There are a lot of ways this mod has become different from the game, and certaom things, which were not existant or not really known about in the orriginal game have become very important:
-The rep, iff and id system. Central part of playing. But... what a bummer. There is no way a player will know how to fix his own rep and iff, without him bumping into another player, and that player telling him "you are violating rules with your setup". And then he has to get luck for someone to take the time to explain it to him. Because there is no ingame readable help (and if there even is a forum help its very hard to find) that will tell him how he can make his iff match right. 10-30% of players will take 20-30 minutes of their time to explain it to him to the point where he really knows how to set it up. 40-50% will just say "read rules", leaving him with 10 pages of rules but still not hints on how to actually set up his rep and iff. 50-70% will just ignore him. 1-5% will maybe report for a rule violation. I think it should be easier to buy and id and set up iff. For example, make ides purchasable not at maximum green, but barely green or positive neutral, and then the ID just sets his rep like it should. Or at least make an infocard that everyone can acess where the player can read up how to set up the iff.
-You can yell at players for acting oorp, but fact is that the whole mod feels oorp. Pirates use lanes and gates that shoot them. Pirates sit in front on Manhattan for purpose of attention-whoring telling people all about how cool their character is, and when a player does the logical thing and attacks them with a police/navy character, they get yelled at "THIS IS A RP SERVER YOU PVP WHORE NOOB".
-People with enough influence in the community (or at least with the dev or admin) get to create their shoot-everything-use-everything faction, with a more than questionable RP background, which doesn't really make much sense in the Freelancer univers. Examples`? Reapers of Sirius. All I was able to understand of their RP is that they shoot people who they deem people who shoot other people, or something. Yeah right. Awesome. Or Hellfrire legion (or how they used to be, havent seen them much lately). Got a hacker iff but shout at you "I AM NOT A HACKER YOU NOOB LEARN TO RP" if you say you see a laner hacker. Also they fly around liberty shooting stuff, it being a total mystery what they want, why they want it, how they get their stuff, or why they should be strong enough as a faction to be able to do that. Oh ok. It's because they're crazy and really awesome. Nomads... ok... a vanilla faction, that should be there. But what the hell... now they are all over Sirius in little groups, for all to see, spreading telepathic messages, not only to themselves (if they are telepathic ok, they could do that) but also to humans, who are not able to do telepathy. And normally humans would destroy those little nomad groups on site right, especially since they can be seen blowing up human stuff all over Sirius? Nope. AFter the nomads flew up to you and said ***we shall see your cities burn***, and you shoot him, another human shoots you in the back and yells at you "STOP GANKING MY LEET FRIENDS!!!!!11". I think you get the idea.
-If it was easy for everyone to learn PvP well early, veterans would have stronger advsersaries to deal with. If it's only player teachable, they can choose who will become good at PvP: people that they like. Which one would you prefer?
I think the reason for all that, is the same. The mod is made and upkept by players who do it for fun, not by payed developers who are trying to make a product likeable to the broader audience. People will make stuff for themselves, and make sure its fun for the people they care about, with the broader casual gamer/noob player taking a back seat.
So I guess you (and me) could launch an apeal for devs and admins to give a little more consideration to the common player, but hey... you aren't going to pay them for doing it, so why should they? They are doing it for their own fun (and for people they care about), just like you play for your own fun and not for other people's fun. What we could do, how ever, is to find or show ways how they would also profit from something like an easier repping system, with less violation reports and a better RP atmosphere for them too.
Big UPS for time taken to reply. I totally agree, maybe an Official POLL to get things changed, and I would consider even donating some money to an overhaul of the Mod.
I guess if I REALLY wanted to make a PvP character I would have to spend a lot of time in Conneticut and learning my Keyboard controls all over... For now it seems I might be back in business with my Barge being taken out of Bastille, I just have to be careful in systems I can't dock in with a Zoner ID...
