How about some diversity in VO character building?

So far every player has to do all aspects of VO to get licences to be able to buy ships, weapons and equipment.
Lets divide areas of interest.
Military, Trade, Mining & prospecting so VO characters can choose their profession and aquire levels accordingly.

There is no sane reason for a member of nation military to trade or mine. He has to be on government payroll.

Also, there is no sane reason for just any character with adequate levels and standing to be able to buy nation specific military grade ships, weapons and equipment.
As a member of nation military guild or guilds your government trusts and pays you to protect it and gives you acces to its most valued technology: ships, weps and equip.

Some of silly/stupid situations in VO atm /like sercos using valkyres or Itanis using proms/ would be instantly fixed by implementing this.

Possibilities of further implementation of new specific profession ships, weapons or equipment are endless.
I am sure nobody wants VO to become a TPG uniform Universe.
Everyone using same ships, weps, equipment, every trader, miner, fighter...its just not right.
And its boring.

there is a sane reason for a member of a nations military to trade or mine. They do so in their spare time, ergo they choose to do so themselves because they like it or as a relaxation.

or they are issued to do so, look at all the military transports.

Still the reason why everybody does them all is because a lot of gamers are powergamers and they like to see everything maxed or to have access to everything.

So?

Cant they make different chars for different professions.
VO client still has 6 slots for chars.

And....military transports...they transport weapons and ammo. Not like they are selling them for profit.
And for fighters spare time....pffft. Maybe get themselves booze blasted in corvus bars or wining and dining serco fembots. :P

if you make different chars it means spending more time and having to make room within a guild for all these chars which would clog up guilds and make more of those pirate guilds (not pierat pierat, but the one full of alts of 1 person).

It is normally the way to go in an rpg, but i kinda like it that i can trade on my char and not have to flipflop to another one before i can trade. Or that i can quickly finish a mission and don't have to change because I am hated with faction y. I do agree that there should be a mutually exclusive faction system for certain factionbranches so that my choices have an influence on the game or on what i can do, but only when there is sufficient content to do such a thing.

Military transports don't always carry weapons or ammo, i have seen a lot of aide transports being escorted by military personnel through hostile territory, just to make sure it reaches its destination.

Bojan, you are right, but you forgot that eventually devs are going to get rid of levels anyway.

Thanks Aleksey.

@Rene:
This is a suggestion and please treat it like that.
You are known for lenghty "against" posts just for the sake of being against something. :P
This idea came out after some of my guildmates ranted about new repair costs, course pvp combat in VO is taking, etc.
So i worded it poorly and posted.

<OT>I'm known for lengthy agaisnt posts because i am a carebear. And i keep my posts lengthy because i lack the intelligence to convey the same stuff in a short manner. I mostly don't bother posting "for" stuff since I consider not posting the same as being for it or having no opinion unles there is a lot of against stuff in the thread allready and the idea is getting the shaft.</OT>

PS: not sure if they are ever going to take levels out, since its a way to limit stuff just as advancing through the ranks of a military branch or traders branch is.

Well, Incarnate himself said that the levels/licenses business was only intended to be a temporary fix, and that he wanted it to change towards a mission-reward/badge system. But maybe that's just my memory banks acting up again.

The license system is pretty good for now, though. It works a lot better and feels much more real than a simple level up system you find in most mmos.

Bojan, you can't strive to lead your own army unless you can handle both combat and trade proficiently =P

not to mention that at current military personnel are NOT on adequate government payroll to fund their own operations.

OK let me elaborate.
When you start in VO as a newbie you really have no idea about how will you develop your char, which nation or faction to choose, etc.
Learning the game and interacting with existing player community can lead you in different directions.

So what can VO offer him?

Dear newbie, just do missions, raise all levels, buy all ships, weps and equipment, try to join some guild and enjoy the nice scenery.

Sure powergamers will enter competition for getting the best possible levels in everything. When they reach their limit they will have only 2 possible decisions to make:
1. leave the game out of boredom
2. create a completely new character and go thru that boring leveling again

Would char profession diversity mentioned in my original post help to keep them ingame and have fun creating a completely different new char?
I think it would help.
I may be wrong thou, thats why this is just a suggestion.

I dislike games when one char can lear ALL the skills (i.e. Runescape) and prefer those where you have some choices to make (UO, WOW). Mostly because it creates different classes, that are good at different things.

But does VO really need all that, would it be logical? If you were the pilot why should you be limited in your mining skill just because you like to blow stuff up? Not letting the serco scum getting Valks is okay with me.

But what we really need, more than limitations an' all, we need end game content.

in my opinion it would not help to keep people ingame. People stay in game because they are having fun, not because they happened to see their licence go up another notch.

The advantage of seeing them do everything is so they experience everything and at the end can do what they like and not have to come to the conclusion that everything they did up till now was useless since they don't like it. If i have to do one more factionincreasing trademission i'm going to cry...

Once more, choices ok. But choices on your actions ingame not on the playing of the game. Ergo, you can chose if you want to align with x or y, but this will have consequences on your faction with y and x and possibly z and g as well. Still i'dd disagree with the item of creating classes that are good at x or y. I would agree with creating items that reward being good at x or y but not on if you spend p time on it or not. In the end it should be the skill that you used who should be determining not on the frequency that you did it(even though there is a correlation)

How many players stay ingame because they are having fun is very obvious by checking VO daily player count graph for the last year.

They dont. They go away.

And Rene, I find chasing levels boring. I mentioned it because in one of your previous replies you pulled out "against" argument by mentioning powergamers that want max levels in everything.
Now go away and leave my humble suggestion thread in peace.

They go away because of the lack of end game content, just making them rehash the same stuff won't make them stay longer... you can only kill the same person so many times before it gets boring. Or you can only make another mill before it gets boring. Or you can just get yourself admired by all factions so much before it gets boring. If i had to do it with another char just to get access to a ship on another char, i wouldn't bother playing anymore. Heck or you can just do so many ctc runs before it gets boring passing through the same uneventfull space.

And my response concerning the levelling up and staying was directed at having fun. powerlevellers have fun levelling therefore they stay in the game. people that hate levelling won't stay in the game just for the numbercrunching. But removing it will not make people stay in the game, not to mention that levelling is a form of character profession development.

Diversity = good
Uniformity = bad and boring

I've only barely skimmed this thread, but fixing professions for characters would make this like every other RPG out there. I like how it is now, that any character can do any activity.

In the future, when players can own stations and cap ships, there will be some natural "professions" for players to pursue, but I still don't want it to be a box you check when you create your character. If you want to captain a cap ship or be administrator of a station, then just go do that. It will take a lot of your time, though, so it would be your profession. Also, when territory is capturable, and nation war actually has a point, then military would be a viable profession that would take a lot of your time, and have pay, since it would be in demand. If building/repairing ships/stations requires resources, then nation war would mean that miners and traders would also be in demand. So there would be professions for everyone, but you'd have the option of changing careers, which is a good thing.

I'm down with the whole box checking idea, so long as there's a logical explanation for it... like this:

"So, you wanna' sign your life away to the (insert nation here) military, do ya'? Sign here please!"

In other words, there ought to be as much 'in character' reasoning for the restrictions in this game as, well, the devs find reasonable. Personally, if it ever came down to that I'd go dodge the draft down in Sedina. Toodle doo!

I think it helps make VO more fun to pick a purpose for each character. Locking people into major career paths is a trait of a lot of other MMOs that gets a lot of complaints. One of the nicest things about VO is that if I decide to be a warrior one week I can work on those types of levels and skills. Then, if I feel like being a trader or miner another week I can do that too. It's an important part of the flexibility of VO that we must not lose.