As you have noticed in the past weeks, server activity has been on a sharp downward slope. Despite our best attempts at rekindling interest, we have been unable to correct course and we now risk complete desertion. We have therefore concluded that we needed to significantly change our gameplay focus and design in order to better answer the community’s desires.
Those sweeping changes are altering the core of the experience we are providing with Freeworlds, which is why we wanted to first expose them to our community so that we may receive feedback on them. We’re doing this for you guys, in the hope that we get more players and create a more enjoyable experience for everyone.
We hope that our plans make you excited, and look forward to your reactions.Note that we do not have a timeframe for this as of yet. The feedback you guys will provide us will let us gauge interest and viability, and we will then be able to get cracking. We’re not ready to throw the towel just yet, and we hope that you will want to join us in the near future!
UPDATE: We have updated some parts of this plan. You can find this update HERE.
Part I - Refocus
Goals:
- Players are no longer reliant on other players to enjoy the mod
- Players are no longer restricted in what they can do or have
- Players are no longer forced to take orders from other players
- Players can join up with friends
- Players have multiple means of achieving the same goal
- Players are no longer forced to play in a way that is not enjoyable to them
Measures:
- We no longer have player leaders
- Players can join any number of factions they wish, without human intervention (aside from Jedi/Sith)
- Players are immediately full members and have access to the complete ship roster
- Capital ships are no longer constructed, they are instead requisitioned
- This process requires players accumulating requisition points on their characters, allowing them to move up to a better ship of their choosing
- RPs can be accumulated through actions such as gaining influence for your faction, destroying enemy ships, etc.
- RPs may not be shared or traded
- Starter ships are removed and replaced with their faction’s corresponding main bomber and fighter
- New starter loadout with a basic capital ship (corvette) per faction
- More diverse choice of starting trader loadouts
- All trader factions are completely independent of the main four factions
- Upon death, the capital ship is lost, but the RPs are not
- You’re given a basic ship again
- You don’t gain back the RPs from your ship
- Players can form fleets (capitals) or squadrons (fighters), which are essentially clans
- We provide subforums under each faction and let the clan leader control acceptance, but do not enforce multiclanning or anything
- Influence works as before, but is undirected; players individually decide what to do and where to go
- Trading is purely a money-making process
- Surplus capitals can be bought for a lot of money (destroyer and below)
Part II - Events & Roles
Goals:
- Player interaction is no longer required to create enjoyable situations
- Players are no longer disturbed/annoyed by NPCs
- Players and NPCs participate in the same metagame
- Players have more things to do
Measures:
- Creation of an AI director
- When players engage in specific behaviors, AI director reacts by spawning appropriate response
- Traders moving around in space without escorts >> spawn escorts
- Smugglers moving around unimpeded >> spawn police
- Enemy fighters raiding systems >> spawn defense squadrons
- Enemy capitals raiding systems >> spawn defense fleets
- At random points in time, spawn random events and notify players
- Trading convoy
- Fighter attack
- Capital attack
- Target random military events towards areas with influence instability
- Players are rewarded with money or RPs for participating
- When players engage in specific behaviors, AI director reacts by spawning appropriate response
- Significant reduction of background NPC spawns, both in terms of numbers and in terms of area
- Implementation of mining
- Implementation of random discoverable wrecks
- Implementation of random systems with rewards hidden in them
- Implementation of bounty hunter system
- Can both leverage player and NPC hunters, but only target players
Part III - Beyond
- Crafting system?
- Player bases?
- Modular ships?
Feedback is welcome as comments to this post or at THIS thread.
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If you like what you see, and have been playing, please don't forget to tell your friends, your communities you frequent and social sites like REDDIT/Twitter about this mod. Player word of mouth goes a long way and we'd appreciate any of the support we can get for this mod of ours! Thanks everyone!
Excellent! The Emperor is impressed with your progress!
This is the most fundamental improvement required: "Players are no longer reliant on other players to enjoy the mod".
HOWEVER BE CAREFUL concerning your next point: "Players are no longer restricted in what they can do or have" should not be game breaking or eliminating any choice, especially since points like "Players can join any number of factions" do seem to indicate that you are aiming in the wrong direction. We need player choice. You cannot allow a character access to both Rebellion and Empire or Criminals and Police. Multiple factions is not a good idea. DO NOT ELIMINATE PLAYER CHOICE FROM THE GAME!
Any game depends on having interesting choices with consequences, if you open it all up you kill both the fun and the need to actually think things through.
The rest of your measures ranges from very good to okay, I am not entirely sure why to remove e.g. the starter ships and joining no faction at all (being a complete Indie so to speak) should be possible as well. And ship roster access could also be governed by RP (which I find a very good addition).
Keep up the good work people, failure is okay as long as it is fast and one recovers!
You can already join multiple factions, but were limited in the ships available to you. We're lifting this limitation. People want to be able to play with their friends, and that might mean across different factions. We want to allow this without gimping the players switching between two factions. This is exactly the same as having two separate characters in two different races or factions in games like WoW or Planetside 2.
You still have a lot of choice, and many consequences, with this. Certain clans won't allow multifactioning, for instance, and you can't expect to gear up two ships in different factions as effectively.
We're removing the STARTER ships, which means the Z-95 Mark I (which is different from the standard issue Z-95!), the old Y-Wing and the broken YT-1300. Those will be replaced by the X-Wing, the normal Y-Wing and a variety of trade vessels. This is a change everyone should appreciate.
Joining no faction at all is still possible, we've never said we're removing civilian affiliations.
I've played this mod for about 1-2 weeks. The mod is amazing, nice ships, planets and etc. But the gameplay is broken imo, if you are alone there is nothing to do. Trading was not present and there was no missions. The starter YT-1300 and others freighters are way too slow, taking about 30 minutes to some basic travel. Also, i'm not a people person, english is not even my first language, so i dont visit forums and etc. So, if i could play this mod alone, doing missions, trading, buying whatever ship i want, just like in Discovery, it will be amazing. I know i'm not the kind of player you want(i hate rp, hate reading a lot *blame my ADHD*) but this is just my humble opinion.
By not visiting the forums, you're missing critical points in how the mod works, such as hyperdrives (which you need to use to get around). We're trying to make it easier for people like you to get to know the mod, but that'll have to go through some reading or a modicum of interaction with the forums, unfortunately.
I recently tried to play. There was hardly any players on, maybe I'm dumb but i had no idea what to do. I was just flying around, jumping in other places too. I didn't know how to make money, find someone to kill or where to find some quests. Otherwise it looked like very cool mod. Good luck, i'll check it later.
One of our priorities will be to make missions more readily available, so you won't have to hunt down the specific bases that give them out. The AI director should also hopefully help direct you towards areas of interest, such as viable trade routes or interesting combat.
AI director sounds like one of the most necessary improvements.
Guys what if you try to post this mod on Steam, like, Steam Greenlight?
Not even legal. We'd need to own the rights to FL's engine. Which we don't.