Staff Feedback Thread

[HUMPHRESS]

I legitimately have no idea how the evidence I saw was worth banning someone for an entire month. I dont know what happened with the incident Hope described, but even then from what I can gather from his post, I wouldnt say it warrented the response. I feel like more diplomacy would help resolve future issues (for both player drama and staff drama). I hope this decision is appealed in time for the Dublin events :]

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[Ramke]

As it's blowing up, I'll put my thoughts here as well.

To the people raising concerns about exercising 1.0 and lack of transparency, the transparency is there for involved parties over what initiated it. Not exercising 1.0 is how we get wonderful characters like Karlotta that, while in theory are within the rules, are absolutely detrimental to the community at large and take a very long time to get rid of.

Does Mort fall into this category? I don't know, I haven't seen what was reported. I do think that without any prior warning that a 30-day ban is very heavy-handed unless whatever was reported was very poor from the player.

I'm sure staff will review it and say "it was warranted" or "we'll downgrade to [x]". I hope people keep their sanity caps on and not feed into conspiracy theories of staff being out to get x or y.

Knee-jerk reactions like official factions saying they'll stop playing the game and/or disband over something without understanding it instead of raising concern and trying to have a constructive conversation is really immature and silly.

[Perfect Gentleman]

I'm not clear on the administration's position on why exactly Mort got a one month ban.

I've got proof. Okay, let's say that's enough. It's not for me to judge. But if Mort was really so brazenly breaking the rules, why didn't you just warn him when you should have? There's already been a case like this. And there the person wasn't just engaging in “meming” (as in Mort's case), there it looked like trolling. Nothing personal against that guy (especially since he was playing with me), but shouldn't the Administration have an established punishment policy that they notify the community of before they start punishing?

I'm not gonna lie, it seems negligent. The mere fact of “waiting” to reward a man with a punch later and create more drama... You literally had drama related to DTR just a week ago, and Mort's ban only turned up the heat.

You knew what you were getting into. You upped the negativity, upped the suspicion of players towards you. Reminder, @Haste, you have a man making videos like this. The populization of Freelancer directly affects online Discovery, and we've already seen it in a... February of 2025 if I am not wrong? Now imagine a newbie going to the forums and seeing this, and then this, this, and this.

I just genuinely don't understand what prevented you from warning him. Okay, let's just imagine Mort would have laughed at your warning.

I do know that I was worried a warning alone wouldn't get the message across, and that Mort would just laugh it off and continue playing the same way -- simply delaying this same ban (or a more severe one) until the next violation report(s) came in.

No question, it's up to him how to respond to your warnings. But if you had a reason to ban him - you could have cited your warning, and suddenly, you'd be completely justified and right in front of the entire community. I will support @Ramke position on this issue. It follows that I support the scenario in which the punishment will be reduced, or removed altogether and downgraded to a simple warning.

(Don't expect any ultimatums from me, these are just leading questions and critics)

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Discovery is a server of dreams.
And I'm a big dreamer.

[Luke.]

What I'm gonna say is under the premise that I don't know Mort, nor am I a 1iC of any concerned faction. I also think a one-month ban is too much. A short one maybe, but not longer if no previous bans were issued. If there's been no warnings, then this is an insane decision to make, straight up. I also think melodrama such as threatening to leave over one person's sanction is not going to help. Staff shouldn't have to feel guilt-tripped, even if you feel they are wrong. I do personally (not that my opinion matters) wish to see more dialogue between staff and players however, since it always seems to be an utter stalemate at least since reading the forums again. Oh, my opinion also doesn't matter.

That said, however...

...sanctions should happen for repeated behaviours that are testing the boundaries of the rules. Think of it from the perspective that a long-term goal (for now) is to bring people back and/or new players in. Like it or not, Discovery is struggling for a variety of reasons and so it's probably very stressful to find ways to mitigate the issue when low-pop leads to lack of interactions, which leads to people getting bored and leaving, and the cycle continues. Case-in-point, people getting fucked in the ass as a new player by someone who can find them on any number of snubs at a moments notice (some have many, I'm sure most are aware of this) is not a great experience, especially with the pvp ceiling ever-increasing as time goes by. Meta-gaming rules exist to mitigate this, but it's hard to tell when that's being abused. There's no teaching, no real RP being done and that is the primary purpose of the server. Connecticut indeed exists to facilitate the purely bloodthirsty.

Disco's onboarding process needs to be better to warn people of these things, I agree, but that's a bigger topic for another day. Not a simple answer after all.

I'm a little tired of seeing the constant bloodthirsty culture though. Not the arranged raids or natural clashes between factions, but the lone wolves doing a /restart [faction] and just sniffing out people for a simple kill. I get it, it's a way to have fun and that's great. Wouldn't want to take that away from people. However, it hardly breeds genuine interaction even when hostility is the go-to for rival factions. It's not asking much to at least try and be more personable toward your adversary. Such is the void between pvp enjoyers, RP enjoyers and those of us that enjoy both I guess. The older the player, the more they'd obviously know what to expect. While it's not unjustified for people to start blasting when they see an enemy even in-RP after telling them they want them gone, setting a higher example is, in my mind, what at least some want to see. Should Mort be that example via sanction? I don't know, not seen all the evidence. I'm not taking sides here, but as a bystander and a player I can see why staff may want to nip this culture in the bud before it becomes too much of a norm. It shouldn't be, and it wasn't in the past. Nobody complained about having to think before right-clicking. You can argue that some just don't want to do that and so they'd leave instead but well, the purpose of the server is clearly stated.

I do agree there are better ways to do it though perhaps, such as revisiting certain rules and making it clear from the start rather than firing the banhammer sporadically, and if a change in attitude is what is desired then a bigger post should be made with amended rules. You have to consider the fact that for newer players, it's a steep hill to get better at the game and defend yourself. It is a natural part of the game, and not everyone will care either of course and may even enjoy it, but it should be understood that a game that feels so unwelcoming and has so much to learn with little in-game resource especially, makes for a miserable beginning when you're just blown out of the sky while figuring stuff out. Freelancer and Discovery as a whole is made or broken by player interaction, whether it ends up in a fight or not. Otherwise all you do is missions, or trade. Alone. Wonderful (it isn't).

Now is this happening to new players? Perhaps not, since I don't think reports would really come from them at least initially, but that in my mind would be the perspective to look at this from. It's not asking a lot to request that people at least entertain the idea of doing more than just roaming looking for a fight all the time. You can do that, but /1 /2 go gives people no time to even understand what's going on, let alone learn anything. An environment must be fostered to balance out the pew with the reasons to pew. Combat is hardly being taken away, and no one is being punished for wanting that result. Just put a modicum of effort in at least.

Just my two cents. tl;dr pew good but disco rp server so pew with restraint.

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[Nika]

Excuse me, you did not just seriously hand out a month ban to a player based on this? I woke up, glanced at the sanction thread and even went to confirm this was all the evidence.

I have received this evidence from my fellow friends as Mort is an Aegis member.

Does it hurt so much to admit you did an oopsie and go back on something so obviously petty?

[sindroms]

Gents, gent-ettes, since this is technically staff feedback - https://www.moddb.com/mods/discovery-freelancer
We need to get this bumped, since Moddb is a free adspace for the mod and, given that ModDB still shows up during google searches on Discovery Freelancer, we need to make sure the page is not 2 years out of date and seemingly belonging to an inactive mod.

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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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[Hemlocke]

At the same time, however, Discovery is still a roleplay server.

Ah, how the turns have tabled.

[Lemon]

Staff Feedback: When you do make a mistake (like pretty much everybody agrees you have done here) - please overturn it faster, it's very frustrating when you screwed up and banned someone who wasn't supposed to be banned, and then it takes a week+ to overturn because you are deciding so long internally. I get it, you want to save face, want to make sure you decide properly, but you are making the player unable to play and it should be n.1 priority to fix that. It took a long time in the past almost always.

[CorsairTrent]

Ruin official event by combat docking with a titan: 2 week ban
"On the radar contact" memes: 1 month ban

Make it make sense.

Enough with these vague rules such as 1.0 that only serve to be subjectively enforced and confuse new players. For God's sake, Discovery has a shorter ruleset than your typical Garry's Mod DarkRP server, a game played by a significantly younger audience. If literal kids can handle longer and more specific rules lists, I'm sure the adults here can do that as well.

With the recent bouts of community drama these past few weeks, I think it's past time for staff to rewrite rules like 1.0 to be more specific, and ditch overly-vague generalities such as "Don't be a dick." For starters, how about adding a clickable drop-down box specifying what exactly breaks rule 1.0? If there are too many examples, then simply list the most common and relevant ones. This would greatly help in reducing player confusion when disciplinary action happens, as well as eliminating or at least mitigating players' feelings of being the victims of arbitrary and biased enforcement from staff.

And Haste, stop trying to publicly justify this erroneous decision from your staff team. Instead, talk to them privately and have them reverse this clear mistake. You've already alienated enough players with your misguided anti-fun game balance philosophy, we don't need to lose even more of them due to fear of unfair sanctions/bans like Mort's.

[9th.Legion]

Ruin official event by combat docking with a titan: 2 weeks ban
"On the radar contact" memes: 1 month ban

Make it make sense.

Enough with these vague rules such as 1.0 that only serve to be subjectively enforced and confuse new players. For God's sake, Discovery has a shorter ruleset than your typical Garry's Mod DarkRP server, a game played by a significantly younger audience. If literal kids can handle longer and more specific rules lists, I'm sure the adults here can do that as well.

With the recent bouts of community drama these past few weeks, I think it's past time for staff to rewrite rules like 1.0 to be more specific, and ditch overly-vague generalities such as "Don't be a dick." For starters, how about adding a clickable drop-down box specifying what exactly breaks rule 1.0? If there are too many examples, then simply list the most common and relevant ones. This would greatly help in reducing player confusion when disciplinary action happens, as well as eliminating or at least mitigating players' feelings of being the victims of arbitrary and biased enforcement from staff.

And Haste, stop trying to publicly justify this erroneous decision from your staff team. Instead, talk to them privately and have them reverse this clear mistake. You've already alienated enough players with your misguided anti-fun game balance philosophy, we don't need to lose even more of them due to fear of unfair sanctions/bans like Mort's.

The Combat docking wasnt on purpose, i also apologized afterwards and i took full responsibility. If the /autobuy command wasnt on, the event would've continued normally. FYI, the event wasnt really ruined, i docked right before the final phase without having in my mind the autobuy command was on. I am not trying to justify myself for my dumbass mistake, but shit happens. I would've accepted 5/6 months bann as well, i understood my mistake and i accepted my fate, cuz a lot of ppl were pissed off at me, which is quite understandable. If i was in ther shoes, i would've been mad as well, but not that much to throw personal insults, which was unnecessery from the to be rude in such a way. From all my years in Discovery, i havent insulted anyone in a personal way or with full hatred, even tho i have been butchered numerous times without even an explanation or from people i have never even MET. Putting all this aside, with all the insults and everything thrown at me, i took everything with a smile and positive energy and i finally understood, that the community hasn't changed at all, which one day will lead us into a pit with no recovery whatsoever.

Anyways, should i start blasting how DTR has been avoiding sanctions for the last 4 years, with the tons of reports towards violations that would lead to permanent banns ?
Or how an "Retired" Ex DTR leader was cought doing Metagaming and powergaming, which was intentional, then staffs issued a warning to the player, then magically changed their minds to do a COMMUNITY warning for the second time ?
Or how few HC DTR members were actively trying to source out Sanction materials from YT videos of certain players, to get other CERTAIN players Perma-banned?
Or how after they get killed, immedietly switch to camera ships to "Observe" the battles, then proceed to PM certain players, that they are "Rude" or not being "Sportsman" enough?
It is quite bold of you, to speak in such ways considering the fact, that you're an active member of a faction that has been cought in numerous violations and has sanction immunity for the past few years.

- In my years in Discovery, i have only been helpful and fun, sharing whatever possesion i have, just to make sure there is an active PLAYER in the server, not just in a CERTAIN faction(Just like how DTR does with their indoctrination). I have been nothing more than good and positive mind player, without the intention on harming somone in any shape or form by balancing fights and joining the weaker sides almost all the time, yet again i am put on the blast, lol.

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