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Sep
27

Vendetta Online 1.8.305

VO 1.8.305 (actually released Sept 20th) included:

- Introducing "Crystal": Vendetta Online's cash currency for Free-to-Play mobile players! Crystal may be acquired in bulk via in-app purchase, or accrued more slowly through gameplay, such as gaining experience and levels, destroying Hive Bots, and reaching Achievements. Lower level equipment requires little or no Crystal, where upper level ships and gear may have increased requirements. Crystal is used for each individual quantity of item purchased, and is in addition to Credits and other factional and license-related gameplay requirements (ie, all regular gameplay requirements remain).
- Premium Subscription players do not need Crystal, and do not earn it through gameplay.
- All non-Premium mobile players will retroactively receive Crystal for experience and achievements they have already earned.
- As a special thanks to our supportive mobile players, everyone who previously made in-app purchases for access to ships and addons will receive double (2x) the Crystal that their funds would normally purchase. This has been automatically added to the most recently used character on your account.
- The "Crystal" system replaces the previous interim "ship-access" in-app purchase method, which has been removed. Thus, it is no longer necessary to make a purchase to gain "access" to a given ship. Because Crystal can be acquired through gameplay, it further mitigates potential pay-to-win advantages between Free-to-Play users. Crystal will also make it easier for us to increase the Free-to-Play license caps in the future.
- Free-to-Play mobile users who convert to Premium Subscribers will still retain any previously-earned Crystal if they revert to Free at a later point; but while the Premium subscription is active, the previously retained Crystal will no longer be visible, and they will not accrue additional Crystal until they have reverted to Free.
- Added a new "First Kill" badge for new users, with a notification and description pop-up the first time the player docks after earning the badge.
- New simplified account conversion menu and removed the captcha.
- Improved readability of some menus on mobile devices.
- Improved gamepad usability for most dialog boxes.
- Fixed issue with swiping not always working on initial Ship Purchase tutorial.
- Changed default framerate limit to 60 FPS from 40 for a smoother UI scrolling experience.
- New Snapdragon splash screen for Snapdragon-based devices.
- Increased default font size for high-res phone devices.
- Fixed potential sector crash when a mine times out and gets damaged at the exact same time.
- Fixed crash on iPad when docking after gaining the First Kill achievement.
- Fixed issue with seeing <crystalexplanation> when logging in for the first time on mobile devices.

The addition of a cash currency (for mobile/free-to-play users only) is obviously a huge change for us, and an important one. Some kind of "free to play" business model is a necessity on mobile, a non-negotiable expectation of that market, and this hybrid solution will let us bring in new players while maintaining our Premium subscriptions as the "gold standard" for our game experience. There is sure to be an extensive period of tuning and tweaking of numbers that will go with this kind of rollout, but it all adds up to a really useful step in the right direction.

With this out of the way, we intend to head back towards gameplay-related development (between bug-fixes), along with some engine/platform work that will dovetail into helping us add additional gameplay.