Scholar quests should have a limit on duration

[Pills]

You know what's a really fun game mechanic and really makes me want to keep playing?
- Having quests I can reasonably achieve that keep me engaged by seeing progress.

You know what makes me bored of the game when everythign else is already tedious as fuck 3 months into the world?
- Spending 3 days on a study quest, for the next quest to be a 7 day study quest.

7 days is fucking insane. There should be a hard REASONABLE limit on how long a scholar study quest can be. "oh just abandon" and be set back 3 days. Yeah., what insanely fun and engaging game mechanic.

Like, atleast have the content that people are seeing at this point be fucking engaging, not just another reason to quit the world.

[Sevenless]

Is that with or without multiple contemplations?

[Vantri]

If studying a curiosity takes ages, Ageless Ice or Abyssal Insight might be applied. Acquiring both or any is really fun game mechanic.
On the side note, credos are not mandatory for survival.

[Pills]

credos are not mandatory for survival.

I mean, if you are to just take "survival" as the SOLE goal then the easiest way to do that is to just never log in again after creating a character. Same way that tetris AI learned to just pause the game so it never loses.
Its a stupid argument.

ice Spire respawns 1 every 12 days. Abyssal Insight requires bat dungeons and to get lucky that one even spawns.
Neither of these are good enough solutions to justify stupidly long quests.

Is that with or without multiple contemplations?

The fastest I could do it with only using contemplate once on each item would have been 72 hours total. at a cost of 8100xp because I haven't hit level 4 yet.
The xp cost is the bit that makes it somewhat unreasonable. I'm not opposed to quests having a max of 2-3 days WITH a reasonable xp cost for contemplation before getting the level 3 buff to reduce the cost.

However, this is still a game, player retention is almost non-existent. its all the little things like certain credos being demoralizing that add to people quitting. Sure, fixing *one* doesn't solve the problem, but it would be a push in the right direction.

[Pills]

Amazing, abandoned it, 3 days progress lost.got a 200hour study quest.

This is literally a textbook example of how to make somebody not want to play your game anymore.

[Sevenless]

Is that with or without multiple contemplations?

The fastest I could do it with only using contemplate once on each item would have been 72 hours total. at a cost of 8100xp because I haven't hit level 4 yet.
The xp cost is the bit that makes it somewhat unreasonable. I'm not opposed to quests having a max of 2-3 days WITH a reasonable xp cost for contemplation before getting the level 3 buff to reduce the cost.

However, this is still a game, player retention is almost non-existent. its all the little things like certain credos being demoralizing that add to people quitting. Sure, fixing *one* doesn't solve the problem, but it would be a push in the right direction.

8k in 3 days isn't bad if you're questing with any reasonable amount of charisma at this stage of the game. 2-4k/hour is probably average with leveled questers and 150-200CHA. Was thinking along the lines of "Is active questing and liberal use of contemplation a potential requirement?"

That said, I really don't think demoralizing credos has anything to do with player retention. Haven has bled off its population in the first 1-3 months for 10+ years now. Credos have not made that worse, if anything player retention is higher since credos have been introduced (a lot has changed though, so there's no guarantee that's more than correlation). Player retention cycles and world restarts are a much more core issue than the relatively new credo system.

[Pills]

if anything player retention is higher since credos have been introduced (

I agree. until people hit deadends like scholar.

In the time its taken me to progress 4 quests one of the guys in the village i'm in has finished cave hermit with 14 quests per level.
That is batshit insane.

People start leaving the game because they get bored of doing the same monotonous stuff and their friends leave. Credos help player retention 100% but only when the credo gives a meaningful sense of progress. Scholar does not. Scholar becomes just another senseless "log in to check it, probably put something on study and log out" task. Along with cheese making, animal herding, farming etc etc.

Credos absolutely should be something that helps retain active players, but when you log in to an absolutely unreasonable quest after it took 3 days to finish the last one, nah. That's not engaging or meaningful. That just makes you think "why am I still playing"

Also RE question: walking from tree to tree is fucking mind numbingly boring. To suggest that normal questing for xp somehow negates the dullness of scholar is just mad

[synntax33]

Alot of the things you have mentioned, I, as a hermit, have never seen.
I have played quite a few worlds, and maybe a 10th of the content. I usually quit at cows, or any livestock even.
The RL time upkeep just outpaces me and i quit. 41 yrs old and have played for at least 10 yrs. Have never made steel. Or wrought Iron for that matter.
I have been part of only one village, but it got wiped. Yet I play again, every new world. Every time the urge hits me. I continue because I love this game. I love what it stands for.

I love that when I get killed by a bear or a player, the adrenaline I feel is the same. I love that if, and when, i unlock metals this world, a whole host of new things from patches will be awaiting me. I love that my free time is fun, not a job. Its seems alot of voices here burn through content like theres no tomorrow, and complain.

I get it its, eternal alpha. Things need to change. But honestly, its still a good game.

Critique what you must. Remember that not all of us like PVP, or make every decision as a min/max. Alot of us enjoy the game, and its concept of a soceital simulator (thats why there is little dev base moderation) and alot of the subs are payed by hermits or smaller non faction players as well. Players like me.

Point is

nothing in this game make a person quit more than losing what they worked for and we all work for different things. I am adding this to the discussion as a counterpoint, for multiple complaints. Alot of what i feel is compelling, others ridicule. Yet what some believe is important I wont experience.

TL:DR
Don't quit because you cannot accomplish your goal as soon as possible. I feel that that time can be spent on other aspects of the game.

[Pills]

TL:DR
Don't quit because you cannot accomplish your goal as soon as possible. I feel that that time can be spent on other aspects of the game.

Easier said than done when you run out of fun things to spend time on. I'm in a pretty large group and most of the game bores the life out of me, like farming etc.
Credos "should't be trivial" but also shouldn't take upwards of 2 months to complete. I think the statement of

nothing in this game make a person quit more than losing what they worked for and we all work for different things

only really applies to hermits if i'm honest, and even then i've seen more people quit the game out of boredom than I have over dying or being raided in recent worlds. Even in world 10. Death in the game isn't what it was in legacy, you can easily recover stats etc in a couple of days if you push for it since its not a linear loss.

its also been 3 months, and there are plenty of other threads explaining why the games content only lasts a couple of months for the majority of players

[Sevenless]

Also RE question: walking from tree to tree is fucking mind numbingly boring. To suggest that normal questing for xp somehow negates the dullness of scholar is just mad

The only way to make things special in haven is to make them incredibly shitty to do. It's a grind game, everything easy to churn out will be churned by everyone. If we remove particularly shitty things, they stop having room for special design around them. Is it worth making nothing special in order to make the game design completely fair? Reminds me of the classic vs modern wow. They did that, but they also sucked the soul out. To make everything fair, everything had to become pretty similar and nothing was unique or unusual.

Not to say scholar shouldn't be rebalanced or changed. But the question is: Should some credos be notably shittier to acquire so that they can also be special and/or unusual? I think they should, because I'm tired of modern day "everything is fair and bland" game design. How could you rebalance scholar to be "fairer" but also keep the degree of difficulty in a grind game like haven? I can't think of one personally, the only things that are ever notably hard are "unfair" in people's opinions.

I only consider this unusual and hard option for scholar because it's not mandatory to have. If it was mandatory for everyone like farmer, I wouldn't have this opinion.