I don't post OORP often much anymore, but I felt the need to do so here.
The server is, indeed, in a downtick of active players. A large part of it is the fact the game is from 2003. While Freelancer is/was ahead of it's time when it was released, there are other games that've come out since such as Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous, Everspace (1 & 2), etc. that have iterated on the formula and evolved it to a state where it's easier to be played by modern players. Sadly, Freelancer can't keep up with those due to us not having access to the Source Code (though I've been asking Microsoft monthly on my Twitter for years, you can guess how that's been going). We can do some with FLHook, but with us having few coders, we can't expect much in the way of that being developed much further than it already has (by the way, Zentor is my spirit animal).
I'm not going to comment on any drama going on in the Admin/Dev team and I'm not privy to all of it...and what I am privy to I'm not going to repeat here. What I will say about the Admin/Dev team is that they're dedicating their free time to the Discovery Project/Mod. Whether or not they've made mistakes, they're giving up their free time to do modding, development, and storyboards. Say what you want about the mistakes they've made or some kind of "gRaNd CoNsPiRaCy" involving the story or whatever else, they're using their free time outside of work to develop the mod. This isn't their day job and as such these things take time to complete and get done. I'm sure some of the dev team go to work, come home, and then spend hours working on things on the mod with little time for themselves. Think about that before you attack them for doing something that you might not like involving the story or anything else.
The other point is drama. I won't get into the different things I've seen on the server related to this, but what I will say is there is a lot of shit talking by certain people in the community who think their shit doesn't stink and that they can get away with things like that. I've seen admins actively bullied off the server due to the actions of a few. I've seen events that people have put their hard work into ruined by the actions of a few people and people bitching and complaining about the event itself. I might've been one of the people that tried to give constructive criticism to the nature of the events, but I never actively complained about the meat and potatoes of them. There were some that did.
There are a lot of contributing factors to the server being in a massive downturn recently. Hell, even I'm not playing much right now, but that's more to real-life circumstances rather than being bored or turned off by someone or something that the mod has in it.
In relation to the officialdom of Factions: It's kinda useless unless you want a Core 5 base. Beyond that there really isn't much point to it, just look at how many unofficial factions there are compared to those that are official. Many that are official has been so for a good chunk of time. Even the faction I lead, SLRC, will probably remain unofficial because there's little to no reason to gain official status when there isn't much reward vs. staying unofficial. Either the Officialdom part of the faction process needs to be retired, or it needs to be heavily overhauled to include more perks that will keep people invested and interested. Although, with the server population declining, it may be prudent to remove it outright and have something else take it's place.
You can call me a "bootlicker", "brown-noser", or "ass-kisser" if you want related to my post. Doesn't really bother me. I just want people to get along and play a game that I've enjoyed for nearly 20 years. I want it to stay alive just a little bit longer so that I can write kick ass stories and have some fun Roleplay encounters with other people.
