Current game mechanics support a shorter world

[VDZ]

I have to point out that, despite all the negativity in this thread, I have been enjoying w13 a lot and at least right now I'm still playing actively.

One thing I think people aren't highlighting enough with regards to 'longetivity' is that the game is simply insanely time-consuming if played seriously. A large part of the reason I quit every world is simply because I want my life back; at some point I want to spend more time doing other things as well, and Haven combines poorly with spending a significant amount of time on other things. Typically my idea is that I'll just start playing less, but usually in no time I find myself just not playing at all. As such, I think that people quitting after some time is partly an inherent aspect of Haven's design, and partly a result of many, many factors combined that encourage high-activity play and discourage low-activity play, and which would be very difficult to resolve.

As for 'trade being dead', I can't speak for factions or large villages, but I think small-scale trade is prospering more than ever before due to Thingwall travel making it easier to meet up and making distant barter stands more accessible.

for early world trade~ needing cloth and metal for your first tradestand, most noobies don't even get to that. I think it would be ideal to bring trade into even early game, day one access without needing Glue and cloth. Just a simple board and block to make a trade table.

For me a bigger problem for start-of-world trading is the fact that you can only trade object X for object Y. If you have a Fairy Mushroom and you'll accept either Hides, Leather, Wax, Tin or Iron for it, that's already five slots (which misrepresent the situation implying you're selling 5 Fairy Mushrooms when you're only selling one), and you'll have to build another barter stand for those two Heartwood Leaves you got, and another for your Pearl. Currency solves the problem, but it's locked behind Steel which is advanced tech and requires you to either no-life for three days or find an advanced player willing to trade some. I always get a Coinpress eventually, but it typically takes ages (and effort!), greatly hampering early-world trade. And without the Coinpress, there's just no point to having fewer than 3-4 barter stands.

That being said, I absolutely think haven endgame needs work but I think it should be MILES away from PVP in every imaginable way. Achievements, permanent trophies, leaderboards and anything that ultimately substantiates one's effort should be the endgame. Whether I am playing alone, with a couple friends or a realm village of 40 I think an endgame type of mechanic that could be enjoyed across the board of all types of players would be achievements. Everybody loves to brag, PVPers, hermits, casuals, you name it. Players can literally set their endgame - "this world I will aim for q500 metal and get the q500 metal badge." "This world I will aim for the kill 1000 foxes badge and get that permanent fox cape." etc.

I think you're overestimating the amount of people who care about achievements. WoW has become bloated with them, but the only people who care about them are either guilds who can get realm first achievements or a small minority of completionist players.

You're missing the core point. Players need goals to work towards. Once they've reached sufficient levels of progression and the rest feels either out of reach or pointless, they no longer have anything to work towards. Providing goals to work towards with permanent rewards (whether that's just a checkmark on a list, a cosmetic to show off, or something else) could incentivize playing further.

What does it matter if all of those players will be gone in a month anyway?

"The Statistical Research Group (SRG) at Columbia University, which Wald was a part of, examined the damage done to aircraft that had returned from missions and recommended adding armor to the areas that showed the least damage, based on his reasoning. This contradicted the US military's conclusions that the most-hit areas of the plane needed additional armor. Wald noted that the military only considered the aircraft that had survived their missions; any bombers that had been shot down or otherwise lost had logically also been rendered unavailable for assessment. The bullet holes in the returning aircraft, then, represented areas where a bomber could take damage and still fly well enough to return safely to base. Thus, Wald proposed that the Navy reinforce areas where the returning aircraft were unscathed, since those were the areas that, if hit, would cause the plane to be lost. His work is considered seminal in the then-nascent discipline of operational research." (Wikipedia on survivorship bias)

If the goal is to keep players around for longer, the focus should not be on addressing the concerns of players who keep playing anyways, but rather trying to address the issues that make people quit - the ones that most bother the people who stop playing after some time.

My two cents: It sucked when my friend back in w11 made Wrought Iron and I had to try and explain that we could just instead trade Cast Iron to big boys for Wrought Iron that would be trash to them but incredibly hq for us.

I realize I'm complaining that we had excellent trade opportunity but basically if we wanted to play optimally, we were locked out from entire industry because other people had orders of magnitude better industry stuff.

This mirrors some of my own experiences in earlier worlds. When you can easily obtain everything at far higher quality than you could ever make yourself by just smelting a few low-quality iron bars, it becomes pointless to do anything other than mining for iron. Having trade opportunities is generally a good thing, but if it's too easy to get things through trade it spoils the rest of the game and decreases longetivity.

The PvP elements are a sort of poison, limiting what could be, forcing game-theory-expedient extreme distrust. I think it would be dishonest to tell a new player the most appropriate course of action when seeing another player is anything other than immediate retreat. I thought Salem had an interesting approach with the central hub allowing for interaction.

You can still safely chat from behind your walls when people pass by. If you know a market nearby that's also a safe place.

Even something as simple as chatting, this game just doesn't have that. A global chat box when?

Realms provide 'global' chat, but it can take a while before they reach you. I'm still waiting for Whatever to expand to Kinmark, they've been in Tunberg for a while now but I still have no chat at home

Why do we have to use discord as a surrogate?

Because people insist on moving everything to Discord for some reason. In Legacy, Ender's client actually had IRC-based global chat, and there's no reason custom client makers couldn't bring that back. There just doesn't seem to be enough interest. As official channel we have the forums for global communication, but even then people seem to post a lot of stuff exclusively on Discord. (For example, earlier today I heard there's apparently a big market on the north side of the southwestern continent which was apparently announced over Discord, but there's no thread about it in Apples for Oranges.)

There are a pile of games that do PvP and trade and survival and every other element better. But I can't think of one other game that does crafting as perfectly.

You should check out the Atelier series, in most entries the crafting is significantly more in-depth than Haven. I particularly recommend the Arland sub-series, and especially Atelier Lulua, for crafting. (Avoid Ryza 1/2, Atelier Iris 1/2/3 and Mana Khemia 1/2 if you want the crafting; they're more like typical JRPGs.)

The crafting focus is pure crafting, though; there is completely no building aspect as is otherwise common in crafting-focused games, you do not grow trees/plants or perform other fancy activities for material gathering (you get it all from going somewhere and pressing a button or through combat) - it's all just crafting to make usable items and crafting to make intermediate ingredients to make usable items (or crafting to make intermediate ingredients to make other intermediate ingredients to make other intermediate ingredients to...).

[Oldimaru]

I think. Need add animal spot shuffle after winter!

[ChildhoodObesity]

I think. Need add animal spot shuffle after winter!

Decent idea too. I kind of wish animals would increase in quality after each shuffle as it's later into the world too. Idk about other people but there's a lot of satisfaction for me when I find a top animal node or something, however, that feeling is never relived since you camp the same spot the whole world and it doesn't get any better.

[Archiplex]

I think. Need add animal spot shuffle after winter!

That's actually a really good idea, yeah. It also adds a cool feeling to spring being the season of regrowth and starting anew- if some nodes shuffled around (I 100% agree with childhood that they should raise in general, too).

[Sevenless]

The concept of regional value increase via the questing system is also a possibility. Not necessarily saying in its current implementation, but a way for long time "anyone in the area" effort to improve a place over time?

Just throwing a thought out there, dunno if good.

Edit: Already thought of a bad. That'd make uncolonized areas worthless long term. I'm not sure if we're really expecting it, but the idea of late joiners venturing to new lands seems like a good goal if we ever really think eternal haven is possible.

[Pills]

I do think the change to potters clay was one of the biggest negative changes they did that crippled the longevity of worlds tbh.

That added with rockcrystals no longer having no cap on Q, just whatever the tool and stat is. Kind of killed all super-long-term quality progression like world 10 had

[ChildhoodObesity]

I do think the change to potters clay was one of the biggest negative changes they did that crippled the longevity of worlds tbh.

That added with rockcrystals no longer having no cap on Q, just whatever the tool and stat is. Kind of killed all super-long-term quality progression like world 10 had

Yeah I considered the rock crystal issue as well, however, I figured the steady growth in quality on dross from spiraling would be better than re-adding rock crystals without a cap.

[The_Lich_King]

Maybe add even more purpose to spring and make it so the Spring nodes are averagely much higher Q, and reshuffle for a lower average Q in Summer and Fall, so that there is something to do in spring.

[Zyean]

I do think the change to potters clay was one of the biggest negative changes they did that crippled the longevity of worlds tbh.

That added with rockcrystals no longer having no cap on Q, just whatever the tool and stat is. Kind of killed all super-long-term quality progression like world 10 had

Yeah I considered the rock crystal issue as well, however, I figured the steady growth in quality on dross from spiraling would be better than re-adding rock crystals without a cap.

I agree, sidenote, rock crystals have very little uses now

[Kaios]

One thing I think people aren't highlighting enough with regards to 'longevity' is that the game is simply insanely time-consuming if played seriously. A large part of the reason I quit every world is simply because I want my life back; at some point I want to spend more time doing other things as well, and Haven combines poorly with spending a significant amount of time on other things. Typically my idea is that I'll just start playing less, but usually in no time I find myself just not playing at all. As such, I think that people quitting after some time is partly an inherent aspect of Haven's design, and partly a result of many, many factors combined that encourage high-activity play and discourage low-activity play, and which would be very difficult to resolve.

Yeah, I agree with that assessment. I'd be interested in knowing how many of the online players indicated on the home page are unique individuals and how many are the same individuals running multiple accounts. I recall Salem obfuscating their population numbers in similar ways and to me that only indicates that the developers are afraid of showing what the true numbers look like.