Balance the game further towards items and infrastructure

[bitza]

Something to keep in mind is that another factor that is trivializing the permadeath feature of Haven and Hearth is the LP system, specifically curiosities. The way it is designed, it makes it easy to produce a large amount of characters. Even if LP is reduced and inheritance is removed from the game, the curiosity still gives those that make alt manufacturing factories an advantage as they will still gain (number of alt) times the net LP of a single character. If they should lose one of those character, they have (number of alts - 1) back-up characters and can resume where they left off unless they happen to lose all of them which would simply be the fault of the player anyhow.

and here we reach the true crux of the problem - alts. if i am only able to play one character, i am going to make damn well sure that i think through my actions before i go swinging a sword around at anyone i see. until world 5 i only played one character, and i lost characters here and there, and every time it was a major punch in the dick to rebuild, even without losing production capacities. and every time i went into combat, i had to think long and hard about the reason i was fighting and if it was worth putting my only character on the line.

i've always said it and i will continue to say, LP is the king of what you need to care about when it comes to combat, and with curios running in tandem on theoretically infinite characters it is possible to hedge all bets and turn permadeath into a worst-case scenario of "welp, there goes another alt"

[Tonkyhonk]

i know many players disapprove of Einherjeraspekt, but isnt it originally for taking a revenge against the murderer who lived and didnt lose the LP like the one who fell did?
i mean, it may be unbalanced now, but im not really sure scratching the original concept of einher all together is good, especially when death and its penalty, and alt factory issue is solved and balanced well.

[MagicManICT]

On the aspect of Einher: for the top tier players, it is VERY possible to play into a long-term end game building up a very powerful combat character, intentionally killing it off, and then redoing said build just to make a god-like descendant. With the current system of disposable alts, it becomes easier to do this. I'm just not sure how much it's done, though.

Under the assumption "players only are really able to commit to one character," this is still possible, but becomes much more dangerous. Losing the character too early can make the build-up problematic, or even losing the descendant too early. There's balance to it, but I'm not sure if it's enough. I just don't have experience with it and could just do numbers on paper.

I'm a bit torn on this whole issue, and believe me, I've been putting some thought into it the last couple of months, mostly along the lines of this: What about a game where infrastructure was the objective and the characters were just disposable pawns? I really don't want to say too much more, as I really am interested in creating something like this myself. I'll be watching this discussion closely, though. (Might start a blog when I have enough to create a clear copyright. There's enough IP poaching going on as is.)

Haven & Hearth, as currently designed, favors the character aspect more than infrastructure. Why do I say this? Everything can be traded. Even a completely new player, economically motivated enough, could build up as quickly as they can pump LP into the necessary crafting skills. Honestly, they're probably wasting time trying to build their own mines, etc. I'd try proving my point, but I'm just not the guy to do it. I'm successful when I do trading in games, but not on the level of others (such as Ramones). I bet that if a new player could grind up their farming to 150 or higher, they could find someone that would sell them a selection of seeds of an approximately equal quality. What stops new players from trading like this? Skill development. Without that 150 farming, strong enough STR and smithing (for metal curios), etc., they can't really put to use the best they can potentially get from trade. Thus my conclusion (And my dilemma... how do you go from this "character development" to "infrastructure development" with minimal emphasis on a character and still get people to play?)

[DDDsDD999]

On the aspect of Einher: for the top tier players, it is VERY possible to play into a long-term end game building up a very powerful combat character, intentionally killing it off, and then redoing said build just to make a god-like descendant. With the current system of disposable alts, it becomes easier to do this. I'm just not sure how much it's done, though.

It's more fun to swap out the character's gear with meh q stuff and go on a murdering rampage.

[MagicManICT]

Yeah, I was thinking it's too much work for too little reward. There's definitely a lot to be said for throwing caution into the wind and going crazy. It's been a LOOONG time since I've done that in any game.

[enconclock]

Speaking from the perspective of someone who has only put a weekend into this game, why not simply limit people to one character and assign a Q to it based off of diet? This can easily be represented in-game by "eating good food makes you strong". This Q would take a lot of time and infrastructure (farms, stockpiles of hunted things, etc) and not be inheritable.

[DDDsDD999]

Speaking from the perspective of someone who has only put a weekend into this game, why not simply limit people to one character

Because they can't.

[brohammed]

What about a game where infrastructure was the objective and the characters were just disposable pawns

I'd really like to play something like that. Closest I can think of is Love, by eskill steenberg. Dwarf fortress kinda counts too.

Salem could have gone down that route if the Darkness was a spreading thing, and the "world goal" was to cooperate and expand civilisation.