Haven's Design Philosophy and Combat

[DafyddapDafydd]

I've been playing this game for probably 10 or 11 years now, and ever since I started, people have been complaining about the combat system. Literally no matter what changes the devs make, people say that it is unnecessarily complex, and only benefits autistic no-lifers who can raise their stats into the heavens. I'm not a hardcore PVPer or something like that, but I do know that Haven makes some very strange, un-fun choices when it comes to combat, and I think there are some lessons the devs can take from other MMO and strategy games in order to improve that situation.

I'm not going to waste my time dreaming up some super complex replacement combat system that probably won't get implemented anyway. I’m also not gonna nitpick about changing specific stats or buffing this or that combat move. And I’m definitely not gonna suggest stat caps for the millionth time lol. All I want to do is criticize the general design philosophy of combat in this game, and sketch an outline of things that could be done to make it better. Without further ado:

I. Quality vs Quantity
I took a break from Haven’s grind recently, in part because I’ve been playing a different game: Space Engineers. This might sound like a strange game to compare to Haven, given that Space Engineers is basically Minecraft in space, and the last thing we want is to make Haven more like Minecraft. However, the server I play on is set up to be like an MMO, where you and your faction spawn into the world, set up a base, and then mine, trade for tech, and compete with a large number of other factions in ship-building and combat. PVP is encouraged, and can be quite devastating to small players if they lose, given that you can invest millions of resources and dozens of hours into designing and building a single ship.

I have an actual life, so I don't really have time or resources to make a million battleships to compete with the big factions in a war of attrition, and my faction is pretty small, so I know I'll never outnumber them in fleet battles. However, playing on this server is literally the most fun I've ever had in an MMO, and that's largely because I know I can stand a chance competing with other players in PVP, so long as I play my cards right. Given the right shipbuilding techniques, pilot skill, and circumstances, you stand a chance of beating the big boys (and indeed, there are people that do that regularly).

In other words, so long as you're a decent pilot, and you have a good design philosophy for your ships, the biggest advantage that large factions have is not quality, but quantity. Big factions in Space Engineers might have dedicated shipbuilders who know all the right tricks to designing a good combat ship, so ship quality is very important, but they can also still lose if they’re ambushed or if they bring the wrong ship to a fight. Their main counter to that is to simply call for reinforcements.

I think this has a lot of interesting implications for Haven PVP, because Haven’s combat design is not like this at all. As many other have noted, Haven’s combat is essentially a stats race where high-stat characters will almost always win against characters that they outmatch. Big factions usually have advantages in both quality (character stats) and quantity (player numbers), with tactics and character design mattering little.

Based on this, the goal of any combat change should be to strike a careful balance between keeping stats useful (like I said, we don’t want this to become Minecraft), while also making those stats situational. In other words, the best way to keep Haven’s combat interesting, dynamic, and balanced is to make it so that high-stat characters from big villages are very powerful, but can be killed if they’re dumb and put themselves in a situation where they’re at a disadvantage.

One way to do this might be to add a directional attack mechanic, where getting behind a heavily-armored player can yield extra AP damage, or attacking a shield-carrying player from the front means that more damage is blocked. We might also add a way to attack certain body parts, allowing targeting (and blocking) of areas that are less armored. We could even add a terrain mechanic, where standing on higher ground than someone else gives a bonus to attack speed or damage.

These are all fairly trivial suggestions that might be easy to implement, but would be complex, controversial and probably won’t change the overall meta too much. To really work well, this design philosophy will need to be paired with Part II:

II. Bringing a Knife to a Bow-fight
One thing that Haven combat is missing that you see in virtually every other PVP game is a rock, paper, scissors system. What this means is that each unique playstyle has its own niche. For instance, on that Space Engineers server, you can design your ship to be a light and fast missile boat, a heavy battleship, or any one of a dozen other combinations, and each one has its advantages and disadvantages depending on which design it is fighting. To use a more classic example from MMO and strategy games, I might be playing a sword and shield character who is cheap to equip and well-protected from arrows, but is vulnerable to two-handed weapons. That same two-handed weapon player would be vulnerable to arrows, and the archer in turn might be vulnerable to cavalry or shielded units.

What's weird is that as far as I can tell, this doesn't really exist in Haven, or if it does, it isn't implemented well. This is such a foundational aspect of PVP combat that I'm astounded that it seems like such an afterthought, both with the devs and the community. From what I can tell, "meta" Haven PVP seems to just consist of getting as high of MC or UA skill as possible, arming as many people as possible with B12s, and then sending them into battle in a horde. Most of the combat changes that I’ve seen seem to be re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; they change some stat or some weapon or some combat move to suit the complaint of the day, but leave this fairly simple rock-paper-scissors dynamic untouched.

I think the combat system should be balanced so that any one weaponset or playstyle has its strengths and weaknesses against other playstyles. A mid-stat archer should be capable of taking on a high-stat two-hander, but a mid-stat shield-user should make quick work of a high-stat archer. This doesn’t mean we’d have to “pick a class” like in other MMOs; it should just be as simple as what gear you’re wearing and what skills you’ve invested in. So, bows might get a bonus against certain kinds of armor, but a malus against shields, while players with a two-handed weapon might do extra damage to armor and shields, etc.

As a final suggestion to this part, I think that the amount of armor and weapons you’re carrying should at least slightly affect your movement speed. This opens up the possibility of more playstyles, like a light-and-fast shield user who is a dedicated archer-killer. This way, you can also flee combat if you drop your heavy plate armor and axes. I’m not completely sure how I feel about this bit, and it’s probably been suggested before, but it might be workable if the rest of this part is implemented well.

If it is balanced correctly, the winning faction in any PVP is not the one that has the highest stats (or that carries the most water lmao); it's the one that can most effectively coordinate its different troop types by overlapping their strengths and taking advantage of the enemy's weaknesses. This makes skill and tactics an essential part of combat, while (hopefully) still keeping stat and gear progression relevant.

III. A Use for Stealth
This is the only part of my critique that is unrelated to PVP, and it’s fairly straightforward. The devs should take the (mostly useless) stealth skill and turn it into a hunting mechanic. Basically, small animals shouldn’t run away until you get really close to them if you have high stealth.

On larger or more aggressive animals, higher stealth should not only decrease their aggro range, it should also affect how long it takes for them to locate you and aggro you after you’ve attacked them. Basically, if you have really high stealth, you can get a first strike on a bear or a moose, and the animal will stop and take a few seconds to look around for you, allowing you to get a few more shots off. If we want to add a bigger skill factor, we could even add a line-of-sight mechanic, where you have to stay out of the animal’s vision cone while it is searching (and with the cone’s size changing based on the attacking player’s stealth).

Obviously, there would also need to be minimum limits for how close you can get to an aggressive animal before it notices you, as well as diminishing returns on how much stealth affects the time an animal has to search for you. Higher-quality animals should also be better at finding you. This also might make hunting too easy if balanced incorrectly, so I’m open to criticism. But I think it would remove some of the need for hunting cheese, while also making hunting as a whole more enjoyable.