ctc - fun but people hardly play anymore. the only thing you lose/win by ctc is a neutron III gun which doesnt really impact the game much. in fact to try to 'win' ctc is considered a bit rude.

----

mining was supposed to be some driving force of the game. bots protecting valuable ore, group mining, etc.

turns out you can mine solo at a station or bot-less sector and get every kind of mineral there is, go trade it by yourself, and get plenty of money, by yourself. its glorified trading. there is no reason to go group mining, or to mine where bots are. you dont get anything special.

-----

cap ships were supposed to be some grand battle thingy.

turns out they were fun for a while but never really turned into anything. big empty targets to shoot at.

------

race tracks.. we all love them but they dont even have different ship categories, no time trialing or racing mechanism (its a single record forever), no starting gates, and the finish timers
dont even work right sometimes.

------

now, we have lots of NPC traders with escorts. and a leviathan/hive.

i sincerely hope that this 'game play' feature will be carried out to the bitter end, as intended, to be some kind of actual thing that impacts the game, instead of another empty monument to cool screenshots.

------

yes i know many people just play it as a fighting game. im sure that in 1785, football was a game where you kicked the shit out of people and there were no goal lines, field kicks, or time outs. but having those things is what makes football a game, instead of being a street brawl. (ie, rugby).

i hope vendetta can get some kind of rules and objectives, and god bless us, more referees. i think that would make it somewhat more fun. although it is of course, as it exists, very fun in many ways.

------

thank you.

Hmm. You could look it as the devs not finishing a feature. Or you could look at every one of those things (except mining) as there not being enough players online, and those being online not being interested. Cap ships work pretty damned well if there's lots of people manning them and attacking them through their travels, as we showed in that little Itani capship run on Sunday night. But if you just wait in B8 for it it show up, then you and 3 other people shoot at each other, it's rather less fun. This is a MMORPG. It works better when there's more people. Ditto for CtC. The last few times I've done CtC have been times when there's been lots of interested parties, and we've had some great times with huge battles. But when it's 3 people, it's much less interesting. Race tracks work fine for me, but I'm a poor racer (number 40-something).

And I bet there's a lot of rugby players that take offense at that. :D

(note to self, stop feeding trolls. they need diets too)

*zamzx gives ananzi the middle finger*

[UN-edited, he asked for it.]

p.s when did you become a guide? congrats eldrad

Ideally all the game-play features should work together - otherwise it becomes more like several seperate games on one server, rather than one game. But in order for all the features to work together, they all need to be designed together, rather than seperately, which means they have to be implemented together as well, or else they won't work. If a single feature is going to be designed and implemented completely by itself, and then as other features are added later and we want to have the first feature work with the later features, it means more work for the devs, because they have to redesign and reimplement the first feature again.

Also, many features require certain things in the game-engine that don't (or didn't) exist yet. For cap ships to really fulfill their potention, there needs to be several new interfaces to control various aspects of the cap ships. Previously the devs would have had to create each interface seperately - this is how they did the cap ship turret interface - but the old way was very time-consuming, and little if anything from the interfaces created that way would be easily re-usable. So they've been working on the new UI stuff. This isn't exactly required for Cap Ships - they could have made cap ship control interfaces, without redoing all the UI code - but it makes it easier, and it allows for many, many more cool things, as well - user customizable skins, the interface for the mission editor, interfaces for controlling stations, etc.

The mission editor will also allow for various game play features to work together, rather than seperately. Currently racing is just racing - it has no effect on anything at all. But the mission editor can allow for racing mission trees, for racers to become sponsored by a specific faction, and gain standing with their sposor for winning races, or lose standing for losing races. The mission editor could create racing tournaments, with specific ship loadouts required, and requiring races in multiple tracks to win the tournament. Really, the mission editor is the big thing that can tie all the seperate game play features together to make everything one solid game. But the mission editor hasn't existed until recently.

The new Hive code will revolutionize mining. It will make it far more like how you described your expectation of mining. The Hive bots needed a high-level governing AI to do this. So the devs have been working on DELIVERATOR - and like the new UI stuff and the mission editor, DELIVERATOR allows for far, far more than simply making the Hive bots more dynamic. DELIVERATOR will also allow for a truely dynamic trading economy, it will allow players to hire NPCs for specific tasks, and together with the mission editor will allow for far more in-depth missions than would be possible without a high-level governing AI.

So anyway, my point is that while it is possible to focus on a single game play feature, in the long run that's not likely to be best for the game as a whole. It's far better IMO to have everything required in the game engine so that all the disparate game play features can work together as a whole - and that's what I've seen the devs working towards over the recent months. Yes, we have to be patient - but I think it's worth it.

It's not that we aren't finishing features, though I can certainly understand someone thinking that. It's that we've built all the seperate components of our intended gameplay (plus some stop-gaps), and now we're nearly ready to tie them all together. Trust us, mining, capships, killing hive bots, trading, attacking trade convoys... these will all have *purpose* Soon(tm) and they will each be more fun. And it will become necessary in some cases, and expedient in others, to do these things as part of a group.

Rougelazer also has a good point. We obviously intend to get more players as soon as the game is "tied up" and fun enough for people to keep playing indefinitely (especially as we'll never stop working on it).

I CAN'T WAIT

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

(In his best Zoidberg voice...)

HOOOORAY!

Thenks ananzi for your comments. I'm glad to hear somone else say what i been thinking for weeks now. And you did it in a nice way. I too think the developers should finish and/or fix game play elements before moving on to add ing new features. It must be easier to finish/fix them now then in 6 months when there will be alot more code to go through.

I still support the developers but that doesn't mean I or others have to agree with everything they do. thank you for also giving us the right to express our selves.

ctc - fun but people hardly play anymore. the only thing you lose/win by ctc is a neutron III gun which doesnt really impact the game much. in fact to try to 'win' ctc is considered a bit rude.

OK, well, when the economy gets started up, how about making CtC more about getting an overall economy booster for the Serco or Itani nation? If the Itani win, then their economy gets a +5% boost, meaning that their banks all give more interest, their insurance rates and station storage rental rates go down, ship and goods prices go down, etc etc.
Doing it for N3's just does NOT cut it anymore.
Expand it to random convoys that go to Itani/Serco Space from UIT or grayspace. They are still announced on 201 and 202, but perhaps there are convoys of 10 Behemoths loaded with XiRite Alloy, escorted by bots and players. They start in a random station and end up in a random station. Like Verasi to Itan, or Bractus to Sol II. Make sure that the cargoes even up each week, and the number of jumps evens up each week for each convoy so it's fair, and then whoever wins REALLY gets something.

----

mining was supposed to be some driving force of the game. bots protecting valuable ore, group mining, etc.
turns out you can mine solo at a station or bot-less sector and get every kind of mineral there is, go trade it by yourself, and get plenty of money, by yourself. its glorified trading. there is no reason to go group mining, or to mine where bots are. you dont get anything special.

If you group-mine you only heat the roid up as if one person was mining. Bot sectors usually have better ores than non-bot sectors.
When the economy and crafting get going, ore will be scarce. In fact, I think it will become so scarce that the devs will have to easily triple or quadruple the number of ore roids available for mining, because NPC miners spawned by Station A.I. will be going out to obtain ores that the stations need. The price of ore will depend on supply & demand, so Heliocene will be cheap in Helios, but a rare treasure in Itan.

-----

cap ships were supposed to be some grand battle thingy. turns out they were fun for a while but never really turned into anything. big empty targets to shoot at.

Player-owned capships will change ALL of that, I am sure. And the HAC cruisers you see in B8 are kinda hard to shoot at unless you take out those turrets first. Grand battles still occur, but they aren't worked into the gameplay. I'd like to see a capship incursion into Deneb by the Serco, that would be cool. Change the destination point of the Nemesis from GR to Deneb's Itani station in O-3 or wherever that station is. THAT would be cool.

------

race tracks.. we all love them but they dont even have different ship categories, no time trialing or racing mechanism (its a single record forever), no starting gates, and the finish timers dont even work right sometimes.

Apparently the devs have said that racetracks are easy to make. And they are mulling over the idea of putting them around the galaxy in different locations. Plus, perhaps making them more interesting. I'm all for it.
I agree that you should be able to set a "starting gate"-type function on a racetrack. How about a blue force-field thingy like in the docking bays that can be enabled/disabled? By messaging the "Racetrack A.I." you could have the "/race gate up" command or the "/race gate down" command. Which would only be executable by the race's sponsor. (I guess you'd become a sponsor by typing "/race sponsor 500000", and your race is "live" for the next 30 minutes or until you cancel the race.) I dunno.

------

now, we have lots of NPC traders with escorts. and a leviathan/hive.
i sincerely hope that this 'game play' feature will be carried out to the bitter end, as intended, to be some kind of actual thing that impacts the game, instead of another empty monument to cool screenshots.

NPC traders with escorts will be integral to the "proper" economy. The hive will compete for resources and will most likely "fight" for mineral resources with both NPC miners AND players who are mining. When the economies are impacted by the hive, it will start to matter BIG TIME when no goods can get through Sedina because the infestation is too widespread, or the bots have cornered the market on Heliocene throughout the galaxy.

Idea: Wouldn't it be cool if some "NPC" Traderbots were secretly working for the hive, delivering items that the Levi needed to make more Queens or something? They could head to Dau to pick up some Ion Cores for a trip to "Latos", but they actually deviate from their flight plan and head to the Levi in Sedina. You could have missions to prevent the goods from reaching the Levi.

------

yes i know many people just play it as a fighting game. im sure that in 1785, football was a game where you kicked the shit out of people and there were no goal lines, field kicks, or time outs. but having those things is what makes football a game, instead of being a street brawl. (ie, rugby). i hope vendetta can get some kind of rules and objectives, and god bless us, more referees. i think that would make it somewhat more fun. although it is of course, as it exists, very fun in many ways.

It's way more fun than ALL FPS games, and it's more fun than MOST MMORPG's. If some of the little annoying bugs & things can be fixed, and if the economy and crafting can really be made to work in a GUI interface, there's no stopping this game. It'll obliterate WoW and EverQuest.

------

thank you.
You're Welcome. :)

[edited by Eldrad] Please don't flame.
Hey! That was art, damnit! =D

Uhoh. Now I'll have to actually refrain from killing Lecter ingame for a couplea minutes so I can see what he said! Tee Hee.
(OOC: Lecter What'd you DO NOW?!?)

Ananzi:

NO BASHING RUGBY!!

pfft, ive been here since it was liked 2 ships and a floating donkey so all this stuff is incredible progress!

I also understand the perspective that we aren't "finishing" features, but it's kind of missing the point. Take, for example, the mining system. It's a vaguely interesting activity on its own, but how would it be possible to "finish it" without adding some overriding purpose to it? That overriding purpose, in our case, is to impact an economy and allow people to craft items from mined resources, requiring resource collection to achieve high level goals and so forth. But, one can't really DO any of that without.. making it first. Everything we're doing is intended to be interconnected, from the new NPCs regulating the dynamic economy with their trading, to reworking the UI so we can add half the interfaces we'll need for the new functionality (inter-player trading, crafting, navigating larger ships, etc), to Hive competition for mined resources creating a PvE conflict area, so on and so forth..

So, yes, we are "finishing it". And mining will be "finished" just like everything else, when it's tied together with the rest of the game and has a point. If we didn't do that, and just focused on "mining" itself, what would you end up with? Sure, you could tweak mineral acquisition difficulty, but in the end all you'd have is "get mineral, sell it to station". What's the point in that, unless there's a greater goal and purpose?

Nothing we do is based on the idea of "creating nifty screenshots", but unfortunately a lot of the things we do don't have much to show for them until much later, when the actual final purpose comes to fruition. Even more features are delayed in-process by stumbling blocks (like "the bots are incapable of docking in quantity"). This is especially true of capships, which are currently guided by the same AI as every other bot, and are barely able to fly, let alone capable of doing anything very interesting (and tend to get themselves in trouble more often than not).. which is yet another aspect of why we're redoing the handling of NPCs. These sorts of real-life problems constantly plague development of any large project like this, and we're no exception.

Keep in mind, that even now, we're simply trying to reach the original gameplay goals that I had conceived back in the late 90s. We have a giant list of dependencies (mostly in my head) of "stuff we must do" in order to accomplish a desired overall goal. We try to "finish" some features as much as we can (like say, mining, or the Hive) so that people can have some fun with them on an individual level, while we continue to work on tieing them together into what we're *really* trying to build. But, until we *do* tie any of it together, we know perfectly well that the individual features won't be worth much.

You could look at it like.. we're working on a number of individual pearls that won't be terribly pretty until they're tied together into a necklace. When *that*'s done, then this game will be really friggin' cool. And the thing that makes us excited (or, at least, myself and Momerath) is it feels like we're actually getting close.. things are starting to work right and really let us make some progress towards our high-level goals.

It would be easier if people really knew where we were headed, and if I had used the Wiki for my intended goal of creating that roadmap to show you where we're going. But, I haven't as of yet, and I continually have trouble balancing the needs of doing things like that, versus my day-to-day "this needs to be done NOW" responsibilities (too many hats, too few people to wear them). So, for the moment, all you have is vaguely general explanations like this post, and "Soon!(tm)" ;). But, it's my hope that you'll be able to actually SEE what we're doing, before long.

(Note: for a brief explanation on the ordering of development dependencies/goals in my head, they are ordered based on gameplay that is fairly "independent / stable" versus that which is not, and also ordered by length of development, degree of testing required after the fact, etc. For instance, if we were to drop in a truly dynamic economy without a self-stabilizing component like NPC traders [which, until recently, have not been smart enough to actually be useful, let alone dependable enough to act as a stabilizing force for a fundamental game mechanic of the universe], things could easily get very out of hand. However, dropping in a Hive, with limited conquest abilities, has no real negative repurcussions. By the same token, dropping in a mining system that amounts to a game mechanic for monetary gain, with no other real purpose, also has no *negative* impacts on the universe. The positive impacts aren't fantastic, but the features flesh out the universe a little, add a little new gameplay and let us test parameters and concepts with the userbase before they actually *mean* something.)

i feel compelled to respond-
i think ananzi makes some good points- especially the fact that some of us are NOT geared to the PvP aspect- or fighting in general- so for us that are into the REST of what the universe has to offer- maybe t appears to be less than desirable- i mine and mine and mine and trade and still only ahve a few mil- and all these other players are loaded- AND what do i get to spend my money on?- **hint- bring on the TPG ship** but i do see now a faint picture thru the asteroid field- the universe will be tied together thru all that WE and the hive and the NPC"s do- and i have seen small things of that nature already- Devs- keep it up- keep workin hard- ill keep sending you my pmnt-

Why don't you guys hire some help and get the game finished.

They did. Michael's t3h n00b.

Taljin: They gotta pay the guy somehow, and still make enough money to eat and host the game...

and keep prices low.

I mean, sure, they could raise prices to $25 a month, and hire a much larger team of programmers, but then again, having a low monthly is what keeping a lot of players around, and keeping Vendetta within a lot of players' budgets.