Fix these. No, really though.

Thoughts on the further development of Haven & Hearth? Feel free to opine!

Fix these. No, really though.

Postby Crest » Fri May 09, 2025 2:11 pm

I'm going to spitball here and fire off a bunch of things in this game that I passionately hate which have been a problem for far too long in my eyes. Things which lower the enjoyment of the game by a surprisingly amount and which if fixed would increase the quality of the game by leaps and bounds.

1. Credos.
The increase in the number of quests you need to complete after each credo you finish is excruciating. Please change it, this is one of my absolute biggest gripes and I can't get across just how much I hate how brutally the ramp up in the number of quests you need to do is. It's one of my primary sources of burnout/frustration. The quicker the burnout build up, the quicker people drop the world and wait for the next and the less time they stick around in each subsequent world when they have to redo this shit all over again. The credo system is fine as is except for that goddamn brutal ramp up on the number of quests you have to complete. You don't even need to change the frustrating quests people talk about which are insta-abandons, I'll take those being in the game providing I don't have to do as many quests as you currently need to do. It's asking way too much. A simple tier system could remedy this.

2. No basic red defense in the starter deck
It's retarded that this hasn't been addressed all this time and comes across as just lazy. What reason is there not to have this? Because I can list off a ton of reasons off the top of my head why it would be a positive to have a basic red defense auto unlocked, can anybody give me a positive as to why we shouldn't have this?
This, along with the next thing I'm going to mention are two stupid things you kind of need to rush otherwise you get your shit pushed in early on by people who did rush them. Being forced to rush these and being punished if you don't is poor design.

3. Forager Credo (and Bunny Slippers)
Why am I forced to take this immediately if I want to travel outside? People have given a ton of great alternatives yet world after world we still need to rush this shit. I hate being pigeonholed into this early game checklist of things I basically have no choice but to get done before anything else I'd rather be doing.
Why the fuck not just make the move speed bonus a skill?
That's what irritates me about most of these things I'm going to mention, a lot of them have been complained about for years now. So many damn years and yet they have the easiest solutions imaginable.
>Remove and replace the speed bonus when chasing small animals bonus from the forager credo
>Make that same bonus into a skill
That's it. What's the issue I'm missing here? Is it really your intent to force and pigeonhole people down into the forager credo and punish them if they don't? ....Why? Try as I might I cannot wrap my head around why this is still how things work.

4. Combat move bloat
Too many combat moves. Most of them are trash. I'd suggest buffing them but considering the snail pace at which other more pressing things take to get fixed I'd really rather see them removed. Trying to get the only combat moves which are actually worth something but instead getting a bunch of garbo moves which nobody wants makes for a dismal experience.
Is anybody going to be sad that Haymaker and Watch Its Moves are gone? These have been here since the start of Hafen, have they ever done anything? No, they haven't, so why are they bloating the move pool? Is it just to give the illusion of choice?

5. Adding new things then but then half assing them.
Bit of a broad one here but things like oceans, seasons (looking at winter specifically) and volcanos. Yeah, when they're first revealed they invoke a sense of wonder until it quickly becomes apparent that they're too light on the content they provide. Seasons gave the opportunity to implement unique scenarios/events/items/playstyles that you can only get during them. I imagine that was the idea initially but either nothing gets done with them or it's getting done too slow or they've been forgotten and abandoned and put back on the ever expanding 'to do' list.
That's why we see so many people disliking these things, it's not that they're different, it's that they seem to come with some negative aspects attached to them and no real benefits to counterbalance them.

6. No real schedule to when new worlds will begin & worlds overstaying their welcome
Not even joking when I say that this is one of the most irritating aspects of this game for me. Just guessing and having to wait months and months as to when a new world will begin. You should capitalize on the fact that the world is incredibly popular for the first 2-3 months. More time should be spent ensuring those numbers don't drop off, that's your key to success. Worlds are lasting too long. We're often keeping worlds up for a year and a half later than they should be with very very few people playing, the rest of us are just sat waiting to play the most enjoyable part of the game again, which is the early/mid game. I know that might not be your intention to have worlds restarting more and you'd eventually like to have something more persistent, but the fact is the numbers simply do not lie, people don't like the end game. Getting some higher quality metal is so infinitely less exciting than getting your first taste of said metal and everything that comes with that. It's not even close. Getting your first tamed animals is so infinitely more exciting and rewarding than breeding for higher and higher quality animals.
That's just how it is and with that in mind I don't know why you don't play to your games strengths, which is the part most of us keep coming back over and over again for.

Last thing I want to mention.
Everything that I've wrote in this post? Piss easy to fix and that's the most frustrating part of all. Everything listed here could be fixed in 1 fucking patch (with the exception of point 5 I suppose) with relatively little work and that's just tragic to think about considering the sheer length of time we've had to endure these unlikable things. Here I'll even sum it up
>Add a red defense to the starting deck
>Remove the move speed buff from forager & bunny slippers, put it on a skill you buy
>Change Credos to a tier system that have a set number of quests to complete rather than ramping up every time you complete 1 credo
>Remove worthless combat moves, everyone knows what's good and worthwhile, the rest are bloat
>Commit to running a separate world that has a shorter lifespan and give us a time limit on when said world will end.

Now tell me, is that asking too much? Because I don't think that it is. I would bet fucking money that all that could be done and dusted in under 2 hours, easily.
Crest
 
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon May 05, 2025 2:12 am

Re: Fix these. No, really though.

Postby Thuzzy » Fri May 09, 2025 4:29 pm

+1
These are common community requests idk why they aren’t implemented yet
User avatar
Thuzzy
 
Posts: 86
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2015 9:25 pm

Re: Fix these. No, really though.

Postby LeeroyJenkns » Fri May 09, 2025 5:20 pm

+1 to everything (Jorb will not see this, I think)
Image
User avatar
LeeroyJenkns
 
Posts: 32
Joined: Wed Oct 25, 2023 8:43 pm

Re: Fix these. No, really though.

Postby Massa » Sun May 11, 2025 12:03 pm

jorb has read this amazing post and taken in its feedback and added a new hat and bird
ImageImage
ass blast USA
User avatar
Massa
 
Posts: 1618
Joined: Sat Jun 01, 2013 4:58 am
Location: the hams

Re: Fix these. No, really though.

Postby AriZona » Mon May 12, 2025 2:09 am

Crest wrote:>Add a red defense to the starting deck
>Remove the move speed buff from forager & bunny slippers, put it on a skill you buy
>Change Credos to a tier system that have a set number of quests to complete rather than ramping up every time you complete 1 credo
>Remove worthless combat moves, everyone knows what's good and worthwhile, the rest are bloat
>Commit to running a separate world that has a shorter lifespan and give us a time limit on when said world will end.

Now tell me, is that asking too much?


...quite a rant LOL

#1. +1
#2. -1. There is no difference at the end if effect exists. But u would make it worse in many cases that it would create some players faster than u (?), right :)
#3. -1. I think the credo system is balanced now in view of escalated effort. If to change to your proposed then there should be a cap for each char how many credo one can hold. Instead I would tame credo appetite fro quantities n distances.
#4. -1 because its not gonna happen :) & removing selected combat moves changes or achieves nothing; sure it would calm your OCDs
#5. -1. Be careful what u wish for imho. Short worlds will burn players badly and player base will shrink drastically on top of diluted player base over couple of worlds/servers, and also adding headaches to maintain 2-3 worlds at times considering feature roll outs. Devs planned that but I bet they quickly realized the nightmare they would create :) It looks benign only first glance.
AriZona
 
Posts: 274
Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2016 12:02 am

Re: Fix these. No, really though.

Postby Nightdawg » Mon May 12, 2025 3:17 am

Massa wrote:jorb has read this amazing post and taken in its feedback and added a new hat and bird


jorb has read will consider this amazing post and has taken in its feedback and added a new hat and bird took some R&R

buy gold sub btw
User avatar
Nightdawg
 
Posts: 2181
Joined: Fri Feb 28, 2020 12:31 am

Re: Fix these. No, really though.

Postby LeeroyJenkns » Mon May 12, 2025 9:38 am

AriZona wrote:Be careful what u wish for imho. Short worlds will burn players badly and player base will shrink drastically on top of diluted player base over couple of worlds/servers


I think it's fine. I agree that the current player base might not be enough to populate several worlds of the same enormous size (in terms of land), but if anything, the longer the world goes, the more players get bored and drop the game until a new world begins to enjoy early-mid game, which I think is the most interesting part of progression. If you argue for increasing player engagement, then imo, 6 months is a very good cycle length to ensure players are both excited by the prospect of exploring a new world and have enough time to take a break from the game so that they don't burn out. The issue of boring late game is pretty common in gamedev tbh. Sure, it's possible to make it less boring by adding more content (not happening lol) but it's been proven time and time again that shorter loops are fine and most players don't mind it.
Image
User avatar
LeeroyJenkns
 
Posts: 32
Joined: Wed Oct 25, 2023 8:43 pm

Re: Fix these. No, really though.

Postby RenatusCartesius » Mon May 12, 2025 12:56 pm

LeeroyJenkns wrote:
AriZona wrote:Be careful what u wish for imho. Short worlds will burn players badly and player base will shrink drastically on top of diluted player base over couple of worlds/servers


I think it's fine. I agree that the current player base might not be enough to populate several worlds of the same enormous size (in terms of land), but if anything, the longer the world goes, the more players get bored and drop the game until a new world begins to enjoy early-mid game, which I think is the most interesting part of progression. If you argue for increasing player engagement, then imo, 6 months is a very good cycle length to ensure players are both excited by the prospect of exploring a new world and have enough time to take a break from the game so that they don't burn out. The issue of boring late game is pretty common in gamedev tbh. Sure, it's possible to make it less boring by adding more content (not happening lol) but it's been proven time and time again that shorter loops are fine and most players don't mind it.


I think 6 months is at the same time a good time frame for one world, but at the other side - it is too little. There is 12 levels of minehole and MOST people will get only to level 7-8 within this time frame (i aint talking about ozzy or snails etc etc), same again - cheese, the process of taming, breeding, waiting for milk, curd, and then CHEESE takes literal months to do for top tier cheese. And jorb will NOT ever rebalance ingame timegates. Another issue is that new world usually brings some big mechanic - oceans, volcanos, seasons (althoug they were introduced couple of months into a world). I doubt jorb will actually work game enough to bring something big for next world within JUST 6 months timespan ¦]
Image
User avatar
RenatusCartesius
 
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2016 9:19 pm

Re: Fix these. No, really though.

Postby Robben_DuMarsch » Mon May 12, 2025 12:59 pm

LeeroyJenkns wrote:
AriZona wrote:Be careful what u wish for imho. Short worlds will burn players badly and player base will shrink drastically on top of diluted player base over couple of worlds/servers


I think it's fine. I agree that the current player base might not be enough to populate several worlds of the same enormous size (in terms of land), but if anything, the longer the world goes, the more players get bored and drop the game until a new world begins to enjoy early-mid game, which I think is the most interesting part of progression. If you argue for increasing player engagement, then imo, 6 months is a very good cycle length to ensure players are both excited by the prospect of exploring a new world and have enough time to take a break from the game so that they don't burn out. The issue of boring late game is pretty common in gamedev tbh. Sure, it's possible to make it less boring by adding more content (not happening lol) but it's been proven time and time again that shorter loops are fine and most players don't mind it.


I agree with this sentiment.

I'd also like to note that the very stark low we have now is probably due to the previous announcement of a roughly six month new world, and this world overshooting that.

People know anything made now has a short life, as we are already past when we were supposed to get a new world based on previous announcements.

Also, unlike above poster, I think 6 months is actually slightly longer than it should be. If anything closer to 3 months, with some minor rebalance, would be preferable. Also he's factually wrong, there aren't 12 levels if minehole. -9 is the deepest.
User avatar
Robben_DuMarsch
 
Posts: 2310
Joined: Wed Sep 28, 2011 2:58 am

Re: Fix these. No, really though.

Postby AriZona » Mon May 12, 2025 1:49 pm

Regarding #5. H&H is not destined for short worlds because:
A. While there are ppl with very short attention span (like down to few weeks), but there is a significant number who play practically as long as world goes. Some ppl actually join months after, and prefer mature worlds rather the starter. Thus normal worlds can offer both - starter and mature worlds, but not otherwise. Not speaking of burns out when many drop after 1-2 months. This game is marathon as designed now ;)
B. The game designed as it is now is not meant for short worlds because its depth.

To play short worlds it is better to look for other game styles.
AriZona
 
Posts: 274
Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2016 12:02 am

Next

Return to Critique & Ideas

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Claude [Bot] and 62 guests