Deleting systems poll UPDATE

[Shimamori]

I had questioned whether I should respond to this thread, as the thread has questionable motivations and abuses the trust placed in certain community members by leaking upcoming changes to the mod.

Before commenting on the veracity of the leak, what is more important is understanding how presenting the information in a partial, incomplete and inaccurate manner as the OP has is harmful for understanding the context of the changes and with what they accompany in the end product (the patch). At best the information is incomplete, at worst it is misleading and misrepresents what is being done.

I.e. by noting that there isn't a Bretonia system in the leaked list of no longer existing system list was either intentional to represent the information in a certain light, or shows how poorly the changes were understood. To note, Bretonia is not somehow exempt from what is being done and when the patch is actually in a presentable form and released this will be clear to see.

As for the veracity of the information being presented;
While I will not comment on particular systems within the list, it is true that Systems are being deleted next patch.
So yes there is truth to the list, but as stated above, it is all presented with no context, and speaks little to the improvements being made to other systems, as well as hides the fact that both deleted and remaining systems are to be utilized in different ways that do not disrupt the core Story/gameplay environment.

Also, for those that assume Discovery is on a downward trajectory towards fewer and fewer Systems, as if to say that Systems count is synonymous with content quantity, I can only say that with this next patch we will have handled the majority of reductions, and Systems development can finally focus on adding (hopefully) high quality systems in a non-disruptive manner that better plays to the Discovery title we have for the mod.

It must be said that the weight of years of Systems development added a great deal of complexity to the Story/gameplay environment (one that is impossible to give justice to), and in many cases Systems are barely recognizable from one another, creating a sense of sameness that helps no one feel attached to the world, and in other cases Systems served as pixel dumps, or outright broke fundamental lore by existing.

System removals have become a staple of my tenure as Systems lead, and it has been a slow grind of a System here or there being removed or merged, which has created an atmosphere of a slow death of the mod for some, the development team has taken the last year of development to turn a slow roast into a fast sear, allowing us to start new and on a positive trajectory for once.

Despite my Dr. Evil signature, I am not unapproachable and will happy engage with anyone who wants to talk about a given system or just in general. Just bear in mind I work full time and live in Japan, so response times can vary.

Originally, I wanted to stay out of this but this passage really caught my attention:

"Also, for those that assume Discovery is on a downward trajectory towards fewer and fewer Systems, as if to say that Systems count is synonymous with content quantity, I can only say that with this next patch we will have handled the majority of reductions, and Systems development can finally focus on adding (hopefully) high quality systems in a non-disruptive manner that better plays to the Discovery title we have for the mod. "

It's really a very poor PR move. What it conveys is that the team admits that the old systems are of poor quality despite numerous people trying their best to improve them, and that the team does not want, or more likely cannot fix them so it has to focus on these new allegedly high-quality systems. You talk of a less disruptive manner of handling things yet think for yourself, what would be less disruptive:

• a) bringing new content or otherwise reworking existing systems with established lore & story to bring them to these high-quality standards you are referring to; or
  
• b) removing old systems resulting in retconning of existing stuff that will inevitably lead to inconsistencies in the narrative & create headaches for the story devs so that you can create new systems that might or might not take flight and become popular.
  

A few examples of the systems on the list to be cut if we assume the leaks are correct:

• Sigma-21. Yeah, the system is rather empty and bland. Can it be reworked? Sure. Maybe, a battlezone for the OC/GMG/KuLawfuls/Hogosha/You name it? Perhaps. Removing it, however, and moving Saigon to, say, Sigma 15 alters the whole narrative regarding the Rheinland-Kusari war for the said system. Now it appears that the planet that Kusari fought for and kind of protected its claims together with the GMG is... in Rheinland space. Moreover, it would make no sense whatsoever now to say that Rheinland attacked in that war because the planet was in its space all along. Narrative inconsistency? Narrative inconsistency.
  
• Tau-53. The system actually has the potential to be a hub for the Gallic-Kusari unlawfuls now that Ku Lawfuls retreated. Tensions between the Maquis and GC? Perhaps. Or perhaps something else. Your story team has always been ripe with ingenuous ideas, they can figure something out. If you remove the system, however, the result of the most recent Ku-Ga war, however weird that conflict was in the first place, would be null and void. If Lorraine is removed in addition to that - even more so. Surely, you can try to pull out a card that the systems got abandoned and removed, but is it really the case the story wants to push when systems like Ontario and Kepler, having been devastated by natural phenomena far worse than the scourge of war that damaged only the infrastructure and not the fabric of reality, keep existing.
  

It looks like a really poor excuse of either inaptitude or idk even what, especially since you clearly see that the community predominantly is against it so I also cannot fathom who is the target audience of these changes and patch in general. I second @Prysin in his post above that you still remain a part of the community. Ostracising yourself like that will not do good either for you or other community members. IMHO, you should really reconsider the whole approach to the development because all the changes I've heard of looked really patchy without a general overarching vision of where the devs want the mod to go. Forced interactions by means of scaling everything down? Have you considered that forced interactions are usually not fun and players tend to flock to points of interest, whether those are atmospheric systems like old O-Delta, or some activity hub like mission farming in O Xi or battlezone in Munich? It would be too ungrounded to state, but it looks like you don't like those kind of activities and try to divert the players into activities that you think should be the priority by deleting the said systems.

If you truly care about the well-being of the mod you must have noticed the alarming trends: non-trading OFs are getting fewer and people generally do not care about those anymore. The RP activity of the forum has decreased. The interest to everything on the server is gradually decreasing. You should not be angry at all these rants - they mean that people still care, at least. The opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy. And at this rate there soon will be no players to savour your patches.

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