There are a couple of things just nagging me about this game. I want to describe the basic feel that the game gives me at the point of getting 5/5/5/2 on my Itani char.

1) Shields
The first time I got into combat I was kind of in a panic I couldn’t find my shield level on the HUD. I then was a bit shocked there are no shields at all. I mean I cant recall any space fighter jock game that didn’t have shields.

Will they get put in at a later time?

2) Strafe
Now I can understand the idea of strafe thrusters but the idea that I can strafe sideways just as fast as I can thrust forward is a bit nuts. It leaves me with the impression that my ship has main engine ports in 4 directions and looks like some massive symmetrical monstrosity that only a mother can love. It didn’t feel natural at all.

3) Compartmentalization
There are just way to many sectors to a system. It seems that systems are broken up into tiny sectors and you just feel cramped for some reason. Its hard for me to explain how this system of many tiny sectors made me feel but its an odd feeling of claustrophobia from being confined by to much stuff. It just didn’t feel open and inviting.

4) Key Binds
Although I run a Unix system at work a HPUX system that runs In circuit testing, and myself can do alias and binds. It seems to me that most users wont feel a comfort level with this.

5) Combat
I’m not digging the roll/strafe style combat. It doesn’t feel like your piloting a spacecraft it makes the combat experience much more penny arcade then space flight simulator.

6) BOTS
Just a pet peeve of mine here on calling the AI bots, Cant we think of something more interesting to call them. Ill admit I haven’t read most of the back story and at some point plan to do that to develop the RP of my char. But at this point it kind of annoys me to be fighting BOTS. Its just a bit shallow.

7) Leveling treadmill
I dont think I have to explain this. It may just be me after playing few games I have grown very tired of just leveling.

I would like to say that despite the above it’s a pretty good game the graphics are good enough to support the game play, could use some bump mapping but who cares its not EnB, its not going to make its name on eye candy. The Auto aim is nice for new players, and also nice that at higher levels you have to turn it off. The stations are really nice work there is enough diversity in station design to make you feel like you have went somewhere. I have been really shocked at the lack of bugs, cudos for a very stable client.

Just some stuff thats been nagging me and wanted to give some feed back.

1) Shields are absent because they make it damn-near impossible to get a kill. The storyline mentions that the Itani have some sort of mental shielding, but I doubt it'll be available to those who are not Itani monks.

2) Actually, the ports on the back aren't engines, or so we decided in a thread on the subject a few months back. Since in space you can't use external radiators to shed heat, energy waste must be disposed of via light. So they're floodlights. or something. I dunno.

3) Yeah, I can echo that sentiment. It feels like there's too much empty space. I liked Escape Velocity's feel of less than a hundred small systems, all of which had a distinct personality. The current universe feels like 7000 endless, nearly-identical sectors. Actually, in previous versions there were individual systems and the world felt warmer. I hear they're going to start phasing in more of the old customized stations over time.

4) I disagree with this, to a point. Basic functions may be bound by GUI but more advanced functions do have to be modified in the command line. I believe games like Unreal Tournament and Quake have shown that if the payoff is worth it, players will rise to just this type of challenge. Then again, the binds are stored in a simple text file, so anyone who wants to write a binding GUI is free to do so.

5) ...which is exactly what Vendetta is. It's not a sim. It's an arcade combat game with the emphasis on fun and easy gameplay.

6) So go and pick a fight with a player! Find someone around your level and ask them to duel. See what happens!

7) 100% agreement. Then again, I hear this'll be alleviated a bit in the final version's emphasis on plot missions.

1, 2 and 5 can be answered simply, "Sorry, that's the way Vendetta is. If you don't like it, don't play."

Reason being is that all we could really do before the beta started was fight each other. We did it a lot. A LOT. Everything was balanced out pretty nicely when it came to combat. Some minor quibbles over energy weapon power but that was about it. Changing the way the ships fly and the way they take damage would just about invalidate the past two years of combat balance testing, and require another long period of tweaking. No such time exists before release, and Guild would be insane to reinvent the game AFTER it came out.

So, that's the way it is. It's not supposed to feel like other games because it's its own game.

The ships don't use newtonian thrusters. If you read the backstory you'll see that it's gravitic pulse based propultion. The advantage of that is the engine can provide thrust into any direction. The thingys in the back of the ship is a heatsink. This is the general consensus among those of us who enjoy the gameplay.
The only reason you think a space-flight sim out to behave like 99% of the fligh sims out there is because ever since Star Wars, you've always seen dynamic WWII style air-battles. If space-combat ever became a reality it would involve ships that fly many times faster than the speed of sound and weapons that move too fast for human reflexes to even dodge. So trying to say something doesn't feel like a "real" space-combat sim is irrelevant since "real" space-combat would actually be really boring.

And why would bots be a pet-peeve? They are robotic controlled spacecraft. Robots = Bots. I just don't understand the complaint here. If you look at the bot names you'll see they all have the names of certain companies on them. Axia, Dentech, Valent, etc. They're robots manufactured by robotics companies who went crazy for some reason. That's part of the story.

I think your points are valid and well made. The folks above who have responded have clearly been playing the game long enough to have become emotionally attached to it. Which obviously isn't a bad thing, but it does prevent them from seeing it as if for the first time, which is what you are doing. Your comments are honest, to the point, and the sort needed. That's why you signed up to beta test, presumably. =)

Heat sinks indeed. I guess that's why "flame" comes out when someone hits turbo, for crying out loud. =)

turbos=more heat
more heat=more intense light.

Dammit, Genin beat me to it...

We are attached to it the way it is, but asking/expecting changes to be made in the basic core gameplay is unrealistic. They're working on missions and server code, not the underlying engine. They can't make the changes to address the things you brought up without make a LOT of changes. Release in 20 days + totally new gameplay = bad idea.

And, uh.. what's this with you not being able to shed heat in space? A five minute google search reveals that all spacecraft use some sort of simple system with radiator vanes/refrigeration to cool themselves down. Your telling me that we're converting heat into LIGHT somehow? What? The ability to convert heat into anything with that sort of efficiency would be a major victory over entropy with implications of technology MUCH more advanced than any we see in game.

Yeesh. The gravitic drive lets you move at up to 65m/s in any direction. For higher speeds you have to engage a more powerful engine that is located on the back of your ship. That drive is run by the power normally used for low speed manuevring, so while it's engaged you can only go where it pushes you.

Heatsinks?!

<The folks above who have responded have clearly been playing the game long enough to have become emotionally attached to it. >

-It's not a matter of emotional attachment. It's a matter of having enough experience with the game to understand the need for things being the way they are. And it's a matter of being able to appreciate something different enough to not demand it be turned into a clone of every other "space flight sim" in existance. We vets didn't all just come into the game in one big flood. Each of us came into the game at a different point in its development. We trickled in one by one. Some of us stuck with it, others left. And each and every one of us put up complaints about how it doesn't match up with our preconceptions of what a space-flight game should be. And each and every one of us got flamed until we were made to understand the wisdom of it.

Tell me, what is your reason for saying the current model is unrealistic? It is no more or less realistic than any other models out there. The only reason it feels unrealistic is because movies like Star Wars ingrain the idea of WWII style dogfights in your head. But Vendetta's combat system is much more realistic than that model would ever be.

So Magus your solution is just flame every noob that comes to the game till they learn to like the game. It has merits but not going to make this game very sucessful.

I think we can clearly put your comments in the FanBoi box.

"Fanboi?" Seriously, who are you, Avril Lavigne?
You can put my comments into whatever box you want. I don't give a shit. But hopefully, it will eventually penetrate through your head that that all these obvious, knee-jerk ideas you had are not phenominally creative and have each already been debated to death 100,000 times before and each and every time was found to be a BAD idea. (With the exception of the key binds one and the leveling treadmill one. Those have been requested for a while) It's the result of people who have started critiquing a game in it's unfinished state before understanding the purpose behind why things are the way they are. This is not every other space-sim in existance. The game's flight system is different. It's good because it's different. Deal with it.

The first month of Vendetta is free. Players have that one entire month to play, and understand what the game will be like. They will have one full month before they have to cast judgement on it. Tell me, how long have you played so far?

>>>-It's not a matter of emotional attachment. It's a matter of having enough experience with the game to understand the need for things being the way they are. And it's a matter of being able to appreciate something different enough to not demand it be turned into a clone of every other "space flight sim" in existance. We vets didn't all just come into the game in one big flood. Each of us came into the game at a different point in its development. We trickled in one by one. Some of us stuck with it, others left. And each and every one of us put up complaints about how it doesn't match up with our preconceptions of what a space-flight game should be. And each and every one of us got flamed until we were made to understand the wisdom of it.<<<

That just summed up the entire beta-testing history before this stress test. All the ideas suggested here have been debated before. I wish I could use that quote and stick it into the boards non-existant sig area.

Yokom, I understand your point. But you must approach Vendetta with an open mind and accept it for what it is.

[locked to extinguish flames]