I havnt played in a coupla years, maybe even a few, what has changed for the better and the worse? Ive been contemplating playing again, but the state of the game when I left it wasnt worth the subscription price. At the same time, I know a lot of things can happen and im curious what the players think, especially the older players who know what kind of vo im coming from.

Last time I played, it seemed likes vos direction was to try to move into the mobile market instead of expanding the scope of and interactivity of the game. Dont get me wrong spacequake soundbites sound great, but to me it seemed like they were giving up on thier initial dream of the game and the scope they were aiming at.

To sum up this already overly long post, I have the itch for spacequake again, but I need some incentive to fork over the cash, so tell me what you love and hate about vo.

EDIT: I checked my account, and this was the last time I played, so feedback about after this date would be preferable.
Account expiration:Expired on 2011-10-25 18:07:34

The greatest change has been in the players. New guilds and shifts in the community would probably be the largest differences you notice. Mobile has changed the way a fairly sizeable portion of the playerbase plays, as well.

As far as dev progress goes, economy has been changed, but that probably won't affect someone like you much. Conquerable stations saw some activity and now they're pretty stagnant, I'd say. Capital ships were popular for a while, everyone wanted one, but many soon realized that while their potential is great, the current implementation is sorely lacking. Collision with static objects like stations and asteroids has become weird; collisions cause nearly no damage, and it's possible to simply slip through objects (confirmed a bug. I only mention it as it has a noticeable affect on gameplay).

Essentially, not much. Many bugs have been fixed, and perhaps fewer than that have been created. The framework is now present for new features; capships and conquerable stations are there, but have a long way to go. Word is, as I'm sure you've heard, that there will be new ships soon.

I don't believe the devs have lost their vision or given up their dream, but instead have come to the point where to continue following their path, they must work on the foundation beneath them. That is to say, money was lacking, and mobile provided it. They've said they want to get back to making the game.

Hello tramshed, welcome back to the forums.

Lots have come and gone. Let me sum it up for you, the most fun and least fun parts of the game, as well as what is new and what has gone.

Fun things:
-- Guild wars for the conquerable stations (when there is activity)
-- Huge guild furballs (same deal)

Things that Annoy:
-- Can't home at conquerable stations or you get sent to your nation capitol.
-- Collision Bugs (negligible damage when crashing into a player or station)
-- Espionage is a newb

New Things:
-- Conquerable stations balancing (much easier to take, and loads of fun to contest)
-- Sexy Graphics (nebulae and other textures have increased 3 fold in resolution)
-- Mobile Platforms & Console (Android, iPad, OUYA, Oculus Rift, WinRT)
-- New Guilds

Things Fixed:
-- Black and Multicoloured Ice Roids Graphics Bug
-- VO doesn't lose chat messages during warp anymore.
-- Manufacture from Station Inventory

Immediate Future:
-- New Ships (no idea what though)

- Estrian

altguild.us nothing else matters

also try nobodies.us, they're just as big as altguild

I could probably spend a few hours writing a response to what's changed since October 2011. I'll try to keep it very short. Another place to glance over is the changelog on the wiki, which is now current through April 2013:

http://vo-wiki.com/wiki/ChangeLog/1.8

From my perspective, the biggest changes to the game involve subtle differences. The mobile expansion may seem as though it would not affect gameplay, but from my experience it greatly has. Whereas before, the archetypal MMORPG player might be someone hunched over a PC late at night, for me the archetypal image has become logging on for a few brief minutes over lunch to perform a small task in game.

The cross-platform-ness of VO has made the metagame huge; Manufacturing no longer has to fit into that late night or weekend time slot when nothing else is going on. It's possible to collect a few useful items while waiting for an appointment, knowing that that progress will carry over to all platforms. In essence, the mobile expansion has made VO an everywhere-game. The only reason I use my laptop to play VO anymore is for those PvP duels, organized events, or the occasional group brawl. I'm not sure how station conquests would measure up on mobile, but I could see playing a support role during a conquest on a mobile phone. I've had success in Hive Skirmishes on mobile, and even in PvP.

The lite sub ($1 per month) has created an interesting avenue of play; it begs the question, just how much is possible within the given license cap? This has given me cause to go back and re-start the free trial, which has granted some interesting perspectives. Knowledge of where to find a rare item can make it a race against time, heading down the right paths before the 8 hours are up. For example, if my goal is to create a lite sub character that will complement my main character during a multiplayer living room excursion on Ouya, how many credits would I need in order to support this? One possibility would be to trade up this amount, but knowing that it's possible to obtain a quantity of an extremely rare item that I could sell to another player for many millions makes that an appealing alternative. As it turns out, there are a lot of obscure long-term objectives that are possible to pursue under a lite sub. How badly do I want my lite character to have that Behemoth miner? Can I pass that crucial mission while on a 2 week trial that will open up a further avenue of missions I can pursue at leisure when the lite sub kicks in?

Finally, there is a huge mission tree I had the opportunity to organize and work on with others. Parts of this tree remain undiscovered as of today. I don't think it's possible to communicate here how hard I worked on this, but I see it as a big accomplishment. If I ever were to look for a job in the game industry, I would probably point to that work as something to review and say "Hey, I did that. I made an impact there."

Re: collision, I just want to clarify that while the lack of ship-to-non-ship damage is a bug, the lack of ship-to-ship damage is not. It's completely fucking idiotic, but it was done intentionally for the sake of poor widdle twaders who didn't like that they could be rammed to death without penalty if they sat still and ignored some punk in a hog instead of, you know, moving out of the way. So now close-quarters fighting is a little less exciting than before, and people who run out of ammo are even more pathetic than they used to be -- no more humorous stage of trying to headbutt your opponent to death before he can finish you off.

Some other changes I haven't seen mentioned yet:

You can now man your own turrets. Your ship will keep flying at whatever speed it was going while you do this.

The tutorial has some voiceovers right at the beginning.

Crates have a new design; they're now more cubic in their proportions.

There has been an alternative 3rd person view added in addition to the previous one. Not sure what the difference is as I don't really use it. Oh, and I think the game is better at remembering which view you use (or has a setting for it), so that if you want to use 3rd person all the time, it should be possible now (apparently mobile defaults to it).

I'm not sure if this happened before or after you left, but people who are really far away now drop off the sector list, so that they are completely undetectable unless you spot them visually. I think the cutoff was something like 15km or so, not sure.

Avalons have been put back into the game.

There be so few of us playin' now and traders are gettin' bored too.

When i log in they tend to ask me where i am so they can come to me to get pirated.

XD

I was on the night before last and I saw quite a few new players, both in chat and in space.

If you have a mobile companion app like Heyzap you'll also see that there are people playing from countries where English isn't the primary language.

According to Google Play, VO has been installed on between 100,000 - 500,000 Android devices, not counting Ouya.

So... I'm not really sure where the "so few of us playin'" comment is coming from.

The same place it has been coming from for years and years: the fertilizer output port.

My apology mr Guide, the game is really crowded, i cant barely avoid ramming into 500000 players when i travel through greyspace any time of da day, and i have to dodge the incessant incoming newb flux to avoid collisions when i am camping at Verasi wh in Edras.

Not speaking that i am bein' chased by a VPR tag team as soon as i dare to speak on a channel.

The inventory bug that caused client lockups when hit by rapid fire weapons like Gatling and Lightning Mines was fixed in May.

Re: DS - you're right, space could be a lot more crowded... I was simply pointing out the fact that a significant number of people have tried the game since 2011 (and are continuing to try it from many different countries, according to some web apps). Relative player quantity is a touchy subject, and probably one of the most damning criticisms I've read of any online game (logical or not). It was not my intention to mislead people into thinking space is full of half a million player ships (Eve has like... 1/10th that number), but rather a reaction toward the perception that people could be misled in the other direction.

I owe you an apology, too.

...that's enough /OT out of this one.

Only like one in every ten newbs get out of the training station. Either the state of newbs is terrifying, or the tutorials aren't all that good.

The tutorials throw too much information at the newbies at one time, in the form of large ominous text walls. But that's off topic.

Thanks for the responses. That there are more players catches my eye the most, as that has always been one of vos large problems. The universe has been far too large for the people populating it. Ill probably buy a month or two next time I get paid and see how it goes.

Now the tutorials have large ominous text walls *and* Inc's boombing space-reverb voice!

I did try to reduce the amount of text.

FYI: we did not actually change any values related to collision damage. But we did fix a very-long-standing bug in the collision system not too long ago, which we think resulted in this change in damage. The flipside is we may have also solved the wingbug, finally. But now I need to go back through and re-tweak the collision value numbers.

When I was young you just launched in a bus into a sector of vicious hive bots and angry players and look at how I turned out, I ruled the universe for a year.

I had headphones on the first time I re-took the tutorial with the voiceovers and it freaked me out.