I'm just tired.

[Shinto]

I have tried to be as optimistic as possible about this game. I know that it is just starting and that it is incomplete. I know that every game has problems. Unfortunately, that does not change the fact that this game has problems that makes it not fun for me.

I am a crafter (supposedly a level 33 weaponsmith), and never intended to do adventuring for any extended period of time. My entire goal was to make weapons and sell them. I wanted to be known as the guy you could go to for an awesome sword. That will never happen with the game as it is. Drops are superior to crafted weapons in almost every case, and are far easier to get. I am now reduced to making enchanted horseshoes and pyrite forks. It takes me days to sell superior weapons, if I manage to sell them at all; I can't sell any uncommons. Flawless weapons used to sell well, but now I can't get Black Iron. Basically, my career has stopped short because I can't make anything worth buying.

I don't want to leave Vanguard. But I don't feel like logging in, either. I have gone days at a time without even logging in to check my mail. I have gained 2 levels in 3 weeks, and I don't feel inclined to try for more. I'm not really even sure why I still check the forums.

I can't see myself staying unless I get a real reason soon. I plan to cancel my sub and just let the time on it run out. I wish I could do otherwise, but I'll not waste cash on a game that I don't enjoy.

[Galahad]

well, you could always check back every once in a while to read patch notes and see if they've upgraded the crafted gear yet. also, i have a black iron ore and if you are on shidreth, i'm sure someone in my guild would be willing to fork over a good bit to you for a flawless weapon. most of us are just below 30.

[Shinto]

Thanks for the thought, but even if I were on your server, I wouldn't keep playing for one flawless weapon. The only reason I joined this game was to make a career of weapon crafting. That is simply no longer practical, or even possible.

My sub ends in early June. Sigil has until then to convince me otherwise.

[Galahad]

i wasn't saying stay for one weapon, i was just trying to get a good weapon

i was also saying that the game is new, they are changing things constantly so don't forget to check up on it every once in a while to see if anything has changed for the better for crafting.

[Ysharros]

/comfort Shinto

I feel much the same way about crafting right now. Fortunately for me I'm an altoholic and I'm enjoying the killing-stuff and trying-stuff-out aspect of the game at the moment; that doesn't answer the base conundrum, but it does keep me going. How long, I don't know. For someone whose single major impetus was the crafting, however (and that could SO easily have been me), it's got to be pretty bleak at the moment.

I've been stoked about Vanguard crafting for years now, since I heard about the game back in 2004. In practice...

I applaud the efforts Sigil made to produce a crafting system that was different, and offered challenge, and that made it worth something to spend all the time it takes to become a useful crafter. I don't know if it's possible to take the grind out of crafting-in-games and still have meaningful crafting (if it is, I haven't come up with a way, that's for sure) -- so it's something one lives with. That said, the repetition of Work Orders is far more tedious, in practice, than it may have seemed on paper, but for a while that was balanced by the awesome stuff we could make and the fun stuff we got in reward packs. Now, the stuff we make is "meh" and barely compares with the legion of loot drops; and even when it does compare, it's more expensive to produce *and* it's now automatically bound... but that latter has been discussed elsewhere.

In my view, crafting in Vanguard has suffered from a series of compromises where, to put it bluntly, loot won and crafting lost. It's my long-held opinion that you CANNOT have a game with meaningful crafting if you also have a varied and multitudinous loot-drop system -- one or the other always loses out. I'm not sure I understand or agree with the notion that crafting was harming the loot drops; the latter were more plentiful, they were cheaper, but they weren't quite as good. Seemed a decent balance to me.

Crafting, as I see it, faces several issues in Vanguard, not least of which is its place in the meta-system of the game. I believe Silius has fought for what he and his team created, and that he's lost, and that he has to lump it and make the best of it. (No, this isn't drawn from any post, just inferred from those he's made. I could be entirely mistaken.) They also have to face that what looked like a kick-ass system on paper isn't all that engaging in practice -- and there again, you run into another problem. Do you make an "anyone can do this with their eyes closed" system, which is the road most games take to *all* their mechanics, or do you fight for something challenging that only the dedicated can do well? Add to that how you define "dedicated" which in MMOs these days, tends to mean more "has masses of time" rather than "has two brain cells to rub together".

For me, there's an ideological battle going on in Vanguard too, and the side I'm on is losing. I so want to see a game where players are made responsible for their actions and mistakes, where stuff isn't handed to you on a silver platter just because you pay a subscription, and where the basic premise isn't to please the Locust Gamer -- you know, the one who devours, complains, devours some more and moves on after 3-6 months. I wanted a game with consequences, even if I happen to be simply unlucky -- one where a disconnect I can do nothing about *can* lead to my death and I just have to live with it. I used to well enough in games before, but these days it's all about the instant-gratification factor and god forbid there should be any kind of unplanned discomfort.

I'm not hardcore, and I *am* old enough to know that people have lives and schedules. I do also, however, know that the pleasure you get from an achievement is in direct proportion to the effort it took to achieve, and when everything is fast-food, you can't expect to remember what you did 3 weeks, let alone 3 years, down the line. It's entirely possibly to provide smaller carrots more often (a basic vision principle Sigil abandoned very early on), but it's harder to design and put in place. Conversely, all the life-having adults out there are perfectly capable of scheduling their own lives so that they have an hour or two of gaming here and there. You cannot, on the one hand, demand a "meaningful" game and on the other hand complain that achievements take more than 10 minutes to complete. (To which I'd suggest larger achievements broken down into smaller steps, or into something where you *can* at least get the feeling you've done something useful even if you only have an hour to log in.) Again, I'm referring to a general "you" and should really say "we" -- the gaming community wants to be heard and has a right to be heard, but it would be more productive if "we" had any sort of clear idea of what "we" wanted, most especially when we seem to want two contradictory things and expect design teams to cater to both.

I'm starting to rant, not to mention to hijack, so I'll stop and just repeat:

/comfort Shinto

[Sigurd]

Excellant thoughts Ysharros, I cannot say I 100% agree with them all because I have not spent enough time crafting (a few <12s and one 16 AC)

I too an am altaholic, I have 2 accounts just so I can play enough combos. I still love the game in theory (havent XPed in over a month, only a couple days of crafting - but that is cos my son was born a month back) but am dismayed about alot of the talk about the changes occuring.

I won't pretend to know the answer, but I will say that the LONG ROAD is the better road. To me and others I am sure - but not for everyone. The thing is, do they want to have another WoW-like (and EQII-like I think... left that after a 12 days) game of instant-gratification (F the carrots idea of the early design?) and assured "endgame" (I HATE that word - I LOVE the trip and the play, there is no 'endgame' for me - I rather level more alts and play the toplevel chars when appropriate) participation. It leads to a very non-filling game that bored ppl early.

EQI held me from release to DAoC release. Then again post my playing DAoC for another 2 years then one last time for a couple months after I got bored in WoW after 9 months (I ended up joining an FPS 'war sim' tournament for nearly 2 years waiting on Vanguard to release.

Nothing recreates the 'magic' of your first MMO, but I wanted the playstyle and LONGTERM view/vision of the early EQ game to be reborn. I don't need or want a clone of EQ but I did was something that played to the same scale and long term community feel. I am not sure VG has lost that - I honestly have not been in enough due to RL, but if this was EQ1, missing 6-9 months would mean nothing - your friends and the community will still be there. In a game like WoW or other 'fast track' games, it may not and CERTAINLY the chars you played with are no longer possible to play with regardless of your later powering to catch up cos there is no point but leveling and it is made easy for you with very casual and soloable content - so you just gotta hope you find out what alt they are on now ;P IF they didn't feel releveling pointless.

Look at EQ. Look at what made ppl play and try to reinforce that in VG NOW... before it is too late. The launched game has gotten poor reviews, I myself, dispute those reviews and wonder what axe they are grinding - but due to this and the loss (potential or actual) of players like Shinto and Ys, you may end up fulfilling the doomsayers' predictions.

Do not do that. I want VG to be here for me when I can return.

Your crafting is great by comparison to any others I had tried - see if you can fix the balance and issues that the dedicated crafters have without making it "an_easy_game _22" again. Hold some roundtables if need be (by invite - don't publish it for the whiners!) do something - the game is great and like EQ1, will be MUCH greater before the first year ends - DO NOT ABORT the game you planned before it truly has a chance to shine.

[Shinto]

Thanks for the words. I was hooked on VG the moment I read the Vision(TM), but I feel that what I loved about it was abandoned before I got a chance to try it. I'm not the kind of person who can deal with alts until my main is near the endgame. I like to hear one story at a time, as it were. Because of all that has changed or just not happened, my story seems to have pages missing. I never wanted this game to fail, and I still don't. But for me, it is already almost there.

[Shinto]

Well, it's mid-May now. I haven't logged in since April. I want to miss it, but I don't. I have maybe 20 days left on my active sub, but looking at the patch notes, I don't see anything that makes me want to use it. Sorry, but it looks like I will be retiring my hammer. I hope that those here with more patience than I have will continue to enjoy VG. I wish I could.

[Shinto]

For reasons that I cannot comprehend, I am still drawn to the lost Vision(TM). So here I am again, asking the same question. Is it worth renewing my sub? I assume that the game has gone through some significant changes since I left. How is it now? I'll look through the official site and the wiki, but I'd like the opinion of a few players, particularly those who were there when I left and understand the reason.

[Ysharros]

Heya Shinto, long time no see.

Edit - fist off, there *is* no vision. Not as far as I've been able to see. There's a moribund game and a team working frantic CPR. It might even work. But vision? If there is one, it isn't the one that attracted us way back when.

I dunno what to tell you. I stuck with Vanguard on the Test server until a few weeks back, mostly because of the tiny but great community we had going over there and because with a million alts, there's usually something to do.

Now I'm back in SWG and, sad though I am to say it, I have almost no impetus to log on to Vanguard aside from saying hi to the folks I miss. SWG isn't a perfect game either, but it doesn't have a million unrewarding work orders, it doesn't have a system based on random drops and sheer luck, and most of all it's gone through fire and is still there. (And incidentally the NGE as it is now is not nearly as awful as I expected. I was very pleasantly surprised.)

I initially thought SWG was a few-week diversion and that I'd be back in VG sooner or later. Now, I'm not so sure.

All that being said there have been some fairly significant changes in VG over the last few months. Whether you like them or not is another matter, but if you're curious enough I would suggest resubbing (even if it's just for a month) and checking stuff out for yourself. There have been some very positive changes among the many that were made. I can't comment on the recipe token system because I've not played since it went in on Test but as one of the players who was consistently stiffed for recipe drops (and told I should shut up because being SOL is just the way it is), at first blush I like the sound of it. I'm just cynically amused at the volte-face from the crafting team - but that's another issue I won't go into.