The Ghost of Christmas Future, II

[Avu]

I'd take grind over long periods of time where I can do nothing. Waiting for cheese or steel is ok since they are used either sparingly and for very specific high end purposes or it can be decently easy to stockpile but waiting for boards to dry in salem is terrible since they kinda go into everything. If there must be systems like dried boards make them medium tier and up say I can build mine supports with crap wood but they take more wood never make me have to wait 5 days for doing basic things. Can't build mine support can't mine further can't mine can't get iron can't get iron can't build any number of things etc. And the timers on eating food are just horrible encourages alts like crazy. All in all the biggest problem with salem is the dev's personality rather than the mechanics he implements many of them are sensible.

And optimism is for fools and I'll believe it when I see it whatever it is.

[LadyV]

Maybe we should all realize this is a game. Two people are working on to put forth for your entertainment. It is currently free and probably shall be during the testing of the new version. You may have put time in playing but you do so of your own free will. If you donated good for you. You helped them maintain the server the game runs upon.

Putting forth expectations and demands to people who do not demand anything in return to you? Foolish, rude, and most certainly ungrateful.

I can not make anyone do anything they do not wish to. But I can tell you civility and manners go much further than the opposite. Please be more respectful.

Now I imagine some will not like what i have just said so say what you will. I stand by what i say.

[Kaios]

Putting forth expectations and demands to people who do not demand anything in return to you? Foolish, rude, and most certainly ungrateful.

Kind of a foolish statement in itself, no? If I am developing a game and I include a forum for discussion, suggestions and feedback there would be this implication that I as the developer of the game would actually respond to discussion, suggestions and feedback with some frequency and a relative amount of interest. Beyond that, expectations and demands are intrinsically connected with the entire process that is the development and marketing of a game, there is no way around that one.

I don't really get why you're here defending jorb when he has clearly become a victim of his own policies, he can cry all he wants about his poor feelings and blah blah blah but to paraphrase probably both developers at one point or another, his tears are very much to my liking.

[Karede]

Game is almost playable. Give us a few more months.

2 of them almost passed, what did you mean by few?

As of last night the ETA was topped off at "at least a couple more months"

[overtyped]

Game is almost playable. Give us a few more months.

2 of them almost passed, what did you mean by few?

As of last night the ETA was topped off at "at least a couple more months"

WANT NOW

[popfor]

but are there going to be guns and dino bones

[overtyped]

but are there going to be guns and dino bones

Yes. Jorb announced me as his unofficial half effective spam bot, so you can trust what I say.

[Felkin]

That Jorb frustration with idiocy, doe. This entire thread has people contradicting themselves every 2nd post, obviously he won't reply to that nonsence. This much dev interaction is already plently, since most studios would have their small playtest group and only take feedback from them without talking to the community for shiz. I personaly find complaining about any aspect of a game completely fine, but complaining about how the development process and feedback filtering works? That's just people having big heads, thinking that Jorb/Loftar are puppets to use to create that "perfect game for this community". Just focus on discussing game design ideas and nothing else.

Very long-term passive object progression (cheese,planks, etc) are perfectly fine, they have a great purpose of giving the player a feeling of anticipation for a long term project. They just have to be more optional than not. The Salem planks were indeed - ridiculous. In my opinion the perfect places to implement such long-term progression are towards the very ends of industries. Cheese was good, growing trees to max stage for extra logs - not so much. Basicaly having a specific few items have a long wait time at their last stage of production is a nice thing, since they don't bottleneck anything. Spending an entire day preparing some super awesome item and then leaving it for that last cool-off timer before going to sleep/away to later return and bask in the glory that is your creation is an awesome implementation I would love to see more of.

[NaoWhut]

It hurts to see y'all being so mean to jorb...
I'd much rather be scheming about the future
of a game and having Jorb respond with his
schemes. I can dream of peaceful times T-T
and one day stealing Jorbs pants... and
getting killed by Loftar once more...

LEAVE LOFTORBJAR ALONE!

[Felkin]

Actualy this could lead to a discussion very dear to me : production complexity. I personaly LOVE creating items with a very long build path, featuring multiple fields of infastructure and a lot of planning. Such items bring out the planners in us and give an extremely satisfying feeling when you finaly do create it. But it does have to be moderated so the game doesn't become overly complex where it shouldn't be. The balance felt very good in Haven with multiple industries overlapping to create end products. The only real improvement I would love to see is possibly creating more "base" resources to work quality up off. I'm talking clay/water/soil/flax. The first 3 are purely based on location location location and the 4th on dedication. This is, of course, already very good and provides chances for small communities to matter, but I think we could go even further. Possibly adding some rare base buffers that can be achieved whilst working up an industry. I'll give an example idea I came up with and you are free to tell me why it's a shitty idea :

The God's faith buff mechanic :

We currently have village idols as hubs of the villages, being used as teleporters above all else. What if we took it further? I propose creating a resource sacrifice mechanic. Example :
Let's say we have a basic player village.
In this village every industry is being worked, it features farms, mines, etc.
For the sake of the example, let's say that every single industry produces goods of the exactly same quality - N.
Now let's say that this village has decided, that they want to produce the best cheese ever. They would have a lot of competition against other villages to reach that highest quality so they need something to seperate them from the rest.
As such they decide to invest in their village's "faith in God of livestock".
They stockpile a ton of resources of different kinds and bring them all to the village idol.
There they burn all of them to please the gods.
The Gods are pleased and buff every animal in the village to produce N+X quality goods (meat/investines, etc).
This village now has superior livestock to other villages, because of their decision to invest in the field. Now they are able to produce much higher quality cheese, by sacrificing goods of other fields.

This mechanic can be implemented in many ways. Making it possible to please as many gods as you want a little, or only focusing on one, but gaining a significantly larger boost. Quality of the sacrifices can have a huge impact on the buff, the choice of goods can too. For example, if you want to please the God of rock more, you sacrifice your best metals to him OR the opposite, sacrifice goods of a completely opposite field, like food.

Possible issues? Making multiple (one industry-focused) villages in which no1, but the people working on that industry work. This could be tackled by creating the buff extremely resource intensive to increase with a very high cost for the very first buff, which would make it important to invest a lot in one, rather than a bit in many villages. You could also encourage specialized villages OR even implement the mechanic on a micro level to simple claims. Imagine a noob, who has been playing for a week, gather what little forest goods he has collected to his claim totem and sacrificing them all to increase his crop quality by 10, giving him a nice point to move away from forest goods and start consuming personaly farmed food. Something on those lines.

I think such a mechanic would fit very well with the theme of Hafen and I know you do enjoy faith in your games, Jorbtar What do you, guys, think of such a mechanic?