please convince me not to start playing again

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Re: please convince me not to start playing again

Postby Zampfeo » Tue May 18, 2021 2:40 pm

Anything less than 2 hours/day sounds like a waste of time in my opinion. There's much better survival/exploration games if that's the gameplay you're after. You can, however, be an auxiliary hunter or miner for a village and still have a life with that kind of schedule. Those are two of the few roles with no specific time commitment. Unlike farming, tree planting, silk making, etc. which all require you to schedule your life around them. The problem is finding a village with those no-life roles being covered for by people who aren't going to burn out in a month or two in.
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Re: please convince me not to start playing again

Postby Archiplex » Tue May 18, 2021 3:26 pm

the funny thing is that all of those mechanics could be accessable if the game didn't punish you for failure, i.e silkworms dying, steel undoing itself, crops dying, trees withering in pots, blah blah.

and not having failure wouldn't impact 90% of villages in the game
the proliferation of automation is the rot of this game, with the next worst thing being the filth that plays it (you, probably.)

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Re: please convince me not to start playing again

Postby wolf1000wolf » Tue May 18, 2021 4:13 pm

Kaios wrote:
VDZ wrote:It's not that bad. Fully casual play (the kind where sprucecaps don't have a palisade up even a week after starting) can be done on any schedule. Even more serious play can be feasibly done especially if you take some time off work near the start. You just can't stay competitive on the highest level unless you plan your life around the game, and you're pretty much locked out of a small handful of aspects of the game (notably taming and steelmaking), but you can generally make up for it via trade.


Disagree. How much of that stuff you're doing as a casual player is actual, fun content versus waiting for mechanics based around time gating. There's about 5% of the player base that actually manages to get in to anything related to PvP while 90% of the "content" is filler nonsense intended to slow down progression. If a game forces you to push through boring tedium to get to the interesting stuff, then it's not really giving you content at all. You're being given chores.

Or, you can trade someone $120 in tokens to skip all that. Huh, that's not too different from the latest MMO cash shop strategies.



I think the issue here is what you consider the fun stuff.
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Re: please convince me not to start playing again

Postby Kaios » Tue May 18, 2021 4:47 pm

wolf1000wolf wrote:I think the issue here is what you consider the fun stuff.


That is a fair question to ask, and for me personally it is content that is engaging.

To provide an example of that, I enjoy hunting very much but I do not like that you are relegated to performing it with the use of a boar spear and quick barrage via boat cheesing. Unless of course you greatly out-stat the things you want to hunt, in which case you have a little more freedom in your approach. Either way though, the way damage works with openings and armour penetration makes it so you still want to take the cautious approach in order to mitigate the overall damage you take as much as possible.

I like Mining, but I do not like the length of time that is required to build up enough wax to get your first minehole going as a hermit (let alone further mineholes after that) while larger villages and faction groups are mining ores and stones of quality 200 or greater.

Smithing is enjoyable but I do not like that it lacks any sort of meaningful goals now that metal spiraling was eliminated. I do not necessarily disagree with the decision to attempt to limit quality progression with its removal, but in doing so they removed a major end-game goal in the overall mining/metalworking process. Regardless of that, metal quality progression has still not been limited in any meaningful way because they fail to account for proper metal and stone qualities at appropriate underground levels and ensuring that the related formulas for production facilities are also in line with the type of progression that they want to go for.

Combat is… combat is not terrible but in my opinion the combat system still requires significant improvement in order to facilitate more players getting in to a greater amount of PvP and PvE content. The current set of attacks, moves, and maneuvers do allow for a bit of tact and strategy but for the most part everything still relies heavily on stats and quality. Not to mention how far ahead in stats and quality the biggest participants in that sort of stuff end up being within the first week of a new world.

There are plenty of fun things that you could do as a casual/hermit player given enough time or under the right circumstances but one's ability to participate in them ends up being highly limited to the point that it is no longer fun or you are gated off from a piece of content in its entirety.
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Re: please convince me not to start playing again

Postby Zampfeo » Tue May 18, 2021 5:05 pm

Kaios wrote:Text


I agree, but I wouldn't really consider these things "boring tedium" as much as just being badly designed, balanced, and convoluted mechanics. Doing tedious activities for a sense of progression is the main draw of the game, so I don't see that as a problem nor that these activities are delaying the "interesting stuff". That is supposed to be the interesting stuff. The problem is a lot of those activities have become increasingly convoluted or unbalanced in terms of effort-reward and hermit punishment over the years.

Casual vs hardcore play has been a hot topic since this game's beginning and, and other than it being harder to outright die, I think the casual experience has immensely diminished since I first began playing.
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Re: please convince me not to start playing again

Postby Sevenless » Tue May 18, 2021 5:12 pm

Kinda funny the way some people interpreted it. I'm saying people who don't meet those criteria will always struggle with elements of the gameplay design, and that they're definitely going to have more fun in other games. Haven is pretty brutal on time and dedication requirements. If you can't "work" a fulltime job in haven, there's always elements of the game that will be painful.

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Re: please convince me not to start playing again

Postby evilboy666 » Tue May 18, 2021 7:28 pm

VDZ wrote:It's not that bad. Fully casual play (the kind where sprucecaps don't have a palisade up even a week after starting) can be done on any schedule. Even more serious play can be feasibly done especially if you take some time off work near the start. You just can't stay competitive on the highest level unless you plan your life around the game, and you're pretty much locked out of a small handful of aspects of the game (notably taming and steelmaking), but you can generally make up for it via trade.


I guess in my case, when you already saw some big stuff in previous worlds your mind gets a coded in a way. For example for me, setting up the palisade asap is something as natural as thoroughly cleaning a new house you moved into. Going back to goodol casual hermit style doesnt cut it i guess.

On a different note, the game is actually quite fun. Like, i dont think ive ever heard someone call hnh boring here. You dont realize how the time passes away. But that is the problem :D
Last time ive played, I had to forage everyday so that my study box would not go empty( it should be as full as it can be ofc :) ). I realized even my casual foraging, quest tree trips would reach 2 hours or so. In the end, one time i just was like "man what the f*ck am i doing with my life?"
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Re: please convince me not to start playing again

Postby Kaios » Tue May 18, 2021 10:59 pm

Zampfeo wrote:I agree, but I wouldn't really consider these things "boring tedium" as much as just being badly designed, balanced, and convoluted mechanics. Doing tedious activities for a sense of progression is the main draw of the game, so I don't see that as a problem nor that these activities are delaying the "interesting stuff". That is supposed to be the interesting stuff. The problem is a lot of those activities have become increasingly convoluted or unbalanced in terms of effort-reward and hermit punishment over the years.


I am not sure that I agree the activities need to be tedious in nature in order to offer a sense of progression but I will concede that my examples were not the greatest in relation to that and you are right that their issues are mostly related to poorly designed or needlessly complex mechanics. Although, I do think that compounds the overall effect the monotonous activities do have when everything else kind of feels like a slog to get through.

Zampfeo wrote:Casual vs hardcore play has been a hot topic since this game's beginning and, and other than it being harder to outright die, I think the casual experience has immensely diminished since I first began playing.


Yes, and I can't put my finger on what it is exactly that has caused this but if I had to guess, the reason for that is because it is likely a culmination of many changes.

Sevenless wrote:Kinda funny the way some people interpreted it. I'm saying people who don't meet those criteria will always struggle with elements of the gameplay design, and that they're definitely going to have more fun in other games. Haven is pretty brutal on time and dedication requirements. If you can't "work" a fulltime job in haven, there's always elements of the game that will be painful.


I got your point but I don't think I agree with you that any mechanic, in an MMO or otherwise, needs to be designed in that way intentionally or for any longer than as a placeholder system until something better can be implemented. I realize that it is difficult to strike a reasonable balance in the competitive field between casual and hardcore players, but the only thing that makes it impossible is not trying to do so.

evilboy666 wrote:Last time ive played, I had to forage everyday so that my study box would not go empty( it should be as full as it can be ofc :) ). I realized even my casual foraging, quest tree trips would reach 2 hours or so.


What makes those activities any more fun than what any one of the other numerous MMOs have to offer? If I play Lord of the Rings Online for two hours and during that time, I complete a storyline quest then I have probably done some number of the following things; Progressed the storyline, likely completed other side quests, progressed my character in skills and experience, gained better equipment and/or other useful loot, gold, etc., discovered and explored new location(s), discovered other quests and/or activities, met other players along the way, and hopefully enjoyed the process throughout all of that along with the sense of progression it offers.

What makes it more fun to go from Point A to Point B in Haven & Hearth in comparison to any other game that offers something of a similar nature? In what way are the repetitive tasks more interesting than other MMO activities like Gathering, Farming, Mining, Questing, Exploration, and so forth?
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Re: please convince me not to start playing again

Postby VDZ » Tue May 18, 2021 11:17 pm

Kaios wrote:What makes those activities any more fun than what any one of the other numerous MMOs have to offer?

Kaios wrote:What makes it more fun to go from Point A to Point B in Haven & Hearth in comparison to any other game that offers something of a similar nature? In what way are the repetitive tasks more interesting than other MMO activities like Gathering, Farming, Mining, Questing, Exploration, and so forth?

The quantity and variety of them. You can go foraging. Don't feel like foraging? You can go hunting. Don't feel like that? Go mining. Not that either? Time for farming. Or treeplanting. Or questing. Or cooking food. Or upgrading gear. Or exploring. Or...

I'm sure the experience is very different in an organized village where people specialize in activities, but as a hermit you always have a long list of different things you can do to progress. That's one major difference between Haven and other MMOs, especially modern 'theme park' MMOs which just railroad you into doing specific things in a specific order.
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Re: please convince me not to start playing again

Postby Kaios » Tue May 18, 2021 11:24 pm

Hmm I don't know. I asked what makes those activities more fun, not whether there is a greater amount of them to do. There could be a hundred more "tasks" in H&H compared to something else but that does not make them fun tasks to perform. Not sure if you have played Runescape in awhile (or ever), but the amount of content that has been added to that game over the years is quite astounding to me. Albeit you have to be a member to be able to participate in a large portion of it, but still there are a huge amount of activities to do in that game and arguably it is far more than Haven.
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