Vanguard (Screenshots & Impressions from CB Tester)

WarriorX said:
Im not sure how you can say its better then Dark Messiah...
I see no shadows(or they are just crappy shadows where I dont see them).
Low res terrain(not much detail, etc)
Low res characters(once again low detail,very plain looking).
The trees look weird.
Draw distance is not a substitute for low quality art. Its not like your going to see anything 10 miles out but terrain.

If this game has better graphics those screenshots do not show it.
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I agree, the graphics are bad, but there is no sense of design it seems. You don't have to have the amazing graphics to have a good looking game, but there needs to be some sort of artistic direction taken in this game and fast. Things just look out of place and not pulled together.
 
Ive been in beta since 2005 and I promise you the SS do not do the game justice. Everyone's a critic!
 
I've been in since beta 1, and it runs crappy, but not as bad as it did when beta first started thankfully. Really though, the graphics aren't that good, so I'm not sure what yall are talking about. First of all, in order to get the far view distance you must turn down other settings, or it will be capped at a fairly close distance, 15 feet for objects about. The water looks like shit, especially when you are under water. It's like you're swimming through nothing, because you can't even tell that you are underwater, it's perfectly clear. As others have said this game hardly holds up a candle to other current games. HDR doesn't look very good, trees and other textures are bleh.
 
Why is everyone hung up on the graphics of this game. Dont we all play games for the rich gameplay? IMO I think the graphics(beta5) are competitive with other mmo's. It runs fine on my system for this stage of the beta.

Look at all the people who play warcraft with toon graphics. Do you think they play because they think the graphics are great? They play because it has the gameplay.
 
I never got into it, but at least WoW has a distinctive look and a cohesive art direction. This just looks like a mish mash of cliches thrown into an ass ugly engine.

Yeah graphics are secondary to gameplay, but why bother paying out the ass for a 8800GTX if that's what your game is going to end up looking like?
 
The point is it runs like shit for looking like something from 5 years ago, even on top notch hardware.
 
those SS do not do the game justice... you need to realy start runing around to realise just how epic the world is..

the game has a shitload of dynamics, from races, to classes, to mining, to farming, to crafting and harvesting shit like trees or ore, to advanced diplomacy spheres... which you can change for the entire continent by just talking your way through diplomatic relations between whole civilizations.

The gameplay is only slow in the begining when you have standard and one special attack... you gain other attacks called bridges and finishes. You start with an Opening attack, then lay down some type of bridge, then lay down a finishing move. All 3 have a vast list of types to choose from for different effects. In the same time space almost as the original regular swing and opener when you were still low lvl...

This game has all the complexity and more than anything I've encountered. I am currently mastering my Dread Knights shadow-step... an ability that lets me teleport to right behind my opponent from 35 meters... and we're not even into special abilities, different combat stances, foci and spells yet...it is a finely tuned chess game. Few will be good, even fewer will be masters. All will have fun :) Learning all the abilities and attack combos is incredible.

The grind is mediocre, I've been soloing a lot, and if you're an overpowered bard then you can probably easily solo into the mid lvls. The unique flying mounts are ape-shit fun... and the saddle bags idea was so awesome... the ships are a nice touch... and the fact that you can get attacked while traveling on your ship by pirates and sea monsters is hella fun.

The "holy f0ck" factor is back... from EQ1... when in the middle of a field of medium mobs and red con pops up and scares the fuck out of you... you remember all the good memories of EQ1 :)

This is a mature man's game... I hope it keeps the kiddies away so they stick to WoW... Vanguard is complicated and for adults.
 
I'm sorry, but those screenshots are hideous. Everquest1 back in 1999 had more style than this. Unreal back in 1998 looked better than this. Just because you use bump maps and normal maps doesn't mean the game magically comes out looking great. Its obvious someone in the art department simply doesn't know what they are doing.
 
I saw at least two people comparing these screenies to the graphics in Dark Messiah...ummm are you kidding?!? I thought the graphics in Dark Messiah were awesome. One of the better looking games I've played recently.
 
Holy hell. Check out those mountains. Looks like a cheap plastic toy.
screenshot00092pb2.jpg
 
Ok, I don't think the graphics are *that* bad but performance has been the main think keeping me from playing. I've been in Vanguard's beta since right before beta 3 started and although performance is better, it's just not there yet. Anyway, my main gripe with the graphics are how low detailed the character models are. Perhaps this will be addressed in a later update (i.e. expansion pack. :rolleyes: ) but they just look plain. Ignoring JPEG compression as much as possible:

Vanguard (near maximum settings - HDR/Bloom/16X AF on)

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Everquest 2 (near maximum settings - low quality shadows/Bloom/ 2X Adaptive AA Quality mode on)
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screenshot00001hk2.jpg


eq2000018pp8.jpg


screenshot00002ln4.jpg


eq2000025oo7.jpg


screenshot00005oa5.jpg


eq2000033ox4.jpg
 
Why are you comparing something with 16xAF to something without 16xAF? That makes a huge difference, and half the reason those Everquest 2 shots look so bad is because of the horribly blurred textures.
 
ManCannon said:
Why are you comparing something with 16xAF to something without 16xAF? That makes a huge difference, and half the reason those Everquest 2 shots look so bad is because of the horribly blurred textures.
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EQ2 doesn't have that setting in game. Just "maximum" for texture resolution. I was trying to max them out as much as possible. Regardless, Vanguard has better ground textures but who plays a game for that? Also that zone I was in is old and ugly anyway IMO but it was close enough scenery wise for comparison. Oh well. I tried. :)
 
You can't force AF in the control panel?

It was a nice sentiment, but the only real negative I saw with the EQ2 shots was the lack of AF :p .
 
Im sorry, but the fact of the matter to me is WOW looks better then that, continuing its place as the best looking MMO out there. Which kinda pisses me off, i dont really like WOW.
 
the game looks just like eq2... so why not just play eq2? outside ss look good to me though.
 
EQ2 failed, IMO, because of its horribly plastic/mannequin feeling graphics..

The game creeped me out.

This looks like an exact copy of EQ2.
 
Vanguard looks so much like EQ2, which is disappointing. EQ2's gameplay was OK, but the game seemed so dreary. At least it's one new MMO I won't be buying.

WoW's art direction is so much better. Granted, the game looks cartoony, but it works and the world has some life to it.
 
The reason wow is soo popular imo is that it does not have high end pc requirements, you can level solo or in a group so ideal for causal or hardcore. FUN gameplay is what keeps people playing a game not graphics...Graphics can pull you into a game though, but it better have the substance to go with it.

They should probably hold the release of this game up...Releasing it on the heals of wow's expansion is probably a bad move.
 
I had hopes for Vanguard but now i see this game is DOA. May you rest in peace.
 
graphics remind me of DAoC. expanded resource gathering and crafting sounds nice, but i won't go back to anything with forced grouping, heavy penalties, and long time requirements.
 
I've been in the beta for a while now, and the very first time I logged into it I would have sworn I was in EQ2 again.

Since then, things have changed a bit, but overall performance still isn't what it needs to be. Having visual settings so extreme that maybe 2% of your potential playerbase can use them is a moot point to me (gee sounds like EQ2 when it shipped).

The world is huge, almost too huge. This was the first MMORPG that I ever felt truly lost in. Some of it struck me as so "over complicated" that it didn't feel fun.

I had high hopes for this one, but right now I'm leaning more towards keeping my rarely used WoW account and enjoying Dungeon Runners when it goes live.

Maybe once they go live and get a few patched under their belt I'll take another look and see where its at.
 
What kind of time are we talking to level up in the early levels? And what is the level cap?
 
I'm not even sure how to put it but I'm not planning on buying any of these mmorpgs that try to make it look real and fall really short. The new LOTR beta I played is the same way, they try and make it look real and it just ends up looking bland and boring. Blizzard killed these other games before they even started being developed just because it has competent art departments that realize that +++ polygons, shdaers, and normal maps doesnt equate to good looks. Less polygons and more immersion please.

I had hopes for this game with its tons of different player classes and crafting options but if its gonna look like a rainy day on a beach in England I'm not about to play it.
 
My nephew just sent me these screenshots of the game

His hardware is
A64 3200+
2GB Ram
X800XT PE (256/512MB memory, not sure)
Windows XP

Hardly the top of the range hardware i know but still should get more than 6fps in this game, he was playing at a lower res but upping the res to his native monitors resolution didnt change the fps (which seems to indicate its cpu limited).

I cant test on my system as the open beta is for US people only. Also the graphics are quite poor considering, i know its beta, but for a game thats supposedly comming out this month (amazon have the 29th jan as release date) then this is going to tank. If people are unable to play due to hardware requirements then the others will be playing in an empty world and will soon leave.

vanguard1.jpg


vanguard2.jpg
 
i didnt read the whole thread, but i only want to comment on those pics..those pics are comparable to FFXI and you said you need High End rig to run it? ack!
 
I did an 8-hour marathon (for me anyway) playing this beta on Saturday night using the rig I built in my sig. Playing on balanced setting in 1680x1050, I get about 35-40 FPS in overland forested areas of Thestra and up to the mid-50's in the spider cave north of Veskal's Exchange. The screen shots really don't do this game justice.

Hands down, the game is not going to be for alot of people upon release. It's going to be slow, it's going to be buggy and definitely a work in progress. However, after seeing the group dynamic of a healer, warrior and paladin in action over a long period of time, I'm sold. I'm willing to live with the bad upon release to get in on the ground floor of this MMO. The worst case is that it doesn't improve performance wise and I move on to something else when AoC or Warhammer comes out.
 
Kevl4R said:
I did an 8-hour marathon (for me anyway) playing this beta on Saturday night using the rig I built in my sig. Playing on balanced setting in 1680x1050, I get about 35-40 FPS in overland forested areas of Thestra and up to the mid-50's in the spider cave north of Veskal's Exchange. The screen shots really don't do this game justice.

Hands down, the game is not going to be for alot of people upon release. It's going to be slow, it's going to be buggy and definitely a work in progress. However, after seeing the group dynamic of a healer, warrior and paladin in action over a long period of time, I'm sold. I'm willing to live with the bad upon release to get in on the ground floor of this MMO. The worst case is that it doesn't improve performance wise and I move on to something else when AoC or Warhammer comes out.
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exactly, this game has done a good job of making it fun and challenging at the same time! i don't care if its buggy right now, but as it stands it reminded me of the days of leveling in EQ, and that is so refreshing to see a game coming out that helps build on communities then the solo'ers
 
It's different...
It's complex and easy at the same time... I felt lost a little but at the same time it felt like something I played a million of times.

The gfx aren't really impressive and the lag is.... bleh.

There's still alot of weird bugs... like running through trees (wtf?)

I like the classes, lots of diversity and choices and they're all kinda diffrent one from another. The leveling is slow, really slow... it's gonna take a while to reach max level in this game. Mob are though... if there was more than 1 mob of my level I had a really hard time doing something to stay alive and same thing happended if I fought a mob that was 1 lvl over me. If you like going solo this game will be one big challenge for you.
 
Toytown said:
My nephew just sent me these screenshots of the game

His hardware is
A64 3200+
2GB Ram
X800XT PE (256/512MB memory, not sure)
Windows XP

Hardly the top of the range hardware i know but still should get more than 6fps in this game, he was playing at a lower res but upping the res to his native monitors resolution didnt change the fps (which seems to indicate its cpu limited).

I cant test on my system as the open beta is for US people only. Also the graphics are quite poor considering, i know its beta, but for a game thats supposedly comming out this month (amazon have the 29th jan as release date) then this is going to tank. If people are unable to play due to hardware requirements then the others will be playing in an empty world and will soon leave.
Click to expand...

Thats a old system, u shouldnt expect a 2year old system to be able to run these new games coming out at good frames :)

Game runs fine here at 1920x1200 and got a huge boost after fridays patch, so they must of optimized it a bit and i expect more optimizing before retail so...
 
X800XT PE is hardly old. It's still a pretty good card. Not high end but much better than a 7600GT or something.
 
Thats a old system, u shouldnt expect a 2year old system to be able to run these new games coming out at good frames
Click to expand...

Whilst i didnt expect great things from that system, it shouldnt be getting 6fps like it did this morning when he created the screenshots. If the game is unplayable on his system, then it will simply be unavailable to the majority of people with a pc that would play a mmorpg and when that happens you end up with worlds empty of players and feeling more like a small multiplayer game rather than massive multiplayer game.

EQ1 which has been out 7+ years can achieve a better framerates with 40-50 people on screen and similar graphics (if your on the new expansions), yet i wouldnt even want to imagine the framerates on vanguard with 16+ people on screen. My nephew went to a group of 7 dorfs and his fraps dropped down to 0fps, lol.
 
The water looks like crap in this game, and the lighting is pretty bland too. I hate how when you're underwater, there's no sort of underwater fog or anything that actually makes it look like you are underwater.
 
Those screenshots are not sufficiently impressive as to justify the extensive graphics hardware requirements of this game. Just my opinion, mind you.
 
I've been playing since Beta 2 and the game has changed so many things in even the last 2 weeks that I'm still learning how it's going to play on release.

That said it is still incomplete and not going to be near WoW level polish on release.

I do really like the class structures and mechanics, decent balance and I love my cleric. VG has the best healing classes of any game IMO.

There are a lot of negatives like no premeire content dungeons at lower levels, but you can do 1-15 in a week or two of moderate play, 4-5 hours a night a couple nights a week.

I have 10 days played now at level 26 but i've done a lot of exploring and helping other guildmates in beta so maybe only half of that is actual playtime :)


I'm still getting it on release to see how it goes and how the rest of my guildmates like it since if they won't play I won't play even if I happen to like it more than then. It's been a frustrating run in beta with class revamps etc and confusing stuff for many of my beta guildmates but most of them are willing to try it from release as well. Which we did for EQ2 but gave up after a couple months. Now EQ2 is supposedly better but it's hard to go back to a game everyone left and be pretty far behind.
 
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