Release Date Trailer: Eternal Alpha, Aug. 21st 2015

[jorb]

You cant spawn together.

Technically you can't in Haven either. Someone has to spawn first. ^^

But, fair enough, perhaps you have a point.

The reason we implemented that change in Salem -- originally the spawning rules were far more lenient there also -- was, of course, that this scenario...



Immediately manifested itself in Salem as well.

The ability to instantly create a character at basically any arbitrary point in the game world is simply not one that players end up using responsibly, and removing that ability is a far more elegant solution to the problem than is trying to fix every conceivable sub-problem that the endless stream of characters causes. Sure, there's probably a bunch of ad hoc rules we could tack on to alleviate that swarm problem, but I haven't been able to think of an elegant one.

Other than removing the functionality, that is.

Mind you, the spawning mechanics are complex and multifaceted problems of disposition which can all be approached in multiple ways. I imagine, for instance, that the actual spawning zone(s?) of the game world will be relatively small initially, which means that linking up with your desired teammates could probably be accomplished with some ingenuity.

I generally speaking hold very few illusions that these rules will, especially in the longer term, prevent the use of alts, or cause players to link up in-game locally rather than ex-game socially, so the "social experiment" factor isn't really there -- or at least isn't that big of a deal -- for me. Players will if nothing else make maps.

To me, this is a gameplay problem, regarding which I simply think that having a qualitative cost associated with a new character -- initial travelling time and localization effort -- could be a good practice. A character is a powerful tool, and my experience tells me that free spawning causes profoundly unaesthetic problems.

I realize, of course, that this almost by definition creates a certain barrier of entry to playing the game -- at least if you, indeed, must play with your friends -- but I am willing to accept that, at least on an experimental basis.

Mind you, my abilities of foresight are not perfect. I am not entirely sure how this will all pan out, but am rather simply curious to find out. If it doesn't work out or isn't fun enough we can always change it. My perspectives on the development of this game are counted in decades, so the exact dispositions of the spawning rules on launch fall 2015 do not make or break my interest in the game, but are rather simply data points for the future development of it.

I want the game to be constantly evolving toward a better and more ideal state. This means experimenting, and I suspect that most meaningful experiments will always be controversial.

If anyone feels like engaging in constructive discourse on the subject, feel free to meditate on my problems! Discuss those, and how to fix them, rather than "boogaemwillsuckQQdevssuckblablablah".

[jorb]

Since we're talking about salem mechanics, here's one I've seen warriors praising that gave crafters huge headaches: The ability to consume food without any form of effort or time input. It caused a lot of supply issues due to a single warrior being able to clean every cupboard in town in a single sitting. The consumption being that fast made it hard to ensure food was shared without headaches, and made the effort of crafting it feel devalued since it disappeared nigh on instantly.

Consumption rate is a major challenge. On the one hand you can create a situation where players are essentially locked out of fun gameplay mechanics while waiting for timers or whatever, and on the other you can create extremely stressful setups where you basically cannot take any sort of break from the game -- i.e. the situation you describe where you can eat without any sort of impediments -- without falling behind in the rat race. Various iterations of Salem have at times suffered from both those problems, and Haven presently suffers from the very ugly plow-to-eat-more "mechanic". I always think of the player as taking a shit when he stands in one spot, plowing uselessly, only to eat more.

Basically I want the game to have a pulse related to real world time -- so that you can take breaks -- without ever really locking players out entirely from gameplay -- so that you yourself can decide how much you want to play. I think we have managed to implement at least some fresh takes on these issues.

More on the 21st.

[whitdemon]

how about if theres an highly costing item(craftable) that lets you spawn 1 new character near you, something like a summoning stone/altar (one use only)

[jorb]

how about if theres an highly costing item(craftable) that lets you spawn 1 new character near you, something like a summoning stone/altar (one use only)

That is essentially Salem's setup, and I just kind of feel that it could represent the worst of both worlds. You can't start together -- someone needs to establish a base first and get those resources -- but once you do have an established base, most any quantitative ingame cost is just (at some point) going to become trivial, and thus you can still alt spam to your heart's content when it matters. Unless we use like gold or trollbones or whatever as a cost, but that obviously makes it so that only big villages can use it (and, arguably, still then really pretty much as much as they want), which just seems entirely off.

Obviously this fix does kind of improve some aspects of the problem -- I'm not saying it would do nothing -- but even then Salem also has a bunch of ad hoc nonsense going on like the claim poles that you spawn by becoming vulnerable when a player spawns, and blahblablah, all to prevent sploiting.

It's not very elegant.

[epicless]

The reason we implemented that change in Salem -- originally the spawning rules were far more lenient there also -- was, of course, that this scenario...



Immediately manifested itself in Salem as well.

This is why we can't have nice things...

[jorb]

This is why we can't have nice things...

My feeling exactly.

[Gacrux]

This is why we can't have nice things...

My feeling exactly.

Does this mean that you and loftar will work on Cartography and it be a worthwhile skill, I would absolutely love to build an in-game map with some reward

[jorb]

Does this mean that you and loftar will work on Cartography and it be a worthwhile skill, I would absolutely love to build an in-game map with some reward

Haha, idk. It feels pretty useless to even implement it when saving down the raw map data in a custom client is a thing. We were very young and naive when we implemented cartography.

In the vein of "if you can't beat them, join them" we are rather considering extending support for actually caching maps that you character has seen.

[proknah]

Remove minimap

[jorb]

Remove minimap

The client still has -- and must have -- access to map data when rendering the actual gameworld. The minimap is itself in fact rendered from the same map data as the game world these days. Removing the minimap accomplishes nothing.