The Problem With Piracy

[Luke.]

For me, the primary fix is greater emphasis on the fact that this is an RP server. Unfortunately the culture, especially as the playerbase has begun to dwindle over the years, has shifted toward a more single-player game with multiplayer elements (mostly PvP) rather than the other way round.

The server would once thrive on interaction and its sandbox-y nature that just isn't really there anymore. Work is going on behind the scenes to give incentives to log more often and start to reverse this years-long issue, alongside said emphasis on the fact that if you play here, you should expect to face hardship by opposing factions and to not be allowed to just powertrade the days away and be upset when your latest profits aren't quite as fruitful thanks to interception...but everything takes time.

I very much agree myself that traders need to understand the idea of risk and reward again and that's something that's sorely lacking. Just recently we saw an incident of a faction being made wholely aware of someone trading Cardamine repeatedly through their home system, and then being accused of metagaming by said smuggler when they began to stop them more often. A good example of the culture shift that's occurred. Upon my inspection, said faction weren't even /1 /2ing them, but rather having a conversation and then being accused in OOC chat. Crazy.

The solution (besides my long-held moniker of "just log in" to have more people around and somewhat revive the scene we all yearn for via a degree of brute force) is just not that easy, but also not that complicated either. Just needs proper implementation and to be pointed at very starkly. Perhaps rule changes too, but when you're stuck between the rock and the hard place of "lose players that just don't get it and therefore lower player retention, or lose vets that are sick of people silently trying to escape all the time", it's a difficult compromise.

and the fact that someone getting hits every 10 mins makes it more clear that you need to change the playerlist to regions only, cuz it makes zero sense to have a sirius wide scanner on a rp server
AGAIN

The problem with this is that the server is quite low-pop at present. While I agree that people using the playerlist religiously might feel like shit, realistically without it your chances of just stumbling upon someone right now is slim. As it stands, it promotes interaction rather than frivolous metagaming. RP can still occur as a result of using it, and if so then I currently don't see the issue. Regardless, this is a vanilla Freelancer feature so I don't know how much it can even be customised. Cloaks change its behaviour at least.

Regardless, I was previously unaware of "lists" and such going around until reading this thread. Reminds me of smear docs being made of people on MMOs who'd then be shoved out of the raid-scene over one singular bad interaction because people that read it can't think for themselves and just believe every word. Extremely cringe behaviour and anyone involved in this practice should be ashamed of themselves and you are perpetuating the very issue that's being complained about. Kindly have a spine, please. I'm sure the obvious retort would be "well enforce the 'reasonable demands' and 'RP' clauses better" and you might have a point but this isn't the answer. Eye for an eye makes the world blind. Everyone, if they tried a bit harder and communicated less confrontationally with each other, could already make a difference. If current rules as they stand are widely felt to be causing problems however, then we (the staff) can of course look into that as well.

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