially around one of the starting cities you’ll likely notice a lot more new faces popping up. With all the bug fixing, performance increases, new features (like flying and racial mounts) and just general polish that has been done over the last year, we’re expecting good things from this campaign to get folks to give Vanguard another look.

Additionally, we’re also hard at work on three big new items right now – the Isle of Dawn (Trial Island), Game Update six and the second phase of the character model revamp. The plan was always to release them all when they were ready, and we are working on each as a separate entity unto itself. However, with the way things are shaping up it is looking like rather than having to space them out and keep folks waiting we will actually be able to launch them all at the same time. So depending on how you’d like to look at it, Game Update six could be considered a mega-update of sorts.

We know folks are going to want to know what date this stuff will be launching, and while we like to avoid setting exact dates in stone this far out we can say that you can expect all three things very shortly after the Las Vegas Fan Faire (which takes place on August 14-17^th – and you’re all coming, right!?).

Now, we realize that is about six weeks away still but these are some pretty significant updates and we want to make sure we take the time to get them right before sending it live for you guys. For anyone who is interested, some of this stuff will start popping up on the test server in the very near future (and we will give updates on that as it happens).

We also realize that now that we’ve got everyone excited about this stuff that making everyone wait is kind of a mean thing to do. So we’re also going to be doing a much smaller update sometime between now and then that will add some smaller new stuff (like factional armor rewards among other things). More details on that will be coming shortly.

So with that, let’s get in to a little more detail…

Isle of Dawn
As most folks already know, the Isle of Dawn will not only serve as a trial for new Vanguard players (with content that runs through the first ten levels of the game in all three spheres) but it will also serve as a new starting city for existing players.

Everyone will still get to select to start in their own racial city if they’d like to, but the option to begin your adventures on the Isle of Dawn will also be present. The Isle will represent the new standard to which we hold content coming into the game and should raise the bar significantly. Even if you happen to love a particular starting city already, we’d highly recommend running through the Isle of Dawn at least once.

One question a lot of folks have about the Isle though is what benefit it gives existing players. Sure, it’ll be very helpful to newer players coming back to the game but what will it do for people already here? Well, aside of the obvious in offering a brand new starting city it’s also going to not only be introducing a lot more people (and potential group or guild mates) into the game but it will be putting them on a more guided path through Telon once they leave the island.

Players will always be able to choose wherever they go, of course, but we’re also going to be revamping each of the three possible locations you can depart trial island to (one on each continent) and as a part of those revamps giving players a much better idea of which directions they could be headed in, instead of just sort of spinning them around and then giving them a shove.

Finally, here’s a little bit of what to expect as far as storyline goes:

Currently, three different groups of beings inhabit the Isle of Dawn. A village of battle hardened humans and a band of zealot hobgoblins have warred against each other for centuries on the Isle. Their mutual hatred for one another runs deep and even now they are locked in an ongoing struggle. Recently though, increasing numbers of ulvari have begun to surface on the island – much to the dismay of both the humans and the hobgoblins.

 Weakened by their perpetual war, the humans aren’t able to capably defend themselves. Even now, their villages burn as they frantically seek aid.  The isle is in desperate need of heroes.

…and that’d be where you come in.

Character Revamp Phase 2.0
This one has a lot of folks on the forums talking as of late. We’ll be posting more screenshots of what the new models will look like in the future and it won’t be much longer until they’re on the test server either.

For those who aren’t aware of what we’re doing with the character models -- this is actually the second phase of the model revamp. In the first face we had to take some customization options away (for a variety of reasons) which we didn’t like doing anymore than most players liked having it happen. Fortunately, this time around we’ll be adding some more back in – and on top of that the way the player bodies look will be improving a good deal as well.

Vanguard is a game about heroes. It’s right there in the title even – Saga of Heroes. We’re making it so players’ character models look more heroic than they have in the past. This means that characters will have more definition and will just be able to look not only cooler but tougher in general.

Game Update Six
As if the Isle of Dawn and character model revamps weren’t enough, we’ve also got a full sized update coming out on top of that. As it gets closer to getting on test, we’ll be posting a more detailed write-up like we normally do, but a few things players can look forward to include:

A revamped and high level Pantheon of the Ancients featuring both group and raid content
A new overland raid (Varking)
The long awaited combat balance revamp
More class updates
More performance optimizations
Lots of bug fixing


The Future
Even though everything listed above is going to be keeping both you and us busy for the immediate future, we’ve always got to be thinking ahead about what we’re going to do next. At this point it’s far too early to give specific release dates or low level details but we can help give everyone a better idea of the direction we’ll be headed in.

At the high end, we recognize the need to keep adding content as more players reach higher levels and finish up existing content. So that will be one of our focuses, and you should expect to see both existing areas get revamped and entirely new areas be added in (such as the Nexus dungeon that Silius mentioned recently in the House of Commons chat and on the forums).

Overland raids spaced out in between the bigger stuff will continue to be released as well as some attention going to areas that aren’t necessarily high level in order to clean them up and add a layer of polish – and we can’t forget about fishing!

We’d like to start doing these letters a little more frequently than we have in the past as well as be more active in the community as a whole (not just on the forums) so stay tuned for more on the post GU6 stuff and definitely make sure to follow next month’s Fan Faire coverage as we’ll likely be talking a lot about what the future has in store for Vanguard.

That’s it for now, please head over to the forums and ask any questions you may have – we’ll be on there doing our best to answer them.

Thanks!

-The Vanguard Team

Very nice...I'm looking forward to seeing the updated tougher looking character models!  I remember what many of them looked like before launch and the customization was impressive so I hope to see much of that return!

check this new pic of a PC model with ARMOR

looking WAY better jeez

Originally posted by Josters

The long awaited combat balance revamp

....

Not that I am the most avid follower of the game, but this is the first I've heard about this.  Anyone know a link to a discussion about this I could read? 

I've never been a big fan of how SOE did their revamps so I might just wait to check the game out again until after the dust of this settles.

Very informative letter, have yet to see a better letter to the public from a devlopment team.

Expect a full list of models, and a showcasing of GU6's features at Fan Faire. I bet my bosses car.

This does look very interesting actually. I reinstalled the game a few months ago and uninstalled it again a few weeks later as it was still as terrible as it was when it first came out. One of the major issues (amongst others) I had with it was the incredibly hideous character models so if they are being revamped then I would be really keen to see them when they are done. Ya never know there might even be a vaguely decent choice of hair styles lol

With the new trial island though I could have another look and see what has changed without wasting more money on it. Is there a link to this information on the official Vanguard website? Sorry its just that I am well aware there are a bunch of Vanguard fans who are trying to woo players onto it to increase the player population.

Combat revamp and SOE spell doom for a games population and Vanguards population is too low to weather a combat revamp by SOE.

nothing serious

here it is explained.

Upcoming Combat Fix Explained

Fusoya and I collaborated on this so thanks to him for providing data and feedback.

Greetings all, just wanted to make a post regarding the upcoming combat bug fix.  We know more than a handful of you are worried that rogue / monk and other melee DPS are going to have their abilities nerfed dramatically, as a result of this fix.  Let me assure you. The dmg of your abilities isn't being touched.  I repeat, none of the damage numbers for your abilities are being touched.  No refresh timers are being changed and no costs are being increased.  We hope to get this out for U6, but it won't be released until it is correct.

You should read through this post and make sure you understand it before you ask questions.

The Bug

The bug is a simple, but clever one.  It was not even a visible issue until U3 when players started raiding.  The bug is with flat damage buffs.  Flat damage buffs, like Marshalling Cry (adds x damage for a few seconds) were supposed to modify the damage of the ability in one place.  A simplistic example equation would be:

    Total Damage = (Ability damage + Flat Damage Buffs) * % Damage Buffs

So, if a Warrior, who had +20 flat damage from buffs, executes Kick, which does 20 damage and he had no other buffs, the resulting damage would be 40.  20 (ability dmg) + 20 (flt dmg) = 40 total.

Simple yeah?  We thought so as well.


The bug is this:  Flat damage buffs are being applied for every effect instead of once per ability.  If an ability has an offensively targeted effect that lowers target HP then flat damage is being applied to it.

Effects

What the heck are we talking about?  What are effects?  Let me explain.  Each ability (spell, melee attack, etc) is made up of multiple effects.  Effects are needed so that the ability can do more than one thing.  Example (Off targeted damaging effects in italics): 

Boundless Fist - 6 effects (4 with can gain flat damage)

• 1 effect for melee damage plus dmg
• 1 effect that restores jin
• 1 effect for melee damage plus dmg if errant strikes is active
• 1 effect for melee damage plus dmg if Celerity is active
• 1 effect that deals additional damage if the opponent is dazed (weakness exploit)
• 1 effect that removes the dazed weakness from the target
• 1 effect that adds the weakness enraged to the target

• 2 effects for % weapon dmg
• 2 effects for the "plus damage"
• 2 effects for % weapon dmg if quickblade is active
• 2 effects for the "plus damage" if quickblade is active.