Shiny videos aren't what Discovery needs the most. Let me be clear that I am not attempting to be disparaging here - I would like to see this project finished. But flashy media projects are not in short supply. Many of them have been put out over the years. What Discovery has issues with are player retention, of both new and old players. I'm going to make a generalization here and there will be some demographics that I miss, but by and large the players who could be kept and aren't fall into one of the following groups.
Group 1: New players who lack guidance.
Discovery is extraordinary difficult to get into for several reasons, but I'll touch on the big ones here.
- Unwelcoming environment. Discovery is full of elitists of one variety or another who are more interested in arguing how the game ought be made/played than actually playing it. The community overall projects hostility, and there's little to no thought given to how this looks to outsiders. If a new player makes it as far as the Discord, even then it's generally only the same half dozen players arguing about the same handful of perceived problems. There's also a plethora of unspoken rules, and it isn't difficult to get written off as an outsider if you accidentally break one of them.
- Dizzying array of lore. There's no single summary of Discovery's history that only covers the big plot points. Discovery's roleplayers have an obsession with minutiae, and at this point there are so many of those that
this is how long the timeline is and that isn't even really what people need. A quick summary that covers the major events (Bretonia Kusari war, Liberty Rheinland war, Gallic War, Second Sigma Conflict) and the canonization of new NPC factions (and even then probably only the major ones, ie: Coalition, Enclave is what's necessary. Let players figure out which base blew up when and who won which battle on their own, by exploring the game world instead of being overwhelmed by trying to shove everything down their throats at once.
- Nobody to play with. This kind of ties in with the first point I made here, but few are willing to sit down and actually fly with new players. Discovery is not intended to be a solo experience and you are going to have a worse time flying alone, period. The glue that holds Discovery together is player interaction, and for newer players that interaction must be something ongoing and something that isn't hostile, due to how great the skillgap is. Which brings me to my next point.
- The skillgap. This wasn't a problem when Joe Average LNS numbered in the dozens and it was not difficult to get 20+ LNS online when a single well driven [HF] cap logged on. Nowadays the pool of those more casual players has diminished to the point that there is no force capable of standing against the RHA, Enclave (combined factions), or Outcasts (combined factions). This is especially a problem because all of these are unlawful and your new player automatically starts off lawfully aligned. It might shock some of you to hear me say this as former [HF] lead, but the group that does the raiding should, 99% of the time, get their asses handed to them by the defenders. This is no longer the case at all, and has turned the whole meta of Discovery on its head. What needs to be done about this is moving pilots to the other side or holding them out, but people just want to win. It sucks.
Group 2: Casual veterans who have lost interest.
This group largely exists as the result of veterans who were never staff, faction leaders, or even well known throughout the community having their factions die on them. These are people who have gotten over the newbie hurdles, but just want people to play the game with.
- Uninterested faction leaders. Discovery has a number of official factions with leaders who have simply become disinterested in
playing Discovery, yet continue to sit on their power. I italicized playing because these people are still around on Discord, however their ideas of faction leadership seem centric to the development team catering to "needs" (wants) that are brought up weekly. This game previously had multi-year long development cycles where not a single change was made to the game, and the community honestly seemed happier and healthier for it. Nobody expected, let alone demanded, that the development team (the people who make the game), make it in their image, and quickly. This leads into point two.
- A disappearance of casual roleplay. Official factions were once the bread and butter of Discovery's casual roleplay. If you saw an official tagged ship online, you knew you could fly up to it and expect a good interaction. These factions do still tend to have more experienced members with a better understanding of roleplay and a more solid command of the English language, but they aren't flying and won't fly as long as their leaders make the game to be about capturing the next system or base, or getting the next ship implemented in game. A pair of [LN] pilots on patrol or a trio of Core| sitting around Freeport 11 could make all the difference in the world, but nowadays people only log when ordered to fight, and log off immediately after. I'm a little guilty of this myself, mostly due to time constraints, but even so all it takes is a pair of people deciding that they're going to stay online and develop their characters for a bit, and this is an effort that ought be spearheaded by OFLs, or at least by official factions. Bringing us to point three.
- Discovery has become materialistic. Some time ago, around 2014/15, Discovery's spirit ceased to be about characters in a backdrop and started to become about the stuff they could get. We now have a hollow, unfulfilling "endgame" of unique ships and scidata rewards. The character, the stories they could weave, the people they could become, is largely dead. SRPs and shiny baubles have been handed out like candy, and the truth of the matter is that most of the people who receive these trinkets end up leaving within six months to a year anyway.
So if you really, really want to help? Get out there and lead by example and be the change you want to see. PM the nobodies on the Discovery Discord - there are hundreds of them - and ask if they still play. If not, ask why. Get them to fly with you. Be that group sitting around roleplaying casually. Be the people helping new players in Pennsylvania and sticking with them, getting their contact details, and bringing them into the fold. Advertise, certainly, but make sure that there is something here and that the lights are still on when they get here.