I’d really like to see a more realistic map with more playfields as well.
HWS is the best server out there, but not because of its game map. This is lacking in my opinion.
Perhaps the game map was set up with fairness in mind. I think this is a mistake though, because no matter how the game map is set up there will never be true fairness between the different origins. Each one has its own dynamic that plays out over the lifetime of the server version. This is not a game of Chinese Checkers!
So I would definitely like to see a more randomized system placement or one that is not symmetrical. This would be a dream come true for me given how awesome HWS is already. The distance between planets (about 22-23 AU) is perfect. I love that part. Just randomize the system placement.
What I would love to see is about 50 individual planets all with a more random assortment of minerals to create hot spots and dead zones. Give a few of the planets moons and spread them out in a mostly random arrangement. Make a few planets PVE, but keep them in the same general area. Perhaps everyone could start in this PVE area, that way the further out you get from it, the less populated the planets will be, but the further you are from the safety of PVE camping. This would create a danger level in the PVP zones that has the potential for a lot of creativity as the tension between faction proximity and the allure of PVP planets waiting to be harvested plays out.
Finally, I would highly recommend dividing the HW system and the Donator systems into separate planets. After all, the more planets you have that require you to spend Pentaxid to reach, the more PVP playfields make sense because ppl have a larger area to hide in. If possible, give us even more planets to explore. HWS has 100 players online on average. Give us more space!
This would create a more exploratory experience for me. I would feel like I was actually exploring a small section of a real Galaxy. The setup right now feels more like a different Dimension that was created by some overlord to torture its inhabitants with boring symmetry and a lack of iron everywhere!
I think every single person who came to the server for pvp would disagree with you about your points on pvp. (feel free to correct me if I am mistaken) More planets and a pve area where everyone can go will not result in more people in pvp, it will result in a massive concentration of people in one playfield (very bad for the game), and those bouncing through pvp being so spread out that non organized pvp will almost never happen without warp ambushing.
What do you mean homeworld and donator systems should be seperate? because they are already about as far apart as they could be. Unless you are suggesting adding nearly 20 more playfields, 14 of which people warping through could not get blue crystal to warp through if they pull a noob and get pent trapped.
Finally, while I am all for interesting designs, and new dynamics, a map reorganization like the kind you are talking about would be the kind of thing that pretty much only happens on major version changes.
As far as PVE is concerned, I dont want to see any more PVE worlds than we currently have. I only suggest that we put them all in the same area so that there will different degrees of PVP-ness. The further from PVE you go the more competitive the area will become.
If not very many ppl are willing to live in these far out spaces due to the lack of safety, then they wont be as dangerous. If more ppl are willing to then the danger will increase and this will inevitably put downward pressure on the population there creating a supply and demand kind of dynamic in these areas. These kinds of dynamics always give rise to interesting situation and creative approaches.
It sounds like we def disagree on the Universe being larger by giving each Donator Planet and HW planet an orbit. I do want the Universe to be larger, with more space and planets (especially PVP planets) to explore. How can you not? This won’t cause non organized PVP to go away. Maybe it will be less, but that doesnt bother me. PVP is far too chaotic atm anyway. Do you see ppl building long term bases on PVP planets? Obviously ZC has and perhaps a few other large factions, but if you are a small 2-4 man faction you dont stand a chance on a PVP world. This is lame imho and just for the record my faction is not small. Still, I recognize that by giving smaller factions a place to call home on an actual planet it will increase the richness of the server and really its going to bring more players to the game and this server.
Deep space = lame exploit with a poor game experience.
Planets = the way the game was meant to be played and far more fun and interesting than the infinite void.
The problem imo with living in PVP is that people offline-raid your bases using the cheapest and lamest tactics you can imagine (or outright exploits). As long as offline bases can not properly defend themselves I see no point to living in space. Instead you live either in deep space (still risky with bugs) or on a PVE planet/donator and then just warp to the PVP areas whenever you need.
Randomizing planets = horrible idea. I’m personally really in favor of more balance, more stability, not less. Adding dynamically unlimited generated asteroid fields or instancing stuff is okay with me but not randomizing a fixed set of planets for the rest of the patch…
Lastly adding more distance between PVE & PVP planets doesn’t change much. Sure it costs more pentaxit and generates more warp-bugs… But I will just warp 3x instead of once if I have too. No problem. Fixes nothing only creates more annoyances. We had that in 2.0 and I personally felt that it just added more pentaxit farming (which is booooring).
Sorry but basically I disagree with almost all you said.
[quote=“Pericles, post:1, topic:3584”]
. I would feel like I was actually exploring a small section of a real Galaxy
[/quote]This game is (imho) not about exploration. That would require dynamically generated playfields and roaming aliens and such. Every playfield is the same anyway regardless of how you set it up. Maybe later the devs will change this but at this point there are no real exploration options other than alien POI (which are 90% raided so finding a live one is hard). Nothing much the admins can do about this.
[quote=“Pericles, post:3, topic:3584”]
If not very many ppl are willing to live in these far out spaces due to the lack of safety, then they wont be as dangerous
[/quote]Only need 1 bad-ass faction that lives there for it to be the most dangerous playfield
Planets can actually be customized by server admins. There are a lot of really cool and interesting designs on other servers and this one right now. For example the Guardian Starter World is a snow covered world with about 75% of it being water. This is not in the original game. The snow covered world in the original game had about 5% water and all the water was located in deep pits with very steep sides.
Yes 1 faction could easily dominate one playfield or maybe even more, but if they did dominate all of the PVP playefields at the furthest reaches of PVP space it would come at a very steep cost given the amount of patrols and bases required to defend more than a 1-2 playfields in PVP space.
Are there any points that ppl like about what I said? Its easy to be a hater, but its not very constructive now is it?
Dont get me wrong, Id love to have my own system. Especially one not on the way to anywhere. Because I would be able to build whatever I want in the space around. but here is the thing, that is actualyl giving TWO playfields to donors, essentially. You double the resources on the server per donor, for areas that will seldom be used by the community. Again… I should be a bit biased in the opposite direction, particularly as I plan to have my planet a little different from most donor planets. But from an objective standpoint, a system per donor still just leads to a lot of playfields, and even more situations of noobs getting stuck. (btw one bc moon in the donare systems would fix this) Atleast daily someone comes onto global outraged that the server screwed them over by letting them warp to a system they get stuck in. Despite them being named DONARE. I mean. How much more clear can you be?
I’m against more planets, there is already lots of planets that are desolate, if they where all full then sure more planets would make sense but i think only 3 or 4 pvp planets have people living on them (excluding faction origin). I do agree on the symmetry thou, fairness is an illusion some one will always have the advantage and i’m fine with that it gives the game depth and difficulty. Tbh I really liked 2.0’s roll play it was nice, traders could have more time to grow while pirates had to tough it out and survive. Only thing i didn’t like about 2.0 was the spiral map, and what your suggesting would bring that back in away. No body likes warping more than 3 jumps at a time.
Yeah, maybe splitting the donare planets up is not the best idea. I think it could work, but it def depends on the cost per playfield that the server has.
To me, there is a lot of value in out of the way places that are rarely traveled. It improves the atmosphere a lot. If you know every nook and cranny of the game map there is never anything new. Having out of the way places that are rarely traveled gives the server not just variety, but a little bit of mystery as well. I think its the mystery of a space that keeps ppl coming back to it right? That feeling that you dont quite know everything about it yet? (At least it can in a lot of cases)
I’m against more planets, there is already lots of planets that are desolate, if they where all full then sure more planets would make sense but i think only 3 or 4 pvp planets have people living on them (excluding faction origin).
More PVP worlds and more space would increase ppl living on PVP especially if there were planets that were out of the way and not traveled by very often. Forcing ppl to spend the resource to jump long distances will increase PVP living even more.
Or they just wont jump, and will live on pve. I am not opposed to this, as it creates a market for me selling them things they are afraid to go get. But It will still be a crowd.
I do like the idea of having more out there, to enhance the experience a bit and see more while you are exploring, but I think maybe you are going in the wrong direction. Instead of more playfields, put some more stuff in the ones that exist. As is stands, most people just treat planets other than start/origin, homeworld, and lucifer/gabriel as flyover systems, places you have to warp through to get to the good stuff. Lets see some massively increased likelihoods of those AI carriers ( that I have never even gotten to see). Lets get some alien attacks like in 4! I know the admins are busy prepping for 5.1, but this is the sort of thing that makes the server more interesting and vibrant, not having more blank places to go.
I see your point, but you don’t have to add more planets for that, you would just have to string them a little with less connections so people have to take more warps to get there, but as i said that was done in 2.0 it was 12 jumps if i remember correctly and the only people living out there was SWP all the way on the end (2nd last) and maybe 1 faction 2 jumps out from that and then XTE somewhere in the middle. and then 98% of the population living in the little pve sector.
The only way for your idea of a huge universe to work, is if there was 0 Pve planets (including donator planets, but that will never happen those people already paid for pve ).
Honestly your idea would be fine Pericles and I could see it going pretty well with the more danger further out approach. The main issue for pvp and risk etc is the motivation to leave is completely missing.
As it was stated above, players if given the choice and no real benefit to leaving always choose pve planets. its safer, lest costly and if you can get everything you need than why leave? Having a motivator to get out and be in pvp zones for more than a 10 second warp is the main thing holding back our dreams of epic space battles between the origins.
If we can create motivation to leave, I think we could have alot more planets. right now the world is small for the sake of increasing the chance of running into an enemy.
[quote=“AsherGrey, post:13, topic:3584”]
Having a motivator to get out and be in pvp zones for more than a 10 second warp is the main thing holding back our dreams of epic space battles between the origins.
[/quote]For me it’s the bugs and imbalances that stop me from PVP-ing. And for PVE I’m hoping for meteorites to actually drop (sometimes 20 min for 1 meteorite but sometimes 2 hours and nothing…) and for aliens to actually be there and not be wiped out and perhaps even dynamically generated playfields or even instanced ones. But that will probably never happen
If we can create motivation to leave, I think we could have alot more planets. right now the world is small for the sake of increasing the chance of running into an enemy.
Putting all the gold resources out at the furthest reaches would help.
I’m not saying 1 gold planet that can be dominated by a single force, but several planets a little more spread out to make it harder for one Faction to have everything.
If the nearest gold world is 5 jumps away from PVE thats 250 pentaxid for a round trip. This comes out to over 100k credits using current market prices. This would motivate lots of people to live in PVP space.
ATM there is absolutely no need for gold , maybe if you could trade huge amounts of materials at a time then yes gold would be worthwhile in having. Once you get over 100 deaths you loose it way too quickly so having 0 is just less painful.
ATM there is absolutely no need for gold , maybe if you could trade huge amounts of materials at a time then yes gold would be worthwhile in having. Once you get over 100 deaths you loose it way to quickly so having 0 is just less painful.
Believe it or not lots of ppl use gold on this server. Two days ago I spent over 1,000,000 credits to buy iron hundreds of stacks of iron from a trader.