Game Development: Dormant Doe

[Crest]

They fucked up. Again. That's all it comes down to. They cannot read the room and miss their opportunity to capitalize on things because... I don't even know why, I have to assume they just don't give a shit.
On one hand we're blessed to have such a unique game made available, on the other hand we're cursed with the slowest most uncaring dev duo of all time who say they're going to do something then 9 times out of 10 don't follow through.
IMO I think they're stuck in the mindset of 'we can't start a new world without some big new grand change to accompany it' and yet they can't figure out or finish something like that in a reasonable amount of time, which is why we have worlds that overstay their welcome by a significant margin.
Forums are dead. Game is dead. Discord is still active but most people in there don't even talk about Haven for the most part, they're playing other games with each other and just using the Haven discord as a hub to talk with friends.

The poster above was right, the roadmap we got sounded great and was something to get excited about. I fucking knew they wouldn't follow through with it. I just had a feeling it would turn out this way, as well as from past experiences with them saying they're going to do something but then backpeddling on it.

Just make a cyclical X-month long world that runs alongside a more persistent one to satisfy all types of players. Why is that so hard? Like I said if you drop the mindset of 'new world must be accompanied by a new big change' then you wouldn't have any issue putting out a world that has a shorter duration and there wouldn't be any pressure that you need to get said big new addition done in x-amount of time to line up with the wipe.
How long do we need to pretend that people like the end game grind of Haven? All of the fun stuff happens in the first 2 months. We should have been having shorter worlds years ago, yet here we are like 15 years later still having worlds which have a few months of booming followed by burnout then being basically empty for a year and a half with people practically begging for a server reset for months/years before one actually happens.

It's all so tiring.

[Audiosmurf]

I must also admit my own growing disillusionment with The Project.

[vatas]

Jorb and Loftar definitely dropped the ball when it comes to communication. Even if they have a legitimate reasons to be busy IRL, that they don't want to specify for privacy reasons, they've kept the people completely in the dark.

Playerbase is put into a painfully awkward position where they have to choose...
A) not playing and waiting for new world, whether a full reset of "concurrent" one -> risking that it doesn't materialize for months.
B) playing and risk sudden announcement that the reset will wipe everything they accomplished in two weeks.

[Giewonciak]

And at some point they will just abadon HnH and we will be left with no source code to continue cuz its their game and fuck off.
Sad

[SnuggleSnail]

I'm a professional hater and you won't find somebody who'll incoherently manchild autistic screech harder when they release a patch that breaks something really badly (winter, oceans, crop circles, spiraling, new boat movement, etc) without fixing it for years, or make the most avoidable mistakes imaginable like W8 monetization.

That said, them treating it like a side project when it is probably literally a side project instead of it being abandonware after all this time is kindof admirable in my opinion. Like, Jorbtar is shit at communication/moderation/setting expectations, but can you really expect them to work as game masters/community managers for what probably amounts to significantly less than minimum wage? It feels kindof unreasonable.

I completely retract the above if somebody figures out they're actually making like 300k/year off of the game, but I rly doubt it

[SpacePig]

I'm a professional hater and you won't find somebody who'll incoherently manchild autistic screech harder when they release a patch that breaks something really badly (winter, oceans, crop circles, spiraling, new boat movement, etc) without fixing it for years, or make the most avoidable mistakes imaginable like W8 monetization.

That said, them treating it like a side project when it is probably literally a side project instead of it being abandonware after all this time is kindof admirable in my opinion. Like, Jorbtar is shit at communication/moderation/setting expectations, but can you really expect them to work as game masters/community managers for what probably amounts to significantly less than minimum wage? It feels kindof unreasonable.

I completely retract the above if somebody figures out they're actually making like 300k/year off of the game, but I rly doubt it

For this to happen, each of the 200 players—actually fewer when considering bots—would need to spend about 300*2/200 thousand dollars on the game per year, not counting taxes and server maintenance costs. That’s around $3,000 annually per player. Even if you buy all existing content, it would be hard to spend more than $300 a year.

[SpacePig]

They fucked up. Again.
...
It's all so tiring.

I think the problem is that server generation isn't automated. It doesn't create like a Minecraft server in two minutes automatically, there's no single script generating data. Instead, there are multiple scripts and datasets written at different times as separate unrelated code fragments. Each time they have to manually assemble an application from numerous sources when creating a new server. This process is labor-intensive and takes them weeks to complete.
That's why they can't release the "server code" — because it doesn’t exist as such. There are just many folders with files labeled “old server,” along with instructions in one person’s head on how to turn these into a new server over the course of 15 days.

[SinJin]

...That’s around $3,000 annually per player. Even if you buy all existing content, it would be hard to spend more than $300 a year.

It would be hard to... ????? I find it extremely easy unfortunately. Too bad I couldn't play the game as well as I could spend money on it. I could spend $300 multiple times in one day. I could only imagine the many vises the Devs have spent my money on. They stopped putting effort into the game. So I stopped lining their pockets with my cash.

[vatas]

I think the problem is that server generation isn't automated. It doesn't create like a Minecraft server in two minutes automatically, there's no single script generating data. Instead, there are multiple scripts and datasets written at different times as separate unrelated code fragments. Each time they have to manually assemble an application from numerous sources when creating a new server. This process is labor-intensive and takes them weeks to complete.
That's why they can't release the "server code" — because it doesn’t exist as such. There are just many folders with files labeled “old server,” along with instructions in one person’s head on how to turn these into a new server over the course of 15 days.

How do you know that? Sounds like a schitzopost or an LLM hallucination. Not saying either is the case, just that the vibe is there.

(Also based on my cursory understanding, your post is fully plausible. I've heard more or less credible claims that even large companies like Creative Assembly (Total War) and Paradox interactive (eu4, ck3, vic3) don't have an engine, per se -a new one is constructed from existing libraries for each installment. Total War games are said to be more tech debt than engine at this point, Paradox games tend to make steady incremental progress between installments.)

[Nightdawg]

They fucked up. Again.
...
It's all so tiring.

I think the problem is that server generation isn't automated.

You're underestimating loftar's ability to automate this after working on it for literally 15+ years and resetting the world 16 times (and probably many more times on his test server).
Loftar already clarified that he set up everything to run multiple parallel servers before we even got world 16.

The problem is jorb making promises and not delivering, you know, the usual.

@OP Just lower your expectations to zero, and you won't get disappointed. Works for the rest of us.