Posts: 3,107
Threads: 96
Joined: May 2012
Staff roles: Balance Dev
Yes, population is the issue. But no matter how often you say it, doubling (or tripling) down on the single worst mechanic our mod has to offer - base sieges - is in my mind not the solution Discovery needs, and certainly not one that would make me more inclined to log in, nor any of the people I commonly play(ed) with (you could call these people friends if you so desired).
At its core, Discovery is built to only really be fun when you're playing in an area of space with high player density. Playing LPI when I started out and having to filter the hundreds of tlagsnet lines per minute for potential Cardamine smugglers (people still bothered with that stuff back then, despite the pay being just as bad if not worse) was actually almost stressful, that's how much was going on in Liberty at the time. People would naturally fly patrols, knowing that they did not have to seek out players on the player list and could simply bump into them organically while playing their actual role as policemen or navy pilots, keeping the lanes safe.
The behaviour we see nowadays - people logging in for 30 minutes to get a quick fight and then log off again - is just a symptom, it's not the cause. The rather underwhelming level of roleplay I believe is also - unfortunately - mostly a symptom. Roleplay was bad "back in the day", too, there was just more of everything, which meant there was more "good" roleplay in that giant pool of garbage as well. You simply needed to ignore the BAF ID'd Humpback trading through New York while Rheinland and Liberty were at war and the Humpback was an illegal ship. Or try your hardest to explain, in roleplay, the laws and that their ship and ID combination was a little odd - if you had the patience.
So we do in fact need something to get people to log in in the first place. PoBs aren't a bad start, if their execution and integration in the game world was a bit better. Disconnecting their commodities from the economy was a mistake, in my opinion. There was something interesting about placing your PoB in a location that offered the necessary commodities close by and at a good price. Nowadays with the prices all being the same that bit of depth is gone. Discovery's also clearly screwed up by not somehow integrating ores and NPC drops into PoB factory recipes.
Making more things you can log in for and do solo or cooperatively that are fun is in my opinion the actual key to "Making Discovery Great Again", if you will. I don't think letting the Outcasts take control of the entire universe through silly conquest is the way, though. Maybe we just need space to be dangerous outside of the core House systems, letting people PvE it up a bit more organically than just grinding boring, trivially easy missions. Who knows.
However, all of these things take a lot of developer effort and unfortunately I don't think any one developer is really working on any of this.
Also, in regard to all this "PvP is still too hard for new players" stuff - it really is friendlier to new players than it's ever been, if you ask me. At least fighters are. There's a limit to how much you can simplify without making the game less fun, though, and I'll never consider that worth it. And again, I would argue this is yet again a symptom of our population and its composition. With more players playing, you will have more "average joes" and fewer "new player versus Connecticut Bot with 8000 hours" matchups.
..You also end up with more people who can accept not beating the best players unless they put in the same stupid amount of effort those players have, rather than playing victims on the forums in the hopes that they will be catered to.