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How Would You Rate
style="font-style: italic;">Vanguard: Some
Perspective
By Machail
style="font-style: italic;">September
14, 2007
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I've been holding off on this review because I
style="font-style: italic;">really wanted to
include a decent review of Vanguard's
raids. Unfortunately I couldn't speak much about it due to an
agreement with SOE, stating that I would not reveal any information
about the current raids until Sony was ready to go public. So
I've been testing this raid content with my guild, and haven't been
able to say anything about it to the community. Until now!
SOE just gave us permission today to let out some of the
goods, so now I can write my review in full force. Yay!
Graphics ![]()
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I think Dalmarus and Ralsu are experiencing a bit of the "kid in a
candy store" syndrome with their graphics ratings. I can't
deny that Vanguard
has some very nice landscapes and effects, but I can't give it more
than three hammers personally. I don't run a beast of a
machine, so I can't tweak up my settings too much. At best, I
have to run on Balanced settings with Low texture resolution.
The game simply looks "decent." There's not a lot
of use of the color spectrum as most of the world is in browns, greys
and greens, and with texture resolution set so low, there's not a lot
of detail. Some may argue that it is not fair to rate the
graphics with that setup, and there is some merit to that.
But I ask you: "is it fair to expect the average user to
upgrade their entire system in order to enjoy the graphics?"
An age-old debate, but let's face it; the heavy requirements
of the game released at the time Vanguard
was released is not a way to get average gamers to oggle over the game.
Most players won't even see the beautiful graphics for
another year or two when PCIe and multi-core processors finally make
their way into the homes of all gamers.
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This is a tough call for me, but I think I'll have to concur with Ralsu
and Dalmarus here. I've been playing
style="font-style: italic;">Vanguard since beta
2.0 back in December of 2005, and I remember the first time walking
into Leth Nurae and hearing the soprano vocals, and feeling shivers.
I had to send Nino a tell at that point congratulating him on
an amazing job. And it was. But it sort of died
after that. The musical scores, though appropriate, are not
memorable any more. I've spent a lot of time in all the major
cities, and I don't think I could hum the tune of any of them if I were
asked to.
Combat sound and character sound are just adequate. There's
nothing there that makes or breaks the game for me - apart from maybe
getting really annoyed listening to the gnome standing beside me at a
crafting station.
One saving grace is that Vanguard
does make good use of newer x-fi cards, and the 5.1 surround, for the
most part, is spot on.
Game Play ![]()
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Ralsu's view is pretty much on par with the
style="font-style: italic;">Vanguard that I've
been playing, while I have to wonder if Dalmarus isn't mistakenly
writing a review of Hello
Kitty Online.
The gameplay is pretty standard fare as far as MMOGs go.
Click the icon. You win. Don't get me
wrong, there are some fantastic aspects to
style="font-style: italic;">Vanguard gameplay,
but they just haven't been realized to their full potential yet.
As it stands right now, any player can get from level one to
level 50 by clicking no more than a handful of buttons. The
real fun though, comes in when you make fun for yourself. The
weaknesses system is a wonderful system where players can team up, and
decide their best strategies to have their abilities compliment
eachother. But is it used? Is it needed?
Is it even introduced anywhere in the tutorial quest lines?
Most players won't even realize it's there or, if they do
stumble their way through and exploit a few weaknesses in combat,
chances are they won't realize that they had. It reminds me a
lot of the Heroic Opportunity system of
style="font-style: italic;">EverQuest2, except
when you pull it off, you don't realize anything just happened.
The dual-targetting system in Vanguard
was simply a stroke of genius. It just makes good sense to
have a defensive target AND an offensive target. I have a
hard time playing any other MMOG now without dual-targetting.
Hats off to the diplomacy team. This aspect of
style="font-style: italic;">Vanguard is both
unique and fun. Until recently diplomacy didn't have too much
practical use, apart from something to do to have a bit of fun.
Now, however, with the recent introduction of the guild hall
quests, and upcoming use in raid environments, diplomacy is finding its
own niche in the game. Diplomacy will be used in Ancient Port
Warehouse, Vanguard's
first raid dungeon, assisting players in learning lore and strategies
against the evils they will face in the dungeon. Steve
"Aruspex" Williams also hinted at diplomacy encounters giving other
fringe benefits later on. Perhaps an advantage against some
of the bosses? Pretty cool stuff.
Crafting is a big grind fest, but it is rewarding. There's
something unequally cool about making some of the best gear in game,
and seeing folks running around the world wearing a piece of armor that
you or a friend made. Reward really weighs in heavily for
MMOGs in my opinion, so I have to give a thumbs up to the crafting
sphere as well.
Stability ![]()
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Why, oh why do we have to consider "crash time" when forming a group to
go to a dungeon or run a quest? If a group of buds want to go
kill the God King, we have to consider: "Ok, about one or two hours to
fight down, plus another hour or three to account for crashes and wipes
due to said crashes." Things were good before May 15th.
Something very very bad happened during that patch, and CTD's
are now as common as gold seller spam. All things considered
though, on my old AGP, single core system, I only crash once every
three or four hours, while my friends running on new high end systems
are crashing much more often.
Raid Content ![]()
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The good stuff! Raid content is a challenge. A
very big challenge. The creatures in APW are unlike any
you've seen anywhere else in game. The trash mobs have a lot
of hit points and take a good raid team to take out. They'll
throw a few tricks at you, like AEs when you least expect it.
Every mob in this dungeon has a learning curve to it.
Some steeper than others.
The strategies formed to defeat some of the boss mobs takes a bit of
creative thinking. It took us many attempts to take down one
in particular, who appears at the end of the first wing in APW.
We were lucky that we were placed in such a position on test
server that we could just reset and start again after every wipe, but
this won't necessarily be the case on live servers.
Guilds and raid groups will have to consider where they are
fighting, and have a contigency plan in case of a wipe. And
wipes will happen frequently until said group figures out the secrets
of this boss. Once figured out though, the fight is fluid and
relatively safe if your raiding group stays on their toes and works
completely in unison.
Heavy Fighter classes are in for a treat as a lot of these encounters
are best done with multiple tanks. Gear is now going to make
a significant difference as to who lives and who dies.
Aggro management is not as easy as it is in other games either.
Every single class will have to keep an eye on their damage,
and other hate-generating abilities. And, if one of the tanks
goes down, strategies will have to be re-formed on the fly, as getting
a rezzed tank back to second on the hate list is a tricky task.
Healers are not stuck as heal-bots, though obviously they'll need to
keep on their toes to keep everyone alive. But every healer
has more abilities that come in very handy on many of these fights
apart from just spamming their heals.
None of these encounters have been created that you need one specific
class' abilities in order to succeed. This means that every
single encounter has several valid strategies to ensure a win.
What might work for one guild may not work for another.
All classes will enjoy thumbing through their abilities books, trying
to find those seldom-used abilities that now suddenly have a very
potent use in a raid setting.
The raid tool is wonderful too. You can select which groups
in your raid you want displayed on your screen at all times.
Raid leaders can do a /raidalert which will pop up a message
on the screens of all the raiders. This sort of tool has many
uses - it can be used by raiders with high intelligence to announce
when aggro switches and to whom. It can be used to announce
incoming spells, abilities, or other tricks that a scripted event might
throw at you. Or it can simply be used to tell the entire
raid to quiet down and pay attention.
And /readycheck? Thank you SOE! No more "Is anyone not ready?" A quick /readycheck will tell you who is ready, who is not, and who is AFK.
The spectrum of difficulty in APW is pretty extreme. Some
guilds may get stuck on the entrance wing for some time.
Others will progress. One thing that's guaranteed:
Every guild will find challenges in the dungeon and many
great rewards.
Fabled loot is being introduced with the dungeon. This is a
new tier of loot available, and will be the envy of all. In
some cases, some of this loot will be required in order to defeat
certain encounters later on in the dungeon. Yes, folks,
you've read it right - a solid form of progression that raiders can
work to achieve.
Now, with all this great stuff, why only four hammers Mac?
Well, I had to take off a hammer because many of the
mechanics in the raids have not been used or introduced in group
encounters. That is to say there are some things that you
need to watch that we're all used to just ignoring. Some of
the combat features that seemed to have little importance in game are
now going to make the difference between a win and a loss.
It's not a bad thing, but it is going to stump more than a
few raiders for a while.
Also, the default UI as is makes some of the encounters very difficult.
Most of my guild uses Drox' UI now, which, in my opinion, was
a necessity to beat some of these encounters. That being
said, nothing is impossible, as all information you need is available
in the Default UI, it's just not as easily accessible at times.
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I feel bad for the PvP community. The idea of infamy may have
gone somewhere, but the implementation left it wanting.
Sadly, the former Team PvP players were the ones that really
got "pwned" with the server merges. This is not a mistake
unique to Sony (or Sigil at the time). MMOGs quite commonly
introduce PvP at launch in kind of a rushed state. I, like my
colleagues, could not, and would not recommend the
style="font-style: italic;">Vanguard PvP
experience to friends.
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Vanguard
has kept me playing for almost two years now. Yes, there are
things that bother me about the game; most of which you've read in this
review. But one thing that gets left out of most reviews,
including my own, is the fact that Vanguard
DOES deliver. Having been able to communicate with the team
several times over the years, they have proved time and time again that
they know the problems, and even if things don't get fixed over night,
they do
get fixed. The whole switch-over to Sony may have slowed down
some of this progression temporarily, but now that the infrastructure
is ironed out, you can literally see the team's wheels spinning and
many issues being realized and resolved. The game steadily
improves. And, with a game like
style="font-style: italic;">Vanguard, that has
had so much potential from day one, I'm confident that if Ten Ton
Hammer were to write a second review in a few months, a lot of the low
scores you see today would be much much higher.
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The Bottom Line:
Graphics: 3/5
Sound: 3/5
Game Play: 4/5
Stability: 2/5
Raid Content: 4/5
PvP: 1/5
- Read href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=747">Ralsu's View
- Read href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=749">Another View by Dalmarus.
Now it's your turn.
How would you
rate Vanguard?
cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
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IN OUR POLL!
How would you rate Vanguard?
Don't forget to rate all categories Ralsu, Dalmarus and Machail did in
your forum post!
- 5/5! Best game eva!!
- 4/5. The game has flaws, but I love it.
- 3/5. Vanguard
is
just so-so.
- 2/5. I would not recommend this game to most others.
- 1/5. This game sucks!
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