Yesterday as I was driving across the luscious Oklahoma countryside, and musing to myself about agricultural suicide rates, an idea came to me: what if we had Tedium as a meter in Haven?
The Tedium meter would tick down the more you do the same task over and over. And if you repeat the same task too much, you would risk serious injury and could possibly drive yourself to suicide. This would be great feature to stop people from using bots and alts, the two most heinous evils of Haven. To regain your Tedium you'd have to do a variety of tasks from across the spectrum.
Tedium Intensity
Certain crafting elements could be broken down into their respective abilities and the more you do that task you'd gain Tedium Intensity.
Example: As you keep farming your farming intensity would keep growing and after reaching a threshold of intensity stacks, it would begin to tick against your Tedium. So to prevent this you could go do some cooking or sewing work to break the stacks back down and let your Tedium recover.
By forcing the player to stop what they're doing and lower their Tedium intensities for the ability they're spamming it would force people to use more diverse characters and stop niche alts. This would also further complicate the evils of botting.
An alternative to the Intensity system certain tasks could also give you negative tedium modifiers, for instance:
If you were to spend all your time mining you'd eventually get a debuff like "Cave-touched: you yearn for the kiss of sun on flesh. The endless mines weaken your resolve..." This debuff could give you a negative modifier to your smithing and stength. Another debuff could be "Weaver's Wrist: a fire burns in your hands. Perhaps the wheel should lay still..." This one could reduce your sewing and dexterity. I feel like these debuffs would create an opportunity for some creative descriptions and immersion.
Another interesting interaction this could add is suicide and suicide prevention. Hearthlings would be able to craft nooses from rope. And a Hearthling that has dangerously low Tedium would be easily tempted to hang himself. So say, if you're going through your cupboards and stumble upon a rope while low Tedium, there'd be a suicide check. If the Hearthling fails the suicide check the player will lose control of their Hearthling and he will begin to craft a noose and build the courage to end it all. To prevent this, the Hearthling would have to reach out to nearby kin in an effort to save him. This would foster players to befriend each other, lest they be driven to end it all. This could also be used offensively. You could leave nooses laying outside your enemies village and tempt them if they let their Tedium drop too low.
I feel like this Tedium system would add a healthy dose of immersive gameplay to the Hearthlands and serve to create an improved environment for its players. I'd love to see your feedback, perhaps I forgot to illustrate some points of the system, let me know!