Systemic Changes 6.0: Overhaul Donor Planets/The End of OCD as we Know IT

HWS General Discussion
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Achilles has launched a fantastic thread called Market Research 6.0. Please check it out and layout some ideas for 6.0. I would have included this as an idea there, but that is a no reply thread.

This thread invites reply and discussion.

Negative thoughts about the Donor planets in no particular order:

Donor Planets Kill PVP: Why go out, you brought your single player game into a multiplayer universe, period.
Donor Planets Improve a Donor Planet inhabitant’s ability to PVP: Enjoy a never ever ending supply of ships weapon and ammo while your foes, a.k.a., the rest of the galaxy, toils to play in a uniquely unbalanced universe.
Donor Planets Kill the Market: You have more ore than you can fit in a LVL 10 OCD. the objective then is to Stifle competition, lower prices, and enjoy a monopoly on supply and demand. Just like you were playing single player!
Its an auto-win scenario that stymies creativity, interaction and conflict. Pay to Win. congrats!

Positive Thoughts about the Donor planets in no particular order:
As it stands now: None.

Let’s be Clear:

While i believe that Donor planets are a scourge and a blight on the galaxy, an ill conceived carrot to con single players into a multiplayer universe, I do understand why they exist:

persistent exploits exist.
There is no Offline protection. That’s only a dream.
Nowhere to gather enough ore to compete. (please see OCD)

Ideas for changes to the Donor Planets for 6.0:

HWS keeps referring to major updates as a season. I would like to change that. I think a season should be 3 months, 1 quarter of the year. That should be the duration of the donor planet “ownership”. (please see Rexuss 5.1 announcement regarding donor planets).

It should be a lower price.
It should last for 3 months. Donor Planet Lease ownership should expire every 3 months. you shouldn’t be able to buy it again until you skip a 3 month period.

If there are to be Donor planets a.k.a God mode, a.k.a infinite riches for no effort on Multiplayer, there should be Caveats that limit this gross power, while simultaneously making it worthwhile to have one, and bring the Donor planets back into the universe, as a part of a cohesive galaxy. I don’t know the right mix of reward/drawback… but without it… we have two galaxies coexisting, overlaying on top of each other playing two separate games, one of plenty, one of stifled boring nothingness and neither truly engaged or happy.
The entire galaxy should have access to them. If you donate, you should be the only one allowed to build and park on your planet.
I should be able to come down and mine or destroy all your deposits because I’m a vindictive pirate or an ore hungry miner.
If I overstay, I should get Lucifer sized tax. Maybe double or triple that based on a new mathematical equation based on my faction rep vs donor rep.
Maybe I get taxed every hour I’m on your planet per device.
That tax money should go to you, the owner of the planets lease.

Donor planets should have no OREs. The fact they have ores that no one else can ever access is Game Breaking. You must see this.
Donor planets should not be able to place autominers, However, Donor planets get a certain amount of alien-core-admin-core indestructible cores for their planet bases. Never the CV’S

Donor planets rotate to PVP on the weekend, However----i don’t know but something fucking cool!

Donor planets can be Won—
Donor planets resources change randomly every season—
Donor planet resources change randomly during the season—

THE END OF OCD AS WE KNOW IT

Come on. okay. okay. I freaking love OCD.LuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuVIT!!

But it has to end.
IT’S overpowered.
No one plays. Its game win-ending in a game that is supposed to have no end. My OCD is full. Now what… fight? mine ore? risk losing my ship? Big deal, fighting is fun, it’s just… my OCD is full.

Setting aside for a second the fact that the warm cozy blanket of an OCD is the only reason 80% of the population of HWS even plays HWS, (that is a fake news statistic), We have to give it up. At the very least we have to bring it back inline with a game that is about constant survival and danger in a universe “frot” (look it up) with peril.

The OCD is a holdover from pre-alpha. It was necessary. It was a stopgap in the early days of multi. Now its a mere convenience/exploit tool. we all know it. no-one will admit it, because we are all addicted to it.

Hording is a holdover from pre-alpha that persist in alpha… because stuff disappears.

The OCD should not be in the BETA.(umm lets say the fullversion) You should not rely on it. It should disappear, or i fear when the excellent potential of this game is released, it will be influenced only by those addicted to the drug OCD… and there will be no survival, no excitement and no danger.

We must be weened off OCD gradually, perhaps those who have leased ocd5 or more can cash in for a season of donor planet.

philigus aka Jerry MacGuire Manifesto.

Whats the point of a donor planet you may ask…

Donor Planets are

You might say philigus, what about the OCD, doesnt that help balance the universe? That is another Post.

----- the amount of restricted donor planets on the server means that there is far too much ore in the galaxy because virtually none of it is lost in transport.
----- they produce an endless, timeless supply of ore

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There is nothing wrong with the OCD. It’s been beaten to death back in 4.0.

There is nothing wrong with donor planets - but there is something wrong with other planets. Donor planets were perfectly fine in 4.0.

You forgot that 1 donator planet pays for almost a full month of 1 server - but lets not have facts get in the way of a good rant…

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Most other servers offer just that a more vanilla playfield.

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I appreciate your thoughts…

Some things a little short sighted and as pointed out already they do help keep the server alive.

However, we have all been discussing in depth the donation system and some final changes are in development so things can be in line with as the game develops and also realistic in terms of future progression.

We have some incredibly big plans regarding OCD but it’s not about to go anywhere, it’s an exclusive HWS feature and you are right that it is a contributing factor in players staying… You forget perhaps this is an Alpha game and we are not even close to a stable and complete game yet so it is waaaay to early to change this.

Some of the negatives you point out are in fact totally justified.

As I said we are in discussions and we are gathering all information so going forward things are greater balanced and future considerations to game development.

Thanks for some points to consider but the post is very much one sided which does boarder on a rant lol

No system will be perfect and we can acknowledge some things need to be re assessed.

We will release more on this soon.

Achilles

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I like the idea that there are donor planets, it helps keep the server alive and it provides a bonus to those that support the server, the question is what is the best way to have this bonus without breaking the environment, some ideas: (maybe the donaters could choose from the list which they want)

*Defensive advantage:

*Donater planets have home-ground advantage, they become pvp but anyone entering it are limit in size of ships they bring so that it is a lot easier for the owners of the planet to defend it.

*A Safe Haven:

*Donater planets stay pve but have no resources on it, it becomes a place to safely store stuff while the donaters still have to venture out to collect their minerals.

*Rotating Paradise/hell

*A rotating pvp/pve planet that only they and people they choose can build on, stopping people from building bases near theirs during pve that await pvp rotation to decimate it.

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I Agrre with Kogami. Donator planet with a purpose. Maybe more res the more pvp the planet is. (for a rotating maybe also some poor gold).
I Think also a sort of rotation for Starters planet. Like Uranus ecc. Like Rotating Paradise Hell where only faction member can build or SPAWN stuffs, if you want to get on the planet you have to spawn it in orbit or away AND move to the planet. This will prevent also the issue of too many cores on starters without a weekly wipe and newbs getting out from the starters can settle there for a while. Maybe week forbidden then week end open to enemyes.

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I love that all of this “feedback” on how donator planets SHOULD be run, is being given by people who did not support the server enough to own a donator planet. Just saying.

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It’s just idea’s not asking or demanding, and to be honest I’d be much more tempted to donate to a pvp planet with some advantages than a pve one that would make things too boring.

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You can do that. And btw, if your planet is boring it is because you didnt choose wisely. Mine was purchased to provide a weekly pvp battleground for the server. Also to give me night terrors of spiders. Thus far only the second one is working. We are trying to get things to settle down a bit in 5 before we open back up the Auctoria even, and to make sure enough people are interested to justify it. But if you want your donor planet to be pvp, it will be pvp.

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I don’t disagree with him in that donator planets are a huge advantage in 5.0. I posted about that over a month ago now I think…

In 4.0 they were not an advantage but merely convenience. I think the new rep gains fix pretty much all the issues with people being able to get access to permanent PvE worlds.

The funniest thing about the suggestions isn’t that it’s just a ‘nerf’ to the donator planets, like “fewer deposits” - it’s NO deposits!

It’s not just “PvP rotatation” it’s “PvP and we can WIN your planet!”

Also remember how I said that donator planets should have no ore? Yeah they should have no ore and the resources should change randomly! They can go from no ore to no ore or maybe even no ore!

Really I suspect that the vast majority of planet owners own planets as nothing more than an autominer farm. We visited our base ship there so rarely that it got wiped.

I get why the PvE playfields are gated behind rep. Remember in the end of 3, the US server rarely saw more than 30 people online. Then 4.0 came and we had 90 on and now in 5.0 we regularly hit 130. So the 4.0 universe or 3.0 with permanent pve playfields accessible by all just would not work - it’d be spammed to death with autominers and garbage bases in no time.

Really reality is that the bigger the server gets the harder it is to have a permanent public pve playfield.

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Agreed. In fact many times we would get the question of “why would anyone ever do that” when they find out about planets. Now, with the exact same planet rules and concept, it is Blamed for every imbalance in the universe. There is no doubt that it makes a huge difference being able to have access to deposits that dont get mined to a nub by people that dont understand auto miners. But that Is not the same as having godlike powers or cheating amounts of resources. The reason they are able to be used is simply because the only people allowed on the planet are those that know not to physically mine. If you made on single planet out there that could not be mined physically, like at all (like say gabriel) but autominers could be placed, Surprise! everyone gets donor planet level of resources. Or on the next wipe of your origin planet, have the major factions in your origin agree to defend the deposits so all can use them!
Point is, Autominers are not out of reach for anyone, its just easier to maintain them when the server boots people off the planet before they can mess with them.

That being said, if they were all to go to no resources, or even meteorites only, I wouldnt be too heartbroken. Sure it would be a major change, and one that would affect us majorly. But It would be in the direction of keeping things balanced. Although I dont believe that donor planets should ever be opened up to everyone against the owner’s will. The donor significantly supported the server, that is why they exist. To have someone come in and mess with that playfield afterwards because they think they should be able to is not at all helpful to future donations.

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Thus the ever waging battle on balance. it’s an ever-unsatisfied quota and the most thankless part of making a game.

RE Donor planets - I think its a thing that should provide some advantage – After all, the donor owners are funding the game time we all put in here… But to maintain balance, it will be tricky. Very interested to see how 6.0 comes along. i DO love the idea of you being able to LOSE Your planet – but this would need to be a grueling task and hard and long - even giving your faction time to bring in reinforcements, as it would decentivize players from spending 100Euro + when it can be simply be taken by a few well-trained pirate bullies in a few minutes (no offence pirates!) I’d love to explore this one more.

  • Hops
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Which planet is yours? Just curious.

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The first one that ReX lets me buy - ask him, i’m incessant about it – and i’ll say the same thing then too. This is why im saying, i love the idea of being able to lose it, but not that its an easy thing like losing your 150k block CV.

Edit: Imagine, for example, a donor planet is rumored to comtain massive riches, and blah blah, you pirates find out about the booty and start planning a seige. It takes planning, cooperation, maybe even a couple factions working together… The owner could have a FLEET down there. It should be a long, hard fight and the reward is a whole damn planet. Maybe even a declaration and requirement to park in orbit for 24 hours allowing time to prepare defenses - if you can do a proper seige, reinforcements would be decimated on the way in, but you’d be fighting for that still. Someone paid 120-340 REAL dollars for that… It cant be an easy take… If it were youd lose ALL your planet donors. But at the same time, you should be prepared to protect your investment… As i said - it would be tricky and require lots of planning, but i DO like the idea of an Epic battle with some risk/reward.

No hypocrisy here, just opinion.

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The shift in power of donor planets occurred due to the addition of autominers in game by Eleon. Up until that point they were a fun place for you to do whatever you want in relative safety and not much more.

On the surface it would seem that putting autominers down on rep locked planets would be the solution. You pay the money for the donator planet or you unlock the rep for the rep planets. Seems pretty balanced.

The problem you run into, however, is massive autominer spam that clusters up the environment.

So the question becomes this. Would it be possible to use ingame autominers to purchase out of game autominers or would this be too difficult to implement (and/or is just a bad idea). Perhaps have the ability to purchase an autominer that is rep locked to the resources of planets you can access?

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Yup. Autominers were a half assed implementation that works OK in SP but is a disaster in MP.

I’ve previously suggested that they be turned into base devices and get call “Core Drills” or something so they dig out random ore from the planet core and can be placed anywhere. That’d remove all dependence on deposits or require massive base spam.

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If you want that, go fight for homeworld planets. Dont put my actual money up for your little battle idea.

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Go to Darkworld or Iceworld and live your dream.

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Why not? If he wants to have a capturable planet - he can do exactly that! Shorty after that ZC will have 2 donator planets.

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Ya. Exactly. Except that he isnt suggesting that just his be capturable. He is saying that all of them should be. So you want to combat the benefit of having a donor planet by allowing one uber faction to field 20+ players and take ALL of the donor planets! Oh ya. That’ll keep the donations rolling in. You know that thing that you paid real money for? Well you got offline raided by a massive group of people, and now its not yours anymore. Tough luck.

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