Season Length

#1

After completing the survey for next season a thought had occurred to me. Do we actually know that attendance significantly drops at the three month mark, or is it simply the knowledge that the season is typically 3 months long that influences that behavior in players? Without a predictable end date will players play further into the end? It may be something to consider when deciding to shorten the season. A shorter season may end in the same result, just a month sooner.

Also, can we ditch faction standing loss for resource gathering in faction zones, or maybe there is no loss for honored status?

#2

hey and welcomes to HWS.

every seasons lasts 3 months from the last wipe date; unless Eleon bring’s out an update which has happened in this case. Alpha 10 will be dropping soon (will be on exp server on monday hopefully), and from then will be up to 3 weeks for release on HWS server.

When this occures we will wipe the server for the release so please utilise the OCD function to save your goods / resoucres, plz see Hws Connect for more info regarding wipes on what will be taken to next season.

Everything including status to factions will be wiped, think of it as a new game except for the Ocd :wink:

Thanks

1 Like
#3

Hi Gareth, I understand the current situation with Alpha 10. However, the survey hints at possibly shortening the season to two months as a permanent change. I am simply postulating that it is perhaps not the actual length of the season that determines the drop off in numbers, but rather that the anticipation of reset is the contributing factor.

#4

This may be. And i see what you mean. This is also why this question was put in the survey :wink:

#5

There are many reasons for the drop in players as the season progresses. Some are here for the first few weeks just to get a feel for the changes, others leave because their faction isn’t top dog. A lot of them run right up to the last few weeks, about this time and OCD everything and start building or modifying their CV, HV, etc. in experimental for the upcoming season with the new changes or options. Myself, I usually go right up to the end storing crap in OCD and make my changes after the update is pushed to the public servers (I don’t like uncertainty when major updates make large changes, seems those get pushed back as testing in experimental reveals more problems). So my suggestion, use the time you have left to get your OCD levels and prepare for the wipe.

My preference is still 3+ months, as not everybody has the resources in OCD to rebuild within a day after wipe. I want more PvP and I want those to have a fair chance at it. I don’t want to fight prefab SVs in my preferred PvP SV a day after the wipe. I want them to build the best they can and not be so disheartened if they lose. And if I lose to them all the better, because I know they brought their best and won.

And the more time they have the better the chances.

3 Likes
#6

That is a very interesting question I tried to explain in the Survey already:

However there is a trigger point where you either feel resignation because of the full wipe or hyped about achieving something until the very end.
The latter should be our goal!

So it’s a fact that over the last 2 years you see a big drop of players after about 60-70 days.
You can check it out a bit here yourself:
https://empyrion-servers.com/server/21190/stats/

So your claim that it isn’t the duration but the full wipe itself which causes population drop is interesting.
However, making analysis of fully season based games you see a different pattern.
Games like League of Legends, Heores of the Storm, Clash Royale, PUBG, Fortnite, Diablo 3, etc.
These games made season changes not really something to scare people off, but giving them incentives to push hard until the last second.
Because the higher your “rank” (global score) at the end is, the better your reward.

That is what I wanted to highlight in the survey. If we implement features, which rather makes you excited about a full wipe than upset, wouldn’t it be cool to make it shorter than 3 months?
I mentioned examples like a Hall of Fame for different things you could achieve and get rewarded for. Or maybe implement the factor of loyalty as well? The longer you play, the more your permanent bonus will be? For example for every day you played in the season you get +100 stack size in your OCD. You get the idea.

2 month personally would be better for me overall. Sounds paradox but I think it would burn me out less than 3 months. Because the things on my TODO for 3 months are at the end like a monster big mountain I have to climb and pressure is high to fulfill the expectations of players who get pumped for 3 months.
Especially reacting faster on Eleon patches, implementing fundamental improvements faster would overall be better.

I would like to tackle gameplay related stuff like @TacoIsland mentioned with high motivation.
I thought my Deathmatch events would reduce such “PvP obstacles” for new and old players. But they are not really accepted, even though I boosted the reward already.

I would like to implement a feature or universe set, where you can play like casual pvp games. Like Battlefield. You queue up, pew pew in that instance and call it the day.
Will think about such ways.

#7

First of all I think it’s good that you discuss it with community, this survey was very nice.

I’d make a different claim - population drop when people got bored with existing features and there aren’t any interesting new features. Wipes means simply that people have to finish their goals, pack their stuff and unpack it for next season.so I don’t think they add any value by themselves.

I think it really depends on kind of players, I haven’t played any of these games, I might be in minority here, but I’d rather see HWS go into direction of MMOs like WoW or ESO. For me wipes are necessary due to game being in Alpha as well as structure overcrowding, but besides that I see them as something inherently bad.

People might get excited about new features, but if season is so short they might skip it altogether since unpacking/packing stuff takes time.

That’s a good idea regardless of how long season lasts.

I think it’s a matter of good time planning regardless of how long season lasts, you can use project management methodics/software like Scrum/JIRA to make it more realistic.

I think problem with things like deathmatch events might be that people who like open world games also like open world pvp, not instance pvp, at least that’s the case for me. I used to play GTA Online few years ago and it had both open world pvp and instance pvp and I almost always avoided instance PVP.

As for getting new players into PVP I’d suggest this:

  1. Create some PDA missions/tutorials which would explain basics of the PVP
  2. Make contests for designing basic class 1 PVP HV/SV/CV
  3. Give these ships at the end of tutorial mission.
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#8

Thanks for your response!

:blush: I like it too… but to create it + analyse it all alone it is quite a time sink… worth it for now.

That is for sure the case for some. But a global issue, even though HWS is the only one giving you even content for so long :grimacing:

This could be improved soon.

Well, of course. But a man can only do as much as a man can do mate :slight_smile:
I’m already a one-man army I have to tell honestly.

hehe, true. More fun… until hackers spawning bombs from heaven :grimacing:
I could try to implement deathmatch events with your own ships. But still no warranty / refund then.

Awesome suggestions. For the last one see here my last note :slight_smile:

#9

Yes I absolutely understand that, but these things can help even in one-man projects. One time I used JIRA for project I was doing on my own and it actually helped me to stay motivated, furthermore it could also help you to better estimate how long things would take so you could make better plans regardless if season would last 1,2,3 or 6 months.

Most of the problems with that game are a result of a single, but huge mistake - when they were designing game networking they decided to make it P2P so game is hosted on player’s PCs not on Rockstar’s servers - this way they saved some money on infrastructure, but because of this this game is very easy to hack and fighting uphill battle against them already costed them much more than they saved even without counting huge revenue from micro transactions they lost because of this.

#10

I admit I haven’t tried any of the death matches yet, but plan on doing so after I have everything packed up in OCD while waiting for alpha 10 to drop for public. Kinda busy doing that and moving IRL, so I don’t know if my internets there will be shit. Time will tell.

#11

feel you… so happy i am done moving for the next years… have my perfect litle house by the ocean and 600/600 fiber <3 (1gig after the summer)

just… yeah… just wanted to say :stuck_out_tongue:

#12

I just want to say I hate you. 600 fiber, while I’m stuck with 1 ISP that loves $$ for anything they can call a fee and another that says DSL is enough for gaming and streaming. I call BS on both…

#13

You love me <3 common… … … a bit… … …

but feel you! Been there for many years! 12/1,5 for 5 years! So this is just a new life…