New Player: First Impression of Discovery and it's learning curve.

[Manu]

I think I need to make some points here regarding the tag issue, visual and the re focus thing: Regarding some points raised by Lythrilux, anton and Gardarik.


About tags: If the vast majority of the community likes the abbreviated tags so be it! Go for it! I'm simply letting you know this is creating a curve. How steep this curve is depends on each player and how much he's willing to invest and learn. I'm exposing my experience of wanting to role play, seeking for that rp moment and the tag issue stopped me dry. I totally understand many of them having the abbreviation specially military and police. But if at least half of them who had an unnecessary abbreviation where easy and quick to recognize, I wouldn't have hesitated to seek for that rp moment right from the beginning. Also taking into consideration the low numbers and you will only find one or two with an easy recognizable tag if you're lucky.

About the visuals: @Gardarik I tried Reshade and got banned afterwards, luckily the admins were very helpful and responsive and disbanded pretty quickly. And I'm not even talking about things like reshade. I totally understand and agree with the position of the devs to keep the game as loyal to the original as possible. The creators of freelancer made an artistic gem with beautiful and extremely cohesive art direction that now has a retro feel that many developers today would dream to imitate, everything looks unique, the characters look unique nothing looks like any other thing out there. And now Discovery is the face of Freelancer, the face and soul too. Crossfire is the face of freelancer after plastic surgery. But the point is, the devs should start looking at the future and begin to add stuff on their own. I mentioned as example adding SMAA option for the next release just like bloom was implemented, something as silly as this could make a difference and show visual progression, perhaps slightly expanding the gamma values in the option menus for another future and so on. I bet many old players would install Discovery back just to see those minor visual changes. I mentioned devs might consider adding a forum section for Enb presets in the distant future, like Skyrim which has thousands of them. But that's something that will be provided directly by the mod.

Lastly about the re-focus thing: I introduced my 11 year old nephew to Eve, didn't like it, I introduced my nephew to Elite, couldn't be bothered, I introduced him to Discovery, love it! Made him mine for a while and he fully enjoyed the experience my other 7 year old also liked Discovery, obviously at their age they cant be bothered with all the shenanigans but they loved it and eventually they will spark interest in the game when they grow up. All I'm trying to say is that Freelancer was made with a particular niche in mind and that niche is translating to the present. I'm not sayiiiing Discovery should turn itself into a kiddie game and totally forget about old players, but should consider expanding to new grounds and creating a layout that serve as playground for new age groups and also making sure a Disco gamer can experience progression and somewhat play on his own even if the numbers get pretty low. Even if Disco gets a bunch of Pirate and Freelancers all over the place that isn't a bad thing for older Faction members. Discovery Freelancer will be taking some hits by Star Citizen, Infinity Battlescape, Empyrion and many more and all this games are pointing at adult gamers as niche. We cant really tell how much will this impact Discovery but we all know it will directly or indirectly.



Thank you all for the nice welcome and to Exo thanks for the scoop I already joined Kruger and so far I'm loving it (I chose one with a clear tag lol) Nicest people very friendly and helpful, I love you all, great community, great people you got here and I hope it never dies out.