Binski's idea has some merit, but forme ugh - a lot of my logging revolved around getting to OF and then keeping OFs.
And at the end of the day - we want people to play the game, the system does it. And as people mentioned, it's not the end of the world if you lose OF and fly as non official (unless you are e.g. Wild where indie ID is super bad)
There is obviously something wrong with the current state of Discovery (community ?) as even vanilla - which has been practically dead for years is suddenly catching up in activity.
So it's not only factions, it's obviously a general trend of dwindling player numbers.
The OF system certainly needs an evolution (not revolution though). It's probably the part of Disco that has received the least attention - even eternally dead Economy got lots of overhauling with the improved ore routes, the NPC plugin, the improved sellpoints for unlawfuls etc.
The OF system as it is right now is quite opaque. Newish players are barely aware of the factions and the way they work. The timetracking counter does not help or encourage quality activity. Start with fixing that and things might improve.
Now, you see, you can't quite raise activity levels by removing the tracker. There was still a pretty considerable number of players, by Discovery standards, still logging in just to farm activity.
Onto the reason why activity is at a low point, well... It's awfully simple, to be honest. People get bored of the repetitive things done here and I'll say this myself, as I was one of the most active player a few months ago, that once life catches up with other matters, you stop logging as much. As soon as that happens and you've got limited time to log on, the game becomes frustratingly stupid and boring, to the point where you lose any interest to open it up.
It's a cycle that has repeated for many players and for many years. Unfortunately, from my own perspective, one cannot do much to save this but rather just try his/her best to enjoy as much as possible. In the end, it's a game.
(10-01-2021, 08:59 PM)Relation-Ship Wrote: rebirth is not vanilla, not at all heh
I stand corrected, just checked it out, and it's something far worse, a mashup mod.
Beats me how a mashup with all kinds of low quality imports is almost as popular as a mod with polished models, mostly balanced gameplay mechanics, and high quality (ok, maybe not that high ) story and lore.
Disco has been in slow but relatively constant decline since 2009, and now it's just fallen below the OF tracker threshold. Funny how some people start to worry only now.
(10-01-2021, 02:58 PM)St.Denis Wrote: There are, in my opinion, a lot of OF Leaders that just 'rest on their laurels' and do nothing further to promote their Factions.
I will leave people to work out what is the difference between the top active Factions and those that have failed/keep failing.
I remember saying something like that about official factions around 2013, with an emphasis on their exclusivity and hostility towards indies, and earned a lot of "nobody cares" memes, while the official admin position was "we have enough players so none of it matters".
For the same amount of time there have also been devs, mods, and admins who are in the best position to affect disco's entire population positively (noobs and vets, indies and officials) by improving the learning curve for new players with respect to rules, lore, and game mechanics, thereby doing noobs, vets willing to work with noobs, and vets annoyed by noobs' ignorance a favor, who could reduce ingame boredom by focusing activity through thoughtful system/economy layout and less counterproductive events, moderate player disputes (like... actually help resolve them instead of just censoring and banning people), and provide better guidelines and advice for indies and officials alike.
But said devs, mods, and admins don't even seem to understand the concept of any of the above and do absolutely nothing in those respects for years and years, apart from blocking other people's attempts to work on it, just asking players to keep carrying water to each other and smile while staff are the ones who could build water pipelines but don't, only to then blame the decline in population and decorum on anyone and anything but those who held the most power over it.
(10-01-2021, 08:09 PM)LuckyOne Wrote: I believe this picture speaks a lot.
Something to think about is that at least 10 of those russians are probably part of reptile/cyka squad and would still be playing here if people had sought a compromise with them instead of intentionally and openly mobbing them off the server.
(10-01-2021, 09:23 PM)Karlotta Wrote: Something to think about is that at least 10 of those russians are probably part of reptile/cyka squad and would still be playing here if people had sought a compromise with them instead of intentionally and openly mobbing them off the server.
None of them play Freelancer. Someone stopped playing online games at all, someone just returned to War Thunder.
![[Image: aZR9E2h.png]](https://i.imgur.com/aZR9E2h.png)
) story and lore.
![[Image: XcIJ0.png]](https://i.yapx.ru/XcIJ0.png)