Quote:
Originally posted by Isobel;167487
I don't think most of the people here, including myself, have a leg to stand on when it comes to advising others on their posting style. I do, however think that beyond the desire for a particular style we should be able to expect a clear, consistant, truthful communication of events and reasons behind them. What do i mean by that? Well, to quote Nino-
"It is more dramatic to believe the sky is falling, but since this is out there, yes we are honoring the email that was sent late." in response to the question of double XP weekend.

The next day quoting you - "Quite frankly, no BSing around, it's a preemptive attempt at giving players who have less time to play a boost and to give people something to look forward to and to keep subscribing. We want to do things that encourage people to keep subscribing. That said, I think it can be taken too far and it also allows people who already play a lot to advance that much more quickly. It definitely could be taken too far which is something we're aware of." in response to a similar question.

Which leads to a further question. If you are attempting to appeal to a more casual player base and you know that the high end content is the most sparse at the moment why are you gving people multiple opportunities to reach the area of the game that is most sparse? Why is it you feel that people aren't leveling fast enough?
You've been speaking a great deal lately about what you feel is your primary role, that being to promote the game and the vision. I have to ask what exactly the vision has become. As far as i understood it the vision invloved a stiff death penalty, a vast landscape without teleports, Fellowships, moderate XP speed relative to other games, complex crafting, item decay and a game wherein grouping was encourgaed. Obviously some of these things will change. Change is just a fact of MMOs, like bugs. However, i feel many people would like to know how far these changes are going to go and at what speed, if possible.
I respect that your "posting is both about high level 1000 ft issues -- the vision, so to speak". I do have to wonder how effective it is for a company or a community to have their leader that far away.



You're right that if we do too many double exp days, people will level too quickly. And the danger isn't just that they'll reach the end game too early, but more so that they won't enjoy the early and mid level game. That's why I posted that we shouldn't do it too often. I don't see where Nino and I are disagreeing -- if you do, please elaborate.

And I still think the Vision is consistent overall, with some flexibility built into it. It's consistent in the sense that we know what we want this game to be and to become, and looking at the game now and what we brainstormed about 5 years ago, I think it's very much the game we wanted. If anything, I would have liked more time to put even more features in pre-launch, but we'll get them in post-launch. But in terms of philosophy and overall goals, I'm very happy with how the game turned out and how we adhered to a vision for the game.

Where things are flexible are in the details and being able to act to tweak things when necessary, especially during beta when we had the chance to actually try out various systems and see how fun or not fun they were. Revamping Diplomacy is a good example. We always wanted diplomacy, so we adhered to the vision, but the way in which it was presented and exactly how the mechanics worked just were not fun. So we revamped it and came up with the card-game style approach. And I love it, being an M:TG fan. It's fun now and has huge potential for the future as well. And it allows us to reveal a lot of lore, which has been a criticism of MMOGs in the past, that the lore was too hard to find, or that the games were just hack-n-slash.

Yes, we always wanted a relatively stiff death penalty, and we explained why since the very first FAQs. But then we learned with such a large world and the ability to make very complex and large dungeons, etc., as well as to not discourage more casual gamers, that we didn't need to always force a CR -- we made it optional -- do a CR or summon to an altar with an exp penalty. In truth I'd like to make it a bit more complex -- I'd like it to depend on where you are and what you are fighting -- then in some cases you would have to do a CR. But that's something we're still debating internally. Bottom line, though, is that death stings in Vanguard and has a dynamic component to it (where you died). And that's been our goal from day one.

We did indeed launch with a vast landscape and no overland teleports. But I said from very early on that if we needed to, our Plan B was to offer limited 'velious' style teleports if the world turned out so large that it was hurting people's abiility to group and community in general. So now we're tossing around the idea of limited overland teleports and how they would work. Again, nothing new -- after we got into beta and now release we are considering plan b., but it's something I talked about years ago that we might need to do.

Fellowships are coming -- we're simply late.

The xp curve is tougher than most games, but that doesn't mean we won't tweak it in areas where it may be a little to steep. Tweaking doesn't mean abandoning the vision or turning Vanguard into another game.

We do have a complex crafting system and we need to monitor it to make sure the complexity is fun and compelling and not tedious.

Grouping is indeed encouraged. Nothing has changed here. We did launch with more solo/casual content than we'd planned, but this didn't diminish the amount of grouping content and the fact that to obtain certain items and see certain areas you'll need to group. It's not a zero sum situation, especially with how big the world is and how easy it is to expand.

Item decay was mentioned in the FAQ from day one -- we said we wouldn't use it as an item sink. What went in is more of a money sink and we're looking at tweaking it and if that doesn't work eliminating it as there are other ways to have money sinks.

Anyway, those I think are the issues you brought up and, with all due respect, I don't see any of them as changes in the Vision or in what we advertised the game to be, even if you look back to the earliest FAQs and postings I made years ago.

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