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Trial feedback summary - Keyn Thror

Jul 20, 2008 keyn134 link
Hi everyone!

I've finished my eight-hour trial two days ago, and decided to subscribe to Vendetta Online. Played several hours more after subscription and felt I made a right decision.

I'd like to share my impressions on the game so far.

Things that I liked in VO:

1. Dynamic flight and combat system - that's really interesting feature, that makes the game quite different from many other MMORPGs, including EVE Online.

2. Realistic physics and collision system - I really like when I have to think twice before ramming my ship into anything. EVE Online, for example, does not have such system, and sometimes it causes some stupid situations which doesn't look too good.

3. Physics flight mode - the ability to pilot ship in semi-realistic space physics gives a lot of fun and I personally like the possibility to fly forward while shooting backwards :)

4. Missions - missions in VO ARE G.R.E.A.T! Very interesting! I'm a MMORPG gamedesigner myself, and from what I saw on the missions gameplay - VO developers are genuis! [Here goes lots of good words about interesting mission tasks, player cooperation, NPC AI, NPC chat and so on...]

5. Open-source GUI and scripts/binds/aliases - this is very good for advanced users - the ability to make custom HUD, macros and key binds seriously improves the player depth of interaction with the game.

6. True cross-platform support - I've recently migrated from Windows to Linux, so I was very happy to find the good MMORPG, that runs natively on Linux.

7. Ion storms - a form of random encounters, that affect all players. Very good idea. Especially when other players use storms to catch other players :)

[update]

8. Active NPC-filled world - I mean there ARE lots of NPC ships flying in space of Vendetta Online, doing their own business. I have met some NPC convoys, flying from one system to another, following the plotted route. You can follow them around, and see what happens to them. They honestly dock to stations, undock and fly 3000m from asteroids to start a warp. Everything to make us believe they are real pilots, not bots. I like that very much.

9. Nice economic system - most things have their prices calculated on supply/demand mechanics, and it really works. I have sold some Scrap Metal on mining stations for a quite high price, while the same item on other station cost much less. Making money by trading in Vendetta Online is very interesting process even now, when the number of tradeable goods is not too high (comparing to EVE Online, for example).

10. "Easy come - easy go" system - you can earn lots of money by trading, mining or doing missions, that allows you to buy lots of different ships, weapons and equipment. I do not afraid to lose a ship, because it's price is much less than my daily profit - that allows me to participate in PvP and go to risky PvE encounters. In other words - I can just enjoy the game without spending too much time "farming" money for another PvP combat.

11. Another good thing - a "buyback" system. Whenever I lose my ship - I'm offered to buy the same ship with same equipment at the moment I respawn at the station. Makes it much easier to continue anything I was doing before I got shot.

12. Systems, that support players cooperative actions - like group mining system, group hunting the high-level Hive bots and so on. You can play and enjoy this game alone, but playing in team makes the game much more interesting and game mechanics support it.

That's it for now, but I think I'll add more positive things to this list some time later, when I get more experience in Vendetta Online.

Now I'd like to say few words about things I didn't like much (but I'm sure most of them can and will be corrected in future).

1. The graphics of different content has different level of detail. For example, some ships have good models and textures, while others look somewhat poor. Asteroids and ice crystals look very nice, but some space backgrounds need some improvements.

But all graphics and sound content improvement is definitely a secondary priority work. The most important is gameplay, which I personally find very interesting so far.

2. Some parts of game interface could be more user-friendly. I speak mostly of the station services interface, but some ship GUI could be improved as well. For example, I would have changed the buy/sell GUI buttons in stations to be more compact and close-placed to each other. But that improvement, like most others, need serious description and discussion.

I will post more detailed suggestions concerning GUI improvements later, when I check the availiable GUI plugins.

3. One thing that I definitely didn't like was restarting the server without a warning, which happened recently during the new version upgrade. Also I didn't get any warning before getting disconnected from server, when my trial time expired. I know that's a rare situation, but for me it's a matter of basic respect to the game users.

4. Concerning gameplay - I personally found most ships in the game having very similar stats, like speed for example. I expected to see light maneurable fighters being much faster than common trading/mining vessel, but their top speed in the current version of the game is nearly equal. Perhaps, there are other factors, that make these ships very different from each other, but for unexperienced user like myself, it looks confusing.

5. There is no way to repair a ship in space, and that makes life somewhat boring, because I have to return to stations often simply to repair the damaged ship before continuing my combat training. Most probably I'm supposed to use the help of another player with Armor Repair module, but solo gameplay is a big part of any MMORPG, and it requires a player to be semi-autonomic in some situations.

6. Most ships are of the same size. I mean there are no really different sizes of ships available for players, though I have seen NPCs flying much bigger ships. Hopefully, the ships of different sizes will appear in stores in future.

Everything I mentioned as things that I didn't like - are not the highest priority, and I totally understand this.

The overall impression of the game - GREAT! AMAZING! INTERESTING!

I don't regret subscribing to Vendetta Online and I'm sure I won't regret it later.

Thanks a lot to developers, guys, you're doing a great work!
Keep it up!
Jul 21, 2008 Lord~spidey link
Awesome post
better than any review on any game site i have read so far anyways :)
welcome to vo, enjoy your stay.

you can repair in space you need another player to heal you ;)

and server restarts come with a warning at 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
minutes before the server restarts you must have missed them :P
I don't know about the trial account tho.
hope that cleared up a couple of things.
*passes out*
*ZZZzzzZZZzzzzZZZzzzZZZ...*
Jul 21, 2008 JJPro link
Some comments:
- you can also repair in space by docking at a capital ship if there is one around, this is e.g. useful for the border skirmish mission
- the economic model is still limited, money can be earned too easily, the devs are working on this as they want to introduce crafting
Otherwise enjoy VO and join some player driven events for the maximum fun :)
Jul 21, 2008 keyn134 link
Thank you, guys!

I know about the repair modules, I just got used to EVE Online system, where I can use similar equipment to fix my own ship in space.

As for the economic model - yeah, I'm sure developers will offer us more ways to spend lots of money soon :)
Jul 21, 2008 Professor Chaos link
I agree the GUI is a bit clunky, but it's much better now than it used to be, and I think many ships could use a significant speed tweak, too. I'd love to see most ships max speeds be as much as 100 or 120m/s, and their armor greatly reduced. Then, in the "other" addons category, the option to increase the armor (no port needed to install this), greatly increasing the hit points and weight of the ship, and therefore reducing acceleration by a lot. If you think about it, in space, only light speed is a barrier for max speed, so the real limitations are thrust and acceleration. I agree we should have very fast ships that can't survive much damage, and slower chunkier ships that can take a lot of punishment.