Vanguard’s Beta Break: The Missing Leak

As the title suggests I was unable to find the other beta Vanguard synopsis I wanted to reiterate from a more trusted source. Several months ago I had ninja pasted the leak in a document file and placed it on my wide screen desktop, which is always cluttered and never organized, when clutter is at full capacity, files are thronged into a folder off the main desktop into what I deem a secondary desktop, which holds even more clutter and sub folders, making sifting through this library of train a huge pain in the ass. It’s possible, I accidentally deleted the file as I frequently tend to paste numerous things in certain text files with names that don’t match the criteria. Yes, my computer organization skills are slob like and I’ve spent several hours scouring forum threads for the missing leak only too no avail. I do remember the gist of the author’s argument which primarily focused on the difficulty and boredom they experienced during Vanguard’s early beta phases.

[Disclaimer: Vanguard is in an early beta development phase, the design will change and fluctuate, nothing I mention in the gist of the author's synopsis is finalized for retail]

* Lack of content: Vanguard promises content for all levels and playtypes; including meaningful content that will support the leveling curve for Vanguard’s three different progression spheres or main systems: crafting, adventuring, and diplomacy. The problem the author discussed is that for early beta testers most of these systems are broken and need more fine-tuning and polish. Ultimately, there was not much content implemented because the foundation of those systems were still being worked on.

* Long travel times: The author discussed concerns for long distance traveling, Vanguard wants to be perceived as a virtual world more than a gamey world, so even with vehicles like horses available players in the early levels, players will spend a decent amount of time traveling. Traveling falls under the game versus world argument, if you want a vast virtual world, long travel time is almost an evil necessary, but long travel times have inherent problems, accessibility barriers for those who play in short bursts and the repetitiveness factor.

* Death penalty & Mob difficulty: According to the author Vanguard’s death penalty was experience debt that stacked, the problem expressed with mob difficulty, even with appropriate gear, there was a high risk of dying to a mob that was even con, so eventually after numerous deaths the debt would only continue to stack eventually to the point where it would take hours to work off. A strict death penalty doesn’t make sense, not in a beta, if you are asking for testers to test content, unless they are specifically testing the death penalty.

*Solo versus Group: This also falls under mob difficulty, the author claimed soloing up until level 12 was possible, but anything after, for meaningful progression experience wise a group was required. Another problem was finding groups in higher level rangers, low population numbers and beta testers patience for grouping together waning, but the low beta population Might explain why Sigil is revving up to distribute the Vanguard beta client through FilePlanet. Certainly by reading various forums there is a high interest in Vanguard from enough players to expand the beta pool if it is needed, the forums saw around 50,000 registrations, which all met the deadline before beta invites were sent out.

Final thoughts: It’s obvious Vanguard still needs a lot of development and content implementation, the development team suffered a huge blow with two key senior designers leaving in the last year, designers who were a cohesive part of McQuaid’s infamous original vision. Still Vanguard holds a lot of promise and I have to appreciate Sigil’s tenacity in wanting to evolve concepts and push some innovation into the genre. However, it’s not all about mechanics and systems, overall actual meaningful content is king and what is even more important in a pve based mmog as most mmogs show so many similarities amongst each other.