Scant regard for stats

[spectacle]

If everything is fine and well, why is there virtually zero PvP, summoning excluded?

Because there's very little to actually gain from PvP?

[Potjeh]

If you go ahead and cap stats at 200 everyone and their mom will have the perfect allrounder soon. It really isn't that hard to grind some million lp even with a normal life besides h&h. Sure you need the infrastructure and the knowledge on how to do it, but this is where teamwork comes in and should weigh alot. I recently died, but I am lucky to be part of Sodom. A month later and I am fully combat ready again without having more time to play than 2 or 3 hours a day. Heck, most of my stats are even better than they were before I died.

This I don't understand. I've been playing an average of two hours a day since the start of this world, haven't died yet, and still I am nowhere near being competitive in PvP (there's people in my village who could kill me in two stings).

I'm sorry, but I just think that's it's crap game design if you *must* play for over 8 hours a day just to stay in the saddle. It's just sad that only like 1% of the playerbase can compete in PvP. And it will get much, much worse when worlds go on for RL years.

[Danno]

If you go ahead and cap stats at 200 everyone and their mom will have the perfect allrounder soon. It really isn't that hard to grind some million lp even with a normal life besides h&h. Sure you need the infrastructure and the knowledge on how to do it, but this is where teamwork comes in and should weigh alot. I recently died, but I am lucky to be part of Sodom. A month later and I am fully combat ready again without having more time to play than 2 or 3 hours a day. Heck, most of my stats are even better than they were before I died.

Also sure there is not enough PvP and nobody likes to die. The first point is more about crappy siege mechanics though, making it impossible to attack any established town. I enjoyed nothing more this world than the battle at Black Helicopter Base. A real medium sized battle made my death worth it and if this wasn't enough there is always a good ancestor you get.

I am not saying there is nothing wrong with the current system, but you make it sound way too harsh.

I died 25 days ago with around 2.5 million LP gained, so far I'm back to around 1.5 million. Though I didn't have access to a pearl necklace, ring of Brodgar (jewelry), or high quality tea, plus I didn't have a q300+ sling while we were still capable of killing animals in one hit. My stats were pretty much reduced to rubble since I was mostly towards change. My attributes are all currently around 50 and my skill values are as so:

Unarmed Combat 35
Melee Combat 1
Marksmanship 80
Exploration 50
Stealth 20
Sewing 50
Smithing 1
Carpentry 50
Cooking 50
Farming 113
Survival 60

At this rate, I'm guessing it would take me at least another month or two to hit the general cap area I propose (faster if I spent less time playing and more time grinding buckets with an alt chopping the trees down for me).
3 months of grinding is still too much to be worth risking on some PvP. And that's still considered newbish stats to you established folk. But yes, that is the idea here - to make it so average folk/newer players could rise up to be threatening to older/established players.

From what I saw in that topic, it sounded like your battle was a pretty cool one and both sides probably had a good time. Wouldn't it be nice if there was more of that and less of farming/buckets?

[burgingham]

See you are going to be a jack-of-all-trades, of course it takes you longer to get anywhere with that. First thing I did after dying was getting mms back to 150-200, then cooking to 150. Now I can hunt quick (well not anymore) and make top q doughs, which are the best lp ressources. From there it is easy to raise everything else you want. It is even better though if you don't have to. We have plenty of specialized taylors, carpenters, farmers etc, some are alts so I always have access to them and they have a 0% chance of ever getting killed. So I can basically just push ua from here to make myself a good combat char again.

[Potjeh]

I got 160 farming, 100 cooking, 100 survival, everything else is in melee and UA.

[Danno]

Well, getting a skill value to 50 is pretty much easy enough. That's as far as I'll go with carpentry for bucket power, 80 marksmanship was enough for me to hunt decently before the update, and I'm mostly just a farmer/baker/general builder of things otherwise. Getting something to 100 is where shit starts to get particularly grindy, I think, but it's still fairly reasonable. I assume it'll just be very old at 150, which is a point I don't think the game should ever reach, really. But it's also not so bad if you just have to push yourself to go that "little farther" (as long as you aren't constantly stuck in that position).

The thing about your proposed strategy is that it's pretty much saying "play like this, raise the stats you're supposed to, then grind flour to get your combat up". One thing that annoys me in games with "good builds" is that players don't play the game for themselves; they do everything for the sake of making their character as good as it can be as efficiently as possible even if it involves tedious grinding. A good build is nothing more than some numbers you put into a game's database. Why spend so many hours following some boring pattern to do just that? In that case, the only part of the character that belongs to you is its name. Otherwise, it's some meaningless pile of stats achieved only by selling your time, in which case we might as well just start out with those stats to save ourselves the waste of our lives.


Grinding belongs only in one place - commercial MMOs. The more players have to grind, the more money they'll spend on 2x exp/drop bonus packages, special equipment for their characters that give stat boosts, pets that give stat boosts and more carrying space, etc. It's like hammering a nail into someone's foot and then offering to remove it if they pay you $100.
Haven & Hearth is not a commercial game, so I don't think we need any grinding. A bit of character building is fine (most of it falling onto your lap as you simply play the game), months of investment is not.

[Jackard]

just fyi If they ever add old age the whole 'individual grinding for stats' thing is prob gonna suck

[DatOneGuy]

I hate breaking apart long posts into quotable bits but...

The problem with those pseudo caps is that they're all absurdly high. I'd have to grind and macro 24 hours a day for several months to catch up and be able to pose some kind of competitive threat. I've already been playing quite a lot recently, like at least 6 hours per sitting (that may not sound like much, but it is quite a lot when you do a reality check). If a person has school/a job and requires proper sleep, they'd only be left with around 8 hours of spare time (or less if they have both school and a job). So even if you take Haven & Hearth on as your "second job"/entire remaining life, it's still not nearly enough time spent grinding. I could grind till the cows turn back into aurochsen, any established player would still one hit me. I'm not saying casual players should be as good as addicts, but I think this gap is just a wee bit too big.
Of course, after spending half a year eating, breathing, and sleeping Haven & Hearth, I sure as hell wouldn't be willing to risk it all by attacking someone around my ability. If I felt like attacking someone, I'd take the bastard's way out and destroy some defenseless newbs to boost my e-penis. Then I'd return to my extremely secure home with 4 layers of brickwall outside and 4 layers of brickwall inside a cave/mine entrance, neither of which would have anything built within view of the walls so no one could drive by and shoot me if they caught a glimpse of me, and continue grinding to ensure no new player would ever pose a threat to me.

Your first problem is not splitting priorities. Everything crafting on one character, then you have a combat character, that's simple, you don't want to lose it all IF you go into battle, and when your combat character is 'good enough' you go full trad and you have little to lose, hell you actually GAIN if you're willing to gain a bit more stats and then einher. Proper character management (something I lacked personally for a long time) is essential for 'effective' playing. Really the gap isn't big enough if anything, the best way to gain LP (and has been for a while now) is wheat, wheat is largely an AFK task other than actually harvesting/replanting. You can easily set a macro (or if you're against that, just do it 'passively' checking on it) and for about 12 hours your character will be gaining awesome LP (and making awesome food for you to gain FEPs). There's really no problem here I see, the people who don't play much/effectively create the problem.

I think skills and stats should be capped somewhere closer to 200 each, maybe even just something like 150. The boosts from equipment should be far more subtle than they are now. Right now it's just typical MMO magic shit where you equip a helmet and suddenly you become as strong as the Hulk (because being gaudy will grant you great abilities). Wearing a bear cape should be more about how your character would feel psychologically; just give a tiny, perhaps percent based STR boost, not straight up give weaklings the power to destroy hearth fires and contribute to palisade damage. Of course, a bear cape is nothing compared to the high tier jewelry I've heard of.

I'm sorry but you got no idea about games if you suggest only 200.I could max each stat at 200 (and FEPs)on a character in 2 weeks, forget him, and move on to just grinding up combat alts to throw at people I fight. Einher? It'd be god tier, the 'endgame' would be thrice-killed maxstat characters. you call that fun? I say if you want that go play some other game where every character is just a set of max stats in a few fields and that's that.

I don't like grinding this much, you apparently don't either, no one does. The game will change whether we rock the boat or not; I hope one of those changes is drastically reduced grinding and a clear message to the players telling them to quit wasting time grinding and try something different after a certain point. PvP/competition gives MMOs replay value, but H&H is missing out on that big time. Fighting a boar, deer, or even a bear is not a challenge for an experienced player. The only thing smarter and more powerful is a fellow player, but few dare tread on those grounds. Everyone wants to "win" and be "the best", so they aimlessly make grinding an obligation rather than questioning it and asking for more actual gameplay. Instead, they just want more LP and more automated tasks since click-grinding for 1000 hours+ is boring as shit.

Grinding is important. Grinding makes the illusion that you had to work hard for your fun, without grind there's nothing to actually make what you did a 'choice' whether you want to lose it or not. The lack of PvP in this game speaks for itself in this regard, diplomacy is actually fun because you know if you fuck up it's battlefield time. The new recent defense mechanics make guerrilla warfare a very interesting and fun aspect because you know the other guy can't come after you easily since attacking a brick walled village is so hard. Everything got a lot easier and funner.
Fighting bears should be harder I agree, they should be stronger or we should get much stronger animals (not sure why we haven't gotten wolves, or trolls or SOMETHING that's actually difficult and takes fighting in groups). Not everyone grinds forever, there are a few in every village, but some of us find a plateau and are comfortable. If you follow the direction f the game they aren't trying to direclty limit things "OMG YOU NEVER GET JEWELRY PAST 100!!!" but instead are trying to make it so that if you want q1000 jewelry next map you better be fucking working months of increasing all your shit (bear skins, gold quality [somehow?] ) for that higher quality goldbeater's skin or whatever itll be called to raise it. 'Farming, Jewelry, these 'raise as high as you want!' stats will be gone as you know them, they are just placeholders.

What I'm asking for is pretty much the same as that, though - that is, less need to grind. We'd reach the cap/pseudo cap faster all the same, just with inflated LP you have to deal with higher numbers in your calculations (numbers~! *orgasm*) and nothing changes since people still have to spend more time working their character up to god status, meaning they won't risk it. Less character investment = more people willing to put their characters on the line (without a suicidal approach) = an actual challenge.

No, if you ask for 'less grind' you probably don't belong in MMOs, sorry to say, but it's the truth. "Less grind" is "I'm bored" or "I hate repetition" and that's what MMOs are for. Don't look to the game to make you happy, it won't. That's what friends are for.

it's worth it

I beg to differ. The only reward is seeing a number go up by one after sacrificing weeks of your lifespan.

--
I am going to suggest this however:
Bring back HP from STR
Give CON some 'defensive' power towards the defbar. Defense needs to be strengthened, a lot. AGI did some help now, but we need more!

[Danno]

You can easily set a macro (or if you're against that, just do it 'passively' checking on it) and for about 12 hours your character will be gaining awesome LP (and making awesome food for you to gain FEPs). There's really no problem here I see, the people who don't play much/effectively create the problem.

That's the problem right there. Why is gameplay so boring and tedious that I have to setup a macro just to play? Wouldn't it be better if gameplay was actually fun and we didn't even think about resorting to something like that?

I'm sorry but you got no idea about games if you suggest only 200.I could max each stat at 200 (and FEPs)on a character in 2 weeks, forget him, and move on to just grinding up combat alts to throw at people I fight. Einher? It'd be god tier, the 'endgame' would be thrice-killed maxstat characters. you call that fun? I say if you want that go play some other game where every character is just a set of max stats in a few fields and that's that.

2 weeks of grind is still a lot of grind. I could play and beat at least a few single player games with that time, each of which would have a gripping storyline, plot twists, challenges, puzzles that make you think, and its own personal touch that makes it a unique experience from other games of the same kind at least to some extent.
Why would I trade that for 2 weeks of grinding wheat fields to throw a combat alt at someone? Unless we're talking about 2 weeks of casually playing 1-4 hours a day, then I could let that go.
That's not to say "Screw H&H, I'm gonna play something better! See ya, lusers!" I think H&H is pretty fun, and I'd like to see it become better. If things stay as they are, I'll probably only play for another month or two and then quit till there's some update. An update like horses would maybe keep me around for another few weeks, but we'd eventually get used to it and be right back to this currently boring situation, so I'd just quit again. It's not like H&H has to accomodate every whiney newb that threatens to leave because they dislike some feature, but people have been complaining about the grind for at least as long as I've been here because they find it futile and boring.
But yes, I do think some weekly or bi-weekly raids would be more fun than farming up our stats and quality for absolutely no reason. Like I said earlier, I'd prefer if player skill accounted for 70% of battles and stats only for 30%, so even a farmer with a pitchfork would have some chance of taking down an armed cavalry guy. The game's combat system is another issue, though.

Grinding is important. Grinding makes the illusion that you had to work hard for your fun, without grind there's nothing to actually make what you did a 'choice' whether you want to lose it or not. The lack of PvP in this game speaks for itself in this regard, diplomacy is actually fun because you know if you fuck up it's battlefield time. The new recent defense mechanics make guerrilla warfare a very interesting and fun aspect because you know the other guy can't come after you easily since attacking a brick walled village is so hard. Everything got a lot easier and funner.

Let's say you play a game like Time Fcuk. The gameplay is generally the same throughout the game, but each level is challenging in its own way (both in skill and strategy). Let's say I beat the game whereas you only got to level 5. I'm better at the game than you are since I've played longer and have more experience; most importantly, I had fun along the way and I didn't have to grind at all. If it were somehow competitive, I would probably win, but there's still a chance I'd slip up and fall to spikes while you make it to victory. Maybe you'd see something that I didn't.
Now imagine we change Time Fcuk a little... Instead of relying on skill, intelligence, and experiments, you now have to press your "F" key 100 times before being allowed to proceed to the next room, and the gameplay is changed to simply having to walk over to the next room without jumping or changing dimensions or anything. We add 100 key presses for every room. We have just added grind. In a competition, the person whose record of pressing F is the highest will start closer to the door to the next room. So if I've pressed F 10000 times and you've only pressed it 1000 times, I'll be standing right next to the door while you'll be way across the room. Aaand begin! Hurray, I won with ease as a reward for my months of grinding and your character is now dead, so you have to start over. Wanna play again? I win. Again? I win. Again? I love winning.

Okay, so let's go back to before we added grind. I beat the game shortly after its release and you just beat it today. We both understand the game pretty well. If we're both thrown into a brand new level, we have to start at the same place and with the same level of understanding, so now it's a race based on who can figure out the puzzle first. It has nothing to do with the fact that I beat it long before you did, but I might have a better idea of how to solve the puzzle since I've played some custom levels already. Still, it's pretty much an even match even though it's new player vs. old. There was no grinding involved; the time we spent playing the game was challenging and original the whole way through. Still, you have to play it for a while to get good at it.

That's the kind of direction I'd like H&H to take. Playing longer means you're literally better at the game, not that you're overpowered and can one hit any newb who crosses your path, and you don't have to waste time "pressing the F key" hundreds of times while talking to people on MSN, watching TV, eating, etc.

No, if you ask for 'less grind' you probably don't belong in MMOs, sorry to say, but it's the truth. "Less grind" is "I'm bored" or "I hate repetition" and that's what MMOs are for. Don't look to the game to make you happy, it won't. That's what friends are for.

Well, that's why I hop MMOs. My favourite now is probably DFO since you can play the game again on a different character for a completely different experience, or just on a different sub-class if you want something closer to home, yet still challenging in its own way. It is pretty grindy at times, but they've been reducing the grind since its release, so it isn't quite as bad now, at least. I can handle to do the same dungeon 4 times easily since you can get an increased difficulty each time. A few more times after that is alright, then it's pretty old, but you can usually go to a new dungeon by then.
You can always find someone around your level for PvP, so you can always test your skills against players of varying skill for an infinite challenge. The game also relies heavily on skill with dodging attacks, moving around, and landing attacks, so even its grinding is the best grinding I've ever done in an MMO.

But H&H is also fun. I like building villages, exploring, gathering materials, etc. It's just that it gets to a point where you have nothing left to do but grind and you don't even have any enemies to use that grinding against. Permadeath just doesn't match well with half-year grinds. If characters were a little more disposable, people would be more daring, shaking up our daily gameplay and making things more exciting.

[Potjeh]

Really the gap isn't big enough if anything, the best way to gain LP (and has been for a while now) is wheat, wheat is largely an AFK task other than actually harvesting/replanting. You can easily set a macro (or if you're against that, just do it 'passively' checking on it) and for about 12 hours your character will be gaining awesome LP (and making awesome food for you to gain FEPs). There's really no problem here I see, the people who don't play much/effectively create the problem.

You seriously don't see a problem here?

"The only winning move is not to play." Really, when there's such a huge gap between what's fun and what's efficient, you have some serious game design issues.