World Decline: Thoughts and Suggestions On Meta

[AbsK]

Best quality saw, axe, pick, hammer, sword, cutting tool, bow, tree planters pot, armor, ...

Basically factions would carry over as much endgame quality gear as possible, early game would be nonexistent and as soon as rage is there it would be armed characters slaughtering everything moving because none of the normal guys could hit through the armor.

what a beautifyl world it will be. Everyone will kill everyone on sight 'cause maybe even nude guy have q180 metal axe from last world.

Okay, the "take over an item" doesn't need to be implemented, but how about everything else?
it doesn't have to be angels vs demons it could be forest spirits vs water spirits. Although if we keep the idea of the divine, it would be cool seeing mini-jorbs going around fighting mini-loftars

[Attas]

What of a seasons system, in which players would have to actively gather food during summer so that they doesn't starve to death during winter? In order to make it happen, seasons would have to be brought together with two major reworks: food and temperature.

Food: right now it's nearly impossible to starve to death if you're playing right; however, this is a survival game, and starving should be more present. Therefore, there should be a higher decay of hunger so that if you don't eat anything for a week you'd die. Of course, this is too hardcore, and it would turn Haven into a Tamagoshi. So there would be a way to feed your characters while you're offline by putting food in the pclaim/vclaim, just like in a chicken coop. Everyone who logged out inside the claim would be fed with the same quantity of food per day - with the food system, it would be more expensive to keep an army of alts. Claim owners should access a list of people the claim is feeding, so that they can evict them properly.

Temperature: just make it so that you can freeze to death if you're not wearing enough - or faint of heat if you're wearing a fur coat when it's 38°C. This would be more of a flavour thing actually, but it would logically make people more fragile during summer (when everyone's out) and protected during winter.

How the seasons would work? Instead of changing the global temperature, northern regions would get winter first, then it would go down along time - by the end, the extreme south would barely feel the presence of winter. The same way, summer would go from the south to the north, so that by the end northernmost regions would be quite comfortable. This would be necessary in order to make it so that people would either have to go to hotter/colder regions during extreme cold/hot, if they don't feel like stocking food. Besides, if the entire world followed a single season at the same time, it would be impossible for newer players to survive if they joined the world during the winter.

The idea behind all this is to make people actively change homes, and therefore always have new neighbors. If they don't want to abandon their old location, they'll have to stockpile a lot of food and deal with a snowy biome during the winter (and frozen rivers).

Some positive aspects of this idea:

• People would have to be less attached to their base and interact more with the world;
• Rehaul of food system will reduce the quantity of alts, which is always good;
• World would be dynamic, resources could be season-based;
• By the beginning of the summer or the winter, people would move to the south/north and rediscover it, recreating the hype of early worlds;
• It will reinforce Haven and Hearth as a hardcore survival game;

Some negative aspects of this idea:

• People would have to invest a lot of time during summer to be fed during winter, making it harder to do things unrelated to winter survival;
• Lack of stuff to do during winter. Of course some winterly activities could be added, but winter is generally a boring season. This would penalize people who don't have the time to build a second base where it's summer;
• Would have to implement and revise a lot of stuff in-game, such as creating a dynamic temperature system, revising each piece of clothing heat gain, add graphical sprites for both snowy and dry biomes.

[shubla]

[*]Rehaul of food system will reduce the quantity of alts, which is always good;

Alts are not problem.
They are consequence of problem.

[y00]

Here are my 2 cents after playing this game for the first time as a group of 2, for a week or 6 with at least 8 hours of gameplay a day.

1) As everyone else is mentioning, the first few weeks are a blast: discovering stuff and learning, progressing. I think that is the key-word, you feel like you are progressing and accomplishing
2) then comes the time when you hit some sort of cap...mine was twofold - i could not find any clay better than 45 average, that was not claimed and needed a zerg squad to capture. Secondly when finally reaching mine level 4, we found ore quality 36....talking about a slap in the face. Reaching lvl 5 would also require strength to be boosted majorly, and without salt (also all salt deposits are either heavily guarded or 30 mins of rowing away) and probably another trick/bug or 2 we dont know of being the noobs we are, would be weeks and weeks of work to get done.
3) so then you are stuck, sort of, and in the meantime you still have to do all the chores, or your cattle and chickens will die, your village shield will drop, etc etc.

I am now at the point where i really struggle to log in.

Here are some thoughts i have that could turn this around:
a) change the game in such a way that people that start weeks/months later still have a fair chance - this could be accomplished by a map that keeps expanding, by resource nodes like clay and water that change quality over time (high quaity nodes become worse over time, other nodes that were bad become better over time) as to avoid the situation we have now that once you have found and fortified your high quality clay water and soil, you are set for life.
b) rethink localized resources for the same reason as above mentioned - it is very easy for the first players in a world to claim those resources and very hard to remove their claims with the current shields etc etc. The difference between having rock crystals and salt and ice spines etc, or not having them, are quite huge
c) the random number generator should be "fair" : no qual 36 ore bullshit at mine level 4. Not to say everyone should end up with qual 200 all the time, but some sort of sensible (and rewarding) minimum should be in place
d) To give longevity to your game, you have to force people to gather in limited spaces from time to time. some good ideas have been mentioned like meteors that drop goodies, but you could also do it in a way that some resources that everyone needs, are only found in a few locations (and i really mean a few places, like 1 or 2 on the whole map), where no one can claim stuff. You create pvp grounds that way...Key here is the no-claim thing otherwise the strongest factions will simply create inpenetrable forts. Besides, gathering in limited spaces could very well be peacefull too, so events that promote trade and working together as a server instead of battle each other...
e) Another way to implement d) would be to generate the world map in such a way that some biomes are much more restricted, ie player one starts on ice and player 2 in the desert, and either biome have some resources vital to progress but not all...not like it is now, where you have like 10 biomes 5 mins walk from where you start. When you start a village somewhere, you then have to make a choice to have plenty of resource X and none of resource Y. This would also be a possible trigger to trade more often and for villages to constanly having to make long trips to get vital resources, which in itself creates opportunities for player interaction.
f) the dieing aspect of the game makes it challenging but at the same time, severely restricted me in trying out stuff. I am not going to try if i am ready to kill a mammoth or a troll if making one mistake or simply not knowing how to effectively battle them, gets me killed almost certainly. Same for pvp. So - maybe introduce a cat-with-9-lives system where you get penalties for dieing (losing stats, or health, or a really long recuperation time where you are gimped during that time), but its not the end of the show instantly ?
g) you should never feel like you are being capped - make it insane hard to progress after you reached a certain level cap, but always make it possible. Progress comes in many ways...from village to town to metropole ( so content wise) or from ability 1 to 999.....Make it almost impossible to create a char that has all abilities but promote specialisation

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

Just my personal thoughts on things:

1 - Map size should be increased, let those who want to go into the great beyond go there, and those who want to stay close to the starting area do so. Just a quick scan of this world and some conversation revealed it's far too compact.

2 - Stat caps are good, Skill caps are good - Maintenance of those caps needs to be a thing. A 'get there and I'm done' process is inane and almost guarantees world resets. If players don't decay, then eventually there's a bunch of max stats running around. Let offline time = stat/skill decay after a certain tolerance.

3 - Fast Travel needs to be eliminated and more methods of trade added. We have horses now, enabling quick travel over the world. Fast travel adds to the 'empty world' feel as people just 'port where they need to go. Hearthing back to ones fire is, regrettably, unlikely to go anywhere. But as Purus said about alting, "Alts are not problem. They are consequence of problem.", Fast Travel isn't itself the problem, It *exists* as a patch for another problem.

4 - Growth Zones - Trade is pointless, unless you're trading regional resources you have nothing I *need* (and I largely don't need those often). Whatever it is you have, I can either do without (High Quality Clay/Water) or make myself (Just about everything else). Make crops, resources, even metals be regional. How about regional animals rather than walking a few minimaps and finding everything you need.

5 - Speaking of Metal - And for fucks sake can we get less metal in the world? I can't cross a minimap without tripping over three ore deposits on the first level, six more on the second level, and a high quality bat node, and one weird subterranean pear tree with a partridge in it.

6 - Unfuck The Charter Stones - Oh great, so now we have Charter Stones for fast travel, grand. How about we actually make them useful and accessible from the starting room instead of needing a damned HS for new people who don't even know what an HS is? My village of 50+ people in World 3 was (almost) entirely built off of shiny noobs from the Charter Stone accessed in the starting area. Why? We took the time to only have it on when we were around, greet the people who came through, and introduce them straight-away into a community. That kind of reception is what a lot of people want in a game like this, and we used it to great advantage both for ourselves, and a as a result, for the community. Give us back that utility.

7 - Equipment decay - This one's going to be super popular, BUT. When you already have the nicest equipment in the game, you have no need to trade for anything else. Sure armor and weapons take their hits, that's fine. But your clothes never wear out, your pick will go on forever, your sword needs no maintenance, your Scythe is eternally sharp, your shovel lasts the millenia, and your fishing pole knows no end. That beautifully gilded hat? Unless it's stolen it'll never need to be replaced. Even curios now have a limited utility in the long term (reference decay for my response to that). Start making things wear out and we'll have a reason and a need to make more and fuel trading.

8 - Stop focusing on End Game Content - This is really more a call out to the community, stop thinking of the game in terms of 'End Game Content'. This is a Wilderness Survival game about community, civilization, and culture. Your end game should be to figure out how to grow your community, how to actively recruit in innovative and interesting ways, and how to start adding flavor outside of 'Lol-Raid' and 'Borequit'. You are bored because your ambitions have been met and you are not practicing the creativity to come up with something new. You have the ability to landscape the world to a ridiculous degree. Multiple color stones to create lavish works of art. You can alt, start a brand new community and roll your old characters into maintenance mode. Cover the world with detailed roads and transportation systems that aren't just sticks in the ground. *Do* something. Expand the world and make it interesting, find ways to encourage new players to come into the game and play. Focusing on 'End Game' implies the game should have an end, that there's some set victory condition to be reached. If that's how you're playing this game, you missed the god damned point coming in the door. We want this game to be great and last the ages? Then we have to work to make it do that, we have to make it innovative and interesting. The community here is able to do things above and beyond the simple game mechanics provided to us. Rather than asking what J&L can do to make the game more interesting and enticing to new people, ask YOURSELF that question. Let's work with them instead of whining at them, and make the Hearthlands a place people want to come, play, and stay in.

Here are some thoughts i have that could turn this around:
a) change the game in such a way that people that start weeks/months later still have a fair chance - this could be accomplished by a map that keeps expanding, by resource nodes like clay and water that change quality over time (high quaity nodes become worse over time, other nodes that were bad become better over time) as to avoid the situation we have now that once you have found and fortified your high quality clay water and soil, you are set for life.

I think having nodes that slowly degrade in quality until they vanish, only for another to respawn afterwards somewhere semi-randomly on the map would be the best solution here. Keeps things interesting, lets you 'own' the spawn for a while, but after time other people get a chance at it.

c) the random number generator should be "fair" : no qual 36 ore bullshit at mine level 4. Not to say everyone should end up with qual 200 all the time, but some sort of sensible (and rewarding) minimum should be in place

This I disagree with, the RNG being a bitch is part of the fun. But then I'm a Dwarf Fortress player.

g) you should never feel like you are being capped - make it insane hard to progress after you reached a certain level cap, but always make it possible. Progress comes in many ways...from village to town to metropole ( so content wise) or from ability 1 to 999.....Make it almost impossible to create a char that has all abilities but promote specialisation

The 'decaying stats/skills' mentioned above I think would be the perfect solution to this.

[tyrtix]

I agree with the shaping of the world and the capacity of making cool things.. but...i'll still play if i could just bash down easily enough my fences and get a bit more of land, or make a brand new tower with the colours i would like...but i cannot, so i am bored again and, right now, waiting a new patch to give me reasons to come back and play again.

[Burinn]

I agree with the shaping of the world and the capacity of making cool things.. but...i'll still play if i could just bash down easily enough my fences and get a bit more of land, or make a brand new tower with the colours i would like...but i cannot, so i am bored again and, right now, waiting a new patch to give me reasons to come back and play again.

Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.