Bring Back WS Rewards

[graceful storm]

It is possible to shrink that minority even further by designing a scoring system more complex than the bar we had. But dedicated trolls that simply want to ruin the fun at their own expense is not something that can be helped. For that, other methods will have to do

[wooden olive]

It can be helped it just requires more dev interaction than we have currently. So the obvious solution is no rewards until such time that something else is done to the players actively trying to ruin the game

[graceful storm]

I suppose the actual issue is will and time

[wooden olive]

Ban all accounts linked to teams that loss farm and we can have rewards back

[potent crest]

another point I just want to bring up - theres an influx of corps that just struggle to form a ful team with fully active members. Its not just loss farmers

To sum, the point you brought up about loss farmers isnt as significant of an issue as youre saying it is.... and removing all rewards hasnt even fully solved the problem. And this problem, will forever persist unless you have absoulutely 0 rewards, 0 cosmetics, 0 motivation

[wooden olive]

I can sympathize with teams that struggle to make a full team. My team was made up of roughly a dozen smaller teams that couldn’t make a full team on their own. Swallow your pride and merge with another small team. I did it and became rank 8. It’s hard but that’s what it takes. Further more teams that are short a player or two are not the issue imo. It’s the full teams that scan and do nothing

[potent crest]

now..... you're just memeing

[wooden olive]

I’m absolutely serious

Same with bls Smurfs. Gets rid of the cheaters they have no place in this game

[potent crest]

ban all accounts? you are that insistent with this issue?

[wooden olive]

Yes of course. I lost 2+ years of time playing with my friends because loss farmers stole it from me. Ban them and put the game in a healthy place

[graceful storm]

I don't mind a WS ban on players regularly engaging in that act, provided they have ample warning

But WS itself has become somewhat stale. Fights are pretty predictable in different tiers, in different ways

There needs to be variety, randomization of certain rules or mechanics.

Cerb variety itself is an issue.

[wooden olive]

Rewards aside, yes dn killed ws. It takes zero skill now. Whoever suicides faster wins

[graceful storm]

It's given more breathing room in certain situations, not so much in others. The slowdown forces strategizing more, but it's underutilized. There needs to be an adjustment to take advantage of this situation

[wooden olive]

We need to be forced to mine in more than one sector. Bring back mining maps and actual fights

[graceful storm]

The idea is simple, to not remain on one planet unless there's too much hydrogen. But that itself should be forced off, and higher level planets should be harder to acquire, not just because of the proximity to enemy gate but also difficulty in eliminating the cerbs around and within.

[wooden olive]

Infinite barrier turtle was already an issue and then he doubled down on it to make it worse

[graceful storm]

Yeah it's possible now as well, if a full team is dedicated to it

Drones like Drone Squad should not be locked under RS12

[wooden olive]

Something needs to be unlocked up there

[graceful storm]

That something should be different enough to make the investment worth it.

Take pulse for example. We have the CR meta right now, Pulse should have been the breaker instead of another niche addition

[wooden olive]

If it’s too strong people complain high level players have too much advantage

[graceful storm]

Pulse could have had lesser damage with more radius. Balancing is difficult but it's doable

There should be more strategic variety, instead of one module trumping another

[wooden olive]

This just lends itself to furthering the suicide meta. I understand what you are getting at I just think balance is hard. Pulse has a solid place in drs and a niche but usable spot in PvP

[graceful storm]

True, one thing leads to another. And that's why most things need adjustment, the usual suspects should change, yes but what needs to be avoided is Andy's idea of cutting off meta, only to make another.

There will always be a meta, it simply needs regular adjustment to shift the balance

[potent crest]

new module every month and problem solved

[carmine cape]

Pulse and Drone squad are recent additions and have not exactly turned the meta yet

More importantly, frequent new modules doesn't mesh well with tech research taking months of investments.

[potent crest]

because its only available past rs12

Im talking more, new modules, in the mid level category

[carmine cape]

We have Rs12 players, and they do WS. The modules aren't making a splash

[potent crest]

well can or cannot modules be designed, so they do affect the meta?

[carmine cape]

Of course. So can existing ones be balanced or redesigned.
But fooding with new ones at a ridiculous rate won't help balance

[potent crest]

like what if they add alpha drone

[potent crest]

well, make me an example of a current module imbalance

I m sure as much as redesigning current modules can fix the issue, so would new modules that counter an overpowered module, and so would a new module be made to aid an existing one

[woven radish]

Maybe the current rewards are still too much and should be removed?
Maybe those of us who don't care about them can have some fun. At least if they showed up and goofed around, that would have been better than this!

[bronze bay]

They probably didn't have enough active in the first place & were hoping for an easy win. Like you get

[wooden olive]

“Didn’t have enough” then don’t scan

[woven radish]

one guy just showed up. That is it for the entire match and there are 2 days left. Nobody warped in, nobody did anything from their team.
It is possible this could have been an easy win for them. We've been on a losing streak.

[alpine temple]

They just want achievements

[wooden olive]

And I just wanna play the game

[cloud bay]

remove achievements 😂

[cloud bay]

i used to be exactly like this. spammed matches just for ws participation achievement. now i never do that because i dont want to ruin other peoples fun

[finite imp]

Bro literally went for participation trophies

[carmine cape]

And stopped after realizing the negative consequences 👍

[slender talon]

What can you see as a possible replacement source for xp for corporations? RS events?

[wooden olive]

Personally think the xp system is horrible and should be scrapped. I liked the old system based on relics. The current leaderboard is entirely made of teams that got points under the old system and the new system keeps the leaderboard locked in. If it needs replaced yes rs events isn’t a bad idea. If we wanna keep corp progress under ws I’d suggest xp gain per relic gained over some set amount, perhaps 11 relic minimum so p1 strats can’t work unless most of the team contributes. For reference my corp hasn’t ws for multiple years and still in the t100 which is appalling

Personally I would like to see no corp levels at all. I want a rolling 6 month leaderboard based entirely on relic count. So each week played counts and drops off the oldest match. Highest relic count gets the highest bonus and works down by 1-2% per placement

[woven radish]

p1 start wouldn't work if gen/enrich stopped stacking. I miss needing brain cells to plan gen/enrich.

[wooden olive]

When did you need brain cells? Do you remember when you could pick any sector and just impulse gen infinitely? We need mining maps back

[graceful storm]

The mid-levels were always full of uncertainty. You had to travel a long distance to mine, and mine as you did.

[slender talon]

Loss farms do sabotage the whole thing, yeah I fully agree. It would be easy to say zero XP for zero effort (there is a minimum participation now) but I once had a game where our team was so out-matched and dominated we didn't get any relics back and that was us trying. It was a couple of moves we failed to counter then after that we couldn't recover. The other team actually prevented us from getting any relics after it was clear they had won by a wide margin unrecoverable by us. Not very sportsman like. At least we got the baseline XP for showing up, without that we'd have gotten nothing.

[carmine cape]

I feel like denying a worthy opponent a single relic would be unsportsmanlike, if that was needed for XP (but it isn't currently).
Then maybe your opponent would have recognized that you got beat but did put the effort, and let you get one home.
Or maybe you would have played the game differently from the start, with a less greedy mining plan.

But ultimately I don't think it's an ideal solution, because it's not actually possible to prevent a team from scoring if "getting at least one" is their only priority; and it only takes ~15h with a single ts + a couple ms

[wooden olive]

That’s the participation trophy logic talking. Winning means you won, you get to be the top, you get rewards. Losers should always get nothing both in this game and life in general

Furthermore without loss farmers ruining the match making there would be more teams actually playing making it more likely to get a fair match.

[carmine cape]

Also I'm not sure if you mean my team with that "unsportsmanlike" comment.
The last time I faced SFA (I honestly don't remember if you were in the roster), you/they sent 6 bs and 2 civs. Barely made 20 moves worth all game.

So yeah even if that meant no XP we would have been very legitimate to zero there imo, sorry.

(That was the WS event before this very last one)

[slender talon]

I don't know what you mean nor do I care about what you're talking about. What part of what I described needs clarification?

[slender talon]

What does that have to do with what I described? When it's clear one side has won you feel it's appropriate that the winners put extra effort in to make sure the losing side gets no benefit from participating, at all? It's okay by you that the winning team makes sure the losing team losses completely when that's totally unnecessary? Really? I suspect I already know your answer so even my asking this question is probably unnecessary.

[carmine cape]

My main point is that I find surprising to say it was not very sportsmanlike for an opponent to prevent you from loading, when that's the point of this game mode.
Meanwhile, we seem to agree that loss farming is indeed an issue (that I would call unsportsmanlike personally), and that's something SFA does engage in (I believe that is where you run, if not indeed I am mistaken and off base); and that's frustrating to end up in a high-end match that turns out to be a waste of a week

[carmine cape]

Secondary point would be that if a team wants to secure at least one relic, there's nothing the opponent can do to prevent that. You can load & bring back a ts at the beginning of the game before any threat can reach

(besides a delta rocket but come on)

[wooden olive]

Getting nothing is what losing is. It shouldn’t matter if you lost by 1 or a thousand points you lost. Why do you think you deserve something for losing? Playing the game is itself the reward. Iv already stated I don’t think winners should get anything either. We are here to play. When I sit down with my friends to play other games I’m not doing it so I get something I’m doing it so I can have fun with them.

https://tenor.com/view/willy-wonka-angry-lose-good-day-sir-you-get-nothing-gif-4862696

[eager cliff]

there should be a reward for investing in ws

[wooden olive]

Investing what? The reward is having fun. If you people can’t see that find a game you do find fun

[eager cliff]

ws now is quite literally the least rewarded content in the game

rs has event and the daily stuff
bls has the seasonal reward and the daily stuff
but ws, ws has almost nothing to offer than bonus

[eager cliff]

investing modules, I mean they take a lot of time, like cr and relic drone

dispatch maybe

and also fs

[wooden olive]

The entire team doesn’t have to invest in every mod. Work this the team and split it up so each player only needs a few things. Most Ws mods are already being researched for other game modes. Hades star has always been about making hard decisions and which mods to prioritize is exactly that

[carmine cape]

To be fair, bonus was meant to be a big thing with corp hopping not working to just go and get it for whichever open corp has the best one on a given day.
But the community cried outrage and Andrea backtracked.
I'm not sure what the correct system is about that, but the free open corp system currently is the reason bonus is not so valuable to many

[eager cliff]

the donation is literally enough to fund a newbie to rs7

[wooden olive]

#1331950553978372147 message make corp bonus change with actual relevant leaderboards

[eager cliff]

well, kinda, what's the point in upgrading relic drone dispatch if ws isn't rewarding the investment put into those mods?

[wooden olive]

FOR FUN holy shit. That’s why people play games

[carmine cape]

Won't change the fact that "it doesn't matter if we don't run ws or suck at it, we can just hop and benefit from other corps doing better"
But I won't argue against the principle of revamping of the leaderboard & xp system

[wooden olive]

Back in my day we spent 2-3x the credit reward on mod swaps just to play and yall crying about breaking even

[carmine cape]

😘
https://tenor.com/view/sure-grandma-lets-get-you-to-bed-yes-grandma-gif-6683134261581381982

[wooden olive]

That’s fair. IMO the bonus difference is minuscule anyway hopping is mostly out of habit at this point

[carmine cape]

Yes assuming you have bonus at home in the first place. If you don't win at all, the 50% starts to matter (which is good, incentive to play ws & win).
The main issue imo is that corp hopping is basically mandatory for the queue system atm. It's the convenience of finding teammates that I am not ready to sacrifice; slightly bigger numbers? I don't care

[wooden olive]

I suppose. The fact that queues exist at all just tells me people are indeed leveling ws and bls mods even without a reward incentive. So all the crying about it isn’t actually stopping them. It’s like the bedtime story if you give a moose a muffin, people always want more even when you give them more

[eager cliff]

ws need more reward because it's:

• 5d long match
• ws specific module upgrades maybe needed
• locked bs and support

rs reward players with:

• daily reward
• module progression

bls reward players with:

• daily reward
• if u did well this season, +gems

ys reward players with:

• progression
• funds for other stars modules

ws should provide something to player's progression, even if it's just participant bonus, no functioning reward for attending to a game's activity isn't a great design already

[wooden olive]

Ws need less rewards (remove xp) because loss farmers steal the ability for others to play the game at all crashing player retention and killing the game

[eager cliff]

here's why ws can't be a "for fun" gamemode and it should not be:

• u're playing hades star and not white star

[wooden olive]

You’ll convince me to have rewards again when players are perma banned for loss farming

Why should you have control over when I can play?

[eager cliff]

then we need a fairplay team to monitor the ws that's maybe a loss farm

[wooden olive]

Absolutely but the devs won’t do anything about so no rewards is the easy solution

[eager cliff]

I believe it'll be fixed with 2025.2 update

[carmine cape]

Love the optimism, no irony 👍

[ivory topaz]

Make rewards be based on number of relics collected

If you want to be fancy, take the team's mining mods and opponents attack mods, estimate the team's score, then make rewards scale less until it reaches that score

[potent crest]

Caprican, I am on the exact same page, I play only, only for WS and I dont even think the rest of the game is worth playing.

Regardless, I dont think the dev has the opinion nor capacity to implement the changes of this suggestion

Personally, all I really ever wanted was, for more community discussion and the good old dev to at least acknowledge that WS is significant to the game and it needs an update, and attention - not even explicitly any of the recent suggestions - if ever the development of this game has the capacity, even if in reality it is never

Instead of even the least reassuring words "ok, this suggestion is good, it got a lot of upvotes, unfortunately we cannot make this happen right now in the exact way mentioned"
we got "WS players are a minority of the playerbase"

144 upvotes and not even words, costless words, 30 seconds of typing, no cost, not even future liability or promises.....

[eager cliff]

i think my sugestion of a pot reward is reasonable

it's lost somewhere in the suggestions

but the gist of it is ws now cost cred to scan

[finite imp]

Let me gamble crystals on betting who wins in a ws

Thats how we solve this

[shrewd dock]

I skiped red stars for 2 days this week, but checked my white star ever hour or so. like.... reward to would help my develop I rarely do a bls. and maybe get newer players to play so I stop matching the same teams over and over agin.

I do wonder if white star players are more likely to spend money on the game then other demos. Like whats the point of buying crystals to make rs easier? naw white star wins.

[wooden olive]

Loss farmers push more people away than no rewards does

[bronze bay]

Just add ws objectives. If you dont do them, thats on you. Like destroy x Sentinels, deposit x hydro. Don't do collective just "personal objective" at least you will get some kind of reward. Adds a social aspect too because this person needs to deposit hydro, other one needs to collect relics. Would have to communicate that

Have it on a timer rather than each ws. Like our personal objectives now. Every so many hours so then you'd have to scan a new one to complete that one.. if not currently in a match

Don't even have specific cerberus to destroy because other team might do it. Just have destroy x cerberus. Or even player ships

[shrewd dock]

alot of corp still scan a LF in the 2nd slot for the 40xp I'm not sure why you think rewards would stop this.

[shrewd dock]

doesn't help my cap increases nor does help new players off set the cost of being down two ships when they really don't have two ships to spear for a week.

[wooden olive]

So you don’t read that’s ok I’ll say it again for the 100th time in this thread, REMOVE ALL WS XP GAIN FROM WINNING AND LOSING. Remove 100% of rewards

Make we cost credits to play

[shrewd dock]

thats one way to kill a star type that a player spends a week playing.

[wooden olive]

Oh no I feel so bad for all the players who scan and then don’t play. Boo hoo.

[ivory topaz]

why would we need an entry fee once exp rewards for losing are gone?

[wooden olive]

Reparations

Just to ensure the loss farmers stay away

[ivory topaz]

loss farming wouldnt exist without loss exp

[wooden olive]

50% chance to win and get Corp bonus still. I agree, remove Corp bonuses too

[ivory topaz]

or make exp tied to relics collected so even teams that match up at a disadvantage or as underdog have a reason to play the match

[wooden olive]

So revert to the original system as Iv suggest many times?

Since the leaderboard is objectively broken anyway

[ivory topaz]

if that was your idea then yeah

but i think no rewards for winning and entry fees are a bit overboard

[wooden olive]

So is doing nothing and letting loss farmers kill the game. Maybe we’ll meet in the middle some day

I won’t apologize for actually wanting to play the game

[potent crest]

I think at least you and I can attest to white star players like us, being the majority in the construction of the modern HS community.
Players who have have built the entire community, at total we spend hours at times recruiting and attending newbies to get attached to the game and motivating our corpmates - in a way, we are equivelant of paid salesmen for the game - and we are also the most active part of the base, which has built up the majority of the community.

So.... WS needs some love, whether this suggestions or something completely else. Or am I wrong?

[potent crest]

MHGA, its okay to have a viewpoint like yours, but I want to once again that there are no examples of rewardless play in simillar game structures. Every game I played till, had loss formers as plain as day. The majority here, disagress with you. And again, I also play the game for WS and only WS and I even hate everything else.

[wooden olive]

You have never sat down and played a game with friends or family that had no rewards besides winning or losing? I bet none of the “similar game structures” are 5 days long. If ws is indeed the only mode you enjoy how would you feel if I went out of my way to rob you of being able to play for multiple years? That is my point

[potent crest]

video games, I've played are closer to hades than "a game with friends or family that had no rewards besides winning or losing"

Rob me for multiple years? Yes I would feel bad. So what if I got compensation in the form of credits? crystals? cosmetics?
you see where I'm going.... Well we've had the exact same discussion few months ago

[wooden olive]

There is nothing that can compensate me for not being able to play

[potent crest]

Now.... the primary concern is future updates and implements.
I doubted if I rallied 90% of the playerbase that this suggestion would implement, neither did I demand it nor disregard the disadvantages.... but I guess we may have a new corporation star game mode soon, who knows.....

[wooden olive]

Thankfully the only person who needs to agree with me does, the dev

[potent crest]

do you really symphatize with the latest statement? "ws players are the minority of the playerbase"

[wooden olive]

Ws players are the vast minority if we exclude loss farmers

[potent crest]

alienating, to everyone. Its not about rewards or erasing them... although my idealogical thinking would say so......
What I really ever wanted was a reassuring response, perhaps an acknowledgement of the problem whether or not the conclusion is erasing rewards or increasing them.
The thread was just a way to get to the dev..... and this was a realistic goal.
Do you really think I would have thought it viable for this suggestion the dev over and over disagreed with?..... This was a doomed thread from the start. My personal point was to observe the community consensus and dev response and results are.....

1. The community majority here agrees
2. The dev disagrees with no reassurance of other changes or anything.

do you see the fundamental issue here? its not about bringing back ws rewards, its not about

[potent crest]

all the least I wanted was an "ok guys, this got many upvotes, its a good issue but unfortunately we cannot implement this in this exact way or time"

or 'alternative solutions to the problem may be implemented instead'

but it seems like White stars and white stars players are lower on the list than even I thought

and the amount of people who want rewards, and want to walk the other way, is also even higher than I expected

[wooden olive]

All of those people also want o be able to log in, do nothing, get credits so that’s kinda a moot point. People want progression for nothing. I just wanna be able to play the damn game I enjoy

[potent crest]

how many times will I tell you... the thread is not, about ws rewards or the removal thereof......

not now at least

not to me

[pure orbit]

Yo this should be added back

@vestal wigeon this is the main suggestion

[vestal wigeon]

potato

[bronze bay]

Cannot implement

[ashen pasture]

tomato

[ashen pasture]

Why do you hate a passive ys income so much 😂

[bronze bay]

Id assume then it becomes to much like an idle game

[honest lantern]

Why have any rewards for lost games? Not like we have them now

Just have the old system, but you don't get anything if you lose. Or you get a smaller reward, but only for a certain amount of lost games in a row after a win.

Or keep the percentage system we have now, but have the white star win bonus (without the corp bonus) also apply to rich asteroid fields.