Hows it going guys?

[Yolan]

Just logged on my char today for the first time in a couple of months. Going to wonder around a little, see how things are going.

Was just wondering what people think about the direction the game is taking. Esp interested in hearing from players who have been around since previous worlds.

[Yolan]

Impression:

Love how the world is littered with the decaying remains of abandoned home steads. Eventually they will disappear all together I suppose.

Not so good side of this is that there is no natural tree growth or stump decay. I'm still surprised that the devs haven't added this yet. Is there a technical hinderance? Balance concerns? I'm all for slow, slow regrowth, but some kind of regrowth would be nice.

[Yolan]

Impression:

I'm liking the adjustment of hunger.

Tried full-screen mode. Screen went white. Had to end process.

[theTrav]

I'm moderately happy with the direction the game has taken... There are superpowers that have their clashes, there are hermits who do their thing and are seldom molested, and there are peons wrestling in the mud.

I like the distributed nature of random spawns, I am conflicted over hearth secrets, I dislike the continued and increased reliance on teleporting.

The farmer/nature lover tree seems pretty fun, I'm enjoying raising my farms and making a small amount of silk. Just gave animal husbandry a go, and taming is crap but hopefully raising livestock is less crap.

So far as I can see the industrial side of the game is fairly low at the moment, village management is still underdeveloped. I am disappointed that they didn't do anything with the governance / permissions / offline management when they were working on it.

Combat I didn't like to start with, but now I'm unlocking a few more of the moves and it seems a bit more fun... I don't like the skill values and stats in combat, I'm also still not entirely clear on how the whole system works (despite several fairly well written threads/articles on it)

Hunting seems pretty painful, as does marksmanship in general

[Yolan]

Impression:

This is more of a general world 3 impression, but...

hmmm..

I dunno about the ability to spawn anywhere. It's accepted that RoB was bad in many ways. A blight for newbies, a cramp of trade, etc. However I think we have lost something which defined worlds 1 and 2, which was part of the flavor of H&H for me.

That is, a central civilized area, slowly spreading out and encroaching into the wilderness. I have no problem with the size of the present world per se, but I think the spread of players isn't really optimum.

Take roads connecting towns. No real point as it is, because major towns are typically super grids apart. Its boat or signage or nothing.

I think we need some kind of natural pressure of getting more people living in civilized lands. There doesn't have to be an artifical 'middle', but...

***For example, how about random placement being limited to areas with a high civ rating?****

Also, nasty monsters could help bring back 'mordor'.

[Onionfighter]

I dunno about the ability to spawn anywhere. It's accepted that RoB was bad in many ways. A blight for newbies, a cramp of trade, etc. However I think we have lost something which defined worlds 1 and 2, which was part of the flavor of H&H for me.

That is, a central civilized area, slowly spreading out and encroaching into the wilderness. I have no problem with the size of the present world per se, but I think the spread of players isn't really optimum.

I agree. In the second world, I used to live about a supergrid away from the center, with one neighbor in the wilderness. As soon as wilderness spawning was implemented, I had a whole bunch of new neighbors, clear cuts started appearing, civ level went up, etc.

[KoE]

Just gave animal husbandry a go, and taming is crap but hopefully raising livestock is less crap.

It's pretty boring, actually. They eat all your excess seeds, catapult babies over fences, and all you really need to do is control which bull is making all the love every week or so. When you aren't jerking udders, it's pretty hands-off.

As far as my impressions, despite all the new content and such, it feels like I'm doing fundamentally the same thing. World 1 I was smacking Mordor bears to improve myself (mostly for World 2, which I didn't even play much of) and in World 3 I'm grinding to improve my farm. I suppose that's as it should be, but I'm often reminded of someone's comment that at a certain point you either get involved in hearthling politics or just fade away.

It also seems like way too much content has food either as the point or as a byproduct. Farming, hunting, getting pearls, exploring (sort of)... Really, I guess that goes to show that it really is Eating Things Online.

I think my biggest disappointment is that exploration sort of sucks. The patchwork spaghetti map-gen is pretty uninspiring scenery and scouting for resources is tedious. Cartography is unwieldy and generally unsatisfying. Dealing the wildlife is more of a chore than any sort of thrill or harrowing survival experience, though perhaps this is because I chose markmanship as my primary combat style (stupidly, again!) The saving grace is that player ruins are fun to explore and/or loot.

The social part of H&H is probably the biggest thing it has going for it right now, and I lament a better village management (and perhaps larger alliance stuff) system just as Trav does. I think being part of Bottleneck is the main reason I played as long as I did the first time, and I probably would have quit as soon as I realized how much I hated cartography if it hadn't been for some of my friends jumping into the game well before I realized that.

[Yolan]

Some interesting points there KOE.

My wish list....

- New player spawn is random, but only in civilized areas
- Improved village management (and later kingdoms)
- Real scary beasties in the far wilderness
- Tree regrowth (and centers of natural force, i.e. Princess Mononoke)
- Different map gen parameters for more interesting looking landscapes
- Sensible LP/Skill reform

[Yolan]

I agree. In the second world, I used to live about a supergrid away from the center, with one neighbor in the wilderness. As soon as wilderness spawning was implemented, I had a whole bunch of new neighbors, clear cuts started appearing, civ level went up, etc.

I just really loved world one, where newbies would come and start dragging the place down, so you would do a little house of the prairie and move further out into the wilderness.

[ImpalerWrG]

I like your idea of wilderness spawns being weighted towards already populated areas. While that would clearly not have worked initially it would be a good thing to add now. It would keep wilderness areas more wild. In this world we had an even distribution of wilderness spawning over the initial 25 grids and the larger organized groups migrated into roughly the center most 9 grids. So now have about a 3 layers, the dense core, the moderately settled ring and a still very wild fringe. Keeping that outer fringe wild and unpopulated would be great for people looking to 'get away from it all' as theirs enough space out their to get well and truly isolated, especially if teleporting finally gets nerfed.

Better maps and especially some interesting topography that had mountain ranges that are a real barrier, real rivers (that branch and GO somewhere like a..) and seas would do a lot to make exploration more interesting and as an explorer I'd really like that.