Community Summit – Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
San Diego, California October 7-8
The Guests:
Veakari - The Syndicate
Arnie from VG Ogaming
Garthilk from Okratas
Freonsmurf from The Safehouse
Overgauss from VG Hell
Rihk from VG Live
Valeria from VG Stratics
Raya from Vanguard Warcry
Andy from VG Gate
Zeus from VG Gamergod
Staunch from Epic Vanguard
Anyuzer - Writer from Game Watchers and Anyuzer.com
Woody - Cartoonist from GU Comics
Bleys - Well known community member and writer for Cinescape
Behemoth - Officer from the guild Fires of Heaven
Argulace - Guild Leader of Total Aggression
Thott – Guild Leader of the guild Afterlife
Allakhazam - The Allakhazam ... from the multi-game site Allakhazam's Magical Realm
Leonai_art - From Online Gaming Radio
MorbidDeath - Well-known in the Vanguard community as an op in the Stratics Vanguard IRC chat room and for Vanguard Watch
Nepenthia - A woman well known in the Vanguard Community for her love of MMOG's, fantasy, RPG's and her focus on community building
The Sigil Mindset
On Forums: Once Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is released, Sigil does not plan to maintain it’s own forums. Their intent is to let affiliated sites, and fan sites handle all public discussion on the games, and to have representatives from Sigil comment through them. Sigil’s hope is that if there is a topic or hot spot that they can address, the forum operators should feel free to contact them to address the issues directly on the affiliated site.
On Instancing: Sigil strongly opposes the use of instancing in MMO’s. They feel it defeats the core purpose of playing in a community setting, because it eliminates the interaction of players with each other as a whole. Their approach is to promote dungeon crawling, where you constantly are on the move. They sited Charasis (Howling Stones) from EQ as an example of their intentions, where X amount of "named" are slated for a dungeon, but any can appear at any spawn point at any time. By staying on the move, and progressing through the area, you improve your chances of gaining higher reward.
On Alignments: Sigil plans to promote faction based play, over flagging, in Vanguard (think EQ: Velious). It is up to the players to decide whom they want to align with, and those relations may degrade without maintenance over time, or can be changed to another with effort.
On Spoilers and DataMining: Sigil seems to feel that it undermines the game play experience, but also recognizes that it is a popular trend amongst gamers. They hope to combat the usefulness of these sources by offering multiple quests from one source, with multiple ways to resolve each quest, as well as making dropped loot only available for a limited amount of time before it is changed. That Uber Toothpick of Haste Procination you found in XYZ may cease to exist in three months.
An example quest we were shown involved a man whose son was kidnapped, and we were charged with helping him get his son back. We could solve the quest by: A.) Killing all his captors, and freeing the son. B.) Disguising ourselves as captors, and then disguising the son and escaping. C.) Retrieving an artifact from the son’s Aunt, and restoring it so it could be sold by the sons family for them to raise money to pay the ransom.
On the Treadmill and Loot: Vanguard offers level based, loot-centric play. Sigil supports the "dangling carrot" theory of gaming. They hope to offer frequent rewards, with the constant promise of something better just around the corner, as you progress through the game. They believe the journey itself is more important than the destination. There was some discussion amongst attendees of mentoring programs (like City of Heroes) where you can help level a friend, but they don’t gain the benefit of loot, but Sigil had little to say about a similar program themselves.
On Farming: Sigil strongly believes in the "Risk equals Reward" style of gaming. If you are doing level appropriate tasks, either solo, grouped, or as a raid, you will be rewarded appropriately. If you are camping mobs below your abilities, you will gain nothing from it, either in experience or loot.
On Twinking: Sigil hope that players will work to build their first character the good old fashioned way, and earn their keep, but don’t seem to frown upon twinking alts.
On Macros: Sigil does not support macro use, and will be implementing skill checks, and failures that would doom any such attempt (more on this when I address combat and crafting). They are gearing game play to require interaction, and develop strategy every step of the way.
On Death Penalty: Yes, you drop your equipment, and have to retrieve your corpse. Yes you are penalized for failing. They have put in a mechanism that helps you find your corpse, as the world is immense.
On Lore: (from their website) The intent of the lore for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is to provide a glimpse into the world through the eyes of those who live within its lands and create a more immersive game play experience. While we will make an effort to describe a world that you the player will indeed encounter in many or most ways and to a significant degree, it is also not the intent of the lore to necessarily or explicitly introduce game play mechanics or features.
On Building the Game: Sigil has licensed the Unreal Engine, SpeedTree, XNA for cross platforming, and have more dev tools available to them than ever before, so they can focus on content, and game play, rather than developing the foundation of the game.
The Game
Vanguard is a huge, gorgeous, seamless world, made of various islands of increasing difficulty, and dungeons, as well as a navigatable ocean in which players can travel in personal watercraft (from small craft to ocean going vessels) to adventure in. Races currently include: Human, Barbarian, Half-Giant, Halfling, High Elf, Dwarf, and Vulmane (a bi-pedal wolfman), which start out on the island of Thestra.
Everything you can see, you can travel to, and most likely interact with in some way. We were shown probably the largest city I have ever seen in an MMORPG, and every single building was available to go in, go upstairs, etc. They are considering areas like these to rent out space for personal or merchant use. They described the city more as a place of adventure, almost like a dungeon opposed to just a place where you go strictly for services. We saw two dungeons that are in development as well, one a sprawling Egyptian looking tomb, and a wizards tower that was simply incredible.
They envision raid content where forces may be required to split up, and complete multiple goals before being able to proceed further, such as in a tower, forces may need to ascend up two separate sets of stairs and complete a trigger in both areas before the next area will be opened.
Vanguard is a PvE game, however they intend to initiate specialty servers, such as PvP, and Roleplaying servers as demand requires them. Planning these specialty servers are an integral part of their design process they are considering from the beginning, and have put considerable thought into throughout their design process.
There are two circles of play, adventurers, and crafters, which can be intertwined, or focused on individually. There is content for both circles on a solo, group encounter, or raid encounter level of play, with hints that some content would require a mixed group to succeed.
Adventurers:
There will be both melee and caster classes, although they are still not fully disclosing what those classes will be at this time. Points will be earned that you can apply to specific lines of disciplines, however base proficiencies are awarded in core class skills automatically. It is possible for a same race, same class player to have abilities that are different from the path another may choose. It also sounds so far as if you can transfer points from one line to another, although I’m not sure if it can be done on a whim, or if interaction with a trainer, or even a quest process will be required. Skills may degrade if unused.
Casters have not been implemented as of yet that we saw, but they did mention Wizards, Shaman, and Priest/Clerics in passing. The only thing spell wise they made any mention of was a "Lens" spell, that could amplify the power of any spell cast through it, be it beneficial to your group, or damage to your enemy.
Melee combat is stance based, including Offensive, Defensive, and Neutral stances, which opens other moves as they are earned, and are appropriate to the combat situation.
While an auto-attack exists, it will be almost impossible to succeed without employing strategy to your battles. I only got to play around on a low level character, so didn’t get to see this in action, however they did give some examples of possible scenarios.
If I initiate an attack that knocks my opponent down, not only me, but any other member of the group that has a "stomp" attack will also be able to initiate the move.
On the other hand, if I am about to initiate a heavy handed attack, like beheading which is a closing move, and my fellow group member initiates a knock down, my attack will be rendered useless.
Developing group tactics are the key to success on group and raid encounters. Resource management (endurance, mana, etc) are also key to success.
Mobs will have resistances to damage, a short sword may be effective on one enemy, and useless on another, I am assuming the same will apply magic based attributes.
They suggest that situational gear will be needed, however inventory space will be limited, so planning in advance it advantageous.
They envision a party of adventurers meeting up, deciding where to go, planning their adventure so they are properly equipped for a variety of situations, journeying across the wilderness encountering adventure along the way, and setting up camp at a dungeon where they can meet up for a couple of days of adventuring that is designed to be challenging, before moving on to a new area.
Crafters:
This is something I really wish they had ready to show us while we were there, as I thought their approach to crafting was one of the most interesting I’ve heard about. You can resource mine as a solo player, in groups, or as a raid. Sometimes you will need adventurers to aid you, as a rare resource may be guarded by enemies. They have carried the Risk equals Reward method into the crafting realm. It is not a matter of finding the stuff, and clicking on it. Techniques will apply, and you can essentially bring a mine down around your head if you use the wrong ones. One herb you may be able to yank from the ground, another may be so delicate you must finesse it out of its environment. An ancient redwood may require a whole team of people performing a variety of tasks in order to bring it down for harvesting. Skill will parlay into quality of goods received.
The Community Summit agenda
Thursday, October 7
Afternoon/Evening- Arrival and Check in at the hotel
8 p.m.- Dinner at hotel with SGO Management
Friday, October 8
9 a.m.- Breakfast with Community Manager at hotel
10 a.m. - Tour of office
11 a.m.- Meet with Art Department
12 p.m.- Meet with Programming Department
1 p.m.- Lunch at the office with the Lore Writers/Community Team
2 p.m.- Meet with Designers
4 p.m.- Leave office to go to Dave & Buster’s
6 p.m.- Dinner for our Team and guests at D&B’s
7 p.m.- Public Event at D&B’s
Saturday, October 9
Guests return home
This was a fantastic experience, and it was my pleasure to represent The Syndicate to the Sigil team, and the other members of the Vanguard community.
~Veakari
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