with FF being turned off this is a suggestion that I have talked to a few people about. Having a 500 m sphere in a random sector in sedina that would be a dueling arena yes we have b8 but this could create a different type of up close and tight fighting since you are limited to a 500 meter ball. It could also be a staging ground for tournaments because so far we just have nation war, which I love by the way but other then that there is not much in the way of an neutral pvp event.

You're talking about having some more nice-and-condensed roid fields like in latos d-2 (I love that one)? I'm all for something like that.

Having a roid ball would be cool too. The more roids, the more awesome :).

I don't think this should be implemented in any way aside from with roids (with an entrance/exit of course).

could just be a giant hollow roid...we already have the smaller hollow ones.

How about a sector that damages ships who go outside of a 'safety' zone, where dueling can take place. A couple of seconds outside of the safety zone, you'll get slowly damaged by the intense radiation.

500m sounds a little small though.

Why? Is this is supposed to be some answer to people running or backrolling? If so, then it's going to fail simply because those so inclined to do so won't use these spaces.

Other than that I don't quite get how this fulfills a need, either in the context of role play or game mechanics. It forces one style of combat, and therefore doesn't seem to be something that would be widely utilized.

On the other hand, if there was some mission or backstory element that supported the concept of gladiators (slaves fighting for their master's entertainment), then it would be cool. If there was a Serco mission that involved kidnapping a couple Itani's (real players), and forcing them to fight to the death, with the winner being released, that would be awesome.

snax its not meant to prevent people running or backrolling it is a consensual pvp group. Like you said the people who don't want to do it won't and they don't have to. I'm talking about having like an arena that spectators can look in and watch kind of how I figured modern day space gladiator duels would be. The idea of a semi transparent ball like the sides of the racetracks is what I am talking about but yes a hollow roid would also be cool

We need some really big structures to explain the construction of cap ships. Perhaps there could be a large space dock that doesn't have a NFZ.

Would need to be much bigger than 500m then considering that even a tight fight takes place anywhere from 250-50 metres, and tends to wander all over the place.

1500 metres might be better?

No reason we couldn't have various sized hollow roids in the same sector, gav. 500m diameter is knife fight range to be sure, but it's not so tight as to be stupid.

I like it. No-FF sectors are going to transient (as per Inc's post last week) but I see no reason not to have dedicated arenas to broaden the game. I think arenas like this could keep everybody happily challenged by letting one choose the type of fight they'd prefer at the time. Will also cut down on 'post-B8-boom' disputes on 100.

I like the roid idea too, the only drawback could be a framerate hit with big polygons all around, but I doubt it would be nearly as bad as a border skirmish, etc. More atmosphere, more PvP!

Better still, what if we had some dedicated arenas, and some with user-settable options to take some of the workload off the host of an event? Ex: If an NW ends up very lopsided, Ecka could merge the minority teams and enable FF-protection amongst the group members. Would also make events like bus-wars more do-able by having the app enforce ship types and loadouts rather than the host.

Am I going off-topic here?

Parking a static levi ring in an empty sector of sedina might be a simple solution to see if the idea works.

What's wrong with good old B8 fights & fur-balls?
What's wrong with bus-wars?
What's wrong with common consensual fights & duels?
What's wrong with ongoing Serco/Itani war, BP, BS?
You want arena with gladiators in space ships?
Next thing you will want 7 vestal virgins for a winning gladiator...

Confining a fight between space ships in a 500m diameter sphere/ring is utter nonsense. What can we possibly get from that?
Fight the same people you fight every day but in arena?
Geeee, wowza, that is something really new and exciting.

This could work in WoW with swords/axes/whatever, but in VO?
This is a space game and you can literally fight everywhere. Why the heck would I want to go to some arena to fight some moron who has nothing better to do then count his deaths and pks and brag on general chat that he is a gladiator in space?

bojan im sorry I don't play the game how you want me to play it.

B8 isn't meant to be a consensual pvp group its just that it ended up that way by a lack of grey space trade

I never said anytihng about bus wars

generally speaking vendetta isn't supposed to be based on consensual pvp

Not everyone can do serco/itani bp and bs

7 virgins? i had a comment on that but it would probably get the thread locked

bojan... while implementing gladiators as a game feature would be in my view retarded, he base of his idea is good. we should have more clustered roids (and I think having some in hollow, arena-like spheres of different sizes would be cool) in pvp-regions (aka, hot-spots in grey). I love fighting in close quarters around a bunch of roids. gives everyday pvp just a little more, which can be really fun! :)

/me points to his favorite clustered roid in Latos D-2.

If you want something new and fresh in grey then forget about levi rings or arena.
This is distant future.
I wouldn't mind a ship graveyard sector with a cluster of wrecked ship hulls and parts floating so you can run around fighting and playing hide and seek.
That could be visually attractive and challenging to play around.

Still more good ideas, and since everyone seems to want variations, why not work towards user-settable sector arenas? I'm envisioning a system where a player, group, or guild could reserve a sector (plenty of them practically unused as it is), and call up an interface to set arena options and rules, much like the server options found in Halo, etc.

If this were built into the app, challenges like capture-the-flag, team PvP (like NW and buswars), sector races and deathmatches would become much easier to organize, and leave more time for the fun part. I think it would also be fun if players could view and bet on events from the station bars (GDAP gladiators!).

Obviously, this all entails quite a bit of work for the devs, but as we're about to see some major changes to VO, it seems like a good time for fresh discussion.

One point against the arena concept, touched on before, is that would tend to cluster PvPs in those arenas, much like we now see with B8. I think it's a valid concern, since ideally, the VO universe is the arena, but I don't think the majority of players would make it their sole pursuit. The changes currently in the works are pretty clearly focused on encouraging everyone to wander more, and that's a good thing.

/\ fail

Actually... I made a grave mistake.
We need arena in some empty sector in grey.
All morons will go there to play gladiators so the rest of VO Universe will be quite enjoyable.
One can just put all known "gladiators" on ignore and even ch 100 will look better. :)

Yay for gladiators and arena. I fully support this idea.

see bojan i knew you would come around to like the idea