Why is the community population declining?

[Ingenious]

What can we change to reverse this trend? Why are people leaving?

[Leppy]

One thing you have to remember is that this game continues to get older and older with each year meaning that there are fewer and fewer people who are buying (or torrenting) it and playing it. On the other hand, the number of people leaving is (roughly) a steady stream. Its a simple rates problem. When the game was younger, there were more people coming in than leaving, but now theres more people leaving than coming in so the community gets smaller.

[onca]

Freelancer is a 10 year old game... holy smokes, there might be players younger than Freelancer.

Anyway all that attrition adds up. But there will always be diehards. *shrugs*

[Ursus]

New players come all the time. Real question is why so many people leave.

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[sindroms]

I've actually noticed an actual influx of gamers. Making threads like these does not help to actually have people play here either. Not to mention people play less during the spring period because of sex and exams.

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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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[Eduard]

I've actually noticed an actual influx of gamers. Making threads like these does not help to actually have people play here either. Not to mention people play less during the spring period because of sex and exams.

True, questions like this should be raised in the summer or the holidays. Because in the rest of the year there is school, exams, jobs, and like you said, sex. So people can't really neglect their real life for disco or any other games without having consequences. Except holidays or summer when they have enough time to do whatever they want

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King Eduard is the greatest

[ryoken]

People leave because it takes 2+ years for each update now.
Things are getting old real fast.
The admins/devs ignore experianced players, and cater to the new.
They introduce new items that un-balance game.
They change rep ninja's because "Official factions" say to, and screw all indies.

I can go on and on, but i am sure you get it.

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[Jinx]

@ryoken

do go on - its always informative to read what we do wrong


on a more serious note - players come, players go. - the mod changes - so some old folks don t like it anymore, new ones come to like it.

then there is the sense of community - just read the karlotta thread and notice how nice - and not at all snide people are towards each other. if they were like that in RL in a real conversation - ppl would just walk away, too.

to be more constructive:

players make their own fun. - sometimes they are handed the tools to even change the enviroment ( like fridays thread when he asked the official factions to submit their storyprogress - which was then assessed based on logic, lore, faction balance and immersion ) - mind you - only very VERY few ppl actually submitted anything at all. <-- which was greatly surprising, since factions often complained not to have an impact on the progression.

all in all - the playerbase increased and decreases every now and then. - there is a downwards trend i guess - but then ... i don t see too many players activly and regularly playing other early 2000 multiplayer games either.

maybe star citizen will be the salvation to those.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[Cannon]

I think this is a difficult situation. Many people are bored and this is a factor. Availability of the game is becoming a problem - legal availability anyway - we're going to try to do something about this too. I'm hoping we can use the demo FL version as a basis for discovery and thus allow anybody to more or less legally play it.

I don't have any answers but I've discovered that not worrying about the population count and enjoying the game and community for what it is and who the people are has made me much happier/

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Proud member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"

Old Avatar #2 | Old Avatar #3

[jammi]

It's true that these threads don't help directly, but they can help identify root causes of problems. Once that's been identified, we can crack it - older games and communities can't afford to pretend everything is perfect and let things fester.

At the end of the day, Discovery has a finite lifespan. That's a given, we can all accept that. However, it should be the mission for every single one us to turn that time into an awesome experience for everyone involved. For you, your mates and the bloke with the red IFF you're lobbing antimatter at.

When it comes to the crunch, the sole purpose of the admin and development teams is to foster good, entertaining gameplay, activity and positive interaction. Some of the more cynical members might disagree, but we wouldn't do it if we didn't love this place. So yes, Discovery is going to die some day, but join Syrio Forel in saying 'not today'.

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