Community and improvments? Thoughts please

[Ghaoul]

Well, the issue I see is that Houses are ruled by a group of people who can wield their power like little gods in this world. If they want to deny someone new, they can— even if the approval should align with the laws. They could come up with reasons that don’t necessarily violate RP but still feel inconsistent.

Going to an admin every time something like this happens would make RP boring, as people would exploit it. Yet, there is no independent 'ruler' to limit this. At least, that’s based on my past experience. Maybe things have changed. I guess it’s up to me to find out and give it another try.

But I hope I won’t be disappointed a second time because I really think it’s an awesome game. After all, it’s the people who make the game truly great.

[Sombs]

PoBs are high-risk-high-reward things. They are the only thing in the game that players can put into the game world but also lose. And this is, while also being a roleplay sandbox, for the most a competitive game. PvP is by no means limited to ships shooting each other. You need to have full awareness of this - people can and will destroy a PoB if you make yourself a target. And making yourself a target is very easy.

People generally dislike seeing PoBs pop up out of nowhere - simply because everyone can spam PoBs with a considerably small amount of effort. They often do a horrible job at integrating into the game world, be it in terms of roleplay or by positioning. While it is true that Discovery offers this very cool feature, it is one of the features that could not cause more drama. It is certainly not a feature that is tailored to newcomers, and pulling off establishing a decent PoB with adequate roleplay, reasoning and function requires a certain level of understanding of how the community works, what people expect and the simple fact that you will have to make compromises one way or another. You put something in the game that can be destroyed by people for the most simple or exotic reasons.


My advice, when it comes to PoBs, is to look at other PoBs, how they are operated, by whom and what roleplay they offer. Get a feeling for what they must have gone through to make the PoB work. The time spent, the roleplay written, the credits paid. It really doesn't matter whether it is a PoB in house space or outside - there is always factions who decide what they allow to be put in their turf and what not. In fact, in house space, you merely get pirated legally by government players. Don't trust that they will come to aid you when you get sieged.

While the PoB feature is really cool, especially now, ask yourself whether you really want to put something in the game that can be destroyed permanently. If it is about the roleplay, just keep in mind you don't need a physically existing installation in the game world. You can always roleplay playing people on a station or doing stuff on a capital ship like a Bustard. If it is for the production of things, you can always help other PoB owners with their productions and make good cash that way, too. There is no need for every player to have their own PoB - cooperation can definitely be a lot more fun than spending your precious time babysitting your own PoB and watching it eat maintenance goods. It is a glorified tamagotchi, in a way.

If you still insist on making your own PoB, I wish you best of luck with it and hope you won't burn out with it. Discovery has so much cool stuff to offer, be it roleplay, PvE, PvP, exploration or powertrading - there is something for everyone. It would be a shame to lose a player because of them going for the one thing that can be destroyed permanently.

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Uncharted System Stories: 18 | 32 | 34 | 37 | 38 | 85

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[Shulsky]

Have you considered talking to the moderation staff instead of ChatGPT? About the violations and stuff as far as rules.

Also, have you considered looking at it from Rheinland Govt's point of view? They just had someone slap down 5 POBs in a system, didn't go through the process of registering these or ignored the process, and I guarantee these POBs weren't actually doing any reasonable economic activity considering you put down FIVE of them. It looks bad. It really just looks bad.

Throwing POBs left and right makes them genuinely meaningless in my eyes, RP wise.

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Operation Have Sea

[Lythrilux]

Damn now AI is coming for the Discovery Staff's jobs too.

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[Vlaicone(Ted)]

I feel that Discovery is at a point where you can do a lot of stuff, both alone and with friends. The server active population has crystallized and centered around several groups. On one hand you have very heavy Role-Play driven factions that make the effort to be out there and to encompass the environment as much as they can, and on the other hand you have as always factions that participate in role play but are also involved into the PVP aspect of the server and quite frankly it does seem that we have reached and interesting point.

Discovery is made and played by people and that makes it very much alive and as much as you want to try you cannot befriend everybody, but weirdly you can become persona non grata quite fast. However we do have rules in place that seem to work quite good.

On the topic of AI, i think it's a very interesting tool, however, you can use it to get a bit much more umpf from your posts, or help you if you are not quite experienced in Role play or on a lower level of English. However, if you want to use it to control your life and you do not put any small amount of work in, you are going to catch some flak.

To summarize, your time would be very interesting.

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[Ghaoul]

Have you considered talking to the moderation staff instead of ChatGPT? About the violations and stuff as far as rules.

Also, have you considered looking at it from Rheinland Govt's point of view? They just had someone slap down 5 POBs in a system, didn't go through the process of registering these or ignored the process, and I guarantee these POBs weren't actually doing any reasonable economic activity considering you put down FIVE of them. It looks bad. It really just looks bad.

Throwing POBs left and right makes them genuinely meaningless in my eyes, RP wise.

Well, I did report the violations, yet the called player was still playing freely afterward. I’m not here to judge, as I was upset and received messages from all sides on discord.

Regarding the point you mentioned about considering Rheinland's government's perspective and the belief that those bases were just appearing out of nowhere—this is incorrect. Those bases had Freelancer IFF and were backed by extensive forum work (for me as a beginner: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...tid=191528). Each base had a specific purpose:

A Shipyard, intended to create RP around building ships on the station (which is now integrated into the game).
A Research Base for scientific advancements.
A Defense Base for protection.
A Central Communication Base for Freelancers to gather and coordinate.

All of that work and storytelling behind their existence was essentially erased by just two lines of text. Even responses to those lines were ignored. The reality was that people simply saw something to blow up and proceeded to AFK-shoot the bases 24/7. I logged in constantly, barely got any sleep, as they would attack in the middle of the night (which, as I understand, is no longer possible). And always sitting next to the defenses which were sometimes not even shooting (bugging as there were 12x Defenses build around them for protection).

Destruction with proper RP would have been fine, yet even when returning after being destroyed, people would claim they were "not PvP dead" and could continue regardless. The bases weren’t even close to anything significant (they were 60k below ground level and far from any objective) and served purely an RP purpose. The central base was Core 3, and the others were Core 2 looking forward to go further with more RP which was just in its early stage. Gathering the necessary materials took far longer than their destruction.

However, I’m not upset about the destruction itself, even though it took me over three months to build them. What truly frustrates me is that the RP was completely ignored. Everything had to be erased overnight, and the attack had to begin immediately (They were even attacked before the 24Hour restriction). I would have loved for the RP to continue, but even a major government ignored the opportunity because it would have taken time to engage in RP—think about that. The legal registration of the bases was denied for random, nonsensical reasons—not once, not twice, but three times. In the end, I said, "Screw it, I'll do the RP and build them anyway." Yet even then, the RP aspect was completely disregarded.

People remained stubbornly stuck in their own narrow viewpoints, refusing to include others in their godlike system where they serve as rulers. I believe that this is the real issue.