The amount of players lately

[shubla]

never played Legacy but I imagine it had no performance problems due to graphics

Not really. There were some big battles with half people logging on and off all the time because their computers would crash!

[Clemence]

If it's the same as 2015, well, not so bad if you see how the population evolved in other games.

[jordancoles]

Hey guys, I've been on and off player, last time I checked HnH around March or April, whenever that was, probably when world reset hit.

I wonder, how comes low pop hours have so little players? Haven was more popular than it has ever been in past few years. Something drastic happened with development? Like it took wrong direction? I wouldn't ever think that you could hit only 70 players consecutively online with added benefit of quarantines and even second wave of corona around the place.

Am I just giving Haven too much credit on how popular it is or is something really wrong? Considering coming back so, I'd like to know.

Endgame content is stale and repetetive, and most people quit after getting their initial base set up. As playercount drops off you don't see people outside while boating, and that removes a lot of the fun. It's a problem that plays into itself. One group of players quit, then another drops off because their area isn't as active, then more quit because they see no one is playing. Eventually the world feels barren and you're genuinely surprised to see another player.

Meteors and lvl 9 mineholes are insanely unbalanced and only small groups of people get access to the top levels of content, which isn't fun for everyone else. Kingdoms are another example of content that only a handful of people ever get to experience, yet it gets updates somewhat regularly based on one or two player's feedback.

Small/boring updates that no one asked for, or getting no updates for a month+ starts to wear on people. Also weird tone-deaf responses from the devs where they don't understand why the user would want a scalable/movable minimap or gridlines is discouraging to say the least. They've recently added these features to the default client, which is great, but it took like 10 years?

Jorbtar seems to be losing interest in their game/community, and it's sad to see.

[iamahh]

I think a lot of people quit exactly while meeting other people on a boat and getting rekt or simply getting raided, stolen... and most quitters won't see all content, unless they're in a big group

also larping is infinite mechanic only limited by creativity, but gets punished randomly, similar to streamers, and devs are ok with it

so there's no way out when the community idea of fun is killin nabs and destroying other's creations, you get an "empty" world

but even "empty" is a unique interest world, numbers means nothing nowadays, as I said Despacito is the most viewed video, and Kanye is a genius

[Zentetsuken]

I think a lot of people quit exactly while meeting other people on a boat and getting rekt or simply getting raided, stolen...

This is definitely not true in most cases. Maybe in SOME, but most realms are totally cool with helping retrieve bodies and are eager to avenge a death for the pvp potential. Dying is not a big deal, and there hasn't been people "boating around and killing people" any more than any other world.

I quit because the game gets boring as fuck after a few months. Setting up a larpy base, making everything pretty, dipping in to every industry you can, making a few big trades for high q shit, getting to the point where you can pretty much PvE anything ... then what?

Then the game it just a daily chore, looking after animals, farming, killing enough to eat

forever

until the world ends

[dafels]

I'm pretty sure raiding and killing is one of the smallest factors that contribute to lower playercounts. It is one of those things that brainlets love to exaggerate.

My scapegoat is that the game has become too complex and a clutter to be fun and the features/systems having no synergy between them at all. The game would be way better with less features but really well designed and refined features

[Thaydi]

I'm pretty sure raiding and killing is one of the smallest factors that contribute to lower playercounts. It is one of those things that brainlets love to exaggerate.

My scapegoat is that the game has become too complex and a clutter to be fun and the features/systems having no synergy between them at all. The game would be way better with less features but really well designed and refined features

I'd add tedium to this. I usually stop playing when the game becomes an obligation instead of a fun time for me. When I have to log in and check for animals, and harvest crops, and making food, do everything except what is fun, which in my case is building and designing a base.

Hope the next updates focus more on quality of life on the default client (so the custom clients makers don't have to code everything on their own, other than the exceptional) and, after that, a focus on the refinning of the old features, also aimed at the improvement of our quality of life.

[boreial]

From what I have seen, Haven gets a lot of Veteran return players on a world reset Those veterans tend to do a bit of newb harassment until most players have a dried palisade in place. Then they either slowly stop playing or build a mega base and once that is done slowly stop.
Other veterans play the "Race to the Top" and once there either ravage their competition or drop when they can't compete with the top, and once the top no longer has any competition they too slowly lose interest. This tends to leave hermit types that gain stats and qualities slowly (as they aren't in a rush) and new players that join mid to late world where they find themselves somewhat safe from harassment.

Since Haven has no real advertisement to attract a larger player base, these new players are few and far between, resulting in a low player count beginning mid world and somewhat stabilizing from there to end of world.

Another factor to add in to player drop off is the continuing adding of content that seems to only add tedium. (case in point) the semi recent glass mechanics, ( previous to make a demijohn you needed raw glass, 1 sand and a crucible) Now you Molten Glass, which requires the addition of Lye, which requires too much time to make if you wanted a piece of glass the same day. It is these little things that add up and make Haven not so much a way to relax (which is what games are for) into more of a chore to accomplish anything before having to deal with actual life.

[SnuggleSnail]

I'm pretty sure raiding and killing is one of the smallest factors that contribute to lower playercounts. It is one of those things that brainlets love to exaggerate.

My scapegoat is that the game has become too complex and a clutter to be fun and the features/systems having no synergy between them at all. The game would be way better with less features but really well designed and refined features

[Jalpha]

My scapegoat is that the game has become too complex and a clutter to be fun and the features/systems having no synergy between them at all. The game would be way better with less features but really well designed and refined features

That game already exists. It is called Rust.

I think there is plenty of players who enjoy complex game mechanics, myself included. What I do not enjoy is the tedium.

You can see many of the same patterns and playstyles in Rust compared with Hafen. Most players log into a fresh server on the first day, struggle to get a basic home built and then log out before even upgrading to metal doors. On day two they log in, find their base has been raided and load into another fresh server. Some people just want to trash other peoples homes without fighting. They log into off-peak servers and farm enough to trash as many homes as they can.

By the end of day three you are left with the PvPers and the RPers. They are the minority. Most players are noobs trying to learn the game.