So, bear with me as I might write a novel here.. Most of the idea for this thread stems off of @Omicron's thread here, so partial credit to him for sparking the idea.
Years ago, back in the long long ago when there was still a Battlestar in Delta and the A.D.M.I.N.S. were a legitimate faction with a legitimate rep system, Discovery had a load of systems. Most of these were the guard systems that everyone loved/hated, some of which stayed, most of which were either deleted or repurposed and all of which were edited in some way. The rest were what people liked to refer to as 'filler systems', these occasional come-acrosses that you would find just randomly exploring (or looking at Freelancer Companion for jump holes) that had their own story behind them.
Omicron Eta had the notorious split system minefield that confined the Outcasts to the north and the Corsairs to the south. This system by itself held about 60% of the mass of RP of all of the systems removed during the Great System Purge of 4.88. Omicron Lambda was another, which had that large 'former star' that made the system unique from the rest. This wasn't even unique to the Omicrons either. The Chester system in Bretonia held the only Nomad hive in the area until it was moved into Inverness. Dundee was a rather unique system in Bretonia that was truly contested, heavy patrols flying throughout the system letting you know that there was actually a war on. I'll admit a lot of these systems had a good portion of empty space, but their location and the things inside them made them unique as a separate system from the others.
And finally there's Gallia. The KING of deleted uniqueness.
I know I rant day in and day out about how much 'Gallia sucks, should be gone, should be done better, blah blah blah'. Admittedly, even I get tired of it. It drains interest away from what I'd rather be doing, what I could be doing and what I could be watching other people be doing. But there was a time way back when that I actually adored it. I'd take a hard-earned trip from Liberty up towards Gallia flying a LibDread through the Gallic Border World (This was on one of the offshoot servers before I'd actually committed myself to playing solely on Disco 24/7). It was nice, beautiful. To a certain extent, it still is. While most of the uniqueness of the place isn't completely lost (Ile-de-France comes to mind. Jesus Christ, planets), there are certain things that even I'll argue should've been kept in for the sake of volume.
I get from a gameplay point of view, Gallia became pretty stale pretty fast. A lot of that had to do with how they were implemented into the story, and a the way they were utilized as a plot device made this beautifully crafted, well thought out House completely secluded from the rest of the mod. No one could get in unless they either smuggled their way through a backdoor or burst open the front. No one could appreciate the effort or heart that went into making it, and that's why I feel that Gallia got a bad rap. I'm not here to deuce on it, but just to say that Gallia by itself is one of the main reasons that I came to the official server. Typing this all out (especially going back to the patch notes thread to find when Eta was removed) has given me time to reflect on my history here. The way I saw how Gallia was crafted, molded into this state of beautiful anarchy seemed to reflect how the rest of Sirius operated, and in a way it was like a condensed tour of the entire sector.
The uniqueness of the entire area was slowly stripped away over the years after droughts of inactivity and neglect, a lot of which was caused by how the storyline was progressing. As we've seen now, Auvergne is gone, Lorraine was merged into Lyonnais (or the other way around.. I don't remember. It's still just Lyonnais), and the crown jewel of Gallia was merged into one planet. A very large portion of what made this house special was quickly dumbed down to make it less so. An admittedly bland, shallow relic of its former self. The Normandy gate gone, and thus the mystery forever that. A mystery. All of this history quickly edited into something that resembled the houses of old.
I'll be absolutely frank here. I don't like the way Discovery is going. The continuing reliance of plot devices, the cliches, the lack of any real infallibility to certain factions (take any of these however you will). It tells me less so that I'm playing in another universe that's been created with love and passion, and more than I'm being shoved into someone's unusually boring fanfiction. There's no originality, which is ironic given the name of the mod.
Discovery
The way Discovery is going is going to end up being as boring and bland as an 8.5x11 sheet of paper painted grey. It has some changes from the original, but in the end it's just a piece of paper.
We need substance. We need depth. There may be depth in the storyline, but at this point I doubt anyone other than the people writing this story are really paying much attention to it. I have no hate towards the developers either (maybe a grudge or two, but nothing overly major). For what it's worth, they're making a decent story. But that's all that's happening.
Discovery needs a change to the environment. New blood, new ideas and new spouts of uniqueness to the sector. We need to have the name mean something. I'm not saying nuke the war and all that, but make it more interesting. Make everything more interesting. There is an entire sector of Sirius that, as @Omicron said, is literally devoted to the idea of being a lawless, wild, Nomad infested place that's completely unpredictable. We need this to mean something. We also need this to expand back into the main of the sector as well. There are gaps in the jump network that, while they look good on a navmap, they could look even better in game.
Imagine a planet like Privas of old, gravitationally bound to each other but completely independent of one another. Imagine a star orbiting a planet. Imagine Nomad whoseewhatsits that are unlike anything we've ever seen before. Imagine ancient battlegrounds of some long dead race. Imagine dense asteroid fields withholding a long unknown material that could be used to fuel something unique. Imagine a derelict Da'am K'vosh superstructure capable of terraforming an entire planet. Imagine a star that you could walk on thanks to some special kink in the laws of physics.
There is a limitless universe of possibilities that we can explore out there, in here and all over Sirius. This sector is and always will be untamed. It's written in the history from even the base game. It's up to us to decide how we'll incorporate the lack of limitations that we're presented with.
I don't want to be one of those old, 'bitter vets' spouting constant nonsense about how 4.85 was the epitome of what Discovery should have been. It had its ups and downs. It was far from perfect, but it was a lot closer than where we are now.
tl;dr More special things. More special systems. More heart and soul into ideas. More, more, more. A lot of what's happened since Gallia was introduced has been nothing but a backwards stumble. We need to move forward.