Game Development: Sniffing Glue

[loftar]

But many times fixing the root breaks more than just the apparent symptoms that's because most things in the game are part of a system and it's not always obvious exactly what that system is. That is why many of your updates create more problems than they fix. Things are too interconnected.

Things must be interconnected to be fun and meaningful. Obviously, that does mean that changes will break other things -- especially where players have invested effort in the current systems -- but we cannot stop changing them; that would lead to a complete stagnation of the game. Some butthurt on the way must be tolerated; there is no other option.

For example todays update was good but it introduce a new problem of making people immune to summonings if they are prepared for it. It also gives more power to the griefers that just palisade gates. This update should have contained wall scaling to address the summoning issue as well as easily destroyable construction on your own claim/village claim and both have been suggested before.

What you essentially request with that sentiment is that we finish the game in one fell stroke and then release it as the final version (especially so seeing how things are, indeed, interconnected). There is no need for me to elaborate on why that won't happen.

[Avu]

No I request you do bigger updates because implementing things by tiny bits makes people adapt to those mechanics that get created as result of partial implementations and past record suggest it may take months until things get fully implemented. In the meantime you get things like helms deep, suiciding for ancestor bonus, alts that only eat str so they can be used as disposable wall bashers (this has been somewhat addressed now). I know the attention disorder kiddies want an update every week and most of them worthless fluff but at least I don't. I want balance and that cannot be achieved by implementing bits especially since without the bigger picture some suggestions while well intentioned and appropriate can actually hurt the end package.

[loftar]

No I request you do bigger updates because implementing things by tiny bits makes people adapt to those mechanics that get created as result of partial implementations and past record suggest it may take months until things get fully implemented.

My point is that, precisely because things are so interconnected, as you say, it is close to impossible to balance them in isolation. We wouldn't be able to make an update that "fixes walls", because it is intimately related to other things -- some things are not intended to be fixed with walls in themselves, but rather in the way claims and villages define and defend ownership, for instance; but likewise, it would be impossible to make an update that "fixes walls and villages", because the combat system becomes involved immediately, and from there comes character development, which leads to Wyrd and FEPs, which leads to remakes of farming and hunting, which leads to animal AI and UI issues and what not. These isolated fixes which you want cannot be produced.

It also becomes very important to realize that there's a reason why we state that Haven is "in alpha". It is important for us, as part of the development and balancing, to do small and (relatively) frequent updates and observe how they play out in-game -- which is why balance can, rather, only be achieved by "implementing bits". In the end, that is -- of course it is going to be unbalanced during the ride. Having alpha-testers like you guys is very important to us. (Of course, it is also true that some things take longer than desirable for us to fix. Trust me, I'd like to work more on Haven given the opportunity. Really.)

[Jackard]

You do however hate intra village travel for some reason.

The reason is that it's used very little for the actual reason of convenient travel

this is so incorrect it boggles the mind

[loftar]

The reason is that it's used very little for the actual reason of convenient travel

this is so incorrect it boggles the mind

Well, the issue of whether it, statistically, has been used mostly for "true" travel or mostly for breaking topology is unimportant

[Jackard]

its important because you have dubious priorities and limited devtime. crossroads should really not be a concern right now, yet somehow they are

what happened to combat and villages?

[Seizure]

its important because you have dubious priorities and limited devtime. crossroads should really not be a concern right now, yet somehow they are

what happened to combat and villages?

[Lothaudus]

#1 Transport

1. Remove teleportation completely. Hirdporting, travel to hearth, travel to village, crossroads. ALL OF IT.
2. Add horses, wagons and river barges so that people can carry reasonable amounts of goods at a time (one of the problems with hunger right now is that even a whole cupboard of food isn't enough to last a single person very long, so you need to haul metric fuck tonnes of shit everywhere).
3. Fix key rings.
4. Allow us to build carts in caves, you god-damned anti-cave mining fags.

Problem solved.

Helms Deeps will now need Gates to get in and out. 20 layers of walls will need 20 gates (and 20 keys stored safely on a keyring or in an abstracted list as per whomever's suggestion). Thus being both aesthetically pleasing and functional. Villagers will be able to get in and out of gates without having to use teleporting because someone else dropped the key or has the key and logged off or you lost your own key or whatever.

Trade will become large quantities of goods back and forth along rivers between major towns. Some people could setup and become traders who only travel back and forth selling goods. Horses will allow lone riders to travel large distances to get goods they need and travel back quickly.

Travel should take time. The only people that upsets are people who zap back and forth everywhere hauling tonnes of shit. Again, that's because you NEED to haul tonnes of shit to actually do anything and hauling tonnes of shit can't be done in a single trip right now. Allow us to haul tonnes of shit in a single trip (wagons and barges) and weyhey, an hour spent travelling as you haul 2,000 pieces of clay back to village in the one trip is suddenly worthwhile.


#2 Walls

People who wall in should be protected. That's the whole point of walling in.

Finding a murder / theft / whatever scent, summoning with it and killing that person should not leave your own summonable scent. You're "delivering justice" so you should be reasonably safe from retaliation... Assuming the whole point of the scent system is to discourage "griefers" et al.

Battering rams shouldn't be damaged while moving too much, they should be damaged mostly from attacks against the wall they're trying to destroy. That way, the attack itself will take time. Players will build a ram nearby, giving the village time to locate it if they maintain a watch (A Watchtower or similar object with a bell that goes off every time someone not of that village is within X distance would be cool).

Moving the ram shouldn't be every three steps it breaks but every couple of hundred tiles. So it still has to be built fairly close to the town that's being attacked but not stupidly close.

When the ram attacks, damage is done to the ram. After a certain point, it needs repairing. People behind the wall can also attack the ram with their archery and damage it, again leading to repairs. Those repairs should only take half an hour to an hour (real time) to dry. During this time, obviously defenders can repair their wall or try and attack / defend with archery... or destroy the ram and thus fend off the attack.

If people without anything in inventory could climb walls, attackers would I think have the advantage again as they'd scare off the villagers easily enough (attackers have a tendency to have decent combat skills while defenders have a tendency to rather suck at combat).

The issues are:
1. A good village should maintain a watch so they can spot attackers preparing. This will give the village a few days to prepare their own counter-attack / get help.
2. The attack itself needs to take time (1 real time hour I think is quite reasonable to break through an undefended wall). As it's too easy to wait until everyone is offline and attack.
3. If defenders are online at the time, the battle should be epic.

[Coldsteel]

So whats the Soak and HP of Housing???

[Jackard]

#1 Transport

1. Remove teleportation completely. Hirdporting, travel to hearth, travel to village, crossroads. ALL OF IT.
2. Add horses, wagons and river barges so that people can carry reasonable amounts of goods at a time (one of the problems with hunger right now is that even a whole cupboard of food isn't enough to last a single person very long, so you need to haul metric fuck tonnes of shit everywhere).
3. Fuck key rings.
4. Allow us to build carts in mines, you god-damned anti-cave mining fags.

Problem solved.

Helms Deeps will now need Gates to get in and out. 20 layers of walls will need 20 gates (and 20 keys stored safely on a keyring or in an abstracted list as per whomever's suggestion). Thus being both aesthetically pleasing and functional. Villagers will be able to get in and out of gates without having to use teleporting because someone else dropped the key or has the key and logged off or you lost your own key or whatever.

Trade will become large quantities of goods back and forth along rivers between major towns. Some people could setup and become traders who only travel back and forth selling goods. Horses will allow lone riders to travel large distances to get goods they need and travel back quickly.

Travel should take time. The only people that upsets are people who zap back and forth everywhere hauling tonnes of shit. Again, that's because you NEED to haul tonnes of shit to actually do anything and hauling tonnes of shit can't be done in a single trip right now. Allow us to haul tonnes of shit in a single trip (wagons and barges) and weyhey, an hour spent travelling as you haul 2,000 pieces of clay back to village in the one trip is suddenly worthwhile.

hmmmmmmm