Nenjin
05-26-05, 05:39 PM
And aaawwwaay we go…
User Interface-
As I said in my earlier articles, the UI for the game is a little intimidating in action, and seems fairly busy compared to other games in the market right now. Here’s why I think so. First, you have the reaction icons that sit over your combat abilities bar, that are constantly appearing and reappearing. Second, you have not one but two group windows, your own party window and the enemy party window. This is one of those features I don’t know the strict details on, but basically mobs that have aggroed your group all go in one window along the right of the screen. While this would mainly seem like a mechanic for encounter routes, I think it works along with regular mobs too, which raises some interesting questions about what happens when two groups agro one group of mobs.
You get quite a bit of information about your group members in the window, including health and mana. To the right of their information bar, more icons appear. These indicate what action your party members are taking (not sure if Perception determines this or not). So, no longer are you left wondering who smacked the mob and broke mez, or what exactly your healer was doing when you died. Instead of scrolling back through chat text you may not even have enabled, you can just keep an eye on what people are doing.
But perhaps the coolest part of the UI was something Jeff Butler talked about having in by release. Currently, to the left of the group member information bar is a window, displaying a silhouette of a muscle bound guy. Jeff wants to eventually have those be portrait windows, that will display the actual face of the PC it represents. The face would move, look around, and be in motion while the game is playing. And when someone speaks in team speak, the portrait box would flash. I thought that was pretty snazzy (since I voiced this exact idea about a month and a half ago in the forums). In many games, faces come from a list of predefined skins. No one really cares what your face looks like, because there are a million other just like yours. With Vanguard’s deep character customization, you’ll have a face that is unique, and people can get to know you by it. This is one mechanic that will help make that possible.
So I’ll say it again. There are quite a few bells and whistles in action when the UI is going in say, combat. Messages coming across the screen, reaction icons, party member action icons….it’s no wonder I was dumbstruck trying to follow what was going on. Much like being punched in the face. But in a good way.
Loaning Gear-
We know Sigil is cooking up some form of side-kicking for Vanguard, and here is one way in which it will take form. When you declare someone a side-kick (a protégé, an apprentice), you can give them pieces of your equipment on “escrow” (as Jeff Butler put it). While they have your equipment, it can neither be sold, traded, or dropped. Additionally, you can yank your gear at any time. I thought this was really cool. I remember loaning someone a crystalline short sword in EQ for like 4 months. When I finally came back for it, no surprise, it was long sold. I think this is a good way to work out side kicking and mentoring, without resorting to things like level buffs and level equalizing mechanisms.
Player Housing-
See this pic here?
http://www.thesafehouse.org/gallery/albums/album05/IMG_4418.thumb.jpg (http://www.thesafehouse.org/gallery/albums/album05/IMG_4418.jpg)
That’s the starting city of Tanvu on the continent of Kojan. Every building you see there is player craftable. Jeff Butler displayed some player craftable housing, and I have to say it was quite impressive. I touched on this a little bit in my first review, but I’ll say it again. The buildings in Vanguard ooze style, character, and details. The Thestran themed player crafted housing Jeff showed off were sweet looking, high end mini-mansions, with exotic and detailed textures. I.e, not just four walls and a roof, which qualifies as player housing in other games. I wanted to know exactly how available player housing would be, so I asked!
Me: Are you guys try to make housing fairly difficult and expensive to attain, or are you making it so at least everyone can have a shanty somewhere?
Jeff Butler: It's not an entitlement. It's going require work and upkeep, it's going to require coordination from all 3 character spheres. So definitely not an entitlement. Lots of work, lots of structure and organization. While it's not impossible, not everyone will own a house. But everyone be encouraged to be a citizen of a city. It's almost inescapable that you would want to be part of a city.
And to add on to that, here’s something that didn’t come from E3, from Brad Mcquaid on the Vanguard Forums. Prepare to be gobsmacked.
you don't just build houses for fun (although nothing's stopping you). You'll want to build near areas with resources you are looking for (and when I say resources I mean harvestable items or a dungeon you are exploring). In Vanguard we really want people comitting to areas. You and your friends will head to an outpost, hitch your horses up, and dedicate maybe a couple of days to getting the most out of an area. Later, if the area is really attractive to you (it has the harvestables you are looking for; it's an interesting area to explore; there are quite a few quests that require travel in this region to complete; etc.) you may want to build near the area.
That way you can store even more items than at the outpost in your pack mule, create crafting stations closer to the areas where important resources are gathered (as opposed to having to travel way back to an NPC town), or set up vendors to sell your goods while offline.
Now this is the key part: the areas we allow you to build that are near lucrative sites (dungeons, harvesting areas, etc.) offer more reward and therefore also more risk. As an extreme example, let's say you find a dragon's lair and plan on raiding it for the next couple of weeks because it's just full of phat lewtz. So you and your guildmates decide to build a small player run town as near to this lair as zoning allows. Convenient, yes? But you're also far from civilization and it's dangerous out there in the frontier. So wandering, aggro NPCs will be much more numerous. Heck, dragon guards may fly routes that criss cross the area. That's not just dangerous for you and your party while you're online -- they will also attack your buildings whether you're online or not if they happen to notice them.
So you coordinate with your guild and try to keep people online to guard your buildings because if they're destroyed it's costly to have them repaired. And then you can also hire NPCs to guard your houses too, such that they are defended even if you and your guildmates aren't online.
One important message here is that one shouldn't necessarily look at player built buildings as permanent like in other MMOGs. It is more likely that as you progress through the world and level up that you'll want to move your base of operations closer to regions that are level appropriate. Then, when you're done with that area (leveled passed it, or just tired of the area and ready to move on), you'll delete these buildings and re-establish a base of operations elsewhere.
Lastly, though, keep in mind that this isn't all that building player towns is all about. You may very well also want to own buildings in safer areas for social or other reasons. And that's encouraged too, and given that they're in safer areas, it's much less likely that the buildings will be attacked because they're not built in hostile regions.
Thanks for the opportunity to talk about this a bit -- I think it's a bit of a departure from what we've seen in terms of player built buildings in previous MMOGs. Think of it akin to people moving west in early America and setting up temporary towns near gold mines and such, but then moving on when the mine runs dry -- it's a bit of mind shift, but I think it's going to be a lot of fun because there's more game play associated with all of this as opposed to just building a house because it's cool to own a persistent structure in-game.
It also encourages people to leave areas and delete their buildings (which have an upkeep cost, so you wouldn't just leave them abandoned), which then frees up those zoned areas for other players to move into after you've left. Again, while we can't guarantee that there will always be places for you to build because the number of zoned areas are finite, this does increase a players chance of finding areas where they can build even on an older server, because part of the gameplay is to find a good place, build, have fun and level up, and then delete and move onto somewhere else.
I wanted to come up with something clever to say here to under score how cool this is. But all I can come up with is holy @%&!!
Down Time Activities-
Sigil has said they think some down time is good, while too much is bad. But what exactly do you do during down time? Chat? Stare at your mana bar? Decompress from a hard fight? That’s all fine and dandy, but Sigil wanted to give you something more to do between fights.
Remember that in Vanguard, damage is location-based. Left arm, left ear, torso, ect… Because damage to specific body parts results in specific disadvantages (or advantages for the uninjured party), healing spells need to be altered a little bit. No sense in having cool location damage if it can be magically healed away with one click.
So, healing spells generally don’t heal specific body parts, but raw HP. And so there fore…you need to do something extra, like bandaging specific body parts, to remove the effects of damaged body parts. The perfect activity after that long hard fight!
You’re probably saying, so what? First Aid isn’t anything new. But this is. While the cleric might be bandaging the rogue’s arm, the fighter uses an ability to establish a wide area around the party of heightened perception, making sure that no mobs can sneak up on them while they are vulnerable and under-prepared. I didn’t get anymore info in that department, but I think if you use your imagination, you’ll probably be as excited about the prospects as I am.
City Management-
So what is going to go on in these cities built by and for players? Details are still sketchy, but we know that cities can have a sort of sales tax that can be interacted with by diplomats. Cities will have needs that will need to be fulfilled. They will need guards and merchants, and possibly administration. Guards will need swords and armor so they can better protect the city (and therefore make a more prosperous city), that player crafters will provided through the work order system. Players will be able to build different functional buildings like monasteries, or inns. Whether all this NPC goodness is real or abstract, is yet to be known, but either way it's going to be cool. Combine that with what Brad Mcquaid outlined above…and you might have a 5th sphere of gameplay. Mayor!
Races and starting continents-
What I had written in this part of the review has since been corrected by Brad and the Sigil staff. There is no mechanic as of right now that is intended to let starting players jump to other starting continents other than their own. Of course, unless they run/swim their naked newbie butt over there.
About the races and the differences between them. I asked during our demo if they were interested in things like racial abilities and stat differences between races. The reply was that, while they were doing stat caps differently between the races (i.e. a goblin might have intelligence capped higher than everyone else at every level, and in the end caps out at 1200 where most normal people cap out at 1000). But they were not so hot on lots of racial abilities to distinguish the races from each other. Their thinking was, abilities really set people apart. They are specific, utility abilities that are highly desirable. Remember ultra vision from EQ? And how eventually they made ultra vision widely available to everyone, because humans were so sick of seeing so poorly? They want to avoid the situation where racial abilities are so cool, that people either want it standard, or end up playing races for the abilities.
In the end though, the reason for races in Vanguard is the lore. The lore is what makes the races dramatically different, and through quests, and diplomacies, you will learn why the races dislike or like each other, what they are about, what really makes the Vulmane different from the Raki, and different from the Kurshasha(sp?). Flavor, feel, appearance, and themes arguably play as much of a part in the construction of races as different stats, or super cool abilities.
I could stop now, but I’ve still got more to say. You can read Part 5 HERE (http://www.thesafehouse.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18958).
Read the consolidated French version HERE (http://www.thesafehouse.org/kb.php?mode=article&k=63)
Justin “Nenjin” wheeler
Safehouse Staff Writer
User Interface-
As I said in my earlier articles, the UI for the game is a little intimidating in action, and seems fairly busy compared to other games in the market right now. Here’s why I think so. First, you have the reaction icons that sit over your combat abilities bar, that are constantly appearing and reappearing. Second, you have not one but two group windows, your own party window and the enemy party window. This is one of those features I don’t know the strict details on, but basically mobs that have aggroed your group all go in one window along the right of the screen. While this would mainly seem like a mechanic for encounter routes, I think it works along with regular mobs too, which raises some interesting questions about what happens when two groups agro one group of mobs.
You get quite a bit of information about your group members in the window, including health and mana. To the right of their information bar, more icons appear. These indicate what action your party members are taking (not sure if Perception determines this or not). So, no longer are you left wondering who smacked the mob and broke mez, or what exactly your healer was doing when you died. Instead of scrolling back through chat text you may not even have enabled, you can just keep an eye on what people are doing.
But perhaps the coolest part of the UI was something Jeff Butler talked about having in by release. Currently, to the left of the group member information bar is a window, displaying a silhouette of a muscle bound guy. Jeff wants to eventually have those be portrait windows, that will display the actual face of the PC it represents. The face would move, look around, and be in motion while the game is playing. And when someone speaks in team speak, the portrait box would flash. I thought that was pretty snazzy (since I voiced this exact idea about a month and a half ago in the forums). In many games, faces come from a list of predefined skins. No one really cares what your face looks like, because there are a million other just like yours. With Vanguard’s deep character customization, you’ll have a face that is unique, and people can get to know you by it. This is one mechanic that will help make that possible.
So I’ll say it again. There are quite a few bells and whistles in action when the UI is going in say, combat. Messages coming across the screen, reaction icons, party member action icons….it’s no wonder I was dumbstruck trying to follow what was going on. Much like being punched in the face. But in a good way.
Loaning Gear-
We know Sigil is cooking up some form of side-kicking for Vanguard, and here is one way in which it will take form. When you declare someone a side-kick (a protégé, an apprentice), you can give them pieces of your equipment on “escrow” (as Jeff Butler put it). While they have your equipment, it can neither be sold, traded, or dropped. Additionally, you can yank your gear at any time. I thought this was really cool. I remember loaning someone a crystalline short sword in EQ for like 4 months. When I finally came back for it, no surprise, it was long sold. I think this is a good way to work out side kicking and mentoring, without resorting to things like level buffs and level equalizing mechanisms.
Player Housing-
See this pic here?
http://www.thesafehouse.org/gallery/albums/album05/IMG_4418.thumb.jpg (http://www.thesafehouse.org/gallery/albums/album05/IMG_4418.jpg)
That’s the starting city of Tanvu on the continent of Kojan. Every building you see there is player craftable. Jeff Butler displayed some player craftable housing, and I have to say it was quite impressive. I touched on this a little bit in my first review, but I’ll say it again. The buildings in Vanguard ooze style, character, and details. The Thestran themed player crafted housing Jeff showed off were sweet looking, high end mini-mansions, with exotic and detailed textures. I.e, not just four walls and a roof, which qualifies as player housing in other games. I wanted to know exactly how available player housing would be, so I asked!
Me: Are you guys try to make housing fairly difficult and expensive to attain, or are you making it so at least everyone can have a shanty somewhere?
Jeff Butler: It's not an entitlement. It's going require work and upkeep, it's going to require coordination from all 3 character spheres. So definitely not an entitlement. Lots of work, lots of structure and organization. While it's not impossible, not everyone will own a house. But everyone be encouraged to be a citizen of a city. It's almost inescapable that you would want to be part of a city.
And to add on to that, here’s something that didn’t come from E3, from Brad Mcquaid on the Vanguard Forums. Prepare to be gobsmacked.
you don't just build houses for fun (although nothing's stopping you). You'll want to build near areas with resources you are looking for (and when I say resources I mean harvestable items or a dungeon you are exploring). In Vanguard we really want people comitting to areas. You and your friends will head to an outpost, hitch your horses up, and dedicate maybe a couple of days to getting the most out of an area. Later, if the area is really attractive to you (it has the harvestables you are looking for; it's an interesting area to explore; there are quite a few quests that require travel in this region to complete; etc.) you may want to build near the area.
That way you can store even more items than at the outpost in your pack mule, create crafting stations closer to the areas where important resources are gathered (as opposed to having to travel way back to an NPC town), or set up vendors to sell your goods while offline.
Now this is the key part: the areas we allow you to build that are near lucrative sites (dungeons, harvesting areas, etc.) offer more reward and therefore also more risk. As an extreme example, let's say you find a dragon's lair and plan on raiding it for the next couple of weeks because it's just full of phat lewtz. So you and your guildmates decide to build a small player run town as near to this lair as zoning allows. Convenient, yes? But you're also far from civilization and it's dangerous out there in the frontier. So wandering, aggro NPCs will be much more numerous. Heck, dragon guards may fly routes that criss cross the area. That's not just dangerous for you and your party while you're online -- they will also attack your buildings whether you're online or not if they happen to notice them.
So you coordinate with your guild and try to keep people online to guard your buildings because if they're destroyed it's costly to have them repaired. And then you can also hire NPCs to guard your houses too, such that they are defended even if you and your guildmates aren't online.
One important message here is that one shouldn't necessarily look at player built buildings as permanent like in other MMOGs. It is more likely that as you progress through the world and level up that you'll want to move your base of operations closer to regions that are level appropriate. Then, when you're done with that area (leveled passed it, or just tired of the area and ready to move on), you'll delete these buildings and re-establish a base of operations elsewhere.
Lastly, though, keep in mind that this isn't all that building player towns is all about. You may very well also want to own buildings in safer areas for social or other reasons. And that's encouraged too, and given that they're in safer areas, it's much less likely that the buildings will be attacked because they're not built in hostile regions.
Thanks for the opportunity to talk about this a bit -- I think it's a bit of a departure from what we've seen in terms of player built buildings in previous MMOGs. Think of it akin to people moving west in early America and setting up temporary towns near gold mines and such, but then moving on when the mine runs dry -- it's a bit of mind shift, but I think it's going to be a lot of fun because there's more game play associated with all of this as opposed to just building a house because it's cool to own a persistent structure in-game.
It also encourages people to leave areas and delete their buildings (which have an upkeep cost, so you wouldn't just leave them abandoned), which then frees up those zoned areas for other players to move into after you've left. Again, while we can't guarantee that there will always be places for you to build because the number of zoned areas are finite, this does increase a players chance of finding areas where they can build even on an older server, because part of the gameplay is to find a good place, build, have fun and level up, and then delete and move onto somewhere else.
I wanted to come up with something clever to say here to under score how cool this is. But all I can come up with is holy @%&!!
Down Time Activities-
Sigil has said they think some down time is good, while too much is bad. But what exactly do you do during down time? Chat? Stare at your mana bar? Decompress from a hard fight? That’s all fine and dandy, but Sigil wanted to give you something more to do between fights.
Remember that in Vanguard, damage is location-based. Left arm, left ear, torso, ect… Because damage to specific body parts results in specific disadvantages (or advantages for the uninjured party), healing spells need to be altered a little bit. No sense in having cool location damage if it can be magically healed away with one click.
So, healing spells generally don’t heal specific body parts, but raw HP. And so there fore…you need to do something extra, like bandaging specific body parts, to remove the effects of damaged body parts. The perfect activity after that long hard fight!
You’re probably saying, so what? First Aid isn’t anything new. But this is. While the cleric might be bandaging the rogue’s arm, the fighter uses an ability to establish a wide area around the party of heightened perception, making sure that no mobs can sneak up on them while they are vulnerable and under-prepared. I didn’t get anymore info in that department, but I think if you use your imagination, you’ll probably be as excited about the prospects as I am.
City Management-
So what is going to go on in these cities built by and for players? Details are still sketchy, but we know that cities can have a sort of sales tax that can be interacted with by diplomats. Cities will have needs that will need to be fulfilled. They will need guards and merchants, and possibly administration. Guards will need swords and armor so they can better protect the city (and therefore make a more prosperous city), that player crafters will provided through the work order system. Players will be able to build different functional buildings like monasteries, or inns. Whether all this NPC goodness is real or abstract, is yet to be known, but either way it's going to be cool. Combine that with what Brad Mcquaid outlined above…and you might have a 5th sphere of gameplay. Mayor!
Races and starting continents-
What I had written in this part of the review has since been corrected by Brad and the Sigil staff. There is no mechanic as of right now that is intended to let starting players jump to other starting continents other than their own. Of course, unless they run/swim their naked newbie butt over there.
About the races and the differences between them. I asked during our demo if they were interested in things like racial abilities and stat differences between races. The reply was that, while they were doing stat caps differently between the races (i.e. a goblin might have intelligence capped higher than everyone else at every level, and in the end caps out at 1200 where most normal people cap out at 1000). But they were not so hot on lots of racial abilities to distinguish the races from each other. Their thinking was, abilities really set people apart. They are specific, utility abilities that are highly desirable. Remember ultra vision from EQ? And how eventually they made ultra vision widely available to everyone, because humans were so sick of seeing so poorly? They want to avoid the situation where racial abilities are so cool, that people either want it standard, or end up playing races for the abilities.
In the end though, the reason for races in Vanguard is the lore. The lore is what makes the races dramatically different, and through quests, and diplomacies, you will learn why the races dislike or like each other, what they are about, what really makes the Vulmane different from the Raki, and different from the Kurshasha(sp?). Flavor, feel, appearance, and themes arguably play as much of a part in the construction of races as different stats, or super cool abilities.
I could stop now, but I’ve still got more to say. You can read Part 5 HERE (http://www.thesafehouse.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18958).
Read the consolidated French version HERE (http://www.thesafehouse.org/kb.php?mode=article&k=63)
Justin “Nenjin” wheeler
Safehouse Staff Writer