I like the game atmosphere, and Rituals will add even more, they are a good reason for players to socialize and exlore the world.
BTW, Rituals icons are simply awesome, Jorb, you rock!
I'd love to see Rituals implemented, but only as an addition to the current gameplay.
The LP training gameplay isn't very realistic, but it's playable and fun - getting some kind of "experience points", that you later use for your character advancement in the direction you like most at current time.
As some people already said here before - learning to murder people by shaking hands with friends and singing morning songs is less realistic, than current system.
It would be good to have Wyrd buffs, like Timber Song and other, that give some bonus to core gameplay, not replace it's vital parts like LP system.
There is a common rule of game design - first make core gameplay fun, and then make additional gameplay, that adds more fun, but requires more of player's actions and attention. Some playes may like it, some don't, but the game is still playable for all of them, because core gameplay is still fun.
I play H&H for about a month and see it's gameplay fun and interesting, with nice balance.
Just my opinion, of course, but as a professional MMO game designer, I like H&H project very much.
It's better than many top-grade MMO projects - and trust me - I've seen a LOT of them.
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Concerning Fast Travel...
As a player, I like Fast Travel feature, because it saves me a lot of time when I go to explore the world.
Especially in situations, when I am lost during travels and cannot find my way home.
Fast Travel isn't overpowered, it has a limit - Travel Weariness, that restricts you from travelling all over the world in no time, and restricts the distance you may travel by one jump.
Even if you want to teleport somewhere, you are limited to Village Totems and Crossroads (which are not an easy thing to get and mantain).
You still cannot bring more than two chests of goods with you, which is really not much for a cross-village trading.
If you want to weaken "teleport trading" - restrict players from teleporting with a boat in hands, only with normal containers - that would lower the trading volumes by half approximately, and would force people to use other ways of transportation.
Fast Travel is a base for several other interesting gameplays, like wine, beer and tobacco production.
If Fast Travel is removed - they have to be changed as well.
Perhaps, if Wine and Beer get some nice FEP points, this is not a problem.
As a game designer, I understand your concern about Fast Travel being a very common way of travelling, it ruins roleplay atmosphere and allows people to scatter around the world, thus lowering their need for socialization and interaction.
But good natural resources are widely scattered too, so it usually requires a lot of time to get from one village to another.
Common ways of travelling are mostly boring, swimming the same route for half an hour a 100th time is simply not fun for most players.
Introducing wagons and rafts really made Fast Travel trading a less effective way of trading, but wagons are high-level gameplay, because they require cow taming, which is not an easy task for a moderately experienced player, especially if his region doesn't have plains that spawn buffalos. This is a reason why many players still prefer teleportation over wagons for trading.
I'd suggest to add some medium-level trading alternatives, like cargo boats for example.
Main trade routes are still tied to water, as it was in real medieval world, so boats are preferred over land vehicles - they are much faster and safer, comparing to the carts, for example.
Make cargo boats slower than regular ones, they should require more resources to build, including medium-level technologies, like ropes, leather or cloth.
In exchange cargo boats might have two more slots for containers, or a "big cargo hold", like a wagon.
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Concerning macros...
It's a common problem for most MMORPGs, and there is no absolute solution to it, really.
EVERY player action can be scripted and automated, there are lots of ways to do that without game software modifications, so tracking them is a real problem.
Even EVE Online, the most macro-protected MMO I've seen yet, has bots, that are effective and are very hard to trace.
Of course there are ways to monitor repeating actions, account uptimes, actions time intervals and such things, but it increases server load, and still doesn't help much, if a player adds some randomization to his macros.
H&H isn't a commercial project (yet, I hope it will get a good financial support in future to keep it running), more than that - it's an alpha version, so there are no reasons to be worried about some macroers influencing game world economics and balance, their influence is minimal, comparing to a common gameplay H&H provides.
Whatever macro you make - you still have to get food, eat, get resources, restore stamina and many other actions, that are much easier and fun to do manually, than automate them. The core gameplay itself creates conditions, where macroing is ineffective.
Anyway, the best solution to "macro training" problem - find reasons why people use macros - probably these are most boring parts of your game.
Make this gameplay interesting - and most people will stop using macros.
Make training through some other gameplay more effective - people will stop using old macros at all.
