It doesn't help that the game is not fun. You start something, you think it's gonna be fun, then you start getting over hurdles, some incompetent devs mess up pvp, frustration starts to appear and everything goes down the drain. There are just too many people that recently stopped enjoying disco because it became frustrating more than enjoyable.
It doesn't help that the content updates, balance updates or story updates come out about 10 times slower than they should be to keep people interested.
It doesn't help that this place is basically run by one person just because that person has enough technical skill to keep it running while everyone else in the admin team just pretend to do stuff and there is no way to hold them accountable for their mistakes other than just quit the game.
It doesn't help that the so-called "story devs" don't even show any incentive to work with people who want to contribute to the mod's story.
It doesn't help that the Freelancer universe is not even remotely realistic. Sure, it was perhaps unique when the game came out, but now there are a lot more interesting universes where one can do RP, write stories (which, if done well, can actually bring actual money) and generally contribute to. It also doesn't help that nobody can seem to agree what stage of the humanity tech tree we are on.
It doesn't help that the game runs on a 14 year old engine which nobody managed to successfully replicate into a more modern technology that runs more reliably on newer machines, is less susceptible to cheating, is not as technically limited and has the actual source code to be tinkered with.
It doesn't help that to become a developer for the FLhook you need the knowledge of a programming language with which you could probably get a good job in programming, or, at the very least, contribute to projects which are a lot more worth your time than Discovery.
It doesn't help that the hype on pen-and-paper, written roleplay stopped in the 90s and now is just pursued by people who can rarely be called mentally sound (I don't think over the last two-three years on Disco I met more than 10 people who I would consider "normal").
Well, I'll go back to my Dragons now (probably with someone getting pissed over this post and giving me another forum warn for nothing, lol).
(02-27-2017, 05:33 PM)Corile Wrote: It doesn't help that the game is not fun. You start something, you think it's gonna be fun, then you start getting over hurdles, some incompetent devs mess up pvp, frustration starts to appear and everything goes down the drain. There are just too many people that recently stopped enjoying disco because it became frustrating more than enjoyable.
He is not completely wrong, I agree with the devs thing, though...I have nothing against the devs but Jesus why is everything going so slow? The story does not progress at all and so the game stays as it is for too long, there are so many devs I can't really understand how nothing seems to go on.
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(02-27-2017, 05:40 PM)Shelco Wrote: He is not completely wrong, I agree with the devs thing, though...I have nothing against the devs but Jesus why is everything going so slow? The story does not progress at all and so the game stays as it is for too long, there are so many devs I can't really understand how nothing seems to go on.
You do realise this stuff takes time and pretty much making sure the continuity is fine is one hell of a job.
Also, people have lives and other things to do. Another factor is motivation, it gets quite tedious looking at the same stuff over and over, where as admittedly, when trying to find crashes or inconsistancy, you kinda glare over the obvious issue.
I slaved away at doing stuff for three days straight and still isn't done. Yes, I agree that the story is slow. But I don't think that theres many devs, as far as I see.
(02-27-2017, 05:40 PM)Shelco Wrote: He is not completely wrong, I agree with the devs thing, though...I have nothing against the devs but Jesus why is everything going so slow? The story does not progress at all and so the game stays as it is for too long, there are so many devs I can't really understand how nothing seems to go on.
You do realise this stuff takes time and pretty much making sure the continuity is fine is one hell of a job.
Also, people have lives and other things to do. Another factor is motivation, it gets quite tedious looking at the same stuff over and over, where as admittedly, when trying to find crashes or inconsistancy, you kinda glare over the obvious issue.
I slaved away at doing stuff for three days straight and still isn't done. Yes, I agree that the story is slow. But I don't think that theres many devs, as far as I see.
Okay, well I have no idea how it looks like in the chats but I see 17 times yellow, I can only state this from a player's perspective and also, I know many things that would help the players can be done within 5 minutes, for example adding nomad cloak batteries to wild bases, really not that much of a deal, right?
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Dev motivation and activity has its ups and downs, much like the playerbase itself (see: this thread's subject). Many people remain yellow as they're still occasionally around, but they aren't hugely productive. I myself have a tendency to do a decent amount of work in a short period of motivation/inspiration, and then go AWOL. And I'm really not the only one.
Unfortunately the various dev teams also rely on one another. People who implement ships rely on "gameplay devs" like me to balance them and add them to the game. I myself mostly rely on the effects team to create effects for weapons and such that I want to add. If one of the "links" here happens to be on hiatus, it slows an already fairly slow process down to a crawl.
Oh, and devs are also people. A newly released game* might grab their attention and keep them from developing for a while. University might get "busy" for them for a while, and so on.
(02-27-2017, 05:33 PM)Corile Wrote: It doesn't help that this place is basically run by one person just because that person has enough technical skill to keep it running while everyone else in the admin team just pretend to do stuff and there is no way to hold them accountable for their mistakes other than just quit the game.
(02-27-2017, 06:41 PM)Treewyrm Wrote: Thank god Valve doesn't know how to count to three for Dota 3 to ever come out.
I don't think that such thing can kill this community. Otherwise Disco would alredy had a new engine, new platform, new publisher and probably the new beginning. <- That's how you kill it and make it reincarnate like the phoenix.
Leading a faction alone is a hard work, and I can say that as someone who led one into officialdom, then watched it fall into pieces because of being a niche in a niche (which is Kusari). Discovery is pretty much non-profit, Devs are spending their free time connecting pieces - having their ups and downs as someone said already. While it is really far from dying, most of the Discovery population are guys who are unable to run Elite Dangerous and similiar games, or are nostalgic enough to be back in here. I'm both, ironically.
However, the biggest flaw of Discovery was the toxic members of community, which were either removed or silenced their toxicity. Or at least their toxicity is not as visible as it used to be. Many players leave, because they have "better games to play". What is happening right now is a huge unknown, but it's not as bad as in case of other stuff like Crossfire or the newest Star Wars TC - which could only wish for such a population we have. We are pretty safe so far. Maybe on support or any other diabolical device - but still able to kick, and bring interest.