Game Development: Runs Like Wind

[popfor]

there is no justice life is hard get good

[Jacobian123]

3edgy5me

[popfor]

3edgy5me

stfu u dull

[Sevenless]

theres no base permadeath u just loose ur loot

Base permadeath is killing animals, kilns, smelters, anvils. Basically any structure or liftable. You can't alt vault animals, but everything else can have a replacement set of likely lower Q vaulted. It'd be a pain in the ass, but it's possible.

[qoonpooka]

legacy siege mechanics with no permadeath is best match 10/10 fuck ur base all ur base are belong to us

theres no base permadeath u just loose ur loot

This strikes me as an endless, and meaningless, cycle of siege and reprisal siege, since the combat stats of the vanquished remain the same, and thus they remain a potent threat.

Permadeath attracts me to the game because it makes PvP meaningful. That little PvP happens is actually a GOOD thing for the kind of game I play on H&H. Conquest is a meaningful enterprise here. Threats of violence carry great weight.

The PvP mechanics as a focus takes H&H out of the category of game I want to play (something akin to 'Diplomacy-ville,' a state-of-nature simulator) and puts it into the category of game I generally avoid: mindless, meaningless PvP for PvP's own sake. I can play TF2 for that.

The other game I play a lot is EVE Online. EVE online has no permadeath, just - in some corner cases - major economic setbacks. The thing about H&H, however, is that basically any setback can be traded around. Whatever you've lost, a handful of pearls and a week's work and you've got what previously took you months to accomplish back. If the devs want to do away with permadeath, I think EVE Online's model of 'big, expensive sandcastles to knock over' is a reasonable one, but then H&H isn't all that distinct from EVE Online. I'd probably stop playing and simply refocus on EVE.

I am, I'll admit, a niche market, but I do think that H&H benefits from the areas in which it is unique and distinguished from the rest of the market.

[Sevenless]

This strikes me as an endless, and meaningless, cycle of siege and reprisal siege, since the combat stats of the vanquished remain the same, and thus they remain a potent threat.

Permadeath attracts me to the game because it makes PvP meaningful. That little PvP happens is actually a GOOD thing for the kind of game I play on H&H. Conquest is a meaningful enterprise here. Threats of violence carry great weight.

Endless fighting is fun, there are many many games that are nothing but "meaningless fighting" for a reason. Beating opponents is fun in and of itself. Actually interacting with players is fun too, which is why the village visitor debuff has been an amazing addition to the game. I think everyone can agree the existence of the community fair being possible is awesome in and of itself.

The problem with permadeath is something I refer to as "uncapped loss potential". Eve does it right, you choose how much you bring to the table in fighting. You can risk a ship you can buy 10 replacements of in an hour, or you bring a ship that took you three months to earn. Your choice. Permadeath doesn't give you that option, short of making an alt for every single dangerous activity you do. And I think everyone agrees that "lots of alts" just cheapens the gameplay experience and immersion.

This game isn't designed for true pvp permadeath. Realm of the Mad God is more along those lines, characters pretty much cap out after a week of play. In order to redesign haven to that, we'd have to shred the awesome crafting/progression mechanics that many players love.

[qoonpooka]

Endless fighting is fun, there are many many games that are nothing but "meaningless fighting" for a reason. Beating opponents is fun in and of itself.

I would rephrase this as "Endless fighting can be fun. The blanket statement that it is, in all cases, enjoyable, is problematic in the respect that it attaches an additional, implied premise: Haven & Hearth should be about endless fighting. I reject this implied premise, because I do not agree with the blanket statement. If H&H tried to be DotA or Starcraft or TF2, or whatever other 'endless fighting' game you enjoy, I would rather go play that game instead; it has an established community and much larger budget to produce a much slicker game.

Actually interacting with players is fun too, which is why the village visitor debuff has been an amazing addition to the game. I think everyone can agree the existence of the community fair being possible is awesome in and of itself.

I came back to H&H after the community fair already existed and still haven't figured out what it is, but I agree that the sentiments I've seen about it are: This is awesome. I agree that player interaction is good stuff, but the problem with favoring player interaction too heavily is that you get gameplay mechanics that: a) protect/encourage griefers, b) take meaning and agency away from players, c) profoundly reduce risk.

The problem with permadeath is something I refer to as "uncapped loss potential". Eve does it right, you choose how much you bring to the table in fighting. You can risk a ship you can buy 10 replacements of in an hour, or you bring a ship that took you three months to earn. Your choice. Permadeath doesn't give you that option, short of making an alt for every single dangerous activity you do. And I think everyone agrees that "lots of alts" just cheapens the gameplay experience and immersion.

Alt spamming is poor, yes, especially to the extent that game activities can be automated and thus raising a robot army is feasible. At the same time, I would question your interpretation of EVE's mechanics - but then, I fly with a Wormhole PvP corp there, so literally my entire asset pool is endangered 24/7. If we got successfully sieged out of our home, I'd lose everything except my wallet balance. Folks who live in Empire space don't have this problem, but if you live in Wspace or Null, all of your stuff could be wiped out if you weren't paying attention. Many aspects of EVE have the same 'uncapped loss potential.'

I disagree that uncapped loss potential is a problem; I see it as a mechanic, specifically a risk mechanic. It requires changes in gameplay to account for the risks. H&H, to me, is about tribalism. You mitigate the uncapped loss potential by spending a portion of your gameplay focused on security. Tending walls, making patrols, training soldiers in a constant arms-race lest you find yourself unable to prosecute a necessary or desired war, etc. The uncapped loss potential means that violence is rare, but serious business. I love that about H&H. It is, in fact, the draw for me. I do think the mechanics still need work, mind you; it feels like there's no point in playing seriously unless you start from day 1, are able to sustain constant LP/FEPs for your army, etc, and if you ever lose a fight, you're basically out of the game until world reset. That makes for a pretty inaccessible game, but I don't think permadeath is the issue so much as a stat/combat mechanics that make low level characters nothing but a corpse waiting to happen.

This is an area where I feel H&H can learn from EVE Online, though: In EVE online, a character is PvP combat effective the moment the account is created, and is PvP desirable within 24-48 hours, albeit in limited roles. In H&H a new character's only job is to be a resource sink until you get close enough to the horizontal part of the power curve that you can maybe get lucky in a fight. That's the problem, to my mind, not permadeath itself.

This game isn't designed for true pvp permadeath. Realm of the Mad God is more along those lines, characters pretty much cap out after a week of play. In order to redesign haven to that, we'd have to shred the awesome crafting/progression mechanics that many players love.

I agree with your diagnosis here, but not your recommended treatment. H&H isn't yet well designed to accommodate the permadeath aspect. I am encouraged by a lot of the things I've seen, however. I just would hate to see the game shed it's high-risk environment in order to become more mass-market. It would lose it's appeal for me, entirely. I play H&H because it's different, not because I'm hoping it will become more of the same.

[Sevenless]

To each their own, but your vision likewise destroys my own.

I personally feel that what makes haven unique is the immersive building system, crafting system, character growth, and general setting. There's no MMO out there that even touches on it, although it has spawned several badly deved copycats in the past 2-3 years. And in past worlds pvp has been fun for the sake of pvp, you're right that not every pvp system is fun but I disagree that every pvp system couldn't be fun given the right setup.

As to your eve rebuttle, that's your choice. You could, as a wormholer, stash spare ships in Empire. Your wallet, as a successful WHer, should be stocked enough to easily replenish what you risk. You're choosing to leave things in WH space. Same goes for null, choice. You can participate in nulll while keeping and earning a huge cash reserve, such that getting wiped out as a player wouldn't be the end of your gametime. There are very few things that you as a player cannot avoid risking in some way. Beyond that, eve offers plenty of catch up opportunities that haven doesn't have, the skill system is intrinsically different in that sense. At no point did I ask to remove base permadeath though, we're only talking character permadeath removal. Factions can be destroyed, very analogous to Null wars, but killing players out of the gameworld is bad for the game. Do you really think eve would have 20k players if everytime a faction lost a station in null their characters were deleted? It might feel satisfying, until you walk a broken wasteland devoid of players and log off due to boredom because the only ones left alive live in paranoid fear.

And from the people I've talked to over the years, the non-combat aspects are the primary draw for most of haven's playerbase. The PvP being "fun because it's fun" has happened in past worlds too. I can never agree that haven is better off with character permadeath than without it.

[popfor]

yea the permadeath and infrequent high risk situations like where u can die as they originally were gave huge meaning to the game, building your base, to build your character, and being able to lose it is great. haven is a game of discovery and progression, and inherently loss. all loss is always the fault of your own, because if a pvper catches you on ur hunting trip, you should have run faster and carried more water, patrol your own base, and dont be a fool, the game teaches you this from day 1 when you get mauled by a boar, and defending yourself, due to the nature of the game, is a necessary mechanic right along side our farmville bullshit. and yeah when ur getting fucked in the ass u might cry a bit but the fact that a game can inspire such a great range of emotion from its player is in itself artful and enhances the immersion of the gameplay significantly, which leads me to the idea that for a game to truly be fun you need to be able to think more freely as a person, and reflect it into the virtual world, the ability to cultivate yourself and then make choices which can influence your own future within the game, to be able to relax, feel good about noobs begging u for ur dank shit, the feel of desperately begging for some dank shit, to discovering the highest recources in your area, the feeling of using them (the noobs) to double your quality, to being fucked in the ass, or fucking someone in the ass or eating a creamy cock or riding a horse bc them bitches go fast, and doing whatever the fuck you want, because people enjoy doing whatever the fuck they want, to a certain reasonable extent, and i think game development has drastically changed course from its initial intentions, in my opinion havens beauty is that it is a game of options. the reason i back old mechanics with no permadeath is solely because it will make the game available to filthy casuals without them crying and turning it into it a pity shit fest

and i doubt anyones gonna level the average joes base to any degree that isnt losing ya cow, unless u actually matter and if u do actually matter u should know better and do better because you should care enough to do so at that point.

in case u dont like my shitposting earlier this is also the same shitposting but large and in depth

also i cry all the time that darkness isnt server side and dark, night vision is so nice but if no one can see in the dark then its fun immersion

tl;dr jorbtar is a smelly unfunny noob that smells a lot and even when he showers he still smells because hes smelly all time his smell has its own smell so when he removes the smell The smell of ur smell reaffects him and he still smells, also hes stinky too

[darlok3d]

non-combat aspects are the primary draw for most of haven's playerbase

True