Reasons to love and hate Freelancer in 2022

[Darius]

Most people, myself amongst them, play Freelancer for the story. The vanilla game, even after 20 years, offers a unique take on space-focused games both from the way the player interacts with the story and the story perspective itself. From the first mission to the very last, the game keeps you focused on completing them and makes sure the player remains aware of the progress made. It's a great concept and as the second sentence says, one that remains largely unrivaled.

I, however, disagree with the points risen about gameplay. While story is indeed the forte of Freelancer, gameplay, and at large, PvP, is highly controversial, to put it that way. For the singleplayer, it's amazing. Easy controls, vanilla has progressively-better ships, NPCs are not hard to deal with, and the interface is easy to understand. For a multiplayer game, on the other hand, it is awful. This is just my take, but, I'll rather take the cookie-clicker nature of EVE any day over the clunky snub PvP that takes place in FL. Cap combat is just as bad, with ships not balanced for the game at all. It is cool to see that people enjoy the gameplay aspect of FL, but the PvP aspect is horrid for the average person not willing to pour in hundreds of hours.

As for Disco itself... eh. The main reason people play it is because they're too attached to the game, a matter that in turn leads to constant drama and lobbying at the first mention of roleplay consequences. I have myself largely given up on playing after several attempts to continue story in a reasonable manner were just pushed aside by the players due to the aforementioned reasons. The same "why do people still play in 2022?" goes for the majority of the "average players", who play just to haul PoB supplies and trade for more credits as their main activity. It is what it is. I largely expanded on the points already made, in any case.