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

The philosophy of avoiding “pay to play” is a good idea in my opinion. Why? Because you want a constant influx of new players to grow the player base and, in this case, also help you pay the bills (which I sympathize with). What keeps new players from sticking around, besides “this just isn’t for me”? I would say frustration with a perceived learning curve is part of it, but mostly the perception that the elite players are just so far ahead of them they will never be able to catch up. This means never really getting to play with new garage ships, see the more interesting areas of the universe, or really being able to progress your avatar. You see that in the general chat at times, I know from experience (this is only my second season…yes, I am a noob, but perhaps that gives me some insight). Given all that, I look at your proposed plans with an eye towards limiting major frustration for the new players, moving dedicated new players towards experienced player status quicker (once they are experienced, I contend they are hooked), while alleviating some tedium for the experienced ones. Things I would suggest:

Forcing people to go to ECC and get out and about I think is important. Therefore, too much automation in OAM and OCD drives that down. I am not so hot on the refinery idea.

Along the same lines, while I very much would like personally to have portals, I think it would be a real bad idea. Large factions would just set them up and portal around (sounds like a song title) with little space traffic which gives the impression of an active universe. See Snowman’s post which I agree with. Don’t make life too cushy for the elite, it widens the gap between them and new users too much. If you really want portals I agree with Keiffo on just having them go to ECC…to work all that non-automated ore! Different approach: set up portals to be leased (RL money) monthly. That adds a twist people could play with, when to rent portals and to where, and gets you subscription income. Factions would use them one way, early players a different way. I would add that the portal should be limited to the lessee’s use only. You would have to establish no build zones around the portals and other considerations if you really think this through on how people would use them.

I do not like the refinery idea for the same basic reasons: too much automation. Yes, you must shuttle around some, but I think that is part of the gaming experience. Next thing you know they will automate the fighting and people will just sit back and watch the game. :wink:

I somewhat agree with DarthMyrten: your income stream should be partly one off’s, but I would argue mostly geared towards getting noobs into the mid-part of the game. The packages are OK where they are IMHO, I used them last season to jumpstart a bit, but perhaps adding just one or two higher level packages for early-to-mid game would help. The elite will not use them anyhow, so you have the right target audience. New experienced players then would consider subscription packages which is what you want.

You already keep persistent data on players to track permanent packages, so extending that model will be easy. How about allowing for a one-time career purchase (RL money) of one special resource package, perhaps including an NPC core and a fair amount of rare materials. Again, targeting getting noobs up the ladder quicker. Sure, some people might game this one with alt accounts and such, so make it available when they reach level 25. The elites (which you want everyone to become) will not bother leveling alts up. This flies in the face of the Ultra Patron Tier idea which I know you like because of the subscription model (perhaps they are compatible, different target audiences?). The cost/benefit analysis between a few elite subscriptions and more general purchases could be made on historical data you have.

There are a lot of good ideas in this thread, made by people who have lots of experience. My general theme is to craft things to move noobs to experienced where they will buy subscriptions, but don’t make life too cushy after that.

2 cents.

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Some really great points here. Touching on what others have said.

Personally for me i always like the KISS approach, (keep it simple, stupid)

For new players individual packages are great as they will need time to discover what it is they want/need and what perhaps they don’t so these should always be an option.

I think everything should be season or monthly long, no confusion but a big HOWEVER is that at the initial start of of a season the packages will be popular but after even 1 month the people say ‘Ill wait for next season’ this is because you have less time (value over time if per season). I for one would want to get the most of it and would not do it for 1 month left of the season.

i am a big advocate for the monthly ‘Donation Subscription’ but $70 is a lot of money and a lot of the rewards are redundant/duplication for long term end game players.

Much like patreon but through HWS you could have subscription much like Origin.

you have lets say (illustration purpose)

Standard - Free
Deluxe - €5.99 per month
Premium - €10.99 per month
Legendary - €15.99 per month
Ultimate - €20.99

the rewards for each tier would need to be established but really the key is ‘desirability’ and ‘necessity’

the issue is see with the system is with the game also itself, that later tiers need to offer something that is unique and worth it.

think of fortnite skins, they don’t do much but its about status and uniqueness . Humans love these.

It baffles me why Eleon don’t add 50+ template items that are not in the game. These are items server owners can customize through the config. As you have done with the commodity trader for example but to really offer something ‘Unique’ and ‘exclusive’ this is not pay to win, especially in a game like this due to the reality that what is to win in this game? everybody has a different idea of what winning means there is no actual end state.

think of when a game is set to release they often have pre order deals where you get exclusive stuff that is not readily available to others. This should be the thinking when it comes to the tiers, have the carrot dangled.

people will moan that everyone should be able to get everything for free through time invested not just money, but this is not the world we live in.

If i say to you for example

Free - Epic Heavy Armor (just through playing you can obtain, it may take time)
Ultimate subscription - Super Epic Heavy Armor (Not obtainable through time/ingame)

naturally one will be like WTF thats not fair, pay to win!!!

but have i showed you the stats? there is minor difference where it matters for challenge, but the super epic armour has RED lights…not BLUE like the standard version.

so some people will be like oh, not worth it but others want to have that status or unique feeling ingame and be drawn to getting the package along side the other goodies on offer.

perhaps people will not like what i say but business is business.

some loyal/long term or new players may not have the money to afford perhaps or out of principle NEVER buy packages as i am sure some players never / very rarely donate unless essential.

with respect, those people don’t keep the server running each month.

you basically need to put reasonable pressure on the players to want to subscribe but THEY DO NOT NEED to as they can play for FREE regardless

FIFA 19 ultimate team, big reputation for pay to win. although reality is that is is not, they give the player the tools that you can obtain in-game but without the grind, you also get bonus packs etc that others don’t and never get the access to unless through greater subscription.

FIFA 19 made of 9 million in 14 minutes in January when they offered exclusive packs that could be purchased in the store for a short time. these packs were limited in numbers and were designed to last upto 3 hours, they sold in 14 mins across Xbox and PS4.

The thing is a guy who spent over $10,000 posted a video about the game being BS because he got beat by a guy who spent nothing and had an average team…

should he be winning? hell no. He has the tools available to him to give him perhaps a greater chance but fundamentally you have to have skill/patience and understanding to best put those tools to good effect.

so never is this pay to win. same goes here i believe.

the reason subscription based plans work so well is because

  1. Cost is spread
  2. Transparent (whilst subscription is active at X level i get X each season/month until i cancel)
  3. More efficient (not having to buy lots of separate micro transactions)
  4. Flexible (cancel and re-activate any time)

from a business point of view it allows greater forecast of income, much like patreon.

if it was me, id be done with patreon and set up a membership/ subscription direct though HWS. I cut the fee to patreon and i have greater control.

just my 10 pence anyway.

peace out

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Thank you so much everyone for your feedback and concerns!

It makes us really happy to see you appreciate this topic and give input! :slight_smile:

While we consider the Refinery and Stargate package, we made progress with the other 2 packages, which should be overall not harmful.

EGS Stealth Support Packages

It is quite the same mechanism of the EGS Recycle package.


Next on the list and save to implement should be the Keep 400m package and the change on 7th April.

Everything else got so much feedback, we have to think about that first :slight_smile:
I think we can go insane creative here to make it fair, fun, excited, helpful and lucrative for everyone!
Sure we couldn’t care less and just pop up tickets from pay2win to “shut up and take my money”, but we don’t. We care about your input a lot!
Thanks again!!

It took me a while to read this, but much longer than it took to write, I’m sure, so that’s fine. :slight_smile:

Stargates: YES. PvE to PvE only! Make it an option to have a portal between EGS HQ and wherever and a lot of folks would likely grab that up quickly (assuming you can link steam IDs to portal access). NOT in PvP, though, it’d be cool but at that point it’s not QoL it’s paying to get to PvP faster, which is too big of an advantage.

I honestly didn’t know keep BP resources was even permanent, but thanks!

I agree with Snowman on the keep 100mil being permanent with the higher ones being seasonal.

Yeah, the ship insurance would be an awesome addition, would mostly apply to garage ships, sounds like a pain to implement/maintain (checking to make sure the BPs are legal, for one thing.), but a good benefit nonetheless. I’d suggest the temp spawn zone NOT work in PvP, of course.

OCD refinery seems cool - you’d need to be able to click and refine and not just refine all or auto-refine… many prefer to have the ores for some things and some bit of ingots on hand as well. Something like that really needs to be instant… when I want Ingots outta ores I just point a bunch of furnaces at the same box and it’s pretty quick!

Keep EB price increase might be a bit much… I don’t plan on (at least right now) going past EB7 or 8, and over time paying for the keep EB level will have diminishing returns on my $$$ investment.

Ultra Patreon tier seems pretty cool, many of your players who consider getting this will be current supporters, so you may need to think about how it is offset if they already have a lot of those packages, or not, just pointing that out.

The OAM booster idea from @DarthMyrten is a really good one, combine that with the Patreon OAM to OCD and that’s quite a benefit.

I do worry about more manual processes for administration! I’m seeing that NPC traders have become manual, major events become somehow manual (tickets like crazy after events), setup of supergates, etc, etc, etc. Time-consuming manual stuff.

Anyway thanks for the heads up and allowing for feedback prior to implementation, and keep up the awesome work.

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What if you had to travel to a given location to spawn your insured ship?

Location or not is a big advantage spawning ships without consuming resources. I can keep spawning ships and throwing at bases and keep respwning them endlessy. Then imagine if i spawn a class 7 50000 blocks cv. I insure it and them with an alt account or another player i organize to lose it in pvp. I reclaim insurance and i duped resources

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it would be more of a location + time limit that could increase with each claim you make, should help with such issues as using the same vessel to hammer a base constantly…

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That’s why there needs to be cost for claiming insurance which shouldn’t be lower then value of resources.

then you can lust as well just keep the bp :wink:

Can we have an eta on commodity trading? There is not much to do when there is no pvp

Trust me, there is nothing worse for me than not being able to implement what I “promised”.

A lot is going on behind the scene at the moment, a lot of that is helping me however insane to make missions etc. faster. I just have to really concentrate focus on it now.

The Commodity Trader the previous seasons were quite fast and rough implemented, hence imbalanced.
I try to create a way deeper and better overall integration.

Once I announce the update, make sure to visit ALL Racom stations again.
Only then you realize why I picked that station and rebuild it for about 1 week.

ETA… within the next 5-6 days!

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