Game Development: Incorrupt Rabbit

[NeoRed9]

I think you guys are doing alright, all things considered.

I think the breakdown of ideas communicated is the expected number of hours a week of development versus actual hours of development a week for two people within their circumstances.

[jordancoles]

o let me ask then, since you've had this "Our primary development direction is toward object-controlled-objects." in the patch notes for several months now:
Have you even started on OCO, at all? And when did you start?

I don't expect an answer

Why not?

loftar has begun working on it, and did so around Christmas. We broke it off while we focused on world reset related changes, but he ha since resumed it, though I do not believe it to be particularly far advanced. Question for him more than for me.

It might be a good idea to shelf OCO longer-term if it has been 8 months with it being the "main focus" on the patch notes with nothing to show. At this point you would get far more bang for your buck by releasing things like new dungeons (and fixing bugged bat dungeons), adding variable animals with different sizes/colours depending on time of year/dice rolls on spawn (eg. a rare white bear that makes white bear coats/cloaks that are slightly better), baby animals (baby cows, horses, bear cubs), or considering core systems like the hunger meter again (since developed characters can basically ignore hunger and it only really affects newer players).

Out of everything my no. 1 change for this game would be simplifying foods and their variance. For example: chives should always give agility when used as a spice in foods. Food in general needs to be simplified and having predictable reagants is the first step towards that. We should not need full websites and built-in client features just to make food that doesn't suck.

I know you're against it but adding a new house or two would also be great to see. Sure, you want modular housing 6 years from now, but the people want things they can actually see and engage with now. In the past you've said the current houses would likely be able to exist in the same world as modular housing, and that it takes you an afternoon to make a new house, so what is stopping you?


Edit: Additionally our Discord agrees that the lolrandommachine that everything has been thrown into in terms of variance and outputs (alchemy, food, archery tower shoot range, questing, etc) has overcomplicated the game to the point that it is absolutely painful to play without an experienced guide leading you around by the nose. I get that the randomization is a cheap and easy way of providing a lot of options, but too many options across the entire game can just overwhelm people rather than engage them. Everything becomes murky blur with no clear destination or direction which makes it hard for people to set goals and work towards them effectively.

[Sigilius]

Out of everything my no. 1 change for this game would be simplifying foods and their variance. For example: chives should always give agility when used as a spice in foods. Food in general needs to be simplified and having predictable reagants is the first step towards that. We should not need full websites and built-in client features just to make food that doesn't suck.

This. I used to enjoy food, but it has become so unnecessarily over-mathed I hate it. I know it makes it easy to add more but It isn’t fun.

[Phaen]

Thanks for continuing to develop stuff. Make what you wanna make.

[jorb]

It might be a good idea to shelf OCO longer-term if it has been 8 months with it being the "main focus" on the patch notes with nothing to show.

Four-ish months, a fair bit of time around the world reset was spent on other things (map gen, province system, &c). Client rendering rewrite took, what... two years+?

And that's precisely the thing. We try to balance between longer term and shorter term projects, but we do need to work on the big ticket items. I do not want to spam dungeons for the next ten years, and the long-term vision needs to be firmly in the driver's seat.

May have a point on the randomization. Will consider. That being said I do not think that changing that "solves Haven's problems".

Thanks for continuing to develop stuff. Make what you wanna make.

Thank you!

[jordancoles]

It might be a good idea to shelf OCO longer-term if it has been 8 months with it being the "main focus" on the patch notes with nothing to show.

Client rendering rewrite took, what... two years+?

This is what worries me about OCO. If it becomes another 2 year carrot on a stick without transparency about the delays/progress/thoughts on the system then I could see it hurting the game rather than helping it during that time. Resentment begins to grow when patches become sparse or are pushed back multiple weeks with no indication as to why other than the assumption that you just spent the week snorting blow and reading manga. If it is a 2 year project then so be it, but please try to keep the community in the loop on your progress or lack thereof.

Like others have suggested, teaser screenshots or C&I posts asking for our opinions on potential content updates would go a very long way.

I understand being hesitant to announce your plans for "bigger content" because it might turn out to be technically impossible, or you may decide to change your mind at the last moment. I get that. But I still believe that giving us a rough outline is likely better than keeping it to yourselves until it has been pushed out as a patch. If an idea is bad, the community would be able to poke holes in it fairly quickly. Hopefully that would lead to patches that never miss the mark/have to be reverted etc.

I'm not saying every patch needs a pre-patch write-up, but for bigger or more long-term things it would be nice to have some input, or to get a better understanding of your reasoning/development process.

[WowGain]

This is what worries me about OCO. If it becomes another 2 year carrot on a stick without transparency about the delays/progress/thoughts on the system then I could see it hurting the game rather than helping it during that time. Resentment begins to grow when patches become sparse or are pushed back multiple weeks with no indication as to why other than the assumption that you just spent the week snorting blow and reading manga. If it is a 2 year project then so be it, but please try to keep the community in the loop on your progress or lack thereof.

Like others have suggested, teaser screenshots or C&I posts asking for our opinions on potential content updates would go a very long way.

I understand being hesitant to announce your plans for "bigger content" because it might turn out to be technically impossible, or you may decide to change your mind at the last moment. I get that. But I still believe that giving us a rough outline is likely better than keeping it to yourselves until it has been pushed out as a patch. If an idea is bad, the community would be able to poke holes in it fairly quickly. Hopefully that would lead to patches that never miss the mark/have to be reverted etc.

I'm not saying every patch needs a pre-patch write-up, but for bigger or more long-term things it would be nice to have some input, or to get a better understanding of your reasoning/development process.

+1 to all of this
there's really not much to lose in just allowing us to understand where you stand with the progress on such a major change to the game.

[Pills]

That being said I do not think that changing that "solves Haven's problems".

Since we're talking about things that hinders players experiences instead of engaging them. Just throwing it out there that everybody unanimously still hates that cheese racks have a quality. Literally adds nothing to the game and just annoys everybody playing who ever even considers touching cheese.

Also "experience event" quests are the worst quest type in multiple credos that also do nothing to engage players and instead often just hinders their motivation.

To further what Coles said though, it would be nice to atleast see some news or progress on OCC, 4 months is still a long time, i doubt many people actually know how much time per week is dedicated to working on haven? I sure don't, but even as a hobby project I would still expect to see something from 4 months of work

[mvgulik]

Isn't something better than nothing?

As with the majority of general generalizations, the answer is "No. Something is not always better then nothing".

... Potential future Patch: "Sorry, no changes ... Just your weekly hat." ...

[iamahh]

people need to curb their own anxiety

there is no gain in knowing were the code is, specially with a small dev team, it will be like watching plants grow

yall are used to AAA games with 100 devs doing vlogs and lives, but this aint it