Make Rheinland at war again!

[Shiki]

Is that why literally the entire community partook in the siege, it prolly did more harm than good too you. Making people mad? I'm pretty sure I got more praise than hate after the siege.

Wesker... stop assuming everyone agrees with you. I did not participate in destruction of Reutligen and the only reason I wasn't there to shoot AT you was 'cause I had other stuff to do iRL. The fact that you and you base killing squad are the loudest group on the server doesn't mean everyone else agrees. Quite contrary I'd say. The three weeks when you were banned were the best in my short time here on Disco.

Enjoy your empty Rheinland.

Oh my. Are we assuming that more than 20 people logged at the same time is just a "loud wesker's pob killing squad"? That's just adorable. Also people like you have promissed empty Rheinland after Solitaire siege. I think we sould intensify our attempts of killing Rheinland activity, since current actions apparently are not killing Rheinland fast enough.

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[Wildkins]

Honestly, It's time the Story Devs act based on the player Actions.

We already spend a lot of time considering the impact of player factions, and conversely, the impact that our decisions and updates can have on those factions. We repeatedly counsel all factions that could be involved in an update (and regularly canvas all factions once a version, or more often, to ensure that their needs are being met). Things like Op. Royal Flush, the Kusari Civil War, and the Omicron Delta incident(s) are but a few examples of this kind of approach, which is only starting to truly come into its own in 4.88+.

To back up the points brought up in this thread, story decisions are not made solely based on the "strength" of a faction in terms of their PvP ability, but rather their logical strength as a result of their available resources, combined with the resources of those around them and their goals, and a progression of all of those in a dynamic storytelling environment. Sometimes those limitations can be bent in order to facilitate a more interesting story, but by no means do we intend to give preference to factions who outperform in a gameplay setting.

And, to answer the OP and everything in general about Rheinland: internal conflicts with RHA, Unioners, and VWA are definitely becoming the focus, or at least that's the hope. Whether or not the playerbase of Rheinland grows to accept that change is another thing entirely.

[Benoit]

Whether or not the playerbase of Rheinland grows to accept that change is another thing entirely.

What will happen if the playerbase is not big enough? Because to be honest, I have a strong feeling that it is the case since almost 3 years. It is almost as if Rheinland is cursed. It either has a strong punctual [RM]-, a strong RHA (as in now) or a strong civilian side but never 2 or more at the same time. For Rheinland to have a big enough playerbase, it should have at least 10 to 15 players logged at the same time and in proper factions. It's pretty rare, ask me, I only play in that house.

I kindly but firmly ask the dev to take in account what I'm writing because it is the plain truth. Make a Rheinland active with only Rheinland internal stuff has been tried since more than a year now, and it doesn't take a genius to notice that this thinking has proven to be flawed. Kusari is an other great example of what isolationism does to a house faction.

Why can't we have a poll for that matter? I think it is the most vital question to ask for the survivability of this mod.

[Kopesh]

But hey,you can use SMH POB as a temporary POB

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If any of you wants to contact me,add me on skype and I'll speak to you.
lungustefan123

[Wildkins]

What will happen if the playerbase is not big enough?

...

I kindly but firmly ask the dev to take in account what I'm writing because it is the plain truth. Make a Rheinland active with only Rheinland internal stuff has been tried since more than a year now, and it doesn't take a genius to notice that this thinking has proven to be flawed. Kusari is an other great example of what isolationism does to a house faction.

This is a bit of a ramble, so I apologize if ideas don't get resolved in this or what have you.

To answer you in a personal matter rather than as a representative of the dev team, I'm of the opinion that Discovery is about twice or three times as big as it could possibly be with the amount of players that we have. There are regions, factions, and entire storylines that are being neglected because there is no interest, and it has less to do with how stories or sectors are designed and more to do with the fact that Discovery is essentially a shotgun blast of content and only so much of it can be covered by the players we have at this point.

Transitions are being made, but the external threats available to place Rheinland on a war footing with are very limited. Another war with Liberty in my mind is simply infeasible; and, on top of that, would likely do little to fix the problem of activity. The war was shelved, in part, because of a decline in interest over the course of the last year of 4.87. On top of that, it is very difficult to write a compelling narrative and simultaneously place Rheinland into another big war, and I don't honestly think that another house war would do anything meaningful in the long-term for Rheinland's player base.

So, to answer your question: Internal conflicts haven't done much for activity in Rheinland, that I will agree on, but at the same time I see little in the realm of external conflicts that Rheinland can both reasonably engage in and would actually benefit the activity of the house. I would argue that the activity issues exist primarily from a lack of new players and a blurry direction in development; transparency is still an issue, although it's certainly improved over the past year, and tenfold of that over the past few. I think that, without an official source to purchase or acquire Freelancer, it's difficult to foresee any large scale improvement in the quantity of the Discovery player base, and that at this point our only option is to lower the quantity and improve the quality of the content available, both on a small-scale in Rheinland and on a larger scale in the mod as a whole.

As a side note, polls of the community's opinion are always welcome, but there is a bit of nuance to this situation. Again, I can't speak for the dev team as a whole, but I can say that my approach to the situation would be a continuation of pairing down systems, and perhaps even factions should it come to it, in an effort to compact and compress what options are available. Discovery's breadth of content has always been its strong suit, but it might also be its Achilles' heel, insofar that we are likely in a situation where the sheer quantity of content available outstrips the capabilities of the player base.

[Wesker]

I see little in the realm of external conflicts that Rheinland can both reasonably engage in and would actually benefit the activity of the house.

the LN Rheinland war brought over 120 players to the server and bred activity for liberty and Rheinland. lol, Rheinland can't "reasonably" do anything thanks to the liberty bias in the story dev team (: Echo was dumb

Either way another war benefits the Rheinland playerbase and the server, and the RHA (^::::::::::::::::::::::::::

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[Antonio]

Can't agree more with John. There's definitely too much factions and systems which the playerbase simply can't cover and it inevitably results in a solid amount of them being neglected. If you ask me, I'd start with a major rework of non vanilla systems which'd ultimately result in nuking quite a few (at this point redundant) ones, with the end result being better overall connections, reduced travel time and increased player interaction. Step two would be the same for factions that are either dead for years or can simply be reshaped into something better coupled with other faction. It's a harsh but necessary task to do, and we'll have to do it sooner or later unless we magically get 50-100 new active players.

[Inferno]

How about we focus on the Kusari exiles or Kusari Republic or the Coalition or-

From my memory the IKN is very neglected lore wise. Only two bases and they only can fly Kusari Dessies? I'm pretty sure they were the majority of the old Kusarian fleet.

[Wesker]

focus on Kusari

please stop posting

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[Wesker]

Can't agree more with John. There's definitely too much factions and systems which the playerbase simply can't cover and it inevitably results in a solid amount of them being neglected.

Why should we try to keep giving attention to houses like Bretonia and Liberty that already get way more attention then they deserve. You're never going to "balance" the activity in all the houses, you may as well take turns with events and changes in each house rather than spending years trying to come up with a solution that will give all houses a fair amount of activity. (Which there never will be one since the player count keeps declining.)

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