Forums » Suggestions
Landing on planets, realistic and proper docking, leaving the ship and entering stations with your character and seeing the cockpit of your ship or the bridge of your Trident Type M. Those are the few things I would love to see in Vendetta Online. A realistic space combat multiplayer game, like Star Citizen.
Imagine you docking your ship into an hangar, exit the ship, enter the station's bar, check your PDA for some missions and visit the shop to buy some commodities, carry and load them yourself into the ship, undock and leave.It would be awesome, being able to do all these things! Think how epic it would be to dock with your friend's Trident, exit the ship and walk around inside it, from the docking bay to the bridge, where there would be proper gunner seats and the pilot(commander/captain)'s seat. It would be just, amazing.
Any thoughts? I don't want big, realistic details so people don't whine about lag and shit, but if just a little of this could be added, like leaving ships and visiting the inside of stations with your character, would be a great accomplishment.
Imagine you docking your ship into an hangar, exit the ship, enter the station's bar, check your PDA for some missions and visit the shop to buy some commodities, carry and load them yourself into the ship, undock and leave.It would be awesome, being able to do all these things! Think how epic it would be to dock with your friend's Trident, exit the ship and walk around inside it, from the docking bay to the bridge, where there would be proper gunner seats and the pilot(commander/captain)'s seat. It would be just, amazing.
Any thoughts? I don't want big, realistic details so people don't whine about lag and shit, but if just a little of this could be added, like leaving ships and visiting the inside of stations with your character, would be a great accomplishment.
VO is run by 2-3 devs with a very limited budget. Star Citizen is funded with $50 million.
If you want to play Star Citizen, go play Star Citizen.
If you want to play Star Citizen, go play Star Citizen.
They're over $100 million now, something like $500k per day in some cases.
Yes, Piment, your suggestions are not new ones, as you can find by searching these forums. In fact, they were old ideas long before Star Citizen was a thing. But we don't have the resources to accomplish these goals, so we're pursuing what we can.
Yes, Piment, your suggestions are not new ones, as you can find by searching these forums. In fact, they were old ideas long before Star Citizen was a thing. But we don't have the resources to accomplish these goals, so we're pursuing what we can.
VO could be WAY more fun than Star Citizen will be. There are certain downsides to having a game that absurdly big that people will discover when they get into it.
Star Citizen is currently limited to 16 players and 4 NPC's per instance.
Star Citizen MINIMUM req: quad core CPU, 8G RAM, and a DX 11 Graphics card with 1G.
Star Citizen is a 30G download on almost every update. Want to run the Public Test Universe too? You'll have 2 copies of the entire game to keep updated.
Want to get a crew together to fly a multi-player ship (the coolest thing ever)? Don't scream too loud when you get disconnected or the client freezes after finally getting into it after herding all your cats.
I am enjoying seeing what this worldwide glut of space gamers, myself included, is coaxing out of Chris Roberts and his almost 300 EMPLOYEES WORLDWIDE, but be prepared to wait. Feature and funding creep will continue to push the release date. They've done some astounding things, but it has a long way to go.
Meanwhile, VO is rock solid, I am at one with the flight model. Best space PvP ever. Period.
[Besides, looking out of my Trident's bridge window, I'd be staring at the wall of the nose section]
Star Citizen MINIMUM req: quad core CPU, 8G RAM, and a DX 11 Graphics card with 1G.
Star Citizen is a 30G download on almost every update. Want to run the Public Test Universe too? You'll have 2 copies of the entire game to keep updated.
Want to get a crew together to fly a multi-player ship (the coolest thing ever)? Don't scream too loud when you get disconnected or the client freezes after finally getting into it after herding all your cats.
I am enjoying seeing what this worldwide glut of space gamers, myself included, is coaxing out of Chris Roberts and his almost 300 EMPLOYEES WORLDWIDE, but be prepared to wait. Feature and funding creep will continue to push the release date. They've done some astounding things, but it has a long way to go.
Meanwhile, VO is rock solid, I am at one with the flight model. Best space PvP ever. Period.
[Besides, looking out of my Trident's bridge window, I'd be staring at the wall of the nose section]
Piment: You just described Shores of Hazeron. It doesn't have the awesome combat VO has and it's pretty unpolished overall, but it's fun and being actively developed. I play VO when I want to have fighter battles, and I play SoH when I want to run an empire. They complement each other well.
Why has nobody mentioned Elite: Dangerous? Best space game ever, that is actually somewhat polished unlike star citizen. They just released an expansion that allows you to land on planets and ride in rovers.
Best of all, it runs on Mac which means linux is coming soon as well, so people can play it on steamOS.
Best of all, it runs on Mac which means linux is coming soon as well, so people can play it on steamOS.
Why has nobody mentioned Elite: Dangerous? Best space game ever, that is actually somewhat polished
It looks... pretty flat, to me.
The ships are all flying wedges; 32 players per instance?
How is the offline mode? Paid expansions?
Great sound design, though.
Sorry, but the correct answer for best space game ever is Vendetta. Runner up would be the Escape Velocity series, as long as I'm being completely frank and objective.
...
As far as for what Vendetta could learn from Star Citizen, unless it's how to set up a cash shop I'd say steer clear. I thought this thread was going to be about how Hornets ought to be sold for $40 with Lifetime Insurance. (This would be horrible, in case it wasn't completely obvious. When the most uniquely interesting thing that can be said about your game has to do with the monetization model, you may have a problem).
It looks... pretty flat, to me.
The ships are all flying wedges; 32 players per instance?
How is the offline mode? Paid expansions?
Great sound design, though.
Sorry, but the correct answer for best space game ever is Vendetta. Runner up would be the Escape Velocity series, as long as I'm being completely frank and objective.
...
As far as for what Vendetta could learn from Star Citizen, unless it's how to set up a cash shop I'd say steer clear. I thought this thread was going to be about how Hornets ought to be sold for $40 with Lifetime Insurance. (This would be horrible, in case it wasn't completely obvious. When the most uniquely interesting thing that can be said about your game has to do with the monetization model, you may have a problem).
I think Elite looks pretty cool. I bought it on Steam recently, when it was $14 or something, but haven't tried it yet. Wanted to see how they approached VR.
(There's also our friends at RockFish, making EverSpace, which has pretty high requirements, but looks incredible).
Both Elite and SC look amazing on visuals and content, but neither are MMOs.. or are ever likely to be. Even Roberts "endgame" version of SC is not an MMO, it's a CORPG, a-la GuildWars, which is a very smart way to go about it (much easier to engineer), but foregoes a lot of the depth of a fully-all-the-time persistent universe.
Elite and SC are also unlikely to be on mobile anytime soon. Not that that's a core selling point for our veteran playerbase. But my point is, we're still working to expand and improve what we have, and despite our minuscule resources compared to either of the newer competitors, we still have some advantages (aside from our honed PvP/combat-model).
"Mobile" may become more interesting for people soon, actually. The GearVR is a really impressive, compelling demonstration of what can be achieved with just a cellphone in a head mount (along with a huge amount of software-side optimization from Oculus). It's better than any of the Rift devkits (anything short of the final Consumer Edition prototypes). It drastically lowers the barrier of entry from the whole Rift + Gaming PC thing, by just requiring the.. phone, with a $99 plastic mount thingie. I expect we will see a lot more of this kind of product.
Anyway, there's a lot of cool stuff out there, and a lot of choice, and I don't view that as a bad thing. All games have some amount of "Churn", and the benefit of some high-profile games in the genre only draws more people into space games, which then leads to more churn and more people considering other options. We've seen this empirically in the past: EVE doing a huge marketing campaign, and us getting more players.
So, we're just going to keep plugging along on what we have, as best we can. I still think VO is pretty neat.
(There's also our friends at RockFish, making EverSpace, which has pretty high requirements, but looks incredible).
Both Elite and SC look amazing on visuals and content, but neither are MMOs.. or are ever likely to be. Even Roberts "endgame" version of SC is not an MMO, it's a CORPG, a-la GuildWars, which is a very smart way to go about it (much easier to engineer), but foregoes a lot of the depth of a fully-all-the-time persistent universe.
Elite and SC are also unlikely to be on mobile anytime soon. Not that that's a core selling point for our veteran playerbase. But my point is, we're still working to expand and improve what we have, and despite our minuscule resources compared to either of the newer competitors, we still have some advantages (aside from our honed PvP/combat-model).
"Mobile" may become more interesting for people soon, actually. The GearVR is a really impressive, compelling demonstration of what can be achieved with just a cellphone in a head mount (along with a huge amount of software-side optimization from Oculus). It's better than any of the Rift devkits (anything short of the final Consumer Edition prototypes). It drastically lowers the barrier of entry from the whole Rift + Gaming PC thing, by just requiring the.. phone, with a $99 plastic mount thingie. I expect we will see a lot more of this kind of product.
Anyway, there's a lot of cool stuff out there, and a lot of choice, and I don't view that as a bad thing. All games have some amount of "Churn", and the benefit of some high-profile games in the genre only draws more people into space games, which then leads to more churn and more people considering other options. We've seen this empirically in the past: EVE doing a huge marketing campaign, and us getting more players.
So, we're just going to keep plugging along on what we have, as best we can. I still think VO is pretty neat.
VO is pretty neat. Please continue making it neater ;)
Misunderstandings abound here, I see. No, Elite is not a CORPG. Elite IS a MMO. Everyone plays in a single persistent instance of universe. This is even more pronounced since the Powerplay update. The actions of one player affect the same world that everyone else is in. The concept of "32 players per instance" only kicks in if too many players are in the same star system at once.
Phaserlight, can you look at those actual in-game pictures of ships and tell me with a straight face that they look flat?
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Courier?file=Imperial_Courier_01.jpg
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Courier?file=Imperial_courier_cockpit_02.jpg
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Orca?file=Orca_Newsletter_50_2.jpg
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Cutter?file=Cutter_hardpoints.png
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Cutter
Unlike Eve, you can actually fly those ships. Twitch based combat. In all honesty I don't think you've given Elite a fairly objective look.
As for "paid expansions", Elite does not have any form of monthly subscription. You gotta pay for the game in one way or another, right? Paid expansions actually cost less in the long run. *wink*
That said, VO is also a pretty good game in its own way. The advantage of being low key graphic-wise is that it works on mobile, and on older machines. You can actually target those people who can't afford to buy $300 video cards. Different kind of crowd, but a much wider crowd than the hard core gamers with money to burn.
Everspace is another game that I really look forward to.
Phaserlight, can you look at those actual in-game pictures of ships and tell me with a straight face that they look flat?
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Courier?file=Imperial_Courier_01.jpg
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Courier?file=Imperial_courier_cockpit_02.jpg
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Orca?file=Orca_Newsletter_50_2.jpg
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Cutter?file=Cutter_hardpoints.png
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Cutter
Unlike Eve, you can actually fly those ships. Twitch based combat. In all honesty I don't think you've given Elite a fairly objective look.
As for "paid expansions", Elite does not have any form of monthly subscription. You gotta pay for the game in one way or another, right? Paid expansions actually cost less in the long run. *wink*
That said, VO is also a pretty good game in its own way. The advantage of being low key graphic-wise is that it works on mobile, and on older machines. You can actually target those people who can't afford to buy $300 video cards. Different kind of crowd, but a much wider crowd than the hard core gamers with money to burn.
Everspace is another game that I really look forward to.
he actions of one player affect the same world that everyone else is in. The concept of "32 players per instance" only kicks in if too many players are in the same star system at once.
Random curiosity: how do they accomplish the former on those occasions the latter kicks in?
Random curiosity: how do they accomplish the former on those occasions the latter kicks in?
Yes, 32, but remember that instances are basically a bubble around your ship that is defined by your scanner/visual range. Although the size is somewhat adaptable. This means that there can be players in one instance and another group of players in another instance some distance away. If one player from the first instance starts to travel towards the seconds instance the players in the first instance will eventually drop of his radar due to distance and the other players will eventually come into view. So if the system works as intended this will feel seamless from the players point of view.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=13528&s=59adc4a834121ce8475c218c5dad866e&p=322442#post322442
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=13528&s=59adc4a834121ce8475c218c5dad866e&p=322442#post322442
Way to dodge the question, joyless. I think you understood Lecter's intent: he wasn't asking about the mechanics of creating instances, he was asking about its effect on gameplay. You know as well as I that the 32/instance design of Elite means that you will never have the equivalent of an Edras-Jallik wormhole blockade; there have been examples of players using this mechanic in Elite to get around other groups of players in crowded systems.
This brings up another interesting point: with the number of star systems in Elite's galaxy, why even bother? You will never have to run into another player if you don't want to. There is even a "Solo" option right on Elite's start screen.
When I used the term "flat", I was actually referring to entropy. I'm not really here to debate you on game design, but it ties in to a couple of interesting topics I encountered in college including the origin of life. One way of looking at it is that of a bounding problem: too few constraints leads to not enough available energy.
I hesitate to talk about it, because it's all rather esoteric and analogous; basically, too much entropy in a game and the player experiences a loss of agency ('Yes! I affected commodity prices on Sigma Sagittarii! My life is complete!'). Too little, and the player feels on rails. Elite is what I would consider far out into the high entropy zone, hence "flat". Frontier seems aware of this, and is trying to fix it in patches, but we'll see. If you're going to procedurally generate an entire galaxy, you'd better have some kick ass algorithms (the kind that would make Chandrasekhar smile down from above).
Personally, I don't think we're ready to do PG on the scale of an entire galaxy; we just don't know enough about what the rest of the galaxy is like on a human scale. We still don't know why our galaxy isn't pulling itself apart (even with general relativity, gravity isn't strong enough to explain observed stellar orbital velocities).
Games like Dwarf Fortress get away with doing PG on a massive scale in part because the way the simulated systems interact on a human scale is much better understood (Geo-Phy-Sci concentration speaking). Things like rain shadows, fluvial erosion, and climate all have impact on culture and anthropology. There is a massive corpus of work they can go to that will have a direct impact on the player's experience. It exists for astronomy too, but unless you are willing to bet that the rest of the galaxy looks a lot like what we know in our own solar system and our limited understanding of exoplanets, it takes a bit of hubris to generate an entire galaxy. In the end, it may end up looking like a medieval map of the cosmos; it appears to be huge, but really points inward.
Shores of Hazeron gets away with generating an entire galaxy because it has far more agricultural concerns on its mind; there are enough interacting human systems in play such that it strikes the right balance of agency in the context of fractal, chaotic possibility. It even goes so far as to simulate sexual reproduction using DNA combinatorics, and it has Texas Hold 'Em hard coded in.
But don't let one guy's opinion on the internet stop you - go ahead and play Elite! Have fun! Maybe you'll see what I mean in the long run, maybe not.
This brings up another interesting point: with the number of star systems in Elite's galaxy, why even bother? You will never have to run into another player if you don't want to. There is even a "Solo" option right on Elite's start screen.
When I used the term "flat", I was actually referring to entropy. I'm not really here to debate you on game design, but it ties in to a couple of interesting topics I encountered in college including the origin of life. One way of looking at it is that of a bounding problem: too few constraints leads to not enough available energy.
I hesitate to talk about it, because it's all rather esoteric and analogous; basically, too much entropy in a game and the player experiences a loss of agency ('Yes! I affected commodity prices on Sigma Sagittarii! My life is complete!'). Too little, and the player feels on rails. Elite is what I would consider far out into the high entropy zone, hence "flat". Frontier seems aware of this, and is trying to fix it in patches, but we'll see. If you're going to procedurally generate an entire galaxy, you'd better have some kick ass algorithms (the kind that would make Chandrasekhar smile down from above).
Personally, I don't think we're ready to do PG on the scale of an entire galaxy; we just don't know enough about what the rest of the galaxy is like on a human scale. We still don't know why our galaxy isn't pulling itself apart (even with general relativity, gravity isn't strong enough to explain observed stellar orbital velocities).
Games like Dwarf Fortress get away with doing PG on a massive scale in part because the way the simulated systems interact on a human scale is much better understood (Geo-Phy-Sci concentration speaking). Things like rain shadows, fluvial erosion, and climate all have impact on culture and anthropology. There is a massive corpus of work they can go to that will have a direct impact on the player's experience. It exists for astronomy too, but unless you are willing to bet that the rest of the galaxy looks a lot like what we know in our own solar system and our limited understanding of exoplanets, it takes a bit of hubris to generate an entire galaxy. In the end, it may end up looking like a medieval map of the cosmos; it appears to be huge, but really points inward.
Shores of Hazeron gets away with generating an entire galaxy because it has far more agricultural concerns on its mind; there are enough interacting human systems in play such that it strikes the right balance of agency in the context of fractal, chaotic possibility. It even goes so far as to simulate sexual reproduction using DNA combinatorics, and it has Texas Hold 'Em hard coded in.
But don't let one guy's opinion on the internet stop you - go ahead and play Elite! Have fun! Maybe you'll see what I mean in the long run, maybe not.
You sink your head into philosophical clouds and ideals way too much for your own good. Also, you shouldn't put words in other people's mouths. Lecter's question is straightforward.
Really, your biggest gripe with Elite is simply that it's too big. Entropy... really?
I've already sunk hundreds of hours into Elite... and I'm having plenty of fun in it, thanks. Although admittedly there's a lot of repetition because everything is procedurally generated, I can attest that there are good algorithms going on. There's enough variety and details to keep it lively and interesting. Also, Frontier is good about releasing huge updates on a timely manner.
Instead of being such a hopeless fanboy, why don't you pick up Elite while it's on sale on Steam for $15 and try it for yourself? Hurry up, the holidays sale ends on January 4. Can't hurt, and it doesn't mean you have to stop playing VO.
Really, your biggest gripe with Elite is simply that it's too big. Entropy... really?
I've already sunk hundreds of hours into Elite... and I'm having plenty of fun in it, thanks. Although admittedly there's a lot of repetition because everything is procedurally generated, I can attest that there are good algorithms going on. There's enough variety and details to keep it lively and interesting. Also, Frontier is good about releasing huge updates on a timely manner.
Instead of being such a hopeless fanboy, why don't you pick up Elite while it's on sale on Steam for $15 and try it for yourself? Hurry up, the holidays sale ends on January 4. Can't hurt, and it doesn't mean you have to stop playing VO.
I like how you berate me for being a "hopeless fanboy" in the same breath as encouraging me to purchase the game you've previously described as the "best space game ever". I'll pass, thanks.
The difference between you and me is that I have sunk hundreds of hours into both VO and Elite, and you have not. I gave both a fair shot, and you have not. I have in-game real experience, and all you have to go on is reading negative reviews from other players and some babbling about entropy. That's what I mean by being a "hopeless fanboy."
I'm not asking you to say that Elite is better than VO, that's up to your own preference, but simply to not put it down before actually giving it a try.
I'm not asking you to say that Elite is better than VO, that's up to your own preference, but simply to not put it down before actually giving it a try.
I wonder if people get this same sad and embarrassed feeling whenever Phaserlight comes onto their forum to proselytize the virtues of Vendetta Online...
My missionary days are complete. I don't think I've ever called someone a fanboy, though.
Reverse cowgirl only now, huh, Phaser?