Question to the community

[Ravenna Nagash]

Main reasons:

• Lack of time.
  
  
• The investment in time doesn't justify the cost.
  
  
• There are other competing games for my time that I am more interested in.
  

I started in Freelancer during COVID era so I had more time on my hands. Even back then, leading DTR and the project itself was almost like a 2nd job, which didn't really leave me with time to invest in PVP skills. I did get okeish in battleships though thanks to Bonsai and a few other people that spent time to teach me for which I am grateful. These days with work, side projects, other games, and a family - it's virtually impossible to find the time to sit and grind at Conn.

Contributing factors:

• Lack of resources/videos/etc. to learn. It's just a grueling experience that most people don't want to deal with.
  
  
• The balance changes often which is not necessarily a bad thing but I doubt I would ever have the time to play catch up. This is probably true for others.
  
  
• The insufferable silly honor code that makes Disco fights absolutely sterile and boring. I come primarily from a strategy background and Disco's silly honor code just makes no sense to me. Not being able to use chokes, not being able to use the environment, having to do X and Y, having to have exactly the same numbers with zero consideration for skills/or ship balance. Basically 99% of Disco fights are with this formula - you have to gather 10 people in empty space and wait for other 10 people to come and you shoot each other. It's honestly like something from Soviet Womble. Any deviation from this and boy you are gonna hear it.
  
  
• Which brings me to the next point - the drama. There's quite a few soy latte enjoyers that every battle, win-or-lose, there's drama. It honestly got to the point where even when you lose, the people that won were still crying. I also find it that the better the players, the more crying (with some notable exceptions of course, definitely don't want to generalize here). I must admit though that it's always hilarious to read the comments from certain people so there's a benefit to that. But yeah, some people in the community are just not good-faith actors. Which makes the game just not enjoyable overall, let alone PVP. I do miss early days fights with RM/OC/Core back when we were actually having fun (Omicron Xi was a blast, best system ever). Overall, no point in investing time to grind in a community where if you win you are gonna get drama and if you lose, well you are still gonna get drama. People having to walk on egg-shells over every fight is just nonsense. I've never seen this in another game.
  
  
• The PVP clique. Not applicable to everyone and again definitely don't want to generalize but there's a certain group of people who absolutely enjoy curb-stomping/skill-stacking who benefit greatly from the silly Freelancer honor code. These people also like to DM potentially good up-coming PVPers with messages of the sort ''why are you playing with X, they are shit at PVP, come play with Y''. So it's a skill-stacking gallery. Boy do these same people cry on the off-chance they die 1 time out of 10. Thankfully, there are some decent examples of good PVPers to offset this trend who do their best to try to teach people or to balance in-and-out of events. People that thankfully understand that one-sided stomps are not fun for anyone involved.
  

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