Increase perceived player presence.

Ultimately I would wish to dramatically increase the number of active players in VO. But to some extent, the perception that VO is not already extensively populated limits its population growth.

It is not that VO does not have a population currently, but that the population is spread across time and volume, often with few signs or signals that they are, or ever where, there, often leaving the impression that VO is under populated.

This thread is to solicit ideas to make VO's current player population more visible, to give new and existing players an improved perspective on player population and activity.

Some of my own ideas include:

server side scripts to drive player's characters while the player is offline or logged onto another character, thereby increasing the number of characters in the galaxy.

Player driven dynamic persistent content, such that players may affect other players that are not yet online. Currently, you can drop cargo in space, log out, and another player could find and load it. That is an example of player driven dynamic persistent content. Another example is the heat of mined asteroids. Cargo could be made to last much longer. Hot roids could be made more obvious to players who are not even looking for them. The focus here is perception. Hot roids could glow, emit vapor, or other wise advertise that someone has been here.

I am open to other ideas. The primary focus is highly visible signs of player activity, preferably that will persist even after the player logs out.

Edit: Contrails: When a ship uses turbo, it rearranges the dust in the vicinity, creating a visible contrail. New contrails may tend to disturb and/or erase previous contrails. Some sensors may be able to detect what ship made a given contrail, how long ago, and perhaps even an approximation of where the ship jumped to. Contrails may dissipate naturally over time, and may further be effected by ion storms and/or equipped counter measures, such as anti contrail mines. The anti contrail mines may themselves leave a signature such that you can tell a mine was used.

I think I might like that contrails idea.

Another thing that would go a long way is if the game provided better situational awareness. I'm not saying it should bundle in AlertMachine and TargetLess, but it should provide some similar (albeit much simplified) functionality by default so that newbies will be more aware when they cross the paths of other players. Newbs don't (and shouldn't have to) constantly check the sector list, and consequently end up thinking they're more alone than they really are.

I like the roid idea. Chemtrails would be a cool way of killing Itani monks too.

THe increase in escorts has imo made an improvement int the perception of there actually being life in the universe. On top of Roda's suggestion, I would add random bot chatter to sector chat, particularly at stations, but possibly also in bot sectors as well perhaps in bianary.

Station sector chat could center around arrival and departures,
Wormhole chatter could be between scout ships and the haulers.
A bit more urgent or fearful chatter could be made for ion storms.

Also better responses could be made when players interact or take missions.

I think last days all ppls have post many good ideas ...from new players trading system to conquered stations in Deneb ...

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/28732
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/28357
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/28724

...and many more ....now is time for devs to decide and i dont think is so difficult to make the 2 stations in Deneb to conquered and gives more fair and fancy war times ....sure VO needs more fresh ideas....

Cheers...

Nice Hijack faceof

@Pizzasgood: Being aware of players in proximity does sound like an important point, quite relevant to the topic at hand. Does the game not already tell you when a new player enters or leaves the sector? What would you add to this, to make sure new players are more aware of the proximity of other "live" players? I think your suggestion merits further elaboration.

@Inevitable: I do not follow the correlation between Chemtrails and Itani monks. This may be in part because I am not aware of who Itani monks are. Would you care to clarify?

@Death Fluffy: This thread is primarily about leveraging the activity of real player characters. npc radio chatter about player activity would be on topic, and perhaps an excellent idea. npcs reporting pirate activity, publicly thanking player characters for escort and transport services, etc, could go a long ways towards making player activity more publicly visible. I think this idea also merits further elaboration.

@Faceof: This thread is primarily about increasing awareness of real player activity, not player independent automated activity. A player driven economy is a good idea. A player market place where players could buy and sell would be player driven, and an economy. It would naturally tend to supplement/correct the automated economy. I am in favor of a station consignment system, which could be a significant corner stone of a player driven economy.

Contrails are a neat idea, though don't belong in space. That'd be exhaust or "plasma" trails, since there's no atmosphere to produce condensation. :P

Maybe burn marks on frequently-mined asteroids too? :)

Having dropped items last longer would help and might be easy to implement, at least in active sectors. Let's ask for 60 minutes before timeout or until the sector goes dormant.

I agree that something simple like the EnterLeave plugin would help new players. This feature should have an on/off switch in the client config screen. When I was new I forgot about the sector list for a while, didn't interact with hardly anyone for a week or two.

Need a default chat key for system chat, if there is one already I don't know about it. Then we need to be conscious to use it when we would sometimes use sector chat. Let the noobs know we are here. I know I can probably bind a key for system chat but it needs to be in the default so noobs can use it right away. Then it needs to be listed in the chat info and tutorial.

More stats of important and silly things on the website. Currently we have the CTC and Deneb list which are fun for us but don't make us look like a big game. We need more. SOme random ideas off the top of my head:

Today's largest growth in wealth achieved by:

This month's highest number of tridents lost achieved by:

List of players that completed the Trident Type M mission in date order, most recent first, showing the player and the trident's current name

List of trident destructions in order of date and time, most recent first, showing player and ship name (that was destructed)

I don't know what's kept in the VO database, but I bet there is a lot of good stuff.

@abortretryfail: Space is not empty, it is sparse. We have solar wind, space dust, etc...

While you might not be able to see a contrail in space with the naked eye, sensors could be quite sensitive to the distribution of even sparse amounts of matter. The sparseness not being a major hindrance, as many sensors are more attuned to contrast than absolute magnitude. If matter has ten times the density in a given area than the surrounding area, it is probably detectable and measurable. We could assume some minimum detection capability as standard on all ships, and then create add on sensors for additional details.

When viewing an asteroid field, if someone is mining it should produce a lot of light that can be seen from quite far away. No need to change the close-up version of the effect since our viewports have automatic light filtering to let us see. But from far off it should be bright and reflect off nearby roids.

@csgno1: At one time, having cargo last too long was a problem. This problem was reduced to some degree by having similar types of cargo automatically consolidate. The state of things may now be appropriate to increase the duration of dropped cargo, and this could be useful to the purpose of this thread. I suggest that the devs start somewhat conservatively, increasing cargo persistence incrementally, to observe how it loads the server.

@csgno1: I think that having mining activity be highly visible is a good idea. I would like player activity to be more apparent not only during the activity itself, but also for a significant time after the fact. But a good start is to make it more visible during the actual act.

Hey guys, we've given up hope of actually getting up player activity so lets just make it look like there is player activity and hope that solves the problem. </rodathread>

@TheRedSpy: Thank you for participating. As I have pointed out earlier in this thread, this thread is not about simulated or artificial activity, but rather, greater visibility of real player activity. It isn't that VO does not have a player base, so much as that player base is spread out over a large volume of space, and significant periods of time. This thread is about leveraging the real activities of the existing player base, in order to attract a larger player base. There is also possible byproducts such as increasing player to player interactions, and having a more dynamic and richer game to play in.
You are welcome to add useful suggestions, and/or, be visible in game. Thank you again for contributing.

+1 for contrails. That is all.

Why not just use NPC bots as fillers. Let's say we want a minimum population of 200 in the universe. If there are 40 players online, then 160 NPC bots would be used to fill the void. These bots do the same things players do. They mine, HS, BS, escort, trade, etc. The important thing is that they take the same missions (from the same list) as the players do. As the player population goes up, the bot population would decrease. Once the player population exceeded the floor population for the universe, you'd only see players at that point, unless it was decided to push the floor up some more.

The bots could be give rudimentary conversation strings to use which were mission specific. They wouldn't be as chatty as some people are, but they'd give the semblance of fullness in some sectors. Bot chat would only be over Sector channels. The NPC bots would not include those bots we all see when we're doing HS, etc. for some missions.

"Why not just use NPC bots as fillers."

Because the point here is not really to fake player presence (despite Roda's bit about handing your account over to an NPC), but rather to make what player presence there is more visible. Your suggestion is not bad, but is orthogonal to the topic.

"Does the game not already tell you when a new player enters or leaves the sector?"

Nope. If yours does, it's because you have a plugin like AlertMachine set up. In a default installation of VO, the only indication you get is if you happen to see the warp effects or are watching the sector list. All I'm really asking for with my comment was to have the game post a small update to either the chatlog or the mission update area, indicating that "SoAndSo entered with a <ship>" or "SoAndSo left". That's it, nothing fancy like standings or health.

"Space is not empty, it is sparse. We have solar wind, space dust, etc..."

Still doesn't mean that condensation is happening. Arf's just being pedantic about your word choice, not saying the idea itself is inappropriate.

@Keller: As Pizzasgood has pointed out, this thread is about leveraging the existing player base to attract new players, not simulating an imaginary player base. I am not oposed to simulated activity, but I do not expect any degree of simulated activity to have as significant an influence on new players as actual live players.

@Pizzasgood: I expect that you are correct that I do have some plugin like enterleave installed, and thus I take the feature for granted. I think that some features are so important to the game that they should come with the game. This is one of those features. I had originally focused this thread on making existing players more visible, but you have made a compelling point, that new players could be made more aware, on their side. I think the subject should be approached from both angles.

If we want contrails, we can invent a mechanic to justify their existence. The details are just details, and the important part is if we want them.