Discovery Gaming Community

When you have 100 systems they can't all be winners.

(09-17-2017, 07:21 PM)Foxglove Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-17-2017, 07:14 PM)Sici Wrote: [ -> ]
And now stop and think for a second, which kind of player can be attracted by Omega-9? And now think how many potential interactions it kills with useless and boring cruising.

(09-17-2017, 07:15 PM)Omicega Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-17-2017, 07:11 PM)Foxglove Wrote: [ -> ]It is about the concept of taking stuff away. To counter declining player bases, other games do more, not less, to attract people and convince veterans to play again. That is all.

In the event of the dev team actually getting off their arses and pruning systems aggressively, I would expect that assets from the deleted systems would be at least partially folded into the remaining ones. I am not advocating that we simply start throwing darts at the nav map and deleting anything that gets hit.

I think you are entirely mistaken if you think anyone wants to play a game where upwards of 50% of your time (and I am being generous here) can be and often is spent just flying around looking for something or anything to actually do.

That is not what you said, though. From what you did say, it sounded like the darts, so you could reach activity quicker. My point is merely that you should try to make Omega 9 interesting before you consider deleting it.

Why don't add new cool stuff into Omega 3 or 5 instead to make them even better? The number of systems is not equal to more or better content.

I would just like to point out that spamming solars into systems will result in every other system becoming Gallia. The more solars there are, the fewer piracy spots and more problems in general.

(09-17-2017, 06:18 PM)Sombra Hookier Wrote: [ -> ]Words.

Keep playing singleplayer in a multiplayer game, it contributes greatly to the server.

Such amazing debaters, each spending the day disproving the other's points about something neither can influence.

There's an Ancient Roman anecdote that can be applied here. Some famous painter had put his pictures on an exhibition, and then he hid behind one so he could hear what people thought about it, without the bias that would exist if they knew he could hear them. Some shoemaker said that the shoes of the depicted person weren't painted right. The painter then appeared and discussed with the shoemaker about what could be fixed, and so he fixed it. But when the great painter accepted his advice, the shoemaker became conceited, and so he started making remarks about other parts of the painting, too. The painter responded with "Sutor, ne ultra crepidam!", or "Shoemaker, not above the shoe!"

Let the devs do their work of developing, and you do your work of telling them what you want developed, but no further than that. Or maybe apply to become devs instead. Well, save those that had already been devs, but were kicked or quit or whatever, I guess there were reasons for that. Unfortunately those don't make "shoes" either, though.

Of course, freedom of speech is a good thing and you can continue pointlessly launching verbal rot each at the other, but I think that you might regret it later. Maybe resolve it in battle in-game?

First post in some years. Can't remember when I left to be frank, must be 5+ years ago.

I logged on the other week, the game is certainly friendly to new players (the cheap freighter makes it quite simple to get enough cash for a decent transport, even with 500 cargo running guns to Leeds a couple times will make enough).

Bought a Templar, my favorite ship, shame it still has that low power core, but the ship is what you make of it.

Player activity, stuff to do, the age old question. I was still here when Gallia was introduced, but most of my play time was when it was KNF vs BAF. Once Gallia invaded, a notable drop in things to do happened, why? Gallia had no player base to speak of, for the months after release, I frankly can't remember fighting Gallia in any meaningful way. Which compared poorly to the KNF fights, which were epic & involved any number of periphery factions joining the fun, Corsairs, CR, GC, BD, Hogosha, Farmers Alliance, Gaians, Mollies, just to mention the NPC factions, Freelancers, Mandalorians and whatnot added to the fun. It was madness, frankly, but it was extremely fun, the RP was light in places, but I respect that people, and factions, want to make their own RP, and going to war is the ultimate form of RP in this very shootie game. Comparatively speaking, KNF was a smaller, less active faction during the wars, but the interaction with BAF and Bretonia allowed BAF and the KNF to feed off of each other, and players who did not play KNF or BAF made indie snubs and switched when a fight started. Fights in Freelancer are like pub brawls, they start small, and there is a pile on, fights lasting more than 5 minutes are a must for this to occur.

I haven't had much chance to try fighting, to see if the balance has changed dramatically, the new gun system is confusing to be frank, but im hoping its still as fun as it was. However, im at a loss to who, or where to fight, before it was simple, the KNF held Stokes, BAF held Leeds, you fight in-between those two places. Space is huge, okay, but battle lines must be drawn, it has to be user friendly, from looking at the current state of affairs, an effort has been made to split BAF and GRN up, if GRN is to take California, fine, but make it so there are clear battle lines, and that includes Bretonia (i.e put a Bretonia battleship in California near the Cortez gate, a GRN battleship outside Cali minor or Los Angeles, depending on the story, and a LN battleship at Riverside or Los Angeles), you need to make an easy to understand Arena for players. Roleplay comes from PvP opportunities, not the other way around, create a pvp friendly/focused environment and roleplay will emerge, making a roleplay friendly/focused environment does not always mean roleplay will occur.

If this much can be done, then that is a good step in the right direction for a player friendly story, but there are likely more issues that need to be resolved, ones that have been alluded to in this thread and ones that I am not that familiar with having just come back.

To my eyes, the next big issue is GRN activity, player base; people will make Gallic indies purely for PvP, which will help this a bit, but compared to LN/BAF+indies, the player base is small I assume? To fix this, something must happen, for KNF, they had CR, a large faction, which just about made up the numbers, with the added benefit that their ships were less frustrating the KNF ships. What does the GRN have? No allies at all, I get that inRP they are the strongest, but that does not mean anything game-play wise, im not suggesting that GRN start losing because of this, if that were the case Outcasts and Corsairs would've conquered all the houses, but out of RP they need an ally or allies, this is the responsibility of players and devs alike. House wise, Kusari and/or Rheinland make sense, Kusari the most, this can be expressed with a Kusari battleship near the GRN one in California and a second front in Colorado, the Kusari civil war will need to be cleaned up, perhaps the GRN could resolve the civil war for the imperials or republicans on condition they join the war or some such. Rheinland joining the war is complicated, and frustrating perhaps for Bretonian traders and the logistics of having Rheinland join the front in California. But what of non-houses? The most obvious candidate in my eyes is the Corsairs, but even the Outcasts are fair game to be frank. Corsairs have long been banned from Liberty, distance being a factor, as such it may face opposition, but politically both the Corsairs and Gallia are very close, both feel betrayed by the 4 houses, if an explanation for Corsairs finding their way to the front in California can be reasoned, Corsairs/GRN vs LN/BAF might be decent population wise, a Corsair battleship in California as a base would be required of course. The other options are few, the Order, Liberty unlawfuls? Rogues/LH are pro-Outcast which are at present anti-gallic, Xenos are of course rednecks and not going to fight with a foreign power. Liberty criminals are not political criminals, so it is not likely they will join Gallia, unless the Outcasts can be roleplayed into attacking Liberty on the Gallic side, I am totally open to this and it would provide Gallia with sufficient allies, the outcasts motive I would say is to destabilize the houses.

Another note on fixing the issues, if admins/devs are going to restrict ZOI's, at least restrict them in a way that facilitates fun, the GRN not being allowed in Liberty systems is a glaring issue pointed out here, frankly they should be sorties going into New York, paramilitary warfare like the Bretonian privateers attacks into Kusari, why should such a thing be punished? Its too arbitrary as is.

Apologies for the long rant, just my opinion on the current state of affairs.

※Note, before I quit, I was GMT +0, after I came back I am now GMT +9, so this might skew my opinion in regards to activity.

Letting Kusari attack Gallia would give KNF something to do, but if you think doing one thing alone (or 5 things to bring more war) is going to raise population again, I think you're mistaken.

There are about 20 things to do to raise activity (each of them with only a small impact, but if you don’t do any of them for that reason you’ll never end up making a big impact on anything), and a good time to do them would have been 2 or 3 years ago. Some of them sould have been good 9 years ago, if not to raise activity, then raise the percentage of RPing non drama-producing players.

1. About the argument of whether to add content or reduce it to increase interactions/density, consider this picture:



Both have the same systems (black dots), but the lanes (lines) on the left will spread players traveling between them evenly (making interactions less likely) and also require more jumps to get from one point to another (taking more time to travel). On the right, travel is shorter and also concentrates players towards points A and B, making interactions there more likely. (for example getting from point 1 to A to B takes 3 and 2 jump on the left, but only 2 and 1 on the right). The right side also makes it easier to guess where activity will be and where there will be little, and thereby where you will find activity without “shadowlogging”.
4.85 was more like the right, 4.88 more like the left. That was not an accident: many people actually wanted to “end the lolwhuttery” in focal points like A and B, and spreading things out was a way of doing that (I even pointed it out back in the day). But three things happened: 1. the devs over-did the spreading out, in addition intentionally destroying focal points like omicron minor 2. Systems were added for the sake of adding systems, and most new systems were totally uninteresting and had copy-pasted bases with copy-pasted rumors and bar chars who didn’t know where they were, ruining the last bit of feeling the game had left. In the same way commodities and trade routes were added simply for the sake of adding them, and they lacked the deep lore immersion and purpose of things like cardamine, artifacts, and alien organisms brought to the game. 3. The people who wanted to “end the lolwhuttery” ended up not having anything to do without “lolwhuts” to lecture, blow up, and laugh at, which also sucked for them.

2. Following up on the last point, people would rather laugh at lolwhuts who don’t know lore, have the game tuned for the needs of vets instead of making it interesting for noobs, and occasionally shine their halos on their angel chars showing them how to mine, instead of giving any thought to what would really make it more fun for newcomers. For example:

3. Pay attention to the progression a new player has in the game from start to finish. It’s been: mine helium, learn to mine something else, save up for a ship or a base, get rekt, keep getting rekt until you either leave or join am existing gang. And god forbid you try to make something new or do anything that doesn’t meet the approval of a local chieftain. Many things could be done to make things better, and making it easier for players to reach the “get rekt” stage earlier by helping them make money and set up ships faster isn’t one of them (that’s only more comfy for the vets). So:

4. Remove the ready-to-go restarts for all factions. They took away the exploration, the repping, the PvE to rep, the time spending of time playing the game. Yes, its all very very convenient for vets this way, but takes away the spending-time-online-grind, the low-level combat that a noob can have a winning experience and progressing experience in, the PvE snub-combat training obtained while repping, the reward of collaborative play with other players in missions. All that was a major part of the game especially for noobs, and it was totally killed off with the restarts. Make restarts Freelancer in all the houses, and that should be good enough. Possibly make IDs rephack in a way that doesn’t permit the buying of all gear without doing missions.

5. Make the tech nerf more liberal (and make the “incompatible technology” message longer to explain the player what is going). Sure, maybe all not-too -nooby LN players will end up getting BAF guns. But seriously, SO WHAT as long as it’s not outcast or nomad guns? Allies share guns and equipment all the time. It rewards exploring, and spending more time on the same character to gather gear. Collecting tech was also an important part of the game, now everything you can possibly get is handed to you in 5 minutes if you have the cash.

6. Make places with very challenging NPCs (especially fighters and bombers), with SNACs and CDs, where people can go to have really challenging PvE and co-op play.

7. A more elaborate help system which gives context and advice ingame. I submitted a bunch of pages, but haven’t heard anything for months.

8. Easy-to-read easy-to-find lore-teaching items sold on the main bases that one can read while trading (making them atm)

9. Follow-the-breadcrumbs miniquests which consist in reading bar rumors and object infocards, to lead people to interesting places (and teach them some stuff in the process) (made several suggestions years ago)

10. Change goto-noob activity form mining helium hidden in Penn to collecting scrap in new york, so they see more RP earlier on, and get access to both lawful and unlawful RP so they get the idea that both sides are human.

11. Stop promoting an honor system that makes siding with noobs a sure way to either lose or to get yelled at. If you're such great aces and tough guys, then toughen up and accept that people will use numbers and ship classes to win.

12. Stop raising totally unrealistic expectations in people, which will only get them into stupid situations and then get them angry when those expectations aren't fulfilled by others. Stop telling people that other people need to be excellent to them. Tell them to be realistic in their expectations, and to lead by example instead of pointing the finger.

13. Stop shoe-horning noobs into trying to get the biggest cap and a base without doing anything else than trading and mining, when every one knows that's not a good way to gave fun, and when its not even really wanted here.

14. Stop advertising the mod with Gallia. It's like advertizing a sports car by promising free aged Camembert in the glove department. Advertise with freedom, opportunity, and try to fulfill those expectations. (already re-wrote the moddb page)

15. Stop forming mobs that lynch every new group that tries to build something, nitpicks their RP, ganks them to punish ganking, and tries to do everything so it doesnt grow larger than some semi-dead faction which still thinks they own the space they use.

16. Stop nerfing generic IDs like pirate ID because you think other factions like rogues should get the activity. There simply arent enough players to fill every non generic factions (not even when there were 200 players every day, there are simply too many different factions). Instead, expand all permissions and ZOIs, also for non generic factions. It's more immersive and fun to stick with the same character instead of having 20 characters in every corner to have something to do. It also lets noobs find friends here easier because they recognize the same person again, because they're not always behind different names.

17. Reduce the number of tradable/minable commodities by removing those that arent really linked to anything with lore (like cobalt, copper) and buff routes that are highly relevant for lore (like artifacts, cardamine), and compensate by giving more factions the oportunity to engage in the remaining trade/mining activities (like let nomads and humans mine something in the omicrons and equalizing the mining bonuses). Activity and RP immersion comes from having many different possible activity for the same character/faction. For example if GRN and nomads only log to fight or "RP" and have nothing else to do, they'll only log when they know they will get oportunities for that, and you'll see them less although they are important for the story and the activity of other factions.

18. Have some IRP warzone systems without bases where people may engage without typing first, and where the 2 hour death rule doesnt apply (if you die in that, you may re-engage in that system but not anywhere else). You can have a green message that announces the altered rules when entering the system like there is Pennsylvania, if possible.

19. Make events less elaborate (playable without reading the forum), less lucrative money-wise (maybe even money sinks, in exchange for scoreboard bragging rights or prizes for winners or NPC-dropped objects like special guns or "ingredients"), only temporary (make them last 1 hour and happen 2 or 3 times per day in an repeat in an automated way), and attractive for newbs in cheap ships. (I admit I dont have any ideas on how to do the latter right now).

20. remove infini-cloak and need to type before shoot for bluesquids nomads



More later

^ best post i have seen here in months.