The future

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

Re: The future

Postby Garfy » Thu Feb 25, 2016 7:10 am

sabinati wrote:
Audiosmurf wrote:you're really complaining about weekly/bi-weekly updates by a two man team being small to moderate in scope? Really???


If they want my money (and judging by the store page which sells various subscription types at various price ranges along with various cosmetic items, they do want my money), they need to earn it. Tiny, mostly inconsequential updates twice a week does not earn my money. Speaking to the 9 other people I play with, none of them have bought a subscription either, because they do not feel it is worth it. Funny thing is, pretty much all of us use to pay for the first month or two, after that we saw less and less being added and less of us started paying because we didn't feel it was worth it.

I've got nothing against paying for the game again, provided I'm shown the developers want to take the game places and not let it stagnate like legacy did.

ven wrote:I wish loftar gave such long answers to some of the good posts in C&I too :/


Like what? "Please add this feature that's probably been suggested a hundred times before but doesn't really add anything to the game but I really want you to add it please"? Yes. These posts are of the top most quality. I will not proceed to suggest they add a round table to the game, this kind of suggestion of the highest quality. Maybe after that, I'll suggest they add some kind of padded chair for maximum comfort at my new round table. Truly, this is what the game needs.
EDIT: It struck me like lightning. Next week I will suggest sofas! So more than one person can sit on a chair. With suggestions like this, we may very well get the game of the century.
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Re: The future

Postby sabinati » Thu Feb 25, 2016 7:25 am

Garfy wrote:Tiny, mostly inconsequential updates twice a week does not earn my money.


they literally just overhauled the world map generator and made sweeping, fundamental changes to the game like, less than a week ago.

if you don't like what you see enough to pay them $7 or whatever, you don't have to. they made it so there is barely a gap between a free player and a paying player.

cuck
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Re: The future

Postby Shadow7168 » Thu Feb 25, 2016 7:36 am

I really don't get what all the people going "hurr small update ded gam" are trying to prove.

Would you rather get a new feature or have something like the "drop a claim and kill anyone without rage" be fixed?

P.S. Most of the stuff you've been complaining about in the past is being fixed. Stop whining about the devs not adding end-game content or even more new mechanics when we're all still derping around in sprucecaps building our starter bases.
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Re: The future

Postby Kalacia » Thu Feb 25, 2016 12:17 pm

if its so broken...Just think of all the things in life you could have done by not making the post and not playing the game.
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Re: The future

Postby earllohst » Thu Feb 25, 2016 1:00 pm

Garfy wrote:
Before I even state anything more, most people are going to have strong opinions about what I am about to post, but please understand, what I am about to say I am not doing because I hate the game, but because I want it to improve.

That being said, I do not believe Haven and Hearth is being updated with it's future in mind. To put it bluntly, I don't think the developers have the vision, talent or just the desire to make big, meaningful changes to the game. When I (and my friends) see a new update, I feel disappointment. It's a list of tiny changes and fixes, and sometimes a new thing (item or some such) that feels incredibly underdeveloped. It feels like a minimal amount of effort is being put into these updates, and as time goes on less effort is being put into them.

Now I understand, making a game is difficult, it takes a lot of time and effort (I've made games before) and although lots of people will say they love doing it, large parts of it are just a chore to do. If this was a free game, I'd be fine with the way development is, but this is a game with a subscription fee and various other things you can pay for. If a game has a subscription fee, I strongly believe the game needs continued and active development to justify such a fee. I do not feel the development on this game justifies paying for such a subscription.

Just to make my point, I will point out a few examples of what I am talking about.

The most obvious is the localized resources added with this most recent update. They're structures randomly dotted around the map. This is probably the laziest way it could have been implemented. When I heard "localized resources", I expected a world with different regions, each with their own types resources. I expected something like part of the world being a desert, with desert flora and fauna, and another part to be a tundra, with tundra flora and fauna and so on. I didn't expect randomly placed structures that are entirely too easy to claim and add very little in the way of forcing player interaction to the game.

Following on from this. The map generator in legacy was pretty bad, the current map generator is essentially an extension of this badness. You took the exact same formula, and just added more to it. It's still bad, now it just has more to do badly. I've played with random map generation, it's easy to google this and learn about it. Diamond square, fractals, voronoi diagrams, these are all easy things to learn, but can all be used to make interesting looking worlds. If I can learn these, and generate maps using them, anyone can.

Another thing that always bothered me (and I'm picking up hints that you might be trying to change or add extra tiers to) is quality and the quality grind. In my opinion, quality should simply not exist. You either have an item, or you don't. It's essentially a lazy (the laziest) way of prolonging the game. In other games, I start of with a stick, then I make it pointy, then I make pointy stones and fasten them to the stick, eventually I've got metals, then I'm using metallurgy to manipulate metals into better forms and eventually I'm implementing chemistry and physics to make devastating weapons. In Haven and Hearth, I have a sharp stick, then I make it sharper, and then I make it even sharper, and I just keep making it sharper.

I know both of these are big changes and cannot just me implemented without making a new world, but as I said, these are the kinds of things you need to be developing towards sometime in the future (they don't need to be these things exactly, they're examples, but get the point across).

Even smaller updates seem to be lacking in effort. On Mondays update I saw rafts and chives were added. One should have been there at the release of the game, the other seems like an afterthought, like it took the whole of 5 minutes to make and add and it essentially amounts to nothing. I'm sure sometime in the future chives will have some kind of use, but at the moment they're a 1.5 agi food I don't care about. I know I sound harsh when I'm saying this, but you get the point I'm making right? The developers said chives were part of an attempt to make each biome unique, which is fine, this is what you should be doing. But where is the rest of this attempt? Am I suppose to believe a single food item is the best you could come up with?

I know what I've said is going to make some people angry, people are going to disagree and what not, but it needs to be said. There is a reason Haven and Hearth can barely break 500 concurrent players (which we all know is mostly bots and in coming weeks/months will dwindle), while another, similar game of the same genre made with the same language became one of the best selling video games ever and it's creator sold it for a hefty $2.5 billion.

To the creators of Haven and Hearth; I don't know whether you're just lazy, if you lack the vision to take the game any further, don't have the skill/talent required to do so, or there is some other factors I cannot think of right now, but whatever the reason is, you need to address it and fix it. I want to like and support the game, but your current development practices make this increasingly hard to do.

I have a similar mindset to yours long ago, why does it take so long for a game dev to progress!? Why doesn't stuff gets added faster!? .etc.
I understand your frustration completely.

But all that went away after I tried making my own game.

Let me tell you this, that the frustration of waiting for a game to progress is nothing compared to the frustration of actually developing a game. Try putting on jorbtar boots, try to be a game developer (with a maximum team of 2 person), make a game and feel for yourself why does it take so long and what is considered "lazy" in game development.

From my perspective haven at the moment is progressing very fast, so fast that I couldn't keep up with the changes! I paused playing on early last world due to new features and game mechanics being added that made my base design or decision becoming bad. Now that the major changes are slowing down I can finally start new base and all, I wouldn't mind starting over or anything because it's fun.

Subscription from the beginning of time is not mandatory and it is stated that the game is eternal alpha without any promise for a fast, instant, reliable progress. So you can't push for fee versus update/progress justification.

The only factor that slows down haven progress that I can think of is the number of people working on it, afaik theres only jorb and loftar in the team and I haven't heard any plan to expand to a bigger team (if that is possible). There are pros and cons in this too, smaller team means game dev is slower, but bigger team consisting of companies or multiple teams might ruin hnh since jorbtar won't have total control over the game. To pull an example; dwarf fortress wouldn't be the current dwarf fortress if the devs decided to team up with game studio or larger teams, even though the game might not be complete or very slow in progress but people love the game.
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Re: The future

Postby simimi » Thu Feb 25, 2016 1:10 pm

Agree to the OP the game have great potential, and that is the reason we dont need tabula rasa updates.
The reason the developement seems slow to you is that its a living environment, and the devs need to see the result of each update before going futher.
Its all about what the players do with the updates, and that take time.
Major updates have to take place when the world is old enough to see what the players interaction ( the true meaning of the game ) looks like in the end.
So there is a big deal of waiting, observing, thinking cautiously, corecting what goes wrong, and only then creating a new world with major updates.
The team is big enough, its not a problem of hard working, but of "what to do next".
Once they know where to go ( and the comunity is wery dedicaced and willing to find answers ), making the changes take no time, no need to more dev team.
Its not about working, or be lazy, am also in creativ business, and people always think the problem is the making of things, were its all about thinking, the "vision", and it takes time ( and number of devs cant faster that).
I rememeber when I showed Mincraft to freinds, they were all laughing and telling lazy devs.
Last edited by simimi on Thu Feb 25, 2016 1:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The future

Postby Undefined » Thu Feb 25, 2016 1:15 pm

I don't see a single actually constructive attempt to offer a better vision for the future in your post. TLDR is "I don't like this, do other stuff and do it better."
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Re: The future

Postby Garfy » Thu Feb 25, 2016 3:39 pm

Shadow7168 wrote:Would you rather get a new feature or have something like the "drop a claim and kill anyone without rage" be fixed?

P.S. Most of the stuff you've been complaining about in the past is being fixed. Stop whining about the devs not adding end-game content or even more new mechanics when we're all still derping around in sprucecaps building our starter bases.


I'd rather have both.

Also, you might still be walking around in a spruce cap, but most people are mass producing steel now. Which is end game content. The people I play with even have bars (not nuggets) of gold and silver. All we've got left to do is actually finish making buildings to store stuff and then grind quality. Just because you're slow, doesn't mean everyone is.

But all that went away after I tried making my own game.


I've been making video games since 2001. I've used many languages and attempted to make many types of games. Which is why I am more than comfortable with saying most of what gets added to Haven and Hearth shouldn't be taking much time or effort.

The reason the developement seems slow to you is that its a living environment


I've already commented on this. I know sweeping world changing features cannot be added on a weekly basis. But these kind of things can be worked on in the long run, so when it does come time to make a new world, we get these kind of things. They can still add things of substance to the game though, things that don't and wont break anything by being added.

I don't see a single actually constructive attempt to offer a better vision for the future in your post. TLDR is "I don't like this, do other stuff and do it better."


I'm not here to give the developers a bunch of ideas that have already been suggested (and ignored) before. I'm telling them they get a D for effort. Try harder. Which is remarkably something people around here don't seem to want to do.

Just remember, true love for the game isn't mindlessly kissing the developers ass while saying the game is perfect as it is and doesn't need anything new. It's wanting to see the game reach it's full potential and be all it can be.
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Re: The future

Postby Kaios » Thu Feb 25, 2016 3:48 pm

Garfy wrote:I'm not here to give the developers a bunch of ideas that have already been suggested (and ignored) before. I'm telling them they get a D for effort. Try harder. Which is remarkably something people around here don't seem to want to do.

Just remember, true love for the game isn't mindlessly kissing the developers ass while saying the game is perfect as it is and doesn't need anything new. It's wanting to see the game reach it's full potential and be all it can be.


I understand exactly what you mean, I don't think you're being malicious with this thread at all. Sometimes these guys need to hear some opinions that they might not like or appreciate but they should be able to understand and consider that criticism.
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Re: The future

Postby Tamalak » Thu Feb 25, 2016 4:02 pm

Personally I am astonished by how much the devs are adding lately. They just casually threw in a siege overhaul and the wilderness beacon experiment right before the start of the new world.
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