Game Development: Prelude

[jorb]

"When all you have is an ass, everything looks like a chair."

-- Abraham Maslow

[raybon256]

I'm not a fan of the "surprises" Jorb and Loftar have brought on the haven and hearth community, and it seems like they have sold their soul to monetize their game. For me, it seems they tend to "change the rules" too much and disorient players. I know some of my friends that went bear hunting on boats and the like and another update completely ruined that. I know they started this game with loads of incurable wounds without any way to fix them forcing us to lose interest in characters we developed as we were learning the game. I know they took away the gigantic world before we all had the chance to explore it, and now giving us one a fraction of it's size. I know that the two gnomes have flip-flopped on a lot of things before we had ANY real change to develop ourselves and our world and I'm not fond of all the drastic changes.

Objectively speaking however, I think that at least they pay attention to what we have to say on the forums, and since we have a week and a half before the change, I want to put in some things. First, this is the only MMO I have played since I started FFXI as a White Mage is '06 that drops all the crapsaccrine bullshit. There's no "roles", no "selfless community", and no godammed "holy trinity" that encourages (or enforces) one-dimensional skillsets. A complex system with complex characters, in a complex world. When I join a guild, it becomes obvious where you stand with them; no one can hold a number over your head and say their better than you. What you do is more important that what you are.

My biggest problem is the way combat "balance" is handled. If I go outside to hunt/gather/deliver supplies medicine and so on, and run into a combat specialist and he wants to kill me, I am going to die if I can't get away. In order to "stay
competitive", I have to specialize (i.e. spend all my points in) a combat if I want a chance, but that inhibits my ability to farm, hunt, gather, and other things I want to do. I know some people have alts and the like, but I like the idea of my character being "me", sort of an identity. For the longest time I wanted to be the Lone Ranger, in my cabin out in the woods in the outskirts of town. Patrolling the woods, being one with nature and lending a hand to those in need. I wanted to
stay self-sufficient so I had my own farm, animals, etc. only asking for what I could not get myself (every place in the region is rocks, rocks, and more rocks, yet moar rocks, etc. getting metal was a pain in the asshole). I delivered medical supplies, I made clothing for naked wayfarers, I tamed animals for people, I built battering rams that destroyed spammed claim poles, I even went on a big magical adventure that took 2 hours of RL time to avenge a murder by sealing a raiding towns mine with a palisade and vandalize what I could. But if I had to run into a raider with a sword, he could do hundreds of damage to me without even trying. I just wish I could be this world's Chuck Norris and give some raider an Roundhouse Kick to the face while Divining by Zero.

Alts make it possible for a player to specialize in everything and means the only characters that are in any real danger for hunters/warriors. You could even have a combat character at a "hideout" so if they kill someone or break something, nothing could be traced back to the other players characters. Loosing a "combat alt" does nothing, if the player can still feed and gear a new one. Someone in 90q plate armor set with a 90q sword that eats from high quality table would be
unstoppable, even for new character. I think its a ridiculous that someone can overspecialize without any repercussions, does that work in the real world? No. You need to make it so characters can't put every single point in melee combat
and Strength so they become unstoppable murder machines; by the same coin; characters should be out exploring the world, not staying inside a wall all day just making food or smithing, or whatever. The combat system is also poor if you have to deal with multiple opponents at once; if you ever gotten swarmed by bats or ants you can only defend against one at a time. Don't get me wrong; I like the color system, but it should be more accessible to the average player.

My suggestion instead of being able to learn moves by pure random chance, allow players to add to their combat deck by doing certain things. We already get experience points by doing lots of different actions; right now I have 22k Experience from all the different things I do, I explore, fish, eat, drink, mine, hunt, craft, etc. and I have lots and lots and LOTs of leftover exp. You could use excess EXP to get more combat moves or certain crafting recipes, or you could learn to make better blueberry pie if you got the ingredients yourself, learned a combat move by mining or gathering in a certain place; getting a "field power bonus" while in a certain biome or within your village. Don't get me wrong, have a class specialty should be important, but even in a community self-sufficiency should be encouraged so everyone doesn't become completely dependent one person, or vice versa (like "princess" classes in older MMOs (like FFXIs bard) or tanks in newer ones that dictate what they will or won't do, or what they allow others to do and not do).

Oh, please get rid of the ghosts. This is supposed to be a low-fantasy game. There should be another way to get through palisades and brick walls. I think maybe someone with X level of Stealth could vault over a wall (maybe at the cost of time and stamina). To counter being killed offline, you could make it so that doors to houses could be locked, so if you were inside no one could kill you (unless someone batters the house down). Would also be a good idea if we had lockpicking, or having an ability to hide our activites (if we don't take action against a player, we can't be detected). Maybe have a "magic point" system where a character can use a special ability (like say, attempt a lockpicking 10 MP, do a crime without leaving a scent 15-50 MP based on crime, hearth while under "red-handed" status 30 MP, use functions while still an outlaw 20MP, jump over a wall 20 or 40 MP for palisade or brick wall, instant hearth even in combat, 100 MP, Emply a nidbane 30 MP). Psyche could be based on how much "MP" you could have (it would be similar to way Constitution effects hit points, but the number starts at zero rather than 100, and only recharged very slowly, and may require the use of a bed, a
craftable item, and so on.

Archery completely sucks. I put 20 points in it and have q15 bow and quiver and arrows, so in other words to use it I need to unequip *ALL* my inventory expanding gear, and I can't shoot something 10 squares in front of me. All my other skills all I needed to do was put 10 points to be functional (so I could farm or smith basic things and plant trees and the like that are not worse that the ones in the world map, etc.) if you want to fix the "balance" issue make it that arrows do less damage to players than animals. Also I want to be able to quiver without removing my backpack or maybe treat sacks and backpacks like portable containers (click on them to open the container, backpacks could be 3x2, and sacks could be 4x3, and so on).

Animals need to stop running full speed over water. Also, I'm tired of animals, especially horses and aurouchs sprinting away when I get them low on health. I've already suffered 20 something HHP damage, and the only way I can kill something fast if I have sprint available and am on grass. Wounded animals don't need to run at full speed, especially since *all* animals seem to be eager to fight me when I engage them wither they agro or not (rabbits and chickens excluded).

Can we please have more metal nodes? I don't need hq gold and silver but it would be great if there were at least one iron node or tin and copper nodes per cave. Without metal, its impossible to make a brick wall, meaning a metal poor area is vulnerable to pallibashers. If someone discovers an area with HQ water, soil, clay, etc. it will be a prime target for raiders and it means everyone in that region is completely screwed.

One final thing; I want some item crafts to be based on Constitution, and have a doctor skill for high potency healing items that can restore a certain level of HHP instantly (maybe just one wound, or a certain amount based on Q 10q being 10 HHP, 40q being 20 HHP, 90q being 30 HHP).

Well there's the end of my long winded post amongst everyone elses. Hope you enjoyed it.

[overtyped]

wall of text

I agree alot with what you say, except the point about jumping over a wall. What a horrendous idea. Also, I dont know that the ghosts are such a bad thing.

[Turtlesir]

Can we please have more metal nodes? I don't need hq gold and silver but it would be great if there were at least one iron node or tin and copper nodes per cave. Without metal, its impossible to make a brick wall, meaning a metal poor area is vulnerable to pallibashers. If someone discovers an area with HQ water, soil, clay, etc. it will be a prime target for raiders and it means everyone in that region is completely screwed.

just wanted to address this here. dude if you'd mined at all this world, you'd know that ores are everywhere, way more common than in previous worlds. in my tiny starter cave alone there were 2 ochre, 3 heavy earth and 2 cassiterite veins. that's only what intersects the cave walls, not counting what was hidden some tiles away. this has been my consistent experience with ore this world. i have halls all the way down until there were only turtles below, and each level quickly showed one or more ore veins (except for -4 which was completely marble and gneiss for some reason). your problem was probably that you didn't have a character specialize in mining (the irony huh ^^).

[Potjeh]

If anything needs to change about ore distribution, it's making copper a little more common and silver a lot less common.

[infectedking]

If anything needs to change about ore distribution, it's making copper a little more common and silver a lot less common.

M8, too much copper in this game, i have over 1k tiles of copper still unmined.

[Potjeh]

It's still nothing compared to all the silver you find.

[infectedking]

It's still nothing compared to all the silver you find.

I've found more copper than silver this world, Iron is most common form of metal in my experience, that then copper.

[Avu]

I keep hearing this about copper I think it was unevenly distributed the goons had a fuckton of copper and now I even believe it while in the area where I played it was so extremely fucking rare we had to dig like 10 holes until we got our first.

[iamclothier]

out of 5 holes. not a sign of copper. only 4 iron nodes and gold. not even tin. I guess i need more holes