Or Yet Another Noob Question.

Hello one and all,

I have played EVE four about six months before deciding that it was not for me. Most of the reasons are said in this review:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/208-Eve-Online

Warning: The above link may not be safe for work.

But the biggest turn off was the fact that I could not solo play. I know that this sounds silly in a MMO game, a lot of people love joining groups or clubs or corporations.

But I want a more mercenary experience where I do what I want at my own speed. I don't want a clan leader telling me that I should log on at X time in order to perform Y act.

For me, EVE broke when I took a computer generated quest that involved getting a resource and delivering it to a location in a certain time. Once I found a place that sold the resource, I spent 20-30 minutes getting there, only to find that some git had purchased all of the resources I required and was demanding a stupid amount of money to buy it.

Sorry for the waffle. The real question is:

Is it possible to actually make some kind of profit on your own, tag along with a clan if you have an ability they want and share the loot and make some progress without having to join a clan where your told want to do?

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to interact with other gamers and will role play if they want to. It's just that I like to do things at my own pace and try things when I want to.

So, Vendetta users, do you think that I could play this way in the Vendetta universe?

My thanks in advance to anyone taking the trouble to respond,

Shadders.

You absolutely don't have to join a guild in VO if you don't want to. There are plenty of missions and activities that you can do on your own and no player or group of players can ruin that for you. Once you get a good feel for the game and the community, you will likely want join a guild, but you certainly don't have to. Plenty of players never join a guild and do all sorts of activities like trading, mining, and combat all on their own.

I tend to be kind of a "solo" MMO player as well, and designed the game with that in mind (not exclusively, but at least keeping that as an option for people).

Also the guilds don't put such requirements on their members as "log in at time X and do thing Y". So sticking to a guild is just clearly defining what role you prefer in the game

VO is different on a lot of levels from EvE. Indeed, you could almost consider it to be a MMOFPS with a single gigantic map and no round end time. Team play is only required for Leviathan assaults, which are rather infrequent things, and not a prerequisite for anything else.

A great deal of the activity found in-game revolves around NPC bots that are interchangeable with players, and generated on demand- the ~80 ship large Hive Skirmish battles are a great example of such. While it's possible to bring in a team of players to get a proper furball going, the battle will go on regardless with a smaller number of people, with the extra spaces taken up by NPCs right on down until it's just you and 79 bots flinging death around the sector. I think it gives me the best of both worlds- a nice group experience, with the ease of a solo activity.

Most guilds are centered around play styles and nationalism first, with formal game events being a distant second. Informal game events are something else entirely, with a fairly good selection of player-driven activities. Some are weekly things, such as the "Deneb Run" race-around-the-galaxy, and the "Nation War" team-PvP battles. However, I don't know of any guilds now existing that will browbeat someone over a failure to appear. I think the ones that did saw their membership disperse pretty quickly.

One final thing to keep in mind is that VO tends to have very substantial additions on a periodic basis. I've never seen any other MMO undergo such a wide array of changes and expansions over the years. If you decide it's just not your cup of tea today, if you come back in a few months, you'll likely find it's changed for the better.

OK first off, I love that bit by Ben Croshaw, it's hilarious and 100% true.

I've been a member of... 5 guilds over my time in VO, some of them more than once.

Yeah, some of them want you to login at X and do Y, but I've never really felt peer pressure to "MAKE SURE TO BE THERE!" Usually I log in and do whatever the hell I want. Sometimes that's been hunting Serco in Deneb with [ITAN] guildmates, or destroying convoys with [CLM] guildmates, or actually mining with [TGFT] guildmates. Other times I've sat in B-8 and dueled other players until my eyes hurt, even while major events were transpiring with a guild I was in.

The thing that makes all this possible is the state of the game: Everything is cheap, and nothing is so valuable that it can't be replaced with a couple of minutes of trading. When items start to have value in VO, there will be a sea change and guilds will become much more serious about things, more like in EVE.

Vendetta is pretty much a free-for-all where there are almost no consequences and lots of fun to be had. Like most things, however, it's always more fun in a group.

The only reason to join a guild at the moment is organization. Other than that there's really no difference from solo playing. However, in long term development, I believe that there will eventually be activities and missions designed for guilds or otherwise large groups of players. But even then I imagine the solo player will still have plenty of options in vendetta.

I own my own asteroid belt and chase people out of it.

I own the same asteroid belt and am there whilst Spence is sleeping.

And I make fake asteroid belts and sell them to people.

haha thanks for the escapist review link, really made me laugh, and I agree. I tried EVE for 3 days and dropped it for mostly the same reasons mentioned in that review.

The rule of thumb is your asteriod belt should match your shoes.

My asteroid shoes are made of iceyo's - my feet -never- sweat.

Of course, they ache constantly, from being encased in ice like that.. but hey, nothing's perfect.

EZR

That rule only applies to people who spend a lot of time with their belt in close proximity to their shoes.

Anyway, I was in the beta for EVE. I did my time and walked away. I'm an admitted geek (though closeted enough that people are shocked that I know anything at all about computer games), and even I found it tedious.