Forums » Suggestions

Remove licences....?

Dec 28, 2004 myko link
What exactly are the licences for? I've been discussing PvP on mmorpg.com and this question entered my head...

There are effectively 3 grinds in vendetta: licences, standing and money. The money grind is a given, it is unlikely to ever change unless there was a dev sponsored corp/war that provided stuff free of charge. The standing grind is interesting in that you begin with certain alignments, making it a grind if you wish to get other races ships and equipment.

The licence grind requires far more work on the part of the player. It tends to involve hours of endless botting, trading or mining. During this time a player makes huge amounts of money, which means that once a player hits high levels they can afford almost unlimited numbers of ships.

If the licence grind was removed, players would only have to bot, trade or mine enough to get the stuff they need. Sure, some players would continue to collect money but it wouldnt be compulsory. I believe this would lead to more PvP and more roleplaying, as players wouldnt be confined to NPC areas as much.

I'm sure there are good and bad points I havent written/thought of, but its late. I'm just sticking the idea out there...
Dec 28, 2004 roguelazer link
Bad, bad idea. Been there. Done that.

[rejected]
Dec 28, 2004 Spellcast link
to expand on roguelazers post...
copied from the post i just finished in the thread about low level weapons.

"Cost is a bad way to provide balance, especially in a game such as this. We had a situation where cost was the only balance back in the alpha, and it sucked. What happens is that new players end up begging for cash, buying a super ship, dying repeatedly because they never learned the basics, and never learning how to fend for themselves.

Additionally having cash as the only progression eliminates one of the things that IMO makes vendetta so good. the fact that everyone, no matter who they know, has to start from teh same place. In other games a new player can be buffed out by an experienced player to the point where the creatures(bots) appropriate to his/her level dont provide any challenge at all. With vendettas license system, this is impossible, which IMO is a good thing."

Additionally, the missions that we currently use to gain our XP and levels are badly in need of an overhaul. they were never supposed to see the live game, but time and money prevented the devs from replacing them with interesting, action filled, exciting missions. Such things are on the list, levels arent supposed to BE a grind in the game, they are supposed to be the reward for finsihing X mission tree or Y story branch.

I believe the idea was that at each level you would have a few mission "trees" availible, each one would have different challenges, but all would end up giving you enough XP for your next level. Hopefully such a system will be added soon, but for now I personally would prefer the devs continue balancing the content we have now, adjusting ships/engines/batteries and continuing to work on minor bugfixes.
Dec 28, 2004 Hoax link
I guess removing the licenses is not the answer but I still have a big problem with them. Mainly they ruin all my fun, they have since they were instigated and they continue too. I like doing everything in vendetta but leveling my licenses.

An earlier solution was to make the pvp playing field close to equal around level 4 and up so as to eliminate some of the driving reason to grind your levels up. This theory still may work but is very broken when neut III's and valks are factored in, at least from a UIT standpoint.

As it is, I will never get my levels much higher than 5 or 6, let alone some random faction standing that will take me a year of 'work' to increase.

I suppose I'm in the position of a lot of the alpha's that left before release. I liked when I could load up vendetta and PLAY, get in some good fights, defend the flag, do a few trade runs for some extra cash, etc.

Now it's like, lets see, if I bot for 2 more hours I might be able to survive a dog fight with a mediocre Itani noob, but wait no, they have neut III's so maybe if I trade for axia for well, my whole game time and my whole time the next day and the next and then maybe, oh who cares...I guess I just want space quake back and maybe this isn't for me anymore. Or at least my opinion isn't so pertinent.

It's all a rehash anyway:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/5004
Dec 29, 2004 madisonsuicide link
i mentioned this as well in another thread. but after some more thinking on it here an idea. i like the xp system, sort of, but it doesn't make much sense to me the way it works. perhaps if weapons had a "drift" or inaccuracy rating/penalty that experience would then counter it might work. after all practicing with a weapon in real life just makes you more accurate and doesn't affect what people would sell you. i would also suggest driving up prices as the main obstacle to be overcome for new equipment, since that is how it works in life. its hard to be attached to my ship with it being so cheap, it becomes meaningless. it took me so long to save up and equip my starbridge in ev nova that i really cared about it and picked my fights carefully for fear it would be blown up. i'm flying a wraith? currently in VO and find i'm not real attached to it since i can easily go back get another because its "unlocking" is just tied to my xp which will never go down.
it also makes for a strange economy with some of the first ships, as bad as they are, costing less than a couple crates of junk. well i better get back to work now.