Experiment Successful

[Boss]

This post will cause rage from a lot of people. However, I'm a bit past the caring stage at this point. This will probably look like a tl;dr at first, but please read the whole thing. I'll try to make it short. Also, don't comment on "Oh, Boss, this doesn't apply to me and you still wrote it in the second person!"

Cry some more.

The Problem

Discovery is a corpse.

It's a fun corpse at times, but when was the last time you logged in expecting to have oodles of fun? For me, it's been about three months. It became a game of internet politics, which I hate.

No matter what faction you're in, you've experienced it. Non-progression. Stasis. People saying "Oh, you can't do this" or "You can't have that". By "people" I mean "admins" and "devs".

Before you start with OMG KARLOTTA ALT!!!11!!...

I'm not against any of our admins, don't get me wrong here. They do a good job, considering that it could well be a full-time job in itself that they do of their own volition in their spare time. For that, I laud them. Every rose has its thorns, though. Our admin team has been static for more than three years. New blood was added periodically, but the most recent batch quit almost to a man, if I recall correctly. While this does keep the admin team with a lot of experience, it also provides ruts. Set in their ways, certain members of the community are granted virtually free reign to the detriment of everyone around them.

Interestingly enough, these people rage like none other when beaten at their own game.

Enough beating around the bush. I've been here for nearly three years, and I've come to a conclusion.

Discovery needs a reboot

I don't mean a player wipe. That would kill the serverbase and Discovery would die completely.

What we need is a new admin and moderator team. Why? If Discovery is a server, it's been running for five years without a defrag and antivirus scan. It's been infested with unsavory practices and principles. I saw a newbie in Pennsylvania last night who -just- arrived and logged in for the first time. I'd hate for that person to have to arrive on the forums and find 4chan Lite just because someone has an ego to feed.

Specific people

Yes, I'm going to call people out, both for good and for bad.

The Bad

JihadJoe
I'm sorry you're first, but you came to mind as I was writing this. You helped create some of the problem children of Discovery, and now seem blind to their tantrums. You've even set up a special division of the [LN] for them. Gold wing. I know not every member of said wing is a problem, but those characters provide a mask for blatant PvPwhoring without knowing who it really is.

Dab
Your ego has diminished somewhat since I got here, which is good. You still lock some threads for reasons I don't quite understand though. Possibly because they contain sound reasoning, perhaps not.

Dieter
The same set of obnoxious persons were accepted -- nay, headhunted -- for your band of merry men, the Mandalorians. While good for business, it ticks people off.

Zelot
It's been a long-running in-joke that everything is your fault, but it's not. You're usually pretty level-headed, if quick to edit people's posts with your signature orange.

Zeltak
El numero uno of the problem children. You relentlessly troll anyone and everyone for sh*ts and giggles. Yet somehow, this goes unnoticed and even encouraged by this mod's leadership. You're good at PvP, so the logical thing to do is go balls-out and do nothing but kill people, then log a different ship, and kill them again. Simply to see them rage. You've created groups with virtually every NPC faction there is, then abandoned them once found out.

enojado
From what I've seen, you work closely with Sina to cause mayhem. You're just less obvious about it.

Naukhel
I'm noticing a trend here.

The Good

Ench
The face that launched a thousand ships. Well, a thousand torpedos into a thousand ships. Which then exploded. You also have a disturbing fondness for BBcode. I used to despise you, for some odd reason, but you're pretty mrawr. :3

Doc Jameson
Thanks for listening to me, buddy.

Walker
No more eight-gunned Liberators, k? K.

Zapp
You've been my role model, did you know that?

Zoners
Zonerzonerzonerzonerzoner

Dusty
I miss the MC Hammer avatar.

Chris
Pick a Chris, there's several dozen to choose from. I approve of the Chris Collective account.

The Ugly

Forum politics have become the norm. Endless bickering, barely controlled anger, and thinly veiled trolling are the social artifacts of Discovery. We've forgotten how to be civil.

Whatever happened to the early days of 4.84?

The Solution

I'm going to recap here because a lot of people are going to tl;dr and just read the top paragraph and the bottom paragraph.

New mods, new admins, nerf Sabre, nerf Kraken, zonerzonerzoner, flame Q_Q rage, Sina pvpwhore, omg u suk, random cat pictures, TEH SERVAR IS DOWN!!111!!!1wunwun, World of Tanks.

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Just go play the game and have fun dammit.

all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.

[Jinx]

i mostly agree with what you write...

solutions might be:

- install a rotating system of officials ( admins / mods ) - so none of them can at any rate be admin or mod longer than lets say - 6 months. ... might be re-elected but only once

that would take care of ppl getting too much set in their ways or too used to power.

about people acting ... for need of a better term: "like they probably ARE" ( a state of being that they usually mask in RL ) - there is nothing one can do about it. - people are people... and even more so when they are anonymous people. - you see the worst and rarely the best in people when all you see is a name they gave themselves - or if you allow multiple "alter Egos" without transparency. ( its a total mystery to me why alter ego forum accounts don t require to show the primary player - after all... making an alter ego forum account is usually done for roleplay ( so you don t have for example a rheinland sig under your liberty char ) - but they should not be anonymous just to troll others with multiple accounts )



discovery is not dead - but its decaying.... . what discovery needs is the release of 4.86 ( which WILL act as a revive ) and quick and smaller releases afterwards - and people who have fun playing the game.
for the sake of what i mean by decaying:

- the mod starts decaying the very second a new version got released. its like a commodity that is vanishing slowly but steadily. - there are certain events that speed up the process - and events that can slow it down. - but in general .... the excitement of the mod decreases steadily. - each release of a new version resets it - sometimes a bit, sometimes more.

- dead however is a stable state. it means that at peak times .... its only a handful of people bothering to log on ... and thankfully we re not there yet.


old people have become dangerous in our community. - they became set in their ways as you say... but also powerful - and that is a dangerous combination. ( not only in a game, but also in RL )


however - i am happy that every now and then - new people still come to disco - with new ideas and innovative roleplay.... and i hope they don t become like some of us "old" people became.



edit:

i started in 4.82 .... and i STAYED - cause the disco community was extremely civil and welcoming.

not sure if i d stay these days, too.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[NixOlympica]

I'm sorry but I would need to sign every word up there.

"mea culpa, mea maxima culpa"

[Panzer]

You forgot to classify CR - the cancer of T23.

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[Aurigae]

Inb4 a thousand of /signed and nothing happening again.

And an obligatory /signed goes here too. Change's good. Provides entertainment.

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Discovery's Resident Lagnom

[Boss]

@Jinx - Rotating team would be good. Keeps the experienced folks, yet allows them time off so they don't burn out.

@Pilgrim - I'm a part of the problem too. I'm old here as well, and I've got my own ways that I'm trying to not get stuck in.

You forgot to classify CR - the cancer of T23.

Never had issues with you lot since I stopped playing Outcasts.

EDIT: I would have mentioned more things in the original post, but once I lock into a train of thought everything else flies out the window. I'd need an alphabetical list of everyone active on the forums in the past six months to get everything.

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Just go play the game and have fun dammit.

all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.

[Aoyagi]

Me being and outsider to the 'core' group of people and avoiding the Liberty and Rheinland, I don't see much of the things going on between all of the named, but as far as I can tell, people can still have fun but if they don't want mindless shooting they need to search for it harder then before and stay lower at the same time.

But I think people who are friends with the admins will always have some kind of benefits unless said admins are turned into machines.

Edit: Or some higher power then admins is made. Something above the admins making sure they are as objective as possible.

what discovery needs is the release of 4.86 ( which WILL act as a revive ) and quick and smaller releases afterwards - and people who have fun playing the game.
for the sake of what i mean by decaying:

I do hope you are correct on that.

[NixOlympica]

@Pilgrim - I'm a part of the problem too. I'm old here as well, and I've got my own ways that I'm trying to not get stuck in.

I play here from March 2008.

From that time I have seen good things and lot of bad things.
I did bad things and good things.

But it always had some excitement.

Now it's just lethargy.

I'm not able to think off something new. Everything seems already done. And those rules everywhere are making me crazy.

As I said in many chats I wish I was a newbie. That I would actually Discover something.

[Virus]

As far as I can tell, you didn't name anything that was good for reasoning beyond you like it.

edit;

Besides, I feel that much of what you say is nothing that will be changed with a reboot. Forum politics aren't going to change. You do something someone else doesn't like and they will find a way to get back at you. People here don't like each other very much as far as I can tell.

Admins can only do so much, and everything they do is Q_Qd about. Admittedly, many of them don't put in the effort required and the others are apathetic.

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Into the Maelstrom - A Measure of Salvation - Reaver Company Database

[pipsqueak]

What most people are failing to realize this is not a democracy. Admins can do what they want.

Frankly I was afraid of this happening a long time ago and even wrote to Jihad when he had just become an admin. Now, it is too late to become "nice" (unless Microsoft becomes real generous and provides source code).

Black prophecy is on the horizon and so are some really interesting looking MMO's with gameplay far surpassing what the current FL engine offers (another example Jump Gate evolution).

At this point even if the 4.86 comes out, it will only create a very subtle bump in the player base which will die off shortly.

Enjoy the time you have on this server.

PEACE

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