PvP, Player Attrition, and the Future of Haven & Hearth

[Halbertz]

Current PvP lets a few top groups wipe out peaceful villages with no real way to defend

There are no peaceful villages. Every pumpkin grown in these fields can be used to increase strength - a dual-use stat.Every piece of ore dug up by a hermit can become a sword in the hands of my enemies. Each character written in the chat can be a diversionary maneuver to buy time until the enemy fighters arrive.
You either get up and fight, or you die in your cuckold chair.

[OIchi]

You won't see a PvE server without absolute autists that will spawn 200 alts to block you in your base or other crap.

Local servers that can be moderated though, that would be good and feasible. But we're not getting those either.

Why would you do that? and how long would you keep getting in someone's way for until you get bored?

I keep hearing of how bad trolling and griefing on PvE server would be, but every time I find it to be absolute bs.
People would do it for a week or 2 just to try and prove their point, but I'm pretty sure they would get bored fairly quickly.

In the end there would barely be any new ways of griefing and none of them worse of currently existing ones.
Instead of getting killed, you get annoyed.
I'm sure that even without any changes, just disabling criminal skills it would work and with simple ones like increase on claim upkeep and removing wall soak could get rid of most of the problems.

One thing I can agree on though is that we won't get it, since J&L are not actually interested in growing the project.

[Havenasket]

Overall here is my feedback on current pvp, siege and power balance options.
Instead of staying for more than 5 days and doing this:


I am quitting due to unbalanced siege for no reason and doing this:

[deMangler]

I suppose I'll chime in. Could do with the typing practice. This isn't addressed specifically to the OP, which is a reasoned well presented post, even if I don't get it. I am not into stifling debate and brainstorming anything. There is some good debate here and improving PvP is on-going.

This is just me venting years of reading nonsense about PvE Haven and Hearth, and also some recent posts on steam...

Been playing since 2010, Still play, legacy as well sometimes. I always play a hermit. Rarely have I bumped into another hermit to team up with for a bit. Been fun when it's happened. But mostly solo.
Mostly meetings with others is a friendly wave or they just kill me, because there are more of them and I know there is no point in specialising combat skills etc as a solo, to the point of it making any difference to PvP vs a group. Unachievable.

I really enjoy this game. It is unique and a relief from what has slowly and agonisingly over the years, become the standard crap way of making MMO's - PvP or PvE. The others don't get it.

Personally I don't partake of the whole fighting side of it, can't be arsed. I do really like living in a world that is dangerous and challenging because of the possibility of having to deal creatively with actual unfettered other human beings, and actually survive, or escape, or having planned properly, surgerat stylee, to somehow beat the odds. When I die it is not because of broken mechanics, or because I necessarily made a mistake, it is just because some people more powerful than me wanted me dead, for whatever reason. Doesn't matter. Living as long as possible and trying to accomplish whatever occurs to me because of what I have encountered in this world of possibilities is fun.

What on earth kind of concept is a PvE , or more 'moderated' PvP version of this game? I mean how is it possible to even conceive of such a thing, never mind start evaluating whether it would be fun or not.
99% of the game mechanics have been introduced or iteratively developed over the years as a way of refining the PvP game and rendering the clearly stated game design philosophy in more and more practical terms, without resorting to the artificial and un-implementable lowest common denominator methods of other MMO's. What would... I don't get... I mean...
Actually I think I have already gotten this out of my system. Wall of text rant aborted. There is no point.

Next time I feel like venting about this I think I'll go off and find a forum where people complain that butterflies are broken, badly designed, and mis-concieved because they can't function as a pancreas, and leave everyone here in peace.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

[chrisrock]

Personally I don't partake of the whole fighting side of it, can't be arsed. I do really like living in a world that is dangerous and challenging because of the possibility of having to deal creatively with actual unfettered other human beings, and actually survive, or escape, or having planned properly, surgerat stylee, to somehow beat the odds.

i agree

[MaltGrain]

A few months ago someone opened a nice market, four pages of compliments on the stock, prices, and friendliness of the owners ....in less than four weeks it was raided and destroyed. We recently lost our community well. This is not conducive to attracting new players nor retaining current ones.

I'd been wondering what happened to the Dew Medows, nobody in Norsca chat will talk about it. I had enjoyed that immensly but dipped a short while before the place was hit (I presume we're talking of the same?). I'd been hoping for a followup story to engage with but everyone must have moved to Neko or burned out on grief.

Do you not think 3-4 weeks of great fun and colaboration was worth it's destruction? What I mean is that my Hearthling was offered a great opportunity to meet other in a friendly, colaborative manner. Collecting tree seeds to trade for coin, then seeing those seeds planted around the market was a awesome. 'Working' alongside other hearthlings while chatting. Meeting familiar faces and asking how they are? Inviting aquaintences to fight a bear no-cheese? Talking prices an deals in Realm? Greatness
That place attracted a great community, I dare say many of them became kin and may well have inherited together.

Speaking of which, Wet Corner Market was still .. there when I last checked. It's got a big ass castle, does that have something to do with it?

The ones who will attack you .. With no fear of retribution because there is none in this game.

I would argue that it's there, but many people are unwilling to persue it. Granted I've not yet experienced PVP, barely had a relevant stat above 150. But it doesn't seem difficult to pump if you're minded to.

[Karede]

snip

Oh no, not your $64! They should definitely compromise their vision for the game because a pack of retards cannot into archery towers.

In addition, if you guys were only five days in it sounds like you settled in a place that wasn't quite so far from everything and didn't lose much. Learn your lesson and try again

[Robben_DuMarsch]

I would argue that it's there, but many people are unwilling to persue it. Granted I've not yet experienced PVP, barely had a relevant stat above 150. But it doesn't seem difficult to pump if you're minded to.

Once someone gets sufficient practice at running, they aren't going to be caught absent some big mistake. Most factions don't fight each other outside of certain static objectives early world, and when they do, it's usually just a few of the newer or less skilled players that get knocked off - Unless someone DCs.

There's really very little risk outside of getting trapped in caves, palisades, or dungeons, for regular pvpers.

Sieging is merely having enough free time and desire to ruin other people's time over a 24 hour period. Do you have a couple autistic friends willing to watch anime while sitting afk on a bench while a ram dries? You can kill 98% of settlements in this game

Archery towers are pretty funny because all the sieger needs to do is build screening siege engines in front of the towers then blow down your wall, but all these people seem to think they actually work well. I bet the devs do too.

Brimstone and leather are laughably cheap in the endgame, and all you need to do is build a few rams to tank the shots.

[MaltGrain]

I would argue that it's there, but many people are unwilling to persue it. Granted I've not yet experienced PVP, barely had a relevant stat above 150. But it doesn't seem difficult to pump if you're minded to.


There's really very little risk .. for regular pvpers.


There's little risk for any player providing they enjoy the practice.



Archery towers are pretty funny because all the sieger needs to do is build screening siege engines in front of the towers then blow down your wall, but all these people seem to think they actually work well. I bet the devs do too.


Tell me about archery towers. Would it be possible to simply build more towers, with additional layers of palisade? They can buffer, you can buffer. I imagine size and build contraints might limit archery towers.
Wouldn't a slow moving ram be vulnerable to catapaults? 2 or 3 shots to destroy a ram, no cooldown before repair. Build a new one if you can't wait.



Brimstone and leather are laughably cheap in the endgame, and all you need to do is build a few rams to tank the shots.


How do you think it would effect sieging if material quality was a significant factor?

• Siege is setup rn so that you can defend without fighting, and while it's theoretically possible to get so overwhelmed by the attacker using an absurd amount of resources, I'm pretty sure a defender who doesn't make a mistake will never lose

What sort of mistakes can a defender make? Misstimed/targetted shots, poor space allocation?