I thought that I would post my "hello" too you all with some comments on what I like and dislike. Who I ran into and my experiences within the first 24 hours of playing. Although I played vendetta test for a little while while I was using linux intill my computer crashed so I'm back again.. A year later.

Well hello fellow space cowboys! Well, thats how I look at it. I did enjoy my first day of play. Although most of the time it was me killing mindless bots that didn't act very intelegent, but still it was fun to dodge around astroids and unload onto the unsuspecting bot on the other side. The only thing that I haven't tried yet is mining and I don't think I will I'm not really a fan of it since I played eve online..

I just wanted to say that I really do like this game but there are a few things that I believe probably need to be built on some of you might agree with me some of you might not. It feels very empty and two-dimentional, I know that vendetta is progressively in development and I am very impressed with the use of normal maps to give that high poly feel on the low poly mesh. But I don't really feel in absolute control of my ship. It doesn't feel like there is a onboard computer, or even a cockpit. I'm not at the helm, it seems like I am controling is from somewhere else. This could be the case but I hope that there are some future plans for "starship functionality" in the future.

Now FreeSpace 2 is one of my favorite games of all time so as you can imagine I fit right into play once the fire started comming at me even though I can't seem to get my joystick to work (feckin thing) must be bloody windows. But what I wanted to say is that there is one thing vendetta has going for it. There's a great community of players and it was alot of fun dukeing it out with them and recieving some feedback on what I can do to improve.

So thats my little hello for now. I'm a real forum addict so you'll probably see me here alot in the future posting my opinion of various things. I like the term "alterd perspective". Remember it.

Peace
Miyamoto (I usally go by the name kozuka but that was taken...)

Welcome back.

The bot AI is being rennovated as we speak, so watch for that. I can't say that the combat abilities of an individual bot will be better, but there will be some changes in bot behavior that may make things more interesting.

The User Interface is also being worked on right now. I don't know that HUD changes will be anytime soon, but I do know that tools are being put into place that may hasten things along. The specs have always called for a modular HUD that one could modify for themselves.

[Troll removed, stomped into paste, and fed to goats]

the goats! what a horrible thing to do!

yeah horrible, the poor lil goats :(

The damned goats have taken over my thread.. Nooo!

Poor goats..

Welcome back, Miyamoto!

Good to see another verbose/mature poster come aboard.

Thanks for the first impressions! It's always a good thing to read about first impressions - as they are uncorrupted by the bias of playing for a long time. We older players get too used to certain things in the game.

Of course, the game is still in 'early' development. Its gotta be hard to come up with a really immersive game with only a vew developers. But that aside, the game does certainly seem "flat" at times. There are basically just a lot of things missing. But I have no doubts that many things will be added in the future that will make it a whole lot easier to feel like the universe is actually a place where people live and die.

welcome back! But I dont think I remember you, but great to have another beta return :)

<sigh>
Another veteran player coming back that I don't know.
I'm soo non-alpha-beta! Welcome back, Miyamoto.

/me pats Leber on the back... there, there...

I am looking to try this game again since I havnt been on since beta. If they change the hud I hope they allow a nose style view to remain an option. When they clutter the screen with non usefull looks like a cockpit artwork you lose more usefull information, like the view of whats out there. The size of the computer monitor (unless your lucky enough to sport an over 36 inch screen) is still lacking the real peripheal vision you would really get in a real ship so putting none usefull graphics to take away the already limited vision should be an option not a hard coded requirenment.

The interface update isn't about adding new pretty things to clutter your HUD. It's about making the HUD much more customizable and feature-full. I'm very much looking forward to it!!

/me bookmarks Shreddi's post to reference those who complain you can't see your own ship from the cockpit. Good argument.

My first day too! (probably six hours or so into my trial)

I just came fresh to this game after finishing my Freelancer trial and not wanting to blow cash on a single player game! I was very impressed, and I wanted to find another space game!

Coincidentally, I did play Earth and Beyond for a week or two, but back then I had only a 32 mb integrated video card and the game was unplayable.

So I had a bit of an idea what might be going on in this game with flying to stations and mining and a 360 degree field of combat.

I did very poor at the bot killing quest hehe, until I tried a bit of mining and made some credits, got a bit better ship and now i've stomped em.

Anyway, the game is pretty damn fun and I'm going to keep on playing. I have to sell my UO accounts first, or my wife will kill me

The ONLY thing I don't like is I crashed! And I suck with the way the targetting reticle doesn't move the same speed as your mouse. I guess it'll take some serious getting used to, up close fighting is nearly impossible atm.

I was wondering how many players does VO have? seems like there are very few, which is weird coming from UO

Heh, crashing into stations happens to everyone, once in a while. As for the targeting reticle moving independent of the ship, that's called mouselook. Press ; to turn it off. Also, it's easier to fight bots with flight assist off, which is toggled with the ' button.

We're not entirely sure how many players we have, but we often have 40 players online, though most are in Greyspace. You won't find many in Nation space, except maybe border patrolling on the Itani-Serco border.