Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

I am attending SoE Fan Faire, and was at both Vanguard panels yesterday.  I didn't have a notebook with me, so am going from memory here, but I'll try to summarize what was learned:

First off, there weren't a lot of people present.  Certainly not compared to EQ or EQ2's crowds!  It was a small room, but did get a better turnout than they expected since it was standing room only.  A couple people came from as far away as Finland and Sweden!  It's also clear that Vanguard has a very loyal following, including with brand new players who've just come to the game for the first time, or who've just returned after hating it at launch.  There were a few AoC refugees like myself there.

The main focus for the last 1 1/2 years has been on fixing the game and making it fun.  They've introduced a lot of new stuff in that time as well, but they recognized that those efforts would be wasted if nobody could actually play it.

The most recent focus has been on the trial island, which is releasing very soon.  Not only do they want it to be a way to hook new players into the game, but it's also meant to show the direction that they want to take things going forward.  They feel it's their best design work to date.

SoE is not giving them much of a budget for promoting the game, however.  Once the trial island is released, they're going to be relying on player-based viral marketing to get the word out and get new players interested.  One thing they would like to do is get the trial onto a disk and make it available for free at stores.  Whether that will happen or not is up in the air, though.  We should not expect to see new boxes being shipped to stores as the costs of that are astronomical.  SoE as a whole is really moving toward the digital delivery side of things.

The new models look really good.  Not radically different, but definitely more realistic while also being more heroic.  Most of the customization sliders that were removed in GU5 are coming back, and you'll be able to use any saved character templates to instantly get your character back to looking much like before GU5.  Then you can make tweaks to take advantage of the new models.  Tails are not coming any time soon for the animalistic races.  Nor should we expect new animations due to the fact that the team doesn't have an animator at this time.  So the jump animation still sucks.

Galleons are ready to go in, with all the art and quests complete.  They will not be released, though, until there's actual content in the world to take advantage of the existence of galleons.  Silius strongly feels that just having a galleon for the sake of having one isn't sufficient.  He wants them to have meaning.  Espcially since it'll require the full efforts of a guild to build one!  Several people did argue their disagreement, but I don't think he was sold.

The new Pantheon is going to have both solo and raid content.  It's been hugely revamped.  I get the impression that there's a major storyline coming up regarding the gods of Telon.

One person is devoted to both Crafting and Diplomacy.  That's all that he does, and the rest of the team tries to ensure that he doesn't get asked to help with other stuff.  He has a lot of stuff that he wants to do with both, including getting more content into the game.  It just takes time.

Speaking of diplomacy, they're looking at trying to create ways for all three spheres to contribute in certain raid encounters.  Sooner or later we'll see content that requires maximum level diplomats and possibly crafters to be able to complete.

Once the trial island has been released, they plan to focus heavily on adding high level content.  They don't want players to get to level 50 and feel that there's nothing left to do.

They also know that there are big sections of the world that don't have much content at this point.  They want to start fleshing those areas out, and possibly revamping them as necessary.  There are currently no plans to change the starting zones that we have right now, though.  Those areas will provide an alternative for the benefit of players who've already been through the Isle of Dawn and would like to roll up an alt with a different starting area.  (They didn't say this, but I get the impression that they're acutely aware of how AoC and EQ2 suffer by having only one starting experience.  No matter how good it might be, playing it a dozen times is just lame.)

Fishing is also on the way.  They're very proud of the system that they've put together.  Not much was given in terms of details, though.

There are no plans for expansions.  The world structure doesn't really support having content that is locked away unless you buy the expansion.  And they'd much rather flesh out the areas that are already present than leave them stagnant while creating new areas.

That's all I can remember at the moment.  In short, the game is now where it should really have been at launch, and is ready to grow.  They're going to do as much as they can to add content going forward.  The dev team is very, very devoted to the game, and they love what they do.  Unfortunately, SoE is also a business and will naturally put money where the players are.  That means that Vanguard is going to remain the bastard stepchild for as long as the game has low subscriber numbers.  It's a Catch-22.  They need money to woo in new subscribers, but they can't get a budget for it without enough subs!  That means that it ultimately comes down to us, the players to get the word out.  If we want Vanguard to succeed, it will be up to us to spread the word and cajole people into trying the game.  Once the trial island has launched, it'll then be up to us to bring enough people in so that Sony can see they really have something special after all.  :)

--I'll try to get more info today, and will update this with whatever I learn.

Originally posted by aurick
[...]

That's all I can remember at the moment.  In short, the game is now where it should really have been at launch, and is ready to grow.  They're going to do as much as they can to add content going forward.  The dev team is very, very devoted to the game, and they love what they do.  Unfortunately, SoE is also a business and will naturally put money where the players are.  That means that Vanguard is going to remain the bastard stepchild for as long as the game has low subscriber numbers.  It's a Catch-22.  They need money to woo in new subscribers, but they can't get a budget for it without enough subs!  That means that it ultimately comes down to us, the players to get the word out.  If we want Vanguard to succeed, it will be up to us to spread the word and cajole people into trying the game.  Once the trial island has launched, it'll then be up to us to bring enough people in so that Sony can see they really have something special after all.  :)

--I'll try to get more info today, and will update this with whatever I learn.

Good to know about Vanguard. ill prolly give it a try when the trial island is released.

About the text in RED. I think SOE is wrong with that. you have a product, you better throw money on it. Words of mouth is a good way of gaining customers but you can't ask your customers to gain more customers for you, unless you make them some type of discount.

Apart from that. Is good to see they are focusing on things and working on developing a game with a good potential. I hope the best for it. As I said, ill try it in the future, again.

Great write OP, and glad to see that they are really working hard to improve this game. If only they would add more content from level 20 to 50 that will be nice, the world is just too big and currently too empty.

I think this game will be a sleeper hit in years to come...

Any chance the rest of the world also gets to see the video of the new animations?

Actually any video will do.....

Originally posted by Ontblod

Any chance the rest of the world also gets to see the video of the new animations?

Actually any video will do.....

Not new animations.  There's no animator on staff at this point.  But new character models.  And the answer is:  yes!  After Fan Faire, SoE will be posting all the convention's videos on YouTube.  That includes the one showing what's coming soon in Vanguard.

Notes from Fan Faire, Part 2

I've just returned home from the final day of the event.  Live Quest was a ton of fun, and I think everyone participating had a blast.  But what you folks really want is news.  :)

The panel today went into more detail about Vanguard's high level content.  The next big thing that we're going to be seeing is the Pantheon's revamp.  This has several aspects to it.

First off, the Pantheon is being majorly revamped with a lot of brand new artwork.  The game play associated with it will consist of two phases.

For phase one, you'll be playing six man quest lines that are designed to be SERIOUSLY challenging.  These quest lines will introduce you to the gods and allow you to align yourself with a particular deity of Telon.  That will ultimately give access to all sorts of special rewards that are unique to your chosen deity, including a special buff that is very long lasting (something like eight hours) but does not persist through death.

The buffs will be given through the black riftstone.  This is going to be a new feature at the Pantheon, and will be the only way to get the really big buff.  It hasn't been determined yet if the riftstone will be linked into the riftway network so that you can instantly travel to it from other parts of the world.  Any shrine in the game can give you a smaller version of the buff, though.

Proving your loyalty to your chosen deity through the six-man quests will then unlock access to the eighteen-man raid.  That raid takes you into the destroyed portion of the Pantheon to take on whatever it was that destroyed the Ancients.  (Pantheon as a whole is aimed at giving much-needed lore to the game, more or less answering a lot of the dangling questions that have been dangled throughout the game so far.)  This raid will be seriously tough, and will require the big buffs to be able to complete.  The gear rewards from it are supposed to be phenomenal.

One big note is that you will NOT need Ancient Port Warehouse gear to be able to be effective in Pantheon.  This is why they introduced the factional armor when they did.  That armor is rated at 85% of the effectiveness of APW gear, which will give new raiders the opportunity to be effective in Pantheon without having farmed APW.

A key thing to note with all of the epic and raid content moving forward is that it's being built for strategic play.  They do NOT want simple "tank and spank" fights.  Instead, they want to reward players for paying attention, thinking fast, and reacting to the curve balls that the game will throw at you.  It's a pretty safe bet that there won't be much in the way of really predictable strategies to beat these end game bosses.  They've said that Vanguard is going back to its more hard core roots in this respect.  Smart, persistent effort will ultimately prevail as opposed to mindlessly following the "established strategy".

There is a whole set of content planned for past Pantheon, but that's pretty nebulous still.  They know what they want to do, but the details are still too up in the air for any kind of reporting on it.  I do get the feeling, though, that at least some of it will take place where the Ulvari are from.  That ought to be really interesting.  And there are going to be some world events leading up to that.

The giant brothers will be continuing their ongoing storyline with overland raids.  Their leader is ultimately going to be unlocking the gate back to his realm, which is going to lead to a big event and the necessity to kill him.

New flying mounts are on the way as well.  Completing the Pantheon raid will let you choose a black or white pegasus.  These will also be the first mounts to have particle effects.  For example, the black pegasus is going to leave fiery hoofprints in the air or something like that.  There are also dragons on the way for flying mounts.

Over the next year, they want to continue fleshing out the world.  The big goal is for nobody to ever be left with the feeling that there's nothing to do.  How much they'll be able to realize with that in the next year is anyone's guess, but it's where they want to go.  One thing they expressly do not want to introduce is meaningless faction grinds.  This is one of the big reasons why an AA system hasn't been put in place so far.  They've also stressed that they want the end game content to be very difficult.  For example, the pegasus isn't something that everyone under the sun is going to have after a few months.  It's going to be a major badge of honor for anyone to pull it off.  But they also don't want the difficulty to be something that requires dumb luck to beat.  Instead, they want you to be able to beat encounters by really understanding your character's full potential (including sometimes some obscure abilities that you've rarely used because they didn't seem to be that practical), and also play as a solid group.

Speaking of which, the voice chat from Station Launcher is going to be integrated into Vanguard.  They don't know exactly when yet, but they're happy to let EQ 1 and 2 work out the bugs on that before it comes to VG.  :)

I also forgot to mention something in yesterday's report:  Sorcerers and Rangers are both getting love here very soon.  Sorcerers, for example, are supposed to be the premier dps class in the game.  And they will be by the time the devs are done.

That actually brings me to something that they talked about when it comes to balancing the epic six man content, and how some classes feel worthless with some of the bosses in the griffon quest line.  Silius explained that six-man content is built around the archetypes of melee, healing, tanking and ranged dps.    If a class doesn't perform well in one of these fights, it's not a failing of the boss design.  It's a failing of the class design.  All classes within an archetype should be able to do equally well against each boss.  So they've been crunching the numbers and have been identifying places where the boss encounters are showing weaknesses in specific classes.  Those classes are then getting love to balance them out so that they can perform as well as the other classes in that archetype.

And there you have it!  I came away feeling that Vanguard is in really good hands and has some great plans going forward.  Now it just needs players, and the Trial Island is going to be the opportunity to get subscribers into the game.

All videos from the show will be available on YouTube within the next several days.  The new character models are also supposed to go onto the test server on Monday.

Cheers!

Many thanks for your reports. Its a good read!