Players are disposable mentality - the true culprit

[naosnule]

[Hint; it's because more often than not the good immigrants integrate perfectly and the bad immigrants do not integrate, and only take money]

That's a lie. To integrate perfectly you have to abandon your ethical values and adopt those of the country you now belong to. Only an insane person would do that, although I can buy the argument that there are those who very much pretend.

Edit:
To give an example: If you were to integrate perfectly into Sweden, you'll have to genuinely believe in the sanctity of human life and the judicial process to the extent that you do not consider vigilantism against or death penalty for ISIS members to be okay. How many from the Middle-East or even from USA do you think would accept that? XD

[Danno]

they won't remove permadeath like you're asking

Where did I say that? Go ahead, quote me.


For the record, I haven't played this game in a year. I have 3 or 4 friends who occasionally mention H&H, joking about how we should play it again, but that rarely leads to anything. Why should the devs care about an ungrateful player like me who doesn't play and isn't part of the community? Read critical flaw #4.

I'm far from being an outsider to this game, though.

1417 HOURS is a goddamn long time to be playing a game. In theory, I should be happy to pay for a game I've played for so long. In reality, I still wouldn't find it worth a monthly subscription since most of the gameplay is tedious, plus my friends and I tend to walk away from this game with a bad taste in our mouths whenever we play again and quit again. Still, someone like me would probably be willing to pay money for some features (as I mentioned before). Said features would also prevent my friends and I from quitting so soon, resulting in us staying longer and possibly paying more.

The Swedish government is a corrupt racket run by clowns and thieves, and yes, they do engage in a fair bit of wealth redistribution to buy votes for themselves and their class interests.

So pretty much same as everywhere else.

Derailer )-:

[Óðinn]

[Hint; it's because more often than not the good immigrants integrate perfectly and the bad immigrants do not integrate, and only take money]

That's a lie. To integrate perfectly you have to abandon your ethical values and adopt those of the country you now belong to. Only an insane person would do that, although I can buy the argument that there are those who very much pretend.

Edit:
To give an example: If you were to integrate perfectly into Sweden, you'll have to genuinely believe in the sanctity of human life and the judicial process to the extent that you do not consider vigilantism against or death penalty for ISIS members to be okay. How many from the Middle-East or even from USA do you think would accept that? XD

They integrate perfectly, not totally. Perfectly in my mind is enough to get along with the native group of a country

[chrisrock]

The Swedish government is a corrupt racket run by clowns and thieves, and yes, they do engage in a fair bit of wealth redistribution to buy votes for themselves and their class interests.

So pretty much same as everywhere else.

Derailer )-:

my bad, i caused the derail, i guess.

[Kubius]

spawning to HF could maybe cost a tiny amount.

That's not a bad idea for a possible MT income source - pay $0.99 to spawn a new character at someone's hearth fire. And then that could link into a benefit - premium members (in addition to the play-time being the current amounts but WEEKLY refreshing on Monday for both F2P and P2P players) and subscribers could spawn a descendant character at their ancestors' hearth fire for free, and subscribers wouldn't have to pay for hearth secret spawning at all.

It gives people (like me) who are inclined towards one time payments instead of ongoing an incentive, while also letting you get a little money now and then out of people spawning new characters. A thousand $0.99 transactions is superior to ten $79.99 transactions.

If you subscribe for a full year, it works out to $6/mo, which is pretty close to what people claim they are willing to pay.
Sensible reaction: If you're dead set on the stupid subscription idea, reduce the normal subscription fee to $5/mo or $6/mo, make the discounted rate work out to $4/mo or something.

I like this. $6/mo with descending pay rates, like $5.50/mo for 3 months, $5.00/mo for 6 months, and $4.00/mo for a year.

The hardcore playerbase (people who play for more than 6 months in a row) is fairly small. Incidentally, this is where the money comes from since casual players won't care enough to buy a subscription.

This is a really big part of the paradigm - if people who don't want to subscribe can't play the game casually (1h a day or so and then a binge on weekends) then you won't have enough of a player base to facilitate interactions. This is why I've been pushing for 12-14 hours a week for free players and 24-28 hours a week for OTP players, refreshing on specifically Monday - H&H is as you have mentioned a VERY slow game, and those hours are not going to be spent doing exciting things.

To fix the monetization problem, read this:
viewtopic.php?p=533239&sid=c19de1283328b4c3517326442798ad2a#p533239
The gist of it: instead of punishing cheapo players, you should reward the paying customers. Let them buy the features they've requested numerous times throughout the years.

When I see "free Q100 crap" I immediately think pay to win and ready my torch and pitchfork... but honestly, maybe it's not as bad as it seems. Paying for temporary (several month temporary, mind) quality material points would equalize the imbalance where high-quality sites get camped on HARD. Conversely, doing so would throw off the actual value of finding and owning a high-quality resource point and using it for trade.

But then I get to the concept of decreased building/paving/etc wait timers for subscribed players, and it intrigues me. It'd be an unquestionable benefit, but H&H is played as a background game for some people - it's the "slow down and speed up" monetization model found in things like Clash of Clans, and those games make craploads of money. However, it could be BETTER IN H&H THAN IT IS THERE because H&H is already a slow-playing game and those faster timers wouldn't affect curios, animal farming, drop rates, that sort of stuff - it's a really intriguing tradeoff that I would like to see explored if it meant F2P or B2P could be better.

[Oddity]

here in my country we hear stories about how sweden is the best country

Which country?

The whole concept of "free money" suggests that money is a central part of your life; to understand Sweden you are already there on the wrong track. A major aspect of the socialliberal ideology in Sweden is to eliminate the "unfairness" caused by chance: a child does not choose their parents and that's why Sweden attempts to a large extent make an even playing field by giving children free healthcare, free school and later on to a larget extent free college education.

Another central concept is that even those who belong to the lowest classes in society should not be constrained so much by money that they are "miserable". That's why there is significant economical aid to the lowest classes in society. Another way to look at it is: to increase the freedom of the individual you could remove several of their economical chains.

In other words: civilized nations simply do not behave like America.

[Danno]

This is why I've been pushing for 12-14 hours a week for free players and 24-28 hours a week for OTP players

Indeed, players would need at least that much time if they're going to be playing a game like this, which requires some pretty heavy time investment. If they absolutely insist on giving people time limits, these numbers would be a lot more fair. Still, I feel it would be better not to ward off the free players. When they're forced to log off of Haven, they're going to log onto something else that isn't restricting their play time.

When I see "free Q100 crap" I immediately think pay to win and ready my torch and pitchfork... but honestly, maybe it's not as bad as it seems. Paying for temporary (several month temporary, mind) quality material points would equalize the imbalance where high-quality sites get camped on HARD. Conversely, doing so would throw off the actual value of finding and owning a high-quality resource point and using it for trade.

There'd still be incentive in finding natural high quality resources - that is, they'd be unlimited and you wouldn't have to pay for them. I feel it gives players (and devs) the best of both worlds. The numerous hermits in the world would especially be pleased to have a chance at having high quality resources for a change, I think. Cha-ching.

my bad, i caused the derail, i guess.

I blame Jorb since people are naturally drawn to his posts (especially considering the lack of communication). They would also probably rather have a friendly discussion with the makers of their favourite game instead of criticizing it.

[Kubius]

This is why I've been pushing for 12-14 hours a week for free players and 24-28 hours a week for OTP players

Indeed, players would need at least that much time if they're going to be playing a game like this, which requires some pretty heavy time investment. If they absolutely insist on giving people time limits, these numbers would be a lot more fair. Still, I feel it would be better not to ward off the free players. When they're forced to log off of Haven, they're going to log onto something else that isn't restricting their play time.

You raise a very good point with the playtime limit - however, there's a consideration for leaving a playtime limit. Playtime limits help to ward off bots - the bot can play as long as it wants, but you can't. (And if you can, that's what subscription is for.)

There'd still be incentive in finding natural high quality resources - that is, they'd be unlimited and you wouldn't have to pay for them. I feel it gives players (and devs) the best of both worlds. The numerous hermits in the world would especially be pleased to have a chance at having high quality resources for a change, I think. Cha-ching.

I agree that there'd be incentive, but I'm still dubious on this - I'd start out implementing the increased playtime limits and hearth fire thingy, and then introduce that sometime down the line if there's enough demand for it.

[GenghisKhan44]

To get something like back on track: Danno's #4 point on the OP is spot on.

It's one thing when the game is just a social and development experiment. You can afford to treat your players like crap, or simply ignore their requests, because it doesn't exist for monetisation. It exists for their and your own pleasures and experimentation.

When you monetise, if you expect to make money, or keep a fanbase, you have to make concessions to the audience to whom you are catering. That's how business in general works.

But because, for all these years, you've done little to make this game accessible to newbies - many people, who might actually have money - and because you haven't heard the pleas of your players, so that the fanbase shrunk down to like-minded people, one of two things is going to happen: either the fan base will shrink all the more - and your game will dry up - or you will need to make the game more accessible to people, either by lowering the cost of it, or by making it more in the image of your consumers.

Your choice, devs. Sadly, you can either kiss the butts of your consumers and make money, or a game made perfectly as you want it, but, as it's currently going, not both.

[slipper]

Players' opinions are pretty much worthless here.