Tri-quality system: huh?

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Tri-quality system: huh?

Postby Hasta » Tue Jul 12, 2016 8:05 pm

I am a rational and understanding person, and, although I am far from being some kind of a "guru", I dare say I know a thing or two about this game most of us actively playing (and some others wait for a "new world" to start, much like vultures over a dying lion's corpse).

I am describing myself this way to encourage people responsible for that abomination of a quality system we have in place to come clean and confess, unburdening themselves from the horrible guilt for spawning this macabric E/S/V cadavre that, I have no doubt of that, keeps them awake at nights. I sincerely believe that their intentions were pure, they hoped for the best releasing their child into Hearthlands, but, alas, the child was stillborn, came back as a ghoul and is slowly devouring the souls of every hearthing.

In all seriousness though: what was the initial purpose of implementing this seemingly unnecessarily complicated system, and why is it still in place if it barely affects anything in current world? I mean, armor and weapons, yes. Foods. And... that's pretty much every aspect of the game affected by tri-quality difference, that I know of. Not that I really care because, let's be honest, the E/S/V fluctuations are rarely extreme, and the correlations between them and affected item attributes are less than crucial (that is to rephrase "basically don't mean shit").

The sole actual somewhat constructive effect tri-quality has is long-term planning for crafting the highest-tier armor and weapons. If you want a high-damage sword, go for Substance since the very beginning of your mining, smelting and treeplanting. Other than that, a few points here or there will not affect your gameplay in any measurable way whatsoever.

After some knowledgeable person reveals to all interested readers, what was the intended purpose of E/S/V, besides making hearthlings' lives much, much more tedious and dragging, I would also like an answer to this question (it bothered me for some time now and I think I should just ask this and be done with it).

Can you guys (jorb and loftar) please, please make the tri-quality system go away anytime soon, or at least make it it into some sort of a rudimentary mechanic solely for weapon/armorcrafting?
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Re: Tri-quality system: huh?

Postby Ysh » Tue Jul 12, 2016 8:21 pm

Hasta wrote:After some knowledgeable person reveals to all interested readers, what was the intended purpose of E/S/V, besides making hearthlings' lives much, much more tedious and dragging, I would also like an answer to this question (it bothered me for some time now and I think I should just ask this and be done with it).

I assume it is to giving development more ''knobs for turning'' to balance various thing.
Hasta wrote:Can you guys (jorb and loftar) please, please make the tri-quality system go away anytime soon, or at least make it it into some sort of a rudimentary mechanic solely for weapon/armorcrafting?

Agree that triquality is shit. Obscure and does not mattering for most times. Feels arbitrary and punishment for times that it does matters. Without any way to influence which value is changing, it is just random.
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Re: Tri-quality system: huh?

Postby Kaios » Tue Jul 12, 2016 8:42 pm

Can't recall the reasons given for why they implemented the three qualities but I don't like it and apparently neither do a lot of other people.

The largest negative impact it has is definitely on the natural resources. Last world the resource qualities differed too greatly in that you'd find a clay node at 20 80 20 or something like that, effectively useless to a majority of players. This world it's a little better and you can find more nodes that are relatively equal in all 3 qualities but this time around I have yet to see a natural resource (clay, water, soil from the ground and not from any other source) that has been very high at all. Most players can easily wander around and find a 40-60 average clay, water or soil node because there are so many in abundance but I have yet to see or hear about very many spots much higher. The new resources were a failure in this regard as well since they were supposed to "typically be higher in quality" and I have indeed heard of some over q100 but again the qualities fall short of the intention.

When it comes to building structures that rely on quality this is the only time I care to take in to account the individual qualities of my clay or brick, as for the crafts I could care less about the individual qualities and only focus on average quality instead except for swords where only essence really matters all that much.

Tri quality was an interesting experiment but I hate it and it's time we returned to the original, better quality system.
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Re: Tri-quality system: huh?

Postby The_Blode » Wed Jul 13, 2016 12:32 am

I agree it is more annoying than anything else. I love the idea of separate qualities effecting stuff like study time, experience required, and LP gained separately, as well as food having separated FEPs, hunger and energy levels. But beyond that i don't see any point to it, and I honestly have no idea if that's how it works because I'm not hardcore enough a player to pay attention. I use Amber client as well, so I can see all the q's at a glance and show the average and all that jazz, I imagine it's even more annoying on the default client.

If there can be a solid reason, like the various stats on food and curios, for the three qualities, awesome. Maybe that's the goal when things are said and done. But as it is, I feel it's just complexity for complexity's sake. Yes, it kind of breaks the monotony that little bit, but is it worth tripling the numbers you need to worry about in terms of q?
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Re: Tri-quality system: huh?

Postby lachlaan » Wed Jul 13, 2016 12:53 am

The quality system was pretty easy to understand, and a quick look at the wiki or a query on the forums will yield you a clear explanation as to what each thing does. I personally think it adds a bit of complexity where the complexity is needed, since using the same argument you might as well suggest all the stats be removed, as specialization is just complexity for complexity's sake and we just want 1 stat called "Badassery" that measures all our skills equally. I find it fun to hunt for nodes that match some need rather than another, like "drinking water" with high essence, or baking water with high vit/substance, high ess/sub water for the leather industry etc.

If you dislike how the natural resources were spawned, then suggest a change in that with loftar, how he generates the quality fields next world, if it's a matter of it being unclear what they do, perhaps better tooltips are needed. If it's a case of the qualities of farming products and animals advancing erratically, then perhaps suggest a more fluid progression of that, but asking to remove it is like throwing away a toy because it didn't do what you wanted, instead of figuring out how to make it do what you want (ask the devs if they're willing to change it or just nerfbat it into single-stat territory).
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Re: Tri-quality system: huh?

Postby Hasta » Wed Jul 13, 2016 1:01 am

lachlaan wrote:asking to remove it is like throwing away a toy because it didn't do what you wanted, instead of figuring out how to make it do what you want


The thing is, to use the same metaphor - I know how to make this toy do what I want. It just doesn't make me happy in the process.

Complexity for the sake of complexity is not necessarily a bad thing, in a sensible manner. I don't find tri-quality system sensible complexity-wise, you do, and that is perfectly normal: the difference is understandable. Now, asking to remove stats altogether "because it's complexity for it's own sake too" is just diminishing my argument to absurd, I don't think it's a valid comparison.

Still waiting for devs to weighn in, although the hope is fading :<
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Re: Tri-quality system: huh?

Postby The_Blode » Wed Jul 13, 2016 2:30 am

lachlaan wrote:I personally think it adds a bit of complexity where the complexity is needed, since using the same argument you might as well suggest all the stats be removed, as specialization is just complexity for complexity's sake and we just want 1 stat called "Badassery" that measures all our skills equally.


Slippery Slope fallacy. Character building is a core part of many games and certainly not complexity for complexity's sake. It's the one of the core foundations of the RPG genre, you get to choose how the character you are 'roleplaying' is going to grow. And yes, many other games apply a quality to an item either by random values for stats, a prefix/suffix-effect system, or indeed a numerical value. But three separate numerical values in this fashion is just.. too much. That's all. If anything it adds stress more than it adds a feeling of progression.
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Re: Tri-quality system: huh?

Postby Granger » Wed Jul 13, 2016 5:47 am

I mainly dislike the impact it has on the interface.

We're all spoiled by custom clients: start up the official one and take a look at stuff and take a look through some cupboards. The 3 quality display overlay of the custom ones doesn't look pleasing too.
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Re: Tri-quality system: huh?

Postby Potjeh » Thu Jul 14, 2016 7:45 am

I don't like it because a player has so little influence on the final qualities of their products, it's all about what sort of raw materials you find. I think triple quality would make sense if you could somehow change the ratios, so you purposefully make trade-offs between the qualities' effects rather than just being stuck with whatever the RNG gives you.
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Re: Tri-quality system: huh?

Postby ricky » Thu Jul 14, 2016 7:51 am

I really enjoy the idea of being able to 'combine' raw resources to alter the quality. for instance, if you have 30/10/10 clay, and 10/10/30 clay, you could combine them to make 20/10/20 clay.

hell, any way to tweak resource quality would be nice. fertilizer for dirt, filters for water, etc. spending the first half of the world hunting for decent Q nodes is obtuse.
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