Some Observations and Suggestions

Before I begin, I'd like to present my credentials. Not because I think you'll be impressed, but because I'm hoping that you will consider that my observations are from an informed and experienced perspective. Please don't take that the wrong way :p.

If anyone is familiar with Microsoft's Freelancer, there is a vibrant community of multiplayer servers that offer a free persistent universe similar to Vendetta. The only cost to play one of these servers is to purchase the game, which is on the $9.99 rack at WalMart these days. In 2003 I founded a multiplayer server called Evolved 24/7 RPG. Initially we ran a player modified version of the game called Nomads Revenge, but soon we began developing our own mod for the game. In 2005 we launched the Evolved Mod v1. It had many improvements over the vanilla version including new commodities, ships, systems, etc. We continued to develop the mod and some server side applications eventually implementing Freelancer's first dynamic economy, called DynEcon. After years of successful gaming with thousands of fellows Freelancer enthusiasts, we decided it was time to close the server. Freelancer had become a senior citizen and the player base was dwindling. We had a good run, revolutionized the game, and made a ton of new friends.

For a while I drifted from game to game, but nothing caught my eye. One day I was searching Google for something (I forget what), but an ad for Vendetta popped up so I clicked on it. I discovered a MMO that was just like a heavily modded multiplayer Freelancer server. I was intrigued and so signed up for the free trial. After spending my eight hours learning the ropes and exploring near space, I signed up for the monthly. I haven't regretted it.

I've been spending the last few weeks developing my character ([USM]Sledge) and learning the particulars of the game. While doing that, I've also been keeping a list of things that I wish were in the game, and things I think can be improved. Keep in mind, I don't want this game to become Freelancer. In fact, this game is what all the Freelancer modders were trying to do. I'd like to share my list with the community and developers. Maybe some of these items will peak your interest and we can have an honest discussion about them.

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The first thing on my list is MONEY. The big question that popped into my head almost immediately is: What's it for? There seems to be no reason for it in this game. Once you've made a few hundred thousand credits, you can afford most everything in the game. The only reason to continue to make money is to support your voracious appetite for PVP and ammo. There are some sweet cargo ships and miner ships in this game, one or two trade missions and you can dock them until you need a few more bucks. I suggest we ease up on the level requirements for ships and equipment (but keep them intact) and make ships and equip waaay more expensive. Make money worth making. I'd trade my tucus off for a Behemoth if it cost 2 million (or more) credits. With the leveling requirements, once you got the level what's a few thousand credits for a Moth? There's nothing left to do.

And then we get to DYING. I LOVE the fact that you have to pay up when you die. It's something I always pushed for at Evolved. If ships and equipment costed an arm and a leg, people would consider very carefully if something's worth dying for. If my Moth costed 2 million credits, I'd gladly pay a pirate 100k to let me live. As it is, I thumb my nose at them and call them names. I've got my level, I'll just buy a new ship. If I had a lot of money invested, hiring escorts becomes a viable contract for other players. Venturing into unprotected space becomes much more adventurous. Role play will benefit greatly from this. The sweet trade routes will go through areas that are dangerous. Cooperation will be beneficial.

Money can become a big deal in this game. In fact, the game is very weak WITHOUT a real reason for making lots of money (by "weak" I don't mean bad, just not a good as it could be). The game is dynamic and I love that. Similar to the guild functions, players can make real estate purchases with the command line such as "/buy e-11". Whatever system you're in, and you've got the cash, e-11 becomes your property. It can be a monthly (weekly or daily) rent that is automatically deducted from your bank. Players/guilds can have bases contructed. The developers should charge a premium for this service (like BILLIONS of credits) so only guilds can afford them. The bases sell goods and services (repairs?) that the owner actually profits from. If you don't want someone in your space/base, defend it. If you don't want the property anymore, simply type "/sell e-11". You've recieve fair market value which can be more or less than what you paid for it. If the owner of a piece of real estate fails to log on for a certain period, his property falls into default and is returned to the "pot".

I've got other observations, but I wanted to get a discussion going about money and the gazillion thigns it can be good for, and the dozens of things it NEEDS to be good for. Vendetta Online has massive potential. But right now once you've leveled and you have cash, the only thing left to do is hive hunt and PVP. Money needs to have true value that people are willing to work for. Money is what makes an economy and an economy is what creates a dynamic universe of players, guilds, and factions interacting and becoming alive. THAT's when things REALLY start to get fun.

*Money, what is it good for?*
Very nice and well thought post Sledge. Since you are a newcomer to VO i will just point out a few things you should take into consideration.
Not everyone in VO is filthy rich.
Players who mostly enjoy PVP combat aspect of VO don't do much trading or mining. They are happy if they have a couple of mil. so it can last them for a few days or a week of buying ships and equipment back when they die.
Unlike trading & mining guilds (TGFT for example), nation military guilds are poor. They live for combat, not trading and mining.
If some of the things you proposed should be implemented, guilds like TGFT would become owners of the universe buying property all around, building guild stations etc.
Others, mainly PVP-ers would have to adapt to survive and start doing things they do not like: trading and mining for money.
The whole game would turn to money driven capitalist economy.
It is a sure death for nation military guilds and PVP.

Well, you can always pay the poor pirates instead of calling them snotty names. That will eat through some of your ill-begotten cash. And you can pride yourself on having helped the poor poor pirates guild.

And as always, a kiss to Bojan

Bojan, I think you're painting too dark a picture. Sledge said that role-playing would benefit greatly. Indeed, hiring protectors would become a viable way to defend one's own cargo and ship. Said protectors would have tons of PvP... and get paid for it.

Silkroad Online employs a similar model (albeit much more explicit), namely a three-sided conflict: Traders trade and pay Hunters. Hunters hunt Thieves. Thieves attack Traders. This could work in VO, as well, I think.

Azumi, I never said I call them snotty names. And what's my motivation to pay them? It's a business decision to not pay them. My ship and cargo usually costs less than what they ask.

Yes, Bojan, I am new. But I see this place as much more than a place to PVP. Maybe I'm wrong, but if that's all it is and all I'm doing by leveling is working to get a better ship and weapons for just that purpose then perhaps Vendetta isn't for me. I'm looking for a complex in depth online gaming experience. There are a myriad of ideas to create that environment, which I'll be sure to post about, but I feel we must begin with an examination of money.

The ideas I posted obviously are just that: ideas. I'm sure the developers are perfectly competent and have a solid plan on where they'd like to take this place. I'm just floating things to think about.

Toshiro is correct that the desired effect of adjusting values is to increase player cooperation, planning, interaction, and yes, PVP. One of the fundamental cores of an online environment is to create a rich environment where players are immersed in an alternate reality. As is stands, the alternate reality is a lot of people on /100 chatting about how to tune their guitars. I'd like to see players bounty hunting each other, making diplomatic and trade agreements, warring, defending, and being industrious. Creating a player economy would help drive that.

Vendetta has a story but it is really just a stage. The players and guilds are the actors. They are the story and intrigue of everyday life in a faraway place. We need a script. An impetus. An economy.

As is stands, the alternate reality is a lot of people on /100 chatting about how to tune their guitars.

Actually, I was helping Mecha with chord voicings and progressions. From what I understood, his guitar was tuned just fine. Anyway, I like your ideas. I have suggested many times that money should have more value in VO. However, the devs have always been cautious about increasing equipment prices or decreasing payouts because they feel it will hurt PvP combat, which is one of the biggest draws VO has right now. By making the game more interesting in one way, they could end up alienating half the current player-base. I personally would be happy to suffer through some dramatic changes if I thought the game would be better off in the long-run because of it.

Without knowing the details, the proposed changed Incarnate wrote about in the News will probably address most of the points you've brought up regarding the economy. If the base of the economy becomes mining for ores which stations need for manufacturing and the more valuable ores are placed in grey space than the potential for more RP-based conflict is greatly increased. How many credits you have will be less important than your access to the ores and commodities used to build the ships and weapons used by everyone.

One aspect about VO that I like playing is the lack of great impact when you die when you lose a lesser than great ship.

Of course when newer, larger ships come out such as capital ships, you need to try to protect that investment which can range from the hundreds-of-thousands of credits to hundreds-of-millions. But the current available ships should not be extravagantly expensive since they are vulnerable anywhere by anything.

To lose 100,000 credits on a single one man ship alone should be justified with the durability of the ship and its function. Making a Behemoth cost 2,000,000 credits is like paying $100,000 on a pickup truck, it's not worth it.

You may lose hours, maybe days of game time and probably to some newb with an itchy trigger finger, blowing up on a roid, or Hive collector bots.

Simply put, the game needs to be fun, not a grind for money for a ship that I can lose at any moment. The original post sounds strongly like EVE where you can lose hours, days, weeks, months, or more of game time that you pay for. But they all come with one aspect, the items importance and survivability is rated by how much it costs. Current prices can go up but not to the point where the ship isn't worth the credits.

"...or I'm underestimating the appeal of a second job you have to pay for."

@Sledge
For several years the whole VO community has been proposing and asking for some major changes that would improve immersion, RP aspect and overall gameplay.
If you have time, go thru suggestions forum and check for yourself.

Sadly, atm VO functions as "cops vs robbers" FPS and is seriously lacking in everything else. I think I speak for the majority of current playerbase when I say:
yes we would all like VO to become something more, a real space MMORPG, and we would like it to happen TODAY!

Incarnates newspost is full of good and exciting promises that it will happen


Alas, that word lost all credibility when used in VO.
I will be very happy if Incarnate proves me wrong soon. :P

I'll agree that ships need to be worth more; at least just enough for death to mean something. However, I also concur with Surb that 2Mil for a Behemoth is more than a bit excessive.

I know, the snotty was on my account. Overall I agree, but Bojan once more states the truth...

Another kiss at Bojan

I agree with what several players have stated previously. It would be nice to see death matter a little more, but again, prices would need to be carefully adjusted so as to not eliminate the military structure, but still hurt those that die.

I personally know that many a pilot functions with only 5-10M in their personal accounts, and frequently deposit the extra into guild banks for the betterment of their society.

I agree however that if we could see the kind of Trader-Escort integration that Sledge mentioned, it might actually make being a combat pilot more lucrative, as well as benefit stellar trade. It's worth further examination.

Ok, let's for a moment forget that everything in VO development happens Soon(tm). Let's look at (yet another) suggestion to make money somewhat important.

Now, I and many other players just hate trading. So we have 2 problems.

Problem 1: Learning to PvP. Learning to PvP means a lot of dueling. And dying. And spending all your money on new ships. A new player might start getting excited about PvP even before he/she gets the first million of credits, but he/she can already be sick of FedEx missions.

So we need to solve the problem of practice combat. Practice combat should be the SAME as real combat (no "training" ships and weapons which horribly suck: if you want to learn something, you should use real weapons), but don't be as expensive.

Problem 2: How will fighters make money. All right, we don't have our "Space Quake" anymore, all PvP has a meaning. I can see how pirates will make money. I can see how probably pirate hunters will make money (though traders might find that it's less risky to pay to pirates than to escorters). But how will Serco and Itani get refunded for participating in their wonderful war?

I'm all for meaningful PvP. Currently PvP is just duels. Duels are fine, but I want some epic large scale battles, and currently there are no neither reasons nor enough active players to participate in them. When I showed a NW thread to my friend he told me: "What, an epic battle with just 20 participants? Only once a week?". He doesn't think that there is anything epic in 10v10 and 15v15 battlegrounds in WoW, and looks forward to RvR in Warhammer.

So, I want some epic battles in VO as soon(tm) as it's possible for our devs to add something meaningful to fight for. And, of course, only when players have something to loose, there will be really hot battles.

I think we can have our cake and eat it too. Leave the ship prices low, but provide expensive real estate to buy and defend.

This is a great discussion. My ideas aren't the focus of what I'm talking about. The point is to give us something to spend our money on besides just ships and guns. Maybe there should also be a "cost of living", things like fuel, docking fees, taxes, shields, "room and board" costs (if you log off in a base you don't own or not on the best terms with), custom items and ships, radiation damage in certain locations and areas close to suns, etc. etc. If we make money something that's really worth making as a "profession", the rest of the professions will line up accordingly (escorts, bounties, pirating, manufacturing, mining, trading, etc.). Guilds will have more meaning as a "business" instead of a consortium of PvP'ers. Hopefully, the backstory and international intrigue of the universe will develop and the game will become alive.

*edit*

I fixed the dates in my initial post. I'm glad none of you veteran Freelancers called me out on the fact that the game released in 2003 and I posted that I started a server in 1993.

In an MMO, the importance of money is that of a time saver. It should be like the shields in some of the newer renditions of Asteroids; a limited shortcut to get you where you want to go faster, but not necessarily access to special privileges you couldn't get by doing it the hard way all yourself. If the carrots in my town's store suck, I may just give them the finger and go plant some of my own. If they're delicious, I might very well sell them at the farmer's market. I want to have the choice to create a veritable station out of the ore from asteroids, without ever being forced into exchanging monopoly money. *That* is the essence of Player Owned.

Sledge, and anyone else who is interested, should also refer to this thread: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/19364

or: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/17458?page=1

Both detail some ideas for making money more valuable.

The one thing that must be avoided is creating a poor class in VO. That would be a major turn-off for many players. Fare well, fly safe, and have fun. I will be out of game for a few months.

-R IBA 3.14rat