I am fast approaching 40 hours in game, which is the equivalent of an average work week in the U.S. I figured I would share my experiences of Vendetta Online so far. This is I guess part diary, part review.

I saw VO in the Ubuntu Software Center about 2 weeks ago. I took a look at the VO website, and as I'm fairly drawn to space games, I figured I'd give it a try. I am a 7 year (8 counting beta) EVE veteran. While I know these are two different games, there are some similarities and differences that I will point out.

The first thing I noticed when starting the game is how it reminded me of Vicarious Vision's Terminus game. Another multiplayer space game released for Windows, Mac, Linux platforms. While Terminus wasn't a true MMORPG, it was one of the first space games with serious multiplayer duels, and true physics flight model. This put me at ease with the controls. While I am no master at these type of games, I got my bearings in the early training quite quickly.

I spent about half of my trial running trough the tutorials. I didn't try and rush through them, but I didn't soak in every mudane detail either. After 6 hours of game time, I decided I needed to explore this universe more, so I used pay by cash to purchase a month of play time. One thing I didn't like at first was the station/pda interfaces. They remind me a lot of CDE or old DOS VGA graphic games.. I know they can be skinned, but they have a campy feel to them. After playing for 40 hours, I can say, it's not a big deal and having just about everything mapped to a keystroke gets me around very fast. The normal space flight HUD is more than adequate, and is much better than the station interface.

After getting out of the n00b section, and doing some regular sorts of missions, I decided to first work on making my self finacially sufficient. In most space sims, this involves Mining or Trading.

I tried trading, but it is probably the weak point of the game. I know there are guides to do it sufficiently, but this is the one thing where I feel EVE shines. I think the trade system could be vastly enhanced in VO. Not to become like EVE's, but for starters, a system wide market without having to launch would be a nice addition. Trade will be a thing I do sparringly as needed.

On the other side of trade is Mining. The mining systems works fine. I guess there are small things that can be improved on, but overall Mining works well enough where it isn't too much of a grind to accomplish something. I started mining as soon as the tutorials mentioned I should try a mining station to learn the trade. It was fairly simple, and the first thing I worked on was getting an Atlas to hold some ore. I think I mined a little too much at first to be honest, because I was 1/1/0/1/4 on my second day. But, it got me some credits, and that payed for my next adventure, combat type missions.

I'll be honest, I wasn't too thrilled with combat at first. It seemed slow and awkward. Then I got a real gun and a decent ship, and everything changed. I took a mission that gave me a Valent Nuetron Blaster, and the combat system came to life. The annoying beginner drones (DenTek, Orun and Kannick Collectors) seemed to take forever to get down at first. I know much of this has to do with my flying skills, but I found out that having a decent gun helps matters. Combat all of a sudden became insanely fun. Here is where Vendetta shines, fast twitch combat, with sensory overload. I was taking all of the combat missions I could at this point. At one point I got a simple escort two pilots a few systems over mission, but it was my undoing because I encounterd my first TyCorp assault drone. Goodbye Valent Nuetron Blaster, but that was ok, because at this point I was able to use normal Nuetron Blasters.

The ship setups are fairly straight forward, and I figured out rather quick what the different stats mean. With EVE, there are so many different module slots and modules to put in each ship, it can take years of tweaking setups and doing the math to get the most efficient effect out of it. In VO, the best policy is to fit it, and go out and fight with it. That's one thing I love about VO right now, I can get killed and not have to wait a long time to get right back in the action.

My PvP experience is very limited. And I mean very limited. I took a mission in Verasi to mine Xithricite. I told I could mine it from the asteroids holding the station together, which was a nice touch. After mining a bunch, I was asked to transport some stuff to this "Corvus" faction I keep hearing about. Along the way, a pirate (I assume) by the name of S7even (I think that was his name) told me to cut my engines. I ran away rather easily. One thing I think VO could use is some Electronic Warfare type combat for the pirates... Propulsion jamming and the like. I'm sure if S7even had the angle on me, he could've taken me out rather easily, but it was fairly simple to just run away. I'm sure I will have many more encounters, and I sure a lot of those I won't be so lucky, or maybe when I'm proficient enough, I will preffer to stay and fight.

I know I'm a little long winded, but I'm actually excited to play VO. I still play Eve, but where combat in EVE is logistical, calculated, long winded, and sometimes filled with frustrating lag, VO is a breath of fresh air to me. What's even more is there is a Linux client so I can play on my laptop and when I'm at work doing unpaid overtime, sitting around updating firmware and servers....

I'm am equally impressed that this game was made by such a small development team. I can see where it has it's plusses and minuses. You kind of have to pick your poisons wisely and can't just send teams to go add this and that. I wasn't around in the beggining, so I don't know how much the game has evolved, but from the little I've seen, it looks like a great deal of work went into it.

Finally, a word about the Community. I haven't used Channel 100 much, mainly because I like feeling out an MMORPG solo at first (go figure). I like to be self sufficient, but I have asked the occasional n00b question, and for the most part I got good insight from the players. Of course I ran into the usual "You kiss my veteran ass, n00b!" response a couple times, which if I didn't I wouldn't think I was really playing an MMORPG. But for the most part the community seems close knit and fun...

I plan on playing VO for a while... I'm only 4/4/3/2/4 right now, but plan on working that up a bit more and then trying a little PvP... Would be nice if a n00b toruney could be arranged sometime. I know the veterans will make quick work of me :P

Cheers,

Fantus

Welcome to VO. I don't know much about Eve but I do agree that the trade system here is severely lacking if only because of the complete lack of any even remotely realistic P2P trading.

Apart from that have fun, blast a way.

*A slightly scorched green ship emerges from the shadows, and a scarred man wearing a bearskin and a helmet fitted with horns appears on your comstation*

There are other ways to make money. Some pilots may wish you to provide them with "protection", so that nothing bad happens to them as they pass through your territory, for which they are willing to pay a small fee. Many of them need this "protection" and don't even realize it, so you should always ask. Of course, should they decline your offer, you may still want to provide some of your other, erm... "services" for free. In particular, you may wish to help insure that they reach their "final destination", where they will... "unload" their valuable cargo. And as the location for this, er... "unloading" is usually in the middle of nowhere, you might find it reasonable to, as a good Samaritan, for the sake of clean spaceways, haul that loot - er... cargo I mean - back to a station.

Farewell, and may the explosions burn brightly.

*The strange green ship fades back into the void from whence it came*

Make sure to get your healthy does of plugins: http://vo-wiki.com/wiki/Plug-ins

Especially targetless ( http://targetless.com/ ) ;)

Good to hear you're enjoying it here so far :)

Welcome to VO. Thanks for the feedback :).

I like you, guy. And really, how often do I say that?

I am rather envious of you, I've played the game on and off (and off the radar) for 5 years now I think? And the one thing a veteran like me remorses over is his own experience either no longer serving him in the current time or there is no adventure left. Reading your review on fighting and how much fun it was for you reminded me of myself when I first began to enjoy fighting. The mystery and the rush of it all, I'd trade all my vo memories for it. Maybe one day I will find a way to relive it, start over and not be found out. unfortunately I am not identified by name as much as I am by my fighting style I guess. I'm rambling and hijacking bleh.

Good luck to you and maybe I will see you around

Oh look, an Emo-Mecha. Yawn.

Welcome, Fantus. I think most of us agree with you that trade needs a lot of work. It used to be trivially easy to make massive amounts trading. The devs fixed that, and now it's a pain in the ass to make anything trading commodities without a massive amount of data. There are plugins that accumulate it for you, and some guilds that use shared databases to make it easier. Unfortunately, it's too much hassle for anyone else.

Escort missions are fairly profitable, especially when they take place in grey space. If you don't run in to an ion storm full of hive bots, they're also trivially easy. If you do, the rewards for fighting them off generally aren't worth the effort. That should probably get fixed.

I'm not sure how successful a newbie PVP event would be. Perhaps you can organize one and find out. The best thing to do if you want to improve is generally to get a vet to teach you. Fighting people who aren't better than you isn't the fastest way to build skills. Good ones will provide you with advice and not just kill you until you fight better (which should not be taken to imply that they won't kill you a lot while teaching you).

Mecha: Just start a pacifist alt. Nobody will ever catch on if you don't PVP.

My first venture trading in VO was actually trying to find items for a mission. I found 2 of 3 rather easy, then the third item was a hunt and peck ordeal through multiple systems. Basically, that's what trading is in VO, at least from my limited exposure.

I'm not the biggest of traders in any space sim, but IMHO, the difficulty trading shouldn't be finding what stations to trade from and to, but the actual passage of those items through hostile space. Make the rewards match the risk, and you will make both the traders and the pirates happy, and leave out the hunt and peck, or at least make it less blatant. To be honest, I know there are trade reports, but they seem to be certain doom to follow to the letter.

As far as the n00b vs. n00b wars, I agree that learning from more experience pilots will reap greater benefit, but once I start honing some skills, I want to test them against people at my level, not far beyond it, otherwise it's an exercise in frustration.

Unfortunately I haven't had much time to play the past week, RL seems to get in the way of my gaming habits. I hope to venture out into some more dangerous territory later this week, and maybe I will start looking for some vets to teach me a thing or two. I've been thinking of purchasing some type of joystick setup. I have an Xbox 360 controller, but I wasn't happy with it's responsiveness in VO, probably just a setup issue, but I'm not liking it so far. I'll read the posts on joysticks again and see which way I will lean.

Fantus

Actually a former Eve player myself. I have been playing STO lately but I find the level progression extremely slow and boring and the overall game design appears to be a mess they are trying to clean up after they had already launched.

I have lately been looking at VO, partially due to the upcoming Android port. I do have some questions though. I'll say right off the bad I'm not overly thrilled about the twited based gameplay as its just not my cup of tea but its something I can overlook if the rest of the game is good.

1. Are the penalties for being killed in PVP serious?

One of the things I hated about Eve was how geared the game was for PVP. Griefing and scamming was not only tolerated but its was practically encouraged. I simply don't have huge amounts of time to dedicate to an MMO for corporate wars and grinding skill development so I'm hunting for something where I can put a few hours a week in and not lose all my progress by being griefed because I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

2. How fast/slow is the player progression in-game? If I'm playing 2-4 hours a week is it going to take me a year to get anywhere?

3. Is this game heavily grind based or are gameplay and missions actually entertaining?

If any other questions pop to mind I'll toss them up.

1. Are the penalties for being killed in PVP serious?

Death currently has no penalty other than "oh crap, need a new ship and what color do I want it?"

2. How fast/slow is the player progression in-game? If I'm playing 2-4 hours a week is it going to take me a year to get anywhere?

At lower levels, it is incredibly fast... you can hit combat 5 from 0 in an hour or so. At higher levels, it is incredibly slow and you can go from combat 15 to 16 in 3 to 12 months depending on what you do and how often you play'

3. Is this game heavily grind based or are game play and missions actually entertaining?

All MMOs are grind based but grinding in VO is skill based (except trade and mining, which are based on whether or not you would make a good CPA or fry cook in real life) how ever the missions are generally fun (though we do need more of them, variety being the spice of life and all.) however, you also get xp (combat only) from PvP as long as the player you kill is of a higher level than you.

Welcome to VO, hope you stick around and above all... have fun.

you can hit combat 5 from 0 in an hour or so

Don't expect to do this if it's your first time playing... however

I hate to agree with Mecha (No, I really really do) but welcome to the VO verse. I dunno how long I've played this game for, but I really wish I could forget I ever played it and pick it up tomorrow. I'd prolly mine and stuff too, but I just got too bored of shooting stuff that I got bored. Did take me 7 years or so though :)