Is Vendetta worth the monthly fee?

Other MMORPG's are about $15 a month, This one is $10 (not counting multi packs) per month. Yet is it 2/3 the game that other MMORPG's are? I don't know if it has 1/3. Vendetta could be so much more, and could attract more players who wouldn't normally play a MMORPG if it was $5 a month. The content is light for even a shareware game, so a monthly fee is hard to take.

I have been only playing for a few days. I was initaily looking for a fun space shooter, and stumbled upon Vendetta online. I had a hell of a good time shooting mining bots and some early leveling up, but that got old really quick. I have scoured the message boards and there is a lot of great ideas out there. The strength of the message boards is one reason why Vendetta has so much potential.

I don't typically play MMORPG's I don't l like the idea of paying for a game, then paying every month to continue playing it. I also don't have the time to invest into a MMORPG to make it worth the cost. Some players are Die Hard Gamers, they thrive online, and are fine with a fee since it is something that takes up much of there spare time. Some one will probably say, "Why the hell did you pay for this one if you don't like MMORPG's". I have some gamer friends who play these types of games, and some who will not. MMORPG's have a small chunk of the gamer population because of the fee, the time involved, and the difficulty of playing with a slowly developing character, if you are a occasionally player. The Die Hards will be so much stronger, and always overshadow the occasional player with experience points.

I payed for Vendetta because it had many elements that Escape Velocity had. If you have not played that sires, go check out the latest installment of the sires, Override.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/

EV: Nova is a cheap Shareware game, but gave hours of fun. There was more story, range of missions, and interaction with this game then I find in Vendetta. So many suggestions focus on the online experience. but I think to MASSIVELY increase the NPC is the first step, and probably easiest for the programers, as whole interfaces don't have to be rebuilt. There is a war going on, there should be fleets of NPC's in battle on the border. small squads of ships doing sorties across enemy lines, and regular traffic at space ports. There is great deal to take from EV:Override.

Right now, this game could be on my hard drive, and It wouldn't loose a single thing, I hardly ever run across another player, I hear background chatter occasionally but never meet up with players. And I have to pay to continue not playing with other people online?

I paid for a 3 month subscription, and it was about what I paid for EV: Override. I paid because I think that Vendetta has more potential than most games out there, and I want to support the team that made it in hopes that it will become great. I hope it stays away from things that are common place for MMORPG's and stays unique. Perhaps this shouldn't be though of as a MMORPG, there really is no role playing or customizing to the game. Currently it has a hard time being a Multiplayer Space Shooter. like what parsec.org planed to be. I think to become a good 3-D EV:N style game is the first step.

Right now I don't think the game is worth the price per month, it is of shareware quality at the moment (shareware is not a bad thing). If the price goes down, or if the quality jumps up. I doubt I will re-subscribe.

This is a cool game now, but needs a hell of a lot of work. I only comment, because I think that we all want this game to ROCK, and with the payer/ designer discussion on the boards, we may be able to make this a Fantastic Game someday.

yes, the universe feels a little empty; mainly because it is so big. there are many players online, but they are scattered across many systems.
When the universe gets more populated, and more communication tools are available (yay growing News system), vendetta won't seem so empty.

There will be more people as time goes on (hopefully), filling up the sectors slowly, and there would also be new features to give players something to do.
But the answer to your question is... "depends"

The reason Vendetta attracts me versus other MMORPGs is that the game isn't so heavily oriented towards how much time you spend online. Yea, being higher leveled helps, but if you're a good pilot, you're a good pilot and you can have a fighting chance no matter what once you get to a certain level. Yea, there are balance issues concerning certain ships *cough*Valkyrie*cough* but overall, it's more about the quality of time you put into the game (i.e. practicing combat) versus the quantity (leveling up) that matters.

low level pilots can make a small way in the universe. buy ships at home nation, buy weapons at corvus, and you're set, pretty much ready to handle PvP and exploration

I am sure Guild Software would like to be a successful business, and I don't want anything for them but success. However, part of me sees the whole Online gaming trend a fleecing scheme to get constant back end dollars after the actual product has been long sold. The Makers of EQ, WOW, and SWG are rolling in profits. Now the upstarts, half ass software companies, are trying to get there share of the MMORPG cash cow. I applauded ideas like The Parsec Project, to make a FREE, multi platform space shooter. Alas, they hit a wall, and the project is now an open source back burner project. http://www.parsec.org

Surely there has to be some middle ground, A game that can grow and develop because of profit, but not at the ridiculous levels that some of the major companies are getting, and all at the expense of the gamer. Video games are now a bigger market than Motion Pictures. and there are a lot of jerks out there who are just driven by greed. By some of the content shown, Guild Software has got something that shows promise. A rough sketch of a greater masterpiece perhaps. Driven by product first, profit second.

I honestly don't know what kind of costs goes into the sever hardware and maintenance that these online games require. So I apologize if I am ignorant to these factors. When I hear about a friend who has been playing EQ for about 2 years strait, and think about the total he has paid to the maker for ONE GAME, it makes me against the whole Genre. There are many more games like this out there now, and soon the bubble may burst, and all the MMORPG's will die because too many greedy companies flooding the market with MMORPG's. Remember the Video Game console crash in the 80's?

Vendetta is little, one doesn't have to petition the company to make suggestions like SWG does. And if Vendetta gets really big, you can kiss this message board good bye, or at least the developer interaction. I would rather keep this game just above "best kept secret' in gaming, so that the original creators can thrive and keep developing games. Rather that or, to have them suddenly get really big, get bought out, or pushed out by Microsoft (still pissed about Bungie). Then you got BG with another hand in your wallet, and the original founders having to start from scratch.

I want Vendetta to be the unique exception to the MMO game world.

Well you have to figure that Blizzard and Microsoft can spend MILLIONS on advertising. Guild Software relies on word of mouth, and their budget until recently was next to nothing (as in they nearly went bankrupt), and they didn't charge anything for the alpha and betas, so their only income was from donations.

They'd really love to make more content, to make Vendetta as big as Everquest, World of Warcraft or hell, EVE Online. They would have loved to have a retail-level featureset at launch, but the truth is, they simply ran out of money. Unless they got some form of income, Vendetta would be gone forever. Thus, the devs launched Vendetta much as you see it today.

I consider paying for Vendetta an investment in something that could grow to be great, and believe that I'm helping four very driven guys realize the reward of five years of hard work and sacrifice.

Though I may not have my dream game today, I am confident that by continuing to contribute my money to the company something great will arise.

That's exactly why i play this game. Not for the game at hand... but for what it could be. This game's only going to get better and if it's fun already then that means it's only going to get more fun! Sure some people say it's empty.... and i agree. At the moment only 26 players are online :( That is pretty sad. Then again in about 2 minutes they'll be 27! SO stick with this game long enough and you won't be disappointed.

/givemoney Devs 2c

Shock: I understand your concerns, and if everything were based on only the game as it is, I would be forced to honestly answer your question with a no.

I have a long term view of vendetta, having been a tester almost as long as the game has been out. Having watched the game evolve from a very basic, 9 system/sector universe(9 systems, each system containing only 1 sector) I feel very confident that all the content that is currently lacking from the game will come with time, and probably not a huge amount of it.
The true achievement that guildsoftware has made is in the game engine itself; it has:
support for PC, MAC, and Linux systems, all playing in the same persistent multiplayer universe, in a game that has a FPS style combat, with minimal lag. Since the game went live 1 month ago, the devs have added mining, a news system, and fixed a lot of the Capture the Cargo bugs, which itself is a late beta-test addition.

Personally, I will pay for vendetta for 6 months (after my 2 month pre-order time runs out) just as a 'thank you' to the devs for letting me, and all the other alpha testers, play for 2+ years for free. You of course have to make your own decisions based on your finances, but I predict that by the time the 3 months you have paid for is up, the game will have much more to offer than it does now.

In a quick response to your views of MMORPG's being nothing but a moneymaking scheme to continue getting profit after a game has launched. In some cases I would agree with you wholeheartedly. I played Ultima Online for a few months after it came out, and that was much the feeling i had at the time, so i cancelled my subscription and moved on.
From my long term perspective on Vendetta, I dont see it going down that road. Vendetta is not a finished product, and the developers have so much that they want to add to it, I dont see it ever becoming a "completed" project. They will always be adding it, modifiying it, and expanding it.

I pay for this game because i played it for free for 2 years and it was as fun as fun could be (3.1 and early 3.2)

then.... they have nerfed the crap out of it and need to wakeup and return the fun.

but i still pay for it because bi-weekly the game undergoes a major update with some cool new feature. CtC one week, couple weeks later mining, another couple weeks and maybe i'll finally get to shoot at people near stations and say "i claim this station in the name of Spain!" because they'll have read my piles and piles of posts that say they have taken the mmorpg out of the mmorpg, who knows, anyways. It changes at a pace that keeps it interesting for me, at the moment ive been spending alot of time mining roids , next week maybe ill go kill some dudes, week after that maybe ill be able to buy an AI wingman, who knows what's in store for us.

Magus: You are really on the point. I think there is a potentially huge market for MMO game players who don't want to dedicate their lives to spending every waking moment playing the game. I can log on to VO, run a pirate blockade, then log off -- all in about 45 minutes. It just doesn't matter what "level" I am. In most other MMOs, it's more like log on, XP treadmill for 10 hours, *maybe* gain a level, and still not be able to do anything I'd classify as "fun" because my character is still too weak to graduate beyond killing rats over and over.

KixKizzle: You said it, except I don't find the universe to be all that empty. You just have to be adventurous.