have the owners of this game considered a massive scale, agressive advertizing campain? this game has so much potential...but when I log in I never see more than 40 or so logged in players. there are so few sci-fi online based games...(in fact only 1 comes to mind)...there is no reason this game cannot be a force to be recconed with in the world of sci-fi MMORPG's. it wouldnt take much and its win win...the game becomes more interesting for players...(large scale guilds, alliences, wars...etc...etc...) and the owners of the game gain significantly more income...whats stopping this from happening?

Yes, and not at the moment.

Vendetta needs more work first before widespread advertising is put in place. Right now we don't have the means to retain enough players. Once more content is in game and more of the bugs worked out, GuildSoftware will launch another advertising campaign. Until then, we're asked not to advertise.

we being the players?

sigh..it makes no sence to me...surely the game would survive say an influx of 500 new players a month? a larger player base would make the game INFINATELY more interesting...if I may quote a classic western villian...

"instead of leaving the people are staying in droves!"

whens the last time there was a massive player vs. player war? I mean hundreds of ships on both sides in all out massive combat? adrenalene pumping as you sent wave after wave of enemy fighters to a flaming death? felt the anticipation as you watched 20 destroyers come out of high warp and slam missiles into your front lines? and when it was over, hundreds of enemy ships destroyed...waiting to be looted...allies to be escorted to the nearest station for repair for repair so they dont fall prey to pirates...

for me it was earlier today...sadly it was not here. this game is basically virgin territory for everyone and as such it has a huge amount of potential...hell, its the only cross platform scifi MMORPG I've ever seen. I just dont want it to go the way of so many before it, and with the current numbers...it will.

Flame.

flame?

ryan:

People have been saying that this game would die for years. If anything, the online numbers have been up slightly over the past several weeks. There was a time when we would peak at maybe 40 players at a time, but in recent weeks we've often peaked at 60, and we hit the 70's last weekend.

The developers are of the belief that if they attract people in droves now, those people will become irritated by the game's shortcomings and leave. Those people will be very difficult to attract back, and they'll tell their friends about their poor experience here to boot.

Vendetta occupies a unique niche because of its genre (among a sea of fantasy and sci-fi MMORPGs), its combat style, and because it is developed for multiple platforms simultaneously. As long as they continue to develop the game, they are likely to be able to keep the lights on.

The goal, I believe, is to get the game ready for primetime, invite the masses - who will be pleased by what they see by then, and then to generate enough revenue to kick the production into high gear.

thank you, though I repectfully have to dissagree...just a little, I know alot of people from the games rival who are growing sick of it and the higher price...many of them are ready to throw thier characters up on ebay and be done with it...and come here.

I think if people know its a "work in progress" they will stay...(imo)

You are welcome to disagree, certainly, but many of us are refugees from the "competition" and those other games that died off. We've all tried to bring our buddies and our clans over, and we've seen many of them balk at the funky interfaces and missing features. Those folks are gone and unlikely to return without a lot of arm-twisting. I can't tell you how many people turn up here all excited about how their clan from some other game is going to move here and rock the universe - same story.

You're right in that Vendetta has HUGE potential, and those of us who can see it and are tolerant of the rough edges will stay so long as development progresses. One day we'll be described as the "cult following" I suppose. Most people expect a bug-free, feature-rich, user-friendly, over-hyphenated game for their money. I want that too, but I know that Guild Software is the only company making this kind of game and they can't do it unless I support them today.

Now, take a break from posting and get in the game so other people will see more players online.

Where are all the players?

players... players for sale... get'em while they're hot!

Oh pssh. We all know players are ugly. Or "average looking".

I don't think the devs intend for this game to ever support 30,000 players in-game at once like EVE gets up to. I can't even imagine that many players, even if the size of the universe was tripled or quadrupled. I've always imagined it peaking somewhere around 1,000 players on-line maybe, not that devs have much control over that.

The news that EVE is being ported to the Mac actually saddened me, because I think that VO's fate is now sealed as more of the underground cult kind of space game. With EVE going cross-platform, I think it will always be the bigger and more popular game. If VO wants to stand a chance of being successful, they need to plan to advertise and go 2.0 before EVE goes Mac. Otherwise, they'll lose a huge portion of the player-base they're aiming for.

i always thought eve sucked
i played it on my friends computer once and it was boring as hell

The dev's universe creating engine can be set up to make an infinite amount of random sectors. The plan is to be able to explore new sectors and systems (so, you decide to go into a wormhole, and the server makes a random system.)

Kinda like, you gotta find the wormholes before they become charted.

Anyway, with the whole-exploring thing, the devs could make more systems if they needed it. Actually, I'm sure one of the mods or devs could say it better. You should ask them.

I agree 110% with FatStrat85. Let's go steal EVE's players! They're BORED with EVE, ryan says! 1% of their playerbase is an extra 2,000 players per night for VO, or something. Let's be aggressive!

Bwaaa a a ah ah ahaaaahaahahaaaa!

The plan has always been for Vendetta to be scalable, and all the revamps have been done with scalability in mind (see the recent News posts).

EVE is big and popular, yes, but the combat does not compare.

The idea is that after advertisement the devs can afford to hire a much larger team, and thus the additions to the game will come much more often. (God I hope they plan on hiring more people as soon as they can.) With more additions, the playerbase will become much more satisfied and more people will play.

However, there is a strong point here that Ryan has reminded me of which I think has been overlooked. A large influx of players will COMPLETELY change the nature of this game. We're so used to having everything balanced for 1 on 1. Even the largest group battles we have consist of a total of a little over 30 people. Imagine a battle with over 100 players or even 500. Everything will change and the mechanics will have to be adjusted accordingly. My point is, wouldn't it be better to try and attract at least a fraction of that kind of a playerbase now so that the devs can work with a closer idea to what they will ideally be dealing with in the future? Building the game to make it functional for this current playerbase will only make it unbalanced again if there is a large increase in players.

it's a deadly circle of life too.

the dev team is small now.. to increase productivity, they need to hire more people.

for that, ...money.

but money comes in from us, the fanboys (that's a non-gender specific statement, so dont get your panties in a bunch, miharu.)

the more players, the more money. but the players are not joining due to the lack of advertising, player-base, and content.

we the players of VO should set our accounts on auto for a month straight. with everyone "online" it will seem like there is always a huge active player list. even if it's just 5-10 of you actually playing at that time.

newbies will see the intensity of the player-base, and have more of an insentive to stick.

and if some dumb noob asks "where is everyone?" please tell them that this is a huge game... people can be any/everywhere.

Bringing in a huge influx of new players will not instantly create something for them to all do. There is a distinct lack of game mechanics for large battles.. Border Skirmish is kind of an alpha test at best. Plus, there are still some technical problems we're working out. So basically, a whole lot of new people would come in, and then after a week or two would go "so, where's the game?". Throwing more players at this problem is not going to fix it, nor will it do anything to help us (aside from the additional income, which granted, would be really useful.. but it would be better if the customers actually wanted to STAY). For development purposes, we already know what we need to know, as far as what we're trying to achieve.

On another note, I hadn't heard about EVE going to the Mac, but it's not a particularly worrysome thing for me. EVE is a different kind of game. It has a lot of similar features, but our basic goals are still different.. we're rooted in "direct control, realtime combat", and I think that will continue to demonstrate a difference between the games in both philosophy and gameplay direction. The MMO market is doing nothing but growing, every single day. There is room for more than one type of game, or interpretation of a genre.

Also, on a strictly technological level, our game with 30,000 players is not unfeasable. Some things would be done a bit differently (station sectors in particular), and some server architectural changes would have to be made. But we have put a great deal of thought into scalability, and such things are not outside the realm of possibility. Hopefully this sort of ramp-up wouldn't happen overnight, giving us a little time to make those changes. As it is, we can probably handle a few thousand players at once without having to do much.

Finally, a massive marketing campaign has always been part of our plan, once we reach a certain level of progress. In some part, it's been delayed by unexpected development problems and instabilities, in other areas it's been delayed by my own personal challenges and tragedies last year, which some of you recall. In any event, it is still a goal we're working towards. That is, ultimately, what 2.0 is all about. Fully achieving the "2.0" featureset will not be necessary, marketing will happen earlier.. you may have noticed we've started to announce new versions to a limited extent already. But it's a slow ramp-up, we don't want a tremendous amount of exposure yet, until we believe the game will *retain* a larger percentage of the new users who try it.

The greater number of players online lately is not a cosmic accident, it's because we've had more new subscribers, which is.. in large part, because we're telling people about the game (although only lightly). Our subscribership is up, and climbing. In fact, it hasn't been this high since last August. We have extensive graphs and monitoring of all this data, which provides feedback on exactly what marketing choices we make and where the new users come from. We do have a plan, and we will get there. I can understand that sometimes it seems like we don't.

...and they have a plan.