Harsh truths > Comforting lies

[Nocturnal-Rainbows]

Every single new world I've harvested people off of 4chan to come try the game out and play.
Every single time they've played, they all unanimously agree on these problems (and tbh and this point I'm not even going to ask for them to be changed because it's clear that's never going to happen anyway, rather I'm just stating what they say here and I agree with it wholeheartedly) -

1. Bots.
Period. Nobody wants to work hard and slave away at their character only to find out that despite putting in absurd hours, they have a fraction of the skills and stats of the vets who all bot.
You know when most people are playing with me, they're actually loving the game at the start because they're in ignorant bliss. Once the realization sets in that no matter how hard they work, they'll never keep up with other players who bot, they're gone in an instant.

2. Vets won't mind their own fucking business
Even in this very thread they complain that nobody knows how to pvp or even how to survive pvp situations but in my experience, whenever 2 noobs clash and they're having a disagreement and violence either happens or is threatened, these vets sweep in immediately, take a side and then the noob whos side they're not on gets wasted, feels like he's wasted his time, then leaves. The other guy who got saved and coddled to then leaves because the games boring now, they're not getting to experience the game either because retarded vets have denied that from them by coddling them. Essentially both parties disappear and once again, months later, the vets are here wondering 'wtf why is nobody playing, guess i better just fight against the same HANDFUL of people i usually do until the new world happens again'.
You wonder why people don't know how to PvP? It's because the moment they do, you swoop on in, wipe them out with your botted inflated stats and the player who that happened to might only have a fraction of your stats but those stats he had were precious to him because he's actually working for them. You say it only takes you a few hours to get those stats back but I've WITNESSED people with double digit stats quit countless times because 'it'll take days or a week to get those again and i'll just fall further behind'.
Veterans are the biggest cancer to the game and I know I'll upset a lot of people on here by saying that since the vast majority of you are exactly who I'm referring to in this post, I just don't give a fuck and I'll tell you straight.
No new or old player will ever know how to properly play this game once any element of PvP is involved because there's too many closely guarded secrets about all facets of PvP, the mechanics are so convoluted that these people will never understand them without somebody who knows them teaching them to somebody. I speak the absolute truth when I say that too. Took me being part of a big powerhouse faction to see just how stark the contrast is.
Think of how many more players the game would have if every conflict wasn't solved by someone whining on the forum for some more experienced player to come and completely ruin some back and forth tension between two learning players. Most of my fondest memories of the game involve little skirmishes and disagreements with other players.

3. Endless grind
It's not gonna change, like nothing I say will, but people, including myself, just get burned out by the quality grind (worst part of the game bar non). It's endless, it's boring, it's when I hang up my character and think 'yeah, nah, fuck that, I've got better things to do with my time'
Endless stat and skill grinding is not appealing. Neither is endless quality grinding.
I'll outright say it now, when a new world does happen, I may come back again for a few months, but I don't kid myself, I know that once everything is set up how I like it, the grind begins and I endure it for however long I can but then after that, I'm out.

4. Too much bullshit which never gets addressed by the devs
Finally, we come to this and I didn't know what else to name this point. It's just an amalgamation of shit all clumped together.
Last time I played, natural resources were being botted to shit. If you wanted any chance of getting things like salt or whatever, you'd have naked alts with a few points in cooking strung all around the map, logged off right by the natural resources and you'd have everything timed so you can log in to pick it up then log out. Has this even changed? I bet it hasn't. I'd be surprised if it had. The rich get richer. I've offered plenty of better solutions to the current world resource problems over the years and so have others yet nothing will be done and there's no point in doing it midway through a world because by then the damage has already been done.

You know, I haven't played nearly as long as most other people on here, I started during the last few worlds of the OG H&H, yet when I look at this forum year after year, it's the same people here. I can unironically count on 1 hand the amount of new posters I see who I don't recognize or haven't seen posting before. Does that not highlight the problem here? I'm not suggesting that the loyal older players being here is bad, but no new players staying around is. The community, despite the game being updated so much, remains stagnant. Know why? Because of everything I've brought up here in this post. It's the truth.

The first point I mentioned is the worst problem despite me spending the shortest amount of time on it because what's left to say about it?
Botting is for all intensive purposes allowed in the game, but you may only partake in it if you :-
a. know how to code
b. join a big village and kiss someones ass for long enough that they give you said bots

You ever try playing the game without bots and making a character that has sufficiently high quality gear + stats to be able to stand up to the people who do use those? It's absurd to the point of impossibility. The amount of work required is retarded. Do you know how suffering it is to manually farm and take inventory every single day? To manually make pies non stop? To tame animals, keep them fed and to milk/sheer them? To ensure your character has a full study table of curiosities? To ensure all misc shit like Tar Kilns are still producing stuff?
That's the bare minimum mind you without factoring in the more exotic crafts like silkmoth farming and keeping an eye on steel production.
You wanna know the absolute worst part about doing all of that shit though? Is knowing that some faggot is doing the same things, only his bot is doing it all for him, and that's fine apparently, either learn to code or deal with it.

You wanna know why you hemorrhage players every world? There's your reasons.

QUICK EDIT - I was originally going to post this in one of the announcement threads that's already up (It was the one from December I think were the devs streamed), just to clear up any confusion like when I mention 'people in this thread are complaining' despite me starting the thread. Decided to make my own thread here since I wrote so much but upon reading it again some parts of the post may not make sense since again it was originally intended as a sort of reply to an already established thread.

[Fostik]

You don't really need bots, grind and devs attention to be good at the game, you just a crybaby.

[SnuggleSnail]

I really strongly agree with your point about fighters not letting regular players fuck each other up, tbh. I do my best to not interfere with regular people when they're actually fighting, and especially when they PM me asking me to help for free, even though I kindof want to for fun. 90% of the time I find out they got somebody else to do it anyway. IMO it's not something that really has a mechanical solution, but raising the average skill a bit so normal people are good enough to realistically run from fraction bois and not be a free kill might help discouraging people from always involving themselves. In general being able to poke bears with a stick and be at least somewhat confident you can escape is the first step towards actually learning to PVP, IMO.

Bots are a huge potential problem, something that stops the scalability of the game - but I don't think they're AS BAD as the perception of them is. I've had very decent stats before using bots, or at least while only using basic bots from the wizard's tower. I think the focus here should mainly be on client features as opposed to direct botting. I would 100% give up every bot I have and never be allowed to remake them before I give up my combat UI if public clients are the alternative.

I suspect Jorbtar not wanting to fix certain major issues is a direct result of them not really playing the game at a higher level as opposed to not being receptive to ideas or whatever. To me at least, realms and vehicles are the biggest examples of this. Both absolutely fuck everything at medium/higher level play while providing very little if anything good in return, but it's kindof hard to explain or justify removing them to somebody who doesn't really tryhard or care about their own progression that much. It's more of a walking around and absorbing the atmosphere game for them, as far as I can tell.

[wonder-ass]

I always have the lowest stats in faction pvp but almost always consistently contribute in fights. And my stats were done manually. needing bots is a myth that comes up every world that has gone past 6 months bcs every bored faction fighter still playing just logs on to eat some food and then flex the 5k they gained over the course of the world.

If youre losing the first 1/2 months in to a world it wasnt bots git gud. Game sucks tho ur right

[razfen]

I very much agree with most points with the exception of the first one.

The reasoning is that I've been playing with, or have been in close alliance with most of veteran factions in separate worlds with the exception of AD. I can tell you one thing: nobody's doing any major botting apart from some quality of life custom client features, such as quick looting (which should be dealt with somehow, because it kinda ruins the competitive aspect of looting in my opinion). Most factions just power through, taking a week off of work and playing 18 hours per day at the beginning to bootstrap their infrastructure. Many days are spent planning, many excel sheets are being made, and then 90% of these plans fail anyway, because everyone has different individual plans and nobody wants to volunteer for digging duty.

There are many other reasons why people don't bot that hardcore:
1. Most mechanics change a lot between worlds. This world was the only one that I can remember since playing, that hunting did not change significantly at all. In World 9 you could just hunt with a bow in a boat. Later they made it so the animal ran away and bashed the fences while running. Then arrows started to cap the hides next world, then another world comes around and animals have hard soak armor. The food meta also keeps changing, because the hunger system is also changed every now and then.

2. You could argue that existing scripts could be easily edited to adjust for the changes, but time spent debugging is time that you could instead spend collecting resources. Our custom client developer basically skipped the first week or two because he was busy maintaining the client code. This is not necessarily a fun activity in my mind, but there may be people who enjoy that aspect. I have my respects for the custom client developers of all the major factions because of this dedication.

3. Botting is just iffy. There are a lot of timings that you would need to match, and even if you adjust for everything, random lag spikes can still break the bots very easily.

The extreme efficiency that you see most often from big groups usually comes down to just having the following elements:
- Big groups of often 10-20+ people organizing everything from the get-go to speedrun the village.
- 2-3 core members (the autists xd) just doing everything. These guys usually have the top stats, the best quality stuff on their plots, and they are also the people who fight the best. They just do everything hyper-efficiently to the point where they have to adjust their real life schedules, and the game becomes a second job for them. We had ONE miner who did all the mining for the entirety of the first month basically, and then ONE other guy who did the entire village infrastructure.

You people who keep complaining about bots just have to accept the fact that there are people out there who put horrendous amounts of time into this game to be on top. There MIGHT be one autist per village who does botting, but even then it isn't on the scale you imagine.

Don't get me wrong though, botting IS an issue for sure, but most high profile players don't do it because they want to play the game.

[razfen]

Another note on PvP:

It is retarded, I agree. The barrier of entry is way too high, to the point where I will just never participate in PvP again most likely.

You have to pay attention to a lot of things, even just running in a straight line without losing speed is a difficult task to juggle mentally, because you have to time your drinking perfectly. This only comes with a lot of experience and basically getting it into muscle memory.

You missed the drinking sweet spot at 55%? Dang, you lost speed. You didn't drink right before sprint land comes? Dang, you lost speed. You didn't run in a straight line? Dang, you lost speed. Whenever you turn, people chasing you from the sides just get closer to you. You clicked too many times close to your character? Dang, you lose speed every time you click because your character freezes for a frame. Random boat speed RNG can also just fuck you up while boating if you don't have a custom client feature that tells you your boat's current speed. All this is just a convoluted mess.

To achieve all these PvP skills, you either participate in training drills (which is not fun at all most of the time), or go to a lot of fights and lose characters.

[telum12]

1.

Botting is not as bad as you think it is. "Period."

If you think HnH botting is worse than OSRS, WoW, or any other major game, you're a delusional twat. If the existence of any form of botting turns you off from a game, you should probably go play a singleplayer game, because there will always be botting in multiplayer games.

2.

Probably true, except the "bla bla botted stats." You can get into the high hundreds relatively easily without botting, you're just a nab and don't know efficient ways of doing so. ASK PEOPLE INSTEAD OF WHINING.

3.

What do you think games are? It's all just endless grinding. Why play OSRS? Grinding. Why play WoW? Grinding. It's all fucking grinding.

Also because of diminishing returns there's a point where more grinding doesn't do much so you don't have to do it endlessly.

4.

kinda tru except you're really whiny

"Is knowing that some faggot is doing the same things, only his bot is doing it all for him, and that's fine apparently, either learn to code or deal with it."

tl;dr: You are delusional and think botting doesn't exist in every other multiplayer game. You should get a singleplayer game.

[Nocturnal-Rainbows]

1.
tl;dr: You are delusional and think botting doesn't exist in every other multiplayer game. You should get a singleplayer game.

It doesn't.
You mention WoW, I played WoW for years, didn't bot, didn't know anybody who botted, where's the botting? Don't tell me you think using some UI modifying mods or cooldown timers are in the same vein as full blown botting lmao. I played Lineage 2 for years. Didn't bot, didn't know a single other person or faction that botted either. I played UO as well, same story.
In fact, as I'm sat here thinking about it, I cannot think of a single online multiplayer game where botting is allowed in the same way that it's allowed here.
The situation in this game can be compared to using a cheat engine in another game that the devs allow, but providing you make your own. It's mind blowing.
Tbh, I don't even blame the botters themselves, this is on the devs. Just build that shit into the client already or do away with it, instead they openly allow 90% of the players to not have access to this shit since people aren't going to know how to make their own botting programs while allowing the ones that do to freely use it. Let everyone be able to do it or let non. That way people are going to get discouraged by feeling that they're working harder and gaining less than others.

Anyway, I'm not even gonna bother arguing anymore, the proof is in the pudding, just look at the player count. You wanna bury your head in the sand? That's on you. Same shit has been happening for like 10 years now, if you haven't been able to figure this out yet, you never will.
This is literally not only my opinion either, I get people to play every world (besides this one), set up a discord, get some old and new players together and those are the reasons they leave. As much as I bitch about the botting issue though, I personally don't leave because of that. I drop out because the quality grind is mind numbingly boring and it's never ending. Oh yeah before I drop out of this reply, you mention that in those other games it's non stop grinding. Wrong again, those games have a clear, concise point where you can drop grinding and start having some real fun. They have level caps, skill and stat caps, they have optimal gear which when you've got you don't need anything else. Not so for this game, the grind is eternal from the moment your character enters the world until the world ends.

[SnuggleSnail]

I think you're half right. The perception here is very bad, and the FEELING turns people off. It sure turned me off before I joined a fraction and realized it's not that bad, TBH.

I unironically think in its current state botting in haven isn't as bad as any of the other games you've mentioned, except maybe(?) UO. Even in UO I used to use the razor client to GM my entire character before PKing. I don't even remember it being against the rules there, but for the most part I didn't play on official servers so that kinda makes sense. I suspect the only difference you're feeling is that it's being done publicly, and talked about openly as opposed to an open secret you can sorta pretend doesn't exist like in most other games. The most egregious forms of botting are ///usually/// moderated here as well, although admittedly that's only if somebody other than the devs finds it and complains enough, but it happens.

botting in wow
I played wow religiously between the end of BC to MOP and I can say for sure me and most of my friends botted, at least honor/gold plus some reputations.

Runescape

[Massa]

I thought I was going to be like "lol tl;dr didn't ask didn't care" but I did read, and I agree.

Bots aren't the issue you think they are, like you said, but they are an issue.

I agree with your take that noobs should fight it out and keep conflict local as opposed to solved by 'federal powers' per se but I hardly see shit pop off anyway.

This game is grindy but it could be less grindy, and small QoL changes that remove tedium/all the tedium complaining is about this. To an extent, this game MUST have a grind. Grinds are not bad things.

I agree with devs leaving shit for too long. Thankfully we've gotten some QOL, but we really need way, way more.