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

[Kaios]

Idk if you guys know this, but EVE literally has token-equivalences. I remember their introduction, it was no problem.

Yeah, PLEX. Runescape has Bonds which function the same way and can be sold or purchased using in-game currency. So what exactly makes those games able to implement a real money trading system successfully whereas a game like this one cannot? That question is not rhetorical and I ask it genuinely because I would guess there are many reasons why this is the case. One contributing factor however does seem to be the difference in player count; Both Runescape and EVE have the larger player base that can foster such an economy and reduce the negative impacts that Haven is currently facing with a smaller active player count.

Beyond that however, I do think there are some interesting parallels to consider. For instance, in Runescape both new and old players alike are encouraged to obtain their subscriptions by using gold to purchase Bonds from other players, rather than paying for them with real money. However in Haven & Hearth, new players are instead encouraged to purchase tokens with real money and use them as a catch-up mechanic. This is not only bad for an economy as it means those new players aren't going to be contributing anything else in terms of trade, it increases the likelihood that those new players are going to get bored even faster because they are skipping big chunks of content in order to "catch up" which they aren't going to be able to do anyways.

[Ninijutsu]

The reason I quit is because of the questing. It's extremely boring and tedious, and it's extremely important for character growth. In legacy Haven, I could spend a small amount of time acquiring curiosities and throw them in my study, and then spend the rest of my time doing something fun like exploring. In current Haven, I feel compelled to spend every spare moment questing because curiosities are not enough, so I don't have time to do what I actually want to do. I can't force myself to not care about progressing my character quickly, particularly in a competitive environment.

[DDDsDD999]

Progression basically boils down to repeating the same content ad infinitum. It doesn't matter how good the content is, everything gets tedious when you grind it forever. And the worst part is that you can't even take a break

This, the gameplay loop quickly becomes maintenance and repetition of tasks, rather than exploration, construction, expansion, conquering, etc. And once you quit it's over, the drive to come back is gone for a long time: your animals are dead, the rest of your qualities are outdated, you might have been afk sieged and lost nearly everything. And since everyone else isn't coming back until world reset, you don't want to either.

I think commiting to a long-term world that's guaranteed to last multiple years, and a Salem expeditions type world that has some end condition could be a good way to resolve this. I think there may need to be some incentive to play each expedition though, maybe just a cosmetic item, maybe some resource that goes into the long-term world. Haven't really thought about it much.

---

One thing on token trading: I think one of the biggest issues is noobs having nothing to trade. They want higher tier tools but the people providing those only want tokens. I can't really think of anything noobs can offer in trade that's useful: sub-par food & curios are actively bad, salt is abused by alt spam, maybe guano/notes but those have a limited time-frame and could be abused by alt-spam if people really wanted.

I think a global haven market ala Salem's Boston could help (it should be an auction house instead of a million stalls though, stalls suck). The requirements to trade with someone currently often make smaller trades more of a hassle, and noobs especially have trouble making use of thingwalls. Could also introduce a centralized currency, which could be used as the anti-griefing tax. Having a currency may compete with people's interest for tokens (and could tie into that Salem expeditions idea)

Also some ways to inject noob friendly items into higher tier crafting items may be needed. I'm not really sure how, but some games just do "you need some tier 1 item to craft tier 2 item, which is used to craft tier 3 item..." so each level of player can have some influence on the highest levels of player.

[Pommfritz]

The reason I quit is because of the questing. It's extremely boring and tedious, and it's extremely important for character growth. In legacy Haven, I could spend a small amount of time acquiring curiosities and throw them in my study, and then spend the rest of my time doing something fun like exploring. In current Haven, I feel compelled to spend every spare moment questing because curiosities are not enough, so I don't have time to do what I actually want to do. I can't force myself to not care about progressing my character quickly, particularly in a competitive environment.

since you mention curios you are probably talking more about lp than exp gain. I have barely done any quests, just a few in the beginning when I didn't know what credos were. imo quests are not required at all for lp gain I'm hitting close to 52mil lp after almost 4 months of playing just doing minimal work to keep my study window full with what I consider the best in terms of effort and lp. Also the big gains came when I did a bit of research on what to study. So with my current knowledge I'd probably get there much faster. especially lp is useless as fuck I think it's pretty hard for someone to 2x your UA/MC if you have a decent study window running so you are basically always equalized. but I'm just a hermit pleb maybe I'm missing something.




for exp it might be different but no clue about that really, atm I'm pushing a bit of charisma for fun and then might do some questing to get more gilding slots or some shit, no idea really what to spend exp on except for thingwall discoveries. xd

[pawnchito]

I do a ton of quests for the exp. I burn through that shit doing contemplation meditation pretty often. They are boring but if you focus you can do a circuit or two of your questgivers and be done getting exp for a few months and have plenty of XP for learning points. I think he means more during the first few weeks of a world when EVERY little thing adds big returns. On day three critting a few k LP from questing is pretty huge.

I think I may be broken though, I like the grind. I'm not sure where you all find the drop off in progression. Credos alone provide some really really strong incentives for character growth with fantastic rewards. Next world I'm bee lining for nomad for that sweet sweet bag space.

[Pommfritz]

alright that makes sense, I don't have scholar unfortunately xd

[dafels]

I think the current user numbers are a pretty damning indictment of our development and/or management, or perhaps of the game itself, tbqh, but -- while I can certainly speculate -- I don't know with any perfect certainty what the big problem(tm) is. I am concerned that recurring resets is an addiction that we're feeding which prevents any longer term commitments to the game.

Continued development is the best I've got.

cmon jorb, every big patch you have implemented has increased the tediousness of the game for competitive players and most of the playerbase I believe is competitive and wants to be competitive. Credos, quests, wounds, anti botting mining features and all of the other anti botting features that ruin average player's experience, billions of fep variants on foods, easy access to fast travel being limited, all of the changes to farming, tedious sieging system and mostly only token based trading
Back in legacy I could be competitive just by playing on weekends, but it is not the case anymore. I would be trading easy to access ingame items for high tier ingame items. No player who plays this game wants Haven and Hearth to be a second job

[Procne]

Yeah, PLEX. Runescape has Bonds which function the same way and can be sold or purchased using in-game currency. So what exactly makes those games able to implement a real money trading system successfully whereas a game like this one cannot? That question is not rhetorical and I ask it genuinely because I would guess there are many reasons why this is the case.

Why do you say Haven's implementation is not successful? As I said the issue lies not in tokens, but rather the fact less established players have nothing to offer to more established villages. Or rather more established villages don't need anything from anyone, so are willing to trade for tokens only, as that's the only thing that holds value for them.

There are several reasons:
- experienced players are vastly more efficient than new players. They can aquire anything at greatly lower time / effort cost
- possibly bots ruin the market for mundane / repeatable / mass production services. Any rarity of materials / items is more easily solvable with bots rather than buying stuff from others.
- it's easy to be self-sufficient.

cmon jorb, every big patch you have implemented has increased the tediousness of the game for competitive players and most of the playerbase I believe is competitive and wants to be competitive. Credos, quests, wounds, anti botting mining features and all of the other anti botting features, billions of fep variants on foods, easy access to fast travel being limited, all of the changes to farming, tedious sieging system and mostly only token based trading
Back in legacy I could be competitive just by playing on weekends, but it is not the case anymore. No player who plays this game wants Haven and Hearth to be a second job

Well, any new content, system and mechanic will add to the "tediousness". Anything that is spammable and not time-gated as well. I think the solutions would be:
- stop adding new content
- heavily time-gate content / progression, so that playing 24/7 doesn't give you a huge edge over others
- do nothing, and stop worrying about warring factions of no-lifes

It's like animals - if you make them eat less then people will just have more animals

[DDDsDD999]

It's like animals - if you make them eat less then people will just have more animals

It's just that the ceiling for how many animals are needed to provide optimal benefit is insanely high. If animals could store more milk and pigs gave more meat, people would probably have less animals. (Also quality gain on animals is really dumb, you have to roll a ton of dice to try and get the perfect rolls on them which requires thousands of animals, but it takes like a year for that autism to pay off so it doesn't actually matter atm)

Though the biggest factor is hunger. Currently hunger does nothing because autists can spam salt, so there's no limit to the amount of food you can eat (besides satiations, but they're not very limiting). If salt was removed, people's farms and animals pens would shrink a lot. Though there's a ton of problems with making hunger a thing again, the game would be about following super strict autistic diets of only the best food, and bad foods would be literal poison. Instead, hunger should be a per stat thing, and hunger should regen faster the farther you are from the global leader of that stat. Also hunger should just be based on each stat gain, eating bad food sucks enough, I already have to eat 4x as much bad food per stat, I don't also need to waste 4x the hunger per stat.

It'd be better if foods were more interchangeable, and the best way to do that is limit the end result. e.g. if stat gain is based on the global leader for that stat, it wouldn't matter as much if I chose to fish or make cheese. One might take more effort than the other, but we all experience similar slow-down based on what our actual stat is, which is the end that people will care/complain about.

[noindyfikator]

For me the perfect solution would be timed worlds, like in Travian games or the Salem expeditions. World lasts several months, with the end game where the factions can fight for glory, and then a scheduled restart.

This + make something that people playing 3h a day still can be competitive to people playing 14h/day