True that there are easier online games to learn, and true there are tooo many rules and things you need to read before you go if you are newbie, that need be to be cut out and make newbies more welcome, i still think that 1 hour death rule is way too much those days, and you don't need a whole novel writing to start a fight, cause this a combat game after all. Still go log fight and enjoy, disregard the aces and gank squads (nod)
(01-06-2022, 03:50 PM)Arcana Wrote: @Selken don't be cut away because of the PvP thing, it is not a big deal, you just log and fight, that's how you learn, everyone wants to win or whatever, still this is just a game to enjoy. I really don't care if gank squad is going after me or not, there is no fair war anyway.
Too many games out there off better pvp incentives. Disco caters to the experienced. And ***** on those who know not.
Why would anyone waste their time on this when they can pick up something easier to learn, that's more active and feels more balanced? sure it's lacks the variety of disco but ... who's going to care if they don't see all of what's on offer?
Most new players are going to earn fast, die fast and leave fast without seeing the majority of disco.
That's not true necessarily - there are groups willing to die and give themselves handicaps against newer players in PvP, not all server is 1:1 gitgut type of people.
Disco age issue is that people need to do this themselves rather than a matchmaking algorhythm forcing it upon them.
No...
You're talking about people who've played disco or freelancer for a while.. When you're sucking someone into something you let them in on an even playing ground
Activision knows this really well
When you a beat a noobie into oblivioin the likelihood of them wanting to continue is very low. The likely hood of them blaming the game and moving on is high..
I'm glad you enjoy your experience in disco but that's not how new players would see an enjoyable experience
No, I am talking about beginners.
Nothing easier than seeing a group of beginners and fly in 3 caps vs 7. Or fly in without any regeneration on a snub vs snubs. Or use bad ships and outclassed ship classes to account for skill.
Or just letting someone who's been losing a lot win.
What made me leave Disco before was the lack of GMs doing GM things. Making the world more alive and responsive to players' actions, writing actual quests using the forum. I started RPing on forums and in RP groups that had a lot of GM influence and got very used to it.
Or maybe I simply failed to become the local diplomat and eventually burned out trying to think of other things to do.
Maybe both.
I do hope that things will get better but will they really? I'll stay and see myself.
Edit: oh, and I still can't get into combat at all
This is not a moba or a Dark Souls lookalike, you just can't have ships be as diverse and unique as characters and weapon movesets/magic there
Posts: 873
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Joined: May 2020
Staff roles: Story Developer
Lack of interesting and meaningful RP for player like me. I tried on many characters through various factions and just burned out after hundreds and hundreds of hours ingame. Experiencing some community-driven issues was just the final straw.
Revert to 4.84 and unban every person whos been banned for more than a year and has not been banned for murdering infant puppies.
Ok skip the puppies bit, but fact is every person changes over time and a lot of people who were banned were pretty much witch-hunted from snobby ultra biased RP zealot admins (not all were such of course).
If you want people to have fun, you should actually let people do some of the stupid shit they usually do without perma banning them or ruining non-rp events which have been performed for years previously without issues. *cough* Last celebrated XTF birthday event
Trolls might cause some chaos but they also give fun content, which usually ends with them being ganked and killed - and both groups get their fun. Trolls make fun of the ones that ganked em, and the gankers make fun of the idiot troll. Perma ban should be removed as a whole.
Dont know about current balance changes and if they are good or not, frankly for me everything above started getting worse at some point in 4.84-4.85(dont remember exactly) so revert to last know best config-4.84.
Remove that stupid online player counter on the first page of the forum - i see it and get depressed instead of having to log in and check whats going on. At least if i log in there's a very big chance id actually do something.
Remove all kinds of shortcuts to getting new equipment for new chars, let people play for god's sake. Liberty has mostly been newb friendly cuz cap nerds flied there a lot, and as for old idiots like me coming back, i can still probably take down 70% of players not having fought for a dozen years.....oh wait no players are left.
Revert map to 4.85 too. Want my Alpha - Eta connection back so i can raid sairs. If i have to pass through ugly beta or sigmas, im not doing it. Im serious, if its ugly i dont wanna see it. NO ONE LIKES BETA - LEAVE IT. No one likes a large portion of Galia either, lets face it, I use to have a GRN affiliated ship and an RM one too, I prefer being in exile in Stutgart than moving around Galia. Make some stuf...you know...bright and pretty. And yes Bretonia had low pop cuz it was also depression inducing, though less than beta.
Do this, and i can bring back an average of 40-60 people who i still keep in touch with. During covid lockdowns people are bored and i was thinking of coming on, but that damned online people counter on the main page stopped me from even downloading the game in the first place, so at least give me the option to be depressed after loging in.
In the end, no one gonna do any of this so im just gonna link this post to a few of the groups of old dudes.
Remove Player Online List - It keeps people even more away because they can simply check the forum if anyone is online or not, instead of starting the game and checking it out.
PVE/Trading/Mining - Why should I trade when I make more money with a cau 6 cap and farming missions? Mining is probably still the most fun thing to do for me, even tho I was known as a PvP whore (Cool XTF times), but with the recent mining field changes it takes away the fun. The amount of asteroids flying around is super low while the drop rate is fine. I prefer to have many asteroids around and a lower droprate (like the Ice field one) it makes mining way more enjoyable for me.
Other games - While Freelancer is still awesome and I really enjoy it whenever I log in, there are games for me like Planetside 2, Escape From Tarkov etc. that give me constant action and gives me a higher heart rate. I had that in Freelancer too, when we had more players and more interactions
End game goals / Faction goals - I lead Ageira and I have no clue how to bring any activity or even motivate players to join my faction. Either you do only forum RP or you log into the game to trade something that has such a low resell value that it's not even worth logging in. (If anyone has ideas, feel free to pm me)
Well, here we are. Almost a year later and the player numbers are still roughly the same.
The mod itself is not really in a worse state. I'd say it's actually in a better state. Stuff was rebalanced, mining and economy made a bit more interesting, PVE got iterated. We got the option of custom POB models as money sinks and tons of ships and visual candy. We even got some dynamic PVE with Entity stuff.
The community, on the other hand, is still quite dead.
The main problem of Disco, and I really mean THE main problem. Is that, in this game, players are the content. Everything else fades quite quickly as this is an ancient game with really simple mechanics. But the players themselves can't do much without the support of the staff. And that support has been lacking lately. They've pretty much shut out the discussion with players and decided they know better.
I think the main drivers of community activity that liked to RP and log in groups to support that RP are pretty much gone at this point.
Either they burnt out or left due to disagreement with staff. The old vets still pop up from time to time, but I guess due to RL obligations (surely multiplied a lot since they were younger) are now reduced to playing just for events or little nostalgia gatherings.
The newcomers are actually really active (I'd say most of the actual active server playerbase are newcomers, barring a few returning vets and a couple of people who just log to trade and keep their OFs active).
The thing is, most of the newcomers lack the support of the more experienced groups on the RP and PVP stuff and are set to get bored and lose interest relatively quickly due to
realizing that more pretty and bigger ships don't really lead to more fun
getting their arses kicked by the few PVP gods that still log from time to time.
the lack of actual "Discovery" in "Discovery" Freelancer
What I think is still holding back Disco, gameplay wise:
The trading still feels extremely symmetrical and made not to "offend" any faction. That also makes it pretty boring. With no obvious hotspot routes there are no pirates either. GMs could help this out by having trading mini-events that promote certain mining / trading routes more often. That's the band-aid solution. The real solution is to make factions matter for trade routes. I think this was the original vision in Freelancer with the commodities rep mechanic that is almost completely ignored in Disco instead of spurring diplomacy and conflicts between factions.
The combo of long PVP death timer and low pop means people are just set not to bother after the first time they get busted. At any moment there are at best two groups PVPing in the whole Sirius, and if you don't want to play with the other after you get blown up, tough luck. The events, and especially the respawn events have much better attendance in terms of the size of player groups. They make battles less tactical but more "epic" and we should have these more often to keep the playerbase interested
The POB upkeep requirements are actually taking a good chunk of the playerbase at any moment. We did see a bit of an uptick in non hauling activity when they were disabled for the holiday period. I'm not saying they should be removed, but reducing the time that needs to be spent hauling supplies (and increasing the prices so the amount of effort stays roughly the same) might lead to a bit more diversified gameplay
The bounty plugin is still not integrated which makes bounties tedious and not worth bothering for most of the playerbase
Smuggling really not worth it due to increased risk for the same tediously long routes. Make the routes shorter and add more incentive to lawfuls to try and stop smuggling. A rotating bonus on smuggled stuff might also work as a focusing tool. So one week it's worth it to try and smuggle in Liberty, the other day in Rheinland, then Bretonia etc.
Running missions is still quite as hollow as the base game
Seems that stuff that can be done cooperatively is actually good for player activity. And this is now limited to battlezones and missions. Why not expand exploration / wreck looting with this mechanic? COOP smuggling and trading has been shown to be really well received in the events we had recently, so at least a part of it should also become part of regular gameplay.
Stuff not related to gameplay:
GMs should really try and work with active factions and their stories. The "no pixel conquering" rule should go and GMs should instead balance out and take over the other side when a faction is trying to take over an asset of a faction that doesn't have an active playerbase. Just because there is no playerbase doesn't mean the whole game should stop and wait for Story to get their shit together.
Community should focus on constructive feedback instead of trolling and memeing to shoot down any discussion
Time, I guess. And most of the friends I made here, no longer seem to be here. When I first joined this community, I was new to online gaming and the internet in general. This place taught me everything and is unironically the reason I am still into many things like World of Tanks, Dota, anime to this day. I didn't know what 4chan or Reddit were. I was largely unaware of the internet culture and it was here, from most of the active members at that time, that I was introduced to much of it, things that I still enjoy. I spent day and night on these forums and in game, on skype. For the bigger part of 3 years, Disco was the only thing I knew. It's pretty wild, looking back at those days. I can't imagine getting anywhere close to that much time now, to spend on Disco. I am, by no means part of the old gang. Even back when I joined, there were old timers from 2000s reminiscing fondly about their time here and their old friends, like I do right now. Just that I never realized I would be doing the same, 8 years later.
I was active during the Skype and Teamspeak era, so most of the faction and personal chat history is gone now. Thousands of hours spent just chatting random things on the faction chats are no longer there. I don't even remember anyone here anymore, except maybe a few. The fond memories I had with most people here have mostly faded away and while I still have some nostalgia about this forum and the game, I just can't start again fresh. It's not a matter of ships or credits or content. I just can't start joining a bunch of new factions and make new friends here because my conscious won't allow that. It will always be a matter of comparison to the old times, to the people who no longer play the game and I will be doing a disservice to myself and the current active players by half arsing it. My relationship with this game was always defined by the wonderful people I met here and no amount of nostalgia will force me to pick up the game again. No idea, why I decided to randomly go through a bunch of old stuff today, but it's a relief. My yearly visit to the forums, I guess. To see this place still going on, chugging along. Rumours of Disco's demise have been there ever since I joined back in 2013. But this little part of the internet somehow keeps finding a way to stay alive and that makes me quite happy.
![[Image: 6LNTuEW.png]](https://i.imgur.com/6LNTuEW.png)
