How to Save Discovery Freelancer

[Erremnart]

Other RP games have system like - you 'die', you don't recall the incident because you lost. It's not permadeath, but it helps with 'kill all witnesses' situations.

[Darius]

Reporting evidence after dying is meta gaming *

Darius you really wouldn't like a permakill system.

I don't mean a permakill system but one that'd no longer accept the escape pod meta. I'm sure you understand what I'm trying to say, anyway.

[Mímir]

You're suggesting to limit something that makes people log to a group of ID's that can already pretty much shoot everything everywhere, I don't think that'll save discovery or help with activity in any way. What needs to happen is making sure that fights are fun for both sides, everyone should feel like they accomplished something and didn't just die for nothing during a fight, but people aren't willing to drop their ego and give a blue every now and then, instead they cloak and run and dock the second they can

How are you going to get fair fights when a faction player is encouraged kill any hostile ship they see, no matter if the target is a newbie, in a transport, doing missions or whatever? There's no leniency at all, no lower bar.

I urge you to take a look at the internal rewards boards, take a gander at some of the targets and the RP leading to those kills and then ask yourself if you think the player on the other side had a good time or really considered the fight 'fair'. Would they log for a spanking again? Could some of those situations not have been resolved without violence or at least with a bit of dialogue? I see no reason for these killboards to have blanket ID-wide bounties at all.

IMO it's counter-productive to actively encourage hyper-aggressive behaviour 24/7. New recruits eager to impress will shoot just about anything for a blue message, it's only natural when anything is a viable target for the internal boards.

I get that Navy players are probably ultra-bored in the absence of a war, and perhaps don't see a reason to log if not for getting blue messages, which is why I initially proposed a war to direct some of that energy towards something a bit more constructive and even-sided. I know wars have always made 'the community' get its panties in a twist, so probably won't happen unless it is carefully scripted, poorly narrated, and insanely boring for all involved.

However, rolling around like a big gang stomping out lone newbie Bactrians in Liberty or chasing transports with Battlecruisers kinda reduces naval roleplay IMO, and it puts up a steep barrier for newbie unlawful players which feeds into the negative cycle of "boredom->violence->more boredom with less targets->even more violence" and so on. It's not a matter of "just log and play the game lolz", because people have other things to spend their free time on, other games they could play. If they have a miserable experience, they are not going to stick around. Again, factions setting higher standards for themselves could help alleviate some of that. Instead of players logging for any kill, they could log for quality kill.

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[Czechmate]

You're suggesting to limit something that makes people log to a group of ID's that can already pretty much shoot everything everywhere, I don't think that'll save discovery or help with activity in any way. What needs to happen is making sure that fights are fun for both sides, everyone should feel like they accomplished something and didn't just die for nothing during a fight, but people aren't willing to drop their ego and give a blue every now and then, instead they cloak and run and dock the second they can

How are you going to get fair fights when a faction player is encouraged kill any hostile ship they see, no matter if the target is a newbie, in a transport, doing missions or whatever? There's no leniency at all, no lower bar.

I don't follow, how is this different between Navy and Unlawfuls or Bounty hunters or Freelancers? This is literally how all blanked bounty and rewards boards work.

[Commandantt]

you can't save disco because it is already dead like we all
just turn off the server and let us go to the better place

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[Reeves]

I honestly find myself agreeing with @Mímir almost in entirety. I do find it an endless source of irony that people will flag down what should be commonsense with nonsense, but I guess that's the only "rhetoric" that'll work as some kind of a counter.

There should be a meaningful war between two or more Houses either directly or indirectly that shakes up the status quo and has long lasting consequences for the regions involved, including the Houses that participated. And this is bound to happen one way or another for the simple reason of the current status quo making conflict between Houses inevitable.

Naturally, people will never have a shortage of things to complain about even when the team is working and putting out regular updates. But this isn't cause for concern but rather a sign that the vocal cliques need to get over themselves and remember that their roles as players is to be participants in a story, rather than trying to manipulate what that story should be.

As for people's mindsets and conduct, that's harder to change. But the hope is that with time new people will come to embody the change this community should be striving for. Rather than settling for mediocrity. I can only hope we start trying to speed up said process with a newsletter and attempts at advertising.

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[Shimamori]

Another poorly written war will surely not contribute to activity and would die out just as quickly as Ku-Ga war and without contributing anything lorewise.

InRP houses must be tired of wars. Status quo is actually politically good for the houses as the risk of another big war is a great deterrence same as mutually assured WMD destruction is in real life. Trade is more lucrative than war as well.

If an RP friendly conflict is to occur it should be a small proxy unofficial war of cloak and dagger by corps and intelligence and sporadic navy involvement in border systems or an exterritorial conflict for distant systems for exotic resources / sci data / power projection.

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[Binski]

Do it.

Wall of text here, based on personal experiences, marked the central bits in red.

I'd say just make the game fun to play and focus on that.

If people have fun with jumptrading etc. then go for it, the economy has already been completely destroyed by missions and NPC payouts. The old truism of jumptrading being bad because it removes piracy interactions is irrelevant anyways since conventional trading is pretty much non-existent already. When you can do missions in a VHF that pays nearly a million credits per NPC kill you've already completely buried the concept of trading as the catalyst for player interaction.

Currently there's not a lot of stuff to do, players are spread out and interactions in-game, except for a few specific avenues, are few and far between.

Well said, and that is exactly the point I'm trying to make. The more we can do, the more fun we'll have. Everyone has the same capabilities opened up for them, and its better for people to see what happens when people are online trying that stuff instead of just logging for a mission or a one time event.

As a new player what motivated me was seeing lots of people gathering for big fights in all those cool ships in places like Alpha, Gamma and NY. I'd fly around in a dinky ship and then look at a giant space battle and wanted to grind out money for a big ship to join in that. The Liberty vs Rheinland war, the buzz in both houses when something was brewing and massive fleets were organising and moving through House space. It was a great backdrop, and it was fun to be a part of. It was awesome, stuff was happening that seemed interesting and the bar of entry was quite low, "yes sir"/"no sir" RP where you get clear instructions from your leaders is very easy to get into for new players, and the teams either side were always interested in including new players. It was the same thing that was exciting in vanilla Freelancer: You undock and see a giant Rheinland ship getting exploded right in front of you and you instantly want to be a part of what's going on.

I think new players today are generally initially motivated by the same thing (the arcade shooter gameplay in Freelancer/Discovery is actually fun and engaging, even in 2021), except due to the direction the mod has taken story-wise as well as limited player numbers, new players are mostly introduced to that sort of thing by the Liberty Navy only. They trade, get some ships and join up to do some NPC missions or to hang out in a big group, but then there's practically nothing to shoot at, which results in 5 lawful ships on your tail every time you log an unlawful. It's not bad intention, it's just that they are bored and eager to play. They want to have fun but there's so little to do, so they swarm. The unlawful playstyle where absolutely everything in the game is pitted against you at all times is just not very attractive unless you enjoy constant PVP, but without anyone to regularly play the "badguys" the game will just die, there will be nothing to do but limited text chat in a one-line format and shooting NPC's. There should be a bigger incentive to *not* go the Liberty Navy route and instead choose a direct adversary to generate more activity and fun. All games with PVP elements are ruined when practically all players choose to play on 1 team, it's something to avoid like the plague.

Aaaand that's why I've been pushing for that Faction Challenge System so bad. We don't actually need wars, just the ability to use force on territory, that only comes from a group's combined efforts. If we had sieges people could earn for their factions by doing a bunch of stuff, and then participated in the battles, that could go back and forth over time, there would always be real stuff to do, to get involved with. At least then we'd have the traffic for bounty lists and piracy to not be overkill.

I think a war without a clear "goodguy" and "badguy" between Liberty and another major house would be a good thing, and that capital NPC missions should be available exclusively in contested systems to spice things up a bit and introduce real risk/reward.


I think another (very) good idea would be for naval factions to remove internal killboards or at the very least limit them to tagged ships and listed individuals only.

Again, without diverging into that area, the Faction Challenge System literally fixes all of these problems, it just needs to be adopted and operated (administered, if you will) by those who hold ownership of this place.

The last thing this place needs is another pre-written, dictated war. We have an environment here that gives us all we need to have functioning battles/wars. If we adopt a system, all they'd need to do is change diplomacies when a war breaks out, and suddenly their ability to siege another faction's bases would open up. Then we would most certainly be best off with letting player factions earn and drive the next sieges, make the plans, use player resources to get it done as best they can, and those who would like to oppose should be able to do the same. Without that, we'll never have as healthy and active a world here as people would like. I still think its not too late, and instead, most of disco's next years should be doing just that.

Now, you can try whatever NPC balance magic you want, but it will just not change as the only thing that can change it in an archaic game that lacks matchmaking is one thing - goodwill of the players and communication. E.g. a leader each can arrange a rougly balanced fight if they just talk, experienced players can have sense and roughly balance sides by taking both numbers and skill differences into account and staying out etc. etc.

And of course then there's signup events.

Also solved by the faction challenge system. To me, fights always best balance when there's a real issue going on. People just have to know that its a standard, instead of a one time thing, and the change will mean people will all suddenly have tons to do. I will always believe that sign up events are also overkill in how they function. "No this, no that" No offense, but you shouldn't be able to do that, you shouldn't be able to change the rules of the server for a one time mini-match, on an RP server. All events should be over a real issue, I guarantee there would never be a need for sign up lists if we did it that way. Otherwise sign up events just push people away I think, instead of doing what they did originally, which was create a battle for people to jump in on. Sour kids rose to power and decided to force newcomers to stay out, to make their victories easier. They're just another nail that helps keep the lid of the coffin for this place firmly closed.

Not intending to make this offensive but don't listen to whatever ***** Lemon posted.

The """raids""" in Liberty(if you can even call them that) are 10 mins fights where it's either 1) unlawfuls get clapped in mere seconds sometimes 2) lawfuls lose because the unlawfuls bring out half the server so nobody will log to counter them. This is anything but fun for both sides and just leads to people turning into blue whores that'll shoot and gank anything that comes at them. A good example of this is the Gallic war which according to many bittervets was "good" and "of quality". Couldn't be much further from the truth when the actual gameplay in it was just GRN playerbase getting demolished by BAF, Outcasts, LN, Gaians etc. (Those who joined during the Enclave know even better what I mean by this)

As for the mentioned Kusari problem, MAYBE try for once to look from another opinion on what the actual situation is
All I'll say is, there have been multiple attempts to restore lawfuls to at least a playable state. All of these attemps failed because GC- and their buddies ganked everyone who dared log an unlawful out of the damn mod.

As a last thing I'll mention, the game can't be saved
It's 20 years old by now (almost) and the playerbase too small and too fractured (and I mean it seriously, out of the 150 players left, more than half are here just to complain and have pixels)
Enjoy it while you can and use the opportunity to make it better, at least for whatever period of time it'll still be in a playable state.

Yes but I always like to remind people that for the first 4-5 years, Gallia only ever won, and advanced, and it seemed like an interactive war, but no matter what Bretonia's side did, it never mattered. I laugh when I see people say Gallia got short-changed in the war, they had it handed to them so much, they had to ease up at the end. I mean, the fate of Leeds proved that someone here is, well, kind of demented. No offense, but Gallia deserved worse after the pre-script always ignored the activity of players, and never allowed for much variation.

But I'm 110% positive this place can be saved, it just needs to go in a new direction. If we want most of those complaining players to come back, maybe we could finally end the tyranny that has ahold of this place. Its like we have a dictatorial goverment that keeps us oppressed, its been going on for years, and either those who can do something are too detatched, or lack a lot of soul.

If I was in charge tomorrow, this place would be vastly more populated in-game within a month, and that trend would only continue. There is no reason for this place to be dead, its all because of introverted decisions that were all about protecting some players over others.

raids are only enjoyable when there's similar numbers and similar varieties of ships

a pack of bombers dropping on a lone cap or six battleships and battlecruisers dropping on a pack of fighters and gunboats on the other hand

shouldve left this thread dead btw, the fact you still lobby for jump trading is just the icing on your multi-layered bad idea cake

Well like I say to others, if you want people online, we have to allow for more to do online. Anything might help at this point, and yet nothing is ever being done. Maybe if players like yourself also advocated for serious changes, like adding a system for sieges, you'd have some balanced battles to jump in on again finally.

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again, and expecting different results. You seem to only ever want to keep things the same here, yet isn't that exactly what has to be the problem? We don't ever do anything significantly different here, and all it results in is decline. How are my changes really bad, to the point where they're worse than what we have already? So to me, its literally insane when you guys shun my proposed changes when it should be beyond obvious that the the things you cling to, like your belief jump trading steals your piracy dreams, are short sighted, and only hurt the place, causing the problems that you hate. You're only fighting yourself Saronsen, let go of what you fear to lose, and you never know what you might gain!

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

Ah yes, coming from the one who came to this place at the end of the war, joined with the losing side, demanded they be favored and protected by the staff, literally had them change the game to protect your faction when you're not online, get made a dev, then leave because you're still unsatisfied with the entire experience.

If you have a problem with my story, just say so bud. But again, ask yourself, what does it really matter to this place, its the deadest place on the internet! You guys should be begging for people like me to spruce up the place with epic stories, but you're so full of yourself you lose sight of what's really important here. You care about that, yet you also claim we shouldn't care about having real battles, player driven story or wars? If everything is only scripted, and nothing unofficial really gets recognized, why do you care? You were forced to victory, until they finally pulled a fast one on you I guess. If that's so, seems deserved. Too bad for the Enclave, if only we had a fair system where your faction could try to gain and hold its territory with real battles, eh?

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.

So if its not so serious, you can relax over my freighter story, of which there will not likely be any more because this place is sadly dead and refuses to change.

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.

To reply to both, I agree with Karlotta here that 'just logging' is like forcing people to live with no way to make any purpose out of life. Its especially true that the 'torch bearer' or 'preserver' attitude that they should keep this place exactly the same forever, is as self destructive as it gets for this place. That is the #1 reason behind its decline, not it getting old. People love this game and the engine/interface, its just that there could be so much more to do, but priority went to balance, which means tweaking ship stats to favor some players over others. Those that remain are kings of the hill now, but it's an empty hill. Instead of thinking of this place as something to be preserved, realize its still technically alive enough to simply be let out of the cage to grow again. Some change should and could be accepted.

Which is why I say, just designate some bases ( a lot) as open to be targeted by OF's for something to do, and a genuine way to grow, or at least keep a real effort up that is technically not totally impossible or pointless. When things, options, are locked out, by things like forced story, knowing there's no point to trying a lot of things, drove people away.

Naturally, people will never have a shortage of things to complain about even when the team is working and putting out regular updates. But this isn't cause for concern but rather a sign that the vocal cliques need to get over themselves and remember that their roles as players is to be participants in a story, rather than trying to manipulate what that story should be.

That's where I have to disagree. To me, that's a control factor, so someone can force people into being useless, so they can succeed despite not really deserving it as much.

This is a roleplay server, but I see no reason why players shouldn't be able to come here with the understanding and intent to 'get involved' and especially with story. That means, it always made more sense for players to try to drive the story, than it be dictated. A player driven story is basically like democracy folks, its more fair than a dictatorship. Yet many of you live in democracies that I'm sure you wouldn't suddenly want to trade for a dictatorship? I just really don't think that ever was the right attitude here, player involvement, and a systematic way to ensure fair application of what players do, means people can help drive story, with their in-game deeds, and it make sense within a framework of options.

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The Further Exploits of Captain Antares (August 2015) │ (alt) JonasHudson
*Argo | Special Operative ID (Approved Request)* | Argo Compilation Video
################ *Proposed OF Challenge System* ################
############### The Book of Piracy (Piracy Tutorial) ###############
############### Binski Alamo (Youtube Channel) ###############

[Binski]

You're suggesting to limit something that makes people log to a group of ID's that can already pretty much shoot everything everywhere, I don't think that'll save discovery or help with activity in any way. What needs to happen is making sure that fights are fun for both sides, everyone should feel like they accomplished something and didn't just die for nothing during a fight, but people aren't willing to drop their ego and give a blue every now and then, instead they cloak and run and dock the second they can

Yes but this is basically your subconscious saying 'I prefer when my opponent just dies, instead of fully tries, and that's your idea of fun.

I grew up on Starfleet folks. Ever hear of the Kobayashi Maru? Its a test of character, to see how some prospective commanders deal with suddenly being forced into a no-win scenario. Do they panic? Do they whine? Do they run without even fighting? Do they fight to the death? Or actually figure out a way to win?

I have gone up against a lot of people here that just want their opponents to give up and die to save them some convenience, that that is as weak as it gets! Fight to the death, do all you can! This is why I hate the wall running rule, or that you explode when you get so far out. To me, if you can't close the gap, you lose, you should be the one to drop your ego and admit its time to head back. If you can, you play a space game, and having the patience to actually chase, catch and fight someone would prove a lot about your own character. But if there is a way to escape, take it! Denying a blue, is another form of blue folks.

In other words, this may be an arcade shooter, but the server is an RP server, and keeping battles quick and painless for the pvpwhores is another thing that has been dragging the place down.

The last time I was chased (which included Groshyr), I dragged them out about 15 mins, not totally to the wall. I'm sure the lost their minds, but to me, that is so weak its ridiculous. Who really should lose, the one with the patience and stamina, or the one without? I should be able to waste their time, make them pay for the chase, since they won't let go either. And I did stop and fight, a bomber and cruiser, in my Pelican! And I went down with the ship! But what irritates me, is Groshyr only chases because you don't even have to fly back after the chase, you just self kill to save time. Very Inrp, I'm sure it made for an epic story! So you guys can act like I'm in the wrong there, but you guys are just kids with no patience or sense of adventure to me. It makes me wonder why people play space games but don't have time for long trips.

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The Further Exploits of Captain Antares (August 2015) │ (alt) JonasHudson
*Argo | Special Operative ID (Approved Request)* | Argo Compilation Video
################ *Proposed OF Challenge System* ################
############### The Book of Piracy (Piracy Tutorial) ###############
############### Binski Alamo (Youtube Channel) ###############

[Arcana]

I still think that some kind of Nomad and Wild invasion all over the place will be cool. Nomads were stopped in Vanilla, but not entirely. Planet Toledo could be brought back to life, the real Osiris battleship could be brought back, there are those lore systems that could be made as distant worlds that Crayter left in first place in their lore to come to Sirius sector. There's that Babylon sector https://discoverygc.com/wiki/Babylon_Sector with Sammaran riders.

When i fight i notice people are just afraid to die and just run and dock to save the blue day. In this game you need to die thousands of times to get better (at least for me) ------> will be cool if blue message thing is removed and replaced with something else. If people are so afraid, just make a funny message pop ---> Player 1 didn't know what hit him/Gunz spinned player 1 comfi cockpit, Player 2 keeps the shells coming/ Player 1 Went Kabooom!

I think we should just get out of 100% Freelancer stereotype and try some different things