If you go back far enough like 4.83 days the level of RP was much lower than it is now. We flew around in Star Wars ships and shot each other. The forum was a joke back then. It is much much more serious now.
Really I dont think the level of rp has gone down its just we dont have the population to provide the variety of interactions we used to.
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Yes. We get this. Discovery always had lows, and we've probably all seen the first few "patrol reports" posted way back when. They're very funny and very poor roleplay.
It also has absolutely nothing to do with someone (very naively) hoping Discovery can return to what I personally consider its "peak". Freelancer wasn't an 18-year-old game back then either so it didn't really have to set itself apart as much to succeed.
Can we try and stay on topic instead of listing our private cringe compilations as evidence that no roleplay has ever occurred on Discovery?
(04-18-2021, 11:40 PM)Lex Wrote: If you go back far enough like 4.83 days the level of RP was much lower than it is now. We flew around in Star Wars ships and shot each other. The forum was a joke back then. It is much much more serious now.
Really I dont think the level of rp has gone down its just we dont have the population to provide the variety of interactions we used to.
The quality of RP hasn't, no, but the variety has. It's a greased, lubricated machine dedicated to cranking out SRP this, faction perk or development that. This, I feel, can be blamed primarily on faction leaders and, to an extent, staff. A progressive decline as a result of person X motioning for Y thing of dubious value, and the devs going "hey why not?" Repeat for many a-year.
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This is a thread that has seriously spiked my interest.
I've been played on and off since 2009, and slowly learning RP skills, as well as PvP. At the time I started I was brand new to Role-play, and what it consisted of. Hell, I remember flying a Liberty Assault Ship (It was an import of SW at the time) into Gamma and was wondering why everyone was hostile to me in chat.
Through this learning and evolution of gameplay, I noticed that people would openly log, and stay logged for some time. Flying around aimlessly for no reason apart from finding RP with people.
As the 'meta' of PvP changed, so did Role-play. I feel Modern-day Discovery is a meta-game of Skype/Discord Alert pings. People log in when they see a threat, remove said threat, and then log off again.
And I'll admit, I am also part of the problem.
I've been surprised by certain players, who may appear to be PvP Whores, actually, stop after a fight, and sit outside a station and Role-play.
Recently as well, I remember RPing with some Auxisia in Baffin, and a friend in the faction. And he was shocked by how long we had sat stationary and just typed lines after lines out. For me, this was the way of Discovery back in the day. I'd say about 40% of RP ended with PvP, while 60% Contributed towards personal RP.
As much as I would love for the days of "Sit outside a Freeport and talk to characters you'd never think to be interacting with" with the current population, I doubt it would earn many interactions.
I feel that characters have become a lot more generic as in "I want to join BAF, I am BAF, I share the same hostilities as the BAF share" - Though this may be okay RP, why not add a small little spice to it, make your sister a Gaian or something, something which would make interacting with the group different.
I've been ridiculed and been avoided because my Unione Corse Character used to be LSF. "Why make her ex-LSF, Wolf? Why though?" - Simple. Because it's a developed character from like 10 years ago. I try to develop my characters as much as I am allowed to InRP and in Server rules. And of course, there will be inRP consequences for doing so, but that's literally Role-play.
And even as you said Haste: "If anyone goes out of their way to roleplay, they're most of the time doing it just because they're chasing some special snowflake SRP". Snowflakes are snowflakes, but it's their RP, let them do what they want to do.
I feel the community needs to stop being a high school band of girls, moaning and whining when they see something they don't like. "Oh no, they hang around in vc with XYZ, I ain't going to RP with them" - Why not? Because you'll lose your 'street cred'?
I feel a small solution, for now, would be a simple message in Discord ( whichever group ) and saying - Hey, I got 2 hours, anyone wanna RP?
Players have countless characters, so if someone does answer, it'll be a 'Which one do I want to develop?"
I am interested in peoples ideas though.
Ps. You'll get lolwuts still, but at least you can begin to teach them RP, and evolve them into a decent Roleplayer within the community.
I don't think it's too late for discovery to recoil out of this. I think people need to stop being butthurt and bitter about the fact that this is just "the way it is".
Probably at the height of my time in the RHA when we were coming off our sieging rampage, I noticed that my characters were looked at differently. Some of the big characters now are hardly seen ingame, little steps would be to encourage people to fly their characters. Discovery is a game and one big story, characters are important to a story. As the story progresses, the characters gain notoriety and seniority in the game, it makes it interesting if people invest in real characters. Each one could have a cool sort of story to it rather than puking up characters that already have their entire purpose and past written out.
Looking at tackling larger issues though, at that time both myself and others were obsessed with story development. Even now in many factions I see people taking to that stupid DWG discord channel to consult on behalf of their faction. The obsession with story has to end, consultation with players from the story teams needs to be at the very least - dialed back significantly. The reason you play, the reason you make a faction, the reason you log in should be to play the game. That means different things for different people, but it's still a step in the right direction.
I think something that ties in a good example of both cases being put into play is the current active GC- faction. I hear a lot of people giving them criticism for being a "circlejerk" or "why are GC- going to iota?" who cares? A lot of them are new, they may not be the "best" players but they do their own thing and stick to their own narrative. I don't see them obsessing over story in their chat all the time. I see them all in vc flying around and interacting together and with others. THIS is how it should be for all factions, even our senior ones. From the characters played to the players themselves. The roleplay "talent" or "knowledge" ill say comes with time. A lot of people personify themselves into characters, I know I did. But over time I think people that care about their characters start to give them their own personality etc etc.
I don't think it's realistic to make the demands of everyone being on top of their game, that every character will be a "main" or "detailed" one. But I would like to see more real characters entering the game in general, and a larger investment into those characters.
Maybe my points sound like a bunch of gibberish but this is my opinion. Above all, I don't think discovery is too far gone. It took a lot of hits with drama and leadership changes over the years. But it's slowly starting to take steps back in the right direction, more threads like this, and more talks like this will help it heal I think.
People need to realize that Discovery's only been able to survive for 16 years because of the RP aspect. Sure, way back when it just started out as a ship pack where there was no roleplay, but over time some guy went "yo Freelancer is actually kind of epic and immersive even when it has star wars imports in it" and then we had roleplay in Discovery. The standards went from absolute dog to pretty decent as the game kept going in that direction, and people were motivated to log into the game and type words. Over the recent years the game's been bloated with gamey bullshit like obnoxious PvP events that are glorified connbotting, and over time the standards crashed through ground and broke the low bar so violently that new players probably think that the roleplay part is more of a gimmick, similar to Crossfire.
The only reason I'm still around is the vain hope that eventually Disco will make some changes and reintroduce RP as the main selling point of the game. I don't think anybody wanted the game to return to being nothing more than a ship pack.
Edit: @Miaou your posts are peak "bitter disco vet" liquid ass. Please cease.
(04-18-2021, 11:16 PM)Haste Wrote: Let's face it. People are just playing themselves in the various spaceship-shaped PvP-sticks they enjoy. If anyone goes out of their way to roleplay, they're most of the time doing it just because they're chasing some special snowflake SRP.
Well said.
Disco these days revolves around bringing Caps and other ships to system X in order to shoot target Y even though it doesn't really makes sense for people to do that. The only argument that I'm hearing is "it's fun" or "it's good for activity".
We have also held back here on a few things that make options limited when it comes to actions groups can take to keep propelling their story. To me, we're best setting up the place to be a space world where we can all do a bunch of activities that you need to RP to enhance and make sense of, and let the combinations form on their own. Meaning, just setting it up so that people could build bases and destroy them has generated a huge amount of RP, both in game and out. And I'm the one pushing for using NPC bases for that more than POB's just by adding a way to make them legit targets.
What we lack on the server (besides population) is activity with purpose, combined with a more detailed way for players to propel story with gameplay. Giving people a reason to be online is the best way to generate in-game rp.
Instead of the place being dead, there should be factions trying to start their own little 'enclaves' all the time, by using POB's, and using a faction level system to try to shake the map up, and doing a variety of activities in between like supplying bases with AMMO as well as fuel, using repair ships to help repair besieged bases, and mining/missions/begging for scidata to help propel their faction's next move. Yet how can it go back to being like that if we are rejecting of going that route? Otherwise its like these are the retirement years, especially now that we're past the Gallic War. I think we need more [new] activities, to get more people, to get more rp.
(04-18-2021, 11:53 PM)Wesker Wrote: I don't think it's realistic to make the demands of everyone being on top of their game, that every character will be a "main" or "detailed" one. But I would like to see more real characters entering the game in general, and a larger investment into those characters.
I think this is the answer, not going to lie. Pick a char, and develop the fuck out of it. Just because your ID has a ZoI, doesn't mean it's RP locked to those systems.
![[Image: cdSeFev.png]](http://i.imgur.com/cdSeFev.png)
