Game Development: Haven & Hearth on Steam

[jorb]

You can't expect the players who got basically fucked over in so many ways by what they devs just announced to be positive about it.

To our mind we're adding optionality, rather than taking anything away. The one thing that could concern me is, indeed, a potential bifurcation of the player base, but if that turns out to be a problem, there is nothing that says we cannot simply return to a one server paradigm. Surely the present server maintenance policy that we've had here for 10+ years now isn't likely to be the optimal? How do we find the optimal breakdown if we do not allow ourselves to experiment with it?

I'm sure if the devs actually address all the issues (custom clients/acc sharing/alts/paying twice/hats/dividing the game into two servers and forcing ppl to play on steam for the new world we waited so long for) the steam release will go a lot better than what we could expect right now.

Custom clients are supported as well as they can be on Steam, I think...?
Account sharing is not a feature of the game, it is something you do against our strong, contrary, recommendations.
Perhaps it is the case that we are dividing the player base, but the aim is obviously to grow the pie.
Glad to hear excitement for W16! Noted!

We're not trying to rob you, Bilbo Baggins. <3

[Robben_DuMarsch]

To our mind we're adding optionality, rather than taking anything away.

I'm sure God was also just teaching Lot an important lesson of some kind by turning his wife to salt. I'm not sure everyone would be too happy with God if they were to be given the same favor.

I am personally not at all aggrieved. My advice is that you do as here: viewtopic.php?p=939740#p939740

Feel free to ignore, I'm not as gifted in turning people into preservatives.

[Nocturnal-Rainbows]

I thought we were pretty explicit about that? Anyhoo:

I also thought you were pretty clear about that. I cannot fathom why people came out of that stream thinking that world 15 would stay as is forever and that only the Steam worlds would be getting wipes.
To add to that, I can understand why you wouldn't want to wipe W15 at the same time as the steam release either and the reasoning for wanting to wait makes perfect sense. The only thing you perhaps could have done better with is providing people with a rough estimate on when you would plan to get World 16 on the go but even then, that could detract away from what you're trying to advertise which is the Steam release so I can see why you wouldn't want to do that either.

My takeaway from that stream was :
Steam release is coming out, new fresh world, shorter world cycles (Roughly 6 months per world)
W15 will remain for the time being (no doubt to give the Steam release a chance to breathe to be successful) but will then be wiped as usual and the worlds that come after it will retain the longer world duration to give people the option of something a bit more persistent, should they want that.

I've slept on it and I'm genuinely not understanding how any of this is a bad thing. It's a win/win for all parties.
The whole hat thing sounds overblown to me, maybe just give people the reassurance that something will be done so that they can eventually have their hats in the Steam release too, but I don't agree that it is some integral pivotal thing has to be implemented right at the beginning in order to ensure it succeeds. That's just retarded.

[jorb]

When you alluded to w15 “not lasting forever” on stream the implication seemed to me that it would end (or only end) should the Steam Experiment Succeed - that is, steam “SX” worlds would possibly be the only new worlds going forwards.

Perish the thought! The idea here is NOT to try to dismantle our independent distribution of the game and move permanently and wholly into Valve's digital ghetto. No. No. No. We're primarily after the imprimatur, distribution, and visibility it could provide. I can only apologize if that wasn't perfectly clear.

Will there certainly be a w16, w17, etc?

I never comment on world resets but: Yes.

[Dawidio123]

You can't expect the players who got basically fucked over in so many ways by what they devs just announced to be positive about it.

To our mind we're adding optionality, rather than taking anything away. The one thing that could concern me is, indeed, a potential bifurcation of the player base, but if that turns out to be a problem, there is nothing that says we cannot simply return to a one server paradigm. Surely the present server maintenance policy that we've had here for 10+ years now isn't likely to be the optimal? How do we find the optimal breakdown if we do not allow ourselves to experiment with it?

Well the split between two servers doesn't just cause bifurcation it causes a whole lot of other issues i mentioned earlier. Makes it more difficult to acc share (which is a very common practice in groups), makes it more difficult to use alts (which are needed in the current state of the game even though i'd prefer them not to be), now you have to solve the issue of sharing hats/verifications and so on between the two accounts and then solve the issue when you at some point merge them back together, gives custom client devs extra work which there is a high chance a lot won't want to do, especially the public devs. And there is probably some i haven't mentioned.

And all of that could be avoided by simply not splitting the servers arbitrarily between steam and non-steam accounts. Let's be honest W15 is dead, it won't go above 100 players. There is no bifurcation of the community short-term bcs everyone will go play on S1 it being the new world. So I just don't understand the reason why not let players using current client + account access the same servers as the steam players. I don't understand what you gain by making it this way instead of the route that doesn't cause all those issues. (At least as perceived from the player side of things) And this way you in many ways turn the community against the steam launch.

[jorb]

My takeaway from that stream was :
Steam release is coming out, new fresh world, shorter world cycles (Roughly 6 months per world)
W15 will remain for the time being (no doubt to give the Steam release a chance to breathe to be successful) but will then be wiped as usual and the worlds that come after it will retain the longer world duration to give people the option of something a bit more persistent, should they want that.

This.

[jpjpjpppjp]

You can't expect the players who got basically fucked over in so many ways by what they devs just announced to be positive about it.

To our mind we're adding optionality, rather than taking anything away. The one thing that could concern me is, indeed, a potential bifurcation of the player base, but if that turns out to be a problem, there is nothing that says we cannot simply return to a one server paradigm. Surely the present server maintenance policy that we've had here for 10+ years now isn't likely to be the optimal? How do we find the optimal breakdown if we do not allow ourselves to experiment with it?

I'm sure if the devs actually address all the issues (custom clients/acc sharing/alts/paying twice/hats/dividing the game into two servers and forcing ppl to play on steam for the new world we waited so long for) the steam release will go a lot better than what we could expect right now.

Custom clients are supported as well as they can be on Steam, I think...?
Account sharing is not a feature of the game, it is something you do against our strong, contrary, recommendations.
Perhaps it is the case that we are dividing the player base, but the aim is obviously to grow the pie.
Glad to hear excitement for W16! Noted!

We're not trying to rob you, Bilbo Baggins. <3

Experimenting doesn't seem like a good way to start a Steam release... We could've tried the 3-4 month or 6 month wipe period before the Steam release and after every system has been thoroughly tuned and tested to this shorter wipe cycle.

[jorb]

likely aiming for slightly longer world durations.

Did I imagine all the talk about a permanent world

Slightly longer than 1 yr is like 1.5 yr? idk the vagueness of "slightly longer" still says to me 'there's no point coming back to rebuild a new village, might as well wait for the restart'. Everyone is going to feel like its pointless to start fresh at any point beyond 1 yr with this vague answer Imo. Which Im guessing is the feeling u want to eliminate.

Edit: you should just say permanent even if u dont mean it and then if its totally dead at some point then do restart lol

The mindset of thinking its permanent vs not permanent is rly important, in terms of feeling like a waste of time or not

I wish I could indulge the golden lie here, because I agree that it would probably be practical if I could, but I can't, hence the non-committal and vague time frames of "slightly longer". I do not want to promise a "permanent world" and then get egg on my face when some quality thing spazzes out to make me want to wipe.

The canonical numeral worlds here should be as permanent as it makes sense to have them, and if we can get the reset energy on a separate cluster, it would lessen the general pressure on having to wipe them. That's the thinking, at least.

[DDDsDD999]

There is no mention that worlds will be reset on steam, there's even mention of a "...game world, which can be permanently and fundamentally changed...". You need to make that very clear, otherwise there will be a massive deluge of negative reviews when people see their characters deleted at the end, alongside the ones from people who got griefed during the world. An early access label would be very good.

Personally, I think a steam audience would be much more interested in a longer term world. Potentially wasting your steam release on a short-term experiment that could go poorly is very risky.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

Experimenting doesn't seem like a good way to start a Steam release... We could've tried the 3-4 month or 6 month wipe period before the Steam release and after every system has been thoroughly tuned and tested to this shorter wipe cycle.

The impression I'm getting is that Jorb and Loftar don't really care if steam launch is a flop and aren't doing too much to modify what they want to do in order to try to maximize steam success.

They are just using steam on the off chance it might blow up there and justify parallel long and short worlds with concurrent servers.

I respect that, but I also think Jorbtar are somewhat haphazardly using their one steam shot. As is their right.