A paradigm shift

[overtyped]

Bob Dole has been thinking about why at the start of a world there is more than 1k players on for a long period of time, and why it drops off.

He knows the reason but it's more nuanced than people just getting tired of the quality grind.
He wonders what haven would be like if it weren't a niche game with 150-200 players/alts on at once, and what things would personally keep him coming back.

Haven has one of the best combat systems out of any game, but many players don't know how to fight other players. That's a problem, even if Jorbtar doesn't see it as one. Everyone knowing how to fight also helps balance pvp, as they are constantly pushing the meta to the brink.

Instead of real pvp just being life and death, or a mock battle in valhalla that most players just avoid due to no incentives, what if there was some change to that? For example, what about some kind of tournament every 7 days that awards the winner a hat. It would be 1v1 or 3v3 duels in an instanced tinier valhalla.

This kind of thing would serve many functions, for one, it would teach people to fight, and it would retain more of the hardcore pvpers as they would always have something to look forward to.

The real purpose of this wouldn't be having a tournament, but the psychological factor of making someone log in. Simply having a player log in gives a chance to get him hooked onto the game again and play.(In Bob Doles opinion, haven doesn't have something like this right now, and a weekly tournament on an equal footing where stats and botting doesn't give you an edge would do that(at least for Bob Dole)

You might be asking how this would work as the fighters could just run endlessly, and the fight would never end, but there are also ways to prevent unlimited chasing with no resolution like in real world pvp. Every minute you are in combat, the combatants will gain 1% movement speed when chasing. Similar to how you gain a movement speed buff when chasing critters.

Then at the end of 20 minutes, the fighter(s) with the most percentage health remaining wins.

This could also be a way to test possible combat implementations without it touching the real game, and see it's effects directly.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

Haven is in an odd place, attempting to be an MMO but fitting more into the survival silo.
It's a single shard, without phasing, making it a true MMO.
But the progression far more closely resembles a "survival game," a genre which wasn't really defined until the mid 2010s.

Rust, Conan: Exiles, DayZ - All of these games keep and retain huge playerbases and are big mountains of revenue. But they also rely on cyclic wipes of anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.
Haven could do the same, and it frankly has enough content to stretch that out to 2-3 months.

I could see Haven hitting several thousand concurrent consistently, if not more, if it reduced grind, added 3 month wipe cycles, and released on Steam.

[Clemins]

I could see Haven hitting several thousand concurrent consistently, if not more, if it reduced grind, added 3 month wipe cycles, and released on Steam.

6 month wipes, reduced grind, and removed localized q boosts from questing and I agree.

While getting a hat every week would be cool, jorb hardly makes a new hat every 3 months nowadays

[dafels]

Jorb: *yawn* another one of those wipe/world progression/PvP threads... *loud fart* ... closes the thread

[DoctorCookie]

Finishing content in 2 months is true for a handful of players. The majority of players do not get to end game content before the end of the usual year long world cycle. At the same time the 1000 player first week start is an illusion. Old players get nestalgic, come back hoping things will be different this time, maybe gather some friends, get wiped, decide they cant commit the time to build up and just quit to wait for next world. New players try it, get wiped, quit, and move on because, again, most people have a limited time to commit to games and it is a tough ask. Rust is not permadeath. Rust has lots of servers and you can choose your community to a certain extent. Take a look at the Haven discord debate thread to see another reason people dont stay long. The fact is most players do not care to be in a constant state of pvp, or participate in the hyper competitive side of the game. The start of world boost is an illusion, a 2 month rush to dominance would be fun for maybe 25 actual current players.

Bob Dole has the right sort of idea. There needs to be something for the dedicated no-lifers(i say that not as an insult) to strive for. Something that is meaningful enough to hold their attention so the rest of world can breathe. Something that does not require world restarts so that occasionally the little guy rise up and upset the status quo, or has a chance. I cant speak to what that would be for the elite players as I am not in that world.

[D0fuz15]

Thats why they should be working on fix the actusl mechanics of the game, if you wipe a world that frequently thrn you have to make it less grindy, also you can achieve goals way faster. Its absurd the amount of stats you can get, instead of having 1 big change for the rest of the world and add more stuff they could choose 1 thing that needs to be re made like:

-Okey, this is W16, lets work around food mechsnic, this is the first iteration oh, the players that have been playing my game for more than 12 years say that this could be better this way, lets test that until we achieve the perfect point in between thst makes everyone feels like this work correctly > jumps to the next balance.

[The_Blode]

It's a single shard, without phasing

WoW and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race

[Dawidio123]

Worth considering that a lot of games (including Salem) that have "seasons/leagues/worlds/etc" have a "standard" server where "slower" people can play perpetually while the season servers get extra content and most of the community goes to.
This is the only solution i see to people that complain that 6 months is not enough to reach the endgame (other than calling out the clear skill issue).

[Robben_DuMarsch]

Worth considering that a lot of games (including Salem) that have "seasons/leagues/worlds/etc" have a "standard" server where "slower" people can play perpetually while the season servers get extra content and most of the community goes to.
This is the only solution i see to people that complain that 6 months is not enough to reach the endgame (other than calling out the clear skill issue).

Fair point.

[Kamekono]

I don't mind the idea, but I don't think it would work as Bob Dole sees it.

While it might be a good incentive for pvpers to stick around, I doubt it would bring many non-pvpers into the pvp world.
I'm one of those who doesn't do pvp. I dislike haven's combat system, I find it extremely boring and I hate the bs around custom clients, critters, and endless drinking.
As such, a pvp tournament would do nothing for me. I know I wouldn't stand a chance against any of the people who usually do pvp, so I wouldn't waste my time just to get my ass handed to me.

So while I'm not against it, since it doesn't really hinder me in any way, I don't think it would incentivise non-pvp players to learn how to, or even join, world pvp.

I think shorter worlds are the easiest fix right now. Big villages get to end content within a month or two. By month 4, market prices are so low that almost any player will either have reached the end-game content by themselves or have the ability to trade for it.
I'd say a 4-5 months world is more than enough. An insanely small amount of players play throughout a whole year, and most of those who come back after a few months quit again in a week or so.

I do like the idea of two worlds, a slow and a fast one, which might solve a lot of issues.