New HWS Patreon Feature | HWS Support Package Rework Feedback | OCD Refinery | Update

RexXxuS · March 31, 2019, 4:14pm

Hi HWS Community,

I got a lot of feedback from the past about my announcements and want to change the way this time a bit. I want to inform you ahead of changes I plan to do and hope to get feedback if it’s a good direction or not or suggestions in general. Especially since it’s an important thing for us.

But let’s start with a very great news

New HWS Patreon Feature | OAM Ores to OCD

We reached the outstanding $700 goal, which opened up the OAM to OCD integration.
Once activated with the command, your OAM Ores are put in your OCD if space is available. Also if your OAM is full of Ores, level 10 = 9000 for example, the overlimit Ores are put in your OCD.
We hope you like this convenience feature and thank all of our HWS Patrons so much for your support!

If you would like to use this, many more convenience features and upcoming cooler features, feel free to become a HWS Patron here:

HWS Support Package Rework Feedback

Alright, let me explain a bit more about all of this first.
As you know, HWS = W3DG (Web 3D Gaming) is the business I do for living. An absolute crazy idea, never did before or “learned” from someone else. It just “happened” and here we are.

However, the most players who dive a bit deeper than just looking at the surface recognize that what you see here on HWS is something you won’t see anywhere else. Reality. Why?
Because time is the most important, crucial and biggest factor for a human being in terms of “success”.
If a human is doing something for the most time of his life he becomes good at it. It’s a logical and natural law, which is always true. Be it soldier, mason, gamer or whatever.

The human brain is most efficient in doing tasks over and over again. The more often you do something similar, the more active and strong the synapses in your brain about that particular task become.

And guess what I’m doing over and over again. I have no real other hobby than my business and I’m just living for what I’m doing here.
Why? Because every single day is always different. Sure, sometimes bad days with some rude persons but overall I can learn every day something new or become better in what I’m doing and just having fun!

Unfortunately or not we are living in a World where time is always equal with money. If you invest so much time in something, it is of course important that you get at least some time you invested back in form of money. And to become even more succesful it’s of course logical to step over the “Break-even” line.
That opens up capabilities like better server hardware, a better webserver hardware and infrastructure, more tools that help with video creating, screen capturing, programming tools, etc. or most important: more synapses. Not your own, but others! Simply put: thinking about other humans that help me out. Because even though my brain could work even more efficient if putting it under even more pressure it is not created to do things parallel. It only works as a Waterfall model. One task after another. Only more people can change this.
Ju for example joined us to help us out, which is awesome!

Long story short: we are looking into ways which helps us to get more money for the time we invest in all of this. Calculating my time / work balance together I get for example 5€ per hour at the moment. Since I have no high life standard it’s “fine” but limit me to learn more, provide even better things to you or even expand to other games.

HWS Support Packages

My plans are as following (not final!):

Implement “EGS Stealth Level 5” package per season for 10€
Implement “Keep EGS Stealth Level” package per season for 7€
Include EGS Stealth Level 3 in the HWS Supporter (bundle) package
Implement a Stargate Package for 10€. You get 2 Stargates / Portals with a do:rp:sg command. You can place them on your Bases and after that call me to setup the connection of them.
Make “Keep Blueprint Resources after Full Wipe” package per season instead of permanent (!! read below !!)
Make “Keep Credit xx after full wipe” package per season instead of permanent (!! read below !!)
“Remove” “Keep Credit 25m + 70m” package (!! read below !!)
Implement “Keep 400m credit after full wipe” package per season for 20€

Important Note

Everyone who paid for the current permanent version of “Keep …” stuff, keeps it permanent and available! The “per season” and removal of 25m + 70m package change ONLY affects new Supporter, starting on the 7th April - 9AM.

OCD Refinery

As announced in the teaser we had a new idea to enhance the OCD. We call it “OCD Refinery”.
The OCD Refinery process your Ores in your OCD automatically into Ingots (good combination with the recent Patreon Features that Ores from the OAM goes into the OCD).
It is of course faster than your Furnace or Constructor.

You can upgrade your OCD Refinery with ingame credits + HWS RP but also with a Supporter Package. At the beginning everyone has it on level 0 = inactive.

For now we thought about 10 OCD Refinery levels, where you can buy OCD Refinery level 5 as Support Package.

We are open to refinery speed and Support Package price feedback.

@patrons If you look at the current $800 Goal, what do you think about making the OCD Refinery Level 5 included as HWS Veteran and up Patrons?

Update

Last but not least I want to give an update about the Commodity Trader and Mission Dealer.
I know I said this weekend they gonna come but with the massive Alpha 9.6 issues and some real life issues I couldn’t finish them. That means I made progress and really try to deliver them as fast as possible!
Keep an eye out on this Topic, which I’m updating along the way:

That’s it for now. We are looking forward for your feedback! Dependent on the overall resonance I’ll do more announcements like that to involve you to our plans.
Realistically as you know, we can’t make everyone happy in the first place though, so the time investment and the negativity this announcement can hold isn’t something other companies are doing in general.
But without you, all of this wouldn’t be possible, so let’s see

Your HWS Team

This topic will contain a table of contents

Fallen_Angel · March 31, 2019, 8:03pm

Otherwise cool / don’t mind / nice if you profit more / will consider Stargates for QoL upgrade.

But honestly, I don’t think the “Keep EB Level” package price should be increased any further. 15 euros is already hefty sum to pay to keep something players earned by working hard and investing their credits… Higher EB levels become profitable only because of this donation.

The Keep 400m seasonal donation makes sense with your decision on EB 10 changes. Hopefully it provides enough money to make you reconsider increasing price of already fairly expensive and very necessary, dare I say must have donation for most endgame players (Keep EB).

Edit: Also thanks for deciding to let the owners of current keep credit packages stay permanent. While this might hurt income a little, it will definitely create a positive atmosphere around this update overall. I’m sure everyone appreciates continuation & avoiding big nerfs when it comes to donations! And again, hopefully most people who strive for EB 10 decide to donate for “Keep 400m” anyways

RexXxuS · March 31, 2019, 8:48pm

Thanks for your feedback @Fallen_Angel!

Maybe I let the Keep EB Level at 15€. I should have changed the price as I boosted it to sky with the Keep 1 billion change. But I was overloaded and forgot it…

I’ll do some calculations and maybe just keep it as 15€.

Fallen_Angel · March 31, 2019, 8:59pm

Probably better idea overall to nerf the keep credit limit of EB like you did than let it stay ridiculously high & increase the price of Keep EB donation though. That was good call I think for the economy.

I think that’s best of the two worlds, there’s the mid-level, Keep EB + hold 100m for EB 9
And then there is the top level, Keep EB + hold 400m for EB 10

Gold value stays high, higher OCD levels stay relevant for storing the gold for most, but then there is also option for higher level of donation that allows the usage of EB 10 without issues

Hayawen · March 31, 2019, 9:14pm

hmm would you consider adding something along the lines of how Star Wars Online and some other games have?
a monthly fee that would unlock everything or a whole bunch of stuff? personally I would prefer paying say something like 20$/month to play on a server than having to worry about micro transactions

RexXxuS · March 31, 2019, 9:21pm

I see HWS as a free server everyone can play for free, without a pay wall.
I want to create as many options as possible and as modular as possible. Sometimes you are motivated for economy in a season, sometimes PvP for the next season.

Micro transactions, as long as they don’t count as pay 2 win are options, right. You can, but you don’t have to.
Ultimately there are HWS Ingots. Quite hard to get but for active players already a common way to pay the Supporter Packages.

But an ultimate subscription to get a big bundle for players like you sounds interesting though. Will think about it.

DarthMyrten · March 31, 2019, 11:33pm

Hey Rex,

Thank you for bringing it up for discussion, first of all I think it’s absolutely reasonable that you want to get more money for your time so the question is how to achieve it.

As for your plans:

I think it could even be 9€

I’m not sure about that, personally I didn’t like this package since lvl 3 upgrades are cheap anyway and I got more by buying lvl 5 packages, 15 € price would make this package even worse.

YES YES YES, we need more packages like this

I don’t like this change for reasons below, but it’s not a big deal.

I personally don’t like it since most likely at some point I’ll get bored with Empyrion, but will also probably return later on when new updates come etc… With this approach I’d have to pay every 3 months just to keep the stuff I got even though I wouldn’t be playing so at some point I’d probably stop altogether.

I’d go with different approach - divide packages into following categories:

Packages allowing to keep stuff (levels,credits etc…) between wipes - in two versions : cheaper one-season and more expensive permanent.

Upgrade packages - one time, I’d even consider going higher than level 5

Extra packages - one time - this should be your main source of income, but currently these packages are very weak in general (for example resource packages are a total joke). Stargate package is a great addition, but we need more, let me give you some ideas for these packages:

Increased private structure limit

Untaxed bases in ECC/CSW orbits (I guess it should be limited)

Private garage ships - someone buys a package, sends you a blueprint within garage ships limit and then that person can spawn it with command for credits.

OAM boosters - like 2x/3x/5x OAM output for duration of the season

Extra OCD space (could also have permanent more expensive variant)

Private Market/Bank/OCD zones

List could go on

evolgenesis · April 1, 2019, 12:06am

I agree with Darth since yeah perm packages are great especially since we can’t play all the time we might even take season breaks and to pay regularly to keep more is a hurdle for money. And with the extra package yes they are lackluster and the requirement of rep to use with so little return on resource packages aren’t great. With the booster, I agree with Darth input they would sell like hotcake you could make extra OCD space per season, but some balancing needs to be considered but probably need to put a reminder if they don’t have slots purchased in there to be emptied before the end of season. you could even have the extra slots be having there own limits like separate from OCD level so there limited could allow players that can’t afford to upgrade OCD for more slots a chance to bring more to the new season.

Rabid · April 1, 2019, 2:53am

Good Job, you posted upcoming planned and/or flexible changes with a period for feedback and change before announcing “we are doing X” or implementing a new thing.

Everything looks cool so far.

Maybe consider credits + RP choices for purchasing more things such as keep EB level versus just purchase (true you can get HWS ingots for credits but, anything you can upgrade with credits/RP should maybe also have a seasonal “keep” option for creds+RP)

MonsterIce · April 1, 2019, 5:33am

First of all I’m a business owner also, I understand. I want you to make money, that’s what keeps you motivated, and things improving.

An idea for people that want to take a season off or something would be to add a support package to buy back levels from previous seasons “Restore EB Level”, “Restore Recycle level” . As an example, I meant to buy, keep EB level and Recycle level last season, but forgot and didn’t do it in time. I don’t mind to pay extra to recover it later. Especially for bank level, since I already earned it once.
Also, for me personally the orbital refinery would be more of a hindrance then a help, unless you can tell it to only do gold or something. Since ores can stack more.
Support package to keep higher levels of money seem good to me. Then if not, just use your OCD for gold.
I also appreciate the free server, and the ability to support when you want to. The freedom makes me want to pay more in the end.
I agree with Darth that level 3 upgrades are les desirable. I would wrather pay more for 5+ level. But again, keep level, or “restore” level is even better. All that said maybe the best thing would be to only have level 3 available to buy, but add the restore levels packages. This means you still have to earn it, but you can support, and not have to earn it again.
Orbital autominer boost. An interesting and cool idea. But could be too OP. A variation could be, you get 5 times you can increase or for a 24-48 hours or something. That would let you body it when you need it, and can be cheaper so you want to buy it more times. Similar to BP time reduction, then can buy over again if you want.
Lastly, as for raising the cost of each thing. Sometimes you need to, but personally I would weather spend $5 on two things instead of $10 on one as an example. I think people will be happier to choose many cheap options, then a few expensive ones, on average.

Sorry this is long, but I think a very good and important topic. Thanks for hearing and caring about our opinions!

Lex · April 1, 2019, 8:07am

I Agree with the OP - instead of pissing about with micro transactions, I’d rather just pay 20 a month and get enrolled on all the things - I can then choose what I want to use when and where EU/NA. At the moment I don’t pay anything because I cba to look through all the different things and payment options. Keep it simple for people like me - one price, one payment and then I will switch on what I want when I want it.

RexXxuS · April 1, 2019, 10:33am

Thanks for your overall positive feedback and suggestions guys!

Thinking about this “ultra bundle” but still no pay wall, what do you think about the first draft for Patreon?

The incentive / discount is quite huge, so I would hope for quantity. Still have to limit the Patron Membership for that Tier like I do for the current HWS Meta Tier though.
It might also means more work to check those Supporter Playfields every Month.

While we are on QoL Packages, I know one of the highest requested ones is the one below.
But technically quite a monster. Especially because of CSW → you get a new ID every time.
Maybe @Hayawen and @DarthMyrten can help me here with Inspirations?

Yeah, probably I stick to 11€ but do include this final bundle item “for free” as incentive.
It’s always tricky to calculate if “quantity is better than quality = higher cost” or not.
The $1 Patron Tier for example was a big mistake.

Well, no matter how expensive I make permanent packages, nowadays, permanent is a very bad idea from a business stand point. Look at Adobe, Office 360, even Support Services. Doing a “subscription” mode is the way to go (unfortunately). You lose tons of money in the long run with permanent offers.

Really good ideas. Basically very easy and most of them are all playing on “HWS” ground and are really QoL stuff.
@Jascha can for sure help me here

I think @Jascha has to answer this from technical point of view. For now it cost quite a lot of manual time to crawl previous backups.

Maybe @Jascha can configure it per Ore, yes.

Hayawen · April 1, 2019, 11:22am

You keep saying paywall… no paywall from me all the same, just an extra new Tier
I was thinking more along the lines of a Tier between the 7$ and 35$ you got now… a balanced 20$ kind of thing…
The contents of the package should not contain any Boosts or such (raise EB/EGS/… level to X), those would remain as they are, you either grind them ingame or boost urself with RL money and save some ingame grinding… the only thing the package should provide in my opinion is continuity sort of thing, so, as much of the Keep packages as possible to stay within the 20$ price tag…

For the insurance part, you know i like that one so ofcourse any help i can provide please let me know, we just have to have a small discussion so i can have a bit more technical information about things though!
But to be honest, insurance only makes sense on garage ships… non garage ships are pretty easy to replace… it’s the garage ships that one cannot print himself that would benefit most from that… adding normal player ships would complicate the math for the costs and such… but limiting to garage ship would make it easy to base it on the cost of the ship…
Should be something like you pay X% and have insurance for the next Y hours (24hrs to a week dono these would have to be tested i guess), i wouldn’t add too much RP cost to this feature, also in my opinion, it is mostly (and probably only) useful for PVP… the idea was to make it less of a risk on someone who just got a new garage ship for the first time and probably spent alot of his credits on it, when they go to PvP and loose it instantly and such… with insurance, they get back the ship or maybe the price of the ship back and then they can insure again… Ofcourse this would have a timeout on getting back your ship/money so as not to be abused in PvP… and maybe you can only get back your ship in a certain area in ECC, so you dont conflict with egs:spawn and dont worry about PvP headaches from this as much…
anyway i am too focused on ECT now will give better ideas later!

Snowman · April 1, 2019, 11:38am

I think portals are a bad idea, I played on a server where they were put in and you never saw anyone in pvp anymore cos they kept moving to their base via portals. It got real boring real fast.

The keep 100mil should be permanent and the keep 200mil, 300mil and 400mil should be seasonal so if people wish to leave for a while they can come back with some money to their name. Its is also a good balance then when someone cant afford to keep their eb level as well.

The idea of the ocd is to store stuff, the idea off the oam is to slowly generate ores outside of the game. Either way you have to actively put stuff in and take it out to use it. The idea of the refinery is the beginning of automation out of the server.

It doesn’t take that long to refine an ocd slot worth of ore and place it back in your ocd and is meant to be an in game function. This idea will lead to more ideas like a ocd constructor and other such rubbish. It is in my opinion a very bad idea, not to mention the amount of requests you will get on ‘fixing ore that wasn’t meant to be refined’ coming your way to waste your time.

Hayawen · April 1, 2019, 11:43am

for the refinery, maybe make it only work for auto miner… so instead of getting ores, you can get ingots directly instead… should still be a bit interesting while mitigating snowman’s concerns…

TheState · April 1, 2019, 6:42pm

Few comments and ideas:

Price point: I like the 400m carryover price, I am not a fan of the keep EB price increase. Like others i think that detracts from the effort people are putting into getting them in the first place. Especially at the higher levels it’s practically forcing people to pay it or lose a season or 2 of progress.

Maybe rework the Pateon ultra tier description. It wasn’t exactly clear to me what was included or not included. Cool idea though.

I think the orbital refinery is a cool idea but I personally wouldn’t use it. If I have ore in my OCD it’s because it’s more compact to store it. Same with the OAM to OCD, it’s nice to have the ability to pull resources from OAM if needed rather than be playfield restricted like OCD.

Perhaps make a “package” like the HWS donator one. Every season I find myself paying for the same ones. Eb carryover. Recycle carryover. Maybe knock 20% off of those two but include something else in it that we normally wouldn’t get. Stealth maybe? Or something currently not included? So that the price goes up overall but so does the value.

I think these are good ideas. Something that is QoL and just fun. Some of my own ideas:

Maybe a donation to have a custom POI implemented on a public planet

egs:selfdestruct command: some people are very wary of their blueprints being captured. Allow this to destroy it regardless of the players in the area. Could make people salty, yes, but people would pay for that salt.

Keiffo · April 1, 2019, 8:38pm

Implement a Stargate Package for 10€. You get 2 Stargates / Portals with a do:rp:sg command. You can place them on your Bases and after that call me to setup the connection of them.

I’d buy this every season I played. QoL bonus if they could be placed in penthouse. Or a new penthouse with portal.

Although I have an idea, a new building on ECC full of portals (no destination set) and you buy a package, connecting 1 of those portals to your base. So you can go from your base to ECC , then a regular teleporter to ECC HQ building. Just have signs in the new portal building above the portals showing the name of the portal buyer for that season.

DarthMyrten · April 1, 2019, 9:40pm

Some people might buy it, I wouldn’t for a very simple reason - it doesn’t matter if there is a discount if I don’t need most of these items.

May I suggest separating uploading ships from insurance?

Uploading should be supporter package one-time action which would work like private garage ships I mentioned before and it should be simple - someone pays euros and get his ship in game once - just like from garage.

I think insurance could be in two versions - free and premium, more below

I’m ok with subscription model, but there is very big difference between let’s say Office 365 and what we got here - if I buy Office 365 subscription I pay for being able to use a tool for certain period of time, but when that period ends I don’t lose all documents, spreadsheets etc since I can backup them and restore later, here I have to pay not to lose what I already have.

I think I have an idea how to to solve this:

Features like OCD, OAM, EB, Recycle, Stealth, Insurance etc… should be available in two modes - free and premium both leveled independently.

Free levels should offer basic functionality - focus on preserving stuff rather then gaining stuff or cool stuff, they should cost credit and RP, but should never be wiped, premium levels should be per season and act as boosters - let me give you some examples/ideas I have for what should be premium and what should be free:

Free OCD levels are good as they are now, premium OCD should add features like CSW OCD transfer, OCD Refinery, OCD constructor, OCD demonstrator, OCD transfer to another player, OCD to market etc…

Free EB should focus on preserving money through wipes but provide low interest - if someone wants higher interest he should buy premium EB levels. Premium levels could also add things like EB Loans, EB payin/out everywhere, CSW EB Transfer

Recycle - I’d move ability to recycle alien core to premium, as well as give premium boost to return rate so 100% could be reached with max basic level + premium.

Stealth - Premium could increase time so full basic level + premium could allow for season-long stealth. I think this feature could even be turned into something like EGS Vessel Store&Delivery - I type command to store vessel on given slot and then later on at different location I could type command to get it back from that slot.

Insurance - free insurance should have a maintenance cost and higher claim cost while premium insurance could be maintenance free and claim costs could be lower.

This could also work nicely with patreon levels as certain patreon levels could give premium levels of these features for the month patreon package is active.

Paxxo1985 · April 1, 2019, 10:34pm

and then you will totally destroy pvp. I am doing pvp just to capture bps.

If you implement insurance, you spawn a ship and then there is no need for resources since you keep spawning them again and again.
Another pvp killer.

Just switch server to creative mode.

I honestly didnt want to say something on this topic since can be a method for Rexxxus to earn some money but thing like insurance and commands avaible to people who pay will make the server only unfair and there will be the p2w monster. Those are too much powerful stuff. I think. Every season i should buy keep eb, keep recycle, donor space and i support the server for my possibilities. But now there is keep stealth, then there will be keep insurance, then keep command etc. For a 20$ game is a quite huge cost.
There will be 5 players that can pay 210euros per season but the majority of players cannot afford to buy every keep packages. Then those 5 people will play alone. Need to think carefully on how much money people are avaible to pay to keep playing. There is a thin line between a full server and an empty server.

Erdisk · April 1, 2019, 11:22pm

Hello,
small feedback/ideas from me:

Do not be afraid doing big changes (like removal of all permanents), but minimize frequency of changes. Nothing will frustrate more, than if something that I built or invested time is going to change value too often. Think deep to details before changes and keep model for longer time.
If you find something, which people must build up over seasons and will lose completely if they give up patreon, they will be motivated to keep patreon forever, even if they do not play for one season. Let people develop patreon levels over time (Like HWS connect skill tree, which will grow over time, but only for patreons it will grow over seasons. If patreons can earn points for months subscribed and then can assign and spent them free into things they want (EB levels, EGS, OCD, AM, …) but everything is lost if they stop subscribing, you will keep me forever). Also, balance between what could be earned ingame, what could be bought adhoc and what could be earned by long patreon subscription. You should prefer long term relationship than one season purchase.
Simplify please. For casual player like me, I just do not keep up with all changes in HWS and also for Patreon. But you know better structure of players. If casuals is minority, forget about it.
Let people with time, earn ingame benefits from people with lack of time, but a lot of money. Take your share.
Never increase price only. Add value and increase price ,)