IMHO:

1. Pilotable cap ships
2. Weapons able to be purchased and transported as cargo
3. New graphic (and sound?) for in-sector jumps
4. Purchasable cap ships
5. Fully integrated Hive
6. NPC escorts able to be hired
7. Faction system adjusted to prevent opposing factions from having good faction in both groups.
8. Economy redux

I left out the obvious "content" because I figure that once the little things are out of the way, the devs will naturally turn more attention to adding content.

That's all I could come up with atm, feel free to add or debate anything on the list. That's what it's here for.

Actually I'd like to see a lot more done with the faction system before going "live 2.0". Like here: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/14417#181798

I'd love to see crafting as well but I'm getting the sense that even if everything else was done NOW, a workable crafting system is still a year away at least.

I'm not in agreement with 3 and 6 being a priority, but I do agree that the other points would make for a better experience for new players.

The faction system is not at all intuitive and needs a a rework so that it is intuitive and consistent.

Errr....you gonna drop a link in there Leber?

/edit: There it is!

LOL Whistler, yer just toooo fast!

And I think that #3 would be so easy to do, I mean that's just ..."patch media file with new animation seqence and sound effect." Not too bad.

I don't think the patching is the time-consuming part. It's the creation of the animation and sound. At any rate, I'm not bothered by the jump effect as it is now so it's just not a priority in my mind.

I think Ghost means the sector-to-sector jump effect, which USED to be just a "zooming away" animation, but is now the same as the Wormhole animation.

A little while ago there was a thread on this which seemed to come up with the consensus that a BSG-style of jump animation was good. LIke this: white light starts at the front of the ship, "erases" the ship as it moves aft.
Jump-in animation is the opposite, white light moves from front to back and "un-masks" the ship.

This thread, LeberMac? (and I still like my idea the best)

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11326#133479

Yes, exactly! Hehe. Although I think only 5% (OK maybe 10% with this crowd) would GET the infinite-improbability drive thing. They'd just think it was a bug, report it, and then the devs would be deluged with thousands of bug reports saying "Hey, when I jump, It looks like I become a chocolate cake for a second!"

I'll bet that most of the crowd has no idea what the hell is going on when us old farts spout off about "Tea / no tea", or about "knights who say Ni", or about "All your base", or about "It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."

Perhaps that should be an appendix in the Vendetta manual. I'll begin writing. Add that to the list of things that need to be done before advertising:

9. Explanatory copy in the VO manual for typical Vendetta-User geekspeak/1337speek/nerdzwordz. (Or maybe just VO wikipedia entries on it)

I know it would have helped me a year ago.

I'd disagree. I think about 75% of the user base would get at least one reference, and about a third would get all of them (I do...).

Oh, and... Frog blast the vent core.

I'll bet that most of the crowd has no idea what the hell is going on when us old farts spout off about "Tea / no tea", or about "knights who say Ni", or about "All your base", or about "It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."

Well, I don't know most of it, but...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Your_Base_Are_Belong_To_Us

Most of non-English speakers will likely not know what "All your base" is

Hehe, but toshiro is tight, I do get at least one reference, and all who read my post will ^_^