March 2012 Producer Letter Discussion Thread

Hey there,
You can use this thread to discuss the March 2012 Producer Letter.
Please remember to stay within the forums rules when offering your feedback.
Thank you!

After advocating for the Free to Play transition at Fan Faire and during my time on the Community Council? I for one am excited to see Vanguard finally making this move. There are a lot of people who would love to come back to the game who quit in the first six months, and might not want to commit the subscription money to find out its current state. This will give them that option.
I'm curious though: When will we be able to see the Matrix?
Looking forward to this change, and to the other updates/bug fixes it will bring.

Thanks for posting the letter Zatozia. So questions.
Question (1) What about content updates, specifically City of Brass and other stuff that was tested? Are these being scrapped?
Question (2) If there are no content updates till F2P conversion is done, will you stop charging the current players subscriptions for content that you don't plan to release before F2P (since these would be technically free after you make the game F2P)?
Request (1) Please fix the Force Duel exploit before you make the game free.
Thanks.

Xhurai@Telon wrote:

We'll have more details and a matrix for it later on. As Andy mentioned in the letter, we'll be using our other games that recently transitioned to free-to-play as a base so it will be similar to those. Obviously, Vanguard is a different game though and may need special case scenarios included. We're still working on all the details!

Hopefully this will bring in more $$$ so we can get VG on the level of Lotro or DDO in terms of content updates. Heck, DDO just added a new class for heaven's sake. VG is twice the game that those are.

F2P pretty much means more people. More people will need more servers sooner or later.
Is there hope for a FFA PvP server to return? We got quite a few people waiting for this.

Nenah@Sartok wrote:

It's a little soon to discuss opening new servers. We will evaluate the need when the time comes though!

okay, in keeping with forum rules i will try to not say anything that might be perceived by the moderators as negative, but rather as constructive criticism.
I have nothing to say on F2p it is inevitable, and may or may not impact vanguard in a positive way.
I do, however, have something to say about the statements regarding the team and updates. If today's update is an example of the quality of workmanship we can expect, then perhaps the producer should rethink his team. We have experienced this quality of work in the past with certain key positions from that team being filled with the same people.
My background in software development and implementation suggests that code never intended for release should not still be on servers that are being used to patch or update live servers. (insert Tombstone issue here)
As a player, i do not find a fluff item pet or title to be worthy of the lable "update" the fixes to disc and the shaman focus item are welcome and could fall into that category. The added appearance epic item sounds nice, but expecting players to pay to unsocket their existing one just to see it on the vendor is just plain mean. If these few things are what we can expect from "updates" then perhaps a client base reality check is in order.
just my opinion.

Dravid@Telon wrote:

I echo this, and if CoB is not being scrapped will we have to wait until after the f2p push to see new endgame content?
Also what happened to Gidoo, is he still involved with Vanguard?

leavwiz wrote:

This. ^^^
Those same team members have also been unwilling or unable to engage the community in meaningful dialogue and have lost the confidence of a large portion of the community. So here are my questions:
1) Is the Vanguard team comprised entirely of the people listed in the letter, or are those just the lead positions? If there are more, how many are now on the team full time (not counting floating coders that work on multiple games).
2) What percentage of the "new" team's time will be spent on converting the game to FTP, what percentage on bug fixes, what percentage on new content, and what percentage on "fixing" content that's currently working and adding fluff pets and titles?
3) Are you, as the producer, willing to commit yourself and your team to reopening a dialogue with a wary and cynical community by making frequent posts outlining progress and asking for our input on major game changing decisions?

Zartacla@Telon wrote:

1. No, that is not the full team. Those are just a few. We'll be releasing periodic website articles of the various team members over the next few weeks.
2. I'll have to forward that question. We're still working on getting everyone on the team access to the forums *grin*
3. The Dev team is very community oriented and wants to share news and status updates as often as possible. I'll be making a few changes on the forums sometime within the next few weeks to help facilitate that communication flow.

The only question that matters to me at all right now is this:
How much longer are we going to have to wait for new content? Is this something that will be shelved until after F2P, or can we expect it in the "updates in the coming weeks" that were mentioned in the letter?

I would like to know since Silius is back. Would he step up and keep the paying subs informed? Will he be online asnwering questions? Update.. great but would it be another Update/Testing or Silius will step up and make sure the work is done right? And if he does say something would he keep his word and stick thru till the end? And lasty will he keep his ears open to the paying subs suggestions?... Everything looks good on paper but once its time to impliment it, it really does not go the way you want to... The only way that everything will work out great if the higher ups would spend time and get a first hand feel on what the sam houston is going on....

As somone who played at release but didn't stick around for reasons I suspect most people posting or reading these forums are well aware of I find this to be very welcome news.
I loved the concepts of Vanguard but was never able to convince my circle of gaming friends to give it a shot. That should be much easier now that the barrier to entry will be removed entirely, coupled with a population boost. I find the lack of population to be the #1 reason most people cite for not playing the game (which is funny since if all those people gave it a shot there would be less of a population problem, but I digress).

I implore you to maintain good communication with the community. I've tried to come back to Vanguard a handful of times but in addition to not being able to convince friends to play the sense of abandonment and lack of communication were what ultimately drove me away. I believe communication to be vitally important and hope you will make an effort to improve in this area.
Also, please bring back the PvP server!

Azraell@Seradon wrote:

to quote silius
Sorry about the tombstone (and other changes) that were supposed to be reverted. We are going to correct this issue soon. We are just confirming that there was nothing else missed during the transition. Once again sorry for the mix up these changes were not meant to go live at any point.
Am still wondering what the definition of "soon" is since it is used so freely by our forum moderator and should point out that broken updates are the current legacy and today's patch shows no sign of that improving. As you can see , Silius did respond on the forums, so clearly he has "access" however , a forum post not followed by action is meaningless.

At what point can we expect the two content updates promised on July 20th, 2011 that were supposed to have arrived by now?
What is the status of City of Brass and other content that may be in development? Will any new content be released before F2P occurs during the summer?

leavwiz wrote:

The servers are being brought down as we speak.

and no rollbacks =/

Yay for destroying the VG economy for a third time.

Graye@Xeth wrote:

Where did you find that out from Graye?
That will kill the economy if something isn't done...just when prices were at a reasonable level after Live Gamer going offline.

Kilsin@Telon wrote:

Via a means of which I am not allowed to post on the forums due to the forum rules.