Forums » Suggestions

Easy ways to create more content and immersion for new players

Oct 15, 2006 LaVespa link
Hello Vendetta Community and Developers,
Almost as much fun as playing the game, is checking out the ideas everyone has for the future of the game. As far as the basic mechanics of space flight and combat are concerned, Vendetta feels very well tuned, consistent, and fun. Also the missions thus far have given me the feeling that I'm interacting in a dynamic universe.
There are a few things that would be fun to see in the versions to come.
1)Unique Station Descriptions
Something in the Description Box of Space stations that make them different from other stations of their type and nationality.

For example,
Itan Meditation
This station is home to the Gardens of Eo, famed for the Hyzine trees that are said to have been planted by Eo himself. The people here are disciplined but good natured. They are friendly towards, but untrusting of strangers.

This would require a lot of writing, the devs could have members of the community submit a 3 sentence paragraph describing their favorite station.

2) Treasure Hunts
Perhaps in thebars of the Space Stations you could pick up rumors of certain treasures being spotted in nearby sectors. Nothings more fun than combing the universe for lost artifacts and hoping you don't run into pirates along the way.
Oct 16, 2006 incarnate link
Hi, thanks for the suggestion. 1) is exactly why we've implemented the station-description area in the interface, but we haven't yet gotten around to writing the descriptions. I'm all for taking player submissions in a lot of areas, but I also think I should probably lay out the baseline stuff myself (including faction descriptions), and let people build on them. So I'm currently planning to write those. There's also going to be some icons in the upper-right hand corner of the station interface, displaying the Faction flag and an icon for the "station type". Also in process.

2) is also a good suggestion, and something I've wanted for awhile. Lost artifacts and weird rumors add a lot of depth to the universe. Right now we have some technical excitement with the actual distribution and execution of "wacky discover-able items", be they drops from special NPCs or otherwise. But, we're working on that.
Oct 16, 2006 Professor Chaos link
"wacky discover-able items"

This is one thing I hate about the suggestion forum. What if someone suggests the most amazing mysterious item to be discovered ever, and it's implemented? Kind of hard to make it a surprise. What if someone's like, "Hey, let's have the universe get invaded by aliens in the next release" (not necessarily that, but something equally surprising. How is it going to be a cool surprise? Oh, well.

Ok, I'm done.
Oct 16, 2006 incarnate link
You can't keep secrets in an MMO. They all get posted to some wiki, or forum, or whatever.. within a few hours of creation. It's a fact of Internet life. Goes with the territory.

Of course, should we roll out "wacky discover-able items", I'll probably say "hey we added stuff, see the mumblings of NPCs and cryptic newsposts / missions, best of luck finding it". I know people enjoy that :). And so it'll be a secret.. for.. a few hours.
Oct 16, 2006 LaVespa link
Also, the thing about secrets is that they build up and eventually people forget about them, so they become happy discoveries as we're exploring the universe and bump into them.

Weekly treasure hunts would also be fun, where the developers hide an artifact somewhere in the universe and drop the players hints, ie news reports as to its whereabouts as the week rolls on.

One thing I was thinking about was hiding artifacts in giant asteroids that act as mazes, much like the ones used for races. That would be pretty interesting, and take some skill to navigate through.
Oct 16, 2006 Renegade xxRIPxx link
incarnate not when you do a randomised wacky stuff :D

ergo if you ever add secret sectors, to make these sectors change their entrywarp.

Or when you add certain gadgets to show them up for x time in sector z or y. Will be heck to program though :D
Oct 16, 2006 thurisaz link
mmm... I hope the exploration expansion has procedurally-generated systems and sectors :"
Oct 16, 2006 a1k0n link
Yeah, but only if they're better procedures than what generated what we've got.
Oct 16, 2006 MSKanaka link
Incarnate: Like the secret sectors in alpha? :P