Game Development: Darkwood Gilding

[Audiosmurf]

another wall of broken record pseud drivel

just lol

[Reiber]

[quote="Zentetsuken"][/quote]

there is nothing baring non seasoned pvp players to koin in on the coversation.
take you and me for example.

i give you right that for the average player there is nothing too gain, and an lot too loose in pvp. while it being the other way around for people playing with pvp in mind.
and this needs too change.

we know you are on an crusade to turn haven intoo an non pvp game, everybody knows, thats all you post. and everybody ever responding too your posts calls you an retard for it. take the hint. the vast majority of people caring enought for this game too post on the forums dosnt take pvp as the inherently evil mechanic you take it for. sure. pvp is garbage, and thats why an lot of people either dont bother, or arent able to go somewhere even if they would.
but the potential for pvp makes this game a lot more interesting. and every non instanced open world with object permanence will be subject too "pvp". even without combat. i take the chance of being ganked on an river, over people just claim,body/paliblocking without counterplay.

[SnuggleSnail]

There is absolutely no incentive for any player to ever learn PvP.

There is. If you get kindof ok at movement & basic defending I won't be able to walk up and murder you so easy it's like like pushing in the soft spot in a baby's head.

Haven is the only MMO I've played where damage is /so/ movement based that if you're better than people by enough they simply cannot damage you. It doesn't matter how many of them there are, or what they stats are, or what they're wearing. That's where a lot of the disparity comes from. In any other MMO, it doesn't matter how bad you are - if it's 10 vs. 1 the side with 10 will press their fireball button and the 1 guy will flop.

In haven it would not be AT ALL unreasonable for not even very good fighters to 100/200/300 vs. 1/2 the majority of the people on the server while barely taking damage. The average player doesn't need to become a PVP god, or even good. The game just needs to passively/intuitively teach them how to move & defend & MAYBE slap somebody off of your friend as a stretch goal. It is not that unrealistic for somebody to know how to do this to an OKish level without ever actually PVPing.

There is absolutely no realistic way to incentivize this type of hyper minmaxing play for the majority of the population.

I abso-fucking-lutely agree. That's why it should be made simpler and more intuitive to play "correctly". Just playing a lot for fun should be good enough to get you to where you need to be to defend yourself. The LARPers who play just to LARP after a few months of just fucking about should be strong/competent enough to make me run away without trying to be PVPers if it's like 3 or 5 vs 1.

It's like listening to wall street billionaire investor moguls giving advice to impoverished inner city wellfare families on how to spend their money.

Also agree. The only gauge I use is "wow, this is too autistic for me and I'm a stage 5 glue eater - so this shit must be unplayable for regular people". To tune things for normal people to a greater degree probably requires correctly interpreting feedback from normal people, but a lot of the systems are complex and demanding enough that you don't even need that yet. At any level of play you can just look at things like the FEP system, hunger system, mining, truffles, etc and be like "hm yes this is very-fucking-obviously a bit much"

[Zentetsuken]

there is nothing baring non seasoned pvp players to koin in on the coversation.
take you and me for example.

i give you right that for the average player there is nothing too gain, and an lot too loose in pvp. while it being the other way around for people playing with pvp in mind.
and this needs too change.

we know you are on an crusade to turn haven intoo an non pvp game, everybody knows, thats all you post. and everybody ever responding too your posts calls you an retard for it. take the hint. the vast majority of people caring enought for this game too post on the forums dosnt take pvp as the inherently evil mechanic you take it for. sure. pvp is garbage, and thats why an lot of people either dont bother, or arent able to go somewhere even if they would.
but the potential for pvp makes this game a lot more interesting. and every non instanced open world with object permanence will be subject too "pvp". even without combat. i take the chance of being ganked on an river, over people just claim,body/paliblocking without counterplay.

most people calling me a retard in this thread have never pvpd and would only benefit from my proposed solutions, they are just upset with me for unrelated reasons and taking the opportunity to say mean words

i don't think pvp is evil i just think that it is terrible and pointless and needs to be removed from the game entirely

[wolf1000wolf]

The problem with Snail's suggestion about forcing the player population to learn how to PvP is...both the combat and timing of PvP in HnH just suck!

If I wanted to play some sandbox mmorpg with PvP in mind, I'd go play some Albion. There's still voice coms, target calling and running around. But none of this stupid manage water + drinking bull. The base combat in HnH just isn't... interesting. As mentioned by lots of other people, even PvE combat is just exploiting bugs/AI.

Also, in other games, I know when I'm going to engage in PvP and prepare accordingly.

In HnH, why should I have to load up on waterskins and then end up playing keep away for 20mins+ when all I wanted was to hunt some critters and gather some foragables? The time spent playing tag is literally wasted time for me.

[Archiplex]

yeah like while i agree with snail that most people can benefit from learning the mechanics, that doesn't really help the case when the mechanics (siege, combat, etc) are all an undocumented pile of shit that a new player basically NEEDS to be guided on by a veteran or read one of the several page long presentations made by veterans

even /as/ a veteran i dont even know how siege works right now because 1. i dont care 2. i haven't been religiously paying attention to patch notes for a while and 3. it's changed so many times i gave up

lets not mention the myriad of things that are a consequence of base building that people need to know that are basically bugs but will never get fixed so they're 'features'- i'm talking about the nidbane exploit, the minehole+charter exploit, etc. idk if those are fixed yet either but they werent fixed for ~3ish years so.

let's not pretend new players even realize they stand a fighting chance vs vets as long as their stats are in a certain range (except not really anymore because of gear differences etc etc)

[ItsFunToLose]

Yet another thread devolves in to seasoned PVPers talking about how to fix the game for people who don't like or care about PVP.

It's like listening to wall street billionaire investor moguls giving advice to impoverished inner city wellfare families on how to spend their money.

There are tons of successful games that give a thrilling sense of difficulty and danger via PvE and other survival elements where PvP remains optional. You guys know damn well it is unrealistic to create some way to force or coerce 99% of the playerbase in to suddenly caring about PvP.

There is absolutely no incentive for any player to ever learn PvP. The only reason that any of the PvP-focused players do it is for the thrill of dickwaving in their own tiny PvP-focused groups and to get their short-lived yearly nostalgia fix. Every imaginable part of their gameplay is different from the average hermit or small villages. The game becomes incredibly small and unfun, ignoring entire industries, eating only certain foods, studying only certain curios.

There is absolutely no realistic way to incentivize this type of hyper minmaxing play for the majority of the population.

PvP for the average, vast majority player offers zero rewards for winning or engaging in it, and if you are not willing or able to put in the effort that a seasoned PvPer puts in with a faction full of tryhards (or even just very knowledgeable people) behind you, it is literally more effective to just stand still and allow yourself to get KO'd than it is to even attempt to fight back and lower your openings.


The most realistic way for Haven development to continue forward is to separate PvP from the core gameplay. Allow minmaxers, dickwavers and nostalgia-hungry players to continue to get their fix and stop bothering the rest of the players with this boring trash. Just like practically every other MMO that is worth playing or considering has.

I don't think you're retarded and I actually agree with everything you've said here until the last paragraph.

Coming from w5 where Murder actually unlocked murder and there was a genuine existential threat every time you stepped outside of your base with none of this carebear KO'd-but-i-can-teleport-to-safety bullshit, the game has made leaps and bounds of progress towards "separating pvp from the core gameplay"

Build a wall, learn how to run and you still don't need to learn how to PvP properly. For months, if ever. At worst, you're risking the clothes on your back and 40% of your stats if something goes terribly wrong.

I am exactly the player snail is describing. no job, 16 hours a day for 2 straight months and I have probably put more hours into the game than most other players, but have very little to "show" for it. Or would be true, If the only metric used to judge that statement is a base designed to turn me into a hat extorting maniac who harms strangers for fleeting moments of joy as efficiently and often as possible. And that's not a game design problem. Hermits should never be able to compete with cooperating members of villages. There's no reason to "level" the playing field so that stick throwing savages, even 100 of them, can compete with 1 nuclear submarine.

The problem with PvP is that it's not real PvP in any meaningful sense. It's a group of well armed, fully loaded on waterskins pirates sailing around in multiple knarrs coming across an exploration-geared hermit in a rowboat with stat lines missing 2 digits. You can't balance that. You can't fix 2 orders of magnitude. You can't "teach" how to PvP and make the hunt fun for the pirates. And devs shouldn't spend a single second of thought trying to.

"forcing" players to learn how to PvP is decoupled insanity. To generate the same internal visceral reaction, I would have to say something like "force snail to stop harming complete strangers for fun"

But I need snail to exist to continue wanting to play this game. I need to know he's out there. Lurking. Waiting. Ready.

[Zentetsuken]

I don't think you're retarded and I actually agree with everything you've said here until the last paragraph.

Coming from w5 where Murder actually unlocked murder and there was a genuine existential threat every time you stepped outside of your base with none of this carebear KO'd-but-i-can-teleport-to-safety bullshit, the game has made leaps and bounds of progress towards "separating pvp from the core gameplay"

Build a wall, learn how to run and you still don't need to learn how to PvP properly. For months, if ever. At worst, you're risking the clothes on your back and 40% of your stats if something goes terribly wrong.

I am exactly the player snail is describing. no job, 16 hours a day for 2 straight months and I have probably put more hours into the game than most other players, but have very little to "show" for it. Or would be true, If the only metric used to judge that statement is a base designed to turn me into a hat extorting maniac who harms strangers for fleeting moments of joy as efficiently and often as possible. And that's not a game design problem. Hermits should never be able to compete with cooperating members of villages. There's no reason to "level" the playing field so that stick throwing savages, even 100 of them, can compete with 1 nuclear submarine.

The problem with PvP is that it's not real PvP in any meaningful sense. It's a group of well armed, fully loaded on waterskins pirates sailing around in multiple knarrs coming across an exploration-geared hermit in a rowboat with stat lines missing 2 digits. You can't balance that. You can't fix 2 orders of magnitude. You can't "teach" how to PvP and make the hunt fun for the pirates. And devs shouldn't spend a single second of thought trying to.

"forcing" players to learn how to PvP is decoupled insanity. To generate the same internal visceral reaction, I would have to say something like "force snail to stop harming complete strangers for fun"

But I need snail to exist to continue wanting to play this game. I need to know he's out there. Lurking. Waiting. Ready.

To be clear, in legacy I think PvP and even siege was fun and had a purpose and I would have never been preaching these ideas back then. The population was dramatically lower, everybody had something to lose, from their character to a clutch resource spot and even a new player/hermit could cause some significant damage and chaos without needing their hand held through a private tutorial of secret strategies and clients. I know this first hand.

If there was a way to completely fix PvP and bring it back to even a fraction of the semblance it had back then I would consider fighting for this and even spending time helping to brainstorm such a system.

The fact of the matter is that I have less than zero faith in the devs abilities to do this. We have all watched the same development, the game evolved for better or for worse and has taken on an entirely new form.

I genuinely believe that the current system is so completely bad and unfitting for the current game that the idea of tweaking it or rebuilding it is a waste of time. I also think that the idea that jorb and loftar understand the current system enough to be able to tweak it is unrealistic and genuinely laughable. I also, also think that relying on feedback from minmaxers as they have done for the past 5 years has only steered it so deeply in to a pit of inaccessibility that continuing to attempt to tweak it or fix it this way is equally unrealistic and genuinely laughable.

It's time to crumple up the proverbial paper that is current PvP and yeet that shit in to the bin. We need to start 100% fresh and new which is going to require not only a ton of time but a brand new workflow and process that involves exhaustive testing, asking for feedback before making big decisions, doing group tests with a variety of player archetypes and having the devs actually engage with the system regularly as metas and strategies evolve.

But here is the problem;
I also, also, also think that this is a genuinely laughable and completely unrealistic goal.


Therefore, I truly and genuinely and honestly believe that delete PvP is the most realistic, constructive and forward-thinking goal.

[ItsFunToLose]

Therefore, I truly and genuinely and honestly believe that delete PvP is the most realistic, constructive and forward-thinking goal.

PvE servers for games designed around PvP are complete cancer because you have zero recourse if someone decides to abuse the game mechanics to troll you. Violence is the only answer.

I think we all can agree that the current state of PvPcombat is less than ideal, but removing PvP is not it. Fixing animal bug abuse so that players actually have to engage in meaningful combat with them is the first step towards combat competency among the general playerbase. But this also comes at the cost of further restricting end-game animal products for all but the largest and most organized and competent factions. Allowing sprucecaps with 20 MC to quick barrage a moose from a dugout on day 2 is fucking nonsense(I am still fighting bears and moose this way, and as much as I love doing it, it needs to go. animals not chasing to water's edge and fleeing when unable to pathfind?). Removing the current drink-your-body-weight-in-water problem and changing the openings icons for default client also would go a long way.

Before you can actually "delete PvP" there needs to be a coherent solution to every imaginable troll, and I'm really fucking creative when it comes to finding ways to ruin a stranger's day, good luck with that.

It's not an optimal use of dev time for them to even try fixing the combat system or balancing PvP, whatever that idea even means. I don't think anyone can coherently define what that actually entails. PvP is not a core gameloop for 99% of the players in this game. And the players who really want to PvP can LARP up a gladiator arena and host weekly tournaments themselves, but they'd rather run around killing strangers for hats. Not my fault they've devolved into pirates and thieves who only know joy through the extraction of pain and suffering from others.

Real life is a full loot open world PvP sandbox, but you don't see these mouthbreathing autists going around punching old women for hats. It's as If the only thing stopping them from murdering strangers for their wallets in real life are the consequences of being caught and punished. In haven, there just aren't any.

[Nikitan83]

There are ways to keep pvp in haven without enforcing it on pve players.
If I remember correctly Dis once set up a peace grid in legacy, where there was a common understanding that no one did pvp inside and left the people in there to live in peace.
Perhaps haven could benefit from such a system. A continent left to be peaceful, not set up by players but by the devs of course to make sure its safe.
Where those of us that just wants to build nice and calm places can do so, without having to take into consideration the forceful pvp groups that abuse every mechanic they can think of.
Everywhere else could be pvp. Better would be if it was set up so that there were certain resources that was only accessible on the 'pvp' lands so if you wanted that then you'd have to venture out and risk your character and whatever gear you're wearing. Perhaps the 'peace grid' would be able to offer something to the pvp lands? Thus also getting back proper trades between nubs and min/max players. In legacy there was a certain charm buying Large chest of blueberries and give tools/gear etc in return.

As for the possibility of pvp players setting up a unraidable base in peacegrid and then just go pvping outside, well perhaps murderskill can't be allowed on the peacegrid. Same for scents?
Idk, just throwing an idea out there.

The main problem as I see it,is that months is being spent to build a base and it takes mere days to lose it.
Thus making it so a larger amount of people lose the motivation to continue playing.
Yet the pvp folks complain it is unfair for them.
People will play this game differently, forcing everyone to participate in one direction or the other is not the way to go.

I do also wish there was more of a challenge for pve players, without having to resort to pvp. Some things could be changed for the better. Take the mammoth for example. Why is it that it is doable for 1 person to take it down? Perhaps it really should take a couple of hunters, making it a proper village effort.
As for the argument that any hermit should be able to do it, I strongly think that a 'peacegrid' would help with this too, having a more safe interaction with others of similar mindset could mean setting up a open village and keep a notice board where people can request help with mammoth, asking for company to a beaver dungeon etc. etc.

I know I know.. I'll go back to Stardew Valley.