Anyway, with the server cap being 200 players, it made me wonder what would happen if the Discovery dev team focused that player count on specific regions every, say, month.
Discovery: Tales of Rheinland
For example. It means that the mod effectively removes all access to content apart from that found in Rheinland, Omegas, Sigmas and Hudson/Bering.
This would concentrate all PVP and RP efforts on one region, with it rotating to other regions every month. With such a sudden added player count to that spot, new groups would instantly form, new groups within groups, all competing for influence over their respective NPC factions. More encounters. More battles. More players being introduced to regions they have not yet fully explored (I think the least one I have pratted around in was Kusari). Better balance, without sirius wide zoi ships.
Now, obviously, there are major flaws to this as well. Less variety. Less interaction between houses. Some players perhaps do not like that select region and do not wish to play it. Trade problems. A few separate player bases, all saved and stored whenever it is time for an episode change. No interaction between the RP of multiple houses.
This COULD work for an event server, but since the primary idea is to concentrate server activity to one spot, peeling them off from the main server and onto the event one will not solve it.
Just a random crazy idea.
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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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Hm, how about instead of closing the rest of sirius, just making it a "community-rule/offer". So that each week in a month stands for an activity boost for a specific area/house. As example:
Could make mining fields replenish faster in each house to boost the number of miners. That would in turn boost the number of pirates and military too.
If voluntary, this would be awesome. But the means here may be difficult, as you would want ships everywhere.
A dedicated group of players, though, who have ships in every region, would be the most fun. Coordinated such that neither side in any conflict gets too much of a boost, respective to one another. Focus on helping factions who are struggling to stay alive. (so play police where possible as lawfuls). It would help preserve variety in the server; as regions who would not normally see action would. Suddenly pirate groups would pop up where none are expected (Gallia). Police patrols in systems normally as good as lawless (California). Focus on hubs areas with 'natural' activity, and make large events out of small interactions, or find regions underplayed, and bring them into the foreground. It would be a fun exercise in RP, as you couldn't be the same person in all places. You would have to study the lore in all places. It would encourage factions to grow from increased visibility for them and their rivals, and provide people with role models for RP, because of the influx of veteran players on both sides.
Someone asked a while back how to make disco fun again. For me, and for those for whom the fun is interactions, I think this is the way. Yeah, there's a lot of space on this server, and few enough to fill it. So enable people to play together, without forbidding them to play apart.
Im penniless, rotten in a fight, and have authority issues, but im back!
I like the idea but i see a lot of problems when it comes to apply it.
The 2 more importants are:
More difficult for new players to understand what happens.
Game more complicated in general to those who aren't playing so often the game due they have few free time to play it (need of making ships at all regions, know good the lore of all regions instead in concentrate the one you're used to fly, etc...)
On the other side a +1 to the "it's needed to concentrate the activity" concept to improve the game fun and intertaction
You can't really lock down parts of Sirius, as it would lock out pretty many players.
Putting it on an event server, would drain the player base and it's not what I would recommend.
What could work is: make the offer of e.g. a "Rheinland week". Add a few events there, something to draw attention. And then let if float. Then change topic/region for the next week.
Episodal isn't a word I think you mean episodic, close enough though.
Limiting focus to a single area per episode won't play out too well, eventually people would ignore it and continue doing what they want regardless. As a few have already said, removing the extra systems would be a step in the right direction combined with the Dev's current work, the improvement would be quite noticeable. Alas that would require a database wipe and we all know folks wouldn't want to lose their stuff.
Alternatively episodic story may work, moving the timeline along in smaller chunks rather than huge jumps. Simple stuff like updating the newsboards, adjusting NPC zones to simulate a living world perhaps including faction battle outcomes in certain battlezone systems (I believe that was being discussed at some point?) The question is who is willing to do the work?