On the viability of a Steam release

[danya]

I think all the reasons for not using Steam are pure luddism to me. Steam release is fine. The developers themselves say that all the bad things that happen in their world (cheaters, bots) are the result of mistakes in game design. Following this logic, should a game like this live at all, where a lot of new players can kill it? It's absurd. And as for the arguments regarding bad reviews or even possible removal of the game - a diamond like haven and hearth is better than 90% of games on the platform.

Steam will give the game not just a second life, but possibly the first of its kind. I'd be happy to see the game on steam. Not to mention it would bring in a decent amount of money.

Haven and hearth suffers greatly from a community that has been playing the game for over a decade and has been brewing in the same cauldron. Everyone knows the mechanics, everyone is friends, everyone knows the meta, everyone uses the bugs. It's the same thing every new world. I don't know about you, but to me there is nothing more beautiful and romantic than a bunch of players who are not sophisticated in politics, minmaxing, and just building their houses and playing for the sake of the process.

In general, there's not a single reason to hide the game from the world. There are a lot of bad games in the world and a lot of people who don't know about the good ones, and hiding haven and hearth from them is a crime. The game could blow up the gaming world and evolve into something new. Evolution in technical terms is important, but what price is it if no one uses its fruits?

Many games spend millions, hundreds of millions in marketing while having no mechanics, gameplay, depth, being nothing. And haven and hearth has everything, but absolutely does not want to use the gifts and advantages of steam, it does the opposite. It's insane. Especially now, when everyone is tired of primitive gameplay, when everyone is tired of beautiful graphics, when people are slowly turning away from consoles, when indie games are exploding due to their depth and unusualness. The time of games like call of duty is over. Now is the best time to show the world what has been achieved over the years.

Dwarf fortress is out on steam. This is strongly indie game with extreme lerning rate curve. Look at the reviews and it's even more unfinished and buggy, not to mention its development progress has gotten even slower since its release on steam, but the reviews are still ecstatic. Dwarf fortress has made tens of millions of dollars. Haven and hearth is able to earn if not as much, then still very much. In the end both we (lots of money for development, lots of new people) and the developers will be happy.

The server is up

There are 120 hearthlings playing.

Is this what we're aiming for? Is this the way it should always be? Is this the peak of the game? Is this happiness? Is this what we all deserve?

Is there any reason why this meter will ever change?

Years go by, but things are getting worse. At someday the hearth will go dark. If we don't change something.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

I think all the reasons for not using Steam are pure luddism to me. Steam release is fine. The developers themselves say that all the bad things that happen in their world (cheaters, bots) are the result of mistakes in game design. Following this logic, should a game like this live at all, where a lot of new players can kill it? It's absurd. And as for the arguments regarding bad reviews or even possible removal of the game - a diamond like haven and hearth is better than 90% of games on the platform.

Steam will give the game not just a second life, but possibly the first of its kind. I'd be happy to see the game on steam. Not to mention it would bring in a decent amount of money.

Haven and hearth suffers greatly from a community that has been playing the game for over a decade and has been brewing in the same cauldron. Everyone knows the mechanics, everyone is friends, everyone knows the meta, everyone uses the bugs. It's the same thing every new world. I don't know about you, but to me there is nothing more beautiful and romantic than a bunch of players who are not sophisticated in politics, minmaxing, and just building their houses and playing for the sake of the process.

Well said.

[jock]

The server tech cannot handle more than 2000 players give or take according to loftar. SIngle threaded and the work to fix that is beyond the scope of what he would be willing todo.

[grumgrumganoe]

*Above issues tend to compound into making "factions" lose interest or quit entirely
*While "factions" can easily have a negative impact on an individual player, their absence leaves a power vacuum where a single bad actor can, for example, go on an indiscriminate killing spree
*In the current world, someone was doing exactly that quite recently, posting regular screenshots of their growing Skeleton collection

Tangent over.

+1

also Robben is an ally of The Gnome Gang in case u needed another reason to see him has an insufferable bad-faith hypocrite who cares more about his own ego than his sprucie child soldiers or game balance

[Robben_DuMarsch]

People who literally wear my picture as their PFPs and talk about me constantly, trying to argue that I am supporting a steam release because of my ego. I really do live rent-free in your minds, don't I?

[Dawidio123]

People who literally wear my picture as their PFPs and talk about me constantly, trying to argue that I am supporting a steam release because of my ego. I really do live rent-free in your minds, don't I?

[grumgrumganoe]

im literally one person, check my pfp again buddy

I’ll take a robben dumarch parody pfp tho if ur offering

[grumgrumganoe]

this one is pretty nifty I think

[UnimportantFarmhand]

I've no question the game is going to be review bombed on steam if they upload the 2015 Hafen trailer video. Any description or content of the game should heavily advertise the unforgiving nature of the game, the necessity to learn the complex systems, and the presence of open PVP and permadeath.

I'd highly suggest linking to the Ring of Brodgar wiki, and describing the game as a hardcore survival crafting sandbox MMO with full loot PvP, the possibility of permadeath, and no rails.

This is likely the most important thing Jorb and Loftar could cherrypick from this thread. (Rest of this post is a tangent.)

inb4 "permadeath has already been removed etc." I'm also increasingly leaning toward "make combat actually lethal" and "make it possible to siege bases" -paradigms because:

*While it is nice to not die because you ran into a PvP player, any "bubblewrap" applies to said PvP player as well, and they're likely much better at avoiding death from anyone trying to catch and punish them.
*While it is nice to feel relatively safe because nobody sieges anyone, this means bad actors can't be sieged either and are thus more or less immune to any in-game action to curtail them.
*Above issues tend to compound into making "factions" lose interest or quit entirely
*While "factions" can easily have a negative impact on an individual player, their absence leaves a power vacuum where a single bad actor can, for example, go on an indiscriminate killing spree
*In the current world, someone was doing exactly that quite recently, posting regular screenshots of their growing Skeleton collection

Tangent over.

Yeah, this is probably the best direction for these things to go. Personally, I think it'd probably be a better use of the devs's time to hold some sort of community competition than having to do a trailer themselves; something something comparative advantage.

The trailer, to me, is a very small issue in comparison to the lack of in-game documentation, though. Wurm, I believe, has a simple right-click-to-wiki button that would honestly help for a lot of things, and seems very easy to implement - I understand that this requires some level of trust for the devs wrt the wiki, but, honestly, this is how every new player plays the game anyway (if they're not, it's because they remember things that they or someone else... read from the wiki). I admit this is a bit of a band-aid but any in-game acknowledgement of the game's only real source of information and documentation would be better than the current state of affairs. Apologies if this has been suggested dozens of times already, but I can't imagine how many equally obvious band-aids that have been thrown at this problem.

[landreaum]

Could you imagine 1 million players in this game, I don't think people understand dynamics of population and the real world. If you think the factions with 100 players shitting on hermits is bad, imagine a whole literal country with 150k players shitting on a hermit, everyone complains about how unbalanced it is now, it will be so much worse if more people played this game, the Balance of faction to hermit is already a glass bridge, stop trying to make it worse, I'm sick of these whiny posts.