Well said Beolach.

I'm not sure what people are responding so negatively to in my earlier post. There was a single sentence about needing to get away from the FPS mindset. I was talking about the players. I'd like to see a gradual end to "I pwned you" and all the other FPS stuff, in favor of a more in-character mindset. I certainly did not suggest we make it into a dice-rolling situation. That's just silly.

The rp mindset must learn to co-exist with all other mindsets, or avoid them. not the other way around. this is a fps game. i like it that way. i have no problem with rp'rs, as long as they understand, that i have no more obligation to thier playstyle, than they have to mine.

i believe that dedicated rp'ing would encourage, that all uncoopertive interactions, be viewed in an rp perpective. it should not require the co-operation of anyone else. the fact that a determined rp'r can reflect any and all event in a choosen perpective, is not only what makes that rp'r appear dedicated, but can be one of the most appealing aspects of rp'ing.

Rp'ing should neither shape nor be shaped by the enviroment, but rather shape the perspective of that enviroment.

but then, i'm not an rp'r. so what do i know. you are free to rp as you see fit, and i am free not to.

Mostly, I'd agree w/ you on that, TRS. Roleplaying is by far more the responsibility of the player than the game. But the game does have enough of an effect on how a player can roleplay that I don't think you should write it off as completely unimportant to roleplaying.

But, I really don't see that as a major problem in VO. This game gives players a great deal of freedom in which to roleplay. The biggest obstacle I have to roleplaying in VO is actually the other players, who don't roleplay. IMO PvP combat is by far the most fun element in VO. But (made up rough statistic) 90% or more of the PvP combat is not done in a RP manner - mostly, when people want to PvP they just go to Sedina B-8 & start shooting other players. It's more the FPS mentality of "Let's get together & shoot each other" than a roleplaying mentality. Which means I have to either forget roleplaying when I want to do PvP, or else not participate in 90% (my made up statistic again) of the PvP in the game.

And this illustrates one of the ways that is the game's responsibility to promote roleplaying. In a RPG the game should provide situational structure for the players to roleplay around. VO has made a very good start for this (for example, the backstory provides an excellent background structure for players to develop their characters off of), but can (and will) still improve. One of the things that I'm looking forwards to is additional in-game structures to for PvP combat. So far, for structures for roleplaying PvP combat in VO we have CtC, which can be incredibly fun when players participate, but at times player participation can be rather lacking. The Border Patrol mission can also provide a roleplaying structure for PvP combat, but I have never yet seen anyone else doing the Border Patrol mission at the same times I have.

So this is why I have a hard time not getting upset with players who just want to play VO as a FPS, and spend all their time PvPing in Sedina B-8. I want to PvP too, but I would much rather PvP in a roleplaying context, but when there are no enemies in the roleplaying contexts (CtC & Border Patrol) for me to PvP against, it is impossible for me to do so.

About the border patrol missions: There really is no reason for an Itani to go out there. People congregate on the entire opposite side of the universe. Create a cause for a border war, and we'll fight. Maybe a cool deserted station to PvP in on the border, etc.

Thing is, we have no cause to RP until we get some actual ingame content that allows us to RP to. I think the addition of things like The Order of Eo and Akan would be terrific for this. (but that's something the devs already know. :P )

Why is there any reason to fight in Sedina B-8? The Serco CtC route, but that's not why everyone fights there. Why is almost all the PvP combat going on in unclaimed space when we have a perfectly good border to fight over? Itani and Serco are supposed to be at war, but other than who people decide to shoot at, I haven't seen much that the war contributes to the game. I really really want to see the Serco try to invade Deneb. "There really is no reason for an Itani to go out there"? The Serco should give them a reason to.

Want a reason to do the Border Patrol missions? XP. The Border Patrol missions give decent amounts of combat XP. Don't like botting? Get players of the enemy nation to take the Border Patrol mission at the same time, and you can get combat XP for PvP, not for the "botting treadmill."

I wish I cared enough about this topic to do a little research, because I think it is
probably one of the larger consumers of megabits around. Bottom line: If a move
or action or tactic is allowed by the game, it is a valid, legitimate move, action or
tactic. Simple, ain't it?

Rattman: true, you're right, any tactic that the game allows IS valid. But the Devs have made changes that remove certain tactics (and add others) before. What's wrong with an argument that they should change the game to require more skillful play?

I personally don't mind the backrolling that much. Like players here have said, just learn to aim.

What if certain ships were less equipped to back up as they engage? Light fighters could maneuver well in any direction except backwards. Heavy ships could have decent acceleration forward or backward, but nothing spectacular in any perpendicular direction. Midlevel ships would be a balance of the 2 here.

Beo: there are very simple reasons why all the fighting is done in Sedina B8 rather than Deneb.

It began with CtC. The Itani would tend to jump the transport when it jumped into B8, so the Serco would try to preempt them by attacking the Itani before the transport jumped. Eventually, the Itani would jump the Serco returning from Initros at the wormhole. So for a while all the fights in Sedina B8 were for control over B8, to guarantee either the death or the protection of the transport. It later just became a convenient place for all fighting to occur because it's relatively close to Serco and UIT space, and Itani space is a bit farther.

Deneb, on the other hand, while close to Serco and Itani space, it's very far from UIT space. On top of that, it's far from both the Itani and Serco CtC routes, so players who want to generally fight and participate in CtC can't (which was a big deal when CtC was the only thing we had to do besides fighting). So it never really emerged as a good place to fight.

I don't think it's ever been (mostly) about CtC. Sedina B-8 was "the fighting sector" back when Serco veterans were still dominating CtC, and all the Itani were focusing more on defending the Itani convoys. So why didn't Bractus I-2 become "the fighting sector"? And the vast majority of the fighting done in Sedina B-8 is & has for as long as I can remember been completely unrelated to CtC.

Deneb being far from UIT space is a valid argument, but IMO players who are most interested in combat should be more likely to create Itani or Serco characters. It's been a huge surprise to me that that hasn't been the case, but I still think it would make more sense.

The distance from the CtC routes is also a valid point, but I would still like it better if players who are more interested in playing VO as a FPS did so in the context of the BP missions, rather than in Sedina B-8. TRS says he doesn't mind players wanting to roleplay in VO, because players roleplaying doesn't stop him from enjoying the game more as a FPS. But I say that I do mind players treating VO as nothing more than a FPS & doing all the fighting in Sedina B-8, because that does interfere with my ability to roleplay. I would like to engage in PvP combat more, but the way I roleplay Beolach, I stay out of Sedina B-8. Which means I don't get as much PvP as I would like. If, on the other hand, TRS & all the FPS players did all their fighting in Deneb in the context of the Border Patrol missions, then even if they were not focusing on the roleplaying aspects, I could, and I would get to fight them.

If combat were to take place on the "current" Itani/Serco border, players of the attacking nation would have to deal with strikeforces. Think seekers are bad when you're running from them? Try avoiding them while PvPing.

All of Deneb is unmonitored space except the Deneb->Eo WH & the Itani station sectors. No strikeforces would launch unless players in bad Itani standing entered those sectors.

The sector the Border Patrol missions send you to has Hive bots, but no strike force.

[edit] Hehehe, I forgot the Deneb->Eo WH has an Itani station, so I should have just said "except the Itani station sectors." [/edit]

Yeah, but there's no diversity in the stations there. Sedina B8 has Corvus, Orion, TPG, Axia, all relatively close.

People want ship diversity in their battles, and they won't get it using only Itani and serco equipment.

Furthermore, what about the poor UIT's? They're often the most numerous player base online, why would people move PvP away from them?

I think that the reason why B8 is the main sector is all about the UIT.

the UIT have 2 exits to grey space. Edras and Latos.

Edras is a bottleneck, you can only go one direction unless you're liked by itani. People enjoy the freedom that Latos gives them to go either way.

We fight in Sedina rather than Latos because Sedina has better stations for weapons.

and if you send the pvpers to deneb it'll split the fighters some whould go and some whould stay for ctc ,since it is so far away from uit space that whould put of some uit and cut the number down a bit as well,at some points as it is there are only one or two people fighting at once somtimes not even that and even though it whould make it easyer to rp with people it whould reaily cut down on the diffrent people to fight.

This is one of the big ways that VO's small player base shows. I'm looking forwards to when we have enough players to really fill out the universe.

Actually, I think B8 as the fighting sector dates to probably the first couple weeks of release, before the 6 week period of Serco domination of CtC.

B8 had fights in beta, too. It just seemed to be where people ran into each other. CtC came around, giving more reason to be in that general area. The Serco domination occurred for the same reason Itani domination occurred a month or two later: team imbalance. There were more Serco CtC-ing.

B8 was already a fight sector, though.. I can remember running into itani there on my serco alt before serco started dominating CtC