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For Phaserlight
from http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/26745?page=3#325902
I understand your investment. I can't think very many players who have contributed as much or more than you have. And yes, the developers are very involved and responsive. I'll agree that they have achieved a great deal being limited in resources.
That said, even Incarnate pointed out in a recent post that without the income they have been getting from the tablet market to make Vendetta playable on those devices, that chances were strong that Guild Software would have gone out of business in 2010. http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/26484?page=2
I don't blame Guild Software for the decisions they have made to keep this game alive. I do worry about what happens when the well runs dry if Guild hasn't built a stronger revenue stream through subscriptions or alternative funding sources like Kickstarter. I believe Incarnates vision is the space junkies wet dream as described previously. Unfortunately at present the reality more closely resembles one of those 'close enough' memes from cheezburger.
And sure, I'm fine with fixing broken gameplay that leads to an exploit. Unfortunately, from my perspective, the fix left the gameplay just as broken while killing the truly fun part which was the research to find a remarkable deal. Spending days or a week or more then grinding to maximize the final reward- and occasionally losing it all because someone else came along and sold a few of the same items. Anyone with half a memory can just fly around buying and selling and make a ton of profit- even without tools like TA. And I would just point out, that there are still static trade exploits left untouched.
Now would I want that exploit to be reinstated into the game? Hell no. But I would like the economic redux to be completed. I still think that the curve by which prices drop should be reversed. I still think that the distribution of station types needs to be reevaluated. I still think that overall pricing needs to be reconsidered. I still think that storage should not be free anywhere except perhaps your nations capital station. There should always be a cost to doing business. Trade should exist for more than just working up faction standing. Manufacturing should be a significant aspect of trade. One that leads to significant rewards for effort and that also plays a meaningful role in the overall economic and military situation of nations.
Now you might not have noticed, but through the years I have made more than my share of both brilliant and idiotic specific suggestions for improving the game. I don't really see the point in a broad conversation to reiterate them. I have been quite vocal about the economy. I have made my support well known for adding cost to playing VO in terms of death and control of property. If you like, we can Google the forum.
Now I love BT. He's like the Houseplant that got away to me. He's got a point. However, instead of using the word 'canvas', I would use 'marker board'.
You talk about key moments in your VO experience. I have mine as well. It took me a year and a half to finally score my 25th pk. And I enjoyed every single death I endured along the way.
The idea that I'm listing my complaints in order to have my personal wish list fulfilled by the development team is incorrect. There is nothing unique to my list. Almost all of them have been discussed repeatedly on the Suggestions forum. Why just the other day, someone posted a suggestion to improve player to player trade! I don't expect the direction of game development to always suit my preferences. I see the potential value in the conquerable stations, but I could care less about the tridents.
The bottom line is that you can be the best at pvp, you can bust your ass in Deneb or CTC or trade, mining or whatever, and it doesn't make a difference. There are players with over 4 billion credits and now 10,000 pks. Borders have not shifted, control of resources has not been affected, and as always before, the player base is so small that in order to create meaningful conflict, the smaller guilds align with the neutral in order to combat the new big kid on the block until six months down the line and a new influx of players old and new change the social dynamics.
I understand your investment. I can't think very many players who have contributed as much or more than you have. And yes, the developers are very involved and responsive. I'll agree that they have achieved a great deal being limited in resources.
That said, even Incarnate pointed out in a recent post that without the income they have been getting from the tablet market to make Vendetta playable on those devices, that chances were strong that Guild Software would have gone out of business in 2010. http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/26484?page=2
I don't blame Guild Software for the decisions they have made to keep this game alive. I do worry about what happens when the well runs dry if Guild hasn't built a stronger revenue stream through subscriptions or alternative funding sources like Kickstarter. I believe Incarnates vision is the space junkies wet dream as described previously. Unfortunately at present the reality more closely resembles one of those 'close enough' memes from cheezburger.
And sure, I'm fine with fixing broken gameplay that leads to an exploit. Unfortunately, from my perspective, the fix left the gameplay just as broken while killing the truly fun part which was the research to find a remarkable deal. Spending days or a week or more then grinding to maximize the final reward- and occasionally losing it all because someone else came along and sold a few of the same items. Anyone with half a memory can just fly around buying and selling and make a ton of profit- even without tools like TA. And I would just point out, that there are still static trade exploits left untouched.
Now would I want that exploit to be reinstated into the game? Hell no. But I would like the economic redux to be completed. I still think that the curve by which prices drop should be reversed. I still think that the distribution of station types needs to be reevaluated. I still think that overall pricing needs to be reconsidered. I still think that storage should not be free anywhere except perhaps your nations capital station. There should always be a cost to doing business. Trade should exist for more than just working up faction standing. Manufacturing should be a significant aspect of trade. One that leads to significant rewards for effort and that also plays a meaningful role in the overall economic and military situation of nations.
Now you might not have noticed, but through the years I have made more than my share of both brilliant and idiotic specific suggestions for improving the game. I don't really see the point in a broad conversation to reiterate them. I have been quite vocal about the economy. I have made my support well known for adding cost to playing VO in terms of death and control of property. If you like, we can Google the forum.
Now I love BT. He's like the Houseplant that got away to me. He's got a point. However, instead of using the word 'canvas', I would use 'marker board'.
You talk about key moments in your VO experience. I have mine as well. It took me a year and a half to finally score my 25th pk. And I enjoyed every single death I endured along the way.
The idea that I'm listing my complaints in order to have my personal wish list fulfilled by the development team is incorrect. There is nothing unique to my list. Almost all of them have been discussed repeatedly on the Suggestions forum. Why just the other day, someone posted a suggestion to improve player to player trade! I don't expect the direction of game development to always suit my preferences. I see the potential value in the conquerable stations, but I could care less about the tridents.
The bottom line is that you can be the best at pvp, you can bust your ass in Deneb or CTC or trade, mining or whatever, and it doesn't make a difference. There are players with over 4 billion credits and now 10,000 pks. Borders have not shifted, control of resources has not been affected, and as always before, the player base is so small that in order to create meaningful conflict, the smaller guilds align with the neutral in order to combat the new big kid on the block until six months down the line and a new influx of players old and new change the social dynamics.
I'd hate to think how many player kills I actually have if I could merge all the yodaofborg's together. heh
This probably could have gone under Suggestions.
I appreciate that you made this thread in order to continue our discussion, rather than dragging the linked to thread further off-topic. I will respond to your points in reverse order:
The exact numbers are not as important as the amount of time and risk required in order to attain the achievements you outline. I'd imagine it takes a lot of time to get to 4 bil credits and 10,000 pks; there is not a lot of risk involved. Because this is a game, I see this comes with a silver lining: I don't want to lose a virtual asset I've worked X number of hours to build in a single blow. The real issue I think is one of change: if I work to build up some magnificent value of credits, experience points or what have you, but am unable to do anything with them, have I really accomplished anything?
"Meaningful conflict" is an important phrase, and I think this is really at the heart of your last paragraph. The problem is one of subjectivity; I may think it's meaningful to hold keys to all three (current) conquerable stations, but you may see it as meaningless if these three stations are all that there are or ever will be. It depends on perspective. One might argue that meaningful conflict leads to so-called peak experiences, and that these experiences should be maximized and reproduced as often as possible. Imagine the ecstatic feeling of single-handedly conquering all three stations and owning keys to them all. Now what? It comes back to time; from an experiential standpoint one moment is like the next, so what delineates a peak experience from the moment before and after? I would argue that it's not the peak experience which is important at all, but rather the conflict itself.
I disagree that there is nothing unique to your list. There is a wealth of tacit knowledge among the playerbase, but only a small fraction of it may be illuminated at any given time. Both our arguments are arranged in a way such that certain aspects of the game are brought to light and examined in a specific sequence, given varying degrees of weight, and reconstituted as thoughts on a page in a manner that could never again be reproduced. There are countless non-obvious relationships at play; some of these may be more important to me today because of the temperature outside, or due to other various relationships in my life. As I sit here and write this argument, I am also aware of myself writing this argument, and that has an effect on what is said.
The main body of your argument is about the game's economy, and from what I can see you have good points at all turns. I agree with the sentiment of wanting the economic redux to be finished. I would also like to see dynamic buy prices along with dynamic sell prices for all goods. I have no opinion on the distribution of station types. I'm not sure what you mean by having the curve by which prices drop reversed.
I agree to an extent about the cost of doing business. I would say that this should exist to the degree that it is not a significant barrier to new players entering the market. VO has kind of a 'terraced economy'; there are goods which are sold from stations, and sell prices go up and down for these goods depending on player activity. Well and good. Then there are manufactured items, which are sometimes bartered between players. These are hundreds if not thousands of times more expensive than the goods sold from stations, because they are scarce. I would like to see VO's economy become gradually more integrated to the point where there is more of a smooth ascent between goods that are freely traded by the stations and goods that are manufactured by players.
Lastly, I feel that it's pointless to worry about Guild Software's well being, unless you are hired by them. The game is here today. VO has been around for a while, and I would be surprised if it were closed tomorrow. Two or three years from now, who knows, but I certainly hope it continues for at least another decade or more.
I have to get back to writing an exam submission so I probably won't reply here again today, but if it's all right with you I'd like to move this to Suggestions.
I appreciate that you made this thread in order to continue our discussion, rather than dragging the linked to thread further off-topic. I will respond to your points in reverse order:
The exact numbers are not as important as the amount of time and risk required in order to attain the achievements you outline. I'd imagine it takes a lot of time to get to 4 bil credits and 10,000 pks; there is not a lot of risk involved. Because this is a game, I see this comes with a silver lining: I don't want to lose a virtual asset I've worked X number of hours to build in a single blow. The real issue I think is one of change: if I work to build up some magnificent value of credits, experience points or what have you, but am unable to do anything with them, have I really accomplished anything?
"Meaningful conflict" is an important phrase, and I think this is really at the heart of your last paragraph. The problem is one of subjectivity; I may think it's meaningful to hold keys to all three (current) conquerable stations, but you may see it as meaningless if these three stations are all that there are or ever will be. It depends on perspective. One might argue that meaningful conflict leads to so-called peak experiences, and that these experiences should be maximized and reproduced as often as possible. Imagine the ecstatic feeling of single-handedly conquering all three stations and owning keys to them all. Now what? It comes back to time; from an experiential standpoint one moment is like the next, so what delineates a peak experience from the moment before and after? I would argue that it's not the peak experience which is important at all, but rather the conflict itself.
I disagree that there is nothing unique to your list. There is a wealth of tacit knowledge among the playerbase, but only a small fraction of it may be illuminated at any given time. Both our arguments are arranged in a way such that certain aspects of the game are brought to light and examined in a specific sequence, given varying degrees of weight, and reconstituted as thoughts on a page in a manner that could never again be reproduced. There are countless non-obvious relationships at play; some of these may be more important to me today because of the temperature outside, or due to other various relationships in my life. As I sit here and write this argument, I am also aware of myself writing this argument, and that has an effect on what is said.
The main body of your argument is about the game's economy, and from what I can see you have good points at all turns. I agree with the sentiment of wanting the economic redux to be finished. I would also like to see dynamic buy prices along with dynamic sell prices for all goods. I have no opinion on the distribution of station types. I'm not sure what you mean by having the curve by which prices drop reversed.
I agree to an extent about the cost of doing business. I would say that this should exist to the degree that it is not a significant barrier to new players entering the market. VO has kind of a 'terraced economy'; there are goods which are sold from stations, and sell prices go up and down for these goods depending on player activity. Well and good. Then there are manufactured items, which are sometimes bartered between players. These are hundreds if not thousands of times more expensive than the goods sold from stations, because they are scarce. I would like to see VO's economy become gradually more integrated to the point where there is more of a smooth ascent between goods that are freely traded by the stations and goods that are manufactured by players.
Lastly, I feel that it's pointless to worry about Guild Software's well being, unless you are hired by them. The game is here today. VO has been around for a while, and I would be surprised if it were closed tomorrow. Two or three years from now, who knows, but I certainly hope it continues for at least another decade or more.
I have to get back to writing an exam submission so I probably won't reply here again today, but if it's all right with you I'd like to move this to Suggestions.
I feel that it's pointless to worry about Guild Software's well being, unless you are hired by them.
Yeah, it's really pointless to worry about whether investing time in a game that purports to be more than a FPS will be around later in the year. Just spend all your rec time on the game now.
Yeah, it's really pointless to worry about whether investing time in a game that purports to be more than a FPS will be around later in the year. Just spend all your rec time on the game now.
I put it here, because this is more of an ongoing conversation rather than meaningful discussion of a suggestion. My other consideration was Off Topic, but then this is Vendetta related, so there you have it. I'm fine with where ever this thread is placed.
That said, you are illustrating the point I was trying to make beautifully with your first paragraph. Without meaningful achievement or consequence, Guild may as well turn this game around and head back into Space Quake territory (which would be fine by me- I just don't like being caught in the middle) But when the definition of victory is defined by things like which side has at least one person with less of a life than the other side and is able to participate just that little bit longer. Or the risk of having your ship destroyed and losing any cargo is merely a trivial inconvenience to anyone but an extremely new player.
You get a bit philosophical in your comment regarding 'meaningful conflict'. I'm a bit more coarse in my thoughts. We started out based on my assertion that Vendetta feels like a demo designed to show off Guild's game engine. My focus is primarily on the economy because that is where I mostly interact with the game.
Essentially, what I have tried to illustrate are areas that work initially. The economy is probably OK for a new player learning the game. Deneb and CTC are exciting ways to participate in the war. The problem as I see it, is that they don't lead anywhere. As Impavid responded in the other threat, 'Direction'. The conquerable stations are really the notable exception because they are desired resources that can't be gotten any other way. They were a step in the right direction.
The distribution of station types really only matters from a trade perspective. I would also include distribution of widget by system. Currently like stations trade mostly the same items. You can with a decent memory trade station to station always buying and selling the most profitable items. The more diverse your stations, the more trading opportunities you have. Also, a product that is manufactured in the system, should be distributed to and from all stations causing the price for a given item in a specific system to be continually low. By doing this, and having a slightly different set of items produced in another system, you increase the need to research trade routes and amplify the risk by negating direct station to station trading. For this to be meaningful, we need to return to a trade situation that was similar to what the first economic redux fixed and that is the ability to sell larger quantities of goods for decent profit margins. What I mean by the curve is the algorithm that is being used currently to determine the buy price at a station vs the number of units sold. Currently, there is a sharp drop starting at the first unit which then tapers off to a more gentle decline once trade in the item becomes valueless. The drop off rate should in my opinion, taper off slowly for the first thousand or two units- possibly up to 10,000 before reaching a saturation point that causes the price to rapidly decline into a net loss for the player.
Lastly, I will disagree that it is pointless to worry about Guild Software's well being. This brings us back to the idea of investment. This may just be a game, the achievements may all be fictional, but my time is not. Right now, my time playing the game is intermittent because I don't really see anything in VO that I haven't accomplished at least once. I've made my billion I have over a 1000 pk on my characters, I don't want a trident. I would love to rejoin my guild if there were something meaningful I could contribute to a group project. And finally, Vendetta is the closest thing on the market that matches what I envision a space game should be.
That said, you are illustrating the point I was trying to make beautifully with your first paragraph. Without meaningful achievement or consequence, Guild may as well turn this game around and head back into Space Quake territory (which would be fine by me- I just don't like being caught in the middle) But when the definition of victory is defined by things like which side has at least one person with less of a life than the other side and is able to participate just that little bit longer. Or the risk of having your ship destroyed and losing any cargo is merely a trivial inconvenience to anyone but an extremely new player.
You get a bit philosophical in your comment regarding 'meaningful conflict'. I'm a bit more coarse in my thoughts. We started out based on my assertion that Vendetta feels like a demo designed to show off Guild's game engine. My focus is primarily on the economy because that is where I mostly interact with the game.
Essentially, what I have tried to illustrate are areas that work initially. The economy is probably OK for a new player learning the game. Deneb and CTC are exciting ways to participate in the war. The problem as I see it, is that they don't lead anywhere. As Impavid responded in the other threat, 'Direction'. The conquerable stations are really the notable exception because they are desired resources that can't be gotten any other way. They were a step in the right direction.
The distribution of station types really only matters from a trade perspective. I would also include distribution of widget by system. Currently like stations trade mostly the same items. You can with a decent memory trade station to station always buying and selling the most profitable items. The more diverse your stations, the more trading opportunities you have. Also, a product that is manufactured in the system, should be distributed to and from all stations causing the price for a given item in a specific system to be continually low. By doing this, and having a slightly different set of items produced in another system, you increase the need to research trade routes and amplify the risk by negating direct station to station trading. For this to be meaningful, we need to return to a trade situation that was similar to what the first economic redux fixed and that is the ability to sell larger quantities of goods for decent profit margins. What I mean by the curve is the algorithm that is being used currently to determine the buy price at a station vs the number of units sold. Currently, there is a sharp drop starting at the first unit which then tapers off to a more gentle decline once trade in the item becomes valueless. The drop off rate should in my opinion, taper off slowly for the first thousand or two units- possibly up to 10,000 before reaching a saturation point that causes the price to rapidly decline into a net loss for the player.
Lastly, I will disagree that it is pointless to worry about Guild Software's well being. This brings us back to the idea of investment. This may just be a game, the achievements may all be fictional, but my time is not. Right now, my time playing the game is intermittent because I don't really see anything in VO that I haven't accomplished at least once. I've made my billion I have over a 1000 pk on my characters, I don't want a trident. I would love to rejoin my guild if there were something meaningful I could contribute to a group project. And finally, Vendetta is the closest thing on the market that matches what I envision a space game should be.
I just wanted to chime in to say that I appreciate the intelligent discussion here. Having different perspectives laid out in a rational manner is extremely valuable.
YOU ALL SMELL LIKE MOLDY TESTICAL SKINBAGS!
It had to be done to keep the balance, carry on.
It had to be done to keep the balance, carry on.
Please, nobody ask him.