Game Development: Yesteryear's Patch

[WEREWOLF132009]

As flattered as I am by the notion I doubt I'm that impactful.

Anybody who acts like they know why player population is low beyond normal attrition should be treated like a retard who's talking out of their ass, but... I'm pretty sure realms having been absolutely fucked for several years directly affecting nearly the entire community, or oceans effectively splitting the population of lower tier players, or fast travel not being good enough to really have global community hubs has had way more of an impact. Oh, and the complete lack of PVP viable/in general good public clients lmao

there is a direct influence in this, when one player irrevocably destroys what the other player has been doing for several months, then disappointment comes and he abandons the project, replacing it with one with fewer griffers.

[Jalpha]

I have to back Snail up on this. Don't hate the player hate the game. Only don't even. There have been a plethora of modifications to core game mechanics which have only made it much less punishing than in earlier worlds.

If players would only engage with the community to seek advice on preventing, combatting and recovering from raids there are good souls scattered about willing to offer suggestions.

Raiding results in a minority of quittings I suspect, although they are the loudest of factors. After the passion of building has cooled the game becomes kind-of monotonous and engaging with the community is not very rewarding. I would consider these factors more pertinent though I acknowledge it is a fools game to understand or combat player motivations. You could write an essay on why some Rust servers die by day three and others have 100 pop after a month too. At the end of it nobody would be any wiser.

[Davor]

So what is a purpose of salt and salt basin now? If none do you have any plans for it in the future?

[Asgaroth22]

So what is a purpose of salt and salt basin now? If none do you have any plans for it in the future?

You can still eat salt to remove hunger

[Davor]

So what is a purpose of salt and salt basin now? If none do you have any plans for it in the future?

You can still eat salt to remove hunger

But tool-tip for salt crystals says "add hunger X%"! You want to tell me for all this time that I thought it adds to hunger level but in reality it reduces it.

[Vesena]

Since harvesting WWW already has a chance to give you another player's higher Q crop seeds, a simple use for Crop Circles would for them to give harvesting crops a chance to give you another player's higher Q crop seeds.

[telum12]

As flattered as I am by the notion I doubt I'm that impactful.

Anybody who acts like they know why player population is low beyond normal attrition should be treated like a retard who's talking out of their ass, but... I'm pretty sure realms having been absolutely fucked for several years directly affecting nearly the entire community, or oceans effectively splitting the population of lower tier players, or fast travel not being good enough to really have global community hubs has had way more of an impact. Oh, and the complete lack of PVP viable/in general good public clients lmao

there is a direct influence in this, when one player irrevocably destroys what the other player has been doing for several months, then disappointment comes and he abandons the project, replacing it with one with fewer griffers.

99% of the time snail et al. manage to grief somebody it’s more so the fault of the griefed. This is not real life, so the idea of inherent moral guidelines are dumb. This is a game with specific mechanics dedicated towards killing, stealing, and destroying. The idea that a person using those mechanics as intended makes them bad is stupid. This is especially true because under ideal circumstances doing those things are incredibly time consuming and difficult. Instead, people like you generally fuck up because they’re bad at the game and get rekt. Instead of improving, you whine.

[Massa]

As flattered as I am by the notion I doubt I'm that impactful.

Anybody who acts like they know why player population is low beyond normal attrition should be treated like a retard who's talking out of their ass, but... I'm pretty sure realms having been absolutely fucked for several years directly affecting nearly the entire community, or oceans effectively splitting the population of lower tier players, or fast travel not being good enough to really have global community hubs has had way more of an impact. Oh, and the complete lack of PVP viable/in general good public clients lmao

there is a direct influence in this, when one player irrevocably destroys what the other player has been doing for several months, then disappointment comes and he abandons the project, replacing it with one with fewer griffers.

99% of the time snail et al. manage to grief somebody it’s more so the fault of the griefed. This is not real life, so the idea of inherent moral guidelines are dumb. This is a game with specific mechanics dedicated towards killing, stealing, and destroying. The idea that a person using those mechanics as intended makes them bad is stupid. This is especially true because under ideal circumstances doing those things are incredibly time consuming and difficult. Instead, people like you generally fuck up because they’re bad at the game and get rekt. Instead of improving, you whine.

catapults are farming equipment idiot

[saltyidiot]

I mean, Snail did systematically take out every market last world. I used those as "global community hubs" such as they were. Also Snail was sighted in my area, everyone stopped doing their regular grinding and within 3 days several players quit. He did not siege or even threaten my village btw lol. Reputation is a helluva thing.

I blame game mechanics tho. If you ban Snail there's still many other titans out there.

[xyzzy57]

Fruit-bearing trees or bushes never replenish their fruits during winter or spring. The onset of summer replenishes all trees and bushes.

You need to let go of this for the sake of gameplay and have spring be exclusively a superficially different summer. It should be the same in every way, except maybe with the extra fruit and spring uniques. All, every single thing that happens in summer should happen in spring. Foragables, growth, etc.

I disagree. However I do agree with my perception of the undercurrent contained within your post. After the long winter there should be some bonus content for those who survived the cold.

Variety is the spice of life and so instead of an early summer (global warming jokes omitted) perhaps something more akin to our paleolithic ancestry could fill the desire. Even today spring is mostly a time for animals while plants are still recovering from the frosts.

However it has been some time since I have actually played the game, having moved on to projects of my own (and also being quite disgusted by certain notorious elements of the community) so take anything I suggest with a barrel of salt.

I'm a relative newbie, though I've had some guidance from a more experienced player, and personally, I like it that Haven has a seasonal cycle, and would be sorry to see the cycle go away. I've been told "winter is only a single RL week because newbs die," and I guess that would be true if the character were created in winter, too hungry to be healing, and the player didn't know how to catch the few edibles around. (It took me at least a week to get competent at the mechanics of catching squirrels, chickens, and rabbits, more likely longer - and I had a tutor.)

But OTOH, some things are notably easier in winter. One of those is catching small animals, as you can sprint on all terrains, including the forest terrains that spawn rabbits. And you can travel much more easily, without the bother of building yet another canoe each time you are blocked by an unfordable river. My youngest character spent a happy winter exploring, visiting I'm not sure how many Thingwalls, and eventually finding what seemed to me to be a good place to settle.

The bad part of winter, from that newb POV, is shortage of materials to make curios. But spring comes quickly, with an explosion of easily foraged curios even a newb can see.

And of course, if one knows the game, and goes into winter knowing what to expect (the recent one was my second), one can and will stockpile both curio mats and varied foodstuffs.

I don't know what it looks like to experienced players, with developed, settled characters. I suppose if one's primary focus in the game was growing and improving plants, winter would be a time with little to do. But my guess would be that except for the ultra competitive, advance at all costs types, a change of pace is more pleasant than not. And the ultra focussed people ought to appreciate having yet another game nuance to minmax )

Of course the credo quests tend to require things that can't be done in winter or spring. Perhaps that little detail could or should be adjusted. (But OTOH, maybe it's good that some quests can wind up taking a real time month - there's no sense of accomplishment if everything is easy; it's just grinding.)

Just my 2 cents worth