Game Development: The Danger Zone

[jorb]

It just strikes me that the faction willing to put up more effort is usually also significantly stronger, and that those two dimensions are usually very much linked. You are stronger because you are willing to invest more effort, &c. Thus the end result becomes noob stomped into ground, base salted completely, &c&c.

[Amanda44]

I think the main thing should be that numbers alone don't win the game. They should help, but not completely remove the effort required to do anything. I don't want to be destined to fail just because I don't want to play with 40 other players.

I do think this is an interesting and possibly large question in and of itself. I mean, even if you don't play in a village with 40 other players, is it not to some extent reasonable to expect players to accumulate allies (that I could call in the event on an ongoing siege or whatever), or settle in the area of a more-or-less benevolent hegemon, or the like? Aren't those the kind of social interactions that should, at least in some theory, be desirable in an MMO? Should I, as a completely isolated and lone player, be able to match up against strong factions?

No, ofc not, but there should still be steps we can take to try and prevent or lessen the in-coming raid rather than just roll over and admit defeat. Most hermits have friends and allies but some of us like to at least try to depend on our own wits to some extent, personally I'd rather call on my friends help after the attack and work hard on my defences prior.

that time I left my keys in a chest overnight with an xrd leading into my village. ( - )

Sorry about that.

It was 100% my own fault.

[strpk0]

It just strikes me that the faction willing to put up more effort is usually also significantly stronger, and that those two dimensions are usually very much linked. You are stronger because you are willing to invest more effort, &c. Thus the end result becomes noob stomped into ground, base salted completely, &c&c.

Well IMO that's sort of what you sign up for when you play a game like Haven and Hearth. It does suck that a change like this could screw over the less-hardcore players (hermits included), but to remove the permanent 24 hour safety of the brickwall/ramming system should help the game evolve into a more social and engaging experience, instead of just logging in every 24 hours to make sure you don't get raided.
I think if anything the people that are less hardcore would just end up joining stronger villages for protection, whereas the really hardcore could brave the dangers and venture out to do their own thing.
Personally, all I see coming from an update that removes the safety of brickwalls is a lot of the current players being totally screwed over, but in the future allowing the game to develop more into a social and teamwork/dedication-based experience.

[pedorlee]

that time I left my keys in a chest overnight with an xrd leading into my village. ( - )

Sorry about that.

You bitching about a pearl necklace and me trying to work on the foundational core of the game? I couldn't agree more. Nuff said indeed.

More like bitching to you about things that are actually worth putting in, the holding off on siege for that long that so many of the fighting players of the game quit because you would rather put in pointless patchs for stuff when the pvp aspect basically had died off, I know for certain that a lot of the friends i've had from previous world and even this world have quit because of that, which you should care about because that means less money for you. putting indestructible objects was a really bad thing, infact you should make Dolman tables bashable because they can be used for blocking people's gates aswell.

Come on, AINRAN quitting its a constant. They talk a lot, they kill a lot of sprucecaps then they brag about it feeling like gods of pvp at pallibashing stage then they quit because reasons.Its devs fault because reasons again. We all know this things. Who are you teaching lessons about it.


PD: Englsih keyboard again, cant use simbols properly. Damn u devs xD

[Ethan]

Personally, I would also prefer a more abstract siege system.
Something that would start off slow, and grow in intensity.

From what I have read, all of your ideas so far have centered around time windows. Certain actions must be done during certain time windows. These actions then advance or halt the siege.
I feel this is a very limited system, and hope that you can come up with something that satisfies your vision, without having these forced time windows of action.

I would like to see a siege play out over a fairly long time frame, definitely more than 24/48 hours. I would say now, that a target of a week would be OK.

I think the aggressor of the siege should need to visit the target multiple times during the siege if they are to advance the siege. These visits should, however, been more than preforming a single action within a certain time window or losing all progress. Same goes for the defender.
Both sides should be presented with actions they can preform, but these actions should not be locked into time windows.
These multiple visits will help to create more person to person interactions.

I don't think it should be a requirement for the defenders to leave their walls and engage the enemy directly. (I am not that strong on this point, could work either way)

I think there needs to be a balance that a siege can be more targeted, less damaging and have a shorter duration. Or a siege can be longer and more devastating.


Mostly, I think anymore focus on how a ram should work is wasted effort. The raiding/siege system should be looked at from a broader perspective. I would happily forgo weekly updates if it meant in a month or two there was a larger more complete set of content added. Instead of iterative band-aid fixes.

I just want to say, that the interaction with the community is very nice to see. I think any anger towards you is entirely miss directed, as you hold some of the most sensible viewpoints I have seen from developers in regards to botting, player experience, etc. I do think that there are updates (nidbanes), that make it seem like you are slightly out of touch with the atmosphere of the end game.

[rye130]

I think the main thing should be that numbers alone don't win the game. They should help, but not completely remove the effort required to do anything. I don't want to be destined to fail just because I don't want to play with 40 other players.

I do think this is an interesting and possibly large question in and of itself. I mean, even if you don't play in a village with 40 other players, is it not to some extent reasonable to expect players to accumulate allies (that I could call in the event on an ongoing siege or whatever), or settle in the area of a more-or-less benevolent hegemon, or the like? Aren't those the kind of social interactions that should, at least in some theory, be desirable in an MMO? Should I, as a completely isolated and lone player, be able to match up against strong factions?

I was more trying to make the point that the numbers alone shouldn't trivialize the effort required to raid someone. Raiding shouldn't become easy because of a huge number advantage, it should just be less dangerous.

[Ethan]

I think the main thing should be that numbers alone don't win the game. They should help, but not completely remove the effort required to do anything. I don't want to be destined to fail just because I don't want to play with 40 other players.

I do think this is an interesting and possibly large question in and of itself. I mean, even if you don't play in a village with 40 other players, is it not to some extent reasonable to expect players to accumulate allies (that I could call in the event on an ongoing siege or whatever), or settle in the area of a more-or-less benevolent hegemon, or the like? Aren't those the kind of social interactions that should, at least in some theory, be desirable in an MMO? Should I, as a completely isolated and lone player, be able to match up against strong factions?

I feel like the counter to that should be that a smaller faction is more mobile. Typically for a hermit his most valuable possession is his main character. Which in contrast to a 40 strong village, where there is a lot of overlap in the professions, which means the most valuable things are the industry, trees, cows, crops, ovens, anvils. Those things are much more difficult to move at the sign of danger.

[loftar]

From what I have read, all of your ideas so far have centered around time windows. Certain actions must be done during certain time windows. These actions then advance or halt the siege.

Just for the record, I do not think this is really the case. The battering ram may have been such a thing, but when we speak of "time-gates", we mostly mean intervals between actions rather than time windows under which any progress is allowed.

The difficult thing about time-gating is generally that objects being indestructible for a certain amount of time usually leads to weird consequences, like wanting 10 layers of brickwall, walling with houses, and whatnot.

[infectedking]

Come on, AINRAN quitting its a constant. They talk a lot, they kill a lot of sprucecaps then they brag about it feeling like gods of pvp at pallibashing stage then they quit because reasons.Its devs fault because reasons again. We all know this things. Who are you teaching lessons about it.


PD: Englsih keyboard again, cant use simbols properly. Damn u devs xD

AINRAN wasn't the only faction in the game.

[strpk0]

I would also like to ask if it's possible that the effort currently being put into "siege" could be postponed for some other time, or if there's any other reason why siege is such an important matter right now (sorry if I missed something).
I feel like as it is, people will not be willing to go from being safe to being in the frying pan (atleast not without a proper world reset).

To be honest I think a good amount of people want more content updates instead of siege and war. Yes, the current siege system allows for "farmville" to take place, and yes the PvP system is not as good as it could be. But perhaps the game could be more fun (right now) without necessarily having to add more siege and warfare into the mix.

Sorry if I sound rude or something, I just personally think discussing siege without a world reset is never going to end in any global agreement.