Social Survey: Why people are loosing interest to Discovery?

[PRJKTLRD]

Majority of people lost interest after the introduction of 4.86

No need to explain more.

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<"From Darkness, lead me to Light. From Ignorance, to Truth. From Death, to Immortality.">

Jared Nomak ||  The rise of the Overlord || The Commune

[Sava]

Majority of people lost interest after the introduction of 4.86

No need to explain more.

I would try to explain over and over what exact differences between 4.85 and 4.86 in the mod are to blame for this, but few people even remember it. It was a drastic and swift change in the economy and system layout that resulted in changing player behavior. For some time after this, there was still 200/200, but the place was becoming less and less fun as people were adopting the new patterns.

Over the years, the population was dwindling, the story progressed, bugs were fixed, imports replaced, flame wars over insignificant things were waged, but this problem was largely unattended because it didn't touch INSERT_FACTION particular interests, and instead subtly but relentlessly affected things on a larger scale.

[Avalanche]

PRJKTLRD and Sava, please can you both expand. What exactly do you think the major differences between .85 & .86 were that negatively impacted the community & population?

[Sava]

It became increasingly harder to get the same amount of interaction per unit of time as before with a single character based in a certain area (while total pop was still around the same).

Around that time, I mostly played outcasts, but I can safely claim that the following factors affected other factions, too:

• abundance of newly introduced trade commodities and routes (+NPC farming to some extent). This made money-makers scatter across more systems, but, what's worse, made their behavior less stable and predictable. While it would be enough to have a single bomber docked in a right place to PVP/pirate active trader groups and lawfuls protecting them (piracy was a thing and one of the activity drivers back then) in 4.85, later you would have to have a few different characters belonging to a few different factions to even come close to the old amount of action
  
  
  I would add POB introduction as a semi-separate factor. The way POB economy works, it just adds to that "scattered and hard to predict" activity which does little (compared to what you would see prior) for any meaningful player-to-player interaction.
  
  
• introduction of "buffer systems" between hostile factions in areas of heated conflicts and frequent raids. One of the best-known examples is the replacement of Omicron-Eta (a system that was a popular battleground and passageway for outcast-corsair raids) with a different, longer and less familiar connection line. These changes were partially reverted in favor of less travel times much later.
  
  
  system layout and connections, in general, were sometimes purposefully changed to separate groups of players from one another. A recent example is driving the nomad farmers away from previously more popular Omicron-Delta.
  
  
• Connecticut access via the /conn command. Albeit a handy and useful feature, it didn't come without a conceivable negative impact (which most people didn't recognize).
  Conn is mainly a place for socializing and PVP training. Before /conn existed, people trained and socialized in RP areas, like Omicron Alpha and Gamma, some capitol planets, populated mining areas, etc. Group activity such as raids or trade convoys often started spontaneously, because you often had people with the same ID randomly chilling in one place.
  
  
  /conn (among other factors, such as players spending more time in Skype/Discord instead of the game, which, in turn, is partially caused by problems with finding activity) also had some impact on disco social dynamics. Where before you had more friendships and connections associated with certain ID/faction/region, now it's more shifted towards what some would call "ooRP circlejerks", being groups of players playing different factions and fighting other groups of players, as opposed to more "factions vs faction" oriented social structure of the past.

[Avalanche]

Fair points. Agreed.

[Gunbladelad]

On the changes from 4.85 to 4.96, the fact that external equipment now took up internal space was another reason why people turned away. I know of a few people back in the day who lost interest in Discovery with that change. The best addition of 4.86 would have been player-owned bases - initially designed as money-sinks, they could become great sources of income when deployed near mine-able resources - and they also allowed solo players to be able to take full advantage of mining by mining with one ship to fill the station, then bringing in a hauler to ship the goods.

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Where logic won't work, I will.

[Akura]

The tech compatibility powerplant rules absolutely killed Discovery for me. It's the antithesis of good RP game design. At best it's a lazy system to save the Admins as whole bunch of work, and at worst it's absolutely crippling to original and creative roleplaying. This was the final straw that soured Discovery and pushed me away for good, it's the single biggest reason why I won't return.

All of my main characters were instantly crippled by the introduction of that stupid feature, I was put in a very difficult position of having to choose between roleplaying my characters honest to who and what they were, and being any good in PvP.

Now PvP is not everything, but basically being forced with a lose-lose situtation where the two aspects of enjoyable gameplay are directly at odds with each other sucks. I had a Mercenary character with perfectly legal and faction approved tech but I was stuck at 75% compatibility? I shouldn't have to put in an SRP request (which is another horrible system) to be able to actually use this character. This is a Mercenary with former service in that faction, and actively worked as a spy for them, and I was forced to drop guns and ships because the Merc ID didn't allow full compatibility, rendering the character useless for PvP. A Merc who is crippled in PvP because of a lazy and shortsighted system is an absolutely useless Merc.

Factions trading tech is an important part of diplomacy in Discovery, and this system absolutely crippled it. Heck, this system all but ruined non-faction characters by railroading them down civillian tech trees. Hello? This is a game named "Freelancer", why are we crapping all over Freelancers?

This is a poorly thought out and damaging system, that only serves as a bandage over Discovery's serious balance issues. In short, it's a system that solved some problems, but ended up creating much, much worse problems in return.

This system actively seeks to seperate RP and PvP into two different groups, and puts them at odds with each other. Completely unnecessary.

[Reddy]

just lost interest over time and increasing hectic RL didn't help either

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[Akura]

just lost interest over time and increasing hectic RL didn't help either

That seems to be the most common pair of reasons from all of the vets that I've talked to since leaving.

People have less time and energy for this sort of passtime, and I think the stupid drama and tensions amongst the playerbase contributed to people feeling like Discovery was more work than play.

The best times I ever had was goofing around with faction mates, the worst times were seeing people literally bullying other players over some tribalism nonsense.

[Redcroft]

the fact that external equipment now took up internal space was another reason why people turned away.

Even now i dont understand the reason why this was made back then.