Official Activity Q4 2025

[Luke.]

We have no plans to crack down on Discords further.

As part of OF rework discussions we've obviously considered the impact of OF discord moderation on the community as a whole. Other than that, we don't believe we have the right or jurisdiction to cut down on peoples ability to have opinions on others and such. That's both an unattainable goal as people can just make new places as if it were a hydra, and an uncomfortable amount of surveillance regardless. No single person on the staff team are delusional enough to think that everyone should like each other all the time. That's inhuman levels of utopia that don't apply to anywhere in the world and nobody is that out of touch so, worry not.

The problem lies with how people conduct themselves in-game as a result. Targeting individuals in-game as a result of external fall-outs, planned PoB sieges that while are vaguely validated by RP, are evidenced to be a result of OOC spite. The aforementioned trade enjoyers that use the available API to create lists of people to avoid because god forbid there's any friction or risk to your money-making in a place as hostile as space. Etc. It might well not be due to any particular Discord server, that wasn't really my point either. But it is happening. I'm not pointing the finger at any specific individual, nor am I defending anyone. Every side is to blame, including us staff for any situation that we haven't handled well.

These are things that have always existed on Discovery to the point where one may even call it natural. However, it's far louder when it's a larger portion of the overall remaining playerbase and losing more people as a result of it is sad because it's avoidable with communication and understanding of each other. In short though, there isn't really much of a concrete solution to it and we know that. Other than cracking down on particularly egregious behaviour as we have done once or twice in recent memory where we deem the behaviour to be problematic enough, that's about all we can do because, as stated, further surveillance isn't good for anyone. We've had to "green room" a couple of conflicts where both parties simply could not get along and it has worked, if only temporarily. We just don't want to be too hands-on besides the obvious (upholding the rules).

It doesn't hurt however, to at least try to appeal to the fact that people want Discovery to live on and improve, and the community aspect of it is a significant part of that given how player-driven Discovery has always been. Burying hatchets from time to time is always a benefit to the overall health of the community when there's less spite being baked into interactions both in-game and on the forum.

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