Seriously, why are these in the game? What was the design choice that implemented them? As far as I can tell they serve no purpose other than to be an annoyance at best and a hazard at worst; they're an unanticipatable, unavoidable and random timesink. Now, part of games is frustration, it's inherent in their design -- the player wants to achieve a certain goal or goals within the rules of the game, but the game is set up so that this is difficult. The balance is delicate. Too easy, and it becomes boring, too hard, and the player quits with frustration. The key though is that the player engages in this form of frustration by his own volition. I've come to recognize over many years of playing games that any a part of a game that the player is forced to participate in, that they do not take part in of their own volition but because the game simply provides no way of knowing ahead of time that the player will be encountering it, is looked at not as fun but as an annoyance, a part of what other MMOs have so concisely termed "grind".

Ion storms fit this category pretty well. Either you take the chance that any given jump will be interrupted by an ion storm (sometimes you are, sometimes you aren't, you have no way of knowing becaue the game never warns you), or you deliberately plot a course away from asteroid fields (once you figure out that asteroid fields are the only place they occur). Either way, you're going to take more jumps than you normally would to reach your destination, and spend even more time travelling instead of mining, botting, PVPing, or whatever else you want to do; in short, playing. It's a time sink and nothing more, and travelling is already enough of one.

So, after all that's said... why do ion storms exist? I think it would be beneficial for the game if they were removed.

If they aren't removed, then there ought to be some benefit associated with them as well as the hazard. I'm not sure how, this idea just came to me as I was writing, but there ought to be something in ion storms that makes a player perk up and say, "Hey... an opportunity", instead of just "Aw man, not again". It still doesn't remove the time sink factor for a trader trying to beat a deadline or the hazard factor for a seriously damaged ship trying to reach a base, but at least it makes it something more than a simple time sink.

I still feel they'd be best off taken out of the game though.

The minning of ionized ores (that would have some value over regular ores) from within storms has been brought up. Maybe some other bennefits could be added as well. Maybe your battery gets ionized and is 25% more efficient for a couple minutes.

It was expected that they might make good choke points thus encouraging player interaction. Obviously that doesn't really happen.

I agree with you over all. They feel like the 'random monster encounter' from early Fianl Fantasy style games, where you're just trying to cross an area but every 2 or 3 squares and you have to stop and fight some pudding.

noes!1

I disagree.

I like ion storms... they add an element of strategy to navigation in an otherwise flat universe. They CAN be avoided, and if we had enough dedicated players there could be some kind of weather guild dedicated to monitoring ion storms in each system. So saying that they are totally unforseeable isn't really true... you'll only hit one if you get lazy about plotting your courses.

I think navigation across the universe should be even more difficult actually... I think it would be great if ships had a limited number of jumps before they had to refuel, making ion storms even more costly, but making a straight jump across the sector a potentially worthwhile gamble compared to corner-hopping (provided you don't hit a storm you'll save 2 units of fuel):
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11369

I also once suggested there be different classes of ion storms, with varying degrees of hazard (the kind we have now would be category 2 on a scale of 1 to 5):
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/7644#96710

To compensate for this and to give ion storms an upside... I think it would be great if all xp earned inside an ion storm had a 25% bonus applied; due to the hazardous conditions the pilot gains more experience.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/8568

As far as monitoring storms, there is no real tangible benefit to doing something like that, and the storms change every few hours so it would be a never-ending undertaking. Why would any player want to engage in that?

And I severely disagree with the concept of limited jumps and fuel requirements. Traveling is a time sink, pure and simple. It's a time sink in any MMO (the only one to partially do away with it is Guild Wars, with the ability to instantly teleport to any city on the map that you've already visited, but they don't charge a monthly fee so they don't need as many time sinks). It varies between games how much of a time sink traveling is, and all in all it's a part of the package deal that MMO players sign up for, but too much of it and it just gets tedious and boring.

I like the idea of different classes of storms. I also like the ionized ores idea, and the extra experience idea. No matter what it is, there ought to be SOME benefit to ion storms.

I agree with the reward part of the storms. Right now as it stands, almost everyone will jump to avoid them. They do serve a purpose, it is just not utilized right now. If there was a "rare" ore, or lets say a station hidden in the storm that offered a unique weapon or something, people would love the chance to jump in a storm. There could even be a "special" bot worth a lot more xp then you would find elsewhere, and worth taking the chance to fight.

The other option could be that when "ionized" your ship has a protective "shield" formed around it by the ions. This would take care of the possible shield issues that people have, as well as a REAL reason to want a storm. The idea of "power" of storms 1-5 could also come in, and the "stronger" the rating of the storm, the longer your shield would last.

I think storms should be dangerous, not a happy fun place to be.

i like the idea of an ion-collector bot that is dispatched whenever the hive finds an ion storm, to collect the precious ions. This bot could be armed with an uber version of the weapons low level colectors use, that could rip apart a Vulture in one or two hits. However the bot is relatively passive and wouln't agro on anything more than 600m away, and would be worth 200 - 300 weapons xp. and may drop its weapon (say 40% chance) when it is destroied.

in case you are wondering the weapon uses the power of ions to become uber.

Traveling is a time sink, pure and simple.

Why does it have to be? I don't think this is necessarily true. There's a lot of fun to be had in planning routes, exploration, and encountering hazards along the way. Just look at succesful games like Escape Velocity where you have a limited number of jumps, with the possibility of getting stranded in an empty sector. Part of the fun was the ever-present danger in travel.. you never knew when you were going to come under attack by pirates or find some lost derelict, and you had to plan your jumps carefully while exploring unknown sectors. If travel is over before it begins, all these opportunities for interesting gameplay disappear. I mean, all you did in Oregon Trail was travel! The entire game revolved around it. Travel is not necessarily a time sink, particularly when there is real danger involved.

I think there should be a lot more thought and strategy that goes into interstellar travel... trading should be like a game of chess. The ion storms are just the first step. I believe limited jumps would take this one step further... Do I corner hop and burn more fuel or jump straight across and risk an ion storm? Where are my refueling points and do I have enough faction to dock there? Should I stretch my fuel to the last jump to make that rush delivery or spend a little longer and refuel halfway?

The reason travel can get so tedious right now is because there is no thought and very little strategy involved.

Oregon Trail is a bad example. The only thing I ever saw anyone do in that game was hunt. That and try to ford a river and drown. I never had any desire to waste my time with it personally.

The chess-like nature of trading should come from plotting routes that will let you hit particular stations that carry a particular good so that you can sell it to another station on the way for a large profit. We won't be able to do this until we have logbooks and station manifests and a HyperWeb to download that information from. But even then, forcing you to a limited number of jumps would be a detriment to gameplay.

I'm the kind of person who even hates driving. The travel is unimportant, only the reason for traveling, the destination. Any extra time spent on traveling is time wasted.

That being said, I like exploring, which is different than traveling, and if there were some reason to explore in VO then that would be great. Derelict ships, abandoned stations, what have you, those would be very cool. As it is the only thing to find when exploring is a random asteroid belt or two with Heliocene in it. But limited jumps would still be a bad idea, putting restrictions on that exploration.

At any rate, travel itself isn't the topic of the thread. Ion storms are. They ought to have some reward associated with them for the risk they entail. Risk vs. reward is integral to game design, and every risk should give some reward.

I'm the kind of person who even hates driving. The travel is unimportant, only the reason for traveling, the destination.

Heh heh, I guess this explains our differing viewpoints. I love driving. Heaven is an empty highway at dawn with hundreds of miles ahead of you.

At any rate, travel itself isn't the topic of the thread. Ion storms are. They ought to have some reward associated with them for the risk they entail. Risk vs. reward is integral to game design, and every risk should give some reward.

I couldn't agree more. I think as they are implemented now there is very little risk vs. reward associated with ion storms. The Thing To Do is take one minute before you depart and plot your route so that you corner hop. I think there should be both a benefit and a drawback to doing this... the drawback being that it uses more fuel, necessitating more refueling stops and costing more credits. The benefit of course is that you're almost guaranteed not to hit any ion storms, which can (should sometimes) prove deadly.

In that case a compromise is possible. Travelling can be made enjoyable without simultaneously being required. That way the people like you who enjoy traveling can, well, enjoy it. The people like me, on the other hand, who look at travelling only as a means to an end, aren't forced into it.

I can see where your fuel requirements come from, but that would force people like me into travel time that we don't want. There have to be other ways to make travel rewarding and enjoyable to those who like it without making it simultaneously tedious to those who don't.

P.S. How do you quote someone on this board?

***cough**carebear**cough****