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Buy Yourselves Some
Time

October 20th, 2008 - By
Dalmarus

target="_blank">Vanguard:
Saga of Heroes continues to garner attention and attract new
players. The majority of players I talked with this weekend had one set
of questions on their minds though. Why is the population still too
low? Why haven't they seen any advertising for the recently released href="http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/gameUpdates.vm"
target="_blank">Isle
of Dawn? Do the majority of gamers out there know that to go
from the trial to the full game, all you have to do is start a
subscription and don't have to buy the game? Where's the game going?
These were all questions that I got when I hopped on today to ask what
was on people's minds. These are all questions I hope to have answered
in the future, but for now, there is one item of interest I'd like to
focus on.



One suggestion I saw more times than I can count, and one that I
completely agree with, is that Vanguard desperately needs an AA
(Alternate Advancement) system of some sort sooner rather than later.
One of the issues facing a large number of players in the game is that
they either don't want to raid or simply don't have the time necessary
to do so. At level 50, this leaves them with very few options to
continue enjoying the game unless they start yet another alternate
character. What happen to the days of falling in love with one
character and putting all your time and effort into improving them?

The character model revamp was done for a variety of reasons, one of
which was to make the characters appear more heroic. This implies that
each character should also be heroic in the sense of being able to
improve them as time goes on, without necessarily hitting a plateau. I
understand the development team has a limited amount of resources,
time, and basic manpower. They've made it clear there are other
priorities for the game and they're working on them in the order
designated. I think we can all agree that this path has paid off for
the team in certain ways.



The Vanguard of today is a far cry from the game that released back in
January of 2007. Some will cry over that statement and start burning
small effigies at their altars in front of their blown up and framed
images of "The Vision". For those players, while I can understand your
frustration, I think there comes a point where you just have to say the
game may not be what you wanted and you just have to ask yourself if
you still enjoy the game. If you do, accept the changes and enjoy your
time in Telon. If not, it may be time to move on, for your simple
health if nothing else. For those players like myself that still enjoy
the game but want to see our characters develop further without having
to raid, a set of AA's to go after would make all the difference.



I understand the team has a set of priorities. Without trying to sound
too audacious though, I would suggest getting an AA system into the
game be put near the top of that list. A deep and well-developed AA
system would add in enormous amount of playability back into the game
for those players that are level 50. It would also buy the development
team a lot of time to start focusing on new content without the player
base continually freaking out over the fact that it takes a long time.
The team will never be able to come up with content fast enough to
satisfy everyone, but an AA system would go a very long ways towards
making it bearable.



Through all of my ramblings here, be sure to understand that I have
faith in the development team. I met the team in Las Vegas at this
year's href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=995"
target="_blank">FanFaire
and they were a great group of folks. They took more time out of their
day than anyone had any right to ask. At times, it seemed like they
were even tracking players down to talk about the game. If you can find
a group more enthusiastic and passionate about this project, more power
to you. Personally, I don't think such a person exists. In other
words, think of all this as some un-asked for advice because
even though I think the game needs an AA set as soon as
possible, I still believe in the commitment of this team.



Now that you've had to put up with my ramblings, let me tell you what
the pay off was. How would you like to have a Vanguard cloth map,
signed by the development team? I know I certainly would and I can't
imagine my fellow gamers reading this are quite that different from me.
Over the next two weeks, the things I post on the Vanguard site, and on
our forums will contain hints to an area in the game that I'll be
hiding on a date yet to be announced. That's all I can give you for
details right now, but just consider it thanks for reading the whole
letter, haha. Until next week!





What do you think? Leave a comment href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=37297"
target="_blank">here!




Have you missed any of Dalmarus' Vanguard Chronicles? Check out href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=969"
target="_blank">The
Archives to get caught up!

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