Staff Feedback Thread

[Haste]

Discovery has always tried to cater to a wide range of players. We fully understand that there are players who just want to play Freelancer in multiplayer. They want to fly spaceships and shoot guns at other spaceships. Now, Connecticut already exists as a completely out of roleplay arena for them to do this in, but in addition to this, Discovery has always allowed players to roleplay little more than glorified NPCs. Setmessages being valid ways to abide by the "two lines minimum" rule are another way for players to effortlessly "do the bare minimum", even if their typing speed or English skills are lacking.

At the same time, however, Discovery is still a roleplay server. It wants to not only accommodate the types of players mentioned above, but also those players who put in a bit more effort. Their characters are often more thought-out: they have a place of birth, parents, and a(n eventful) life that shaped them into the "people" they are. These players are trying to immerse themselves into the game universe. And if we want them to have fun and stick around, we need to throw them a bone, too. If everywhere they fly they bump into LPI ships writing "STOP! You violated the law. Pay the court a fine or serve your sentence. Your stolen goods are now forfeit." then they'll likely conclude that the "RP" in the server title is nothing more than a farce.

Discovery once had a healthier balance of these two player types, and also many more players somewhere in-between. I don't personally know the perfect solution for how we can reasonably cater to everyone, in the way that we've been trying to for so long. Picking one or the other would likely be easier, but would also obviously rob the other group of players of a game to play. Either way, I believe that for Discovery to function as a "light RP" environment at the very least, some standards need be enforced.

I don't want to publicly shame Mort for what he did. He's probably heard enough chats in Wilde over it, and while he remained silent for them, he has given me his apology on the incident today, and has offered to replace what he did because of his negative impact in that moment. That I can respect, and he has my forgiveness for being decent and admitting he did wrong.

I will just go on record and say that several members of staff weighed the incident you're referring to quite heavily when making this decision.

---