Prelude: Happy New World!

[joojoo1975]

• Cumulative bonuses from Subscriptions and Verified accounts

have no problem with the Convenience bonus, but I do have a problem with the Character Development rate. in all honesty, the convenience bonuses should be highly padded while at the same time the character development should not be enhanced all that much, some, sure, but not that much. you don't want to be labeled as pay2win, so stick to convenience as well as cosmetic.

but it has also been the case, over the course of this past year, that the game's income has not, by a significant margin, been sufficient to sustain our present development efforts.

if you think by starting a new world and not have a way to at least combat the botting, you will just be spinning your wheels. the game is flawed in the fact of rampant botting and not to mention with the current game designs you are able to have throw away fighters. until you go back to your roots with this game, you will accomplish nothing.

Stat Caps & Tri-Quality

Stat Caps, would work but at a reasonable amount, really like that you took the concept to cap combat attributes.

as for the Tri-Quality, get rid of it, serves no purpose until you A. have recipes and items that can be affected by each quality and B. have ways where we can influence said increase or decrease of said quality.

The new world -- World 10 -- will launch on Saturday 7th of January, 2017.

unfortunately unless you can introduce some major changes into the core concept of the game, it will be like all the past worlds. super heavy numbers at the beginning and maybe 1/10th of that population for the rest of the time.

[Granger]

• Cumulative bonuses from Subscriptions and Verified accounts

have no problem with the Convenience bonus, but I do have a problem with the Character Development rate. in all honesty, the convenience bonuses should be highly padded while at the same time the character development should not be enhanced all that much, some, sure, but not that much. you don't want to be labeled as pay2win, so stick to convenience as well as cosmetic.

Limit the convenience and character development bonus to one character per account.

[ven]

This is all very underwhelming. It seems w10 will be just the same thing. It feels like a breakup letter too. I do understand the development and financial reasons though. Like many others, it's really appreciated that you're still working on this game.

I think a sure way to make haven more interesting and profitable is to give people the option to make things more unique. You should sell vanity items at the Shop, from body tattoos to different shield and weapon recipes. Kingdoms should be different from one another through specific policies. And villages should at least look different from one another. There should be incentives to people who play regularly, like infinite skills for further challenge and specialization, and the special actions/effects they give should only available while you're above a certain amount of XP, thus encouraging active playtime and exploration. There should be actions only possible when you have 2, 3, 4 people working together to encourage interaction. We should be able to name things, from knarrs to swords. All these ideas were mentioned in C&I at some point this year.

In short, in my opinion the one point that's important is: how can the game be made renewable and replayable? Because if we can't create things that are minimally different from other things, the game becomes a chore of numbers and repetitive tasks that serve to no other purpose than pure grind, with no prospect of change after a bit of gameplay.

This lack of progression milestones after you reach certain point of the game is a major factor of player dropout, I think. Humans hardly ever reach the point where they're satisfied, they're always fighting decrepitude and greed. In haven, it is easy "not to have anything else to look forward to" because you've simply done and learned it all.

So I agree with what has been said about slower progression. The best part of the world is the beginning, maybe because progress is still evident, so overall character progress should be slowed somehow. If not, maybe some recycling through old age and disease could work too.

[Amanda44]

^^ I agree with both you guys (above joojoo who has posted whilst I'm thinking ...and actually with some of what joojoo is saying too) ... Haven is in a really good place right now and really should now be focusing on balancing and fleshing out some of the new mechanics like the realms and siege introductions, but, if the devs can't draw a liveable income from it then ofc they need to diversify ... however the timing is all wrong and Juukin is right, if you leave it again now it is akin to throwing in the towel and it is going to be that much harder to pick it up again and make it a success financially.

Personally I disagree with both of the payment models we have had since the new version launched, I don't think either worked in persuading players to sub every month when the majority don't feel the need to.
I would make it sub to play, if the monthly price was lowered to like $5, this being with no free play and with more focus on store bought decorative items, skins for clothing, more customisation and some of the perks like bigger inventories and faster menial tasks as we have now ... this is by far the more lucrative approach and the game is easily worth $5 a month ... I know there was a massive outcry when devs tried to introduce a mix of free play and subbing at the start of the new version but I think a lot of that was brought about by the way they mishandled legacy in cutting everyone off without any warning and the confusion over the mixing of two payment models.
We all buy and sub games elsewhere, we cry here because we have been spoilt for too long in having haven free-to-play, if we want haven to continue and the devs to be able to focus on it as a primary factor then we have to pay for it, it's that simple ... or we can continue to have it for free understanding that the devs meanwhile need to work on having an income elsewhere.

As I said earlier in this thread my worry is that the devs have lost both heart and faith, the last few months they have just given us a lot of what we have been asking for without fleshing out or working on mechanics that need more attention, the updates have been fun and we have some really cool things we have been asking for for ages but it feels like the devs have given up to me and have just thrown a lot of stuff in to keep us happy and quiet for awhile whilst they are off again working on something else.

[Myrgard]

unfortunately unless you can introduce some major changes into the core concept of the game, it will be like all the past worlds. super heavy numbers at the beginning and maybe 1/10th of that population for the rest of the time.

After thinking about it, this is most likely the only reason for the world reset.

Jorb and Loftar are low on cash so they're going to change the subscription mechanics slightly to make a bigger incentive for people to pay (inventory) and get a large one time money boost from all the carebears who will come back to the world for the first month and buy a monthly subscriprion as well as from the mass verification of accounts from people who never did that and were just paying subscription instead.

Personally I disagree with both of the payment models we have had since the new version launched, I don't think either worked in persuading players to sub every month when the majority don't feel the need to.
I would make it sub to play, if the monthly price was lowered to like $5, this being with no free play and with more focus on store bought decorative items, skins for clothing, more customisation and some of the perks like bigger inventories and faster menial tasks as we have now ... this is by far the more lucrative approach and the game is easily worth $5 a month ... I know there was a massive outcry when devs tried to introduce a mix of free play and subbing at the start of the new version but I think a lot of that was brought about by the way they mishandled legacy in cutting everyone off without any warning and the confusion over the mixing of two payment models.

The problem is Ammanda that there simply aren't enough players for this game to be financially successful for even two people. The pay to play model that we had at the very start would have been the best for a game this size (but as you've said the outcry was something to behold). Just like WOW large scale a fixed income each moth. Now we basically have (and will have) a pay to win game with all the bad carma that comest with it.

Cosmetics/ eye candy/ convenience only works with a large player base. Every game out there (even super big ones like lol) with that payment model have 90%+ players who don't pay a single penny. Those games live thanks to the so called "whales" who dump tons of money into the game, they make up less then 1% of the population and over 90% of the income. A free to play model will leave some 10 players (with this population) buying the fancy hats and golden subscriptions and j&l will shut the servers down before spring from poverty.

[borka]

getting rid of tri qual ... you guys know to tease me ...

Selling Legacy on Steam = easiest way to earn a bad reputation there ...

[joojoo1975]

also please kill the plague that is the. . . RNG

please kill it, kill it with Fire

[DaniAngione]

I know there was a massive outcry when devs tried to introduce a mix of free play and subbing at the start of the new version but I think a lot of that was brought about by the way they mishandled legacy in cutting everyone off without any warning and the confusion over the mixing of two payment models.
We all buy and sub games elsewhere, we cry here because we have been spoilt for too long in having haven free-to-play, if we want haven to continue and the devs to be able to focus on it as a primary factor then we have to pay for it, it's that simple ... or we can continue to have it for free understanding that the devs meanwhile need to work on having an income elsewhere.

Yes, the time most people spend in Haven is certainly worth $5/mo

And the store not selling more cosmetic stuff is really a missed ball. There could be a lot of income from there. Sketches should become store-only again, for example. Everyone loves making shields, capes, banners and paintings... and that would be a good help for them. Not to mention all the other ideas for skins, clothing, fountains or whatever.

It's perfectly understandable that Haven needs more income, of course, but I suspect these things should be more transparent and brought forth before desperate measures are required. As a community, we should all figure out what to do to help
Waiting for the breaking point and one day coming with news of another game or something like that will be terrible for everyone that have now high hopes for Haven since Hafen started to have such frequent updates, etc...
It's understandable, but could be avoided with a bit more of transparency.

Maybe we're just expecting the worse, and the upcoming news (if any) won't be so bad. But as others said, if Haven is put in the fridge *again*, not sure if it can get out this time.

Edit:

also please kill the plague that is the. . . RNG

please kill it, kill it with Fire

Yes. And I'll add:
#NoMoreTreeStunting2K17

[Myrgard]

The best they could do right now is to kill the verification, kill the hats, kill the convenience bonus, the development bonus... make a simple pay to play subscription 5 to 10 $ a month which would leave a steady income and just continue development.

They stopped for instance making special hats for each update because it took them too much time to make them and next to no one bought it like I said in the previous post only about 1% of people will spent money on a game if they aren't forced to do it.

[romovs]

From what I gather from the OP new world will bring the long overdue singular quality and one less inventory row...
I get the business reasoning for the world reset due to payment model changes. Buttt... is that it? Is there gonna be anything else new?