by Joorin » Mon Nov 07, 2011 3:21 am I like the premises of the game. Some of the design decisions baffle me. This forum offers entertainment.
Normal version:
I'm a casual player who started playing a few weeks before W5 ended. I just died for the first time and found it fitting to give something back to the community in the form of my thoughts and reflections.
After having lurked in the forum until now, I've picked up enough to know that the response, most likely, will be the following:
You n00b, stop QQing and get with the fucking program or play fucking Farmwille you weak cunt.
And, with that out of the way, here goes:
I'm more of a builder than a player. I like to construct environments and/or problems for others to play around with so my foray into the H&H world was more about exhausting the possibilities than to construct something viable or powerful. In W5 this led me to a secluded spot close to the southern border of the world where I tried to farm every crop and craft every item that does not require any metal while baking as many different pies as possible. I was just about to start on a mine hole on top of a steel node when the world reset hit and W6 was a fact.
In W6 I kind of lost some of the giddy excitement since I'd have to work my way back up to my W5 level (which wasn't much compared to anyone actually knowing this game and grinding her way to a competitive level) while doing the same things as I had already done so far. But, I did try to use what I'd learnt and settled down next to a small cave where I placed my HF in front of it and as quickly as possible made a claim, built a small house and went out on foraging expeditions in my boat. My only real goal was to get back to a level where I again could find Chiming Bluebells, just as in W5.
Tonight I logged in to do just that and found someone with a sword and a bear cape standing next to my bed just waiting to run me through. A n00bling stood waiting nearby which most likely was the reason I was killed: to supply a starting spot for this n00bling. Since I find the combat system extremely unfriendly, unwieldy and blatantly unbalanced I've never seen any reason to try to put any time into it, thus I could only try to run a bit before getting killed.
It is, on the other hand, very obvious that some other players are capable to learn and (ab)use the combat system while having lots of fun so it's not completely without merit. And I did get a nice rush of adrenaline and feeling of urgency when I saw the armed fellow next to me, which lasted for a couple of minutes after my death, but it felt a bit empty since it took one hit to fell me and just him standing around waiting for me to come around and hit me again, killing me.
This, in a way, leads me to the technical details of H&H. I'm a developer and I've spent the most part of my life tinkering with computers in one way or another and one of the lessons I've learnt is that no matter how nice the content is, it's still going to suck crushed glass through urethras if the mechanics are badly designed. And I do know this is a two man operation where I'm guessing loftar is the one doing most of the coding so the result is still impressive but, to me, the things I find the most broken are the ones that should be addressed from day zero.
I've looked at some of the developer threads and it kind of boggles my mind how late the idea of multi threading enters the arena. I've also seen some talk about client-server communication and I'm sure it has been discussed a lot already but since it's incredibly central to an MMO, it really should have been designed with utter care from the start. My only hope is that they revamp it by starting over from scratch with Salem and either get someone on the team who knows what to do or really take the time to learn from the failure with H&H.
And to pre-empt the usual "If you're such hot shit, why won't you just write your own server!?": I already have. Using Java 1.4.2 when java.nio was young and implementing the SSL layer was still a bit of a sloppy hack. I designed the protocol, the database and the state machines and it easily scaled to some 5000 clients using hardware that was only moderately hot in 2005.
This, then, leads to the forums. I do like the tone here. The meta gaming taking place here is entertaining to say the least and it's quite clear that this game, once it's sunk its teeth into you, can keep people around long after they have stopped playing. From what I've seen of the moderators, it's easy to see that they are at least having some fun which isn't that common. This, in turn, is a nice indication of the state of a forum.
So, to sum it up: nice game with an intriguing idea behind it, some crappy design and an engaging forum with lots of drama llamas.
outb4 jackard ROFLWAFFLES
