Posts: 3,332
Threads: 103
Joined: May 2012
Staff roles: Balance Dev
Our current Wiki should be archived (mostly to prevent losing years/decades of player backstories and what not) and a new one should be set up from scratch, with an emphasis on guides and quick lore summaries. The landing page should get new players right to where they need to be (How the game itself works -> How a roleplay server works -> Everything else like more elaborate RP character creation guides and PvP guides and whatever).
The issue thus far has been getting people to write all these things. That, and the few people who have expressed an interest tend to end up wasting their time trying to repair the decade-out-of-date current wiki and some of the horror stories passing as guides on there.
(12-30-2021, 08:13 PM)Haste Wrote: Our current Wiki should be archived (mostly to prevent losing years/decades of player backstories and what not) and a new one should be set up from scratch, with an emphasis on guides and quick lore summaries. The landing page should get new players right to where they need to be (How the game itself works -> How a roleplay server works -> Everything else like more elaborate RP character creation guides and PvP guides and whatever).
The issue thus far has been getting people to write all these things. That, and the few people who have expressed an interest tend to end up wasting their time trying to repair the decade-out-of-date current wiki and some of the horror stories passing as guides on there.
Re-purposing, fixing, or improving on something that generally exists already would be much quicker and more effective. Starting from scratch will take you a lot longer. The current wiki is usable, it just need updating and some re-work. Let the community help and incentivize it. There's more than enough people that should be experts on their groups / factions / lore. As mentioned non-contentious stuff like guides and updating wrong info can be done by virtually anyone. Allow people to do it. Make an event and reward people for updating the wiki. Implement the model I suggested for community health check and an admin check for the content being written.
Create a new player section that contains:
- rules (that need to be cleaned out, revised, and assorted).
- what can you actually do in this game (Piracy, smuggling, raiding, fighting, trading, mining, etc.) with assorted guides on it.
- an NPOV of the main areas in the game and what to expect as interactions (Houses / Border worlds / etc.).
- IFF and IDs and how that works.
- Good etiquette vs. bad etiquette.
- RP - good and bad examples.
- Equipment and ships (basic guides).
- Combat (more in-depth guides).
- Examples of newbie friendly factions that new players can join.
The last part is actually quite important. We've been criticized by picking up new players on a regular basis. That couldn't be more wrong and myopic.
The reason why you have such a high attrition rate is because you expect a newbie to absorb an absurd amount of information. That and an ineffective information system for people to ''learn'' from. The average player will just quit - nobody has the time to learn 20 years worth of info and get dumped by vets all on their own. Or search through 50 pages worth of forum threads. The approach where you let newbies just find their ground is absolutely contra-productive.
You need to be incentivizing and encouraging groups / factions to pick up and train new players. And that mentality should come up from the top / administration. Instead we recently got told off on the official Discord that we are messaging new guys and getting them in and that we should stop - which is completely counter-intuitive.
People generally prefer to be a part of the team and are more likely to stay in a game if they enjoy the people they play with. Especially in a game that has absurdly high learning curve. That's just facts.
Absorbing new players is actually a good thing.
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
As a returning player, I will chip in about the previously mentioned ailments of this server (gate-keeping, information overload, left alone trying to comprehend lore/rules/you name it):
(Not native speaker. Whoever finds grammatical errors is free to keep them.)
I have played FL Disco a few years ago. And I really tried to accommodate to the rules of "entering". Made a forum account, read about the server rules I could find (scratched my head),
applied for a player faction via RP-post in the forums, etc.
Thing is, you sat there and there is no one to turn to really... Without the numerous Discord groups nowadays, I would not have spared one thought about coming back.
Why? Because this game not only has a steep learning curve, a load of complexity not visible at first sight, counter-intuitive RP-styles (to me as a Pen&Paper GM), but also
a cabal of salty people who held and hold my nostalgia hostage in a way: "Do it the way we concluded fits us best!" / "Be happy to get restricted!" No?
Sure, I could just step away and then it would be no issue for me - another player lost (for a second time).
But is it too much, to ask for some change? If so, how about stepstones? Make an official tag "Learner" for new people.
I heard about the presumably now dead faction "Angels" who seemed to tried to do something similar. Well, I get why they would seem to be discouraged.
As I concur to almost all of the points brought up by Ravenna Nagash farther up, I have a few additional/differing ideas:
1.) Give Vets an incentive to help people ease into the game.
Many people like being publicly praised (heck, I do too) and there are three platforms to do so: The forums (Kudos!), the Discord and the game itself.
For example: Create an official faction similar like the "Angels". Even make them left-handed to give them a great storyline as to why they prey in Penn to
fish for new pilots. Give them two special ships for free, a versatile Cruiser and a REAL Carrier. Have them load up "Newbies" in their frail new ships, jump with them
through Sirius, all the while being in Discord voice chat explaining basic lore and mechanics. And while doing that pointing out the ingame-written or forum-written RP
that is in the making while the new players are in the most inclusive way present to be part of it and learn conduct / RP / rules / lore / mechanics / tactics and whatnot.
2.) Completely dump the dogmatic and convoluted rule-set(s).
Start anew. Get people together by randomly selecting half of them from the Discord/Forum and let other games and RP-styles actively influence you.
There need to be rules, sure. Although you (the people in "power") could delegate much work to the playerbase (inclusivity, remember?).
I suspect cutting down the mess of the rule-set(s) down to a third of it in size would still be more than enough.
I cannot count anymore how much I heard/read people exclaim "I really want to do X, but the rules forbid it or make it very difficult..."
3.) Embrace non-destructive alternate ideas and approaches.
Don't grief people for doing it differently. This is a game on a somewhat public server. Not your life or the base of your emotional wellbeing.
I joined a faction that does things differently and boy oh boy, the grief, the drama... It's like kindergarden all over (and I know what I talk about regarding that!).
4.) Change the lore-storage. Change how lore is fabricated - at least how it is distributed (from "not at all" forum-wise).
I am an educator and a GM, coincidentally both for about ten years now. And I can safely tell you all that there is something not working here: Lore-distribution.
When I get home from work to hop on the game and go inRP, I should not be bothered to first sift through the forum for lore-stuff to get up to date. That does not work for me
and I'm fairly positive I'm not the only one. Implement it in the Discord. Have sections/threads for all relecant and alive factions,
with short paragraphs (he said while typing down half a TED-talk) about the current state of events in the server-lore-narrative. Ain't hard, ain't much work.
Always link the Discord-paragraphs to the inevitable forum page and there you have a smart, fast, congruent way of distributing lore among the playerbase.
Freelancer is too often played in silence. Sometimes I'm in a voice chat with my friends who play different games while I'm trading/mining/doing missions alone, just to get some form of vocal interaction.
There is too much silence between the stars...
I have a great example at hand from yesterday: Participated in an RP-activity and we were in-voice the whole time. Seeing events and negotiations unfold inRP while being silly and laughing at times,
had me interested in FL Disco RP for the first time EVER. Because for the first time there was the human element in all of what happened, not the cold-deadpan style present in too many player interactions.
Yes, I know some of that is owed to the technical restrictions inherent in the game itself. Still my point stands and (I would argue) can hardly be refuted if viewed from perspective of communication theory (Schulz von Thun).
I have learned more about the recent lore of a certain official faction in two hours, than I could have looking stuff up in the forum in ten hours.
Have inRP-encounters relevant to the overall/faction lore be held in-voice, record it, make it available, note in the forums and the Discord and you can HEAR Sirius and its inhabitants.
6.) Fight griefing and ganking with fun and unity.
This goes out more generally to everyone who like me had the dubious "luck" of getting-encountered by the hilarious boyband of Sirius ("Sirosis and the Bomads"):
I'm not perfect so stuff like that makes me itch for handing it back to people who target you in a unproductive way for their childish amusement while unconsciously (I hope for them)
do a terrific job at iron gate-keeping towards new players.
Case in point: Three-ish years ago. The encounters I had with players were mostly terse and kinda grumpy from their side, if I wasn't perfectly doing it by THEIR standards.
Decided to play a bounty hunter then, to avoid some of this stuff. Getting ganked 3:1 and hunted (yes, I get the stupid irony) by Liberty Rogues players deep down into Rheinland and not
really seeing (then more like "knowing") a meaningful way to do something about it - it was at that time the last drop that made me quit the game for years.
Find people who want to play constructively with you. Who want to have fun, be silly, be curious and aim for the goal of being a Crew, a team.
And the factions and crews who actively search for and embrace new people in their group need to be lauded - not put down for it...
Computer died, then I went through 3 years of massive life changes, 60 hour work weeks, lost all my accounts due to inactivity wipe (which is fine, I like the early game, building characters, and have decided anything over a medium transport is too much hassle anyway). Also did a dip into D&D a bit, which is overwhelmingly expansive.
Ultimately, the thing that bums me out most is the lack of server population US East Coast time zone. I remember when I started Discovery, there were over 100 people on, sometimes 200+, now when I finally have time to log it's like 30 max. It makes everything too easy, the games of cat and mouse are gone. Before I left, I literally ground a billion credits in a medium transport smuggling cardamine mostly ON THE LANES with an unlawful ID and almost no one stopped me.
I was starting to feel like a lot of the cool Role Play aspects of the forum where being handled on Discord instead of Role Played out on the forums. I know Discord is a valuable tool for the community, but it does drain a lot of the Role Play aspect of the mod and lessens the stories unfolding where people can read them.
I also have been just flying solo all these years, so it gets old quick. I tried getting some of my friends to play, but the game never really stuck with them. Also, the whole no multiboxing on the same IP address thing stops me from getting my kids into this game. I could probably convince my oldest to play, but we're all on the same connection. Factions here are extremely intimidating to outsiders, especially when the server drama ramps up, so it's something I've avoided.
But despite all that, I still find myself updating the game and thinking about logging in. This mod is brilliant, the environments are compelling even though it's an old game, the feel of the controls is oddly smooth, and the integration of the forum roleplay is brilliant. I keep coming back for the crazy never ending story that is Discovery and the characters you all create.
threat of sanctionlancer
shrinking zoi of lawfuls
low population when i get home from work
gmod tier roleplay when ingame
backlash for daring to shoot someone who doesnt want to be shot
i dont care about the last one, its just gone ad nauseum
(01-01-2022, 11:50 PM)Dogbite10 Wrote: I also have been just flying solo all these years, so it gets old quick. I tried getting some of my friends to play, but the game never really stuck with them. Also, the whole no multiboxing on the same IP address thing stops me from getting my kids into this game. I could probably convince my oldest to play, but we're all on the same connection. Factions here are extremely intimidating to outsiders, especially when the server drama ramps up, so it's something I've avoided.
There are plenty of people that play from the same connections.
The Multi-boxing Rule is that 1 Person can't play more than 1 computer/character at a time.
'I would like to be half as clever as some people like to believe they are' Life is full of disappointments, it is how we handle them that helps to define us, as a person
What is keeping me from playing is because the devs have now totally stopped access to other servers being visible by preventing the files from being added to the config files. Adding them now triggers the anti cheat and prevents a user from connecting to the server. Doing this simply drives people away. Making it totally closed does not keep people playing, it stops them from playing. You cannot force people to do anything and the devs should consider that. Seeing other servers makes me want to play and does not make me look at joining those servers for anything more than a quick try. I refuse to play now because of what has been done to stop this. I disagreed with the removal of the other servers but that was before I first came to Discovery but the removal of the use of mods to show those servers has been done since I first joined and was able to use those mods to make them visible. Bye bye I will not play now because of this. I will look for other games.
(10-24-2021, 10:26 PM)Selken Wrote: Posts like this
Oh no! Why? It's all good fun.
(01-06-2022, 10:47 AM)=RedDwarf= Wrote: What is keeping me from playing is because the devs have now totally stopped access to other servers being visible by preventing the files from being added to the config files. Adding them now triggers the anti cheat and prevents a user from connecting to the server. Doing this simply drives people away. Making it totally closed does not keep people playing, it stops them from playing. You cannot force people to do anything and the devs should consider that. Seeing other servers makes me want to play and does not make me look at joining those servers for anything more than a quick try. I refuse to play now because of what has been done to stop this. I disagreed with the removal of the other servers but that was before I first came to Discovery but the removal of the use of mods to show those servers has been done since I first joined and was able to use those mods to make them visible. Bye bye I will not play now because of this. I will look for other games.
You can't even join the servers that would be visible
Even if that were the case, it only affects the people who didn't intend to play on the server. Lan servers work fine, private works fine with direct connect with the launcher.
Alright, so, realtalk. I am sure that I still have a few oldies subscribed to my channel and quite a few potential new blood from Planetside 2 and Avorion. So is there any date, within reason, soon enough where we can do a big get-together in, dunno, Conn or something and bump up the server number even for a moment? Perhaps that alone, people seeing it at 190/190 or whatever our current extended amount is, is enough to not uninstall the game afterwards.
All that needs to happen is that the method of installing Disco is made as quick and painless as possible, so that nobody will mind it. I could then announce it on my channel. I suggest that the date is given a month or so from now to give people a chance to actually consider attending, though. Jobs are jobs.
Whoever is currently in charge, you know my discord, @me.
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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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