There is a lot of potential here.

[Zolkowski]

I just thought I should add some words of encouragement to our two dedicated developers for such an amazing game. What you have so far is an awesome formula for a great game. If you keep at it, this game will become unhealthily addictive to me. Please don't stop working on this, the better and better you make this, the more people will show up

Thank you so much for the experience.

[sami1337]

Yeah. The only thing i think is keeping people away is the way you're tossed into the world with absolutely no instructions, no info no nothing.

[Zolkowski]

Yeah. The only thing i think is keeping people away is the way you're tossed into the world with absolutely no instructions, no info no nothing.

That's one of the aspects I like about the game, you learn about the world on your own... how things work.. etc. I don't want to be told how to do every single thing in the game, I think it should be open to discovery. It adds a lot of immersion.

[sami1337]

Yes that's one thing, but understanding you have to right click on the anvil in order to use it, is another thing if you know what i mean.

[Zolkowski]

Yes that's one thing, but understanding you have to right click on the anvil in order to use it, is another thing if you know what i mean.

Yeah I do, but even so, I learned that right clicking was an action key on my own, as well as access to inventory, and things like that.

[loftar]

I give my heartfelt thanks for your post. It's nice to see our ideas resonate with people; even though we have [of course ;)] been convinced from the start, we've been working in kind of a vacuum. Thanks for playing! :D

As for the critique about being thrown into the game in a complete vacuum of knowledge; we do agree, and we have witnessed that players who we teach a bit about the basics of the game tend to stay around a lot more than people who we just leave on their own. One of the prime reasons why we're working on a quest system is indeed to let it provide a soft introduction to the basic game mechanics. We also know that the UI is a bit inconsistent at places; for example, the way of loading fuel vs. the stuff to process into ovens and kilns. It's just very unclear to us what would be a better alternative. None of us are any UI experts, if I might say so*. :)

Of course, we also agree with Zolkowski about a game being fun where we're allowed to learn about stuff and discover new things on our own, rather than being hand-held through the entire thing (which is, as you have most likely noticed, a core point about Haven & Hearth), so the exact balance to strike might be a bit hard to find. One of the nice things about implementing tutorials as quests however, I think, is how the player can freely ignore the quests and go on doing stuff entirely his own way. Mostly, we just want a good way to teach people about our inconsistent UI. :)


* As for me, I get freaked out just by using a mouse and would rather prefer the game client being command-line based; and as for my friend, he is so hindered by his inner chaos and confusion that he cannot make any rational decisions whatsoever and just cares about the shininess of the widgets and gadgets. If he reads this, he'll probably tell you how that isn't the case; please ignore his mindless ramblings, as they are clearly just the random utterings of an unstructured mind. ;)

[jorb]

What Loftar said. And thank you, Zolkowski.

Edit: And I do apologize for Loftar's incessant drooling. He can't help it. He was born that way.

[sami1337]

My suggestion would be to implement a weight system also used on Wurm Online.
For example. A tree has a max grown weight of 500kg (depends on it's fase). After making logs out of it, it still is 500kg but for example spread over 6 logs. Each log weights 75kg, which means there's 0,6kg log left. No problem, it will just be shorter (50kg).

You might be wondering what the advantage of this is. Well, simple. A fire consumes 5kg of wood a minute and generates 0.5kg of ash.
Weight also works for health points. If you take a log and whack a boulder with it, it will chip. Losing weight, thus losing hp.

As for UI: Make it so you can right click stuff like the anvil to perform an action giving an error message if you don't have the resources.

[Milaha]

I just started playing yesterday (thanks to the link from tigsource) and I must admit I am really liking the concept so far. I can't wait to see it develop more.

[fldash]

I just discovered the game, yesterday infact, based off a post on MMORPG.com. Everyone was hating on the game for the graphics, but I'm past that in my gaming life (considering I started on a C64). This game reminds me a lot of ATITD which I loved. Look forward to playing as time permits.