My opinion on why the game has constantly been losing players

[Chills]

I sort of agree with the weak NPC's I can just go afk in deep space and I know nothing will happen to my ship if there are no players around.

But on the other hand, nearly every system has a(tleast one) station. And traveling through a system, if you don't have a huge battleship and lots of asteroids around you, takes you more or less 5 minutes. There you can dock and afk your game aswell. If you're out for activity grinding for a faction then this wouldn't work anymore. Whcih may be good because you have to be active then and may get into some interaction with other players.

[sasapinjic]

@SnakThree, freelancer is space/Combat/trade/exploration(roaming around among stars searching things) game, just like all other games of this type (elite, Frontier, Evochron, pioneer, Oolite etc), you trade, explore/find new trade rutes, search new systems, planets, wreck, secret bases, nebulas, new/secret weapons, ships, special equipment, hiden POBs, stash with Loot, etc. Thats exploring isnt, specific word "exploring" dont have to be writen in oficial freelancer description for as to clasify it as exploring game to?

[kerfy]

As a newer player, I found the 2 hr rule to be kinda long, esp when yer a newb and get killed fast when in pvp. The npc's --- would be nice if they were tougher when there isn't lots of players about, I do a fair bit of exploring as I don't want to retart and lose my ship.. . have had wonderful suprises when I run into a mine field I didnt know was there. I don't think it is possible to do much about the npc thing , maybe just make em tougher in some systems and not others ?? I was wondering for quite a while what the deal was with conn a I kept seeing lots of people there. I know now and have been there 2 times, nothing there really .. lol I suspect that the learning curve for RP in this game is what keeps some players away. Me, myself actually had a greattime in and out of RP when i was trying to set up a gunboat only to get pulled over and fined by the military fer an unlicensed ship ( i deleted it and started another properly) I have found the veteran players to be pretty darn helpful. the lack of missles is sad, seems vets want everyone to have exactly the same weapons so they can shine, and feel like pros, like guns only lol. seems they want to be unkillable by anyone not deem "skilled".That is kinda what missles are for I think at least. guess cm don't matter when yah don't know how to use emproperly heh heh. all in all. I started playing back in july.. still here still playing, having a great time. FYI sigmas are still fairly safe to run a transport through... hint hint ..lol

[Chronicron]

Disco died when you got rid of the fun people.

It's just a game. Go outside.

Fun people are only a factor of our activity. If they get removed, it doesn't means you should stop playing this game without them, hoping that one day they will come back and do something outstanding.

And if you see this place as just a game, by all means. There is an entire section on disco forums called "Discovery Role-Playing", which obviously makes it more than just a game. In this section, you can see not only members of our community, but also their own characters. And every single character has it's own personality, in most cases. It all depends how many effort the creator puts into their character. It's almost like writing a book, but instead of writing a book, you write/create your own character.

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To stay on topic, I should say that for recent times the main drive of our communitie's dedication to play were events. Now, if I recall correctly, this thing with Omicron Delta was going on for a whileand it doesn't drives too much attention. Obviously, we need a new event, and by that I mean something huge, which might envolve the entirety of Sirius Sector's population. The most obvious solution would be a mass-combat event with a trade event as a consequence.

The second drive of our community are player factions, which, except of trading factions, obviously decay in recent times. We need a new faction, a new idea. Something that will bring an activity back to the community.

Whilist I won't bring any certain suggestions, an idea of what we should do still stands. The matter of fact is how and when.

Also, we need to bring back the Angels. However, they should have more freedom - Penn is not the only system you can see a newbie, sometimes newbies get themselves the OC Caps without any bit of knowledge or understanding of server and community rules.

[Sol]

Disco is utterly boring to explore in. What will you find in all those dozens of empty systems?

There are no quests you can find, the missions are the same everywhere. No interesting lore or stories worth reading, the amount of worthwhile text in game is low for a community full of people who like to write a lot of nonsense for the sake of writing. The NPC are all static same faces in same uniforms that have empty dialogue markers over their heads. No wrecks are worth your hours to search for, the worthwhile code drops are already known. No matter how much you try to pretty up the systems, it will never be good enough to make you want to explore more than once (for me, less than once). And there are other, a lot more prettier games focusing on exploration which freelancer is completely bland compared to.

Just because the mod has discovery in its name makes people somehow assume the game is good for discovering interesting things. It’s not.

The gameplay itself is not good enough in any aspect. It is the interaction between players that kept everything going so far and that should be the main focus. It is the players who give you ‘quests’,interesting information and a dynamic, engaging environment, making this game a lot more fun than it could ever be. The game itself should even be made less interesting to enhance interaction between players, like reducing the amount of viable trading routes, focusing the main gameplay area to a smaller amount of systems while keeping empty discovery systems out of the main routes, increasing ZoI for most factions and allowing them to roam closer to activity zones, setting up lore and stories for them to help this increased ZoI make sense.

For those who want to explore, keep those systems but do not use them as buffer just to make traveling longer between activity zones. Randomizing the contents of wreck drops after each restart could help a lot, even I would stop by a random wreck on my travel route to try my luck and see if it will drop a shiny code gun this time. I do not know if it is possible, how easy or hard it could be to code such.

[Shelco]

I agree with Sol. Environmentally, Freelancer is too old to have the game bring appealing stuff to you, it is the players and the players only. On one hand we have too many people playing in Liberty, leaving other places behind. On another hand, we have too many careless faction leaders that refrain from passing on their positions to people who have more dedication. Then there is the problem that the only things people gather for are Cultist or Nomad mini events, why are Cultists so much of a thing? We need player antagonists, not Admins in OP ships firing 10 Super torpedos at once and also not more NPCs. NPCs could really get a tad more challenging in systems made for it, like Taus, Omicrons, Omegas etc. Dangerous systems that are empty of players can still be dangerous if the environment is. Join dead factions in houses that need players. If a few people do it, you already have a small group that can get things moving, it is that easy people, yes, you just need to be the person that brings the activity. We're all sitting around and waiting for someone to do something cool, why aren't you the one doing something cool?

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[Felipe]

Most of the newbies are ridiculous themselves, to be honest. Swearing in system chat, never reading the rules, and easily getting annoyed by what they perceive as unfair, even though what happened to them is usually actually perfectly acceptable. Most newcomers are not ready to be nice, be one of us, and need to spend time trying to be integrated into this community. ....The game itself is boring, with outdated graphics and a clunky gameplay. There's less and less people who think playing this game is worthy of their free time, and this wont change. Disco will die off soon like the other servers and there's no way you can change it. Enjoy it while/if you still can.

This summarizes to me why we get new players everyday but we dont keep them.

Not what he says, but the attitude. A player thinks the game dont worth his time and projects that on everyone. Theres lot of similar folks around. That just log for a "quick ez blu", destill some poison on forum, and then go back to whatever was playing.

You see, at each step, a line is changed in some ids, some rules are changed, or decided to be ignored.

Ridiculous on my view is a person expecting new players to know all the game rules, all the id/ship/zoi restrictions on first day. Ridiculous is players with 7 years of gaming killing people in penn. Ridiculous is bittervets destroying that shinie pob a noob done in o-7 (yes, i leaded Kruger, i had a pob there, i saw all the 4 pobs built by other players there last year, and i saw "fun people" killing all of those for "fun" and saw the new players going away.)

Ridiculous is destroying a shipclass because you wont bother logging a counter to it. Ridiculous is getting rid of weapons that could make game more noob friendly. Ridiculous is the circle-jerking between bittervets deciding the comunity is their "club" where they change the rules to better please themselves.

Ridiculous is admins ignoring for years "fun people" exploiiting bugs, harming the activity. Ridiculous is "players" blaming admins when they finally stop ignoring and enforce the rules.

is quite simple in fact, in 15 days, half hour/day maybe you turn a noob crying for help in the gen chat into a noob flying tagged, following basic rules, with right id/ship respecting its zoi... IF you bother recruiting em, directing them to forums, then to your recruitment.

But calling em ridiculous em mocking em, hunting down freighters in penn, all that may be accomplished is having sure player numbers will only keep diminishing.

And to finish: ridiculous is ex-players trying to dictate how the game should evolve (or in some cases go downhill). Theres people here saying this and that and not even have Disco installed. Are playing Wargaming's, or StarCitizen, or Pugb or whatever, and not Disco. And pass here just to destill some poison and toxicity.

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[Sol]

@Felipe

Yeah yeah, nice cherry picking the contents of the post to enhance your point which is only something that is told over and over and over like a broken record.

[Felipe]

On another hand, we have too many careless faction leaders that refrain from passing on their positions to people who have more dedication.

Join dead factions in houses that need players. If a few people do it, you already have a small group that can get things moving, it is that easy people, yes, you just need to be the person that brings the activity. We're all sitting around and waiting for someone to do something cool, why aren't you the one doing something cool?

As usual, even Shelco being a bastard (part of the time ), he said it very well. What Disco have that keeps ppl hre isnt the game alone, Disco dont excell in any area of gameplay, what it have that keep ppl in is the enviroment (as toxic and mean it can be, thats the fun i guess) the players.

Every player can make the difference, for good or bad. Everyone of us can change the fate of a faction, or even a house, and at the end, keep our fun around for more time.

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[Lythrilux]

I've found that over the years the quest for 'balance' has become so extreme that it's squeezed all the fun out of the gameplay.

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