Devs require majority approval from community for major changes

[Lanakov]

Do you know why we don't have referendums that often in our cozy, ancient Western democracies ? It's because it's time consuming as all hell and you're likely to emerge with a 51% for and 49% against case nine times out of ten.

People have complained about the staff when the updates were too scarce. This was corrected through more regular updates.
People have complained when the updates didn't change much and story development was too long. This was corrected through more dramatic updates.
People have complained about updates being too dramatic. Leeds obviously springs to mind as a very personal connection.

Narratively, it was brilliant. Broken powerhouse is forced to make a hasty retreat following a devastating defeat, and ensures that its pursuers will be left bleeding and unable to give chase. It was also the climax of Gallia's descent to the dark side. Some have perceived it as heavy-handed (I count among those), but narratively, it was something. Something big that'll have cascading consequences on many people's roleplay over what remains of Disco's history.

Would this event have had any chance to occur at all if it had been submitted to community approval ? No, of course not. And you all know why : pixel power. Muh station IFF. Oh no it's Vanilla, don't touch it.

And frankly, bugger that. Asking everyone's opinion on everything, even major plot points, is the 100% guarantee of making everything stale, safe and boring, perpetually balanced. That's not a good story, that's an accountability ledger. Discovery Freelancer has always been about delivering a story for people to roleplay with. And good stories are dramatic, powerful. We don't love everything that happens in one, that's the point of a good story. Which is why I will forever disagree with a strong player influence over story development. Glassing Leeds was a bold story idea that was obviously bound to generate a lot of friction and anger, but it worked. It got people to talk about it, it generated activity and it will be a core point of contention between Gallia and Bretonia for years. I've been privy to the original plan of resolving the Gallic war ; it was boring, safe and put the emphasis on status quo. This was more aggressive, I didn't like it at first, and I'm still iffy about the creation of the Enclave for many reasons, but it turned out to be a fitting, appropriately apocalyptic conclusion.


I'm currently working on a system to involve you more in the resolution of story arcs. It's far from finished and I don't know how feasible it'll be, so we'll see. I'm keenly aware that people want Disco to take more account of them and their actions, and I understand that. But we cannot cock it up by opening the floodgates, lest we'll end up with a chaotic mess.

On the more technical side of things, I understand changes have been made without player input, namely in regards to balance. As others like Riehl have pointed out, there exists development requests and the possibility of submitting your own ideas and changes. The staff welcomes those, as long as they're worded properly and with the right tone. I'm not giving names, they'll know themselves.

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If everyone was a bit more like Lanakov, the entire world would be more positive. Including pregnancy tests.