Spring
Cleaning

By AnomalousSilence

Ahh, the smell of
spring: it's on the way! Wild flowers blooming, trees budding with their
first new leaves, and a plethora of animals prancing about merrily are
the true images of spring and the following warm months. It is the season
of new life: spring begins everything anew. This not only applies to nature,
but applies to homes, games, the car, and everything in between.

Still, there are two
dreaded words associated with this season: Spring Cleaning. While Vanguard:
Saga of Heroes isn't released yet (though we're all eagerly waiting),
there are inevitably a few things that any company designing an upcoming
MMORPG could do to improve the potential of the game. Only three Spring
Cleaning issues come to mind for Sigil, however. These include the one
significant concern and two minor concerns. The biggest issue is the current
death penalty. The two minor issues are pets for all classes, and horse
color.



Currently, the death system in Vanguard is designed as follows: when a
player dies, they leave behind a tombstone at the location of their death.
In some ways, this element of gameplay is similar to EverQuest: the player's
gear and other items stay behind at the location of the tombstone. The
loss of gear is not intended to be an insurmountable obstacle in Vanguard,
however, since a typical player will have multiple sets of gear that can
be carried by mounts and other modes of transportation.

Along with leaving
behind a tombstone, the player will also incur experience debt. Not loss,
debt. This current system is flawed, though, because it is too soft on
the players. There is only one concept of a system that incorporates a
healthy mix between experience loss and experience debt, leaning more
towards loss. It is a system that would allow the game to be enjoyable,
yet having the player feel the sting of death.



This method has been explained before by Brad
"Aradune" McQuaid on the Official
Vanguard Forums. It is one that, according to Brad, could possibly
be incorporated in Vanguard sometime during Beta. In this system, the
player would lose a certain amount of gained experience upon death, along
with the standard penalties and corpse runs. When a player would normally
lose a complete level upon dying, debt comes into play. The player would
incur debt without going through the aggravation of losing a level.

This system is preferred,
allowing not only for an enjoyable game, but for a death penalty that
clearly keeps players focused on trying to stay safe, and less likely
to treat death lightly.

The second aspect
in which Sigil could do some Spring Cleaning is their pet system. By this,
I mean that all classes will have some sort of a pet. In MMORPGs, pets
tend to be a valuable and useful commodity to certain classes such as
the Necromancer, Magician, Summoner, and Warlock. According to Sigil,
all classes in Vanguard will have some sort of a pet. While the Necromancer
will be the only class that heavily relies on a pet of any type, every
other class will have a pet, as well.



This feature obviously will allow all players to have some sort of critter
following them around everywhere, if the player wishes. This has the potential
to cause serious lag, and can become distracting to the overall scene
before you. If everyone has a pet, a full group battle could consist not
only of six group members and the numerous MOBs, but six pets fighting
alongside each character! Imagine that crowded battle scene: six players,
six critters, and one to four MOBs or more. Add on top of that the spells
being cast, along with bridges and finishes popping up on the screen.
Unless one had a high-end computer, the lag would be pretty unbearable.

Finally, there is
one last thing that the folks at Sigil could do to improve the state of
the game, to the best of our knowledge. It is something quite minor: the
fact that the look of horses depends on what type they are. For example,
a horse that is owned by a higher level player can be easily distinguished
from a horse that is owned by a mid-level player. These distinctions are
made by the type of horse, and the color of the horse. One of the things
I was looking forward to in Vanguard was Role Playing with a single horse.
Though I would, of course, be changing horses due to speed and item storage
capacity throughout my character's career, I planned on always buying
a single color and Role Playing that the horse had been with me since
I first started adventuring. While the horse would be speedier and, in-game,
a different horse, I planned for it to look exactly, or close to the same,
as horses in the past, even going so far as to name my horse. From a developer
comment over a month ago, this will not be possible due to horses being
available in certain colors and types based on the horse's speed and storage
capacity.



In conclusion, for the routine, annual Spring Cleaning, there are only
a few things that Sigil could do to improve their game. Having death sting
a bit more would certainly add to the experience, as would pets being
a special feature of a certain class or classes. While horse color being
dependent on specific characteristics (speed, storage) of the horse is
a minor issue, it is one that I would personally like to see cleaned up,
or at least considered.



It's hard for anyone to rightfully comment on the stage of any game unless
they have played it themselves, and the same holds true for Vanguard.
There is abundant information, the famous "sekret sauce", that
we don't know about. What we do know, we are sure to comment on and have
an opinion about, without even testing the feature out: it's human nature.
The developers at Sigil have given us no reason to believe that they will
stray from the Vision, and they will ultimately do what is best for their
game and the community.