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

[joojoo1975]

Having been involved/watched a lot of indie games with limited dev resources and rabid or at least intense fanbases, I'm not sure I agree. Players only want openness and communication when things happen exactly the way they want. But with a community that is literally at odds with each other due to the pvp/pve/hermit/village/faction stuff, that's nearly impossible. Also, fanbases for open world pvp games tend to be incredibly toxic and demoralizing when they're even slightly unhappy. It won't encourage the devs in the slightest.

Communication has been a bit too sparse lately, but I don't think open dev tracking happy family type stuff would be good for haven. I also hold that about world resets: People who want more openness don't realize how badly it hurt the game when the devs were open about it in the past.

While I value your opinion, i will disagree with you in point.

The player base has a lot of toxicity in it. But, as you know, that comes with the territory unfortunately. But if you plan to raise Tigers for a Living, you have to know what you are getting yourself into. And you don't go into a cage with a bunch of meat all over you thinking they will not attack you.

We indeed do have a Lot of play styles, but never the less the same results happens again and again and again. Big player numbers until 3 months into the game. And now we have one of MANY threads where players try to figure it all out. In these pages you have Great Advice and Horrible Advice



Overall though, If you make this kind of Game and have good communication and work on the game instead of just putting more stuff into it. . .

[Sevenless]

We indeed do have a Lot of play styles, but never the less the same results happens again and again and again. Big player numbers until 3 months into the game. And now we have one of MANY threads where players try to figure it all out. In these pages you have Great Advice and Horrible Advice

Overall though, If you make this kind of Game and have good communication and work on the game instead of just putting more stuff into it. . .

Glad to have civil discourse

To your first point: Haven is by no means unique on this point (although it may have been when it started over a decade ago). There are many sandbox games that rely on world resets (with varying degrees of intensity) to keep the game alive. I don't think this is a haven specific problem, it's a genre problem. Albion, Rust, Tarkov to name a few. Games that don't reset in the sandbox pvp world (but maintain population longterm) are extremely rare, EVE being the only one I know of. Not to say the game can't be improved for sure, I just think it can't be "fixed" to the point where eternal world will work by studying other games in this genre. Possibly looking into eve's success might show something, but eve isn't something haven could copy since the founding mechanics between the two are extremely different. Also I think part of EVE's formula is it's massive world that requires 1000s of players to keep from feeling empty.

It has come a long way already and it keeps growing albeit slowly.

To the "more stuff" issue: It's worth remembering that dev resources are not equal. Putting in a new hat and item uses art resources mostly, while doing big updates like object controlled objects is intensely coding related. I'm not sure how much code jorb does, but I don't think it's a lot and probably not on the engine level technical that loftar does. So adding more stuff uses jorb's dev resources while loftar works on the big update only he can really contribute to. This contributes to lots of fluff patches while backend coding on major changes gets done.

[vatas]

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

Super late reply but found this when I checked if I had any replies on this thread.

My phrasing kind of sucks, what I meant is that you spend a day carrying a curiosity in your study screen, tying up your attention. Then you accidentally click the curiosity even once and you've wasted all that time and opportunity cost of not being able to load up other curiosities while the curiosity you ultimately reset by accident was taking your attention.

I find it quite unacceptable that you can undo days worth of progress with a single miss-click.

[mamflo]

Reasons are obvious.
Game is too grindy, when reset comes people play for 10 hrs every day after 2 months they realize they've fucked up their life and quit for 10 months so that they can waste those 2 months again when a reset comes.
Also most people realize that they cannot keep up with the highest of qualities even if they played 14 hours a day and then feel dissatisfied and quit.
Some people also simply get raided/killed/KO'd of their belongings and snap because of that.
And when your villagers and neighbors slowly quit, soon you will easily quit as well.

I think tediousnes/grindiness is the biggest part, just running the "normal" tasks to have somewhat decent chars/qualities is so much work that you will burn out / not have time to do it all. Most people want it all or then nothing.

1 reason for sure is lack of long term goals. After you've rushed 4 credos, dug q200 metal and killed few mammoths, there is not much to do other than increase qualities, which is meaningless as I said earlier because you won't have top ql ever. (Except if you have large'ish group of no life players and/or bot a lot)

I think there should be some long term progression/goals, and possibly more timegates, so that you could play for few hours every day for year instead of playing 14 hours a day for those 2 months.
Powergamers play the game out really really quick so its no wonder they get bored. If there is no metal within first 2 days its already experienced as unsuccessful reset by most!

this!

[Ferinex]

If you need time gated goals artificially set for you by the developers I think you've missed the point of an open world sandbox economy. The struggles you have with setting goals in the hearthlands, are they a reflection of a struggle you face in the reallands? The problem here is not at all the platform. what might be a good addition are obvious tools that enable users to set and track goals

[WowGain]

duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh game design? whats that?

cake farter

[joojoo1975]

I think it's been said a lot better than I ever could.

It's not so much that people want dev driven quests and content

People want to be able to jump back into the game and feel like they can compete again from scratch.

People want to know their characters mean something and not basically have to have a fighter alt, a farmer alt, a miner alt a back up miner alt a back up miner alt a back up miner alt a smithy alt etc etc etc



And finally people want the pvp but when pvp is Lag Fest. . . Figure out what causes the Lag on these big fights and adjust if possible?

[dageir]

I think it's been said a lot better than I ever could.

It's not so much that people want dev driven quests and content

People want to be able to jump back into the game and feel like they can compete again from scratch.

People want to know their characters mean something and not basically have to have a fighter alt, a farmer alt, a miner alt a back up miner alt a back up miner alt a back up miner alt a smithy alt etc etc etc



And finally people want the pvp but when pvp is Lag Fest. . . Figure out what causes the Lag on these big fights and adjust if possible?

I have dropped using alts (except key alt) this run and it feels great. My toon actually means something and if he dies, he dies.

[Pan_w_okularach]

I would say comparing to the numbers it should have the game is doing well