Hey I just wanted to give some constructive feedback on why I'm canceling my subscription. (besides money)

I have by no means mastered the game or even explored all of its facets but I will share my opinions thus of what I have played thus far.

Reason 1: Graphics and UI, the engine runs fine and I know that its not supposed to be graphically stunning. But the whole look gets boring quick. The ships are fairly unimaginative and the weapons fire is cartoonish. I would suggest taking a look a X3 reunion (a game I just bought) and perhaps getting some fresh ideas from that game. (the weapons fire is pretty convincing). Also just having some personal avatars or something would be nice.

Reason 2: plot, there really isn't one. I wish there was a string of missions that immersed the player in the culture of the chosen faction. From reading the wiki I saw that there have been in the past player driven stories (wars, guild battles, pirate infestations etc.) But that seems to have died out almost completely.

Reason 3: That annoying beeping sound when you hit the targeted ship.

Overall the balance of rewards versus risk just doesn't compell me to keep pursuing goals in the game.

The people are friendly and I wish there was a larger player base but I just don't see this game making a comeback without some drastic tlc.

Thanks folks I'll keep checking back to see how things change and you never know I might resubscribe someday.

Peace : Onimbus

Don't let the doorknob break yer rosebud on the way out.

I think he's really just leaving because he misspelled his name. He'll be back as "omnibus."

On the other hand, unlike many who post threads like this, this guy doesn't sound bitter, he's even being polite. This is constructive criticism, and while I disagree about the "lack" of plot being a big problem at this stage in the game, he's got a point about the beeping....

I hope next time you check in you change your mind, onimbus.

No no, it's Oh Nimbus, Chaos. How can you not see it? ;)

The beeping could be made optional, but I like it as a feedback (I love feedback control, so nice and absolute).

Peace, onimbus. We hardly knew ye.

OP...as for plot, reading the HUGE backstory is a good start. Certainly helps one take pride in their affiliation, at least.

If you all were honest, you wouldn't flame someone for pointing out points #1 and #2 which are obvious to anyone who plays the game for more than just PvP.

Is this getting better? Yes, at a slow pace (given there are only 4 people to work on it), but until some major issues are addressed (soon?) I don't see these types of comments ceasing....

As I see it, the real niche for VO would be plot expansion and gameplay development rather than more visually stunning graphics.

Even though I'm enjoying the game, I can see were the OP is coming from and how it would effect my LONG term play. Now I'm just looking at it from a 2/2/1/3/0 perspective which I understand is barely scratching the surface, but if we want the game to grow these items need addressed for those on the trial period.

- There is a HUGH backstory yes. Almost makes you think someone wrote a novelette and then built a game around it. To be honest it's probably way too big for the average player.

But that's not what I thought of when I saw 'plot'. I'll use the little bit that I really liked 'the courier pilot'. This was a 5 or 6 string of missions I did in Divinia. Running coded data pads back and forth. Each mission built nicely on the previous one, but when it ended the string; it ENDED the string. At first I thought it just tapped out that station, but no it was finished nation wide.

My 14yr has gotten his combat lic. & mining to 3 each and has been doing the escort missions, but with too few NPC attackers and the player numbers being low, he's finding those good credit makers (but unsure what to spend them on) but boring.

There really needs to be a story line plot inside the overall plot alteast for each of the different areas (combat, comm/trade, mining). Would this be a Huge undertaking? Very much so, but probably needed to keep non-hardcore Pvpers in the game.

- The ship look's are weak. I understand this is a big graphics undertaking / coding / what not, but it's hard to get excited about them as is. They need to be flashier to sell the game to the public. For something like this, visuals mean alot. Now the stations are just the opposite as I've yet to see two that look alike. Each seems unique, they have neon signs etc.... which is really nice looking.

- I like the beeping to let me know I'm hitting my target, otherwise I'd never get a kill.

It is amazing that 4 people have done something this good. The base flight/combat engine is probably the best I've ever played.

I'm with Vardonx I would love to be the ingame story lines expanded because I think if that was beefed up, then many trial players could overlook some of the graphics.

Prof. Chaos: It's my understanding the games been out since late '04. Was that just the Alpha date and the live game came ??? If that's the case than your comment would make sense. If it's been live for the last 4 years, even with just 4 people (part time game - RL other jobs I'm guessing) than most would wonder why it's not farther along.

The game isn't farther along for a few reasons.
1) The game was originally built as a "tech demo" of Guild Software's proprietary game engine. This demo was intended to entice a larger company to sink their resources into making a real game. It was hard-coded and never really designed to be a full-scale MMORPG at that stage. Sadly, about the time the demo was up the market veered away from space-genre MMOs in favor of FPS. No love.
2) World events led to a dearth of venture capitol. No external cash.
3) Four guys need to eat, and some had other jobs to pay the bills during some of those years. Reduced time.
4) An undocumented bug in the programming language they were using began to rear its ugly head as the game grew - they tried to work around it, but ultimately they had to recode. This wasn't a total loss as much of the game was still hard-coded from the tech demo days and a more modular, scalable platform was needed anyway. This caused huge delays.
5) Life happened. A founding dev and artist left, a new artist came, was trained, and left. Momerath joined and needed to be brought up to speed. Life-changing events occurred.
6) [x] a1k0n
7) Garbage trucks
8) ?
9) Profit!

I don't disagree with the OP's points, but I am skeptical of the premise that these were reasons to cancel. However I do think they are reasons to choose one game over another if one's gaming funds are limited.

"I don't disagree with the OP's points, but I am skeptical of the premise that these were reasons to cancel."

You are skeptical that these were reasons to cancel? Seriously? I believe that pretty firmly puts you in the "unable to be objective or realistic" category. Certainly, far more polished products have failed due to that same "skeptical" attitude.

The reality is, if there isn't enough to make this game stand out it will always be a niche offering at the very best. And there are some very similar MMO's as this game under development right now, with a much bigger budget. Being apologetic for the developers is all well and good, but it doesn't bring subscribers or success. The OP's criticisms are valid and, I would go so far as to say, the majority of cancellations would list all his issues as major factors as to why they no longer subscribe.

Freelancer was a great game in its day. If released today, it wouldn't sell.

Indeed.

I'm not sure why you've chosen to cherry-pick my post and get rude and indignant. I did state that his complaints were valid. I am simply doubtful of the premise that he subscribed and then canceled over them.

I can see one taking a pass at subscribing at all for the reasons given, but canceling after having already subscribed with those issues very much in the fore during the free trial seems like a cash flow thing to me. If that's the case, then certainly one would compare similar games and go for the one that is most appealing. The OP did reference money as a reason for cancellation.

I was not apologizing for the devs in the least. I was responding to the post prior to mine where it stated "If it's been live for the last 4 years, even with just 4 people (part time game - RL other jobs I'm guessing) than most would wonder why it's not farther along." I supplied information so that he and others would not have to wonder any more.

Personally I think that some good points were underlined in several of these threads. The game has potential but in a way has not picked up the pace to deliver what most players nowadays need to stick around for longer times.

I don't know what's the cash situation of the company but I strongly believe that Incarnate has a good plan to make this game better but I think they have to make a decision sooner or later to invest more into this project. Especially in hiring more people to speed up development in several more areas.

Moriel

I have to wonder in what way is the firing of weapons cartoonish? It's not like the missiles have exagerated faces and go "WHOOOOO I'm gonna GIT YEWWWWW!" as they chase the ships. If you've ever seen missiles fired in real dogfight videos, generally all you see is a bright light. Now, we may not know what nuetron and plasma cannon fire looks like, but it's not exactly cartoonish. Balls of light sounds about right.

As far as the ships go, I keep hearing that complaint. Personally, I find the ship design to be aesthetically pleasing. Some of them remind me of Wing Commander. And hey, you get to fly a 'colonial viper', what more do you want?!? Xwings? Lucas'd have a feces-fit if they put those in.

That the game needs work is a given. But guess what? That's true of EVERY living MMO out there. The day it no longer needs work is the day they shut off the servers. Still, the OP was concise and polite in his critique, so we should show him some respect.

"That the game needs work is a given. But guess what? That's true of EVERY living MMO out there."

No one was saying the opposite. The problem is speed of development. I know that Devs work around the clock but most of the complains I see are concerning the speed of new content additions that see their way into the game.

Thanks Whistler for your post. Most of those I figured on. That this started as a tech demo comes as a surprise since it works so well as a game engine for the flying part.

Kamui - As far as the ships go, I keep hearing that complaint. Personally, I find the ship design to be aesthetically pleasing. Some of them remind me of Wing Commander. And hey, you get to fly a 'colonial viper', what more do you want?!? Xwings?

When I first saw the warthog, that's exactly what I thought 'a viper', and if they could call it a viper and sell it (in advertisment) as a viper along with other matching style ships we might have more players. As for the X-wing, think of all the games that people bought JUST BECAUSE THEY COULD FLY AN X-WING or TIE FIGHTER. Some might have been short, some not so good, but consumers forgave that just because THEY COULD FLY AN X-WING or TIE FIGHTER. How many people have that same attitude because in VO they get to fly a ..... ATLAS? :)

Scottso - The reality is, if there isn't enough to make this game stand out it will always be a niche offering at the very best. And there are some very similar MMO's as this game under development right now, with a much bigger budget.

Tosheeba - The game has potential but in a way has not picked up the pace to deliver what most players nowadays need to stick around for longer times.

Both of these sum up the same point. VO IS a nice game, but there's no HOOK there. X-wings, Star Trek, Stargate, good story lines - those are all marketing hooks. You buy the game because you get to play with or in that hook item. The only Sci-Fi hook not mined out there (and I'm not sure why) would be Babylon 5. If the dev's could magically change the ship graphics to Starfury's, Narn, Centauri etc...., the universe to those systems & wormholes to the gates they used and advertised it as a B5 space game you'd see an increase in players trying it and possibly staying with it, just because there are people that want to play in that setting.

VO is a small game. It must be a labor of love as the 100? sub's (based on how many players I've been seeing of late) x $9.99 a month = Not giving up your day job. Not real sure what VO 2.0 will bring to the table; maybe all this stuff being talked about will be included and if so great and even greater if it comes out early this year as their devlog said. I just hope if it is a large change that they market it aggressively with another 2000 trial keys and e-mails to all those that tried the first set to take another look at the 'bigger and better' version.

they have well over 100 subscriptions..more like roughly 1000

"... think of all the games that people bought JUST BECAUSE THEY COULD FLY AN X-WING or TIE FIGHTER."

While I agree to varying degrees with most of the points made in this thread regarding VO's deficiencies, I don't think it fair to compare VO to games based on huge franchises; VO will never be competitive against games backed by the development budget and marketing muscle of such intellectual properties. Not that those resources even guarantee a good game, just that the sheer weight of numbers precludes an even playing field.

I have been a subscriber for six months and have renewed my subscription for another six months. I'm not sure what happens after that as VO is kind of in limbo right now with a non-functioning economy which precludes any meaningful interaction with either the game or other players. I've purposely stopped posting ideas to the suggestion forums because none of my ideas are as important as getting the economy working and the faction system reworked.

VO has been described as an FPS/RPG-MMO. I think the FPS part (the combat model) is pretty solid and the MMO part (the network architecture) seems to work well, it's the RPG part which now needs to be integrated into the game. There have been some fundamental changes made to the game in this direction just while I've been around and even more promised in the near future and my understanding of the rationale for these changes leave me hopeful but I have to admit to a growing sense of unease as I continue to wait. But I remain hopeful and will do what I can to help VO become successful because I would prefer to support independent developers rather than soulless megacorps and because VO provides an opportunity for players like me to contribute directly to the game (partially because it doesn't have a huge, unmanageable population).

P.S. A quick word about VO's community - it really is VO's greatest strength. Without the many contributions by players of binds/aliases, plugins, skins, the wiki, pieratery (defined as pirate activity that is actually entertaining rather than just mindless banditry), player-run events, mentoring of newbies (both official and not), not to mention all the suggestions and the dev's willingness to take them seriously, I truly believe VO would have folded long ago. Leveraging that community and its contributions might be the best way to make VO standout from the growing crowd.

Daare -

The quote you quoted was Kamuri and I commenting on the ship's graphic's. Eye candy I know, but it's the eye candy that stands out in the trailers etc.... that first bring a player in. I've heard it said VO generally has a more mature/older player base and I would think that to mean eye candy isn't quite as important as gameplay, but from the questions and typing in game, I'm thinking alot of the trial key players are younger and the eye candy will help keep them around.

The huge franchise comparison was more about the marketing 'Hook' than development budget etc..... There's currently a 1 man designed, independent, freeware PC game based on Babylon 5 called B5: I've found her. Fairly true to the science & look of the show, pure physic's flight etc.... If you goggle on B5 or while in FilePlanet you'll hit it. It's an older game that's still turning out new product slowly. Not a very big(long)game. Like here players have developed missions, did graphic designs of the ships etc... There's alot of sameness between it and VO. It still has a large player base, new content etc.... with no marketing at all. Because it has a 'Hook' which in this case is B5.

VO doesn't really have anything to make it stand out, no 'hook' to catch someone's attention. What is it they say about TV commericals? If you don't grab the views attention in the first 5 sec, the commerical was a waste of money? Because no one's going to watch it.

I didn't mean to imply that the devs are still working day jobs. I don't believe that is the case currently.

I would disagree with Nebless that VO is in limbo right now. In terms of outward signs of development VO was very much in limbo a short time ago, but this is actually a time of major change. Smaller changes were made recently to set the stage, and major changes are being made right now. The next several months should bring significant faction and economy changes. I assume that they'll first roll out the interdependent aspects of both, followed by an adjustment period, and then they'll backfill the details. That's been their MO in the past anyway.