Official Activity Q4 2025

[vladimir26]

And change your signature xD
Leaving DTR but still having it as signature xD
clown

Is this any better?

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[Groshyr]

And change your signature xD
Leaving DTR but still having it as signature xD
clown

Is this any better?

Yes

[Lemon]

Balance killed off solo mission farming too - it's just, sad and bleak and I don't see any way out of this for the very large group who used to fly caps without big fleet fights.

The hate against solo or even just profitable missions for capital ships is something I will never understand. Arguments have been made that Discovery lacks progression (and it's true) and in my opinion one of the few ways we actually had some progression was going from trading in a transport, getting a capital ship, and then grinding money in caps. Without giving trading significant overhauls to make it more exciting than watching paint dry, I just never saw the logic in undermining a form of money-making that was actually somewhat fun. You're not going to make me go back to the lanes if you take that away from me.

Argument was that if they kill casual missions in battleships,.people will only trade for money, which in turn will bring pirates, which in turn brings in navy factions etc.


Honestly I want to tear up at what they killed - you'd come home after work, fire up an account with 7 battleships in 7 regions and just run gunboat missions. If you wanted some excitement, you'd go to Delta, Nomads would then log to clear you and then all hell broke loose. They broke this ecology of the game,.on purpose.

Then battlezonea came, where you didn't have to think about how to collect and store the cargo or get gun drops - you'd have one guy start, and it snowball into up to 20 people farming in the same place while chatting. Then someone would PM for a pew, you end the day with big fleet fight and call.it a night.

A true reason to log, an arcade game that's very easy to learn, easy to enter that offers endless RP opportunities if you dig deep.

It was easy for OF navies to get people in this way, always something to do, without much skill needed, and it was killed as many people said here, because the Devs didn't like how people.played, they lived in their eSports fantasy that wanted to make disco more than what the philosophy of freelancer was, where you need to put in the effort, learn things like dropping shields to even be able to shoot your guns.

It's great, on paper, for someone who does want that complexity, but if I want to escape my reality, relax after a hard day's work and chat with my friends, it's not suitable at all, not suitable for the people who actually do have the vast majority of logging times.

Now there is trade that rules activity - the numbers have proved it and are right there to see, trade that hasn't brought in piracy the way it was intended, that isn't enjoyable for folks who want to play freelancer was designed to be, with trade just a side hustle - a simple arcade pew pew game, with godlike story and endless RP opportunities.


The only way this would be fixed again if someone with that philosophy comes to the helm again. The game as is without a new Barrier will drop off more and more, and especially cap centric factions and OFs will struggle, no matter how the OF system is reworked, outside of allowing the roleplayers to have a say on story if they become official again that would carry the faction.


The data is all there for the reversals and change of direction, very large samples, we just need staff willing to read and act on that data.


It's an arcade pew pew shooter with godlike story and RP, systems, or supposed to be

Actually I did not think I would jump but this post made me do it.
I "came back" to disco, more said Freelancer, because of some very good memories,
especially the Arcade game design in mind, beautiful systems, lots to explore.

When I got told I could target components, I was baffled and was like what the heck, how ?!
I learned some stuff but yeah, yeah.

Back then as kid I wanted to get better and better and beat everyone, wanted to get a cap
to shoot stuff, now I am just glad to F2 and chat most of the time about almost anything, thinking about how I flew with my dad from Nagano to Rheinland selling Platinum, mined Artifacts in Gamma selling in New York I think.

Just wanted to share something, have a great day all!

#BringBackMyNagano, please?

Yeah you felt like you are at the top of the world in your first battleships that felt like a big fat snub with a lot of guns - all intuitive, all easy to understand, easy to pickup coming from freelancer.

And then eventually after a long time you found out you are not as good as you thought - couldn't even hit some cap aces, could dig deep into the mechanics of turret view, weapons groups, hornets, positioning, strafing, blind fire, tricks to actually hit bombers, that there were people like Val or Thunderer willing to teach you - it was exactly the same as with with story, you play the campaign, think you are the end boss and know it all but eventually you discover there's so much more.


Now - components, super slow movement that feel like oil in water and hitting a trade lane a life achievement, less guns, less core, fast death to small ships, everything but intuitive - you try and you give up, and the OFs that used to get folks like you to open the world for you, to show you how to roleplay or play in a team, get better and eventually join them never get the chance.

We looked at something simple and straightforward and said hey - this is not how it should be, we know better than what made people keep coming back to this ancient game! And our hubris killed what made Disco Disco.

RIP indie LNS- Ivans who used to be always the number one or two on the tracker. We didn't know how much we'd miss you, RIP to caps being popular and the biggest big unique draw to the mod. RIP to combat factions having combat, not trade ships dominate their activity.

[Laz]

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[Lemon]

This guy gets it - nostalgia simplicity like the Elder Scrolls - thank you friend, honestly it wouldn't be a bad idea to have OFs not only have impact on story but to be consulted on ship mechanics changes as well, and how they might impact the actual gameplay, and be the first ones to be invited to test servers with their say having weight.

[Egon Bigmemes]

It strikes me that the people who consider maintaining a faction a chore, shouldn't be running factions. Factions should be allowed to die (as they currently are) if people don't want to "maintain" them.
It's not about maintenance, it's about play.
Play the game, do things, have fun.

the issue is that when you had a large enough playerbase, it came naturally to play the faction. now you have to try and convince jaded individuals to log on and selfish individuals from opposing forces to log on too, or just plan some bland weekly event (or promise a small fortune because people wont log on for pvp for anything less most times)

i call it a chore because, again, unless you just treat the game as a chatroom/truck driving simulator, that's exactly what it is. you log on, have zero interactions, and have to force yourself to not fall asleep/alt tab off of the game while you grind up hours of activity because your region/PVP/faction niche is dead. i spent more than enough years leading factions to know what it entails and "just log on!" never has and never will be the solution, particularly for factions with restricted ZOI or dead regions of space.

Empty sandpits naturally make space for others.

????
what does this even mean in the context of discovery?

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Its no time to compose some like this: Roses are red, Violets are blue, please, please, please gallics, dont shoot, or i kill you.

[MFN Neuss/Helmut Schmid]

So you agree with me about your special server where everyone thinks they are God and can decide what happens on Discovery.

How did you figure about the Godscovery Godlancer GodPee 25/8 discord server?

By having contacts and informants or spies

This back-and-forth regarding Discord server(s) proves my point about how things like this have caused rifts in the community by being staging grounds for vitriol and OOC hatred, by the way.

Thanks for confirming.

I hope you now understand where the real problems lie.
And that I don't talk nonsense.

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[Luke.]

I always knew. It's just no less disappointing as a result, to see the community continue to cannibalise itself. Everyone wants the server to thrive and yet self-inflicted barriers prevent it from doing so.

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[The_Godslayer]

I always knew. It's just no less disappointing as a result, to see the community continue to cannibalise itself. Everyone wants the server to thrive and yet self-inflicted barriers prevent it from doing so.

I'm interested to know what your actual full opinion on this is. There are really only two Discords that he could be referring to. One of them hates and hunts the exact same people he does (like Perfect Gentleman) and is literally a friend-group Discord for a guy and his friends, and the other one is just unfiltered free speech and doesn't target anyone in specific, both sides of literally any conflict have been present and have been argued there. Being hostile to "things like this" is relatively vague. If you intend to crack down on every single private Discord and group chat between friends, that is a bold choice, and I'm unsure how you even plan to do that. On the other hand, if you plan to hunt out everywhere that lets people say what they think, you could likely get a bit farther, but I don't think "We must have absolute control over what you say and think" gives the admins a better name and more faith from the community than they have now.

What exactly is your idea here? If you genuinely think that people should not be allowed to have closer friends and that somehow everyone should get along perfectly evenly, you're beyond helping. People have their personal relationships and emotions, and those differ from each other. If you genuinely think independent thought as a concept is a negative thing, you are also beyond helping. People can have opinions that differ and are incompatible with your own. Even this PoBoid here has internal chats that track pirates and "trolls" and "griefers" that could add even 30 seconds to their perfected trade routes so that he can avoid or call ganks on them if possible, because piracy and terrorism are opinions that are incompatible with PoBoidism and Powertraders.

The only secret channel that decides what happens in Discovery is the Developer and Admin chats, so what are you thinking about? What's your idea? What point was proven? Please enlighten me, I'd like to understand.

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"

[Luke.]

We have no plans to crack down on Discords further.

As part of OF rework discussions we've obviously considered the impact of OF discord moderation on the community as a whole. Other than that, we don't believe we have the right or jurisdiction to cut down on peoples ability to have opinions on others and such. That's both an unattainable goal as people can just make new places as if it were a hydra, and an uncomfortable amount of surveillance regardless. No single person on the staff team are delusional enough to think that everyone should like each other all the time. That's inhuman levels of utopia that don't apply to anywhere in the world and nobody is that out of touch so, worry not.

The problem lies with how people conduct themselves in-game as a result. Targeting individuals in-game as a result of external fall-outs, planned PoB sieges that while are vaguely validated by RP, are evidenced to be a result of OOC spite. The aforementioned trade enjoyers that use the available API to create lists of people to avoid because god forbid there's any friction or risk to your money-making in a place as hostile as space. Etc. It might well not be due to any particular Discord server, that wasn't really my point either. But it is happening. I'm not pointing the finger at any specific individual, nor am I defending anyone. Every side is to blame, including us staff for any situation that we haven't handled well.

These are things that have always existed on Discovery to the point where one may even call it natural. However, it's far louder when it's a larger portion of the overall remaining playerbase and losing more people as a result of it is sad because it's avoidable with communication and understanding of each other. In short though, there isn't really much of a concrete solution to it and we know that. Other than cracking down on particularly egregious behaviour as we have done once or twice in recent memory where we deem the behaviour to be problematic enough, that's about all we can do because, as stated, further surveillance isn't good for anyone. We've had to "green room" a couple of conflicts where both parties simply could not get along and it has worked, if only temporarily. We just don't want to be too hands-on besides the obvious (upholding the rules).

It doesn't hurt however, to at least try to appeal to the fact that people want Discovery to live on and improve, and the community aspect of it is a significant part of that given how player-driven Discovery has always been. Burying hatchets from time to time is always a benefit to the overall health of the community when there's less spite being baked into interactions both in-game and on the forum.

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