Will hafen ever be popular or did it miss its chance?

[wonder-ass]

the core mechanic of the game hinders the rest from being good.

[Potjeh]

EVE has actual PvP going on. In Haven it's nothing but pushing number via repetitive actions. The sad thing is that Haven before you get to that "endgame" is a really fun game, but that's all gone once you're fully established. Basically people come to Haven for fun, but they stay purely for sunk investment. Anyone who claims that eating pumpkin pie #10 000 000 is fun is only fooling himself.

[Jalpha]

Stat capping feels only relevant to faction playtime balance as the typical hermit will not be competitive on that scale anyway. I have dominated neighbourhoods with quite low stats. Most people will do anything to get out of a fight.

There are plenty of fair fights to be had at any stat level. What I'd prefer is some kind of indicator which would let me know if a potential opponent is on my level or way above it. Not that I'm opposed to yolo.

The pace of Rust is way faster than in HnH so you can't really compare loss there. Additionally death only results in loss of a portion of your playtime. Your inventory is made vulnerable but you lose no skills or attributes and you can make a new home in thirty minutes. Way less if you know what you're doing. You can't mimic that on any level. Nobody wants to lose a character they spent months on and I'm sure you have seen for yourself how noobs react after losing two day old characters.

The real issue is that nobody at any level has much of a reason to fight. There is no naked carrying C4 in Hafen. Basically people pvp to wave their dicks at each other or they are some scrappy raiders. Aside from mining there is no real character sink and I'm not sure that there should be.

No reason to live and none to die.

[Zentetsuken]

EVE has actual PvP going on. In Haven it's nothing but pushing number via repetitive actions. The sad thing is that Haven before you get to that "endgame" is a really fun game, but that's all gone once you're fully established. Basically people come to Haven for fun, but they stay purely for sunk investment. Anyone who claims that eating pumpkin pie #10 000 000 is fun is only fooling himself.

I suspect that anybody who is actively PVPing in EVE can "afford it" though. The grind in EVE is just as bad as Haven, the only difference is the EVE grind is sort of passive and happens in the background, even offline. When you die, it is arguably more forgiving because you can jump right back in another ship and start again, especially if you are in a faction with money that actively PVPs. Gankers in EVE and Haven are basically the same, the main difference is that if you die during a gank in EVE you can bounce back in minutes.

I think the grind is a big part of haven and potentially a big part of what keeps people around. It's bragging rights and dick waving. Everybody wants the best quality shit, the highest stats. Maybe a nolifer SHOULD be rewarded more than a casual, I don't think it's any different in any other MMO. I think the main difference is that the rewards need to be pushed away from "you are basically unbeatable" to "you have unlocked incredibly cool looking shit with the odd powerful bonus along the way"

[MightySheep]

To be perfectly honest Eve is a mystery to me because its complete and utter shit but it somehow maintains a steady stream of new players I guess through hype alone.

More what I had in mind is games like Rend, Conan Exiles, Wurm Online, Life Is Feudal (and maybe Albion) which are all similar grindy open world sandbox games where you run the risk of losing everything you built. Even if they get big influxes of players, like Rend did when it released on steam not long ago, they always lose the players just as quickly because no one enjoys getting totally wiped out. In all these games they ended up losing all the casuals and got stuck with the fat nolifer tryhards that totally dominated.

It's just how the game is designed, it cant really be helped, if you make the game easier / less punishing or less grind-orientated then you alienate the fat losers which make up the existing playerbase.

If I had to guess how Eve is managing to maintain a big playerbase I would say they have captured a huge chunk of the sweaty nolife tryhard market and have maintained it for years. I think Eve also has an in game system to help new players avoid getting shit on quite so hard, sort of like the role New Brodgar used to play but unfortunately no longer does. Right now if you're a new player in Haven you're basically fending for yourself and you're almost guaranteed to get slaughtered. Haven probably has one of the worst new player experiences out of all the games I listed in terms of people in the community actually taking you under their wing and helping you lol.

You should just make alt spying / infiltrating peoples villages an IP ban offence.

Also among those games I listed there are really well made ones like Conan has fantastic graphics etc and I think really targets the same sort of player demographic as haven so looking at haven in comparison its hard to imagine this derpy looking buggy indie thing becoming super popular if that game isnt. What u need is some dumb headline grabbing stuff like Eve's "million dollar battle" which I actually played in when I was trying the game out recently and was disappointed by how completely dysfunctional the game actually is. It really is trash.

[Potjeh]

It's not like there's much of a playerbase to worry about alienating. It's just sad that such great content is wasted on such a terrible subgenre.

[vatas]

Full-loot and Perma-death sounds cool until you're the one who gets fully looted and permanently killed.

Speaking of EVE Online, there's this video giving one Youtuber's reason why he isn't playing it despite being fan of similar MMOs. I personally played EVE Online for years and can't say much because, in hindsight, I was essentially a permanent noob at the game.

[Adder1234]

Personally, I think that the problem with the game currently is that fast travel makes the whole world very small, not to mention it makes trading such a boring experience. You have no need or want to travel anywhere, since you just use a road to travel straight to the biggest market, where to look around and find the highest q goods. The closest I come to travelling while playing is walking around my local area to find some animals to hunt.

Which is very sad, because travelling and trading shouldn't be so monotonous.

[jordancoles]

World 8's horrendous payment model has to be mentioned. Massive amount of people were hyped for Hafen and were then turned off by effectively having to pay to play. They may not know it has been since (more or less) fixed. I think we at least lost many Legacy veterans who haven't returned.

1 of our legacy bros who we played with for like 2-3 years was so hyped for hafen and when he saw the payment model he said like "wow what the fuck" and we never heard from him again.. quite sad...

F

[MightySheep]

Personally, I think that the problem with the game currently is that fast travel makes the whole world very small, not to mention it makes trading such a boring experience. You have no need or want to travel anywhere, since you just use a road to travel straight to the biggest market, where to look around and find the highest q goods. The closest I come to travelling while playing is walking around my local area to find some animals to hunt.

Which is very sad, because travelling and trading shouldn't be so monotonous.

There might be truth to that, I think one of the thinks that keeps you somewhat safe in Eve was just how big space is. Even if people come into your vicinity you could usually escape fairly easily. To go into enemy territory you had to make like 50 warp jumps usually and there was a definite defenders advantage in terms of calling reinforcements quickly so murdering expeditions generally had to be planned to some extent.

In Haven its like the entire world becomes the domain of some sweaty tryhard factions and they know what every map tile looks like and who every village belongs to, its impossible to fly under anyones radar or to avoid destruction if they want you dead, which is inevitable because theres not that big of a pool of victims in the first place. Anyone who isnt some decade old clique of sweaty nerds falls in the "victim" category. Fast travel allows people to basically camp your doorstep no matter where you are on the map.

I dont even dislike fast travel but have to admit it completely removes the safety buffer between players.