Archiplex wrote:I don't know what you know about running servers,
Doing it professionally for 20 years now.
and while I can't speak for the specific netcode of htis game, it isn't something that would take about 15 minutes. Now, I doubt it'll be as long and complicated to figure out (and more just to actually spend time to develop), but there are a LOT of decisions to be made about private server hosting. The first decision would come into *how* someone would structure a 'private server' based system- and yes, there's more than one.
The scenario I had in mind was automating spinning up another (physical or virtual) machine, deploy the server codebase, either run worldgen or load an existing map, add it to the account of the owner (so he can modify the access control list), put it online. And to tear down the machine in case monthly payment ceases.
So it would be selling managed private servers that give (apart from the decision on which accounts are eligble to login) no further access to the users than the current server, no filesystem access, handing out or even open-sourcing the code. The upside for the owner would be 'this is my world so I can decide who is allowed to be in it', but everything else behaving identical to the current server.
I picked mussh as an example that multiple servers wouldn't create relevant additional support overhead as it could parralize the update cycle (I suspect to currently happen: shell into the server, shutdown game server, make backup, pull new server code from git, run update script (if needed), start server, logout, enjoy cold beverage) across an arbitrary amount of machines without increassing the workload of the one doing it (loftar). Plenty of other approaches available too, but it was my pick as he seems to like a home-brewn approach to things (else he would use a 3rd party game engine - see https://godotengine.org/ in case you need an excellent one - as base for the client, to not having to deal with many/most of the generic technical problems of creating a game client, especially ones like efficient rendering on the current versions of GPUs or deploying on multiple current platforms, which have already been solved by other people and are available under MIT license).
This to the technical side of things.
While you have a point with limited polishing and the existance of bad mechanics... these are general problems of the game that have no correlation with how many servers it's deployed on.One, your playerbase has split. There are people, right now, who play and while they dislike pvp, are willing to bare it. I imagine these people would also quickly swap over to a private server without pvp- and you'd also have the issue of people who just leave to play with their friends. The fact that you can play on non-pvp servers does not suddenly mean you will tap into this incredible market of farmville players because this game is NOT designed for that sort of gameplay loop- in fact this game BARELY has a gameplay loop as is, other than watching the same number rise higher and higher- and it completely lacks the charm, well-polished nature and progression system that those other 'casual gamers' adore for the titles you've named.
The second glaring issues is that now you have TWO (or more!) seperate communities that each desire different things and wish to see the game develop in different directions
We also already have these multiple communities.
They just have to run around on the same server, which adds the additional problem that the PvP ones rage-quit a portion of the non-PvP ones.
that are each impacted by the various 'rules' their servers utilize- a non-pvp version of hafen, quite simply, cannot be developed in the same way a pvp version can be.
Again:
Idea with private servers is that they all run the same rules but differ in the users. Which could well be enough for many to reevaluate the (currently lacking) attractiveness of the game.
I can follow your argument about your fears regarding splitting the user base (in the scenario of this not attracting additional users), but your arguments on the technical side IMHO lack substance and from this result in unfounded conclusions.Private servers are the worst fucking way this game could develop for a myriad of reasons- splitting dev focus, burdening devs with even more system restructuring, and given how it's taken them over a month just to get the beginnings of a new combat system out, it would take them far, far longer just to build up the framework for a private server system.
Developer performance I see as a function of lacking revenue as jorb stated not that long ago that he's working on another thing in parallel now, the possible reasons for him to do that are basically either lack of funds or being bored with haven - my money is on the former and from this I try to come up with suggestions that could resolve that problem. So while you argue that private servers would slow them down further... you might be completely wrong as these could allow them to spend more time on development instead of having to work otherwise to pay the bills.
Learn from the mistakes of other similar games that have gone down this road and failed. Private servers are not a solution to any problem and are the pipe dream of people who hate other players in this game.
When viewing Haven from a business standpoint it's completely irrelevant if I hate the other players in this game or not, looking at the MAU this game entertains basically every MBA would decide that it has already reached the end of the road quite a while ago.
But you have a point about the other players in this game, my educated guess (from reading the full forum for some years and thus having consumed basically every rage quit post since Hafen release) is that there are plenty that learned to hate other players that much (from the actions they have been submitted to) that they refuse to further interact with them - and lacking the ability to enjoy the game without these (as there are no private servers where this could be the case) they only have the option to quit. How that's good for the financial health of the game is beyond me.
