[Official Event] Operation Cathedral [Outcast Victory]

[Lythrilux]

Okay, so after having just gotten six bombers together and driving them into Tau-29, these are my feelings on this whole thing.

- These people are awake, active, and responded immediately. They are not asleep with weights on their RMBs. Within thirty seconds, there was not a single sieging capital ship that did not react to shoot us.
- The purpose of the event beyond mechanics testing (which has as usual failed terribly, since neither base is regenning properly), is to allow the community to choose which ship lives or dies through their actions. They are choosing that.

The issue of "The OC playerbase is larger/more skilled/better organized" is kind of falling upon deaf ears with me, because those Outcast players are part of a larger whole. We're all here playing Discovery, and if the Discovery community has decided the Outcasts will be the victors, then that will be the result of the event. It's like... cliques are being seen, and recognized as cliques, but not as people who are choosing the direction Discovery goes in.

What I'm trying to say is, if Discovery wants one side to win, that side will win, and its a pretty insular attitude to make this about either side's playerbase.

In addition, people have been screaming for years to have an impact on the storyline. I'm not against that, I'm for it, but it isn't going to come without hard work and consequences. In the past whenever such an open ended opportunity has been given, the complaints here have been echoed and player impact immediately shut down, in favor of devteam arbitration. That isn't the attitude that the current development team wants to engender, and have no interest in catering to people who are afraid to lose. There's been a long long trend of these sort of events being attempted, and then the staff abruptly shutting them down due to mass outcry from whichever side isn't capable of attracting the winning group. If you're not capable of doing that, its definitely time to look inwards. I myself, and many others, have been flying for both sides. The Outcasts? They don't have a problem with that. Crayter? Well, I hear a guy was kicked for switching to a hostile bomber, for trying to play Discovery Freelancer 24/7, instead of trying to play Crayter Republic 24/7.

Play Freelancer, not Cliquelancer.

I have to admit I'm not really pleased about this. For better or worse, justified or unjustified, CR has a big stigma attatched to (Dev bias, import faction etc) it for a variety of reasons and will always be the underdog in it's match ups. Heck, even I have my disagreements about CR and would be more inclined to fly Outcast rather than a CR ship. To make this example relatable, the same thing could happen with HF. Non-vanilla factions tend to be viewed with scrutiny, to varying degrees depending on the faction. Let's not beat around the bush and act like we haven't seen people rejoicing at the chance to inflict impactful damage to CR. I just don't feel like putting the outcome entirely in the hands of the community is the right mentality. You're just putting power in the hands of the mob and in actuality, this will encourage cliquelancer.

I definitely want players to impact things more, but we need to be careful when maintaining the extent of that. If people are raising concerns about fairness and balance, it's worth an investigation so that we can ensure everyone has fun.

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