Mist thoughts?

[Nospeedy]

Was wondering what everyone was thinking about the current implementation of the mist. Seems alot of people have been getting caught in it recently.

[Luka]

Seems to be the general sentiment. The mist has a habit of dropping a group of monsters strong enough that even the strongest characters on grid all teamed up would struggle to handle them, often times seemingly spawning them directly into the square you’re in. It’s very easy to but in a no win situation when in the mist, and people are getting abducted often enough that people are regularly needing to go into the mists to go and recover those people.

I’m told that it’s game theoretically possible to recover someone safely if you know what you’re doing, but I think the people who say that are just the ones that got lucky and didn’t have a minotaur, a satry, a shadow creature, a wyvern, and a devouring plant all spawned into the room alongside them.

I imagine some kind of setting somewhere was accidently set too high, or, as often is the case in game development, something was implemented with an unpredictable effect that’s resulting in the mist being way, way harsher than it was intended to be.

[Luka]

to be put into a no win situation*

An edit button on forum posts would be pretty sick

[Rev]

I think the mists are great. It gives the game a reason to group and help and work together with a common enemy – the actual enemy. Please remember we’re just early in the game with T2s. By the time t5s are rolling around with their 600hp and 100 damage with 200 stagger per hit… these enemies will probably be rather easy. So it makes sense that we don’t nerf it into the ground while everyone is supposed to be weak? If you can solo them when you’re t1/t2 what’s the point of getting stronger?

The bugs about people getting reabducted while being saved should be fixed. But I think it’s exciting that it moves around the map. Already I see people saying ‘oh I had to camp out at x bar because of the mist’. That’s GOOD. That’s what you want to do. Not check that your house is the middle of the mists and go oh I must go home tonight to sleep and then get abducted.

[Luka]

I agree with the theory you’re presenting, but I don’t think the 5 man goonsquads being dunked onto your square directly from the heavens is all that great. I imagine a lot of these are situations even a T5 would be struggling with.

[Nospeedy]

It has been spawning some press BS gank squads ontop of people. And I don’t think trying to use the T5 and T4 which are supposed to be really strong and not the majority of players to balance it isn’t really the best method.

[Sophie]

My issue is the whole spawning outside of homes or businesses. I have no clue how combat works in this game as a newbie. I probably built my whole character wrong and need to redo them. So not being able to walk to a car outside of a house without being mauled, which then takes eons to heal, is not fun. It doesn’t craft RP either.

[Nospeedy]

Yeah. It has been catching alot of newbies and hospitalizing them. And if they don’t got regeneration? Gonna be sitting in one room for like a week. Does put a really bad impression. Maybe can change it to not be spawning stuff outside businesses and homes atleast?

[Anonymous]

The mist monsters spawn too frequently, hit too hard, have too much hp, and monsters bug out and follow players in areas not intended, and can even spawn on top of a player when they enter a new tile, which makes stealth 3, which worked wonderfully in previous iterations quite the lackluster investment now.

Mist grinding was already a boring, monotonous, and laborious activity, and now it’s just a true newbie trap, overly punishing, and group based only and even then how randomized the monsters are, and their wonky power levels showing up in areas they shouldn’t be in, or en masse based on number of players, can absolutely destroy even the most hardened Haven veteran.

TL;DR: Not good, overly punishing, bugs out, monsters hit too hard and have too much HP, and overwhelms even experienced groups with too many hard hitting monsters due to size of group.

[Pingpongspiders]

As things stand, I quite like the mist and how it works. I think a few things could be tweaked, but that’s a given with how new it all is.

1. I think the ‘deep mist’ takes up too much of the area the mist blankets. I would prefer a more middling or even small core of where the mist is deepest, and a more generous portion to only be ankle/waist height, to give people learning to hunt rats a little more mobility, and so that it’s a bit less risky to access your property if it is stuck in the mist.

2. Car pathfinding is tricky and will (as of the last time I checked) take you through the mist even if it could have gone around it to reach the destination, leading to lots of car crashes and so many horses on grid. Not that horses are bad, but we might get some more variety back if cars only crashed if the destination specifically is in the mist or some other measure like that.

3. Newbies have been complaining a fair amount about how quickly overwhelming the mist is and how long the consequences last, so a ‘newbie friendly’ feature might be to check a character’s hours and invested CXP, and if they are below a certain threshold on both counts, they just get mild wounds when they’re KO’d and get spat out on the border of the mist. So be it if that separates them from their vehicle – now they have an excuse to set up an escort to get them safely reunited with their wheels.

Ultimately I think a lot of criticisms about monsters are a bit exaggerated or coming from newer players/players who’re used to hunting at a higher tier, fighting too aggressively before they’ve figured things out some more. Always bring a buddy and be ready to run if you’re going monster hunting!

[Mirabel]

2. Car pathfinding is tricky and will (as of the last time I checked) take you through the mist even if it could have gone around it to reach the destination, leading to lots of car crashes and so many horses on grid. Not that horses are bad, but we might get some more variety back if cars only crashed if the destination specifically is in the mist or some other measure like that.

Yes, this. Playing a non-combat character is almost impossible as it stands. Anytime you drive anywhere, there’s like a 20% chance that the game sends you in the wrong direction and into the mists where you will wreck your car and get attacked by monsters. It’s honestly so bad that it’s chipping away at my desire to play.

Just now, driving from the Ivory Quarter to a Downtown shop, the game decided to take me in the stark opposite direction and drive northwest instead of southeast, into the mist. Hey presto, wrecked car and unconscious with a severe wound an hour before my calendar event. And it’s not the first time this happens.

Combat with monsters should be reasonably avoidable, otherwise it’s a game where all characters must be warriors. That certainly isn’t something I want. I actually think the whole idea of dangerous monsters constantly roaming the city streets at all times, rampaging from borough to borough, is really bizarre and extremely unrealistic. There’s no way to suspend one’s disbelief enough to accept that this is a city people live in and lead at least relatively normal lives. If fighting for our lives against monsters is meant to be an everyday fact of life in New Haven, the city’s makeup and basic concept is completely at odds with the way the game is played.

In previous iterations, monsters were in the forest. That was believable. It made sense, and it was avoidable for those of us who don’t play characters where battling monsters with swords and guns matches the concept. The town itself was at least superficially realistic–you could see how there would be coffee shops, a school, people going to night clubs or the beach. Those things are entirely at odds with the idea of a city where bands of deadly mythical creatures mill about in the streets all day, every day, attacking everything in sight. That calls for a post-apocalyptic survival horror setting.

[Mirabel]

And on that note, my calendar event for today is postponed for the aforementioned reason.

[Calk]

In H6 the game kind of separated into two spheres: Those that go into the forest and those that don’t.

I think with H7 the idea was to make the monsters relevant to all players.

Unfortunately, the way that’s working out now is “you may be, through no fault of your own, sent into the mist where you will get a free trip to the hospital and spend the next 3 days there.” This will repeat at semi-random intervals with no real variation for noncombat characters, turning something that should be exciting and dangerous into an obnoxious monotony. I play a noncombat character and when he gets trapped in the mist it’s less “Oh no, danger” and more “Oh crap, time to dust off my hospital gown.”

I assume that eventually the pathing issue will be taken care of, but that’s not going to solve the underlying issue that the only interaction noncombat characters have with the mist is a trip to the hospital. I think expanding the options for dealing with the mists might be a necessary component of the game.

Fortunately there’s already a bunch of systems designed to make player created danger more interesting. What would people think about repurposing some of those as alternate solutions to being trapped in the mist? Some ideas that already have a basis in the code might be:

1) There’s a mechanic for fleeing from danger that could get you lost in an unknown location when your home is broken into, that could be repurposed to having people that end up flee to a random building (making it an automated thing rather than something they have to finegle through combat code) and then get rescued.

2) There’s a nice bargain mechanic whereby players can currently pact with a demon to get out of a player created trap. Just expand that to the mists and make it an option for tier 1’s.

3) When the dream worlds are up and running, maybe let characters opt for an automated adventure in the dream realm instead of physically moving through the mists.

[Mirabel]

At the very least, if there’s meant to be an army of monsters rampaging through the city 24/7, there needs to be clear demarcation between the inner and outer boroughs and a setting that prevents you from accidentally driving into the latter. It’s obnoxious having to research the location of every address before driving to make sure it isn’t in the mist, not to mention the risk of having the mist move to your area if you dare to spend any time in the outer boroughs. It really does feel like the game is designed from the assumption that all characters are expected to be monster-battling survivors who go around armed and armored at all times, with very little room for any character concept where that doesn’t fit.

And on top of fixing the pathfinding, can we please also make it so that if you typo an address and write ‘drive 25 maroner avenue’, it doesn’t drive you to intersection #25 on the map instead of 25 Mariner Avenue? It should only take you to an intersection of you type ‘drive 25’ (or whatever) with nothing else after it.

[MojoJojo]

Horrendous. Simply horrendous.

Haven is, already, a bad combat MUD. It just doesn’t hold up to par with MUDs designed around solid combat mechanics. Now, it practically forces everyone to deepthroat its bad combat mechanics and suck it up. You wanna go somewhere on the map — Here, let me detour you. Why would you go two stops west, which would be the logical path? Instead, let me send you all the way to the northeastern corner of the map, then straight into the centre of the mist, only to leave you crashed there.

Spawns are both predictable and way too rampant. There’s nothing engaging about going hunting, especially now that safe zones are practically completely removed. We had a few safe zones from which to orient ourselves, to prepare a little, to RP some during the hunt. Right now, you can’t do anything like this.

Because of the way safe spots were tweaked, now any store which would like to host some outdoor RP/activities is screwed. The mist is already so persistent when it finds a spot to sit on, it actively kills people’s desire to visit a store. I’ve had my store be in the epicentre twice now, and this is so destructive to the motivation and spirit of a player like me. You can invest a ton of passion and time into a store only for the game to just decide your store is now a kill zone and actively deter players for going there.

Monsters are way weird, too. Some of the mobs don’t want to aggro unless they have +1s. They roam real randomly, too. Some of them chase you, others decide to just wander away. Other times, you’re in combat and some new mob just decides to ignore the fast combat you’re already in, walks five rooms towards you, and only joins combat when it’s in the exact room with you – so now, on top of having the two mobs you were already dealing with via kiting, you have a weeping willow within 20 units of range of you.

Their damage numbers are whack, too. Ankle-deep, you’ll already encounter mushroom men, which can hit for around 15-18DF. That’s enough to two-turn an unsuspecting person who ended up in the mist cause of WALK. There’s carnivorous plants that deal upwards of 60DF in the waist-high. Then there’s the absurd monster swarms that show up in waist-deep, sometimes consisting of multiple golems, multiple Snarers, and a whole flock of ‘lesser’ mobs.

It’s a terrible design idea, no matter what way you colour it. It forces combat. It deters activity in entire areas of the game. It is unpredictable. It makes hunting unfun and turns it into just standing still on a tile on the street and only adjust what room you’re in when the mist status changed.

There isn’t a day that goes by where like 2-5 PCs are hospitalized. This helps highlight the core issue rather well. It’s way too brutal, unpredictable, and spammy/swarmy, and this is built into a game that does a bad job at providing an engaging, balanced (if not exciting) combat experience. It forces people to always be geared up for possible combat because of the MUDs inherent issues with pathfinding. It kills hunt RP with how spawns are now predictable -and- timed. And if it’s meant to be punishing, I’ll have you know you can outsprint pretty much every mob with Running 1.. but now need to sprint all the way to where the mist doesn’t reach if you don’t sprint through a street with a store next to it – but you better pray that the store, that hopeful safe zone, isn’t accessible only through the new auto-doors, as you didn’t seem to be able to move through them or open them last time I tried while in combat.

[Author]

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