Improving quality

[Raephire]

Quality degrades through harvesting in places that have high clay quality. I began digging at Q56 and by the time I was done they were Q54.

My question is, Is there any way to improve quality in an area, such as clay quality? Surely someone full nature spec should be able to live WITH nature.

[loftar]

Clay quality shouldn't actually change now. It should be said that I have noticed a similar things with the soil outside my own home, though, so there may be some bug. It isn't actively altered by digging, however.

It should be said, however, that Jorb and I have recently started discussing ways of altering resource and/or animal quality/level more consciously. We started doing so mainly as a consequence of discussing the possibilities for removal of the RoB. We are kind of agreed that we'd like the possibility for new characters to default-spawn in the wilderness, but that would be very harsh right now seeing how they cannot possibly fight level-X animals, and even more so if we actually start improving on AI and/or making animal encounters possibly lethal.

[Raephire]

Clay quality shouldn't actually change now. It should be said that I have noticed a similar things with the soil outside my own home, though, so there may be some bug. It isn't actively altered by digging, however.

It should be said, however, that Jorb and I have recently started discussing ways of altering resource and/or animal quality/level more consciously. We started doing so mainly as a consequence of discussing the possibilities for removal of the RoB. We are kind of agreed that we'd like the possibility for new characters to default-spawn in the wilderness, but that would be very harsh right now seeing how they cannot possibly fight level-X animals, and even more so if we actually start improving on AI and/or making animal encounters possibly lethal.

Nodes. A solution could be Ley-lines. where those ley lines meet, a nexus or node would be created. These nodes could have an influence of low wilderness.

a high nature spec user who has high attributes and farming could have an aura of influence on their surrounding area, clay, river, soil, trees. That increases the quality gradually.. Slowly.

While an industry spec user who produces metals and mines often could gradually lower the quality of nature.

I'm just toying with notions here though.

[Jackard]

if you made charterstones give RoBlike levels of civilization that wouldnt be as much of a problem

but that might cause other problems

[loftar]

if you made charterstones give RoBlike levels of civilization that wouldnt be as much of a problem

but that might cause other problems

Yeah, the greatest trouble with civilization (in Haven) is that people tend not to want it. The only noticable effect it has is to lower animal levels (it does decrease decay as well, but it seems to be hardly noticable), and everyone except noobs, obviously, want high animal levels.

If civilization could be decoupled from animal levels, it could be quite reasonable to have the default-spawning mechanism for new characters place them explicitly out in Mordor, far from villages and other new characters, and they might actually be able to survive. It would probably be well liked by those who wish to begin as hermits. Of course, that prevents new characters of people who know each other from finding each other, which is why we added the charter stones. (Another option we discussed was to make noobs spawn explicitly in highly civilized areas, but I have the definite feeling that that would just mean yet another reason for many to avoid civilizing an area)

Our intention with civilization is that it should be likable, and that Mordor, far from being the only place of excitement and ability to level, is rather a place of hardship that you want to either avoid or civilize. "As the first hearth fires disperse the darkness of the surrounding wilderness", to quote the About page. One option we have discussed is to have the civilization rating limit the quality of crafted things in much the same way as skill attributes, but that feels a bit weird and backwards in some ways. I'm not sure. It would lead to a situation where raw material is gathered in the wilderness but processed in civilized areas, which is probably as it should be. Of course, it might also be argued that such things should be taken care of indirectly by making actual division of labor by specialization more fruitful and fun, so that people actually want to be living together.

Furthermore, I'm not exactly fond of the current "static quality hotspot" system currently used for base resources, for at least the reasons that A) it is static rather than player-modifiable unlike most of the other more likable aspects of the game and B) it cannot be improved along with characters, unlike such resources as wood and crops. In a way, that may be realistic and so (seeing how good natural resources often are highly localized phenomena in real life), but it's a bit boring not to be able to do anything about it (B it may just be an aspect of A, indeed). Of course, modifying the quality of such base resources should be at least as hard as growing good trees.

One option for creature levels that we discussed during our last dev session is that creatures begin at level 1 everywhere (by default, say after a map reset), and players then have to "tend to their hunting grounds" to make higher-level creatures spawn. Say, by, for instance, leaving food in the area for the animals and such things. Likewise, each successful animal kill would decrease the creature level in the area, so that hunting grounds can be over-hunted if not properly taken care of. Creature level would be taken care of as an alternate dimension of the census system (the system that currently keeps track of civilization). On that same note, planting crops might be made to alter soil nutrient parameters in the area, which might even be used for making crop rotation techniques meaningful in Haven. Fertilizers and irrigation systems could also be used for altering those parameters. Farming is really much too simple as it is right now.

This is turning into a WoT, but I thought I might put it out there so that you can see what we are currently considering (and RAEG about in advance rather than after we've just added it ;) ). It is far less structured than what I tend to try and write (successful or not), but that is, of course, a reflection that our thoughts on it aren't quite structured yet.

[Jackard]

In my opinion, you should do away with the artificial system of creature levels altogether - it tends to make combat either frustrating or trivial and is not very immersive besides. This sort of change would go hand in hand with improving combat so that it focuses less on the skills of the individual and more on that of the group. A less grindy and LP dependent system.

Dangerous animals like boars, bears and wolves should always be dangerous, just in different ways; prey should be skittish instead of combative. Foxes should be the latter but also greedy for chicken. Some quarry should be so quick that you need dogs, bows or horses to hunt them down.

[Raephire]

In my opinion, you should do away with the artificial system of creature levels altogether - it tends to make combat either frustrating or trivial and is not very immersive besides. This sort of change would go hand in hand with improving combat so that it focuses less on the skills of the individual and more on that of the group. A less grindy and LP dependent system.

Dangerous animals like boars, bears and wolves should always be dangerous, just in different ways; prey should be skittish instead of combative. Foxes should be the latter but also greedy for chicken. Some quarry should be so quick that you need dogs, bows or horses to hunt them down.

Agreed, but I may be selfish saying this and in wanting the best of both worlds. But I also enjoy being able to become ultra powerful with effort. I don't like the idea of even a single boss monster having more of an attribute than I could ever have. Which is one of the reasons H&H is the one mmorpg that has kept my attention.

[Jackard]

You know how bears and boars took hunting parties to take down? That's be pretty sweet to see. Then just think of how awesome and terrifying a troll would be, a creature with the strength of a bear and a craving for human flesh....

PvP is currently similar to heroes dueling, if we want to see any decent battles we need to lessen the gap (canyon) between novice and veteran fighters. And in doing so, rid ourselves of the grind and dependency on LP.

[Potjeh]

I agree with Jackard, in fact one of the first threads I made was a request to make all foxes the same. We'll need a lot more animals before we can have a smooth danger scale based on animal species, though. Pack animals like wolves can be fairly versatile, though, because you can just increase pack size in higher level areas.

[Jackard]

Basically, levels make creatures uninteresting and reduces them to "mobs" that you "aggro" from any run of the mill MMO.