get rid of the combat mission and give a small ammount of combat exp every time you kill a bot

arklan 30
artemis 3

or whatever numbers fit
then folk can take a mission as well as killing bots

Combat License

This license level relates to your general ability in combat, as demonstrated by your mission history and a few other factors. Combat-driven missions are given a particular "rating" by the offering party, which is then added to the pilot's history on a successful mission completion. The more combative missions that a pilot completes, the greater their overall combat License level, and the higher esteem they will have in the eyes of the offering corporations and governments. High-level combat missions are often only offered to those with proven Combat ratings, although Faction Standing and past mission history with the offering party may also be a factor.


Quoted from the game, this also coincides with my opinion of what the Combat license relates to. It's not a measure of your personal skill, but a measure of how other parties view your skill.

Currently the only way to raise combat is through missions and PvP. While technically killing random bots could be automatically reportable, without proof of the claim it's meaningless. Obviously killing someone in PvP the word gets around.

A potential compromise would be to allow combat license gains if you're grouped with someone and they are in the same sector as you and within active radar range.. However, even this stands to be exploited, at least until the AI can be improved.

Why not just take the mission and go kill the bots and get the XP?

@draugath: What is annoying about the current system is that you have to juggle missions to get optimal improvement.

The fastest way I found to get through the initial levels was to work on the collector core missions, but take combat missions while gathering the cores. Something like:

1) Check collector mission: "get 20 artemis processors'
2) Take combat mission
3) shoot drones to get objective for the collector mission, while you get combat XP for the combat mission
4) If you have all the cores,
- stop combat mission
- take collector mission
- undock
- dock, get bonus points for collector mission

If that sounds intuitive to you, you need to stop playing VO for a while ;-)

Also, your argument doesn't make a lot of sense as long as you get a faction bonus for killing bots outside of combat missions. I mean, either the nation notices that you kill a bot, or it doesn't....

It doesn't sound intuitive, at all.
I don't know of any game where the most intuitive track for newbies to progress is also the most efficient way to power-level a new character. Why should VO be any different?

you must not play a lot of games, arf

I'm not convinced vanatteveldt's method is the fastest way (at least, not as described in his post); it ignores a lot of "ifs".

e.g.

The Rogue Drones tree (collector cores missions) rewards you for delivering Processor Cores, but one of the missions gives you a wingmate which helps you make the kills (this advantage is only available if the mission is active) and this mission must be passed before you get to the Artemis Cores part of the tree.

Beginner Combat Practice follows an incrementally increasing reward schedule; you get more xp for the later kills than the early kills.

Intermediate Combat Practice gives you more xp than Beginner Combat Practice does at the beginning, but is only available at Combat License 2.

I'm not writing that if you have 2 mutually beneficial missions available at the same time there's not some way to synergistically capitalize on the opportunity, but arriving there probably takes at least a little manipulation of the mission trees which may not at all be obvious, which I think is ARF's point. There may be faster ways to get to the frame where the opportunity is available, etc.

One of the things I like about the missions in Vendetta Online is that they blend pretty well; a newbie striking out in any direction across the mission network will probably find herself reasonably well rewarded, but not obscenely so above what freelance gameplay would grant in most cases.*

*edit: there's obviously a few exceptions to this, such as Hive Skirmish missions in Ion Storms. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have these discoverable (non-obvious to the new player) cases. To my limited understanding of game design, it's more about having a variety of viable options than having all options equally balanced (I've been designing games since I was 7; yes, the sketch-paper board games I made for my siblings count).

ref: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-1-definitions.html

Anyway, not trying to thread derail here; I just felt compelled to respond to vanatteveldt's (valid) observation, as I'm responsible for the later missions in that tree. It's not perfect, but I tried to make it glide with the other missions as best I could.

re-re-edit:

I am in favor of combat xp for killing hive bots without a mission, in theory. My primary concern, however, is that far more missions than just the combat missions would need to be altered. If the devs are up for a complete overhaul of all the combat xp granting missions, great!

I am against removing the combat missions completely. noobs need missions to tell them what to do.

As far as intuitive leveling, the beginner combat missions is intuitive. Kill stuff! The collector core missions can be a nice scenic route, but for players that are good at combat, or intend to be good at combat, the collector core series is more of a distraction than anything else. I like the collector core series. I abuse the collector core series. But I am not a real noob. Real noobs should get centurion with a plasma hx, take the "Beginner Combat Practice" mission, and go kill 200+ dentecs, preferably in a row, until they hit 3/3/2/-/-, and then move on to hive skirmishes. Collecting cores takes longer than killing dentecs, and doesn't provide the same practice. I like the core collecting missions to be there, for players that wish to power level an alt, vets that want access to the EC88, and noobs that suck at combat so bad they can only kill a collector while it is mining. Otherwise, just go kill dentecs till you are sick of it, and ignore the cores.

No matter what system is in place, players like DE will abuse it.

Damn that de! !! *shakes fist*

@Phaser

It might well be that there is a quicker method, but I haven't found it.

The whole point is that you take two missions "simultaneously". You start with beginner training and collect the first (orun?) processor cores, getting bonus XP for the kills under the combat practice terms. Once you have enough cores for the first "rogue drone" mission, finish the practice mission, take the rogue drone mission, undock, dock, and immediately complete the mission. Inspect the next mission, e.g. collect X dentek cores, then take the best available combat training mission, shoot drones and collect both cores and combat training XP, then go home, take the rogue drone mission and immediately complete it.

So, at any point you are working both on the best available combat mission and the best available rogue drone mission, and get "double" XP. This works up to the point where you run out of "regular" rogue drone missions or the combat missions require killing assault bots.

(and screw the wingman, he's just stealing your kills anyway :-)).

I think I'm in the minority here, but I think some grind is necessary. Figuring out a good balance is the trick. With the current system of licenses I think that balance is pretty decent. It doesn't take nearly as long as in other games to reach a license level where you can be competitive. If the current method of missions and combat gains is changed to streamline XP gain, then it stands to trivialize the existing system. I get that this is what you are after, however, I can see this only serving to benefit established players that want to quickly level up alts. New players will likely find the ease of XP gain would put them at the effective max level far too quickly and then struggle to find a reason to stick around since many seem to have difficulty with sandbox games with no clearly defined goal laid out for them.

I would like to see the mission system overhauled to support taking more than one mission at a time, but the ramifications on advancement would need to be carefully considered and many missions likely adjusted.

All of this is somewhat moot since it's my understanding that the license system was never intended to be a long-term solution. Incarnate likely has bigger plans for overhauling character advancement.

@vanatteveldt: I understand that you are trying to be efficient, and I am telling you, that for a new player, operating independently, the efficient method is to skip the cores. The most efficient path for a new player operating independently is beginner combat, using only small port weapons, to combat level 3/ light weapons 3, and then hive skirmish missions.

I use the core missions extensively to level alts, with the assistance of other characters. I use 7 orun cores and 10 scrap to open up the dentec series, and 22 dentec to reach levels 2/2/-/-/-, and I then optionally use 10 more dentec (at some point), I skip the arty cores (takes too long to ship in), and make up the difference with combat missions.

@draugath: I love quake. I hate grind. I believe the beginner combat mission to be valuable to noobs, because it trains them to aim and dodge. It builds the manual dexterity a player needs to play vo well. But what about players that already have that skill? Someone please build me a mission where I can go 1v1 an arklan overseer with a plasma hx and earn combat 3. I already know how to kill dentecs, trust.