The thing that hooked me on this game back at the end of 3.2 and the beginning of 3.3 was that combat skill was derived entirely from PvP practice. You were only as good as you worked to become. There was no 'leveling treadmill' as in other RPGs - you weren't forced to perfrom repetetive tasks endlessly for days on end in order to gain some intangible level of 'skill' that allowed you access to weapons and equipment that would make you competetive.

Now after the fourth day of botting... it's getting really, really boring. Sure, I could go try and kill someone in my light/light/ion/plasma 'hog, but even if I succeeded in killing them I wouldn't get any XP from it. So no matter how amazing a pilot I was, I would always be limited by my wish to avoid the leveling treadmill that drove me from other games.

I realize that you can't escape some form of an experience and skill system in an RPG. So, how about giving all of us back what drew us here in the first place: PvP? Missions that reward us for killing other players - if I'm Itani, I could get something like this: "Kill one Serco in sector 5." from the mission computer.

If I kill another player, I should be awarded some amount of combat/weapons experience based on what ship I had, what ship they had, what level they were, etc, just like when I kill a bot. Fighting another person is infinitely more interesting and compelling that endlessly killing bots with randomized character strings as names.

I only raise this point now because I want to be sure that it's out there now instead of three weeks before release. I hope that the devs already have something in place to keep vendetta from becoming a level treadmill with a new face, and since it's still early in the feature release cycle I'm not too worried yet. Just... wanted to put it out there.

Starfisher, i sympathize totally, however lets be patient and bear with the devs. right now i think that they are trying to get the update code stable, adding more missions to a stable code platform is largely a matter of plugging numbers/names/objects into a prewritten form.

Yes, but at their core those missions would all end up as "Kill X of Y Bot in Sector Z", just reworded or with little variations. I hope that some other way to get combat experience materializes, because otherwise things are going to be much the same as they are now.

Keep in mind the last paragraph of my first post, though... I'm not demanding immediate action (as if I have the right), just tentatively expressing a vague concern that has developed since the reset.

Just lessen the amount required for a level, otherwise all of this botting would have been fer null.

not true starfisher, the <bot X> can be replaced with <serco player> the Sector Z can remain.

you could have specifics on the player data too, <serco player [with attribute Q]
possibilities include
[in a centaur]
[with a reputation R]
[before he docks]
[carrying a C, where C is the name of the cargo, to be delivered to sector Z, in a mission that has been accepted by a serco pilot, in which case the system also generates the name of the pilot who took the mission]

the wording is then generated depending on the mission, for instance,
Our spy in 11 recieved word [## minutes ago] that a pilot by the name of <name> left, headed for sector 14 with a datapad. intercept and destroy him before he docks.

the basic form of a mission can be the same, but have many possible things to plug in, for instance if the mission has the following 4 elements:
<action> | <target> | <timeframe> | <event>
you could substitute any of the following words into the approptiate columns.
destroy | player | before | docking
capture | cargoX | before | leaving sector 9
defend | player | indef | enter sector 12
prevent | bots | 10 mins | warping out of 7

and generate 4 fairly different missions.

Exactly. That's what I'm looking for. I misinterpreted your other post, sorry.

ok, now that we are on the same page, the devs are getting the framework set up and functioning.
the <action> | <target> | <timeframe> | <event>, if you will. (whatever form they use)

so for now (if they were using my frame) they have generated a very limited set of missions based on the listings of

kill | Bottype | unlimited | times#.
they generate bottype, and times# from a list that is determined by your level, and leave the other 2 alone. so for now they are changing 2 subgroups of 1 mission group. yea our missions are boring and repetitive right now, but it provides data for the frame. generating a list of things to plug into the frame can wait and be accomplished at some other point.

I still think the biggest problem in people's thinking write now is that they are assuming that this is the final game. I'd be a little bit surprised if any of the missions we are seeing right now are exactly what the devs intended for the final game. Probably the current mission structure exists because it is convienent and relies on objects that already exist. Even if a compressed development schedule causes them to go live initially with something like what you are seeing now, I'd still expect them to be working towards something radically different than anything like the current Vendetta experience.

...and keep in mind that the missions are new and in need of heavy testing. The current mission structure, repetitive as it may be, is an excellent way to ensure that many people will be using them.

Indeed.

Uh, we're not stupid. We know the game is under heavy development. But the whole point of this test is to get constant feedback from us lot- we haven't got a clue what's going on behind closed doors, so of course we're going to speak up if we think something isn't as good as it could be. There really is no point in saying "well the end product will probably be different" if you don't know.

Yeah, its great, its huge steps forward. We're just saying that at the moment levelling takes too long- and if the entire mission structure, level 1-12, is to be tested out, thats not a good idea.

/me hugs UncleDave

Well said, Dave.

Oooh, Spellcast's idea would allow for missions to capture players... That'd be awesome... :D

[moved to suggestions]

It will be pretty sick when missions can intertwine and overlap.

ie: an Itani trader, or group of traders, may get a mission to run cargo between 7 and 5 several times. This then means a Serco player may get a mission to raid a series of Itani convoys traveling through the sectors surrounding s9. Thus an Itani player may get a mission to intercept and destroy said Serco player raiding the convoy. A further mission may involve another Serco pilot protecting the first Serdo pilot etc...

So two further missions for other players are triggered by the initial Serco player accepting a raiding mission. The cool thing about this is that in order for one players mission to succeed, anothers must fail. I imagine that as more threads are added, the payoff for finishing the mission would increase. The initial Itani trading mission may only bring a +300 commerce reward initialy, but when the Serco pilot accept his intercept mission, the trader(s) are alerted and the reward increases to +1000...

-ts-