Try changing the coloring on "VENDETTA" anywhere it occurs (in game / on forum) to red for two months and see if it affects active serco participation.

+1

You sure it wasn't the sins of Itan guild? (oppressing/griefing Serco newbs) Of course you have to look the other way, being blue yourself and you were formerly one of them.

Let's try the color change on logo for two months, then make all Itan guild members stay logged out for two months.. compare the results.

Just an experiment. Curious to see if it would make a difference. However, failure, I fully believe the oppression you feel is mostly due to the inevitable situation I laid out here:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/29642

Right, so you're blaming it on your boredom basically?

There's no arena-style structure and fights come very few in between. So you shoot at any available target... who happen to be serco newbs.

Instead of succumbing to boredom and crying about lack of structure, why not drop the "I spent all of this time on building my trident therefore I'm entitled to this" bullshit act? See what you can do to tone it down so that serco newbs don't feel intimidated and terrorized by your tridents barging into their Serco capital systems. I get it, you're bored and don't have anything else better to do in game, but if you want serco growth in the long term, put away those tridents for now. You can bring them back out when serco guilds have gotten a chance to grow and to build more tridents for themselves.

No, I'm blaming your oppression on the inevitability of a majority of players flocking towards social groups that offer them the best assistance and protection.

ONE has had plenty of tridents for very long time, but they almost never bring them out to fight.

I personaly don't shoot unguilded serco newbs unless they shoot me first. I personally have extended an invitation to serco nationalist guilds to open dialog with my guild (PA) in the hopes of calming hostilities. They have emphatically rejected all attempts to make their situation better, which is in line with their typical behavior over the last.... 2-3 years... which is to be off-putting, abrasive, and insulting curmudgeons who seem to actually prefer their suffering state.

The other oppressed group (pirates -- of which I think of you, failure, primarily as a member of) have a particularly difficult situation. Because, while they have a generally more positive attitude and are more active than serco nationalists, they struggle in being effective at their task because of a lack of trident access. An inevitable result of piracy is an abated availability of assistance when it comes to making a trident, something that you, failure seem to have difficulty accepting. FAMY has had, to my knowledge, 2 tridents in their entire existence, and neither of them was ever used effectively as a pirating platform.

I think the loading screen needs some variation. It used to be a neat little station picture with the logo on it, Now it's just VENDETTA ONLINE in giganto-font.

Why not overlay the logo on top of say, the background of your destination sector from a random direction? That way it's always something different.

+1 to some variation especially if it could promote the least active nation.

Pretty sure that Star Destroyer was an effective piracy platform. It's been a long time since PA was effective at anything, they are anti-nationalist by virtue of their existence why would any serco want to align with PA when their leader is only doing it cos he was rejected for the leadership of ITAN. We all know you hate them now, but you're still fundamentally a swarming carebear.

Perhaps a random background tint of red blue or yellow behind the VO logo?

/me tosses the molded TRS bait into the bushes (you really need to get some new bait...this stuff is expired!)

+1 Interesting approach, let's try it!

And can you guys keep the RP off this for ONE time only please? Just one time...

Changing the logo colour isn't going to do squat.

I was really impressed, sincerely, when Incarnate moved to even up the ship roles by buffing the SVG. You know you've done a service to the Serco team when the commander of Itan is bitterly cursing it wherever he goes.

However, it's a historical problem more than anything, the population is bad because the short end of the stick has been given to Serco for so long. If you think it's the colour of the logo then you're completely misguided.

Serco needs advocates. Good advocates and advocates that demand respect. Your idea of a respectable advocate is completely different to a traditional Serco's idea. It has to be someone good at combat. It has to be someone who is established and it has to be someone who TGFT and Itan hate with a passion.

Sieger would be a pretty good candidate if he spectacularly betrayed TGFT, maybe rob the guild bank or something. Then you can be king dick of Sercoland and have your own flag instead of flying under everyone elses.

Now that we are thoroughly off topic....

The only way a historical problem is affecting serco numbers right now is because in the past all the good serco players quit. There is a higher percentage of vets still playing in non-serco (and non-rat) positions. And there simply is no way to replace vets now once they leave...since almost all new players are mobile players.

And there is simply no way to get those vets to return in a meaningful way... they've moved on. No amount of buffing up serco ships and changing gamemplay to benefit serco will change that. So what's left is a sad, half-collapsed shells of two guilds that are supposedly nationalists, but ultimately do nothing nationalistic, nor could they hold their own if they tried. And you know this TRS -- which is the main reason why you still play but not on your RED alts: You know your nation has fallen and can't get up, and you aren't willing to piece it back together.

Back on topic....

The OP wasn't a suggestion to boost serco numbers... it was to see if it has any effect.

Of course it's on topic, it's like you're looking to have a completely one-dimensional non-contextual discussion about the problem of race imbalance and sort of kinda suggest a solution but not really engage with it. That's stupid.

"there simply is no way to replace vets now once they leave..."

This is really the problem, but you don't ask questions about why its impossible to get new vets. It's because we've turned VO into a two tier mobile game where most new players are just mobile players and to even become a respectable leader or player you have to have a trident. Not only is it a total DRAG to actually make a trident, virtually impossible as a solo person who isn't Itan/TGFT affiliated. Yeah that's right, I'm saying that to whomever it was that cited RED and ONE as the evidence that it's possible to conquer to build tridents. It's rubbish. We played way, way WAY too much VO nobody should ever play that much VO it will ruin your life, so the bar is far too high.

I don't have time to be a leader anymore, and people who aren't me don't have time to build the Trident without kissing up to the carebear alliance. So that's kinda central to the question of active serco participation.

Back off topic:

You are the one trying to turn this thread into something that it's not. Which is fine... it's not a super important suggestion to begin with... so I'm happy to oblige your off topic ramblings.

So on one hand you think it's very important that serco players should hate TGFT and ITAN and basically slay them at every turn, but on the other you are a sad panda because they didn't give you keys when you were building tridents? If you can't understand the lunacy of this then I'm surprised you haven't gone insane in real life. Surprise surprise, if you piss someone off they aren't going to be nice to you!

It means that the game should be changed so that tridents aren't simply a matter of whoever has the most people can choose to exclude other people from trident building. It'd be a much different story if there were universe limits to the amount of trident production that could happen. It would essentially dictate a maximum alliance size.

The other possibility is just remove trident manufacture from conquerable stations altogether and bring about other reasons to fight.

The Serco players have to hate TGFT and Itan because they are Itani supporting guilds. Trident ownership is about character progression, status, recognition and commitment to the game. Two separate things entirely. If nobody can reach influential status on the serco side you're not going to get any vets and Serco will be forever dominated by churning through lite subs or mobile f2p players.

It means that the game should be changed so that tridents aren't simply a matter of whoever has the most people can choose to exclude other people from trident building.

Oh right, because it makes much more sense to waste dev time on changing the game so you can continuing be dicks to be people, rather than you (i.e. serco nationalists) stop being such dicks, make up with TGFT and share some keys for once in 3 years.

Two separate things entirely.

1) The Serco players do not HAVE to hate anyone. The enemy of your enemy is always your friend.... i.e. compromise of your ridiculous principles is necessary to enjoy station access in the guild environment that is present in the game.

2) It's quite laughable that you think Trident manufacturing should be completely removed from any guild relations impact. At first glance it would seem you are just out of touch with the game, but a deeper understanding of you points more towards you are simply being a crybaby and a sophist. Trident ownership is DESIGNED to be a group effort.

The only reason you want to share keys with Serco nationalists is so you can boot pirates out of the stations, or so you can boot some other random people you call dicks out of the stations.

1) Serco players have to hate Itani players - if they don't then we should just abolish nations altogether.

2) It should be removed from Nation-relations, not guild relations.

Also it's important to refocus the discussion away from me. I don't need TGFT for Tridents. I don't need PA relations. I don't personally need anything. I have the skills/history/intelligence/friends that I need to do anything I aspire to in the VO verse, but I don't have the time or inclination to do it. We're not talking about me, we're talking about the current Serco players that have none of the above.

The bar is too high for newbie Serco to overcome any of that.

I wouldn't mind sharing keys with serco because I see no reason not to, other than their assholery. Pirates on the other hand are, by their very nature, going to be shut out of stations for the majority of the time -- whether or not I want them to be is irrelevant.

You are a fool if you think the existence of separate nations necessitates a hatred between them. Some can take that line as RP, but it's not necessary. Perhaps it is necessary for you, because without hate you find no purpose in life? Or perhaps you feel like if you go against the backstory Incarnate is going to come and take your computer away?

2) It should be removed from Nation-relations, not guild relations.

Taking away the end game from conquerable stations and putting it somewhere safer and more accessible is a very carebear thing to suggest. I didn't realize you had such a soft tummy!

Current Serco players have just as good of chance as anyone else to succeed in VO... unless they want to join ONE or SKY or FAMY. Those guilds have chosen to limit their options in game by being exclusionist extremists. As I've pointed out, FAMY cannot avoid this. But ONE and SKY can find ways to work around it (just like ITAN has).

All that said, the greater flaw in your argument is that somehow Trident manufacturing is why serco players are in the minority. 99% of new serco players, just like new itani and UIT players, will NOT stick around because VO sucks on mobile. The 1% of serco players that DO stick around quickly see that if they are going to make any progress in VO, they should join up with a guild that will help them and limit their exposure to and/or protect them from enemies. And then of that 1%, only a tiny fraction ever consider, let alone pursue, building a trident. So to try and blame this race imbalance on Trident building is just plain deception.

Serco have no short end of the stick anywhere in game aside from Deneb (and, even there, it's pretty minimal). Any short end-of-sticking that serco feel outside of Deneb is self-imposed.

Just to be clear, TGFT in no way hates Serco players in general. The fact that ONE are too proud to come to negotiations causes TGFT to comply with their apperant wish to perpetuate the current state of war. SKY is currently neutral with TGFT, something that is I am sure a refreshing change for most players involved. What the Serco nation needs is a guild that supports new Serco players regardless of their guild affiliation. If you Serco guilds were proactive and helpful instead of being exclusionist and aloof you would have more members and greater chances of holding the conquerable stations, should diplomacy fail. Yes, I am suggesting diplomacy, because even if your diplomacy is thinly veiled extortion or extremely overt nationalism it is still necessary to have a successful guild. For instance, selling keys to unguilded builders or neutral guilds is something I could see a successful Serco guild doing. You don't have to break the role playing, just tone it down from political extremist to patriotic opportunist.