The Violet Sector, or TVS, is a cross-platform, text-based, sci-fi MMO. It was designed and developed by The Vision Studios, not coincidentally also TVS. It's primarily meant to be played through a web browser, but you can also access it with your cell phone via WAP, with somewhat reduced functionality.
You start by creating an account and choosing a ship, which determines your class. Example ships include fighters, bombers, and repair ships. Then, the game assigns you to a team. This is the team you will play with for the rest of this instance of the game, which could last months. If your team gets eliminated by one of the other teams, the game will assign you to another team. When one team defeats all other teams, the game ends and starts again fresh.
All of the combat in the game is against other players, or perhaps decoys placed by other players. So, there is definitely no grinding. Since getting experience is much less frequent than most MMOs, the level curve is much shorter: you start at level 1 and end at level 5. Leveling up increases your various stats, such as attack and defense power. If you work hard and get lucky, you could probably reach level 5 in a week or two. Generally, it takes longer than that. Also, level 5 has two tiers, with the second acting almost like a level 6. I don't know why they didn't just make it level 6.
Death in TVS is much more hard-core than in most modern MMOs. When your ship is destroyed, you go back to being level 1. This has several effects. First, it's extremely disappointing to lose a high-level ship. That's the obvious part. I would say it's too punishing for most casual players. Or, maybe it keeps you casual because you can't get too invested in one ship. On the positive side, though, detaching your identity and sense of accomplishment from your ship level frees you to identify with your team and its success. Also, every time you lose a ship you can choose a new one that lets you play a different role. You tend not to think of yourself as only a repair ship, unless that's all you ever play. You tend to think of yourself instead as a pilot who can fly all of these different kinds of ships. Finally, your play strategies will, or should, change depending on your level. It would make sense to take more risks at low levels than at high ones, since you have less to lose. It's also a viable strategy to never try to level up and instead sit in one sector for the whole game and send scanning reports back to your team. I'm not sure how fun that would be, though.
Your team operates with two leaders. The first is a sort of permanent leader called the Legion Commander, elected by all the players on your team. There may be brief campaigning on the team message boards, but frequently someone just says, "Everyone vote for playerX, because he did a good job last time." And they do vote for him. This leader could stay in power for the rest of this game instance, which as I said could be months, or the team could change leadership part way through. At any time, you can switch your vote of confidence in the leader to a vote of no-confidence, and the results are always visible to the entire team. It's interesting to see the leader's approval rating go up and down after key battles or controversies.
The second leader is much more temporary and tactical. There is a need for someone with power to be online almost all the time, to call targets for everyone to fire at. Players have a limited number of moves per turn or Tick, so they should be spent wisely.
What can players spend moves on? There is a "turn" that rolls over every three hours. All players get five moves each to spend at some point during those three hours. If you don't spend your moves, they disappear at the start of the next turn. You could spend all five moves attacking or repairing someone, or attack with two moves and pulled to the requisite three moves in case you want to fly ("jump"/"hyper") to another sector in pursuit or escape. You could spend moves entering another player's level 5 carrier ship where you'll be safe unless the carrier is destroyed. You could spend moves transporting scrap found in orbital to your home world, to make it stronger and harder to conquer by opposing teams. You could spend moves rolling the dice and getting random rewards like experience points or repairs or a triple attack on an opponent, but you also may lose ground.
The persistent nature of the game world along with the three-hour turn cycle can sometimes feel confining. In a certain sense, you can never leave, because you will lose ground and harm your team. People are playing all the time and team fortunes are always changing. Every once in a while a teammate will post on the message board that he just logged in to find his ship destroyed. Sometimes this message contains profanity. True, you can designate one three-hour tick as your sleep tick, effectively removing you from the game for that turn and keeping you safe, but the rest of the time you are more or less responsible for showing up. That's where the WAP component comes in handy. You may only need to spend a few minutes every turn checking in to see what your orders are and performing them before waiting for another three hours. If you had to rush back to a PC all the time, it could feel even more impractical than simply checking in from your phone. Furthermore, like e-mail, having this game available from your phone gives you something time sensitive and personally relevant to check up on, perhaps compulsively. This creates a lot of stickiness and would be perfect for advertising or a subscription model (this game is free and has neither).
In the end, the game is always interesting because all the players are people. There is no grinding or getting bored with repetitive quests. There is only strategizing against other people to try to outsmart them. And, since my team had about 50 people chatting through a variety of message boards, sharing information and strategic advice, it's a fascinating experiment in collective intelligence. Multi-team alliances make things even more interesting, like the Nap (2 on 1) and Tri-Nap (3 on 1). However, since there are only four teams, breaking too many alliances could give your team a negative reputation that lasts for the rest of the game.
I do have to say that my identity construction process was interrupted by the game too significantly too many times. I didn't enjoy losing high-level ships. And, when my team lost after months of effort and we were all added to one of the remaining teams, I had no desire to help "my" new team out. After all, they had betrayed us in alliances several times and had just destroyed our home world. So, I took a break from the game to wait for the next instance to start. However, the waiting process was too long, and I lost interest and didn't come back for the next game. Perhaps if I had a stronger identity and sense of mastery represented in the game between instances it would have pulled me back in. I just couldn't get excited about starting over. Maybe if there were more than five levels players could advance and maybe if death didn't send you all the way back to the beginning and maybe if I kept my ship between game instances... maybe then I would have come back. But, then it would be a completely different game. I did enjoy it tremendously for awhile.
Whether you play for one week or several years, if you're interested in cross-platform, mobile, multiplayer games don't miss The Violet Sector. No mobile game I've played offered by my carrier (Verizon) has hooked me like TVS.
