B-8 is a wonderful thing, but it bugs me from a role play point of view. A small proportion of professional duellists is believable, half the population of the universe congregating in the same place for the joy of killing each other is not belieaveble.

Suggestion: install "combat simulators" in (corvus?) stations. Participents could dock at the station and (perhaps pay to) enter a "simulated" sector with a simulated ship of thier choosing. They could then happily fight it out with other players in the simulation. This would avoid any serious financial loss (in view of the upcoming changes to ship pricing) for those who want quick and easy PvP. It would also remove the RP black hole that is B8 and replace it with oppertunities for leauges and betting. Perhaps this would be a good venue for things like CTF. Battles fought in the simulator would not count to "real world" stats, but there could be a seperate counter for simulated kills/deaths.

no...

B-8 is just a common ground right now because there arent that many players in the game. AS the game userbase grows, and more specifically as more content such as missions and the like are added, B-8 will become less and less populated.

Simulators would just take away from the immersion of the game.. by removing the risk entirely. no risk = less fun.

like hell it will, everyone who likes to Duel or deathmatch will still go there and then it will bother the obsessed RP'ers even more and I will laugh at them as they make more goofy posts like "interfere with the game and make b8 terrible for players because it bothers me and my cousin/wife who love RP'ing more than going outside and stuff!"

Not that I agree or disagree with this idea, but here, for your information CrazySpence,

MMORPG= massively multiplayer online ROLE PLAYING GAME

Spellcast: I don't agree it would detract from immersion in any way. I was looking for a way of putting something that IMHO detracts from immersion right now into a context that fits with the universe. As for there being no risk, there is also no gain other than the prestiege of having a high kill to death ratio. Non-consentual combat continues as normal in the real universe, with all it's risks and rewards. I take your point about the size of the player base though, this is a problem that will solve itself one day without any extra work for the devs. I still think it would be a nice feature.

*sigh*

The point of ships costing money is it to be a MONEY SINK to fight, and make money something you actually have to keep track of.

Bah. Playing a space combat simulation that contains an ingame space combat simulator? Silly.

Bugging Klepto from a realism/RP point of view is along the same lines as saying "Why don't our ships use real physics for unlimited acceleration to 5000 m/s?" or "How come unlimited amounts of ships can dock in the capship! We'd bettter remove it from the game!"

Why not just build the "Coliseums" through grayspace and hold gladiatorial events?

Crazy: B-8 evolved because people needed something to do, a convinient place to find each other, etc etc..

people still need these things.

If the need goes away, i assure you that the population will also disperse and go about thier respective tasks. Not to say it will ever be EMPTY.. just that it will no longer act as the 'center of the game' that it sometimes becomes now.

Klepto: right now there really isnt any immersion anywhere in the game.. not really.
additionally the fact that non-consentual PvP is availible in the "real" universe won't make any difference in the risk factor i'm discussing.
getting into a fight SHOULD have risk involved, for both sides, theres always the chance that the player you are attacking with an unknown name is a veteran on an alt.. or one who just doesnt normally play while you are on.
IMO removing the risk factor by giving people a chance to use simulators would be self-defeating to one of the design points that incarnate has always wanted to keep.. namely that space IS dangerous.
If all the people who just want to fight are able to do so for free with no risk.. (and no effort.. they dont loose credits so they dont need to earn them) they will congregate in the simulators and the rest of space will be 'safe' when it shouldnt be.

Simulator means that you can choose any kind of ship and weapon.

...its a bit odd that you sit before your computer and play a game in game :) I fear that lot of people will not undertake the dangers of grey-space if they has same feeling inside a safe simulator.

Regards,

Darkwood

A sim within VO? What a useless idea!

the truth is there are several players who don't spend much if any time in B-8 (they are less visable because they are off doing whatever they do). Also i don't think the B-8 population would decrease if more people were in game. the persentage of the in-game population who spend time ther may decrease, but there will always be the space quake croud, and posably even characters who have RP reasons to be there.

I don't hink B-8 should be forcibly altered, by artaficial game mechanics. Just let it be, and it will t5ake whatever form the player-base wants it to have on it's own.

OK, I accept I am wrong, if only because it would reduce the number of aggressive players in the game. Thanks all for showing me my mistake, I'll try to make my next suggestion a better one :)

Wing Commander for Super Nintendo had a combat simulator within the game. It was pretty fun, actually... but it doesn't make as much sense in this game, where the repercussions for dying aren't so great.

I've never been to B-8, and duelling isn't what I'm paying $9.99 a month for. But I can see that trading and exploring is going to get old, and I'm going to be looking for deeper game play options. I'm not talking about duelling.

My question is (and it's a big, ugly one) what's the point of all this trading, exploring, and accumulating credits? Sure, I can buy a new ship once in a while, and I can build up my licenses but... At the end of all of that, am I just going to end up in a space FPS that pretends to be a MMORPG?

My first impression: it's a good-looking game. It has a lot (A LOT) of potential. But it's far from complete, and why am I paying to play an incomplete game? We can't own anything but our own ships. We can't do much in the way of cooperating to achieve goals (other than to build up our licenses so that we can go fight in B-8). Have I missed something?

Klepto, there's nothing wrong with aggressive players ingame. And your post was NOT any kind of *mistake*, it's just that a bunch of people disagree with you. 's OK.

There are no bad suggestions. Unless it's been suggested before. Then Phaserlight gets to make fun of you.

I, for one, agree wholeheartedly with you, Klepto. I think it's a wonderful idea.

Partly because a simulator would allow players to build up their skills (and if simulated combat ever becomes a threat to B8 duelling and the like, ask the devs to add rewards to 'real' dueling. Not that I think it's necessary, as it will never be as fun as a Sedina run...), but mostly for immersion and role-playing aspects. For, seriously, what starship pilot would take to the skies before having made sure that he has learnt all he can from his flight academy's simulators? And for those less fortunate non-military UIT pilots, who inherits father's first bus, a government-issue plasma cannon and a heritage of skybound fame, it would be a great asset if stations featured simulations to help them prepare for the next time they get stuck in the midst of a CtC event or get hunted down by that mysterious fella who dwells in deep space and never speaks (not even in the forums), just appears out of the closest nebula, and demonstrates to you just how thin the walls between you and absolutely no oxygen really are...

DagobahDave: ''Have I missed something?'' not really..
Part of it is the fact that the game really isnt complete.

There have been a lot of posts concerning this recently i'll link a few of them where the devs and players address this for you to look over, instead of rehashing things here in this thread.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11654?page=1
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/11313?page=1

Ion, simulators are fine for training.. as long as they are only populated by AI. Allowing people to use the simulators to fight with each other would be detrimental however, for the reasons I listed above (unless there was enough of a monetary cost to using the simulators that people couldn't choose to do nothing else).

Spellcast, I wouldn't mind at all if these simulations where player-versus-AI-only. I would prefer it. Perhaps it is a step away from Klepto's original idea, but I believe that would be the best way to implement this feature. It was what I had in mind, but I forgot to add that to my last post.

Umm, frankly, I've always wanted a simulator. Something simplistic that was used for the tutorial, and perhaps for vs-AI training and some PVP combat. I don't think it would be a huge threat to the rest of the game. And yes, having some sort of "Arena" kind of thing within the game might be pretty interesting.

Thanks, Spellcast.

Game within a game... it's a bit surreal, isn't it? Especially if it's PvP!

Half-seriously, what about in-game email? You know, you check it when you get to the station? ;)

actually dagobah.. there is a form of in-game e-mail.. sort of.

you can leave "notes" for people on your buddy list. they will get them when they log in the next time.