Is the game dying already due to group/faction murder hobos?

[wkiller]

Yesterday 3 guys destroyed my pallisade by hand in a couple of minutes, when the world is not even 1 month old. I think it is too easy for people to destroy everything. They did not even need to build a ram to destroy the walls. Maybe there need to be options to make your walls more secure so it cannot be destroyed without siege equipment. There was no chance defending or preparing against this attack. I like the mechanics of the game, but indeed i see that early on in the new world many people die and lose their property.

[boshaw]

Yesterday 3 guys destroyed my pallisade by hand in a couple of minutes, when the world is not even 1 month old. I think it is too easy for people to destroy everything. They did not even need to build a ram to destroy the walls. Maybe there need to be options to make your walls more secure so it cannot be destroyed without siege equipment. There was no chance defending or preparing against this attack. I like the mechanics of the game, but indeed i see that early on in the new world many people die and lose their property.

Walls take 3 days to harden to prevent people from abusing them and trolling due to past issues. Once hard it can't be broken without siege.

[Valgar]

H&H isn't a combat game PVE or PVP wise.
Combat in H&H got nothing close to skilled gameplay and is totally outdated.

PvE - Cheesing is the main way to go, modified clients here for even more cheesing.
PvP - Everyone is using modified/at the edge of the ban clients, running like rabbits and hoping that your opponent got some lag or water issue to pinata him at 3v1. It's a shame to even saying that someone is good at this type of game.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

We are approaching the end of the first month.
Approximately 66% of accounts that logged in over the first month have not logged in during the past week, reflecting a 3 week turnover rate of about two thirds.

A lot of that can probably be attributed to people playing initially and not becoming invested. Some of it is veteran burnout. In any case, steam seems to continue to keep the daily concurrent max quite steady. Presumably enough new players are filtering in that those who are exiting are being replaced.

I'm not sure what, if any, takeaway there is to be had by this data. My gut feeling based on this data plus steam reviews and other anecdotal evidence is probably that spruce genocide is a contributing factor to the turnover, as people rarely cite gameplay concerns (other than perhaps light tutorial) when giving negative feedback on the game, but often cite negative player interactions.

If I had to think of the lowest hanging fruit to address this, I'd probably simply suggest that there should be an ingame tutorial that guides a player along a path where completion is given contingent on having a fully claimed palisade with only visitor gate entrances.

[wkiller]

Yesterday 3 guys destroyed my pallisade by hand in a couple of minutes, when the world is not even 1 month old. I think it is too easy for people to destroy everything. They did not even need to build a ram to destroy the walls. Maybe there need to be options to make your walls more secure so it cannot be destroyed without siege equipment. There was no chance defending or preparing against this attack. I like the mechanics of the game, but indeed i see that early on in the new world many people die and lose their property.

Walls take 3 days to harden to prevent people from abusing them and trolling due to past issues. Once hard it can't be broken without siege.

You are right it was just within 3 days. But we already fixed the gate. Hopefully it dries before it gets destroyed again.

[Kearn]

ive been here for 14 years and know exactly what i need to do and when i need to do it after world start and none of it matters because some ape spamming naked bucket alts can just set up a bot to walk through half a supergrid worth of area and as long as he can cover every tile once within 8 hours it is impossible to ever set up a claim (let alone get a palisade to be left alone for 3 days so you can actually properly start the game) since any alt can just smash an unhardened claim in about 3 minutes

very cool to have massive area denial with zero recourse to anyone unwilling to spam alts and leantos (AKA defeating stupid game mechanic abuse with even dumber game mechanic abuse) to block the claim post. perhaps there may be some inherent flaws in this regime with respect to player retention

[wkiller]

ive been here for 14 years and know exactly what i need to do and when i need to do it after world start and none of it matters because some ape spamming naked bucket alts can just set up a bot to walk through half a supergrid worth of area and as long as he can cover every tile once within 8 hours it is impossible to ever set up a claim (let alone get a palisade to be left alone for 3 days so you can actually properly start the game) since any alt can just smash an unhardened claim in about 3 minutes

very cool to have massive area denial with zero recourse to anyone unwilling to spam alts and leantos (AKA defeating stupid game mechanic abuse with even dumber game mechanic abuse) to block the claim post. perhaps there may be some inherent flaws in this regime with respect to player retention

Yes, maybe it should be changed like this: when you build a palisade on your own claim it should directly give the full protection (or maybe half of the full protection). If it is build outside your claim it maybe still should have the 3 days drying time. My palisade was destroyed within our claim. I think if there are more options to protect yourselves, people are less likely to quit. I makes not much sense you could destroy a palisade without any siege equipment if it is within 3 days.

[Fostik]

I think noob hunters is useful for community, as they creates evolutionary process for players, alas for the price of some player decline.
After all, I don't like autists who sets on peninsula, refuses to communicate or join any discords, does not listen to experienced players advises, and spends all his time to try to dig hole deep enough to make his peninsula an island. This is expected outcome you see them floating near their base.
Noobhunters are playing role of viruses in wild nature.
I'd like to note that I never killed or griefed any of them.

I'm not sure what, if any, takeaway there is to be had by this data. My gut feeling based on this data plus steam reviews and other anecdotal evidence is probably that spruce genocide is a contributing factor to the turnover, as people rarely cite gameplay concerns (other than perhaps light tutorial) when giving negative feedback on the game, but often cite negative player interactions.

The turnover is natural factor that is happening in any game regardless of PvP, you just log in to realize it does not click with you and never log in again, you can't expect every new player to retain.
You are just inclined to prove your point, that's a bias.

Game reviews on steam at moment is Very Positive (492 reviews), but you cherry-picking bad ones to prove your point.
I see a lot of new players in official discord, some of them creating new discord communities and grouping together to understand this game better.
And last, on haven tracker https://brodgar.io/tracker/ you can compare old world releases, you can clearly see online decline is not as steep this world, each day breaks previous online records.
We have 5th weekend coming soon since world start(if we count world start weekend as 1st), just to compare Nov 14, 2023 had 1235 online. On this weekend I expect 1400-1500 online.

[Kaios]

Game reviews on steam at moment is Very Positive (492 reviews), but you cherry-picking bad ones to prove your point.

It's worth noting that while the majority of them are positive, a lot of those positive reviews point out the same/similar negative aspects which many new players also immediately recognize. Most of those issues having existed for years.

[MightySheep]

1500 players at start 1500 players now

I watched a poe2 dev interview the other day and I think its a pretty good point relevant to haven by top tier game devs https://youtu.be/dsrIEWXPHlo?t=2244