Ironman Mode 💪 For Solo/Harcore/Returning players POLL

[Achilles]

Hello HWS Community

It has been a while since i posted anything meaningful but now has come a time i feel there is something i would like to run by you guys and ask for your vote.

I started playing HWS back in version 2.0, a long time ago it would seem now. Things were very different back then, dare i say harder.

i come back every major update, most of the time it will be for around 1 week - 3 weeks.

The main objective i have is to offer feedback to Rex but also enjoy this game on HWS.

Over the past 4 or so updates something became very apparent to me.

As a solo player who is a veteran it can be some what boring upon returning.

The main culprits i found is the OCD and Auto miner.

I have played many hours long ago but each time i come back i still have a full OCD of goodies, i have maxed out auto miner levels, millions of gold and even things have changed ingame making getting items, resources and gold fairly easy within a short amount of time.

This is a very different experience to the one i had back when i used to play a lot.

Now naturally you could say well delete your OCD, delete your Auto miner and your bank and see how it is then. The thing is i found that even if i do this it does not take me long until i start to fill it all up again and have a hefty amount of items, resources and gold once again.

As i say back in the day things were harder…gold was VERY rare and it took me weeks and weeks to accumulate 10 million, i may even say months.

Starting new this will take me no longer than a few days if you know what your doing.

Now everyone has a different style of play when it comes to HWS, for me personally it was always about survival and risk v reward.

I feel these days i have to risk very little but the reward is very large.

So without futher words, something i have mentioned to Rex but now i would like your feedback

HWS Ironman Mode

What is it?

Ironman mode is for those of us that really love the survival and risk v reward aspect of EGS and are not afraid to lose it all. You will carry your valuables on you and in your ships and bases.

When you die with that epic weapon you can’t spawn another through OCD so you better stock up or head to the market and grab a new one. In every sense of it you are one PVP loss away from losing that expensive ship with all your loot. It is to its core about ‘survival’ and you will feel every win and loss a lot more because it becomes more meaningful.

Ironman mode brings purpose and encourages you to learn from your mistakes and to live to survive, not living for luxury.

The Details

Available to Patrons or as a donator package.

• Upon a new season you select in HWS connect if you would like to enable ‘Ironman mode’

• In Ironman mode you are unable to access your OCD and Auto miner and other luxury features, they become completely unavailable. You will also be unable to use any support packages such as blueprint spawns. This is for the Entirety of that season. Once you select ironman mode you have locked in your choice for that season you are going ‘Hardcore’

• Enabling Ironman Mode will open up some very nice benefits, as you are sacrificing a huge blanket of safety you will be rewarded for your courage.

Features

Brave = This passive trait enables a daily reputation boost just for logging in

Iroman package = No doubt you are at a big disadvantage in HWS, so when your journey begins you can summon a one time use package that will give you a nice boost of items, resources and other goodies to give you helping hand.

Ironman Skill tree = You will not only have access to the standard skill tree, you will have your own exclusive tree that will further the development of your character with boosts to your health, stamina and food.

Ironamn Discord group - want to team up with other Ironman players or just want a place to celebrate your glories and losses, you will have a discord tag and exclusive group.

*Other features to be confirmed.

Disclaimer:

Don’t worry if you have a full OCD and Auto miner and other donor packages these will still be linked to your account, so if you decide that for the next and any upcoming seasons you do not want to enable ‘ironman mode’ it will be like it was before but of course you lose all ironman privileges.

I think it is always a question of why, why should you stop using OCD? why should you stop using Auto miner and other safety features?

Until now there has been no real incentive, but let us not forget these HWS exclusive features were introduced to help the ease of loss in an alpha game and they have evolved so much so that some could say you have your hand firmly held in HWS.

this could all change, ths could open up a style of play i feel is lost but yearned for from players similar to me.

so my question to you, the HWS community

is this something that interests you!?

• Yes, I would love to see Ironman Mode
• No, i don’t like the idea of Ironman Mode

Feel free to leave comments

Thanks for stopping bye

[Dr.Dark]

I think it’s a good idea, but it sounds like a lot of work for the admins, and i don’t think it should be patrons only.

[DarthMyrten]

Lot of work for admins and number of people who would use it is tiny so I’d prefer they work on something else.

[Wiseman738]

This sounds really good Achilles, I considered something similar a while back, a sort of OCD ‘prestige’ mode where you can essentially reset your OCD/BANK and in return each new upgrade per season would make it even more powerful. But there would obviously be a massive power creep with my idea for those who continually ‘prestige’ it…but yeah this sounds like an epic idea!

+1

Best regards,
Wise.

[Fallen_Angel]

I love the idea of “Ironman” in several games I’ve played. The problem is generally caused by the community. Unless trading between regular mode players & Ironmen can be disabled, it’s very hard to make sure Ironmen are not enjoying both Ironman benefits & the regular benefits by using a friend for example.

I guess this would be do-able if it didn’t offer any major benefit, nothing worth rolling Ironman for just to gain advantage over other players.

Rewards like big RP bonus or extended skill trees are not possible unless
a) Ironmen are unable to trade with regular players (I feel like this is impossible to achieve)
b) Have separate playfields (Boring for Ironmen, not able to access regular areas)
c) Have their separate server (Not really worth it).

tl:dr Wonderful idea, hard to do (& balance) for admins.

[Achilles]

I don’t see a big issue with trading and what not with other players as this is something that can be done via the HWS market and ingame market regardless and still it’s not that convenient always having to rely on others doing the donkey work for you.

I do agree with the statement when it comes to BIG factions abusing this type of thing, however, in the argument of balance it would seem that BIG factions tend to rule the roost of more or less most things and can make the most of abusing a lot of things in HWS by having sheer numbers. I don’t think this is something that can be addressed easily as generally it is also what can push people to team up with one another not just in HWS but in almost any online game.

No matter what you offer, if you give choices that offer different pros / cons you will likely get people choosing based on how it can be best utilized within the team which is human nature. When it comes to the rewards such as RP and Skill tree this is something that only the player can have the advantage of, so no sharing with friends or another account.

i mean what would a person bring to a faction if he decides to have ironman mode enabled? besides the personal boost its not all appealing to a group, but for individuals it can offer an opportunity to have some motivation and even advantage of those who choose to associate in team play.

i believe there would be no real cause for concern with balance when it comes ot ironman mode, the implications for Rex and Jachua to implement however, yes this could take time. Time they are willing to invest will have to remain to be seen

[Israel_T-C]

If this was a test mod on a completely different HWS server i’d be open to people being able to try it out but thats not what this is. I think it favors a particular type of player and playing style instead of benefiting most of the people who actually play in HWS server.

i think this will bring further imbalance and other issues to a server that already has these issues. Having this mod running with an opposite type of mod seems counter intuitive and asking for more imbalance and issues. How i see it; its best to solve the current issues in the mod we use now then trying to start a new mod which is the opposite of the mod we are using.

One of the greatest incentives for someone playing in HWS is that what they are able to gather with their time in the game and risk in pvp, won’t be lost every season it gets wiped or updated. Once you take that out of the equation its not that attractive anymore, and it becomes basically like any other regular cheap-survival server. So in reality having a type of bank and storage which is also used in real life makes the game more realistic and far sighted and a longer term investment then killing eachother every season for something that will be wiped every season like if your time didn’t mean anything to begin with. That is a short sighted type of arcade mod.

[Achilles]

Your comment is based solely on your style of play as i am saying from someone who has hundreds of hours invested into OCD, Auto miner, the bank etc that i would prefer some kind of incentive to play differently. You may not want to yourself of course but how many games that you complete do you generally go back and play over and over.

the item pool is EGS is small, there is no overall misson so to speak and so a person who has everything jumping into each new season it is only a matter of time before a lot of people might think, why bother?

Sure start all over again but without any incentive to do so as it is not like currently there is dramatic class differences, choices that one player can make that another cannot. Ultimately restarting will be nothing more than wiping progess you will then once again get too over time. What if by starting again i can have incentive or a different play style without the imaginary RPG aspect, i mean real differences such as Ironman or many different other possible things like this.

All im after is more variation

[SkulkLife]

Good idea, but why should I pay for it? I just simply not use OCD and other features.

You can block gold income from daily vote too, when you are playing ironman mode.
Adding a planet for ironman players would be good too.
Ironman package should be a small survival package, not a large boost because it’s killing the suffer and pain.

[Chaplain_5-15]

@Achilles

As i say back in the day things were harder…gold was VERY rare and it took me weeks and weeks to accumulate 10 million, i may even say months.

I know. 6.0 HW only had gold met’s and those gave only about 800-1200 gold ore each and only about 5 on the whole planet. Problem was PVP was dead only gankers.

I did play in 4.0 and 5.0 but not on HWS. When we only had hand mining tools getting ore must have been insane hard.

The Issue I see is you want HWS to be something it isn’t. A hardcore RPG server. You don’t need a 170 person heavy modded server for that. You only need like a 8 to 15 person server since you admit its more for hardcore survival which is only a fraction of the population.

I like the fact you are suggesting it be voluntary and are up front about why you have an issue with OCD/AM/Banks. But I feel like this is more for a minor server than for the largest best server, most modded server. Also when I think of ‘Iron Man Mode’ I think you die you restart like in D&D or EU4 or Diablo 2 etc.

[Achilles]

@Chaplain_5-15

The Issue I see is you want HWS to be something it isn’t. A hardcore RPG server.

Not at all, HWS is you unique and diverse i don’t think you can categorize HWS as saying it is this or isn’t that.

It offers NPC traders, Reputation, OCD, Auto miner, Hunter boards, Bank accounts etc etc in what world is this not RPG aspect and more what is HWS to you? it is what you want it to be. Iron man mode would just be another addition, another feature for the player to use or not.

I agree that you can get some of the experience in Iron man in just a standard vanilla server, even single player…but then it’s not on HWS which means sacrificing the living populated universe, the unique and exiting missions and POI and all the other remarkable additions you can find ONLY on HWS.

Why have a server that just offers X if it can offer X, y and Z…

of which you can choose how much of each you use.

i am confused to some objections based on this not changing anything that already exists, it is offering something additional which would leave things currently unchanged in terms of what exists.

Imagine i am offering an apple pie, i say to my customers you have the choice of cream or custard and then they get to choose or hell even have both…

If i say we only offer cream then it’s offering less options for no particular reason, and i think if someone was to say it is good you only offer cream would lead me to think that person is clearly only looking at things from their preference and what appeals to them, not the big picture as it is no sacrifice to them if both are offered

[Chaplain_5-15]

@Achilles

magine i am offering an apple pie, i say to my customers you have the choice of cream or custard and then they get to choose or hell even have both…

Maybe, but I still feel like what you are suggesting needs it’s own low pop server. Even if done in the HWS universe. Then you can CSW to and from leaving the ‘perks’ you recommended behind and as others have pointed out no need for balancing.

[TacoIsland]

Could always do a true survival mode. Death = starter planet, however big RP bonuses as an offset. OCD/OAM usage could take a massive RP loss and negate the RP bonuses for a week if used. Death also removes all structures owned or spawned. No alt accounts,

How about that for an Ironman challenge?

[Dr.Dark]

@TacoIsland

Death also removes all structures owned or spawned

Either factions wouldn’t be possible, or they’d be exploited.
If you just set your base to faction, and you die. Should it be deleted then?

[TacoIsland]

Yes. Private or ones spawned in by player. Sure they could use a faction base, but maybe the Ironman challenge should be made on a faction basis?

[TwitchyJ]

I like the idea.
I’m not keen on the name though.
We have Ironman competitions in Empyrion and they are one life. You die and it’s game over.

[Achilles]

Thank you to all who participated in this poll, perhaps in the future we will get something like Ironman