A detailed critique of Haven & Hearth

[Cypress_z]

Hello. I am an individual who is a relatively new player to Haven & Hearth, and have decided to write a critique of the game. I will place this here, as well as on my blog and various other sites. For this reason, it will say some things people here on the forum already know.

1: Graphics
The graphics are occasionally criticized as poor, even on the game's own Wiki. Although it isn't 3d, I don't see it that way. For what the game is (a free, small scale MMO) they aren't that bad. The characters are simplistic, but there's nothing wrong with simplistic. Things are generally easy to distinguish, and most objects have a nice or unique feel. For what it is, I'll give the graphics decent marks.

2: Playability: The game interface is simple and easy to use, with a hotbar and detailed menus. Combat can get somewhat confusing, and you'll find combat abilities will end up dominating your hotbar if you don't want to die. The biggest flaw right now is the commonality of lag and the constant server crashes. The game goes down almost once a day, for several hours a day. This is not conductive to a fun play environment.

3: Crafting System
The crafting system is extremely good, having a wide variety of items and requiring an extensive chain of various crafts to create the more advanced items. This is where Haven & Hearth shines the most, because at it's heart the entire game is a crafting system. You hunt to get bones and leather needed to create fishing hooks and capes and palisades and so many other things. You chip stone to create buildings, and runestones and fishing lures. You forage for seeds in order to create a farm, which can be used to provide material needed for building yet other things. The game works on a long, extensive chain of events and objects. Because the chains are so complex and large and require so many skills, this encourages the formation and construction of communities. This is a good thing, as it is social ties that tend to keep MMOs going long after the grind and boredom would otherwise encourage them to quit. This makes Haven & Hearth shine. The Kin system is simple and does a good job of keeping communities together, making the formation of groups simple and easy.

However, not everything is good. The crafting system requires a preposterous amount of grinding, even to do basic things. Experience gain is modified by the quality of equipment you have, and the quality of equipment is modified by your skills. Gains for any skill are extremely slow, even with maximized peace/change beliefs, making setting up a home and small farm a very long and tedious process. This would be tolerable if unpleasant except that if you aren't playing for 16 hours a day, every day, from the start of a new world you are very likely to get murdered and have everything you own taken from you. Which brings me to my next point:

4: PVP:
In this game, PVP is not optional. It starts with theft at beginning levels. More advanced players will have certain means of protecting themselves, but newer players have none, save for grinding for a skill called Yeoman, which allows you to “claim” a small portion of land as your own. A player new to the game and attempting to get established enough not to starve to death may go out to forage to find people making off with everything they own and unable to do anything about it. Yeoman takes about 4000 Learning points, or LP, which for someone just starting translates into several hours of in-game play. More, generally, considering it took me two sixteen hour days of nonstop playing to get the talent myself, as it takes so much effort just to get the skills needed to get the items needed to set up a claim in the first place, and I had a village backing me. Even once you have a claim, however, you are very likely to have everything stolen and get murdered. There are skills which allow trespass and murder, and to be fair, they are fairly high in points requirements. Rage alone, the skill that only allows nonlethal fights with other players, costs 30,000 LP. That does help a fairly large bit with griefers wanting to just pop in with a new character and do damage (and the game has plenty of those) but it causes problems of it's own.

The primary issue is that there are certain communities which are slightly better established which happily murder and steal from everyone nearby. They do have individuals which play for 16 hours a day to get high combat abilities and the ability to murder, then proceed to kill absolutely anyone they can. While the game also allows for people to track these people down and kill them with the Ranger skill, and there are presumably people who wish to be rangers in the game, I never met any. My village might have gotten some if we had survived long enough. I suppose these issues can be illustrated with a short history of my settlement.

Our village started shortly after the beginning of world 4. A few days after the world restarted. These days, it turns out, made all the difference between the survival and mass murder of our village. When we started out, we had clear plans for what we wanted and set out to do them. After about four days, we had a community with all the basics, and most of the territory under claim. We'd had our issues with griefers and thieves during that time, of course, and many people ground LP to get yeoman to protect our resources. However, there was always the spare boat left out by accident or crate that was left outside a claim that someone would walk up and try to run off with. As a result, we had several people grind for combat ability and rage. This was more or less our undoing. Our desire to put down thieves led to the death of our village. Another village nearby, smaller but having been established earlier, had a small group of people that had done NOTHING but grind for combat ability since the start of the new world. With the few days lead they had, we had no hope. One of their members attempted to steal from us, grabbing boats and such. We had an individual come out and knock them unconscious and retrieve the boat. As a result, their entire community mobilized and murdered our enforcers, who with their lower combat ability (again, not as a result of not grinding, as we'd all been playing for about 16 hours a day since the beginning of the community) simply couldn't stand up to the other individuals, who then proceeded to murder our entire village of 50 people and destroy everything they could get their hands on. With trespass, they could violate our claims and murder whoever they liked.

Some people who had escaped decided to move the village and continue on, but this is the point where I decided to quit. My experience has been short and NOT representative of the game as a whole, but looking back on it, the game was a frantic grindfest occasionally fun because of the in-depth crafting system, somewhat flawed but enjoyable to play. The fun came to an end however due to the imbalance of a few days head start by another group, illustrating the issues with the largely unrestricted PVP in the game. My proposed solution is to simply have dedicated PVP servers, for those players who wish to focus specifically on combat-oriented communities. Those who prefer more peaceful play should have their own server, where Murder is not an available skill, or is restricted and only possible to use on those who have the scent of a crime.

Overall, the game has flaws, but could be very fun. As it is, I will not return to play unless a non-PVP server is created. The game also seriously needs some backup servers and work to prevent crashes.

[Oddity]

2: Playability: The game interface is simple and easy to use, with a hotbar and detailed menus. Combat can get somewhat confusing, and you'll find combat abilities will end up dominating your hotbar if you don't want to die.

You'll be using a modified client with multiple hotbars if you want to fight or just get around without the tedium of only 10 custom hotkeys.

My proposed solution is to simply have dedicated PVP servers, for those players who wish to focus specifically on combat-oriented communities. Those who prefer more peaceful play should have their own server, where Murder is not an available skill, or is restricted and only possible to use on those who have the scent of a crime.

It's funny every time someone posts this idea

[Cajoes]

This did not work for Ultima Online.
Odds are it won't suddenly work here.

And this is from a guy (debatable) that fucking hate PvP or any form of violent confrontations.

That said: They barely are able to keep one server up, much less two of them. Tongue in cheek.

Edit:
If anything I'd like to see rage become a little cheaper again so one can at the very least maintain the illusion of being able to defend oneself*, rather than just submit to the crushing hopelessness of failure just because you did not dig dirt for sixteen hours straight the moment you logged on. (or spent a hour or so hunting bears with a sling from a boat. (or six hours weaving baskets.( or equal time crafting dousing rods))


*can you fight back if someone initiates combat with you even if you do not have rage? I've never had the chance to test this. (Because of line 3)

[SacreDoom]

My proposed solution is to simply have dedicated PVP servers, for those players who wish to focus specifically on combat-oriented communities. Those who prefer more peaceful play should have their own server, where Murder is not an available skill, or is restricted and only possible to use on those who have the scent of a crime.

RuneScape over again.

[Cypress_z]

This did not work for Ultima Online.
Odds are it won't suddenly work here.

And this is from a guy (debatable) that fucking hate PvP or any form of violent confrontations.

That said: They barely are able to keep one server up, much less two of them. Tongue in cheek.

I'm aware it isn't necessarily feasible in the near future, but it is something that should be kept in mind over the long term. Fixing server crash issues comes before creating a separate PVP server, and from what I'm aware the Devs have actually been working on it somewhat since the start of the game. So that's good.

I've also been told that PVP dominates the end game simply because there isn't much else to do; you probably already have all the best gear and have built everything you care to build. I didn't include this point because I haven't experienced it myself, so this is really speculation. However, one thing that would really open things up is giving more items for crafting, as well as allowing for megaconstructions. I've seen some of the stuff done in previous worlds and it is nice, but it isn't nearly on the same level as something you could do in, say, Dwarf Fortress. I doubt it would be possible at this point to add multiple Z-levels to the game, but that would make megaconstructions far more plausible. Even if people are doing something as silly as building giant statues of themselves, it's perfectly alright, because that gives them something to do other than PvP.

Another thing that might help is giant creatures that require raids to kill. I say this tentatively; I like the relatively grounded world the creators have made. However, something that a lot of people could focus their efforts on, only overcoming through massive group effort would add a lot to the end game. It could be something as simple as unique, named superboars and superbears with bones, meat and furs of uniquely high quality. Again, however, I haven't experienced the end game content for myself so this is just speculation.

[Cajoes]

Endgame in HnH: (user experience may vary)

Everyone is either living in the middle of nowhere (behind walls) or in major cities, (behind thicker walls), sharpening their skills and tools to the nth degree, with the odd sporadic skirmish between major factions over valuable resource deposits or the odd murder by some outlaw (who is then subsequently crushed into paste by well established ranger corps). This remains the status quo since nobody has the balls to venture outside their walls and actively try to do any domination on other factions from fear of merciless retaliation. Until one of the two following events occurr.

Loftar the Sage either finishes a major update and decides to remake the world/alternatively he drops the ball again and corrupts the database.

Jorb the Trickster sounds the Gjallarhorn*, signalling the end times and Ragnarok approaches.

Then everyone** fights. Since the world is screwed and there is no tomorrow for any of them.

Victory is claimed by both sides.

Server resets.

*Assuming this is just a airhorn ducktaped to a vuvuzela
**Or they just have a party.


Edit: Yes: Let's have giants.

[Naerymdan]

Like any and all projects, the aim is to please the customer/client.

What many people do not seem to understand is that in H&H case, the customer/client is Jorb and Loftar, not the nameless masses who spend their life grinding baskets.

We are but spice sprinkled on their own gaming universe. It is quite like having a ant farm: you build up the best ant farm possible so ant can live in it. But was the farm built for their convenience? NO! It is but a means to an end, which is to observe them live, reproduce, build and suffer.

If it ever becomes commercial we might see changes in direction but otherwise... keep wishing!

[Jackard]

There will never be a separate server for PvP.

[jorb]

This did not work for Ultima Online.
Odds are it won't suddenly work here.

Might be because the idea is terribad. Removing PvP removes conflict resolution from the game. I believe that a viable means of conflict resolution is essential if the central premise of free-form building is to work.

Did i mention that losing is fun? <- Lost my character today.

[Grog]

you are still able to play totally peacefully.
either live as hermit, without having wealth (so noone is interested to rob you) or with double brickwall.
or live in a village as farmer, having guards