I know I've quit, but just out of curiosity, I made an alt to test this new feature. He spawned on the triangle between Chokepoint Alpha and Oregoon on the Maplib map. Nothing he could do, as it's a small piece of land with a large grasslands covering almost half of it, so not that many trees there. Either I'd have to get wheelmaking and build a boat, or teleport to Brodgar. I did the latter. So in my case, the result was exactly the same as if I had spawned at Brodgar, but with the fatigue bar three-quarters full, preventing me from going anywhere else.
Starting in the middle of the woods is a challenging idea, but it should be clear that the way the map is constructed means that you can be out of luck; in which case, a quick retreat to Brodgar ought to be maintained as a possibility, no matter how much Jorb's desire might be to get rid of it.
What I'm sensing here is that this is a stopgap measure to compensate for a failure of the game to ensure a decent starting area. Brodgar is a wasteland, and the Novigrad experiment demonstrated that there is no shortage of griefers who'll want to destroy an area just for the hell of it. What you need is a feature (I'm thinking specifically about villages here, as everyone can walk on their land) that would enable semi-protection of trees: You're not allowed to cut them, but you can take branches and fruit from them, something that every newbie has a pressing need for. Right now, either trees are protected and you can't do anything with them, or they're not protected and consequently almost immediately cut.
jorb wrote:Son, if you can't stand behind our troops, then maybe you should stand in front of them?
Ehrm... I mean... carry on.
Maybe you remember my flummoxed reaction to your political rant a while ago, where you cited Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises. This is another case where I feel the same uneasiness creeping back. As someone else pointed out in this thread, you're not American, but Swedish; five minutes' internet search reveals
your real names and even where you're based. Yet you seem to cultivate the impression that you are American, and this is perhaps what bothers me most, as I am not American myself. As further evidence, even one of my friends who was playing this game said he "picked up the notion somewhere" that you were American, and it did not come from me.
This unwarranted reference to "our" troops is in this context quite jarring. Maybe you were educated in the U.S., I don't know, and your English is impeccable. But you're coming across as... how can I put it gently?... the thoroughly assimilated kind, who looks to the United States for his ideology -- and not just any ideology, but an ideology on the right of the political spectrum that was repudiated in that country a year ago, and this while you're living in, laudably, one of the most progressive countries in the world.
And that's your own business, really, except for this: What I also fear is that this ideology might trickle down into your game. I have seen too many libertarians embrace EVE thinking that real life should be just as glorious as a might-is-right science-fiction dystopia rife with scamming and griefing. Your own comments on griefing and such did nothing to reassure me about the trajectory of Haven & Hearth.
jorb wrote: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".
I have an old saying: I might not be a mechanic, but I sure know when the car doesn't start. (For that matter, if I knew anything about programming and such, maybe I'd try my hand at "building games", because let's face it, nobody plays board games anymore.)
You won't be surprised to learn, then, that I agree with everything Rhiannon said. What his (her?) point is easy to see, because I made the exact same point last week. 4000 registrations, 300 stayed a fortnight, 20 still play. Pretty high attrition rate for a game that is free to play, wouldn't you think? What will happen when you start introducing subscriptions or RMT (or, heaven forbid, both)?
And when I used to make that point, what kind of response did it get me from some of your players? "Who gives a fuck where they are? Half of them are nubs who ragequit like you. 1/4 are JTG's alts and the rest are active players and their alts." That was Chakravanti, who, by the way, wrote in another thread about his "disenchantment witht he game in general." That's someone who defended the game against me, yet he's "disenchanted", too. What do you make of this?
What Rhiannon was saying is that playing the game honestly (like, you know, my own little group was doing before we upped and quit) is not only scoffed at, it also gets boring; boring to a point where every player aims for the path of least resistance -- that is to say, avoid putting any effort into making stuff by just stealing it from someone else, like you have done with your little experiment in replicating the Newbie Experience.
P.S.: Coincidentally, I just tried A Tale in the Desert. It seems to feature a community that is so tightly knit that it becomes oppressive if you're not part of it (your average newbie, really), if you can see them, as I don't recall seeing anyone after the tutorial island, and the forums are much less active than here to the extent that you wonder if that game is past its prime. I have no doubt that it must be rife with favoritism, with every detractor quickly ostracized, but I can't picture what would rightly be called griefing in that game; the means for it are not there, unlike here. A few interesting touches, but you can feel the grindfest just around the corner.
Last edited by Vetarnian on Wed Dec 30, 2009 5:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
by jorb » Wed Dec 30, 2009 3:00 am 
