Sir Frog would pity the fool who says RPing is impossible.

Hehe.. At least I didn't fall for the "Verdandi Incident", or perhaps I did, but I didn't care about killing "a girly" anyway ;-) It was hugely entertaining though... truly a moment in Vendetta history (especially cos of that silly SF) ;-)

/me kicks StarFreeze

no player interaction... whos fault is that?? Not the devs IMO they have given plenty of opportunity for player interaction!

There is a war between Serco and Itani, so go fight it.

There are guilds, go have some wars.

Anybody that was around the last time things got boring knows what a good guild war will do. INM vs SAW wars were intense battle and trading for weeks.

Most MMORPG hold you hand and tell you to go out and do this and do that. This game gives you all the options they do. Yes player controlled stations and player controled capital ships have not been implemented yet. Some mission trees have not been made yet. This is trivial.

If you want to interact with people, get some friends together and start attacking people, in less then a day people will be attacking you too.

Durgia, i would say you are partially right. the concept of the game must stimulate player interaction. i am not saying it doesn't, i am just saying that player interaction is always a result of good rewards for pursuing it.
at the moment player interaction is not really well rewarded, and even if it would be, it is hard to find it because of the curent situation of low number of players.
i am sure that situation will change right after the last char-wipe and if the strategy of the devs is good it will never be low again.

and here is another ideea for promotional strategy: what if anyone will be allowed to download the client without a license and be limited to observer status ? he could be thrown automatically in the most "busy" sector, set to invisible and no game interaction and be allowed to just travel arround that sector at 100 speed for example ? or be attached to some player's "on-board camera" and get to see everything he is seeing and doing.

anyway, this thread became what was intended to be: food for thought, and i hope the attitude will always remain the same on these forums.

<quote>willing to tolerate a beta-test environment</quote>

I, for one, am more then willing to tolerate a beta test enviroment. That is, something that crashes. Something that causes unsual hair growth. But "beta" is generaly heald to mean: done with bugs, looking to squash those bugs with outside assistance (in finding them).

Ive been playing off and on for years. From my casual observence there have been exactly 4 changes: structured stations; XP/levels; missions and the new universe. Im sure things have changed in the back end, sector server internals, bot AI and what not. But it is hardly more "playable" today compared to a year ago.

There are a few possible explanations for the lack of content.

- The content is being held back untill the release.
--- Uh, then what am I testing that is different then a year ago?

- The content will be added once the game ships.
--- Do you realy expect to sell a unplayable game?

- This is it and there are no plans for enhanced playability.
--- Beh. Even worse.

I ask again: What are we supposed to be testing?

<Uh, then what am I testing that is different then a year ago>

Like you said, each major version change had a huge change in the backend. Each time that happenned we had tons and tons of new bugs. We still have bugs right now.

For those of you who are wondering whether or not this will be a successful game in terms of subscribers, let me offer some words of hope.

Back in the 90's, before Linux caught on really big, there was an alternative to Windows called OS/2. IBM couldn't market its way out of a paper-bag, but it was a good product (compared to Win3.1 and later 95) and it had a small but loyal following. Around 1994, a small company that made desktop utilities for OS/2 decided to release a single-player space exploration and conquest game for OS/2.
That game sold over 1 Million copies!

Besides the fact that it was a decent game, a big reason for its success was that it fed a market segment starved for decent games. I don't know if they realize it yet, but Guild Software is doing a brilliant thing by supporting Mac and Linux users, where there is far less competition for a decent space-based MMORPG than on Windows.

A good product combined with a loyal and hungry user base can result in some impressive sales even when the user base isn't that large. Combine that with the fact that Vendetta is available on Windows, where even a small market share means lots of sales, and I think there will be plenty of VO subscribers.

Oh, and if that weren't enough, this release is happening just in time to make VO a great stocking stuffer for Christmas.

Oh man, weird mental image: Imagine a Red Marauder spewing a trail of cargo, flying around a station decked out with flashing light strings, and reflective, colored, spherical asteroids floating around... ok, that's enough.

"I, for one, am more then willing to tolerate a beta test enviroment. That is, something that crashes. Something that causes unsual hair growth. But "beta" is generaly heald to mean: done with bugs, looking to squash those bugs with outside assistance (in finding them)."

As opposed to most other online rpgs, it seems to actually be a stable beta rather than a shabby release. This is not a bad thing ;-) That aside, I bet it's quite interesting (for those with the data) to see what people actually do and tweak the game accordingly rather than go by random guesswork + big marketing budget.. so in that sense, I'd guess(!) it's more useful for Guild than entertaining for you.

And what Screwball doesn't mention is that same company STILL exists today and is STILL selling that game (granted now converted to Windows). ANd the game is STILL great! :)

I think this game will succeed. I believe that the developers have a good understanding of how big of a turnout will play this game, and they have have budgeted and prepared for this.

I, myself, will not play this game. Why? Straight out - this game is not for me. I don't want to whine/complain/b*tch.

However, I will state why I am disappointed in this game (and thus, I will not play)

1) I do not care for the graphics. Sure, graphics aren't everything, but they are SOMETHING. And that something here isn't exactly great.

2) I don't like the feel of the universe. Yes, it is large, and cool, but it feels repetative. Tons of empty sectors. And all those asteroid fields feel the same to me. As do all the stations. When I did some cargo runs between like 5 different systems total, I wasn't really caring what system I was in, i was just flying autonomisly. I didn't know or care where I was, it all looked the same. Sucked for me.

And I don't like it how I can't just fly from sector to sector, circle a planet, or fly into the sun. Maybe it's just me.

3) The combat is too junky for me. The game is meant to be PvP, which is supposed to make up for the bad AI (or just weird)I assume. However, I don't really like that either.

This is why I don't like the game currently. True, it is not complete, but that does not change my current mind. Now, if I hear rave reviews about the random systems coming in, and the great implementation of capital ships, I may come back and try this out. However, it's like I said, this game (currently) is not for. But, it does have some form of a loyal player base (you guys... the real beta testers, hehe. I was here to test it for myself, not them, I guess you could say.)

Thanks for you time.

some good points wooly. still, please note some possible answers :)
- empty sectors = room for development opportunities (player run stations, hidden features, blabla)
- the feel of the universe will change when M from Massive becomes a reality. that also goes for the PvP argument.

But then I recon that i just remembered flying into the sun in Elite (spectrum) and i miss that. i also tried flying away to a different sector to test what was stated and obvious and nothing happened. same with closing on to the planets (yeah, wasted time, i know). that would be really nice

I have played VO close to 3 weeks and im just starting to get bored. I admire that four guys have been able to build this game.

What would keep me from getting bored is the ability for me to build my own spacestations,and then let me have a certain number of bots to help me defend against any or all. Make it so the player build spacestation can be captured then we would have a really good reason for PVP. Sir Ny

SO. . . SimCity in space is what you're looking for?

Well, SimCity in space would be interesting. Unrelated to vendetta compleatly, Ive wonderd about the possibility of combining online FPSers with online strategy. "General" decides on allocating resources, battles to fight, etc, and the battles are played out by real people in a FPS. As I say, compleatly unrelated to Vendetta, except that combining geners and only required players to play in one would significantly expand the game.

Of course, it would significantly expand the code base required to implement the game too.

But an interesting idea..

On a vaguely-related note, we always wanted to have player-constructed stations. That's part of the reason why the stations have their "component" based designs, with the long-term idea of a player construction mechanism in mind. Unfortunately, that feature will not be appearing in the immediate future, although it's something we'd love to add (along with a lot of other things).

Regarding the game and success in general.. I can understand where people are coming from who don't find the game worthwhile in its current state. We are going to add more content over this week, but I don't want to give the impression that we're going to magically revamp the game into perfection in the next few days. That's unrealistic. Basically, what we hope is that we'll have a game that will entertain enough people to allow us to continue working on it. As I've said on here, and in numerous interviews, we really want to add mining and capital ships and all the major aspects of the game that have been designed and desired from day one. This is not "it". But it remains to be seen whether we'll attract enough of a userbase who believes in what we're doing, and is willing to hang on while we continue developing the game. This isn't a "by choice" scenario, it's a necessity. As some of our older users remember, we're lucky to be here at all:

http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/story.php?ArticleID=8981

But we scraped together enough capital to make it this far, to release the game and hopefully be able to continue to make it better and better. As far as the future of the game goes, this is far from "done", and we don't have any plans for it to ever be "done", we want to keep adding things.. for as long as people keep wanting to play it and we can support ourselves. It's like I said at the end of the recently-posted Apple Games article:

http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2004/10/vendettaonline/

“We don’t need hundreds of thousands of subscribers to sustain ourselves,” he says. “We have modest expectations for the sales of the game. We’d like to get an enthusiastic user base and be able to continue working on Vendetta, evolving things with user input and our own design direction.”

And that's very much true. I don't honestly know if we'll be a success or not. I hope so.. because there's so much that we want to add to this game, to make it what we've always dreamed (and known) it could be. At the moment.. well, it's a bit boring and needs more stuff, and we're working our tails off to try and create as much stuff as we possibly can, and make it as cool as we possibly can, in the time that we have left. That's about the best we can do.

In answer to the comments about how much the game has *really* changed in the last year. It's true, on the surface the changes aren't so easy to see (aside from obvious things like, "wow, the universe is bigger"). We spent months of time creating things like the framework for the mission system, so we *could* make powerful, interesting missions. The framework for the AI system, so we could have interesting AI. Unfortunately, we're only just beginning to tap the possibilities of what we've created (we don't have particularly interesting missions or AI yet). It remains to be seen whether we'll have the opportunity to show off what it can really do. I hope so.

^ That was beautiful ^

Makes me want to P2P.

DAMN the MCATs. Damn them all!!
I really hope Guild sticks around so I can come back after all my Med School stuff is done.

>As far as the future of the game goes, this is far from "done",
>and we don't have any plans for it to ever be "done", we want to
>keep adding things.. for as long as people keep wanting to play it
>and we can support ourselves.

This says it all for me. It's not like buying a game it's more like renting game developers. This means a lot to me. If there is something that should be added to the game and it's feasible, they'll do it.

That fact alone is enough that I would have pre-ordered at 3.x. I can see the game engines potential and (based on the development history of the beta) I can see the devs desire to exploit that potential. What else do you need?

(dangit Magus, you better come back)

"Will Vendetta be a succesfull MMOG?"

In this player's eyes, it already is. We have a devoted team of four devs that actually listens to their playerbase, responds to their posts, and occasionally implements some of their ideas.

Oh, and did I fail to mention that this is a massively muliplayer, twitch based, space combat-trader sim? That absolutely rocks. I will continue to support the devs and I hope that as many of you who are able to will also, because I believe in them and in what they are trying to create, and I can't wait to see where they will take us next!

"It's not like buying a game it's more like renting game developers. "

LOL

I have never thought of it that way but it is rather an amusing thought.

I will buy the game when its available from this site, so all my money goes to the Devs. Since the first day I came here I have believed this game has more potential then any game I had ever seen. And darn it I would like to see that potential used. I would have paid for this game in January and I will pay for it now, and as long as my finances allow me to, and probably a bit after that.

The devs have put their blood and sweat (hopefully not too much of either) into this game, and the testers have put their hearts into it as well.

I will support this game to the very end, no matter if that is good or bad.

<I will buy the game when its available from this site, so all my money goes to the Devs.>

-That box does look pretty darn spiffy though. Besides, it might be nice to give SFI some props for bailing Vendetta out in its time of need.