The Hacker Project - a free online game

Hello Everyone.

I just thought i would bring a topic on the faction update about the good and bad things.

Good things:

More fighting and strategy.
The fighting and strategy has been improved a bit more as you have to choose a faction that benifits you better in what you're doing.

No Farms.
The no farms means that you have to fight and do more missions, so you don't just install virii on your own server and the AP is fitting better as you could only install 8 0.5 f.s per day.




Bad things:

No Farms.
Farms were a money making machine if you can call it that, you make millions on your farm and it helped in research.

RWT= Real world trading.
RWT could be a future problem as someone could be playing on to get HPD and then sell 40k for 1$. insted of donating to the game. this can be done by the "stealing" with your virii from another player.

More time to spend.
You have to spend a bit more time, or some have to to keep track on what's going on and what you have to do is taking more time and you lose you time for anything else.








This is just something and anyone else who has input please write it here. Everything can ofcourse be discussed.


Regards
Net

More fighting and strategy.:
people were requesting more pvp - now they have yay for the good.....

how can no farms be in both good and bad ??? its either one or the other.

Real world trading. :-
we already have that and have for ever? emi is currently selling 25,000 HPD for $1. before AFAIK HPD was never RWT'd before why should it now ?

more time to spend:-
1 week ago you could log in once a week collect the cash from your farm upgrade your server and install more virii and log out for another week.

this would put you somewhere in the top 20 power rankings. is it right that someone who logged in once a week should become top of the rankings while a player who logs in for say 4 hours a day and does 1000's of missions still be in the low 100's ???? surely we should be giving recognition to those who play more rather than those who don't ????

/wrong . If you play 4 hours, do 1000 misions, of course you'll be up there. Otherwise you should go to the mountain and live there forever, because you don't know even to read (it's pretty simple to get up there, believe me). If top 20 players just log once and collect it's because nobody plays, and it's normal to stay there. But ask to Donn, Jager, Araeus, Damascus... I'm sure they play more, or they've played more at the beggining of the round, don't you?

This update would for the start of a new round, not the end. Anyway, it will change the gameplay for sure.

Bye bye.

Sorry for my grammar.

Krieger is right - this will definitely change the gameplay. After the last server update (when servers changed ip every week) I wasn't doing much except researching and growing my farm. But before that I was very very active - 5-10h a day, searching new ips, doing high paying jobs on servers no one else were doing (and finding such jobs wasn't easy), finding new software that spawned, etc etc ...

Now with the beginning of new round I see a lot of possible action. HPD won't come easy anymore, it won't be enough to just buy a new server and start installing virii. Sure, you will be able to find secret servers and install virii, but believe me, now everybody will want piece of that (only 200 of them!!) and spyware will be working overtime! Then PvP for revenge against disinfecting and spywaring, process tracing against god mode, researching, getting new software for more faction missions and more more more...

If only we would remove the software dealer, that would really force us to play PvP :) Software will now again play important part of the game, not only for points ...

there was a rumor that the software dealer was gonna be forced to sell the lower 75% section of the software range not sure if/when he will be told that though

example
best in game is v100 software dealer can only sell v75 or less.

RWT... well when buying the HPD from the site you donate to the site... does you do that if someone does lots of missions and earn the money and then you sell for 100 hours of 10 0.2 f.s worth which is 12.000 only, but what if it's 1/4 the price?








Oh and yeah about the software dealer, it would be an good idea.:)

Net

Honestly this will just bring back things the way they were in R1 before SGP started the whole Farm trend.

That means that SGP will once again become hated by all.  So anyone who doesn't mind being hated can always PM me on the SGP forums for a chance to join SGP and get certain privs that others won't get for a while yet.

Oh and yes I will be VERY picky about who I allow into SGP.   Now if only HJ hadn't turned his back on SGP or Soviet for that matter....  Ah oh well.

i assume this is a good thing ???

that was originally the idea we had in mind - everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves during that period - the farms kinda killed it - now the farms have been killed but new features added to assist in the money making to balance it out.

I don't see why you guys talk so much about this update. It didn't change a thing.

If you got a freind you will own this game.

You guys put a spyware on each other farms and then its back to the old stuff.

lol good luck with that. you do know that if virii your friend you steal his money and he steals your so neither of you will get any more money than you started with.

jimmi i noticed your sig links to a website

i tried going there and see that Squirrels attacked it. they made it so people cant create new accounts or login :(

EDIT : sorry for way off-topic

Jimmi, you can not do that :)
You would just steal money from eachother, none becoming rich in the process - tested :) Only farms on public and secret servers are now usefull, on players not in any way.

Because it entered a new database and so all the stuff needs to be moved :P


That sounds interresting. As i understood then that only happened when you tryed to spyware your own. Good to see that Emi for the first time actualy throught something trough.

That was pretty funny  :laugh:

The fun thing was i meant it :P

Just if you are interrested then i can tell you the squirrels are still running but we have hunted them with fire so they are nearly gone ^^
which means you can create and login now :P

Belonging to a faction does raise the change of conflict with people from another faction. To some degree it raises certain aspects of the implemented strategy, as you are motivated to explore new ways to resolve such conflict. Faction members could potentially form packs in order to make their life in HP easier (provided; That the Faction Members can look past HP's FFA mentality), thus it stimulates the creation of groups (such as SGP during R1).

However, do realize that the new system does diminish other aspects of the implemented strategy. Due to the new abilities, certain software types will be favored above others (As the reward system makes them more effective). Thus HP's potential will not be used to the fullest extend.

I agree with what you say, although I do not agree with the underlying thought. I will explain below.

The removal (better yet the nullification) of player owned farms is a great loss, in that sense I understand your reasoning. But the usage of farms is more complex then you state. I will explain below.

Yes, this update "forces" people to do mission. Those who enjoy constant micromanagement wont be bothered by it, while those who dread it will be driven way.

As for the player owned farms;
Farms had a great influence on the way people played in HP, they gave the player a fixed income. Allowing them to invest their time and effort into areas they like. This fixed income gave players a sense of freedom.

Back when farms were a brand new concept you could clearly see HP splitting up  in 2 (non-existent)groups, namely; Those that knew how to build farms, but chose not to in favor of mission. These people were driven by the fear of getting caught, the (unavoidable) conflicts, the sense of danger. Challenges which also make life worth living.
The other group never hesitated to set up their own farm, becoming financially independent allowed them to pursue their own goals.
  A sort of symbiosis was in place; Mission Players, which chose mission for the thrill of it, often got targeted by Farm Players, which chose farms to free up time to track/crack/hack other players.

However, in time farms start to exponentially increase their owners income. The unequal devision of wealth "forced" every player to use farms. People tried to catch up with the top 10, inevitably this lead to a income race where every minute was spend to increase income/farms/servers and software. Leaving no time to actually enjoy the game.

So you see, farms are both good and bad. Allowing them, or in this case removing them, will not solve the problem. Better yet, it only makes the problem worse as it limits people in the choices they can make.
Choice is what gives us a sense of freedom, limiting them is the same as limiting our freedom. By giving players many choices, you are giving them  the ability to customize their gameplay to match their character (which is why the beginning of R1 is regarded as the pinnacle of HP's existence).


This update provides us with more choices in one area, while taking them away in another.
Depending on your gameplay this update can be viewed as good or bad.
IMHO This is more a trade-off then a update, I would love to have seen farms replaced by a balanced/fair fixed-income system instead of removed.

Gotta go with RaiseCain on this one. Farms should not have been exterminated entirely, just balanced. Perhaps merely by limiting their usefulness, providing diminishing returns in creating a server devoted purely to spamming or filesharing, the two acts themselves seem not so much to siphon funds from connected accounts so much as use resources to provide a(n) (illegal) service. Perhaps creating a more lucrative virus which targets cash accounts was needed more than the elimination of farms.

Sadly the instant this update went live I suggested to Titam that instead o fully removing the farms limit the number of virii that would still produce income.

Needless to say he never responded to that suggestion while he did respond to many other questions.

FINALLY someone else sees the logic (or rather dis-logic) in this, look at it like this,

Adware Spam Daemon -> Generates cash based on Spam Mail sent.
File Share Virus -> Generates cash based on users downloading/sharing files.

So where is the logic in having these virii steal from an account? Thats more like a Trojan Virus/SpyWare. So Adware Spam Daemons SHOULD actually, as titam put it 'pull cash out of thin air'. Not quite sure about the fileshares, as they would be based more on a users upload/downloads, or the BW activity on a mega-corp server etc. Thats more like it, balanced, and LOGICAL.

heres the logic :-

Adware Virus
i get sent 10,000 spam emails - the only way that spam gets money is if actually buy something from one of them or am tricked into buying something = I lose money.

Fileshare Virus
while i admit most fileshare virus's are malicious and do harm, i assume Emi is using the fileshare as a delivery of a keylogger and thus getting bank details = i lose money.

Ok mr Triadian, what's with the undermining? there is no need to pick at little details, you obviously got my point, if you didnt...too bad for you :14:

i wasnt undermining, i honestly thought it was a question which i answered. guess i didnt get the point.

Sorry, i was in a bad mood when i write that last post (and the other one), and you did have a point, but undermining was just how your post seemed to me, if it wasn't then i apologise :)

Anyway http://www.hacker-project.com/forum/index.php?topic=1535.0 is the new idea to balance out the farms debate, and i think its a superb idea. Just the right amount of power to even things out a little. :19: