Game Development: A Sound Badgering

Announcements about major changes in Haven & Hearth.

Game Development: A Sound Badgering

Postby jorb » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:53 am

We've been developing, and here's what's new.

New Implementations
----------------------

Added Badgers
Added a "Stinging Poultice" to heal Deep Cuts and Swollen Bumps
Added a "Mirkwood Offering" early curio for fast LP at high XP cost.

Fixes
----------------------

Meat types (Bear, among others) should present correctly.
Bear Tooth Talisman should give usual stat increases
Wooden plow repairs with wood
Objects with setting time count from when the construction object was placed, rather than completed
Cupboards cannot be placed in container objects (boats, carts, &c) if there is anything in the cupboard.
Dream Catchers & Tables can be destroyed
Leantos should now be inherited properly
You may now only own one leanto
Leantos now graphically indicate when they are owned with a small note on them.
Swithced places for "Learning Points" and "Experience Points" in the character sheet (Abilities screen) to better indicate the actual flow of points. Also changed "Cost" to "Learning Cost", to avoid confusion.
Curiosities state an "Experience cost" rather than "Experience points"
Should now get an error message when not able to plant grapes due to lack of winemaking.
Scrollbar should no longer cover the second digit of wounds in wound list.
Should now be able to run with the cart on beach terrain
Should now be able to log back in again if you logged out while mounting a wild horse
Should now be able to lift dead horses
Should now be able to enter minehole while carrying something
The hotkey indication in the Actions Grid (bottom right corner) should now stand out more, orange & bold as it has been made
The party chat texts have been brightened for better readability
Pushing "Make level" in a land survey should now properly abort drinking, open containers, &c.
Should now properly need a sharp tool to butcher small animals
The horse's stamina meter should now have a tooltip
Food & water meters in chicken coop should now have tooltips
Honey now has quality
Palisades now have the correct cost
Corner posts can now be sealed.
Rootfills can now treat Cruel Incisions
All stones, trees & bush seeds should now give discovery LP (better late than never, right?).

Party Arrows have been restored to full functionality, and can now be used to find friends.

We Didn't Fix
----------------------

Presently the setup is such that a claim which finishes building becomes owned by the person who placed the construction object, while the person who finishes the build project gets the bond for the claim. I received this as a bug report, but after due consideration we have decided that no alternative regime is better (for various reasons), thus this is working as intended.

The Store
----------------------

Sooo... that went over well.

In hindsight, I suppose we should have figured that introducing a store would cause a stir. Call us naive, but we were focusing entirely on the game, and did not imagine that what in our perception was a small thing, would completely overshadow everything else we'd done on the game, i.e. completely overhaul it.

Our intention was never to keep the store a "secret" as something to be "sprung" on anyone. It's more that we weren't really pushing or talking about the game in general, so announcing any specific thing, about what we saw as a whole that we weren't talking much about, didn't cross our minds. The store was added late in the process, and two weeks before launch we had only loose ideas.

Our intentions were also not really to make the game "pay-2-play". The idea behind the payment solution, though I can see how it was lost in the general perception, and in some poor layout/setup and whatnot on our part, was to create a soft pay wall which could be negotiated with, and which gave you choice and smooth transitions in terms of how and when you chose to permeate it, and which did also not significantly impact ingame balance. That is what our discussions had been focusing on while we were implementing the thing. To this end, the store was also executed in a light-hearted fashion.

All of that, I guess, conspired with us to make us believe that the store was not a big deal(tm).

Apologies. We'll try to do better in the future.

We've made some changes.
  • The store layout has been changed. Subscriptions are now presented before "Game Time", which in turn is presented last, and which has for that matter been renamed "Subscription Token".
  • Play Time is now awarded weekly instead of monthly.
  • Free Play Time has been increased from 12 hrs/month to 7 hours/week.
  • Verified Account Play Time has been increased from 24hrs/month to 14hrs/week.
  • Support Items (hats) are no longer lootable. If you buy an item in the store, or receive one with a subscription, it becomes rather a one-time permanent upgrade to your account. You can at any time withdraw or re-withdraw that item/hat from your Hearth Fire, and any other copies of it in the game world (on a wall, or whatever) should then disappear. Other characters cannot have your item/hat in their inventory, and should they try to take it, it will vanish in smoke.

    The reasoning behind this change is as follows: Hats/items were not intended as anything other than cosmetics. They have no other utility than their show-off value, and the problem with having them lootable is that they completely lose said show-off value, as wearing them paints a huge target on the wearer, making them essentially useless.

    Now you can wear your support hat/item openly, without risking losing it. If you get eaten by ants, if we reset the server, if you drown, if you get eaten by nasty bagousers, whatever happens, your hat/item should still be there in your Hearth Fire, ready to be worn.

    Anyone who has purchased a hat should find that they now have an entry for that hat with this described functionality in their Hearth Fire, regardless of what has or hasn't happened to their purchased hat before tonight.

    And!

    Any instances of hats already withdrawn from a Hearth Fire before this update, will also remain as legacy items as they are, irrespective of where and how they are, with their old functionality of being a normal item completely intact. Consider these now epic l3wt legendaries a bonus for the early bird punter who hasn't yet managed to lose his hat.

    This also means that you can no longer buy multiple copies of the same hat/item, but no one had, and why would you, so who cares.

    You also cannot receive mutliple copies of a hat/item when buying subscriptions. Each hat/item can be gained only once.

We will continue to iterate on the monetization until we have something fair and balanced, and we want to make it a priority to implement alternative payment providers.

One topic for discussion could be, "Should we sell Play Time?"... at all? Instead of, or as an alternative to Subscriptions? Let us know what you think.

Under the circumstances the store has been performing admirably, and we send a special thank you to everyone who has used it!

Image

As always, if you liked what we did here: Support the patch.

Today's Patch Item, for the fair price of $5, is the "Protest Sign".

Store description wrote:Image $5
Show up to the next game riot in style, with this thoughtful and politically conscious message of social justice. The devs do indeed suck, and with this sign you can tell 'em, and tell 'em good.


All Gold level Subscribers have been awarded the "Protest Sign", free of charge.

Everyone's Play Time has been refilled up to seven hours, if you had less than that.

Enjoy!
"The psychological trials of dwellers in the last times will be equal to the physical trials of the martyrs. In order to face these trials we must be living in a different world."

-- Hieromonk Seraphim Rose
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Re: Game Development: A Sound Badgering

Postby DDDsDD999 » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:53 am

Image It's a fukken spruce cap
Image
Image
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Image
Image
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Re: Game Development: A Sound Badgering

Postby Avulsio » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:54 am

NOOICE!
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Re: Game Development: A Sound Badgering

Postby CaptainMidget » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:55 am

We love you.
Is the badger hostile?
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Re: Game Development: A Sound Badgering

Postby Orcling » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:55 am

No additional payment methods added.
0/10 try harder.
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Re: Game Development: A Sound Badgering

Postby jorb » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:56 am

CaptainMidget wrote:We love you.
Is the badger hostile?


Slightly.

DDDsDD999 wrote:Image It's a fukken spruce cap


No. No it really isn't.
"The psychological trials of dwellers in the last times will be equal to the physical trials of the martyrs. In order to face these trials we must be living in a different world."

-- Hieromonk Seraphim Rose
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Re: Game Development: A Sound Badgering

Postby mamotromico » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:57 am

>14 hours weekly

YES

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES


That is MUCH better
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Re: Game Development: A Sound Badgering

Postby ApocalypsePlease » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:58 am

jorb wrote:Play Time is now awarded weekly instead of monthly.

Could we get some clarification when this gets added?
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Re: Game Development: A Sound Badgering

Postby jorb » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:59 am

ApocalypsePlease wrote:
jorb wrote:Play Time is now awarded weekly instead of monthly.

Could we get some clarification when this gets added?


Every monday. Midnight UTC.
"The psychological trials of dwellers in the last times will be equal to the physical trials of the martyrs. In order to face these trials we must be living in a different world."

-- Hieromonk Seraphim Rose
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Re: Game Development: A Sound Badgering

Postby Eemerald » Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:59 am

thank you:)
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