Bob Dole looks back at the stat cap

[overtyped]

In havens past, skills were at one time capped at 300, but people didn't like it.
The idea of stat caps were very unhaven like, and I agree with that. However this was good in some ways, you couldn't bot to 5000 strength and agility, and had no incentive to. Of course this doesn't mean I want that same stat cap system back. I don't.

While stats like that aren't a problem in itself, the ability to get there is not available to everyone. Big factions have people creating elaborate scripts, but they aren't keen on giving those away, and there's no reason they should. One solution would be adding smart scripting abilities into the standard client, which would allow even a hermit to have the ability to somewhat compete, however that would be time consuming, and a waste of development time. Botting isn't fun either.

The game currently feels unhaven like, and if you aren't botting with the best scripts, then you are always weaker than those that do. Sure, you could be a hapless hermit in the woods and be happy with that, but simply the fact you will never be able to change that fact is disheartening.

So here's one idea that could stay true to haven while allowing players to stay on a (sort of) even footing.

Continue to allow stats to be increaseable forever, however, no matter how high you go above 300 con/strength/agility/unarmed/mc, you won't actually gain more benefit once you are aggroed by a player, (but you can scale forever in pve. Con would be hard capped at 300 for pve and pvp). Equipment would be exempt from this, a 600 pvp stats limit could be potentially possible with good equipment, and it moves the goalposts from enormous cheese botting farms to botting quality. At least in regards to pvp only content.

I said (sort of), because players will still make botting farms, and instead of increasing one character to infinity, they'll make legions of throwaway characters with 300 mc/agi/str, etc. There isn't anything you can do about this, but at least a hermit has (some) fighting chance.

Isn't this more haven like?

[shubla]

Haven is q1000 carrots and beetroot farm bots.

[SavageFox]

In havens past, skills were at one time capped at 300, but people didn't like it.
The idea of stat caps were very unhaven like, and I agree with that. However this was good in some ways, you couldn't bot to 5000 strength and agility, and had no incentive to. Of course this doesn't mean I want that same stat cap system back. I don't.

While stats like that aren't a problem in itself, the ability to get there is not available to everyone. Big factions have people creating elaborate scripts, but they aren't keen on giving those away, and there's no reason they should. One solution would be adding smart scripting abilities into the standard client, which would allow even a hermit to have the ability to somewhat compete, however that would be time consuming, and a waste of development time. Botting isn't fun either.

The game currently feels unhaven like, and if you aren't botting with the best scripts, then you are always weaker than those that do. Sure, you could be a hapless hermit in the woods and be happy with that, but simply the fact you will never be able to change that fact is disheartening.

So here's one idea that could stay true to haven while allowing players to stay on a (sort of) even footing.

Continue to allow stats to be increaseable forever, however, no matter how high you go above 300 con/strength/agility/unarmed/mc, you won't actually gain more benefit once you are aggroed by a player, (but you can scale forever in pve. Con would be hard capped at 300 for pve and pvp). Equipment would be exempt from this, a 600 pvp stats limit could be potentially possible with good equipment, and it moves the goalposts from enormous cheese botting farms to botting quality. At least in regards to pvp only content.

I said (sort of), because players will still make botting farms, and instead of increasing one character to infinity, they'll make legions of throwaway characters with 300 mc/agi/str, etc. There isn't anything you can do about this, but at least a hermit has (some) fighting chance.

Isn't this more haven like?

I think the stat system the way it is fine yes there's some super uber Chad's like snail in the last World but I don't care I think the game is more interesting not everybody is going to be the best and not every game needs to be fair the highest I got my stats to is there around 2,000 without Bots I just traded for the good stuff

[Zampfeo]

It's hard to say what "haven-like" is these days because botting, factions, and stat titans have been common-place for the majority of Haven's existence at this point. Either way, this solution gets rid of titans, not botting. I'd rather see more changes that address botting - like reducing the impact of hard labor on hunger (no hunger, high energy food when?), reducing pointless time-wasting tasks (spitroast turning, stack furnace blowing, terraforming), and reducing needlessly high-APM tasks (butchering - just give us a butcher's table or something you can place animal corpses into and auto store into nearby stockpiles).

[Nexit]

Even if this isn't the solution, the game is way too group oriented. Too much specialization and too many things to manage in a competitive environment. If you aren't playing in a faction your relevance is negligible in the game, centering itself around a fraction of players.
Obviously cooperation and time investment will always dominate in a game like haven, but quite frankly some of you have TOO much time to play.

[Potjeh]

I don't think bots are nearly as much of a problem as the variable ingredient system. Factions can eat 10x more efficiently because they've used their numbers to explore the ingredient space and find ridiculously OP recipes that a hermit can never hope to discover. Only a small portion of recipes is publicly available, so I'm sure they're keeping the best ones a secret. So yeah, the utter randomness of the cooking system is bad and needs to be changed to something simpler and more predictable so hermits can cook efficiently without having a 10GB spreadsheet.

[Sevenless]

I don't think bots are nearly as much of a problem as the variable ingredient system. Factions can eat 10x more efficiently because they've used their numbers to explore the ingredient space and find ridiculously OP recipes that a hermit can never hope to discover. Only a small portion of recipes is publicly available, so I'm sure they're keeping the best ones a secret. So yeah, the utter randomness of the cooking system is bad and needs to be changed to something simpler and more predictable so hermits can cook efficiently without having a 10GB spreadsheet.

Ingredient availability was far more important for W13. Whale/Troll/Seal foods are just so beyond what a non-faction village tends to provide in bulk, and they were the massive stat boosters. We'll see this world, but I think it'll be similar.