Game Development: Prelude

[jaguar]

Thanks! Right back at you! Under that regime you would get 125, yeah.

Hey, does it mean that current stats will be caped down to 125 or we will start from 0 again?

[CSPAN]

new world = new world mayne. everyone starts fresh

[Glorthan]

Please, make an ability that you can spawn somewhere close to your friend, hell you don't even have to make it close, but also it should not be really far when you're making a character in the new world. There's absolutely no need to keep the un-fun,mindless walking and running to your friends once you spawn in the game, it demotivates a lot of people that you can't play with your friends, especially it demotivates the newcomers.

How should alt-spamming be prevented?

It would be nice if there was a noob-friendly single use construction you could build to allow a person to spawn at you. It could cost a fair bit of resources, ie planks, blocks, strange dreams, etc. but would allow you to play with a few friends without having to walk for hours to find them or establish an entire village and charterstone by yourself. This would make it harder to grief with infinite alts like hearthfire spawns allowed, but make it possible to play with friends.

[bmjclark]

You can spawn alts at a charterstone anyways can't you? What does stopping people spawning at eachother early on do when charterstones can already spawn alts asides for making the start of the world a pain because you have to walk to your friends?

Charter stones take some planning, and a village, and are thus exclusive within a fairly large area. Hearth secrets allow you to spawn any number of characters at any point in the world with very little planning.

Perhaps make it so that you can only spawn so many characters from a single HF, and so that you can't spawn off HFs that were spawned from other HFs? Make hearth magic take more LP so that you can't just get it from discoveries in 5 seconds to make more HFs? You could even make it so that if you spawn off a HF, you'll just spawn in a general area around the HF you spawned off of, say, within a few minimaps. I don't know, but i agree with dafels that the central grid was an issue (it put everyone in a tiny area to just be hunted, and noobs didn't really know to walk for hours to get away from danger) and if that were to ever go away we're gonna need ways to spawn at friends again.

[higherark]

You can spawn alts at a charterstone anyways can't you? What does stopping people spawning at eachother early on do when charterstones can already spawn alts asides for making the start of the world a pain because you have to walk to your friends?

Charter stones take some planning, and a village, and are thus exclusive within a fairly large area. Hearth secrets allow you to spawn any number of characters at any point in the world with very little planning.

You could let players choose from a selection of set spawns in the main grid (riskier) or let them spawn away from the set spawns at a semi-random location (safer)

More important than spawn points is the ability to find other players to interact with. There are a number of ways to do this and many of them are, unfortunately, unsuitable for hafen. Nontheless, I do think a mechanic allowing players some ability to interact with the overall community would be good. Maybe some way of sending advertisments for your trade goods that players can seek out and access, but is not intrusive and doesn't give a direction by itself (think message or party board in traditional mmo's) This way newer players can seek out and acquire resources, but more importantly this also lets new players see proof that an in-game community exists. With visible proof this can greatly assist retention of new players.

I'm not terribly familiar with charter stones so I can't say much on them. Getting newer players into the community is obviously desireable, but of course we should be careful striking a balance between coddling them or handing them to the wolves. A new player should have some more information imparted to them at the very least such as: trading, kinning, groups, progression, death, combat and so on. Being dropped into a world and dying without ANY chance of learning what to do or how to fighting back is extremely disheratening. You mentioned a revelation that players value their time spent as opposed to character progress. As such, we should minimize the amount of time newcomers have to spend learning about the games most basic mechanics. Otherwise they will find somewhere else to invest their time, even if hafen is their kind of game.

As a baseline suggestion - I strongly recommend more tutorial information and tips on the game. Having anything is better than what we have now.

As a tenuous suggestion - To encourage player retention we should see more mechanics regarding player communication. The advertisement idea works for all players and enchances the trading system. Again, it does not matter what we get as long as we get something to improve the situation.

[apoc254]

I decided to check back in and I am glad to see this post!

I look forward to the changes and feel bad for those that invested heavily into this world... However, this change will ultamitely give them some people to play the game with!

Thanks for all the hard work and I will be around to enjoy the game again!(don't worry about 25% should return if they hear the news also)

[who885]

i'd much rather manage time then deal with a cap. i was recently deciding to return and play when i finish home work or essays.....seeing the word "level cap" is a big turn off. while i do love this game i am unbiased to tell people about its faults. when i go to my friends and tell them hey! i got a settlement up you guys should come join me!. i want to do everything in my power to keep them and myself safe and still keep up a reasonable level of progression to keep them interesting once we hit that cap most of them will pretty much quit knowing to keep progressing they need to pay. Sadly even with a new world i won't be joining until i either see we are staying with the current model or something better comes up. until then ill keep on stalking the forums.

If there Really "NEEDS" To be a chance i much rather have:

0-80 100% growth rate for all.
80-150 70% growth rate for free, 100% for verified and subs
150-FOREVERRRR 30% growth rate for free accounts, 60% for verified and 100% for subs.

Sometimes your starving and need to eat out of a trashcan or sort through leftovers. sometimes you need to pick out the shiniest of all the shit.

[dafels]

Please, make an ability that you can spawn somewhere close to your friend

How should alt-spamming be prevented?

You are implementing changes which only encourage alt spamming. Isn't it futile to resist at this point?
If you want to prevent alt spam you are going to need a more comprehensive and effective strategy than "trololol enjoy your hike".

I also strongly encourage you to re-think the everyone spawning in the same grid idea.

Any particular reason why?

Resource deprivation for new players. Lack of content in the wider world (ie. ruins and noob villas). Also spawning into a wasteland midworld isn't the best first impression one could make. Unless there's something at the center for new players it just seems callous to dump everyone there.

That's my take on it. I'm sure other people can add to that.

Don't forget that it provided easy grounds for noob killers this world and it made the rest of supergrids dead except for the noob grid.
Why would you want to toss the noobs to live in the most dangerous/griefy grid in the game right when they start to play the game?

Please, make an ability that you can spawn somewhere close to your friend, hell you don't even have to make it close, but also it should not be really far when you're making a character in the new world. There's absolutely no need to keep the un-fun,mindless walking and running to your friends once you spawn in the game, it demotivates a lot of people that you can't play with your friends, especially it demotivates the newcomers.

How should alt-spamming be prevented?

Certainly not like this, it didn't keep people from spawning alts this world, you just made the noobs to suffer from this, being unable to play with their friends.
People from my village were walking their alts for a 10 hour walk from the spawn grid and some of them had up to 6 alts. It didn't keep anyone from spamming alts at all. The alt spamming was almost same on the level as it was in old haven with the HS spawning.

[Immortalsouls]

I started playing several times but every time it was reseted after a few month. I payed already because I like the art of the game with some things I didn´t like but it´s ok.
But because of this I want to share some points and ideas.

My points:
1. Now the game is boring for the most low players, they don´t know if the would will end or not. And if not than in two or three weeks later?
That is for new player the worst ever.
Restart it or not.

2. A little bit of point 1. We, some friends and I, always join worlds and 2 month later you reset. That is so boring. Can´t you publish it
bevor. Maybe, a world starts and you show the starting date date on the page and of course a date when it might be resetted and let it stand until the world will ended. So people have a feeling of joining or not.


Ideas for more people to play the game and spend money:

1. What is with different servers. For Example try it with one PVE World, one PVP World.
Or, maybe start a world and say, it will live 2years. But start after a year a next one, with new updates but let the others still play. And you pay the verification on each world extra.

2. Different languages for the clients. I don´t know how you programmed it, but if possible invent something.
For Example the language file ist on the pc and you must only change it. So it would be easier for others to make a file for their language and
you don´t have to translate.

3. NO Pay to Win. I am not sure if someone has a chance with fixed Q75 (Q125 Verified) against Q200 people. If not it is worse.
Make other thinks for spend money.
Everyone one, one free Charakter and the other, to a maximum of maybe 5, costs money for each slot(10$ each slot).

4. Make the verification a little bit expensiver but lower the cost for the subscriptions a little bit.

5. A playing ground for newbies. A world which is resettet every 2 weeks, but you can join in, you get a char full skilled and equiped und 1 million EP, so you can look and test for a real world.

Immo

[ErdTod]

Indeed, what if you conduct another experiment and let 2 world live - a permadeath one and one with a huge stat loss upon death, but not permadeath? Say, on PvE server after death you will become a wisp or something for like 1 hour, so it will give some time for the raiders to actually raid your village. And then you respawn - and die again fighting or don't die and respawn far away where your wisp went (and ofcourse those who are alive can't see the wisp). A crafters world - maybe it will not be so boring as it might look at first sight?

Also, as a payment model, the one with different stat growth multipliers looks like a better idea. But I'd rather implement those modifiers to things crafted in-game: so if an unsubsctibed hearthling crafts a food, it will only give the said low multiplier amount of stats to even a subscribed one - to prevent the scenario where only one person from a village gets the subscription and has 15 of feeders that are free accounts. However, contrary is possible

You have already moved from some of visions you had in the beginning of the game in order to provide more fun to play. It is better to have alot of players and somehow a little more casual game, than a hardcore permadeath community-based game with 50 people online daily: you will end up abandoning this project. Which will be one of the saddest days on Earth )