Haven player numbers graphed

[tripp6]

why was W8 so short?

wasnt that the first world in hafen?

w10 was community fair world, and i think the devs took some time off on that one

[DDDsDD999]

why was W8 so short?

wasnt that the first world in hafen?

Yeah and it sucked ass. jorb and loftar developed the game for multiple years without any feedback. The game was so screwed up that it alienated a huge portion of the playerbase. There had to have been 100+ threads complaining about the terrible payment system alone. Then there was also the fucked up map and spawning mechanics. They had to restart the world fairly early on to stop hemorrhaging players, and they still took too long to do it.

[MagicManICT]

why was W8 so short?

wasnt that the first world in hafen?

Yeah and it sucked ass. jorb and loftar developed the game for multiple years without any feedback. The game was so screwed up that it alienated a huge portion of the playerbase. There had to have been 100+ threads complaining about the terrible payment system alone. Then there was also the fucked up map and spawning mechanics. They had to restart the world fairly early on to stop hemorrhaging players, and they still took too long to do it.

I think the two biggest complaints were the change to 3D and the business model for income, and yeah, the number of threads complaining about the latter was just nuts. Most got consolidated into one megathread that's still stickied in C&I.

@wonder-ass: as much as I'd like to see a persistent world, I think I have come around to reluctantly agree with the more or less regular resets. They at least keep people coming back to check things out every once in a while.

[VDZ]

why was W8 so short?

wasnt that the first world in hafen?

Yeah and it sucked ass. jorb and loftar developed the game for multiple years without any feedback. The game was so screwed up that it alienated a huge portion of the playerbase. There had to have been 100+ threads complaining about the terrible payment system alone. Then there was also the fucked up map and spawning mechanics. They had to restart the world fairly early on to stop hemorrhaging players, and they still took too long to do it.

I enjoyed world 8, as did others. I think the monetization scheme was the only significant culprit; many players were literally unable to play actively, and with only X hours per week people are guaranteed to drop out because that's just not feasible.

[jordancoles]

why was W8 so short?

wasnt that the first world in hafen?

Yeah and it sucked ass. jorb and loftar developed the game for multiple years without any feedback. The game was so screwed up that it alienated a huge portion of the playerbase. There had to have been 100+ threads complaining about the terrible payment system alone. Then there was also the fucked up map and spawning mechanics. They had to restart the world fairly early on to stop hemorrhaging players, and they still took too long to do it.

I think the two biggest complaints were the change to 3D and the business model for income, and yeah, the number of threads complaining about the latter was just nuts. Most got consolidated into one megathread that's still stickied in C&I.

@wonder-ass: as much as I'd like to see a persistent world, I think I have come around to reluctantly agree with the more or less regular resets. They at least keep people coming back to check things out every once in a while.

Also the game played like a bag of bricks. I had 17 fps standing in the woods and that was like peak fps for me

[tripp6]

oh yeah, you couldnt spawn beside anyone....

i remember we had to spawn in and like use the party system to travel on foot for 2 hours to get to each other

truly dark times indeed

[wonder-ass]

I actually remember when I was new to the game and knew nothing about it, the game was actually really good and provided a ton of adventures. Got a wound? you'd spend a few hours figuring out to heal it. I can't recall most of it but every day I'd log in and had something I wanted to do or things I had to figure out got thrown at me and everytime you'd go on an hour long adventure to figure it out. Imo that was a ton of fun even tho it provided not much progress in most cases. Other games litterally have to force quests upon you to achieve this, in hnh this occurs very naturally for a new player and I think it's great.
Once those things become trivial tho and become a timegate (wounds, quality grind, feasting etc), it turns into a repetitive grind that can burn you out and the more you get into it the more you realise how broken some systems are and that makes people frustrated/angry.
So idk exactly what my point is but hnh has some great things going for it and only 2 devs that only have 4 eyes and 24 hours per day

i agree, all these concepts are fun when u first interact with them but sadly this game is designed in a way that u have to interact with these mechanics 1000 fucking times so it just takes all the fun out of it.

[VDZ]

I actually remember when I was new to the game and knew nothing about it, the game was actually really good and provided a ton of adventures. Got a wound? you'd spend a few hours figuring out to heal it. I can't recall most of it but every day I'd log in and had something I wanted to do or things I had to figure out got thrown at me and everytime you'd go on an hour long adventure to figure it out. Imo that was a ton of fun even tho it provided not much progress in most cases. Other games litterally have to force quests upon you to achieve this, in hnh this occurs very naturally for a new player and I think it's great.
Once those things become trivial tho and become a timegate (wounds, quality grind, feasting etc), it turns into a repetitive grind that can burn you out and the more you get into it the more you realise how broken some systems are and that makes people frustrated/angry.
So idk exactly what my point is but hnh has some great things going for it and only 2 devs that only have 4 eyes and 24 hours per day

i agree, all these concepts are fun when u first interact with them but sadly this game is designed in a way that u have to interact with these mechanics 1000 fucking times so it just takes all the fun out of it.

Most of* these concepts. Midges have never been fun (due to the only counterplay being 'stay inside for 20 minutes and hope nobody else enters the area'), nor has taming (the process itself is perfectly fine, but the bullshit timing requirements and various gotchas that make the animal disappear or die make it unfun). Some implementations are so flawed that not even the first time around they are fun.

Most of the stuff that is fun the first time around stays fun though, even if not as amazing as it is the first time, as long as you take long breaks occasionally. The first weeks after a world reset always feel like an adventure to me. There have been times where I felt the same restarting mid-world after quitting for a while (mainly in Legacy), though nowadays that usually feels pointless as resources are readily available from abandoned places if you explore just a bit and it feels like there is little point to doing anything other than looting ruins as you're unlikely to progress faster doing normal activities even with looted materials.

[Soukuw]

I feel like this is inconclusive data. I'd like to see how many unique players play each day.

Once people have their bases up it's much easier to log in for 10 minutes each day, this would explain the insane drop in consecutive players.

Sort of related: Even though players leave, end game has more options for transport. Higher Will, more Thingwalls, horses, etc. It matters but at the same time travel to do what you need with other players is still possible.

[shubla]

Can you tell too much about playercounts though? It counts bots, alts etc. I'd imagine that botting and alts even are both more common now than in w8.

If something kills worlds its just burnout. At least that is my experience. People play 2 months 24/7 then realize that everything in their life is fucked because they played 16hrs every day to get all credos and hq metal etc. Then they realize that even that is not enough because there are villages with more tryhard powergamers playing, which they will never beat. Then they just quit completely.
Adding more content will just make it worse, adds grind. Tedium must be removed to make game playable with less grinding.

If you think of the "daily" tasks, manage animals, craft curios, craft food, farm fields, mine a bit, hunt a bit.. Big village you have to do lot of them. Farming fields of village may take few hours even with bot, (most people don't even use farming bots)
Should make farming faster (there were some updates, can't comment how much they help because I've not tried them out), make trees for example yield more resources. Decrease amount of food that you have to make. Decrease amount of curios you have to make.
Metal is also big one, mining node yields should be increased.
I think that we had like dozens of smokers, and most of time we still didn't have enough smoked stuff!

I'm not sure if I've ever managed to keep my study full of good craftable curios for more than few days at a most. Because you'd simply have to make curios just ridiculous amounts every day.
Study table helps a bit with stocking them in but even with study table things like strawdolls are very very tedious.
Maybe durations of curios (and their LP) should be just multiplied by 10x or something. And rate of hunger regen reduced a lot.
Yeah maybe few people who play 10 hrs a day will complain that they get bored but so what, most of your playerbase is not prepared to play the game 10 hours every single day for months. Maybe for small periods but not persistently.

Also big one: limit credo quests I had people in my village who grinded like all the credos on first days then burned out and quit. I've had some suggestions about how credo quests could be easily made less tedious.

Credos and HnH is like a cake. First piece tastes delicious, second piece is good, third is ok, but if you eat whole cake by yourself in one go, you'll not want to even see cakes in a long long time. With HnH there is no limit on how many pieces you can eat, and game strongly encourages you to eat maximal amount of pieces every day, that you have time to eat.