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in VO, i like to just be able to have a 'pick up' game, grab a ship and go shoot people. yeah, the races and escorts and miscellaneous games are fun too. but i am glad there is no massive 'super item tree' like WoW.
linked off slashdot:
http://soulkerfuffle.blogspot.com/2006/10/view-from-top.html
"First off, let's go back to the time it takes to accomplish anything in the game. To really be successful, you need to at least invest 12 hours a week, and that is bare minimum. From a leadership perspective, that 12 hours would be laughed at. That's the guy who comes unprepared to raid and has to leave half way through because he has work in the morning or is going out or some other thing that shows "lack of commitment". To the extreme there is the guildie who is always on and ready to help. The "good guildie" who plays about 10 hours a day and seven days a week. Yes, that's almost two full-time jobs. Funny, no one ever asks any questions, though."
linked off slashdot:
http://soulkerfuffle.blogspot.com/2006/10/view-from-top.html
"First off, let's go back to the time it takes to accomplish anything in the game. To really be successful, you need to at least invest 12 hours a week, and that is bare minimum. From a leadership perspective, that 12 hours would be laughed at. That's the guy who comes unprepared to raid and has to leave half way through because he has work in the morning or is going out or some other thing that shows "lack of commitment". To the extreme there is the guildie who is always on and ready to help. The "good guildie" who plays about 10 hours a day and seven days a week. Yes, that's almost two full-time jobs. Funny, no one ever asks any questions, though."
This link really shocked me!
The thing about many MMOs is that there run by people who are looking to make a ton of money, so the more addicts the better. I've been a gamer all my life and have made many friends that way, but its important not to get too caught up. I've caught myself missing a homework assignment or two but I hope to never lose touch with my real life.
The thing about many MMOs is that there run by people who are looking to make a ton of money, so the more addicts the better. I've been a gamer all my life and have made many friends that way, but its important not to get too caught up. I've caught myself missing a homework assignment or two but I hope to never lose touch with my real life.
LOL 10 hours a day, 7 days a week? Holy CRAP. I'd look like Cartman in that South Park WOW episode.
ananzi - Incarnate & Company have NO plans to move VO away from twitch, I'm sure.
ananzi - Incarnate & Company have NO plans to move VO away from twitch, I'm sure.
I am all in favour of expanding VO into non-twitch areas of MMOs, as long as they do not take away from the existing functionality. E.g. mining is non-twitch, and so I can imagine there being more mining beams/more mining missions and/or badges appearing up to level 25 mining or so some time in the future. This is more of a comment than a suggestion/request though.
Holy shit, ananzi again making some non-trollish sense on the forums. What the hell is the universe coming to?
I definately agree with what's said in that article, and it's the primary reason I don't play WoW myself. It demands time and more time from you to really feel any accomplishment in the game, and there's no point in just logging in occasionally for a scrap. I have commitments of my own, and I can't afford to throw parts of my life away in the grind.
I applaud any and all content that goes into VO, as long as it does not detract from the grab-and-go play and twitch PvP aspects of the game. I want a game that I can log into, grab some guns, break some rust, make a few kills and hone my skills. Other content? send it my way - I'll check it out if and when I find the time... but I don't want to be put through the paces and forced to endure it at the cost of PvP time, and I don't want to log on and find that just because I haven't been on for x hours of the last week grinding, I don't have access to the tools of war needed to go head to head with people who have less of a life outside of VO than me.
Right now, VO gives me what I need, and even though I can't play more than a few hours a month, I'm still content to pay my monthly fees and stick with it.
That said, I have been disappointed with some of the changes that have been made recently... things which are little by little sacrificing that quick and easy combat fix for "more MMO," "more realism," "more content," or any combination of the above. The repair costs being one big part of that... it makes doing what I like to do (PvPing) more difficult, and requiring of more of my time doing other things to raise the money I need to do it. What happens when I run out of money, and don't have the time to grind for more? do I just stop playing? or do I waste my time doing what I really don't want to do - trading and mining, or some other grind that has ben cooked up in the name of "content."
So yes, devs, bring us content, but above all, keep VO twitch. Don't sacrifice a shred of 'Space Quake' in the name of MMORPG. It can be both, and that's great, but to lose 'Space Quake' is to lose what makes VO unique, and in my opinion, worth playing.
I definately agree with what's said in that article, and it's the primary reason I don't play WoW myself. It demands time and more time from you to really feel any accomplishment in the game, and there's no point in just logging in occasionally for a scrap. I have commitments of my own, and I can't afford to throw parts of my life away in the grind.
I applaud any and all content that goes into VO, as long as it does not detract from the grab-and-go play and twitch PvP aspects of the game. I want a game that I can log into, grab some guns, break some rust, make a few kills and hone my skills. Other content? send it my way - I'll check it out if and when I find the time... but I don't want to be put through the paces and forced to endure it at the cost of PvP time, and I don't want to log on and find that just because I haven't been on for x hours of the last week grinding, I don't have access to the tools of war needed to go head to head with people who have less of a life outside of VO than me.
Right now, VO gives me what I need, and even though I can't play more than a few hours a month, I'm still content to pay my monthly fees and stick with it.
That said, I have been disappointed with some of the changes that have been made recently... things which are little by little sacrificing that quick and easy combat fix for "more MMO," "more realism," "more content," or any combination of the above. The repair costs being one big part of that... it makes doing what I like to do (PvPing) more difficult, and requiring of more of my time doing other things to raise the money I need to do it. What happens when I run out of money, and don't have the time to grind for more? do I just stop playing? or do I waste my time doing what I really don't want to do - trading and mining, or some other grind that has ben cooked up in the name of "content."
So yes, devs, bring us content, but above all, keep VO twitch. Don't sacrifice a shred of 'Space Quake' in the name of MMORPG. It can be both, and that's great, but to lose 'Space Quake' is to lose what makes VO unique, and in my opinion, worth playing.
Well put Cunjo.
Devs need to eat to stay alive.
Food costs money.
Subscribers are the primary source of money (although ingame advertising and the likes are competing).
Therefore devs need subscribers in order to stay alive. And this means implementing features that encourage people to stay in VO for more than one month, raising the number of active subscribers. I doubt anyone wants VO to turn into an interactive screensaver, but unless VO can attract and sustain around 3000-5000 subscribers at the very least, the chances of long term survival are not that great, and so I welcome any development that might get more people into the game.
Food costs money.
Subscribers are the primary source of money (although ingame advertising and the likes are competing).
Therefore devs need subscribers in order to stay alive. And this means implementing features that encourage people to stay in VO for more than one month, raising the number of active subscribers. I doubt anyone wants VO to turn into an interactive screensaver, but unless VO can attract and sustain around 3000-5000 subscribers at the very least, the chances of long term survival are not that great, and so I welcome any development that might get more people into the game.
Perhaps we could keep both aspects of the game-implement a system for pvp (and I know this had been mentioned elsewhere) where, if agreed, all the participant's weapons stop doing real damage. Players still lose hp, but it is restored at the end of the fight and minimum hp is above 1%.
For nation wars and such everyone could make this agreement for a set time, say 20 minutes, and during that time ships that go to 1% would freeze in space, unable to accelerate or fire but able to rotate about their axis (to watch the fight). No ships would actually explode, no money for repairs, and the "space quake" part of VO stays alive at no cost to the MMO part.
Side note- after writing this I though "Ender's Game!" If you've read them then I've referring to the battleroom, where the opposing members of each "army" used lasers to tag the other side and cause their suits to freeze up. Immobilized, still able to watch, unable to fight.
For nation wars and such everyone could make this agreement for a set time, say 20 minutes, and during that time ships that go to 1% would freeze in space, unable to accelerate or fire but able to rotate about their axis (to watch the fight). No ships would actually explode, no money for repairs, and the "space quake" part of VO stays alive at no cost to the MMO part.
Side note- after writing this I though "Ender's Game!" If you've read them then I've referring to the battleroom, where the opposing members of each "army" used lasers to tag the other side and cause their suits to freeze up. Immobilized, still able to watch, unable to fight.
Yeah, ty FatStrat, that was the thread I was referring to with "mentioned elsewhere."
Good article. After logging 50+ days myself, and creating the largest and most active Serco guild at the time felt like a real sense of acomplishment. To see my final highschool grades slip, and my already, relatively small social life completely diminish towards the end, wasn't so great... I "woke up" in almost the very same way, realizing I had in one way, was ruining myself through lack of self control and neglecting what shreds of relationships I had around me for VO. After awhile I was using VO to hide away from all my unaccomplished tasks in the real world. I forced myself to quit, convincing myself I didn't want to pay for 2 months of inactivity, and left for Britain during the month of July.
I've toyed with the idea to come back in February 2007, but after reading the article I'll take that idea into serious deliberation with myself. On a "positive" note (depends where you are) I was going to log on a trail account to help out some old guildies, but I can't. I'm busy that night supporting a friends band, then partying. VO is like life in one way, the more you put into it, the more accomplishment you get out of it. Only in life its worth a lot more. than any virtual world can give you.
I've toyed with the idea to come back in February 2007, but after reading the article I'll take that idea into serious deliberation with myself. On a "positive" note (depends where you are) I was going to log on a trail account to help out some old guildies, but I can't. I'm busy that night supporting a friends band, then partying. VO is like life in one way, the more you put into it, the more accomplishment you get out of it. Only in life its worth a lot more. than any virtual world can give you.
As long as I retain an authoritative place in this company, VO will remain twitch. It was designed to be and always will be, and I'm completely unapologetic about that fact to those who have stated other preferences.
Back in the mid 90s, I played UO (beta/early release) and eventually EverQuest. EQ was definitely the design-predecessor to WoW.. Blizzard basically took a very proven model and gave it the gold-plated Blizzard treatment (I have great respect for Blizzard). Anyway, at the time I had started playing EQ in part so that I could see all my "EverCrack" addicted friends, who had all vanished from the real world. The problem was, I was never willing/able to dedicate the amounts of time they could to the game. So it ended up that I couldn't play with them anyway. They were off hunting dragons or gods or something for like 50 hours a week, while I was being killed by, you know, "angry potted plant".. for much shorter periods of time.
When we eventually started rolling our own MMO in the late 90s, a lot of those experiences went into my initial design intentions for VO (and granted, it was many years before VO was anything like an MMO). I wanted people of different skill levels and time commitments to be able to play together with useful cooperation. I wanted it to be possible to "jump in and have a good time" on short notice. I wanted any newbie to at least have a *chance* of fighting and winning against a long-time veteran. And, I wanted it to be possible to play solo. I'm not really any more social online than I am offline, I'm not a Big Guild Oriented person (ironic, given the name of our company). I tend to prefer to go off and do my own thing, and in a lot of MMOs that's kind of an exercise in futility once you're past the beginner levels.
Granted, we all know the game still has a lot of flaws and problems, and there's only a limited amount of Stuff To Do. But all the above points are still resonant in my intentions for the future of the game. Make Guilds have their purposes and benefits, but not make them the only way to play over Level X. The general concept of trying to keep things as open-ended and flexible as possible.
I also admit I have some concern over the sheer amounts of time that people play these sorts of games. It's not really any different than offline games, I suppose (Sid Meier has made much of my life disappear), you just never "win". Anyway, I've had a thought in the back of my head about putting watchdog timers into the game. Basically, these could be disabled by the user (in Options or something) but would, by default, give you notifications over a certain number of hours or per day, and per week. Something like "We really appreciate your dedication to Vendetta Online, but perhaps you should go do something outside." I dunno if that would really help, but maybe it would give people a "heads-up" about just how long they've been playing. Dungeon Keeper II (Bullfrog) used to do funny stuff like that after 2am, telling you to "go to bed".
Back in the mid 90s, I played UO (beta/early release) and eventually EverQuest. EQ was definitely the design-predecessor to WoW.. Blizzard basically took a very proven model and gave it the gold-plated Blizzard treatment (I have great respect for Blizzard). Anyway, at the time I had started playing EQ in part so that I could see all my "EverCrack" addicted friends, who had all vanished from the real world. The problem was, I was never willing/able to dedicate the amounts of time they could to the game. So it ended up that I couldn't play with them anyway. They were off hunting dragons or gods or something for like 50 hours a week, while I was being killed by, you know, "angry potted plant".. for much shorter periods of time.
When we eventually started rolling our own MMO in the late 90s, a lot of those experiences went into my initial design intentions for VO (and granted, it was many years before VO was anything like an MMO). I wanted people of different skill levels and time commitments to be able to play together with useful cooperation. I wanted it to be possible to "jump in and have a good time" on short notice. I wanted any newbie to at least have a *chance* of fighting and winning against a long-time veteran. And, I wanted it to be possible to play solo. I'm not really any more social online than I am offline, I'm not a Big Guild Oriented person (ironic, given the name of our company). I tend to prefer to go off and do my own thing, and in a lot of MMOs that's kind of an exercise in futility once you're past the beginner levels.
Granted, we all know the game still has a lot of flaws and problems, and there's only a limited amount of Stuff To Do. But all the above points are still resonant in my intentions for the future of the game. Make Guilds have their purposes and benefits, but not make them the only way to play over Level X. The general concept of trying to keep things as open-ended and flexible as possible.
I also admit I have some concern over the sheer amounts of time that people play these sorts of games. It's not really any different than offline games, I suppose (Sid Meier has made much of my life disappear), you just never "win". Anyway, I've had a thought in the back of my head about putting watchdog timers into the game. Basically, these could be disabled by the user (in Options or something) but would, by default, give you notifications over a certain number of hours or per day, and per week. Something like "We really appreciate your dedication to Vendetta Online, but perhaps you should go do something outside." I dunno if that would really help, but maybe it would give people a "heads-up" about just how long they've been playing. Dungeon Keeper II (Bullfrog) used to do funny stuff like that after 2am, telling you to "go to bed".
Puzzle Pirates has those reminders too ... you just ignore them after a while. so they don't really work..
Guild Wars has them fancy reminders too. Every hour it tells you how long the client has been open, and if it's over two hours it tells you to "Please take a break."
Mostof the time I ignore them, but if I lose track of time and that pops up telling me I've been playing for eight hours I make a mental note to get off and actually do something else soon.
Mostof the time I ignore them, but if I lose track of time and that pops up telling me I've been playing for eight hours I make a mental note to get off and actually do something else soon.
heh, my max has been 72 hours keeping it on overnight :D
Incarnate -
Thanks a bunch for replying to this topic. This is my first MMO, and after reading the article, and the many responses of people who felt they had lost something important(friends, significant others, jobs, degrees) due to mmo addiction I became very concerned about whether I should be starting to play a game that has the potential to be harmful. It's true that people should excercise self control when playing any game and that many of the people who get addicted to MMOs are often dealing with other problems as well. However, social addiction can be very powerful, when people are depending on you to play a game, your much more likely to give up something else to play. And even though I doubt I would become addicted, it is not worth contributing to something that actively makes people suffer in their outside lives.
Although the developers at Blizzard are probably not trying to make addicts, the business side of the company is making a lot of money off of people's addiction to the game so they probably don't have any plans of fixing the problem.
I've been waiting to see how you guys at Guild felt about the problems of MMO addiction to see if my time in this game was in good hands. I was glad to see you confront the issue and show that you have a solid plan to keep social addiction out of your game. This is something that I strongly support, as it shows me that this game is worth participating in.
Thanks
Thanks a bunch for replying to this topic. This is my first MMO, and after reading the article, and the many responses of people who felt they had lost something important(friends, significant others, jobs, degrees) due to mmo addiction I became very concerned about whether I should be starting to play a game that has the potential to be harmful. It's true that people should excercise self control when playing any game and that many of the people who get addicted to MMOs are often dealing with other problems as well. However, social addiction can be very powerful, when people are depending on you to play a game, your much more likely to give up something else to play. And even though I doubt I would become addicted, it is not worth contributing to something that actively makes people suffer in their outside lives.
Although the developers at Blizzard are probably not trying to make addicts, the business side of the company is making a lot of money off of people's addiction to the game so they probably don't have any plans of fixing the problem.
I've been waiting to see how you guys at Guild felt about the problems of MMO addiction to see if my time in this game was in good hands. I was glad to see you confront the issue and show that you have a solid plan to keep social addiction out of your game. This is something that I strongly support, as it shows me that this game is worth participating in.
Thanks
Nice Incarnate. Good luck.
Thanks for replying incarnate. Client uptime and idle timers would be a welcome adition (and also easy to add), but not a very useful/important one. There is already /time command, /uptime could just give back (time - logon_time). Development towards removing (no)FF, allowing players to fly cap ships, and own stations, 'tani shields, and serco cloaks >> uptime counter though. Also stuff happening to ion storms look interesting... Hard to imagine so few of you manage to be doing so much! Keep up the good work!
An interesting (but hugely unpolular, so don't even think about implementing it or anything like it) concept is to have character fatigue that incrases with playtime and decreases during inactivity. Thus, characters live through the day they get tired. First of all it is not easily implementable in VO and secondly in just encourages using alts. I thought that concept to be interesting nevertheless.
Also in VO you do win! 10/10/10/13/10 is victory. Personally I see it as a bad thing, but it keeps the game twitch, so complaints would not be justified.
As for Things To Do you are right, but I trust you are addressing that issue somewhere on the top of the list of priorities you have.
An interesting (but hugely unpolular, so don't even think about implementing it or anything like it) concept is to have character fatigue that incrases with playtime and decreases during inactivity. Thus, characters live through the day they get tired. First of all it is not easily implementable in VO and secondly in just encourages using alts. I thought that concept to be interesting nevertheless.
Also in VO you do win! 10/10/10/13/10 is victory. Personally I see it as a bad thing, but it keeps the game twitch, so complaints would not be justified.
As for Things To Do you are right, but I trust you are addressing that issue somewhere on the top of the list of priorities you have.
Does ANYONE have the ungodly mining level of 10?
Sure, and many people go way higher.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/stats/75078/
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/stats/75078/