At some point Rex is going to have to weight up the time/effort taken to implement this new feature and the possible drawbacks / dramas / imbalances that could be created. Hopefully this thread will serve as a useful tool in that decision.
To those who say the OCD is ‘safe’ and those who say if you’ve ‘paid’ for it you have certain rights - i’m afraid neither is the case. Rex can withdraw/amend any feature as he sees fit. I believe the text with all donations states that features are subject to future amendments or words to that effect.
Therefore, the best way to minimise anything you’d see as negatively impacting your enjoyment/gameplay is to positively contribute to the discussion.
Whether thats improving his already excellent ideas or nerfing his imminent OCD destruction
I still think this all is a horrible idea. I would prefer if RexXxus says he cuts down the Slots over 60k down to 60k against the hoarders, instead this horrible feature.
It´s just a matter of time till one faction decides to destroy another player, please do your math with a 40 man faction like TAW or the Russian Alliance with their Family Share Accounts. A total Disaster.
I think a successful hack should make you guilty, not unsuccessful. Does anyone want to be hacked? I just don’t like it in real life either so why would I want it here? Why give players an official way of greifing?
I’ve already put something in my suggestions about preventing that from happening.
@Quasar I wouldn’t consider this griefing but more adding an element of risk to what has until now been an infallible feature. At the end of the day this is a PVP game and this is just another PVP element. I’m all for more ways of PVP, empyrion OR HWS
I do But i’m also mentioning that this adds another layer to the already thriving PVP community on Empyrion? Surely this is a good thing, no? I felt it important to mention that until now our OCD has been our invincible storage device; surely a ittle bit of leakage can be a good thing; giving players like me who have a mostly full-up OCD the reason to continue filling it?
How did you think i did not want a discussion? I’m curious; me replying is not me trying to shut you down. It’s me trying to keep this going!
Best regards dude and your opinion is more than welcome!
Wise.
As I already stated on Discord I’m completely opposed to any hacks or other attacks on your OCD. Here’s a few points why I object so strongly to OCD hacking:
Missing the objective
Making this kind of storage unreliable would not allow the poor to steal from the rich, it would allow the organised to steal from the dumb and lazy. The organized will find ways to protect themselves or have someone in their group come up with a way of mitigation. New players would face an even steeper learning curve.
More harmful to those who have little to lose
The rich actually won’t lose anything but their temper. While most players with OCD5+ will have filled many if not all slots with valuables it won’t actually mean any serious harm to their play even if an entire slot was lost. It would be annoying, irritating, and you’d feel cheated. But for people that have very little it would be devastating. Just think of the droves of people that quit after losing their survival constructor on a starter - this would be the same thing but amplified by a longer grind.
Randomness is terrible for competition
Chance based game elements are not a good substitute for a solid base game. Since random chance is the same for everyone it pulls everyone closer to the mean, enabling bad players short term success at the cost of better players (or plays). Empyrion is already not very competitive in nature due to many game design elements, we do not need more BS to suck the competitive spirit out of a PVP centric server.
It can be completely countered by logistics
Making a storage facility isn’t hard. Hiding it - even in PVP - isn’t hard either, just more time consuming. Alternatively it adds more P2W vibe to donator planets by removing the need to hide your storage facility to make it unhackable. Moving everything out of your OCD into storage and vice versa is just a time sink.
Wolfpacks protect each other
With the evil klingon alliance and their frivolous minions on the one side and the glorious western alliance of righteousness and their supporting white knights in shining armor won’t let it slide if any smaller factions would hack them. With the wrath of a thousand 135mm H-missiles they’d be hunted once spotted just to teach the lesser plebian factions a lesson. Using this feature as a small fish in a big pond would lead to your own damnation.
Griefing as a feature
Griefing sucks. It is the second lowest form of play aside from cheating, usually performed by same dodgy characters. It is playing in a way that avoids competing to achieve something and instead takes that achievement from others. Do we as a community really want that as a feature?
It undermines one of the best features of this server
It is the stand-out feature that allows you to have a persistent progress through the seasons or necessary resets due to the rapid developing nature of Empyrion. It is also a very convenient way to store things and reduces server load due to less storage units needed by players since it disappears from the game into a separate database. Making it unreliable would force mitigation or accepting losses which is the exact opposite of what it is supposed to do: reducing your losses in case of wipes.
And to the point raised by Wiseman that more PVP is good: No, it isn’t! If people wanted unlimited PVP than servers like this and earlier Oblivion wouldn’t be bursting at the seams while the unlimited PVP servers are mostly dead. People want a little excitement in their battles and use their stuff and fight for resources but at the end of the day you do not want to lose everything. You want to chose what you risk and what you keep safe. Adding random chance to elements you thought were safe does not make for better PVP, it is an element of gambling - and if you are on the receiving side you can’t even chose if you want to gamble, you just have to.
I’m alot more open to other hacking options like PVP bases and even the bank where you could even add a feature where you can adjust risk/reward to your liking. Want to be safe from hacks? Choose security level A and you will have a 0% chance to be hacked with only half interest. You can take a small risk? Choose level B for medium risk with regular interest. And if you are feeling frisky choose level C for low protection but doubled interest!
In either way this is widely different because it isn’t meant to be permanent, it is for the duration of the season anyway.
Thanks for your really detailed post! Good to see another person taking this seriously
The main issue I have is the infallibility of the OCD. Right now it’s our ‘safe space’ which i think we on HWS have grown a little bit too-much accustomed too.
So my question is this: Say Rexxus wanted to nerf the ocd somehow (hypothetically) how would you go about it? (Genuine question, as i’m curious too but i don’t have any good ideas right now).
Best regards
Wise.
PS: I do disagree with points 4 and 5 and 6 and 7. But I agree with you on 2 and 3.
Good logistics can counter this yes; and that’s a good thing as the organized SHOULD
If they are lazy enough to fail to protect their OCDS then that’s their own fault! We should never cater to ignorance or laziness. I was too lazy to pick up the christmas drop boxes; should I automatically be entitled to them as a result? This hypothetical question i think raises some big issue.s
A hacker can still resort to PVE playfields am i right? Or Maybe give the playfield and not the location in X, Y Z so it isn’t tooo OP.
6 I don’t consider it griefing but a viable risk. At the end of the day think of the name; ‘Orbital Cargo Drone’. It isn’t some treasure chest under our bed, is it this thing somewhere in space probably thousands of miles away and only contactable with an RFD. Someone may hack the RFD signature in order to hack the OCD even if it is just a tiny amount.
The OCD is a fantastic feature no doubt, but i think this just adds another layer to the level of risk/reward gameplay that Rexxus has been trying to promote throughout HWS.
Yeah that’s something that I felt was 100% OP. The ability to hack an entire slot. Therefore Ranzeth and I were discussing ways of preventing this from happening.
Ranzeth’s method:
My method:
(High chances of failure for the gold-storing OCDS with the ability to…
Curious as to your opinion on this? Would you and other folks storing gold in the OCD be happy with one of these kinds of counters?
Or would it be better to disable the ability to steal rares completely as one of us (can’t remember who) suggested?
I’m just wondering at this point where ‘the line’ is so to speak. Do the majority on here opposed to the OCD hack are they opposed to it in principe such as SirKnum? Or with the correct limitations/caveats could it ever be an acceptable feature? As tbh i don’t mind either way i’m just wanting to gauge other peoples opinions on this.
Hmm Personally I hope not. The problem is with polls is that they’re a little bit like referendums. Meaning that there is no challenge to those opinions and therefore no finding of any suitable middle ground. Each box normally would be a series of seperate extremes.
Take a look at the GG improvement discussion for example It started off as one thing and ended up entirely another thanks to people coming out and making suggestions We need more of that. After all Rexxus’ suggestion is less than 24 hours old! I’m pretty sure we should wait and see how this discussion develops first.
People need to learn to speak up and have their voices heard; this is the perfect place to do it :
That can be dealt with by how the question is put and the options provided. A yes or no is polarising and detail is oft missed. If a variety of options is put to the voting masses however Rex can see what would be most… or least preferred. Obviously, its his choice on whether to act on the result though.
@Daddystu Absolutely right! If it wasn’t for him making some hard choices then we wouldn’t have half of what we have now. But yeah he should also level the pros and cons! I also edited my prev post to make myself sound a little bit less like some sort of puritanical tyrant
Just let people opt in individually like the lottery. Those who want it can join in. Those who don’t just avoid it. It seems just the longtime bored players who want this. Those of us just starting to get a foothold don’t. You guys had years of safe OCD why not let us have the same?
One of SirKnumbSkulls best points was point 7. The OCD is one of those things that makes HWS such a popular server. I think Rex does have to be careful here that this hacking change doesnt in effect ‘nerf’ the attraction of a server with an OCD.
Yeah I understand and can totally get behind that Grizzly. When i was starting out i remember just getting to AM 10 and then the ore-rates were nerfed…i then got to OCD5 and the slot capacity was nerfed So i know that feeling too too well to disagree with you there! 100% behind you on that point
Having this as an optional feature could be an awesome idea and i dunno how i didn’t think of that! I remember Daddystu coming up with something similar when we were talking about wiping OCDs entirely! @Daddystu said something along the lines of:
And it’s similar with this feature proposal in which those who want to hack can hack and consequently make themselves vulnerable to hacking by doing so. Some sort of HWS connect’ shadow wars’ feature
Moreover Loke raised a good point about how this may be exploited with people travelling from NA or EU to the opposite server with hacking enabled where they have nothing to lose. There would have to be some sort of counter to this (not sure how).
@Quasar I think your suggestion of this feature being optional you may have hit the nail on the head and made the most valuable suggestion here yet out of all of us!
PS: Daddystu my post is MUCH less tyrannical ahaha, everything there i can get behind Before i was a little bit too like ‘avoid the masses my good fellow, they carry disease and pestilence!’
I dont like the idear
I would rather maybe give give some of my resorces and credits into a bunker that new players can accsess.
I dont see how one big faction can steal another big factions resorcesc and then dominate the server. it will end up like the na server with dominant factions.
I think a lot of people especially new players will not like this either as they find it hard enough now to grind there levels of am’s and ocd’s.
But juats just me.
I think we’ve solved most of it but it’s dependent on whether it’s optional or not.
It would be voluntary (in my suggestion but not yet clear if to Rexx this could be made voluntary)
And there would be high chances of failure.
I can see a practical use for the base-hacking feature such as finding underground cores of abandoned bases/hacking them and making them public.
I’d say it’s slightly easier to grind Res (super recently) in order to level up thanks to sped up asteroid mining times (but need more GOLD asteroids in BH pls Rex!).
As long as this is voluntary is see no issues. But if it is not voluntary then all of your issues apply
I’m all for more ways of PVP, empyrion OR HWS 