07-18-2022, 02:54 AM
Rant below - you have been warned.
I have had a great time during my few months of return to disco. Unfortunately, my time here has come to an end. Because of IRL stuff, I never had a lot of time to spend on video games, so my free time is quite precious to me. Recent encounters and subsequently responses have left me with some bad memories of disco... but video games are supposed to be entertainment.
1. The admins' response to a recent report made me rethink my time here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2267052
"The Reporting Person provided a Video, nicely starting at the point he/she believed the offence occurred. They also provided 128 lines of Logs.
Yet if we just 'looked' at the video, it looked clear cut, but looking at the Logs we could see that there were 4 lines of RP, from the Offender, over a 94 second period before shooting occured that weren't shown at the point of the video."
Video referred to by admins above is here. The first line of RP is "Bonjour", second line is some RP about brigands. Third and fourth line which were two seconds apart were "you think it?" and "FIRE". Now according to the admin's interpretation of the rules, that's "reasonable time to react to hostilities". By their interpretation, I could be having a pleasant conversation with a neutral party, then say "FIRE" and start shooting. After speaking with other people, apparently this is something that is not against the rules. The fact that the decision was reached by consensus is disturbing, as it suggests multiple people on the team feel the same way. I'm not even the person who was shot at, just the wingman who went "what?". I wish the admins would take into account what was said during the 94 seconds. "Bonjour" <wait 30 seconds> "FIRE" is within the rules apparently.
2. I've also recently had bad experiences with the other side bringing gunboats to a snubfight, then scattering when a cruiser showed up to counter the gunboats. Our side was told "That happens when you bring a cruiser to a snub fight". Well excuse me, you never addressed the gunboats on your side.
A subsequently what-I-thought-was a 4v4 snubfight didn't occur, because a POB was supposed to be inRP hidden and the other side was "Not in the mood that they are just going to visit us here". Which is fine in and of itself - I mean, some people treasure RP over pews, others treasure pews more. You can't force people to interact with you. Then I found out (from a certain forum thread) the person who said the above line subsequently rammed a planet to avoid a pew. Okay.... what happened to treasuring the inRP experience? "I don't want to fight you so I'm going to kill myself" ??? Doesn't make RP sense.
Add to that some toxic comments thrown around in discord and on the forums, and suddenly, League of Legends seems like a better place to spend time on (for those who don't know, LoL is a cesspool of toxicity).
3. Expectations around piracy also left me with bad experiences. I keep seeing the "tips" that piracy demands must be reasonable. Great. When I play pirate, I demand 1 mil per 1k of cargo. Empty transport I demand 1 mil. So 5 mil for a 5ker. Sounds pretty reasonable.
Then I haul some plasfoam conduits. I run across a Royalist and he asks for 2 mil. Okay here you go have a nice day. Haul some more plasfoam conduits and run across two Royalists who want a total of 10 mil. What? My 4,250 units of plasfoam conduits cost me around 2 mil. So to "preserve inRP", I paid the 10 mil, and told the pirate to not expect anymore interactions. But ooRP, really it's cheaper to just die, and I get to respawn at the sellpoint and I'll just haul an hour later.
The pirate says threatening to not interact is "weak-minded". Okay, then why are pirates forcing interactions? Has anyone seen all the Royalists crawling around lately? It's been a half-dead faction until I started up a new project and suddenly everyone's logging Royalists. I forgot what MdG/- even stood for. And let's be clear here. The Royalists are clearly camping certain jumpholes, because they're opening the player list and see that I'm coming their way. There were 15 players on the server when I was stopped. Don't tell me the Royalists "just happened to be there". I log a transport and within five minutes, I see Royalists switching ships a dozen times. There are more systems on the map that I could count - if the Royalist wanted to camp a random jumphole with the highest chance of intercepting a transport, I suspect Tau-31 would have been a better spot. So if the pirate can "open the player list and camp at a convenient location to intercept a transport" - because that's not weak-minded at all, that's just part of the game, why can't the transport "open the player list and evade the pirate".
I was told later on discord that reasonable is up to 10 mil for one encounter, more if hauling high value goods. I wish I knew that at the beginning and set my expectations straight. But at the end of the day, from my perspective, I hauled some plasfoam conduits, decided to entertain some pirates instead of hitting F1 (because what transport pilot doesn't have their player list open), and left the interaction with a bad taste in my mouth.
Here are some recommendations:
By far #1: Someone please get rid of the player list. Yes, I am aware that some interactions are "forced" because people log in response to who they see on the player list, and that getting rid of the player list will reduce the number of interactions. On the other hand, it would eliminate a lot of grief from: "you logged a pirate because you saw my transport coming" "your smuggler logged off because you saw police" "your transport hit F1 because you saw my pirate". People can organize and have been organizing fights through discord and group chat. It can be done. Pirates can still camp jumpgates.
#2: Rules should be clearly spelled out. Yes I understand that RP thrives on having loose rules which allows for more unpredictable interactions. Having loose rules also gives rise to differing expectations. Don't even get me started on all the "unwritten rules" and "unwritten etiquette" of disco - how do players join this game and learn all of this anyway? Cringe means "not against the rules but ewww".
Anyway, rant is over, I wish everyone well and all the best. I hope I have wrapped up any loose ends w.r.t. communications with other factions. For factions that I'm HC in, please contact other HC members if you require assistance. Who knows, I may return in the future to play as an indie and say "Bonjour" <wait 30 seconds> "FIRE", but at this point, unfortunately I don't expect a Freeport 7.
I have had a great time during my few months of return to disco. Unfortunately, my time here has come to an end. Because of IRL stuff, I never had a lot of time to spend on video games, so my free time is quite precious to me. Recent encounters and subsequently responses have left me with some bad memories of disco... but video games are supposed to be entertainment.
1. The admins' response to a recent report made me rethink my time here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2267052
"The Reporting Person provided a Video, nicely starting at the point he/she believed the offence occurred. They also provided 128 lines of Logs.
Yet if we just 'looked' at the video, it looked clear cut, but looking at the Logs we could see that there were 4 lines of RP, from the Offender, over a 94 second period before shooting occured that weren't shown at the point of the video."
Video referred to by admins above is here. The first line of RP is "Bonjour", second line is some RP about brigands. Third and fourth line which were two seconds apart were "you think it?" and "FIRE". Now according to the admin's interpretation of the rules, that's "reasonable time to react to hostilities". By their interpretation, I could be having a pleasant conversation with a neutral party, then say "FIRE" and start shooting. After speaking with other people, apparently this is something that is not against the rules. The fact that the decision was reached by consensus is disturbing, as it suggests multiple people on the team feel the same way. I'm not even the person who was shot at, just the wingman who went "what?". I wish the admins would take into account what was said during the 94 seconds. "Bonjour" <wait 30 seconds> "FIRE" is within the rules apparently.
2. I've also recently had bad experiences with the other side bringing gunboats to a snubfight, then scattering when a cruiser showed up to counter the gunboats. Our side was told "That happens when you bring a cruiser to a snub fight". Well excuse me, you never addressed the gunboats on your side.
A subsequently what-I-thought-was a 4v4 snubfight didn't occur, because a POB was supposed to be inRP hidden and the other side was "Not in the mood that they are just going to visit us here". Which is fine in and of itself - I mean, some people treasure RP over pews, others treasure pews more. You can't force people to interact with you. Then I found out (from a certain forum thread) the person who said the above line subsequently rammed a planet to avoid a pew. Okay.... what happened to treasuring the inRP experience? "I don't want to fight you so I'm going to kill myself" ??? Doesn't make RP sense.
Add to that some toxic comments thrown around in discord and on the forums, and suddenly, League of Legends seems like a better place to spend time on (for those who don't know, LoL is a cesspool of toxicity).
3. Expectations around piracy also left me with bad experiences. I keep seeing the "tips" that piracy demands must be reasonable. Great. When I play pirate, I demand 1 mil per 1k of cargo. Empty transport I demand 1 mil. So 5 mil for a 5ker. Sounds pretty reasonable.
Then I haul some plasfoam conduits. I run across a Royalist and he asks for 2 mil. Okay here you go have a nice day. Haul some more plasfoam conduits and run across two Royalists who want a total of 10 mil. What? My 4,250 units of plasfoam conduits cost me around 2 mil. So to "preserve inRP", I paid the 10 mil, and told the pirate to not expect anymore interactions. But ooRP, really it's cheaper to just die, and I get to respawn at the sellpoint and I'll just haul an hour later.
The pirate says threatening to not interact is "weak-minded". Okay, then why are pirates forcing interactions? Has anyone seen all the Royalists crawling around lately? It's been a half-dead faction until I started up a new project and suddenly everyone's logging Royalists. I forgot what MdG/- even stood for. And let's be clear here. The Royalists are clearly camping certain jumpholes, because they're opening the player list and see that I'm coming their way. There were 15 players on the server when I was stopped. Don't tell me the Royalists "just happened to be there". I log a transport and within five minutes, I see Royalists switching ships a dozen times. There are more systems on the map that I could count - if the Royalist wanted to camp a random jumphole with the highest chance of intercepting a transport, I suspect Tau-31 would have been a better spot. So if the pirate can "open the player list and camp at a convenient location to intercept a transport" - because that's not weak-minded at all, that's just part of the game, why can't the transport "open the player list and evade the pirate".
I was told later on discord that reasonable is up to 10 mil for one encounter, more if hauling high value goods. I wish I knew that at the beginning and set my expectations straight. But at the end of the day, from my perspective, I hauled some plasfoam conduits, decided to entertain some pirates instead of hitting F1 (because what transport pilot doesn't have their player list open), and left the interaction with a bad taste in my mouth.
Here are some recommendations:
By far #1: Someone please get rid of the player list. Yes, I am aware that some interactions are "forced" because people log in response to who they see on the player list, and that getting rid of the player list will reduce the number of interactions. On the other hand, it would eliminate a lot of grief from: "you logged a pirate because you saw my transport coming" "your smuggler logged off because you saw police" "your transport hit F1 because you saw my pirate". People can organize and have been organizing fights through discord and group chat. It can be done. Pirates can still camp jumpgates.
#2: Rules should be clearly spelled out. Yes I understand that RP thrives on having loose rules which allows for more unpredictable interactions. Having loose rules also gives rise to differing expectations. Don't even get me started on all the "unwritten rules" and "unwritten etiquette" of disco - how do players join this game and learn all of this anyway? Cringe means "not against the rules but ewww".
Anyway, rant is over, I wish everyone well and all the best. I hope I have wrapped up any loose ends w.r.t. communications with other factions. For factions that I'm HC in, please contact other HC members if you require assistance. Who knows, I may return in the future to play as an indie and say "Bonjour" <wait 30 seconds> "FIRE", but at this point, unfortunately I don't expect a Freeport 7.