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Well, this game IS PvP pervasive, and that's how it was invisioned since the start. So if you don't want to risk player attack, this game is NOT for you. Again, go play EVE!
Player-controlled artificial wormholes will be the solution. Thurizas posted good ideas on his "VO in 2009" thread, were these wormholes are Guild-owned and require to be fueled with rare ores or they cannot be activated. Even so, I would really hate it for them to be totally reliable and open all of the time. Having some would be good, having thirty of them on each system would not.
But the ideas presented by gidds? Eeewwwwwwwwwwwwwww.....
Player-controlled artificial wormholes will be the solution. Thurizas posted good ideas on his "VO in 2009" thread, were these wormholes are Guild-owned and require to be fueled with rare ores or they cannot be activated. Even so, I would really hate it for them to be totally reliable and open all of the time. Having some would be good, having thirty of them on each system would not.
But the ideas presented by gidds? Eeewwwwwwwwwwwwwww.....
So you not only want to force people to PvP, but force them to join a guild if they want access to better means of travel?
Uh... hate to burst your bubble, but some of the higher-end content, like, say, capships and stations, will only be available to Guilds. So you might just want to start considering joining one.
Plus, having a Guild control an artificial wormhole doesn't necesarilly means only they can travel to it, it just means only they can open it. I can easily see a Guild charging people for passage on its wormholes; whoever manages to establish one going from Sedina to Deneb is sure to have a LOT of business...
Plus, having a Guild control an artificial wormhole doesn't necesarilly means only they can travel to it, it just means only they can open it. I can easily see a Guild charging people for passage on its wormholes; whoever manages to establish one going from Sedina to Deneb is sure to have a LOT of business...
The sum of a game is not "content" nor how many people you need to force together to play it, but rather how much fun each individual player has. Designing a game with only large guilds in mind is completely flawed, WoW is the perfect example of this where you have 6% of the player base actually involved in regular 40 man raids, but 95% of the development effort put into catering for these players.. Everquest did the same thing, deviating from its original design which ultimately led to its decline.
"The universe is so small already, though. We really don't need to make it smaller."
The universe is small, you're right. But it already doesn't feel big, as Netherby noted - it just feels like your ship sucks and is really slow.
What it ultimately comes down to is, "is it fun?" Right now, I don't think it's fun to crawl at a snail's pace across the universe to find anything interesting to do.
Why is it this way? Well, we could argue about it I guess. Probably because there's so little going on, and most of space is either dead empty or populated only by hive bots.
I don't think speeding up travel will make the universe feel smaller. It'd probably feel just as small as it does right now. The reason it does feel small is there's so little going on in the systems, reducing space to stations and wormholes.
And "only 30 minutes"? What? Only 30 minutes of utter boredom before you can actually play the game you want? Maybe you're happy with that, but let me suggest something: World of Warcraft's spectacular success is because you can jump into the game and do what you want to do with very little delay. Similarly, its failure in the endgame is that you can't do that.
At the moment, it's hard to just jump into VO and do what you want to do, because it's often 15+ minutes' worth of travel time away. The obvious alternative, of course, is to not play, and I doubt any of us like that as an alternative.
Special jump methods, or even just regular wormhole links added to improve speed would improve it a lot.
The universe is small, you're right. But it already doesn't feel big, as Netherby noted - it just feels like your ship sucks and is really slow.
What it ultimately comes down to is, "is it fun?" Right now, I don't think it's fun to crawl at a snail's pace across the universe to find anything interesting to do.
Why is it this way? Well, we could argue about it I guess. Probably because there's so little going on, and most of space is either dead empty or populated only by hive bots.
I don't think speeding up travel will make the universe feel smaller. It'd probably feel just as small as it does right now. The reason it does feel small is there's so little going on in the systems, reducing space to stations and wormholes.
And "only 30 minutes"? What? Only 30 minutes of utter boredom before you can actually play the game you want? Maybe you're happy with that, but let me suggest something: World of Warcraft's spectacular success is because you can jump into the game and do what you want to do with very little delay. Similarly, its failure in the endgame is that you can't do that.
At the moment, it's hard to just jump into VO and do what you want to do, because it's often 15+ minutes' worth of travel time away. The obvious alternative, of course, is to not play, and I doubt any of us like that as an alternative.
Special jump methods, or even just regular wormhole links added to improve speed would improve it a lot.
the universe would feal bigger if there were more "action" in systems other than Sedina and Deneb. as it is prety much everything hapens there: the Itani-serco war is centered on deneb, the nationm war is in sedina, the race tracks are in sedina, the new hive is in sedina, etc.
now i understand that most player generated content takes place in grey space so that everyone can esily participate, ant the serco/itani war takes place along their shared boarder, but when all the other systems are used only by industrious miners and traders (maybe the ocasonal pirat) it's hard to justafy their existance. the universe feals small because only 2 systems serve as major gathering points. however it takes a bit of time to travel between those points which makes travel seem unreasonably slow.
the idea of guild controled jump gates is interesting but the operation of them would have to be prohibitivly expencive. Say they can only connect to other gates that guild ownes, and each activation takes something like 100,000 cu of Helio and 2,000,000 cu of xyth, and the gate will remain connected for 3 minuts before it runs out of power.
alterbnativly the gates could be desructable, and the main factions routenly issue missions to attack jump gates in enemy teratory. so a guild can expect it's jump gates to come under attack about once a week, unless they have their gate placed in a strategicly unimportant sector.
now i understand that most player generated content takes place in grey space so that everyone can esily participate, ant the serco/itani war takes place along their shared boarder, but when all the other systems are used only by industrious miners and traders (maybe the ocasonal pirat) it's hard to justafy their existance. the universe feals small because only 2 systems serve as major gathering points. however it takes a bit of time to travel between those points which makes travel seem unreasonably slow.
the idea of guild controled jump gates is interesting but the operation of them would have to be prohibitivly expencive. Say they can only connect to other gates that guild ownes, and each activation takes something like 100,000 cu of Helio and 2,000,000 cu of xyth, and the gate will remain connected for 3 minuts before it runs out of power.
alterbnativly the gates could be desructable, and the main factions routenly issue missions to attack jump gates in enemy teratory. so a guild can expect it's jump gates to come under attack about once a week, unless they have their gate placed in a strategicly unimportant sector.
..thanks for the compliment, jex, here's some clarification on my ideas.. (for the original post, look here: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/9/13692#172442 )
- all the wormhole areas we have now are naturally occuring phenomena
- an artificial wormhole area would require a "wormhole anchor point", which I envision as a very small user-placeable station, like the old "Ceres", or "wheel" stations from alpha -- these would show up on radar like a normal wormhole, and project jump-capable areas of a similar radius
- anchor points would be placed in quantum-entangled pairs; each anchor in the pair would ONLY be able to take you to the other one, just like the natural areas we have now
- the anchor would have a storage tank for rare ore (I used lanthanic as an example), which can be refilled by docking with it; every single jump activation depletes that ore by a few hundred cu or so.. not too little, not too much (maybe have this related to the mass of the activating ship?)
- the anchors will only be placeable by a special light frigate-sized explorer ship, that cannot jump using wormholes or in-system jumps, only via onboard displacement engines that also need ore to function
- no more than four wormhole areas, total, would be able to exist in the same system, whether natural or artifical
- ideally these explorer vessels would be guild-owned, but not necessarily; the owner of a certain jump point can set access controls for docking and jumping - the ideal method would be to allow anyone to use their anchors, but charge a toll to recoup costs
- jumping to unexplored systems would be semi-random, with the server creating content on-the-fly.. the random seed used to create such a system could then be saved locally to the player's computer; if a new system warrants development, then wormhole anchors could be placed to connect it to the rest of explored space on a permanent basis (at this point, the server would add the system's data to its memory)
- all the wormhole areas we have now are naturally occuring phenomena
- an artificial wormhole area would require a "wormhole anchor point", which I envision as a very small user-placeable station, like the old "Ceres", or "wheel" stations from alpha -- these would show up on radar like a normal wormhole, and project jump-capable areas of a similar radius
- anchor points would be placed in quantum-entangled pairs; each anchor in the pair would ONLY be able to take you to the other one, just like the natural areas we have now
- the anchor would have a storage tank for rare ore (I used lanthanic as an example), which can be refilled by docking with it; every single jump activation depletes that ore by a few hundred cu or so.. not too little, not too much (maybe have this related to the mass of the activating ship?)
- the anchors will only be placeable by a special light frigate-sized explorer ship, that cannot jump using wormholes or in-system jumps, only via onboard displacement engines that also need ore to function
- no more than four wormhole areas, total, would be able to exist in the same system, whether natural or artifical
- ideally these explorer vessels would be guild-owned, but not necessarily; the owner of a certain jump point can set access controls for docking and jumping - the ideal method would be to allow anyone to use their anchors, but charge a toll to recoup costs
- jumping to unexplored systems would be semi-random, with the server creating content on-the-fly.. the random seed used to create such a system could then be saved locally to the player's computer; if a new system warrants development, then wormhole anchors could be placed to connect it to the rest of explored space on a permanent basis (at this point, the server would add the system's data to its memory)