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Administrator
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 352
Name: Oloh
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Vanguard Gameplay
OMG BETA INFOZ, CALL THE COPS11!!
I have been playing Vanguard since the first hour of beta 0. I play pretty much every night, and have been working my way up in levels. Brad has allowed me to begin posting my thoughts and observations from beta to provide everyone with a player's perspective on how the game is going.
I feel it is fitting to elaborate on some of the posts that Brad made yesterday. The first topic, then, is Vanguard's game play.
But first, I want to offer a mini-disclaimer. I do not have a mandate on what I can say, nor is anything I say pre-approved by anyone at Sigil. The team is confident in their product, and they were looking for a way to get information to the community in a responsible way (i.e. a way that doesn't spoil every aspect of the game and that will respect features that are being witheld to protect competitive advantage).
I will be the first to admit that I am baised. But my bias is the type of bias typical of players that love a game. I love Vanguard and have been having some of the most fun in any MMOG since Velious era of EQ.
In the interest of full disclosure, I work for Sigil as an attorney, but do not work in house for them. I was playing MMOGs long before I practiced law though, so I like to consider myself a fan first, and a lawyer second. My goal is to provide real information that I, as a player, would like to hear. Tell me how I do.
I welcome fellow players to tell me what they want to hear.
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With comments from the peanut gallery raging from "its too brown" to the "character models suck compared to Unreal 2008," I want to start off talking about something important…gameplay.
Rather than provide "puff" about how great it is, I think the best thing to do is just describe it. Res Ipsa Loquitur.
I am a player, not a developer. The description that I provide is from my experience playing almost every night of beta0 and the budding stages of beta1. It is slanted to the role I am most familiar with, warrior tanking. I am a level 34 warrior, and this is the system as it is in the game right now.
General Statement: If EQ's gameplay is considered a leisurely stroll, and WoW's is a healthy jog, Vanguard's gameplay feels like ice skating. It is smooth.
Autoattack
Let's start with the whole notion of autoattack. Prior games used autoattack to both remove twitchy skill from the game, and spread melee's damage over the course of an encounter. In Vanguard, autoattack works differently.
Harking back to pen and paper games, autoattack is essentially your "combat round timer" to plan the encounter before your next move, or series of moves. If the player does nothing, the character will execute a very basic attack for his next round. But, just like a pen and paper campaign, players will do something every "turn" of combat.
Your "turn speed" is variable, with different types of weapons having different turn speeds. A newbie two hander would be, as stated elsewhere, about a six second swing time. This is as slow as it gets. Faster two handers drop turn speed down considerably, and one handers are generally a lot faster. Because a decision to do "something" must be made every turn, combat appears somewhat slower than what players may be used to. I would be the first to complain if it was a real problem when you are playing. It isn't. Even when using the slowest two hander, I find myself missing openings and opportunities, rather than waiting for it to go off. In fact, I sometimes use slower weapons in some situations to have more time to react, when it is important.
Special Attacks
So what can you do in combat? Let's start with the most basic form of an attack in Vanguard, (and in most other games), the special attack. Special attacks are melee attacks that do more damage than autoattack, or create some form of special effect, such as a debuff, or a cone shaped area of effect melee attack. Pretty staple stuff here, and a well-versed mmoger will pick up using specials very quickly. Except for the fact that there are also defensive specials, which leads to a tank, and other classes, having to pay attention (oh noes!).
Some Special Attacks are defensive, rather than offensive, in nature. The best way to describe this is by a reference to the old pen and paper ability of "set to receive charge." For example, if a warrior perceives that the next attack is a hugely damaging attack (see below how this is done), the warrior may choose to use a defensive special where he doesn’t do any damage, but instead sets himself to receive the blow and, in turn, mitigates a large chunk of its damage. A sharp armchair designer out there may say "oh great, so we will just be spamming defensive specials," but that is not the case either…because of special ability cool-downs and the timing of autoattack, if you simply spam your defensive specials, you will not have them available for use when "the big one" occurs, because you may have "wasted" it on a lesser attack used to fake out the warrior. A good example from actual gameplay is wasting a defensive special mitigating a claw attack of 100 down to 10, but then not having the ability to mitigate the 500 devour attack that the mob does the following turn.
Mob Attacks
You may notice in the screenshots floating around that you will see icons appear to pop up on the screen. Many people have mislabeled these icons as a complex game of whack-a-mole. In fact, the some of the icons on the screen are actually forthcoming attacks by your enemy. Intelligent tanks (or other players such as sorcerer waiting to counterspell) can "see" the attacks that the enemy has currently executed, and more importantly, the attacks the enemy is setting up to use on the next turn. This is a fundamental part of the game play of Vanguard, and experienced MMOGers should immediately be frothing at the mouth when they read these words:
Important Part 1: You have chance to see mobs attacks BEFORE they actually land. Think about that, and what that can do to boss encounters, raids, etc., not only from a tank perspective, but from other classes as well.
Here is the important part, obviously. Not all mobs attacks are the same. Just like PCs, the critters have various attacks. Some of the attacks are devastating blows that can cripple even the most studly tank in a couple hits. Others are minor attacks used to throw off the warrior's timing, and still others are used to debuff the warrior, or snare him, or otherwise cause some parade of horribles upon him. Still others are huge AEs that, if they land, can seriously change the encounter.
Important Part 2: Players have abilities to proactively counter some NPC abilities, and will need to do so or else they will get owned.
Extrapolate the idea. A warrior sees the critter's attacks about a round in advance, and has time to react, and is, in turn, given abilities to react, and you start to see how Vanguard's gameplay begins to take on a whole new light.
There will be time later to get into more complex things. These are just the basics. Other aspects of gameplay are stances (that have only some attacks available, so switching between them is a must…at a penalty), chains (attacks that lead to other attacks), reactions (mob attacks and defensives have a chance to be flawed, and give certain classes an ability to take advantage of the flaws), symbiotics (which will, in the near future, be chains between classes), weapon choices, techniques (single encounter buffs), and varied monster states.
Take a minute and think only about the gameplay elements mentioned. If you do, you can see how combat in Vanguard will redefine the complexity of encounters:
You have chance to see mobs attacks BEFORE they actually land.
Players have abilities to proactively counter some NPC abilities.
Simply put, the tradeoff is that VG has exchanged seeing multiple, lower value hits fly across chat, for slower, more powerful hits, that require players actions both to and in response of mobs. You are not unilaterally hammering away at a HP bar with a 3d model attached. You are interacting with the enemy. This is one of the many reasons why Vanguard lives up to the hype with respect to its third generation gameplay.
Like EverQuest turned MUDS 3D, Vanguard has made MMOG combat 3D.
I would just like to point out that the above is not theory. It is not sitting in some design document heaven buried right behind player housing in original EQ and permadeath Jedi in SWG. It is in the game, working, and it is freaking sweet.
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Last edited by Havelock : 10-30-2005 at 05:46 PM.
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