Game Development: Colorful Carpet

[Robertzon]

finally, glad yall are back!

[GaraDasha]

Boring.
Where the fuck is world 16? Holy shit I'm growing so tired of this clown circus of a schedule, getting like 2-3 months of fun out of the game then needing to wait 8+ months for a fucking reset. The end game just isn't good enough to warrant playing after the first few months, it becomes a chore of quality grinding and nothing else.
Why can't you give us shorter worlds? It doesn't have to be that way forever, but until you come up with a satisfying end game that keeps people interested and retains the player base this should be the forward. This isn't some random ass selfish wish on my part, the drop in numbers every single world after the first few months confirms everything I'm saying. It is a fact that 90+% of the players drop the game by 3 months in then come back during the reset. Why is that, I wonder? It's because the early and mid game is fucking incredible, so incredible that people keep coming back just to do it all over again KNOWING that the end game is garbage and they'll probably quit at the same point they quit all the other worlds, yet they come back and do it all again anyway for that 10/10 early/mid game.
You, as developers, get paid more by having shorter worlds. The player base will remain at healthy numbers and not 'thousands for the first month then struggling to hold triple digit players 3 months in for the next 8+ months'. There is no logical reason besides stubbornness to not at least try 6 month world cycles. Even if it was only for a year to try and see if it proves beneficial, you should try it. A scheduled end of world after 6 months of being active. See what happens, see if players like it (they will), see if you get more money from actually retaining your players who are now happy (you will, because we will be happy).

I've been checking in on these forums every fucking day for the past few months just waiting for a world 16 announcement. I don't even give a fuck what you add or change, I just wanna play again. Restart the world and go take a break for 6 months without adding anything new for all I care then add something new next world. You don't need some grand game changing new thing every single new world, which I assume is what you're trying to do, and I appreciate that you're trying to keep things fresh but this is unironically a worse way of going about things than just having shorter world cycles and adding that big new world change every OTHER world instead.

No doubt ass kissers will rage at me for saying this but I'm not saying any of this to shit on you, even if it comes across that way, I'm saying it because most of your fucking fans of the game are waiting, like I am, for months on end just to jump back in and play. That is retarded, I can't think of any other game that operates this way. You could be farming sub money from a much larger player base for longer periods of time if you just reset the damn world and give us shorter world cycles. 6 months is still a long fucking time, drop off will STILL happen in that time but it will be lessened by an enormous degree.

Then, if you ever come up with a satisfactory end game that doesn't result in the lion's share of your audience dropping the game, then you can go right back to longer world cycles. It's folly to keep going that route as things are though.

If none of this sounds appealing (genuinely no idea why it wouldn't), then at least sell us a single player version of the game. I'd pay $60 easily to get a hold of that. You'd still have the vast majority of the playerbase playing the online version as is because the multiplayer aspect is what most of the players like. Everyone wins.

the worst part is the more i agree with you, the despair hits harder

[Robben_DuMarsch]

I choose to remain optimistic. We've seen Loftar has been consistently working on the client, and we've got other indication they are working on larger stuff, and now Jorb is reporting (albeit vaguely) the same.

That said, Jorb and Loftar, if you are indeed working in the direction of steam please consider opening a steam page for it earlier rather than keeping it a surprise. I'm not asking because I feel you are somehow required to keep us in the loop, I'm asking for pragmatic reasons related to a steam launch.

When a game is released on steam, there is a certain level of algorithmic recommendation that the steam store uses to advertise games. They will highlight your game on the front page of the steam store based, in a huge part, how many people have "wish-listed" the game. If you put up the steam store page early, we can word of mouth spread news that Haven will be getting a steam store launch and ask people to wishlist it when the game launches. As I've spelled out, this will give the game wider reach on launch.

With a little bit of advance notice, it'll probably spread virally amongst former Haven players (of which there are many over the years), and hopefully we can mobilize enough of that population to wishlist the game that it can see substantial free advertising on launch. The free advertising, one click ease of installation, can make indie games have small or large viral launches on steam.

[Drownin_DaSea]

I choose to remain optimistic. We've seen Loftar has been consistently working on the client, and we've got other indication they are working on larger stuff, and now Jorb is reporting (albeit vaguely) the same.

That said, Jorb and Loftar, if you are indeed working in the direction of steam please consider opening a steam page for it earlier rather than keeping it a surprise. I'm not asking because I feel you are somehow required to keep us in the loop, I'm asking for pragmatic reasons related to a steam launch.

When a game is released on steam, there is a certain level of algorithmic recommendation that the steam store uses to advertise games. They will highlight your game on the front page of the steam store based, in a huge part, how many people have "wish-listed" the game. If you put up the steam store page early, we can word of mouth spread news that Haven will be getting a steam store launch and ask people to wishlist it when the game launches. As I've spelled out, this will give the game wider reach on launch.

glub glurbbbrbb ppprpwrpppp blub blub blub - ACK!

translation:

big mistake telling The Gnomes what to do, fellow robben alt. You'd be better off playing some passive aggressive reverse psychology game, now they DEFINITELY gonna keep it a surprise

[Nightdawg]

out of season april fools' ahh patch

remember to renew your gold subs to encourage more patches like this

[Pills]

this thread is so toxic lmao, why are some of you even still here?

Happy to see you guys back & working again, hope you had a great summer. Patch is great

[grumgrumganoe]

this thread is so toxic lmao, why are some of you even still here?

Happy to see you guys back & working again, hope you had a great summer. Patch is great

stop lickin they boots tho

[jordancoles]

I'm sure that new GUI took a long time to do, so thanks for that. Uploading and previewing images on the website has always been super clunky and tedious

I'm glad you're "back" from your yearly Chrisummer vacations and I look forward to the new roadmap for 2025

I predict we get another patch in october, followed by the Christmas patch/new year world reset. I suspect there will be another patch after reset to fix any immediate bugs and then 1-2 other patches before the belated Chrisummer slumber of 2025

[grumgrumganoe]

yearly roadmap is like 10 failed promises ago

[DorenirI]

Nice i been waiting for carpets