Advertising Disco

[=Hellfire=]

Seeing that activity is very low currently, and fearing that this mod will die sooner or later, why not try to revive it a bit with some advertising on the most important social media and sharing platforms?

Facebook, twitter, imgur and all the other fancy sites people love to hang out these days would be perfect to trigger a bit of nostalgia among the freelancer vets, interest new players who never heard of it and look for something less complicated and expensive than Elite, Star Citizen or the other hardware heavy space sims.

Maybe even make a server wide ooRP event coupled with a voucher code given on the ad, to help newcomers who present this code to get started with a few mil credits.

Or add a starter system where they can get to know the world of Discovery FL without too heavy consequences for ooRP behavior, just to spark the interest to dive into it more and maybe stay safe from people who would very likely blow them up just for lulz.

I came back after 2 years, and seeing that the activity has dropped even more, without some efforts to draw attention is a bit saddening...

Let's be honest, the only advertisement so far is on ModDB, at least what I found so far, and that is a very niche platform imo. Older players who would love to dive back into an expanded Freelancer usually don't spend time surfing the web for a nostalgia inducing space sim, it's more triggered by suddenly "stumbling" upon something like an advertisement or a mention on websites, social media platforms, sharing sites, stuff like that.

So, is there anything we could do to try and bring Disco a bit more to the "frontpages"? Maybe even including donations from long time players to finance a more "pro" process?

I really think this mod and the community involved should keep existing.

[SnakThree]

https://twitter.com/DiscoGC

---

[Misfit]

whoever owns this facebook page should hand it over to someone that's active

---

[=Hellfire=]

https://twitter.com/DiscoGC

it's outdated...

Who runs this account?

whoever owns this facebook page should hand it over to someone that's active

It's already good that there are things in place, but now it needs to be up to date...

Would be good to have admins or GMs consider doing something or the mod will inevitably die out....

I already posted a thread in another gaming community where I am active in hopes that might spark some interest.

[SnakThree]

https://twitter.com/DiscoGC

it's outdated...

Who runs this account?

I do. How can it be outdated if it has latest patch and event notices?

---

[=Hellfire=]

https://twitter.com/DiscoGC

it's outdated...

Who runs this account?

I do. How can it be outdated if it has latest patch and event notices?

Ah sorry, might have confused it with the outdated twitter stopping at 2017

[=Hellfire=]

So ye... What else could be done to spark interest?

[Gray_Mouser]

So ye... What else could be done to spark interest?

There's a subreddit for Freelancer https://www.reddit.com/r/freelancer/. Maybe you could advertise there.
Perhaps use one of the videos from the recent events.

...
I really think this mod and the community involved should keep existing.

I don't think that's a problem, the few hardcore fans that are seemingly left over in this mod surely will be roleplaying
as they are used too for quite some time I think. At least if they can resist annoying each other so much, that more and more
of those hardcoreplayers are leaving (I think I witnessed already at least 3 players quitting or taking a longer hiatus in the about 5
weeks I am here. One of those might have been annoyed that his 2 latest POBs where destructed by players that belonged
to his own house system. A GM left because he was overworked rl, made mistakes and earned a lot of critique, a longtime
player had a sort of burn out in behalf of the mod.)


And now unfortunately to some negative things at least as I see them:

I came to Discovery because that was the only Mod where still some people were playing, but it is a bit hard to like this mod,
it is not really Freelancer anymore since a lot of the genius features of FL are modded away:

You have real difficulties to make missions here since in many cases the npc kill you faster than you can blink even in
missions that pay nearly nothing (seemingly weapons have been nerfed over and over and I'd lie if I'd say that I understand
how you equip your ship correctly here and with what, you can call me a n00b that doesn't speak your jargon (I tried to ask
people what they mean with SNAC and SNUB but maybe not explicitely enough). It's quite irritating that you have weapons
that force you nearly to be in direct contact to your opponent to work. Basically that seem to be knifes that are named guns.

FL normally let's you choose between a lot of different paths (jumpholes or -gates), you can build very complex reputations
via shooting the right npc and buying bribes (this system isn't really flexible here anymore because the ids set reputations
that are quite fixed, I can understand that this is part of the roleplay but ...) and that normally gives you very much freedom
to go whereever you want with your character (but not on Discovery). It looks like the pirates wanted still easy prey even
with sinking player numbers and tried to convince the GMs to concentrate the players on certain paths.

For a mod that is that old it is quite irritating how much smaller and bigger bugs still exist. It is not really what you would
name a Gesamtkunstwerk in my native language because it misses some kind of natural flow, while there is of course great
and mind-boggling artwork in parts (like the custom lanes in Gallia and the general design of the systems there). I think I never
saw such impressing systems in a mod. I can see that is difficult to make small changes with every patch to adjust the mod to
the roleplay story line and that this of course results in new small oversights that have to be patched next time.

The forum is a bit overwhelming for a newbie as well since it seems that players are spending more time there than ingame.
And that makes it often hard to find information you are searching for. I am quite sure many of the players here could write
and sell LitRPG on Amazon and maybe they are doing this already.

What is even worse I somehow miss the social interaction here that is the soul of an online game, it makes nearly no difference
if I play on the server I came from where I am mostly alone nowadays or if I am here. Ok that might be mainly my fault since
I have no headset at the moment and ooRP part of the game might take place on Discord nowadays while ingame only some
stilted role play phrases are exchanged.

I appologize that I didn't really mince words here but I thought it could help to see some matters with the eyes of somebody
who might belong to the group of people you want to attract with advertising.

[NoMe]

to be curious, a story with 5 existing years, it count?

probably not? or yes?

[Ash]

Discovery right now is really cliquey. There’s no shortage of personal, factional and idealogical rivalry. As a new player i’d look at that and think, ‘yeesh, why get involved in all that?’.

I’m all for advertising, but we need a positive image. First we need to clean up our act; stabilise and unify as a community or this will just become another thing to argue about.

EDIT: Inb4 someone takes that as kindling to take a dig at someone, probably management.

---