*Upcoming Events*
There will be a special developer-run Capture The Flag event on
Saturday, May 15th, at 5PM CST, 23:00 UTC. Unique prizes may be
expected. More details will be posted to the forums, as well as the
in-game event system, as the date approaches. Notices will also go out
via Twitter, RSS, and Facebook.
*Recent Changes*
We've made some cool progress lately, including:
- More Conquerable Stations! -
Two additional conquerable stations have been added to the universe, and
all conquerable stations are now visible on radar only to those who have
a currently active key. The "S" icon is hidden from all others, which is
now a matter of some importance, as at least one of the stations is
obscured in a dense, persistent fog. Additionally, static fog now limits
the characters shown on the sector list ("u" menu) to only those within
radar range, allowing total concealment through use of radar occlusion
and fog. More features are upcoming for conquerable stations, where they
may be used to manufacture special equipment over a period of time, and
where multiple stations may be needed to work concurrently to build
larger and more complex equipment.
- War Convoys -
These special blockade fleets are launched by either the Itani or the
Serco every day, depending on who controls the most sectors in Deneb.
Each convoy then blockades the grayspace borders of the opposition,
impinging on trade and other activity. If the conquest of Deneb should
be reversed the following day, then the convoy of the new winner will
need to break through the remaining blockade from yesterday. In this
way, actions from the war front in Deneb have repercussions that
resonate throughout the rest of the galaxy.
- Friend Keys -
Help your friends check out Vendetta Online! Any account subscribed for
a month or longer may now begin collecting "Friend Keys", special
extended-trial key codes that may be sent to anyone you think might
enjoy the game. Accounts may accumulate up to five "Friend Keys" at any
given time, although each may only be applied to a single
never-subscribed trial account. As time goes on, more Friend Key related
features may be expected.
- Replacement of the Players Online website list -
This was a long-requested but still somewhat controversial change. The
"Players Online" list on the VO website has long displayed the names of
all characters currently in-game. Unfortunately, this was extensively
abused, both by people "data mining" the list to determine which
characters were "alts" of other known characters (by never being logged
on at the same time), as well as people seeking out and continually
hunting down specific individuals over and over again. To improve this
situation, we've removed the Players Online list and replaced it with a
graph of relative "player density", colored by Nation alignment. In
addition, a "Buddies Online" list is also present, which checks against
the buddies of all characters present in the account used to log onto
the website.
- Increased Financial Rewards for Deneb War participants -
We have drastically increased the payouts for Dynamic Warfare
participants in Deneb. Income per kill has increased from 1500 credits
to 5000. Overall skirmish success bonuses have been increased by four
fold. In addition, we plan for more "role-specific" bonuses, for people
flying Bombers and the like; dropping the shields of a capship will
accrue a special bonus, along with credits-per-percentage-damage for any
destroyed capital vessel. Combined with the existing free ship
replacement for any person homed in the station issuing the Skirmish
mission, combat on the Deneb border is on its way to becoming a
reasonable income-generating activity in VO.
- Friendly Fire, New Trade Routes, Ship Tweaks, Etc -
Friendly Fire restrictions have been dropped from all space, with the
exception of the Itani, Serco and UIT Capitol Systems (six in all).
Odia is experiencing large demand for many manufactured products, with
Corvus and other local corporations paying top dollar to support a great
deal of unexplained activity. Consumer Robotics, Civilian Textiles and
Personal Defense Systems number among the items seeing demand spikes in
the region.
The Warthog TD has had a serious makeover, with improved armor, thrust,
braking, turbo, and more. Cargo capacity and turbo energy usage were
slightly reduced in compensation.
*Upcoming Changes*
- Launch of the Vendetta Online development Trac -
The VO "Trac" is a development wiki and collection of ongoing tickets
detailing the work we're doing, and what we have planned for the future.
The public release of this was a primary feature promised in the last
newsletter, intended to happen during the month of April. Unfortunately,
this has not come to pass, for which I apologize. GDC (the Game
Developers Conference in San Francisco, back in March) had some
unexpected (but positive) results and opportunities, and we have been
focusing a great deal of attention on a significant new VO feature that
has not yet been announced. There will likely be a press release about
this feature towards the end of May, in the run-up to E3.
Nonetheless, I am hopeful that we will see the Trac debut in May, with
the complete milestones for VO 1.9 and 2.0, as well as many of our
long-range plans. This may be something kind of new: a retail-shipped
MMORPG allowing public access to our forward-looking design
documentation and internal development discussions. This is a whole
other level beyond the cooked-down "developer blogs" that ourselves and
many other games have maintained for the last decade. For better or
worse, you will be able to see us struggling with new APIs, major bugs,
or implementation strategies for new features. Hopefully this degree of
transparency will help inspire further interest in our long-range plans,
and allow our userbase to see their own suggestions be scheduled for
implementation, as well as join in watching us check off the various
tickets and milestones that mark the road to our Ideal Game.
- Faction Redux, Mutual Exclusion -
A lot of work over this coming month will focus on "polish"; areas of
gameplay that while fundamentally implemented, and functional, could
really use some improved balance or tweaking to make it shine.
One area that impinges on many parts of the game is our Faction Standing
system, which has tended to be excessively lax over the past few years.
We will be adding mutual exclusions to the system, such that one may be
aligned with the Itani OR the Serco, but not be highly regarded by both
at the same time. This has been planned for years, but following the
drop of Friendly Fire restrictions from most of the galaxy, this needs
to take place in the near future. We expect this change to suddenly
alter the relevance of many gameplay factors, such as the
above-mentioned "War Convoys", as their aggression will impact new
groups of people. The exact specifications for how this will play out
will be posted to the forums in advance of release, and we will be
allowing people to choose the "side" (Itani vs Serco) with whom they
would prefer to retain higher standings.
The Itani and Serco will also not be the only mutual exclusion in place,
as some Corporations also have enmity for one another. The degree of the
mutual exclusion will not always be the same, but there will be cases
where gaining standing with one group is a tradeoff, as you lose
standing with another. In the long run, this should be much better for
the game, and make for a more interesting environment.
- Complex Sectors, Fog, and Bot Radar -
Truly complex sectors require some technical work that has not yet been
completed, but you can expect to see more of them in the near future.
We're still using the central Deneb ring as our testbed for this, and we
intend to make many performance improvements to loading time, and other
aspects, before rolling it out galaxy-wide.
Foggy "reefs" that create choke points in the galaxy, and largely
replace Ion Storms will also be rolled out. However, any effect on
visibility and radar range is problematic for as long as we have bots
with magical unlimited detection abilities. Of course, this is another
non-trivial issue, since their "unlimited" sensor range is of use in
certain mission-based activities, where the NPC is spawned far from the
user, so we will likely have to find solutions to several tangential
problems in the process of changing this.
- Economy, Game In General -
The economy also requires more attention, a re-working of the way trade
works in the galaxy, the distribution of items, and what it all
"means".. from the lowest newbie in an EC-89, to a vast armada of
Constellations. The economy, for lack of a better term, is a fundamental
root of my long-planned "Endgame"; a seed from which many things will
sprout, and much gameplay will be affected.
In General, for the near term, it is our plan to focus a lot of energy
over the coming months on "cleaning up" and polishing a lot of our
existing content. Bringing back and revising "Capture The Cargo" and
tying it into the Deneb conflict, fixing silly exploits in Convoy
missions, locating most of the dumb gameplay oversights and problems
that people have had to become "used to" over the years, and actually
doing something about them.
It is never as exciting to tell someone that you're going to be spending
a lot of time "polishing", as opposed to creating the Next Awesome
Thing. But I expect that this time will have a greater and more welcome
impact on our player's enjoyment of the overall game than the majority
of our "Big Gameplay Additions" of the last few years.