Honest Thoughts

Vanguard Vanguard General Discussion
1

This is obviously pre-alpha as the game makes sure you know. Okay. That is fine. No biggie.

That said, assuming CCP is not intending to burn it down, I want to give some thoughts in the hopes that CCP can make the game better for players like myself. It is clearly rough in terms of polish, but that is expected for a pre-alpha game, so that will not be in my thoughts.

As a baseline, FPS extraction games are not really my cup of tea in general, but I have played countless hours of games like Golden Eye and Halo in my youth, so I am not entirely unfamiliar. I have also enjoyed games like Helldivers 2, so I thought I would give it a try for the current event.

What feels good: The first few missions while they were teaching the game. PvP was not on and there were times that I would randomly run into other players and we would, without even having to communicate, start working together. Felt great. Had an almost Helldivers 2 feel to it.

The first few missions were also not really focused on their industry and loadouts which was much simpler. I think this was mostly because the industry and loadouts still needs a little time in the oven.

What feels bad: The game, for me, completely fell apart when PVP was turned on without any real explanation. I am playing solo (because I have no friends #PoorMe) and I quit the game on the spot when I figured out I was going up against what appeared to be a squad. I actually killed one, not knowing it was a person because I was used to PVP being off and I was in the practice of shooting anything that moved, only to have his squad mates turn and erase me and all of my stuff.

CCP, can you make a way for PVE lovers to be excited about this game. I have zero interest in shooting others or being hunted by others (competitively). If not, this game is DOA for me. Just was not fun for someone who favors PVE over PVP. Heck, even having the ability to mark ones self as PvP ineligible would be fine for me, though it is hardly in keeping with the lack of safety of the original EVE. But at least EVE has high sec where others are “punished” (sort of) for shooting another player.

Don’t have the answer. Just don’t want to play a game where I am forced to PVP.

And yes, your response can absolutely be that you are not trying to make a game for players like me and I would completely understand that. Just offering my honest thoughts and perspective for your new game. Wish y’all the best.

4 Likes
2

I tried to play the game again today, thinking maybe I was just having a bad day and I think the easy answer is that this game is not made for PvE folks like myself. There were parts that absolutely felt good, as I described in the OP, but those parts are seemingly well behind me.

I can’t see anything changing during the current event, so I am uninstalling for now. I have given my honest thoughts above and hope that when the game is released in the future, it will have stuff for PvE’ers (PvPvE is not PvE). If not, no worries. Still appreciate CCP for all the fun I have had over the years in EVE.

1 Like
3

Hi, thanks for posting some positive impressions. As for those bad, related to other players forcing PvP on you. I had the same reaction, initially. Then I’ve changed my attitude and put it up on “it’s head”. Briefly speaking - I started treating players hunting other players for sport, as part of E in PvE :stuck_out_tongue: specifically, something you tend to avoid or hide from.

I’ve just tried to tag along and complete those assignments to advance my Event Progress Bar. And it was extremely frustrating to me to die midway in the deployment from other players. NPCs are very easy to take, other players not so, at least to me.

And yesterday, it was most satisfying experience. I first got shot by a duo and later, in the same deployment, seeing them arrive to my extraction beacon location, when it’s 2 seconds until the end and my assignment being complete. I even managed to fire few “kiss my as*” shots at one of them, then poof and I was safe. It really felt good :face_holding_back_tears:

What we have now is still just a fuzzy glimpse of what this game could become. It really has great potential in it imho. And having “safer zones” (Golden Rule #2 applies here ofc) is on the backlog.
Though they mostly want to achieve it by giving advanced players more incentive to deploy elsewhere than beginners do. It obviously couldn’t be done in the Operation Nemesis setting. With literary 3 basic maps, having a daylight and bad weather variants. Still felt good imho. Especially the Maelstrom with heavy rain and a thunderstorm.

The Fanfest presentation hinted at developing a special map assembly tool and assets library that will let them build unique maps very fast for more planets. So there will be lot’s of places to go. Maybe even with some player density indicator, to help judge your chances of success.

If you would like to have a bigger influence on the development, I recommend joining “closed playtest” group. We participate in regular playtests, roughly, every month and we are at a very close distance with CCP London devs. Primarily via official EVE Vanguard discord (unfortunately?). And they are listening to our suggestions.

Here is the official EVE Vanguard FAQ page with Discord invite link
https://evevanguard.com/frequently-asked-questions
(Note: there is a quarantine for posting embeds due to bot spam, it requires posting ~100 messages, 1 minute apart of each other, to be released out of it, the message length doesn’t matter)

6

FPS .. PVP with no real team work, unless you count squads… This will quickly become nothing more than shoot/grief everything .. Everything else will be shadowed by it ..
Really enjoyed it to start and it played well.

When PVP enabled.. I sort of excepted squads to be PVP .. and solo to be PVE… sadly not so…. im done with it until something changes… good luck with it.

7

I think this is valid - in EVE we have Hisec, lowsec and nullsec. Why not the equivalent in Vanguard ? In hisec you can get ganked, or killed if you go suspect; in low and null anything goes, and if you are doing a PvE mission in lowsec, you can get jumped. By solo players or by groups.

More risk in “low / null” on VG, but bigger rewards.
More PvE and likely cooperation with other players in VG “hisec”. But possible “ganker teams”.
And in EVE, the hisec killers are Omega, so … equivalent system in VG ?

Two types of areas, one encouraging cooperation and more PvE, but not immune to “ganking”.
Maybe more resource harvesting based ?
The second where anything goes, PvE and PvE, and bigger rewards.
Resource-harvesting plus player-corpse-harvesting ?

And maybe a third type develops as groups take control of certain “lowsec” planets / locations.

And training areas, certain locations equivalent to Starter Systems and Career Agent Systems in EVE. And VG players can stay in these systems for as long as they wish.

8

To me, it felt like a bunch of psychopaths looking to slaughter anyone in their path. I was trying to run missions and was set upon as soon as I jumped in. What are these people like in real life? I thought all the people jumping in had an objective. It appears that some people are getting off ruining the game for everyone else. They have weapons that are more powerful so they use them to just trash everyone else. One guy shot my character down and as the character lay there helpless he kept reloading the weapon and emptying it clip after clip. Who does that? Sorry, I’m done. Next time start a game of serial killers hunting each other. I’m sure a few playing this game would sign up. Life’s too short for such darkness.

1 Like