Game Development: Salem & Haven

[whalrus]

You could even address the alt issue with a cash shop by making it so you have to buy extra characters after your first.

Couldn't think of anything more jewish.

BANNED UNTIL THE END OF ANTISEMITISM

[boshaw]

You could even address the alt issue with a cash shop by making it so you have to buy extra characters after your first.

Couldn't think of anything more jewish.

Sure you can call it jewish, but follows up with what Bitza was talking about when dealing with alts, and it most likely would work. Sure it might make those people who try to solo an entire village by having a ton of alts to do everything, but i'm sure they'll deal with it and make friends and have a real village of real people.

If you have a great idea on how to fix the 'alt' issue then please do make a suggestion. Ignoring it won't make it go away.

[sabinati]

are you fucking kidding me whalrus

[TeckXKnight]

The potential for Haven and Hearth is incredible, a few fixes for lag and combat and such will make it that way. Subscriptions are 2005 and cash shops is pay to win, find a new way. Salem to me looks like a pile of sloppy horseshit trying to be formed into a pyramid of sloppy horseshit. The gameplay, which is suitable for anyone, we had this 'slow' girl in our village that just farmed all day. The wars between factions and the encounters while exploring and building your place, it's great. I myself have my own stories which are an entertaining read for an on-the-side game. Make a Kickstarter or something, you can't let this just fade away.

excuse me but who the fuck are you? "subscriptions are 2005" is your only rebuttal to my argument, and your post otherwise contributes exactly nothing, so go fuck yourself

Why so mad bro? He's just saying a subscription model won't work and he is partially right. Haven't you seen how a lot of MMOs have been going f2p recently? The Secret World or Tera ring a bell? Maybe you should go fuck yourself if you can't handle being part of an adult conversation.

Tera is just a bad mmo. It flopped before it got to the US and it flopped again when it got here. That it went to a f2p model is just because they were desperate. Secret World is also pretty meh and hopefully the f2p model will improve it.

That said the average subscription model is only looking to hold on to a player for 3-4 months. Once you've gone beyond that means you're running low on game content. Long-term games like Haven tend to suffer under this model for that reason but then there's EVE so what do I know. Other models have tried banner ads and have flopped, such as NCSoft's Dungeon Runners. Donation based models are a joke and will never be sustainable. Your best bet with a game like Haven is to sell a service, such as via cash shop.

I'm of the opinion that if they sold account-locked aesthetic such as wall skins, house skins, and non-interactive critters to follow you around or perch on your gates that they'd make a killing. Especially if you price them low enough that it's too easy to justify buying them on a whim. Of course, someone could make the argument that this takes away from the all-access permeability of the world but Salem's model is too rage inducing and too easy of a loss to ever invest in.

[bitza]

my thanks to everyone here who's trying to open a reasonable discussion on this so far

maybe subscriptions are 2005, whatever, but i'd rather stand on the point that a subscription would be a hell of a lot better than salem's cash shop. we all know a cash shop should ideally avoid a pay2win situation, no thanes and dhelms for sale at the irl cash barter stand. but i could totally see people paying a couple bucks for a kitty or a butterfly or something to follow the character around. sure, there are tons of things you can do with a cash shop in haven that wouldn't wreck the game. design your own village banners/colors somehow? dyes to change the color of your merchant robe? to be quite honest though i'm probably not gonna buy this stuff, though i could definitely see people spending money on the cool customization doodads and it could totally work. a solid idea there but i think ultimately doodads aren't gonna pay the bills.

teck, while it's true that most players only stick around a game like EVE or warcraft etc for 3-4 months, we have to remember that h&h is not EVE, and h&h is not warcraft, and there is really nothing out there that's quite the same as h&h and even that being said, EVE and warcraft are still running aren't they?
so maybe lets not give up on subscription model yet, guys. this is where folks like boshaw, people who know about computers will know more than me. i remember h&h when it ran on a computer in jorb's apartment. it was kinda laggy back then but nothing like today. i understand the coding optimization and the client/server side blah blah stuff which basically boils down to, we can't throw money at h&h to fix it.

well, i'm not really a computer guy, i mean really not a computer guy. so my question to people who know more about this than me is, if we put 5 computers in jorb's apartment, could we have 5 worlds of h&h? i know we're getting into more stuff than jorb and loftar want to get involved with right now. policing these worlds would probably be the worst part, with all the hearthvaults and bagousing and terrible things we have all been getting into since the beginning of this game. ideally though we would play this game and no one would ever needed to get a fist of jorb, but you know..bear with me a minute here anyways:

world 1. the permanent world. this is where you build your sodoms and your bottleneck empires and your winterfells and your Dis capitals and all that craziness and poopsock your way to 5k str and UA and some people are just like that. since world 1 is a permanent world it runs on a standard monthly subscription, $x/mo.

world 2. same as world 1 except there is a regular reset period. for those who would prefer a monthly subscription along with a reset every so often.

world 3. runs for 2 years, then a reset. 2 years is plenty of time to spend on creating a village and fighting wars before a reset. many people would prefer this to the permanent world, i would imagine. the difference here in the pay model is, a flat rate one time fee to create a character *and its descendants*, not a monthly fee. you pay $xx for a character and if you want an alt, it's another $xx and then some. think of it as an amortized cost of running the server for 2 years, or "up front donation"

world 4. same as world 3 but runs for 1 year. since world 4 is reset more often than world 3, and we are paying for characters at every reset, a world 4 character needs to be significantly cheaper than a w3 character.

world 5. runs for 6 months. crops will grow faster, clay nodes etc regenerate faster, livestock gestation and maturity is faster, etc. again cheaper characters than the longer worlds.

i can think of more things that we can do across different worlds, but i know that ultimately jorb and loftar are going to do whatever they want with haven. thanks for reminding us zacty that this is jorb and loftar's game, i had forgotten i'm just throwing around ideas and hopefully at some point the fellas read this.

of course, if all of my ideas are bad, then yeah, we might be better off to go ahead and just make a Kickstarter

[bitza]

world 6. all stats, skills, and quality are capped at 100.

world 7. a victory condition, a simple "capture the flag" or "build your village authority over the ring of brodgar", and hold it for X amount of time.

world 8. no water. all mudflats contain at least a q10 clay node.

there's so much that can be done here

[TeckXKnight]

Sorry, I said that wrong. I meant that while the average subscription based mmo is only aiming to hold players for a few months, mmos like EVE exist that hooks players for years even though it's a long-term build up game that has very little content addition over time. Games that tend to flourish with a subscription are ones where you hit an end. You attain the highest level or a barrier that's too difficult to go any further. If you kept pushing that point further and further away you end up stifling players. Yes you may extend how long some subscribe for to reach that end game but for the most part people just start losing interest.

[bitza]

good point teck, games with more specific things to accomplish probably do better overall than pure sandbox games. the reason for this i imagine is simply for the fact that as game players, we are consumers of entertainment. it's different than watching tv or a movie but i think the truth is that a lot of people just aren't that creative and run out of things to do on h&h.

most people who play this game enjoy the sandboxy world aspect of it and would rail against quests or instances or NPCs in haven. and that's certainly a valid standpoint. it's one thing that separates h&h from most other games out there. for people who want to play the original freeform h&h there should be that option available in the form of a separate world or worlds.

some others might prefer things to do, if nothing else than a regular set reset point (or random? or based on some sort of victory condition that will lead to further competition and conflict between villages - good old games of capture the flag, build the world wonder, that sort of thing though i'm sure someone more creative than me can come up with better ones). many people seem to be of the opinion that resets are a good thing if the game stagnates too much and a faction gets too "far ahead" (examples come to mind of w2 wayneville, w3 sodom, dis in the current world). and in an impermanent world, grudges are often carried over to the next world, aren't they?

most players i've seen follow the same basic path of "things to do" while they play h&h - i'm sure there are many exceptions to this. some people never make through the entire list of "things to do", but once they do, then what? YMMV but the new players all seem to follow a same basic pattern:

1. start playing and figure out the game a little. build a little house and read the wiki and grind up to collect www and skills and so forth.
2. build a little homestead
3. find metals and clay and whatnot and try to advance a bit
4. grind grind grind as they start to learn combat, if a newb joined a village at this point they might get some kind of gear or mentorship, etc
5. begin trading either with or without a village, and never stop with the curios, food, or search for metals and resources.
6. hunting. killing a bear with UA or a sword is one accomplishment lots of people want to go for. but this leads to -
7. pvp (if a person wishes to participate)
8. feed the cows and chickens
9. when this gets boring, people may get into other activities such as pavement artwork, village aesthetics, trade capitals, sparring, or attempting to make empires. or just going around and bullshitting with other people on the game. or they focus on mass murder and destruction. lots of people will get bored and move on before this point however.

this is fine for many players, and while h&h is a fantastic and true sandbox experience, maybe it would make the game better if the sandbox had a little more sand to play with?

[bitza]

the fact that as game players, we are consumers of entertainment.

and, inb4 the old "we are not consumers we are play testers". yes, i know. i've been "playtesting" this sucker for over 3 years now. and here's my conclusion.

haven & hearth can be a commercially viable game that tons of people will love to play. i think ultimately it can beat salem. but jorb and loftar's most beloved child needs their attention in order for this to happen.

[bitza]

world 9. the green world. topography similar to the current world, plenty of forest, usable farmland, rivers, rich in soil, clay and water nodes. but metals, particularly iron, silver and gold, are quite scarce.

the green world could be more of a larger, long term, stable, "peaceful" world (as peaceful as haven can get i suppose). perhaps there are less people running around with swords and armor and dhelms since metal is harder to get a hold of. killing someone for their thanes would be quite the accomplishment, and due to the good natural resource infrastructure of the green world, the quality of everything can become quite high. i suspect though many people would be running around with UA and cutthroat cuirasses. in order to mix it up a bit, why don't we nerf the CTC (and maybe the stone axe, lol) in the green world and make the woodbow a viable combat weapon

world 10. the dry world. large regions of mudflat, very few if any lakes or rivers. villages will have to be sure to construct (and protect) wells, water sources will become important for the simple purposes of drinking, tanning and making food. high quality water -extremely rare and valuable here.

in the dry world, why don't we make it so there's lots of mudflat, heath and moor, and less forest. everyone can still have a farm but with less trees to chop, less capacity for stupid shit to be built everywhere - could this also lead to competition over trees and tree farms? for added hilarity we could remove brickwalls in the dry world and beef up palisade to bw strength along with a comparable timber cost

world 11. the mountainous world. prospecting is very rewarding here as is mountain foraging. many opportunities here for people to run around with dhelms and 500 UA. but farmland, soil and clay will be at a premium.

world 11 will be a quick and brutal world. we are running around with swords and armor and dhelms and thanes all of relatively low quality but LP distribution is high and so are gold and silver. good farmers and crafters will be worshipped and protected here but the low distribution of farmland might make their homesteads become hot spots