What is keeping you from playing?

[SkyNet]

Despite the salt mine Disco is known for, i can't deny that Freelancer shaped my childhood and it still has a certain appeal to me. I still have a passion for old games and believe the age of a game is irrelevant as long as it successfully maintains the fun-factor. And for me, most fun events here were the massive battles in Texas, the joint omicron expeditions with KNF/Core, and in general RPing secret agency warcrimes. And that's kind of difficult to realise if there is no war at all. Sad because that's exactly what i'm looking for.

I have seen lots of people leave over grudges, I have completely stepped away from anything involving Rheinland again. I'm still the 1ic of my faction but I hardly do anything. A while ago, I figured maybe the region needed me to step back. I was being vilified over a lot of stuff in the region, but now that I've stepped back I've still seen nothing change in the area at all. Interest there is pretty much kaputt. But there is still hope for other regions.

People leaving over development-related issues is probably the thing that makes the least sense to me at all. [...] I can appreciate Freelancer no matter what state it's in, I played when heavy decision hit, I played when Justin was the lead developer, I played when the Admins and devs were at their most polar, and I'm playing now. I think if you really appreciate Freelancer, you can enjoy it regardless of where it is. You just need to play the game.

Just stepping away will not bring people back or change anything. Disco's decline began much earlier, most visible after the Rhein-Lib war ended. And no, you can't just play the game as if it were solitaire, because of the practice you need in handling your ships. I do not know what you are doing the whole day long, but i certainly do not have time nor mood to spend the 2 - 3 hours per day of my valuable freetime at conn just for training. This investment of time is best spent in RP anyway. Combat mechanics need to be simplified.

When you devote years of your real life time and effort to get good at certain mechanics of the game and then those mechanics are arbitrarily changed to suit a particular demographic of players it comes off as quite insulting. Made me feel like the people in charge of applying those decisions aren't actually interested in running a public server and would rather turn Discovery into their own little private club custom tailored to their own personal game style.

I guess people stop playing because they grow bored trying to kill invincible guys who just fly in circles.

The drama is past us, if everyone really left over Justin, then why aren't people coming back? [...]

So what is it? Why aren't people coming back?

How nice for you. At least one that may have settled with the past. I for my part, can not just return pretending nothing ever happened, because there's nothing left i could return to. You still have all your ships and your faction still exists. I, on the other hand, had to watch my friends tear each other apart and lost everything in the process. I lost the confidence into the staff at the point were they saw sh!t boiling but nobody of them cared about intervention when it was needed most.

What is keeping me from playing?

- The fact, that i was forced into an involuntary donation of my shared ships.
- The risk that such rogue actions could repeat anytime in future.
- The amount of work that would be necessary to re-earn all the credits i had, in order to restore my faction back to normal.
- The need of keeping my faction's activity up artificially at this low player count.
- Combat mechanics demanding me to spend more time in conn than elsewhere.
- All the people and most of the factions i used to RP with, are gone.
- Yet i don't see any goals for my chars. There's no war or anything interesting going on.
- Too many laws/rules/restrictions i have to pay attention to during gameplay.
- RimWorld...