Socio-Economical State of Hafen

[LadyGoo]

I've been playing since the world start. We could meet dozens of people a day first 3 weeks. Nowadays, I hear my friends saying they have not met anyone in 4 hours of travelling along central river systems away from our village. It keeps some people wondering, where are those 700 people online?

Badly edited Abstract
Hafen might be fun for the first couple of months, when you have to build your village, make level 5 mineholes, find resources and etc. A few weeks later people start realizing that there is nothing else to do, since the actions listed above keep your interest only for a short period of time. You do not need to grind highest stats. As a result, people start complaining about the "dead game" and the devs destroying it. Then, people start quitting, since maintaining your livestock and quality grind becomes a routine and pointless (you just produce for the sake of production), trade is not that vital for survival, you do not need any allies since there is a little to none need to leave your walls at all. At the end, players start begging for the world wipe even if they'd lose all their belongings and characters.

The image below represents some of the major issues of hafen's socio-economical degradation.

Trade
Big villages have the potential to sell the high quality items and resources. But they lack the interest in doing so, since they are self-sufficient and do not want to trade for anything, but tokens. Foregable curios cannot compete with craftables. Salt/Ices/Crystals are collected by major factions mostly, so the noobs cannot sell them on a consistent basis. Lack of interest of big villages in trading leads to:
1. Lower interest in maintaining a good image and sparing people
2. Lower levels of social interactions
3. Lower numbers of trading hubs and role-play spots

Social projects
They lack some in-game mechanic support, therefore there is a lack of events and they require a high level of maintenance. It is probably not so evident, but maintaining the Venetian Emporium last world was tough even for a big faction like mine. We used to have some nice events back in W3-6, when we'd have food event bonus. Therefore, people need to make an actual profit from events in order to have a motivation to initiate them. We won't see beautiful communal projects surviving for long and re-occurring.

Politics
Low action consequence levels lead to lower social interactions, higher noob death rates, game feeling boring and miserable. Right now pvp interactions are concentrated around camping crossroads/caves, showing up at your enemy's walls and trying to lure them out. Meanwhile, raiders are butchering noobs out of boredom. Doesn't sound like an ideal situation neither for raiders, nor peaceful farmers.

[LoLa]

Very good post and seems pretty accurate, do you have any proposals for fixing things? If you are wondering about the number of players, I believe a lot of those are bots, so they aren't going to be found as easily if they are being stationed in certain areas. From my time in the game, I noticed that it seems a lot of players have certain playstyles, some stick to the same paths when traveling I'm assuming, so if you don't see anyone in a certain area within a week, its very likely you will continue to not see any/many players in that area in the future. The incentive to forage for curios is much lower than in the previous version of this game, because the majority of the curios are pretty terrible for the study time, weight and learning points gain, therefore I could see why many people may choose not to leave their claims risking their death. Also I will mention again, that now more than there ever was I think there's a botting epidemic, especially with all the public custom clients releasing botting abilities in some form.

There aren't enough incentives to socialize with other players, the risk is far too great. There aren't enough incentives to explore, the rewards are to low and the risks are too great. For those of a competitive nature they are compelled to use bots to gain an advantage or keep pace with others, so a lot of the numbers may not be actual players. A lot of this game is currently designed with large groups of active players in mind, so smaller groups or solo players have an extreme disadvantage and this has an extremely negative effect on the entire game for everyone in many ways and eventually leads to a dead world and calls for a world reset. Small groups or solo players will likely never be able to compete with large active groups, this leads to unsatisfaction for both sides within a short amount of time.

[Kaios]

If you are wondering about the number of players, I believe a lot of those are bots

If by bots you mean everyone keeping their character logged in to auto study then yeah, not that there aren't players running forage bots or whatever but I think those are in the minority to be honest. Most people make use of the public tools available and that is largely the public custom client features.

There aren't enough incentives to socialize with other players, the risk is far too great.

I agree. Certain mechanics were put in place to help alleviate this problem, visitor buff, nidbanes, and visitor buff especially changed a lot in regards to allowing more people to visit your village, or in the creation of a market, but these mechanics have failed in giving any further incentive for players to leave the safety of their walls to explore and socialize out in the world.

[LadyGoo]

Well, whenever I walk up to a village, I can see some red dots + as far as I know, the player count is based on the IP's rather than number of accounts opened. It's just no-one goes outside.

Fated foragable curios could be more seductive by having wear. So you could re-use them several times.
If there would be a fated chance of digging the strange crystals/salt or whatever while mining/digging, noobs could have a chance of trading them to larger villages. Or use them by themselves. Some sort of alternative ways of obtaining rare stuff would be nice.
As for the PvP, I have a radical proposal: what if you could craft an item using offender's scent which would tell you that the person is 2-3 minimaps away from his hearthfire? Would bring some action, at least. Adding timers to natural resourses would also benefit the game action-wise. Spawning some mega-mobs (like dragons) might become a good objective for villages and make use of even nooby fighters.
Kingdoms could become a renewable source of interest for the players as a matter of socialization, politics and warfare.

I hope the devs will do something game-changing as soon as possible. People are already feeling bored. Updates like horses and trolls are nice, but they do not change the meta-game radically or add additional objectives and interest generating systems (mob lairs, kingdoms and etc.).

[LoLa]

Here's some ideas to ponder about in regards to alleviating the problems;

1. Separate the combat abilities from the other abilities and add three more combat skills, such as two handers, magic, and polearms just as an example.

So you'd have something like:

Combat Abilities:

• Magic
• Polearms
• Two Handers
• Unarmed Combat
• Melee Combat
• Marksmanship
• Stealth

Learning Points: 300

Tradeskill Abilities:

• Exploration
• Sewing
• Smithing
• Carpentry
• Cooking
• Farming
• Survival

Learning Points: 300



The combat abilities could have their own separate Study Report from the Tradeskill Abilities, OR they share the same Study Report, but the learning points you get is stored in two places, Combat Abilities and Tradeskill Abilities.

For instance I have 0 Learning points and I study a ladybug for 300 Learning Points, so I now have 300 Learning points I can use in my Tradeskill Abilities and I also now have 300 Learning Points I can use in my Combat Abilities. In this way I can raise my tradeskill abilities and my combat abilities evenly which would encourage more combat activity throughout the world otherwise. So for example I use 300 in unarmed combat and 300 in farming, and now I have 0 learning points to spend again.



2. At the next world reset, instead of having random water, clay and dirt nodes that rise in quality randomly throughout the world, keep them all as q10, in this way people(essentially large villages usually) won't reach such a high quality level so quickly early on causing a large gap between other players and ruining their(both the offending and defending players) fun.

3. As I mentioned in another topic, viewtopic.php?f=48&t=47199 there should be boss monsters that encourage multiple large groups of players to defeat. I don't know if the recent troll update was seriously intended to be something along these lines, but if it was, it was not exactly what I was suggesting. I would suggest instead to have said boss monsters already spawned in the world and roaming it, where players can come across it and alert us either in game or on the forums to its presence, then we'd have to form together a large group to kill it. The amount of goods it produces should be enough that everyone who participates gets something from it and there should be a significant challenge to it otherwise there'd be no point.

4. Make many of the forageable curios more worthwhile to study, in this way it will entice more players to go out and forage for them.

5. Add more end-game skills and technology. (Automated machinery, could also help get rid of the botting problem, therefore two birds with one stone potentially)

6. Add more ways & tutorials to practice all forms of combat skills. If a player does not feel proficient enough they may not want to risk the death of their character in an actual fight.

7. I haven't figured out how to get past the bot and alt problem when it comes to idea number 7, except to say that we could possibly factor in the distance traveled from one's hearthfire or make it so only being around subscribed players counts towards your reputation gain, but I will still elaborate on the idea; Some type of reputation system with benefits could encourage socialization. Based on the amount of points, different icons could appear above players heads, those with a negative amount of reputation could for instance have a pitchfork icon above their head, and those with a high amount could have a halo above their head.
It could work in the same way as discovering a new item.
For instance something like amount of players you've been around(within chat range) multiplied by the average amount of time you've been around them(maximum time is capped each week) and you subtract an amount which is multiplied by the square root of the total amount of reputation points you've gained that week by amount of times you've assaulted or murdered someone. The bonus(if you manage to get one) could be an LP modifier boost for instance. The maximum Learning Points gain modifier for the week could be a 25% boost. To get the maximum boost(2500+ Reputation Points) you would have to meet at least 100 different players and be around them as an average across all of those you've met at least 25 hours every week. Each week the amount of reputation points you had will rise or decline by 25% of your points towards the neutral point of 0.

Example:

• Player 1 has met 10 people, and has been around all of them an average of 4 hours, and has killed or assaulted 0 players. 10 x 4 = 40 reputation points. Learning points gain modifier is boosted by 4 percent for that week.
  
• Player 2 has met 50 people and has been around all of them an average of 10 hours, and has killed or assaulted 20 players. (50 people x 10 hours) = 500 reputation points however since they assaulted or killed players we will take the square root of 500 which is 22.35 and multiply it by the number of assaults and murders which is 20 and it equals to about 447, we will subtract this number from the amount reputation points they would have had(500) - 447 = 53 is their total amount of reputation points for that week. LP gain modifier is boosted by 5 percent for that week. Next week if this player for instance hadn't met, assaulted or murdered any other players their reputation would go from 53 to 39.75 because of the 25% reputation decay value. So now their LP gain modifier for this second week would be 3% increase.

[Bowshot125]

Kingdoms pls, I want to be a vassal. <3

[Onep]

We need a way to take serfs. Ours keep running away. Filthy peasants.

[MightySheep]

I think the points about pvp, politics and no consequences that you made are all caused by the same thing: lack of a proper siege system.

As for the absence of proper trading, you have to remember that it used to be WAY simpler with village oathing. I would teleport my char to ramones place every single time I killed a bear. Also, I personally think that people in new haven take game a bit less seriously than before, I have no evidence ofc but Ive yet to meet 1 super competitive grindy faction running around in dhelms to prove my theory wrong.

Regarding 'social projects & events' I find it hard to consider any kind of player planned event that wont turn into a blood bath. In the past it requires some big respected faction to make this type of thing happen but even then, you already mentioned lack of consequences.

[linkfanpc]

What they should do is re-add Murder skill so everyone isn't able to kill.

Or, after Rage, there would be Threaten, Harm or something, that allows you to attack people while they are down, but not kill them. If whatever blow your trying to give would kill them, the game would stop you. This would be good for not killing, but simply crippling people for revenge. In order to do the final killing blow you need Murder, which in my opinion should be much more expensive.

Rage: Attack and KO other players. (30,000 LP)
Harm: Attack players who are KO'd. (100,000 LP)
Murder: Deliver the final blow to a downed char killing him. (300,000-1,000,000 LP)

I know, a mil LP for Murder seems like alot, but that may be good. It means when i see a nettle-noob, i know he definitely can't kill me, therefore it's much easier to socialize with him.

Oh and another quick idea, it would be interesting to have a few new animations.

1: When you get knocked out, your character clutches his chest with one hand, (maybe twirls for comedic effect) and collapses.
2: When you die from a killing blow delivered while KO'd, your character would outstretch his arm, then fall back down to the ground, motionless.
3: When you die from a single blow while conscious, your character clutches his chest with both arms, looks down at himself, and collapses dead.
4: Maybe a pool of blood forms under a dead player.
5: When a character gets up from being KO'd, he clutches and nods his head a bit getting a hold of himself.

Also, i'd like it if you could visually see if someone was wounded.

1: If you in any way are missing 1 SHP- only have 2/3rds of your max SHP, your character clutches his arm.
2: If you only have 2/3rds-1/3rd of your max SHP you character clutches his stomach and occasionally stumbles and limps.
3: If you only have 1/3rd or less of your max SHP your character clutches his stomach, has a terrible limp and is visually bloody.

[jordancoles]

I think the points about pvp, politics and no consequences that you made are all caused by the same thing: lack of a proper siege system.

Just saying this over and over again doesn't do anything
What do you think a proper siege system looks like?