Good fight on GG, for the most part!

HWS General Discussion
80

Well I have been away for a week now and sad to see that due to Exploiters again the entire community gets punished. Soon an Hour Delay for OP? Wow that is great so wait until I log off and you have an hour to take out all my turrets anyway needed including cheating and there is no one there to see it. This is so sad that the solution to Exploiting/cheaters is to have everyone punished. Why can we not just BAN the Exploiters for doing it maybe not the first exploit but certain by the third or fourth it is clear that they are just cheaters.

Sadly if OP is increased any further I am sure HWS will see a decline in population again. The reason is there are too many people that cheat. PVP is not about waiting until the other PLAYER goes offline to attack them. That is equal to PVE. PVP is suppose to be PLAYER vs PLAYER and anyone attempting to circumvent that with exploits or other means is the one that needs to be punished.

Rex and the rest of the HWS team I respect what you guys are trying to do but you fail to see that you punish everyone for the work of a few. That will do nothing but destroy your community. Those that cheat know no other way and will never stop. Remove them from your community once and for all. HWS would survive even if you banned half the community tomorrow. Allowing cheaters/exploiters is almost the same as turning a blind eye to hackers. So sad that this is the direction HWS is chosen. I will check back in 8.0 but if OP delay goes above 30 minutes that is too much. Sure it keeps people from spawning bases and logging to use the OP for defense but those that do that…just BAN them and be done. Many others will pop up to replace them.

81

I think an elegant solution to players splintering into smaller or smallest factions is to create negative consequences for such a downgrade in loyalty. If a player leaves/kicked from “mega-faction”, then if you could prevent him/his new faction from creating alliances with any faction “mega-faction” has an alliance with this would encourage fair-play and break the meta-gaming for circumvention. Perhaps its a permanent block or for 30 days or something that creates more loss than gain.

The rules/limits shouldn’t negatively impact the lone wolf who has not yet joined or built up his own faction. If this solution isn’t easy to automate the rule could create negative consequences for both “mega-faction” and “splintering faction” ie. strip both factions of all alliances if found meta-gaming.

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82

There is NO negatively impact - thats just fact, that some “rats” use holes in rules, and ruined game for others. U want to see gold planet full of BAs in OP?.. That is not a big deal for ppl with money and time. Had u think about other ppl, who played by rules?

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83

Come and give it another try Alek! A.f.t’s config is fantastic and runs really well, whilst the number of bases allowed has been lowered significantly.

84

Not sure what you mean by this. My comment about “no negative” impact was intended to encourage consideration to players who weren’t exploiting but may be negatively impacted by rules trying to govern the exploit from the perspective of single-player factions.

Thanks for your response.

85

Solution to meta-factions and using alts to accumulate extra bases is simple. Limit factions to 5-7 players as a max, and only allow 2 faction alliances to be made. If a faction wants to set up a faction of alts for extra towers, then they get one less ally. Benefits:

  • More small factions and less massive carebearing factions means more enemies… or, in other words… more PvP

  • Factions no longer able to set up innumerous side factions to circumvent base limitations

  • Factions become tight-knit group and actually work together, as opposed to a large faction where almost nobody knows eachother

  • Battles become somewhat smaller in scale (no more zerging), thus reducing a large amount of lag.

  • Adds a new/interesting mechanic to gameplay that forces more tactical assaults rather than relying on the amount of turrets one can place in any one given area (which further reduces lag)

Thoughts?

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86

Interesting. How about …
Lawless - 2 alliances
Freelancer - 3 alliances
Alliance - 4 alliances

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87

Nope. Equal alliances.

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88

While I rather like the idea of a different amount for each origin (very inventive twist and fits well on HWS), I still think more than two per faction defeats the purpose. I agree with Taco.

89

I’m not a fan of arbitary limits whatsoever. It’s also not true that having big factions means you do not know the players. In GMC we have a very close as well as considerable community. And the numbers playing Empyrion vary but what makes it fun is that if you’re organised enough you can reach those kinds of sizes. It’s about valuing your team and taking the time to get to know people, and that is how our faction exists in the whole of HWS.

Limiting factions just seems like a complete nuclear option. What I love about this game is how those kinds of arbitary limits or rules simply do not exist. Furthermore setting up alliances is a perfectly good idea. And if a faction wants to counter it then it should set up allies of its own, instead of trying to shift the rulebook to favour smaller, less organised factions.

Finally if you are truly serious about your point then please post it elsewhere where i can reply, for this post isn’t really the right place for it.

Best regards
Wise.

PS: If anything there should be a minimum player limit to setting up factions, that would solve all of our base-alt problems. In fact Rexxus already has a rule in place saying any faction with less than 3 men can not set up bases near allied bases on GG. This rule has worked very well and dealt with all of the alt factions on GG. So your problem is already solved on EU.

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90

These limits are not arbitrary by any means. I have thought about what would allow factions to play with people they know (I don’t want to separate players from their friends whatsoever) while still eliminating zerging (you must admit does generate lots of lag). If you think a different number is more fitting, by all means, suggest one.

I’m sure GMC does value its players. You wouldn’t have made a point to say so if it weren’t the case. Simple observation however shows this is certainly not always the case.

I agree, setting up alliances is a good idea. No faction should fight alone unless it wants to. Again though, alt factions too commonly end up circumventing base limitations, which this suggestion aims to fix (among other things). Also, if one meta-faction is countered by others doing likewise, extrapolate that to the extreme (where it will end up over time) and consider the ramifications. Only massive battles where playfields are maxed on players and everyone recieves 3fps will be the eventual result. This would be akin to the EU invasion of NA in V6, where battle was almost impossible for most players, and actually impossible for some.

Limits like this do already exist, in the form of core limitations per faction per playfield, among others. Organized factions (if they are truely organized) will respond to this change and adapt as they have always done. This is not meant to inhibit gameplay, but to enhance it generally and encourage PvP. Lagfests and zerg rushes inhibit PvP, but several daily PvP encounters will allow players to engage in battle more often and in an environment with reduced lag.

I will consider making a new thread for this, though it was partially (among other reasons) posted in response to a statement made in this thread.

Thanks for the reply,
Supreme

PS: The problem has not been solved on NA

91

I disagree with almost everything you said accept the adjectives. Big faction namely ours are a tight fit community as we all know each other and talk with each other on a daily bases. We do everything together on a whim whether its protecting each others miners or defending a ally base or just common tom foolery. Also limiting one faction large numbers means stunting growth as a community cause whats the point in asking a friend to join if hes gonne join someone else. @Supreme_Admiral.

Regards
I still like pie.:grin:

92

@tK_Hunter Again, I don’t wanna stop people from playing with their friends. If you think the suggested numbers disallow that, what number do you think would be necessary? Perhaps factions should not be limited in players and only in alliances?

Thanks for the reply. =]

93

Honestly i dont think putting up any max limit is fine. You may have people joining purely for PVE like in ACM. Not all our players are PVP oriented. Id suggest a completely different solution. Nothing to do with community building. Usually my premise to recruit new players is that i can provide them with security and a fun group of gents/ladies to play and participate with. Therefore no limit as faction sizes go. If your problem is your a small faction maybe break yours up and join us.

Regards
This pie is great

94

The limits i’m afraid are arbitary, and they damage and harm the big factions, which are often the ones that keep PVP going, especially on the quiet seasons. In regards to this ‘zerging’ i haven’t seen all that much of this. The maximum we’ve been attacked with this season is 9 hovers and 1 sv. Yet the playfield handled it remarkably well, it surprised even me! I don’t think any number would be fitting whatsoever. I remember the old days in 3 and 4.0 where you had the Space Wolves Pirates (SWP) Rolling around in a pack of about 30-40 laying waste to the surface of almost any PVP planet. I was unfortunately on the receiving end of that, but what we did was adapt. Slowly MAD and then in 5.0 PKA (now GMC) formed to combat the pirates, and we’ve been locked in mortal combat since.

I’ve seen numerous big-factions form over the years, from SWP to RED at its zenith to FST, UP and UST as well as us when we were PKA in 6.0 we hit 44 members! 44! About twenty of them were new players never-to-be-seen again. However the other twenty four were regular players, spread out and about all across the galaxy either for fighting, exploration, or harvesting. Ultimately it is this experience that has made the game so fun for me. Therefore I propose that there be no upper limit on playercount or on alliance count whatsoever. All it does it damage the whole sense of community and forces Rexxus to rewrite the limits for almost every playfield, as well a throw a considerable spanner in the works for new big factions that regularly migrate over from EVE (such as FST) or other Empyrion servers.

I also propose to say that what happened on NA was rather extraordinary. With this massive faction just allying up with everyone and setting up an uber super set of bases on GG…on EU i can safely say that will never happen, our whole joy stems from PVP and little else. Holding a planet just for the sake of saying we own it and little else would bore us to death. I really have no idea how you solve that problem on NA, as i know little about how it all works there. All i know is that we have no such problem on EU. Even at our Zenith our bases are composed of five alliances, and our enemies are still brave and organised to attack us and cause us some major damage, just yesterday they took out one of our defence bases.

I think the problem is yet again NA’s issues being seen to be whole-server issues when actually there is no such problem with EU. I would have little problem whatsoever with your solutions if they were restricted to NA, which might shake up the PVP for you. But the issue here is you’re trying to fix a non-problem on EU. Hence why this whole thread is titled ‘Good fight on GG, for the most part’.

Anyways enough from me for now, i’m running late for work, have a good day Supreme_Admiral and Tk_Hunter and i’ll reply when i get back from work!

Best regards
Wise

PS: (Our NA invasion was only ten players in a single star destroyer :slight_smile: it was our organisation that made us so deadly, we spent two weeks preparing that assault, we had enough res on our ship for that fight to last the full 24 hours :slight_smile:

2 Likes
95

@tK_Hunter I understand your point fully. My faction is not large at the moment, but could well be again if I were to convince many of our player (who left for the reasons I am trying to address here) to return. I don’t necessarily seek smaller factions, just smaller battles. Many players I know have become aggrivated with swarms of enemies making gameplay near impossible. In this case, the faction with the most turrets on site (generally the one with the most players) will win in a lag storm. If we were to counter in the same way, we would only cause the same problem, which is the reason we have not. We can do the same, we simply won’t be part of the problem.

To address your point and still reduce lag (trying to find a compromise), what do you think about limiting the amount of players a faction can have on any single playfield at any given time?

96

@Wiseman738 Yeah, props on that assault. That was WAY more than we ever expected.

I actually like your idea to impose this on NA (and am glad you somehow know these problems exist there) but not EU. I agree! The only reason I didn’t bring this up is that I didn’t think Rex would want to have different rules on each server. I am however VERY much in favor of that. And, pardon me for not considering the ramifications on EU thoroughly. It sounds as if EU’s much larger player base makes this a non-issue over there while it straight kills PvP on NA.

If @RexXxuS wouldn’t mind having different mechanics on the two servers to attempt to accomodate for their different populations, I agree completely. Thanks again for your insights into the EU PvP mechanics.

97

@Supreme_Admiral Well Id agree with @Wiseman738. Were on EU as well and none of the large faction gets along. Except for the 3 large alliances that make up the large factions. We haven’t had one off day on GG for the majority of this year and the holidays. If the issue is a NA issue then the resolution needs to enforced on NA. I still don’t agree with cutting faction to bits tho. Maybe aggresively limiting the amount of vessels or bases on a single playfield. Force them to move their numbers around more often.

Regards
’‘grabs another pie’’

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98

The reason why some of the large factions stay together is that they value their members - AAA is another case where members are valued and appreciated for their positive skills. Large factions that do not value their players eventually break up. I have seen this on a number of occasions, so there is nearly always a turnover of large (and smaller ones too) factions. The situation is self regulating and does not need any arbitrary number limiting the size of factions. It strikes me that there is a degree of envy from some smaller factions who cannot be bothered enough to grow.

I started as a one-man-band, added a member or two, allied with another single person faction, allied with a small multiple person faction and as a whole became AAA which has grown somewhat since then. We have become allied with several large factions since in order to counter another large group of factions, but we do not do everything as a ‘super-faction’ because we still like to do our own things, so we are not some mega-block dictating to others. The problem with large battles dropping the frame rate should not be blamed on large factions, but on the fact that the game is still in alpha and requires a large amount of optimisation. The players taking the game to its limits is a good thing because it flags up the problems to the developers. Limiting faction sizes will only limit the testing of the game and therefore limit the ultimate potential of the game.

Please don’t try to limit faction sizes because you cannot do large yourself.

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99

You make it sound like it’s 15 players vs 3 whenever you guys come down here in force. Sure, there are times when there are 3 of you and 7 of us - and that sort of thing. That being said if you come to ‘our planet’ then you should expect to be swarmed.

If you don’t like it - recruit guys, get organized, adapt. The reason why Op4/TPP get wiped so often if you guys do not seem to adapt or develop new strategies. Just today, I had GRG setup a base, and with one guy defending it vs 2 was able to do more damage than 3 or 4 TPP players, and he didn’t even have really tank CVs/HVS/SVs, he just had a good base design and some ingenuity.

Now, I’ve been down to GG on EU, and it appears there are groups of 3 - 5 factions in 2 or three spots on the planet. I’m not sure why one side hasn’t fully wiped out the other, but from what I can see the only difference between GG on NA and EU is that the average pvper must be more experienced.

For all your talk about the ‘zerg’ alliance on GG NA, we have never fielded more than 12 combat assets at a time, and on average it’s around 5 - 7 players. (At least on operations I’ve been involved in)*