First of all I feel like you're making a mistake by assuming Freelancer is some kind of bleak dystopia. Actually, in terms of general outlook, the universe of Freelancer is quite positive, it's just that 99% of roleplay these days is edgy and niche. I can only speculate why that is.
Quote:What is it that makes people flock to just a small set of corps (usually unofficial factions and a couple of OFs with their own IDs) and not even trying to play several vanilla corporations of Freelancer at all (hello to Synth Foods & Cryer, our newest vanilla revival attempts) ?
Mining bonuses, pob supplying and grinding credits. That's literally what most corporate RP is about. The so called "smaller corps" like Cryer and Synth are unable to mine and therefore never had much success in finding players. There is roleplay potential in all of them but there is not all that much to do. I know a little bit about it as I led one of the more successful attempts at Cryer in recorded Disco history.
Wisp functioned as a Cryer faction in game only because of a) a large population of Outcasts and Cardamine smugglers at the time and b) a line which allowed Cryer to shoot any Outcasts anywhere. This made it a sort of lawful Corsairs. Once that line was removed because of butthurt, the faction died literally overnight, despite quite a substantial amount of forum RP that was done during that time. You can listen to my conversation with Spazzy from 2015 to learn a bit more about it here.
Quote:Why are people mostly playing Freelancers and Zoners for casual trade despite their supposed disadvantages?
No rephacks. Freedumz. And also because you can actually play them as you like. And because Zoners have good routes and are rarely bothered by anyone because NEUTRALITY. And also the ease of /renameme once you get caught smugglering.
Quote:Why is every corporation in Disco played just like a regular Mom & Pops bussiness instead of a ruthless hypercapitalistic giant hellbent on crushing their opposition by any (economic) means necessary?
Because many of us already have to deal with these in real life and it's nice to do something else for a change. And also I think if you ever spend some time around any kind of people from the upper management of any kind of larger corporation you will find they are less like ruthless hypercapitalistic giants and more like something taken straight out of The Office (US).
Also we've had to deal with the same old Freelancer corporations for almost 20 years now. It's a lot more fun to roleplay a small mom&pop business that operates as a subsidiary of a megacorp because it has a personal touch and you have more opportunity.
I actually quite like the idea of allowing corps to pirate Zoners and Freelancers, I think it's worth a trial run at least. I also think restricting some of them by rephacks would be nice but this might not work out all that well given that people are very attached to their pixel assets and pixel power these days. The rest of your ideas don't really sound like they would have all that much impact on the game.
