I want to thank the devs.. the game looks good, and the feel of the interface seems to be what i would want in a space game, however, i am leaving.

over the last 3 days i have been pirated on every trade run i've attempted, no matter when i log on to try one. i've been shot by red players in proms while botting in 4. I've been killed by players who don't want to do anything but shoot other players so that they can get their PK score up.

I've had it. The game is cool.. the community is not. This is not an attempt to change any of you, or blame anyone.. i'm not naming names. I just don't care anymore, so i'm not going to play for a while.

I am planning to watch the message boards, and post, as I feel the game has great potential. I simply will not be logging into the game itself. It's not any fun for me right now. I dont mind dying, but when it happens every single trade run, it starts to get old, and it gets there fast.

To all of you, (even those who are doing the pirating) I want to say thanks, playing with you guys has been entertaining and educational, If you guys want to pirate.. thats fine, you get your entertainment that way. I just am not fond of playing that kind of game, Space combat ( being pirated ) should be a RISK on every trade run, it should be a bigger risk on more profitable trade runs.. it should NOT be something that WILL HAPPEN every trade run, so. GoodBye for now.

You know, I'm just about to get really fed up and flame people.

I'm not at all fed up with the pirates. I'm fed up with all the whining.

You know what I think. I think people that whine about pirates and talk about leaving the community would never pay to play a massively multiplayer game in the first place. I think that the pirates show better gamesmanship than the players that run off and start whining on the bulletine boards. I think that the problem isn't with players that hunt down and kill other players, I think the problem is with players with basically nothing but single player experience who don't play well with others - and that can mean both the pirates and thier victems.

I'm sick and tired of people invited to play in a free Beta complaining that 'the game isn't fun anymore'. Ok, fine. It's not fun anymore. Noone was gauranteeing you fun. It's a Beta. It's not balanced. It's not finished. No one was gauranteeing your ego would be flattered. No one was gauranteeing a fair game. No one was gauranteeing an easy game. It's a Beta. We are guests. We are priveledged to be here, and if we ever have fun that's just a bonus. Heck, the devs have gone out of thier way to see that you guys are entertained - even to the point of wasting time and John's money in order to do so. THE FINAL GAME WON'T HAVE CAPTURE THE FLAG. THE ONLY REASON IT IS IN THE GAME IS TO GIVE YOU SOMETHING 'FUN' TO DO.

And all you guys do is gripe and gripe about how the other players are acting. I'm sorry, but in a MMORPG, you have to deal with the fact that their are alot of other players and they have a right to do whatever they want even if it gets in the way of what you want. If you don't want to play that sort of game, then pickup a copy of Descent:Freespace ($9.99 in Walmart) or EVN or some other game in which _you are always the center of attention and the world really does revolve around you_.

Or just maybe the next time a pirate blows you up you could just shrug and say, 'Good one. Get you next time.'

Escaping pirates isn't hard either. At least with version 3.2 of Vendetta, you'll have a better chance of finding a safe sector. Version 3.1.x only had 9 sectors!

Arolte does prove a point...sectors that are usually contain pirates are 14, 13 and sometimes 7. You can trade around these if you want. Yes you won't make as much money but you could save up enough to get a good special ship and if you need to run away you're new ship will stand enough hits that you can turbo away in time. If you try to fight them they will more than likely kill your special and you're back to step 1.

take a chill pill celebrim. I'm not whining. simply saying good bye, read the last paragraph. i said thank you to everyone, acknowledged that pirating is part of the game, and stated an opinion on trading. or did you just flame the post without reading it.

as for playing a MMORPG i play UO and EQ.

Arolte, running is not always an option, I was chased from sector 14 to 8 to 7 to 10 to 11 to 13 to 5 to 9 by a pirate the other night. I'm on a dialup so my sectors load slower than ppl with a cable modem or DSL. any distance i gained would usually be negated when switching sectors. I jumped, the pirate jumped 4 seconds later and beat me to the next sector by enough that he had almost a full battery charge when i got there (to judge by the amount of firepower he put out at me.

sure you can point your ship out into deep space and run indefinitely without jumping sectors.. but then you are in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do. as for a safe sector.. no such thing.. I've even been killed in sector 1 by another player (tho he was at least after a flag and not just after cargo)

SF: thats exactly my problem, i've tried every trade route imaginable. over the last 3 days i haven't completed a single trade run. ignoring 14, staying out of 7 and 13. i still lost cargo's in 10, 11, 9, and 5.

I hate sounding like a broken record, but, here it comes..... TEAMWORK! Spellcast, offer to hire an escort and give him a cut of the widgets. Heck, tag along with an experienced player, pirates tend to leave them alone. But it's stupid to try and transverse a lawless universe alone and not get razzed. Remember, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Spell, I hope we will see eachother after 2 months

take some time off, and then come back to kick some pirate ass :D

that's what I'm going to do once I got money and experience. Besides , then some people have plenty of money and are maybe willing to escort you because it is the only fun thing to do, who knows. You'll see. Besides, you read the thread about pirates, go and dock in a station , jump in a free bus, and start shooting them, after a while they will get tired and maybe even killed, when they change to a free ship , change to your tradingship and run like you have never run before, then do this again untill you have amassed adequate money. Then start kicking sopme pirate ass, I'm sure that some of your fello itani are willing to aide in that, and if not, PM me on starfreezes board, I will see what can be done ;)

cheers

PS: cele, calm down, first off all , we know it is a beta , but if some people don't even find the beta interesting"satisfying" then they won't botter to try the entire version. But if people found that the beta was a cool game ,and so very nicely made, then that will reflect on the advertising they do for the beta. That will finally be good for the final version. Like he stated, he found the game top notch but the community was worth crap. The community is all of us. Pirates and all included. So try to improve this in stead of posting agitated in here ;)

Renegade: As I've said before, most of the time you are in a Beta you are under a non-disclosure agreement precisely because they don't want you to 'advertise' about your experiences prior to the game getting closer to a finished state.

Beta's aren't demos. People who try out for a Beta are assumed to be people who are willing to put up with the frustration of bugs and unbalanced game play for the sake of being part of the process of creating a game. Once the Beta is finished, the Demo is released in order that people will have fun and decide to buy the game.

The only portion of the community I'm beginning to be annoyed with is the whiners. To me the pirate is less offensive than the player that spews a stream of invective on the channel at the pirate after being destroyed. I feel this sort of temper tantrum is more of a sign of poor sportsmanship than player who really enjoys PKing, and certainly more of a problem for the community than occassional PKing.

I stand by my stats. I'm not a pirate. In 600+ kills, I've only killed 27 players - all of which were either in a 'blue' sector, following me very closely for extensive periods even after I did sudden changes of direction, shooting at me, or in the path of a cap team and not doing what I thought was thier best to get out of the way. I've never killed anyone in hopes of getting cargo. But even if I had, I don't have to apologize for any of that hostility, because I don't even think Icarus does (not that what Icarus does is always helpful). PK is after all part of the game.

I assume everyone in the game is hostile and do my best to keep my distance and not do anything that looks provocative. I am careful when approaching stations that I don't startle anyone, and I'm careful when approaching wormholes that some doesn't get the idea that I'm going straight for them. I check 'u' frequently. If I see a player that I think will be hostile, often I turn around and try going in a different direction. I don't assume I have 'a right' to fly through space however I wish. I assume that it is a hostile and lawless place and that I have a responcibility to take care of myself. I'm not afraid to go around and snoop at the sector on the edges to try to see where everyone is and whether they are lying in ambush. If I find pirates consistantly blocking my path, I'll either take them down myself or if I think that I'm insufficiently skillful to do that, I'll find some other Vets and try to work with them.

Unless I know a sector to be pacified, I don't trade in a ship that can't defend itself (like the Centaur or Atlas). I'd rather get 3 widgets through in a Vulture modified for sprinting, than risk blowing up with a full load of rare metals. If pirating is too dangerous even so, I'll wait and make money botting.

It is possible to play the game successfully (and indeed more succcessfully than I am) without having alot of skill (because I don't have much skill, I'm just careful and cautious). One bad night or even one bad week is just part of the game and you learn from it.

I agree with Celebrim. I'd also like to point out to everyone that pirating and fighting are major aspects of the game. I myself pirate once in a while, and get pirated a ton. However, if we weren't meant to pirate, there wouldn't be weapons in the games. Just trade in groups. There are always a few people on each team trading, and I'm sure they'd be more than happy to fly in a convoy with you. You might still get attacked, but you'll have a better chance percentage-wise getting to the station alive than you would if you were alone.

add s15 SF

This is probably the last message I'll ever post... then bye bye to my computer. I completely agree with Celebrim. Way to nail it man. Seriously... loss is what games are about. I'm sure tons of you have heard me say this, but if you can't take a challenge, then go watch the teletubbies. Games weren't meant so you would win every time. Don't be a baby - roll with the punches... get better at it... and fight back. I am also very tired of seeing people whine all the time. Both players and pirates. Stop trying to give yourself an more of an ego boost. Thats the last thing any of you or us need. Its about getting better at something you like to do. Its not about the thing you like to do becoming easier.

The problem isn't people who want to pirate for cargo and money. The problem is the people who pirate for kills and to annoy people. The sad fact is most people aren't gonna like this game because of a few small minded people who like to treat people like crap and while I realise that pirating is apart of the game it just gets pointless when you get one person camping outside of a station just waiting for people to dock then kill them as soon as they exit. Now what the hell is fun about that?!

The game would be a hell of a lot more enjoyable if you could actually exit a neutral station without blown up in two seconds and "Realistcally" speaking pirates would even be allowed near neutral stations because the station would lose business I would love it if the station had weapons and fired at known pirates it would force pirates to operate in deep space (as they should) and not have the luxury of running cowardly to the station when they take 10% damage.

In the full version pirates won't be much of a problem because you would have 1000's of sectors to go to but at the moment it's really hard to avoid a pirate (given that I've seen about 10 new pirates") unless you're willling to just fly about in the home sector.

I got blown up about 3 times in a row once, started whinging, out of cash, blah blah blah... but in the end, its incredibly easy to get back on your feet. Your ship and your money goes, but your experience doesnt... and next time the pirate drops by, if youre in a centaur, give him a swarm or two to think about.

I am a little bit guilty of the camping outside stations, as are many reds. But we actually do it to make money too- a lot of players trade regardless of enemy pilots in an area, and its only a matter of time before, instead of having to go to the cargo, the cargo comes to you.

Now that bots drop cargo, every sector that gets botted is litered with cargo, i like the cargo they drop that look like heads, cause they look like heads. =P

is it expensive cargo, or just cheap one ?

cheers

250, 500, 1000 cargo, depends what level bots yah blast to bits.

I semi-agree with Celebrim. The only point I disagree with is that Spellcast wasn't whining. There's nothing wrong with saying goodbye if the game is no longer fun. As a responsable Beta tester, it is an obligation to:

1) Express your opinion to the devs about the game. This is going to be an MMORP so expressing opinion about the community is part of that.

2) Stop testing if you no longer there is any benefit. If the game has been ruined by bad community behaviour, taking time off will allow Spellcast to re-join the game later with a clear head and open perspective. If playing while endlessly frustrated, opinions will become jaded and less valuable to the devs.

I myself stopped playing for a long time (from about 3.1.2 until 3.1.11, although I didn't formally annoucne it, because I found myself getting pissed off shortly after logging on. I'm back now, and I'm seeing the game community start to degenerate in some ways again. However, I'm starting to see it improve in some ways also. I'm holding out because I want to help the greater good by helping to test the game, but I can completely unerstand why someone else would bow out for a while.

<rant>

That said, I am irritated by ANY player who detracts from my ability to succesfuly test. This doesn't mean combat: that's part of testing too. That means:

1) Overly abusive players (verbally or by their actions) who purposefully try to piss off other testers.

2) Whiners, who lose the game and get all bent about it, without trying to work through something. Testers should try to find flaws in gameplay AND try to find ways to fix flaws. You're NOT being forced to play-test the Beta, so if you don't like it, don't test it.

3) Nerf-mongers who try to promote ship and weapon nerfing in order to dumb down the test so it is more satisfying int eh short term. This irks me because I think we all need to think more long-term. If our short-term thinking infects the devs, the game will suffer.

</rant>

I want to comment on your last point. I have posted messages regarding game balance, and barring knowing well in advance what the future plans of the developers are, what we see before us *is* the standard we have to base things on.

I have called for power downgrades on things. I may well again, until my psychic "read A1k0n's mind ray" device works again, at which point I will be able to predict what the future holds with much more precision, and write posts accordingly.

The rest of your points are all good, though. Likewise, I am here for testing, and it's easy to get into the testing frame of mind by slapping a few /ignores on pointlessly spammy people. (I will also add I wholeheartedly agree with the point you had about needless whining.)

Still, there needs to be a context in all things. Some things which are immensely unpleasant now are going to be immensely unpleasant in the future. Most of these problems can be solved by a judicious /ignore or flying in squadrons or convoys. The rest of the problems, no matter how ludicrous, should actually be considered.

Well the only thing I will add to this discussion is this. Pirating is annoying. Continuos killing of players is annoying but again yes a part of the game. Now if you are constantly killing a bus that is where it gets both stupid and to me wrong. A bus is either a player just trying to get ahead a little or just trying to sucker in a pirate. Either way it is not worth it. I have found a time frame during the day when I can get a couple runs and make a little cash.

With that said. WHAT ABOUT ROLE PLAYING. Instead of attacking outright why not RP. Instead of killing outright pull up and say "Aarggh matey give me ye gold or cargo or we will hole ye ship and kill ye." Come on folks part of MMORPG is ROLE PLAYING GAME.

So in conclusion leave the busses alone. Give new people a chance and go out after those who might give you a challenge. Or are the pirates just yellow and dont have the guts to take on a loaded ship.

Ohh and one thing why the hell pirate a bus in lag. You might as well do something personal on a porn page.

Random

Lem, I thought those widgets looked like little people, thast what makes em fun to sell :D