Haven 2.0: "Hafen"

[Kaios]

Brow do you even lift?

[Tonkyhonk]

the bottom line is that most are asking for certain changes that allow them to "win" in their manner, pretending to be considering the game balance. this illusion of "regaining competitiveness for all" is actually an important key to the popularity and motivations for players, though. we all know its easier said than done.

[Potjeh]

Quid pro quo, bro.

When I read some of these comments I honestly don't know what game some of you are playing, I suspect, as LadyV implies, it is because your game play is pvp based and therefore you just rush to 'grind' the numbers but, if you then don't leave your walls to put it into practice because you are scared of losing your chars then seriously, lol, why play at all?

Story time. Last world I tried playing casually, because endgame is disgusting thanks to that number rushing. So of course I didn't have top end stats, it was maybe like 50UA and I had ~q30 bronze gear. One day I log in to find a bubble ram at my palisade (I didn't have a brick wall, because I was a casual hermit). I'm loitering around my claim, when what do you know a guy with steel sword and ranger cape drops by. He offers to help me, but I'm not an idiot just because I'm casual, I know chances are he's the guy that made the ram in the first place. Still, I play along just to see what happens, and open my gates. Ofc, he aggros me, I evade him for a bit and finally manage to trap him in my gate. I stack up coins on him and carefully op knock him once, but the second time I go in for an op knock he lands a val strike on me and drops me in one hit. GG, no re, because fuck this shit. I'm not going to play if I'm going to be kicked around with zero chance to do anything about it, no matter how much I outplay the opponent. So yes, the game is all about pvp because pvp will come to you whether you like it or not. You can only manage to avoid it as a casual if you play with hardcore grinders who do the pvping for you. But they're really not gaining anything from it because a casual player brings absolutely nothing to the table, so it's just charity. And I've got too much pride to live on charity.

[Amanda44]

Quid pro quo, bro.

When I read some of these comments I honestly don't know what game some of you are playing, I suspect, as LadyV implies, it is because your game play is pvp based and therefore you just rush to 'grind' the numbers but, if you then don't leave your walls to put it into practice because you are scared of losing your chars then seriously, lol, why play at all?

Story time. Last world I tried playing casually, because endgame is disgusting thanks to that number rushing. So of course I didn't have top end stats, it was maybe like 50UA and I had ~q30 bronze gear. One day I log in to find a bubble ram at my palisade (I didn't have a brick wall, because I was a casual hermit). I'm loitering around my claim, when what do you know a guy with steel sword and ranger cape drops by. He offers to help me, but I'm not an idiot just because I'm casual, I know chances are he's the guy that made the ram in the first place. Still, I play along just to see what happens, and open my gates. Ofc, he aggros me, I evade him for a bit and finally manage to trap him in my gate. I stack up coins on him and carefully op knock him once, but the second time I go in for an op knock he lands a val strike on me and drops me in one hit. GG, no re, because fuck this shit. I'm not going to play if I'm going to be kicked around with zero chance to do anything about it, no matter how much I outplay the opponent. So yes, the game is all about pvp because pvp will come to you whether you like it or not. You can only manage to avoid it as a casual if you play with hardcore grinders who do the pvping for you. But they're really not gaining anything from it because a casual player brings absolutely nothing to the table, so it's just charity. And I've got too much pride to live on charity.

But .... that is still just bad luck and inefficient game play. I hermit, I guess I'm casual in that I have a life, lol, but I still have a brickwall and put quite a lot of effort into trying to make my base secure, because I hermit. I do raise my stats on one char in a pvp related manor even though I'm not familiar with pvp, purely because I think it may help me when push comes to shove. And it has and it should, strength should play a part, even if not the whole part, in any fight it is both strength and skill that play a role. Admittedly if I woke up to a bubble ram there is not much I can do about it as a hermit, I would have to just alt vault and wait for it to be over and in these kinds of area's, siege attacks, I would like to see some changes.

I do experience the pvp side even though I'm not a pvp player, in W5 I was killed twice by other players, in W6 I had raids, rams at my walls and was agro'd a few times, it taught me two things, one to take as much precautions as possible and secondly that losing a char is devastating but you get over it, lol. If you had built a brickwall you would have had more security, if you hadn't let him in you may not have died, I get what you are saying but someone who has put more effort into their char is clearly going to have an advantage, there are always other options to try and avoid death, intelligence doesn't have to mean just being able to outwit your pvp opponent through fighting, although that is possible too, as I said before making skill play a bigger part is something I'm all for but not at the price of capping.

When I had those problems earlier in the year with RIP they had fighters camped outside my village and in the mine, just waiting to catch me on-line and kill me, I avoided them for ages and when one did finally catch up with me I simply argued my way out of it, lol, he ended up bringing me a crate of curios -

About a month ago I was agro'd by two players on a mudflat, I didn't even run, lol, I won't tell you a long and boring story about me being rubbish at pvp and embarrasing myself by doing fancy moves that kept missing, lol, but the end result, after quite a long time, was still my char still alive and kicking, though only just.
And now I've lost my main to a troll, lol, a troll! It's not even real! But I'm not now raging against there being trolls in the game, it was still experience, was still exciting and at least I didn't run away and hide. The game is what you make it.

I do understand your point and your frustration but as I said previously, Haven isn't just about pvp, yes it will come to you at some point because it is part of the game but being a pure pvp player doesn't equal a pure pvp game. I suppose I'll go as far as to say the raising of numbers can be abused, in so much as players just bot grinding or staying in their walls and not really playing whilst they grind their chars, but, then why not find ways to make that not possible rather than introducing capping, which imo will just leave nothing to aim for. Like Grapie said awhile back, all games include numbers as a way of showing your progress in some way or another, reaching the limit is then game over.

[Potjeh]

If I had brick it would still get rammed. So I guess I'm supposed to just tuck my tail between my legs and abandon my base every time a griefer decides to raze it? If I thought stuff like that was fun I'd do BDSM instead of gaming.

[Amanda44]

And that's all you took from what I've said .......... ?

Amanda44 wrote:
and in these kinds of area's, siege attacks, I would like to see some changes.

I certainly am not one for tucking my tail between my legs and limping off, or giving in on any level, I thought you would know that about me by now. It would be far easier to quit sometimes, as in after RIP razed my base to the ground, but I didn't, I stayed put and built it back up again and refused to be intimidated. In some ways that had it's own element of fun, or certainly an element of satisfaction and achievement.

Are you now saying that players shouldn't be able to ram or grief or steal or kill? If the game has pvp these things are always going to happen, someone is always going to be better than you no matter what changes you implement, balance and fairness will probably also always be an issue, with many different player styles you will never be able to please everyone.

[Potjeh]

Well there's nothing else to do if no capping of any kind is introduced.

[Amanda44]

Sorry, I ninja'd you with editing -

[Dondy]

It seems to me that if botting is here to stay, then the best approach would be to integrate the bots into the game so that they are available for everyone. LP gain has been integrated this way with the curio system. Instead of logging in your alt and leaving her standing in the water grinding clay, you log her in, load her mentory and log her out. So I wonder how practical it would be to have all the various bots integrated in similar ways.

My first question is how to make the game interesting when it is a matter of logging in alts and setting them to work in absentia. You'd really end up playing a game where you run a tribe, not a character, so it would very much change the original feel of the game.

Somehow the curio system has made the game more grindy, rather than less, at least for me. It used to be I could go from one task to another task, confident that they all gained me lp and being a non competitive player I'd vary between house building, construction, ploughing and so on enough to keep it interesting even though I might have gained more lp by sticking to only one job. Now that there is no lp gain I've lost the motivation to build a lower q kiln while I wait for the materials to build a higher q one. I don't bother with the first one. I find myself simply ploughing the same tile over and over in order to increase my hunger, since it is more efficient than the kiln construction would be. If I make a q10 kiln and produce q10 treeplanters pots and plant q10 trees I just have to cut them down to make room for the higher q trees that I can make when I construct the kiln out of better q clay. Meanwhile I am spending a lot of the game waiting for clay nodes to regenerate, crops to grow and curiosities to finish processing in my mentory. A lot of the time I am better off not being logged in at all.

Perhaps happiness could be a factor to make it worthwhile to do the random inefficient kind of play. But then people would design bots to grind happiness. Or perhaps the game could be coded so that it would be too inefficient to make a bot, that is, the higher the number of different action you do, the higher the point gain. Something like the first brick you make gets you 10 lp, the next brick 9 lp, the next brick 8 lp... if you do one activity other than brick making it stops the lp drop so the next brick you make is at 8 lp again. If you do three different activities the next brick goes up to 9 lp but to get back to 10 lp for the brick you have to do nine different actions... This would be highly inefficient. But it would also mean dashing off from brick making to catch and process a random rabbit would be very worth your while. I'm sure a really good programmer could make an algorithm that would make a bot that could cycle through digging, drinking, clay work, tree chopping, eating etc. but the programming might be so complex that it wouldn't be worth while. Probably not. And of course it's doubtful if Loftar wants to do the coding necessary to make happiness link to action changes although I gather that was part of the initial concept, that grindy work would make the character unhappy and they would get a penalty for it.

If lp and stats were balanced in value against happiness that could change the game balance in a way that made it less of a rush to bot grind. So for example if happiness trumped stats in combat... You could grind until you had strength 500 but then if the opponent you hit was at better than 80% happiness you wouldn't do any damage. But I can't remotely see that idea being acceptable to the player base. They want powerful characters and anything that deprives them of their rightful grinding gains would feel stunningly unfair. Why play a competitive game if you can't rely on increasing your power?

It's an interesting problem. I'm sure there is a solution. I hope Loftar and Jorb are coming up with a good one for Hafen.

[WaitingforHaven2]

I'll add my thoughts to this discussion as well. As my name already suggests I'm just waiting for the new Haven to be released before playing again. What always made me quit Haven (or Salem) at some point is the lack of player interaction. In the final stage of the grind (when you have seen and done everything) that is the only thing that kept me going. Either all other villagers quit or I left because of the grind which then is also a result of too many other villagers leaving (and me taking over their tasks).

The number one reason why I feel Haven and Salem failed for me prematurely is that it is too difficult to get new people for your village. You have to be super careful not to get a backstabber or a person that might ruin your whole setup for other reasons (someone not feeling appreciated or contributing far less than he consumes, etc). Every new player is a wildcard. Your only option to reduce these risks is to make an ugly, multilayered place that is idiot safe and limits player interaction again by turning most people into hermits inside a commonly shared wall. That way any other type of village simply dies out over time. And new players without a reputation have a hard time to find a home or will be very picky/afraid as to what place to try out.

I believe this is a case for village management tools: making it possible for a village leader to put restrictions on lower ranks. Including the options that certain ranks are not allowed to break things, pave over nodes, attack other players on the village claim, take items only from designated areas/containers, etc. Furthermore you could make it so that villagers can only revoke their oath of allegiance once they're outside the claim (to avoid the issue of just leaving and then wrecking the place - therefore gates also need to be passable only for villagers, keys need to be removed with this solution). The village is a place of set rules. Make the lawspeaker actually be the one to make laws instead of just having a pretty name. He can also have "underlings" who hold power over lower ranks (as does currently the chieftain position). Reports of abuse of power/complaints in general can go directly to the lawspeaker.

Measures like these don't fully eliminate backstabbing and tantrums but they reduce a lot of uncertainty. Poor judges of intent will still fail and that is fine. Dramas between higher ranking members can also still occur.

There should also be more "unskilled tasks" that aren't shit boring. So that new villagers have time to pick up and find their place without quitting after a day or two because making 10000 bricks wasn't their idea of fun. Time to pick up should probably also be reduced in some magical way so that new players won't have to raise stats for half a year to be the new village silkmaker (by then they will long be gone already).

Then again, maybe that was really just my issue. Maybe I would have quit sooner rather than later anyway. Could be that these suggestions are not worth the effort.