I don't think the active player count is a reliable indicator of the state of things. When I was discussing "having the perspective of time" part of what I meant is that having played for nearly 3 years I've seen this cycle repeated over and over again. The count goes WAY up when there is a review in a respected publication, or an interview. It's artificial because those numbers can be largely from trial accounts. Many of those people moved on either because they didn't like what they saw, had other priorities, or never intended to sign up at any price.

Guild could easily tap Strategy First for promotional help, but there is still much to be added before Vendetta has wide appeal. It would be a waste of resources and would expose a larger potential user base to a game that might disappoint in its somewhat spartan state. That could hurt later on when Vendetta is "ready for prime time".

Guild doesn't really need a huge amount of subscribers to carry on with Vendetta. A low player count is not an indication that Guild is in any trouble. They made their official release and started charging people largely to finance continued development at the rapid pace we've become accustomed to recently. Many of the long-time players actually requested that they do this. Guild could just as easily slow down the pace and find other work while keeping the game servers up.

Is it an ideal situation? No, but for a small, unproven company trying to build their vision of a space-genre MMORPG within an industry that has no interest in such ventures, it's the only option left. Those that have the perspective of time know that Guild has made all the logical moves to try and make this happen. Larger companies have walked away from games that we loved because the profit wasn't there, or the game wasn't fashionable anymore. Guild hasn't forgotten about us.

I don't play much vendetta theese days because it's...
..
...boring.

I'm bored out of my skull trying to bot myself up a level, but I'm so confident that's gonna change that I signed up for a three month subscription and will probably buy another one when that one expires.

That makes me a perfect customer, right?
I pay for bandwidth and server time I don't use.
Makes me feel good :D

Why?
- The engine kicks ass.
- The game mechanics (physics engine, weapon balance etc, since there is no roll-the-dice combat) are coming together nicely
- The mission system is being worked on to allow a pile of missions to be added to make it more diverse
- The war (Itani vs. Serco) is starting to happen

Once I can do trade missions and have special NPCs helping me out and interaction with the world etc I'm gonna get fired for forgetting to go to work, but it'll be worth it.

Devs: Thank you! You have access to my wallet every three months and I have complete confidence in your abilites as MMORPG developers.

Also, I-don't-remember-who i id software (I might be mistaken..) said that developing for several platforms in some respects speeds up development as alot of the code compiles cleanly for both systems if it's Proper Code.
This forces developers to keep their code clean and saves time on not having to go back and correct the little "shortcuts" when they turn out not to be so short afterall.

When I read that, he's making a fool of himself.

So, we made this guy have a Vendetta against Vendetta?

Personally I think he was trolling. /me sets out the goats

Well I thank those that have allowed Ray to persue his dream, because he is much happier when he is working on Vendetta fulltime. I recall he was miserable when he was also working a part time job at Menards and on VO at the same time.

Ray won't tell me the details (very few, other than just wait and see) but he has something big planned for June. Heh it might not be even Vendetta related!

IMO there is much more to VO than just logging on and playing the game. It would appear from the message board content that many of the subscribers are hard-core gamers, at least those who are active on the boards. In a sense, VO has many of the traits of a club, with the game itself being a reason for us to virtually meet, and the subscription price being more like club dues. A primary purpose of this club, imo, is to develop the game, something that could truly peak the interest of hard-core gamers, at least those that are as interested in game designs as they are in finished products.

How many of you keep paying 'dues' just to see what is coming next, and perhaps contribute to the process? I know I do, and although some would think me foolish, that opinion would seem to me to be coming from someone who just isn't interested in contributing to the progress of the game; a perfectly valid perspective, but not one that I share.

How many games are out there where the players have as much influence on the game itself as they do with VO? Granted the risks involved with that, aren't there many of us that truly appreciate that uniqueness and are are willing to support the devs with our inputs as well as our 'monthly dues'? How many of us are, like the devs, in the IT industry (I am) and are cheering on a small group of colleagues developing a complex system just for our fun, and hopefully theirs as well? Isn't that as much a reason to support them as is logging on and blowing each other up or amassing huge in-game fortunes?

If a subscriber is looking for the same kind of fully developed service as would be found in a WoW, they will probably be (imo) dissappointed, for many of the reasons stated in the review linked to in the initial post of this thread. I will confess that initially I felt that way, until I finally caught on to a delightful consequence of something that at first appears to be a negative, lack of content.

Within VO, and with this particularly dedicated community, player content has been beautifully filling that void, and in doing so has added a sense of reality not found in other games. Look at the variety and interplay of guilds, player sponsored tournaments, free-form character development, and how all these things are reflected not just in-game, but in the message boards as well. The result of this is some pretty interesting role-playing, where you are not confined by some pre-defined character class.

Yes, the game could have more interesting NPC interactions, but (imo) they would never be as interesting as player interactions. This is true not only because of the potential for PvP, but also because dealing with another person is always more interesting than dealing with a piece of code. That is where role-playing is and has been the finest. I think additional evidence for that is found in much of the fiction we write and post.

Yes, we can and will have discussions about ship tweaks and other such mechanics issues, but would we even bother to do that for a WoW, where we wouldn't really have the same kind of close interaction with the devs? What other game company would give us the same kind of attention or sense of involvement, and isn't that also a reason to stay with VO?

I think we have a pretty good club here. I only hope the devs can continue to afford us this opportunity.

His points are biased, but valid. Sometimes I wonder why I continue to play because the game can seem to get pretty stale at times...

But then I just have to remind myself of the many times that i've been in wicked combat that makes my heart pump and and adrenaline rush.. Few games do that for me, that alone makes the game worth it.

What I don't understand is why he writes such long paragraphs. I don't think we're in any danger of anyone actually wading through them.

I got all the way through the first one!
'm proud of meself.

Yeah, Ray what Menard's did ya work at? The one on Bluemound in Brookfield? I need some discount building materials...

I'm here to support you guys thru my monthly subscription, and I fully realize that the $9 a month is for a product that is not done, and will never be done. It's worth two extra value meals. It's great to see four [edit: three. damn] game developers get together and build something that can be as fun as Vendetta is for me, even in its unfinished state. The player interaction is the best thing about this game...

I can't wait to see what comes out in June - just put it out before Summerfest, 'cause I'll be offline for those 2 weeks.

The Unabomber wrote really loooong paragraphs as well...

I said I'd look in on this game now and then in the past and after writing that review I had a feeling this would happen so made a point to check to see if my suspicions would hold true. I've written two and only two reviews on this game and that's all I plan to do. Then when I set up a user account at a site it's because I plan to make use of it to do different things in the future, not just write one review. I'm quite sure some in VO's small community have set up accounts at game sites for the sole purpose of writing glowing reviews of VO and have done so at more than one site but since they were glowing reviews and maybe also under multiple names they never caught the attention of anyone here. Mine as some have said are not untrue at all but also not glowing so you people start a thread about them to group flame someone that isn't publicly gushing about the perfection of the game which only validates one of the things I wrote in the IGN review. What happened to the "be nice" rule people in here are supposed to follow?

I wrote one on MMORPG.com since I like the site and there's a number of VO reviews in there already plus it has an active user base and I plan to poke around in there for a while yet looking and writing the odd things regarding to other games. I noticed a review a while after I wrote mine that had line breaks in it. Usually actual HTML tags are removed from things the public writes and will be posted on the site so I figured I was stuck with my pseudo line breaks (a bunch of underscores) since simply hitting return at the end of a line wasn't working. When I saw a review with line breaks I gave it another shot but as a last resort tried the actual HTML line break tag, it worked, go fig. To my surprise though that bumped the review. I figured once you write one the position it falls in is the position it stays in but it ended up moving up to the top. Since that happened I figured I may as well update it some which I did.

The IGN.com review I did because the person that wrote the review for IGN seemed to have a very similar opinion of the game as I did and the two reviews that were there suffered from the same over the top scoring as too many others do. I mean the one guy certainly seems to concede that the graphics aren't at the level of some other games but then proceeds to give graphics a nine, then he says it has no music but gives that a seven anyhow. These are the kinds of things I see in many of the reviews people write for this game and just make no sense at all as what they write and the score they give completely contradict each other. If people want to give a review on something they need to at least have them make sense and be reasonable, too many of the reviews on this game I ran across just don't follow those two requirements which in of themselves causes one to doubt their credibility.

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the paragraphs are too long...
Read a book sometime people. Paragraphs deal with one general point which is how they were used. Some points such as the longest one about the game being a FPS rather than a MMORPG deals with one point but is a lengthy one since I clearly referenced it as an important matter. Had I been writing a longer review such as that done by the IGN reviewer I could have split things up more and made several smaller specific paragraphs that collectively worked under a grouped heading but I didn't plan on or was even able to write a review of that length due to the length restriction. Also had I been expecting payment for my writing I would have worked it over more but it was another while I ate something writing. Now there are books both written in the narrative and not that I have read where some paragraphs just go on and on, I assure you, the length of those paragraphs do not set any records.

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he's complaining about it being on three OSs...
It's not a complaint but the process used complicates matters. As I've said in other postings I work in programming and I prefer the Mac, I installed this on a Mac and played this on a Mac as well. It's nice that it's on more than one OS but it does make things more difficult to work with, especially when trying to do it three ways at once with a small inexperienced team. If the team is small an easier way to work a project is to develop for one with plans to move it to others latter. When writing large programs no matter how well planed it was when you started out things always change over the course of the creation cycle. Some parts get removed, others changed or added. If those things have to do with how the program interacts with the OS to produce a result like the UI for instance each change needs to be done and debugged three times over when working over three OSs simultaneously. It's nice that it's on three OSs but that was the choice of he devs and the way some of you sell that point here and in reviews it's like that alone makes the game unique and worth buying.

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he's complaining about the devs...
The fact of the matter remains that this is a small group with no prior commercial video game development experience working under a small budget. I remember reading how they did little mini games made up for fun between them but as for full out commercial games this was the first any of them worked on in any way. Writing a little mini game and a full commercial MMORPG is like the difference between a feature rich office suite program and some little thing that sorts the stuff you write into one column of a table plus can load, save and print them. That maybe a little extreme but it's really not all that far off either. Also doing a modern MMORPG has got to be the hardest game type to do, but yet they did that as their first project. Where I work we start the complete newbies fresh from university out with small tasks that each have small very specific goals. The idea is to get them used to working in a team, see how the process works and how we do things as before then most just did solo programming and maybe some group stuff in school. They then are moved up over time from there but it's a matter of progression from small direct tasks to managing a group and being the lead programer of a project at some point should they get that far and have proven their ability. The devs would have been better served starting with smaller direct goals like a rich single player game to get used to the whole process, from there move to another with multiplayer functions and then finally move to the complexity and scope of a MMORPG. This would have given them some experience and a certain notoriety among players so once they do start asking for monthly fees people will have a general idea of what to expect from a game by Guild.

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about the community and the forum mod...
As stated before the mere fact this thread is here, quite active and participated in by not only the community but the mod and heck, even one of the devs proves the point I made in the IGN review about what happens if you voice an unflattering opinion about this game as true. The players want to bash me for disliking the game as it is now and saying so, fine, whatever, but the forum moderator? This is a person that is supposed to moderate the content of the forums, imagine that. This person is supposed to be level headed and fair at all times to all people, even if that person where trying to tear him a new one, not resort to name calling and other such childishness. This can not be said about the VO forum mod as he seems only to willing to hop in the flame fest, something noted right before you come into the forums as being not allowed. He talks about how the points I made about the state of the game being common knowledge. To who? Common knowledge to the people that have been an active member of the small VO community for years or common knowledge to the people that only heard of it after it was released and come here expecting to get the game this is advertised to be? Considering matters only known by those that have been here and active in the forums since long before its commercial release as common knowledge is total nonsense.

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other matters...
I'm male, I just read and write more than most. I'm certainly not a child as I've been out of school for many years now. I can write quite quickly as this was yet another lunch time writing posted the next time I went online so it's not like I'm spending much time writing these things. I've offered to even work on their site so parts could be dynamically created from source files they would easily be able to modify and manage (see the suggestions post about in game and site searching and info). The furthest I go to take issue with people here is to refer to it points given as nonsense, silly, childish and the like rather than making baseless insults for the sake of making insults. I've offered suggestions in even the reviews and posts so many of you take such offence to such as the frequently mentioned point of making it so stations do use up resources when repairing or building things. That alone would make being a trader or miner very valuable, make the game universe much more dynamic, give people more purpose in attacking other players and so forth. This game isn't all that unique either I'm sorry to tell you as the space based twitch based MMORPG thing has been done before. I do believe at least three have come and mostly gone already before Nov. 2004, only Jumpgate remains. The monthly price is also nothing that new. Jumpgate costs just as much, some including at least one space based MMORPG are even free (StarPort I think) then other bigger ones aren't that far off from $10 US / month and can be less than that if paid in longer chunks as well. Think of me as you may but at least I'm being fair and honest with what I say and also don't even try to hide behind different user names.

It is not much more difficult to program something for multiple platforms if the program is written that way from the start.

And you seem more concentrated on the fact that Guild Software is a small company and that they are working on porting it to multiple platforms then you do the actual gameplay.

"This person is supposed to be level headed and fair at all times to all people, even if that person where trying to tear him a new one, not resort to name calling and other such childishness. This can not be said about the VO forum mod as he seems only to willing to hop in the flame fest, something noted right before you come into the forums as being not allowed."

If somebody would like to point me to exactly where I actually flamed ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming ) him, called him a name, or otherwise violated the "Be Nice" agreement, I'd be grateful.

No. Your paragraphs are too long because you rant. They consist mostly of run-on sentences which are either redundant, only peripherally relevant, or semantically worthless, unless the reader is an idiot. Your messages are like perl programs - practically write-only, with all the important bits buried in the middle of a long expression. It has nothing to do with how much you read and write or how much I read and write. They're parseable, and grammatically correct, just not well-written, narrative style or not.

I never bash people, and I always feel bad about it, but your "Read a book sometime people" comment pissed me off. I think it's disrespectful to write a long rant without editing it at all and expect people to read it.

Have you seen http://www.vendetta-online.com/manual.html ? That's where this damaging common knowledge, which supposedly only veteran players and people who read your insightful reviews know about, is presented to the new user.

Now, I'm the first to admit that our game sucks and our business model is questionable. I feel no real need to justify it to you, since you seem to think we're stupid or something.

For a long time developing this game was a fun hobby, and it kind of snowballed and gained momentum. We aren't fucking amateurs - we had other jobs. Eventually we were faced with a choice - should we leave it by the wayside and move on, or start a company, devote much more time to it, and see where it takes us? We figured it was worth a shot, since people seemed to like it. Are we nuts? Sure. But the fact that we had an active userbase who seemed to be having fun significantly influenced that decision.

Nobody disputes that space shooters have been done before, but the actual mechanics of ours are pretty different from those of Jumpgate or any other of our contemporaries. It opens up different tactics and strategies than just flying around in circles trying to shoot one another. That was the central thing that was different about our game that we built upon.

The most obvious flaw in this plan is that we built a game on a combat engine and didn't do a very good job of telling people why they are shooting each other or why they're shooting an endless stream of bots.

Now we've got this pointless hodgepodge of stuff that needs to be tied together, so that's what we're doing. We aren't advertising or anything - our die-hards support us, so we can continue development for now. Once we get a few more elements in place, there should be enough of a "point" to keep people busy for a while.

Is this funding model dishonest somehow? I don't really think so, as we try to make all this clear. Maybe it's hard to find on our site, which is poorly organized, but it certainly isn't intentionally obscured.

All this aside, I think playing the game for free for eight hours is enough to make a decision whether it's good enough for you, so I'm not sure what your intent is in reviewing the game. A simple "trying the free eight hour trial is not worth your time for these simply stated, not-really-long-paragraph reasons" is a valuable review. A six-page long review detailing what the proper software process is and how the developers are not following it is not a valuable review, unless you have some suspicion that we're going to pack up our servers and leave town with your money.

ok, now he's been flamed... yeesh a1k0n.

PhoenixHawk. I saw 2 reviews above yours on MMORPG.com, and then you have reposted yours to keep it on top. Now you may have just updated it and added line breaks.. I'll grant you the benefit of the doubt. However, on the whole your review comes off as extremely HOSTILE; it's not "well thought out criticism" for the most part its a rant.

I fail to see where you have been treated in a manner that goes against the board policy, other than a1k0ns last post.

Your initial post was repsonded to politely, and even after you made several very critical reply's that almost fell into the 'troll" category, no-one was overly mean to you. I dont see anywhere that Forum Mod was rude to you.

Even this thread didn't degenerate into a "bash the phoenixhawk" fest.. several people agreed with you, and no-one was overly rude.
As to Forum Mod / Whistler getting mixed up on his accounts.. well he was Whistler for a long time before he was asked to be the forum moderator, and he still uses his original account from time to time.. he wasn't "hiding" but back when the forums first needed a moderator it was decided that a seperate account should be used for it. he didnt check to see which account he was logged in as.. oooooooo lets take a simple mistake and try to blow it out of proportion.

Anyway, I'm glad you decided to check back in, but i highly reccomend that you try not to assume everything has some sinister reason behind it. I think you'd have a less stressful life if you just chill out a bit.

a1k0n wrote:

# Your messages are like perl programs - practically write-only,
# with all the important bits buried in the middle of a long
# expression.

hey, stop that. my ship stat calculations and all the DB interface work was written in very nice and readable perl. I will not tolerate my choice of language being compared to longwinded rants.

:-)

(and by the way, w00t, go Vendetta!)

@PhoenixHawk: I'm pretty sure that as it is now, you don't like the game. So why bother coming back here to the games forums? Do you think that at some point in the future the game will be worthwhile? If not, why waste any more of your time on it?

Also, regarding developing for multiple platforms you say "If the team is small an easier way to work a project is to develop for one with plans to move it to others latter." That is so not true. It is always easier to develop for multiple platforms when you do so from the very beginning; coming back later to port it makes you likely to find that you programmed some aspects in non-portable code, and you'll end up with more work. So especially when you have small teams, it's best to develop from the very beginning with all of your target platforms in mind.

@a1k0n: Dude, don't bash perl. Perl is no more or less readable than any other programming language - well written perl code is readable just fine.

Thanks Spelly. I did accidentally post with the wrong account here earlier, as you mentioned, but I think PhoenixHawk was speculating that people might have multiple accounts on *other* websites for the purpose of promoting Vendetta. I don't think he was making an issue of me posting to this thread as Whistler.

Emm, for my part, as far as the "game developers are inexperienced thing".. well, I agree that it would have been better for us to tackle a small game as our first project, rather than this one. As Andy mentions, several times we re-assessed whether we were going to really try and DO this or not, but we had committed too much time to walk away. Also, we started out with the concept of creating a tech-demo and hopefully selling that to a publisher, investor, or other source of funding, and hiring a larger team. The current situation is less than ideal, not what we hoped, but it's what we've achieved, and I'm quite proud of it, frankly. Were we "insane"? Yeah, sure, fine, but we're here now, so one might as well look forward instead of back. I certainly wouldn't advise anyone else to tackle an MMO as their first title, but we've learned a hell of a lot doing it.

Your criticisms of the game itself are largely sound, I think. I don't expect anyone to gush about our game (and neither does Andy, obviously), we're very uhh.. intimately familiar with the flaws of our product ;). I didn't object to your review, particularly, I thought it was honest. Honest reviews are better than the common publisher-advertising-funded gushing that tends to be somewhat prevalent in game reviewing.

Your comment on the multiplatform aspect is inaccurate. I would guess we spend (total, among all of us) less than an hour per month on anything platform-related. I saw Ray tinkering with some Mac specific shaders the other night, for new cap ship stuff, and that was the first time I had seen him working on the mac in ages (no offense, mac people :). The multiplatform framework did take a little time to set up back in initial development (years ago), but it's been no trouble since then.

Additionally, the fact that we're multiplatform is one of the major reasons why we're still here at all. Without an advertising budget, we relied on communities like the Linux and Mac gaming groups to get the word out amongst themselves, and that's been a major boone. The windows gaming market is flooded with titles, the other two platforms, less so. This makes it easier, even possible, for a game such as ours to "get by" while we improve it.

Lastly, there is an overall vibe to your writing (which I think is a big part of what irked Andy/a1k0n so much) that you think us dishonest for.. either being a small team and attempting this, or charging for our game, or some such. All I can say to respond to that is that we're very proud of what we've managed to achieve on a virtual shoestring of nothingness. Our game is EXTREMELY imperfect and flawed, but we have a good idea of what to do about it, and thanks to the support of people who either like what we have, or like where we're headed, we have the opportunity to continue working on this game. Yes, it's unorthodox compared to the rest of the industry. Yes, our game is "unfinished", and frankly, I intend for it to always be in development. You could say that our users are analogous to our "publisher": instead of being funded by one big operation, we're funded by a whole bunch of individuals who really like what we're doing. What could be more ideal than that? Half the time a publisher doesn't even really care what you're making, as long as it matches their bottom line and "fits their portfolio". We're backed by people who really *believe* in what we're doing, as we do.

The only real downside to this development strategy is having someone come along and criticize your honesty for selling an "unfinished" game. Well, there's a free trial, it's up to the individual to decide if they like it. Dishonest is the big studios crapping out terrible license-based titles, marketing them for all they're worth, and having people pay $50 a pop for a box with no return policy. At least with our game people have a chance to see what they're getting into.. for free.

Our game, website, and all other material could use a lot of work, no question about it. We are the first to admit the problems with all of the above. Nonetheless, I'm very proud of our achievements, I personally *enjoy* playing our game, and I'm really excited to make it better. I don't really read many reviews anymore (I read yours just now, because of this thread), mostly because I already know what's wrong with the game and don't need to hear about it any further (the only difference in reviews is really how Kind the reviewer is willing to be). The best thing I believe I can do is just look forward and see about fixing the problems. So, that's what I'm going to do.

As a footnote, I haven't personally seen Forum Mod hassle anyone, ever. He's one of the most levelheaded, responsible people I know, and he deals with a tremendous amount of headache on a completely volunteer basis. As he himself said, if you have some example of him flaming you that you'd care to point out, I would be interested to see it.

I understand this can be aggravating, but let's not overreact.

Honestly, when I'm thinking about trying a new game, reviews never factor into my final decision. After all, they are just one person's opinion, and everyone is entitled to their opinion. No matter how much this guy rants, he can't keep anyone from trying the free 8 hour trial, so why not just let the game speak for itself. If anything, it's better for people to have low expectations than high, so he may have actually helped us.

My personal opinion is that this game rocks. I've been waiting for something like this ever since I played the original EV series.

I'm going to go ahead and lock this thread. I do apologize for Andy flaming a bit, I think he was a bit irked by the impingement on our honesty and previous experience (while we had never done a game together before, our previous experience individually was considerable.. obviously, or developing this whole game/engine/everything from scratch would never have happened with four people).

I don't mean to prevent PhoenixHawk from responding by locking this, it's just that it's getting a bit out of hand, and clearly even irritating my coworkers. He is more than welcome to email me personally if he wants to respond to any of my comments, or point out how/where Forum Moderator ever acted inappropriately. I think we've hit all the major points of "we agree with your review, but don't terribly like the way you said it", and that's just a difference of opinion.

Moving right along then..