i have read a few here on the boards and felt the urge to say thank you for what we actually have in addition to what i expect.

- praises:
the game is the best space shooter i know. who ever loves pvp and the physics engine will hopefully agree on that.

- what i miss:
a reason to fight.
sure it is fun to hang out in b8 but i would wish for like a mission triggered war event fighting another faction incuding players and npc's for something...

in daoc it were the relictraids, in wow its battlegrounds...
to have the feeling of a win (yes we made it we beat the others... (for now)) most of the time i log on for nation war... why can't the game itself offer such an event? with missions leading to it, perhaps special wh's to enter the combat zone and then smash the shit out of each other whenever each side has about 5 or 7 attendants queued up... for well some pricemoney maybe... or extra xith (well uit and xith...) whatever i think you got the idea... something to win as a faction team would be really nice!

Crafting:
well actually the only ites which are "craftable" are not even related to a prfession they are way overprized regarding time and effort and though contrary to the philosophy "no risc no fun - what risc? loosing a ship? - let's have fun!" why?
Money sink? whatfore the game is good as it is everybody fights and all are happy...
so what i whish for crafting is a method to yes build ships and other stuff...
but the time it consumes actually to build just one cent sl is way over the top.
the gameshould be fun, not work. fun is the moment you see a pirate and fight or run ... btw. where the hell are npc pirates... they are obviously missing in the game...

Lots of people in vo also like trading and mining more than the pvp aspect... a real crafting system and realeconomy would give them something to do and later to be proud of...

i don't play a trader character but i wonder what might be cool abut trading anyways. that's why i don't play one i don't see any goal for me in trading i would like to achieve, except the licences which i actually have. why can't there be more content to make you feel needed? whycan't we larn to craft ioncores and other stuff in oderto build our ships from the ground? give ore some value please. till now mining is for the licences only as well (or the new centurion).

the new cent costs 1200 cr - w00t? more like 2 million!! noone is going to waste such a ship.

yes there should be moneysinks. the tweaking of the escort missions was fine we still have nothing to spend our mony on but it does not float in like before.

these are mostly concept tional critics and behind loads of programming work. i realise that, but to have the game complete somewhen i suggest you really start thinking about such concepts fist and then go there in small steps...

i love what you do with the hive and other improovements. but still
1. why do i finght, for what?
2. why should i mine what to do with the ore?
3. why should i trade if i can afford my ships to fight?

owning stuff like own stations and capships and other "woah objects"may be nice but for what goal do you need them?

sure i am keen on having a frigate somewhen but what if everybody has them an what shall we do with them then? i mean why should we fight in such costy things if there is not even war?

notes at the end:
- aerna seekers are way to powerfull! i mean such a little shithead just blows you up by ramming you ... haha how funny... :( i was actually fighting some serious opponent and the seeker justs ends this... - no fun in that.
- lawz drop not often enough

Yup. I've posted about pretty much everything here (especially the Lack Of A Point issue), so yeah, we're.. working on it?

It is a little amusing though, that you're saying it's bad the Superlight is so costly, while in the other thread they're asking for things to be made more expensive. Yes, the game is generally a "get out and fight" type game, where worrying over gear recovery is not the top priority.. but it was always the intent to have a steeper curve applied to that than is currently present. So the "best" stuff would be pretty damned expensive, but "good" stuff would be within everyone's range.

Well Inc , I appreciate that most of the work over the last year has been on the underlying structures of vo , and can only be sensed rather than directly observed . The new crafting style missions are a welcome step in the right direction ,but writing many such missions is a large task , perhaps the revised editor and the pcc can help there .

So , what brings players in game ? The answer is activities or events where players interact . Look at the popularity of Nation wars , races , LMS contests and so on . People enjoy getting together to do things as a group , a guild , a nation . These are activities in which the outcome is unpredictable, in effect a recurring mission of infinite length.

I realise that BS and BP ( and to an extent ctc) are structured towards this end, and can be improved and extended with the aid of the new mission editor.

I am not making any specific suggestions , since I cannot assess with any accuracy the implications of implementing those suggestions . I am just observing that group pvp or pve activities are rightly popular, and that such activities with positive outcomes would seem to me to be a good long term objective.

Ecka

what i am worried of is that the concept may not develop freely because the brainstorming already comes up with "no we can't do that, that would be another 2 years of work and we would need to make too much changes to the actuall game..."

no offense at all, you guys are great. you have prooven this already. just telling ya what my concern is.
it is just - i think you guys are coders mostly, dedicated to how the the code works used to make a flawless game and stuff so naturally you started with - "what would be fun" "yeah let's make a game we can shoot eachother in spaceships" Checked, we have that.

but the backside of this approach is you easily loose the scope for the greater view...
incarnate you NOW think of how the game might work later...
i am pretty sure you guys may have realized that these thoughts should have been made around 2000 before the first line of code was written, so the game may have then already had taken a slightly other course other things would have come earlier ... like thinking about dynamic hive from the beginning on an stuff... like just use it as a module for also future expansions...

i don't want to say something went wrong here. The game rocks.
But please free your mind when thinking about what the game should be like, do not think about what cost changes might bring, just think of what would be really fun and if necessary just name the result VO2 then if you set yourself on course into a deadend with the actuall game.

Sure i don't really know what is going on at your place so please don't take this as offense in any way. all i want to state is my concern that the way the game actually develops may limit the freedom of imagination of how the game should be.
You took the approach that was closest to you guys, the result is a good game. i just hope you also deal with the thought of "perhaps our initial approach was not ideal and the concept should have come first so we might have had a better focus on where to go if the overall mmo concept would be available in the past already".
just to free the mind,, for the thoughts of a concept that actually might not really fit to a few parts already in the game, but closer to your guys feeling of "that would be a great game man!"

so if you guys realize there might be a little glitch/error in the past plans/approach just not do it again and really open your mind to what and how it should be from now on.

Don't limit your imagination, the concept is the most crucial thing doing a game. 2nd on the importance list is the game balance imho then finally features like missions npc traders pirates ...
the concept nails it if the game may have a fake or must have real economy.
well i guess finacial aspects also made things turn out as they are. but i hope you guys meanwhile earned the freedom to really start thinking about the game you really had in mind so please free you mind.

i don't ask for a comment on this because it just would be unwise no matter what you reply. but i know you read it and i hope you are able to care about these thoughts/concerns. a "don't worry" perhaps would be cool.
as far as i can tell i think the community will supoort any changes you might come up with for turning this game into a "real mmo" no matter how long they may need to develop as long as you give us the fun to shoot ourselfs like it is.

and if there has to be a cut for a new introduced economy, so be it, then well a few of us will be rich as hell, add a ceta badge and all is explained.

you guys rock.

Seriously, 99% of questions about the future of the game would be directly solved by having half the features I wanted back in 1998. So I don't terribly worry about whether old ideas are out of date, because they're re-requested on a continual basis. We also adjust our aims and goals as we go along, and learn from usage of the game, what people seem to enjoy, what works, and so on. That's.. the evolutionary process of making a game.

Anyway, I'm not concerned about it. We are now in a far better position to actually make the game what we wanted it to be, than we ever have been before. So, we're just going to keep moving ahead with that.

"but the backside of this approach is you easily loose the scope for the greater view...
incarnate you NOW think of how the game might work later...
i am pretty sure you guys may have realized that these thoughts should have been made around 2000 before the first line of code was written, so the game may have then already had taken a slightly other course other things would have come earlier ... like thinking about dynamic hive from the beginning on an stuff... like just use it as a module for also future expansions"

Shaded, I think that you are approaching this issue with the mistaken idea that the VO you see today began as an attempt to make a full scale MMORPG. The reality is that Vendetta began as "Vendetta Test", a hard-coded tech demo so that some wealthy development company would shower Guild with the resources needed to make their fully-realized dream game. When that didn't happen, Guild had to make do with what they already had - a hard-coded demo. It's not the ideal situation, but here we all are years later. What's important is that they've been working all this time to replace all the old code in favor of a modular approach, and have made or updated the tools that are required to develop VO much more quickly and reliably.

To build on what Whistler pointed out..

If we had tried Doing Everything From The Beginning.. we probably wouldn't be here. We were only able to ship the game with a publisher because we had a fairly simple product that was largely complete and functional.. as opposed to a complex game that was totally unfinished (and broken). We always intended to build a complex game, but not with four people on next-to-nothing for capital/income. Videogames that try to do Everything tend to end up as Vaporware.. and we nearly did as well, even with a reduced featureset (and we *still* overshot a lot of stuff, like making the universe too big.. but we had no idea how many players we would get).

The fact that we're even here at all is.. uhh.. highly improbable, in retrospect.

that's why i am glad you made it.