Game Development: World 14

[vatas]

EVE Online: creates a new tutorial in 2010 or so where you are railroaded into losing a ship, to showcase that it is normal part of the gameplay loop to lose a ship.

Haven and Hearth: is a hardcore pvp game. Instead of being upfront about it (and explaining peaceful play-style is possible and valid if you take precautions to protect yourself) devs apparently think it's a great surprise to people expecting Stardew Valley Online that definitely doesn't make them ragequit.

To clarify/elaborate: I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I'm starting to theorize that Jorb has this stupid idea that "player starts game, doesn't know there is PvP, gets shit kicked in" is intended and thinks it somehow gets people hooked. Well it does hook some people, who want a PvP game, but for the average player, it just results in a thread like this.

Again, this is pure speculation but dev actions strongly support it:
You want PvP = game doesn't advertise the fact it has it to you.
You don't want PvP = game thinks it's funny/engaging that you learn it does have it the hard way.

[SnuggleSnail]

Calling haven a hardcore PVP game outside the first month of the world is more misleading than calling it stardew valley online.

[vatas]

Calling haven a hardcore PVP game outside the first month of the world is more misleading than calling it stardew valley online.

Granted, the "Lord of the Flies Simulator"- aspect of Haven winds down significantly as world progresses. However, average person would probably still classify Haven as "hardcore PvP" because of full loot and permanent death. Even if experienced player can easily avoid dying, sprucecaps lack the knowledge required and die anyway.

So while death isn't really removed, it effectively is- for the "sweaty tryhards" while new players get to experience "die noobs die."

Optimally high-level PvP would probably have a degree of fatality to raise stakes and reward people who win fights, but you couldn't seal club people trying to join the game. I don't have the screenshots at hand but one time dozen people from /v/ board tried out the game and started building a camp. Couple of b12 boys came and slaughtered them.

Imagine if you wanted to learn karate but entering the dojo would give a black belt master free reign to beat your ass any time he wanted to.

TL;DR: Devs have tuned player death to have worst of both worlds: faction PvP has little stakes/reward in terms of actually killing your opponents, while there are still dozen ways to make people pay for the sin of not already being a veteran at this game.

[wonder-ass]

the average players opinion sucks anyways. you have people comparing elden ring pvp to rape do you really want these players to dictate how a game should be designed? (you don't even lose anything for participating in the invasion)
also if i sign up to a boxing competition and then get upset that all of my opponents want to box with me sounds retarded right? you cant just join mma and then say "hey i dont want you to grapple me" its part of it.

[Moonpoppy]

Calling haven a hardcore PVP game outside the first month of the world is more misleading than calling it stardew valley online.

Granted, the "Lord of the Flies Simulator"- aspect of Haven winds down significantly as world progresses. However, average person would probably still classify Haven as "hardcore PvP" because of full loot and permanent death. Even if experienced player can easily avoid dying, sprucecaps lack the knowledge required and die anyway.

So while death isn't really removed, it effectively is- for the "sweaty tryhards" while new players get to experience "die noobs die."

Optimally high-level PvP would probably have a degree of fatality to raise stakes and reward people who win fights, but you couldn't seal club people trying to join the game. I don't have the screenshots at hand but one time dozen people from /v/ board tried out the game and started building a camp. Couple of b12 boys came and slaughtered them.

Imagine if you wanted to learn karate but entering the dojo would give a black belt master free reign to beat your ass any time he wanted to.

TL;DR: Devs have tuned player death to have worst of both worlds: faction PvP has little stakes/reward in terms of actually killing your opponents, while there are still dozen ways to make people pay for the sin of not already being a veteran at this game.

This just isn't true at all!

The current state of the game (or atleast at the start of W14), it was actually beneficial to die for your hunger reset.

I personally think not being able to die during pvp, promotes pvp... Saying pvp has little stakes/reward is such a exaggeration when your basically getting all their loot and study.

[SnuggleSnail]

I personally think not being able to die during pvp, promotes pvp...

Higher engagement does not equal quality. Haven will never compete with any dedicated PVP game on the quality of its combat. All it had going for it was excitement and some fun social dynamics risk created. That is 100% gone.

Also, the only reason to dunk on somebody is to shittalk them on discord. Not a single fighter would ever tell you they PVP for gear.

[Nightdawg]

I personally think not being able to die during pvp, promotes pvp...

Higher engagement does not equal quality. Haven will never compete with any dedicated PVP game on the quality of its combat. All it had going for it was excitement and some fun social dynamics risk created. That is 100% gone.

Also, the only reason to dunk on somebody is to shittalk them on discord. Not a single fighter would ever tell you they PVP for gear.

No, actually we did pvp for gear. After fighting AD we doubled the number of b12's we had, which was 1.

[Moonpoppy]

I personally think not being able to die during pvp, promotes pvp...

Higher engagement does not equal quality.

In what context is that relevant though... Are you saying that the quality of engagements were better when you had a chance of dying, purely based on the fact you could kill someone? I'd honestly argue the opposite.

I think its such an outdated view especially when dying in Haven seems like a bump in the road at the moment. I cant think of anyone this world that died and was left worse off. We even heard stories of people purposely killing themselves for hunger reset (but i'm not sure if it actually happened, however seeing some of our group die and basically come back better off its a possibility).

I do agree that one of haven's quirks was the idea you could die in PvP, but the system was always stupid. You never really died, nor did you ever get reset so it was just a bigger bump in the road and one that just made people quit.

Its like the argument over full loot and none full loot games. It really is a niche.

And to be honest nightdawg is right, we literally did pvp for gear because when your fighting someone like trollex its almost a guaranteed upgrade.

So yeh I still think not being able to die during pvp promotes pvp. Especially long term.

[SnuggleSnail]

No PVPer is /playing the game/ because of gear upgrades from PVP. Don't intentionally misinterpret me.

Across every group there are <100 "real" fights per world. A world is ~1 year. It's not uncommon to play explicitly for PVP, and spend <1% of your time in combat. As far as I'm concerned the entire game exists as a vector to make you value your progress, and give you rare opportunities to lose it or make somebody else lose theirs. At a conceptual level as a PVP game Hafen breaks into a loop of 99 hours of random bullshit -> 1 hour mediocre PVP if there is no inherent value and or risk to characters.

Does anybody really prefer to fight in Valhalla with no investment? Is the combat even good enough for people to enjoy that for more than a day? I doubt it.

If you like stardew valley online with a PVP mini-game, fair enough. I would prefer it be one of the best games in its historic niche instead of the 10,000th mediocre at best MMO with an irrelevant PVP mini-game.

[kabuto202]

The consequences of PvP only exist for the people on the part of the totem pole or otherwise the most vulnerable. Those at the top who are either getting resource funneled by their zerg or are poopsock botting are never at risk to lose anything, because at worst they'll just recreate their lost character in a couple of days to the same over inflated stat-level, who was probably not even their main but simply one of a dozen throw away combat toons. Likewise, most people are going to avoid messing with them, because it's the equivalent of small arms fire against a tank. Even if you do get a W, you still lose because you'll wake up to a burned down base or be forced into defending against a siege at 4AM.

Meanwhile the person with least amount of resources to rebuild just gets rolled because there's no way for them to effectively retaliate and they lack the skill/experience to even put up a fight because they don't have a nearly unlimited amount of resources.

I get why PvP is necessary in a massive shared server scenario. But like I said last year, it's probably the shittiest part of the HnH experience (even the gnognards here who AFAIK are known for PvP don't seem to enjoy the current system), and the game would probably far more enjoyable with Valheim/Conan/Rust style private servers. Much like Mortal Online, this game's adherence to a single server is probably killing it more than helping it. Even those who prefer to group PvP more would probably have a lot more fun, on smaller sized maps, with designated siege times, with higher resource yields. So they can spend more time actively fighting other groups who enjoy PvP rather than rolling some rando sprucecap hermit who made the mistake of plopping a leanto within 10 map tiles of them.