i just logged 4 hours ago and sadly i can only see 14 people. and sadly, im the type of player that only play when the server is crowded enough ... guess it's my fault
From my experience, the start of the downhill of Disco was when several things happened:
1.) WE LOST THE LUNCHBOX Q_Q... Oh wait, this is serious?
1.) Gallia was introduced. Though it was a very pretty house and actually had better soundtracks, the BIGGEST factors why it didn't work for me were that it was so remote and hard-to-get-to (there are MINEFIELDS blocking the damn jh, for Eris' sake!), not to mention isolationist. I hear stories of players honestly working diligently making Gallia work, but it was just so damn remote and not worth spending 30 minutes - 1 hour to "sidetrack" towards, that they lost inspiration and quickly assumed Disco was going downhill.
If you asked me, it would've been infinitely more interesting if Gallia was linked to Sirius via jumpholes from ALL FOUR HOUSES LINKING TO IT. Think about it: Gallia not only would've been the new wild wild "french" west with all the sudden influx of traders and smugglers using the house as a shortcut hub, but the house inhabitants would get activity rivaling New York, it could also use this advantage to launch a MASSIVE INVASION to all FOUR HOUSES (of course, said houses could THEN fight back! It'd cause MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF CHAOS, MAYHEM, LOWLUTTERY AND RP).
2.) Updates became more and more infrequent, while contributing less and less (or at least feeling like they contributed less and less). Once upon a time, every week or so whenever I opened Freelancer I'd get this white window saying the game needed to "download new content", and I'd wait for several minutes, to half an hour, and when it was done I'd find that almost always the update would change something. Since I was a trader at the time, what I noticed most were commodity prices shifting, and while those proved hassle at first, when I look back on it, even that "hassle" made the game feel very dynamic, very alive.
From the many "leaving" threads I've read over the months as I saw it slowly decline, many had a common theme of complaining they were tired of waiting for the updates. Well, there were also themes of elitism and imbalance and what-not, but I didn't really mind them, since I felt they were personal attacks solvable through proper community culture. The perma-updates gave me a feeling those problems would fix themselves. But now that this white messenger of change no longer graces me, it's like a voice inside told me the mod had finally reached its apex, and it was only a matter of time it would soon die a silent death.
Oh, and while we're on the subject of elitism:
3.) Reports, sanctions, and conflicts were taken more and more personally. Call me naive, but when I first came here the community felt warm, open, and accepting despite the outward trolling and bashing. The tipping point of where the aforementioned really caught my attention was when the Bret-Kus war dragged on for too long. Before then, I was just another trader-turned-refugee runner of the Vagabond-series transports, and those were the best Freelancer days of my life. I felt like I had a purpose, like I really contributed something in the war despite my relatively-few interactions with other players. I wrote to my heart's content in those days, I did.
But when the war dragged on, people started to take sides. There were players who internalized their side's hatred towards the other. I dunno why I didn't feel such a rift in my time with the LN against the RM, since THAT war dragged on longer than the Bret-Kus war, but I felt that rift in the war of the west. I saw reports for bad behavior linearly increase, bad blood increase.
... And then Gallia happened. The ENTIRE COMMUNITY took sides. It was the devs/admins versus the original factions. Trolls started appearing in massive droves, reports filed, arguments turning into flamefests, even admins couldn't help blow off their tops, which only made matters worse. As I said, call me naive, because then i simply observed as the flames of conflict burned relationships to ashes, and I was simply content to stay in my little world of being a trader simply going about his daily business, only being minorly-affected by events around me.
I guess you could say I became apathetic by that point.
This is my dollar, my little POV as to why Disco's become smaller and smaller over the years. If anyone would like to correct me, I'd love to hear it, because I'm open to hearing your ideas.
... Gallia was requested by the playerbase back in 4.84. Granted, the execution of it was poor - the systems were overdone and left dangling, so you could either be in Gallia or in Sirius. Couldn't be fixed until now.
So yea, be careful what you wish for. Dev projects take weeks, sometimes months. Player whims, I can say from experience, change much faster. It is annoying to a dev to have to keep up with that. Developers hate throwing out a few hundred hours of work because some folk suddenly turn around and say "hey, let's trash that and do something else".
Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.
Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.
I don't get on Disco much these days.. the last time was a few months ago, and there were well over 100 players as usual. But today I downloaded 4.87 and just logged in, and I could not believe my eyes.. There were 20 people on the server. I have not seen that few players since 4.79, when I discovered Discovery (lol).
I'm guessing the beta is the main reason people have been leaving Disco in droves, which is a bloody shame, because a lot of work has gone into 4.87. I hope that after a stable is released people will start coming back.
One problem is not so such Gallia as many people are saying, we've had Gallia for like 3 years now. It's a case that with so many systems, even 225 players will get diluted.. and even more so now. Another problem is what I call the "tragedy of choice".. now with so many more systems, factions, ships, IDs, rephacks, and commodities, I honestly think it scares a lot of people away. It certainly makes things like trading and exploring that much harder, especially when you start rearranging Vanilla systems around (hint hint!)
Anyhow I'm going to have a serious think about the Disco advertising thread.. I'd hate to see all this hard work from very talented people go to waste because of a dwindling player base. With the combination of Swag Pack and Disco, FL can be retooled into a whole new game.
I would assume that the VAST MAJORITY of freelancer fans have found Discovery over the last 8 years. Those who were interested joined, played, and are now beginning to move on.
The beta doesn't help, certainly, but everything gets old at some point.
I've taken a break recently, as I've been playing a lot of war thunder, and the imminent rollback and lack of mining are a big turn off at this point.
Regardless, as much as we love Disco, we will eventually have to accept the fact that we will very likely run out of people who would have any interest in playing a 11 year old video game mod with a lot of rules, restrictions, and elitist pricks who troll newer players for not knowing all 12000 lines of rules related text by heart on their first day on the server.
They need to rollback soon, or people who have "taken a break" will also start to leave. The longer the rollback is put off, the more people will start to lose interest.
I would proudly join the ranks of those who claim:
It's time for the rollback!
Reasons:
1: The most unbalanced trade routes and the most serious of bugs must have been found already and taken care of in Update 2. As a consequence there will be no outrageous cashgaining via godlike traderoutes, neither skyscraping QQs due to bugged hitboxes for example. Even if a few players find some, that won't have as much negative impact on the game as it has now by delaying the rollback. Besides testing can continue after the rollback and bugs can be found and fixed later on. Implement the fixes you made so far and let's go!
2: AND MOST IMPORTANT
People are leaving. The beta is dragging on long enough. PLUS before 4.87 we had at least 3 weeks of hackers that turned gameplay upside down. In addition bases were disabled.
That's about 1,5 months without proper gameplay!
That's too long for new players to stay. It's hard for even those old veterans to wait.
I truly honour the efforts of those working hard in the dev and admin teams! 4.87 would be a lot of fun to play! But the time you experience as a rush and pressure most people experience as a LONG wait. You can't feel it. But it is time. Please consider my points.
- testing stability is important to a Server so i can feel with mod devs it must be a pure Horror for them looking to 48 pages of bugs but i must say time has come to say - thats it - its stable now - who cares if there has to be an other update in 3 or 4 weeks
- do the rollback asap RP is running on a very low Level at the Moment
- the missing presence of admins / angels online
- the online community has changed and needs help by official factions - means there must be made something easier to join.For a new (and often an older Player, too) there are Problems with factions like ALG|, [ALG], ALG- etc ... makes no sense to hear - ehh you can read at Forum about
- since PoB's there are many suppliers - now in beta - awaiting rollback - theres no sense for them beeing on
- PoB owners - well many bases were build directly to mining fields - i dislike - but changing materials, routes and Systems doesnt make them happy - they had an Intention to place the base where it is - now many things are "far away"
- rules seem to be "offline" at the moment - you pew someone to a base he docks reloads and restarts - telling him the rule to leave System or make a 2 hrs break - you only get the answer NO - beta bug - even if you sanction him this makes no sense.
- Reengagers - nothing else to say about - but masses of them
- add a new rule "Begging is strictly forbidden" i stopped playing several times to get these "plzplzplz gimme 300 millions i want to buy a BS" from me
- official factions do often give a negative example: like
a) Situation in Magellan: a fleet of 10 / 15 ships are standing by to raid (to liberate) leeds just helping the BAF - then the who is allowed to / no do not enter / whos on the lead ...etc. starts via grp-chat - people (fleet) waiting 30 mins -45 mins 1 hour - nothing happens gets annoyed.
b) Situation Rheinland raiding liberty - it started perfect - a large fleet mb 15 ships moved to Texas - then california - then the Group leaders said oh sorry weve to leave here - were preparing a nomad raid - and went off ... 10 ppl pi**ed in california
c) a [LN]- asked for help in california to handle an enemy cruiser - i gave my ok to come - so i moved my carrier from Alaska to california 10 other [LN], LNS were on too - nearby - but noone else came - the one asking for help - was pi**ed about and left.
d) dieing factions - like Kruger - i recognized 2 attemps to bring them back to game 2 years ago and this year. showing up as Kruger or KMS was pretty awful - 2 years ago when there was the miners conflict in O7 (IMG-Kruger) Kruger was slaugthered like flees by hesians, wilde, sairs, pirates and even junkers - the "community" gave them no chance to come back
e) vioces here at Forum:
"restrict caps to official factions and remove them from unaffiliated or non official members" - funny - teach these non officials how to play - invite them - give them help, discuss weapon setups etc.... you will see they are not that bad you make them
i am one of these free - capship captains - i really enjoy these fat beasts - with RMS- or LNS or HMS or OC .... i can join in many groups, took part in many raids and other events AND i can go alone eg hunting npc caps off the main areas - so why removing them ?
f) activity of official factions - yes you can see nearly any time a LN or OC or .:j:. but wheres the rest - if someone else shows up - asking him about activity - joining the group you most get the answer - ehhh ... make a post at Forum - gimme your Skype etc ...
finally - i will stay here at Disco - no matter what else will happen
You know how people say that 84 was better in every way? Well, we curerntly are running on the same amount of activity we had in 84. Heck, in 83 we had 50 people during the evenings and less than 10 during the mornings and day.
Remember what a big deal it was when we hit 100 players?
Anyway, the boom in 84-85 can be explained by Eve Online scrapping their "Lite" client that made it possible for low-end pc users to play it. Needless to say, with that gone, a few thousand players were left without it. Some of them sought out other space sims and eventually got to Disco.
Remember how many of our newest members made thread about how they came from eve?
Anyway. With the promise and now known specs for Star Citizen, combined with the recent development in budget-power APUs by ATI, everyone is saving up for a better PC, so they eventually move on to better games.
They do not LEAVE disco per say, just that if something is up, they have OTHER games they can play. They do not have to endure the lag or the rollback. People stop playing and wait it out, playing something else.
That easy.
EDIT: Well, it is not easy, no. The biggest mistake, you guys, is that you are trying to pin the blame of the inactivity wave to one specific cause. What if it is the combination of many?
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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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