The Safehouse Fanguard
San Diego 2006 Write-Up-Part 2
Written
by Justin “Nenjin” Wheeler
Safehouse Staff Writer
View
from the shadows of the demo floor
The Vanguard Demos opened promptly at 10am on Saturday, and the room
was quickly filled with excited fans and onlookers. Sadly, onlookers
most of them would remain. The first few rows of chairs around the
tables were crammed with fans huddling over the devs as they played. It
was, as you can imagine, an oven. Can a Rogue get a little AC?
There were 4 machines set up to run
combat demos, featuring a 4-man, 45th
level group
adventuring in the ominous and foreboding stone vaults of Dargun's
Tomb. The featured classes were Ranger, Dread Knight, Cleric, and an
arcane caster which I believe was a Druid. It would not be an
exaggeration to say that people generally weren't allowed to play
because Vanguard isn't the type of game you learn to play, or even
begin to understand, from a one page cheat sheet. This is even more so
at the high end game (the current cap is 50 lvls) The 2 other
machines were running the Character Customization demos, and players
were free to play around on this to their heart's content. I'll start
with these demos.
Character
Customization
First of all, the specs on the machines are not certain. At least I
got some smarmy answers from devs like “286 and a Voodoo Card”
when I asked. Based on the kinds of cards they handed out for prizes
during the dinners though, I'd guess they were all PCI-E 256 meg
cards or better. I think it's a pretty safe bet that all the machines at the
top of the line.
The Character Customization demo utterly fulfills what Jeff Butler
outlined for me almost a year ago at E3. Everything has a slider.
EVERYTHING! Except what you're thinking, sicko. To give you an idea.
Body
-Height
-Width
-Multiple Skins for each race (and by the sounds of it, some very
exotic selections for Dark Elves besides black.)
-Tattoos (for some races)
Head
-Hair Styles
-Ear Size
-Ear Position
Arms
-Arm Length
-Hand Size
Legs
-Calf Thickness
-Foot Size
Torso
-Chest (or Breast) Width
-Chest “ “ Height
-Chest “ “ Slope
-Shoulder Width
Face
-Eye Spacing
-Eye Slant
-Eye Depth
-Eye Size
-Eyebrow Slant
-Nose Length
-Nose Tilt
-Mouth Width
-Cheek Height
-Cheek Fill
-Beard Styles
Are you getting the general picture? Utterly insane amounts of
customization. And I can't even claim this an exhaustive list of
options, there are more. Some qualifiers however. First, not all
the restrictions set by race, and good taste, have been put in yet.
Second, as you can expect, not all of that geometry morphs without
flaws. What looks good at one angle may look very wrong in another
angle. Third, not all the options were working, but most them were
the incredibly minute details. All of these issues however are a
matter of tweaking and adjusting. The majority of it was there and
functional, and looked fantastic. So don't be alarmed by the
absolutely ghastly model in the pic (which I think once was a
Thestran Female), part of the fun of playing with the customization
at the demo was pushing it to extremes.
Customization gone WILD!
Hrm, I don't think I'd hail you...
All in all, customization is shaping up nicely, some beta development issues with standing. I can safely say that
I have never before seen this volume of customization in any MMO that
I've played. Players just got about 5 steps closer to realizing the
avatar they've always wanted.
The
Combat Demo
Having seen Vanguard before at E3, and having reported on a lot of
it's core mechanics already, I was taking a slightly different angle
here. This time I had actually got to sit back and watch combat
without trying to talk to 2 people at once as it was back in E3. And
I was looking for how the game had changed since my last look.
For the most part, it was Brad playing as his Ranger Aradune,
Talisker (aka Darrin McPherson) playing the Dark Knight, and Tagad
(Bill Fisher) playing the Arcane Caster.
Various other developers like Doug Chronkite (aka Elidior) moved in and out of playing the demos over
the 4 hours it was running.
Brad Mcquaid (foreground) and Darrin McPherson
demoing Vanguard
Graphics-
Screen shots have never done this game justice. It's one thing to see
a high res, high poly count image in mid-swing, in a single frame.
It's a whole different story to watch it flow at 30fps. Vanguard's
graphics are vivid, fluid, and gorgeous. The spell effects bloom into
brilliant colors. And the mobs are truly something to behold. By now
most fans have probably seen a screen shot of the trolls yes? Well he has
a cousin. A big necrotic, purple, decaying
undead cousin. Bone and sinew through rotting flesh, and dead white eyes stare
out at you from sunken eye sockets. It's head is similarly sunken in and
decayed, cradling a maw full of razor sharp teeth.
If that's how Vanguard makes you feel,
sign me UP!
If that's an incredibly graphic description, it's because Vanguard
gives you that kind of detail with it's graphics. The player
characters too had the same detailed design and polish. Aradune
charged around with 2 flaming scimitars that really were flaming,
their blades sheathed in swirling red infernos. The Dread Knight was armored
from head to toe in plate mail that had swirlsand
designs etched across every inch of it's surface. Over that he wore a
thick dark colored cloak. The mage actually flung big balls of fire
at the mob. Beams of white light around down on the group like a rain
of light at his command. I could go on like this for quite a while,
because the images are that crisp.
Again, I'll qualify all that by saying the FPS weren't flawless. There were a
couple hiccups every once in a while, but again, that's not something
that should be shocking for a beta build of the game.
To any Vanguard fan, I say, you have not seen Vanguard until you've
seen it in motion, with all the eye candy set to ultra high.
Sound-
Regrettably, sound was not something that
was very distinct with that much human activity going on. I will say that combat is
full of the sounds of swords clashing against armor and hide, the dull
thuds of blunt objects, and the pained grunts of player and foe. The
sounds are rich and full, and there are a lot of them during combat.
To my ear, something didn't quite sound right with how they were all
coming together in a big brawl, like there were too many going at one
time, but it didn't ruin much. The spell sound effects deserve special
mention for their richness as well, as a spell changes pitch as it
casts, making the sound hit you in a wave. Music was something
that was hard to pick up on, but Nino (aka Todd Masten, the Muzak-inator) has offered up
quite a few samples already. (And maybe he can offer a couple more in
the spirit of Fanguard :) ), so I wasn't too disappointed. I fact I'm listening to his work as I write this.
Gameplay-
In a way, the same issue I had
at E3 cropped up here. It's very hard to get a sense of what's going
on when trying to take in the whole screen someone is playing on.
There's a lot of activity. Player windows, enemy group windows,
target windows, a couple chat boxes spewing information, an ability
bar (or two), a set of boxes that flashed in response to an
opportunity to take a reaction, and of course, the whirling chaotic
mess of combat with 3 other group members and multiple mobs.
Darrin McPherson hard at work.
The pace of combat is definitely a
little more frantic than EQ. No longer are you trying to chase down a
single mob while his friend's are mezzed. It's
more like a real breathing combat environment, but that means it
takes a lot of attention to follow what's going on. The autoattack
went off every few seconds, and abilities executed when clicked.
Sometimes after using an attack, an icon with a little timer would
appear in the reactions bar. Clicking it would sometimes allow
another ability in the chain to be executed. A lot of abilities
seemed to funnel into these chains (I mostly paid attention to the
Ranger and Dread Knight). Following the chat text was pretty much
impossible without sitting in someone's lap (and I think I was 10th
in line or so to try that). I did manage to get a look at the way
Rescues and Intercepts work.
Basically, you have skills
like Combat Awareness that determine how often you see the chance to
intercept or rescue your buddy. (Defensive Fighters Rescue, Offensive
Fighters intercept). When you see the opportunity, the icon pops up
and you click it, and then you “attempt” to Rescue or Intercept.
Failure means it didn't work and it's like you never tried. Success
depends on what kind of Rescue or Intercept was being used. Some
reduced damage, some removed it completely. And sometimes, a
successful rescue attempt segwayed into
another combo.
It was pretty funny
listening to the Devs play, Brad would often be calling out, some
what tersely,
“I need a heal!....”
Rangers, they just never learn. I guess it's hard not to get
attention when you're carrying around 2 bonfires for weapons. The
pace of combat, in my opinion, bordered on hectic. Fights were pretty
quick, and I saw Brad and Darrin's life bounce around quite a bit. If I
had to liken it to a game I've played before, the pace mind you, it
would be CoH. Large groups, between 3 and a ton of a mobs. One mob
would take maybe, 30 to 45 seconds to kill, then on to the next, with
fights taking a couple of minutes at a time.
They battled against 6.5 foot werewolves and tattooed
ogres that stood at around 15 feet tall. Dagrun's tomb, what I saw of
it, had a very Gothic sort of feel to it.
Large carved stone hallways drenched in shadows, that opened into
huge vaults supported by many thick columns. I caught sight of some
freaky skeleton monster that looked like
someone had robbed an animal grave yard and built a pet. He had
fanged skulls for hands and walked hunched over, covered in rags, with spines poking
out of his back. I even caught sight of what had to be a boss,
carrying his own sharpened bonfire (:P) It was pretty cool to see a
named mob carrying some special to clobber players with.
The other locale, which I
saw a bit less of, what a big forest of tall pines, some living, some
toppled on to their sides, under grey skies. The devs fought the undead trolls there, and
for a moment, I thought I was watching EQ. The caster would stand way
back from the fight and nuke, and the mob would go charging past the
tanks to crush him, and the tanks would curse and chase after it, and
the caster would nearly die. I saw a lot of
similarity to the way EQ flowed, cloaked in dozens of layers of
mechanics and information, at faster pace. Don't worry though. Each
screen was laid out different demonstrating
how flexible the UI is. With so much information though (like the
little boxes flashing around the UI that tell you what your fellow
players and the mobs are about to do), playing without it could be a
dangerous self-handicap.
The camera transitions
fluidly from 1st to 3rd person, and it can
extend out quite a ways, perfect for those screen shots of your raid.
You can lock the camera to your position, or rotate it around
yourself to take a cinematic perspective on combat. In 1st
person it looked like there was no attacking animation ala EQ, but
Brad stated later during the developer panel that 1st
person animations were coming down the pipe line.
Jeters was one of the lucky few allowed to hop on a machine.
Either that or the devs just don't like sharing with guys.
All in all, combat and
game play looks better, crisper, and more fluid since I saw it last
at E3. (Although maybe that's because they had actual LCDs instead of
plasma screens this time hehe). Combat gameplay looks like a mouth
full and then some. For the truly dedicated information junky,
Vanguard as it stands now is going to offer a wealth of information
to parse, compare, and evaluate, depending on what you want to focus
on when combat is going. So when is it too much? I guess that's a
matter of perspective.
Some people thrive and knowing mechanics like the back of their
hand, like knowing exactly how much x monster should do against y
player at z level with q quality of equipment. At the other extreme,
some people thrive on the mystery of not knowing, feeling the mechanics
instead of knowing them. The
cool part is that it's going to be your choice how much you want to
know. If you don't want to deal with it, don't want it cluttering up
your screen or ruining your immersion, then you can most likely just
turn it off. There are some things that you'll not be able to do
without, like the reactions bar. A lot of the features of Vanguard flow
through it. I've said it before, and I still
believe it, I don't think you can be an effective player in Vanguard
without the UI, but whether or not I'm right remains to be seen.
The
Panels
Due to some confusion over the end time of the LiveQuest, I ended up
missing a good chunk of the developer panel. As I mentioned earlier
though, the rest of the Safehouse was there and caught it on video.
Developer
Panel
First let me say that, Jeff and Brad have always been very
careful about committing to something they
aren't sure of. Many of the questions sought specifics, and they were
often deflected away, for either being something that wasn't even in planning yet (money) or something that
they weren't going to talk about (features). Even though Brad and Jeff didn't
talk specifics, they painted a portrait of what they wanted, what
they would accept, and where they eventually wanted to go. Add in a
liberal dash of hard info and specifics, and all in all it was a very
satisfying panel. Zack Karlsson did the moderation and selected
questioners.
Brad and Jeff lead the Developer Panel
Zack Karlsson, Ph3rless Panel Moderator
There was a demo video running while Brad and Jeff talked, and we
were specifically told not to film it. In it where brief shots of the
game in action, mostly from a cinematic perspective. A Ranger running up
to see New Targonar looming over the hills in the distance. Another
character running across the desert sands of Qalia, it's landscape
broken by tall, thin towers. A knight in full plate mail, his horse
covered in barding, charging across a forest meadow with the light
glinting off him. Huge 15 foot tall skeletal warriors that looked
like the raised corpses of dead giants, their huge figures covered
in furs and hides, weilding massive weapons. It was an impressive video even for someone that
has seen the game a few times now, and I personally am egging Sigil
on to share it with the fans.
Paul Luna is biologically incapable
of NOT hamming it up for the camera.
PvP,
Rule Sets, and Game Architecture-
As I walked into the panel, Jeff and Brad were taking questions on
PvP, and there were lot of them. Will it be there at release? (Yes)
Will there be limited forms on PvE servers (yes, and lots of types,
from duels to arena battles that could involve groups). A particular
point that they made, that I think is worth repeating, is that
Vanguard is NOT
going to face some of the problems EQ's PvP had. For starters, the
entire game was designed from the ground up so that the core game
mechanics
could be changed, from server to server, with relatively little work.
In Brad's words (I'm paraphrasing), “If we need to change a class
because it's ability doesn't work in PvP, we will do it, because the
way we built our game allows us to. EQ didn't”. What this means for
PvP is that it could potentially have a very different rule set than
PvE, using the same classes and builds, but with abilities tweaked to
keep Player versus Player battles balanced. From this, questions of
Realm vs. Realm rule sets came up, and roleplaying rule sets. Brad and
Jeff said both were easily possible (but that's not a commitment for
release). Brad mentioned Firona Vie (an oft used quote of his) as an
example of what he'd already tried, and had found successful.
While neither Brad nor Jeff would commit to
exactly what they would have by release, they said the alternate
server rule sets would be there, and the sky was the limit in terms
of what they could try. “We should have a server where everyone
plays a badger!” indeed.
More of Sigil's Dark Overlords...taking questions
It was right around here that they made their standard disclaimer
that this is a PvE game at heart though. To me that says the focus
will always be PvE, and that it comes first. Take it for what you
will. And before you PvP readers start gnashing your teeth, remember
that Jeff Butler himself is an avid PvPer. He took a show of hands to
see how many also considered themselves PvPers and got back almost ½
of the room, no small minority. Just because the game is PvE focused
does not mean PvP won't get support. Just how much support it gets,
only time and the release of the game can tell.
Weather,
Housing, and doing things the Right Way
Zach and Paul focus their powers in an attempt
to make a questioner spontaenously combust.
They went on to describe how weather was coming to Telon soon in the
beta. Rain that would change to snow as you went farther north, fog
that was atmospheric as opposed to
volumetric. The days, months,
seasons, and weather conditions will eventually impact spell casting,
damage values, failure rates, ect...(Reminiescent of FFXI actually) And it would be fairly simple to
broaden that even further.
The
duo also launched into a discussion of housing, likening
it to Star Wars Galaxies. They admitted they had no problems with
borrowing what they had enjoyedfrom games that they had played, the
mechanics and implementation of features. For example, making
permissions for your housing was a strong possibility. The question
of housing and PvP came up, whicl led Brad into laying
out his plan for player cities. Players would, as a group, move into
an area and construct housing for themselves, probably near a
lucrative adventuring spot. From here, players could launch attacks
on content and have a nearby base of operations to return to. Of
course, monsters would object to nosy adventurer's building on their
prime real estate, and players would have to defend their cities
against mob attacks or lose it all. Once players had been satisfied
with an area, they could tear down their small city and move on to
the next area. Brad extended this example to how PvP could
potentially work with regards to player cities. Although none of this
is currently in the game, and the first step is simply player owned
housing, it's where Brad and Jeff see themselves going. A phrase they
really liked using during the panel was “It's all about taking it
to the next logical step”.
Developer Panel attendees
And
while we're on the topic of the next logical step, the question of
mounted combat came up. Oh, mounted combat. I've been in your corner
since day 1. Sadly, Brad and Jeff were fairly certain it was not
going to happen for release. But here's what they did say, and again I'm
paraphrasing, about how they felt. “We like mounted combat. We want
mounted combat. Right now, we could make a minor change and have
people attacking and casting from horseback today. But that would
trivialize the whole reason for fighting from horseback in the first
place. It would be just like fighting as normal from your high movement speed,
walking bank. We'd rather wait to have time to do things like,
jousting, and to make it cool and fun, than do the bare minimum and
have it be simple and without depth”. That's a philosophy that goes
a long way with me. Just because you can do it in principle doesn't
always mean it's a great idea. This Rogue is willing to wait for
mounted combat. I have confidence that when it gets done, it's going
to have been worth the wait.
Guild
Management, Caps, and how not to Zerg
Naturally, guild management came up. While Jeff and Brad didn't
elaborate a whole lot on their guild tools, they did affirm many of
the questioner's requests. You will be able to view guild rosters, stats,
and manage the guild all from inside the game. More than that was
planned, but mum was the word.
And of course, that led right to
another important concern, guild size caps. Specifically, Brad and
Jeff said that they had no desire to break up your 400-man
Guild of Powa. What they didn't want however was zerging, a natural
result of having 400 people wanting to do something together. That
was their main concern driving decisions about the guild cap, a
debate that I believe is still going on internally at Sigil. Of
course, this doesn't address the fact guilding isn't a requirement
for zerging, but one issue at a time. Their possible suggestions for
working around the need for a small guild cap involved limiting encounters
to a large, but non zerg-like number of participants, allowing them
to set difficulty for raid encounters according to a standard. That
being how hard it is for the max cap of players to defeat the
encounter. Obviously, this is one of those issues that is still in
flux for Sigil.
Quality shot of the Panel room
Some
things may have gone better unasked
Not only because Zack Karlsson was quick to shut down questions
they didn't want to answer, but because Jeff and Brad are two pretty
intelligent guys, and have a ready answer for just about anything.
For example. Someone said they disapproved of tanks in full plate
mail swimming at full speed, or floating at the top of the water. To
his chagrin, Brad and Jeff both came back with a scenario that a tank
drowns in a pond and every time he tries to loot his corpse, he
drowns again. The crux of the issue was reality (believability,
whatever) vs. what is fun. And Brad and Jeff firmly came down on the
side of fun over realism.
Other questions that weren't answered were things like, “how much
will you charge us to transfer characters between servers?”.
Financials are like cryptonite to developers, they retreat from it as
quickly as possible, and in their defense profit specifics and costs
are usually some of the last things they think about.
That's all about I got out
of the Developer Panel for the short time I was able to attend it. Be
sure to check out our Safehouse video of the whole panel, so you can
get the entire story, and so you can watch Brad and Jeff get surly
with each other!
The
Community and Affiliate Panels
Video Link
The
Community Panel-
I wasn't actually there for the community panel, but it featured
Cindy Bowens, Nick Parkinson, and Paul
“Teller” Luna. A good chunk of their time was consumed by
questions about how to become a fansite, and how you police fansites.
In what has become a reoccurring theme in
almost all Vanguard Community discussions, the fan site buyout was a major concern of players.
Cindy reassured the fans that all fansites must prove their worth to
Sigil in terms of content and dedication to providing a service to
players. And once they had met that level of quality, they had to
keep it there, in addition to adhering to
the standards and practices of being an affiliate, such as not
running banner ads for a certain secondary-market provider.
The
Affiliate Panel-
After the Community Team from Sigil stepped away from the table, the
Affiliates stepped up. Present on the panel was The Safehouse, Silky
Venom, Vanguard Spheres, Vanguard Ten Ton Hammer, Vanguard Fighters,
Vanguard Mondes Persistants (joining us from as far away as France!),
Vanguard Crafters, and Vanguard Warcry. The Affiliates answered some
basic, and important, questions about being Affiliated Fansites.
Like, what it is we do? Why do we keep doing? Who the hell pays for
all this stuff? Part of the reason for these questions is the
mistaken assumption that all you have to do is sign on to a fansite
and boom, you're in beta. Wrong. It's part hobby, and part job.
Your Vanguard Affiliates
(L to R: Mondes Persistants, VG Warcry,
VG Crafters, Silky Venom
VG Ten Ton Hammer, VG Spheres,
The Safehouse, VG Fighters)
For most Affiliates, it's purely a labor of love in writing news
articles, write ups, fan art, and the dozens of other services we
offer. Network sites are a special exception in that they are part of
a larger web of sites that support them financially in return for
putting them in charge of an entire site worth of content. Ten Ton Hammer and Warcry are two
examples of Networked Sites. But for most Affiliates, the cost of running
the servers (which increases as you bring more traffic to
your site) and the time you end up putting in, ends up being costing
more than any one beta account possibly could be worth. Let me put it this
way. My primary responsibility as a Staff Writer for the Safehouse is
gathering info and compiling it for readers in articles. Since
getting back from Fanguard, I'll have put in almost 2x the hours I
put into my final for a 400 level Anthropology theory course, by the
time I've written everything.
So why do we do it? Because we like doing it. Because we want
to do it. We want to bring this information to you, the people
who want to know stuff, and it makes us happy to get the chance to.
That's what being an Affiliate is about. Bear that in
mind the next time you hear someone saying that being Affiliate is
only about access to beta.
Uhm, Aidden, maybe you should put the camera
away....
Cough. Anyways, that is essentially what Affiliates, paid or
otherwise, tried to get across the fans. We're here for you, it's why
we started doing this whole fansite thing in the beginning in the
first place. And when the Official Vanguard Forums close at the
release of the game, we'll have a place
waiting for you.
The
Customer Service Panel
Leading this panel was Michelle Butler (Customer Service Manager),
along with GM-Elaisu and GM-Fessius (my apologies if I'm missing
someone). I only stayed for a few brief minutes, but I guess I
entered at a high point. Michelle Butler was stating her and the
team's commitment to one fundamental principle: they will do what is
necessary to protect the integrity of the game and the game world.
It's a pretty definitive statement. What's at stake is clarity, and
equality. As I mentioned in Part 1, not even the President of Sigil
is above the rules that are designed to protect Telon. Sigil's goal is having
a clear set of rules so you the player know exactly where you stand,
and so their decisions can be made quickly and with a clear
conscious. If you, the player, find that
line in the sand uncomfortably close to where you like to stand, then
perhaps you'd best check your step.
No policy is immune from hard questions though. Kiranth from Silky
Venom posed probably the best example in MMO history on tough CS calls. Of course he was talking about: How Feign
Death went from exploit to legal tactic. There's no real good answer
to a hypothetical like that. But the CS team did say that situations
like that would have to be evaluated on a case by case basis.
Another
interesting question came up about zone crashing, due to population,
and what could be done about. The Gms had a ready answer for this one
backed by a real example from game. When they run Gm events, people
tend to swarm to that zone in mass. It stresses out the server and
affects everyone's game. One strategy they are plotting is to divide
events across multiple chunks to alleviate the stress. So you might
start the event in one zone and head to one or more others to finish
it. Pretty snazzy, I thought.
So what can you say about Sigil's CS policy? Maybe it's too early to
tell, but it sounds like it will be pretty hard nosed. Can you blame
them though in this day and age? EQ's heydays were the golden years
of innocence compared to today. The secret is
out now, and everyone is looking for their special angle. When you've
got that kind of opposition out there, and a promise to keep your
game world pure for players, you have to be vigilant. And being
vigilant means you can't let small things slide by your attention.
So
how do I feel about the “game” experience at Fanguard?
The game is coming along nicely. In terms of what they said they'd
do, and what they are doing, things seem to be in-line with each
other. There was a post on the official forums pleading for attendees
to say something “negative” about the game. Well, I think I've
said plenty. I saw some frame rate issues, I saw some geometry that's
a little wonky, sound effects are a little rough, combat is a paced a
little too much like City of Heroes, as opposed to the 1 mob vs. 6
players dichotomy we are used to from EQ. Happy now?
And I say, so what? Everything I've seen is a matter of tweaking,
adjusting, and playing with it until it's just right. The bedrock of the
game is as strong and sturdy as a granite mountain. The paper designs
have gone to game and they work. The “Vision” is working as far
as I can tell. And no one, not even Sigil, has seen where the Vision
ends really. It only gets better from here.
So I'll see you at next Fanguard.
I'd be a liar though if I said this was all the Safehouse had to bring you
from Fanguard. We've got more coming, and I think you're going
to like it :P. Keep checking back with us in the coming days.
Thanks for reading.
San Diego Fanguard Write-up Part 1.
Essential Fanguard Links
Essential Fanguard Links+
Safehouse Anthology of Telonian Lore by Nocte
Vanguard Affiliated Fan Sites
