Social Survey: Why people are loosing interest to Discovery?

[Wesker]

I gave this game tons of effort as a 1ic for years, I've learned quite a bit looking back on it from where I am now.

-Story

The greatest mistake the story devs ever made was involving players as a group in story development itself. But this is also not a one-sided issue, the player's obsession with story development is a huge issue as well. I was guilty of it and paid the price in the long run, and I see people even in this very thread guilty of it. If you give anything more than 0% of a shit about story, you are part of the problem. If you like to see tons of npc bases under your control, or even one scattered everywhere where it isn't needed - you are part of the problem. I've seen so many faction leaders drive their factions into officialdom for the promise of being involved in story and then I see them quit for the same reason. It took me a while to realize it as well, but story is irrelevant. If you aren't logging on for the sole purpose of PLAYING THE GAME then there in lies the issue. People are obsessed with being the best or being the coolest in a space sim where less than 100 people play, there's nothing special about owning so many npc bases and theres nothing special about driving your factions storyline over others. I've willingly given up 2 systems after realizing this. I don't give a shit about what happened to 54 or now in Cologne. It's irrelevant, as long as my faction has a shipline and just enough bases to launch from for fights - that's what matters. Every fight where I've seen this server population spike up has been over a story conflict, or about something where one side gains where another loses something that's represented in the form of an NPC base. This is poison. Again, I am guilty of having behaved this way in the past as well (see omega 3 drama lmao) but I've accepted it was a mistake and have changed. Hopefully, it doesn't take the server falling apart for others to realize this. Who gives a shit if you have 1 base, who gives a shit if you're confined to your vanilla gig just log in and play the game.



-Lack of fighters.

I have my moments in caps where I enjoy flying them. I recently bought a BAF Dunkirk again, I own a Valor, Misrecorde, and several jorms and vidars. I don't mind logging in for a cap fight when time permits and I know I can make it. But I also like flying fighters even more, regardless of the numerical advantage or disadvantage. But everytime I log into the game and look outside conn I see level 79+ across the board. People complain about "the skillgap" like it's impossible for them to meet or exceed, the skill ceiling is rising, a lot of these new players coming in showing promise at pvp are waaaaaaay better than the people that were supposedly showing promise years ago. What took me months to understand is being understood by new players in a matter of DAYS. That to me is a win, but likewise other people see these players and get intimidated, partly because they don't want to put in the effort to improve in fighters or because they fear dying ooc.


Learning pvp is like learning it in any other game if you ask me, its a process. People are picking it up faster and faster the more the years go on and it's only a matter of time before my laziness truly takes over my drive to improve as well. If you put in the time and effort, you will improve.

But then people say "well what does it matter if you improve in fighters you'll just get pummeled by caps anyways." Yes, there's always going to be a majority of caps because they take less effort to use and guarantee the player's safety in most situations where caps aren't around. But at the same time being better as a fighter pilot gives you the confidence to go out and do whatever kind of rp or flying you usually do on a daily basis. You know that if other caps are around you can just thrust or cruise away without dying, and if other snubs come around you'll be good enough to confront them and win. If you have that confidence as a player, that in itself provides more motivation to play the game than someone who doesn't have that confidence.


-RL

I've noticed a lot of the players here are older folks now, I started playing discovery when I was 16. Now I'm 22. I have a serious real-life goal ahead of me that has taken a lot of my time already and will soon be my one and only focus for a long time. After that? Well, I don't know. A few of the people I wanted to continue RP with have left and I'm not sure when or if they will return. It depends.