Petition to Jorb for Stat Caps

[Agame]

- How about "make the fastest knarr you can, build 4 docks on 4 continents and charge people one pearl an inter-continental trip." Or 5 seeds q 200 or whatever you feel like. Or one crafted hat.
- How about the old "I want to have a tower in the cellar of a house in the cellar of a house"?
- How about "I want to have the best Q well of the entire map, then make it public for free?"
- How about inventing another 3 then doing all of them in any order but only after you finished all credos on a single character without dying?

That is the real attraction in a sandbox. The end-goal is yours to set. Only your lack of imagination can ever lead to an end of the game. Or the game owners pulling the plug.

[overtyped]

Stat caps are decent if there are ways to raise stats through doing stuff like dungeons, aka nonbottable stuff.
300 could be the stat cap, but killing a dungeon boss drops an item like the heart container that can increase stats.

[MagicManICT]

Stat caps are decent if there are ways to raise stats through doing stuff like dungeons, nonbottable stuff.

I'm guessing you're referring to temporary boosts, otherwise, if they're permanent, that's not really a cap.

[overtyped]

Stat caps are decent if there are ways to raise stats through doing stuff like dungeons, nonbottable stuff.

I'm guessing you're referring to temporary boosts, otherwise, if they're permanent, that's not really a cap.

not temporary. 300 will be the cap for food, but dungeons can increase it without limit. Actually this shud have it's own thread.

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

I'd like to make the same proposal here. I'd love to see dragons and other big fantasy things. however, haven as is is already great. There are tons of things to do, tons of goals to create. Maybe the addition of these "greater things" will actually lessen the greatness of the game.

My argument would be that they simply don't add any content that's worth pursuing for more than a novelty thing. We need more content that's similar to gilding in its scope (Not its exact content). Things that provide a diverse set of choices and tactics to help you at every point during your playtime. Innovations that help increase the importance of content like this is important, while ones that impact their usefulness need to be avoided.

Dragons could be fun, sure. But I'd really see a method introduced that lets us customize our armor in a meaningful way. I'd like to see weapon, tool, and food decay that keep these industries forever relevant and the crafting of top-end equipment necessary. I'd like to see farms get diseased and blighted so that farming is more than just plant and forget, and animals have a similar system installed. With them would come more important healing and medical systems to help counteract them.

But those are just my ideas... Any idea that touches on the game at every stage is a good one.

Dragons just... don't.

[Avu]

I have another idea, what if there was a system to increase the global stat cap and it would depend on the death of an x number of high stat characters say after 15 (a percentage of active players over last x days or whatever) high stat characters died (check for both stats and skills to count) increase global stat cap by 50 and repeat at infinity. If people want to make alts to suicide for this to empower everyone including their enemies great let them otherwise it would just go up naturally through pvp (which will be encouraged by it being easier to just remake your character anyway).

[Granger]

I have another idea, what if there was a system to increase the global stat cap and it would depend on the death of an x number of high stat characters say after 15 (a percentage of active players over last x days or whatever) high stat characters died (check for both stats and skills to count) increase global stat cap by 50 and repeat at infinity. If people want to make alts to suicide for this to empower everyone including their enemies great let them otherwise it would just go up naturally through pvp (which will be encouraged by it being easier to just remake your character anyway).

Wouldn't help with the issue that the world gets meaningless after a while.

[Reyajh]

I also agree with Lunarius, for the most part, but am not sold on the stat cap idea (Nor am I likely to be.) There will always be someone better than you. Grow up! Get over it. This is why there will never be an end to the crypto wars. Someone will always figure out a way around/over/under/through/whatever... So Titan runs around naked and swings his wooden axe and swats the little gnats fleeing like flies and thinks he is all wise... Soon enough someone, or a team, emerges and figures out a way to rip his skull from his lofty head and shove it in their panel but to study in triumphant glee.

...Haven is a Sandbox style game by deliberate choice, intention, and design. The trick the developers have, in my opinion, is producing content that will, in turn, develop into emergent content. I'm not quite sure that the presence of coins in the game counts, but I suspect that since there is no point during the game where coins are REQUIRED for trade purposes that our use of them and the markets that result from them count. We don't have to have a Community Faire (I rather wish we didn't), each village could be a competing market of its own, but we as a community developed the Community Faire instead. This was not planned, not designed, and not required by the creators, it happened because of other elements of game design...

...The arguments against stat caps are largely based in the desire for there to be something to do during this 'End Game'. If all you do is grind for stats, kill things, and push quality as far as it will go? I feel like you're missing out on a huge part of the game experience that is richer, deeper, and more nuanced than simply pushing numbers.

Sorry buddy, I agree with you wholeheartedly on emergent content but, what you feel doesn't matter to how some people like to play the game. Personally, the closest I ever came to top dawg in an mmo was 16th Blacksmith out of over 2200 (since there was an 0th position in 'Lastkingdom' I was technically 17th in all the servers). LK was also a hardcore pvp game and what did that enable me to do? Pay to have killed whomever I wanted in the game. Me, I only used it once to have the supposed 'top dog' killed, by number 3(Japton a 16 year old kid ), because he pk'd me for no reason. Point being; so what if someone else is higher than you. I like having that aspect of the game in the game. It adds to the drama which is a big part of what this type of game revolves around. And they deserve reward for their efforts. If they cheated? Well you won't end that without removing everything else that makes the game fun and worth playing. Certainly, at least 'unique'.

...If we are to see this game truly flourish and reach its potential, we need to stop this incessant obsession with "End Game". We need to turn our minds to everflowing threads of emergent behavior based on interesting and engaging content and instead look for ways that will keep the world growing and evolving whether numbers grow or not.

Just keep making the game fun. The game does and the game does not have 'end game' content aspects. So what. Add more.

Haven and Hearth is only mechanically a game of numbers, experientially it is one of the most interesting social experiments I've ever had the pleasure to be a part of. "End Game" content design will just turn it into every other MMO, and that is a sorrow I could not bear to see visited on it.

I couldn't agree more with this and most of what follows.

We have enough traditional game design. Jorb and Loftar seek to break that mold, and do so with regularity... If you're looking for the same old game, you might need to look somewhere else. If that's what you keep expecting this to become with your "End Game" obsession, then you're part of the problem plaguing it, not the solution.

Stop talking about End Game, and start talking about how and why stat caps are good or bad for long term gameplay.

I sense letting the community police itself is the answer and perhaps that could be encouraged or supported better. Either way...

The game might just seem too hardcore for where a lot of gamers are. Some will, some will never change in that. Stat caps are bad imo because once a player reaches max stats, as has been stated, all that ever seems left to do is run around and show off all the glorious things you and everyone else that cared to, accomplished. Again as has been stated, solve that and you might be on to something. The dev's can add more content as a solution but all I've ever seen of that attempt to solve is just regurgitated, circular, same ole' – same ole' and there are already many games that do that. Some of it might be fun and interesting but everyone is just stacked up waiting for that next expansion to go running off and rinse – repeat. I think the non-stat-cap route adds more diversity. But who knows... In the end, like Jorb said, no matter what he does some will quit. I think they should keep on doing what they are doing which keeps the game unique and that is more than just no stat caps...

[Granger]

Stat caps are bad imo because once a player reaches max stats, as has been stated, all that ever seems left to do is run around and show off all the glorious things you and everyone else that cared to, accomplished. Again as has been stated, solve that and you might be on to something.

You might have noticed that eg. this wouldn't boil down to stat cap at x, you're done, it would still allow you to put more work in to get better - just no longer able to permanently go outside the bounds the world is meaningful in.