Game Development: World 5

[burgingham]

At some points your accusations that we get special gifts from the devs just get boring, but you probably know that yourself.

The key to solve all your problems is called teamwork. Not everybody has to have all the skills you mention. Divide them between the members of your group. Don't have a group? Well that might be tough then, I admit that. My personal opinion is though that this game is made to be played in communities and hermits should have a hard time.

The game would have been so much better for a long time if it were NOT ture...but as you so rightly elude, it's moot...just the way it is. However, i think what you mean to say about "communities" is that since you are of the drama queen ilk who loves all the "raids, griefing, murdering, drama trauma intrigue betrayal and RolePlay socialist uprsisings and pretend politics" that you indeed like the fact that small groups or 'hermits" shouldn't be here. As what drama do they provide right. The devs make the game and your group controls the devs and you are correct that although the fundamanetal greatness of a true sandbox was represented here at first, you have managed to bring them away from it and more into a single mission pointed game. Unfortunately for the sandbox crowd thats just the way the cookies have crumbled. But hey, long as the small minority is happy and rich and getting their rocks off its all good. We have that here in the USA it's called the fundamentalist republican party...LOL

You got issues, woman. Now I single-handedly ruined H&H? I don't even know what to say....wow

[Rhiannon]

You got issues, woman. Now I single-handedly ruined H&H? I don't even know what to say....wow

lol..you're not THAT great. I am speaking of your "group" that you elude to. Many of whom we are familiar name-wise. You were the speaker so I encapsulated the "group" into "you", for as you state, your hivemind is the "skill" that you claim the foundation of your unstatistically unusual ability to defy said statistics world after world in a game where random luck plays an unusual high factor (Which was always a unique selling point and key to a proper fair sandbox).

Why your "way" is supposedly incompatible with other "ways" of playing in what was the most unique full out sandbox I had ever seen in 15 years of internet gaming has always been a mystery to me. So yes, in a way, your group (those who share your mindset) because of the manipulative position you (see definition of you) began to hold over time over 2 uni students (genius as their original ideas were) who are prone to ego stroking, and well versed in drug and drink so they indicated, have because of this innacurate belief that this game should "evole" into just another lame facebook one track mmo so that your particular gameplay style be maximized and which is supposedly incompatible with "sandbox hermits and small groups" have in the end. "Ruined" this game as you put it.

Let me illustrate further.
Typical Facebook games for example require as major components of success
Aggravate as many of your friends as possible to be your "neighbors" to recieve benefits, bonuses and group circle jerks for items..ect. Refusal to do so = severe lack of progress and even refusal by game to let you advance.
Use time delay actions to recieve game currency/points
replace real time actions with stated time delay actions to avoid bandwidith/server overload issues.
penalize real time actions to psudo force compliance with previous point by making said actions result in account/toon/avatar drain

and that's just a few, how exactly does this "new" gameplay style NOT move dramatically in that direction? And yes, I am seriously asking, both that and for your reasoning as to why you think your hivemind style and hermit/small collective style is so incompatible in a sandbox? I mean we, I, and all the hermits/small collectives I knew were never bothered by your type of play...so what did their type of play do to you guys that was so bad or hampered your playing?

[jorb]

The more I play with this the more I like it. No more retarded rewards for doing meaningless nothing.

Yeah now you get meaningless rewards for looking at toys such as cone cows.

Repeating that you're enjoying it every second page won't be enough to brainwash people who don't like it, y'know.

I thought the same thing yesterday to myself "aww isn't that cute..Jorb is running in with his new toy going "see,see it's a cool toy, a really cool toy, you really DO have a reason to be jealous and wanna play wif it" While all the other kindergardners look up from their puzzles and yawn. How frustrating that must be...lol

Sheesh. Fuck off both of you. I reported my experiences playing just like everybody else did.

Yeah that was a one time thing and he isn't very proud of it either.)

Not true, jorb doesn't mind at all, though he would probably not do it again.

[pyrale]

Sheesh. Fuck off both of you. I reported my experiences playing just like everybody else did.

So did some of us.

I guess we didn't get such thing as a horde of angry fans telling us we had to leave the game and not express our opinion as you did. Oh wait...

[Quipster]

wow.....everything people worked hard for is completely and utterly gone....-.- Nice warning

What would you have done with a warning? Taken all of your stuff off the server by magic? The only thing you could have done was to not bother playing until the reset, and following that line of thought you may as well stop playing now because one day, world 5 will come to and end. Nothing you do will have any lasting impact, well, not in a material way, its the experience that you take away from the game.

You didn't think this trough did you? So you mean your way of life wouldn't change if you knew you would die in a week, instead of in 60 years? There is a balance of collecting and preparing and using, this balance is based on trust, assuming that things are slightly predictable. I didn't even think to give an example in the beginning since this is just bullshit reasoning from your part.

And by the way @ all of you who defend the changes, this time you are wrong, the changes are bad. This doesn't mean that Haven sucks, it just means that this change was bad, and it will change back soon. I have had my share of gamedesigning myself and I have played games for circa 20 years of my life. Its in the statistic probability that some people will believe in bullshit, thats ok. But now I really think for haven and other forum centered online games people just like to bitch. =) Or perhaps I get to see more ignorant people on forums than in my real social sphere.. Quite plausible indeed..

See, the change is not "bad". Yes, a good majority of the player base is going apeshit over it, but that doesn't mean it's a bad change. A game like this is designed for a very specific niche. I'd imagine the developers are doing their best to tailor the game to fit that niche market. Just because a couple hundred people started playing the fourth iteration of the game's development, and then subsequently left (or bitched) when the fifth iteration came out does not mean that there is anything fundamentally wrong with the game. It just means that the game is not for them. Yea, LP gain is slow as molasses now. But it causes it to be so much more valuable, forcing you to consider carefully how you spend it. It also makes the game last quite a bit longer, as it now takes that much more time to advance a settlement.

Edit: Also, when you are designing a game with no profit motive, it really doesn't matter if the community is butthurt. All we do is test the game, its not like we supply dollars. (Maybe through donations, but those who appreciate what the devs are trying to do will donate regardless)

[Thijssnl]

Very interesting.

And please, trolls and crybabies, stfu >>
It doesnt matter how long a world will last, its equal for all of us.

Edit: Is it me or is the current walk speed about the old run speed?
Seems quicker anyway (might be the non-fullscreen default client )
Edit: Cant forage anthills anymore with just foraging, has this been since W4?

[jorb]

I guess we didn't get such thing as a horde of angry fans telling us we had to leave the game and not express our opinion as you did. Oh wait...

Have you noticed how world reset threads, in fact most announcment threads containting big changes, usually contain rage? Would you believe me if I told you that we got rage when steel was first implemented? Do you blame me for taking said rage with a pinch of salt two years on?

[Fetdaniel]

[

to such a resonable reply I must try to reduce my whining. Because I can admit that I'm upset about the change and I didn't elaborate on my reasonings enough. Though this was mostly due to time limitiations actually.

I think the previous system worked and from a psychological standpoint it made sense to become better from action. The curiosities are not intuitive since you can't choose your curiosity. There is no minigame and immersion you just put stuff inside a separate inventory. If you could choose to study cow dolls and get better at herding, even though it sounds stupid I admit, it would be more sandbox, making you free of choice. Now it is more evident than ever that you are forced into collecting the objects that grant the greatest lp gain since they are not of your own choosing(There are no other ways now) and still necessary to ALL progress, not just hardcore. In the previous worlds I did lots of stuff that didn't give alot of LP but had other benefits. And it still gave me some lp, now I am forced to consider another system outside of my choosing that isn't intuitive with the game world. They have sort of divided the sandbox and the "leveling" in to different systems. And since the beginning game requires a little lp gaining you will be conditioned from the beginning to try and find stuff that are curious. It doesn't solve problems with botters as far as I understand it since curiosities can be farmed and resused as of what I have understood. It just derails the intuitive part of gaining lp. And more people will be conditioned to maximize LP gain. So my biggest criticism is that the system actually encourage lp gaining strategies and the only way it might seem good is that you can only put a certain amount of time to utilize this in the beginning. But later on there will probably be a race to increase intelligence and spam objects of curiosity, in a big alt fest. But that is speculation since the world is new I will admit that. But i can't grasp how they could possibly make this system as we have understand it right now, somehow put less focus on lp gain, from low to mid to high level chars.

The time constraint thinking can be compared to alot of games, the old and once(?) popular utopia and other textbased webgames uses turns that are static similar to farmville where there was a cooldown after attacking, and farming respectively, other games use accumulation of turns like urbandead. None of these games are fitting for the context haven and hearth is in since we want to put alot of time and not just come in and harvest at a regular interval. It is not the coffee break audience this game targets.

So if they want learning to come from some representation of curiosity on some pseudopsychological level I think there should be more "game" in the curiousness. Reward synergy by introduceing teaching, reward specialisation by having to make choices, like the belief system. They already have the industrial / nature slider which makes some skillsets get benefits and some get drawbacks. If they would focus on increasing specialisation and synergy in a non nerfing non restricting way then the main focus of building your castle from the sand, and socialising trough trade or mutual construction in a village would prosper alot more. In previous worlds noobs would just lower quality on everything they laid hands on except a few foraging and quality independent chores. The current synergies that exist rewarded single players to massproduce high tier goods and increase lp and atribute gain exponentially trough feasting(altough certain parts of the symbel are cooperationbased). This diablo/rogue/dungeon and dragons mode of rewarding getting better withdraws from social interaction and cooperation. It creates an elitist environment not suitable(Ok this is totally my point of view) for coop play.
Anything you want clarification of?

[Butko]

Biggest problem is not change. But a thing that most of ppl has nothing to do at start. You do all usual stuff as new character and then? Wait?
I'm not saying that everything should be given to us, but there should be more stuff to do at startso ppl can actualy play the game and not just wait to get LP needed to start making stuff.
Second thing is info. Game is not user friendly. After all those changes and so on even new and old players are now catching how to play. Why not making some kind of help or at least tooltips in game?

[jorb]

There's plenty of stuff to do. You're doing it all wrong if you sit and wait for your silly cone cow to finish.

Also, the game was never user friendly.