Secrets of The Hearth

[sabinati]

Thievery is a legit way of playing.

this

[Rhiannon]

Thievery is a legit way of playing.

Servers down so have some fun rambling in thought I will...lol

Hummm, I suppose so, Thinking back I guess i have ran across some examples. there is a few RO private servers that allow botting, some games here and there that turn their eyes to macros and exploits, very few and they always fade away or dissapear. So I suppose it's correct. But like the majority I've always agreed that I fail to understand "why bother" Time being a bit precious in this life...lol So, I play this game for instance but I don't want to "play" I want to...just be here? I can't figure out how to get it myself, do not wish to, have not the ability, so I just "want to be here and have what I want" but "I don't want to actually play" so I steal it all and call that "playing", that way "I don't have to do the boring stuff". Instead I steal it from someone else who did the work.

So, in analysis, we want newbs to play legit, because if noone does the work then no one has anything to steal and eventually the game dead ends. So in development we make things more tedious and nerfed so working is even harder to encourage more stealing to advance (led by the developer himself as example to others publically at that), but again in the circle, soon everyone steals and noone works and there's nothing left to steal and "dead end again". As I've seen in other threads, when people do wish to play legit or peacnik or care bear, they're threatened and smirked "ummm well lets come find you and wreck your game then hehe haw haw" becuase we have nothing else to do because we've "stolen all we need" and now are bored.

Maybe like a couple articles I've read at mmorpg (where i found this game by the way), sandbox games are doomed to failure despite the huge desire in the gaming world to have someone make a good one, is because of the 2 distinct types of gamers it attracts, whom when they meet, clash in an unbalancable manner and so all sandboxes fail. I guess the answer could be a double server sandbox in which some simple mechanic (tresspassing skill for example which if disabled would then make moot all following skills such as theft) is allowed on one but not the other. I think I've seen a couple games do that in the high grade pvp genre. In the end such a thing may be the only way to finally make a sandbox that actually lasts. Espcially since the dislike between the two types is so venomous. Theives/griefers find the peacenik workers so silly and boring for working to advancement when they could just skip it all and steal, while the workers find the theives/griefers lazy, childish, not real gamers, inept and unintelligent. 2 opposite and not very nice views could hardly ever co-exist within the same game in a successful level. This may be why no gaming compnay with real money at stake has even taken this genre seriously or as a possible workable gaming platform.

Which is quite sad since whoever does finally make one will make a financial killing, this game for example could make J&L never have to work another job ever again and live quite comfortably rolling in revenue. I think the best example I know is a silly little animal game called Pony Island, ran by a guy and his girlfriend, just an Indy mmo, they made so much money they had to MOVE from Switzerland to Malta because they didn't want to face the tax rate...LOL (I mean this little indy couple after 4 years were raking in mid 6 figures per year and still are! not bad for a little horsey breeding game). But maybe H&H like all other attempts at a sandbox is doomed to the dual conflict of the 2 types of players such games attract. Disheartening but what can ya do.

[Jackard]

sandboxes and the gamers that love them: the tale of a waiting fortune in an unfortunate genre

[Lothaudus]

In other words you've tedioused your own game so much you cannot even play it Legit yourself. Though that IS part of the development problem, I honestly believe you are incapable of playing the game legit. If you did I think you'd get alot better insight into how to make it successful. WHen the developer of a game can only play it as a cheat and a thief then regular/legit gamers have a serious problem if they want to play, support or fall with said game.

Whether jorb is playing legit or not is actually irrelevant simply because regardless of what he does, there's no way in hell he's ever going to independently do everything or consider every possible option someone might do in a given scenario. Nor will he encounter every scenario either. He needs testers to cover that, which is why we're the Guinea Pigs. His experiences so far, while a little more fortuitous than most, aren't all that far out of the ballpark. Raiding other unclaimed communities for resources and being lucky enough to find someone elses metal mine are both things my own group did in its early days (though erm... we did jack the personal claim at the mine in the end by planting a village on top of it. Heh. One day the owner logged in and we ended up sharing it with him because he realised he wasn't going to use it as much as we were).

... and you do realise that if that mine was claimed, jorb wouldn't have been able to do jack-shit right? Like-wise with the other camps he encountered. Failing a claim, a pallisade would've kept him out just as easily.

Taking a handful of nuggets and bars from a mine is also hardly going to cripple whomever's mine that is; again similarly with the crops he took (unless he strip-harvested them). It takes me all of an hour to fill a chest with cast metal bars and replanting a few crops is no major drama for the owner. In terms of his "damage" to the game, it's non-existent at best or minimal at worse and maybe when the owners return, they'll learn to put up some fencing.

[Neruz]

I've raided plenty of villages, never found a mine i could get into though. I did find a copper mine once, but it was locked in with palisades so i couldn't get at it. Mines seem to be jealously guarded.

[Delamore]

So theft (An important part of the game as the devs have made clear) is the same as botting and exploiting?
And all sandbox games are doomed to failure? Does this include ATITD that fosters conflict between players yet is pay only and has had more players paying every reset?
You are a cry baby, you are the reason griefers exist so you will cry.

[Avu]

ATITD fosters competition between players not conflict.

[jorb]

Some poor bastard is going to come back to his home and discover that jorb has jacked all his shit.


Also, that 'claim this mine and DIE' runestone sounds alot like the guy who raided me.

Jorb didn't jack all shit. Jorb is a firm believer in sustainable thievery.

But seriously

In other words you've tedioused your own game so much you cannot even play it Legit yourself. Though that IS part of the development problem, I honestly believe you are incapable of playing the game legit. If you did I think you'd get alot better insight into how to make it successful. WHen the developer of a game can only play it as a cheat and a thief then regular/legit gamers have a serious problem if they want to play, support or fall with said game.

Probably explains the "4000+ members but only 300 ever played for more than a week and only 25 and their 20 alts ever stayed for longer than that"

Ya think???

Yeah yeah I'm a bitch, but I don't know man, been a gamer along time, and when I see a dev incapable of playing even their own game without cheating and stealing then It's just scanky and explains a whole lot.

Strange how everyone knows better than me how to build games... yet I'm the one doing it. I honestly have a hard time parsing out the message in that word soup of yours. Could you state clearly what it is you want, rather than failing at innuendo?

I stole from an unclaimed settlement. That is not "cheating".

[Delamore]

ATITD fosters competition between players not conflict.

You mean competition that leads to conflict?

[Potjeh]

You can't actually set back other people's work in ATITD, can you? If so, what you're saying is basically "It doesn't change anything if you give lances to jockeys, because horse racing is already competitive".