The future

[Garfy]

Before I even state anything more, most people are going to have strong opinions about what I am about to post, but please understand, what I am about to say I am not doing because I hate the game, but because I want it to improve.

That being said, I do not believe Haven and Hearth is being updated with it's future in mind. To put it bluntly, I don't think the developers have the vision, talent or just the desire to make big, meaningful changes to the game. When I (and my friends) see a new update, I feel disappointment. It's a list of tiny changes and fixes, and sometimes a new thing (item or some such) that feels incredibly underdeveloped. It feels like a minimal amount of effort is being put into these updates, and as time goes on less effort is being put into them.

Now I understand, making a game is difficult, it takes a lot of time and effort (I've made games before) and although lots of people will say they love doing it, large parts of it are just a chore to do. If this was a free game, I'd be fine with the way development is, but this is a game with a subscription fee and various other things you can pay for. If a game has a subscription fee, I strongly believe the game needs continued and active development to justify such a fee. I do not feel the development on this game justifies paying for such a subscription.

Just to make my point, I will point out a few examples of what I am talking about.

The most obvious is the localized resources added with this most recent update. They're structures randomly dotted around the map. This is probably the laziest way it could have been implemented. When I heard "localized resources", I expected a world with different regions, each with their own types resources. I expected something like part of the world being a desert, with desert flora and fauna, and another part to be a tundra, with tundra flora and fauna and so on. I didn't expect randomly placed structures that are entirely too easy to claim and add very little in the way of forcing player interaction to the game.

Following on from this. The map generator in legacy was pretty bad, the current map generator is essentially an extension of this badness. You took the exact same formula, and just added more to it. It's still bad, now it just has more to do badly. I've played with random map generation, it's easy to google this and learn about it. Diamond square, fractals, voronoi diagrams, these are all easy things to learn, but can all be used to make interesting looking worlds. If I can learn these, and generate maps using them, anyone can.

Another thing that always bothered me (and I'm picking up hints that you might be trying to change or add extra tiers to) is quality and the quality grind. In my opinion, quality should simply not exist. You either have an item, or you don't. It's essentially a lazy (the laziest) way of prolonging the game. In other games, I start of with a stick, then I make it pointy, then I make pointy stones and fasten them to the stick, eventually I've got metals, then I'm using metallurgy to manipulate metals into better forms and eventually I'm implementing chemistry and physics to make devastating weapons. In Haven and Hearth, I have a sharp stick, then I make it sharper, and then I make it even sharper, and I just keep making it sharper.

I know both of these are big changes and cannot just me implemented without making a new world, but as I said, these are the kinds of things you need to be developing towards sometime in the future (they don't need to be these things exactly, they're examples, but get the point across).

Even smaller updates seem to be lacking in effort. On Mondays update I saw rafts and chives were added. One should have been there at the release of the game, the other seems like an afterthought, like it took the whole of 5 minutes to make and add and it essentially amounts to nothing. I'm sure sometime in the future chives will have some kind of use, but at the moment they're a 1.5 agi food I don't care about. I know I sound harsh when I'm saying this, but you get the point I'm making right? The developers said chives were part of an attempt to make each biome unique, which is fine, this is what you should be doing. But where is the rest of this attempt? Am I suppose to believe a single food item is the best you could come up with?

I know what I've said is going to make some people angry, people are going to disagree and what not, but it needs to be said. There is a reason Haven and Hearth can barely break 500 concurrent players (which we all know is mostly bots and in coming weeks/months will dwindle), while another, similar game of the same genre made with the same language became one of the best selling video games ever and it's creator sold it for a hefty $2.5 billion.

To the creators of Haven and Hearth; I don't know whether you're just lazy, if you lack the vision to take the game any further, don't have the skill/talent required to do so, or there is some other factors I cannot think of right now, but whatever the reason is, you need to address it and fix it. I want to like and support the game, but your current development practices make this increasingly hard to do.

[mamba]

Were do you think you are ?
You are just a guest here, in the home of Jorb and Loftar, they dont owe you, or anybody, anything.
You dont like the game, fine, but its irrelevant cause it only have to please them.
Dont like Picasso , go see Rembrant paintings and dont ask Picasso to paint what you like, there are enough other games to please everyone btw.

[loftar]

There's not really much I can respond to something like this. If what you're saying is right, then there's not a whole lot we can do about it, and if it isn't, then only our actions matter anyway. If you think the game is bad, it's not like I can argue the point with you and convince you that it in fact isn't.

However, there are some things in your wall-of-text that I cannot help but take issue with.

When I heard "localized resources", I expected a world with different regions, each with their own types resources.

This only has to do with your expectations rather than any reality. Doing spot resources wasn't "lazy", but rather exactly what we wanted. We wanted to introduce spots of contention and potential conflicts. If you read "localized resources" and interpreted that in a way that we didn't intend, that may perhaps be a miss in communication, but not one in development.

On the other hand, we do have localized terrains, and the chives, mandrakes, yarrow and whatnot we've added the last two updates are part of an ongoing project to make the distinction between them more meaningful, which does seem to match your idea of "localized resources".

Am I suppose to believe a single food item is the best you could come up with?

Just because we only added a single food item that particular patch (we added more this patch, as previously noted), would it have been better if we had not released it? Just because something that takes five minutes to add (I would also like to add here that I think you underestimate the time it takes to model something in 3D, but that's besides the point), does that mean that it shouldn't be added? I noted something similar with the "rocking chair patch" as well, where people complained about it just because it was a small patch. Yes, it was a small patch, but so what? Does the fact that it's small mean that we should have scrapped it and not added it? We happened to have the rocking chair, and thus we added it. Was that wrong of us to do? Would the game have been better without the rocking chair? I don't understand the complaint.

[LadyV]

Obviously you are not happy with the game as is or where it is going. Fair enough, no one gets everything they want or the way they want it. As for your comments on their vision and talents.... It is theirs and theirs alone. You may not like it but if they don't want grand and elaborate designs that market to millions that is ok. Not everyone seeks such things. Some are just content to make a good product for their community. And it is a good product. They may make errors and such but at least they try and are steadily working forward.

As for your comments on quality, it is what make this game fun on many levels. I can find great resources and instantly be successful. Those same resources can spark war and conflict which makes it fun for others. I can raise my items and crops... quality and feel a sense of pride in accomplishment. To remove that would wound the soul of what Haven is. It is quite simply working to better your game life and have fun and pride in doing such.

I am sorry the game does not have allure to you but it is eternal Alpha. Join in the adventure or don't. You can not dictate what a game is, becomes, or how others enjoy it. If you can do better with your gaming knowledge then do so. Make the game you see fit and if you want that wealth work for it.

Good day!

[evilboy666]

[Audiosmurf]

Send this guy to the gulags. This is the worst "DED GAME" post I've ever seen, because this guy actually put time into this awful awful thread.

Another thing that always bothered me (and I'm picking up hints that you might be trying to change or add extra tiers to) is quality and the quality grind. In my opinion, quality should simply not exist. You either have an item, or you don't. It's essentially a lazy (the laziest) way of prolonging the game. In other games, I start of with a stick, then I make it pointy, then I make pointy stones and fasten them to the stick, eventually I've got metals, then I'm using metallurgy to manipulate metals into better forms and eventually I'm implementing chemistry and physics to make devastating weapons. In Haven and Hearth, I have a sharp stick, then I make it sharper, and then I make it even sharper, and I just keep making it sharper.

Quality is part of what makes the game what it is. I can safely say that it will always exist in some capacity.

Comparing this game to other games is meaningless.

The sheer audacity that it takes to come in here with this "NO TALENT NO VISION" business, simply because you don't like what they're doing, is absolutely staggering to me.

In addition, you're really complaining about weekly/bi-weekly updates by a two man team being small to moderate in scope? Really???

[Rotsala]

I do not believe Haven and Hearth is being updated with my personal vision for it's future in mind.

Get out

[Garfy]

You misunderstand my post. I never said the game was bad, I was explaining that it is simply not living up to it's potential. My examples were just pointing this out.

Let me go back to localized resources again. You added them, and they do add something new and different to the game. But the way they were added, was one of the easiest ways they could be added, and also one of with the lowest return as far as players are concerned. You added new resource nodes, new items and some new minor mechanics, this is something that is relatively easy to do when compared to redesigning how the world is generated, and how progress through the game happens, new tech trees and so on. You could have done so much more with localized resourced, but for reasons I don't know, you didn't.

You did not live up to the potential this new feature could have offered, and this is the point I am trying to make.

With the most recent updates, you claim to be working towards more long term goals, such as adding unique features to biomes. This is the kind of updates you need to add, but at the same time (and in the past) you are adding things without fully fleshing them out. The most recent updates with mandrakes and yarrow is better than when you added chives, but you could still do more with them. Off the top of my head, when you say mandrake, I think of poison. Naturally such a system would require planning and implementing, but it is a direction you could take. Likewise, there are many things you have added in the past that you could have done more with, but simply didn't and might never.

As for adding thing just because you've got them and can. That is fine, but more often than not it feels like most of the stuff you add was added just because you can. Sometimes, you just need to add meaningful content, which in Haven and Hearth only seems to happen when a new world happens (I understand due to the nature of the game you cannot constantly add world changing new things, but you can introduce new meaningful content and mechanics still).

You are aiming too low with the development of Haven and Hearth. You need to start aiming higher.

PS. I've worked with 3D models before. It doesn't take long to whack out a low polygon model unless you've got to animate it as well.

[sabinati]

you're really complaining about weekly/bi-weekly updates by a two man team being small to moderate in scope? Really???

[ven]

I wish loftar gave such long answers to some of the good posts in C&I too :/