I was pondering the issue of creating content, and surveying the missions currently available. Now I know that (currently) VO is mostly PvP, with missions largely thrown in as a seeming afterthought to (re-)build rep with a faction. Still, I believe VO has great potential for also attracting the 'content believers', i.e. those people who are there for the story, not necessarily the fight. Yes, for example someone like me who thought PvP was getting old when they released the original UT.

Now, in order to strike a balance between PvP and content-driven play these should somehow be separated, as not to alienate those who love the current game, and still be able to pull off story-driven gameplay. There are of course many ways to do this; a simple way would be to create an additional 'Content System' (perhaps a newly discovered wormhole) that focuses on story-based, and perhaps even introduced some severe penalties for PvP (to keep the PvE people happy). This is the easy part.

Still, how would we drive content? I was thinking along the lines of discovering a new system (or set of linked systems) that contains alien artifacts. A *lot* of story arcs, search missions etc. can be created around this, including a host of previously unknown nasties. Of course any artifact, if functional, would only work whilst on a mission (and should not fall in the über-weapn/defense/capacitor category), and only inside the 'content system', so as to not tip the balance of classic VO gameplay.

Let us imagine this: Accidentally, a new wormhole is discovered, leading to a strange system inside a nebula (this sets up plausibility for any special powered item only working inside the 'content system'). The system is littered with roids that are mineral rich, and an independent trader sets up a station. Soon, it is discovered that something is wrong. The roids are all in the wrong places. Then, the first artifact from an ancient, long dead civilization is discovered. A joint research station is set up to find out what happened. They offer bounties for any artifact discovered. Soon, pilots arrive to try their hands on this treasure hunt. Then the first treasure-hunter dies… (I agree that this is a run-off-the-mill set-up, and many people can come up with vastly better stories).

But all of this would only get us so far. What is needed to get *really* good content going would be instanced sectors, driven by the currently active mission. Instances, of course are private versions of a sector, where only you, and people from your group are present. They exist in parallel for other players/groups that enter it at the same time so they won't meet or compete for an objective (I call them 'instances' because that is the closest term used in other MMORPG, e.g. WoW). The major difference here is that the configuration and contents of a given instanced sector should be mission-driven. If no mission is active, the sector can be anything and is *not* instanced. But if a mission for this sector *is* active, the whole sector becomes populated (including roids, relicts, mobs) according to that, and only that mission. This makes driving story arcs very, very powerful, and will even give the impression of persistence *and* progress. If in mission M1 it is your job to clear a sector from all mobs, you might find something at the last kill (an artifact). Upon returning it, you get followup mission M2. This one shows you how to activate the found artifact, and tells you to return to that sector to find something using the activated artifact. Upon re-entry of the sector in question, it is devoid of any mobs. Now you need to find a special roid perhaps, or relic. Once you activate the artifact close to the correct location, other events are triggered. etc, etc.

All of the above would not be possible with non-instanced sectors. I do realize that this may constitue a great departure from where the current development is going, and may require a lot of effort. Instances themselves shouldn't be too difficult given the way (I believe) current sectors are implemented (except that the process dies when a player leaves a sector). Mission driven content, however, may be much harder to do.

Just a thought, and I'm probably not the first one to suggest it (although I did scan a couple of hundred threads back)

-ch

What you suggest is a good thing but one point does not fit imho.
why should you generate extra content and leave pvp aside or even penalize it?

let's say there is a "new frontier" a new host of evil stirring in a nebula... with own capships... and let us call them "the swarm".

first of we find out that the nebula is rich of energy and our scientiscs need samples... (peacfull mission so far)

next they develop a way to use the energized nebula as resource but found other strange things in it...

so next mission would to establish a researchpost...
hehe ever had the idea to build stuff? player owned stations...

and then they notice that the energylevels in the nebula are so high that - greed drives them into it and your greed makes you want to help them...

and they also discovered that some of the "strange things" mentioned, near the nebula turn out to be lifeforms.

unfortunatly these lifeforms also hold the energy and the same way life in it phase shifting partly...

untill one day one of the newest station build into the nebula, while one of the nebula storms, somehow lost signal.

a flight duration later the storm reached another outpost and with the storm came this enormous mass, that was no rock and battered the station into pieces along it's way.

The same time other outposts report of strange carrier like vessels apporaching and launching thousands of little spacecraft swarming and firing at the stations while the nebulastorm presists.

---

This day 8 years ago we will never forget. since this day there is war. we fight against the swarm and we fight against our enemies for the biggest piece of the cake. That's why the guild XY setup this station here Stranger and if you can proove to be a willing and loyal fighter it shall be rewarded with honor to protect build and conquer in the new frontier. perhaps one day you and your allies also setup a base in here...

-----

Mothership class: 16 times the size of a constellation.
as far as we know the swarm has a minimum of 3 of them which we can distinguish by their slightly diffrent radio frequencies.
these must be old species...

Carrier class: each Mothership is guarded by several carriers.
these hold fighters and tankships.

Tankships: heavily armored vessels well armed but keep distance most of the time or try to avoid direct confrontation these ships the tiny fighters dock regularly midfight then swarming out again refueled

Fighters somewhat bigger than a drone but smaller than a collectorbot these fast tiny things seem to have little to no armor and only carry one gun. they need to get into close distance to fire it and are quite easily killed but unfortunatly it seems they are also as easily and fast produced by motherships ...

---
nebula streams can be harvested with modified "mining" beams called tractor beams. to conserve them you feed a plasma with it and this plasma then is pure energy used to create stuff in special converters our scientists recently discovered.

well it still all needs a lot of testing and lot of samples and testing can only be done in a secured area...

think u got the idea what your job might be...

Instances, -
no. one of the most boring aspects of wow was doing instance runs
up to this day my guild is running into serpentshrine lair. i didn'T even see it because i got sick of the concept "more content" = more instances with other and more bossmobs

in wow the only reason to do pve is gone, outland is empty, you can fly through the marshes a whole day and you won't find even one player worth a kill. without pvp there is no need for the pve items. blizzard killed pvp so blizzard killed the game for me.

the game need a real trading system run by demand.
population driven by needs like the need for saftey when an area is to crowded with war the system generaes refugee missions and the "population" leaves this area heading for homezones like itan sol II or odia depending on their aligiance. npc traders really ned your help to jump in because their fleet needs repairs or escorts... yes this would be lots of ai work to come but a dynamically reacting ai would add so much spice to the game...

dynamically generated missions... just think of it then real trade could establish far beyond the possibilities of the actual static mission system. also pirats not only there to plunder and sink your ships. no they have stuff to offer and also npc'S are greedy... lots of possibilities of autogenerating missions real missions with mutliple steps perhaps.

generating more factions as well on playerbasd stations... say two of them founded by itani and the npcs there figured hey there is a traderoute without or low risk of hostility then this could form a new faction when these npc'S call them a new one...

playerfounded bases would open lots of possibilities again.
there is always a population forwithout a station could not live... as the founder you can control a few things but the larger the station grows the more the npc ai will demand independency... sure they will never forget their founders if treated correctly but like a tamagochi you feed them for the purpose of of being able to defend themselfs so you don't need to take dcare of that and still have a "safe" place to stay and your bussiness keeps selling what ever your npc employees produce...

the more population you have the more need they have for goods...

real trade driven by demand... "real ai taxpayers"

/me gives this thread a

STAMP OF GOOD IDEAS AND INTELLEGENCES!

Empty sectors are this game's 'instance' zones. (What a dumb term) If the need to be away from other players truly becomes too great, then space should just be doubled with more emptiness.

Ha, some very good points here...

> why should you generate extra content and leave pvp aside or even
> penalize it?

No reason really except that *personally* I'm not so hot on pvp. The idea was to create a separate *additional* bubble inside VO where pvp is less emphasized. But there is no overwhelming need to do so. OTOH, I really think that there is demand for non-pvp (i.e. PvE) gameplay. I do realize, shaded, that you are someone who really likes PvP, and the thrill it gives you. I'm different and would love to experience some PvE action in VO without the constant threat of being engaged in PvP. If you look at other RPGs I think it is clear that there is a huge market for PvE (in WoW Europe the ratio is roughly 4 PvE : 1 PvP servers). If we manage to set up VO in a way that allows PvP and PvE to coexists simultaneous, this would be a great boon for everyone.

> [great ideas deleted. Impressive what people come up with on a momen't notice!]

>Instances, -
>no. [...]
>in wow the only reason to do pve is gone, outland is empty, you can
>fly through the marshes a whole day and you won't find even one
>player worth a kill. without pvp there is no need for the pve items.
>blizzard killed pvp so blizzard killed the game for me.

And that, exactly, is the crux of the matter. First, I may be mistaken, but you seem to have been playing on a PvP server. I'm still subscribed to WoW, and on my PvE server Outland is teeming with other players, many of them with live PvP tag. But since I don't do PvP, finding someone to kill is a non-issue. (That being said, I'ts not as if VO is chock full of players that you can engage. I'm not complaining, since I've only once been killed by somone else. In that case it was a classic case of ganking, reminiscent of a level 5 being hammered by a level 50 in WoW. Frustrating since I wasn't expecting it).
What I want to avoid, though, is what you describe: the necessity to go to instances to get good PvP gear. People like me go to instances for the PvE fun. My characters are all PvE specced, I've done hardly any PvP at all. Sadly, for some people all an instance crawl is about is 'getting the purple' (i.e. very rare hi-power PvP item). My idea for instances is simply to allow a PvE group to quest undisturbed by other players, and, more importantly, not risk being engaged in PvP directly after, or in mid-fight.
Another thing to remember is that VO is set up differently than WoW. In WoW you can't really lose items. In VO, if you lose your ship, your über-weapon goes with it. If it was unique, it is now, well, extinct. But I don't want unique items in VO. All I want is a story arc - content.

I believe the merits of instances are clear. They are a reasonable work-around for the problem of multiple people competing for the same mission quest who do not want to engage in PvP to settle the competition. If a mission calls for elimination of a certain mob in a certain sector, everyone on that mission would congregate there. It won't be much fun sitting around waiting for the re-spawn, only to have your kill claimed by someone else waiting for the mob. Instances remove that problem. Simply adding more sectors does not, as everyone will still go to the same sector.

That being said, it's not that every content (mission) should rely on instances. Nor that instances should be done the way they did in WoW - with gargantuan dungeons, and lots of elite mobs. No, I want some missions to utilize this, with micro-content: just that sector. And definitely not for all missions. Actually, I want the ability to create Instances available to content creators. That way, most mission are non-instanced, while others are. Also, I don't like the concept that instances are populated by elites as in WoW. No, they should be regular mobs, and just small parallel pockets of the same universe that just for the time become exclusive for the players in them.

>the game need a real trading system run by demand.
One of the most brilliant implementations (even if now seriously out of whack) was WoW's auction house. Take this concept, and add automated (i.e. server-based NPCs) bidders as well as sellers, and this could seriously take off. The problem here, of course, is that currently we don't have that many items to sell.

> dynamically generated missions... just think of it then real trade
> could establish far beyond the possibilities of the actual static
> mission system. also pirats not only there to plunder and sink your
> ships. no they have stuff to offer and also npc'S are greedy... lots
> of possibilities of autogenerating missions real missions with
> mutliple steps perhaps.

Brilliant idea! I'd like to add dynamic *military* missions that time out - strike incoming bombers, scout a sector, transport important cargo, escort, combat patrol, defend NPC mining ops, relief, etc. - all these missions based on the current dynamic military/economical situation. Also, these missions are unique - if someone signs up, it's gone, and no-one else can do it. Thus people can also compete on missions.

Another Idea: haggling on a price -- but this could be taking it a little bit too far. For this a mission is open to interesting parties for a certain time. People can 'bid' on a mission, and when bidding closes, the lowest bidder will receive the contract. The mission then begins immediately afterwards)

> playerfounded bases would open lots of possibilities again.
> [more excellent suggestions deleted]

... plus player bases giving out contracts to real players to fly patrol. Plus, of course, posting bounties on real players, and having these show up as missions. Real players as well as the server should be able to post bounties. [this i bet has been suggested before.]

-ch

i see your point of doing pve just to do pve...
and i would like to combine these two worlds once in a game without one side lacking in thrill.

thing is it would be like an instance if you, because at the right time, at the right place, would get one mission and take it because an npc in comparison to wow would not give a mission twice when it thinks you could please his needs... so it is your unique mission untill at another time a similar situation comes up and the npc will spawn this mission again because of - his low stocks of - rattails.

but i would not be like a seperation in total like what an instance would mean, from a pvp perspective an instance is a non pvp zone and these killed pvp in wow. maybe there are more guarded areas to do pve in them but never never never be really safe from pvp after leaving the starting area.

pvp can only work if there is no place to hide...
sure it could be made really annoying to hunt someone in his nationspace but hey the game has to offer this possibility...

and monitored Nationspace also should protect newbies like SF patrols through questing areas (kill artemis collectors at k 11)
makes a patrol coming along there once in a while...

But you should never be able to flee from pvp by jumping into a pve INSTANCE for you alone.

let the quests be unique at a certain time in this area. this would seperate your activites to complete the quest by bringing you into specific quest realted sectors. and other people would quest elsewhere because their quest brings them elsewhere but no matter where you go there should always be the chance someone comes along by whatever reason and gets the jump on you.

in some mideval mmorpgs there are lvl areas... so the endgame concentrates on just a few specific areas because there are the ores and there drops the leather and there ... i don't know if this principle of seperating players by lvl's or progress could not also work in vendetta..

say you need basic mining something to get a mining beam
but without this mining beam you can't mine specific ore at all so why would you try to go to areas without being able to mine there... the more progressed players instead would love these areas because they give better combatxp and they are able to mine these good selling ores. and these areas are closer to where the fun is like borderzones with objectives... capture xy...
defend xp ...

> pvp can only work if there is no place to hide...

Ah, yes. Of course. The instance should only kick in if the relevant mission is active, and you intend to jump into the mission's target sector. As I imagine, there are no permanent instances, as instances are only mission driven. That way *any* sector can be an instance if you have the correct mission - including mission with bases.

Let's have an example. Sector A1 in System 'Whatever' is a non-descript, boring system. You can enter it, and leave it as you please. You'll be in there with everyone else who isn't on an active mission that has this sector as a target.
Now, if your mission is active, you jump into an instanced version of this sector, that is populated according to the missions requirements.
This has two important benefits:

1) 99.99% of the time you can't escape PvP into an instance.
2) It opens the possibility of 'war torn' story arc where you are tasked to blockade-run a base. The target system can have a base, but when you jump in-sector, it is now an instance, populated by lots of nasties, laying siege to the base. For anyone else the base is still normally accessible, but not for you.

> sure it could be made really annoying to hunt someone in his
> nationspace but hey the game has to offer this possibility...

Yes. I don't want to change the general idea of PvP, just would love to have a non-PvP area. Perhaps a requirement to enter must be no combat in the past 5 minutes to prevent PvP runners from entering in order to flee from a PvP battle. Once inside, though, PvP may still be possible, but should be heavily penalized (for example reducing PvP damage by 99.9 percent. This makes destroying a player next to impossible - unless he consents to PvP and exits the 'non-PvP area').

In any event, my main point in this thread was not abolishing PvP, but adding PvE, and *lots* of content (PvP and PvE).

-ch

I would very much hate any 'magical' penalties to pvp.
Only penalties should be in game ones, like faction loss, strike forces defending players and such.
In fact Nation space is intended to be kind of partially safe area but through such ingame means. Not magical ones like friendly fire protection that devs are trying to go away from.

thing is, friedly fire protection comes in pretty handy if again u rammed that damned npc moth which you should escort right after leaving the station or stuff...

imagine how often the sf would kill you for such "hostile" behaviour if it would not exist ^^

You do realize ramming something doesn't activate the strike forces or lower your faction, right?

All these would be terrific, But something you should keep in mind. Separate instance of sector for mission would be bad. That the reason why i hate so much Guild wars, The concept of having mission only stuff outside the city in your own little world remove one part that make MMO fun. You can't call for help / reinforcement when your in trouble. That would be a major loss IMO. A Mission like 'Patrol this border sector' could be a boring mission but if someone else on the other side take this 'Raid this border sector' and teams up with a couple of other players to do it, the guys doing the first patrol mission maybe would need re-inforcement.

I also think we should be able to take some mission at a time, not only one. Just my point of view.

For those about putting bounties on other players... I think these should be stackable, this could add some fun for famous pirate. They would have a huge price on their head so many players could go after them or team up against them. Again they could try to track who put bounties on their head and bribe them to remove the bounties.

Just an other thing, Devs... We what to make some progress to that backstory so please help up do it. :)

I agree that for most missions you do not require instances, and the border patrol mission you mention is exactly the kind of mission where using an instanced sector is not good.

I'd like to have the ability to have a sector become an instance specifically for some missions. It would only become an instance for that player on the mission. For all other players the sector remains as always: shared with everyone else. The can enter it separately, and still see each other, no separate instance is created.

The pilot/group on the mission, however, would enter an instance that will be configured according to the active mission. This means that the same sector can look differently for different people: just as every other sector for almost anyone, privately instanced according to mission 1 for players on that, differently privately instanced for players on mission 2 etc.

But most missions would not require an instance. Instances would be required whenever something unique is called for in the content story arc (e.g. meeting someone from the story line, finding a unique item, fighting a certain mob etc.

-ch

Too many text. I think devs will just ignore it, as they already stated that this game is all about constant never-ending PvP. No magic protection for anyone

I think this is one of the things that are coming soon™.

is till did not get one single hint for what kind of missions you would need an instance...

see the pda is able to check where a lot of players are...
if not in this system it could pick a more empty system and there a empty sector for placing your mob in it.
Believe me you wouldn't see the diffrence in meanings of being disturbed... it could happen but at these low population vo actually has it is not even close to 1% of the possibility someone could disturb you or your team.

l8er when vo attracts more players this might change but still there could be also more systems then added to the actuall known universe...

also i would find it quite difficult to crete some sort of instance that works like a dungeon... see wow for example the layout of a room with a mob plays a huge role in encounter design... we are in 3d space, there is no layout of room design, there are just some roids...
(this might change of course if the game gets a 3d person shooter aspect coded into which you can switch in for doing some stuff... )

so what kind of encounter or mission do you think of that really would need a modified sector as instance to fight in?

played homeworld perhaps? these missions were really great ... this i could imagine but also such nuisances could be related to one ingame sector ... and the target respawning after a while...
if so you would need a group of people anyway to solve it.

a few mission recalled from memory...

"ancient evil ship"
imagine a spacecraft a very ld spacecraft an some newer spacecraft models around it, you get too close to the gigantic ancient one it will overtake your ship by mind(machine)control.
so it did to the ships which float around it like dead.
you get into a certain distance the ships will be activaed and fire at you..

to solve this mission in homeworld you had to lure them out of the mindcontrol zone and then capture or destroy them. when the last ship was gone you could apporach the ancient one and deactive the mindcontrol whatever...

"radiation"
see you have a target near the source of deadly radiation...
and roid streams which shield your ships from the radiation.
and you have enemies as well...

"through the roids"
well convoy need to go to some nexplored space and it is your job to clear the way but this time the roids are in constant movement so make sure they don't hit your trannies...

all these would be cool missions... but for all of these pvp would spice it up.

> so what kind of encounter or mission do you think of that
> really would need a modified sector as instance to fight in?

Any mission that visits the same sector and would somehow resemble 'progress'. If in mission 1 it was your task to infiltrate a 'bug-infested' roid and place a charge, your second mission could be to now enter the roid with a special drill to excavate. When you return to the secor, the roid has splintered into many different parts, and, as a nasty surprise, space around it is teeming with lots of little, aggressive bugs. Very difficult to do without instances.

Imagine the following 'freedom fighter/mercenary' plot line: two factions are revving up to wage war against each other. in this string of missions, you first shuffle diplomats secretly between locations (no instances needed), perhaps even arrange and host a meeting (an instance probably needed to protect you from PvP jokers). When talks break down, the two factions go to war. One gains the upper hand, and lays siege to the other faction's main base. While before you where able to freely approach any of the factions bases, one of them is now closed. You tasks now can include blockade running, smuggling spies in and out etc. Without an instance that reflects the blockaded/non-blockaded status of the base according to your mission that would be difficult to do. Again, instances are used to simulate actual change. The plot line ends when you finally are able to broker a peace (and of course help the warring patrons' children marry each other, as they've been secretly in love forever (wipes tears)), and the blockade ends.

There may be ways around instances. Above could be had with a permanently blockaded base. Not half as neat, though, as it loses all appearance of an actual space 'adventure' with a developing plot line.

> Believe me you wouldn't see the diffrence in meanings of being disturbed...
> it could happen but at these low population vo actually has it is not
> even close to 1% of the possibility someone could disturb you or your team.
>
> l8er when vo attracts more players this might change but still there could
> be also more systems then added to the actuall known universe...

Well, two issues with that: first, population around bases is significantly higher, and that is where most things ahppen. But the argument that 'currently we can live with a cludge because there are so few players' is not only bad practice (you'd still have to change it later, at greater cost because all missions must be re-written), it's also partly self-defeating. Many people I know come for content. If there is no content because no good content system is in place, few people will come. If only few people come, the content system won't be upgraded. Because the system isn't upgraded, few people will come. (loop ad infinitum)

Oh, and the Homeworld missions bring back great memories... ah, those were the days.

-ch

you left out the part about the pda uses some code to figure where a good place would be for a mission...

also your exploding roid could spawn additionally into an empty sector ... which is still part of the main game...

it will be blasted up right? or despawn when you cancel the mission right?

so the roid itself seems more a problem to create a split appart pattern for the devs than the problem instance or not instance?

no offense at all this is a to good conversation here. but i really wonder if there could be an example that really would require an instance.

> you left out the part about the pda uses some code to figure
> where a good place would be for a mission...

Oh, sorry, no I thought I referred to that, but obliquely. What if the pda can't find an empy sector (too many players because VO *really* takes off, and people are signing up in droves)? Worse, what if VO starts getting successful, but then progress is halted because of limited sectors (we are talking massive content, i.e. more than 1000 missions) coupled with griefers that are bound to show up to make life miserable for the PvE noobs like me? No instances = Griefer fodder.

I don't think PvE instances will sudenly shift the game's balance - provided the mobs in the instances dont drop über items, which would be *really* bad. I belive with the right preconditions (e.g. low player count), any mission requirement for instances can be worked around (except the PvP Griefer harassing PvE players, but that is a separate issue). Once those preconditions don't exist any more, it becomes a problem, though. Just how many players can simultaneously be on a mission in a system? Do you really want your content system have a hard limit on your own success? Not an easy decision.

-ch

I'm not particularly fond of PVP. However, instancing is a bad idea IMO - one single unsafe universe is what the game is about, and putting in artificial limits to prevent it seems wrong. Fixes should be in game (learning to fight back, or travelling in convoys for example).

As SuperMegaMynt said, if missions become unplayable due to too few empty sectors, then adding more systems would be the right approach.