Social Survey: Why people are loosing interest to Discovery?

[Mephistoles]

Hi, friends. This type of thread is never gonna be perfect, but there are some constructive posts and it would be nice if we could maintain a modicum of productivity without degenerating too far.

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[Thunderer]

@Haste I had quite a lot of fun with Disco in singleplayer before I went online. The caveman I was, I didn't have internet connection yet, so everything was a mystery. Every ship was a curiosity, every system was a region to explore and find something epic, spooky, fun or an Easter egg here and there. I loved Easter eggs. Discovery really was about discovery. And when I finally connected to the Web, I wanted to do this together with other people and compete with them in skills I thought I had developed by playing single. If I started online right away, I'd have been hopeless - all I knew of combat were the instructions you get when you start the SP campaign. If I didn't play SP for a couple months before going online, I'd have likely been too confused to even start. Yet if I already know where every jumphole was and how strong every ship was, I wouldn't have started playing at all, because discovery was the primary motivation.

Obviously Discovery can't be about discovery any more. There's only this much to discover and some people can do it all in a week, yet we've got 10 year long players here (hello!). Plus, even if that's not the case, every piece of info is readily available - we've got the online nav map, FLCompanion and other useful tools.

Discovery might want to upgrade itself, as everything is already discovered. It might be good to spend some brains developing the game in the direction of SP. Reshape it into an entirely new concept.

What would it be about? I don't know, not yet. I'm just brainstorming. Maybe I'll be back with an idea in a week. but that isn't guaranteed. Ideas don't come as planned, they are more like the Spanish Inquisition. Perhaps it won't even be me. But I do think that we need an idea, though instead of as fast as possible, as good one as possible.

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[LuckyOne]

A lot of good points have been pointed out in this thread. And a few biased (and seemingly personally motivated) opinions.

First of all I would like to congratulate the team (and the community) for keeping the game/mod alive. It's a miracle this thing survived for so long with all the new and hot alternatives.

From a perspective of a late joiner I can tell you a few things that are especially confusing to new players:

- the ID system is a bit confusing. Even after the rework which made ID rules clearer I still come across lines where I'm not really sure about the exact meaning
- the lack of dedicated tutorials for a lot of things (the Mining/Ore Trading one is a great example of how all of them should be written)
- half of the mod is the Forum "metagame" which has weird rituals and even less understandable rules. A somewhat casual player will simply not bother with it
- all the prices are insane at first glance, until one discovers the concept of Ore trading as a money making activity
- the essential forum sections are not highlighted enough (although forums as an essential game manual is basically early 2000s design. Modern games tend to integrate help systems seamlessly into the actual game)


And here are some things that really irk me sometimes, and I think cause a lot of players to eventually give up, and leave disappointed

- the toxicity of some players/moderators/even devs towards others, especially those who have invested lots of their free time in a best-effort attempt to improve the game
- the unbalanced greenhorns vs Ace veterans in PVP, with a tendency for the development to shift in favor of the latter (often no way to actually run, no more powerful friendly NPCs to help even the odds )
- the lack of a clear vision for half of the features of the mod. There are cool mechanics such as jump drives, cloaking devices, POBs, jump beacons, docking modules.... and then there are those weird rules on when/why/who can use them
- the disregarding of PVE / Co-op features of the game in favor of solo / PVP, although this has apparently been changing lately with the work done on the PVE controller and various ship rebalances


What I would like to see (more of) to improve the mod:

- more chances of group fights (either via events or encouraged through some gameplay mechanic). These are quite fun for newbies to hop into, and they won't get instantly obliterated by a duel pro
- more PVE / Co-op content. The recent event has lead to random people naturally grouping up to seek protection from the pirates / powermine in a group with a JD Bustard
- in-game bounty system. Honestly, the current forum Bounty Boards are tedious to find, tedious to post to, and often require registration which basically might make your chances of actually getting your bounty even lower if it's not a blanket bounty board.
- more chances for the players to affect the state of game. Currently there exist a few mechanisms (POBs, dev requests, SRPs) but they are complicated, take a lot of time and are very confusing to a less RP-oriented player.
- a modernized interface for (official) factions to post their missions / track their roster. Maybe even nicer if some of it could be integrated in-game as rumors.
- more mechanisms for people to team up and get in on the action faster and without having to switch accounts. A rework of docking modules I suggested here might actually help with that.
- a boost to unlawful gameplay. Basically make smuggling / piracy more incentivized and more equal time/credits-wise to other activities. I have already suggested a few ways this could be done (NPCs acting as a warning beacons outside trade lanes to increase risk of interception, unless you tip them off by dropping part of your cargo - that way you could increase the profit on the smuggled stuff without it becoming too profitable. Also making smuggling drop off points freighter only so you need to work in a group with a 5ker for maximum profit) and some have suggested permanent bonuses for PVP kills for certain unlawful IDs.

[HoakinBlackforge]

[color=#FFFF00]In order of priority:

1) Ambient emptied with recent updates: No more NPCs, no more Auto-rewards in killing them, 3999 Oxygen in NPC trains (!?), No more "Cooperative" part of the game (like every MMORPG has).

Wait, no more npcs and no more auto-rewards?

What the fuck have they done?

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[Piombo65]

In order of priority:

1) Ambient emptied with recent updates: No more NPCs, no more Auto-rewards in killing them, 3999 Oxygen in NPC trains (!?), No more "Cooperative" part of the game (like every MMORPG has).

Wait, no more npcs and no more auto-rewards?

What the ***** have they done?

If we have to explain that precisely, nothing. But the "Auto-rewards" weren't only money for killing them (That they're low in any case since they're basically level 16 or less) but, indeed, they don't drop useful/precious things that can be aquired by the player and precious things like trains still carry useless stuff like Oxygen.

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[HoakinBlackforge]

Ok, i have been lurking here just for tiny seconds and noticed this thread, i feel like i have the right to post, though even i wont play anymore.

At first, when i started the game, the main idea of "progress" is to do discover trade routes that are profitable (which most are useless across the world), get bigger and better ships, and hoard some money to build up an actual good roleplay character and engage in good, fun roleplaying through the community. That was my goal. It was long, but i had hoped that it would eventually pay off the grind, helping the trade routes was also something i enjoyed, filling ore deports by myself when there was nobody available, so other players like me could make the ore trade routes wihout the help of a miner escort. Since you know, there was nobody willing to do that since they already had all the money and resources.

And then you know the story of what happened, the elite dominating group of players of the server, who have been playing for years, have near infinite resources, coordination and teams, decided to completely destroy the ore depots that were set to help out new players in progression.

Because they coulndt handle the idea of having opposition. Because THEY are the ones who must be at the top. And nobody else. Thats what happened that day. There was barely any excuse to roleplaying, nor reason to attack the ore depots other than stall or stop the progress of other players who were trying to experience the game and the community.

And they won, obviously. They won, and kept their chimpanzee ego intact. Some of us left as they wanted.

Im pretty sad because i had some good characters in the works at that time, like a survivor's guilt enclave soldier who joins the liberty army to take revenge on gallia, or a human whose soul has been transfered into a robotic body.

I must admit, reading into the lore that was built into the game definitely helped me improve my worldbuilding and character developing skills greatly. So thanks for that. Too bad i wont use them here anymore.


Enjoy your slowly, bleeding and dying community. Im sure you will deny whose fault it is.

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[Giorgio]

Disco isn't efficient enough when it comes to fun per unit of time.

There's just nothing (enjoyable) to do that doesn't involve other players already being logged in. Travel times are still - even after a lot of system culling and shrinking - very long. People here will unironically say "But Haste, that's part of the charm!". Yeah, it was charming in 2008. Nowadays it's just outdated.

Agreed. There are definitely more reasons for the decline in activity than just "new games were released". FL was already old in 2011 when it had 200 players at peak times. Faction activity often went down after some nerfs/downgrades. The most obvious example is when Corsairs and Outcasts completely stopped logging after 4.86 was released, even though they were some of the most active playerbases in .85. Part of it was because their favourite ships were nerfed. Then we also had the Corsair playerbase complaining that the constant Gamma raids were "unrealistilc" and "didn't make much RP sense". When they got Gamma surrounded by buffer systems, the playerbase died out as there was nothing to do. It just makes it harder when a big chunk of the playerbase is asking for measures which would kill activity even further, I still see that even now.

Fun per unit of time wouldn't even be that bad if it wasn't for people acting like idiots/ganking/dropping GBs into snub fights and so on like half the time. I don't even care about ganking but it's too much when the same people that gank others cry a week later after getting ganked themselves. Like, shorter travel distances would help with fun per time but they wouldn't fix everything unfortunately.

[Binski]

Ah but instead of layout changes, bump up the cruise speed instead. Let transports make 425 m/s and bump the rest to match. I guess that would put freighters at like 600! Still though, saves time, no need to shrink up the game.

Maybe its time for some new engines that upgrade a ship's speed. So the default for transports might be 350 but for a moneysink engine it could be bumped to 400 or 425. I'd much prefer that, would make for a new thing to scan for. When you chase a ship, you won't know if its low end or high end. You might catch up, might not!

[pillow]

who knows

[Corpus13]

Won't really prioritize things here since there is no need to.

• The Community. Every community has its own weak and strong sides. The community of Discovery is very willing to accept and guide new players especially the ones who are experienced in roleplay and don't see issue in learning. However at the same time we've got some issues.
  For relatively long time I thought I've got no issue with anyone here but at some point it turned out that there were people who had a strong dislike towards me for reasons I wasn't even aware of. I won't be pointing fingers, really, but I will bring one simple example.
  When I took my leadership in UN, I did it out of despair because nobody else was there to take it and I was asked to do it. Turned out that some people were quite upset with this turn of events. Of course being accused in something like that didn't feel nice itself, but most importantly I was disappointed because I really thought I was doing a right thing there.
  
  
• I've got life. Really. I was mostly sticking to Discovery because my laptop didn't run Gmod quite well and I was starving for RP. Discovery provided. Then my last year at university kicked in together with writing my graduation thesis and choosing what do I even want to do with my life next and at some point I just... Lost interest at all. Mostly because of this reason, I would say even.
  
  
• The way RP goes. I liked forum RP. Really. A lot. Leading resistance movement or a corporation was always a nice experience, but in game things were drastically different. Pirates with their "2 mil or die" demands, military and police with their "please, stop for cargo scan or die", traders with their 2 lines of RP. Interactions with players didn't feel natural at all and there was next to no interesting RP in the game. Though some (quite a lot) people like it this way and for them it seems to be organic and natural. Why would the captain of corpo cargoship stay and talk with you about the weather, really? Doesn't make really sense. But for me it was kind of a bummer.
  
  
• I lost things I had to take care about. My faction, pobs - these things literally kept me here against my will and I hated it. At some point I gave up on them too and I finally managed to get rid of this anchor as well. It didn't help me to lose interest in Discovery though but it definitely kept me from coming back either.
  

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