' Wrote:It doesn't really matter what you do to the environment. People will always do that. You could write the finest, most gloriously detailed and intricate, most immersive universe imaginable, and people would still find ways to crowbar their own personal fantasies into it.
Because that is what people do.
Ok I took some time to read some of hte longer answers too, and I think I should make this clear:
1: This is not supposed to be a rant about furries, its supposed to be a discussion on how we create a consensus and motivation to role play something that is accepted as good canon role play
3: I dont consider indies lolwhuts (someone said that somewhere, although he was probably tlaking to someone else thant me). Some of the biggest "lolwhuts" (although I dotn like to use the word) I saw were people who later turned out to have join dates around 2007 and post counts above 1000 and were in at least one official faction.
3: Im not proposing something that forces people to follow a certain storyline, I'm proposing something that offers help and a choice to follow one of many storylines.
(long boring speech on my personal experience when I started playing here between the ---- lines, skip if you dont care)
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When I arrived here, and I think a lot of people made a similar experience, I flew around looking for stuff that was new in the mod. I flew around, did some missions in different factions, and got the best gear and ship I could get my hands on, exactly like the SP was, exactly liek some other FL mods I played years ago were supposed to be played. Bam... someone told me ya cant do that, its against the rules. It didnt actually say that in the rules... but yeah it was. I also go told I need to role play, and preferably choose one of the faction and role paly as that. Thing is I had no idea how to role play, because they only thing I knew about Freelancer was how to be Trent, and frankly I hated Trent from the beginning. To I thought ok I'd join a faction... make a navy ship, make an order ship, and try to do what I got told. First experience was that the official faction noticed that I'm a noob so they didnt let me join. Ok so I tried being an indy and gain experience first, so I flew around not knowing why there was war between rhineland and liberty ,why there was war between order and liberty, what my ZOI was, and most importantly not knowing what I am actually suposed to do if I cant invade rhineland on my navy ship and I cant attack my enemies on my order ships (there was always some reason why I shouldnt, either dont enter Iota without telling hte keepers first, dont attack if you are in superior numbers, dont attack navy, dont attack while zoners are near, and so on). Then I came across some a little more experirnced players and somehow they were able to bring up the patience to tell me all that stuff, which really isnt written down anywhere, its just learned by someone telling you sooner or later. Still I had hardy any feeling on how to role play and the faction.. because of all the different kkind of people I saw out there, it was hard to choose a "role model" to learn what is actually considered a good thing to do and what is not (especially since on ost things not even the veteren players agree.)
I think a lot of people make similar experienes when they a start here.
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Since Joe, you're navy boss... here is an example for you which I was thinking of:
Lots of people wanna RP navy, and go around asking people how to do it, and some end up doing a lot of police work cause they dont know what else to do..
Maybe we could make a "secondary fleet recruitment officer" which consists of a bar character on West point.
This guy tells people how to set up their ship, names, where to do missions, how to behave as a navy officer, and maybe gives them motivatn to do smoething, like fight on the front against the order in alaska or against rhineland in the southern systems.
The guy could also tell some stuff on the background of the war between liberty and rhineland, just to get people's minds more occupidied with the disco universe.
Kinda give people a goal, and help in setting up.
Basically, keep them busy and having fun with something that is generally considered to be ok things to do. Dont force peopel to do it... just offer it as a way to learn how to play a bit better.
Same could be done for Order or ther other house factions. Like Order guys tells people how to behave towards the liberty house, explains how to keep a low profile, and makes some firey emotional speech on how to deal with nomads.
Kinda like the mission briefings in those games I mentioned (wing commander and starcraft) got you doing the right thing, and got your mind more involved in the game.
Image playing those games without those mission debriefings... it would be very similar to the experience you sometimes get on discovery as a noob... like "what I do now? wtf just happened?"
Those kind of briefings ingame for everyone to read would help take that feeling away on a lot of issies. Not everyone will read them, but some people will, if you tell them that they will be able to progress ingame by reading them.
Quote & reply to previous invisi'd post removed in the interest of thread cleaning
-Burg