after 2 weeks we would like to ask you about a feedback about the universe and features. What we can improve, what we can fix and so on.
Please try to focus on the universe / features and not about the game bugs.
So as far as I can see:
sadly the universe is too big. Even for the 230 dollar machine on EU we had 30 open playfields at the same time what causes 99% CPU. The next universe will be reduced a bit that only 20 playfields are really intersting / worth to stay and 7 playfields as a puffer.
The fight about gold and other resources are very interesting and keep dynamic?! Some say generally too few some say too much resources?! Especially Gold?
Sorry, the Elemental Tradingstation is still missing. Really want to place it after the new NA server is up. Other than that some people canāt find the Elemental Bank in the center? Why?
OCD is used very likely and often. We already have improvements / balancing coming. Anything else?
Auto Miner will be balanced one last time soon.
6.1: Only on faction planets the withdraw is for free. Lawless and everywhere else for the other factions you have to pay Credits to get your Ores.
6.2: Upgrade up to level 20 coming with more advanced stuff
Other than that we think the output and prizes are good for now?
Rule 6 will be clarified a lot and fixed as soon as the devs fixing the device count bug. So the whole PvE park / build questions will be reduced then. Other than that a good relation between PvP / PvE? Elemental Toll systems are quite good?!
What about turned off Offline Protection? What are your thoughts about it?
###And a little anouncement about donations:
Since we added more feautres and you get the OCD to level 5 instant with an donation and coming Auto Miner features and generally more donation features coming we increased the minimum value of āactivationā by 5. So you have all donator benefits if donating 10 dollar / euro or more now. Everyone who donated till now 5-9 euro/dollar we automatically set him/her to 10 as a thank you.
But again: HWS is against pay to win and the playtime will still be the crucial part of the system. But since we have to pay ~450 Dollar per month for two power servers now we want to add a bit more of variations in supporting us:
We will announce it more in detail (prices) / redesign the whole Donation website but for now we have something like that in mind:
permanent Discord Channels for donators. Everyone else get temporary channels IF an admin is around.
keep more credits after a wipe rather than 250k
increase your bank interest rather than have 3% per day like now
keep your blueprint factory resources after a full wipe
add YOUR planet, with YOUR resources, with YOUR look and feel on it (trees, sky color, monsters, pois, gravity)
Of course you can also let us know what you think of that or you have another good suggestion how you can support us without typical āpay2winā perks?
HWS cool server. All good, but some moments need to be planned. I try to count that:
tons of useless systems.
not-functional limits (230 of 200 cores on Destiny - LOL)
LOR didnāt works, as it might be
No sense in game
For that purpose, I see only rework of hole HWS-World. We need 2 Sides with some neutral systems for trading. As I see that: we had 4 start systems/conditions (2 for each side): easy conditions and hard conditions. Both sides had starter-wiped systems, and both had 2-3 PvE not-wiped systems. All other Systems are PvP-zones, which must be conquered by some Event.
Simple Example: both sides, placed their Bases in space of such PvP-system, and fight (TD, PM, DB or other mode) - who wins - get day to farm this system. Ofc such systems and battles got some limits for CV/SV count (and block count ofc), but we get the REASON, and some target to play/farm/fightā¦
That all, I see, how we could make game interesting in this conditions, without making epic moves (which couldnt be realized without devs).
Other way, its boring: start - farm - warp to PK4 (PK1-3 useless), Build BA, modern CV or build new CV and again: farm. Ofc some may go PvP, but game Core and players imagine didnāt support such dreams: CUBE with 5-6 armor layers and 100500 weapons - which gonna ruin my farm until he get bored or I leaveā¦ That not for me.
Definitely too big. I pretty stay in the vicinity of GF. No need to go anywhere else tbh as the game is broken. I get more than enough of the ārareā ores as a trader for my building needs and I have enough money to buy what I want. Right now youād get more action if you put Iron only on the far PvP planets as its the most used and hardest to get in bulk.
Resources need way more balance. PvE should have minimal resources - even none imho. Give people a reason to leave safe space and lose some stuff. Conversely, being a baddy needs more penalty than it has. Mining gold is pretty much the only way to get a lot of money right now. Trading/Marketplace is hard to use from a UX perspective and you can do a lot of stuff without leaving safe space.
If people want to carebear then IRON/COPPER/COBALT/SILICON usage needs to rise a LOT such that carebears can supply the market to those of us willing to risk going out into space to make money. We also need other avenues to make that money than mining gold, otherwise the game will get really boring just camping gold meteorites all day.
Never use em - meh
Again - havent tried but might do.
Love it, want more functions and better interface (gonna do a separate post on that - could be tied to donations/micro transactions)
Go for it, however i can see this replacing any need to leave your base unless there are restrictions imposed. At some point these things plateau and therefore remove some element of the game. Will level 20 in AM mean all i have to get is Pent? If so, youāve removed the mining mechanic from the game for me, I don;t have to do it, ergo I donāt have to leave PvE, ergo no targets in PvP.
Lots of discussion on this already.
I am liking this overall but the game itself isnāt balanced which makes your life hard keeping people happy. There is a lot to improve here but you guys are making a fantastic experience from an Alpha state game. Keep up the good work!
New player here so my opinion is purely based on what little I have seen so far. I do however have thousands of hours exp. in similar games like Eve,Rust,Dayz,LiF etc. (Sandbox games as well as theme park.)
I havenāt had a ton of time to browse the forums in search of information but as a noob to the game and the server there is very little info that explains how things work, maybe I am blind but the Forum FaQ was empty and I didnāt see anything right up front. Mainly stuff like the auto miner. What is it, who can get it and how? The space map doesnāt follow the main games map so what are the planets or at least what do the stars mean. The PVE planets are labeled green stars but so are the PVP planets in the solar system. So does a green star denote within a solar system or pve etc.
When first joining the game we start working on building our base not capitals etc. Maybe make it a point to have a loop in chat or a pre-join text so people know you spawn on earth your mission is to get a capital up and gtfo etc.
Maybe designate one planet for real noobs. Nothing more annoying then trying to figure out the game building a ship from the starter list get mining and have a 20x20 cube role up with a bajillion guns and flatten you literally 13 times in a row while you are trying to get back to your backpack for the crap you have been saving for 13 hours.
So you killed a guy with absolutely no bullets because Earth outpost has no magnesium and I ran out of bullets farming water jugs and such. Then proceed to kill my T1 starter ship, then a short while later blow into our base and steal everything blow up walls and the coreā¦ My partners defend themselves and kill you off and keep you from dumping all our gear on the ground and you call everyone in chat to come blow us up. This is not how a server gets more players. Acts like these are what kill hardcore games of every genre. JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DOESN:T MEAN YOU SHOULD. Hence why you should make a nooby planet off limits to veterens with flying bricks loaded with more guns and resources then any 5 noobs could hope to beat. Allow noobs a teeny bit o time to learn wtf is going on before quitting and leaving.
Maybe just a chat loop that directs new players to the server to a forum post that has a brief explanation of what your goals should be the first day and what the map is as far as planet types. A cautionary warning that starter ships will never stand against anything made by someone who has played before lol. And any other pertinent info you folks think noobs need.
As far as moving resources to force people deeper into space this is a very old school of thought that has proven time and again to not work. Small games and servers such as this will wither and die if you donāt allow the PVE element to flourish there is no argument just google any hardcore sandbox game aside from Eve (Because half to 3/4 Eve is now carebear) and take a peek at their server pops that is right there really isnāt any population. Prime example: Legion Amra 3 server. Players ask admins to take away some of the less risky features and take away this and that and force people into a very small amount of places for good weapons. (Mind you theres one safe zone and has only noob gear all black markets x3 were full pvp) The admin calmly replied go on A3 launcher and type in such and such there about 50 to 75 servers with exactly what you want and their all emptyā¦
What you need to to encourage voluntary PVP not ganking of defensless or unskilled players. Limit hard points on ships and maybe even layering so you canāt fly a 50 cube thick brick and take on 100 other players. The downside is that those wanting to fly replicas get hurt by the limits.
The biggest issues hurting this game right now are well beyond rexx and the other server admins ability to fix. PVP is unbalanced at best, especially with flying bricks five layers thick. I wish the game offered the server admins the ability to limit specific device slots such as the number of guns one may have (21 rockets are just too many), or block count for specific vehicles like limiting SVās. I am starting my suggestions with this paragraph, specifically to state to anyone unfamiliar with the gameās problems, and to inform such persons that the server admin can do little to stop the exploitation of these game mechanics.
As for Rexxās points.
I feel that the universe is too big for the player base who is unable to afford the warp fuel to go from their PVE safe spots to the PVP play fields for mining, but if not for the exploits such that one may find any playerās space base at 70km away, the number of planets and their set up are great. I specifically like how some planets are rich in one resource, and how this forces players seeking those resources to go there. It serves to provide a battle ground for PVP. I say this as a member of a trade and not a pvp faction.
I havenāt had much of an opportunity to explore this aspect of the game this time aroundā¦ Been busy tending to griefers killing my guys when I am on and have had too few chances to play.
As I said with point 3, players who are coming to this server with the sole intent of griefing players nearly 24/7, have kept me too busy repairing ships or preparing for the next offense to remove them from precluding our game play (having to do the alliances job for them) has left me with little time to hit up these cool features.
I love the OCD, and it works for the trader very well, especially given the broken PVP element which precludes our use of space as it would be used in realityā¦ A cold and empty place, where the chances of finding someone in deep space with their engines off, are reduced to nearly zero.
I need to get more auto mining fuel, otherwise I have no issues with how it works currently and wouldnāt change a thing.
Until the exploit which is allowing players to find other players and their ships parked 70km or greater away from the mapās center is fixed, my only suggestion is to allow players to base out of the PVE systems with their CVās. If there is a need for limitations, my suggestion is that you take the number of players in any given faction, and multiply that by 2, granting each faction 2 CVās or 1 CV and 1 BA (base) per player per PVE zone. If further limitations are needed, perhaps factions are granted PVE zones to base out of. I suggest that the mega faction (Trade, Alliance, ect) home system be set to PVE, as to reduce faction clutter in other PVE systems. For example, Jupiter seems to be the trade factionās home world. The solar system in which Jupiter exist, should be set to PVE. The same would hold true for each of the serves factions, leaving lawless to the PVP systems, and always forced to move around, as lawless people must in reality (society doesnāt like lawless individuals).
Thanks to you and all others for the feedback. Glad to see opinions coming up and help improving HWS.
About the beginner focus @Kegstand you are right, we can even more provide information to them even though a lot of your request should be done by the game itself. And well Eleon trying his best with the PDA. You used it (F1)?
What you see here: Frequently Asked Questions about HWS is of course focused on HWS / - features.
Anyways a new universe for HWS 4.0 is rising in my head once again
spread resources out, gold meteorites just on āgold fedā why travel anywhere else? Erst, neo and zac are ment to be rare. They are worth less than iron because so common and rarely needed more than a handful of ingots to craft Sv etc.
Planets donāt have baby names āgold fedā āzas fedāā¦could you sign post me a little more where to find those resources lol. Be original, Zenthiaā¦Alcatrazā¦Delvionā¦they are probably bad examples but you get it ;).
faction specific planets. Only traders can build on x planet and pirates on this x planet etc. Make it pve for sake of pvp issues it will keep factions together to keep role play high and allowing a community to gather. If in any faction T,A,H,P you cannot build on ANY other pve planet, those other planets are for noobs/lawless/they donāt care about factions. Letās say a bunch of traders are sick of being smashed by lawless/pirate faction on x planet that is pretty high in gold They can launch an attack from their own planet together on x planet, yes we cant attack thier planet direct cos no one would build on it if you could. Traders killing traders etc doesnt work. This i think would be amazing, which leads on to my next point.
5.faction chat, not mic just Text. Fed up of spamming the server but I donāt want to chat to every 16 year old or 40 year old on there. Will get rid of alot of server spam. When I say faction I mean. A,T,P etc.
HWS campaign is an awesome concept. How about implementing that on a few planets, they get wiped daily but are all about NPC. make it hard and full of bases. PvP is so bad letās make pve more exiting. Atm only the buggy space gets wiped on hws campaign not the planet. I wiped out every base on alien laboratory 3 days after new sever releaseā¦so no reason for anyone to ever go there. See where Iām going with this :).
7.Offline protection. I was definitely more with the off with its head but tbh now no one builds at all but in space. Those that do build on planets that arenāt pve get smashed so easily when your not online by pesky diggers. Letās be honest itās not pvp if the other person is offline and you smash their BA/CV thatās called PVnothing.
A rework of the core factions that exist. I will draw up a diagram of what I mean and post but it will lead to how the new universe will be, a greater player experience and a clear understanding for new players. Iāll post later today and all will make sense.
This universe is good Rex, great fights for ressources, ETN/ETS are always a good idea, you can keep all the nice features you made
For the next universe, may be more balance the faction as right now, i see that Traders are probably the best faction, they can attack everything except Traders, zero OCD cooldown on pvp, good weekly supply.
I mean in most of games Traders are not supposed to raid or volontary attack, only defend themselves and do business with their customers. Right now most traders donāt sell anything on market, raid ppl (who can eventually be their own customers) like pirates or lawless with all the advantagesā¦even the protection of alliance.
May be your old idea of separate PVE and PVP with a wormhole for fight time to time was a good idea.
I want to go full pvp or toll planet only, but how can we fight back when ppl got their main base in pve except pirates.
Right now weāre using too a peackeeper for back up because most factions can, so for this to work the rule must be applied to all or nobody.
For the OP, personally i donāt think itās working as faction planets are empty, nobody want to be raided when sleeping without at least try to fight back in any games (Thran donāt take that for you only buddy, you know i like your tunnels :D). Thatās why you already have a pve planet at max limit.
In the next universe i think you should keep all the good features ppl like with a smaller universe if needed by the server capacity, and focus more on events.
Keep the good work Rex and iām sure the next universe will be the best of all and may be will last longer with everyone happy (let me dream a bit on that idea :p)
Ill try to write more later but Rexx you are in one big trouble. No matter what you think out you are still more than terribly limited by game itself on all sides. I so much love what are you trying to achive but your hands are tied by lack of diplomacy in many areas and unbalanced and not working pvp part of game.
Anyway whats good in this Universe:
Elemental Tolls - Very good idea probably the best in this universe. Sadly ppl are crowded on Destiny and they are not using these planets. Solution is to make lessons of reading for ppl.
HWS Campaign - This is nice idea of sector for more PvE like experience, not sure if this is good to be as starting planet, ppl go there as they want chalange and cb:reset later. For experienced players who jump there its too easy. So use this idea to make sector which is wiped every day as place to farm epic and some loot and have some PvE shooting. But all the POIs are made to be placed into ground so they are defensles from sides and bottom, also POIs are obsolete in steel. Everything must be in combat steel. You dont need to be afraid about epics, they shouldnt be rare as they are useles, POIs are gone quickly in rest of universe, usually by one faction and no more epics left for new players.
Elemental market Outpost - I love this safehouse, going there to withdraw from OCD and farm meat. Not sure maybe it can be abused as GF is near and so far only 3 or 5 factions have base there. Again do some lessons about reading for ppl
Gold Federation - Only true PvP area in game, lovely planet. Sadly it makes gold to easy to get, last time i got more than 500k gold there without any pew pew Not sure how good is idea to wipe this planet so gold is hard to mine only in form of natural deposit, no meteorites. It wont allow ppl to build bases thats not good, but maybe way is to do it like with Hoard, refresh terrain and restrict underground so surface bases will be avivable. Gold is super easy to get now.
Elemental Blackmarket is good idea but a bit killed by lagging pvp and nearly no reward. One gold meteorite will spare ppl all the BM trouble. Of course who wants fun can try. We still didnt have time to try that.
Military Base - For god sake dont wipe server before we try Love the idea. No time to try. Also dont have enough info about it. I need lessons in reading probably.
Black Hole - Mined all i was able to mine. Improve this more. Let it happend offten, make Blackhole more unstable. Changes can be only with restart i know, maybe it can work randomly. This could be interesting. Bad thing is that fialkovzky made it away before BH ate him
Bad things:
Universe is too large - for server and for carebears. Good idea wasted because crowd is crowded on Destiny generaly, it reminds me of fishermans bucket of worms.
PvE - Its obvious that PvE wins becouse of Eleon hard work on unbalancing everything they can. Every peacekeeper needs planet i think. Also i see that carebears tends to settle on Akua type planets to do carebearing there. So probably Akua type planets on Peacekeeper orbits.
HitānāPvE run - still here represented mostly by )!( from my sigh of view. I would like to see something like you kill in PvP you live in PvP. Chickens should choose if they are carebears or killers. Example is Galaxy9 - If you want to PvP nothing for you in PvE. And of course ther eis probably no way how to limit this in game like flaging yourself for PvP. Simply if you have SV in PvP its fair to kill SVs in PvP as you can loose the same, same for CVs. If you dont have base in PvP planet its a lot lame to kill bases in PvP as you cannot loose the same.
Maybe something like this: If attacking BA in combat log check faction structures for BA in PvP, if no BA then jail. Of course BA on planet counts only not 11 blocks BA 200km away and so onā¦just idea. This is one of biggest problems, no way how to take revenge.
edit the more im thinking about this the more i like it. You cannot raid in PvP at least BA unless you have some BA at least 2k blocks on PVP planet. We think all the time how to force ppl to go to PvP and build there. Well a bit problem will be 2k of concrete blocks and empty base.
Story factions - I like commands. I like different rewards. There it ends. Alliance is dead. Traders are abused. Bountyhunters cant collect bounties. Pirates gets too much but at least they cannot be in PvE, and Lawless are as always best faction free to do what they can while chickening on PvE. This is brutaly limited by lack of ingame tools for diplomacy, by current blind updates, by no frindly-foe visibility and so on. Maybe its time to remake it to good guys vs bad guys. I know its hard to do something with this but something has to be done.
Jail - Why the hell is still noone in jail
OCD - This is supposed to save resources from wipe and to have stuff to start over when destroyed in PvP. I dont think this is supposed to be undropable backpack for saving everything valuable whenever you want.
OP well what can i say here. With all the underground turrets on attacker and defenders sideā¦with all the unbalance, with turrets stops shoting while they have ammo, with crazy lag bases do. And with no bases nearly in PvP. With no messages when your base is under attack. I dont know. Its not fair ppl can be ofline raided with no chance to defend base which needs to be babysit all time. I saw nice bases, we build nice bases. If owner is sleeping i can anihilate all of these bases in 8 hours without any problems.
Anyway for me this whole Universe is even better than old one. Factions are better. Everything is better and im better too. Thanks for your time and work!
Just if those damn devs would listen as everyone says and do that few changes like artilery range changeā¦
Dont rush, dont overwork yourself guys, just kill some playfields which are not in use.
Not going to make a big post as most people have said the main issues, but have an Idea which might be good for PVP and Server load
GF is my favorite planet by far and its not just because of the Gold it because it where PVP seems to be focused, it like High risk for high rewards and it seems to work (and its fun!), so why not make either a single planet or 2 in the same solar system with all the resources that matter are placed here which means everyone even the care bears will be forced to go to for getting resources before going back into hiding. You probably have to make it so no one can build on thereās planet so they cant be dominated or controlled by anyone faction.
This should help limit open playing fields, increase trade because people who really donāt want to go get the resources will be forced to buy increasing demand.
Some quick feedback. I apologize in advance if someone has already posted these ideas. I didnāt have time to read through all the comments yet.
Agreed. Besides being a CPU hog, players are spread too thin now. I can visit a half dozen PvP fields and not see anyone else. I would recommend no more than 20-30 playfields.
Iāve noticed a real shortage of iron. I scoured a mess of planets last night and turned up nothing.
Can the trade, bank, etc functions be combined into a single playfield?
I have to admit to not being familiar. Statler seems to already be helping with promoting events though. An advocate is probably what was needed.
Iāve noticed OCD being used as a PvP exploit. I thought it was nice to have during the 2.0 to 3.0 transition (though I lost most of my content). Otherwise, I donāt see enough of a justification and donāt use it.
I still donāt use AM. Iād be more inclined to use it if it were restricted to specific locations, not just have different withdrawal costs. Traders need more to do, e.g., moving cargo. This and the Marketplace I currently see as the biggest detriments to a thriving trader community. Would it be possible to forego Eleonās Marketplace for an HWS specific?
Yeah! Mu suggested limits: SV 100 devices, 500 blocks. CV: 400 devices, 4000 blocks. SV and CV limits are universal. 2 CVs, 1 BA per faction across all PvE fields.
Since it never worked for me, I havenāt missed it. Until addressed by Eleon, I agree with leaving it off.
Other thoughts:
A. I really like the idea of at least 1 PvP space field (with ~ 2 PvP planets) that are refreshed daily. Some custom POIs would make it even better. Donāt overdo the epic weapons.
B. Reduce the number of planets per system to no more than 2 or 3. Navigation is a pain in Empyrion.
C. Change PvE planets from fuel heavy to base resource heavy (i.e., iron, silicon and perhaps copper/cobalt).
D. Add āgas giants,ā i.e., fuel heavy planets (but not much else) with 1 or 2 moons with limited other resources. Do not allow construction on gas giants themselves.
E. Restrict Zasc and Eres to nor more than 2 or 3, PvP fields.
Good point, though I suspect the issue is oxygen atmosphere. Other biomes would probably work as long as the players donāt have to wear helmets all the time.
I still havenāt found a link to download the custom PDA but I have found a bunch of the information you folks were talking about. So have to apologize that you folks have the info posted it was just a bit confusing.
Not sure how good is idea to wipe this planet so gold is hard to mine only in form of natural deposit, no meteorites. It wont allow ppl to build bases thats not good, but maybe way is to do it like with Hoard, refresh terrain and restrict underground so surface bases will be avivable. Gold is super easy to get now.