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The losing is FUN group
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Welcome to our redone post. The original thread still found HERE is now being divided into two sub sections.
One will remain in the RP forum and will be used to either post or link existing character stories, while this post will be now posted in this forum and used as an introduction/Q&A/feedback thread.
Since this is not strictly speaking an ingame group, but rather a group of players operating with the same RP rules, I have decided to avoid posting this thread in the factions section.
Let's start with the INTRODUCTION
The "Losing is fun" group or the "R.R.Martin's" group or the ...cough... "CARPE DIEM" group is not a new concept.
Every once and a while there are players willing to challenge themselves and play their characters on hard mode.
The short term goals of this group are:
To improve the ingame experience for the players involved by introducing a flexible punishment and reward system for ingame and forum RP.
To provide new ingame experiences to new and old players alike with the added ship/equipment or character death system.
To introduce this system to newer players or still unsure veterans by allowing a more flexible and less hardcore version of the shiploss system.
To give inagame RP a sense of emotional high and dread and immersion usually found in the horror game genre.
To teach the player self-control and self restraint, when the fruits of their labor are at stake.
The long term goals of this group are:
To encourage already experienced roleplayers to use low level characters to interact via roleplay with new players on our server.
To encourage players in the group to show a good example of ingame RP with low level ships.
To slowly encourage the server's inagme population to recognize low level players as potential RP partners.
To diminish the unwritten rule that low level or ill equipped ships equal a bad roleplayer.
The basic idea behind the group is rather simple. By using a closed economy character, you progress through your character's story, no matter how short it is. Will he be one of the poor souls, who loses his life before his adventure begins, or will he find fame and wealth and die a glorious death? Every time you lose a character, you have a completely new story to share and write and this is what this group is all about.
Be it text, dialogue, black box, video or sound recording, simply play your characters and show how far did you make it. There are many ways to do this, most of which I will note a bit further down the line, but these are the basics.
How to set up a new character for this group? Well, that is pretty simple. My suggestion is that you do not make a pre-planned character and just undock and see where your adventures take you, but you still should chose the background of your peep as a minimum. Using any restart is fine, also giving you a choice to sell off the CSV for a small profit. And that is it. Space is large and dangerous, so it is only up to you to see how long can some pleb fresh from the planetside survive.
We encourage these sort of limitations to players wishing to develop their personality- got killed by a lolwut? No, saying that ''this does not count'' will not roll. Ingame your character was a tragic victim to a delusional pilot, and was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. He is baked bread. Start over. Space is dangerous.
Now, we know that not every person might be interested in outright losing their character upon death.
Because of this, we have decided on three levels of FUN to be had:
Ironman mode: This is the default. Once your character is dead, it is dead. Feel free to delete the ship.
Make a story on a sticky note and try again.
Semi-Ironman mode: The same as above, but with a 50% chance of death. Upon ingame ship destruction, simply flip a coin with the /coin command to see if your character survives. Whether you lose the ship/money or not, is up to you to decide.
Hardcore mode: This is recommended for most players. Upon ship destruction, take note of the amount of money you have, liquidize the ship and use the /restart command to reset it to the closest house. After you do, draw back the money you had before you lost the ship. You lose your ship and cargo and its value from that character.
Now, obviously, since this is not exactly a faction, you are not required to join this group to actually enjoy this sort of roleplay. Any forum member is free to use these ideas and even post in our thread, if they wish.
So, why would you even want to try this? Well, there is a small list of what this sort of limitations brings to your ingame experience:
First of all, you get to challenge yourself. Older discovery members might know that the game is really a bit on the easy side, so if you want a decent challenge like in the old days, when we did not have 5kers, try this.
Secondly, related to the first reason, you get a much bigger sense of achievement. If you get a gunboat, it is not because you delivered a shipment of ore on your 5ker, but because you worked up from scratch.
Third of all, self gratification and bragging rights. Oh, you got your BS by powermining? Phah.
Fourth of all, the time spent in your small ship lets you interact and give good RP example to new players on our server, allowing them to see that you do not need a large ship to be able to RP and gain respect.
Fifth, related to the previous, you are also teaching the vets and big ship pilots that small, underleveled characters can be a source of RP encounters and one should never pass up the opportunity to RP with someone just because they are level 20.
Sixth, such gameplay where you know that all of your success can be undone by one wrong choice gives you a sense of dread, an adrenaline rush usually more common while playing horror games.
Number seven. You learn humility. Indeed, better not badmouth someone ingame, knowing that if they or their friends pop you, you will lose everything. This works, believe me.
Finally, it tends also to be very competitive. Just try this with a friend of yours. See who advances the furthest.
And now comes the part where we add all of the suggestions for you on how to proceed with this. From ingame experiences of mine and others.
* At first, avoid making a character dedicated to a certain house or affiliation. This is pretty simple, until you know which place in Sirius allows for the best non-lethal interaction, you should be able to move around and explore a little. The Freelancer ID is a good start.
* Do not worry that by RPing a miner or trader will ruin the concept of this RP. First of all, both are much more frequently put in danger of losing their ship and it gives a sense of genuine terror whenever something red pops up on your radar, it also fits their RP. A trader or miner IS rich and can afford losing their ship. Actually, once you buy whatever you were saving up for, you will instantly ramp up the challenge for yourself.
* Spend all of your ingame money on ship development. If you are using the usual Hardcore mode instead of Ironman mode, then you will keep your money after you lose your ship, cargo and equipment. This might make the possibility of ship loss a momentary annoyance rather than a fear. Best is to keep as much spare cash as possible, so when you do cock up, you have no choice but to downgrade.
* While freelancing, try to make your job offers to both side of the law. Makes things interesting.
* Keep an eye on the base list. If you are a freelance transport, then POBs are a goldmine, some goods being bought for up to 5k per unit.
* Avoid having multiple ships on the same character. It just ruins the fun, because if you are flying a transport, you could in theory stack up on VHFs.
* Interact, interact and interact. The more ingame and on forum RP ties you make, the more fun you will have out of the whole experience.
Hope you enjoyed this little writeup. Any feedback, comments and suggestions are encouraged.
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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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I've been working on closed-economy characters now, though not with the ironman rules.
I might just give this a go again. Let me give a bit of help in how I did it: I got a fully equipped/armored BHG Manta just from running missions in Shikoku, and that also got me a full BHG Core rep. Missions can be a really good source of cash, now. If you do set yourself up for a specific faction, I'd suggest doing that. Once you have a fully equipped ship, keep in mind you still have to make money to pay for regens. Bounty hunting and pirating are the easiest way for a fighter to make money. Escorting also works for Freelancers.
Ah, well, the point here is to avoid any income which is not directly tied to player interaction. The ones I use mostly right now is scouting, information trafficing, smuggling, sometimes code hunting.
To each their own, I suppose, but the above are the ones I had the most fun with only because of the things that happen if you meet someone while you do them. Most of the time it is just sneaking around on the character without worrying about money, thus the LF.
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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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Of course, escorting (which is synonymous to scouting for me) is something you can do at any level. I mean, it really depends on what you want to do. I started an IMG mini-faction with /restart rheinland in the past, no outside funds, and it grew extremely fast. If you just want to play around with mk 1 fighters, that works too.
The beauty of chreating closed-economy characters and restricting yourself is the way you can develop your character as you play. Been having fun with my one on camera.
The benefit is learning ways to start new characters, plus finding roleplay outside of areas you might tend to frequent (the popular spots), plus what has already been mentioned.
Having a great time with my LiF guy so far and will probably make a new one once death actually settles in.
Casual Flier: Returning Player. Forum-PM me if you require my attention
(04-08-2013, 03:07 PM)Dusty Lens Wrote: What a novel idea.
Is that...good?
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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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I've been playing an Outcast, and it really adds to the feel of being a pariah when you're sitting ten kilometers off a lane in Liberty unsure of who you should be more scared of; the lawmen or competing pirates - either of whom could squash you on the spot.
Funnily enough, I've ended up drifting back to the Omicrons in a Dagger, so I'm not expecting this particular character to last too long, but I've already had more fun here then I've had in other RPs for quite a while.
Nomads become a lot scarier when you know there's no coming back.
Something I thought about would be the efficiency of escape pods in Sirius. If your ship blows, would your character not be able to safely eject? Especially in snubcraft, where the cockpit itself would no doubt be a built-in escape pod? I can understand it takes time to run to the escape pods in a larger ship like a train or battleship, but smaller ships...?
For those who would rather roll dice than flip a coin for Semi-Ironman mode, here is an idea for you. Instead of either death or escape from death scot-free, you might be interested in potential injuries obtained during your flight to the escape pod as your ship starts breaking up. Roll a d6 and see how things go!
1 - Left leg gone
2 - Right leg gone
3 - Left arm gone
4 - Right arm gone
5 - Head gone
6 - No injury
I would like to, once more, state my support for this idea of hardcore mode characters, and welcome you to applyinRPly to the Association of Free Traders as a freelancer looking to improve his position in the world. The Association will gladly accept, and even provide a small loan (inRP), to hardcore mode characters.
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