Old and new factions in Haven

[isdel]

When googling the forum for game information I often end up reading a fair amount of older threads from legacy times. I've recently noticed something and I'm wondering if anyone else has made the same observation.

It's common in games like Haven for groups to be formed based on external websites. These groups typically have the advantage of increased trust between members due to the shared background and backstabbing being disincentivized due to the risk of being labelled a traitor on the home site.

I first played in world 6, and only put serious effort into worlds 7 and 9 as a hermit, so I can't say I'm an expert on Haven politics over the years. But I know, from reading through the archives (which is kind of difficult right now due to the state of the hearth vault) that in the early legacy worlds there were groups based on communities like Something Awful, the Bay 12 forums and RPGCodex. Judging from Congress threads, these groups were involved in a fair amount of political events at the time.

What struck me is that these groups largely seem to have disappeared. To be sure, players from these groups are still around - but none of the major factions are, as far as I know, based on specific communities anymore (or not exclusively so, at least).

I'm curious if anyone has opinions or theories on how that happened. I can't quite tell when it did, since I wasn't around at the time - I would guess some time between worlds 6 and 9, but that is a guess based on very little. These kinds of factions seem to be almost unheard of post-Hafen. I recall seeing threads about the Hafen launch of two of the sites mentioned above and it got a very lukewarm response, partly due to the dubious payment model.

What does this change mean, if anything? Are the same people playing world after world, with little new player influx? Did the rise of major powergaming factions make website-based factions unviable as the most experienced players were skimmed from the latter by the former? Maybe each of these external communities became "mined out" of potential new players as the game got older and everyone there was either already playing H&H or didn't care to, leaving members from these communities to join other groups? Or are these groups still out there, but not as relevant anymore?

[Ysh]

When googling the forum for game information I often end up reading a fair amount of older threads from legacy times. I've recently noticed something and I'm wondering if anyone else has made the same observation.

It's common in games like Haven for groups to be formed based on external websites. These groups typically have the advantage of increased trust between members due to the shared background and backstabbing being disincentivized due to the risk of being labelled a traitor on the home site.

I first played in world 6, and only put serious effort into worlds 7 and 9 as a hermit, so I can't say I'm an expert on Haven politics over the years. But I know, from reading through the archives (which is kind of difficult right now due to the state of the hearth vault) that in the early legacy worlds there were groups based on communities like Something Awful, the Bay 12 forums and RPGCodex. Judging from Congress threads, these groups were involved in a fair amount of political events at the time.

What struck me is that these groups largely seem to have disappeared. To be sure, players from these groups are still around - but none of the major factions are, as far as I know, based on specific communities anymore (or not exclusively so, at least).

I'm curious if anyone has opinions or theories on how that happened. I can't quite tell when it did, since I wasn't around at the time - I would guess some time between worlds 6 and 9, but that is a guess based on very little. These kinds of factions seem to be almost unheard of post-Hafen. I recall seeing threads about the Hafen launch of two of the sites mentioned above and it got a very lukewarm response, partly due to the dubious payment model.

What does this change mean, if anything? Are the same people playing world after world, with little new player influx? Did the rise of major powergaming factions make website-based factions unviable as the most experienced players were skimmed from the latter by the former? Maybe each of these external communities became "mined out" of potential new players as the game got older and everyone there was either already playing H&H or didn't care to, leaving members from these communities to join other groups? Or are these groups still out there, but not as relevant anymore?

My guesses:

A. As time go on, if players from other community enjoy Haven much, they slowly become more of serious Haven player and less of community member. This is making it hard to recruit from community as more serious player, as community is naturally going to be brand new and not serious yet as well as player maybe drifting from community because of play all the time in Haven.

B. In the beginning, community has large pool of potential Haven player build up. Each of these player then has chance to enjoy Haven. After this first push, every one in community has had chance to try it. After this, the only new blood to recruit from these community is from new member of these community. For already very small or niche community, this may be too slow to be worth efforts.

C. Haven was in very not good state during Salem era. A very large amount of hype was build for Hafen, but this was destroy by payment models. Possible for favor in community to never recover, as maybe most of community population thinks it is still pay to play game.

D. In general, it seems forum community becomes less popular (or at least, have not gained in popularity as quickly) compare to other thing (e.g. Reddit style site or Facebook). These platform are less conducive to recruiting because they tend to be less tightly knitted it seems.

[ven]

I'm curious if anyone has opinions or theories on how that happened. I can't quite tell when it did, since I wasn't around at the time - I would guess some time between worlds 6 and 9, but that is a guess based on very little. These kinds of factions seem to be almost unheard of post-Hafen. I recall seeing threads about the Hafen launch of two of the sites mentioned above and it got a very lukewarm response, partly due to the dubious payment model.

What does this change mean, if anything? Are the same people playing world after world, with little new player influx? Did the rise of major powergaming factions make website-based factions unviable as the most experienced players were skimmed from the latter by the former? Maybe each of these external communities became "mined out" of potential new players as the game got older and everyone there was either already playing H&H or didn't care to, leaving members from these communities to join other groups? Or are these groups still out there, but not as relevant anymore?

When w8 launched I invited my old forum people. They quit in less than a week because they couldn't figure out what to do or how to play the game. Things have gotten better since then, but only marginally. Many of this game's concepts aren't self-evident, most aren't explained satisfactorily, and there are even some cases of the same word being used for two different concepts (and two words being used for the same thing), something which should never happen.

I suppose this answers a bit of what you ask. I think old groups dissolve because we get older and have more real life responsibilities, work, kids, etc so we can't be as dedicated as before to the group, resulting in either us moving on to more casual playstyles or the entire group slowing down, and a faction without nolifers or a good botting system eventually fades into irrelevance. At the same time, new players have a hard time remaining in the game because of a series of factors, so a constant influx or replacement of members from the original communities doesn't really happen, at least not in a way that makes it meaningful.

I'd guess part of this is also due to competition. Now there's a greater range of similar games that groups of old friends can play together, like private starbound servers, don't starve, or a number of newer console titles, all of which have the advantage of being plug-and-play, which haven does not.

[Ysh]

When w8 launched I invited my old forum people. They quit in less than a week because they couldn't figure out what to do or how to play the game.

Could you not explain to them?

[ven]

No.

[Direkled]

When w8 launched I invited my old forum people. They quit in less than a week because they couldn't figure out what to do or how to play the game.

Could you not explain to them?

You can't just tell people how to do things, you need parchment for that.