I've spent a lot of time thinking about discovery lifespans and lifecycles.
I've looked at players, and I've seen a couple kinds. You've your obvious Gamers, here because they enjoy PVP and can survive on the underbelly of the RP, and you've your RPers, who are here mainly because it is meant to be a niche community. The RPers built what was orriginaly a PVP server into an RP server, and kicked out, or convinced them to leave. The community became a niche, with people here who didn't particularly enjoy PVP, who would rather play a game of make believe.
We've had plenty of PVP players join and acclimate over the years, and turn into RP players. The community of RP players can convert a fraction of PVP players to RPing players, and I suspect the magnitude of that fraction is dependent on the size and dedication of the RP community. Long ago, I said this, with the stipulation that the RP community would convert or force out most of the PVP Gamers to leave. I would like to rescind that statement. We've taken in enough to create a growing PVP community in our RP server. I believe that community is growing, and will consume the RP. Our liver is not large enough.
On player's lifespans, we have, across my two fundamental groups, a couple forms:
There are people who are outrageous enough that we kick them out, in their early stages...They are, in my opinion, the most likely to actually be forced out. Others are only rarely, if ever, forced to leave.
There are the short term players, who drift into the game, and quickly leave, maybe they're prodigies, or perhaps they're horrors, but they lose interest fast or find it not to their taste.
We've long range players, too, who generally get addicted, and stay until the community chews them up, or the game changes from what attracted them, or perhaps they lose their good friends, the people who made the game fun for them.
Before leaving, a long term player may find that they've withdrawn from the game, possibly because of the forums. The Forums have an attraction to anyone who is attached to this game, because they often are attached to some era of the community's development, and would like to make it that way.
A major part of the difference between the era I am trying to preserve, the time I consider the best, is the current faction/indie balance, as well as the number of players on the server. The factions create a measure of order in a make believe world. We are playing cops and robbers, and often enough, someone wants to bring in superpowers, or a giant mechanical spider. The factions, often enough, don't like that. I don't like it.
The rules on this server are mainly in place to avoid PVP imbalances, with a shell that enforces the RP, but not a specific RP. It just says that you have to RP. Factions built a cohesive imaginary world, but with the number of indies, and indies who don't even know what that world is like, the world dissolves. I is hard to maintain a world when there is a constant influx of people who call it a game, which makes no sense in the world characters, or those people who create imaginary worlds that don't quite fit.
I see disco getting worse. There has been a great influx of people who aren't looking for the niche RP community, and those people are going to distroy what disco is. Some people are fine with that, others claim it wont happen. Still more, tell me that we need people, because FL is a dieing game. My disco isn't much like the FL game. It will die before FL dies, if this persists. Others, good RPing blokes, say that disco isn't losing, that it will be what we make of it. I think they are very, very wrong, and sitting peacefully in a boiling cup.
The reason there are so many new people - heavily pvp-oriented people at that - coming to discovery is because it's one of the few good freelancer servers still running. Take a look around at the others... they're all empty, or close to it.
Would you really want to play on a server with 5-6 people spanning all of sirius, or a server with 120-150 people online almost 24/7?
The point of a multiplayer game is to interact with other people, and the discovery server gives quite a lot of player interaction. Most other servers do not enforce RP, and this server is quite strict about it - so it takes people from pvp servers a long time to adapt and figure out how to behave here. You just need to give them time.
I wouldn't be that negative actually. I can see and understand the frustration, where it comes from. But call me naive, despite all my regular skepticism I do believe in a better future. Even if I know I can be wrong and wouldn't deny that things perhaps aren't as good as I try to see them. Somewhere I do share same thoughts. But for all that is worth I'd like to stay a bit optimistic, for a good reason I hope.
The problems are see are that there are people that see Discovery as "theirs" and they do not like new people coming in with different ideas and different ways of doing things. That is a big hurdle for new people that come here bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to RP. Then a vet treats them like crap because the new guys RP is not
100% sound or the new guy just though it would be cool to fly a battleship.
Now there are bad players that just want to pwn things. If it is explained to them how to RP and they still don't want to hear it then release the hounds. But people need to have more patience. I think the vets need to step back and remember what it was to be new. They need to stop foretelling the doom of the server and be the leaders they claim to be.
I firmly believe that good RP will keep us alive. If the hard-core RP'ers out there don't lose patience with the B.S. we put up with and leave, we will prevail. There has always been the other element here, there always will be. But this being the community that it is, with all the dedicated loyal players, we'll rise above it. Similar to this scenario : I invite 20 people over. 3 don't like the music I'm playing. They will either deal with it, or seek fun and free drinks elsewhere. I'm not changing what I like to listen to, not at my party. The same goes here.
The only thing that will bring us down is if too many veteran RP'ers let the BS get the best of them and get disgusted and leave. I consider myself a good RP player and supporter of this community. I've tried to make reasonable posts with helpful thoughts (or so I think) here on the forums. I've run across some things that irritate the hell out of me, but I'll not let someone drive me away from what I consider to be the coolest game/mod available.
I'll just go my way, enjoying myself in-game and I will find a good time out there. Sirius is one BIG place.
And I plan on sticking around 'till the almighty Igiss pulls the plug, or we run out of electricity and back-up generators.
You ask me why Im weary, why I cant speak to you.
You blame me for my silence, say Its time I changed and grew.
But the war's still going on dear, and theres no end that I know...
And I cant say if were ever...
I cant say if were ever gonna be free.
Best evidence on how factions fare: look at what's going on with the dinosaurs, like =BSG=/=CR=, AW and a couple of others, that stay in the shadows. I'm barely seeing any Asgards on and I'm having a hard time dragging some of my guys ingame for a drill.
It's not that bad - we're many, we're getting over 100 people every day on the server. No need to be /that/ negative, but it's true, that there's way too many indies. I don't really expect everyone willing to be a pirate to join TBH/OPG/RoS, but really, those all indies, who hang outside Malta could wear RoS/BLS/101st tags, couldn't they?
And yes... there's enough of us, old chestnuts to keep it all running.
' Wrote:The reason there are so many new people - heavily pvp-oriented people at that - coming to discovery is because it's one of the few good freelancer servers still running. Take a look around at the others... they're all empty, or close to it.
Would you really want to play on a server with 5-6 people spanning all of sirius, or a server with 120-150 people online almost 24/7?
The point of a multiplayer game is to interact with other people, and the discovery server gives quite a lot of player interaction. Most other servers do not enforce RP, and this server is quite strict about it - so it takes people from pvp servers a long time to adapt and figure out how to behave here. You just need to give them time.
Very well said.
//Signed
Why is there 120-150 people online 24/7? In my opinion, it is the Community that made is so and THANK YOU for letting me join.
If Igiss had never put the mod together with the assistance of other modders and a server assembled, and good people pledged their time to be ADMINS and MODERATORS, and PLAYERS, this Community would not have had a place to come together and grow into what it is today.
I'm going to refer some terms as past and present in order to explain a factor I think is the essential difference:
The "past" (Version 4.84 and below)
The "present" (late 4.84 and current version)
We all know that since discovery community was created, there had always been problems. No "era" is a golden era, thus meaning everyone has some problems of itself, not one time has it ever been perfect, its really important to remember that. Then you might ask: Whats the real difference between the "past" and the "present"?
Lets look at the number of players shall we?
In the "past", there was an average between 40-80 players online. Out of these number of players, 80% were factionized players (meaning they have some kind of tag on their name). There existed independents but almost 90% of these independents had a factionizied character.
Now lets take a look at the "present" time:
We have an average of 100-150 players online. Now its reverse - If you do a simple analyze, check the player list for one week , do it once every day. You will start to recognize that between 20-40 out of theee 100-150 players are factionized players. The rest are using "independent names" so to speak. And many of them are not in a faction at all.
It may sound too simple, but with all versions and "eras" there has existed the same type of problems: OORP, Cap ships, PvP whores etc. etc. But the real concrete difference between the "past" and the "present" is the amount of players and the balance between factionizied players versus independents, the proportions are wrong these days and this is the result of that.
This may sound biased, completely off, whatever. But I think this is the real concrete difference, and therefore its also the problem.
Now I'm gonna sit back and wait for one of those Independent-Crusaders to show up. You know who you are.;)
It made an RPer out of me. I came here when I, in a moment of nostalgia, wanted a good old FL multiplayer game. I found a server list and my eyes bulged at the average play count. Compared to ten or five on the other servers, there was no question as to what server to choose. I arrived, found the whole RP thing interesting. I liked the IDs especially, which is the most visible thing you see imeediately. My RP was not that good i felt, but i tried my best to act my role, and i found i really enjoyed it.
Now, not many days of time online later, i've already joined a faction, and i'm already got some grand plans for what i hope will be a pretty interesting RP (I'm making a research vessel, the Freeman Dyson, my research transport, the Von Braun, is gathering funding for it)
But yes, sadly, FL is a dying game. Every time i say that inside myself i feel a sharp sting of sadness and nostalgia, and i wish it was still the early times again.
But they are forever gone. Now, as sort of a final gift, Freelancer has given me a love for RP, and for you.
Discovery is the last dance before the lights come on and the evening is over. We have to accept it.
But what I want surviving is you, the Discovery community. You need a new host soon, so to speak.
But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, so let's keep it up and restrain yourself next time you see a new guy in a capship, and try to teach him in the ways of the RP.