Rewrite GUI and Change character creation [for new players]

[524u]

Many currently playing players of Haven and Hearth are veterans who remember how this game works, especially the GUI / game mechanics, but what about new players?

The problem:
If developers want more players, they need to understand that there are new generations of people who don't want to waste time googling/clicking through unofficial game wiki, searching topics on forum etc. like it was years ago.
New players keep coming to the game (the game has humongous potential, really), but one of the main reasons why the players leave and never come back is because of not understanding how to play this game

The gui/game at start tells nothing

What about health, what about crafting, what about fighting, creatures, curio, siege system, PVP, when players can fight / when not, what are "scents", criminal acts etc.
I know that there are tooltips on particular gui elements, but hey, do you really think that few sentences is enough to understand game mechanics?

Take a look at other games, like factorio, the player is nicely introduced.
Player has simple tasks which introduce game mechanics - how to: craft, build, fight etc.

Don't focus on new things, fix current problems, to help new players get into this game.

Maybe create small tutorial at "character creation" place, which tells the players how to move, interact which objects, craft, build simple constructions, gild system, how to cook simple food, like, telling the players what they exactly need to do, pointing on gui elements, like in many new games.
(for example, I think that new players don't know what is "Character sheet", what it looks like, how to open it etc.)
Of course it can be skipped.

After small tutorial, there MUST be an access to recent "glossary"/"help" section, from DEVELOPERS which is UP TO DATE.

What about the GUI?
The overall GUI is good, reflects the game vibes, but I think that the small icons with tooltips on the bottom right/left corners should be changed, there should be a list with icons and text, maybe change the display to list instead of "blocks"
I don't have detailed list what could be changed and how, but please, do research, think about it, watch some gameplay videos of haven, analyze how the new players play this game, what is frustrating.

I understand that I may be exaggerating, but the players should ENJOY the game.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game, but maybe it's time to think about new players?

To sum up:
- Change GUI of navigation to craft, build etc. (some UX/UI elements are very unpleasant, player has to guess what is where, for example gilds)
- Create a tutorial/guide to introduce the player to basic game mechanics instead of throwing them unprepared into the game world (some info about health system, which animals are aggressive, how to craft/ build, what to click)
- Developers need to know what is "user experience" (UX), really

[524u]

To Jorb/Loftar
You know that there are players who really love this game and could help you with that, what's the point of not letting them help you?
Some of them already help with for example client-side code

[SnuggleSnail]

Haven is too convoluted and complicated for groups of over 100 people that develop their own clients and have played for in excess of a decade.

I'm with you in spirit, but even the 1% of haven don't understand most of it. Not even sure if Jorb would consider that a good or bad thing.

[sMartins]

An even more relevant point in my opinion is the technical side.
Are you aware that right now with a fresh installation of the game, I take my configuration, gtx 970, as an example, the game runs at around 15-20 fps.
Far be it from me to go into the technical details, of which I know little, but hypothetically I think it's due to all those new technologies, superstructures, effects that are now set as basic in the drivers and sofwtares that manage the hardware (and that incentivise buying new graphics cards).

The fact is that without disabling these settings by the user, the current game does not run, or runs very poorly on most configurations.

Something, in my opinion, to take into account.

[524u]

I'm with you in spirit, but even the 1% of haven don't understand most of it. Not even sure if Jorb would consider that a good or bad thing.

In my opinion, they don't have to understand most of it, it's nice to give a "space" to the players to explore new things, but "explore" is the crucial word.

Bad example:
The cooking system
Probably no-one knows how exactly it works.
Most of us on the forum already know that ingredients give different results, but there is no information about it in game.
When selecting blueberry pie I see that it gives INT and PER, but by adding barley and millet flour the final result is STR, INT, PER and CON (according to shubla's cookbook)
Players after that may be surprised and they may think that they don't know how the "cooking" works, which is a bad sign IMO

Good example:
Smoking meat in smoke shed
Players just put meat into smoke sheet, then some wood, and wait for the results
There is information about it in game, what is missing is probably - how much wood is needed, but it's more because of the game design, to guess everything (which is frustrating at some point)

I think they could change the interface of smoke shed - create slots only for blocks of wood, instead of clicking on wood block and right clicking on smoke shed to guess if it works.
right-clicking on everything with items to guess if it works is too abstract, a bad design. It should be replaced with more intuitive interfaces, like above - slots for wood blocks in smoke shed

It is only one example, there is more, like
- mining
- how to tame animal
- how to fight and how to cancel fight (what are the little icons next to character avatar - the two swords or bough on green background - I know that player can guess, but yeah, GUESS, no information about how it works)
- how to get seeds for farm
- how to hunt
- what is QUALITY in this game and why it is so important - probably the main reason why people should stick to this game
- ...

The players don't have such information, it really is a shame

[DonVelD]

I agree, especially with the character creation because I can relate to that. When I started out in W10 with vanilla client my sound was cutting out and I thought it was my fault, then I went through a river and realized that my character was female yet I didn't know why I couldn't pick a male one (I feel like most of players don't read the flavor text that appears before the rivers, just like I did).

Then I was completely confused on how to spawn near my friend and in the end I didn't figure it out. And after I spawned in after a fair bit of time, I had NO idea what the stats did, how to get them and if I'm wasting LP by using it on XYZ skill instead of some other one. I also thought that the only source of LP is discovering things. The game truly is terrible for new players, even if we don't mention the client.

[vatas]

I also thought that the only source of LP is discovering things.

When I first played Haven back in w6, I figured out you can study things but only had access to Itsy Bitsy I found in random container and Cat Gold, so I was starved for LP really quickly and had no idea how to acquire more/better curios.

World 14 was a huge stride in this aspect, you now how study quests in "Beginning of" -quests for Fishing and Pottery that act as breadcrumbs that help you figure out that you can both harvest curios from natural stuff (Fishy Eyeball) and craft them (Toy Chariot.)

[dagrimreefah]

zoomers are dumb and gay, they don't deserve this game

[hollyfire]

I agree with vatas.
quests are a simple solution to this problem. I think everything started smoothly for the new players. if they found these quests... but the other game system is too complicated to understand.
in addition, it is not always possible to explain any subject in textual information. maybe the initial location will be transformed into a training ground? new players can determine their role in the game world by testing their strength in any direction without loosing any LP\XP to fixing their mistakes.

or maybe they will get some kind of little increase to the initial parameters? something like choosing a role at the start.

[SnuggleSnail]

You guys are being too high concept and wordy. Scream "in game time is an annoying, retarded, frustrating noob trap that exists for no reason" constantly until they fix it after a couple years.

Focusing on something unambiguously awful, easy to convey, and meme-able is the most efficient way to make yourself realize you're wasting your time when they struggle to even agree it's an issue after years. Boulders. Drink keybind. Pepper. Truffles. Sleds. Satiations.