Vanguard Spheres

[Greymain]

I was musing about Vanguard while walking the dog this morning and I realised what it is about Vanguards design that feels wrong. It is the concept of spheres as totally separate mechanisms.

Its a sort of Jackal and Hyde sort of concept. It is artificial and goes against common sense. I suspect it is driven by Sigils wish to be innovative and "3RD" generation rather than vision.

The Diplomacy and Crafting spheres should become skills and abilities just like harvesting. The local blacksmith sees a bunch of kobolds approaches and attacks them with his Hammer his fighting skills should be valid and he should get fighting exp for his effort. Hammering out metal should increase strength which is reflected in fighting skills. His Selling and marketing activities should impact diplomacy as well as extracting information from NPC.

Your character should be the sum of all their actions and activities. The biggest problem is that this system is similar to that used by Horizons. Horizons failed for many reasons but the way experience was gained was not one of them.

In reality it would not require a major rewrite to undertake such a change, although it would be a large slice of humble pie. But reading between the lines, I think Sigil has already found that diplomacy may not work as sphere.

OMG what impact would this have for our web site? Vanguardskillsandabilities does not work!

[Arctic_Slicer]

I don't think the spheres concept is that bad. "Earth and Beyond" had some kind of multi advancement system as well. If I remember correctly a character in "Earth and Beyond" had 3 expirence bars and 3 levels. I don't remember exactly but it seems that the three levels were, combat, crafting, and exploration. I know alot of people who loved that game and felt that the multilevel system was one one of the best features.

[Greymain]

Its nice to know such a system can be made to work. It still feels wrong to me. hopefully there is a bottle of sekret sauce ferreted away in some dark corner of Brads kitchen that will ease my worries.

[Pirotess]

Hehe we'd probably not change our name but then we'd have a good story to tell whenever someone asked about it! I think the spheres part of the system may be a little more transparent than Sigil makes it out to be in the long run. Sure you'll need to swap gear out for the different spheres but thats only to raise different stats. Think of it more like putting your fire gear on to fight a dragon instead and it doesnt seem so different does it?

[magicalfirebird]

i think what it is that is bothering him, is that from what we've been told, you pick which sphere your in at some point (i.e. , when you leave the city, hit a crossroad, enter a different bunch of woods, etc.) and your stuck with that choice until such an event occurs again. So if you go crafter and your in the woods near your cottage chopping wood, and UberMobX comes along, your fooked. Or if you walking down the road as SupremeTankY, sword broken from a recent battle, and find an abandoned house with a forge, nope, cant fix that sword now! Move along, nothing you can do here Mr. Warrior.

However if you put it all as you have one class and everything is skills and abilities, then congratulations, you just brought us all back to EQ1 and other MMOGs.

[Pirotess]

Thats how it was explained a looooong loooong time ago. So I understand where you are coming from but Brad is on record as saying you can switch on the fly whenever and wherever you want now.

[Taronn Anvilmarr]

I suspect that your supposition is correct in the OP. If a blacksmith hits a kobold then his blunt weapon skills will come into play and if he hits a metal bar in the forge his smith skills come into play. I am hoping at least that is how it will work. I have always beleived from my first reading that the "Sphere" concept is just how they are explaining the separated areas that you can gather experience in - they are separating the stats too (str, dex, agi, wis, etc...) for each sphere. By saying the harvesting is just a skill set not a sphere then they removed the separate lvls and stats associated with harvesting.

This is just how i looked at it.

[Greymain]

It is the stats and experience pools that bother me the most. The idea that my character has 3 sets of stats a mighty warrior is also a weedy but nimble outfitter and a charismatic and clever diplomat. That after years of playing a diplomat my adventurer skills can be zero even though the groups I have played with have undertaken mass murder of mobs and I have explored the world.

[Taronn Anvilmarr]

i certainly hope that the sigil crew did not miss that loophole.

that would be funny indeed in a bad way.

But i dont think they did - i suspect that any action u take will impinge on one or more spheres and therefore on one or more experience pools.

I liked your example Greymain, but i dont think u need to worry. There has to be a person in beta or on the Sigil crew that had that thought.

[Greymain]

I think I have read every Dev post and the specification, at one time was as I had stated. Each Sphere was independent. Your core stats are set at character creation. The stat pool changes that you get when you level in a sphere go into that sphere pool. Fighting mobs while in crafting sphere will not get you points in your adventurer sphere. However you can swap spheres quickly by changing your gear. incidentally anyone know what sphere an weaponless naked character is in? or what bit of gear determines your sphere? if my blacksmith drops his metal working hammer and grabs his sword what sphere is he in?