Quest Hubs? Game areas, defined

[John Adams]

"The Flow" kind of means what Faux is referring to. Where there are quest clusters that lead the character throughout the world, either on their own continent or across the globe, to guide them to as much content as possible. Maybe "Character Progression" might be a more apt term.

I know when I first played my (only) character, a Lesser Giant Dreadknight from Halgarad, I did all the lowbie quests I could find, then ended up heading westward through Veskal's until I ended up in Renton Keep, Three Rivers, Silverlake, etc. I was mostly bound to my continent (only by lack of knowledge of the rest of the world) until around level 40, when my gang and I headed to Qalia. Naturally, by this I missed all the Qalia content and barely ever even saw Kojan.

So I guess what I'm looking for is if SOE changed Content/Quests after 2008 to drag players more throughout the entire world, or was this basically it? I like the idea of 1 single character exploring the entire world - all 3 continents and altered planes. But I'm fairly sure there's more content than there are levels, and I know most people just make a Qalian or Kojani toon to experience that "Character Progression" (the Flow).

Did that make more sense?

[Jakkal]

The original "launch" version of the game was pretty linear. I remember that we had to actually rebind ourselves to each new quest hub we got to, so recall didn't put us back at our starter city if we needed to use it (which would take an hour to get back because of the really slow travel). So if you started a vulmane, your only track was Dahknarg -> Halgarad -> Jerogar's Post -> Vault of Heroes -> Veskals -> Misthaven -> Silverlake -> Trengal Keep. etc.

I can't remember when exactly they added the riftways, but it was set up really weird. First you had to unlock them (Which I thought was a very good idea). And they were on separate networks. You could only go from one rift to another if they were on the same network. And the Purple Rifts were exit only. I can't for the life of me remember if these rifts had a purpose such as "Quest Flow" or whatnot, but I don't think they did. I think they were to aid travel, but not make travel trivial. You also needed riftway shards to use them. Don't run out.

It was when they added the Isle of Dawn that they gave more of a choice of where to go. From the IOD you could port to Veskals, Qa Riverbank, or that place in Kojan that the name escapes me right now. It was in the same chunk as Slimnir. But at that point, all the rifts were changed to be level based. All green rifts were level 10+ stuff. Blue rifts were 20+ stuff. When they did this, you could follow whatever quest path you wanted to. YOu could start at Veskals and skip TK and move on to CIS. This, in a way, made VG much more free and let you pick your own path. You didn't need riftway shards for these anymore, just had to pay.

Seems like they did another change to the rifts after that, but I can't recall specifically what it was.

Just before F2P, they wanted to add a 'golden path' which accidentally backfired and caused some of us to get very, very rich (got 10 plat myself), but I don't think they ever actually implemented it.

[Apaelias]

I think somewhere in between they added NPCs that sent you other places in the mix of most quest hubs. Like in the middle of Cragwind, which has to be the biggest quest hub in VG, there was like one dude that wanted to send me to either Thelaseen or Nothern Highlands or something. So i'd go grab up all the 15ish quests and do them all only to find out that the one dude wanted to send me elsewhere. These NPCs I don't think were there in the beginning though.

Due to the overwhelming number of dungeons and places to level I don't think there was really much of a flow.

[John Adams]

[quote="Apaelias"]Due to the overwhelming number of dungeons and places to level I don't think there was really much of a flow.[/quote]
Speaking of "dungeons", and slightly off-topic, one thing I really, REALLY liked about Vanguard was in fact this seemingly seamless world where I am trotting down some path in a forest and suddenly see a hole in the ground big enough for me to enter... and I do, and there's stuff in there that wants to kill me. I didn't have to zone/chunk/reload the UI nothing... Very cool. I only grasped how cool they were when I was collecting data in the final months and running off-path through many chunks, and finding holes-in-the-ground

[Jakkal]

I used to love exploring some of the caves that were cut off from the world by barricades. There were ... ... tricks ... to getting into those caves. But sometimes it's just as nice to wander around these old barren caves as well! It's like a whole world of potential.

[Cyrcle]

Quest Hubs - I never thought of a quest hub as an "on rails" experience. I've always thought of them as an town or area where you could go to grab several quests, turn them in, and get more quests. They never had to guide you from one hub to the next. I remember at launch before Rifts, you were kind of on rails, if you will. As a Halfling, I was guided from Rindol Field to Tursh (Rift Seekers Torrent dungeon) to Thenmar's Shield to Three Rivers (Khegor's End dungeon) to Renton Keep to Hillsbury Manor to Silverlake to Trengal Keep. You thing is, even though you were on rails, it didn't feel like it, because you received what felt like just enough experience for killing and doing the quests to take you to the next area.

Tiers - A lot of people are talking about armor tiers, but the way I consider tiers is, Swamp Armor is Tier 1, APW is Tier 2, PoTA is tier 3, CoW is Tier 4, Stiirhad is Tier 5, for example.

[quote="Jakkal"]
COW: Cave of Wonders (This is what killed the game we think, I mean, that SOE put money into making this zone and it failed utterly and broke stuff)
[/quote]
I disagree. I was thinking about around a month ago. I really think that once that 51+ content came out and then they started adding more and more stuff on top of it. It became a big balancing issue. I mean, if you look at some of the POTA gear with runes in them, they literally took up the entire screen vertically. How much more powerful could you make your characters? They just dug themselves so deep, with dev team after dev team instead of just keeping people that knew the game, that they couldn't dig themselves out.

I love exploring Vanguard as well. Even leveling up three characters to 50, there are still areas and dungeons I haven't done. It's the game that keeps giving.

[Jakkal]

[quote="Cyrcle"]

[quote="Jakkal"]
COW: Cave of Wonders (This is what killed the game we think, I mean, that SOE put money into making this zone and it failed utterly and broke stuff)
[/quote]
I disagree. I was thinking about around a month ago. I really think that once that 51+ content came out and then they started adding more and more stuff on top of it. It became a big balancing issue. I mean, if you look at some of the POTA gear with runes in them, they literally took up the entire screen vertically. How much more powerful could you make your characters? They just dug themselves so deep, with dev team after dev team instead of just keeping people that knew the game, that they couldn't dig themselves out.

I love exploring Vanguard as well. Even leveling up three characters to 50, there are still areas and dungeons I haven't done. It's the game that keeps giving. [/quote]

Well, the game was on a slow death even from the very start, but I don't think 51+ content was the death knell of the game. I actually quite enjoyed a lot of the 51+ content myself, and I even enjoyed the challenge of a two person boxing team taking down raid mobs in APW. (I know, most people greatly disliked this, but all games transition to more and more power, so older stuff becomes obsolete. But I did enjoy the challenge of it).

Infact, I think the game was at its best during the 2010-2011 version, just after the Magi Hold/Shadow Hillsbury additions. At this point we got new raid mobs, such as Shendu, that were a ton of fun. And even as buggy as Tharridon was, his strategy /was/ a lot of fun. I really enjoyed these mobs. And POTA gave us the chance to take on Karax, who also had a really fun strategy, in a Playing-Simon-From-Hell kind of way.

Even the augments were fun to get. I enjoyed kiting to try to get them. I enjoyed raiding to try to get them to drop. I Enjoyed the option to build my gear with stats the way I wanted it to.

But in early 2013? I think it was, they did something to the game, there was an update and then suddenly the game was not running properly. Some of us suspect that they put VG on an older, less powerful server. It was really laggy, it was really difficult to do anything. Then after that, they did "network code changes" which were supposed to fix all the lag and latency, but that didn't fix it either. Then they blamed it on clickies and buffs, so they ruined our clicky timers (dev note: fix clickies) and then they ruined our buffs (BBO). The lag was still there.

Then the announced that Cave of Wonders was ready to roll. And despite numerous people saying "No it wasn't!" SOE said "Yes it was!" and not even a month later, they announce Sunset. They did something to the game that they felt wasn't worth fixing, or bothering to fix. So instead of trying, or leaving it on life support, they killed the whole thing.

VG survived when we lost all of our devs, just on basic life support (circa 2010ish). But whatever they did in 2013, and whatever happened after COW was the real death knell of the game.

[Apaelias]

[quote="Cyrcle"]Quest Hubs - I never thought of a quest hub as an "on rails" experience. I've always thought of them as an town or area where you could go to grab several quests, turn them in, and get more quests. They never had to guide you from one hub to the next. I remember at launch before Rifts, you were kind of on rails, if you will. As a Halfling, I was guided from Rindol Field to Tursh (Rift Seekers Torrent dungeon) to Thenmar's Shield to Three Rivers (Khegor's End dungeon) to Renton Keep to Hillsbury Manor to Silverlake to Trengal Keep. You thing is, even though you were on rails, it didn't feel like it, because you received what felt like just enough experience for killing and doing the quests to take you to the next area.

Tiers - A lot of people are talking about armor tiers, but the way I consider tiers is, Swamp Armor is Tier 1, APW is Tier 2, PoTA is tier 3, CoW is Tier 4, Stiirhad is Tier 5, for example.

[quote="Jakkal"]
COW: Cave of Wonders (This is what killed the game we think, I mean, that SOE put money into making this zone and it failed utterly and broke stuff)
[/quote]
I disagree. I was thinking about around a month ago. I really think that once that 51+ content came out and then they started adding more and more stuff on top of it. It became a big balancing issue. I mean, if you look at some of the POTA gear with runes in them, they literally took up the entire screen vertically. How much more powerful could you make your characters? They just dug themselves so deep, with dev team after dev team instead of just keeping people that knew the game, that they couldn't dig themselves out.

I love exploring Vanguard as well. Even leveling up three characters to 50, there are still areas and dungeons I haven't done. It's the game that keeps giving. [/quote]
There were some problems when they introduced 51+ content but I do not that that's what killed the game. I do however think there was a problem when they refused to increase level cap. A lot of people are gonna disagree with me here but oh well. A major problem in the end was player power. I could 2 box all the OT names with just a bard buffing my sorc. That's kinda ridiculous. They kept adding 55 content when at 55 our power was ridiculous. I think at the end they needed a level cap increase and a readjustment of cap equations to solve out power problem, but instead they tried to change how buffs worked/stacked. In the end they fucked it up so bad it only made us stronger. Monks spamming their chains that were supposed to be relatively long. 2s Comet refresh = ridiculous. Paired with my 2m burn it was just stupid.

[Kilsin]

[quote="Apaelias"][quote="Cyrcle"]Quest Hubs - I never thought of a quest hub as an "on rails" experience. I've always thought of them as an town or area where you could go to grab several quests, turn them in, and get more quests. They never had to guide you from one hub to the next. I remember at launch before Rifts, you were kind of on rails, if you will. As a Halfling, I was guided from Rindol Field to Tursh (Rift Seekers Torrent dungeon) to Thenmar's Shield to Three Rivers (Khegor's End dungeon) to Renton Keep to Hillsbury Manor to Silverlake to Trengal Keep. You thing is, even though you were on rails, it didn't feel like it, because you received what felt like just enough experience for killing and doing the quests to take you to the next area.

Tiers - A lot of people are talking about armor tiers, but the way I consider tiers is, Swamp Armor is Tier 1, APW is Tier 2, PoTA is tier 3, CoW is Tier 4, Stiirhad is Tier 5, for example.

[quote="Jakkal"]
COW: Cave of Wonders (This is what killed the game we think, I mean, that SOE put money into making this zone and it failed utterly and broke stuff)
[/quote]
I disagree. I was thinking about around a month ago. I really think that once that 51+ content came out and then they started adding more and more stuff on top of it. It became a big balancing issue. I mean, if you look at some of the POTA gear with runes in them, they literally took up the entire screen vertically. How much more powerful could you make your characters? They just dug themselves so deep, with dev team after dev team instead of just keeping people that knew the game, that they couldn't dig themselves out.

I love exploring Vanguard as well. Even leveling up three characters to 50, there are still areas and dungeons I haven't done. It's the game that keeps giving. [/quote]
There were some problems when they introduced 51+ content but I do not that that's what killed the game. I do however think there was a problem when they refused to increase level cap. A lot of people are gonna disagree with me here but oh well. A major problem in the end was player power. I could 2 box all the OT names with just a bard buffing my sorc. That's kinda ridiculous. They kept adding 55 content when at 55 our power was ridiculous. I think at the end they needed a level cap increase and a readjustment of cap equations to solve out power problem, but instead they tried to change how buffs worked/stacked. In the end they fucked it up so bad it only made us stronger. Monks spamming their chains that were supposed to be relatively long. 2s Comet refresh = ridiculous. Paired with my 2m burn it was just stupid.[/quote]

I agree completely Apa, 51+ had issues but it didn't kill the game, the balance, itemisation and player power was the real issue that trivialised pretty much everything.

If that Free to Play itemisation didn't take place and no Augs were implemented, the 51+ content would've been fine with a few tweaks.

[Jakkal]

I think Apaelias hit the nail on the head with the level cap. If we went up in levels as things came out, then it was okay that older stuff was 'trivial' but also unnecessary for us to take down.

What I didn't like about the augs is that with the way buff and stat caps were, everyone was scrambling for specific augs in the end. *cough* RORR *cough*