Staff Feedback Thread

[Kauket]

But my guess is that Aux wants to grow to be another Insurgency or something

which is a load of bollocks because it isn't in our M.O. - that's people making assumptions.

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[Karlotta]

Where does this end?

It ends when there is an actual irp reason why they shouldn't have it.

Balancing IDs by adding restrictions because an ID is too much fun compared to another ID is strangling the game by making it more boring, poorly RPed, anonymous, annoyingly restrictive, rule-lawyery, balance-bickery, biased, and paranoid.

You might just as well ask "Where does all this restricting IDs because they are too good compared to each other end?".

Farmer's Alliance look at some of the other Unlawfuls and decide the others are too good and they shouldnt be able to mine or have cruisers?

Mollys look at Aux and say they shouldn't have a large ZOI than them?

Brigands look at Maquis and say they shouldnt have Cruisers?

Maquis look at the Red Hessians and say Hessians shouldnt have Battleships?

Red Hessians look at Corsairs and Outcast and want to a) remove their bonuses and b) give them a ZOI that is as small and boring as theirs?

All this "restrict stuff because we want people to make characters in 23 faction instead of 4" is not only harmful because it literally makes gameplay worse, but also because it's based on a wrong premise. People dont spend more time playing disco if they are forced to have 23 chars in 23 factions instead of 4 in 3 factions, and they don't interact with other players more. They just do it more annoyed, lonely, bored, and anonymous.

How is it so hard to understand that "lets make the fun ID as crappy as the boring ID" is a much worse way of dealing with balance than "lets make the boring ID as much fun as the fun ID"?

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[Lythrilux]

Mollys look at Aux and want to have a large ZOI as them (2 Full Houses, Omicrons, Omegas and a few odds & ends ((not really a big ZOI, honest))?

You're looking at it wrong. You're supposed to compare it to the same league, not another league such as a House Military, police, or pirate organisation. So look at IDs like the Order, the Core, AI, Nomads, Intel IDs, etc.

Their activities are mostly not limited to a ZOI, but ours is, barring a demand line+defense, where most can defend allies anyway.

Auxesia has an absolutely massive ZoI, can demand alien/artifact stuff anywhere. Order granted does not have a ZoI (bar indies having a cap restriction, though there may be some questionable things here I conceed) but Auxesia ZoI and what they can/could do definitely eclipses that of Core, AI and Intel groups certainly at least. I still think Intel groups being able to mine is a bit silly, given how the sale points are setup.

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[Karlotta]

The above thing about general balance being said, it's still simply hilarious to see some people complain about "hostility" after seeing how some of their members behaved towards... I dunno... =CR=, Gateway, and me for example.

And to those who are saying that 'there is no hostility against Auxesia' then, well.

p.s: Also, in order to reduce the frequency of the depicted behavior, something about a public and more explicit staff code of conduct.

p.p.s: And something about me being permabanned from the disco discord for defending myself against demonstratively false accusations, while the depicted behavior is being allowed to run rampant for select people, still now and in years before.

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[Kauket]

Mollys look at Aux and want to have a large ZOI as them (2 Full Houses, Omicrons, Omegas and a few odds & ends ((not really a big ZOI, honest))?

You're looking at it wrong. You're supposed to compare it to the same league, not another league such as a House Military, police, or pirate organisation. So look at IDs like the Order, the Core, AI, Nomads, Intel IDs, etc.

Their activities are mostly not limited to a ZOI, but ours is, barring a demand line+defense, where most can defend allies anyway.

Auxesia has an absolutely massive ZoI, can demand alien/artifact stuff anywhere. Order granted does not have a ZoI (bar indies having a cap restriction, though there may be some questionable things here I conceed) but Auxesia ZoI and what they can do definitely eclipses that of Core at least.

Core can:

Can attack Alien and Order ships anywhere
attack ships equipped with Alien or Order equipment anywhere (basically kill their main opposition anywhere)
Fly caps
fly 4.3k, larger trading ability with a better tech cell (we only have pilgrim)
can mine iridium + azurite
enforce laws within their ZOI, legal piracy in a larger amount of systems basically.
Demand kemwer & alien materials anywhere
Core has a better tech cell, lots of tech opportunity, 90 on a load of mil (rhein, lib, bret), has both edge+bw+civ at 100



Both can:
demand alien materials.
shoot enemies within zoi
defend allies - basically every id already has this anyway.

Aux can:
in theory, yes, pirate people but we use it for law enforcement, in 3 systems
demand alien related materials + cardamine anywhere
larger engagement areas, zoi is larger.
weaker cell, only 3 cells, 75 on img, 90 on insurg. 75 on rha. has bw+ew at 100, civ at 90. that's more or less about it.



Core has a lot of room to play around in terms of stronger cells, can fly caps, can mine, can engage their opposition across the game. We can't engage our ideological opponents across the entire game. We also don't have our own native cell, and only two bases. We don't have a lot of targets to attack, even though it seems sparse in variety (OC/Sairs/Nomads/Core/Order/Unioners - pretty inactive), while true we have Bret + CR as an engagement, we don't really want to engage with them since the whole purpose of attacking on a very frequent basis has passed two patches ago.

We don't have any passive activities to do, we don't have a lot of targets to hunt - which I don't mind to be honest. Even trading is limited because nothing goes to our bases. But Core can do missions, do mining, trade or hunt down their (inactive) opposition .

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[Arcana]

+1 @Karlotta all those restrictions makes the game more boring. In matter of fact give some more freedom to players, mining bonuses, trading and such. I mean in versatile way. It's like hey i got mining bonuses in my fav mining ship. That's cool. I can mine in two systems also. Hey i can sell it in three places for good price. And on the other side -> You go and fly a ship you don't want to cause this is the only ID with 3.0 bonus and whatever.

[Haste]

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[Ilya]

Although I agree that no faction should have too many advantages over another for the sake of fairness, I think I have to repeat something I said before, because there is a very fundamental issue that GMs still don't understand, judging by the responses.

Discovery does not lack factions.

Discovery lacks PLAYERS.

The decline in factions does not cause a decline in players, as long as players can find another faction to play, if that faction is fun.

What does cause a decline in players is that the game is not attractive. There are many things that make discovery unattractive and I won't go into all of them, but one thing is that people are forced to spread their chars over many different factions and many different IDs, and that ends up with throw-away characters and throw-away RP that people do because they have to do it so the are able to do X, not because they like it.

Yes, make things fair between factions, and I also had the impression that some factions like Aux had advantages over other IDs, although I didnt study the matter closely.

However, if that is true, give other IDs more things they can do as long as it's not illogical for them to do it and thereby immersion breaking, instead of making this ID bad because that ID is bad.

Make IDs equally fun instead of equally crappy.

I don't think that all factions have to be very niche and promote players to have multiple characters with different IDs. It's much better not having to log a different account every 10 minutes in order to have a chance for meaningful interactions and gameplay. Better for immersion, for involvement, and character development.

Does not mean profitable mining for every ID that "has a mining background", as that would likely blur the faction's intended purpose and role. I think most unlawful IDs have viable smuggling options.

Also, there is a widespread tendency where player factions view the canon (in-lore) power and its dynamics as a measure of their success as players. To my view, this is a bad approach that results in a lack of consistency and more often than not backfires at the said player factions. And this for sure has to be kept in check.

Where does this end?

It ends when there is an actual irp reason why they shouldn't have it.

Balancing IDs by adding restrictions because an ID is too much fun compared to another ID is strangling the game by making it more boring, poorly RPed, anonymous, annoyingly restrictive, rule-lawyery, balance-bickery, biased, and paranoid.

You might just as well ask "Where does all this restricting IDs because they are too good compared to each other end?".

Farmer's Alliance look at some of the other Unlawfuls and decide the others are too good and they shouldnt be able to mine or have cruisers?

Mollys look at Aux and say they shouldn't have a large ZOI than them?

Brigands look at Maquis and say they shouldnt have Cruisers?

Maquis look at the Red Hessians and say Hessians shouldnt have Battleships?

Red Hessians look at Corsairs and Outcast and want to a) remove their bonuses and b) give them a ZOI that is as small and boring as theirs?

All this "restrict stuff because we want people to make characters in 23 faction instead of 4" is not only harmful because it literally makes gameplay worse, but also because it's based on a wrong premise. People dont spend more time playing disco if they are forced to have 23 chars in 23 factions instead of 4 in 3 factions, and they don't interact with other players more. They just do it more annoyed, lonely, bored, and anonymous.

How is it so hard to understand that "lets make the fun ID as crappy as the boring ID" is a much worse way of dealing with balance than "lets make the boring ID as much fun as the fun ID"?

I've remained very quiet as i felt not being here for many years didn't entitle me to have opinion of great value, that being said, @Karlotta and @Sava have made some extremely accurate points, ive highlighted some in red.

From my observations there has beena trend to make all factions as active as possible, however the current reality does not make this feasible. Instead of making new factions and trying to get people to have 10 different OF toons, instead look at condensing factions.

Too many factions, means too few interactions between peoples , with factions having only 1 or two people active routinely at any time barring large events. I know it goes against the grain, but it may be logical now to consider faction mergers, to reduce factions operating, like merging mollies and rogues, or like the 5 corporate factions in liberty RP "Business mergers" to reduce them to 2 as examples, and yes i expect large deep breaths.

Less factions means a higher population density in those factions and more interactions and immersion instead of being the lone person in .. i dont know, IC for example. it is not really ideal to have one person in 10 official factions, because they can only play one at a time.

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[LuckyOne]

What does cause a decline in players is that the game is not attractive. There are many things that make discovery unattractive and I won't go into all of them, but one thing is that people are forced to spread their chars over many different factions and many different IDs, and that ends up with throw-away characters and throw-away RP that people do because they have to do it so the are able to do X, not because they like it.

Too many factions, means too few interactions between peoples , with factions having only 1 or two people active routinely at any time barring large events. I know it goes against the grain, but it may be logical now to consider faction mergers, to reduce factions operating, like merging mollies and rogues, or like the 5 corporate factions in liberty RP "Business mergers" to reduce them to 2 as examples, and yes i expect large deep breaths.

Let's face it Freelancer / Disco is ancient in Internet years. At this point it's almost closer to the electronic arcades of the 70s than any "modern" genre.

Also, you won't get kids people to "interact" more if you put them into a 5 by 5 square meter sandbox. They'll just step on each other's toes, get into a fight, then go cry into their corners when they get a slap on the wrist by the GMs. The "power" of ruining a person's day by going "well actually the rules say you can't do X" is too much to resist for many people with a sociopathic streak that seem to dwell in these parts.

The main problem of Disco is that it lacks focus. It's basically a sandbox game, but a very strictly controlled sandbox. It's more of Petri dish experiment than a true "do whatever you want" sandbox. There's weird rules. Cringy RP requirements. The pixel power grabbing and endless circlejerking. And it's all measured by some subjective arpee quality rules where things get decided on a whim of a closed clique.

The events provide focus. And the few of them that (seemingly) have an impact on the state of the game / state of your chars provide incentive for participation. That's the "interesting" gameplay loop. But the "regular" one is boring as hell. Trade 100 000 units of Ore on the couple of routes that are not camped by pirates / too long so you can afford a "powerful" battleship that will just get stomped into the ground by somebody who traded 900 000 units of Ore and mined 5000 Sci-data then spent the rest of his Disco time dueling in Conn with a couple of friends.

All of that puts off any potential new players from joining sticking around.

The current state of Disco is, too many "filler" systems, too many "special" factions and a total lack of an interface for any decent coordination between players... or even interface for feedback on what the hell is going on. Any newbie who pisses somebody off isn't gonna bother reading hundreds of pages of lore, laws, rules when his a__ gets blasted by some "lawful vigilante" for flying a "wrong" ship in a "wrong" place. Or getting slapped by 150 mil fine for not obeying a request to halt (seriously wtf ?)

I don't claim to know how to "fix" Disco. But slimming it down and giving people more "focused" gameplay and tools for team-oriented (f)actions seems to be a good idea for a start.

[Egon Bigmemes]

And here we see it's okay to brigade against someone and act as foul as you desire as long as most of the staff dislikes them too.

We traded durandal for more of the same. Or perhaps for worse?

The heavy decision was incredibly accurate, and hindsight is 20/20

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Its no time to compose some like this: Roses are red, Violets are blue, please, please, please gallics, dont shoot, or i kill you.