Curb your over hyped enthusiasm

I am digging around my second rate grab bag and delving into my unsavory rough drafts that have been on the backburner since the last Ice Age known to foozlekind. Instead of completely burning all the tripe and tossing my first class shit bag out the window I will be serving up several of these wordcrafted schematics sporadically in the coming weeks.

I like fillers, easy updates, raw butchered uncensored shadowy and explicit updates that portray me as being somewhat useful when really I’m just a fucking lethargic bastard mongoloid craving an Apollo candy bar. Roughing it out and being half-assed and attacking gnome technology on a whims notice defines my purpose in life.

I have written many longwinded rambles about Vanguard that I have never published for one reason or another, the post below is just one of many failed attempts at providing some form of edification. I have been following the development of Vanguard closely for over two excruciatingly long years.

For those who may not have heard of Vanguard until now, Vanguard is a “next generation” general fantasy mmog currently in development by Sigil Games withthe development being financed by Microsoft Games Studios. With this partnership Vanguard has pockets that run deep into the molten lava in the earth and it is rumored the cost for all the fire penguins and the core development runs at an estimated 30 million dollars. Alongside the cash, mountains and valleys of hype surround this potentially expensive catastrophe.

The majority of the developers who formed Sigil Games a large section of the core developer team who created and developed Everques leaving midway through the Shadows of Luclin Expansion halting the expansion’s development which was later to be released unfinished by SOE years ago. If you enjoyed original Everquest and its ‘visionary’ justice there is a strong chance you have heard of Vanguard and have enjoyed what Sigil is proposing for Vanguard.

This post contains nothing innovative or any fancy angst ridden rants that petrify you readers. It also lacks the funny, if you find any content on this site from the last month funny or not. Nor do these rambles serve the violent diabolical justice you wish to witness by my four hands.

The post below taps my wrinkled brain and attempts to put those random thoughts into words about the size of development teams, in particular Vanguard’s development team and the workload in front of them.

Does size really matter?

Loaded question, but depending on who you ask, anyone with half a brain will normally answer yes, and for this still reading and brooding salaciously I’m referring about size in regards to mmo development teams, particularly the designers who implement content and design the mechanics and core foundations of a game.

I am specifically going to talk about Vanguard given my recent self humoring lambaste on the fohrums, which you can read here, although this applies to all mmos the fact Vanguard has been receiving a maelstrom of over hyped ad nauseam pseudo viral marketing in recent weeks thus making Vanguard a worthy candidate for today’s discussion.

Size simply matters when developing handcrafted content, it takes time, and time is money. EQ2 was in development for years before hitting desktops, I remember hearing rumors on the grapevine about EQ2 being in or at least planned for development before Brad McQuaid left SOE four or five years ago.

The more designers a company employs, the more handcrafted content will be worked on and implemented it’s a common law. Procedural methods (computer generated) for content implementation are still under developed to be utilized to the potential of providing meaningful and yet refreshing content in a mmorpg.

I feel like some cheap advert on one of those worthless late night cable channels, but if you want more information on procedural content check out Darniaq’s post about procedural content over on Grimwell. Although procedural methods are being used more and more in texture placements and other places handcrafted content reigns supreme and is still more important to the player experience, definitely more so than procedural content.

I’ve heard the argument in regards to handcrafted content is that developers can toss some spawns up, put items on them and be done with it, fuck the quests, fuck the lore, the game world doesn’t need it. A groundhog day is all you need, and in a lot of ways developers still do this and yes, in some aspects groundhog day can be considered handcrafted content, but the concept has evolved, it has broadened and expanded moving into an in breadth approach where players are encouraged to crawl instead of camp, or in recent games like WoW they have lore behind these thousands and thousands of ’small camps.’ In the original Everquest, that wasn’t the case, during Brad McQuaid’s reign while in camp spots pale in comparison to what is witnessed in today’s mmorpgs.

Several months ago I made the claim on Vanguard’s forums that Sigil’s development team was undermanned and it was ludicrous to assume they would accomplish their touted exuberant goals given the fact they were already cutting unseen corners by nixing simple staples like fishing . I found these hidden announcements to be surprising, since McQuaid & crew have coined and touted Vanguard as being a “third generation” mmog for more than a year now that will feature an advanced crafting and harvesting paradigm and yet they have already decided to nix fishing before beta 0 even started.

According to the authorities the fishing system was written off as being low priority, while true it is a low priority compared to the other systems they are implementing in the harvesting/crafting pardigm, how can a third generation mmorpg not have fishing? For fuck sackes, borrow ffxi’s fishing concept, which has the best fishing system in any mmorpg.

Of course, I was flamed for these notions that were deemed negative, I was told I was out of my gourd and there were enough designers working on the game that could handle the demand for handcrafted content. I was labeled as a traitor in one thread, which is funny, I was never much of a Vanguard fanboi to begin with. I just enjoyed participating in game design discussion in general and their forums used to be the best place that I have come across for said discussions.

Before I continue the probing, I am specifically talking about the design team, not the artists, not the programmers, although they matter too, but I’m talking about those developers who implement general content, design quests, the game’s systems, place the mobs, design the items, the core roles of the classes, their spells and abilities. Did I mention fucking design?

My old Vanguard forum post:

I think WoW will retain at least a one million player base over a 2 year span. Battlegrounds will offer more replayability than any whack-a-mole one thousand day player versus experience treadmills and once Blizzard establishes a few expansions under their belt they will have a lot more too offer player versus experience wise and most likely an influx of past subscribers will resub checking out the new expansions, a common practice really. WoW is here too stay, and despite McQuaid’s and the Vanbois naysaying of WoW’s retention in the past and present Blizzard has already proven WoW (shocking even me) has retention power thus far with the huge influx of their playerbase from the get-go.

Vanguard will be lucky to break 500k subs unless they release for Xbox360 than I think they can definitely have a strong potential breaking point, they may get 350k subs right out the gate, but I’m bettering my judgment until I see the amount of beta signups and general overall response of the first 20+ levels in beta. I’ll definitely agree with at least 250k the first month of release. Is that necessarily bad? I don’t think so, I believe it to be a realistic figure.

While McQuaid controls the diehard Vanboydom with his sycophantic purist preaching, aside from the core foundation of game mechanics I believe handcrafted content implementation is just as important in the mmos of today. Designers should no longer rely on piss-poor concepts of time sinks with the sole implementation of rare spawn camping see in Everquest’s hay day. Actual substance is needed disguising the treadmill or a lot of players will tire of the banal progression, especially with such an elongated leveling curve.

If this is the case these core players will have no problem canceling their accounts and fleeing back to one of their previous mmos or having the urge of trying something else. A lot of these core players have higher wants given they are grokked. Vanguard is targeting experienced mmo players, there may be thousands of newer players wanting a hardcore gaming experience Vanguard will offer, but not hundreds of thousands.

Behind the massive scope of handcrafted content implementation is the size of the development team and of course the budget backing. The budget should not technically be a problem for Vanguard with a rumored 30 million dollar piggy-bank, but the slots on WoW’s development team was filled with more game designers in addition with quest writers during about the same current state of development Vanguard is currently in.

The complexity and perplexed nature is starting too show now that we have more information. Staples, such as crafted food and drink are not currently scheduled for implementation. These are just a few examples, and may not matter too most of you, but the other is the over ambitious design out of the box, which in turn makes me question Vanguard’s capabilities on the quality of general handcrafted content.

I’ll break some of the designer’s focus and current responsibilities. Most of the senior designers are busy working on Vanguard’s core foundations. We know there are at least 16 classes planned and 2 new in depth spheres besides adventuring promising tons of content, enough content it will take just as long leveling in these spheres as it does adventuring…. 16 adventuring classes alone that need their own set of abilities and spells, balances, tweaked, distinguished traits, etc. Even with Talisker and Myrlokar, both proven designers working on this alone it is a massive undertaking.

Keep in mind this is not necessarily the general content implementation I am referring too. I am speaking of what makes the virtual world breathe. The npcs, personalities thereof, quests, the basic general portion of the game, the journey.

Other designers are assigned and working on specific areas on the different continents. I’m assuming Kendrick and Tagad will be highly responsible for the high end content areas because that is what they primarily worked on in EQ. Well, what about the other general 70? levels of content? Silius is responsible for the crafting system, and even alone this is more complex than the class system because it’s almost a whole other game of its own. I’m sure they have another designer or two focused fulltime on Vanguard’s crafting paradigm. And I’m sure they will have another designer focused on diplomacy.

As for some of the more important quest waxing Steve Burke of Coldain fame is probably focusing on that as well as the scripted nature of encounter routes. There are a handful of associate designers, I believe a total of five who almost all lack actual mmo design experience, their objective is too focus on the general implementation such as spawning, lower end quests, more so the grunts of implementation, albeit an extremely important part of the design process.

As for the few other designers, Elionia (Michelle Butler) (who is scheduled to lead up the CS department according to a recent SV interview), Marius, and Marcs this is a relatively small development team given the scope and current hype on these forums, there is some definite cause for concern in regards to the quality of handcrafted content implementation and I find it even more amusing when Brad spouts his mantra of content is king.

Out of Vanguard’s three spheres, adventuring is the most important part of gameplay, even if diplomacy and crafting play an integral role in the adventuring sphere, or as I see it, the new holy trinity of the third generation. The developers must be working 24/7 injected with feeding tubes pumping out the quality content.

In a way, my earlier concerns were technically spot on, Sigil has recently hired 4 new associate designers in the last two weeks, if they had enough designers why would they hire four more associate designers that are primarily responsible for implementing handcrafted content?

This will help with Sigil’s proposed scope of development in Vanguard, but I still think they need more designers to meet most expectations and provide everything they have promised thus far. This is a huge farfetched assumption on my part, I admit that, however, it’s a valid concern so I want to back it up with some relevance rather than just dismissing Vanguard for other ineffectual reasons.

Breaking Vanguard Into Bits Again

Vanguard will have 3 main “spheres.”

Adventuring, Crafting, and Diplomacy.

Adventuring: Rumored to have 16+ classes among everything else, 80% of the game is basically adventuring integrating with the multitude of other systems and content. Perception, advanced combat mechanics, fellowship, player housing, boats, etc.

Very few classes are implemented and being tested in the beta0 phase.

(WoW was the same way when it first entered friends and family alpha, and in fact, some classes like the hunter weren’t implemented for closed beta testing for nine months. There are 9 classes in WoW that are still struggling with revamps and changes 1.5 years later) Granted, I do know Vanguard has three designers working on those 16+ adventuring classes, they do have their work cut out for them.

Crafting: Rumored to have 4 crafting roles or classes on top of an intricate and in breadth system of several tradeskill professions.

Foreman: Focused on maintaining group stats and resource quality

Reaper: Focused on group buffs and resource quantity

Prospector: Focused on resource integrity and the predicting of detrimental obstacles

Gleaner: Focused on harvesting byproducts of resources

Have fun raiding Yellowstone forest and getting your ass beat down by level three saplings.

Diplomacy: Rumored to have 4+ diplomacy classes, including a system that will require a slew (thousand of pages) of extra dialogue written specifically for those ‘player decisions.’ Think sims on another level.

Multiple diplomacy classes seems too much, I prefer my similar idea of just having one with maybe a type of skill system rather than a full fledged “class.”

3 continents are confirmed, 4 are rumored.

(Continents are large in size, the game is massive, the three continents alone will be twice as big as the world of Azeroth.)

(WoW only launched with 2 main continents, and WoW’s development team was larger in this initial stage of game development.)

100 planned levels.

Brad has talked about how he wants to head back into the light and find the long lost purist days of EQ, which I find amusing. According to his bio on the Vanguard forums Brad didn’t level a character in EQ the old fashioned method to max level or for that matter participated running with a cat ass guild defeating end game content on a frequent basis.

In his defense he was and still leads a hectic schedule and controlling an echelon with a myriad of responsibilities to maintain and running a company with several mmo projects, but really is it fair to say this is the way mmos should be played when you haven’t experienced the purist cat assing for yourself? No it isn’t.

(Now, I have no problem with a long treadmill, in fact, any of my friends will tell you that’s what initially killed WoW for me. 12-15 days played, ding welcome to level 60, your e-life is in shambles, go strive for your exuberant whiney post count on the forums.

What I was pissed off the most about was the fact I was enamored with WoW, I was exuberant about the game and immensely enjoyed the content and I wanted to savor it, but really who wants to sit there pounding on greens and doing grey quests while your friends out level you as quickly as possible and than go on to raid the same dungeon a million times over. Would the leveling curve be so awful if it took on average of 25-30 days for a player to reach the cap?

Given Vanguard’s tenets, it’s a fairly safe assumption to support a 100 level curve it will require at least 50 days on average played before reaching the cap, and that’s with a large variety of handcrafted content. That’s a fuck ton of handcrafted content, it can be done, but a lot depends on the team, how efficient they work, the producers and of course, most of all, the overall size of Vanguard’s development team.

Senior designers are primarily responsible for game systems, and although why they all work in a collaborative environment handling multiple tasks between each other, each designer focuses on one main ‘priority’ which can take several months if not years. Senior designers are the smoozles who are fleshing out the game’s systems, handling the balancing, tuning of mechanics, etc.

The associate designers are more so the grunts, implementing basic content, some associate designers do have higher responsibilities than others on the Vanguard dev team, which could be cumbersome with a lack of experience and effect the quality of the game on what those future Vanguard players expect.

Here’s another closer look at Vanguard’s designers and what they are most likely working on given their bios and word of mouth from people I have talked with who have spoken with developers in person. In stalker fashion, I’ve gotten most of this info from Sigil’s Team Page.

This is where I never finished the post, but if you are curious to get an idea of the background of some of the developers feel free to read the designer bios yourself. There is a lot of new blood on the team and some of the experience the seniors have isn’t really all that impressive. I think there best designer that has some potential for awesome content implementation is Steve Burke, it should be interesting to see what dungeons and encounters he can script with Unreal Editor’s tools, but Sigil will definitely need more than Mr. Burke’s talents too keep me stuffing their pockets in the long haul.

Looking back on this post Sigil has acquired 8 new designers since I originally waxed this post. I’m not as concerned about the size Vanguard’s development team as I once was and I’m not as passionate about the game. However, I still believe McQuaid and his visionary acolytes won’t be able to provide enough meaningful content for everything they proposed unless they are using procedural methods or have another team of developers locked away in some missile silo near Area 51.

Curb the over hype you vanboi hyper enthusiastic hypists.