Well, here we are. Almost a year later and the player numbers are still roughly the same.
The mod itself is not really in a worse state. I'd say it's actually in a better state. Stuff was rebalanced, mining and economy made a bit more interesting, PVE got iterated. We got the option of custom POB models as money sinks and tons of ships and visual candy. We even got some dynamic PVE with Entity stuff.
The community, on the other hand, is still quite dead.
The main problem of Disco, and I really mean THE main problem. Is that, in this game, players are the content. Everything else fades quite quickly as this is an ancient game with really simple mechanics. But the players themselves can't do much without the support of the staff. And that support has been lacking lately. They've pretty much shut out the discussion with players and decided they know better.
I think the main drivers of community activity that liked to RP and log in groups to support that RP are pretty much gone at this point.
Either they burnt out or left due to disagreement with staff. The old vets still pop up from time to time, but I guess due to RL obligations (surely multiplied a lot since they were younger) are now reduced to playing just for events or little nostalgia gatherings.
The newcomers are actually really active (I'd say most of the actual active server playerbase are newcomers, barring a few returning vets and a couple of people who just log to trade and keep their OFs active).
The thing is, most of the newcomers lack the support of the more experienced groups on the RP and PVP stuff and are set to get bored and lose interest relatively quickly due to
realizing that more pretty and bigger ships don't really lead to more fun
getting their arses kicked by the few PVP gods that still log from time to time.
the lack of actual "Discovery" in "Discovery" Freelancer
What I think is still holding back Disco, gameplay wise:
The trading still feels extremely symmetrical and made not to "offend" any faction. That also makes it pretty boring. With no obvious hotspot routes there are no pirates either. GMs could help this out by having trading mini-events that promote certain mining / trading routes more often. That's the band-aid solution. The real solution is to make factions matter for trade routes. I think this was the original vision in Freelancer with the commodities rep mechanic that is almost completely ignored in Disco instead of spurring diplomacy and conflicts between factions.
The combo of long PVP death timer and low pop means people are just set not to bother after the first time they get busted. At any moment there are at best two groups PVPing in the whole Sirius, and if you don't want to play with the other after you get blown up, tough luck. The events, and especially the respawn events have much better attendance in terms of the size of player groups. They make battles less tactical but more "epic" and we should have these more often to keep the playerbase interested
The POB upkeep requirements are actually taking a good chunk of the playerbase at any moment. We did see a bit of an uptick in non hauling activity when they were disabled for the holiday period. I'm not saying they should be removed, but reducing the time that needs to be spent hauling supplies (and increasing the prices so the amount of effort stays roughly the same) might lead to a bit more diversified gameplay
The bounty plugin is still not integrated which makes bounties tedious and not worth bothering for most of the playerbase
Smuggling really not worth it due to increased risk for the same tediously long routes. Make the routes shorter and add more incentive to lawfuls to try and stop smuggling. A rotating bonus on smuggled stuff might also work as a focusing tool. So one week it's worth it to try and smuggle in Liberty, the other day in Rheinland, then Bretonia etc.
Running missions is still quite as hollow as the base game
Seems that stuff that can be done cooperatively is actually good for player activity. And this is now limited to battlezones and missions. Why not expand exploration / wreck looting with this mechanic? COOP smuggling and trading has been shown to be really well received in the events we had recently, so at least a part of it should also become part of regular gameplay.
Stuff not related to gameplay:
GMs should really try and work with active factions and their stories. The "no pixel conquering" rule should go and GMs should instead balance out and take over the other side when a faction is trying to take over an asset of a faction that doesn't have an active playerbase. Just because there is no playerbase doesn't mean the whole game should stop and wait for Story to get their shit together.
Community should focus on constructive feedback instead of trolling and memeing to shoot down any discussion
