04-29-2016, 03:43 PM
![[Image: apm01_by_rhulaner-da0r24h.png]](http://orig09.deviantart.net/e26d/f/2016/120/f/6/apm01_by_rhulaner-da0r24h.png)
TL;DR: Just read the colorful parts. I don't blame you for not reading all of this dwarf fortress-ish text wall, but PLEASE don't reply to something you didn't read. Don't be a dick.
Hello you there!
So, I'm playing Discovery now for a bit more than a month (I rejoined it 03-18-2016, where I decided to sell my test ships I used to get my first impressions on the RP server) and I thought it would be nice for some people to read a bit how all this here feels to me, a "newcomer". Please remember that I will just state my personal opinions and impressions, so try not to be too offended if you have another opinion. It's just my point of view and to the most of you, it shouldn't matter anyway.
First of all, how did I get here? As I said in another thread that mainly is about that topic, I was looking for Freelancer mods in 2014, as far as I remember. I played Discovery in Singleplayer mode, because I thought this roleplay server would be a bit too tough for me as a german. But I tried it anyway, mostly avoiding roleplay/any interaction with other players and just watch and do some trades, just keep the talking in a way I can't respond wrong. I was really impressed on how much this mod contains. All those new systems, ships and features! Totally amazing, and I still am amazed by this. The Modding Team did a fantastical job on this and I hope they will keep on doing this. And I hope the Community isn't too hard on the Devs and other team members, because there is literally no need to. The thing that impressed me the most, aside from the fact you brought a whole new house into play, Gallia, are the unique atmospheres in all the different systems. The black hole in Omicron-85? Holy shit, what a great thing! The new effects on the neutron star in Omega-41? Super cool! Being able to revisit the systems we only could visit once in the campaign? Awehot!
About being a newcomer
So, when I quit the server in 2014 because I was convinced my english skills weren't well enough to be taken serious, I still watched sometimes the YouTube videos on Discovery. Just typed "Freelancer Discovery Battle" into the search, and found videos like Rheinland vs Liberty in Texas (iirc) and some other cool stuff. And then, right before I rejoined 1 1/2 months ago, I found Sindrom's channel. I know, some people now think "Oh no!" or facepalming silently because they don't agree with some of sindrom's opinions (like "There is no ganking in Discovery", very controverse topic), but this guy made me want to give Discovery another shot. Kudos to you, spazzy! ;)
I rejoined and sold the test ships I had from 2014 - everything was savely stored by Discovery Launcher. Great thing! In the last two years, I literally watched web shows like Game Grumps every day, and that was very helpful to improve my english skills. Still not perfect, and especially encounters with nomads and AI are a bit challenging to me, because they tend to use some abstract terms I have to look up first, but in most cases, those RP-focused nomads and AI players are very patient. That's not only very awesome and impressive, but helpful to me. So here once again a Kudos to all the roleplay encounters I had. :)
One of the very overwhelming things in Discovery are all the rules and laws to keep in mind. I mean, I never had problems with the engagement rules - I never do the first strike - but there are some things that made me having more questions than answers when reading a rule. Also, there are some things I found a bit ridiculous, like people (who are banned now) who said a bounty hunter can't engage unlawfuls without being registered in a bounty board. At that time, I already knew the IC bounty board auto-contracts BHG-IDs, but some people think/thought it's only for BHG|officials. So, in fact, all those things are that overwhelming, that even some of the players who are here for many months and even years don't really know everything. And that's good the way it is. It's nothing wrong with the incredibly high amount of information in this forum to keep track of. It's just that people need to keep in mindthat mistakes happen and not everyone knows this and that. I guess most people here did the mistakes they did not on purpose, but without knowing/realizing it in first line.
And most people here have shown me their patience. That's awesome, because I know it can be different. So I traded a bit. The Serenity is a very cool ship for newcomers, and making money in the first hours isn't that hard (ASIDE from the shock you'll probably get when you do Discovery missions - the vanilla missions were ridiculously easier). Later I got my Renzu Liner. Very impressive thing, was very much fun to fly it - with one exception: Big ships aren't fun when it comes to trade lanes. That's why I decided to give the Bison a try, and it was a good decision, at least for in-house trading. OSI will probably enjoy their whales in the edge worlds.
Finally, I got enough money to get me a cool capital ship. I already told it in other threads, but my right hand suffers from a only slowly curing carpal tunnel syndrome - right-clicking and quick manouvering is a bit challenging, since my fingers don't act like they should, but that's okay. Just annoying in battle situations with fast enemies. :)
Since I really like the design of the Mako, I bought it. What a cool ship! Okay, it's not compareable to other battleships like a murmillo or such. But I don't really care about the battle stats at all. I'm a PvP-noob and will probably always be one. Can live with that, because Discovery offers much more than PvP. So I tried to establish my first constant roleplay character, an indi Core Captain, more a mercenary than a stereotypical Core member. At this point, I tried to read as much lore stuff as possible, especially the Core lore and I think Lythrilux provided so much lore for the Core that it really has earned it's place among the official factions. I always loved roleplay and do it since I was 13 (now I am 25), and I really wanted to do it right from the beginning. Good intentions, and as far as I see it, I'm not doing _that_ terrible. My first deep roleplay encounters were absolutely amazing, sometimes really funny (Hello Nyx.) and never! regretable. Remember, I'm just talking about roleplay encounters. The PvP-focused encounters... well, it's my opinion. I think PvP is okay. Balancing it is a hard topic and I guess it will be a hard topic all the time. In my opinion, I want to avoid the entire pew pew stuff, because it causes very often QQs.
About PvP, aka "About QQ"
In fact, the whole PvP thing is one of the very less disappointments I've experienced so far. It's not about some unbalanced ship lines like AI are said to be, and I don't even care about the whole ganking topic so far, but what I really don't like are 1. the guys who do bullshit roleplay to excuse their PvP-seeking behavior. I guess people know who I am talking about right now. It's never fun with those guys and I decided to combat dock whenever those incidents are about to happen and just play elsewhere or do forum RP stuff. 2. the incredible ooRP hate in this community. I know, it's totally easy to cause this ooRP hate. Faction A doesn't like Faction B because they didn't balance a fight - damage is done, they troll each other whenever they can. That's bullshit. And that's the reason why I am going to leave the Core when I'm ready with my roleplay preparations. And I'm not going to join any other faction, because I don't want to be seen as a member of faction x, but I want to be seen as a person who wants roleplay most of the time, and ooRP it shouldn't be the way like it actually is with the "Look at the player list, there is this faction's player, let's gank him/her!". It should be "Look at the player list, there is this faction's player, let's go there and see what happens!" I totally agree with the whole player list thing, since it causes activity. That's okay. But the whole ooRP "We know this/these person(s) is/are there, so let's fly over to this system and gank the fuck out of them" is just terrible, in my opinion. Don't expect me to join those raids. You've already seen how much bad feedback it causes most of the time. I'm sure, some people really enjoy PvP that way, and raids of that kind are okay, but they should at least make sense inRP and should not be started because you desperately want to troll some guys you don't like ooRP. Don't even try to fool me. I know how this bullshit happens in skype, exactly that way.
Also, about balancing. I've experienced some guys who came to Delta, bringing a small battle group there and decloaked somewhere next to me, causing a roleplay situation. That's totally fine. You brought a battle group to another battle group. And I usually play very roleplay focused with my Mako. But seriously, don't expect me to not shoot snubs when you come to me and shoot at the snubs that are with me. They are allied with me. It doesn't make any sense to just stay around and see how my little snub friends get smacked by hostile snubs just because I'm a Mako and are, in your point of view, not allowed to react to hostile snubs? I mean, why then did I buy Solaris Gattlings and Flaks? Those things are especially to kill snubs. I agree, battles should always be balanced. 10 vs 1 is unfair. But when you do roleplay and enter the enemies domain, also roleplaying, don't expect a mysterious force to shut down all capital weapons in all of a sudden. If your battle group is about to loose, retreat or take it. You should be able to handle PvP within a roleplay behavior that makes sense. So everyone will have fun. I can handle a PvP loss when it's the result of a nice role play. Spazzy once said a very memorable thing: "If you want fair fights and duels, go to Connecticut" - Don't blame other people for using ships that are not the same class as your's. Pirates don't feel bad in their bombers when they blow up a transport, so why should a bomber QQ when it enters an area with one or more Battleships?
That it with the PvP-related things. I personally enjoy everything but snub-fights. It's just a mess to me. Have your fun with that, that's okay. It's just not my thing. But I really like mixed battle group fights where everyone has his job. I was taking part in two bigger events so far, the first one was Ensnared and the second one was the spontaneous event Alley did in Omicron Delta
. Role play reason was there, people came with mixed fleets, everyone had a job and most of them did at least a little bit role play. Totally awesome. As far as I've experienced yet, K'hara| does a great job, and I enjoy every encounter with those guys. They don't just pop up with a two liner and kill you. It's just awesome.
I also really enjoy the crazy people that tend to spawn at Freeport 11 in Omicron Delta. Well, most of them. Some few have a shitty, too unserious chat behavior, but one can ignore that.
Another thing that bugs me a bit is that people tend to outhouse/outsource to places where they don't need to role play. I, for myself, don't like it. I don't like being forced to use Skype to join a faction. Another reason why I will leave the Core. It's not worth it. I see how people be toxic about other people of the community. They really overexaggerate often. It's breaking the immersion. It's just saddening me. People try to force their opinion on stuff to you. I don't want to adapt other people's opinion. I want to experience the guys myself.
The same about group channels ingame. I'm tired of getting invited by Core battle groups that want to raid/gank people, especially when I'm doing roleplay with them right at that time. As far as I know, there are some guys who treat the group chat just like the normal role play chat (Hello Nyx!) and that's how it should be, in my opinion. Don't spam your damn ooRP hate about other people on me. Just shut up.
I agree, there are good reasons for using skype and doing ooRP chat in group chats. That's all okay. But don't expect me to like it. I will join groups only if it's neccessary or for role play. I will not join any raiding groups that are not based on a roleplay situation.
About trading
Now back to more uplifting things! Trading. Sure, it can be terribly boring. You bring stuff from A to B and it seems it doesn't change anything, eh? Well, that's the case if you don't do jobs for PoBs or factions. IT IS GREAT to do that not only for the money. It's one of the greatest concepts to make trading more attractive. PoBs? Awesome idea for groups, and the ressources they need are from all over sirius. It's so cool! So much more reasons to interact with other factions. I love it. Faction contracts? Fuck, yeah. Not only helped me to get my first upgrades for the Mako, but also helped me to do my first role play postings here in the forum. It encourages me to try more and more, improving my english and roleplay skills post after post. So Kudos to all the PoBs and Factions with trading contracts. It's awesome and I hope you don't regret your decisions!
Doing convoys? Oh boy, that can be fun. I like it when pirates appear, there's nothing wrong with it. I like hire escorts, 150.000 - 250.000 credits per system and ship is always a fair thing, depending on your trading ship and how many you are. I guess it's a good chance for newcomers to see how things work on this server. Convoys are one of the less things I actually would join a non-RP group chat, just for a little small talk in between and there's only so much you can talk about inRP when you're literally doing the same route all the time, bringing stuff from a planet or station to a PoB or something. CAN be fun, because you it doesn't benefit if you are the only one in the group chat, while the others are in TeamSpeak or even do the whole thing AFK. Right. That happened and I was really mad about that person and the excuse that person brought. Anyway, if you have a good group, it's fun as hell. Kudos to the guys who did convoys with me! :)
About the forum
And that's one thing that really surprised me. When I joined the RP server, I had no idea people are not only that active here on the board, but also do SO MUCH GREAT ROLE PLAY here. Some already know I do the pixelated/photomontaged graphics for a browsergame that also focuses on roleplay (it's german), also Sci-Fi. I won't tell the name, because it's a dying game and it deserves to die since the guy who made it is just an idiot. Anyway, there are only very few people that really enjoyed role playing. They often don't put much effort into it. Here, on this board, there are sooo many people doing so cool stories. I love the neural net transmissions, all those cool BB-coded layouts, stolen pictures, the clever use of links, all those different characters. It is just awehot. I love this. It is very impressive and fun. Kudos to all those who do forum RP.
Aside from the roleplay here in this board, there are some things that, well, one doesn't need to like, but it doesn't really matter. Right, people tend to bring their ooRP hate to the board. That's sad. And we have some trolls around here. Lots of them. Some people enjoy to be a dick just for being a dick. That's something that happens everywhere and is caused by people thinking they can do everything because they think they can afford being banned from here. Some guys try to use the rules as a weapon to troll other guys. Some even try to piss off the admins and show no respect to the devs. Well, that's sad. BUT I LOVE HOW THE ADMINS DEAL WITH THAT. Boy, as far as I've seen it, these guys are funny and human. When someone breaks a rule, they sanction him. That's okay. When someone didn't do it, he can tell the story the way he experienced it. If it's okay, he get's his stuff back. They show mercy. That's good. Even if an Admin does a mistake, the admin apologizes. That's awesome and rare. Very honorable! And if a troll just want to fuck with the team, they turn the table and troll the troll. It's hilarious and the best way to stay a sane human. I adore it!
Also, we have some cool stuff linked here. Some cool features like the Player List, Faction List, PoB-List, the Online Map (!!) and so on. It took me some time to find out where everything is. Finding the house's laws was terrible. Maybe a link to this thread in the player utilities would be helpful. Because I guess it's terrible for players who buy a Bustard to find out it's not allowed in some areas. On the other hand, once people know it, they can try to get a permission for it, doing roleplay. FUCK YEAH!!
About ingame enhancements
Operator SmileWhileAlive was so kind to share his media package with me, because the SWAG pack download is still broken, as far as I know. Using this graphical enhanced version and switching the music files to some soundtracks that appeal a bit more to me, my Discovery experience improved to a very high level. It's a whole new game, if you ask me, and I like it.
I made the mistake to change the cloaking sound to an alert sound and already recorded some video logs with it - then later Laz told me I'm not allowed to change it (although I didn't see the rule yet and he didn't showed me it?), so I'm going to switch it back once I get the original back again. :D but being allowed to switch the whole soundtracks is really cool.
in the end
At this point, after more than a month of actively playing here with you guy, I feel like I established myself here and still feel welcome. And I still have fun. That's important. I think we have something very wonderful here. So many people playing a game from 2004, in a mod with so much effort, so much love to the detail, so many individuals and backstories. I know, it's always easy to be a judgy jason when it comes to Indi capitals, but even those tend, when not in Liberty, to have cool stories in the repertoire.
I'll further try to improve myself, and I want to have the people that roleplay with me to have fun, interesting encounters without breaking the immersion. I hope I can provide my part in this community. :)
