improve early-end game

[Zentetsuken]

a visual effect so everyone could see who is top pvper.

if this is all it would take to make the tiny population of pvp obsessed players happy and give thome something to work for I would be SO all for this. But since pvp is not the end-all be-all of the game perhaps the worlds best farmer and crafter and fisher should also get nice shiny visual effects too then?

All of which decay could solve, when implemented in a way that it replaces 'endlessly raising quality' (and the inevitable effects that has on characters) as the item sink / busywork of the current 'endgame'. But I guess Haven is like a democracy (even when it isn't) - in the sense that things that would benefit 95+% of the population are guaranteed to never be implemented, to not inconvenience the powers that be.

God this is so true it hurts. I don't know if decay would completely solve it, but in every other mmorpg in the world there is a stat cap in place, as well as the entire game basically scaling in difficulty with new threats and areas to explore as you get more advanced. Maybe instead of arbitrarily decaying everything, there should be a solid stat cap on something like cave levels, and each level should have harder monsters? Maybe the map should have something like darkness around the edge, and "Here be dragons" message should disappear and let you continue on further once you have 1000 combat stat/con/agi or something?

I think if there was hard skill number locked content like any other mmorpg has then new players couldn't really feel left out of it and would rather be able to get there eventually, and the idea of being a "market zombie??" would actually make sense, you would actually have hard goals to strive for. Literally unlocking new content.

[Lyrroth]

statcap wont work. it is not WoW.
decay wont work gtfo with this stupid shit where youre punished.

make a good catch up mechanic. proposed a lot on forum in different forms. You dont want to punish people for being on top and you want to give people below a chance. to give them a chance, give them a chance to close gap close enough to be able to touch tail but not head.

which mean that without combat rework again, not much will be changed.

also i can get behind diminishing returns from stats.

[Headchef]

statcap wont work. it is not WoW.
decay wont work gtfo with this stupid shit where youre punished.

make a good catch up mechanic. proposed a lot on forum in different forms. You dont want to punish people for being on top and you want to give people below a chance. to give them a chance, give them a chance to close gap close enough to be able to touch tail but not head.

which mean that without combat rework again, not much will be changed.

also i can get behind diminishing returns from stats.

Diminishing returns are the way to go, if it would scale way differently above 500 stats then don't need catch up mechanics because it's not high

[Granger]

[whining]
make a good catch up mechanic.

Yea, so the world will get uninteresting even faster for latecoming players.

Brilliant plan /s

[MagicManICT]

statcap wont work. it is not WoW.

You're right... it's closer to UO, which had... stat caps! Or EVE which has... stat caps!

It's just like anything else that's a game mechanic: the developer has to make it work. when adding limiters onto things, the importance of proper balance becomes even greater.

[pppp]

People who quit over seeing HQ stuff they can't reach shouldn't be playing anyway.

With that mentality the game is going to have a population of 10 people who really deserve to play it.

it doesn't matter if they have 120 or 400 feps they will die to actual fighters in every stage of the world.
The gap will always be there, in knowing what to do as well as stats.

That sound like a perfect diagnosis of missing balance. I agree with the knowledge part though. In fact most games that make sense to play depend on knowledge.

So I think everyone should just try to let that go. You need so much people time and resources to be able to compete, and unless the same amount of effort is equalized or triumphed, it is the way it should be.

A very good explanation why the game is considered grindy.

also i can get behind diminishing returns from stats.

Diminishing returns are the way to go, if it would scale way differently above 500 stats then don't need catch up mechanics because it's not high

Well, yeah, but.
What kind of diminishing returns exactly ?
is it going to be O(√(n)), as it is now or is it going to be O(1-exp(-n)) ?

I agree with Granger and others that there should be caps but the question is how those caps will be presented to the player. I wholeheartedly hate raw decay mechanics, it is just demotivating. We need growing numbers to wank over them but if that growth is allowed to be meaningful it will hurt the balance. If diminishing returns are modelled as O(1-exp(-n)) it will create de facto cap without actually limiting the numbers. See knarr speed as an example.
Example

If top char reaches 1010 in any stat, his stat is decreased by 100, down to 910. at the same time chars with 510 stat will be down to 460, with 110 stat will be down to 100, chars with 20 stat will be down to 19 and chars with 10 stat are unchanged. Numbers are chosen so 10 base stats can be easily subtracted from the calculation.
It it open to discussion if that should be limited to single stat or any stat can trigger decay of all other stats.

Another alternative is event based global decay of stats, If top char reaches preset amount it's stats are decreased by some number and stats of all other chars are decreased in proportional way. It will be still annoying but this kind of mechanics can be gamed offensively, so finally what matters is economy organization and ability to quickly recover. Newbs will be mildly screwed, which is already an improvement compared to being screwed hard.

[xzo]

define catch up mechanics

in w10 i joined very late, grinded few pearls, got some gear for those, mined some gold, had fun, never catched up to pvp but thats different area, there are catch up mechanics, you can get good food, curios, but that require people to actually trade with you, and you to have interesting goods to trade with them, if you want catch up mechanics you dont have to punish players that are grinding from the start, you just give lower players something to offer

at present state if noob finds clay its like q 20 because all other clays are covered, so he dont have shit to trade, he falls back

there is no "coins" dropping from mobs, same as there is no npcs, if you want to keep it that way we need foraging or other animal hunting improved ( just dont nerf gardener ), so there is something that can be used by strong players, or to craft some potions, maybe that's the way to go, if not decay, make "potions", that would require only wild ( foraged ) ingredients

[Granger]

We need growing numbers to wank over them

There are specialized websites that, according to friends, work better.

Apart from that... I acknowledge the view of

I wholeheartedly hate raw decay mechanics, it is just demotivating.

to be potentially problematic. On the other hand I see no way for the game to sustain a world without something that keeps the numbers in check as the only alternative of nerfing the effect of the numbers with time (plus a catchup mechanic that speeds up newly created characters) would both get silly quite soon (as the numbers would still get out of hand) and not solve the problem of perception (that new people see the numbers and quit because 'fuck this' as they see no reasonable way to meaningfully participate).

The suggestion of

If top char reaches 1010 in any stat, his stat is decreased by 100, down to 910. at the same time chars with 510 stat will be down to 460, with 110 stat will be down to 100, chars with 20 stat will be down to 19 and chars with 10 stat are unchanged. Numbers are chosen so 10 base stats can be easily subtracted from the calculation.
It it open to discussion if that should be limited to single stat or any stat can trigger decay of all other stats.

Another alternative is event based global decay of stats, If top char reaches preset amount it's stats are decreased by some number and stats of all other chars are decreased in proportional way. It will be still annoying but this kind of mechanics can be gamed offensively, so finally what matters is economy organization and ability to quickly recover. Newbs will be mildly screwed, which is already an improvement compared to being screwed hard.

could be a form of stat decay that is palateable (though I question the presented upper limit, which seems to be too high for several reasons), but for it to effectively work it would also need decay on tools or commerce will die as the existing ones won't need replacement.

Bottom line is that IMHO the only real problem with number decay (be it on tools or characters) is that we're not used to it, thus the idea feels like someone threatening to take away the favorite toy. Same goes, for as it seems some noisy ones, for any kinds of changes to whatever mechanic... as the content of this forum proves. I guess the only way to answer the question of it being really be that bad (as some claim) would be to have a world with a decay mechanic that both creates a ceiling for character stats (and through that sets an effective maximum to item qualities that can be created) and consumes tools so they need to be replaced (to keep trade alive). Preferably without that being turned off without further comment after a too short time to evaluate because some complain, opposed to how they (devs) handled the stat cap experiment.

[Lyrroth]

im whining other are whinning we all whine

you speak about decaying like a remedium (which is not) but you fail at basic stuff like trade:
existing tools are being replaced all the time. breaking tools will be only taking it tool on those who are at bottom, because they're getting older versions from trade, as it is now, good tools cricle from top trade to villages to hermits to trash. You propose a lot more trash or scam trades with end durability tools. not to say high burn for pickaxes if that happens.

[Granger]

im whining other are whinning we all whine

you speak about decaying like a remedium (which is not) but you fail at basic stuff like trade:
existing tools are being replaced all the time. breaking tools will be only taking it tool on those who are at bottom, because they're getting older versions from trade, as it is now, good tools cricle from top trade to villages to hermits to trash. You propose a lot more trash or scam trades with end durability tools. not to say high burn for pickaxes if that happens.

As I didn't specify anything about how a decay (for tools) should or could work (only pointed out that and why it's needed) your post just demonstrated that you're able to burn strawmen. Nice fire you made, but what a waste of electrons...

Stop the fallacies and instead concentrate on adding productive information/insights to the discussion.