The license levels for ships and weapons were clearly done before the basic license test mission or the mining tutorial mission. I have been told this by players and it is clear in the license level requirements. In example the Centurion I has a requirement of 1/0/0/0/0 and the Centurion II 1/1/0/0/0. The Revenant needs no combat ratings but now players will have a 1/1/0/0/0 rating before they start merchant missions so they can get the Revenant II 1/1/0/1/0 at the same time they can get Revenant making the base model Revenant useless. Also the Ec-104 has less reason to exist as a ship you can get before the Revenant II and the Ec-101 no reason to exist along with the Ec 98. As such all license requirements for combat and light weapons on ships should be raised by one. Right now weapons and ships are not being used at all or very little as players advance. Why design lots of things that see almost no use in a game plus people complain about lack of items in part because they fly by allot of items in progression right now.

There is a problem that combat license experience given for missions tops out making it harder to get the higher license levels so some missions with higher combat experience than current missions should open at those levels and points awarded for player kills should be in relation to that players skill. (duel rating should be calculated for all battles maybe with some modification for shared kills and difference in combat abilities of ships flown)

The mining licenses have a similar distortion but current ratings are find except for Advanced mining beam has no reason to exist with Mining beam II available at same level. So all mining beams except for basic and Advanced Mining beam should be increased by one. This would also make the light xith beam received from mission more useful in that you will not receive the regular xith beam as soon.

In weapons problem also exists in example Ion Blaster needs a 0/1/0/0/0 and Ion blaster Mk II 1/1/0/0/0 so now you are able to get both at same time making the base model almost pointless. There is little reason for plasma cannon II and III as plasma cannon HX is available at 1/1/0/0/0. The fact that poorer stations or stations that you lack faction at limit the better modes not enough of a restriction to justify having the poorer weapons. So all weapons but government blaster need one added to combat and light unless weapon is heavy and had no light rating. Also the HX is generally considered a better weapon than the Ion Blaster and Phaze Blaster and thus should have higher license by one then them. so in example ratings plasma II 1/1/0/0/0 plasma III 1/2/0/0/0 Ion Blaster 1/2/0/0/0 Ion II 2/2/0/0/0 Ion III 2/3//0/0/0 phase blaster 2/3/0/0/0 Phase II 3/3/0/0/0 HX 4/4/0/0/0 Neutron Blaster 5/5/0/0/0 and all weapons with higher levels modified by adding 2 to combat and light except for heavy that need no light or combat. Exception the Fechette cannons seam to be overrated so they could stay the same or have there stats improved.

Prices for items also should reflect the reason the poorer ship, weapon exists. Even if the overpayments in some missions and commerce overpayments corrected the low level ships and weapons start too cheap. Roughly the base ships and weapons should start around 1000. Then the next model up twice that price and the best model four times the price of the next lower model. Higher level ship prices actually would not need to be raise in there base model. I need to work on this pricing suggestion more.

As far as leveling in the game the MMO industry is advanced enough that research on how fast people should level to retain the highest number of players should be out there. I do know that what different players want in a game info is out there. A link to an old article on this is based of a quiz you can take. http://www.gamerdna.com/quizzes You take the quiz and then you can read more details. My observations is there is not much in Vendetta for the Explorer player (my highest rating) and little for the achiever as they level out way early and the badges have little power so not as powerful a reason to stay. Socializers are better served in Vendetta but still without more cooperative missions they are limited. Only the killer type is served in Vendetta but the raw killer who hunts new players is the type of player that can kill a game.

The Atlas comes too quick for merchants making EC-104 and Revenant not much useful. Raise requirements for Atlas and Centaurs buy one.

You need too much faction to get the Valent and Axia EC 101. By the time you can earn enough faction to get them you can get way better ships. Either no faction requirement should be required or a basic mission worth of faction should be required to get. If any faction is needed it should be made clear to new players that like one basic merchant guild mission will get enough faction to get. Better yet each faction should have beginning player missions that basically only requires you accept mission(like joining military) (after the basic test) that give like plus 250 faction enough to qualify for the ships but warn you the enemy corporations will not like it and in example for Axia your Vallent rating will drop 250 with same mission. I’d call mission take “name” employment. Text. Become employee of “name” you get access to these ships, faction increase and access to higher level mission when ready. WARNING our enemies will not like this and it will lower your faction there greatly and they will not give you any of there special missions. (of course turncoat mission could come latter) This would be added by adding a status system modification to the faction system. Status would limit how high your faction can be with particular factions and what missions a faction will give you. Status can also be used to modify lots of other things. A player could have many status depending on each status limits. In example you could have a Itani military status, merchant guild status, friend of TPG status but could not receive Serco military, Clovis named man status. And your faction would be capped at hate for Serco and dislike for Clovis and you faction for Itani and TPG could not fall below neutral unless you lost the ITani or TPG status by attacking those factions. Then you would get a criminal to Itani status that would limit you to KOS with Itani unless you bought a fake id from Clovis. (of course your fake id would reset all your factions to what ever type of person you faked in example a basic fake Itani id would reset your factions to starting Itani player) and a fake id would have a set chance of failing first time used and a much lower chance every time used after. (example 20% first time and .002% every time after) When discovered you’d forfeit like 50% of wealth in fines, confections and or escape costs and your alt would be unplayable for like two days.

Other ships needing faction or license level fix. TPG Atlas B and X. why would you ever buy a B currently either change license level higher for X or make B available at plus 201 faction but X at 800 in example. The basic Maruader is not much better than a Centaur lower it’s merchant to like 6 and it’s faction to 201. or it’s merchant to 4 and keep faction the same.

A very well thought out post. I think it's worth of serious consideration by the devs.

*Approval*

I know the devs want to wait for the economy to change things...but if they jack up prices now (Which should be easy to do thanks to their new system) then there will be less overhang when they switch over to the new economy. Sort of like baby steps.

I don't see the point of this thread.

tl; dr... leveling sucks as it is, now?

What is your suggested change?

And zamzx, new players would be the only to actually suffer from a price increase. Do we want that?

Balance is a hard thing to achieve, particularly in a game so complex as this. I am in favor of modifying the license levels of particular ships and weapons in a bid to reduce the unused game items that we all scroll past on our way to the better ones.

A price increase would not be a bad thing, it would actually accomplish several things at once. (Let me be clear that I am advocating for a ramp up in prices gradually as players become richer. The cheap ships will always be cheap, but the ships requiring more levels will cost more to reflect the buying pilot's wealth.)

Firstly, death would mean more. As a pirate, I cannot help but like this concept; it will make my targets more likely to pay, and make me choose carefully who to shoot.

Secondly, it will give the economy a little more of a boost. If things cost more, the worry of money meaning nothing will gradually reduce as players behave more carefully with a 500K ship. Crafting is doing this somewhat, but it took me SOO LONG to build a Super Light that I am not tempted to go through it again. In other words, crafting is making us value ships too much. (the short solution to this is to make people less likely to shoot you, or to make the ships somewhat easier to build [maybe only 30mins to build an SL instead of 3hrs])

Sorry, I wrote way too much again...

-R IBA 3.14rat

I am advocating for a ramp up in prices gradually as players become richer . . . the ships requiring more levels will cost more to reflect the buying pilot's wealth

Let me guess, you're voting Democrat (assuming you're not still wet behind the ears).

This idiotic idea would simply result in rich players using a bank character, be it guild run, friend run, or self-maintained. You geniuses keep trying to tax wealth simply because you think wealth can afford to share--wealth will keep moving its assets away from the theives.

That being said, I think proms, valks, and all classes of moth need another 250,000 credits or so added to their price tags.

Lecter, I am afraid I'm genuinely confused. You say the idea is foolish and unpractical, and then you say just what we are saying:
"Up the price of high level ships."

Let me know if I have misunderstood...

The basic suggestion is only to increase the combat and light license level of most ships and weapons by one to correct for the auto increase of one that the basic test gives. (heavy weapons without a combat or light requirement not having a increase in that area) This suggestion is not to make leveling harder but to make leveling as hard as it used to be.

the Ec-98 not changed to show gray example of items you can't afford. (major problem with a credit system if this never occurs in the game after you start) the Centurion I could be made 1/1/0/0/0 so passing the test earns you something. (the Centurion II 2/2/0/0/0, Centurion III 2/3/0/0/0.)

I might have messed up by putting other suggestions in as I went along after my basic point.

I recommended next new higher level missions that gave more license experience than current set of missions to make time spent earning higher license levels less of a steep curve up of time spent each license level up. (I like the math in the current system as the system should make prior types of earning license slower and slower guiding players into the harder missions without totally discounting value of lower missions)

Made suggestion to correct seaming error in license levels for mining by increasing most by one.

Next suggestion is to correct for HX being more powerful than weapons that have a similar or higher license requirement by raising the HX's requirements by more than one and all weapons except the flechette better than the HX by two in combat and light weapon (again no effect on weapons with no light or combat requirement

Next was a partial pricing suggestion I should not have included as it was not complete. The basic point being that a price under 1000 almost meaning less and that there should be a meaningful difference between increases in value of items to explain why versions lest than the best exist. (not my actual suggestion buy idea of what I'm thinking of follows point was each level up doubles price with final version 4 times the price of next lower) Centurion I price 1000 Centurion II 2000 Centurion III 4000. Vulture I 2000 Vulture II 4000 Vulture III 8000 Vulture IV 16000 (nation specific Serco Vulture Guardian either 32000 or 64000, don't know if the special modifications after the highest general should be double or quadruple the already quadrupled highest general item) The base model of the high end ships might actually be lower in price in this system say 5000 for Basic Valk or Prom.

I put in a suggestion then that leveling might want to be made harder than basic suggestion as you went up as that might get more players and retain players longer. But I did not make a suggestion on how to do so.

Suggestion to fix level for Atlas and Centaur by one.

I then made suggestion to correct fact that you don't' get access to some ships like the Valiant ec 104 or Axia ec 104 until you don't need them as their faction requirement way to high for a new player to get. I then should have put most of the paragraph into new paragraph. (and am editing to do so)

Ending suggestion was to correct lack of gap between requirements for TPG Atlas B and X and fix to basic Marauder value.

Dr. Lecter don't know who you are quoting. Maybe person deleted their post.

You can't compare the glaring errors in the games wealth caused by unbelievable over payments for escort payments and errors in the set up of the economy that made ridiculous wealth in the games credit system with the real world. (be like having hundreds of people with wealth of 100's of trillions in the real world, and everyone can get very rich easily here in this game currently)

As the game did not match reality in wealth generation a correction is not a real world thing either just a attempt to make game more enjoyable for future players. (this is very tricky as you can lose current players from doing it) Don't know where your real world example of moving wealth away from thieves comes from as the game is a closed system compared to real world open system. Developers can get rid of all the money currently held in game and you can't escape it if they do it right. (now whether they should is different issue)

Political moderate by the way. I'm often called a conservative by liberals and a liberal from conservatives that's how I know i'm somewhere in the middle lol.

Alternative correction idea. Get rid of 1000 point and one level increase given in basic test and mining and merchant introduction type missions (instead a low amount like 100). Then current levels for ships would not need modification. HX's level could be increased by two and other weapons not necessarily changed.

Would like to see correction in some form soon as the current license levels contradiction makes this area of game look unfinished and flawed. Sort of like a game typo. (sorry my disabilities have it difficult for me to avoid spelling and typo's)

Good well thought out suggestion in my opinion. I'm new only been playing and subscribed for a week.....in game handle is Almighty Bob, and I'm having alot of fun playing VO. However, even being a noob, I can see that there should be a little tweaking, and what Milferd here suggest is a good idea. I wouldn't be offended or put off if I had to work a little harder to get a certain class of ship or pay more creds for it. Some might think it would drive away new players to VO, but I disagree. Although, you might loose some, you would gain players who really enjoy and want to play VO.

I seems tweaking the level requirements only affects players who have license levels of 3 to 4. I found myself not using some ships simply because there were better ships available even at low levels, and/or not using a ship for long because it became oboslete so quickly due to another ship becoming available with very little effort on my part.

As far as, increasing the credits, it would affect both new and older players alike of which you might have some grumble and gripe, but right now, it is easier to die than pay a ransom to a pirate or working to get back a good ship you lost in battle. There is not much fear from dying or loosing one's vessel, except depending on where your home base is having to navigate for half and hour to get back to an area or fight.

Again, I am really new, but I even see Milferd's point on this.

The original post (from which I was quoting--don't edit and then pretend it wasn't there, Milferd) was somewhat ambiguous.

My only quibble was that it sounded like the OP suggested that a given high level ship should cost more to a wealthy player than to a poor player. E.g., I go to buy a Valk X-1, and if I have 1,000,000 credits, it only costs me 50,000--but if I have 100,000,000 credits, it will cost me 500,000.

If all that long ass OP was saying was "for certain ships, jack up prices equally for everyone," then I'm 100% in support.

Only if a complete inventory sweep takes place will serious price increases be efficient as a means of making money/death have meaning. Otherwise, new players will be bogged down with scraping together credits for PvP while legacy vets can dwell easily on their accumulated riches.

That said, I'm all for more expensive stuff. And an inventory sweep will become necessary once the new economy is dropped into place. Unless there is a feasible way to have different stages, where the accumulated property can be sunk into <stuff> without real effect on the economy.

Also, I think political/real life topics have no place here Lecter. That's what the Off-Topic forum is there for.

A complete inventory sweep . . . you're fucking joking, right? Take the guy who traded for months to break 1 billion credits (Anevitt, I think). You wipe out his credits, I imagine he blows a Goddamn blood vessel.

Wiping the slate clean is no longer a viable option--not so much due to game mechanics, as due to GS wanting to stay in business.

No to sweeping inventories. No to jacking prices because the current ships lack a noticeable diversity in each variant except a few such as the Behemoth and some would say the later variants of other ships 'suck' compared to their predecessors. No to making death cost more than the ship lost with items on board, time lost, and stat changes.

Yes to making logical gains in levels and what weapon/ship become available. Yes to adding more diversity among weapon/ship variants similar to the Behemoth so there isn't a vast majority of unused content due to the short comings of the item's stats.

The changes should be LOGICAL and not blindsided by trying to appease the lower level players or those that think making drastic price differences without changing anything else is a good idea because it is NOT.

This thread lacks in-depth reasoning as to why prices should go up and what other changes need to be made with proper balance. DO NOT make the game too hard or too shallow for new players and don't deter veteran players by adding harsh changes that make the game undesirable. Don't progress to the grinding fashion of other undesirable MMOs with no end in sight because every mistake made would mean hours gone or making the climb to the top worth 'shit'.

The game is fun when you can interact with the community and play casually; not be hooked on grinding every hour of everyday to make it to the top when there is nothing much up there but the same that makes the game worthwhile in the first place.

Play the game long enough and in other shoes/characters to generally understand the repercussions on lower and higher level players. Not babble mindless dribble aiming at one demographic and ignoring the other 80%.

Lecter, sorry for my ambiguity. I intended, as you said, to note that while a hog Mk1 for example could cost peanuts, and Mk4 should be very expensive (player levels not mattering). A BMW and a Toyota Carolla are both cars, the BMW is gonna dent the pocket-book due to its increased performance. With this in place, we could stand to have have higher performance in the more expensive variants...

Surbius is right, we need to protect each respective group of players from newbies to vets in any change we make. We currently have a system in which people have no trouble getting by. Making it a little harder wouldn't be a bad thing, but we don't want to create a vendetta poor-class.

EDIT: changed last line from "would" to "wouldn't". Hope you all understood that earlier... (oops)

Major mistake sorry putting my incomplete pricing ideas into this post as it clearly has gotten attention drawn away from my main point of License level correction. My main point was that the license levels were set before the basic test mission existed. See my earlier posts for specific examples of how adding a automatic level increase distorted the license levels. The License level correction has to be fixed in some matter as it makes the game look unfinished and illogical. The correction also needs to be done to put some ships and weapons in use as they are currently being skipped over. Or these weapons and ships could be removed from the game as they are barely if ever used. I then noted other problems in ship or weapon license levels or required faction levels.

To avoid the confusion my incomplete ideas on pricing and other areas have caused I will not comment further in this thread until I have them complete.

Hi, I totally agree with the general idea of these suggestions. I've been aware for some time that our early level content needed to be reworked a bit, but hadn't spent the time looking it all over as of yet.

I also concur with price rescaling, in the sense of higher level and fancier equipment becoming drastically more expensive (low level equipment staying about where it is now). There's actually an old thread of mine, somewhere, about static re-pricing on a curve, with the high-level stuff being up in the six figure range. It was held up by a couple of things: Station cargo limits, and a better interface for actually manipulating prices. The latter has only been available for the last month or two (the new content editor).

Anyway, I welcome further feedback on this general topic.