Ideas to make the game more engaging

[CapnCliff]

One of the things that ensures that the game is never hard is that it never forces itself on the player. All animals can more or less always be avoided, your settlement is never attacked or otherwise engaged, &c&c. Philosophically this is one of the things that I'd like to do something about, that is to say I'd like it if the game tried to engage the player from time to time, although I'm admittedly not entirely sure how to go about that.
~ jorb

So ive had many ideas about this same issue. Ive forgotten many but ill list them as i come up with them here.
1. Weather and natural disasters. Earthquakes. Mess up earth and cause uneven or jagged land. Cannot raise, lower, or damage buildings to the point of destruction.

2. Plants growing in specific terrains. Have plowed field as secondary terrain and the primary being what spawned naturally or changed to over time.

3. Plant disease and blight. Utilize certain stone like limestone and various other things to prevent crop disease and keep insects at bay.

4. Temperature/ seasons. Have another guage for body temp. Certain clothes make you warmer or colder. Also have to drink more in summer and eat more in winter. Also wetness. Speed reduction after going through water and walking with wet clothes.

5. fishing changes. Cast net. Can be used to catch small fish. Add minnows and shrimp and other tiny fish. Make small fish usable as bait to catch larger fish.

6. Fertilizer. Build compost bin. Add plant materials, soil, water and worms. Raises q of soil +10 of average of all ingredients. Takes a week or so.

7. Nuisance animals. Beavers, gators, snakes. Things generall non aggressive until you walk into their immediate area. Beavers could damage palisades, dam rivers and cut trees.

[Jackwolf]

Oh gods, the snakes from Salem. The flashbacks. Ahhhh.

[TeckXKnight]

Grab bag idea threads are difficult to respond to and very seldom elaborate on any idea meaningfully. Vagueness can make even a good idea worthless because suggesting 'Animals' doesn't add anything to the discussion, even if you name them off.

The first question you should be asking yourself about each of these ideas is if they engage the player and how.

Weather is, at best, a denier or consumer of resources. While it can potentially be engaging, simply destroying a player's base overnight while they're asleep isn't engaging. Preparation for and actively tackling an obstacle is engaging. Passively watching your mansion and all of your cupboards get smashed by RNG is about as far from that as possible.

Plants growing in specific terrains will certainly cause players to migrate to specific biomes based on their needs like they already do and potentially even establish trade chains to get what they need but it most definitely will not stir players to interact with their environment or the world any more than they already do.

Plant disease is another potentially fun idea but you've just attached an upkeep cost to farming. Why? What does that do for the experience of the player? Adding a resource cost and additional grind on top of the grindiest task in the game isn't what most people would consider a worthwhile mechanic.

I'm going to skip your next three suggestions because I don't have the interest or energy for them.

Animals that damage your stuff when you're not around are just like your weather suggestion. If beavers mass spawn in my area and I'm asleep for the night, are they just going to put a hole in my palisade and make early walls effectively pointless for me? If they're not able to break my palisade, are they just there to act as decay ticks against my walls and buildings forcing me to repair them daily? Things like this have been implemented and removed already because they ultimately turned every day into a chore-fest. In world 3 the first 2 hours of my Haven day began with repairing all of the crap in the village and then after that I got to play.

[Jackwolf]

Granted it wasn't exactly what he suggested, but there is potential in his thoughts Teck.

Weather could be interesting in:
Rain could speed up crop growth temporarily / for a couple days.

Windy days could provide more WWW's, slow down flying critters (ladybugs, silk moths, ...bats.).

Even snow could be pretty interesting by dropping the move speed without stamina drain down a grade (grasslands from run to walk, woods from walk to crawl) in areas that haven't been 'dug out' (relatively quick and not too stamina consuming, just needs a shovel), while also providing improved curios unique to the snow fall (temporary buff for a temporary debuff) such as snowball, 'special snow flake', hail, potentially even moving on to holiday themed stuff.


More animals would be fantastic, because well. more animals. Alligators would give a reason to actually be wary of swamps rather than everyone looking at them as a glorious treasure trove of LP and fishing bait. They could only spawn within swamps, and move at a crawl outside of them. While within they're borderline invisible, being that they're usually under the surface. They'd spawn as rare as, if not rarer than, bears. It opens up crafting such as gator skin boots, which could potentially give +con in the manner the bear cape gives str. ----A second end-game creature that's as sought after as bears, maybe.

Snakes would be kind of cool in HnH. In salem they were gods awful and no one (to my knowledge) enjoyed ever seeing one. On here there's not really venom or such like that which could cripple a character as badly, but merely introduce a new avenue of curios and crafting.

Beavers...? Ehhh, I'm with you on that one Teck. The only appeal I could see is beaver pelts, but that was more a 'new world' thing and I know JnL are straying away from that.

[jorb]

Snakes would be kind of cool in HnH. In salem they were gods awful and no one (to my knowledge) enjoyed ever seeing one. On here there's not really venom or such like that which could cripple a character as badly, but merely introduce a new avenue of curios and crafting.

lolwat? What's the point of snakes if they aren't poisonous?

[Jackwolf]

Not all snakes are poisonous. As far as in game reasons... different meats, curios, crafting, etc.

Though if they were implemented as poisonous I'd still be happy as hell to see more animals, just terrified of ever picking up an old log again. >.>

[TeckXKnight]

I think you missed my point as well: the goal of these ideas was to engage the player by encouraging them to face their environment in a meaningful way or by having the environment face them. I agree that weather, diseases, animals, etc. can potentially contribute to this notion but without serious elaboration onto how, none of these ideas are particularly meaningful. You've fallen into the same trap. Ladybugs and crop growth speed don't bring the game to the player, they're just sort of parts of the world that players will largely ignore or passively benefit from.

Hrm, perhaps a better question to ask then, to address this idea, is how do you bring the hearthling out of their walls and into the world? Or how do you bring the world into the hearthling's walls?

[Jackwolf]

That's certainly a harder question to answer.

[ErdTod]

I'd add something like character thoughts and wishes - similar to the old numen points mechanic. Something that doesnt punish you for not playing, but rewards for playing. We already have XP. If we combine, we can get some kind of a set of 3 wishes of you char, like: "Craft bear tooth talisman", "Witness an unfamiliar hearthling", "Eat a cake" etc. - and when you fulfill your chars needs you can get some kind of nice reward - maybe some stamina restoration, some 1-2% of hunger lowering, some LP, some XP, a curio, stats buff, skills buff etc. - to prevent mass-spaming of wishes your char will be wanting something once per few hours, like every 1-2 hours if the previous wish was fullfilled. If not, it will stay for 24 RL hrs and then change.

[CapnCliff]

I like the idea of thoughts and wishes. would be fun to try to fulfil them. maybe add some ways for the character to have fun. like the old happiness bar. add fun to things like swimming or studying certain curios like the toys section. maybe sports. im not sure what Germanic sports they had back in the games set time.