My personal review of the gameplay, the politics and the pla

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My personal review of the gameplay, the politics and the pla

Postby warrri » Sat Mar 20, 2010 2:08 pm

Attention, wall of text incoming. I have 5 hours journey with the train ahead of me, so i have some time to write down things that bother me, things that i did, thank people that i have played with and here i go. It's gonna be really long and it will include some whine about the current situation, some fun facts you prolly didnt knew about me yet and many things more. If you dont know me and dont care about my story scroll down to gameplay passage.

I decided to quit the game. This time it's true, at least until i read changes that are making it worth playing the game again.
I started playing the game in august on the first map. This was about 2 weeks before the reset, so all i've done was to learn and advance in gameplay. I read about it on a german starcraft community forum, the author was Voodoodog (i will write about him some more later). His post also contained a link to a 100 pages long thread in a poker forum, where i met burgingham, hermes, and most importantly: klaue.
When i started i was lost, as all new players are, so i joined up a small settlement with Harry and Klaue. Another guy led me all the way from rob to their camp -they had no village idol-. I think i heard the name pumpkin for the first time on that day. He killed Klaue before i started playing. Klaue taught me most of the things. I started grinding some LP with looms. Later he gave me a weapon and armor so i could hunt lvl 5-7 foxes. A week later i advanced to traphunting bears with a bow, i heard rumors of taking bears melee and i thought wtf, those guys must be pretty strong, how can i ever catch up to them? When i play a game, i want to be on top, i want to compete with others, i want to be better than others. But i realized that this isn't really possible and so i just grinded LP for the fun and yea, it really was fun back then.
So the map reset was two days ahead and Harry raided some camps for cheese because it wouldn't matter anyway. I let our gates open because i thought it doesn't matter anyway, Harry got killed over the night and stopped playing. I was like :'(((((((((((((((( and joined burgingham, Xybb, hermes with klaue on the new map. But after one day i became bored and angry at them because they only organized the area for wv - the layout was finished days before the reset, just like this time- and didn't make me tea to make mining easier. So i left the village with the pickaxe that i made and wanted to do the only thing i haven't done yet. Kill people. I grabbed scents at the GEA, tracked the guy and wanted to summon him. It was then i realized one major flaw of the gameplay mechanics. His hearth was behind 2 layers of unfinished hops. Unclickable. No way. I drowned myself so it would be easier to let go. One day later i read Xybb raging on me for taking the pickaxe with me. He went out to kill me before i could do something bad. So there i had some motivation to come back and rape their asses :). I made a new char and joined up with Voodoodog, who, at that point, had some grudge with them already, i dont know why however. We had a small camp not far from rob - note: voodoodog is also a member of that poker community-. Some days later a guy from wv stole some of our stuff, so we tracked him but didnt have black skills to kill him. We asked klaue to kill him, but he refused. So we flamed WV in public. A day later our camp was completely raized. Only the palisades and cabins remained. They even grassified our pavement (lol xybb you freaking bastard :D). We hired Delamore to kill Xybb, he went to WV and arranged a deal to bluff about xybbs death (and stole some bugged water). We believed him and game him some steel. , i had enough con by then so swim rivers (yea guys, no boats back then!). We made a new settlement a bit farther away. People knows this place as the 3villages lake! The story behind is that Voodoodog and his mates left me because i made my own claim and they were more in to communism. I made a new village idol to be able to hirdport there. Later this place was too small for me, but it was so close to an ironmine, q 55 water and q59 clay that i just went across the river and made a new village idol. I then played completely alone for quite some time, only chatting and trading with klaue, because he wanted gold so badly ^_^.
About one or two weeks later goons put up their extortion racket, and delamore threatened me to pay them with access to my gold mine. I lol'd. Fully aware that he bluffs about his stats. Then i joined Xanadu because i thought it would be cool to be a military force. But Xanadu wasnt what i expected it to be. All people there were busy to build up a new village. I was afk most of the time, sleeping at the idol. Jorb became mad at me, flamed me for being lazy and almost didnt want to give me my gold back, because blaze could craft os much better rings than me! I left one day after i joined and continued playing on my own.
Some days later i raized a village at the q75 water, simply beacuse i could! By that time i had a rl friend playing with me. Again a few days later, goons came by and killed me. My friend even told me that they were attacking, but i didnt believe him. I had a 10m char at that point and would have killed all of them -they were about 10 i guess-, because the old combat system was in favor of me. So i died. The whole time when i was playing alone i heavily flamed members of WV in public for the coal bug, i even flamed them in the poker forum. However they still offered me to join. You know burg, he just cant dislike people, and of course i also had klaue on my side.
So i let my hate against them go, inhertied and joined them.That was the most exciting time. I got hq thane rings, armor and a weapon to grind up to my old stats, however i kept made a new own village again, at a new silvermine that i found, because i still didnt fully trust them. That village was never found by anyone beside sabinati who stumbled across me with his wilderness alt, and i gave him some wheat i think.
However, few weeks later the game got boring again, so i decided to do the only thing i still havent done yet, killing people :). But this time i didnt want to lose bounds with WV anymore, so we raided Codexia together. I played Foofighter, a 500k alt with Murder and 50 marksman. Klaue and burger went with his mains, but didnt touch anything that would leave scents. I killed avu right when we arrived, he ran from their docks to a cabin, i followed him with hit and run. Then we camped a little, surprised that no one was only although they had 30 hearths there. Memestream logged in and i started shooting her. But it seems she had a Loading screen for too long, because when she finally started moving she already lost 600hp and then tried to run away instead of hitting me (i had 30hhp:P) She got killed too. That was the beginning of our offensive gameplay and politics. By that time Chak started playing again and started insulting me on irc, because i refused trading with him when i left Xanadu. So i raided Innsmouth too.
Then we heard about CoP being formed to raise chars that are strong enough to kill us. But someone sold them out, told us the location and a gave us a crossroad sign. I dont really know who it was, but i think it was Nao, who joined us at that point. I hated her for being an attention whore on the forum with her special posting style and content.
We raided CoP few more times until the mapreset, everytime because i wanted to harm chak. All other players were collateral damage, and i think juhubert suffered most. But he was a cool guy and i talked him into joining us on the new map later. However, at some point hanuman managed to sneak into our vault, known as Helms Deep. I still dont know for sure how he did it the first time. Either it was nao selling us out again and carrying his hearh inside or he bugged through the ridge with herth secret spawning. Either way, he killed klaue and foofighters descandant 2qweasd (or so). I then didnt bother to grind a new alt and started doing bad things with my main. Hanuman broke in again, this time bashing all our walls, because neither nao was in our vault anymore, nor did hs spawning thtrough the ridge work, because i put construction signs there. He killed my 17m LP and 170 psy main- no kiddingl, i really had that stats- and stole my pink cape :<. I inherited with stats worth no more than mere 2m lp and played with that char until mapreset. By that time i was barely playing anymore.
So the mapreset came and we suddenly realized, that all the cool things the devs promised were retarded limitations. I lost the empathy to play seriously and started macroing. I managed to do about 4m lp, always being on 0% starving with a gauze, when he finally managed to fix this "bug" quite unannounced and i died. That was 2 days ago. So thats it. If i combine all the LP of all my chars, i am at about 38m. Thats still less than Blaze had if he didnt lie about his stats.

I left out a few things because the text would have been just too long (it already is :( )


People id like to thank in this order!
Klaue- coolest guy to play with, gets out of controle when hes drunk at night, resulting in quite nooby irc spam and flame :D. I played with him for the most time, and never lost contact to him ,even when i was not a member of wv and flamed them.
burgingham and Hermedicus - Cool guys too. For reaccepting me into WV after i got killed. For the time we spent together grinding bears and food. For all the fun chat i skype and irc.
Voodoodog. Despite the fact that he is hated in all 3 communities that we both are members of, he is also pretty cool to play with and generous to friends.
Pacho- For his cool resolution client, which has major flaws but resolution > all.
Chakravanti and Avu-for giving me a motivation to play by flaming me.
Gato for doing raids for me when i didnt want to lose my char again :P and for hunting with me
Sabinati, mightyagrippa, spiff and goons in general- For all the trades and forum posts.
Nao for being a traitorous bitch and Rage for being a raging but very busy bee
and of course all the other old and current members of WV that i got to play with. It was all fun while it lasted.


Gameplay and dev policy
Here are the things that bother me most, and have to be changed before i would even think about playing again.
The worst on is, of course, the lag. It kills 99% of the fun when things take more than twice as long to do because it lags. Walking through a forest or steering a boat becomes a farce. However i dont expect them to fix it that fast because loftar mentioned its just not possible at this point.
Villagemanagement and claim security. The latter point got adressed and greatly improved, but its still very easy to grief people, as you see in all the threads about walled in people.
Bears. They are good lp, they are the only way to catch up with people if you play longer than other. So why the hell are they made worse with every patch that adresses hunting?
The dev policy of ignoring feedback in 99% of the time, unless it fits their opinion. Their lack in thinking ahead and instead doing the second step before doing the first. Best example is the recent change of bears. Its cool that they are impossible to kill legit with the new combat system, but did you really consider, that a village idol requires bear tooth? Players are forced to cheat to get a village up. Then they tried to prevented cheating by making them destory construction signs, and failed horribly because its still so fucking easy to do with boat traps instead. Why do you try to prevent us from killing them at all? Why cant you just implement real traps, make their lp even less rewarding, so you would only hunt them to get materials or food you need?
Travelling and Trading. Teleporting made trading affordable. With the removal of the rob it became really hard and useless to trade, because 24 or 30 slots are just not worth to be traded, unless its gold for silver or crops that you still miss after a week of playing.
I can thikn about the devs removing teleporting completely before implementing bigger inventories or containers, or other fast ways to travel like marching.
Combat System. It sucks. Horribly. No matter how much Potjeh likes it. It is boring and makes no sense gameplay wise, beside making it possible to kill a high stats char with a group of lower people.
Taming. Again, it forces players to cheat, because its not possible to tame without cheating. You need to trap auroches, else they will ko you, you need to leave at least 2 alive, else it takes fucking ridiculous 50minutes of fucking boredom to tame a single cow. I wont explain the complete process at this point, because ive done it like 20 times already. Note that the thread in the how do i forum about taming is not the right way to do it, or at least not the most effective way :)
The Client. It just takes too many resources for being a sloppy 2d game with very basic graphics. WAY too many.

Thats it. I will prolly answer to questions or flames, so go ahead.
The world I love The tears I drop To be part of The wave can't stop
Ever wonder if it's all for you
The world I love The trains I hop To be part of The wave can't stop
Come and tell me when it's time to
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Re: My personal review of the gameplay, the politics and the pla

Postby DarkConvict » Sat Mar 20, 2010 2:28 pm

I like this game and the style of game, its new so there is plenty of developments to be gone and plenty of 1/2 done ideas in the game been tried out. I have thought of a stack of ideas but balancing them is not easy, i sometimes think its best just to add them see how they pan out as no much thinking will beat how 1000 players use it :)

I love the 2D graphics, im going to have a go at making games once my exams are finished in May, work with XNA try and build a simple isometric tile based game like H&H. Ill probably not get very far :)
I do wonder whether 3d games or 2d games are easier, 2d games require lots of separate graphics, but with 3D a single model can be used and viewed from all possible sides. I looked at how your chacater is drawn to the screen based on what they are wearing and its a long process loading each image based on your characters standing position, one at a time every frame.

I would redo the combat more in the style of Diablo II, Need to balance out melee vs ranged, and eventually hearth magic too.

The client i think is inefficient, 300MB+ for 15MBs of graphics, but obviously if they spend time on optimisation you loose features, trust me im trying to program in a good way and it takes bloodly ages to get anything done.
As to lag, there is alot of people on one server, and unless they get funding for a 2nd server it isn't going to change. I think it may come to a ~£1 a month subscription to pay for a subscribers only server.

I never got as far as making metal and killing people, so i can't comment on the game politics, although i got close to going that way in the new world but decided i don't have the time so doing hunting and leatherworking, although time available farming may have been a more sensible idea :)
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Re: My personal review of the gameplay, the politics and the pla

Postby Gauteamus » Sat Mar 20, 2010 2:43 pm

Nice post!
More people should take the A-train those days, and write walls of text about their HnH biographies.
I wont comment on the gameplay comments, I wholly agree on some points, and disagree on others.
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Re: My personal review of the gameplay, the politics and the pla

Postby sabinati » Sat Mar 20, 2010 4:08 pm

cool story bro. seriously.
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Re: My personal review of the gameplay, the politics and the pla

Postby Pansy » Sat Mar 20, 2010 5:21 pm

nle;rwi

(not long enough; read with interest)
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Re: My personal review of the gameplay, the politics and the pla

Postby Jackard » Sat Mar 20, 2010 5:42 pm

ill probably end up reading this but seriously how many times have you quit or gone rogue now
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
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Re: My personal review of the gameplay, the politics and the pla

Postby Potjeh » Sat Mar 20, 2010 6:20 pm

In other news, a wolf was sighted.
Image Bottleneck
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Re: My personal review of the gameplay, the politics and the pla

Postby warrri » Sat Mar 20, 2010 7:27 pm

Jackard wrote:ill probably end up reading this but seriously how many times have you quit or gone rogue now


Only the very first time after mapreset. The second time when i made the post it was just PR, nope ididnt kill klaue either!, however i did really play a free week of WoW by that time.

By the way this is not supposed to sound like this game is total crap. It is not. Else i wouldnt have been playing it for so long. I like many mechanics, for example the FEP system, which is quite unique, or at least i have never seen this before. Note that this doesnt include the ridiculous fep distribution on several food items.
The world I love The tears I drop To be part of The wave can't stop
Ever wonder if it's all for you
The world I love The trains I hop To be part of The wave can't stop
Come and tell me when it's time to
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Re: My personal review of the gameplay, the politics and the pla

Postby Spiff » Sat Mar 20, 2010 8:23 pm

warrri wrote:Sabinati, mightyagrippa, spiff and goons in general- For all the trades and forum posts.


+1
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Re: My personal review of the gameplay, the politics and the pla

Postby Tonopah » Sat Mar 20, 2010 9:40 pm

This is where the vets stroke each other off. Stay tuned for the munyshot!
The dark night of fascism is forever descending upon the United States, yet somehow it always lands in Europe” - Jean Francois Revel
Refusal to enforce rules, or enforcing them capriciously and arbitrarily, is one of the chief characteristics of tinhorn internet forum moderation- Me
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