Greetings Everyone,

First off I want to say thank you to all of you who showed up to Fan Faire. I had a great time and always enjoy talking to people face to face. I also want to say thanks to the rest of you who could not or chose not to come for whatever reason. Vanguard has a wonderful community of people who are very passionate about it and that fire is what fuels this development team.

As I told Lazaretto at the show I was planning on writing my first development letter since receiving the new responsibilities of producer on top of lead designer and designer. Things have been very hectic on this side since that happened and I am still trying to adjust to properly splitting my days up to take care of all responsibilities. So without further adieu here we go.

Fan Faire

As with any Fan Faire we came out of it with a list of issues that we are going to look in to. Considering we are looking at the player choice update some of theses things may be great additions to that update. Some of these things include looking into the following:

• Tooltips for placed objects in homes
• Making some changes to specialty bags so they can be equipped in other slots making them mover viable
• Expanding the enhancement system to other spheres
• Taking a serious look at armor dying
• Restoring the UI win scale
• Adding horseshoes that modify flight speed
• Looking into boat bugs when trying to get off of boat
• Issue with mindpsy hotkeys going away when you lose connection
• Guild hall transfers made a bit easier
• Boat issue with passenger floating in the air
• Z axis issues

I do want to apologize for the first day of panels. I was suffering form excruciating pain and made the mistake of thinking I could function while hiding it. This lead to a less then happy Silius as some of you can attest to. I am very sorry for letting that affect work after many of you traveled so far to talk to us.

Looking at some of the reports from Fan Faire there are some misleading posts out there. I am not going to spend time trying to counter anything that was said incorrectly or is just not true. As time goes on things should be resolved on their own.

In regards to not being mentioned at the keynote speech I am asking that you guys please not read into it. I will take the blame for it as we just did not have anything prepared to go up there with and preparing for Fan Faire was not in the forefront of my mind this year as I tried to get settled. If you are going to get angry at someone please get mad at me but please do not assume it means the SOE does not like VG. There are some talented people on this project and if SOE did not care about VG then they would take that talent and use it somewhere else.

Pantheon

Pantheon has gone great so far. We are not happy with some of the bugs that made it live but we have been working through them and resolving them as quickly as we can. We are also glad to see a stead stream of feedback from all of you. Due to some of the feedback we have received here and at Fan Faire we will be making another round of adjustments to things related to HOTP.

• Armor costs reduced
• Drop rate of echoes increased again
• Level 50s will be able to group with 55s
• Adding some tier 6 specific plant nodes to KDQ area
• Increased stack sizes for souls
• Increased stack sizes for slivers
• Making all enhancements tradeable

Player’s Choice

Fan Faire set us back a little bit in regards to data collection but we should be getting the thread up to vote on player choice issues so we can build a priority list and attack. One of the things that will come from this list is a definitive list of bugs that I am afraid will probably never be resolved. I will be taking these bugs and posting them along with an explanation of why they may never be fixed.

I hope that this will at least give some form of closure to some issues. I want to make sure we at least address something even if we do not plan on resolving it.

Future

The remainder of the year we are looking at releasing the second part of the Pantheon story which finishes the story and leaves the hook for the nexus story. WE are also looking into some side projects that I mentioned at FF. The earliest one being a revamp of the Salamander caves beneath VT. We are planning on re-itemizing and increasing the levels of these areas. It should flow like an old EQ style and is kind of an experiment with how we want to populate some of our other upcoming dungeons.

Speaking of other dungeons after looking at Nexus and realizing that it needed a good bit of time we made a decision to push it back and spend some time populating some areas that actually exist on Telon first. Here is a list of areas we plan on working on after HOSS is released.

Pankor Zhi

Stiirhad

Shadow Hilsbury

Old Targonor

City of Brass 2 (Fear Plane style experience)

COW

Of the list above we have already started planning out Pankor and Stiir. Both of these areas are a significant part of Qalia’s history and we really want to do them justice. For Pankor we are looking at a plan where the dungeon is mainly 6 man but leads to a final encounter area that is targeted at 12 man much like HOTP is set up. For Stiirhad we are looking at 24 man raid area within the dungeon. My desire is to get Pankor out for Christmas and Stiirhad early next year. The remaining projects we will see as we get closer to them. Old T is another of those significant locations that needs some attention.

Summary

Once again I want to thank all of you for being here and supporting the development of VG. We do not deserve such a dedicated group of players and it really makes our day to serve such a great bunch. Despite some of the impressions given at Fan Faire VG’s future is bright. VG has grown and grown and we are all happy with how far it has come. We want to continue that trend and hope that you will all be here for the ride. Tell a friend that VG is still here and kicking.

I just want to thank you for giving us so much info to pass on to the rest of the community. I know I'm going to be going through all that I recorded and try to put together a detailed list of all the content you mentioned.

Can't wait to see the new stuff, and, yes, even my Wyrmie.

/tipcap I will also have a write up on all things Fan Faire but again it was a blast to be a part of and to see all the good communication from everyone. Fantastic all around guys!

It was a pleasure to get to speak to you face to face the few times that we had opportunities Silius.  While I couldn't attend the panels due to keeping up with friends and what not, I look forward to seeing what more is coming down the pipe from you and your very dedicated team.

Keep up the good work, and keep working on your dual wielding skill! (Inside joke)

For a "Short Development Letter," that was the longest and most informative producer's post I've seen in almost 2 years of being here (there may have been one or two that beat the word count, but none beat the content of that post).

One selfish HURRAH!  Mindspy's no longer going "poof" when we crash or have to relog??!?!?!?  I love you.  Will you marry me?

Well, before we get married, could you please also make it so our new all-in-one buff doesn't go *poof* when we relog, as well?

Anyhow, thanks for the informative post, and looks like a lot of folks who've been complaining about some things will find reason to cheer with your post.  50s grouping with 55s?  Enhancements tradeable? Yeesh.  The latter sorta takes the wind out of my sails in leveling myself up as a artificer (went from 1 to 25 this weekend heh), but if it means a few folks stay with the game, then meh.  Probably will still max out crafting under the assumption you'll get us rewards for 50/50/50 toons that doesn't make folks whine.

Thanks, Silius, and keep up the good work.  It's been a year or more since the community has had reason for optimism, and your recent efforts, coupled with this post, probably returns us yet again to another period of optimism.

Don't suppose you could make the Tier 2 souls for pantheon auto loot?

Like the faction coins.. it's far easier to grind KDQ than to bother with the T2 pantheon trials ATM.

Thanks for the changes incoming thought, especially the pantheon ones!!

When was the interview for mmorpgfocus.com done? In it you said that VG didn't have a producer, but that you were basically filling the role. Is it official now?

• Tooltips for placed objects in homes
• Making some changes to specialty bags so they can be equipped in other slots making them mover viable
• Expanding the enhancement system to other spheres
• Taking a serious look at armor dying
• Restoring the UI win scale
• Adding horseshoes that modify flight speed
• Looking into boat bugs when trying to get off of boat
• Issue with mindpsy hotkeys going away when you lose connection
• Guild hall transfers made a bit easier
• Boat issue with passenger floating in the air
• Z axis issues

Thanks Silius and it was good seeing you at FF this year

lovely list of changes, only thing missing to make it perfect would be to have echo's drop from other nodes then just mining too.

Great news Silius You rock as a lead designer and revamping those old areas is awesome

Silius could you clarify one thing, when you say you want these new dungeons to be EQ like; what exactly does that mean? Does it mean these dungeons will be made for crawling ala NN or VT? Pantheon is nice but it's not a dungeon in the crawling sense.  Does this also mean you will be staying away from the outdoor KDQ like design?  I hope so, KDQ has decent encounter desgins for the T3-T4 named... but it's just a mess in terms of location and flow... it just seemed like there was enough content for a single dungeon that got spread out across 5 chunks.

And when you say you want Phankor out by Christmas, is that the first dungeon you will be releasing?  Or will there be something in between; like you mentioned with Vi'rak.  Or is Vi'rak going to be a post-Stiirhad project?

Silius wrote:

 

 

Greetings Everyone,

First off I want to say thank you to all of you who showed up to Fan Faire. I had a great time and always enjoy talking to people face to face. I also want to say thanks to the rest of you who could not or chose not to come for whatever reason. Vanguard has a wonderful community of people who are very passionate about it and that fire is what fuels this development team.

As I told Lazaretto at the show I was planning on writing my first development letter since receiving the new responsibilities of producer on top of lead designer and designer. Things have been very hectic on this side since that happened and I am still trying to adjust to properly splitting my days up to take care of all responsibilities. So without further adieu here we go.

Fan Faire

As with any Fan Faire we came out of it with a list of issues that we are going to look in to. Considering we are looking at the player choice update some of theses things may be great additions to that update. Some of these things include looking into the following:

• Tooltips for placed objects in homes
• Making some changes to specialty bags so they can be equipped in other slots making them mover viable
• Expanding the enhancement system to other spheres

Cool, but why? Crafting recipes and Diplomacy parleys are already basically no-fail at 55/50. Why more mods?

• Taking a serious look at armor dying

Meh. A lot of the grief about armor is more about a lack of appearances, not colors. For leather/chain it seems like there are only 3 or 4 styles of armor, of which all colors are available somewhere in the game. You should go kidnap some of the AoC artists from Funcom. Their armor, botht he quality and quantity of different styles, is downright epic.

• Restoring the UI win scale

Not sure I understand this. Do you mean making /uiwinscale modifications persist between logins?

• Adding horseshoes that modify flight speed
• Looking into boat bugs when trying to get off of boat
• Issue with mindpsy hotkeys going away when you lose connection
• Guild hall transfers made a bit easier
• Boat issue with passenger floating in the air
• Z axis issues

Hope that means the agrro drop exploit in addition to climbing stairs.

I do want to apologize for the first day of panels. I was suffering form excruciating pain and made the mistake of thinking I could function while hiding it. This lead to a less then happy Silius as some of you can attest to. I am very sorry for letting that affect work after many of you traveled so far to talk to us.

If I had to deal with a bunch of VG players, I'd be in pain too.

Looking at some of the reports from Fan Faire there are some misleading posts out there. I am not going to spend time trying to counter anything that was said incorrectly or is just not true. As time goes on things should be resolved on their own.

In regards to not being mentioned at the keynote speech I am asking that you guys please not read into it. I will take the blame for it as we just did not have anything prepared to go up there with and preparing for Fan Faire was not in the forefront of my mind this year as I tried to get settled. If you are going to get angry at someone please get mad at me but please do not assume it means the SOE does not like VG. There are some talented people on this project and if SOE did not care about VG then they would take that talent and use it somewhere else.

Pantheon

Pantheon has gone great so far. We are not happy with some of the bugs that made it live but we have been working through them and resolving them as quickly as we can. We are also glad to see a stead stream of feedback from all of you. Due to some of the feedback we have received here and at Fan Faire we will be making another round of adjustments to things related to HOTP.

• Armor costs reduced
• Drop rate of echoes increased again
• Level 50s will be able to group with 55s
• Adding some tier 6 specific plant nodes to KDQ area
• Increased stack sizes for souls
• Increased stack sizes for slivers
• Making all enhancements tradeable

Like em all. Please take RvR into account for the T6 nodes on the KDQ island. Currently miners can go all day with minimal risk due to the nature of the nods being so close to the zonewalls, but lumberjacks and reapers have to be out in the thick of things, dodging mobs to get to their nodes.

Player’s Choice

Fan Faire set us back a little bit in regards to data collection but we should be getting the thread up to vote on player choice issues so we can build a priority list and attack. One of the things that will come from this list is a definitive list of bugs that I am afraid will probably never be resolved. I will be taking these bugs and posting them along with an explanation of why they may never be fixed.

I hope that this will at least give some form of closure to some issues. I want to make sure we at least address something even if we do not plan on resolving it.

Good idea, even if some people won't like it.

Future

The remainder of the year we are looking at releasing the second part of the Pantheon story which finishes the story and leaves the hook for the nexus story. We are also looking into some side projects that I mentioned at FF. The earliest one being a revamp of the Salamander caves beneath VT. We are planning on re-itemizing and increasing the levels of these areas. It should flow like an old EQ style and is kind of an experiment with how we want to populate some of our other upcoming dungeons.

Speaking of other dungeons after looking at Nexus and realizing that it needed a good bit of time we made a decision to push it back and spend some time populating some areas that actually exist on Telon first. Here is a list of areas we plan on working on after HOSS is released.

Pankor Zhi

Stiirhad

Shadow Hilsbury

Old Targonor

City of Brass 2 (Fear Plane style experience)

COW

Of the list above we have already started planning out Pankor and Stiir. Both of these areas are a significant part of Qalia’s history and we really want to do them justice. For Pankor we are looking at a plan where the dungeon is mainly 6 man but leads to a final encounter area that is targeted at 12 man much like HOTP is set up. For Stiirhad we are looking at 24 man raid area within the dungeon. My desire is to get Pankor out for Christmas and Stiirhad early next year. The remaining projects we will see as we get closer to them. Old T is another of those significant locations that needs some attention.

Summary

Once again I want to thank all of you for being here and supporting the development of VG. We do not deserve such a dedicated group of players and it really makes our day to serve such a great bunch. Despite some of the impressions given at Fan Faire VG’s future is bright. VG has grown and grown and we are all happy with how far it has come. We want to continue that trend and hope that you will all be here for the ride. Tell a friend that VG is still here and kicking.

I have one question that I think would resolve a lot of the uncertianty among players (or at least forums trolls). That being said, you probably aren't allowed to answer it: Is VG currently profitable?

Thx.  Great post. 

Keep up the excellent work. 

This kind of communication goes a long way. 

I wonder if there's anyway to make something like this available from within the game.  I have no idea how many people play the game but never look at these forums.