back when there was no speedcap i always enjoyed how you could always either stay and fight someone if you wanted, or you could runaway as the pacifist scum you were. people complained a lot about never being able to kill people but now people just complain a lot about pirates and such dont they? seems like it would fix the pirate problem.

i think this was probably my favorite thing about vendetta because it was something ive never seen in a video game which was true space flight. people just need to realize that you cant really kill someone if you just accelerate forever.

and there are many ways to balance such a thing if your goal for balancing is reducing peoples propensity to accelerate forever. one example could be that you could have a fuel supply and the turbo takes this away. or you the levels could be very very dense in areas so if you lure someone into the asteroid field they cant exactly accelerate forever or else kaboom.

i just think vendetta would be much more unique if it had unique gameplay...

Infinite speed and a finite game universe don't mix. Heck, very large speeds (or distances) proprotional to the resolution of the floating point numbers don't mix.

Clearly you've never played Elite if you've never seen 'true' space flight in a video game. Elite mapped planets in true planetary scale. However, for reasons that have been many times discussed, I don't think that is practical in a multiplayer game with current processors, memory, bandwidth, etc. - especially if you want better graphics than Elite's vector based stuff.

What happens to someone who runs out of fuel after accelerating out a few thousand kilometers? How much of a learning curve do you really want in a game like this? Do you really only want combat to occur by agreement between the parties? Given that there are only so many objects you can put in a sector, is it reasonable to make more of all that empty space accessible? It might be realistic, but it might also be boring for most people.

exactly. if i want realistic space flight, i play Qrbit. search mgf...

im simply saying that its boring due to people being stuck in a certain mode of playing games.

you could easily balance this out, weapons that accelerate faster than you accelerate is good one for instance.

personally yes i think if someone doesnt want to fight than you shouldnt have to.. you should be able to do what you want in this game not be subjected to constant pirating. i think most people Do want to fight though, and eventually most people amass enough wealth and become bored of amassing wealth so at that point they stop trading and start fighting or doing something else interesting hopefully .

i encourage this game to have UNIQUE gameplay, instead of thinking how new things are wrong consider how they might work out ?

although if all this community/devteam wants is the same old fps shootemup style gameplay except in space then who am i to argue. its merely a suggestion.

Am I just completely crazy?....


Ive always thought of Vendetta gameplay as very unique. I love the fights because you can't get them anywhere else.
.... right? .... im not completely crazy?

If you can't avoid fighting players now, you're doing something very wrong. It's not hard. If anything it's hard to chase someone down with anything but rockets. Either rockets need to be balanced, or energy weapons need to be useful again by using a separate battery to allow chases.

longish post, please read all of it before you decide to flame me :)

ojok2: vendetta gameplay is quite unique, you are not crazy, however what planaria is saying is a good point in a game like this, combat should be optional (or at least there should be a way to make combat unlikely if it is not something you want to deal with).

however, now that i have acknowledged that, i will also (so dont flame me yet) state that this is NOT a game. it is a server/design/idea test. to me this means that the devs are attempting to create an environment where the test software is subjected to the most stress possible in the final product.
Trading from one safe area to another puts little to no "stress" on a server. a 356 processor using a 300 baud modem could pass the data neccesary to run a trading simulation. combat, with weapons fire, random dodges, and missiles tracking the opponent causes server stress, so that is what is being tested.

If you don't like combat, come back in a few months, watch the boards but dont play very often. thats what I am doing.

Imagine this for a minute tho. the final game has, say (and i'm keeping the estimate small) 1,000 sectors, of those, 100 are nation specific for each nation. which means that if you aren't a member of that nation, or "totally trusted" by that nation you cannot go there. The area is well patrolled, pirates are all but non-existant due to the steady police/military patrols through the area. Trade routes are safe and heavily gaurded, but consist mostly of predictable cargos, opportunities for profit are long term and generally more commercial than anything. goods to be bought are luxury items and staples, but nothing overly exotic. Some goods are illegal (depending on the values of the nation) and carrying them is a good way to get your flying priveledges revoked.

Around each nations "controlled" sectors there would be an area of "buffer" sectors, maybe 50 sectors for each nation, a place where anyone who is not on the "enemy" list could come to trade, take simple missions, and otherwise co-exist peacefully with that nation. an area that is heavily influenced by each nation, but not directly under it's control. (kind of like canada is to the usa lol j/k canada.) The buffer areas are less patrolled, an occasional sweep of police/military, pirating is more common, but varies from almost none (near the controlled sectors) to fairly frequent (out by the neutral areas in the middle). Trade routes are defended, but not safe, and the items for purchase here are more in the gray areas of commerce. staples and luxury items sell for a bit more here as they are not as common. there are fewer illegal cargo's here, although as you get closer to the "controlled" sectors, they become more restrictive.

finally in the middle is an area of totally neutral nations, anything goes, anyone can come here. the most profitable, (and dangerous) area. there is no nation providing influence here, as such pirating is more or less unchecked. there are few or no restrictions on trade goods, since there is no-one to monitor them. laws may be sector or even station based, so with 2 or 3 stations in a sector you may have 3 different sets of rules, depending on which station you go to. anything and everything is for sale, if you know the right places to go.

to become trusted you would spend game time to make trade runs to sectors on the edge of the nations controlled space and in the buffer area around each nation, taking missions for that nation, maybe even helping defend some of that nations ships from pirates and the like.

in order to become an enemy of a nation you would have to break contracts with that nation, steal from them (maybe on a mission) or be caught pirating in their territory on neumerous occasions.

(please keep in mind i'm not suggesting that there be only 1 or 2 possibilities of reputation, just picking the most extreme. depending on how far up (or down) the reputation scale you are would adjust what kind of missions and what sort of reception you would get in various places.)

anyway, to wrap up the post, what i am basically trying to say is that in a final game there will be areas to trade in that are more or less safe. (at least I hope there will be) and areas where combat is more likely, or even very likely.

i guess i basically agree with what people say, vendetta is a test true and we should really be trying to find ways to stress test it.

i think what im really trying to get at here is that what made games such as quake fun after you figured it out were the little engine exploits that would get you ahead of the game like rocket jumping, grenade jumping, and in quake 3 they allowed this with even more weapons because they could simply balance the weapons a certain way and this wouldnt hurt gameplay but enhance it.

in tribes 1 there was skiing , in tribes 2 they tried to take this away and i think it basically ruined tribes 2.

the point is not about realism its about making things very fun, but again this is a test. so im sure that the vendetta people will figure out how to make this game interesting.. its just that i think it would be more fun with interesting little exploits inside the gameplay.

so for me something like shooting a rocket at just the right time into an asteroid and turboing into it whilst using the blast radius to propel you very fast would be extremely fun. i think adding things like this into the test would actually make this test incredibly more fun because instead of trying to kill people if there was no one around you could just practice your ingame acrobatics.

there could even be levels were you dont get damaged but simply learn how to use the exploits of the physics to really get around.