HWS 13 Pre-Announcement Teaser | Full Wipe Notices | Galaxy Rework

HWS Announcements
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Dear HWS Community,

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many asked about the 5th August and so I will invest some hours in writing this announcement for you.
But first things first: our Ritual!

HWS will full wipe all Servers on 5th August

Full Wipe Notices

Why?

Technically, a full wipe is only required to get all the new Space Stuff, POIs, etc. in. It is not the reason we will full wipe.
The main reason is for us to rework our Galaxy, to implement all lessons we learned with that DB and Galaxy drama the recent 1+ month.
With high hopes I think we are then fully prepared for the “” full release “” or whatever the name will be of Empyrion.

Shorter Season

With a short season there comes also shorter runtimes of some bought packages.
We decided:

  • to let you keep the Keep EGS Recycle Level
  • everything else will fall under the regular Season Reset wipe respectively 90 days for Planets/Spaces continue to run until the end.

The OCD

This is a bigger topic with some background history.
First of all: no, we won’t wipe your whole OCD! But.

The intention of the OCD is to keep your items from one season to the next season. This was the original idea and reason it was born.
Everything else that made the OCD powerful are additions. For example pull/put in PvP, hoarding progress, categories, etc.
All those additions are great of course but subject to change at any time.

Even the wipe of the OCD could happen but for that I need more time to think about. I will never just wipe the OCD because I can. IF I wipe it, then in favor of a rework, big rebalancement + rework etc.
The point is: some players totally deserve a OCD wipe, because they duped, exploited or whatever to hug their greed. Unfortunately it happened years before and I can’t proof it anymore, but there are such players for sure.
Why they deserve it? Because, as already happened, they spam their illegale stuff to the Market or gifting it other players, ruining their fun by spoiling them, making everything faster boring etc.
This is what I hate the most and if I catch such players, they will lose their OCD instant and / or getting banned.

So for now, we are in a very tricky situation overall.
On the one hand Empyrion makes a “” full release “” or whatever. It is labeled 1.0 which will attract probably a lot of players. With that we have the first conflict:
Are we calling the next season HWS 13 or HWS 1.0?

HWS 1.0 → it would reduce confusion, we are aligned with Eleon updates again.
BUT who knows when the next update will come? HWS for sure keep the 3 month seasons.
And if new players are coming, expecting a fresh 1.0 server, they will quickly realize that we have players sitting around for 4+ years and 6000+ hours already. It feels fake, like the whole release.

HWS 13 → we keep counting our own seasons as before. It might be meh for new players to join an “old bread” but well, it means longevity on the other hand too.
Apart from that I think after the 5th August we will do our own thing. If we are ready for a 1.0, we make it whenever with rebalancements or whatever included.

And because we are not ready, because time rushes me again, I won’t wipe your OCDs. I can’t make everything perfect as I wish I could.
HWS 13 will be mainly a solid foundation and beginning of something much much bigger, no matter what Eleon is cooking.

Let me finish it by saying OCD and everything “persistent” should also reward You, by going with us through thick times, difficult times!

OCD Category Shifts and Limit Enforcements

To prepare for the future we have to start to look at the big picture of the OCD though.
The 1 year+ old change about the Ultra Epic Category will finally be enforced.
See here:

Note: Some other items will be moved from the Common Category to Epic or Rare. Those limit changes will be also enforced. Splitting them to other slots won’t lose you anything.

But some items were not updated for long either.
Current plan:

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Please check this Screenshot out for changes. It’s mostly about high end components getting categorized and not sitting in the Common as “Rest”. They are too valuable for that.
Especially Teleporters moving up to Epic.

If you don’t know what it means when items get a Category please check out the Table and their proper limits:

Quick Example: If you have 100 Epic Sniper in one OCD slot, make sure to split them to 10 slots a 10 (you lose nothing). Otherwise you will lose 90.

Galaxy Rework

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New Nebulas

One of the biggest change will be the Galaxy. I can proudly say that I tried everything I could.
From 10 000 Stars, to 7 000 Stars, to 4 000 Stars, to a dynamic Big Bang growing System, injecting playfields in Database and corrupt Databases anyways.
It was “good”. Only if you know your limits you can achieve healthy perfectionism.

HWS 13 will be the beginning of that path. From 10k, 7k, 4k we are going down to our Core 13 Stars and add on top of that “Random” 7 additional Stars. (who guessed my love to the 7?). 20 Stars in total.

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Those 7 Stars will have the focus of PvE. Only because it’s 7 Stars does not mean 7 planets though. Those will contain bunch of new, interesting planets and spaces you can discover.
Going with quality over quantity this time.
Maybe one day Eleon will improve thousands of Stars for Empyrion in Multiplayer. Until then it is not worth the disconnects, glitches, problems, corrupt databases and boring quantity for HWS.

Furthermore we still keep the mechanic of the Big Bang and will add every Friday one of those 7 Stars. They are the Home Stars for the HWS Fragments, which will be completely reworked. While finding them will not be the focus anymore, it will be much more a progression system throughout a season to gather them.

Competitive PvP on the other hand will get pushed even more in the center with more benefits and events.

Last but not least let me Teaser the beginning of something very big:

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I hope I could make you excited once again for a new season and a lot of work put into it.
HWS 12 was the most difficult season for me in the 4+ years I’m running this server.
We tried non stop to rescue what we could but in the end we are thankful for the experience, for improving Empyrion as its whole by our “tests” and that you sticked with us through this.
It means a lot for me, I appreciate your feedback and support!

Your HWS Team

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Sounds awesome.
Just a question, I know you said you won’t wipe OCD yet, but might do at some point.
Are you planning on wiping OCD contents only, or also levels? O.o

Edit:
I’d prefer HWS 13 to HWS 1.0

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Very excited, the new season sounds great! As a new player I’d be more inclined to join the 1.0 server… that’s just my 2 cents. Best of luck on the launch!

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I did not plan anything yet.
Levels will be most likely never change.
IF I change them only in combination with my old famous OCD Prestige idea… how ever it will look like :slight_smile:
So nothing to worry about for some time still.

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I bought a Package end of last. Is their a confirmation I got my package or did I have to contact you? Was a keep factory resources… great work as always… maybe >:D :wink:

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Make a ticket with details please.

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Yuck, tickets. Lol okay sir

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ooooo is that the new ECC HQ? oooooo :grin:

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I think it’s a new T.E.A.M Tower :stuck_out_tongue: Not EGS HQ.

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sounds like HQ, racom, and flying city combined. sooooo cannot wait. i think i may just sleep till the 5th :wink:

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Hey Rex,

  1. Some people gained content of their OCD illegitimately and managed to get away with it for sure, but I’d argue that this is small minority, even among ‘rich’ players because it’s simply not that hard to get rich on HWS. Majority of people gained their OCDs legitimately, some grinded like a madman, but many people just played smart and took advantage of various things HWS was offering, starting with insane event rewards, rushed changes to the game - best example being the carbon crisis and ending on imbalanced economy - people have been buying stuff from HWS/NPC traders for years before it was nerfed into space. Taking all this stuff out would not be fair, and some players would be gone for sure and this would not fix the economy - in current system total number of resources in OCD is constantly growing, so after some time you would be back with the same problem.

  2. I think this would make OCD changes easier for everyone:
    a) During wipe script should check if overlimit items can be moved to another slot before removing them
    b) New limits should be implemented before wipe so if someone takes everything out and put back into OCD he’lll be 100% sure that nothing will be lost.

  3. Carbon blocks really don’t fit epic category

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All of that sounds perfect

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Love the Ideas presented. The reduction in Systems to 20 will be cool with the knowledge of Larger Sectors within the systems. It will balance it out. I just wish there was a way to stop the gankers at warp points. Just my two cents. It ruins the PVP side if you get killed before you even have a chance to defend yourself.

HWS 1.0 is cool, or you could say HWS Beyond.

And thanks for the time you guys and the Admins have put into this game.

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eventually we will just stop counting and call it home. we now know what it possible for the expanding universe. i am looking forward to seeing how it plays out on this smaller scale. it should help refine future additions and help to increase content for us all.

camped warp in points aside, it would be nice to have shield requirement for warping removed at some point. if not, decreasing the power-on time may be an option. with the warp cool down, you cannot warp out while under fire anyway. seems awfully redundant to have more ways for things to go wrong instead of the opposite. im sure there would be more to venture out if they knew their ships wouldn’t have chunks fall off before they could see where the shots are being fired from…

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You do realize warp camping is illegal, right?

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Agree 100% with @DarthMyrten

I think the vast majority gained their resources and OCD legitimately through grind and who kept careful but meticulous eyes on the changes in the games economy (they should not be penalised for this!).

I also think the OCD new limits should be implemented before wipe so if someone takes everything out and put back into OCD they’ll be 100% sure that nothing will be lost. I have OCD 6. I have 120k raw pentax in one slot and 100k in the other. I think my new limit now is 60k per slot!? I just tried removing it from my OCD and placing it back in but it still puts it back into the 120k stacks. I would be upset if i lost a load of hard earned material during this wipe if i overlooked something or simply was away during this transition period. I don’t have many free slots in my OCD but to be safe i will convert my raw pentax into 60k stacks. In my opinion changes like this change affects mid tier players the worst in a negative way.

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I’m sure you will do this in a way that ensure that you keep us playing on the server, so all good.

However, I have a cpl of suggestions:
I do think you should reconsider the length of seasons. Eleon will probably not release as often as before, so the big changes might not come as often. From my view, as a casual player, I think you should extend the seasons to 6 months.

Although I did not have time to explore the stars in HWS12, I hope you will consider the number of starsystems to be a bit more than 20. I know this is performance issues being fixed, but theres a big gap from 1000’s to 20. :wink:

Keep up the good work, looking forward to next season!

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I vote for HWS 13. Eleon will be at 1.0 and will stay there until there is a 2.0, which may be years, so you’ll be 1.0 for about 3 months, then what? HWS is yours, and we like it that way. :slight_smile:

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So at week 7 of the season there will be only 27 stars? This is very disappointing. No exploration at all and now its going to be gankfest 13 or 1.0 or whatever trying to get needed resources.

Chaotic, it may be illegal but it happens, enough to keep some people out. Also agree with Bob, remove the damn shield limitation on warping. Why should anyone have to jump into a system, that should NOT be but is, camped and have no chance to get a fight going?

I was really hoping you would be able to bring the fields down to 100 or so where there was SOME idea of trekking out of the main system. As it stands now I guess some of us are left to figure out if this is still the server for us. I refuse to be drawn into the gankfesttoxicahole systems because there are no other choices.

Of course that being said I do appreciate the work you put into this server. It was an interesting season for sure finally hoping on board to see your creation.

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There will be 20 star Systems. There will still be more than 100 playfields, and the HWS Universe is actually fairly big, so there will be lots of exploration :wink:

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