Vanguard - My Experience thus far

[deusdivini]

Firstly let me open with this. Here are my system specs:
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
2gb Corsair DDR RAM
PNY nVidia Gforce 6600GT 128

Now that I have established this baseline with my essential specs let me say this. Since the 1/3 patch I have averaged 25-30 FPS in open field areas on the balanced setting, with minor tweaking to the settings. On High Performance, which still looks excellent BTW, I get about 35ish FPS.
In cities, it's a whole 'nother ball game. In Khal I drop severely, averaging 8-10 fps on highest performance. Where as in Leth Nurae I average 10-15 on high performance.
As you can see, the game runs excellent with the exception of when in major cities.

Now on to the hands on gameplay.

I've tested several classes, dabbled in diplomacy and immersed myself in crafting. (I have 2 mid level crafters. An outfitter (leathercrafter)and a weaponsmith.)
As far as the adventuring sphere goes the following is my personal experience with several classes.

Paladin:
The Paladin, in my opinion is bar none my favorite defensive fighter. Why? Because they are extremely versatile, solo VERY well, have great group utility, awesome buffs and are overall just a great concept.

The Paladin has several very useful abilities both solo and group, and it seems to me that there is a good possibility that Paladins will never be second best to Warriors. Why? Their abilities allow them to hold agro just as well as a warrior, and though they can't dish out the pure DPS that a warrior can, I've found it's preffereable to have a Paladin MT when taking on 3dot+ Mobs. Their sheer ability to shrug off and negate damage, not to mention heal makes them a much more viable main tank option with high DPS nasty mobs... and from what I saw, when comparing HP to my warrior, my paladin had HP that was pretty much on par.


Warrior:
The warrior is a powerhouse. Their ability to dish out the pain is ALMOST on par with some of the offensive fighters. Not only that, but they have some very interesting abilities that not only allow them to gain and maintain hate, but also to a VERY SMALL extent, crowd control for a few seconds at a time.

The warrior is more a jack of all trades in the defensive fighter category in my opinion. They don't have the sheer mitigation of the paladin, or the nasty offensive capability of a dread knight, but they fall right in the middle and do it extremely well.

In addition to all that, the warrior is really fun to play. It's not mindless rinse and repeat button pushing, but rather a very responsive and conditional affair. It keeps things fresh.


Ranger:
What can I say about the ranger? This was the character I played the least. (only level 15)The ranger just didn't tickle me, but hey, they're still fun, and some of their later abilities looked neat... not much to say here. Oh, but forage is cool and it's nice to be able to make my own arrows.


Rogue:
I've played many a Rogue in my time... you come to expect them to be pretty much the same... but in this case you could be wrong. Sure we make and apply poisons, yes, we stealth... So what's different? Firstly you stay stealthed.. and it's TOUGH to keep stealthed. As a Rogue, you're basicly a nuke with daggers. You DPS capability is ridiculous, and in my opinion the highest of all the offensive fighters.

Regarding stealth, the longer you manage to stay undetected the stronger and stronger you get. A stealth counter increases with the use of special techniques while stealthed and when you get a 'dot' on this counter your stealth capabilities grow. Increases in damage, stealth speed, attack speed, agro reductions and other abilities are tacked on. But it's hard to play the balance between kicking butt and not being noticed.

This isn't your run of the mill rogue. This is a tactical twist on what we thought we knew so well. And it's to the Rogue that I owe my greatest admiration.

That not different enough for you? How about a D&D twist on the MMO Rogue? Scribing magical scrolls and use of magical devices that you can craft. How do you like that? All in all, I won't say much more... play one and see what you think.


Crafting:
I've two crafters, a 23 Leathercrafter and a 25 Weaponsmith. let me say this, right now, crafting is kind of broken. Crafted items have four grades, D, C, B, and A. They increase in quality respectively.
While crafting sometimes complications arise that need to be rememdied... the issue is, these are occuring WAY too often right now... and issue the devs are ware of. So it's Extremely difficult to make B grade or better items that are very easy, even trivial.
Crafting works like this:

You start with 2000 action points. There are 4 stages to crafting, in these four stages you have several actions you must take to make the item. Each action has a set AP cost. Some items further progress, while others increase quality... some even do both. You have to balance the two, progress and quality and be sure that you don't spend all of your AP before then end, lest you waste all the materials.

Anyhow, all in all the game is amazing, though I believe we went to Open beta way too early. There's a lot of adjusting and tweaking that needs to take place. But lets hope you all love it as much as me.

Vanguard is the ONLY MMORPG since EQ that has made me feel like I was finally HOME.

[Gosta]

I agree with much of what you said, but I think that the game still has a lot of stability issues. I've been crashing to desktop very often now since the last patch on 1/3. Happened like 15 times within 3 hours of playing. Other then that, the game is fantastic - very fun to play, etc. Lag issues are mainly due to graphics, so I'd assume that more optimization needs to be done. I've been running the game on pretty low settings, and getting about the same fps as you, slightly worse. Cities are horrible for fps - I can't imagine what it will be like on release date.

My specs are:
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ (2.2 ghz)
1 gb ram
PCIe nVidia GeForce 6800 GT 256 mb
And of course, Windows XP.

[Gstiss]

the reason for those FPS drops in the cities is because of the loading of all those textures and stuff your machine has to do.
once ur tour around town is over u should be able to craft and parley around just as usual.

[Gosta]

the reason for those FPS drops in the cities is because of the loading of all those textures and stuff your machine has to do.
once ur tour around town is over u should be able to craft and parley around just as usual.

what i was saying is that once release date comes around, those already crappy fps in the cities are going to be compounded. i can imagine not being able to move.

[Lenilya]

I still say the end of Beta 2.5 was the best the game ever was, fun-wise. Everything since has been too downhill for me. In one aspect, they dumb it down to cater to the 'casual' crowd, yet they'll tweak some other setting to make it harder for the 'hardcore' crowd, ending up with just another grindfest at the end.

Give me back my 2.5 combat chains, damn you. >.<

[Ruccus]

what i was saying is that once release date comes around, those already crappy fps in the cities are going to be compounded. i can imagine not being able to move.

Not really; that's the advantage of the unibody; once it's loaded, additional characters aren't nearly as demanding. waiting for the boat is a good example; with a half-dozen avatars and a couple NPCs my framerate was fine. About the only issue right now is when another player first enters your area, there is a studder as his information is sent to you from the server.

As for stability, I was playing earlier today for about four hours waiting for it to crash and it didn't. Over the past couple days there have been several patches to get it ready for beta 5. A week ago I felt it wasn't quite stable enough, but today it was solid.

[Gosta]

Not really; that's the advantage of the unibody; once it's loaded, additional characters aren't nearly as demanding. waiting for the boat is a good example; with a half-dozen avatars and a couple NPCs my framerate was fine. About the only issue right now is when another player first enters your area, there is a studder as his information is sent to you from the server.

As for stability, I was playing earlier today for about four hours waiting for it to crash and it didn't. Over the past couple days there have been several patches to get it ready for beta 5. A week ago I felt it wasn't quite stable enough, but today it was solid.

yeah, but that stutter may happen much too often... i have this image of hundreds of people running around entering and leaving your screen every minute - i think it'd get annoying. Good to hear that stability has improved since yesterday, and I also hear that it (crashing) can be caused by local problems too - not necessarily widespread.

[deusdivini]

My one worry about beta 5 is that the masses are all critics. Not everyone will be so accepting of the bugs and flaws left in the game at this point.
As such this could lead to so bad, bad press for Vanguard. I'm confident that they will bang out the bugs eventually... but everyone is about to see what we've been seeing for months now, and they're going to magnify them and blow them completely out of proportion.
To say I'm a little worried about this is understating the matter... but hey.

From what Brad's said it sounds like King Smedley wants his money... :hmph

[zeklummen]

My one worry about beta 5 is that the masses are all critics. Not everyone will be so accepting of the bugs and flaws left in the game at this point.
As such this could lead to so bad, bad press for Vanguard. I'm confident that they will bang out the bugs eventually... but everyone is about to see what we've been seeing for months now, and they're going to magnify them and blow them completely out of proportion.
To say I'm a little worried about this is understating the matter... but hey.

From what Brad's said it sounds like King Smedley wants his money... :hmph

No one worth playing will take what happens in beta as what they should expect come game time. Also, being a person that has pre-ordered and not been in beta, don't believe that we'll all be like that. A lot of us have been looking forward to the game for years and are very eager to see how it is. I expect bugs, but being a programmer I guess I just know what to expect. The final code will work itself out, and the major lag issues will too. I will easily say though that upgrading your computer for this type of game is just smart. I also think that the game shouldn't come down to levels of current systems. It should esteem itself higher. People can always upgrade, and should. The recommended specs that I've seen are what my two-year-old system are at. So, I don't think that it's asking too much at all.

[Fydel]

No one worth playing will take what happens in beta as what they should expect come game time.

Exactly. Although, I think the three most annoying, although superficially so, bugs I've run into so far was 1) When you fire your bow, you acually throw your arrow instead of using the bow. 2) the loot window doesnt auto-close when you loot coin. 3) Longsword graphics arent in game (least the ones I've tried.

Oh, and as a rogue I can stealth while mounted on my horse =P

[deusdivini]

Shush about the horse bug! We're just that sneaky!

[injijo]

I still say the end of Beta 2.5 was the best the game ever was, fun-wise. Everything since has been too downhill for me. In one aspect, they dumb it down to cater to the 'casual' crowd, yet they'll tweak some other setting to make it harder for the 'hardcore' crowd, ending up with just another grindfest at the end.

Give me back my 2.5 combat chains, damn you. >.<

I'm with you Len. I tried to stay interested, but they kept messing with things until I didn't even feel like playing anymore. I guess I'll jump in and give beta 5 a chance with some friends who can now play. But man, I'm disillusioned.

[TeanninBramblefeet]

I'm liking it thusfar... Logitech G15 Keyboard LCD usage really sells me on it, lol

[Gstiss]

I'm liking it thusfar... Logitech G15 Keyboard LCD usage really sells me on it, lol

first of all: woohootage! :shock :love

but on secind thought: what's does it support sofar?
im asking, because im concerned about bots or stuff like that could ruin my gameplay if they give you values for stuff like hp.

[Aiden]

I still say the end of Beta 2.5 was the best the game ever was, fun-wise. Everything since has been too downhill for me. In one aspect, they dumb it down to cater to the 'casual' crowd, yet they'll tweak some other setting to make it harder for the 'hardcore' crowd, ending up with just another grindfest at the end.

Give me back my 2.5 combat chains, damn you. >.<


I think they lost the identity of what the game should be by trying to cater to the mass market appeal. as you said they could not seem to find a single identity and stick with it. I am glad to hear that they have appeared to fix the graphics issue people have been having up till the end of december, even on high end systems.

Overall for me , the game has fallen into the catagory of a game that has potential, but i think needs alot of work yet to make it ready for release to the public.

As dues said, hes concerned about the masses being critics, and i agree with him. Given the general consumer market, if VG makes a poor launch im really concerned about its long term viability. I do not believe its DOA by any means, but if they lose out on that tell a friend word of mouth early on , it always has a huge impact on sales.

[Colvin]

Since you people like it, tell me what I'm missing then. I have 2 level 6 characters on different continents, and for both of them I have done all the quests and can't find anymore. No idea where to go next, no idea where I can go; and even if I do find quests, no idea what level they are supposed to be for. Maybe WoW has just spoiled me, but I would at least like some direction from the NPCs of where I should head next.

[Qutsmnie]

I got in beta like way way way way back. And went cool time to go test. And after 7 GBs and running out of space im like no testing for meh! Im surprised it doesnt get mentioned cause if your still in the 60gb generation of harddrives it might be time to go to 120 if you want to play this... I have no idea what it tops out at as I gave up at that point.

[Nocte]

I think it's currently 22GB, last time I checked. The goal for retail discs is 17GB I believe.

And for those with great connections wondering what's going on... it decompresses every file after it is downloaded- before downloading the next. The download install time is also largely client processor lag. :b Total actual download is in the 6 to 7 GB range.

[Hordolin Awanagin]

Rogue:
I've played many a Rogue in my time... you come to expect them to be pretty much the same... but in this case you could be wrong. Sure we make and apply poisons, yes, we stealth... So what's different? Firstly you stay stealthed.. and it's TOUGH to keep stealthed. As a Rogue, you're basicly a nuke with daggers. You DPS capability is ridiculous, and in my opinion the highest of all the offensive fighters.

That's one thing that pleased me. The first time I walked around a corner and was unstealthed because of a good sized campfire.

[vjek]

well, I played most of today and have some impressions.

This is my first day testing in VG beta, so those of you who have been in beta forever, understand the context here. I've played a wide variety of MMOG's, and have played UO, M59, EQ, EQ2, DAoC, AC2, and a few others not worth mentioning. I've played a Rogue in EQ up to 65, until the release of EQ2 and a Brigand in EQ2 up to 70, awaiting VG. I've played other characters also, but in the context of the Safehouse, that will give you some appreciation of my perspective.

So, here we go.

First, I had read the review on one of the other fansites recently regarding starting on Martok, and I had planned to play a goblin on release, (evil and short = best) so it seemed a great choice. And I think it is. The introduction into the Lore and geography is quite seamless, and the quests are varied and engaging, at least up to my current level (9). I won't re-iterate what goes on the first few levels, except to say there is one key point that I missed, due to a bug in a quest.

I was in such a hurry to actually see what the combat mechanics were like that I didn't talk to the first quest NPC after you get off the boat (literally). I just did the first boat quest and ran off to slaughter crabs like a good noob. I ground up to level 4 before I noticed I wasn't really getting any new skills, so thought it might be good to go to town and see if there were trainers or what the deal was. Once in town, I tracked down the Light Fighter trainer, and saw I could purchase new abilities.

Oh, right. I rebound my screenshot key to PrtSc and it doesn't work now, so I have no screenshots, even though I took a whole bunch of them (ok, i THOUGHT i was taking them, but I really wasn't, even though it said I was. /grumble).

Anyways, so I got a bunch of new skills. Let's face it, the first few levels these days of any of these games, you're a grunt. Hack, slash, kill, move on to the next mob/quest, and follow the linear plotline because quests are the best way to level. There were several dozen (over 40) people on Beta2 today on the Martok Peninsula happily blasting their way through the quest line, and I only saw severe competition on a couple of different mobs. Not that much, really. Alot more people were killing mobs repeatedly thinking they were going to drop uber loot then realizing they were quest mobs and finally giving up, or running off to go get the quest themselves.

There is a /log command. It puts the logs in the /bin subfolder (why not the /log subfolder? good question. It should be.) but you cannot permanently toggle this, and the land chunks reset about once per hour at the moment, so there were some times I forgot to turn it back on. However, I was able to get a good chunk of log data, and I'll write a perl based log parser for personal analysis like i did for EQ2 soon enough.

The first 8-10 levels of the Martok Peninsula noob experience provide you with weapons and armor completely. There is no need whatsoever to rely on mob drops in any way. This, I think, is a good choice. The mobs are all solo that I saw, anyway. Up to level 9, and I've never seen what I would call a 'heroic' mob yet. I don't know what this dot system is, because... frankly, there are no dots that I can see anywhere on any part of the UI to evaluate the difficulty of the target. Or if there is, it's been the same for 9 levels on ever mob. /shrug

Graphics are great, but not a huge sticking point for me. On my system, I can have 5FPS or 100FPS (yes, literally, 100FPS) depending on the settings, the area, and the weather. Rain drops my FPS by about.. 5-10. Inside Franx caverns, 100FPS baby, booyah.

So, what do rogues do? Here's the list so far.

Block
Parry
Dodge
Wicked Strike I (yes ,there is II, III, etc, this is a quick refresh reasonable damage attack)
Backstab I (big DD)
Lacerate I (DoT)
Hemmorage (Finishing move)
Pickpocket
Plunder (Finishing Move)
Ravage I (another big DD opener, from stealth, from out of combat only)
Intent (crit chance modifier for 8sec, huge ability)

(there's more, but that stupid /log command not being permanent made me lose a crapload of data, and the servers are down atm for a patch)

EDIT:

Here's more!
Bow
Archery
One-handed piercing
Safe Fall
Dagger
Combat Awareness
Awareness
Sneak
Hide
Dagger and Knife

We can use Crushing, Slashing, and Piercing weapons.
Can use Leather (medium) armor, and can use poisons, flechettes, throwing weapons, darts, bows, crossbows, scrolls, blinding powder, and flash powder.

Just before the servers went down, I was able to use blinding flash to do the following.
Sneak up on a solo mob.
Ravage to open.
Blinding Flash (stuns for 6 sec, although I think it's more of a mez than a stun, it appears to break on damage)
... reposition quickly/strafe behind ...
Backstab
Wicked Strike
..mob dead..
This was on a level 8 solo mob when I was level 9.

Flash Powder is _consumed_ when you use Blinding Flash. Just like a Hate Stones used for porting up to Hate, except it's much cheaper. ;)

So while that particular technique is very fancy and works well, it costs money every time you want to kill a mob.

Pickpocket and Plunder are used to obtain materials to make poisons and rogue usable items, like flechettes (and apparently blow darts?) but I haven't received any items like that yet, just Pocket Lint, Cracked Gems, Bottles of Bad Wine, etc... stuff like that. Junk that sells for coppers. Still, mildly entertaining, and you have to work up the Pickpocket skill somehow, right?

So, my biggest mystery was this only Opener, Chain/Bridge, Finisher thing that Brad keeps ranting about how it's evolutionary and everyones going to need a new change of underwear after they see it. So far, what I've seen is that particular combat moves done in a particular order have a _chance_ (no, no guarantees) to let you use the "specials" you have.

So far, at level 9, I have Plunder and Hemmorage. Hemmorage is a higher damage DoT than Lacerate, so no big orgasmic damage display or anything, but it does make a tremendous difference in combat on difficult targets, when used in conjunction with Intent.

So what is Intent? Think of it kind of like... a martial arts focus type thing. You focus on your goal (doing damage) very intently for a few seconds. During that time, you have a much higher chance to do criticals, and in my experience, although this may be impression only, the chance for finishing moves is greatly increased also.

For example, the last mob in the Grakkor's Beacon line is a tough fella. Level 8, harder than usual. I used Stalk, Intent, then Ravage and Wicked Strike and I killed him so fast I shocked myself. I went back through the log and saw I had done an epic critical on him. Basically what those are is a very rare critical hit well beyond the normal. In this case, about 200 damage above normal. :) Amazing.

I had a chance to group a few times, but people aren't so keen on it at the moment, probably because they're still all googly eyed at the eye candy and it's all fresh and shiny. The few times I did manage to group, though, I was able to stay stealthed pretty much throughout all of combat, as long as I didn't burn through all my huge damage moves sequentially as fast as possible. It's a little freaky, though, let me tell you. After playing an EQ2 rogue for so long, where stealth in combat is very fleeting and more of an annoyance than a goal, this is a whole new ball game.

As for being able to re-stealth after combat has started, that is only possible if you use ... something I haven't used yet. It's another thing that consumes Flash Powder, but i can't remember the name. Basically it dazes the mob long enough so that you can stealth, but if you're the aggro focus, and get hit, it's just going to break right away anyway.

I'll put that another way, as it's not too clear. You can always start combat stealthed. If you're in a group, until you do something aggressive, you can stealth. Your other party members can all be happily slashing away, and you can stealth AFTER they have engaged, and go to work. However, once stealthed, and you break stealth, and the monster isn't dead yet, getting back into stealth is going to cost you something. Either time, DPS, or money (in consumables). When you're solo'ing, you can actually stay stealthed for more than one hit. How? Easy! The monster misses. :) Yes, if they miss the first attack after your opener, you get a second attack while stealthed. The timing is tricky, but it can be done. Typically, though, there aren't that many misses fighting white/even-con/same-level mobs, on either side.

The green bar on the UI shows you endurance, and this recovers faster in combat than I expected. You can run the bar out really fast, but it also recovers at a reasonable rate, allowing you to do a few more abilities before combat is over. Opening moves like Backstab and Ravage take off about 1/3 to 1/4 of the mobs health when done from Stalk and from Behind. With Intent, that's more like 2/5's to 1/2, but you can't have Intent up all the time, and it's very short duration. Personally, I save Intent for adds. When I get an add, I pop Intent, burn down the first, then use whatever I have left in timer on the second, and I'm back where I was before the add, so to speak.

We are not tanks. If you walk up to a solo mob (aggro or not) that is even con and hit auto attack and walk away, you'll probably come back dead. Toe to Toe without specials, tricks, or paying attention, you're going to come out under half health almost for certain. I'm sure good gear will compensate for this to some degree, but for the average player, you have to pay attention and actually play to be efficient and effective.

So, on to the list of complaints:

-no permanent /log'ing option
-when you have more than one bleed DoT on the mob (Like both Lacerate and Hemmorage are running) you can't tell which one is which from the log, it just says:

Combat_log_2007_0105_1738.txt:[18:06:23] [18:06] <BLUE>Krinknax Slick is bleeding and takes 19 points of damage.
Combat_log_2007_0105_1738.txt:[18:06:23] [18:06] <BLUE>Krinknax Slick is bleeding and takes 13 points of damage.

Well heck, which one is which? So there's needs to be some kind of differentiator added, like: "is bleeding from Lacerate and ..."

-Lotto looting is not the default for group looting. This turns every group into a clickfest when something dies as everyone right clicks like a fiend to get at the coppers on the dead monster. Lotto looting should be the default.

-Walking backwards slowly. Ok, wow, do I ever hate this. What's the deal here? Humanoids are horses? I'm pretty sure I can walk backwards or at least jump backwards pretty freaking fast, not like my PC in game. He's a sloth going backwards, and there's just no good reason for it. Hate this "feature"!

-The XP bar does not show % when you mouseover. It should. (this is the bar at the very bottom of the screen in the default UI that shows your level progression %.

-When an ability improves, it doesn't show the current max cap that ability could be. It just says:

Chat_log_2007_0105_1738.txt:[18:20:05] [18:20] <color=yellow>Your skill in Awareness has increased to 31!
Chat_log_2007_0105_1738.txt:[18:20:05] [18:20] <color=yellow>Your skill in Combat Awareness has increased to 28!
Chat_log_2007_0105_1738.txt:[18:20:05] [18:20] <color=yellow>Your skill in Dodge has increased to 76!

Ok, great, but... does that mean Awareness and Combat Awareness should be 76 also? All it needs to have is 31/80 or 28/80, or 76/80, as the case may be.

-There is no way to tell when/how/why Hide, Stalk, Sneak, Combat Awareness, Awareness or any of the other "nebulous" skills increase. I presume there's a whole wackload of hidden skillchecks going on, but seriously, how are we supposed to know?

-Skills apparently only have a chance to improve on creatures that are your level or one level lower than you. If this is true, I hate it. :) That range of skill chance improvement needs to be much greater. I didn't see any skills going up on fights that were level -2 monsters.

-low level Aggro creatures attack you, you can't avoid them unless stalking/stealthed, but if you kill them, they grant no experience. So, they're just an aggravation? No thanks! If I don't get XP from them, they should avoid me like the bringer of death that I am.

-disabling and re-enabling the audio freezes the client for at least 10 seconds. ow!

-You can't use zoom during character creation. Really annoying when trying to set facial features. (No, not even if you re-assign the keys, you can't. It's just disabled for some reason)

-The character creation "choices" sliders do not correspond to the actual number of choices in the given customization. For example, goblin hair has 4 actual choices, but 8 slider positions. Goblin facial hair has 4 actual actual choices, but 6 slider positions. Consistency would be better. Also, you can't use the keyboard to select the slider positions for customization, so when you go to choose one of 30 colors of hair, you have to hope to hell you can remember that one pixel position between the letter "i and o" above the slider bar to get that exact shade of red you want, cause god help you if you want to find it again.

-The character creation customization palletes are random. They jump all over the place. It'll go white, grey, brown, orange, light grey, blue, pink, dark brown, reddish-orange, yellow, green, purple, all from left to right. Just... insanely annoying. :)

-when in melee combat, if you move back from your target EVER, it (the monster) will teleport on top of you repeatedly, without end, and you will get this message, or something similar, over and over:
Chat_log_2007_0105_1004.txt:[10:04:26] [10:04] You failed to use Wicked Strike I because you have no line of sight to your target.
Chat_log_2007_0105_1004.txt:[10:04:30] [10:04] You failed to use Piercing because you have no line of sight to your target.
Chat_log_2007_0105_1004.txt:[10:57:19] [10:57] You failed to use Piercing because you have no line of sight to your target.
Chat_log_2007_0105_1004.txt:[10:57:24] [10:57] You failed to use Piercing because you have no line of sight to your target.

My GOD is this annoying. The hilarious part is that it's plagued EQ1 beta, and EQ2 beta and production from time to time over the past 7 years. I keep wondering, possibly, maybe, just MAYBE the base algorithm for determining how the monster moves to the player could be fundamentally BROKEN? hehehe. Three games later, same broken behavior. Gotta love that. I'm overstating this a little bit, but it's there, and reproducable 100% of the time for me, so if you find this happening, just don't move backwards after you start combat and it will happen... less.

yes, it's beta. yes, there are bugs. yes, it's playable and fun.

I hope they flesh out poisons, scrolls, and the rest of the "useable items" stuff alot more than it appears to be now. For the moment, there are fewer abilities and fewer skills for the Rogue in Vanguard than in either EQ2 or EQ1. That's a bit disconcerting, but it's only day one!

(yes, I'll be submitting /bugs for all of these, and more)

[ubernome]

Wow...it's been a while since I last posted at Safehouse

So here's the super important question before I go download the 6.6GB client: Are gnomes a playable race?

[vjek]

Yes, gnomes are playable, and I was sorely tempted, until I saw goblins....

[Gosta]

-You can't use zoom during character creation. Really annoying when trying to set facial features. (No, not even if you re-assign the keys, you can't. It's just disabled for some reason)

Yes you can. Is your mouse broken? I've been able to use my scroll wheel to zoom in and out just fine. This is the first MMO that the scroll wheel on my particular mouse has worked in (didn't work in EQ1 for some reason).

[vjek]

ah, well, there's no way to bind a key to it, and I use a trackball mouse, so no scroll wheel for me. :)

EDIT: Day 2!

Well, it's getting more interesting. Moving away from the raw noob areas out into the world is becoming more challenging. There are a few areas with certain humanoid types of mobs that are very challenging to fight. Specifically healer mobs. They are basically unkillable for me, even using all my tricks. They have some kind of innate regen that is like 100health per second I swear.

However, none of that information shows up in the logs, or in any way you can actually determine or counter or try and figure out how to beat. That is a problem. It doesn't give you the information in numerical form in any way (and I can't see a way to turn it on) to show enemy heals, or enemy beneficial spells, or anything like that, which you can do in other games.

Plus there doesn't appear to be any way, as a Rogue, to interrupt a caster, at least at level 11.

So those mobs and quests will probably wait until I'm much higher level, which of course is a balance issue and the whole point of beta. the quests after level 10 are much more involved, which in some cases means travelling farther, in some cases means trying to find elusive NPC's, or in some cases means simply killing more of x to obtain bits of quest drop y in sufficient quantity. The world is laid out very well. It's an efficient use of space, and there are a few shortcuts once you know the landscape.

EDIT2:

Ok, so, a few other annoying bits now that I've had supper...

As always, these are my opinions, and I would never attempt to convey them as facts.

No Tracking for Rogues. I know it doesn't fit with the EQ1 Lore, but I got really used to it in EQ2, and heck, why not? Only Rangers get Tracking? How about we get half their ability of tracking, or only able to track monsters and not people, or something really different, like tracking by sound only, so it only works in dungeons, or something. Ah well, who knows. I just miss my tracking from EQ2.

You can't change the chat font with the default UI. I'm not interested in breaking out my XML editor just to change the freaking font. This is 2007, not 1999, let me choose the chat font from my list of installed fonts. And the choice of font is, in my opinion, inefficient. Even at the smallest size, it's too big, and too bold.

The graphic for a short bow is this freaking huge longbow that's almost as tall as I am. Where's my shortbow graphic? If I wanted a longbow graphic, I'd use a longbow. Not that I would, I'm a Rogue! (this is an item specific problem. I just looted a bent crossbow in the Wildgrowth Forest, and it's the proper graphic (in this case a crossbow, not a short bow, but it's still correct). The item Adventurer's Shortbow is using a longbow graphic.

When you are jumping, and trying to move forward, it's very difficult. You basically move probably 1 or 2 pixels if you try and move in any direction once in the air. Not sure why this is so restrictive, but it feels like my character is gimped in some way, when compared to EQ1/2 / all other games. It actually makes me think back to how annoying it was in SWG during beta when you couldn't jump AT ALL. This is almost as bad. Can't jump backwards, can't jump forwards. You can jump forwards while running, but from a standing start, you can't jump then move, at least not in any way that feels like you're doing it especially well. Acrobatic Rogue? Nuh uh.

There's no indication from the Quest-giving NPCs what the level or difficulty or goal or anything about the quest they're offering you. For all I know, some of the quests I'm doing now are level 1 quests, and I couldn't tell you if that was good, bad or appropriate. In one case, the quest I've been given is basically impossible to do alone, but the mobs are my level. Ok, I get that some quests are meant to be harder than others, but there's no indication of any kind that is the case until you die in frustration. Ok, so live and learn, be a hardcore player, blah blah blah, I get the rhetoric. Unfortunately, the translation into game mechanics is just unpolished or unfinished or punitive. Not so good for retail sales numbers and repeat subscribers.

Also, the Quest Log (or Quest Journal) gives you no method to sort by location, doesn't give you a list of names you can use to get back to your quest giver. And while I recognize the die hards will say "You're supposed to know the world well enough to know the locations of every single NPC from 1 to 50", it's not practical. I've seen / met dozens of NPC's and I haven't even done half the quests I could from 1 to 11, and I couldn't tell you their names if you tortured me to death for the information. There's a location journal in your quest log, but apparently (does someone know how?) you can't add your own NPC's in there, which would 100% solve the problem. If you could just right click and add them (and then delete them later) and it would light the compass up like SOME of them do, that'd be awesome. But right now, I have a few names in there I don't want in there, and have no idea how they got in there. /boggle

Also, so far, I haven't been able to pickpocket anything to make any gadgets, gizmos, or other utility items. I haven't seen anything resembling a poison, nor have I seen anything that makes the Rogue different from a Monk or Heavy Fighter except Blinding Flash.

Also, Safe Fall is 100% unnecessary at the moment. Falling damage is nothing, even with Safe Fall at 0, anyone could jump from easily 50 feet high and maybe take 12 damage. That needs to be tuned, for sure.

3rd Person View - Line of Sight calculations take into account Camera Position. This is very bad. Extremely so. It's almost game breaking, in fact. In practice, what this means is that targetting, positional attacks, and "visibility" of your target all depend on where your camera is. I was trying to figure out why it was taking me so long to get into position for backstab compared to EQ2 when I realized the camera position was the variable. And given this works for "target nearest NPC" means a fundamental change to this mechanic will be required before Go-Live because I'm not going to be the only person that notices this. :)

To fix this LOS/Camera problem, the camera position needs to be 100% ignored/removed from the calculations in any way. Also, the direction my character is facing probably shouldn't matter either, given how latency and movement are affecting how the mobs are appearing now. To be precise, at the moment, mobs are not always facing the direction of travel, so they sometimes appear to be walking backwards. Also sometimes when you get to their back to backstab, they're really facing the 180 degree opposite direction, so they have you have to try and move around them to get to their back, where they promptly start moonwalking through you and you get the "you're not in the right position" message, so you have to try moving backwards (at 1/10th the forward rate) and all at 50% movement rate decrease because you're stealthed. /phew. yes, it's a bit frustrating.

Thankfully, walking speed is still not faster than stealthed speed, so at least they're not walking away from you while you're desperately chasing them while stealthed to get close enough to open combat with a stealthed backstab.

Stealth in/out walking/running issues. Right, almost forgot about this one. Basically, the behavior when going in and out of stealth while moving is not consistent. If you're duck-walking (crouched) and then un-stealth, you stay crouched, but absurdly, you keep trying to duck-walk. If you stop, and start again, the proper animation is used, but if you do it on the run, you want to hide your head in shame at the embarassment of how ungainly it looks. Not cool. Not Rogue. In addition, if you're running, then you stealth, it doesn't switch to crouch unless you stop, so you look like you're in molasses running super-slow-mo until you stop then it puts you into crouch. Here's a tip on this. EQ2 went through all this iterating over the past two years with stealth animations. Just stick to one, be consistent.

Anyways, it's still fun, I don't want to push so much negativity, but I'm fairly critical given the amount of hype the years have built up. So far, no-one wants to group, but hopefully I'm approaching the level ranges where it becomes more advantageous than soloing.

[Jeters]

BTW, the gnome starting area (mikalia) is awesome, up there with half elves as one of my favorites.
- and I suggest doing the diplomacy starting line there as well, Ive heard very good things.

[Ezrael]

The Rogue is a treat so far and I believe our big update is yet to come.


I'm hoping we are going to be nice high sustained dps with our spikes from backstabbing and legendary / epic crits etc. Though Im hoping we keep the ability for a short % dmg buff so that we can atleast have some kind of "burn mode"

I love it in EQ1 where at the end of raid mobs burn the mob was called and everyone popped whatever kind of dmg disciplines or AA they had, much funs :)

Here's hoping for some triple epic backstab following by a swift death and a cool sig somewhere down the line.

[vjek]

Ok, finally figured out this whole '2,3,4,5,6 dot' thing...

http://oz.cx/vg/mob-dots.jpg

Maybe a little overkill, but hey, at least it's clear now.

EDIT:

So, got a group earlier today in the Gardens of Xia'Lau (sp?)

Actually, that's not accurate. I was the 7th man, just Stalking with the group to see the region and help them out damage-wise. It was great to practice and work up some skills, though. Improved Hide, Sneak, and learned all about the ... Offensive meter.

http://oz.cx/vg/offensive-meter.jpg

Basically what that meter on the left does is show you a kind of damage multiplier. The longer you're in combat, the higher the red line curves around the bottom from left to right. Once it maxes out, a red dot appears, and the red line starts to climb again. As you can see, there are 5 dots. :) This meter is what you can use to estimate how big that next hit is going to be. The tricky bit is that you have to keep fighting to keep the bonus. If your group cools down too long between pulls, this bonus decays. If your group waits so long that the current corpse decays before the next one pulls, the bonus resets. At least, that's what I've observed so far.

Some interesting snippets from combat... (notice, all really cool stuff happens while Intent.)

---
[12:24:37] [12:24] <GREEN>You become more intent.
[12:24:40] [12:24] <color=white><color=blue>You stab Yukiona Cultivator for 58(31+27) points of damage.
[12:24:40] [12:24] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 19 points!
[12:24:41] [12:24] <BLUE>You backstab Yukiona Cultivator, dealing 290 damage.
[12:24:41] [12:24] <BLUE>You succesfully exploit the enraged weakness on Yukiona Cultivator, dealing 102 additional damage.
[12:24:41] [12:24] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 97 points!
[12:24:45] [12:24] <color=blue>You stab Yukiona Cultivator with Wicked Strike II, inflicting 119 points of damage.
[12:24:45] [12:24] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 40 points!
[12:24:47] [12:24] <color=white><color=blue>You stab Yukiona Cultivator for 59(31+28) points of damage.
[12:24:47] [12:24] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 20 points!
[12:24:47] [12:24] <BLUE>Yukiona Cultivator is bleeding and takes 41 points of damage.
(Yukiona's can be horrendously difficult mobs. Be wary of these things.)
---
[12:25:47] [12:25] <GREEN>You become more intent.
[12:25:49] [12:25] <BLUE>You execute ravage on Clay Guardian, dealing 303 damage.
[12:25:49] [12:25] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 101 points!
[12:25:50] [12:25] <color=white><color=blue>You stab Clay Guardian for 86(44+42) points of damage.
[12:25:50] [12:25] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 29 points!
[12:25:53] [12:25] <BLUE>You backstab Clay Guardian, dealing 833 damage.
[12:25:53] [12:25] <BLUE>You succesfully exploit the enraged weakness on Clay Guardian, dealing 283 additional damage.
[12:25:53] [12:25] <color=red>Epic hit doing an additional 555 points!
(go go Epic hit!)
---
[12:28:07] [12:28] <GREEN>You become more intent.
[12:28:09] [12:28] <BLUE>You execute ravage on Silverfox Strider, dealing 266 damage.
[12:28:09] [12:28] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 89 points!
[12:28:13] [12:28] <color=white><color=blue>You stab Silverfox Strider for 86(45+41) points of damage.
[12:28:13] [12:28] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 29 points!
[12:28:15] [12:28] <color=white><color=blue>You stab Silverfox Strider for 88(44+44) points of damage.
[12:28:15] [12:28] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 29 points!
[12:28:15] [12:28] <BLUE>You backstab Silverfox Strider, dealing 405 damage.
[12:28:15] [12:28] <BLUE>You succesfully exploit the enraged weakness on Silverfox Strider, dealing 137 additional damage.
[12:28:15] [12:28] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 135 points!
[12:28:19] [12:28] You have slain Silverfox Strider!
[12:28:19] [12:28] <color=white><color=blue>You stab Silverfox Strider for 100(57+43) points of damage.
(stabbing the dead, go me)
---
[12:32:48] [12:32] <GREEN>You become more intent.
[12:32:50] [12:32] <BLUE>You execute ravage on Clay Guardian, dealing 284 damage.
[12:32:50] [12:32] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 95 points!
[12:32:51] [12:32] <color=white><color=blue>You stab Clay Guardian for 82(37+45) points of damage.
[12:32:51] [12:32] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 27 points!
[12:32:53] [12:32] <BLUE>You backstab Clay Guardian, dealing 383 damage.
[12:32:53] [12:32] <BLUE>You succesfully exploit the enraged weakness on Clay Guardian, dealing 132 additional damage.
[12:32:53] [12:32] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 128 points!
[12:32:55] [12:32] <BLUE>Clay Guardian is bleeding and takes 113 points of damage.
[12:32:58] [12:32] <color=white><color=blue>You stab Clay Guardian for 136(82+54) points of damage.
[12:32:58] [12:32] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 45 points!
[12:32:58] [12:32] <color=blue>You stab Clay Guardian with Wicked Strike II, inflicting 154 points of damage.
[12:32:58] [12:32] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 51 points!
[12:32:58] [12:32] <BLUE>Clay Guardian is bleeding and takes 113 points of damage.
(biggest DoT I've seen yet, from me)
---
[12:34:49] [12:34] <GREEN>You become more intent.
[12:34:52] [12:34] <BLUE>You execute ravage on Tombo Soldier, dealing 289 damage.
[12:34:52] [12:34] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 96 points!
[12:34:54] [12:34] <color=white><color=blue>You stab Tombo Soldier for 83(42+41) points of damage.
[12:34:54] [12:34] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 28 points!
[12:34:57] [12:34] <BLUE>You backstab Tombo Soldier, dealing 415 damage.
[12:34:57] [12:34] <BLUE>You succesfully exploit the enraged weakness on Tombo Soldier, dealing 141 additional damage.
[12:34:57] [12:34] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 138 points!
---
[12:37:48] [12:37] <GREEN>You become more intent.
[12:37:50] [12:37] <BLUE>You execute ravage on Tombo Radiant, dealing 286 damage.
[12:37:50] [12:37] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 95 points!
[12:37:51] [12:37] <color=white><color=blue>You stab Tombo Radiant for 94(57+37) points of damage.
[12:37:51] [12:37] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 31 points!
[12:37:52] [12:37] <BLUE>Tombo Radiant is bleeding and takes 60 points of damage.
[12:37:55] [12:37] <BLUE>You backstab Tombo Radiant, dealing 443 damage.
[12:37:55] [12:37] <BLUE>You succesfully exploit the enraged weakness on Tombo Radiant, dealing 146 additional damage.
[12:37:55] [12:37] <color=red>Critical hit doing an additional 148 points!
[12:37:55] [12:37] <BLUE>Tombo Radiant is bleeding and takes 60 points of damage.
---

So as you can see, having the mob enraged (at least, at this point) is extremely valuable from a damage perspective, if you have the right group setup and people doing what they should and using the proper abilities in concert.

EDIT3:

Chat server and world server's are down atm, so here's a few more nits to pick...

-the client doesn't always start full screen, even if you've never had it windowed. And you can't seem to switch to full screen until you're in game playing a character, for some reason.

-stealth doesn't last through logging in/out. It does, however, last through chunk-transfers.

-the camera view, however, does not persist through chunk-transfers, and I find myself in first person more often than not, after transferring to a new chunk

-Awareness/Combat awareness only goes up when you charge aggro opponents like a fool. If you actually stalk them, you never see improvements. Are we supposed to use Stalk, or not? Cause if we do, with the current mechanic, we're screwing ourselves over in the Awareness department. To be clear, if you're stalked, Awareness/Combat awareness -never- appear to improve.

-I have the kick skill, but no ability that uses it. Why do I have it if I can't use it? /boggle

-When you swim on the surface of water, you have to "porpoise", that is constantly jump out of the top of the water, and have the camera below and behind you, to force yourself up high enough so that the breath meter doesn't threaten to drown you constantly. It'd be nice if the Breath meter was considerably more forgiving, in that it didin't actually come up until you were at least a meter or two below the surface.

-There is no indication that quests are repeatable, and the ones that are give such a pittance of XP they're hardly worth doing, so it'd be nice to know in advance so if you didn't want to "waste your time" (strictly from an efficiency perspective) you could move on to the one-time quests that give reasonable amounts of XP.

-Contrary to what I said earlier, some quests are marked as (Group). It would seem that the one particular quest I came across simply has extremely difficult mobs in it, although it's supposedly solo-able. (DAMN you, Yukiona's!!!)

-There needs to be more than one bindstone on the island of Martok. One at each Garrison would be sufficient, but running for 15 minutes to get back to -anywhere- after binding at the port is a bit tedious.

-It appears that the cheapest horse is almost exactly as fast as sprinting, which calls into question the purpose of the mount at all?

-Sprinting never appears to wear out, although this may be a beta only thing, it makes it hard to balance things like horses! ;)

-If you die while stunned (which happens pretty much anytime you run past a single 3-dot humanoid aggro mob) the stun stars around your head animation persists through death, until you re-log.

-Yukiona mobs are the debil.

-Diplomacy is remarkably addictive if you get into it, but given it provides no adventure XP of any kind, I can see it being ignored by 99% of the players.

[B'leto]

vjek,

Those were the two most useful posts I've seen in any forum to date. MANY thanks.

I'd pretty much figured out the dot system for MOB cons, but I'd only just recently even noticed the red arc and dot system on the left side of the target window! It was completely arcane to my goblin rogue personage...until now. :)

I've got to wonder if that 113-point bleeding DOT you dished out was the result of a critical Hemmorhage hit. Since bleed hits don't rate their own personalized notification line, maybe you popped that Cultivator as a critical finishing move. Possible, I guess.

Are those Yukiona Cultivators half human, half...plant? There's something in the forest that's the same way. Even con, two-dots, but holy crap! <grin>

Thanks again for the info!

B

[TeanninBramblefeet]

-Awareness/Combat awareness only goes up when you charge aggro opponents like a fool. If you actually stalk them, you never see improvements. Are we supposed to use Stalk, or not? Cause if we do, with the current mechanic, we're screwing ourselves over in the Awareness department. To be clear, if you're stalked, Awareness/Combat awareness -never- appear to improve.

-It appears that the cheapest horse is almost exactly as fast as sprinting, which calls into question the purpose of the mount at all?

I've had Awareness and Combat Awareness shoot up just stalking through groups of enemies that were engaged with my group... you might want to try de-stealthing for a bit in your group for a while just to see if you start making gains then, but I haven't had any issues...

Sprint is supposed to drain endurance per second as it's used. As it stands right now, it's bugged, and draining no endurance. That's where having the horse is gonna be useful, perma-sprint+. Also keep in mind that you can give your mount better horseshoes to make it run faster, and saddlebags for more inventory space.

[vjek]

I was in the Temple of Ghalnn yesterday and foolishly tried to kill one of the Golgrethor Maurauders there. She killed me, so I rez'd and ran back to grab my kit. On my way back, naked, I started seeing Awareness and Combat Awareness literally SPAMMING my chatbox with improves. I ... have no explanation. I wasn't getting aggro, but I think I have an idea what's happening.

There is apparently a check that is done when you are first LOS'd to any mob in the game. When it's beady eyes touch your ugly bag of mostly pixels, some kind of skill check is done. I think why it was going up so quickly for me while naked was that, in comparison, the creatures were all vastly superior than I. While in my gear, I'm a god among mortals (relative to the mobs I was hunting) and so there was no skill increases.

At least, that's going to be my working theory until I see something that breaks that observation. Also, humanoid mobs appear to generate more skill increases.

So, it would seem that there is an Awareness sphere that is basically as large as LOS, there's a Listen Sphere for Sneak check, and a Vision Sphere for Hide check. Crossing the boundary of each sphere generates a roll against skill, and can produce a skill increase, and/or success/failure.

Can anyone confirm/deny?

Also, Teannin, is your Awareness and Combat Awareness maxxed for your level all the time? or Does it lag behind? Mine is at something like 50-60 out of a possible 120 max, so just wondering if you're always at the cap or not.

I've got to wonder if that 113-point bleeding DOT you dished out was the result of a critical Hemmorhage hit. Since bleed hits don't rate their own personalized notification line, maybe you popped that Cultivator as a critical finishing move.
My thought exactly, B'leto. :) And yes, we need every ability, finishing move or otherwise, logged, so we can see things like this.

[TeanninBramblefeet]

Awareness and such definitely lag behind for the level, but usually it's about 3/4 of the way full...

[vjek]

Well, I guess that's similar then.

Day... 4? Yep. Day 4. More Opinions, brace yourself! (ok, maybe a few bugs too)

-You can use the skinning skill to get raw crafting materials off of the creatures that have it (cats, stags, bears, etc) but the corpse will despawn while your skinning it if you wait too long. Obviously, it should not. In addition to this, if the corpse doesn't have any loot, it makes you wait like 20 seconds before you can harvest it, which only frustrates the player and exacerbates the problem. When interacting with a creature corpse for skinning, it should not despawn, and if there is no loot on the corpse, it should switch to skinnable much faster, like 2-3 seconds max.

-When you use food to recover health/energy, it breaks Stalk. Obviously, it should not.

-Finishing moves are not logged in any way. They should be.

-Everything you do, everything you cast, when it starts casting, lands, and is finished, should be logged. Every action of every monster, player, npc, everything needs to go in there too, in excruciating detail, with subsecond accuracy on the timestamp, too. Right now, the logs are inadequate for any kind of serious gameplay, never mind parsing or analysis. Remember, VG is supposed to be BETTER than the rest, not inferior. Right now, in the /logging departing, it's not even half as good as EQ2.

-Camping should only take 20 seconds, no reason for it to be 30. If the monster is coming for you, that 10 seconds isn't gonna make ANY difference. :)

-There are no recast timers shown on abilities when you examine them. Ruin, for example, has a 2 minute recast, and it is 100% impossible to find this out unless you cast the ability then mouse over the ability to watch the recast timer count down. Things like endurance cost and range is already there, so this isn't setting a precedent.

-When you fight on hillsides, the "no LOS" error is very prounounced. I'm not sure why creatures feel the need to stand ON TOP OF YOU when you engage them on un-flat ground, but they do!

-For certain types of mobs, (goos, energy swirls, other geometric/magical beings) it is nigh impossible to find the back of the mob on the first try. I recognize the targetting reticle on the ground is very cool and nifty, but if it didn't rotate, and actually could be customized to show the back and front of the mob, that'd be awesome. 'Cause then we could, you know, know where the back is so we would know which direction to stab the pointy knives. ;)

-Power of the Grove says +19 STR, -19INT, but it's actually -19WIS. Simple fix for this one... hehehe.

---
EDIT

Start of day 5.

Had a chance to group more today.. found out some interesting things.

-/follow doesn't just lead you near the target, it places you directly on top of the target, so that you spin around and flip around on the spot due to latency and such. It looks really goofy, hopefully it's something they'll fix. There's also no way to bind hotkeys or keys of any kind to camera panning. This means you're forced to left click and drag the camera around instead of just quickly panning it with 2 keys. Personal preference thing I guess, but I would expect this engine to be MORE feature rich, not less, than the past 7 years of games.

-you can't /invite someone unless they're within LOS. Or if you can, it's not with /invite. Annoying, and also a step backwards. EQ2 allows you to invite anyone anywhere in the world, at any time, to your group or raid.

-there's no random all loot option, so looting in a group is still a click fest to see who gets the corpse first. Not sure why this behavior is like this. My guildmate says that you can set random all but magical, and then set the level to mundane, and it's supposedly lotto's everything then, but... I haven't seen it in practice. Round robin is an alternative, I s'pose, but I'm sure people will cry foul if it resets the round-robin-ing whenever someone joins or leaves the group or something like that. We'll see. Have to test it more.

-loot messages are not echo'ed if you loot something. If someone else loots it, you get the message and a link, but not if you loot it. Simple enough fix here, echo all loot messages to the group regardless of who loots the item.

-Still no waypoints to quest givers, once the quest is complete. If the issue is which one to use with multiple completed quests, just put the waypoint indicator on the compass for the quest that currently has the focus in the quest log/journal.

-Can't buy stacks. gotta be able to buy stacks. Clicking 50 times every time i go back to town to buy stacks of flash powder != fun.

-They sorta fixed swimming with the patch last night.. if you start at the shore with the camera up and behind you in third person, and never move the camera once in the water, you stay exactly on the surface and never see the breath meter. Works great. But if you move to a new zone chunk, or move your camera, or change directions, it presumes that you want to commit suicide by drowning, and promptly dives you to the bottom of the ocean. Not sure how to convey how silly this is, maybe people will have to experience it for themselves. After the zen moment of "calm ocean surface" is broken, though, you can't get it back, and your back to porpoising, which just looks comical beyond words. :)

-the Rogue ability "Ruin" modifies monster damage output by reducing it to roughly 45% of it's original damage. If the monster would normally hit you for 40, it hits for 18, for example. Great ability.

-Apparently, through some as yet unexplained mechanism, Rogues get a 10% critical hit chance bonus when wielding daggers. There's no indication how or why this is the case, but when I look at any dagger weapon, that's what it says. We have 8 other weapon specializations, but none grant this bonus. Also, we have 5 other weapon TYPES we could wield, but none of them appear to have this bonus either. So I'm left wondering, with such a massive advantage to daggers, and no apparent way to change it or actually specialize in another weapon type, what's the point of the other weapon types?

-Also, another problem with weapons in general that I can't explain. The Traveller's dagger on the merchant appears as 9-10 damage, level 11, 4.09 DPS:

http://oz.cx/vg/dagger1.jpg

However, when equipped, at 100% condition, and my One Hand Pierce and Dagger and Knife skills maxxed for my level at level 12, this is how the dagger appears:

http://oz.cx/vg/dagger2.jpg

Damage is reduced to 6-7 and DPS to 2.73. There's no difference in the item. It's the same item. It's just... gimped when equipped for some reason that escapes me.

Any ideas why this is happening?

[vjek]

C'mon fellow Vanguard Rogues, I've seen you playing on the Beta servers. =) Post your own experiences!

[Ruccus]

Well, one experience I had at the Asylum on Kojan was at level 10 I tried to pull a level 12 with my crossbow. I aggroed a second level 12 and prepared myself to do the normal EQ thing by beating on the first mob in hopes that I'd kill him before they both killed me, then die to the second mob. I popped Keen Eye and finished of my original target with a bit less than half health remaining, then turned to the other mob.

Then I remembered that I had just gotten the skill "Blinding Powder". I tossed some blinding powder at the mob, turned and ran. He didn't chase me. I was then able to heal, come back, and finish of the second mob. It's nice that an unexpected add-on isn't necessarily a death sentence.

[Krikit]

Hmm well, my experience is a bit different. Just seems like the class is very generic right now. Theres not even lockipicking/traps..i have yet to experience poisons at all as of the current phase. back in beta 2.5 i tinkered with them a bit, but collecting components took way to long. The class really need more flavor. Only thing you do is try to stay stealthed and pound off the same chains over and over again. We need more utility, and devs need to stop making rogues a plain and simple dps machine. The rogue class has died a long time ago it appears.

[Krikit]

Then I remembered that I had just gotten the skill "Blinding Powder". I tossed some blinding powder at the mob, turned and ran. He didn't chase me. I was then able to heal, come back, and finish of the second mob. It's nice that an unexpected add-on isn't necessarily a death sentence.

That was a bug, the powder was only supposed to stun him for 6 seconds, then when the time was up he was supposed run after you and continue to hand you your arse. er wait...you mean blinding flash? we get the blinding flash skill, blinding powder is a reagent for blinding flash and smoke bomb.

btw, where the heck are the company of thieves people, havent seen any of you on in ages. Appears Fricka was last on decempber 10th.. =p

[Ruccus]

Yup, the level 10 skill that uses the blinding powder. I think because I was well out of his aggro range after six seconds, he didn't follow. I was on the upper level of the asylum and booted it all the way across the upper walkway to the guardian guys so he may have followed fo a while, but I got out of range from him pretty quickly.

[Gosta]

After todays patch, I notice that my ability to stealth past mobs has been severely decreased. It seems like 99% of the time now the mobs hear or see me. These are mobs I was able to sneak by just fine before the patch today. Wonder if this is a bug or an "unintentional nerf" sort of thing... Quite strange.

[San Kshun]

I've had the same experience, Gosta. I get seen almost every time now, whereas I didn't get seen 99.9% of the time before.

[vjek]

I'd say you're both right, I too saw an adjustment in mob perception against sneak/hide skills as of the 1656 patch. Unless you're referring to build 1659, which I haven't tried yet. If it's even worse, it may be a big problem, because with build 1656 it was noticable that I was being seen and heard very often, but it was basically impossible to max my hide and sneak skills given how few improves you see against the skill checks. My suggestion would be to improve the skill-up rate for both hide and sneak if the expectation is that it should be at max for your level.

As well, I echo the sentiments of Krikit, in that item assembly, scrolls, poison, traps, and locks need to be in the game from level 1, not from level 20, 35, or higher. At the very least, ALL of them should be available at lev10, even if they're not introduced until level 10. And I haven't seen anything that can be used to make any of the above yet, so far. I did obtain an item from Pickpocket, an Agate, and it said it could be used by Rogues, but I couldn't use it, nor did the Rogue NPC's in Martok have anything enlightening to remark about it. Right clicking does nothing, it say's "you cannot use that item" or some such, even though mousing over it says "This can be used by Rogues". Ok, I'm a Rogue already, let me use the damned thing!

The assessment that our role from level 1 to level 10 (in a group) is to remain stealthed and cast the same spells (use the same abilities) over and over is fairly accurate from a group-role perspective. IMO, a Stalking Rogue, for a group, is a burden. We move so slowly (50% slower) compared to everyone else, but we must position and remain stalked to retain our combat bonus. Damage Casters don't need to stalk, nor do they need to find position, nor are they slow. :) Can any higher level rogue confirm that we ever move faster than a 50% speed penalty while Stalked, between level 1 and level 50? And if so, via what mechanism/ability? Beyond level 10, I would hope the role would be considerably more broad in scope, but up to level 12, not seeing it so far.

Also, yesterday I found a way to max out Awareness and Combat awareness. It's lame, imo, but it works. Basically you find any dense group of aggro static mobs. Run through them. Run until they don't chase you. Then turn around and do it again, over and over, until your skill is maxxed. Took me about a dozen runs through the gauntlet to max my two Awareness abilities. I have found no other way to improve this skill while playing the Rogue (apparently) as intended, specifically, while Stalked most of the time.

Every time your character crosses a sphere of awareness of an aggro mob, and you're visible, you get a skill-up check to Awareness and Combat Awareness. This doesn't _appear_ to, (for me) go up if you're Stalking. Again, as a suggestion, I think the skill-up checks for Awareness and Combat Awareness should roll even if you're Stalked.

In addition, I was surprised yesterday when I could see other Stalked Rogues, even while not stalked. What's the point of Hide & Sneak if others can see you? That was a bit disconcerting, to put it mildly.

Finally, I saw many cases of you have detected such-and-such on monster blah-blah, a weakness, and yet no indication you can do anything about it. There are these reactions, rescues, (used to be bound to F G Y V?) and sympathetic "things" you can can do, but when I press those keys, nothing happens, and there's no feedback as to why it didn't work, or what it should be doing, or anything. Is this some old game mechanic that's gone, or some new game mechanic that's not working, or what?

I understand certain abilities we have do more damage to certain opponents in certain states, (dazed, enraged, bleeding, etc) but is that all these "detected" lines are telling us? Because there's little icons on the target that also tell us that, so I'm not sure if both the iconic and textual feedback is simply a duplication of information (which is fine!) or if they're two separate systems, and one involves these sympathetic, reactions, and rescues. Still a mystery to me.

[Zincarla Khazidhea]

Right clicking does nothing, it say's "you cannot use that item" or some such, even though mousing over it says "This can be used by Rogues". Ok, I'm a Rogue already, let me use the damned thing!


I understand certain abilities we have do more damage to certain opponents in certain states, (dazed, enraged, bleeding, etc) but is that all these "detected" lines are telling us? Because there's little icons on the target that also tell us that, so I'm not sure if both the iconic and textual feedback is simply a duplication of information (which is fine!) or if they're two separate systems, and one involves these sympathetic, reactions, and rescues. Still a mystery to me.

1) A long time ago, you could use those items by crushing them into powder with sand (another pickpocketable item) using the assembly window. Then, if memory serves, that powder could be turned into ink for scribing scrolls, among other things. Assembly has gone the way of the dodo, but those gems you can steal, should factor into new poison recipes. Im just L19 right now so I'll start toying with it next level. So, its not a direct use item, but we can "use" it.

2) You no longer have sympathetics or counters and what nots. They should probably revise that UI box. Basically, its as you said. You need to have high enough awareness to detect weaknesses on a mob and then know which of your skills will exploit that weakness. In some situations, for some classes, you can get a skill that causes a weakness that another of your skills will exploit. This gives you an unofficial chain. At 19, I cant set anything up like that, but I know some classes can. So, to start, review your most commonly used skills, like wicked strike, hemorrhage, backstab, and ravage, and then just watch for the weaknesses to be triggered. Should give you a nice little boost to DPS.

The thing I like about this system is that it promotes intimate knowledge of your skills, resulting in an easy to use, but hard to master combat system.

Depending on what UI you use (Im using the DroxUI), it can be set up to easily see what weaknesses are currently active on a mob, kind of like an alternate debuff window.

Hope that helps some.

[Nenjin]

Honestly, the game has changed so much since the last time I had a chance to test it, most of my input would be obselete at this point. While I do have opinions on the game, I'm going to withold them until I get a chance to look at the release product.

[Warforge]

Honestly, the game has changed so much since the last time I had a chance to test it, most of my input would be obselete at this point. While I do have opinions on the game, I'm going to withold them until I get a chance to look at the release product.


Well watching all the changes in the last week its hard to go by the write up now....

They have changed a lot with classes....last night they Nerfed Blood Mage dammage....which I saw comming..I mean i was smoking 3 dot yellows solo.

Now I can barely take on a two dot yellow.


Dread knight I mentioned on a post was hit hard on beta 5 launch patch.

they took away some skills...removed provoke 2 at levle 14...which Gimped my tank skills...but my DPS went up....they also removed my hit rate dodge aura...&gt;:(


I havn't touched my druid since beta 4 ..im afraid to see what they goofed with.

[vjek]

Just to put some Rogue context around that 3-dot vs 2-dot thing.

As a Rogue, since Jan 5th, without Keen Eye (Intent), a yellow two dot 2 or more levels above me kills me 100% of the time.

3 dots are pure fantasy. Not even with an epic critical backstab could I hope to kill a 3 dot with my Rogue. Certain death.

My only killable targets are level+1, level+0, and lower two-dot monsters. And without Keen Eye, it's down to me having 10% health on a level+1 (yellow) 2-dot.

Now that I'm almost level 13 I've run into:

-no groups / no-one lfg to join to get gear upgrades
-not enough money to get gear upgrades
-not making enough money per solo kill to keep myself in flash powder, never mind saving up for gear.

So it's looking alot like I'm going to have to grind for hours just to get enough cash to try and save up 10 silver (literally, not exaggerating) to try and buy one dagger upgrade. :) hehehe. ah, to be a noob, so refreshing.

[Nenjin]

Well watching all the changes in the last week its hard to go by the write up now....

I was actually testing in phase...2? for a few months, all of which I couldn't talk about at the time. I _had_ a pretty good idea of what the game was like then, but its a different beast now than it was then, from what I've been told.

[FunkyLePew]

today i maxed out my sneak and hide via the following: (and they raise faster the closer to cap they are, (in my opinion), so it kinda proves that skill ups are on success only)

Find a group of static mobs.
go inside their radius of awareness (for lack of better term), but make sure you stay out of their agro radius.
turn on stalk
turn off stalk
(repeat)
not sure if its necessary but i move around a smidget everyonce in a while or rather often (but just a smidget mind you). dont know if there's mechanics behind it, but the mobs just wont repeatedly give you more then 5-6 skill ups max, moving around helps, and moving between groups of static mobs is best. (i ran between the 4 ramps the temples had outside of Autumns Oak (i forget name), each ramp was positioned so i could be in awareness range of 2-3 mobs easily but out of agro range)
also, try to be in the awareness range of multiple mobs, and this works best if the mobs are equal to very slightly above your level.

watch for walkers. the higher the mobs level in relation to yours the faster the skillups i would say unscientifically.

thanks for the hint on awareness/combat awarenes... its hard to skill those up and they seem to help.

also, in regards to daggers +10% critical strike. well i believe thats for all, 2 hand swords give +10% parry and 1h blunt give +health... i dont remember specifics, but it seems to be "by design"
they have a thing called parry daggers that give AC and parry% (and usbale only by ROG,BRD,RNG) but i dont see how that is usefull unless parrying is a requirement to some abilities.

ohh one other biggie that i didnt realize till i restarted my rogue as another race. one of their first few quests got you a sword.... it appears you can dual wield from level one. so make sure you get a weapon in your second hand as soon as possible.

[vjek]

I tried to max hide and sneak as you suggested, no worky for me. Not a single skill-up. I'll try some static humanoids tomorrow that are higher level.

found some new things this evening:

-You can't set your chat channel in your chat box permanently. This was a feature of EQ2 that was great, so you didn't have to keep switching back and forth with /say then /shout then /say, then /group just to keep yourself from /shouting something that should have been in /group.

-Spiders chase you at least 3 times farther than normal mobs, and always cast snare. Oddly, this makes spiders the most feared of all creatures in Telon, because a) they're everywhere and b) the snare is unresistable. How about we have a chance to resist it? That'd be good. They actually chase you so far that when they finally break, they are out of line of sight and unselectable, they run so far back to their aggro point. It's crazy. Of course, they're blue 2 dots that beat you down to half health while you're "sprinting" away, which calls into question the whole point of sprint at all if they can just snare you and sprint does nothing. And they're going to be doing this for 50 levels? Wow, that's something to look forward to.

-If you're in a group, and a monster aggro's you, perhaps you're running by or going through caves or a dungeon or whatever, doesn't matter, but if you're the first in the group it sees, but ownership has NOT been established, Stalk cannot be used. Ok, you haven't DONE anything aggressive in any way, but somehow, for some reason, you can't Stalk. Furthermore, if your tank then establishes ownership, you STILL can't Stalk. However, if the tank establishes ownership FIRST, you can run around like a bloody loony stealthed or not, stalk in and out appear and disappear as much as you want before attacking, and there's no problem, Stalk away! Stalk on your hands, Stalk while juggling, doesn't matter! So really, it should be changed to either be one way or the other, and my preference (obviously) would be that until you do something that would establish ownership, you can Stalk.

-The two buttons for "Stalking I" and "Appear'" that are by default, placed just above the "Stalk" (/cast Stalk) macro button allow you to go in and out of Stalk MUCH faster than if you use the macro button. Unfortunatley, these particular actions cannot be bound to keys. Either they need to be bindable to keys or they need to be macro-able, or the macro key for /cast Stalk needs to have the same cast and recast timers as these buttons. Consistency, please! With the macro button, you have to wait quite a while between casts. By clicking the buttons like a crack monkey, you can appear and stalk again as fast as you can click. Repetitive Stress Injury ftw!

-And yes, as of patch 1661, you can still /cast Stalk, then cancel Stalk by right clicking and run around at full runspeed, while Stalked, with no issues. If this is intended, great, but I seriously doubt it, and there's going to a whole bucketload of disappointed Rogues if it doesn't get fixed before launch.

I'm really surprised, given most of these bugs have been identified for literally two months, that they have not been fixed. I get more nervous every day logging in and seeing no Rogue items in the patch notes.

[FunkyLePew]

yeah it didnt work for me after the patch either. but it worked with single moving mobs that was red, not as nice as the multi skill ups at once, but at least theres someway to do it without just hoping. not sure if its cause i leveled up 2 levels and went back to same mobs or something they changed after the patch cause it worked late last night. The only difference was that last night i would also fail on stalking cause the mobs would say they saw or heard me but i was far enough away that i didnt agro them. So it may just be that it has to be done with tough enough mobs. as the mobs were blue to me now.

[vjek]

Ok, just finished maxxing hide and sneak 15 minutes ago.

So these were the conditions.

This is a goblin rogue, level 12, in the region around the temple of ghalnn SE of the city of martok, where all the trees are on fire, etc.

In that area, is a couple of golgrethor marauders. They're NPC goblin mobs, level 14, 2 dot. They wander around, but it's a pretty small area. they probably take maybe 10-15 steps in any given direction before walking back.

I did not use this button:

http://oz.cx/vg/stalk-macro-icon.jpg

I used these buttons:

http://oz.cx/vg/stalk-appear-buttons.jpg

And clicked between Stalk and Appear as quickly as possible while in the perception radius of the NPC.

Eventually..

Chat_log_2007_0112_1601.txt:[16:12:55] [16:12] Your skill in Hide has increased to 83!
...
Chat_log_2007_0112_1601.txt:[16:25:14] [16:25] Your skill in Hide has increased to 120!

and

Chat_log_2007_0112_1601.txt:[16:17:25] [16:17] Your skill in Sneak has increased to 83!
...
Chat_log_2007_0112_1601.txt:[16:30:17] [16:30] Your skill in Sneak has increased to 120!

A couple of observations:

-Hide improved faster than Sneak.
-Until I was at the cap, the NPC saw or heard me pretty much constantly.

Conclusions: (As of this build of the client)

You will be seen and heard by any/all NPC's pretty much constantly until you are at your level cap.

Once at your level cap, you can walk safely among two-dot aggressive NPC's that are two levels higher than your current level.

What I'd like to see:

More of a graduated system whereby if you're within 5 of your level cap, your chances greatly improve. Literally, right now, 119 is the same as 19, if the cap is 120.

On the plus side, I couldn't replicate the "You have no line of sight to your target" bug where they wanted to stand inside the center of your model, so it looks like the patch notes were accurate, bug squished!

EDIT (several days later):

I was able to replicate this behavior on another character, up to level 10. Here's a screenshot (http://oz.cx/vg/stalking_two_levels.jpg) showing a 4 dot level+2 aggressive humanoid NPC that I Stalked in front of, behind, around, etc, for several minutes.

However, as of build 1689, I was only getting Hide and Sneak skill-ups on level + 0, level + 1, or higher monsters. I got zero skill-ups from level - 1, level -2 monsters.

[vjek]

Also wanted to add earlier this weekend, I was able to raise Pickpocket using the following method.


Find static grey 2-dot aggressive humanoid NPC/monster.
Stalk behind static grey monster.
Press Pickpocket ability. Get skill up.

However, the following caveats were true:

I could not raise my skill beyond (the level of the monster * 10) + 40. For example, with this particular character I was level 10, and had to find a level 6 monster to raise my pickpocket to 100. ((6 * 10) + 40 = 100).

A level 4 monster let me get to 80, a level 5 to 90, etc.

It did not matter that the creatures pockets were empty (after I got the initial lint) , I still got skill-ups. The closer I got to the maximum level that creature would grant, the slower the skill-ups became. I tried for many many minutes after I reached 70,80,90 respectively and got no skillups, so I believe this formula is accurate (until patched or changed) for the moment.

[17:17:46] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 61!
[17:17:51] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 62!
[17:18:02] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 63!
[17:20:47] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 64!
[17:22:02] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 65!
[17:25:42] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 66!
[17:26:38] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 67!
[17:26:45] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 68!
[17:26:57] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 69!
[17:27:29] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 70!

[17:47:57] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 71!
[17:49:00] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 72!
[17:50:47] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 73!
[17:51:43] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 74!
[17:52:02] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 75!
[17:52:21] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 76!
[17:53:11] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 77!
[17:53:55] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 78!
[17:54:08] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 79!
[17:55:29] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 80!

[18:09:18] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 81!
[18:09:37] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 82!
[18:09:50] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 83!
[18:10:08] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 84!
[18:10:46] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 85!
[18:12:08] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 86!
[18:12:39] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 87!
[18:12:45] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 88!
[18:13:11] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 89!
[18:13:29] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 90!

[18:19:52] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 91!
[18:21:01] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 92!
[18:22:10] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 93!
[18:23:01] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 94!
[18:23:07] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 95!
[18:24:35] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 96!
[18:24:41] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 97!
[18:24:47] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 98!
[18:25:31] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 99!
[18:27:22] Your skill in Pickpocket has increased to 100!

These skill-up rates were obtained by spamming the skill every time it was ready.

It was also possible, using this method, to raise myself to Stalking rank 3, without entering combat. Every time I used Pickpocket, it raised my Stalking rank slightly. The delay between 10-level ranges above is when I was running around trying to find a creature of higher level to work with. I was also harvesting Jute Plants at the time. ;) Go Go Jute!

[FunkyLePew]

good stuff!! does anyone know how to raise "Detect" it is currently at 4 and every time it has rissen i was not in a situation to take notice of why it did. Do i need to find stealthed creatures?

[vjek]

Regarding Detection:

Yesterday, outside the Gulgrethor Fortress (which looks freaking bad-ass, I must tell you) I saw two different types of Stealthed humanoids moving about.

One was a Shinak Deathdealer the other was a Shinak Death Agent. One moved at sprint speed while stealthed (bastard!) and the other moved at normal stalk speed. (50%, wooo)

Each time these NPC's entered my visual range (LOS) I got a skill check (and some skill ups). Additionally, there was one occasion when the creature LEFT my visual range, and I got a Detection skill up. However, I have on occasion been wandering around with no apparent invisible creatures in view, and still got the random skill-up. My only guess regarding these random skill-ups is possibly GM's in the world invisible? Or there's some other strange bug with skill-ups in general that cause them to just go up for no reason.

Oddities:

Hide & Sneak only work on Yellow Con (level +2) or lower mobs, regardless of how many dots they are. A bit sad, really, that we have zero chance of sneaking past level+3 mobs, but I guess that's the design goal met.

I mention the Hide & Sneak thing to put some context around the following: Why do I need a Detection skill if all stalking players and all stalking NPCs are 100% visible all the time anyway, as long as they are within LOS/Visual Range? Why have the hides, sneak, stalk, detection mechanics at all, if it's just a transparent texture overlay for looks? My Detection skill was four (4) and I was able to see level 16 Humanoid NPCs that were stalked. I was level 13. It's not internally consistent with respect to game lore, breaks immersion, and gives the impression the entire gameplay mechanic is broken.

More to the point: Stalking Players and NPC's should not be visible in any way (Like EQ1, EQ2, DAOC, etc) unless we successfully roll a detection check and see them. If a player is in our Group or Raid, obviously, we need to see them. The current "visibility" of Stalk is ... well, it's an insult to the class, lame, and a bad precedent in the genre, IMHO.

All comments above are made in the context of PvE, not PvP. And before righteous indignation wells up inside you and drives your inside zealot to post some emotional rhetoric, consider: The "invisible" (no visible texture) nature of Stalk, Stealth, Hide, Sneak, Invisibility, etc has worked extremely well in PvE environments in a wide variety of MMOG's for the past 8 years. This is not a mechanic that needs to be "fixed" by giving the players utilizing these abilities an "always-on" visible texture. History is a great teacher. If this visible transparent-stalking-texture thing is a bug, then I apologize, but it really bugs me in it's current form.

EDIT:
Added a link to this picture (http://oz.cx/vg/detection_stealthed_npcs.jpg) which shows the area, NPC's, and Detection skill increasing.

[Nocte]

All comments above are made in the context of PvE, not PvP. And before righteous indignation wells up inside you and drives your inside zealot to post some emotional rhetoric, consider: The "invisible" (no visible texture) nature of Stalk, Stealth, Hide, Sneak, Invisibility, etc has worked extremely well in PvE environments in a wide variety of MMOG's for the past 8 years. This is not a mechanic that needs to be "fixed" by giving the players utilizing these abilities an "always-on" visible texture. History is a great teacher. If this visible transparent-stalking-texture thing is a bug, then I apologize, but it really bugs me in it's current form.

:rofl No need to be defensive at the 'house, rogues rule the roost. I think most, if not all rogues think this way.

The transparent texture is an improvement if you can believe it... we use to have a nice neon blue sheen as well.

I don't understand the whole detection thing myself. Perhaps the mob gets a bonus/modifier of some sort. I dunno... I'm not a huge number cruncher myself.