(12-15-2019, 08:07 PM)Durandal Wrote: By allowing us to work on the game and actually progress things instead of being bombarded with "the community demands you rewrite every infocard in Rheinland". Now we're morally obligate to do that next since we allowed them to vote on it instead of work on a neglected region of the mod such as the Omicrons or Kusari.
Focusing on roleplay you don't intend to canonize allows us, the development team, to deliver more content to everyone involved.
Call me cynical but Discovery has to be one of the worst examples I've ever seen for moral obligations. That will need to be seen I suppose. But I can't say there's been a good track record of things being delivered upon, even when there is a value of some kind involved.
(12-15-2019, 08:07 PM)Durandal Wrote: I'm sure as someone who is not a member of this team, you know what is best for this team to organize itself.
Given the bustling, healthy state of the community, you guys clearly are doing a great job without any issues. I apologize for even daring to criticize the Team.
Dealing with requests is part of my job at work - I know a bad system when I see it, and excuses when I read them.
(12-15-2019, 08:07 PM)Durandal Wrote: I think people should take some solace in the idea that, if they do the work, ask us first, and file a request, that there is a solid chance they will actually be able to impact the game world. Which is again, something Discovery and certainly not Freelancer was even built for.
The game being bogged down with requests and tedium is what's killing it. Go on any Freelancer forum or Freelancer related discussion and ask why people are disinterested in Disco; it's usually because of the surplus of rules and regulations that upset the experience.
And I strongly disagree with your viewpoint as to what Discovery was "built for". That just sounds like anti-fun.
If you can make a clear distinction between what obtaining approval to start roleplay is, and what the request is approved is, that would make this system easier to understand. Dare I say split this system into two parts: the first part where an idea is proposed and approved, and then the second part which is the requester simply submitting the information required to implement the request.
(12-15-2019, 08:07 PM)Durandal Wrote: I'm somewhat ambivalent about the fee myself, but the idea of asking people to play the game in order to contribute a permanent, canonical change to its lore instead of just writing on the forums does not strike me as unreasonable. Money is not that difficult to make. The fee is there to show that people are dedicated to the request they are about to file.
Forcing people to mindlessly power trade to maybe impact the mod isn't playing the game, it's soulless, and the difficulty of it will vary from faction to faction. This didn't need payment before, and it doesn't need one now. And if you feel like the money is oh so easy to make and nothing to cry about, that doesn't feel me with confidence that when requests are submitted, the pixel credit attachment will make you care for them any more than you would normally. It can take hours, days even or weeks for a faction to come up with that money for the request. A request which could theoretically be denied by the team in less than an hour. You have an obligation to at least try to make the system fun and engaging.
(12-15-2019, 08:07 PM)Durandal Wrote: "Allow people to know exactly who voted no on request, so that the requesting party can target those specific developers to lobby to them."
Yeah, no.
You either stand behind your decision to approve/not approve or you don't. Plus you have already forbidden lobbying and penalized it with a request forfeiture so why should that be a problem.
Quote:Because we need this new system in order to keep the lights on and keep Discovery functioning, and we have a community that will never understand and accept that, and will always believe they are capable of doing a better job without being in the hot seat themselves.
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I am no big populist myself but basically saying I know better than the community so I forcefeed them a radical change without discussing it beforehand ... yikes.
(12-15-2019, 03:09 PM)Wulthus Wrote: I'll be blunt. Devs shouldn't be making the story of disco. It is our job. Job of the players and many factions they are involved.
IMHO If a Dev wishes to see his version of the story included in the cannon, he should go trough the process like any other player, submitting stories on forums, creating a faction, gaining support and "paying the bills".
I can't help but see this as just another way for the devs to keep their story on rails. There's nothing good in adding another layer of complication to alredy complicated system.
You are entirely right. If this game was truly dictated by the players, we wouldn't have had the long lines of stupid powder that had already been snorted by the community. The only reason I returned to this game is that I heard that there wasn't Auxusia F1nd in Bering waiting to shoot my transport with 3 capships. Now, seeing that the devs have decided to flex their "im the dev, you don't matter" ideals again, I'm once again tempted to leave. In the end, I may just stay here out of spite, but that's for time to tell.
However, if there was anyone willing to take what's left of this after the impending collapse, and make a version that actually cares about the people, I, and many others, would like to play that. It also would have been nice if all the original freelancer factions had been more fully developed from the start. Gaians don't have actual capships, even though their pre-established lore points calls them "rich kids". Xenos lore would have me believe that they have a MASSIVE population within their numbers, simply because of the numbers of people affected by corporate outsourcing in real life. They should have full development of things that large numbers of people would have, including cruisers. And at this point, I'm not putting gunships in the same class as gunboats or above. They're really just big snubs, and putting them in the same class as gunboats is just pretending that they have the same effect.
As far as I can see, Devs have done the bare minimum of developing the factions that they are not part of, and that, at it's core, is why this game is dying. It had the potential to be something so great, we would have troubles because Microsoft would want it back, and now we're here, where every interaction between players ends in 2 or more sanctions, where the people in charge of making this game good have openly declared that they don't care, where the economy is broken in such a way that new players leave almost immediately, where you can't play a trader without getting pirated twice for every jump you make, where the only thing that truly reigns supreme is a self-centered circle of literal corruption. Welcome to the Discovery Freelancer 24/7 RP that will carry into the future, folks. Welcome to Disco 2020. Have fun, if you can.
why is discovery like this
developers/admins: implement thing
community: not like thing
developers/admins: keeps thing
community: outrage, people stop playing
developers/admins: still revert back to before-thing, just way too late after the damage has already been done
There'd be fewer demands for transparency if the community trusted the devs to be impartial. To quote another person:
Quote:As far as I can see, Devs have done the bare minimum of developing the factions that they are not part of, and that, at it's core, is why this game is dying
This is a very common perception, and that's a big problem for you, Justin. You say you want to do your job? Part of that's fixing this. Because if people don't trust the devs to be fair, morale will continue to sink and players will continue to quit.