Im not sure what possessed me to make this thread. Maybe it was something I needed to do, maybe I did it on impulse, and maybe I'm just an advert attention-seeker. Whatever it is, I thought I would write down my thoughts and opinions on this game that I have played for so long.
I first encountered Freelancer at my friend's house one lunch break, and at the time it seemed to me like a simple space flight simulator. After having played flight simulators in the past, I figured it would be pretty fun as long as it was close to Defender (the 3D game released by Midway). I figured alright, flying around blasting people sounds pretty appealing, I'll give it a try.
Whenever I play games, I am always interested in the single player campaigns, so I played the campaign for FL. Turns out it was pretty damn epic, what with the aliens and the possession and the breaking into alien homeworlds and the being a fugitive.
My friend then said that I should play online on a mod called Discovery Freelancer 4.84. Not knowing anything better, I asked what was new in it, and his reply was that it was basically a massive expansion. Of course, everyone likes expansions, so I figured Id try it out. Like every other person when they first started playing, the major selling point of the game was flying capital ships.
I set out with the goal that I would acquire enough funds to buy a nomad battleship (after all, it was the coolest looking and it had those purple turrets) when I discovered that there were two major problems: 1, that it takes a FREAKISHLY LONG amount of time to amass that many funds, and 2, they dont let people use nomad battleships. I was pretty deterred, so I asked my friend what I could do. He recommended that I get a trader, since he knew a good route that would earn quite a bit of cash.
So I took a fly. Got myself a train, and then I realized that wow, theres a lot of people who like to destroy trade lanes and take your cash. Convinced that this was a fruitless method, I was about to abandon all hope of getting credits for anything. Then, I was pulled over by a gentleman piloting a Huntress cruiser. At the time, I was forced to conclude that the Huntress was quite probably the most awesome looking ship, besides the nomad battleship, so I decided to get one. Tirelessly I ran the trade route, disregarding all losses in my cash pool from piracy. Just when I was making some headway, it happened.
Discovery update 4.85.
I was intrigued by all the flashy new ships in the trailer video. I was considering getting fighters as it would be my first venture into ships other than traders. But for that, I needed money. That's alright, I had amassed a small amount on my train, so I made a few fighters. After discovering (no pun intended) that 200 ping makes me horribad at dogfights, I learned a new concept that I was supposed to incorporate into my gameplay known as "roleplay".
First I was like 'wut'. This pretend to be a criminal business was pretty newsauce to me. After frustratingly making a fool of myself (no doubt) sounding like a cheesy b-rated action movie, I seemed to get a hang of how to sound original in the game. While somewhat of a strain at times, I got better at it.
Now that that was under control, I decided to redouble my efforts to get that Huntress, because man was it awesome. And then, imagine my surprise when I find out that not only have all the trade routes been changed, making it impossible for me to get rich quick, but the huntress is also no longer buyable. Further more, they even changed the name of the Huntress to something utterly worse!
I admit I was extremely frustrated with Discovery freelancer at that time. I decided to stop, because nothing was going my way and I was too stubborn to try anything else. My life as a Discomaniac seemed just about shelled after my characters got deleted due to inactivity.
Then one day, as I sat in my room at night, bored of schoolwork, bored of warcraft 3, bored of pokemon, my friend offered to fund me a virage so i could fly around with him. I was reluctant at first, but that all changed when I saw that thing. Man, that is one cool looking ship.
I took him up on the offer, and started doing things like bounty hunting, exploring jump holes, and looting codenames, and I think somewhere in there the flavor of the game started to appeal to me again. I decided then that I wanted to keep going with this game, and see if it would really be worth my time.
Part 2 coming soon. Please leave comments/opinions/flames.
I wish that was an exaggeration, but it really isn't.
As to the main post, I have one word: "fun". We play a game. A very involved and complex game, but a game. "Fun" is the guiding principle even more than "roleplay" is. You found fun in the game. This is commendable. Keep finding fun. That's all I have to say, really. For the sake of consistency I'll recite my catchphrase:
Seek fun and you will find it. Seek stuff to Q_Q about and you'll find that too. I choose to have fun.