by Garfy » Tue Mar 15, 2016 6:21 am
I pretty much went over this already, but the game needs more long term goals. Not only in terms of playing, but in terms of development either.
The quality grind is dumb. It needs to be replaced with technology levels. You start with pointy sticks, advance to sharp rocks, then glue them together, then you get soft metals, hard metals, then you learn new techniques and so on and so on. Not you get a sharp sword and just keep making it sharper and sharper.
As an example of technology/techniques. Once I learn a skill like blacksmithing (but this could apply to any crafting skill), it unlocks specializations. Like weapon forging, armor forging, tool forging or jewelry forging. I can only ever pick one of these, once I pick it, the others are locked off from me. But once I pick one, it would unlock 3-4 more skills. Weapon forging might unlock sword, axe or spear specialization, again I can pick one. Each one of these would unlock unique items to craft. Repeat this as many times as needed so after a while I have a unique path.
Additionally, add cultural differences and techniques. One village might make steel by using wind powered crucibles (an actual technique), another might use clay crucibles, and another might use the standard brick crucibles. Each one would result in a different type of steel which when used with my unique sword forging technique would result in a different sword.
Trading will never work because almost every resource is distributed randomly and fairly evenly. You're always going to find what you need relatively close to you if you keep looking. There is just no reason to travel across the world to trade with someone, because you both have the same stuff (outside of different qualities). The new resources were a terrible way of trying to address this. Honestly, the world generator needs remaking from scratch so it can generate maps with actual regions each with their own local resources (such as the top of the world being a desert, while the bottom is tundra, and one area is a swamp, another is mountains and so on).
If both of these things were correctly implemented, it would facilitate the need for trade (although, given how autistic the average Haven player is, they'd likely exploit it with bots and alts to claim everything they need anyway). A village living in a desert might have unique metals a village living in tundra doesn't have. But the village in the tundra might have more varied foragables and animals to hunt. Combine this with unique technology/techniques and you'd have a massive range of products that no one village could have access to all of them.
Assuming these kind of things were implemented correctly, it would facilitate trade, and thus politics. Assuming efforts were made to stamp out bots and people with 200 alts to unlock everything (but that's an entire other issue that needs addressing at some point).