Discovery Gaming Community

PREFACE

I have played thousands of hours of Freelancer back in the day when servers were brimming with players, only to return years later and find this gem. Discovery has advanced beyond what I thought was possible with the game and I would be really saddened to see the playerbase decline. After all, it's the only community that's left and is a real testament to the dedication and love of people who run it, and also play it. I would like to use this opportunity to thank everyone who works on keeping this little dream alive and to everyone who still participates in it, truly feels like coming back home after many, many years.

I know I am a new to the community, and what do I know about all the work that went into it, hell, my modding knowledge goes only as far as editing .ini files in notepad so I'm not even sure that what I am suggesting is possible. But, I really want this place to live on, so that is my only motive for making this post.

GOALS

-Boost player interaction by incentivizing gameplay in specific areas of the map. (Shrinkage, I know some people don't like this but hear me out)
-Create a focused experience for new players because the amount of changes, features, rules and programs one needs to play this game is really not user friendly.
-Boost the RP gameplay further instead of making it feel "game-y".
-Attract new players.

SUGGESTIONS

-Create a pool of "soft events" which boost certain areas of the game, incentivizing gameplay in those areas.
-Every other day, on server restart, a random soft event from the pool gets selected until the pool is exhausted. Pool is then reset. Other option is to just have a "cooldown" on soft event that is equal to 1/2 of overall number of soft events ensuring that half of other soft events will happen before a soft events enters back in the pool and can happen again. (This is subject to discussion and perturbation to get optimal and fun frequency of "soft events")
-Nobody knows which soft event is coming.
-Everyone gets notified when logging in which areas of the game are boosted that day in general.
-Very slight nerf to making money across the board, a tiny bit larger nerf on making money with missions as pirating other players often isn't more profitable per hour then doing missions, so just bringing them closer together incentivizes player interaction. (I am talking about nerfs of only couple of % here, so fine-tuning, the goal is not to destroy the existing balance but to make room for these soft events)

-These soft events would basically give a small boost to trade-routes and/or smuggling-routes in certain areas of space for the day, boost bounties and possibly give rewards for killing players of enemy factions.
-This slightly boosted area of space, together with slightly nerfed areas of space across the board would in theory incentivize players with all the different playstyles to flock to some areas of the game.
-The soft event day would alternate with normal days because it is imperative to cultivate organic player interaction and let people flock together naturally
-By having these days that are focused on one area, new players can learn the ropes of any playstyle. Throwing a player in the game telling him to shoot Helium spacerocks and then letting him loose is credit-effective and simple way to start out, but completely divorced from fun and direction. Instead, new players should be held by the hand a while longer, like helping them to choose their playstyle, buy their next ship and generally showing them the ropes of certain common playstyles. How do we do that then? By creating a more focused experience where players interact with each other.

EXAMPLE: Today is the "Liberty" event, basically trade routes passing through/starting in/ending in liberty are buffed (as well as bounties). 1 or 2 of those trade-routes are even announced as soon as you join the game (or in news portal) by say "Liberty Navy", calling all traders to supply their military to the front lines. (of course every soft event would have some sort of story and RP justification) New player is then instructed by the "Tutorial item in inventory" to take one of those routes, but is warned about the dangers etc. That would facilitate a pretty fast way to get the player interaction going because he is going to be pirated on that buffed official trade route, OR he won't get pirated because local police will defend him, OR somebody will offer to escort him. You see where I'm going with this? More focused gameplay experience coupled with more instructions in steps will create interesting gameplay for new players right from the 1st launch, while also getting them fast-tracked towards integrating with the RP world. For new players to stay, the world needs to feel alive, and they must have their first goals clear and set by somebody else.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

There is an overarching goal why I'm focused so much on new player experience and keeping the game fun and interactive for them. This game/server/mod needs exposure. And not just any exposure, it needs to be revisited (or visited) by a large-scale youtuber or streamer. But to invite somebody like that to our little community and for such a thing to have an effect, this mod needs to have more systems in place that draw-in and keep new players.

We have many cards to play:
-Roleplay is a huge and unique element that hardcore communities love.
-We haven't had a good multiplayer space game come out....well since Freelancer and there are some very hungry people out there.
-The mod expands on original game so darn much that it is effectively a completely different game with many quality of life improvements (only thing missing is /giveitem).

So yeah, for example, people like Mandalore and Sseth have a soft spot for RP and love to get lost in it, they also frequently revisit old, forgotten and extensively modded games, so if we just showed them the colossal effort that went into this, all the dedication and love, I am sure that they would not be indifferent to checking it out, especially if devs reached out to them and coordinated a big update like this with them.

Also, any suggestions, ideas, discussion and constructive criticism is more than welcome.

I will provide a proper response once I read through this, but you do NOT want to have Sseth advertise Disco. The whole community is DPC X10

Sounds interesting. But I fear this will incentivize powertraders to focus on such things. Would be better to have RP-focused events.

Gotta agree with Spazzy, Sseth is probably not the one we want advertising Discovery. I've been hoping for Mandalore to get around to reviewing Freelancer and, by extension, Discovery for ages now. It's on his list, at least.

As for the idea, I like it. 'Passive' events would be a good way to draw activity to certain regions, though trade-only won't do much. Expanding the types of events used would be helpful.

(04-19-2021, 01:35 PM)sindroms Wrote: [ -> ]I will provide a proper response once I read through this, but you do NOT want to have Sseth advertise Disco. The whole community is DPC X10

You might be correct, though I don't think we as a community can be too choosy. Everyone should also understand that Sseth is just a content creator who does what he does for entertainment purposes, I doubt that he wants to hurt other people, it's just that the presentation style is such that it takes no prisoners and literally everybody can be a target to make jokes about. I mean the script for his video writes itself. smuggling Slaves to STUTTGART, then buying Human Organs and running them to "research facility" in New York...etc., he would have a field day.

Maybe the devs could you know, talk to him a bit or whoever would maybe do a video about Disco to keep it in RP an to emphasize that this is a RP server, just so that new players know what they are getting into.

(Sorry I don't know how to quote what both of you wrote in a single forum post)
So reply to "monmafori":

The goal is exactly to incentivize powertraders, as I said, just by a very small % but still enough that you WANT to trade there by any means. That way, pirates and other enemy factions will flock to tax them, and police and bounty hunters will flock to clear up the systems for said traders. Also, the idea is that all these soft events have a backstory to them like a conflict between factions driving up the prices, factions need to supply their front-lines, nomad incursion etc. The point is not to restrict anyone, just to softly incentivize gameplay in a certain area every other day.

(04-19-2021, 02:05 PM)Toaster Wrote: [ -> ]As for the idea, I like it. 'Passive' events would be a good way to draw activity to certain regions, though trade-only won't do much. Expanding the types of events used would be helpful.

I agree, I am trying to come up with an un-abusable system of droppable IDs of other combat players that can be cashed in on that day, basically. Something like this could incentivize skirmishes by both giving new players an objective they understand, and promoting just random players organizing for protection and to hunt players of opposing factions. These passive events could also effect some larger-scale events and story changes, if we could track the outcomes of these passive events say through those IDs, we as players would have a simple platform that enables "player agency" and is understandable. This is basically implementing gameplay mechanics that promote player interaction and by extension of all other rules, promote RP.

(04-19-2021, 01:32 PM)Psyrebro Wrote: [ -> ]GOALS

-Boost player interaction by incentivizing gameplay in specific areas of the map. (Shrinkage, I know some people don't like this but hear me out)
-Create a focused experience for new players because the amount of changes, features, rules and programs one needs to play this game is really not user friendly.
-Boost the RP gameplay further instead of making it feel "game-y".
-Attract new players.

Incentivizing gameplay in specific areas can be done in multiple way. Story development is typically one of the best ways to do this but are infrequent. Another is combat/trading events that you're probably already aware of.

The creation of a new player experience has been something constantly talked about but few things have been done to push the idea into a more complete experience. The Penny rework afaik has attempted to offer more guidance to players with what they can do. But this was just specific effort on the part of a Sys developer. Imo you need a specific person with the vision for change who will put devs to task and light a fire under their arse to constantly keep working towards it otherwise it will end up never happening.

Funny you should mention RP, check this thread.

Strangely, like you I haven't been around long. Only joining early last year. I know another guy who joined in August who's a pretty well known guy in the community now as well. Disco seems more to have the problem with retention, over new people joining. Although more new people is likely to keep more people around anyway.

(04-19-2021, 01:32 PM)Psyrebro Wrote: [ -> ]SUGGESTIONS

-Create a pool of "soft events" which boost certain areas of the game, incentivizing gameplay in those areas.

As will know, we've came up with MANY ideas for events. Some of them require specific things added to the game, others are comical events like "You need to collect ingredients and give them to a potion seller" or other none specific story/lore related events.

The main issues with it are just variety and mechanics.

(04-19-2021, 01:32 PM)Psyrebro Wrote: [ -> ]So yeah, for example, people like Mandalore and Sseth have a soft spot for RP and love to get lost in it, they also frequently revisit old, forgotten and extensively modded games, so if we just showed them the colossal effort that went into this, all the dedication and love, I am sure that they would not be indifferent to checking it out, especially if devs reached out to them and coordinated a big update like this with them.

Also, any suggestions, ideas, discussion and constructive criticism is more than welcome.

Mandalore and Sseth could be well received, although I think the Sseth crowd leans more on the piss take kind. I do like his videos, but I'm not sure about it.

Who the fuck is SSeth? But eh, any advertising is good advertising at this point.

We shouldn't really get hanged up on Sseth, or any one content creator in particular, if we showed that we have a plan and something to offer, I'm sure there are content creators who would be interested.


I can't really speak about the decline of RP since I'm a new player, but I think adding simple mechanics like buffing certain numbers is a good start. The main advantage is that changing numbers around is easy and doesn't really require new mechanics so creating this pool of passive events wouldn't be too complicated. I agree that taking inspiration from all the events community has thought of is the direction to go overall when coming up with these passive events.

To be honest. The only thing this game needs is less people arguing on forums on how to save the game and just log in and have fun.

I see this kind of thread being set up on forum every 3 days or so with tons of suggestions. People seem to forget that you can set up small events yourself in the game that doesn't even need staff support, just player participation.