Deleting systems poll UPDATE

[LuckyOne]

While one could have the appreciation for the developers trying to get some semblance of quality in many of the former "Guard" systems, there could also be an argument that making the game world smaller and removing things that (former) members of the community strived for and often spent numerous amounts of resources, including the most valuable one, their own time, will lead to alienating many active people and demotivating them from further efforts. All this is simply not good for the long term longevity of the game.

By all means, rework what is needed to be reworked, make the systems backwater like Baffin or put some powerful NPCs in it like O-Major and O-Psi to make them have a different purpose.

But if you really want to increase player-to-player interactions you need to take a backstep and look at the big picture. It's not only systems design or even the number of systems that increase the likelyhood of player-to-player interactions, though those certainly help when the systems have more chokepoints or a clear purpose and known activity the players could use a system for.

The other side of the coin is the gameplay mechanics, namely the ways it's possible to intercept and find other ships, besides just looking at the player list. My honest opinion is that further buffing of cruise speeds for some ships, like interceptors, while slowing down others (such as heavy transports), increasing overall scanner ranges and reworking all scanners for more variety, having more ways to generate co-op activities (co-op trading, smuggling), giving unlawfuls some form of access to TLAGSNET could all lead to increased friendly and unfriendly interactions between people regardless of the system design. And also fix the damn Docking Modules, didn't Darkwind already submit a patch for them that's waiting years to be reviewed and pushed to the live game ?