Deterrence [DTR] - Feedback

[Ravenna Nagash]

That's exactly the issue. The vast majority of DTR locks itself inside the faction and refuses to play anything else, instead choosing to make up conspiracies against whoever they think is best.

First of all, this is not factually true. Any DTR is free to play other factions, and quite a few I know do so, including myself. Second, we are the only faction on the server that actually allows other factions to promote themselves on our own discord to my knowledge. Thirdly, we've even had cases where we've filled for other factions in order ensure events are done and people have fun.

Lastly, it's not my obligation or requirement to fill up another faction, because you are too lazy to recruit or onboard new people. As mentioned, people have the same tools as we do. If you don't want to bother to take other people, that's on you.

You also have the tendency to oversimplify things when the root cause is complex. Most people simply don't have the time to be playing multiple factions, or spend a significant amount of time on Freelancer in general. Other factions can be dead or unfriendly to newcomers as well.

Bottom-line, there's nothing wrong with individual choice and playing one faction. My official stance has never changed and will always be the same - DTR members are free to play other groups as they wish, provided they don't share internal information. They have their own free choice in the matter.

You also glossed over all my arguments. You've got all the tools - use them and revive Bretonia instead of complaining that other regions are active. Your siege by the way actively contributing for that activity too.

It's doable by everyone which is exactly why it's awful and despised.

Recruitment is awful and despised? You ever played another game with factions? Recruitment and gaining new members is one of the fundamental pillars of any group, faction, and organization. In any game I've ever played that had a guild system of any kind in the last 20 years. You are talking nonsense.

They don't contribute anything. They are just dead weight to the server and that's hurting it tremendously.

What's the metric for contribution in your eyes? Writing on the forums? I hate to break it to you but this thinking is part of the problem. If you want to read Shakespearean level of fan-fiction - go to college and do an English major. Most people are here to play a game. Not to have a substitute literary club. Elitism has no place on a 20 year old game with a very small player count. That's not an opinion, that's a fact. It's literally a game with a forum and people writing stuff in threads. Get over yourself.

Unless you are interested in your own personal D&D with your clique, Discovery needs to be accommodating to people or end up a dead server on which about approximately 10 people practice their writing skills. There's blogs for that hermano.

People that could instead be allowed to discover the mod on its own instead get hooked up almost instantly into RM/Corsairs, have fun for a week, and then they drop out because they don't have any idea that the game world exists beyond Omicron Xi and Munich.

I will be blunt - I can tell that you don't touch recruitment when you say nonsense like this. Retention is a huge problem for Discovery - it's difficult to retain people even in an extremely newbie friendly faction like DTR predicated on helping people and supporting them. Let alone when someone is dropped as a new person into this server with all its toxicity, rules, pros, etc. I've actually had a number of people personally tell me how happy they are with our group and that they've quit before but now are interested in staying and playing. Some of them play with us for now 1 year.

New players, and I will stress this again, need to be let the hell alone to explore the game on their own instead of brainwashing them into joining specific sects of the community. It's a damaging attitude and the only thing it achieves in the long-term is making regions dead.

I categorically cannot stress how wrong this mentality is on virtually every level. New players literally quit in the first week because the game is complicated, there's a lot of toxicity, the server has low player count, and there's nothing to do.

Without engaging with them, people quit. Consistently people have stayed on the server with us because we give them things to do and people to play with. You evidently don't have a basic understanding over acquisition, engagement, and retention of players. People stay for other people - hauling from point A to point B or killing the same dude 20 times on a 20 people average player count can only get you so far.

Eventually DTR too is going to lose most of its players. Eventually DTR too will end up without new people to recruit.

I keep hearing this statement thrown every few weeks for the past 1 year+ now. More and more people join us. In fact, last month we recruited more than any month in quarter 3. If the server dies, there's other games to play.

I'm not interested in joining every faction discord to catch up on what everyone is doing, so it is not our fault that DTR had an event that same week.

The Xeno Relics event was even public on the forums with big green notification. In general, you've got an unilateral, and one-sided approach to other groups. If you have no consideration to what others are doing, don't expect a reciprocal relationship.

All I can say to you, and this is generally not for our feedback - I categorically disagree with your thought process when it comes to new players, server health, or server population. There are several groups that have taken DTR's approach and thrived from it. RM, DTR, and AWES are generally the top groups for months now, driving actual in-game activity and doing stuff in the actual game, which we are all presumably here to play.

My advice to you is to actually sit down and understand what makes these groups successful and these regions active. Change should be based on successful practices - not mediocrity or the life support status quo that exists in Discovery. Keeping mediocrity and low activity across all sectors is significantly more damaging than having some regions being active and pockets of decent activity. And that approach should be emulated to bring life elsewhere - not extinguish it equally to level the field.

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Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.