Pilots to Servers and How to get them there.
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Hello, I originally went By Maxthor, so some might know me. though I did see another now using that name.
I am an Aerospace Manufacturing Engineer, which means I make build steps and instructions on how to build and modify aircraft.
I wanted to give some insight to possibly help you get people to your servers.
There are a couple thousand registered bodies in the starport, yet you usually see just around a hundred pilots in servers throughout the day.
why?
Let me give you some pointers. (Rules for training, education, and instruction)
- Never Ever assume a player/Pilot knows anything. even if they had done this before they may have forgotten. act like you are showing your own child how to start playing.
2). because of rule 1, always give detailed baby steps into how to get your mod onto their computer and play. and I mean STEP by Agonizing STEP. “but the steps are in the mod spaces if you search for it.” NO, you write your step and put a link if you want to that. Human nature is if they have to click away from more than once you lose them.
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Have your “How to” Steps in multiple locations, don’t rely on another link to support you. if that link goes away you lose.
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Advertise! you have the ability to put pictures in here, place photos in between the steps of your universe to make them excited to go explore.
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Be there to help. these days you don’t have to pay and run your own forum Server, you can set up a free business Facebook account and put all kinds of content in there, get notifications, place your steps and advertise. be there for tech support. another place to have your “How to”.
You can ignore this if you wish but if you’re not helpful and excited to play this game why would anyone else want to join?
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We are well aware of the divide.
People that historically played Freelancer know or know how to find details to make the game work today. We know this is a barrier to entry.
This is why some of the mods have installers etc these days, including a project I’m involved with, Freelancer HD Edition.
There is an untapped new generation of players out there who I believe would enjoy Freelancer and give it new life. I think we have to do some modernising though before that can happen.
I think as a community we should work together to a common ground remaster and then advertise/deploy it. But concepts like that have never gone down well, community is too split between their projects for that, and there would always be debate on what should be included and what shouldn’t be without a central guided direction that we can’t deviate from.
We have to naturally come to agreement/compromise.
That’s the real hurdle, we collectively have the knowledge and tools as a single force to completely overhaul the game to a modern standard. We just don’t have a common goal, and if we did, we’d have different thoughts about achieving/implementing it.
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I played for the first decade on many Modded servers, even helped on a few Mods, but been years since I played frequently. and my primary computers are Apple. So I don’t remember how to make sure you have all previously saved files removed from Fl and FLMM to make sure you have a clean install, I don’t remember how to manually install if needed. I don’t remember many things and I have to search and search to try and find threads that wind up in archives. So not all previous players know how to get things running.
I do look fwd to seeing where the mods go. especially with better graphics and skins.
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I like to think servers wanting to attract people would already be implementing those suggestions. Beyond a few core servers such as Discovery, there’s not enough of a current MP playerbase to spread across many servers.
A community-based remaster would definitely bring more people back to the fray, however mechanics are also somewhat antiquated, and games are more evolved now. Librelancer is a good start, which is a C# open-source client - https://github.com/Librelancer/Librelancer
I’d love to contribute but need more C# knowledge, so modding is as far as I go until I can get time enough to learn.
