Moon Weeks (cheap idea for more dynamic world)

[LadyGoo]

The hafen's biggest issue is that it becomes too stale at some point. Nothing changes, you have to do the same thing over and over, which puts a lot of people off. Established meta-game leaves no space for creativity and etc.
I think, the devs could temporarily boost different things every week to change the stagnate meta-game. For instance, declare the month of the dry weather or something like that, so the trees would be very easy to cut down. So people will concentrate on cutting the trees down asap. The week of the fast building, so people would shift to build stuff quicker and etc. Making a week of the mega-beasts, so the animals would be much harder to kill, but give much higher quality loot, so the villages would spend time on hunting together. Or a week of foraging, so anything you harvest would give you 4x times what it usually gives.

http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/he ... eeks.shtml

Week of Toad If a young girl should dare kiss a frog during this week, it is said that she will be married within a year.
Week of Hen A week when you should watch your step
Week of Firefly The week with the most beautiful nights.
Week of Dragonfly A week when it impossible to have a quiet lakeside fishing session.
Week of Fox Not a good week to be a chicken.
Week of Rat The favourite week of cats.
Week of Rabbit Not a good week to be a carrot.
Week of Squirrel Not a good week to be a hazelnut.
Week of Caterpillar A week when the Elves organise a great meal, after which they do a traditional dance.
Week of Hamster Weekly Hamster and Berserk Combat Hamster production doubles.
Week of Pigeon A week when all statues must be cleaned daily.

Translating to hafen:

Week of Toad you can kiss the enthroned toads, the curio gains 300% more lp boost
Week of Hen more intense chicken quality rise
Week of Dragonfly A week when it impossible to have a quiet lakeside fishing session. No fish, instense dragonfly spawning.
Week of Fox Not a good week to be a chicken. Foxes spawn more often, gain strength and higher quality
Week of Rat The favourite week of cats. Lynxes become deadly.
Week of Rabbit Not a good week to be a carrot. Intense rabbit spawning
Week of Squirrel Not a good week to be a hazelnut

[LadyV]

I think all kinds of new and unique lore and fun things like this can and should be added.

[ven]

First off, thanks for writing. Ever since Sevenless and equivalents stopped posting well-thought ideas this board has been pointless.

A simpler, more lore-neutral version of this feature would be a weather system, consisting in nothing else but changes in formulas and spawn rates. They would change weekly and cause minor disruptive effects, working alongside seasons (which are instead major disruptions to all playstyles). Something like:

Heavy rain: This week the hearthlands are suffering from particularly intense rains. Water and clay nodes have their quality randomly increased, while sand and dirt cannot be collected during this week. All characters receive significant penalties to their marksmanship attribute, and those wearing heavy clothes cannot run past the 2nd speed. Curios under the Spring Items category yield 35% more LP.

Mild heat: The Sun shines bright, and the heat is starting to become uncomfortable. Drying rack and kiln activities sped up by 15%. Quality of sand nodes slightly increased.
Quality and spawn rates of snapdragon, tangled bramble, and thorny thistle slightly increased. Rates of mushrooms, frogs crown, edelweiß decreased.
Curios under the Summer Items category yield 15% more LP.

/

From a development point of view, both moon and weather weeks are a great dev'ing opportunity to test changes right on the main server, without compromising the entire world (since these changes basically reset after 7 days). The devs could then evaluate player reactions and change the respective weather/moon week effects accordingly. Pushing important updates into static, unchangeable and permanent worlds like the one we have now are a challenge, as jorbtar have repeatedly seen since september.

From the point of view of player engagement, I think the randomness of weather weeks are a good thing in itself. They would make players anxious about what changes we'd be having this week. A little bit of anxiety would be great to fight playerbase boredom (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1 ... hp?print=1)

And related to your other thread, when you talk about the world stagnating after one group wins, these ideas could also minimize that a bit. Since weather weeks are random, it could happen that we get three consecutive weeks of "scorching sun", ruining water quality and giving massive penalties to certain armors etc, and random events like this could shift the balance between losing and winning factions somewhat. Not to mention making trade way more dynamic.

[jorb]

Heroes was always a fun game.

[Vert]

seasons, weeks. people want gameplay changing from time to time.

[shubla]

I think it would be good idea to have more impact on game depending on what time of in game year or day it is.

[Teacwr]

Agree, in-game weather or calendar system will be a great addition for H&H meta!

[zebratul]

Certainly would love to see some random or seasonal changes to the world.
Imagine if we could get rivers to freeze over for the third of the time? So we could actually use wagons or explore on horse-back easily.

[shubla]

Certainly would love to see some random or seasonal changes to the world.
Imagine if we could get rivers to freeze over for the third of the time? So we could actually use wagons or explore on horse-back easily.

Freezing rivers/lakes would be nice.
You should also be able to break ice, in case that you need access to the water.