The brand new player experience

[Durandal]

This is a very well written, levelheaded assessment and is just the sort of thing that I as a developer love to hear. Some of your gripes can't be handled with a simple change of game mechanics and a lot of it comes down to attitude, but there are other things here which are extremely useful to see.

The idea that bigger = better and that capital ships are an endgame is completely false. Every class in Discovery is balanced against each other and even some well coordinated fighters can take down a much larger foe (at the cost of being slower at it than bombers).

The reason that Discovery is a game of progression is largely due to limitations in game mechanics and simply the age of the game itself. It can't keep itself alive on pure roleplay like WoW can - it simply isn't large enough - and due to the mechanics there isn't much to work towards aside from larger ships, which aren't quantifiably better.

Once you start getting into the realm of the quantifiable, the progression suddenly becomes real rather than imagined. We don't want veterans with billions of cash running around in ships that are objectively better than anything a new player can get, that becomes EVE, and much like the WoW analogy, we simply don't have the player base to support that type of meta.

So there is a progression there, and there are certain things to work towards such as POBs and the equipment they can make, as well as Spazzy's event commodities - more on that in this thread - but for the most part it's all a show, at least as far as ships are concerned.

I've always worked towards progressing my characters and their stories as well as my skill at the game as a player rather than anything purchasable with money. I've found it to be much more rewarding, and I'd argue that I'm one of the few players here who is just as interested in FL's old, janky combat mechanics as they are at roleplaying in the (I'd like to believe) intriguing universe that we (both developers and community) as well as those before us have given us the joy of experiencing.

All in all, I'd love to see more unbiased, objective views like this, and I'd also be very interested in just sitting down and roleplaying with you some time, or hitting up connecticut to get some training on. You seem like a very bright person, and those come along rarely no matter where you are.