The player list experiment

[GreySeiker]

Good day.

I would really change it to just "zones". For example Omicrons, Omegas, Sigmas, Taus, Bretonia, Liberty, Galia, etc.....

That at forums, and in game, that you could see only 2 systems around you, and the rest are the same as forums.

For me this is the most gray area making hunters actively fly, but also "hidding" smugglers and traders enough to be more interesting to find them.

And it will not kill at 100% the "reactionary players* since you still know someone is there

[Redcroft]

I would really change it to just "zones". For example Omicrons, Omegas, Sigmas, Taus, Bretonia, Liberty, Galia, etc.....

Also ingame!!!

[Nodoka Hanamura]

This would work, if we had 4.88 era player numbers. We don't. Right now we've got 34 souls playing this game as I speak - and 50 at peak, and you (Not Fab in particular, but the people in general, take no offense, not trying to shit in people's cherrios) want me, TFP and other factions to, when say, responding to a LN ship in Liberty or the Independent Worlds, to meander around Igiss' creation trying to find the fucker, in the name of 'natural encounters' or other such matters, and complain about Metagaming, when this has deadass, quite literally, been the way the game works since time immemorial.

Is this really such a bad issue, that we need to risk jeopardizing the interaction/encounter rate just to please people who deep down, do not want to interact because it might be a negative one? I don't like being pirated as much as the next powertrader. During my time with Ouroboros last time around I didn't feel like being ganked by KNF or Bounty Hunters - but negative and positive encounters are an important part of how roleplay works. You take away the player list's accuracy, I guarantee you people player count will start dropping - and I will definitely be one of them.

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[Culbrelai]

Would not work with current player numbers, unfortunately. The playerlist is the prime activity finder as haste said.

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#NotMySNAC

[Fab]

An alternative method would be replacing player names with IFFs:



this would be less frustrating to use, for sure

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[A Magpie]

@everyone Target in X system at <location> bring backup

There is usually one thing to do per system or even region for a given faction. For example, any LNS in the independent worlds has a 99% chance of being in Magellan, any Rheinland Military in the Sigmas is doing the Corsair encounter, etc….

[Horizon./MDVII]

[...] Truly natural encounters [...]

Doing just the forum is going to result in nothing more than people logging in, sitting on a base and scrolling through the player list

"+"

Piracy becomes far more threatening without the ability to just look a system or two ahead. Probably good.

Well, it's not just about piracy. Players will have the opportunity to hide from being chased, or be interested in the chase.

It's about someone can find you, but someone won’t necessarily find you. You can take the risk of continuing your activity, because the likelihood of being caught is less. The excitement factor is added. Launch the roulette and see if it lands on red or black. Will they blow your brains out or not?

Meanwhile, considering that the trend towards the police cannot gain popularity in any way (everything always comes down to the Navy in any case), it is possible the ability to see who is in which system to police officers. According to their regions. Official police officers . Not just fake characters to come in for 5 minutes to see who is where. Knowing Discovery players, rule loopholes and misuse of tools - tradition.

because the only question we want answered is "Would this change reduce our average player count".

This thread does not answer that question. This change cannot be the reason for players leaving. Discovery doesn't need a player who leaves JUST because we stopped showing him other players. (What about the more difficult situations that an online game can offer him? What will you do when players blow up a ship full of ore that he spent half an hour digging for?)

Another thing is that the player “finished off” by this innovation. Because he's just such a “finished off”. And he had collected a carload of crap before. But THIS cannot be the real reason for leaving.

In practice it would make players like myself just start our Sekiro NG+ because that would get me far more fun per hour than aimlessly floating around systems I have already seen six hundred times.

The presence or absence of a list of players does not prevent you from launching Sekiro now. False argument. I can explain it if necessary, but we both know it's not true.

We can change nothing and see the online slowly melt away. We can change it and see where it leads us. Discovery has experienced even worse crap. You can always go back to the roots.

Multiplayer involves interaction between players. Singles don't survive. Big things are not done alone. Rockets that fly into space are not made by one person. Any drunken mass fight is the result of communications and preliminary agreements. OR the result of high temperature in a certain area of ​​space.

This is why loners behave like loners - because they seek solitude while doing something of their own. Spending your time plowing through one system in the sixth circle in the hope of finding one player with whom you could interact (if he doesn’t tell you to go to hell or logs out) is obviously nonsense! If you need a meeting, write and coordinate. Another thing is that the lack of direct visibility of who is in what system makes it possible to attract singles to interact, eliminate power trading and abuse of the list of characters in general.

As if you don’t already know where and in what system a player with LN\KNF\KHara\RM\ or others may be located.
This is not to mention the fact that invisibility will really become a tool of espionage, excluding the situation when suddenly everyone closes their mouths as soon as they see a UFO on the list.

I don't like being pirated [...] I didn't feel like being ganked

You take away the player list's accuracy, I guarantee you people player count will start dropping - and I will definitely be one of them.

Wonder why...
If you have never been ganked, it means you have never taken a proactive position on a controversial issue. Any fool knows how to fight against everything bad and for everything good. Although, considering that you are ready to threaten to leave in order to protect your interests, this says a lot about your loyalty to the project and manipulation skills. I agree with you: it's cheap, but it will work. Perhaps it helped you survive before. Perhaps this provided you with protection from ganks. I don't know, I don't care. Just think about what you're saying. Not all people are stupid.

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It's a wonderful life

[Czechmate]

This would protect newer players - there's a lot of oorp groups going after e.g. folks in my factions who go out of their way to gank them as hard as they can.

You run into the unsavory choice of either teaching them how to legally metagame and do what others (including many staff members) do, or just trying to shield them by e.g. moving away without them knowing this is happening in game etc.


For me personally, this would be a net negative as I am a vet who just reactionary logs and uses the tracking bots to tell me when.

But do I really matter? So what if people like Haste or me counter log others and this would turn us off - we aren't the people spending the most time actually playing the game, with all due respect, washed out has been vets who need specific players to be logged to even bother to play the game should be an afterthought when considering mechanics like this.


Protect the newer players and implement this across the board I say - even if a lot of vets start playing less, who cares - the players just playing the game without the need to metagame the player list are grinding many more in game hours anyways.

[Levenna]

snip

Nobody goes out of their way to reactionary log against new players.

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[03.07.2024] LNS-Beast***: we can do this every day but you have to buy bigger stronger ships...and i'll help you

[Czechmate]

An alternative method would be replacing player names with IFFs:



this would be less frustrating to use, for sure

This is the ideal solution if possible to be done.

Right now metagaming bittervets have the advantage of knowing who is who anyways very fast. There have been trading groups even keeping spreadsheets with pirates - this method is MUCH more beginner friendly and levels the playing field.