they seem to get locked by experienced admins whose gut tells them that thread is leading down the path to flameville. Their forum, their rules... simple. Nothing is stopping you from making your own 'Freelancer Sux' forum. Once everyone goes and posts there that it sux, what would be left to say tho? LOL!

Most of them get locked because they turn into a flame war, unfortunatly.

Then shouldnt those who repetadly turn then into flamewards(HINT his name starts with a D and his sig has a picture of the great green arcleseazure in it) be smacked instead of the threads being locked?

One got locked for blatent breach of our rules...

One for arguing the same thing over and over... We know FL isn't everybodies Messias... get over it - you told us - the people who have a different taste, and actually LIKE Freelancer. I can tell you that DA would love to do the stuff you all say, but it is a question of time and money. Time to do it, and money from the SALE of the game. Hope some of the feautres will make it into FL2 or even an expansion.

So why tell us over and over the weaker parts of the game?

Best Regards
Christian "Bargib" Koerner
Editor in Chief, The Lancers Reactor

They do not get locked because someone expresses a negative opinion about Freelancer. They block them when all the points have been made and it turns into one big worthless disccusion and name calling. Comes a time when after you make a point...it is best to rest your case and get on with life. I for one am very thankful for this forum and the hardwork the guys have put into it.

Also the people that like this place come because they like Freelancer, and are fans of the game. Thus this is a Fan Site!

And being told that the game you like/love/enjoy is bad for this or that reason is not the best way to start a participation in a community. So I've decided to take a slightly tougher stand on this untill things slow down a bit. People might dislike it, and start yelling at me, but honostly: I don't do it because I can, but because I think it is the ONLY way to keep the positive, nice spirit we have around here... Sounds weird, but if you build a house, and you open the door to let people in and visit you, and then they start talking bad about your things and the house - what would you do? Propably throw them out... Here we try to listin, try to show why we differ in oppinion, but if they insist, we first ask them to refrain from doing like that (eg. locking a thread), and if that doesn't show it, we explain it a more explicit (like this). If they then still insist, we start warning people that we disagree, and if they keep on and/or start getting mad we throw them out...

It's not something I do lightly, I'm just a bit tired here...

Best Regards
Christian "Bargib" Koerner
Editor in Chief, The Lancers Reactor

Bargib,

I applaud your actions and totally agree with your reasoning. I personally have built and run several fan sites and things can on occasion get out of hand. It is after all your site/house. Quite a nice one too!

I know all too well how difficult it is to run a good site with ever-expanding content and let me say it is no walk in the park. Most of the time it is thankless work and long hours. It is most definitely a labor of love.

Do not let a few discourage you. I for one really appreciate the job you and your staff are doing. Keep up the excellent work!

Lance

One can be a fan of a game, without being a mindless toady.

Sincere discussion about the pros and cons of a game should be encouraged. If the members begin to get the impression that this site is nothing more than an extension of the marketing arm of Microsoft or Digital Anvil, then credibility in the information presented by the site's staff may lose credibility.

Having said that, I am not leveling any accusations - merely, urging caution and tolerance of mature expression.

How about instead of laying the blame at the feet of the site owners, members have a good long hard look at what they are posting. No offence here Lach, but you titled your review about FL "The truth about Freelancer". Unfortunately it's not the "truth about freelancer " it's your opinion of freelancer.

All im saying is that if people want to have a formal discussion about the pro's and cons of the game, put the pro's and the cons in your reviews. Almost every person who has posted a negative review has done thier utmost to try and convince us not to buy the game, telling us thier are no positives to the game only negatives. In my honest opinion most of these reviews stink to high heaven, they are poorly written and are basicly dot points of what the reviewer didn't like, without even a reason of why he/she didn't like it.

So in short, if you have to write a review please put some intelligent thought into it, point out the good and the bad, write it well, base it on a personal opinion and people will respect your review.

Posting that you don't like this, didn't like that, hated this, so quite clearly the game sucks and you should all buy X2 instead. It doesn't really inspire confidence in your opinion.



Ah, she's built like a steak house but she handles like a bistro. - Zapp Brannigan

Agreed...

but on the same token, please allow maturely worded complaints to be heard. I don't think anybody should be offended that I think some of the voice acting was silly and it had a tendency to cut out at times on my machine, but the rest of the game is good enough to warrant buying (I did).

Criticisim is not always a bad thing, especially when done with respect for other's opinions. Developers listen to such criticisims over such phrases as "FREELANCRE SUKS DONT BUY IT LOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!11111"

I agree, AstralKnight. It's funny you say that, because it seems like everyone (NPCs) I've spoken to in the very first mission say something like, "I don't run this place, but I have an agreement with the people that do." I mean, what's the odds that all of these different people would say almost the exact same thing. I'm by no means providing a formal review here - but since we're on the topic of the voice acting/scripting, that was a bit strange. And it did kind of sound like the same guy doing many of the characters, just disguising his voice a little; it sounded sort of cheesy.

On the positive side, I do like the atmosphere in the bar - nice little, off-kilter jazz tune in the background music. And the city settings are pretty cool. One other good thing is that the character animations look really well done.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players...

Because the king never likes to hear he is not wearing clothes

Well I dont mind hearing constructive things on why the game is good or bad. Yes, I want to like and buy freelancer, but I am not going to buy it if its not worth my time.

I just dont like seeing the pissing matches about how XTF has this and that. I want to see if this game can stand on its own.

I'm all for mature discussion and criticism. I've got a number of suggestions/criticisms I'd like to make, but I'll probably do it after I'm a ways into Freelancer and have gotten a good feel for it.

Right now I'm just hostile to negative reviews that try to insist that Freelancer *really is* a letdown (like it's some objective fact and everybody on the fence beware, the game sucks!), and getting called a fanboi when I disagree as to how much of a problem something is.

Even based on what little experience I've had with the demo (man, we've come a loooong way...), I think FL is overwhelmingly the best space sim to hit the market since...I dunno, Wing Commander 4? And I mostly enjoyed that game just for the cutscenes, not the gameplay.

I also think the repetitive dialogue needs to be taken in context. Freelancer is really the first open-ended space sim to devote as many resources as it does to meeting people while not in flight. Think about Tachyon: The Fringe, for example. You don't meet ANYONE in that game on a station. Few games beat FL when it comes to non-scripted conversation. Shenmue comes to mind (and the dialogue's pretty bad, too, but it's more varied), but Shenmue...is just insane. It cost Sega boatloads to make it. Even in Privateer, there were very few people you could meet in bars (and I think that was all confined to story missions, anyway, though I'm not sure). Dialogue in Morrowind didn't really feel like dialogue, either.

I DO wish you could explore planets and stations a bit more, something I always wanted to see more of in Privateer, but I think FL actually has many more unique locations than even Privateer had, and given how much work it takes, it's understandable.

Really, I think the main problem with the rash of negativity lately is just that people just harp too much on any one thing, refuse to take FL for what it's supposed to be, or refuse to see its merits in context with the rest of the genre. Sure, some games have better features or implementations in some respects, but then they totally drop the ball on some other aspect, with FL kicking the crap out of them for it (planet/station-side interaction for one, atmosphere for another).