Hi all.

I'm almost half-way through my free 8-hour trial. So far, the game is quite fun :-) and it runs fine on my hardware.

My only suggestion:

* Get more people playing this game!

Some of the ways I thought this could be done are:

* Translate the game into, at least, Spanish and Mandarin. This would open the game up to a much larger part of the world. Allow other language in the interface and chat, and allow player-contributed translations. [I'm not sure about political issues - are MMOs allowed in Mainland China?]

* Port it to more platforms. Getting it on the Android OS is a great start. The platforms that come to mind are: consoles (XBox, Playstation, etc), iPhone, the Pandora (which is already Linux), Netbooks (which may not have much 3D acceleration?), Windows CE devices. I think that Windows CE and Linux-based devices should be fairly easy, whereas the consoles require specific knowledge and expensive dev kits? (IANA console dev...)

There are a lot of potential players out there who are "stuck" on platforms such as game consoles that can't play Vendetta, either through the lack of technical know-how (downloading stuff is hard!) or inertia (signing up for stuff is hard work!).

The game has fairly low hardware requirements, so getting it running on devices where other MMOs can't opens up a niche market.

* Allow a casual play option. The game is fun from the word go, so allow a "prepay arcade" option that gives the player (and his mates) a reasonable ship and another pre-paid 8 hours of play, and let them just go blow each other up without caring much for career progression.

* Streamline the download process. Send the game's executable out into the wild (e.g. download.cnet.com, etc), and let it be downloaded from your front page without the whole sign-in thing. When run, the game should have a browser link (opening up a web browser) to create a new account.

* Change the way the free play option works. Rather than having 8 hours free, prevent "trial" players from progressing from the EC-83 (or whatever the starting ship is) until they pay up. Anybody with the executable should be able to play without logging in, with the limitation that they can't get a better ship without paying. Having more players in the game benefits the game through word of mouth, having more players to shoot at, etc, even if they don't pay to play.

* Allow pre-paid per-hour payments, e.g. in 8-hour blocks.

I probably won't sign up because I can really only play for a small handful of hours each month, making $US9.99 quite expensive per hour (and other MMOs are completely out of the question! I just don't have the time.)

You can't pay 10 dollars a month but would pay by the hour? Do you know how many hours are in a month?

peytros: I have very little spare time for stuff like games.

Then games have very little use for you.

Try not to let the doorknob rip your sphincter as you depart.

Okay. The game is average, but the community that comes with it sucks. Looking through the history of these message boards, such remarks are not uncommon.

Enjoy your game. I won't be playing it any more.

woo
ding dong, the troll is gone, the wicked troll is gone!

you idiots just cost us another non paying, deadbeat, worthless...

*sigh*

nm.

I'll just lock the thread behind him...