Well, I read the first six pages, but having ten more to go I figured I'd offer my thought:
The biggest thing I've noticed that has killed the "Freelancer vibe" (as has been discussed by some here) and potentially some activity is the defaulting of local chat. Now believe me, I know the .83 days of everybody and their mother communicating via system chat was confusing, but at least it added a life and vibrancy to the systems. Communications felt private and special when the green text flashed across your screen and, quite frankly, it felt a bit like a lot of MMOs out there (Runescape, WoW, etc.).
When you're in an environment with dozens of people all chatting at once, it's engaging and interesting.
Now compare this with the days of local chat. Suddenly everything in the systems goes dead-silent. Nobody is communicating with one another; there aren't dealers offering goods, pirates taunting cops, traders looking for escorts. It's just silent. And this silence has become infectious to the point that new members of the community - at least, I presume they're new - simply don't talk. You approach them in-game, attempt RP, if they're new you could even offer them a job of some sort, but they don't respond. Whether it's because they don't know how or they simply don't want to is immaterial.
The reason the community is floundering is because the only way we can establish ourselves as players of a mutual game, sharing a mutual experience, is here on the forums. And for a lot of reasons that I won't get into, that isn't healthy. It's destructive.
Jak, there's more to it than just advertising and goodwill, the mod and base game need to present something perceivably and measurably beneficial to a target audience.
in disco's case, it's an audience composed of the precious few people curious or not rigged well-enough to play things like eve, X-series or the upcoming star citizen. They do however expect that aspects of those games will exist in the mod which builds upon what essentially is one of the measly space RPewpew prototypes.
Now... original freelulzer was unprepared for MP by and large - only three engame planes to chose from and trade was basically a futile grind. Lots of mechanical features were uttelry lacking, the trade balance was deplorable. Disco came to existence for the very sake of addressing the incomplete nature of stock FL and as long as it kept on fixing faults - it remained easily the bossest mod. It started being meh aroud the time it started deducing probable futures and adding reslts there of instead of filling gaps in the pre-existing setting.
Now I say, that if Disco wants to heal some and if not reverse then at least halt the trend - it needs to dumb down to an amalgam of vanilla's setting, considerable FLhooking and disco's equipment and trade balance.
Trash the mod, take vanilla and start over, re-adding content that proved historically and demonstrably worth it.
(04-25-2014, 03:37 PM)Panzer Wrote: Trash the mod, take vanilla and start over, re-adding content that proved historically and demonstrably worth it.
Problem is there are too many who don't want this. And some who even donated to this version of the server. I think a new mod is the solution, but then there will be few people there too. So in the end i think we should let it die in peace and find something else to play.
(04-25-2014, 03:37 PM)Panzer Wrote: Trash the mod, take vanilla and start over, re-adding content that proved historically and demonstrably worth it.
Hardly gona work.
IMO, Disco's main agenda now should be, how to keep and RETURN, those players, who love good old Freelancer and that stuff. Not gaining cheap popularity, like it was with 86, making coordinal changes.
(04-25-2014, 12:49 PM)Xenosaga Wrote: Making Discovery stand alone would probably help introduce many new faces. But, it may be an impossible task.
I agree with you, however the current problem is that Freelancer is stuck in an eternal judicial limbo.
Digital Anvil doesn't exist anymore and Microsoft Games own the rights of Freelancer, BUT as the game is not available for purchase anywhere anymore, it is technically considered Abandonware, BUT it is not legally Abandonware untill Microsoft state that they're ok with it.