in client Game development meter request

[Rebs]

It's a problem, the game lends itself to player dropoff after a year because people expect a reset.. (or at least it prevents players from returning or even starting late).

I have just started again with an old character, and the only thing that makes the game less interesting is the lack of a player base compared to a reset.

It's rather lonely, not seen as a soul, the early world is full and bubbly, alliances and neighbors, trading and fighting. it's full of interaction compared to right now which is boring. Ironically the gameplay is no different apart from that (and maybe your neighbors out leveling you and there is nothing you can do to catch up, which also puts people off).

Having a world timer for resets I think is rather pointless and encourages resets, working towards a neverending world should be the end goal really, and ironically if resets were never a thing the population would be better which is the core of the early game personally.

Just load up the game and play it. if you have the mind-set of "Why waste the time", I don't see anyone complaining that they wasted 1000+ hours playing world 1-11..

[VDZ]

Ironically the gameplay is no different apart from that (and maybe your neighbors out leveling you and there is nothing you can do to catch up, which also puts people off).

As I posted earlier in the general world wipe thread:

But let's say you don't get discouraged, or just take a little break and then return to the game. While you are starting anew, the rest of the world is not. Struggling to get some tar as is common in the early game? No worries, your friendly neighbor will just hand you a barrel for free because at this point there's plenty anyways. Your tools are low-quality, and you have no advanced tools? You can just skip the whole crafting chain by just trading some bulk materials with someone. Oh, you found an abandoned settlement! Now everything you've worked on for the past week is obsolete because everything you find there is much better than what you have. The state of the world greatly accelerates the early game, and your own efforts frequently being rendered worthless due to this acceleration is discouraging. This effect increases as the world ages (around the end of the world I can just straight up buy my way to progress beyond what I managed to achieve at the start of the world for very little cost), and is then topped off by the existence and semi-unpredictability of world resets; I'm not starting right now as I anticipate there will be a reset soon which would invalidate any progress I do make in this reduced-fun environment.

Just load up the game and play it. if you have the mind-set of "Why waste the time", I don't see anyone complaining that they wasted 1000+ hours playing world 1-11..

There's a massive difference between having made so much progress I kinda ran out of things to do, then losing said progress weeks or months after I quit, and looking forward to that batch of decent-quality coal finishing so you can smelt your decent-quality ore to finally get decent-quality metal, only to suddenly lose it all to a world reset. To compare it to singleplayer game, it's like restarting the game after finishing it compared to just suddenly restarting while you're halfway through (and still actively playing!). The former is not uncommon if you really like a game, but the latter nearly always sucks (and generally only occurs because e.g. your little brother overwrote your save file, I'm sure there are people here who can relate, it really sucks to the point you might just drop the game rather than restarting).

[Rebs]

Ironically the gameplay is no different apart from that (and maybe your neighbors out leveling you and there is nothing you can do to catch up, which also puts people off).

As I posted earlier in the general world wipe thread:

But let's say you don't get discouraged, or just take a little break and then return to the game. While you are starting anew, the rest of the world is not. Struggling to get some tar as is common in the early game? No worries, your friendly neighbor will just hand you a barrel for free because at this point there's plenty anyways. Your tools are low-quality, and you have no advanced tools? You can just skip the whole crafting chain by just trading some bulk materials with someone. Oh, you found an abandoned settlement! Now everything you've worked on for the past week is obsolete because everything you find there is much better than what you have. The state of the world greatly accelerates the early game, and your own efforts frequently being rendered worthless due to this acceleration is discouraging. This effect increases as the world ages (around the end of the world I can just straight up buy my way to progress beyond what I managed to achieve at the start of the world for very little cost), and is then topped off by the existence and semi-unpredictability of world resets; I'm not starting right now as I anticipate there will be a reset soon which would invalidate any progress I do make in this reduced-fun environment.

Just load up the game and play it. if you have the mind-set of "Why waste the time", I don't see anyone complaining that they wasted 1000+ hours playing world 1-11..

There's a massive difference between having made so much progress I kinda ran out of things to do, then losing said progress weeks or months after I quit, and looking forward to that batch of decent-quality coal finishing so you can smelt your decent-quality ore to finally get decent-quality metal, only to suddenly lose it all to a world reset. To compare it to singleplayer game, it's like restarting the game after finishing it compared to just suddenly restarting while you're halfway through (and still actively playing!). The former is not uncommon if you really like a game, but the latter nearly always sucks (and generally only occurs because e.g. your little brother overwrote your save file, I'm sure there are people here who can relate, it really sucks to the point you might just drop the game rather than restarting).

I don't know if you intentionally meant to support the idea of not resetting the world, All I got from that was "Don't do world resets so people don't get discourages from playing due to work being overwritten and let people restart by themselves when they are ready."

There is a point to be made about resetting the world without any additional features, you might as well just start playing now.. which I assume is one reason why they don't want to just add a timer as it would assume there is a roadmap for features that require world reset at that time. This also just adds needless deadlines on a hobby, anything to stop the devs from being discouraged or bored/stressed of developing I am all for, I don't want a repeat of them leaving to develop something else.

I hope for a reset, but I still enjoy playing the game whatever stage the world is at, just gotta find some peeps to play with.

[VDZ]

I don't know if you intentionally meant to support the idea of not resetting the world, All I got from that was "Don't do world resets so people don't get discourages from playing due to work being overwritten and let people restart by themselves when they are ready."

Are you ignoring everything in the post other than the last paragraph? The late-world experience is very different from the early-world experience. That's why world resets are a good thing, to allow players to get the early-world experience again.

There is a point to be made about resetting the world without any additional features, you might as well just start playing now..

Oh, you ignored the last paragraph too. Re-read it to understand why I don't want to start playing now.

This also just adds needless deadlines on a hobby, anything to stop the devs from being discouraged or bored/stressed of developing I am all for, I don't want a repeat of them leaving to develop something else.

Haven & Hearth is no longer just a hobby for the devs; ever since world 8, this game has been a product and we have been paying customers. Despite this I am still very much in favor of letting the devs just do their thing rather than specifically demanding anything of them - that's how H&H became the game we all know and love after all, so I see no reason to play the 'as a paying customer, I feel [...]' card - but I do expect the devs to do what they think is best for the game and not refrain from doing work beneficial for the game merely because 'it's not fun to do'. If deadlines benefit the game - and I'm fairly sure at least some already exist internally, considering updates are generally at consistent times - then they should have deadlines.

[Apocoreo]

We are working on a bigger implementation. Might be a few weeks.

What is this? OCO? How's it going?

Well, sometimes there are reasons for being vague, too. You'll find out soon enough.

(In this particular case, I'm also quite frustrated, because it's in fact almost ready, but there are a couple of slightly more external reasons that make it highly inopportune to finish it up right now, and there isn't a whole lot I can say about it, unfortunately.)

I was about to make a joke about you still being vague, but sincerely, I do hope things are well in your personal life. That goes for Jorb too. Much of the shit you're getting is coming form the playerbase's own frustrations. Hope to hear what's up soon, but your candor is appreciated.

[Alince]

I don't think it is ever a good idea to announce far in advance how long it is until a world reset. It's no coincidence that the population drops off a cliff whenever we announce one.

I am asking that mainly because I was never able to join a world on the first week of its reset at the very least

If that is the problem that you want solved, I'd be more inclined to send a mail to all registered accounts when a world reset is announced. The main reason I haven't done so up until now is that I'm kind of worried about getting our mail servers blacklisted, however, and I'm not entirely sure how to properly handle that.

I see, the player base drop didnt occur to me, but yes an email will be helpful to be able to compete fairly or at least have the chance to do so, its just that we dont always follow up on changes until they are implemented, like the hafen client does have an update tipbar at the side at the very least to update players on current changes, the progress bar as you said may actually be a bad idea if I consider player base.
also I dont use opt-mail as suggested and its the first time I hear about it, I honestly dont even know how to do that

[VDZ]

also I dont use opt-mail as suggested and its the first time I hear about it, I honestly dont even know how to do that

'Opt-in' means nothing happens unless you specifically indicate you want it to happen (this as opposed to 'opt-out', where something happens unless you indicate you don't want it to happen). In this context, it means there would be some place you could enter your e-mail (or some setting you could change on your account) and after doing so you would be sent an e-mail when there's a world reset announcement. (The previously suggested alternative, mailing everyone who has an account, could result in some people who played a long time ago but are no longer interested in marking the e-mail as spam, which would cause problems when sending mails in the future.)

[DDDsDD999]

It's a problem, the game lends itself to player dropoff after a year because people expect a reset.. (or at least it prevents players from returning or even starting late).

Only way to fix this is change player's expectations. Need to make this world last 3 years so people stop expecting a reset each year.

[VDZ]

It's a problem, the game lends itself to player dropoff after a year because people expect a reset.. (or at least it prevents players from returning or even starting late).

Only way to fix this is change player's expectations. Need to make this world last 3 years so people stop expecting a reset each year.

How much would that help, though? People tend to be more enthusiastic about the early-world gameplay than the late-world gameplay. Resets always bring people back; how many of those players would come back without a reset?