Current game mechanics support a shorter world

[iamahh]

a longer world doesn't support that thread again, but I guess tis the proper season for that thread again

[Liss12]

Its all pointless without implementing some kind of lategame. May it be endgame megaboss or dungeon, or some kind of "build a world wonder to win" system- without such global goal as soon as you getting metal tools and normally functioning village there is nothing to do besides tediously grinding Q for no apparent reason. Going from stone axe to variety of metal tools and from dugout to mighty knarr feels like real progress, rewarding enough to keep people from leaving. Going from q40 meatgrinder to q100- not so much. Big boys tryhards can compete with eachother for sole purpose of being biggest nolifer on the server, but for a hermit or a small village player there is nothing to do but routine chores after couple of months.

[Amanda44]

Good post, prob won't get the attention it deserves. Game feels more like a tedious chore than it ever has imo.

Totally agree, on both points.

I'm not playing this world, for the first time in ten yrs ... the last world kinda burst my haven bubble in a lot of respects, or rather Snail and Jorb between them kinda burst my haven bubble. ;p

A lot of the issue is the slowing down of the game due to time-gating and mechanics to lessen botting which end up having a detrimental effect on everyones game, I agree with Ardennesss, haven is becoming more and more tedious with every world, it's losing it's fun.

I also agree with Sevenless - and something I have been saying since I first came here .....

Game keeps yoyoing between which playerbase to cater to. But I really don't think there's a compromise that makes everyone happy.

There really isn't ... and the devs trying to find a balance between the two, consistently for all these yrs, simply results in just us die hard core members left standing, both sides wanting different aspects modified in the game, everyone else leaves within the first 4 months, lol, ... meaning the game stagnates and never grows.

Anyway, good post Troll, hope Jorb gives it some attention.

[maze]

As an older faction player vs now a days~ my prospective has change.

Spiraling use to be fun, it was bigger numbers content. but after doing it over and over...it was not content it was just a race and I'm going to say the taboo word, it was a bot race.
Look at todays content, if a player hits "cap" they're still better then 90% of the world. people are already hitting stats in the 400-1000 range~ to me that's speed running a game and I'm defiantly not able to keep up.

Now I talk to my mates and hear "O yeah I have 500 str 400 int".
I'm old, I don't have the time I use to play. I Don't have bots anymore and I can't keep up with anyone.... this is the reason I normally quit.
When factions become so powerful they can just crush towns (like they do now) people just quit. I think a very small % ever hit the current cap before they quit now a days.


I agree with some of your other points. Trade is life and blood in this game, but I don't think infinite quality is the way to go
for early world trade~ needing cloth and metal for your first tradestand, most noobies don't even get to that. I think it would be ideal to bring trade into even early game, day one access without needing Glue and cloth. Just a simple board and block to make a trade table.

Stats are to much of a crap part of the game and do gate things in unnecessary ways warranting the the use of alts and bots.

I wonder sometimes about a world without players stats and all gear stats.
I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where food acted more like a study (you eat food every 24 hours on a study table) it would give you stats for that day (could force eat to change stats to a different buff).
Clothing would be the main way to get more stats. it would promote trade as people try to make new sets of clothing to spiral higher, older sets would be traded off hopefully.
Killing someone in combat with armor vs someone in full UA clothing would be different.

I think that there is different ways they can take the game... but I think a better direction is one where people can grind towards things but can also give an item to a day 1 noob and have them catch up.

[Zampfeo]

Good post, but I agree with others that you shouldn't solve the lack of end game with infinite quality grind.

I've never been a faction player in Haven. I have however played with factions in other sandbox MMOs (Darkfall, Mortal, Eve). It's largely because I find the quality grind exhausting after a month or two. Whereas in those other games I've played there's generally a progression cap and the end game becomes the PVP content. You say that the quality grind ties into PVP because of better weaponry, but factions rarely have a reason to fight each other in the first place. The only somewhat fun PVP content in this game is sadistically messing with spruce caps.

If there were better realm and siege mechanics that promoted PVP, it would create more late-game content. Right now, there's no real incentive to fight over realm territory other than for clout and siege mechanics are so bad, sieging might as well not exist.

I'm not saying infinite quality grind shouldn't exist necessarily. The importance of industry is part of Haven's niche. If it's going to be this way, metal spiraling is the right way to do it because the act of a sprucecap selling iron is an organic catch-up mechanic. Ideally, we'd have a similar mechanic for each industry to allow plebs to trade their low-medium quality materials for high Q tools. And, as Maze pointed out, the barriers to this trade shouldn't be so high. To a sprucecap, trade stands are expensive and markets are unreachable.

tl;dr To fix end-game, fix PVP first.

[ChildhoodObesity]

Good post, but I agree with others that you shouldn't solve the lack of end game with infinite quality grind.

I've never been a faction player in Haven. I have however played with factions in other sandbox MMOs (Darkfall, Mortal, Eve). It's largely because I find the quality grind exhausting after a month or two. Whereas in those other games I've played there's generally a progression cap and the end game becomes the PVP content. You say that the quality grind ties into PVP because of better weaponry, but factions rarely have a reason to fight each other in the first place. The only somewhat fun PVP content in this game is sadistically messing with spruce caps.

If there were better realm and siege mechanics that promoted PVP, it would create more late-game content. Right now, there's no real incentive to fight over realm territory other than for clout and siege mechanics are so bad, sieging might as well not exist.

I'm not saying infinite quality grind shouldn't exist necessarily. The importance of industry is part of Haven's niche. If it's going to be this way, metal spiraling is the right way to do it because the act of a sprucecap selling iron is an organic catch-up mechanic. Ideally, we'd have a similar mechanic for each industry to allow plebs to trade their low-medium quality materials for high Q tools. And, as Maze pointed out, the barriers to this trade shouldn't be so high. To a sprucecap, trade stands are expensive and markets are unreachable.

tl;dr To fix end-game, fix PVP first.

tbh I agree with everything you said here

[ChildhoodObesity]

I think you are a bit off when saying "trade is dead" because last world there was a boom of trading. Every corner of the world had a big market.
Just looking at people trading right now there are plenty things that can be sold to the big boys that anyone can make.
What current quality increase system did to trade is reduce the tokens/hats that get sold to big factions because there is no steady infinite quality grind.
Tokens only have any value because they can be resold at the black market.

I personally encountered mining botters in that world. Just because you don't see it or some who decide to close their eyes doesn't mean its not happening. You can't know where the massive amounts of pepper and iron came from if you don't ask any questions.
Having someone bot in some corner of the world and them selling the botted goods at a favorable price to the faction is still botting. Trade does not make these bars of iron fairly gained suddenly.

Maybe saying trade is dead is too far, but honestly if you actively played in W10 or W11 you would know that current trade is nowhere even close to what it was back then. Some people are making markets for larps but these markets don't really compete at all with what it was back then. Also people buy stuff like gelatine, some useful meats, steel, etc, this stuff will last all world. A lot of the current stuff on threads people will remove as soon as someone actually tries to trade with it (I know because I've been trading this world and every world and 99% of my trades are people just using tokens). When spiraling is in the game people are actually competing to buy cast iron from these nabs. No one is competing to buy someone's gelatin. Tokens are still sold to factions just as much as ever. It doesn't matter that the industry caps out because a lot of players have trouble reaching this cap anyways and for some reason people like to spend a lot of tokens on things that are outdated in quality a week later.

I'm not saying that mining bots didn't exist at all, sure some people used them, however, I'm saying that having spiraled my own anvil for 1 of the big factions, and having played with the group with the highest anvil to ever exist in this game that these people weren't botting mining and the majority of the anvil upgrades came from traded cast. It's not like I'm some random noob or anything I've played in Hedgehugs and AD which are the two main factions. People in these groups weren't raising their anvils to insane qualities due to botting. Also regarding pepper, yeah that is something I believe everyone knows by now is entirely botted.

There needs to be more reasons to fight.
There needs to be more reasons to have community events like Aurora and CF had in w10.
All mmos thrive on player interaction. I think the goal should always be to increase all types of player interaction.
There needs to be more things like morels that factions can buy.
More foods that can be crafted for combat stats that require getting materials from noobs. More foods create more different things to satiate so you can increase stats faster.
There needs to be a new building system so there is always something to do like create cool looking structures.

Agree

[Archiplex]

I should also mention that this thread isn't meant to support earlier world resets. This is something I am actually against, I support the long 1+ year worlds, however, I believe there needs to be some kind of content that keeps people playing for this long which the game currently lacks.

I read all of it! I think it's an interesting read, especially because I am someone who's completely on the opposite side of the fence.

That said, while I basically agree with everything on this point, I'm wondering: Be that as it may be, what would be your proposition to extending the game 'playability' length for serious players? I personally don't think the game should be extended so far- and instead, the idea of a wipe needs to be made into a core balancing point around the game. A lot of these issues are hit quickly mostly because of large factions being insanely efficient compared to smaller bases (and to an extent, botting) but I also don't think having an open-ended infinite stat cap is a great idea, either; it compounds the difference between a group that's played for a month or two and a group that's been around for four months (and like you said, reaching half stats is much easier than infinite growthing your stats anyways). I'm also not really certain if making the endgame loop be "watch the same number go up higher" is all that exciting, either.

I mostly echo Sevenless here. Just embrace the fact that this game doesn't really work long-term, embrace a 3-4 month wipe cycle, and make the game faster and more exciting.

[Zentetsuken]

Good post, but I agree with others that you shouldn't solve the lack of end game with infinite quality grind.

I've never been a faction player in Haven. I have however played with factions in other sandbox MMOs (Darkfall, Mortal, Eve). It's largely because I find the quality grind exhausting after a month or two. Whereas in those other games I've played there's generally a progression cap and the end game becomes the PVP content. You say that the quality grind ties into PVP because of better weaponry, but factions rarely have a reason to fight each other in the first place. The only somewhat fun PVP content in this game is sadistically messing with spruce caps.

If there were better realm and siege mechanics that promoted PVP, it would create more late-game content. Right now, there's no real incentive to fight over realm territory other than for clout and siege mechanics are so bad, sieging might as well not exist.

I'm not saying infinite quality grind shouldn't exist necessarily. The importance of industry is part of Haven's niche. If it's going to be this way, metal spiraling is the right way to do it because the act of a sprucecap selling iron is an organic catch-up mechanic. Ideally, we'd have a similar mechanic for each industry to allow plebs to trade their low-medium quality materials for high Q tools. And, as Maze pointed out, the barriers to this trade shouldn't be so high. To a sprucecap, trade stands are expensive and markets are unreachable.

PVP is not endgame in any good MMO I can think of, there are tons of people who play games like EVE for years and never once engage in PVP. EVE and MANY other MMOs can literally be super comparable to the endless sort of grind that haven is.

Fixing endgame with PVP in mind would be the biggest mistake the devs could make because they would be catering to such a tiny percent of the player population it would be a waste of time. PVP should not be considered the endgame in ANY way, just like in most other MMOs, PVP is 100% optional.

Do I agree that siege and pvp could use work? Sure.
Do I agree that there could be more incentive to fight over shit for the tiny percent of players who engage in realm-based battles? Sure.

That being said, I absolutely think haven endgame needs work but I think it should be MILES away from PVP in every imaginable way. Achievements, permanent trophies, leaderboards and anything that ultimately substantiates one's effort should be the endgame. Whether I am playing alone, with a couple friends or a realm village of 40 I think an endgame type of mechanic that could be enjoyed across the board of all types of players would be achievements. Everybody loves to brag, PVPers, hermits, casuals, you name it. Players can literally set their endgame - "this world I will aim for q500 metal and get the q500 metal badge." "This world I will aim for the kill 1000 foxes badge and get that permanent fox cape." etc.

Honestly if it feels like the game is steering away from catering to PVPers I think that is a blessing. There are about 750 people online right now as I type this and I would be incredibly surprised if 20 of them are actually interested in PVP. Haven endgame could be incredibly dynamic and accessible, contain many avenues for effort and time just as other MMOs do.

[dageir]

I think the game should have an apocalyptic trigger of sorts.
It could be when someone is able to break into some kind of NPC lair and trigger some "button" that could start the event. Acheiving this should be difficult ofc. and should not be possible until some months progression.
Once triggered there should be a second and final stage where the players wanting to end the world could try to hit the final button to trigger the apocalypse. Players who would like to keep playing in the current world could "defend" the "button". In the last stage everyone should be able to kill everyone else without limit.