(03-08-2021, 12:09 PM)Hemlocke Wrote: Forums.

(02-24-2021, 01:51 PM)Sava Wrote:

(02-24-2021, 12:39 PM)PRJKTLRD Wrote: Majority of people lost interest after the introduction of 4.86

No need to explain more.

I would try to explain over and over what exact differences between 4.85 and 4.86 in the mod are to blame for this, but few people even remember it. It was a drastic and swift change in the economy and system layout that resulted in changing player behavior. For some time after this, there was still 200/200, but the place was becoming less and less fun as people were adopting the new patterns.

Over the years, the population was dwindling, the story progressed, bugs were fixed, imports replaced, flame wars over insignificant things were waged, but this problem was largely unattended because it didn't touch INSERT_FACTION particular interests, and instead subtly but relentlessly affected things on a larger scale.

(02-24-2021, 04:04 PM)Sava Wrote: It became increasingly harder to get the same amount of interaction per unit of time as before with a single character based in a certain area (while total pop was still around the same).

Around that time, I mostly played outcasts, but I can safely claim that the following factors affected other factions, too:

• abundance of newly introduced trade commodities and routes (+NPC farming to some extent). This made money-makers scatter across more systems, but, what's worse, made their behavior less stable and predictable. While it would be enough to have a single bomber docked in a right place to PVP/pirate active trader groups and lawfuls protecting them (piracy was a thing and one of the activity drivers back then) in 4.85, later you would have to have a few different characters belonging to a few different factions to even come close to the old amount of action
  
  
  I would add POB introduction as a semi-separate factor. The way POB economy works, it just adds to that "scattered and hard to predict" activity which does little (compared to what you would see prior) for any meaningful player-to-player interaction.
  
  
• introduction of "buffer systems" between hostile factions in areas of heated conflicts and frequent raids. One of the best-known examples is the replacement of Omicron-Eta (a system that was a popular battleground and passageway for outcast-corsair raids) with a different, longer and less familiar connection line. These changes were partially reverted in favor of less travel times much later.
  
  
  system layout and connections, in general, were sometimes purposefully changed to separate groups of players from one another. A recent example is driving the nomad farmers away from previously more popular Omicron-Delta.
  
  
• Connecticut access via the /conn command. Albeit a handy and useful feature, it didn't come without a conceivable negative impact (which most people didn't recognize).
  Conn is mainly a place for socializing and PVP training. Before /conn existed, people trained and socialized in RP areas, like Omicron Alpha and Gamma, some capitol planets, populated mining areas, etc. Group activity such as raids or trade convoys often started spontaneously, because you often had people with the same ID randomly chilling in one place.
  
  
  /conn (among other factors, such as players spending more time in Skype/Discord instead of the game, which, in turn, is partially caused by problems with finding activity) also had some impact on disco social dynamics. Where before you had more friendships and connections associated with certain ID/faction/region, now it's more shifted towards what some would call "ooRP circlejerks", being groups of players playing different factions and fighting other groups of players, as opposed to more "factions vs faction" oriented social structure of the past.