Two Important Suggestions for Haven Before Release

[finegamingconnoisseur]

The Haven tutorial island is just around the corner it seems, and before it is released I need to point out two important things that I think will be crucial to keeping MO2 from deviating off course as I see it.

One, players who leave Haven cannot take any items they have gained on the island to the mainland Myrland.

Two, all players who begin on Haven will have limited logged in time before they will be forced to leave for the mainland.

These two suggestions are to prevent what I foresee as predictable unfair advantages and giving players the wrong impression about the game.

The first suggestion is to prevent what I see as open abuse of the purpose of Haven, which is to teach new players how to play the game in detail.

If you allow players to take their items to the mainland when they leave Haven, you will effectively enable players who have multiple gaming PCs and deep wallets to have one account for their main character and the other accounts to gather low-tier resources in complete safety indefinitely.

They will gather everything they can from the island, arrive on Myrland and hand it all to their main character, delete the alt character, and start over. Rinse and repeat.

The second suggestion is to keep Haven from becoming something resembling a sort of Trammel that (in my opinion) killed Ultima Online.

New players who for whatever decide that they will settle permanently on Haven and never leave for the mainland, have effectively turned their experience of the game into one of consensual PVP, non-looting upon death, and never needing to set foot on Myrland which I feel goes against the spirit of the game.

Give new players on Haven one full week of logged in time (168 hours that only count down while they are logged in) which should be more than sufficient for them to learn the basic and advanced elements of gameplay. Once this timer runs out, they are kicked off Haven and brought to Myrland at the town or location of their choice.

Haven needs to remain as a place where new players learn how to play the game, not to live there. Ideally, Haven should always have a steady stream of new players arriving and leaving the island. This would be seen as a healthy state for not just the island, but the mainland as well, which in turn should lead to more players playing the game as it was intended.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Speznat]

Preventing players from taking there stuff with them is just wrong.
Thats symptom fixing not problem fixing.

Simple solution would be: make the resources less on haven, less drops and less stuff. Problem solved.
That means for veterans its not worth the hassle. And thats how star vault always should come up. They always should Fixing the Problem not the Symptom of the problem.


Here just maybe an Idea. not fleshed out but maybe just an brainstorm example:
The rest of the game should be like on the mainland. but with many guards in the town.
Maybe some animals nearby that a noob can atleast farm pigs and stuff with guards nearby while 5guys pvp camping the town gate.

Than outside of town no guards and same rules like the mainland.
No additional stuff or extra mechanics needed. the game is still hardcore and should be.

(Optional and not very nessary, but still and option) And Maybe another option.
If to many players get slaughtered outside town:
No priest that revive red players. or something like this.
with 1 murderocunt youre out and get thrown onto the main land.
Or stuff like Priest are only inside town. Such Stuff

 

[Speznat]

And Second:
No timer, everyone hates timers likes hell. Timers are always shit never timers. people may have the feelign that they are missing something than. No never a good idea.
Haven leaving should be option of choice. 99% will leave anyway to the mainland.
But there must be the Boat npc in the town of haven, that people can also immediatly leave if they want. and nto have to run across the map.

Haven should be free to play. That people can try the game. Many got problems with pay to try games.
Would also be awesome if you wanna show a friend and he is not sure if its something for him or he is not sure if it runs on his mashine.

My suggestions are just ideas and maybe have flaws. but thats why we discuss stuff on the forums. Come on people ideas!
I wanna see brainstorming suggestions here.

 

[Kaemik]

If Haven needs a timer to inspire people to leave, the resources there are too valuable and the content quantity too great. Newbs should be able to take the stuff they earn in the tutorial with them, and have as long as they want to complete it. That being said, if they cut and paste that crap over from MO1 I can see the need for this.

I just hope for once they don't cut and paste. Prettymuch the entire community on both sides of the debate has said they don't want to see a Haven as large and resource-rich as it was in MO1.

 

[grendel]

If you allow players to take their items to the mainland when they leave Haven, you will effectively enable players who have multiple gaming PCs and deep wallets to have one account for their main character and the other accounts to gather low-tier resources in complete safety indefinitely.

I think the above is very likely to happen, if it does it will destroy the haven experience for new players.

I also think that it should be possible to completely skip haven, if you want to.

 

[Xunila]

I also think that it should be possible to completely skip haven, if you want to.

Completely skipping Haven makes no sense because at least you have to run to all tutors and learn the skills. Might also be useful to get some mounts before leaving Haven because it might be much easier to get some (we had donkeys and Steppe horses in Haven of MO1). Of cause you can run to the harbor of Haven and move to Myrland within 15 minutes.

 

[grendel]

Completely skipping Haven makes no sense because at least you have to run to all tutors and learn the skills. Might also be useful to get some mounts before leaving Haven because it might be much easier to get some (we had donkeys and Steppe horses in Haven of MO1). Of cause you can run to the harbor of Haven and move to Myrland within 15 minutes.

I really hope that SV will include tutors on myrland, otherwise anyone(new players or senile fucks like me) who forget to learn all the skills, will have to reroll.

 

[Rhias]

I really hope that SV will include tutors on myrland, otherwise anyone(new players or senile fucks like me) who forget to learn all the skills, will have to reroll.

I hope no got damn tutors are needed and you start with level 0 in those skills, e. g. cooking or woodcutting.

 

[Kaemik]

I hope no got damn tutors are needed and you start with level 0 in those skills, e. g. cooking or woodcutting.

Yeah, tutors were a symptom of MO1s bad leveling system which has begun to carry over into MO2 already. They're completely unnecessary in a better system.

 

[Eldrath]

Yeah, tutors were a symptom of MO1s bad leveling system which has begun to carry over into MO2 already. They're completely unnecessary in a better system.

Your repeating mistake is that you just assume that SV will make improvements on systems without any basis for that assumption.

The reason why vets like me point these things out again and again is because we know that SV is very lazy in the idea department. They work like crazy but don´t spend enough time reflecting on their mistakes. Whenever Henrik talks about how they learned from the past 15 years it´s seem ironic since they already ported over some of their failures.

If Haven needs a timer to inspire people to leave, the resources there are too valuable and the content quantity too great. Newbs should be able to take the stuff they earn in the tutorial with them, and have as long as they want to complete it. That being said, if they cut and paste that crap over from MO1 I can see the need for this.

I just hope for once they don't cut and paste. Prettymuch the entire community on both sides of the debate has said they don't want to see a Haven as large and resource-rich as it was in MO1.

You can look at Sebs comments on Discord. It will be a copy of Mo1 with instancing added on top.

Maybe now you understand why my threads and this one are extremely necessary.


Edit:

Here are the extensive thread where both these points are discussed at length.

Why we don´t need Haven

This is an appeal to push back and/or abandon the concept of “Haven” for Mortal Online 2. I will lay out 3 connected arguments that will show that dedicating development time and resources to this will have a negative impact on the game. 1. Most games do just fine without a tutorial, let alone...

mortalonline2.com

Haven in MO2

SV will put in restrictions to make Haven unattractive for veteran farming. Which should those be? Haven is supposed to be an noobie island in which you can learn the game in complete safety. So no thievery or ganking. Which means that farming there is much more efficient, since you cannot...

mortalonline2.com

 

[Necromantic]

How about just make all items you can get on Haven special items that can't be sold or traded. I mean they are essentially newbie items.

I hope no got damn tutors are needed and you start with level 0 in those skills, e. g. cooking or woodcutting.

I don't mind tutors as long as they only give you an insignificant amount of skill so that you basically only get the ability to use the skills. And they should only work as long as you only have almost no skills spent in total. Similar to a starting "template".

 

[Kallardian Prince]

Henrik said he is unsure about Haven and clades. I think it might be a good idea to limit the amount of achieveable clade points to 4 on Haven, so new players get to have a character building goal on Haven and when they spend all the effort necessary to earn 4 clade points they will have a deeper understanding of character builds, either through tutorial or people explaining to them, on the one hand and on the other hand they will want to leave Nave so they can continue earning Clade points. On that note I hope they will allow remaking the character upon leaving Haven whilst retaining Clade points.

 

[Rhias]

How about just make all items you can get on Haven special items that can't be sold or traded. I mean they are essentially newbie items.


I don't mind tutors as long as they only give you an insignificant amount of skill so that you basically only get the ability to use the skills. And they should only work as long as you only have almost no skills spent in total. Similar to a starting "template".

They are frustating in my opinion.
You know that feeling when you're somewhere deep in the jungle and you notice that you forgot to talk to the cooking tutor, and you don't know how to put palm fruit and water into a pot?

Or you're standing in front of a tree and notice that you don't know how to swing an axe...

 

[Kaemik]

Your repeating mistake is that you just assume that SV will make improvements on systems without any basis for that assumption.

The evidence for that assumption is getting thinner, but it's a rather necessary one to make as otherwise, any discussion about the future of this game is pointless. MO2 as an MO1 cut and paste with shinier graphics and a bigger map has no future. So minimizing the damage of implementing the game that way seems a bit redundant. It can't succeed without meaningful improvements in a few key areas so why bother debating the details of a system that's doomed to failure?

 

[Eldrath]

The evidence for that assumption is getting thinner, but it's a rather necessary one to make as otherwise, any discussion about the future of this game is pointless. MO2 as an MO1 cut and paste with shinier graphics has no future.

If you don´t make that assumption you will be able to give better and more focused feedback.

I mean if you suggest somthing to Henrik that he is already doing or planning on doing - great. It might reinforce him to do what´s best.

If you on the other hand just assume that he is doing it and don´t speak up it will just stay the same because the message is: "It´s great the way it is."

 

[Kaemik]

I'll put it this way. If we get Haven and it's a pure cut and paste of MO1. Neither of us are going to be happy. But my reaction is going to "Implement timers to rush newbs through their tutorial and implement import restrictions so they can't take their donkey and newb sword with them."

It's going to be "Get rid of the wisents, get rid of the razorbacks, streamline the experience, do it better."

 

[finegamingconnoisseur]

How about just make all items you can get on Haven special items that can't be sold or traded. I mean they are essentially newbie items.

That could work as well. Also make it so that those special items are non-lootable upon death, but will disappear as per usual when the loot bag is unclaimed and the timer expires.

Though one thing that concerns me is how crafted items using resources marked as special items would be treated as. Maybe need to mark them as special items, too. So that you don't get situations where the in-game economy gets flooded with items that can undercut identical ones crafted on the mainland using regular resources. Due to the resources being obtained with essentially zero risk.

 

[Valoran]

We already know that the resources obtainable on Haven will be severely limited in quality and quantity compared to Myrland.

If a player wants to attempt to create and pay for alt accounts to spawn, skill up every skill required to efficiently gather these lowest tier resources then transport them to Myrland and repeat, they should quickly find out that the time spent constantly levelling up new characters is entirely wasted, as you will be able to gather those same resources much easier on Myrland, in higher quantities and in less time than using the above method. I don't see this being a problem at all.

Imagine being a completely new player and spending dozens of hours on Haven playing this great new game with your friends after launch, only to learn that all the materials you found and gathered, all the things you crafted or bought will be deleted upon travelling to Myrland.

This can of course be remedied by telling the player immediately that everything they find on Haven will be taken when leaving, but that encourages rushing through everything and not actually enjoying the experience.

It also goes against Mortal's entire feature of persistence, in that whatever you do will remain. Whatever you find, you get to keep and it won't ever be taken away from you by the game, only the players in it.


Allowing players to gain a small amount of wealth and items before arriving on Myrland ensures that history should not repeat itself, where hundreds upon hundreds of prospective players finished the 10 minute tutorial, walked outside Tindrem gate and died immediately with everything they had on them, then proceed to quit, uninstall the game and never think about it again.

If you have a couple gold in the bank and a few extra weapons, you're far less likely to quit when dying for the first time as you know you haven't lost everything.

The more a player gets to play the game, the more attached they become to their characters and their place in the game world. You need to allow the player to have enough time in order to foster this investment, and therefore care about the game enough not to quit at the first sign of failure.

 

[Farligbonde]

A fairly good and simple way would be just to only have fairly basic materials on haven when it comes to materials and animals, just so people can learn to play and craft the basic stuff, let them keep this basic material and crafted gear beacuse it will also be fairly easily obtainable myrland continent and wouldn't hurt the economy that much.
If a player want to have several sets of the most basic gear-let them. If players want alot of basic ore and wood-let them.
To get people off the island and into the main game. Put a lvl cap on skills, because haven is simply a demo/tutorial this could work very well together with making haven f2p.
And since there is lvl cap, i would assume players cant carry that much anyways.
Start a quest chain in haven that leads to the boat that takes you to the mainland.

A tutorial that does this good is acutally old runescape. It let's new players learn and get a taste for the game on their tutorial island, with lvl cap and just enough stuff to teach the player the basics and they can bring their stuff with them to the main game, i think it's a rather good tutorial.

 

[Eldrath]

A lot of incomplete information being used here.

1. Haven skill gains are going to be fast. Confirmed by Henrik. Meaning skill up a character to do one thing won´t be hard or prolonged at all.
2. Resources on a map half the size of old Myrland are going to be plentyful even with competition.
3. Banks are transfered, not inventories.
4. Considering a "tutorial area" aka PvE server will have extraction thus it won´t be basic ore but intermediate products being transferred.

Obviously those interested in a PvE server will distort facts to suit their narrative. Distortion does not change them.

Tricking players into liking Mortal by disabling defining features (full loot, open PvP) so that they buy a subscription, leave Haven and then experience a game they did not want to play is dishonest and will certainly backfire. If SV has so little faith in their own game that they have to hide behind a friendly optional PvP mask they probably should not be making a full loot PvP sandbox.