Or at least, an attempt to explain what my crazy mind has been thinking up in the past bit of time.
I'll try to organize this by different topics and such, but right now Haven has (not including the most recent change) a lot of core mechanics that simply do not work alongside each other
The biggest of these is...
Permadeath and Infinite Progression
These are the two things we can probably look at haven and singlehandedly identify it for- a lot of people play Haven because it IS a permadeath game, and it is a game where the amount of time you spend grinding correlates with your maximum potential (and current of course.) If you spend months grinding every day at maximum efficiency, you will eventually hit 4x efficiency (160 stat/quality). If you keep that up, it will not be long before you hit 5x (250) and so forth. The scale of efficiency in this game is almost universally sqrt(Stat/10) = Efficiency modifier, which is a rather fast rate of growing in efficiency, and while it does get reduced gains the higher you go (Gaining 10 skill from 10-20 is MUCH more impactful than say, gaining 10 skill from 990-1000), it's simply not tapered enough when in considering how much time it will take a new player to reach this state.
So, with this concept of infinite progression (which i personally believe is incredibly unhealthy for the game entirely), almost every moment you spend raising your numbers is incredibly impactful, even in the "end" stages you can still easily glide above others in strength by spending each day on increasing them- which normally isn't bad, but the issue is HOW MUCH power you're gaining from continually rising in stats over others. A guy with 160ql gear is MUCH better than one with 90ql, to the point where it's just not a fair fight at all, even if the 90ql player is much more skilled he will likely not win a fight.
Then, we have the idea of permadeath, which makes life feel horrible if/when you lose a character due to how much sheer time you are set back from a death- and in a world where everyone is on-the-dot about their grinding, you will be set behind everyone for the rest of the world (though luckily we are lazy people usually) This is emphasized due to the idea of infinite progression (You die at 6 months, by the time you regain 6 month's work, the enemies are all 12 months, and as we know, the impact of 6 month's work is absolutely gargantuan in this game)
My solution:
The clearest and one i believe people might favor is to keep permadeath, but reduce the impact of infinite progression. This is done by either turning the "scaling" formula for progression away from what it is now (sqrt(stat/10)=modifier) into something more logarithmic that tapers off to the end, and is easy to reach a majority effectiveness.
For example, 1x effectiveness = 100, 2x = 300 3x = 700 4x = 1100 and so forth, this would allow people to keep their idea of "infinite progression" while having it be much less impactful for each little point, though this still carries the issue of time spent = power, and all those behind will never catch up.
So, the alternative idea for reducing the impact is to change it into a percantile quality system (Ala Wurm), where 1ql = 1%, and 100ql = 100% effectiveness. In this system it should be easier to hit ~70ql, representing 70% effectiveness, and striving for the last extra 30ql should be a challenge, of combined effort and time. 99ql should be very very difficult with few items ever existing at that stage.
OR, my personal favorite, is introducing a skillcap- however introducing a skillcap will remove an endgame "task" (however much people ACTUALLY enjoy infinite number raising, it's not something that should be seriously considered as an endgame task), and thus more activities will be needed to be defined. But, what is there to do and what could be done?
And hence, the next topic
World size and Player Interaction
Interaction is any form of players communing, fighting, trading or whichever with each other.
There's one rule, the game is dead if everyone can go out alone travelling many hours away from where they spawn in order to live completely away from the interaction of other players.
Player interaction is absolutely vital to Haven, and i'm sure everyone wants a world with a real history of interaction and watching the world change month by month- the easiest way to force player interaction is to have everyone be together.
To do that, we reduce the size of the world to a fragment of what it currently is- which is a fine act on it's own. The problem there now becomes the idea of quality nodes (before, we travelled until we got great nodes). I personally believe the world should have centralized nodes, for example 5 points in the world where all qualities are high, and taper off the further you get from these nodes. This would encourage people to fight for these territories, or trade for bulk assortment of goods of one quality for another.
Another thing, should be special resources only found regionally in parts of the world- perhaps this could become the new source of "rare" curios, bluebells, pearls, etc. only being found in parts of the world, and in order to use them for any items (arguably other fate curios should be used for crafting goods as well, on top of being studied for a big lp plus). This is as well in order to encourage interaction.
The river system as well, should increase interaction by making it simpler to reach others- ultimately though i feel like there should be no space for people who wish to completely isolate themselves. If you don't wish to fight at all, that's fine. There should be bastions of safety - kingdom capitals for example, that people can live in and feel at ease, until the kingdom is threatened by war- then everyone is equally effected. That's how I view it should exist, anyhow.
I'm pretty tired, but i have a lot more areas of concern that I believe should be changed, but I wanted to make a thread on the fundamentals of haven and how they should be seen.
I'll reserve a post though for when i regain my ideas.