Are devs happy/okay/satisfied with the player numbers?

[Sigilius]

Make food fun again.

[Procne]

See, this is what's I'm questioning. Is that HnH and jorbtar's actual intention? Nowhere in HnH's About page is mindless number grinding to keep ahead of others mentioned nor pursued as the primary goal. Instead, we have goals of survival, construction and society building.

Isn't society building about agreeing on some set of rules, and then imposing them on others, or forcibly removing them from the society?

[wolf1000wolf]

See, this is what's I'm questioning. Is that HnH and jorbtar's actual intention? Nowhere in HnH's About page is mindless number grinding to keep ahead of others mentioned nor pursued as the primary goal. Instead, we have goals of survival, construction and society building.

Isn't society building about agreeing on some set of rules, and then imposing them on others, or forcibly removing them from the society?

Sure! But there are plenty of methods to impose your rules and exclude others without wholesale deletion of another player and their stuff, no?

[VDZ]

I very rarely finish games of Civilization, and despite 336 hours in Terraria I've never fought the final boss. This does not make them bad games. In fact, I have 815 hours in Civ V and even now I occasionally start a new game and play through the early game again...only to quit again in the mid- or late game. In games where you develop your character and/or infrastructure, the fun is in the part where you are mainly focused on developing those aspects. At some point progression slows down or stalls and the game becomes a lot less interesting. Haven is no different; as pointed out by GamingRAM earlier in this thread, throughout the early game your options keep expanding and every development feels meaningful. However, at some point I'm just repeating the same motions over and over again to see my carrots go from q70 to q73 - a difference which has no real meaning to me, as there is barely a difference between a q50 carrot and a q70 carrot. The longer I continue, the less meaningful progression becomes. And once I notice I'm just going through the motions without actually accomplishing anything, I start playing less and soon enough stop playing entirely. Because what am I going to do after logging in again? Just harvest my carrots again for the umpteenth time?

Surprisingly absent from this thread, but what people usually say to this is: "But you can just create a new character and start over mid-world!" The problem is:

and also kinda disagree with not getting progress via raiding etc. it obviously depends where you are at. I basically started late and got almost all my progress from raiding other bases/ abndoned places (obviously not so common early world) but I got quite lucky and picked up a lot of good shit and tons of meat that would have taken me months to grow myself.

In Civ or Terraria, when I start anew it's like a world reset. Everything goes back to when I first started. In Haven, starting a new character does not reset the world, and the state of the world taints your character development. Progression speeds up dramatically yet feels less satisfying as it's just a matter of lucking into a good place to loot or a good deal in trade, rather than something you actually worked for. And the worst part: The things you did work for retroactively lose value once you luck into easy upgrades. (I would argue that this is also best argument against making trade too easy: It risks speeding up progression and may reduce the value of normal progression.)

The devs have a vision of Haven eventually being a permanently persisting world without any resets. I've said it before and I will say it again: Give up on it. It won't work without completely overhauling the game to the point it's no longer Haven. Instead, embrace resets and integrate them into the design (scheduled resets, meta-rewards for goals accomplished during worlds, etc). Haven without resets is like continuing to play a game of Civilization endlessly beyond victory/defeat; there are a handful of people who enjoy doing it, but to most players it gets very stale and it's nothing like the normal game experience. Focus on leveraging the fun parts of the game, rather than trying to make the unfun parts the main game.

The secondary reason for me quitting after some time every world is simple, noted by multiple posters and aptly described by Shubla (oddly enough):

when reset comes people play for 10 hrs every day after 2 months they realize they've fucked up their life and quit for 10 months so that they can waste those 2 months again when a reset comes.

(I don't agree with the 'too grindy' part preceding it; the progression is what makes it fun.)

Haven is a fantastic game. To this day it remains my favorite game of all time, and when I'm into it I'm completely hooked. I specifically take time off work to nolife the game for a while after every reset. This may sound unhealthy, and maybe it is, but I fully enjoy it. But this is just not compatible with the rest of my life, so at some point I just have to stop playing Haven so I can have time for other things again. Playing for only small amounts of time isn't as satisfying, and beyond the early game it's not satisfying at all (as most of the time is then spent on repeating repetitive tasks).

I'm not sure if I 100% agree on the no stats part but I really hated it when qualities were introduced in w2, made the game unnecessairly complicated and tedious

I think the quality system is a brilliant piece of game design, allowing for progression even with otherwise static content. The best example for this is gilding (which I initially disliked, and still have my reservations about - particularly how 'identical' gear is functionally radically different now despite looking identical, and how mandatory gear-switching all the time is tedious - but I now appreciate the diversity of gilding items and especially how the system interacts with quality). If you can just get one more q34+ skin you can make a piece of gear give you a +3 boost instead of a +2 boost, which is a significant difference (particularly when repeated for every gildable equipment slot). It allows for a consideration in item acquisition and usage beyond mere quantity - that q40 skin is a lot more valuable than that otherwise identical q15 skin. At some point the number becomes less important, but there's massive distinctions between items in the q1-q10 range and significant distinctions between items in the q10-q40 range. The repetitive process of farming feels rewarding for a while because the number that goes up actually means something up to a certain point.

Just look at what removing village idol teleporting did to trading, to me this would seem like an obvious enough reason to bring it back in some capacity, despite how "ugly" or "unrealistic" it may have seemed when it was removed.

The only thing that this proves is that forum trading has decreased. Which I think is a good thing; I've always hated having to use outside-of-the-game services to trade in the game. Nowadays, pure in-game trade is far more feasible, in particular trade between non-merchants or with minor merchants (small markets). There's probably quite a bit of trading going on on Discord as well, which would also reduce the number of threads.

But it doesn't really matter. If you currently removed the tokens then most traders would simply stop trading because, as you said yourself, there is nothing else worth accepting as a payment.

Tokens should still be removed because you never know. Devs can also think on what they coudla dd that would work as new, better currency or how to encourage trade in general.

Should anything be done?
People trade when both sides see some profit in the exchange. When what they get is more valuable than what they give plus the effort they spent on trading. Currently it seems only tokens are worth the effort. I assume that this bums the less established player who would want to buy some good quality stuff, and don't want to buy tokens. But the core of the issue seems not be lack of currency, or existence of tokens, but the fact those players have nothing to offer? Even if the currency was an issue, and token functioning as one, it would still be possible for said players to "buy" a token in game for services / items. But if noone wants to sell a token then doesn't it mean "I don't need anything"? It's not like the whole playerbase reverted to mercantilism, or is it?

Part of the problem here is the complete lack of granularity in using tokens as central currency. (I do think having a central currency, even tokens, would actually benefit trade, if more granular.) Currently, an offer needs to be worth USD $10, or it is worthless. Prices exist only in increments of USD $10. If you have something worth less than USD $10, and can't combine it with other items to make it worth USD $10, it's not interesting to trade for. But there may well be someone out there who would be willing to pay you $0.005 for your blueberries. If they could pay you 1/100th of a subtoken for 20 blueberries, you could have someone to sell your blueberries to. But that is currently not an option. It's either USD $10 for 2000 blueberries, or nothing. (Bots and pots exist, but you really shouldn't underestimate people's willingness to pay for convenience. If trade is quick and hassle-free people would be willing to buy all kinds of stuff.)

aside from learning from the wikis, newbies take longer because of being punished by FEP and not knowing what to put LP into, they need INT, PER, STR, and Exploration and Survival

The problem isn't the FEP system (in fact, getting additional WIL isn't hurting your INT/PER/STR growth unless it's way above the other stats), it's the hunger system. The devs intend the 300% (and 200%/150%) to be a catch-up mechanism, but in practice it's the base value. Anyone who has ruined their hunger needs to eat thrice as much to gain stats. For this reason, players are punished very hard when eating the wrong foods and it makes the food system unfun in practice. You need to minmax because the punishment for not doing so is extremely harsh. Ravenous is not a 200% increase of your FEPs, Content is a 67% penalty to your FEPs. I think this is also the root cause of the complaints about Energy - it's not that players are unable to feed themselves, but eating any food outside of your optimal diet is just extremely punishing. Remove 300%, 200% and 150% and the system would work fine.

Add some kind of overworld needed item or barrier preventing access to the next level of mines. Like..... beating an Ant Hill dungeon will give you the meta-physical strength (or an item needed for the recipe) to dig to level 3. Level 4 could be unlocked via the Bat Dungeon. Yes this is very a gamey thing to do, but I think it's a better idea than treating it as a grindy job. (And other games do this all the time anyways, like Valheim or Terraria, it works).

You do need to be careful not to overtune this. I personally consider Terraria's 1.4 update a disaster for the game as it made the early game extremely linear; you really have to check off all the things one by one, rather than the previous situation where there was a recommended progression which gradually gives you the resources to reasonably perform the next step each time, but there were only a couple of actual hard gates and if you were pro enough you could focus primarily on the hard gates. (Doing a naked jungle run to get Moonglow for Spelunker Potions is fortunately still in, but you can no longer use Dynamite to break an orb (bonus points for no hook) then Dynamite out the Meteorite without any armor or a decent weapon to then fight the Eater of Worlds with the Space Gun. You have to go through all the steps of the recommended progression now.)

One big fat problem with all of this- in the void of not having any of these systems interacting with other players in a constant flux of antagonism and communal attitudes, the game loops mean literally nothing.

Everything in this game is about constantly trying to improve the numbers of the stuff you have and make in comparison to everyone else, and mastering them gives you the reward of having a significant skill gap over your competitors that you can use to leverage yourself over them.

Just as an example, why do I care in the slightest if my eating table is fully decked out with all the best symbel and loaded with the best food, all fed into it as the complex products of every single industry I have if I'm at no disadvantage against competitors by not trying to constantly push these things because they cannot impact me in any way I would want to prevent and vice versa

What you're asking for is fundamentally incompatible with the basic design principal of Haven and Hearth, and I gotta be honest if the principal which underlines your idea is the one you wish was in place, this might not be the game for you.

All that is required for progression to be meaningful is a challenge which the progression is measured against. This can be other players, but it can also be the environment - NPC enemies (animals in this case), elements in the game world (e.g. rock hardness) or core game systems (to get the +4 gild your materials must be at least q31). This is why peaceful play is called PvE (Player versus Environment). The Atelier series (particularly the ones with time limits) are good examples of games designed around improving numbers on crafted items to have more success in PvE. It can be a lot of fun.

[AtoB]

I think the current user numbers are a pretty damning indictment of our development and/or management, or perhaps of the game itself, tbqh, but -- while I can certainly speculate -- I don't know with any perfect certainty what the big problem(tm) is. I am concerned that recurring resets is an addiction that we're feeding which prevents any longer term commitments to the game.

Continued development is the best I've got.

I would suspect that encouraging a game loop that revolves around griefing each and every NPC till they stop respawning... leads to a lack of NPC, sooner than later.

Maybe finally pick some other two of
- fun game
- long-term development (both base and character)
- open PvP with permadeath (both base and character)

[Procne]

See, this is what's I'm questioning. Is that HnH and jorbtar's actual intention? Nowhere in HnH's About page is mindless number grinding to keep ahead of others mentioned nor pursued as the primary goal. Instead, we have goals of survival, construction and society building.

Isn't society building about agreeing on some set of rules, and then imposing them on others, or forcibly removing them from the society?

Sure! But there are plenty of methods to impose your rules and exclude others without wholesale deletion of another player and their stuff, no?

Do tell us about them, and how would they work in game

[telum12]

I think the current user numbers are a pretty damning indictment of our development and/or management, or perhaps of the game itself, tbqh, but -- while I can certainly speculate -- I don't know with any perfect certainty what the big problem(tm) is. I am concerned that recurring resets is an addiction that we're feeding which prevents any longer term commitments to the game.

Continued development is the best I've got.

I would suspect that encouraging a game loop that revolves around griefing each and every NPC till they stop respawning... leads to a lack of NPC, sooner than later.

Maybe finally pick some other two of
- fun game
- long-term development (both base and character)
- open PvP with permadeath (both base and character)

Shut up atob. That's not the gameloop for 99% of players. Go post in your anti-vax, covid-is-a-scam facebook groups instead of the forums.

[wolf1000wolf]

Do tell us about them, and how would they work in game

I assume you're specifically discussing the kingdoms/realms part of society building as HnH's village system already allows for inclusion/exclusion?

So here's a scenario where there's no open world PvP combat and siege.

1) Using the current realm system, have only the area around thingwalls allow for PvP combat to decide ownership of realm.
1b) Kingdom members can gain exclusive rights to harvest realm local resources.
1c) Kingdom members can gain ability to evict/declaim villages in their realm (probably need some sort of cost vs age of the claim, etc)
1d) Kingdom gains ability to construct kingdom roads. Have these be the only source of teleportation. Have roads accept tolls for use (like barter stands, keys).

These rules allow for social interactions between kingdoms and realm inhabitants. Sprucecaps no longer have to worry about marauders but at the same time, incentive to be good at PvP combat is still there. Allow for more granularity of kingdom memberships and there could be some sort of societal structure.

Players under threat of eviction can negotiate with the kingdom or just straight up leave. This way the kingdom still has control of their lands but players retain some measure of decision making.

Even the thingwall claiming process/mechanism can be more than just straight up combat.

Eg: Have the area be non-buildable. In order to claim, a village has to build a liftable idol object (marked by the village). Then during the thingwall claiming window, you have to move the idol to the designated spot through the PvP area. During this time, the area can have some sort of environmental effect to take care of the spam alts strat. Whichever village has their idol in the spot when the window ends claims the realm?

You can even have the idol accept varying amounts of resources/quality to denote how strong a control the kingdom has over the realm...

[SnuggleSnail]

cringe

[strpk0]

Just look at what removing village idol teleporting did to trading, to me this would seem like an obvious enough reason to bring it back in some capacity, despite how "ugly" or "unrealistic" it may have seemed when it was removed.

The only thing that this proves is that forum trading has decreased. Which I think is a good thing; I've always hated having to use outside-of-the-game services to trade in the game. Nowadays, pure in-game trade is far more feasible, in particular trade between non-merchants or with minor merchants (small markets). There's probably quite a bit of trading going on on Discord as well, which would also reduce the number of threads.

This is such a lazy take for multiple reasons, but the simplest being, if I'm a trader wouldn't I want to advertise my services/items on the most amount of places possible? Are you seriously implying 100% of these would-be threads don't exist because people prefer having to walk to markets, and are so satisfied with the current system that they see absolutely no need to use the forums, a place where they can more statically advertise and overall collect reviews and reputation from others?

And about discord, I'm inside many of the more popular discords, and was for the entirety of the world, and I did not see anything even remotely close to the amount of trading that happened during legacy. Most of the trades are usually for hats or larger, more expensive items such as guano and whatnot. Not even remotely close to the diversity of items that was actively traded in previous worlds.

Skype was a thing before discord existed (during the legacy era), and while it indeed sucked ass, it was commonly used alongside the forum for trading, IMO proving that its not an either-or thing as you suggest.

Nowadays, pure in-game trade is far more feasible, in particular trade between non-merchants or with minor merchants (small markets).

This part is specially confusing, infact it seems like it has become actively much more of a pain in the ass to trade items, but I'm legitimately interested in hearing how its "far more feasible" to trade under the current mechanics vs alt porting in legacy.

Also very interested in hearing about these "small markets". Having to deal with 20 different worthless currencies (often made with tin and copper or whatever) that will die as soon as the market dies 2 weeks later seems like an actively bad trade system for the game to me. I can probably remember 2 or 3 markets that remained for the larger part of this world, and again, none of those were anything special or comparable to the legacy threads.