Jan 15
What To Do With Vanguard
What can put the brakes on this game’s freefall? In my mind, I think about the only thing left is an influx of new players. A sufficient parachute of players might make this game’s time in the air a little longer - and certainly more interesting.
The key is that folks need to face up to the reality that the game is just not set for the big time anymore. As hard as the skeleton crew on on the game works, regardless of their successes, Vanguard is not going to get these players in its current configuration. Generating a ton of new content is also not in the cards. You’re not going to snag players with expansions and whatnot - the core game isn’t sturdy enough for that. There’s also the incredible hugeness of the title; the game takes up gigs and gigs of space.
That size is a liability for what I have in mind. In short, I think Vanguard would be perfect as the first AAA 3D fantasy free-to-play title. SOE has already shown its interest in utilizing the F2P business strategy with plans for FreeRealms and Agency. I think it would be a small jump to extend that to Vanguard. Show an ad as players log in, and offer a number of options for users via a microtransaction format.
Vanguard is already set up with more bells and whistles than you can shake a stick at. Most of these currently have to be earned through hard play, and should continue to be available via that method. For a couple of bucks, though, who wouldn’t want a cool camel mount? Or a dragon? Or a unicorn? Housing options are also obvious choices for purchaseable upgrades. With this kind of thinking behind the game’s financial future, I’m certain that all new batches of content could be added to the game.
I’m also going to go ahead and say that I think Vanguard would be a good game to test the waters of more ‘liberal’ RMT. The kind of players who enjoy Vanguard might appreciate the chance to legitimately buy some gold, decent equipment, or a higher-level avatar. At this point its something that’s never been fully explored on a wholesale commercial level, with full support from the developer. That’s one of the inherent beauties of Vanguard: it has so much potential, but almost none of it is realized. Why not go out on a few limbs with it?
In my view the game is basically a failure. At this point, what does SOE have to lose by shaking things up?
These business-side decisions should be supported by some fairly drastic design changes, I think. The bottom line is that the world of Vanguard is too freaking big. Players are far too spread out, there’s too much art, too many classes, too many races. It’s a mess. It’s a legacy of the overly ambitious days of Sigil, and it shows.
So cut the crap. There’s a ton of unfinished junk lying around the game world. There’s miles and miles of unfilled spaces, starting zones that never really started … so why leave it in the game? What I’m going to say now is going to come across as startlingly naive, but I believe there’s a measure of sanity here: cut and paste.
Cull the world down to a small portion of its current size. Choose the best chunk of the game, and concentrate on that to the exclusion of everything else. Take the best elements of the rest of the game world, and relocate them to the new version of Telon. I know, I know - this wrecks up the gameworld’s lore. But the number of people who really care about that lore are a handful at this point.
I think there’s something worth saving here. It’s just spread out, too thin on the ground for people to enjoy. That laughable monthly fee is a barrier that most people won’t get past. Even if they do, it’s so hard to get to the really good parts that they’re highly unlikely to stick with the game.
I feel the same way about PlanetSide, as long as we’re chatting on this wavelength. The monthly fee for PS is a freaking joke. It’s long, long, long overdue to be done away with. Cut the number of planets and caverns, merge all the servers, drop the fee and you get more people fighting across a smaller world. All hallmarks of fast and furious awesomeness.
I’m a big fan of recycling. I’m an even bigger fan of seeing hard work given meaning. The VG site amusingly has a banner that says “Set Yourself Free”. Indeed. Indeed.
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I’d go buy the box today.
Michael,
As much as I agree with 99% of what you’re saying here…realize that what you’re saying here essentially amounts to a new NGE in the minds of most players. Now, I know and you know and most of the folks at SOE know that it’s not an NGE you’re talking about, but it’s drastic enough that most players would see it as such.
…and really, is there any game worth SOE taking another NGE reputation hit over?
Kendricke:
You make a good point. I still think this is a good way to go, specifically because SOE *has* learned its lesson.
See, the NGE *could* have gone fine. They could have rolled that sucker out and had the players … well, maybe not happy as clams, but not so much with the ‘leaving in droves and swarming with hatred’.
I am firmly of the opinion that the mistake with the NGE was not the mechanics, but with the way the changes were rolled out to the players. If the NGE was dropped into the game after months of warnings, features, discussions, feedback, testing, etc, etc … I bet you dollars to donuts the community could have adapted.
SWG is a good game today, which indicates to me it had the makings of a good game right after the NGE as well. It was broked-up and a lot less featureful, but the potential was there. If they’d harnessed the player’s interest correctly, I bet they could have pulled it off.
So with a change like this to Vanguard … I think it could be done. You’d just have to put it to the players in exactly the right way.
What this says to me is that Raph and Brad should never be allowed to make a game again.
I think you seriously underestimate a playerbase’s resistance to change.
While SWG today may be a decent game (I left a month prior to the NGE, played for a month a month ago, wasn’t offended), it is only superficially the same game as the one that players abandoned. The NGE was not just a PR problem (although I have an interest in that subject). It removed sandbox elements, removed a skill system, implemented a combat system inaccessible for some disabled players, and so on.
I think that Raph is right: you have to dance with the ones what brung ya, and if you chose the wrong target audience in the beginning, the only way you can get a replacement audience is to hope that the old game didn’t make enough of an impression to poison the well. It’s a crowded marketplace out there, and an NGE experience provides a tailor-made jumping off point for old players with no guarantee of neew customers.
Now Vanguard doesn’t quite have that problem. There are, what, three players? Four? So perhaps there’s nothing to lose. But I don’t see how you can take a game with “big” as its defining characteristic, gut it, polish the remains, and attract serious numbers to it. Even “free” to play. And I think redeveloping the game along the lines you suggest would require much more than a skeleton crew of developers.
Now that’s actually something of a shame. It may have been Darniaq, or Timothy Burke over at Terra Nova, who wrote at the time of the NGE that it was shaping up to be an excellent test of whether a developer can make fundamental changes to an MMO if needed. Admittedly the launch quality of the NGE muddies the question a bit, but the answer appeared to be, “No,” and SOE/LucasArts can only be happy with the current state of the game when it’s compared to six months to a year ago.
Personally, I love big worlds like SWG and Vanguard, when they work.
Practically, they probably need to just turn the lights out on Vanguard and figure out something else to do, with an entirely different intellectual property, with the parts of Vanguard’s technology that work.
I’d have to disagree Michael.
I happily played VG up to the mid 40’s where I realised the devs had run out of “puff” and all the content was “grindcentric”…go kill 10 thousand Gorgalok/Ik/whatever and hope you get a drop for your swamp armour.
It’s well and good to draw new people into the game, but if there is nothing fun to do once you hit your “end game” people aren’t going to stick around, and from personal experience, that’s where the drain is on the VG player base now, lack of high end content.
There’s a Golden Rule in MMO’s, and VG is breaking it “end game”. Content Is King…
Aaron, agree 100% about Brad, but Raph had nothing to do with the NGE (it was LA that made that choice), all SWG “original” needed was content (quests, items), the sandbox world he created was amazing.
However, you could only make so many speeder bikes/pistols/armour sets/cities before you were looking for something else to do, and unfortunately, it just wasn’t there.