So it's been about 4 years since I played VO for serious, and about two weeks ago I got interested in the status of the game and dropped by. I never played the pay-for-play VO because college got in the way, so I had my free trial left to mess around with.

So I did, and became hooked again. $10 later, I am paying to play.

But I can't say that I'm terribly impressed with what has happened to the community and game in four years. This isn't meant to knock on the Devs or any players in particular, but rather to generate some conversation about the game and the community.

So here's what I've noticed about VO in my two weeks back.

1. The people who play are still generally cool people, and that's good. I think part of it comes from the cross-platform nature of the game, and it's low profile. the personal approach of the devs to the community helps too.

2. Once you finish the basic training missions, there's no guidance as to where to go or what to do next. This contributes to the impression that there's nothing to do in VO, despite the fact that there are plenty of things to do. But without some sort of leads for new pilots to follow, the game appears to be about getting your feet wet, doing a few escort missions to make a cool million or two, and then PvPing all the time. I think this encourages pirating and abusing newbs because there's "nothing else to do"; I will keep thinking this through though.

3. There's not a clear roadmap as to where the game is going. I saw in the newspost by Incarnate that the trac might be coming up soon - that would be incredible. Just being able to see that "oh, exploration will be coming along soon" or "ooh, factions will make sense again!" would be great.

4. The storyline is woefully underrepresented in game. I know that those things are usually the "spice" after the main game is finished, but in VO I think that the story could drive the game. For example, the backstory mentions that the wormhole to Sol was destabilized by constant travel, yet it seems like the wormhole between Itani and Serco space sees an awful lot of travel due to border skirmish every 4 hours. There's no explanation of how that wormhole problem got fixed, or any suggestion that the drives that the ships have now operate on a different mechanism; why haven't the busier wormholes degraded yet?

My suggestion here is not to imply that we need a one line fix to the backstory (Oh thank God we invented the..you know...whatever device), but rather that this could drive in game content and give people something else to do; maybe a scientist guild with missions that slowly lead to something in game and open a new wormhole or something.

That's a small example; what about the Akanese? What about Sol? It would seem that exploration would be key to the game; maybe being able to buy a gravity sensor or something that can help you find wormholes?

I guess the point is that the game is just really confusing for a new player. Confusing because you feel like there should be more than there appears to be, but there's really no way to discover if that stuff is there besides either going out of game to look at wikis or the message board, or just randomly accruing licenses and standing with different nations.

you shoulda seen how lousy it was right when VT turned into VO

talk about nothing!

I'm happy now because I can make a living killing stuff instead of lame trading widgets

I've periodically made the same observations as Crazydeb8r, and agree. The last few years have been challenging, in some ways, and we've suffered as a company from both a lack of leadership (largely due to events in my personal life) and some major development setbacks. At the same time, we're still only four guys, so any development setback or productivity issue has major consequences.

We've also generated a lot of powerful new code that isn't really being wielded in the game very much, as of yet. There are occasional border skirmishes, regular hive fights, and convoys going to and fro, but much of this is still in "testing & tuning" phases as we learn the best methods of deploying such ideas. The plan is that once more of this comes to fruition, a lot of related gameplay content will emerge. There are still many dependent changes to make, however, and that stuff all takes time.

Still, we're doing better now than we have in recent memory, and I'm pretty optimistic, for the reasons I tried to get across in the latest newspost.

I'm aware of the Tutorial problems, and the lack of higher-level tutorials to teach more advanced functionality. I just haven't had time to write them. Too many database servers exploding or other unplanned excitement. I actually have a plan for a much more involved new-user experience, which would hopefully make things easier for newbies, while also teaching them more about the game before they're just kind of.. kicked into the unknown. But given current priorities, I'm not exactly sure when that'll all be implemented. In the meantime, I have thrown together some combat training missions, at least, and have notes for more involved (and advanced) missions, which hopefully better describe the available gameplay.

More storyline related content will be implemented as we go along, I intend to add more as Deneb becomes conflicted territory and the border skirmish expands.

I think maybe you misunderstood part of the storyline relating to the Sol II wormhole. Sol II actually has three wormholes, one that goes to Earth (Sol), one to Betheshee, and one to Dantia. The wormhole to Earth collapsed (well, "cycled off" would be a better term) and became unusable very early in the Sol II colonization. This was the only destabilized wormhole in current-universe human experience, and it happened some 2100-odd years before what is considered "present day" in the Vendetta Online universe. There was never any difficulty for the Serco and Itani to reach one another (they just chose not to, for awhile), they've been fighting on the Deneb border for a very long time.

Minor storyline question, Incarnate -- wouldn't the Serco have put up some sort of minor post by the site of the old wormhole for research or some other purpose? It would be interesting to know where the wormhole is in the system.

I'm particularly curious because a good time ago (early 2005-ish, probably) there used to be a null object somewhere in Sol II D-3 -- maybe somewhere else in-system -- that appeared on the radar; targeting it didn't show anything special, it showed in the target info display like wormholes and storm jump points do/did; an object named "Object" or "Navpoint". I never found any physical object in that sector where the radar said it was, but the object also mysteriously vanished a few updates later.

Was that just some random database oddity or was it supposed to signify something?

Just a random oddity. Nothing significant that I'm aware of.

It would be interesting to put some kind of research satellite or some such at the location.

[EDIT]: back in '02, I had hoped to put various objects throughout the game in specific locations, to tie in aspects of the storyline. The simplest example was the space equivalent of a roadside "historical marker" or plaque saying "back in such-and-such a time, a big battle was fought here". The idea was to mark locations, like where the big Aeron's Icefield battle took place in Deneb, where Eilon of Eo's ship was destroyed (perhaps with entombed wreckage), where the fight between Oernon and Karun took place, etc. This idea fell by the wayside along with a lot of other stuff, but I'd like to revive it at some point.

Anyway, I don't mean to digress too much from the original forum topic, such a discussion might be better off on Suggestions.

I guess my initial thought is "Why don't you have a dedicated content guy?" I mean by that someone whose entire job is to develop content for the game and then package it and have it rolled out for the players. Maybe the infrastructure is still being solidified (seems to be the suggestion in your post).

As for the wormhole storyline... I see what you mean by your post, that said, it just strengthens my idea. We need a wormhole scouting mission, where you get sent to scout out a wormhole and make observations of it. Throw in something about how you need to just through a certain number of times and measure something, and you gain standing with the scientist guild or whatever. Just a thought I guess.

I read the storyline to suggest that jumping in and out of a wormhole would destabilize it, not that the lifetime of that one wormhole was nearing an end, but I see now that I was mistaken. Still, scouting the wormholes and trying to learn how long they might have left could be a viable mission for scientists.

Anyway, I'm going to go play missions so I get a 4/4/4 licensing and can join the User content generation thingy.

We're tiny, and poor. I would like to effectively be our "dedicated content guy", but I have to spend a great deal of time on finances, administration, and other concerns. Ideally, I would like to hire full-time people to do some of these other jobs. But, we do not have the funding to do so. We exist month-to-month, and do what we can with the resources we have, while trying to move towards a better future.

Before someone then says "well why don't you go find funding!", to do so would require still more of my time. Probably a couple of months to write up and polish all the necessary work to make a reasonably good impression. During that time, many other things would not get done. For the moment, the trajectory I explained in the latest newspost is probably our best bet, so, that's the one I'm taking.

Yeah, I can see how that's a problem, and I think that the community is the answer through user generated content, which you seem to be taking.

Mad, mad props for keeping this game rolling so long. I'm really really glad to know that you're addressing the concerns I have; that alone will keep my money rolling in regardless of whether I have time to play. Thanks.

(I deleted my post because incarnate finished his post first and rendered mine redundant...er...more so)

hey, don't forget about us (PCC)...we're content guys too!

Give me a sector builder and a station builder then you'll see some cool sh..!

Crazydeb8r: thanks, we're doing what we can.

CrazySpence: yeah, that'd take us like 6 months, at least. But, we're adding as much PCC stuff as possible.

I know :) I have a lot of mission ideas to make reality before I get to that point anyways

Question about backstory integrating w/ vo that I've always wondered...in the backstory there is ZERO mention of space stations. People are barely surviving on planets. So how come space stations are such a huge part of the game? Besides the technical reasons I mean. When I first read the back story I kept waiting for mention of "Itani become super awesome and make stations" but nothing of the sort ever came up :/

I kept waiting for mention of "Itani become super awesome..." but nothing of the sort ever came up

What a shocker.

Erm, there's a lot of mention of space stations. Like the fact that the entire Neutral / UIT race lives in space, since they never found a planet. And then there's the whole part where the Akanese attack the Serco SkyCommand space station.

There isn't a lot of discussion about "and then they invented space stations!".. because this technology existed prior to humans even moving through the wormhole to explore Sol II. I mean, compared to terraforming an entire planet, a space station is pretty minor. But, since you asked, here's a quote:

(Section VIII, AD3252, Terra II)

"Since their first faltering steps into space, TPG has grown and expanded into a respected spacecraft manufacturing corporation. Their light, relatively inexpensive craft allow the Neutrals to experiment with a space station in orbit of a planet near Terra II. Experiments are conducted in long-term space habitats, yielding discoveries in artificial gravity and other areas. A self-contained biosphere is built on the station, allowing experiments in space-based farming."

What can basically be gleaned from the backstory, is that the UIT are probably the best at building stations and living in space (since that's all they do, they have no terraformed worlds). The Itani are probably second, since they have a lot of experience in space exploration before the war started up again. And the Serco probably have the least experience, although they were building stations independently well before the war restarted. However, it's all kind of a wash anyway, since the UIT are sure to do contract station-building work for both other Nations, much as they sell them spaceships.

Also, since the AD3252 quote is well over a thousand years before "present day", it can be reasonably assumed that they got pretty good at making space stations over the intervening millennium.

Apparently I suck at inferring...and you know...reading in general. Thanks for taking the time to pull the quote and explain, I can finally rest easy :)

My quarters in Deneb O-3 are a hundred times more comfortable than anything in UIT space what are you going on about inc :P

Random thought.

Problems with MMO games having single storyline, as opposed to everyone having quests. CtC partially works the correct way. Many people working together over extended period of time to accomplish a goal. What we need is encouragement of nation organization so that military and trade/mining/crafting will take on symbiotic missions to help to a small advancement in physical change of environment/universe.

Instead of having these long lasting efforts though, I think this will do better: The long term work will aid in winning a critical battle. In terms of an RTS game, instead of "whoever has the most monies wins", it becomes "whoever wins this standoff wins, and the monies will help us win the standoff".

Although, I'm not sure what form this help comes in. Maybe a national leader can decid to add 15 guard turrets to so-and-so station, or launch a fleet of 100 bot fighters to so-and-so to help capture a station (with obvious need of help from players), or send 3 cappys and 30 bots, or enable cheaper weapons and ships from an increase in military spending (doesn't really work in this economy does it?). While it may seem unfair that mr. leader has such awesome power, it really is kind of a public service, as they are setting off an event for players to participate in. And so the people who want to roleplay will take these positions. And the people who just want fights to get into will be given those fights.

I guess this is really a suggestions post, but it seems to me a lot of the cool happenings are in the backstory. It might be cool at some point as the game is ready to really be marketed, if someone could afford the effort, to "reset the clock." There would have to be station-building, exploration, etc. systems implemented first, so this probably won't happen, but if people were entering the game shortly after there even became independent nations, and there was opportunity not just to war but to build and expand otherwise, that would be extremely cool.

That would be amazing. They could even generate some small-scale exploration systems. They already have the mechanics for making the sectors; They'd just need to put in some fog 'o war on the systems' map, and also make the wormholes to the systems not be marked unless you've already found it, or something.