Are devs happy/okay/satisfied with the player numbers?

[GamingRAM]

You do need to be careful not to overtune this. I personally consider Terraria's 1.4 update a disaster for the game as it made the early game extremely linear; you really have to check off all the things one by one, rather than the previous situation where there was a recommended progression which gradually gives you the resources to reasonably perform the next step each time, but there were only a couple of actual hard gates and if you were pro enough you could focus primarily on the hard gates. (Doing a naked jungle run to get Moonglow for Spelunker Potions is fortunately still in, but you can no longer use Dynamite to break an orb (bonus points for no hook) then Dynamite out the Meteorite without any armor or a decent weapon to then fight the Eater of Worlds with the Space Gun. You have to go through all the steps of the recommended progression now.)

Last I played Terraria you could still Dynamite/Bomb Orbs/Hearts if you want. You should check out speedruns.

But the point, I still think more milestones would be benefitical for HnH so players can have some kind of meaningful goal to pursue, and for said milestones to be stretched out more than they currently are.

There's just not a lot to do after you get metal.

[Vraatjuh]

Would it help if progression was locked behind stats? Let's say carrots can be planted with 1 farming, but you need 300 farming to plant peppers? 1 cooking to make rat-on-a-stick but 300 cooking to use bear meat recipes? Instead of endlessly grinding stats/quality, your stat increase would be more meaningful since it will open up new recipes. Thus allowing pacing the game to keep players interested for longer. And it would help against all the bug exploits early game to skip weeks of progression.

It would probably require quite a lot of rework of existing mechanics though and bring its fair share of new problems.

[MagicManICT]

Would it help if progression was locked behind stats?

No, it would not. Artificial restrictions on crafting is a tier based theme park thing, not a crafting game. The unlocks here are things like going from smelting copper in the new furnace, to smelting iron in the normal smelter, to making wrought iron and steel. While there isn't such a hard line for farming, there are a couple of small ones that make it easier, such as building hives and windmills, there are a couple of "hard lines" like requiring winemaking to plant grapes, sericulture to deal with raising silkmoths, etc.

[meus]

Haven and Hearth is awesome as it is, still a few things that are a bit annoying (i.c. custom clients are almost a must-have), but it is very good in general.

I don't think that the population decreases, in the sense that "losing players" is not a thing. The people that play are pretty much the same, but they just spend less time every day, after a certain level of progression is achieved. That's why the online number is lower - just because everyone spends less time after achieving some milestones such as building a village, acquiring decent tools, exploring the immediate area, etc. These are mostly one-time high effort tasks, that require little to no additional ongoing effort or repetition.

Most people that play here are long-time members. Also probably online time per player is also reduced by QoL improvements, i.e. the farming updates made it much faster to harvest/replant, etc., so you don't need as much time online as before.

[insanechef]

Yugioh shit(tm), grinding cards, grinding stats is not fun pvp/pve

[Nightdawg]

custom clients are almost a must-have

almost?

If you want to go beyond the quality 20 bronze sword stage, they're not "almost" a must-have. They are beyond a must-have.

[vatas]

Since w9 (w8 is an outlier due to hype and relative disappointment) every consecutive World reset has brought in more people. Admittedly every single world has had massive, if gradual, player drop-off afterwards. I might be just making up stuff but I have memory that people were talking how the player count has started to collapse even faster (this could at least partially be caused by the higher initial player count.)

They are beyond a must-have.

Currently, default is missing even the option to lock the study screen to not accidentally undo days' worth of attention.

[shubla]

I wish the next world was smaller, like maybe 1/4 or 1/8 of the currents size. And no expansions. Just to see what happens in such case if it persists for many months, past the initial boom.

It would perhaps "force" devs to change/add mechanics for reasonable player interaction, instead of avoiding player interaction problems by making less player interaction via distances.

[noindyfikator]

Imagine patches focused on client so people don't have to use custom clients.

[Pommfritz]

I wish the next world was smaller, like maybe 1/4 or 1/8 of the currents size. And no expansions. Just to see what happens in such case if it persists for many months, past the initial boom.

It would perhaps "force" devs to change/add mechanics for reasonable player interaction, instead of avoiding player interaction problems by making less player interaction via distances.

nothing would respawn because people are loading areas too frequently, I think it's a big thing in the way of the game growing actually.

Imagine patches focused on client so people don't have to use custom clients.

would obviously be a good thing if done right and they'd have to get equal tocustom clients, as long as it's not the case it would just mean no content/ optimisation for the players that are currently playing and would probably upset a lot of people who don't see the bigger picture

They are beyond a must-have.

Currently, default is missing even the option to lock the study screen to not accidentally undo days' worth of attention.

can you elaborate on this? I haven't used this feature yet and never had any problems, how do you fuck up days worth of attention? xd