The Kingdom of Philtopia

As I have mentioned in a previous post some months back I am a member of the Player contribution corps for Vendetta Online. The purpose of this group is to develop content for the game in the form of either Missions, Documentation or Lua interface improvements.

Over a month ago Guild software made some announcements that got the attention of Slashdot and a few other high profile sites which attracted an influx of new players. I happened to notice they all seemed to run into the same issue between lvl 2-3 which was an immediate halt of anything interesting and a terrible grind with the basic and advanced combat missions in order to make level 3. Level 3 being key here as that opens up access to trading guild, escort missions, hive skirmish and the border wars all of which can be very amusing. This lead me to the drawing board to try and correct this long standing issue.

The Gauntlet

The idea behind this mission is you go to a specified sector and fight waves and waves of enemy ships of progressing difficulty and getting larger rewards as you reach certain gates or round completions. This is similar to how adv combat works EXCEPT I use a variety of ships in progressing difficulty until an ending conclusion of a boss battle that ends with a bonus and cash reward whereas ADV Combat just tells you to go find and kill bots until you don’t feel like it anymore and it’s always the same over and over and over and over again! Plus ADV combats rewards are shit. If you have ever played the game Wing Commander: Academy you will immediately recognize the format of Rounds and waves because that is pretty much the direct inspiration for this mission. For anyone who might read this and want to check them out this mission is available for lvl2-4 combat in barracks stations it has a replay limit of 3 times per day. You may ask why it is limited and that reason is because I don’t want people to just play this one over and over and over without checking out other missions available either otherwise the whole point was lost in creating it.

Help! Rogue Queen detected

This mission was inspired during the newb influx by the amount of new players requesting help with Queens and also by seeing veteran players taking newb players out Queen hunting. The basic idea is that there has been a rogue Queen detected and the station is hiring the player to help destroy its escorts so a ready wing of Bombers can swoop in and destroy it. The point is to show the new player that coordinated efforts result in easier victory and also to introduce the player to the Hive Queens in the event no one else does. This mission is available at barracks stations immediately and goes away once the player exceeds combat 5. There is also a 3 play per day limit attached to this mission to avoid overplaying it.

This is all very newb oriented content and for that I do apologize to the more seasoned players for leaving you out this time but I have something coming down the pipes either this week or next week that is for higher levels players so stay tuned.