Game Development: World 16, with Steam

[22nd_ChuckNorris]

What kind of "addressing", more precisely, is it that you'd like to see? Also, where would you draw the line? Do you make a distinction between "pick nearest herb" or "close nearest gate" bots, drinking scripts, farming bots, the built-in autoharvest action, foraging bots, surveillance alts, &c? Just curious. If I gave you admin access, what would you do?

I honestly don't know how to realistically address it, I'm largely just light heartedly griping. I do think wrist slapping the obvious 24/7 botmasters with mini-divine-interventions would at least make a dent, but I'm also sure that's reductive and it's not so simple.

My main issue, personally, and I think what you're going to hear a lot of after launching to steam, is that knowing that there are players who are getting the same rewards as you (or, generally, better rewards because you can time/optimize things better with automation,) basically without Playing The Game cheapens much of the sense of accomplishment/progression, leaving larping as roughly the only gratifying thing left.

One of the best steps I ever saw you guys take in this regard, just as an example, was the addition of curio tables to remove the disparity between the theoretical barely existent vanilla client normals, and losers like me who stayed logged in permanently with an autostudy script running. Jorb asked in the stream, approximately "if everyone could do it, would that make it fine?" and the answer is yes, 100%, it's the inbuilt disparity of proprietary client/scripting stuff that's the issue.

Like, if you knew that everyone who was in the know was just perpetually getting stronger/progressing like it was EVE Online, but you're only getting better/stronger when you're Actually Playing, I'd suspect you can surely see how this would dampen or snuff the enjoyment of someone who's not already an entrenched player, yeah? I sincerely think it's gonna be a real problem for this game in a normie ecosystem.

I agree, the disparity between custom clients and the default is much too high, same with botting vs those that don't, very likely most steam users wont like this at all either, you devs know better what solutions are possible from your end as you have much more backend info than us, but its definitely something that should be adressed in either direction if possible pre-steam release.

[Shitten_DuPants]

>devs make game where minmaxing and botting is optimal
>where u die (or lose (or dont have best products for sale (or feel bad))) if ur not optimal
>devs also despise taking away from the larpfeel of the game by adding the more….non-diegetic….of optimizations players have innovated


its an impossible problem tbth……either they add all custom client features as opt-in settings on default client (they wont) or relent and admit game this cutthroat competitive doesnt actually fit their temperaments as much as they imagine (they wont)

silly willy players and maybe the devs need to exit platos cave and piece together that maybe the vision itself is flawed

[Audiosmurf]

I hold out hope that there's some phrasing that'll work like some kind of MKULTRA activation code and they'll start getting it

[Shitten_DuPants]

something about flies and honey and vinegar anyways my bawls itch go ahead and scratch ‘em nematode

(btw fostering a group and finding/creating a client should NOT be part of the learning curve, programmers and socially unstunted humans are both dirty cheaters who should have their advantages levelled for my personal benefit)

[Audiosmurf]

Yeah, my mistake for responding to one of you losers with anything but seething contempt. I genuinely can't believe you can try to position "creating a client" as part of the game's learning curve with a straight face.

[Shitten_DuPants]

aha, you mistake intent my good sir! It seems you saw the irony in my latter statement but not the first!

It’s said that Art is larger than the work, more than “consumption”; that those beyond the artist can participate to dictate the shape the Art takes from the perspective of those experiencing it. Are CCs not a rather large part of What The Game Even Is? And, following the the logic of POSIWID, is it not evident that HnH could be called a test rewarding community with Programmerkind, beginning in cosmic rhyme with the bond of the developer duo themselves?

but forget all that and keep scratchin’

[terechgracz]

Don't do anything Vs botting, you can't know if input to the server comes from real human ornmachine mate. Go read about Turing test!!!! It's usolvable. If you have solution then share it with academic world.

[DonVelD]

@jorb i couldnt make a post before because i was banned but good job for doing things right, after backlash but still!

[animary]

... maybe this kind of bullying is a good incentive to learn how to defend yourself....

Or inducement to quit. This game already has a reputation for such bullying/aggression, and the non-intuitive combat system does not help.

[Undefined]

Your biggest hurdle with HnH on steam is the obtuseness of many mechanics, the current playerbase understands them because the current playerbase has been dealing with them for years.
The combat system, I know you feel is unique, but it's painful to learn and at its core it's one way and boring. I've talked about this before, but without things like the ability to heal yourself or your allies during combat health is a finite resource, combat is all about trying not to ever get hit or lose health. There's literally zero teamwork possibility other than both hitting the same person.
This is why PvP in the game is just carrying lakes of water and chasing each other for miles based on numbers, there's very little room for individual skill or group skill to play a part in the outcome of a fight.
The game being open PvP will draw in a certain type of player, I first came to H&H after having quit Ultima Online because I was drawn in by this open world PvP mixed with survival and world building. In UO my playstyle was purely PvP, myself and my guild were very proficient at it, frequently winning fights while outnumbered 5x or more simply because of small scale solid teamwork. After learning the combat system back then (Which I admit was far worse than it is now) I just gave up the idea of bothering with it because it's just so boring. Every iteration of the combat system has had largely the same fundamental flaws and resulted in the same scenarios. To this day I just don't engage with it more than I have to because it's boring and broken.

Another problem that maybe the influx of new people would help is purely the community, the community has over the years largely devolved into some of its most toxic elements, I think the hands-off approach when it comes to community management is great in many ways, I grew up in the heyday of the internet of the 90s when the idea of "community moderation" was a joke, but it also almost always leads to the same situation we have here, it's partly why myself, and likely many other people, don't even bother engaging with it anymore.
The largest and most visible elements of the in-game community are also these same people, it'll be seen and turn away many people who would otherwise come to love the game. Had I started playing Haven and seen only this I wouldn't have bothered sticking with it, back when I started we had such a wide mix of playstyles and opinions and a much more open and friendly community, maybe it's just the memberberries or just because the general state of the world itself is much more divisive and hostile than it was back then too, but the current majority of the posts or discord discussions remind me of schoolyard posturing and bottom barrel American comedy.

Moving on, we have longevity, thankfully with the goal of 4-6 month long server life this will partly be nullified, but one of the key problems we have is that character progression is entirely uncapped, think of any other MMO, those with AAA budget research and design teams and how they handle things like skills and stats, they cap them, because it works.
You need a reason to make new characters, you need to limit the power level a basic single character can reach. You can add ways to increase this, difficult to achieve (end game content right here), but again, capped to a finite limit. Reaching the absolute hard-capped power level on a character will be the primary focus of the player, this also explains the fundamental reason why credos are seen as essential by players: they HAVE to have the maximum efficiency, the absolute limit they can, mostly because it's required to compete on the same level with anyone else who has it.
When you have a game that doesn't ceiling this absolute limit you're creating a Sisyphean competition when it comes to character development. You can rebalance food as many times as you want, but it's just a boulder to push, not the reason we push it.

There's a lot more, but I've mentioned most of these things in the past. I really hope to see the Steam release be successful (I'll be on vacation through November so will miss it sadly), but to be blunt, I don't think the game is fit for general consumption. I personally love the game, but I fell in love with it a long time ago and I've stuck around through thick and thin, and still love it despite the large number of flaws and frustrations it has. It's kind of like a marriage.