by Kathdys » Mon Dec 22, 2014 6:31 am
Are you serious? I play without the fuel or leather bugs all the time. It's actually easier and more fun to play without them. To use the fuel bug you need to use a timer, and to use the leather bug you have to move the tanning tubs at least twice after preparing them. Not using the leather bug requires waiting a few hours. Not using the fuel bug requires collecting more branches. Either of these is less difficult than tying shoelaces.
It's not just those, either, I generally find the game to be more fun and less of a chore when I'm not cheating than when I am... and more often than not it takes more effort to use exploits, not less. When they do save effort, the amount tends to be negligible, or there's some simple substitute or workaround. They mostly just cut down on the amount of time required.
Anyway, you've summed it up, Massa. The devs willl choose what to continue working on based on what they feel like working on, which may or may not be connected to what any one group of people wants them to work on. That's how indie game development always goes, almost by definition.
@Bob_the_cat, remember that Haven, itself, is an alpha, thus its 'players' are volunteer alpha testers, though we're not strictly required to file bug reports (which is great, because I can't figure out how to use the bugtracker.) So it's not a situation where they need a large playerbase, it's more a situation where they're merely tolerating one.
It's going to be a really, really long time until Hafen is 'out of alpha and beta stages', and I'm guessing it will be 'released'... for alpha testing, when it's out of pre-alpha. A full-featured beta is a long, long way away.