*** Vendetta 1.8.305
- Introducing "Crystal": Vendetta Online's cash currency for Free-to-Play mobile players! Crystal may be acquired in bulk via in-app purchase, or accrued more slowly through gameplay, such as gaining experience and levels, destroying Hive Bots, and reaching Achievements. Lower level equipment requires little or no Crystal, where upper level ships and gear may have increased requirements. Crystal is used for each individual quantity of item purchased, and is in addition to Credits and other factional and license-related gameplay requirements (ie, all regular gameplay requirements remain).

- Premium Subscription players do not need Crystal, and do not earn it through gameplay.

- All non-Premium mobile players will retroactively receive Crystal for experience and achievements they have already earned.

- As a special thanks to our supportive mobile players, everyone who previously made in-app purchases for access to ships and addons will receive double (2x) the Crystal that their funds would normally purchase. This has been automatically added to the most recently used character on your account.

- The "Crystal" system replaces the previous interim "ship-access" in-app purchase method, which has been removed. Thus, it is no longer necessary to make a purchase to gain "access" to a given ship. Because Crystal can be acquired through gameplay, it further mitigates potential pay-to-win advantages between Free-to-Play users. Crystal will also make it easier for us to increase the Free-to-Play license caps in the future.

- Free-to-Play mobile users who convert to Premium Subscribers will still retain any previously-earned Crystal if they revert to Free at a later point; but while the Premium subscription is active, the previously retained Crystal will no longer be visible, and they will not accrue additional Crystal until they have reverted to Free.

- Added a new "First Kill" badge for new users, with a notification and description pop-up the first time the player docks after earning the badge.

- New simplified account conversion menu and removed the captcha.

- Improved readability of some menus on mobile devices.

- Improved gamepad usability for most dialog boxes.

- Fixed issue with swiping not always working on initial Ship Purchase tutorial.

- Changed default framerate limit to 60 FPS from 40 for a smoother UI scrolling experience.

- New Snapdragon splash screen for Snapdragon-based devices.

- Increased default font size for high-res phone devices.

- Fixed potential sector crash when a mine times out and gets damaged at the exact same time.

Bloody hell you wrote that up quickly. I just ran the updater and then tried to sign in, and it said VO was out of date, lol they released it within the time of VO loading for me :P

Nice stuff devs, I hope this new Crystal system delivers the results you hope for.

When will it roll out for PC?

Very interesting development. While I'm new to VO, I am not new to gaming. You're gonna probably see some backlash from long time users, and complaining from free-account users that they are not accruing crystal fast enough, but I'll reserve my judgement 'til I see how the system works.

On the face, I think it's a cool development.

Crystal is going to be mobile-only for awhile (aside from Lite subs).

There's definitely going to be some tweaking and tuning to find the right balance of freely-accrued crystal vs purchased crystal, and the different crystal "costs" per ship/item type.

I don't anticipate long time players being unhappy, really (aside from it not being a gameplay change). They mostly all want to see more players anyway.

+1 very good development lol

"They mostly all want to see more players anyway"

Yeah.. more PC players specifically. Ones that play on mobile usually restrict themselves to non-interactive game-play because they can't compete with the PC players.

Interesting update, certainly a large undertaking, no doubt there's going to be a player bump and longer retention.

The new badge is interesting, just blow up a bot and tada, and you might have accidentally of word there.

Great update! Seems a sane concept, I'm eager to see how it will influence the player numbers.

P.S.: I think there are a few firs-login bugs that Kierky has discovered such as a not-loading Crystal Explanation message. This is fixed when you re-login but most kids do not give a game "a second chance" so this should probably be fixed quickly.

It sounds like GS is now the local drug dealer. Should have called them Helio Mists.

A question from a newbie/lite subscriber.

Will the mobile/lite subscription still face level caps? I think it is Level 3 if I play on PC and Level 4 if I play on mobile device.

I am a newbie, have almost the first month of lite subscription completed and I am considering going the premium subscription route, but that was only to unlock the level caps. I do not mind earning either experience OR crystal at a reduced rate for the lite subscription, to me that is a very fair trade off.

Thanks in advance for any answers you provide.

Yeah I think clarification is needed for the F2P and lite sub players.

What is the level cap for F2P players?

No complaints from me. If you must go F2P, then this is certainly one of the least offensive ways to do it. An important detail is that there is a maximum expenditure at a sane level -- i.e., $10/mo. It is not the sort of system where people can just keep dumping in more and more money for additional edges. There is a limit, and that limit is low.

Another question about the new system: Mobile F2P users can continue using their account in F2P mode when they sign on with a PC, correct? That would be my assumption, but I don't want to misinform anybody in chat by accident if the subject comes up.

I love that it's called 'Crystal', plural without an s. I dig it.

Interesting development for VO on the whole; looking forward to checking this out.

Isn't crystal another name for meth? :P

"crystal meth" is definitely a term, but I don't really care. Crystal is also a first name in north america, and a lot of other things. If you google "crystal", you get lots of sane definitions and nothing about drugs.

Our crystal is green, it's basically supposed to be a kind of refined xithricite or something. But I needed a really common term for it. Everyone else uses "gems", which I don't like as much.

Yes, crystal is much better.

Ok whatever.. on google.de half of the results are about the drug though. German news tends to call it crystal too. Coulda called it "chips" or something.

That reminds me .. gaira rutilus needs its old name back!

Geil?