In the other thread I wrote:

"Big misunderstanding, I have not the slightest interest to be neutral with everyone, I want a game with interesting conflicts to evolve between naturally antagonizing guilds. It's just, as I tried to point out, that a predefined conflict between red and blue has no meaning to me and bores me."

It's not a big difference if a Serco player or a UIT player owning Serco equipment blocks Itani space for a guild (despite that guild not taking part in the faction battles!). Even a UIT only guild of that kind would be locked out of Itani space as well as of Serco space if one member of a wing uses Serco equipment and another one uses Itani equipment.

So even a UIT only guild would be forced to chose between either avoiding any high-end equipment of both opposed facions or avoiding all controlled and monitored sectors of both opposed factions.

That would be utterly awful.

"If a multifactional guild can't have a group of members from different factions operating in about half of the game universe it is a severe hampering."

A mufti-national guild can and always will be able to operate in MORE than half the game universe. It can operate in 100% of it. Some members may, by their own choosing only operate in 3/4s of the universe.
So, once again... you are completely wrong.

"If a multifactional guild can't have a group of members from different factions operating in about half of the game universe it is a severe hampering."

Update: The same does apply to a group of members from a UIT only guild where some use high-end Itani equipment and some use high-end Serco equipment.

a predefined conflict between red and blue has no meaning to me and bores me

It has no meaning to any of us. We're all here saying the devs need to give it meaning by making content exclusive so that the choice actually matters.

"It has no meaning to any of us."

Try something else then. Get out of factionalism, go for player-driven conflicts.

"We're all here saying the devs need to give it meaning"

They can't do that for you.

Of course they can. If the winner of CtC was the only faction that got to buy prom/valks that week, a TON of players would get involved in it. Nobody cares about neutIII so thats why people don't particularly care if serco or itani wins the battle. Same goes with deneb and other nationalist activities, they need to have a bigger impact and really hurt the losing team whilst rewarding the winning team.

And I dunno who on earth your in-game name is bungarus but I don't think you've ever been in FAMY, because we ARE player conflict, so you should probably look into that if you want to fight with people :P

Sure, or VPR of course, those are some possibilities. But I am a noob on combat license 2 right now and have no idea how I might turn out at PvP.

Also trader guilds and mining guilds should have military wings. Do they?

In-game name is the same.

Okay, if you are new then you have a lot to learn before you can really comment on this kind of thing. VO is a place of discovery and you can't possibly see everything that is going on until you get out there are plant some seeds in different guilds and in different circles.

I suggest you do that before you do too many game suggestions, you might find you will be kicking yourself down the track because you will understand a lot more.

As I said in the other thread: "This is the point of view of someone who is new to VO but who played both kinds of MMOGs in the past, with focus on predefined factions and with focus on player-driven guilds."

I really wanted to stay out of the discussion for a while because I saw that argument against me coming of course. But I couldn't resist touching on the topic before, and now with Incarnate asking for a new discussion I thought someone must point these things out.

Thankfully nobody, including the Devs, has any interest in players being able to avoid a choice between access to nation-specific goodies (proms and talks) and not being at least "Disliked" in either Itani or Serco space. Want the toys? Pick a side. Multinational guilds aren't nerfed by this - they just have to have enough players able to operate in the relevant nation space.

Note that whether automated defenses will attack you just because you're Admired with the opposing faction is still totally unknown. Personally, I'd say the line should be that if you have the standing for the SCP, you're Itani Hated; vice versa for the X1/Vigilant. But, what is known is that you will be killable without penalty within the opposing faction's space, as it should be.

In short: anyone bothering to reply to Bungarus after this post is below the troll line.

VO has plenty of player/guild driven conflict.

Less game-created / preexisting conflict does not necessarily mean more player-created conflict, it simply means less overall conflict. There is 8 years of varying levels of player-created and game-created conflict in Vendetta's current universe to back this statement up.

I do agree with Bungarus on one point: It should be possible for any player to obtain any item. I do not, however, agree that it should be an equal or easy process. If I am admired by the Serco, I should not be able to buy anything from the Itani themselves. But I do think there should be expensive and risky black market options. I also think it should be possible to steal ships from people. So I could obtain a Valk, but it would be a lot more painful for me to lose it than it would for somebody the Itani liked. If my flying a Valk angered Itani players, they could try to kill me, and if they succeeded, they'd be able to know that they actually hurt me.

I would also like it to be possible for players to sell eachother ships, although this would contradict some of the difficulty mentioned above. Measures would need to be taken to make such smuggling dangerous enough that the player-set prices for black market ships remain high. It shouldn't be possible for an Itani to just buy forty valks, move them to Sedina, and then sell them at 5% markup and come out ahead.

A ship registration system could help take care of that - buying ships from other players wouldn't automatically register the ship in your name unless you have the appropriate standing with the source nation. Otherwise, you will be recognized as piloting an unregistered ship, and any faction who doesn't like that might shoot at you. (There should still be a way to get a forged registration, but that could be an expensive process done through Corvus, and requiring sufficient Corvus standing.)

Other than this one point, however, I disagree with most of his complaints.

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One other thing: Player driven conflict is awesome. The problem is, it is hard to work with from the developer and business sides of the equation - especially with a playerbase as small as VO's. It can be done, sure. But it's a lot easier if you build a few sources of conflict into the universe, rather than leaving it entirely in the hands of the players. For one thing, this makes it a lot easier to have meaningful PvE elements. It also means the basic premise of the game is a lot more stable, which makes the game itself easier to describe, market, and sell. Yes, this means that player run guilds have to take the war into account. Tough. Just accept it as a fact of life and plan around it.

You can always go make your own game. Programming isn't magic, it's just a skill that you learn with time, patience, and lots of practice. Making the game actually be fun is the magic part - but hey, if you're presuming to know better than the devs, you must know what you're doing, right? (Heh, that applies to all of us, of course, not just you.)

You seem to admit the validity of much that I was saying but want to implement this with complicated new game mechanics, while I already see some ongoing and potential for more interesting player driven conflict in the game as it is.

UIT guilds and multifactional guilds - who seem to spearhead player driven roleplay and conflict - should simply not be nerfed dramatically by locking either high end equipment or half of the universe from them.

I have to disagree - I and many others are long tired of seeing Itanis running around in proms and more commonly sercos sporting valks. Players have 6 different alts they can play per account so there never has been any real limit to using equipment. Even with the current limits it is simply a matter of playing the nationality that provides the features you actually want.

If anything the faction system does not go nearly far enough to restrict usage and access.

Let me put it this way Bungarus: I would rather have extended mutual exclusion with no way to get gear from both sides at the same time, than what you are asking for. I would prefer for there to be a painful way to get the gear, but I'd rather have no way at all than for it to return to what it was (or even stay like it is now).

As PaK reminds us, we can always make more characters. That's a good idea anyway, because there already are some missions that are only available to people from specific nations. There are also missions that have forks, which you can only take once. And though as a newbie you might not realize it yet, it doesn't take very long to level up an alt, especially once you are familiar with how the game works. Even more so if you can get some friends (or even your own main) to help. So maintaining a couple characters to handle work in various locations wouldn't be a big deal. And if you're into RP, you can give them different personalities, so that you have a change of pace.

On numerous occasions I said obtaining high-end equipment should not be easy. But it should be possible, also for UIT guilds and multifactional guilds that don't want a bloody half of the space locked away from them for heaven's sake.

I am not fond of alts, I think I will never use one. In the past I never felt an urge to change the developped character in the MMOGs I played.

What I think should be discussed in context with the topic of this thread:

1. Does the playerbase wish for more players? - From all the griefing that seems to go on judged by players being proud of it here in the forum and on 100 I doubt it.

2. Since Guild Software will certainly wish for more players, which makes 1. rather insignificant, how can the number of players be increased?

I think the current balance of predefined factions with UIT guilds and multifactional guilds opening up player-driven gameplay and roleplay is clever because different types of players can be attracted.

This balance should be better reflected in the introduction on the game website. It appears quite a contradiction that this text seems to claim VO is a sandbox type of game at first ("This MMO permits thousands of players to interact ... in a vast universe. Users may build their characters in any direction they desire ... RPG gameplay in a massive online galaxy") which surely many players prefer, but then describes the predefined stuff that offends the sandbox-type of player. UIT guilds and multifactional guilds who are neutral in the faction war being also possible is not even mentioned. That should be changed.

But the statement must be valid. Should UIT guilds and multifactional guilds get dramatically nerfed the sandbox-type of player may soon feel he has been fooled and leave the game.

With more players (edit: of the sandbox-type) more player-driven roleplay and conflicts should emerge naturally.

I really wish you'd play the game more and get a realistic understanding of how the game actually works and what changes would actually benefit it, instead of derailing this thread.

I personally, and my guild as a whole (the Coalition of Itan, an Itani nationalist guild) have had to force long-lasting unnatural (aka does not make sense in the context of the goals of the player-created guilds involved) conflict in the game on more than one occasion because many players, when left to their own devices, will sit back and not do anything to further conflict. It's rather clear after spending a fair amount of time with the game (and without a pre-existing bias) that purely player-driven conflict is not and will never be enough for Vendetta. It sounds like you really like the idea of having everything be determined by the actions of the players, but in reality that will not work most of the time. Vendetta is not and should not be a sandbox.

The idea of faction-exclusivity creates real reasons to choose a particular faction over the other. I noticed you didn't respond to my post where I stated that having no consequences to choosing a faction makes the choice a false one, leaving one to wonder why the factions exist in the first place. You may not like constraints imposed upon you, but that is a basis of game design, and it works.

I made an edit to the last sentence in my previous post.

I may answer more, but now I go to sleep.

Users may build their characters in any direction they desire

This is true, but you actually have to pick a direction. You may be an Itani nationalist, a Serco warrior, or a UIT trader. But what you may no longer be, and will be less able to be in the future, is one of those annoying pieces of shit with 13 factions at POS, swapping between an X1 and a SCP as you see fit.