I've noticed that a lot of PvP encounters, especially ones that lean towards role-playing, feel empty. For example, if a group of a few serco begin battling a few itani, the battle will go on and on until people get tired and log off. People will keep dying and warping back to the battle sector. No one ever really wins. Some people may feel that they won, that their team died less or killed more, but the other team usually is not in agreement. There is no sense of accomplishment for the winners. There is little motiviation to make the effort to fight well. I feel like this is a fundamental flaw for a game that relies on large-scale PvP so heavily.

I read through some permanent death threads and saw a few good ideas. I feel like we need to brainstorm and come up with a good system that will add a strong deterrent to dying over and over. I don't know if I believe in permanent death for this game. It seems a little too extreme, but there are things along those lines or even completely different that would do the job. I couldn't think of any ideas on my own that I really liked, otherwise I would have posted that specific idea.

One idea I thought of that seemed OK was to make stations run out of ships. This fits in with crafting sort of. Give the stations only enough supplies to make a certian number of different ships. Maybe the sedina corvus station could only make 5 vults or so. This number wouldn't have to be fixed and could change based on local trading, etc... After a few hours, enough new supplies would be delivered so that it could make more. This would force people to buy other ships during a battle, go to a new station, buy another fighter, and then finally return to the battle. If the battle were long enough, the losing team would get pushed farther and farther back from the battle sector as ships ran out in local stations so that eventually they'd be to far away for it to be worth returning. This would work particularly well near the itani-serco border (Deneb) where the opposing teams use different ships, not available at the same stations.

I'm not really in love with that idea and I hope that a lot of people agree that this is a problem and reply with their own better ideas.

The main reason I love this game not having much consequences when I die...

P.S. I know the border skirmish mission and cap ship battles in general kind of solve this problem in certain situatuons. However, that doesn't help when pirates and vipers battle in sedina for hours. I'd like a more elegant and universal solution.

Have you read this thread?
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11768?page=1

This addresses my first thoughts when I joined about death being meaningless, simply because ships were dirt cheap.

Also, this one:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/14626

My thoughts are that if kills happened a bit quicker, then maybe a battle would be over before a player could retern when killed. Also, if it's more expensive to replace your ship, you might think twice before risking having it destroyed several times. You'd have to assess the goal of the battle versus ship prices. This would especially work if the fight was over something such as capturing an important ship or cargo/equipment. If it's over simply valuable territory, then the battle will be long anyway.

I've thought about permadeath a lot, too, and you're right, it's just too extreme to be fun in an MMORPG. I don't want to have to start new characters all the time. I like your suggestion about limited ship quantities, but it should have a sharp curve. I think this will work well when we have a dynamic economy, and better when there's crafting. The bigger the ship, the more material it takes to make, and the more expensive it is. So small ships will be much more abundant than big ones, so there will always be a ship to buy, but sometimes big ships will have high demand but low supply. I think no one will argue that there should always be a free ship, though, because we don't want to actually kick anyone out of the game, just make the higher end of the learning curve more difficult.

The only way I can think of at all for permadeath to work is to either have special events on a different server with real permadeath, or to implement some sort of escape pod widget in every ship. You can equip one or not, but leave one out of your ship at your own risk. The pod could have the coordinates of the nearest friendly station preset (I don't like the idea of home stations that you can always resurrect at) and a one-time-use warp that can get you there. Or whatever.

Thanks for the reply Chaos. I have made several suggestions regarding increasing ship costs. I always have said that I believe stuff should cost twice as much and that money should be twice as hard to earn. However, that idea has always been shot down. Here's a thread where I made that suggestion:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/14502

I'm opposed to the idea of decreasing armor though. I think it's just right the way it is. When I first started playing I even thought there wasn't enough armor.

Since people don't want stuff to cost more, we'll have to come up with something else I guess. Although maybe they don't want stuff to cost more because they like not having any serious consequences for death. I think everyone is just spoiled though!

I'm with you on the thought that all armor shouldn't be simply reduced. The direction I tried to take that thread is that you can strip down your ship if you want, so you're really vulnerable, but super-light so you can go a lot faster, and that there should be many different kinds of armor with different capabilities. Hopefully when they redo our economy, prices will make more sense, and owning a ship will actually mean somthing other than "yeah, this is the ship I'm flying today."

Yeah, making ship costs go up would suck. Look at me for example, I love pvp, am pretty damn good at it, BUT I #!@% hate trading!
For me, Trading isn't a challenge, pvp is.

So, the pirating missions and stuff work for me (we still need a little more profitable pvp mission) and trading works for robo*cough cough* other people...

The devs planned (At least, at one point; I dont pretend to know their minds) to have the station-avalability stuff online. You should ask one of them.

just want to toss this into the mix... the permadeath duel
obviously the rewards would have to reflect the risk, all the losers worldly possessions, cash?
would anyone actually risk it?

As in, a duel where the loser, dies, for good?

Yeah I don't think anyone would do it on a character that mattered.

You underestimate the power of ego, Snax.

There have been more than a few feuds in this game for which people would have taken that risk.

Mmm, it would be a kickass thing to have, even if it is rarely used. It should give the winner ( since the other dude gets deleted and has to start from scratch, he should keep his pvp kills though.) all of the other guys money, his items, and 5% of his xp. Sure , it's hard, but damnit, that would be so cool. It should also have its own webpage, the best pvp'ers would be on there and such. It would be very good, eh Lecter?

After reading the thread, i've thought of some things that need to be remembered:

1. Increasing ship cost makes people more likely to run from combat. Running = not fun.

2. If stations have a certain number of ships, what's to prevent people from stockpiling them and making it difficult for others to buy a certain ship?

I agree that it would be nice to have a better way to determine the winner/loser of a battle, but I think the devs have dynamic stuff like this already planned. Once territory is able to be taken, the consequences of dying a great deal or losing more people in a large battle will become more apparent.

I'm not sure how I feel about the perma-death duel. I suppose it would be alright because it's optional. But I hate to put anything in that deletes a player's progress in the game. Even if optional, having that happen could result in enough frusturation to cause the loser to leave the game. And we definitely don't want people leaving.

Yeah, that would be interesting, a duel to the permadeath. If someone leaves because they're a poor sport, maybe the game would be better without such a person.

Why is running not fun? Just because you want to shoot them and they won't cooperate? Or because you're not good at running? This is supposed to be a role playing game, is it not? Right now it's more of a shooting game where you have to do other stuff to get better stuff to go shooting with. Ship prices are an important touch of realism that increase the immersiveness of this RPG. Right now, the problem is that death means nothing. True, a dynamic universe where you can capture territory will help a lot, but supply/demand driven prices are the other part.

Stockpiling can end at any time, I believe. I read in a thread recently that limits on what you can keep at a station are ready to roll whenever the devs see fit. I would like to see a system where storage space costs money after an initial free space. Besides, if there's a dynamic economy and player/guild owned stations, what happens when someone buys a lot of a ship to stockpile? Lots of profit for that station, which they can use to expand their production line and produce more ships. Shortage would only happen if that station's supply lines were interrupted. These are non-problems that people keep bringing up: Running is not fun, and it's not fair that people stockpile.

Believe me, the reason I dislike running is not because I'm not good at it. It's quite the opposite in fact. The way things are set up currently, anyone in a halfway decent ship save only the prom, rag and moth, can run from combat provided they know what they're doing. It's really very easy to do. The only way an experienced pilot is going to be killed while attempting to run is if he screws up drastically, or is in a drastically outclassed ship. My point is, if everyone took to running as a primary option, nobody would die. The only way we get kills currently are:

a. Pilot A is inexperienced and attempts to run. Because he does not know the in's and out's of doing so (or if he's in a moth/rag), he is overtaken and destroyed by Pilot B.

b. Warp kills and type kills.

c. Both pilots do not run from the engagement. The winner is the last one standing.

Please note that "c" is much more common than the latter two. If a strong desire to run is created (ie. adding a higher penalty for death) you're effectively taking away a good deal of the times that "c" occurs. This turns combat into a gank fest and encourages the use of underhanded tactics to gain kills. Now nobody wants to lose their precious ship because they're afraid they will run out.

I'm all for supply/demand. But if you create a limit of ships at a station, it has to be a large one. The example given of 5 ships of a certain type would not be realistic. For the majority of people, combat = fun. Therefore, adding restrictions that encourage people to avoid combat = not fun.

Immersion will come with development. When there are critical missions (like the quests of other RPGs), they may fail with death. Other stipulations like that will add a deterrent to death. When that kind of content is added, the cost of ships will be less relevant as money will be the least of one's problems. The actual objective will become the focus and dying will result in a failure to achieve said objective. Until then, the game is basically an organized (and sometimes disorganized) free for all. Giving players a strong reason for avoiding combat decreases the fun of the free for all. Until content is added, it really is space quake. The content will fix that. But in the meantime, it may as well be fun space quake. Increasing the ship costs does nothing for content and hinders the fun of the current playstyle. Nothing is gained from that. Supply and demand (which again, I am in favor of) would add content, but those numbers need to be large. I imagine this will come with crafting anyhow.

It's just like any other RPG. If you're not on a quest or a mission of some kind, say you're out hunting, when you die there is little consequence. Maybe you go back to your last outpost or something of the like and you lose your equipment. Vendetta functions the same way. The reason why it seems different is that we're currently missing the missions and quests which create a reason to survive. Unfortunately, those will only come with content. Until we have that content, VO functions as a base for a skyscraper without any of the girders. We just have to wait for those girders.

I guess what I'm asking is that you please wait for some solid content to arrive before deciding that death needs to have more consequence. The consequences will come with the content and the game is still very much in development to create that content.

In reply to my own post, no bloody way!

Yay Ghost!

Thanks for your replies Ghost. What you said about territory ownership eventually coming in your first post made me happy. I'd like to hear more about how this system will work.

I'm assuming it will be connected with guild owned stations (which I can't wait for and I think will be the best feature the devs will ever add). That seems like a real elegant solution to my problem, assuming this isn't limited to the 3 nations. Gray space has to have a dynamic territory struggle as well.

I think there was a dev comment on changing territory. I'll see if I can dig it up. I do agree with you on the issue btw, I just think that content is the best cure =)

Edit: I can't seem to find it. I'm not sure exactly how the devs are planning to implememnt it, but I can say for sure that it is something that the devs are planning to implement =) Whether it's coming sooner or later is a good question. But, if the devs have their way, I'm certain that the majority of the universe will be dynamic, including grey.