Сritique: Hafen and Hearth development

[dageir]

Yes, the current pop is not the same as the pop starting out.
We could therefore assume that the opinions and play style in the different groups are .... different.

It would not be smart to take advice from only one of the groups. Some likes as mentioned earlier the early building phase.
Others like to grind stats. Others like the politics. Some like the forum shenanigans and so on.
Many quit after the early build up phase. Most are done with what they want to do after some weeks. Exploring the land
does just so much and gets boring fast. The "quests" are (pardon my language) horrendous and not entertaining at all (might be in the concept phase).
Combat is convoluted and not very intuitive. The game is rigged for people to hide behind their palisades with their industry alts.
To add to the boredom/decreased motivation there are bots. How big the bot problem is, I do not know.
Many tasks takes a long time to do and requires the player to have a lot of time on their hands.
There is no global chat in game which might be both good and bad. There is no global market/auction house.
Having no auction house might be realistic, but you can actually teleport in the game from the start of the game.
That is also unrealistic. Then there is the argument that a global market would make people visit each other less.
There is no way I will walk around talking to random villages to ask them to trade. It will take a lot of time and give little
pay off. I know some people walk around like that, but it is not for most people. A more vibrant in game economy might retain
more people. Playing with new, easily accesible items might cause some player retention and allow people to specialize.

To summarize:
- Get info from every player. Maybe some kind of questionaire in game with a little prize as a gift if you fill it in?
- Make exploration great again! (Not sure how).
- Introduce captchas to root out the bots. Make puzzles that require people to do math with just oddly spelled words no numbers. There should be a small in game reward for finishing captchas.
- Make higher tier buildings/village items even harder to build. Also world unique "wonders"?
- Auction house from the start or make it an easily buildable item/chest etc.

[Granger]

some kind of questionaire in game with a little prize as a gift

I wonder how many 'new' accounts this will attract, quickly.

Mechanics should be made in a way that don't incentivise alt/account spammimg.

[sMartins]

I'm totally agree about global chat (well, better if with multiple channels you can create/join: trade,hunting,etc..) and also with the global market....I know is a lot more cooler on the paper having to travel to the market etc.....but doesn't work, to step up the economy, a global market is the best bet.

[Sevenless]

Global economies destroy market variety. You get a very few sellers able to dominate the entire world very easily. Currently we have some market variety in CF due to the information cost of hunting deals by checking each stand for the average player.

I mean, one of the more touted economies in video games is EVE. And it doesn't have a global market either.

[viznew]

- Get info from every player. Maybe some kind of questionaire in game with a little prize as a gift if you fill it in?

mabye only sub or vari accts? if do make alts for it at least thay make money

[azrid]

- Make exploration great again! (Not sure how).

The first step is to remove fate.

[sMartins]

Global economies destroy market variety. You get a very few sellers able to dominate the entire world very easily. Currently we have some market variety in CF due to the information cost of hunting deals by checking each stand for the average player.

I mean, one of the more touted economies in video games is EVE. And it doesn't have a global market either.

It's cool the thing you have to travel with your cargo, etc...but at least I think we need something you can build in your own claim to check the prices all around the world and even buy/sell, then if you want the real stuff you have to travel (like Eve)...but if you want to play the economy game buying and selling you can do that without travelling. Maybe even a skill for that giving you more and more range like Eve and more slots.
Add more "game" to the game.

[Sevenless]

- Make exploration great again! (Not sure how).

The first step is to remove fate.

The only thing keeping factions from having cabinets of pearls and flotsams?

I hate it as much as the next guy, but I remember why it was originally implemented.

[azrid]

The only thing keeping factions from having cabinets of pearls and flotsams?

I hate it as much as the next guy, but I remember why it was originally implemented.

It was removed at the end of last world and I didn't see any ill effects due to it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there is a limit to your combat stats.

So what would removing fate actually do? I believe it will give people more reasons to go out and about.
It will give people behind a chance to get closer to the combat stat cap faster.

I would also like to point out the last update to support my suggestion. They added curiosity melding which would help factions grow much faster than edels and glimmer. Also with new craftable curio power creep fated curios don't even look that appealing anymore.
What I am suggesting is that game is already moving towards faster paced convenient LP gain. Having a ban on what used to be OP in the old days is not very important in the current curio climate. In fact I think it affects the game experience negatively.

[dageir]

some kind of questionaire in game with a little prize as a gift

I wonder how many 'new' accounts this will attract, quickly.

Mechanics should be made in a way that don't incentivise alt/account spammimg.

Umm.. Make the gift meaningless after the character has progressed a bit? Maybe a small rise in a stat of the players choice.
This would not be possible to transfer to another character.