Introducing people to Disco through unlawful characters might harm their experience.

[sindroms]

Earlier today I made this thread here, and while I wanted to simply post there with my overall analysis of the data that was provided, I think posting a new thread would not hurt.

Keep in mind, I am using the data provided to roughly reinforce my own conclusion of this topic. The votes I based this off are inherently limited to give the actual views of the community, because they only represent the thoughts of the people who voted.

However, the results, even at 40-60 were enough for me to view them as not having an overwhelming preference in either one or the other choice. That was all I needed to justify the idea of why, as I mentioned in the topic, introducing new players to the mod by giving them unlawful ships, harms their experience.





Let us say you joined Discovery for the sake of roleplay. If you are invested in the act of roleplay, sooner or later you will want to have some sort of feedback to your ingame actions. Automatic feedback would be something along the lines of making ingame friends. The moment you log on, they add you to their group, they enjoy your company and your RP. More indirect feedback can be found via the Kudos thread or being mentioned positively in a communication thread or message dump.

The problem starts, when you decide to make a feedback thread, like many of us have done so in the past and/or are considering making one in the near future. This allows direct feedback, usually the kind you'd want in order to see if you are doing something wrong.

When it comes to lawful characters, feedback, as I have noticed, is generally positive. There are not really too many ways you can frak it up, apart from one or two mentions of unfair pvp balance during group fights or the occasional mishap here and there. No, that is all fine and it is the sort of feedback the player is glad to receive. Even though we want to hear it, deep down we still hope it is positive and it boosts our moral.

And then, there are threads with feedback on unlawful characters. As we see in the previous thread and poll, it seems that the community has a (generally) two-sided view on the subject. You see comments explaining why either is a good choice and that is the point. Both are a viable choice when playing a Pirate character.

The problem here is that if a new player started off with a pirate, even though they might have not made too many rookie mistakes, their feedback thread is doomed from the start to have an overwhelming amount of negative feedback, and this is why.

With newbie mistakes aside, they are asking us to judge their RP so far, and since we already see that our community is pretty much split in two, when it comes to how you should play a pirate, realistically or reasonably, they are by default peev off one of the sides.

And now, here comes the killing blow. We as a community have an utterly nasty habit to ignore things that are done right by the newbies. We seem to notice and comment on the wrongdoings. Nobody will give a thumbs up to a new player if they act accordingly to what we have taken for granted as a social norm for Discovery, but if they frak up, we will instantly point it out.

In other words, even if the community was split down to 50-50 when it comes to piracy encounters, most of the feedback the player would get would be negative.

The reason is utterly simple- if you see someone RPing a character like you would, you really have no reason to give a thumbs up. You look in the thread, say to yourself something along the lines of "Why would he want me to tell him that he is doing something that he is supposed to be doing in the first place?", shrug and close the tab.

But if the thread is read by the opposing side...
Oh yeah, they will tell him where he is wrong. They will make a whole damn list of where the person is doing wrong. They will start trying to make him accept their views, that they feel are justified and in doing so, they will cause unease.

In other words, as I already said, no matter what you do, which side you pick, you will always get mostly negative feedback.

And now imagine if the player goes "Oh, well, I suppose I was doing it wrong. Let me try the opposite side to see if people would like me better."?

Same result, only this time the first side is going to point out how they are roleplaying wrongly.




This causes the person getting this feedback to simply deduct that they are constantly doing something wrong, that they just cannot win. And mind you, this does not seem to happen with other topics as much these days, so they cannot really look at the rest of our community and go "Yeah, but looks like I am not the only one."


Nope, this is why you should never introduce your friends to Disco through unlawful roleplay. It will just end badly in the long run.

A big thank you goes to Tom, Enthy and Rion, who no longer play Discovery for this same reason (or one closely related to it) and gave me the initiative to make this post.



And remember.















EDIT:

I suppose I did not really add my own two cents on this whole mess. Needless to say, I am a person who enjoys feedback. I cannot be a part of the community unless I know that people know me or enjoy me or at least hate me in a way that makes me laugh. This is why you see me make funny videos, but then make a troll faction. Why I make a tutorial, only to do something retarded afterwards.

I started off Disco with an overall unlawful experience, when I moved off to Omicron Alpha after my first two weeks. And when I started making feedback requests, that was pretty much the case. And then, as time went on and I got more lawful chars, I made the same kinds of threads for them as well.

The people I mentioned probably played Freelancer with us for a month or less, but it was already enough to make them give up, eventually. Feedback is important. It is one of the most valued things for new players joining Disco, just because of how small and tight the community is.

In other words, if you want more people to join, I suggest we all start imagining how it is like to join here and where does the community itself fall short to provide the nublets with enough fun to make them stay.

Cheers.

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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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[sindroms]

*cough*

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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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[Omicron]

tl;dr version available?

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[Pel]

If your underlying point is, "Sometimes people suck," well-- yes they do... most of the time.

This is a problem with ALL communities. Humans act this way. They notice the things they don't like. They ignore all the good stuff you do. You feel mistreated. You feel taken for granted. Yadda-yadda, blah-blah-blah.

That's the nature of things.

The main defense is not to care so much. Then they can't affect you.



Your complaint is not about Discovery. Its about humanity.

No community can be perfect as long as it contains more than one person. Thems the breaks. Deal.



Go RP what makes you happy. Hope some of your friends stick around. Don't worry about the polls-- do what's right.

[Curios]

Mhm. Never had a feedback thread for my own characters so can't say.

The most destructive change was to create a very aggressive and hazardous environment for players around here. Not a single idea since 4.84 wasn't of a help to make living on the server any better. 4.85 was good, but then something changed and I'm not really sure what exactly went wrong but I feel that it's somewhere along the lines of rules and gameplay changes.

When the new player comes to the server he can even lack the forum account in the first place (and creating one is an interesting case as it is - I made this account after making at least 3 attempts - it was simply got deleted 2 times w\o approving so I had to repeat and took me a couple of weeks. I mean, admins, what's wrong with this? Every service around is trying to be friendly and simplify the registration while here it's just too damn annoying and frustrating). I was playing disco and even was in an official faction for months without having a forum account. That wasn't stopping me from reading comm channel, rules, etc. But mind that most of the new players and, generally, most of other players are playing alone. It's nothing surprising actually - you can't always find a company when you want to play the game, however you can find it later while playing. Now put the new player into that frame - you have little to no friends here yet so finding a company to play with is tricky quest. But as the time goes playing alone on this server was harder and harder, as I said, the environment for a single player is very aggressive right now. If you want to know what do I mean - try to play as a pirate alone with a bomber and soon you'll find that there is a lot of people who're out to get you without taking the part where you must get your share of fun too into account. It's pretty much easy - why would I even try to play the game if it's screwing me around every here and there. I'm better off to do more enjoyable things while playing other games.

Think about it.

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[sindroms]

Eh, no.
My underlying point is that anyone, who thinks to introduce a friend or perhaps ''lure'' new players in Penny towards unlawful characters and RP, should reconsider it a little.

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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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[Curios]

Well, my first faction was unlawful one (Corsairs) and it wasn't bad. It's all depend on how enjoyable the game for player is. If it's fun to play then it doesn't matter the side or faction. And how many feedback threads of newbie players did you really saw? I think the number of newcomers that make fb thread straight ahead after installing the mod is irrelevantly low.

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[sindroms]

Well, my first faction was unlawful one (Corsairs) and it wasn't bad. It's all depend on how enjoyable the game for player is. If it's fun to play then it doesn't matter the side or faction. And how many feedback threads of newbie players did you really saw? I think the number of newcomers that make fb thread straight ahead after installing the mod is irrelevantly low.

Well, I did say ''at some point'' you will want a feedback thread, granted you join Disco for the purpose of RP, instead of just fraking around with friends, which is not a bad reason either.

My first faction was the OC, so I can relate, but again, these are just my two cents.

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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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[tyro]

I don't think to introduce or invite anyone.
I have invited several friends to play on discovery in the past. I explained them the rules, policies, ways to play.
Aside from those who don't like the game itself, others didn't stay here as well. With the progress of the game, they were getting into more and more strange things and not very pleasant encounters. It ended always with the statement that this server is too complicated and the players not overly friendly.

[Curios]

Well, my first faction was unlawful one (Corsairs) and it wasn't bad. It's all depend on how enjoyable the game for player is. If it's fun to play then it doesn't matter the side or faction. And how many feedback threads of newbie players did you really saw? I think the number of newcomers that make fb thread straight ahead after installing the mod is irrelevantly low.

Well, I did say ''at some point'' you will want a feedback thread, granted you join Disco for the purpose of RP, instead of just fraking around with friends, which is not a bad reason either.

My first faction was the OC, so I can relate, but again, these are just my two cents.

While I can't say that your point is completely wrong, because it is actually true but I don't know how exactly it affects the decisions of players to stay here. So I rise my own point (again) which you can see few posts above that one. If community is aggressive towards players they are playing with (and the guy you just utterly ganked in game can happen to be a new player) then they can just move to better games w\o even trying anything with feedback or factions or "cool and unique mod features", "great and best RP environment", etc etc. Who need that shet if you're simply screwed hard right at the doorstep?

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