haven is missing something to show off for all your effort

[Aerona]

World firsts doesn't fit too well with the idea of a meta-progression that carries on from world to world, either, since it encourages a race at the beginning but has nothing to do with the final state. Which means it would leave players with no achievement to work toward for most of the time between resets. The only thought I have on this is that the ancestor worship concept seems like the best place to tie in any memory from previous worlds.

I could joke that the pile of bones at your shrine could get bigger the more previous experiences with the game you've had, but I suspect that's not the sort of progression others have in mind. Personally, I prefer the legacy I get from playing games to be a fun experience and the chance to develop useful skills rather than anything tangible.

Giving players an incentive to play longer sounds great, but ideally that'd be an intrinsic reward. Especially since science has shown providing extrinsic rewards tend to discourage players from striving for intrinsic rewards.

[MightySheep]

World 1sts are definitely a fun mechanic, poe has that too, it announces to everyone with a chat msg. Diff topic tho.

I just want something to show for my grind that persists beyond the world wipe. Obviously Making numbers go up is pointless in all games, ofc those numbers wont persist forever, ofc youre just wasting your time caring about virtual numbers, but the point is to maintain the ILLUSION that making numbers go up matters. People who grind to 99s in runescape like to imagine their progress is eternal. It's a lot easier to get stuck into the psychological trap of making numbers go up when you dont have voice in back of your head going "this is all just going to be wiped next year anyway, whats the point".

Anything at all to tell yourself its not a waste of time is a big win for the psychological longevity. If I can answer "whats the point" with "I gotta reach the 1k threshold to unlock the next trophy" or "this will add to my overall progression" etc then just maybe I wont mentally give up 1-2 months into every wipe.

[vatas]

Not super related, but unusal exploit in World of Warcraft was exposed really fast because of all the global "Realm First Raid Clear" -messages it caused on their server.

[Sevenless]

World 1sts are definitely a fun mechanic, poe has that too, it announces to everyone with a chat msg. Diff topic tho.

I just want something to show for my grind that persists beyond the world wipe. Obviously Making numbers go up is pointless in all games, ofc those numbers wont persist forever, ofc youre just wasting your time caring about virtual numbers, but the point is to maintain the ILLUSION that making numbers go up matters. People who grind to 99s in runescape like to imagine their progress is eternal. It's a lot easier to get stuck into the psychological trap of making numbers go up when you dont have voice in back of your head going "this is all just going to be wiped next year anyway, whats the point".

I really hate that some people tell you you're not allowed to have fun because of stuff like "numbers go up is pointless" when literally everything in any video game is "pointless" outside of RMT or Esports. If it makes you happy, it makes you happy. Yeah, videogames are an artificial environment so they will have artificial mechanics to make monkey brain happy.

the point is to maintain the ILLUSION that making numbers go up matters.

Couldn't agree more that this is important to haven as a game.

[Dawidio123]

I mean, the examples i gave for world's first are probably heavily early game and yeah based on rng (Is that so bad tho? It's just about bragging rights who cares, i prefer it over having to grind/bot stats for a year to get that most dex).
But alluding once again to poe, it could be a progressive world's first (like delve, for those who don't know you basically "delve" deeper and deeper into the mines. And the world's first are for every X (i think) levels, so you get a world's first for -100 and another for -150... etc.). So there could be a world's first for 100 str, 200 str, 500 str, 1000 str... and so on, so not really early game but gives you an incentive to play longterm. Or some arbitrary stuff like first to craft 420 ql B12.
Of course these things should only be for bragging rights since it wouldn't be fair to have an advantage for it (winners win more stuff), but maybe some cosmetics would be nice to reward the players (ie. capes like runescape, maybe the same cape for all the milestones in a world's first or just changing a number on the cape idk just throwing ideas out)

[Aerona]

To put it another way... instead of "How can we encourage people who are playing this game to spend their time doing things they don't find fun?" the question could be "How can we create more ways for people who play this game to spend their time having fun playing it?"

I think figuring out how to get people to spend more time grinding when they might otherwise quit out of a feeling of ennui isn't the right question to answer, and there's no version of it that is. Games are played for fun, in theory at least. Positive reinforcement for grinding instead of playing can sustain an illusion, for sure, but that's like how if you make it slippery enough, you can get your car down the road without any wheels on it. It's a solution, but not the solution.

https://www.verywellmind.com/difference ... on-2795384 I found this article while checking my memory on what I mentioned earlier. The principles seem to apply, and I think more game designers could stand to study it more, since a lot of games die off not because the players didn't like playing, but because they were taught to wait for top-down feedback on what they were doing instead supplying their own.

Speaking of which, journals, chronicles, or scrap books are all ways to keep records of a character's progress, but the game has no automation for any of that. I wouldn't press for it, but if it simply printed to a logfile every time some sort of event occurs related to character progression - the same ones that the client itself gives immediate feedback for, like stat increases, skill purchases, and so forth - that'd serve as a basis for something to show off, and to be examined. Could be useful for the data and insight, not just as a keepsake. It'd be raw, though, and need some kind of processing.

Which brings me to the next idea. Based on what I've heard from them, from the beginning and on through today, Jorb and Loftar created Haven & Hearth because they wanted to see what players and the communities they build would create and come up with. They don't want to tell us what we should and shouldn't do in game. That doesn't mean we can't have external rewards for what we do in the game, but it suggests those rewards should come from the community, that members of the community should decide trophies, prizes, ribbons, or whatever else should be created and awarded to players, and who they should be awarded to. Maybe if one or more of those rewards get prestigious enough Jorb and Loftar might implement an in-game version to apply to an account just for fun, but it makes no sense to start there.

We could have a discussion about what in-game feats or achievements we as players would like to see other players commended for, and what would seem like fitting rewards without the need to program them into the game, first. I don't have much to add to that since it's not something I'm interested in, but there's nothing to stop players from creating and adding ribbons and commendations to their forum signatures, for example, except that it might be a bit tacky to do that without coming up with some kind of broadly-accepted system for it first. Has to start somewhere, though.

In short, we can make our own trophies and achievement milestones.

[Dawidio123]

To put it another way... instead of "How can we encourage people who are playing this game to spend their time doing things they don't find fun?" the question could be "How can we create more ways for people who play this game to spend their time having fun playing it?"

I think this was said a lot of times already, haven is just full of chores that you either bot away (i wish i was motivated enough to make a botting client so i could automate butchering/hide managment/silk/farming/herding/cheese making/...), or you need to log in every single day and spend a couple of hours doing it. Like it's fine for the first couple of months when there is still a sense of progression.

But at the point where the only thing to get is bigger ql numbers i'm just out, i don't want to log in every day and do X for an hour (it's easier in a faction since you don't do everything, and things like farming/industry have someone assigned to them, but back when i played in a small-ish group, having to do farming/herding/crafting curio/cooking always ended up killing my will to play the game), it's not that there is no point, it's just unfun to do same shit every day for a year.

Even if there were achievements such as "Most animals butchered" or "Most strength gained" (etc.), it would still not be really motivating when you know you are competing with people that automate that shit (And it would give more incentives to do so apart from just not wasting your time), that's why i liked the idea of world's first a lot more since you could accomplish something in a certain amount of time and even if you decided to quit before the end of the world you wouldn't be left in the dust by people that just keep on grinding.

[pawnchito]

it would be nice to have some way to review the past characters in the account area.

Having monuments and stuff that other could see would be mega fucking cool to be honest.

[VDZ]

To put it another way... instead of "How can we encourage people who are playing this game to spend their time doing things they don't find fun?" the question could be "How can we create more ways for people who play this game to spend their time having fun playing it?"

I think figuring out how to get people to spend more time grinding when they might otherwise quit out of a feeling of ennui isn't the right question to answer, and there's no version of it that is. Games are played for fun, in theory at least. Positive reinforcement for grinding instead of playing can sustain an illusion, for sure, but that's like how if you make it slippery enough, you can get your car down the road without any wheels on it. It's a solution, but not the solution.

https://www.verywellmind.com/difference ... on-2795384 I found this article while checking my memory on what I mentioned earlier. The principles seem to apply, and I think more game designers could stand to study it more, since a lot of games die off not because the players didn't like playing, but because they were taught to wait for top-down feedback on what they were doing instead supplying their own.

Games are defined by their arbitrary rules judging player choices as 'good' or 'bad' (often indirectly by only slightly and not always visibly moving the game state towards 'victory' or 'defeat'). A game without rules, interactive entertainment which relies on intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic motivation, is not a game but a toy. If Super Mario Bros did not punish you for running into a Goomba, falling in a pit or running out of time, and if it did not reward you for completing the level (with arbitrary extra score for completion speed) and collecting coins and power-ups, would it still be fun to play? The answer is yes, for a short time. Give a kid the NES controller and they'll be entertained by the sound the coins and blocks make when interacting with them. But they'll soon grow bored; what keeps people entertained is the framework of rules to guide them in how to interact with this toy; the presence of goals (including negative goals, requirements to avoid a failure state) transforms it from a toy into a game, which remains interesting even after the novelty wears off. Even in Haven there are people who enjoy just making pavement art and constructing a nice-looking village, but most players would grow bored if it was a true sandbox with no arbitrary rewards or encouragement from the game rules.

Intrinsic motivation works if you're trying to do something productive (in the broad sense that we gain something from it, not just the economic sense): at work I want to do certain tasks (e.g. creating tools) because doing them will be helpful in the future; the task has an inherent reward. Games however are generally not played to achieve a productive outcome, but to provide entertainment and mental stimulation. As we are wired to work towards productive outcomes, games either need some way to be productive (even in a subtle way, e.g. making pavement art will provide joy for your companions and increase your social standing) or trick you into feeling productive (with extrinsic rewards) to bring enjoyment and keep you playing*. Is it trickery? It certainly is, but so are movies showing you things that didn't actually happen and music artificially triggering positive stimuli. We're no longer in the stone age where our precarious situation necessitates these instincts, but in a modern society which provides us health and safety but lacks much of the intrinsic motivations (what can you make that you can't better buy from a store?) and brings us constant stress without the expected subsequent respite (we can't breathe a sigh of relief knowing the animal is gone now; we need to wake up in time for work again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after...), so we look for stimulation from artificial entertainment. It's fake as fuck, but 'numbers go up' still feels good. More rewards are better, as long as the game retains the illusion that we worked to accomplish things.



* (There is actually a third way to keep you playing but without bringing enjoyment, infamously pioneered by Farmville: Tricking players into loss aversion for the game state can bring player activity solely through punishment, without rewards. It will harm their psychological state and bias their financial decisions (making unreasonble sacrifices to maintain or improve the game state), letting you extract money from them by making their lives worse. If you're working on or have ever worked on a game like this, fuck you. This predatory tactic is a disgrace to gaming. Games should bring joy, not suffering.)

[Aerona]

There's not really such a hard delineation... A game can just be a form of play, it doesn't have to have competitive elements or hard rules. In many games that are played, the rules are made up on the fly, and I don't think this is an exception. Most of the rewards and punishments in the game are the result of player decisions, not developer decisions. What form of competition there is, and even how competitive it ought to be in the first place, are defined more by the behavior and culture of players than by the design of the game. Players are punished by the game rules sometimes, but not very often; mostly just for stumbling into things without paying attention or neglecting to take precautions. But even most of the cases of those things happening are the result of player actions, the game world is not out to get the hearthlings.

Many toys, including some of the best, continue to generate interest for years after the novelty has worn off, because there's so many things that can be done with them. H&H has more in common with toys like LEGO, especially if you look at how players use it, than it does with most games. This seems to align with the developer intent, too. When Jorb and Loftar looked back on World 14, they looked at what some of the highest quality items were, but mostly at some of the beautiful things that players created in the world; character progression was not it. For those who don't care about aesthetic achievements, there's lots of room for the game to have rules and goals that are laid down on them by villages and other in-game leaders, and that in itself is a source of motivation for those who disagree and want to pursue their own vision instead. I think that works a lot better. There's definitely some room for top-down management to discourage players from doing things that just make everyone else want to log out and stay out, but much of that has already been implemented. (If it hadn't been the game wouldn't still be here.)

For most people who engage in play, whether with sports, games, or toys, the goal is not the illusion of material progress. That makes it more of a insidious substitute for work than a form of play. Instead, their "productive outcome" (which rather defies the definition of "productive") is having fun by engaging in play. Humans are "wired" to enjoy doing things that are relaxing or stimulating, that help them unwind or sharpen the skills they use elsewhere, because it's a survival advantage. In short, play helps people with personal development and self-maintenance, no trickery required - and indeed, trickery makes this less effective since it makes maladaptive learning more possible.

Expending energy jumping through hoops is not fun, and only resembles it the niche case where one is conditioned to do it through a system of extrinsic rewards until those simply become assumed. It's a dangerous game (very different definition of "game") often played by MMORPG designers when they condition players to perform tasks that aren't fun every day, and it puts developers in an unsustainable trap where they have to keep players chasing the unattainable until they get wise, and flitting from game to game looking for something those games can never give them.

Hijacking instincts to get people to engage in repetitive tasks is pernicious. Negative reinforcement is not the only way to be predatory. Many games, especially recently, use the same mechanisms as slot machines to keep people playing because it's lucrative to do so, but that's just keeping people trapped, not giving them ways to have fun.