How to Save Discovery Freelancer

[Mímir]

I know that in a pitched battle if you took the strongest line-up of primarily lawful players vs primarily unlawful players, the baddies would likely win, but that's not the point I'm trying to make.

I'm talking about the perspective of a player who just created a Rogue ship and undocks for the first time, what that person will be met with. Or even as a newish player joining a faction, you'd have a much easier time joining the Navy where everything is stacked in your favour and you can always go hug a base if you feel like an enemy player will win the fight. If that same player was to join the Rogues and play solo he'd get smashed a whole lot, and there would be nothing he could do about it. It's EZ-mode vs. Nightmare-mode, but it doesn't have to be like that.

Events, faction-logging for an hour of activity etc. is very different to general activity and just cannot compare. Maybe it's down to timing, but when I log there are usually around 20 players and 3-4 of those are doing mining ops, 5 are Liberty lawfuls in NY and the remaining players are spread accross the giant map. If you log an unlawful ship with a familiar name in Liberty, you're gonna get swarmed.

There are so few players, everyone metagames like hell, so you just have to look at the player list to see there's an unlawful player in the system and go straight to where their most likely position is. As an unlawful player there are so few scenarios where you stand a chance of achieving whatever objective you set out, whether it is to rob a trader, to successfully destroy another fighter and get away, or even have a conversation with a lawful without getting murdered mid-sentence, unless you are a PVP god or fly with wingmen. New and newish players rarely have that option. I wouldn't recommend a new player to make a Rogue character, they would get killed all the time and not have a lot of fun.

I get that there'll probably not be a war, and that the game is what it is, but at the very least, I want to reiterate that I think the internal reward boards should only focus on tagged ships and listed individuals/repeat offenders instead of ID-wide blanket bounties where everything and everyone is a fair target. It should be an internal "Most Wanted" type thing where you target your enemy player factions and individuals that are guilty of various offenses. Prestige kills to boost the faction's reputation and morale, rather than just trawling the bottom for anything they can get. I think internal boards should have standards above and beyond regular boards, really.

If you look at some of the targets that are claimed on internal boards and the rp leading up to it, it's pretty clear that a lot of the ones dying are new players or players that get very little chance of even replying to the /setmsg aimed at them before getting clapped for a report and a reward. It is full-on purge-mode.

The internal boards incentivise exaggerated aggression and that isn't positive neither for gameplay nor for roleplay - I think it's a different story with regular Bounty Hunters and Freelancers as they hunt in limited numbers and don't have the same resources at their disposal, and are roleplay-wise better suited for the role of contracted murderers than the Navy is. When you incentivise killing this heavily, the result is always going to be excessive violence and a disregard for new players, lone players etc. That is something that can easily be rectified by setting higher standards.

---

[Czechmate]

Well if you take a look at 46th board it's either new players shooting other new players, or vets shooting vets.
Also the thing if you do standard lines vs untagged ships you get 5 millon per snub kill.
And when you do 4+ lines of 4+ words non preset roleplay and kill one of the high skill tagged ships you get 26 Million per snub kill - seems like a fine system.

It's true however that sometimes people can get overboard - believe it or not but in Liberty it was the unlawfuls rather than lawfuls that did that with claims. I can tell you that 46th for many months was getting slaughtered so hard over and over without any kills themselves in snubs that the unlawfuls themselves removed them from their rewards boards for a pretty long period - I am still not sure if it was out of pity or because they couldn't keep paying the huge bills racked up by Couden and others or the combination of the two heh.


I personally actually have a problem with freelancers actually - e.g. you log one faction in a region, expect some sort of gameplay and opponents. And then a guy who plays the same generic ships that has multiple parked around the map that kills your unrelated factions in other regions comes and with the same attack line RP he uses in all other houses takes you down without you having a chance - god knows I whined about this in the past and started avoiding these people like the plague. Maybe we do need to look at bounty boards etc.

I'd be interested on what you think about the tiered system 46th has.

[Groshyr]

To save Discovery you should cloak away from interactions, RP with NPCs and call yourself a hero for powergaming an attack on fort made by a freighter~ ezpz, big success

[Mímir]

But it isn't "new players vs. new players", it tends to be "new player with some PVP-training in a combat ship receiving support from a large group vs. a lone actual new player in a transport" etc. It would be a lot better if it was "new faction player vs. new faction player", it would level the playing field a lot. And since you brought it up, yes, I do have a problem with that board, mostly because there are no standards at all and there is a constant influx of new recruits who are constantly incentivised to murder anything. Yes, you get better pay if you up the standards, but you still get paid in credits and glory if you do the bare minimum, and as a new recruit within a faction of course you really want that recognition. Ace Navy pilots keeping score of their kills is naturally a part of Naval roleplay, and in the absence of a war I am wholly onboard with the idea that unlawfuls are the next best thing, but at least keep it to targets that have a chance to protect themselves, i.e. faction ships and listed individuals.

Specifically, the other day I was setting up a new ship and fixing reps and I came across a player doing missions around Alcatraz and exploring jumpholes. He was flying around in his cute little Rogue ship and looked like he was having fun, I tried to RP with him but he was clearly new and just enjoying doing his thing. I log off and an hour later I see that new player in an internal claim, splatted accross the windshield of a Navy fighter. The RP leading up to it was clearly /setmsg and the poor Rogue barely even replied. He was executed just so someone could post a claim on an internal board. If I was that player I would either go "screw this game" or go make a lawful ship instead and not be KoS.

I think it's really bad for both game- and roleplay to have this giant gang constantly incentivised to kill everything, no matter what. In a situation between two hostile players that could be resolved by roleplay, the outcome is always going to be a fight because these players are rewarded for kills. Unless they've attacked you before and lost, in which case they just hug the nearest base.

What made Disco fun for both new players and veterans alike was that the scope of possibility was only limited by imagination, that's not the case when everyone is incentivised to murder - it pushes every situation towards a fight. Extreme violence used to make Bounty Hunters stand out as the brutal killers they are, but now the bounty hunting serial-killer playstyle is a part of Naval gameplay and RP and I do think it's counter-productive to incentivise that. On that note, I think it's similarly problematic that a lot of boards that host blanket bounties no longer require registration.

---

[Major.]

As someone who really tried to leave Disco and didn‘t play for ~ 3 months, I need to say, that I enjoy the game again. Probably because I only play 3 factions anymore and don‘t take disco to serious anymore.

Yes, we don‘t have that many players, but I experienced some nice dudes yesterday. Just play the game, find something fun and don‘t play the game like a tryhard.

---

[tommygun209]

To save Discovery Freelancer ya'll need to stop complaining and just play the game, bigger numbers will attract more new players and look at that! Disco is alive and kicking again! It's that simple, isn't it?

---

Information | Recruitment | Internal Comms | Feedback | Discord

MacRory's Irregulars

HAPPINESS, FREE, FOR EVERYONE, AND LET NO ONE BE FORGOTTEN

[Groshyr]

As someone who really tried to leave Disco and didn‘t play for ~ 3 months, I need to say, that I enjoy the game again. Probably because I only play 3 factions anymore and don‘t take disco to serious anymore.

Yes, we don‘t have that many players, but I experienced some nice dudes yesterday. Just play the game, find something fun and don‘t play the game like a tryhard.

^

1) Don't play 100500 factions -- absolutely agree, this leads to burn out, as well as to involvement in pixeljerking circles
2) Breaks are required -- without them you will have the burnout cumulative effect, slowly turning toxic bittervet (just look at some players in general discord lounge)
3) Don't take Discovery serious -- it has never actually been serious RP project, expecting something serious from it is just wrong approach to the project. It's a light RP project, always been. Some people may say about decreased quality -- answer is simple, its more obvious that people who expected serious RP burnt out and left, leaving only people who having fun and don't expect it to be ultra super realistic.

I have spoken serious this time, despite Blinski's thread moment

[Karlotta]

To save Discovery Freelancer ya'll need to stop complaining and just play the game, bigger numbers will attract more new players and look at that! Disco is alive and kicking again! It's that simple, isn't it?

No, it is not.

There are simple solutions for many of disco's problems, but just doing nothing to fix problems isn't one of them, and has never been no matter how often it was put in practice.

Unfortunately even the simple solutions that benefit almost everyone and harm no one are totally incomprehensible for the "staff"... or rather... the "staff culture" we're stuck with. Mainly because people are chosen as "torch bearers and legacy preservers" (translation: keep everything as is), and are thus of similar caliber as the people who troll every attempt to fix things and who provide us with brilliant wisdom like "just don't care for the game or other people, and you'll be cool like me" when people are trying to address the glaring and re-occurring problems that have been driving new and old people away from disco for many many years.

---

User was banned for: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...tid=200950
Time left: (Permanent)

[Czechmate]

But it isn't "new players vs. new players", it tends to be "new player with some PVP-training in a combat ship receiving support from a large group vs. a lone actual new player in a transport" etc. It would be a lot better if it was "new faction player vs. new faction player", it would level the playing field a lot. And since you brought it up, yes, I do have a problem with that board, mostly because there are no standards at all and there is a constant influx of new recruits who are constantly incentivised to murder anything. Yes, you get better pay if you up the standards, but you still get paid in credits and glory if you do the bare minimum, and as a new recruit within a faction of course you really want that recognition. Ace Navy pilots keeping score of their kills is naturally a part of Naval roleplay, and in the absence of a war I am wholly onboard with the idea that unlawfuls are the next best thing, but at least keep it to targets that have a chance to protect themselves, i.e. faction ships and listed individuals.

Specifically, the other day I was setting up a new ship and fixing reps and I came across a player doing missions around Alcatraz and exploring jumpholes. He was flying around in his cute little Rogue ship and looked like he was having fun, I tried to RP with him but he was clearly new and just enjoying doing his thing. I log off and an hour later I see that new player in an internal claim, splatted accross the windshield of a Navy fighter. The RP leading up to it was clearly /setmsg and the poor Rogue barely even replied. He was executed just so someone could post a claim on an internal board. If I was that player I would either go "screw this game" or go make a lawful ship instead and not be KoS.

I think it's really bad for both game- and roleplay to have this giant gang constantly incentivised to kill everything, no matter what. In a situation between two hostile players that could be resolved by roleplay, the outcome is always going to be a fight because these players are rewarded for kills. Unless they've attacked you before and lost, in which case they just hug the nearest base.

What made Disco fun for both new players and veterans alike was that the scope of possibility was only limited by imagination, that's not the case when everyone is incentivised to murder - it pushes every situation towards a fight. Extreme violence used to make Bounty Hunters stand out as the brutal killers they are, but now the bounty hunting serial-killer playstyle is a part of Naval gameplay and RP and I do think it's counter-productive to incentivise that. On that note, I think it's similarly problematic that a lot of boards that host blanket bounties no longer require registration.

I mean sure you can lobby with the staff to abolish all blanket rewards and bounty boards, it would make some sense I suppose.

Or to have them only vs tagged ships . . . but often the random new solo untagged ships are aces.

You also have to look at it from a weaker player's standpoint though. I find conn boring and never really used it. I play mostly on underdog factions. And having rewards and bounty boards in regions where you can't win bigger fights just means I can go in against big odds, knowing the fight will be lost but at least I can geta chance at getting a kill and some bragging rights. And they have been around for a very long time, give incentive to get to OF to be able to offer bounties not just to your player faction. Doubt the staff would ban them at this point really.

[Mímir]

I mean sure you can lobby with the staff to abolish all rewards and bounty boards, it would make some sense I suppose.

That is not at all what I am suggesting.

Or to have them only vs tagged ships . . . but often the random new solo untagged ships are aces.

Exactly, so factions put those characters on their specified KoS list along with tagged ships.

You also have to look at it from a weaker player's standpoint though. I find conn boring and never really used it. I play mostly on underdog factions. And having rewards and bounty boards in regions where you can't win bigger fights just means I can go in against big odds, knowing the fight will be lost but at least I can geta chance at getting a kill and some bragging rights

And I think that's just fine for registered hunters. It's totally fair game, and that is pretty much how I play too on bounty hunting characters. I don't see why Naval factions should be incentivised to commit murder though. Instead of having rewards for blues, you could just put it in a RP combat log like old times - it would incentivise roleplay and lead to other solutions than violence to every single encounter.

What I object to is the logical outcome of having internal rewards boards with low standards, and that outcome is Navy faction players actively seeking out and destroying newbie unlawfuls doing missions, defenseless transports and so on and so forth. There's a constant incentive to pull the trigger no matter what. As an entity, the Liberty Navy is *way* too aggressive*, and in my view the primary causes are boredom and glory hunting via internal boards. RP combat logs are just fine for glory hunting, really, and would diversify the possible outcome of any given situation.

*Mind a lot of the players are really nice, will give duels etc.

---