[Ckaleb]

Also, thanks for the Fairefield Parking Lot. What a wonderful gem to stumble upon in an otherwise identical series of roads and 3×3 houses.

[Ckaleb]

By far the greatest achievement of Haven was curating a playerbase of proficient writers to tell stories. I think, at its core, that’s been the objective of Haven. The promise of its premise.

I want to take a moment to list a few of my favorite moments, how the community aided in creating them, and then have a comparison of the setting across iterations and how mechanics helped or did not help in setting a foundation for the community to tell stories.

H6
-A woman on the cusp of her 30s, seeing the final year of her youth, desperately shivering out a cigarette from a smushed pack in a ditch as the rain runs mud through her shoes, trying to ignore the voice in her head repeating ‘BURN.’
-a copy of someone else’s ill-considered dreamlife begging for a way out of the responsibility or pregnancy in a world she knows will end before her child’s had any time at all to experience so much of the life she wants to bring it, having her vertebrae cracked by a found family deluded by her need to ‘save’ her.
-A buddhist angelborn man struggling with escaping the Samsara because he can never escape desire without isolation, standing up for his values to what might as well be one of God’s angels and getting his tongue ripped out for it. Making the decision to leave a person he loves afterward and stay a Stranger to another foreign land in hopes that is soul will know peace.
-A Circus freak thrown out into a world with a body that will ensure she will never belong in it visiting the hospital to feel better through some demonic sadism, and instead finding a girl writing poems about a man that may as well have been another one of her dreams.

H7
-A nihilistic gnostic sadist so weathered and tired of a penance of duty that she doesn’t want, accepting a cup of coffee from her enemy and too jaded to care if it’s poisoned. Waking up in a hospital room and being fatecrafted such that it was the last mistake she ever made.
-a son named by his mother, translated to ‘hope,’ dying alone in a hole for executing a serial SA predator hellbent on pride.
-a dreamgirl sobbing in a pitifully decorated home, emotionally abused by a sociopathic boyfriend aided by an eidolon, bargaining for love with just so many handfuls of dollar-store lollipops.

For these stories, I do love Haven. All of them were granted gracefully (and in some cases, perhaps lacking grace) by other players that I have enjoyed writing with and getting to know. All of them have occurred over the course of a year, and there are many, many more. They’re tragic, melancholy, and very inspired by the settings by which they come from.

But I miss Haven 6. Haven 7 just isn’t inspired in so many ways. I notice more of the players above that have been with Haven for a little longer were more willing to move on from the small town setting, but I don’t think the city setting managed to inspire nearly as much creativity and character interaction in spite of its many additional systems.

In some ways, H6 was bound to be unhealthy by the sorta hopeless reality that it exists. There were many players that played in this iteration who had a strong tendency to ‘bleed’ into their characters and vice versa, and I felt the move to H7 was very healthy for their mindsets especially with the content warnings. I recall one of them, in H7, saw a ring depicting St. Bartholomew and thought it should have a content warning. Suffice to say that these players should never have been playing H6 in the first place given the premise and its content, and yet I found that these same players for which the new setting benefitted most left early on in the iteration. I do think there was something unhealthily attractive about how dark H6 and before was/were, retrospectively, and I can’t answer definitively whether the change was good because it allowed people to get healthier, or if it was bad because it catered to an experience that wasn’t invested in anything but the problems to begin with.

I’m sure it’s a little of both and a lot of neither.

The new grid is mindless. I can’t tell you what sits on Elm street, but I can tell you that Elm in H6 was flanked by White Oak’s modest path across the street from a pizzaria turned botique. I can tell you it lead from pavement onto a dirt road where a pet store sat with a door that was always locked, but wasn’t hard to pick open. Ultimately a good grid is one that you interact with. I didn’t mind AI going into H7, I actually thought it was a fairly acceptable writing tool, but after just a few weeks I noticed I couldn’t be bothered to read the utter lack of intent of anything on my screen. It all reads the same and has nothing to say, nothing to inspire. Each room, wherein they’re actually different from the last, have very little environmental storytelling. There’s a graveyard of statues in Petris Park RIPE for description of various bodies to humanize the tragedy of being petrified, but instead because it was written by an AI it had little more to say than ‘this is spooky and the statues might have been people.’

Everyone else has said everything I would about the systems. I would say ‘what iteration of systems.’ My abilities changed constantly, information in the help files quickly got outdated, and I eventually lost the will to care much about combat as attempting to use it for story purposes would disruptively impact my characterization when it changed or arbitrarily didn’t function against mist monsters the next week.

Why did we care again how quickly people progressed? Was it because people built T3 power fantasies that took on T5s? Could this simply not be addressed by removing the ability to buy focus and leaving it to the merits of corruption to be more powerful (which is an intrinsic part of the setting?). I, for one, liked very much that my abusive found family would crack my pitifully weak character on the jaw everytime she was a little annoying. It made the relationship monstrous and served the story and setting. And, now that the stronger characters are less powerful than they were and favor is generally harder to accumulate in a passive manner, why is there still a doom mechanic? I do not need new characters to tell stories, I need the retention of older characters so that my character arc maintains a trajectory provided by the context of persistent interaction.

I played H6 for about five months before it ended. In that time I played 3 tier 2s, one tier 3, and one tier 3 enemy all of which could engage with the entirety of the grid. I know guests weren’t intended to be played for so long, and there was some ‘abuse’ that could happen since they didn’t have to follow the same rules of LF drain and stuff, but LTs have nothing to give to the grid and neither do monsters. They’re extremely pigeon holed experiences with little options to surprise and innovate on the experience as antagonists. The last compelling monster couldn’t last long enough to follow up antag the other party in a weekly manner, and the last compelling Legion member was killed while he was afk in the Legion camp (because players could/can just walk in there for some reason). Then again, what other way was there for a character to deal with that LT other than the repetition of taking boroughs?

H6 altogether was a much more consistent experience of various systems that all assisted to aid in the gameplay loop of its setting, while H7 is a lot of experimental ideas thrust onto the former iteration without much thought on what incentives drive people to want to write. H6 wasn’t perfect, and it did have a lot of problems that the new iteration solved that I’m not getting into for the sake of not writing a novel, but it had a vibe I wanted to write within. At this point of writing I find myself just… Apathetic about Haven as it is. I log on every now and again for those that are still playing so that I don’t just abruptly dismiss my character from what they’re trying to write, but I have nowhere I care to take my character. All threats and issues are either endlessly self-perpetuating or are too ephemeral to be used for what I feel is meaningful characterization. What incentive is there to antag players? It used to be a necessity and created a drive to commit unspeakable acts to maintain power, definitive power that defined tiering up.

[Ckaleb]

There are limits, of course, to how much you can rationalize IC. I try not to think about bedwindow or how some abilities and powers are entirely arbitrary in how they don’t effect NPCs. It’d be nice to see more explanation for that stuff, and it’s a little frustrating, but it’s not the end of the world.

That said, I think Matias has the most reasonable, actionable interpretation of how invitation works, which is that your character should act invited. They should, through their actions, be more conscionably inviting of the actions of darker forces- or resigned to them.

[Ckaleb]

I mean, what your character observes to occur through mechanics is one of the few concrete methods of portrayal the system has. Invitation must be a mark of how much your character knows you can do, because the effects they produce are occasionally nonsensical.

How else does one rationalize ‘One moment someone was a block down the street in another building, in the next second they broke through the window of my windowless room?’ When characters have to engage with one another through the system, such as say, wanting to chip another character to their virtuous or evil ends, they must understand such logic as ‘They have not invited an acceptable increment for me to do this.’

What I think about those examples seems poor RP or meta-gamey is how they specific of consequence they are? The better thing RP, as a character, is like;
1) I’m afraid that anyone can break into my home at night, afraid I’ll forfeit my safety and privacy.
2) Even if I’m just scrolling social media, I won’t be able to escape temptation.
3) I’m afraid I won’t be able to resist corrupted people.
4) If I invite too much Charon will no longer consider payment for my soul, for I am in some way already dead.
5) (You’re not really supposed to neg-train as an excuse for ‘experience currency.’) I’ve spent the last week, giving up on the progress of my hobbies and ambitions and self, to spend some time in contemplation with God/Buddha/some essence of human morality that assuages temptation towards sin.

[Ckaleb]

Let’s uh not dismiss me on something more than month removed out of context, especially with red herrings, and have a productive discussion by responding to what’s being said with less victimization, please, regardless on how frustrated we are with the subject matter.

On that note, of making things relevant, after understanding invitation a little more as a means of how it allowed other characters to interact with mine, I’m really glad with how it operates, but also understand the fear it gives other players. I gave the system a chance and allowed players opportunity to effect me. It’s an awkward balance, and really tough generally, to allow other players to effect how you’re telling a story. But it’s also just core to any cooperative storytelling application.

Mind you, this was my decision to opt-in to content. I had the privilege of, er, being tortured in such a fantastic way and being given many story beats in lieu of it and it’s all in all been delightful. Something that couldn’t have happened if I hadn’t engaged in the system. In fact, all of my invitation at the time came from bargains I had made in the first two weeks of the game, and a flat +2 had been bugged onto me as a Fabled character.

Still. Bearing all of that in mind, what changes would you suggest to be made in light of what you know? I think we have a loose idea, each of us, what problems we might have with the system even if we disagree on the parts. I do think it would be more productive to try and impress some solutions to aid constructively in having the problem solved.

[Ckaleb]

Sounds like a character for the Hand, or even the Vigil? Are you referring to ‘Scientifically Augmented,’ the positive modifier that was changed from ‘Temple Augmented’ to be broader and less faction specific, and edited recently in the help files to account for this? Being righteous and moral is the defining feature (of few) that separates the Temple from The Vigil and shouldn’t be changed.

[Ckaleb]

Not incentivizing enough that it should matter? Having illusion Mancy at 1 is not drastically changing how I play. Having Soldiering from Temple wouldn’t either. It’s horizontal progression. Good, nice to have! But if I weren’t in the Order or better yet, had never gained the Award, it wouldn’t matter. Horses are 15% cheaper, cars are 15% more expensive. Melee damage is increased by 5%. These perks and abilities are meant to synergize and develop a roster of characters that are MORE their faction than they are not. So, you’ll see a lot of Order characters involved with horses, tooth and claw, slightly combative, etcetera because these mechanics encourage characters to act more in line with the future The Order wants to create.

They ‘highly’ incentivize you to homogenize with the faction you do join, as they also come with debuffs. These bonuses are not so strong that you’re going to overcome someone who isn’t making use of these systems at a relatively similar tier, especially as people start using the RP fight system more than the combat system. It’s min-maxing. I don’t think there’s something wrong with joining a faction, a society, and a cult, but Fear of Missing Out would be misplaced and unwarranted (often at the expense of your characterization, wherein you become a character with no values or principles tied to their organizations [This sort of a broader complaint to the community, tangential to the subject, forgive me]).

I do agree that T3s and really all of the higher archetypes aren’t nearly as strong as they were. Given their cost, they’ve been superseded by guest characters and monsters to fill the role of antag from what I can discern. I think I would like to see some encouragement/tools given to higher tiers in order to allow them to antagonize other players, so, I think what I’d like to do is offer Nova solutions depending what his goal might be? As it seems hard to discern what the goal is at the moment with the way systems are working.

If the goal is to make higher tiers get up off their butts and antag, I’d suggest returning them their focus points/giving them other tools in order to facilitate their evil ways. I think the idea here was that the more time you spend with players, the more invited to you they are, and the more you’re able to do/change them in order to fit your evil schemes, but in practice this also allows other players to course-correct your victims and step in.. And a tier 3 will never be able to make up for a bad night from a gank squad. They have to sleep, regardless of how powerful they are.

If the goal is to make higher tiers less significantly powerful, more social characters and have really eventful antag replaced mostly by guests and monsters, I’d say invitation levels should be adjusted in order to fit this nuance (And also communicated so that people playing these characters can adjust accordingly). There might be better changes for this, that other people can suggest as well.

[Ckaleb]

Correction to the above, The Conclave*, not the Court, all tier 2s are capped at rank 2.

[Ckaleb]

The Temple and The Order are righteous factions and don’t allow tier 3s to have authority, yes. They wouldn’t be moral if they did. And.. Really, people shouldn’t be motivated/obligated to join a faction, a society, and a cult all at the same time. People get really obvious how highly they prioritize the mechanics of the game over their characterization/real belief in their faction/society when they do this. And if you wanna go that route of characterization, of having no values or principles beyond your own self-interest and accumulation for favor and relics, then one must capitulate to the status quo of each faction they join, or otherwise mold their actions to it in pursuit of power, no?

So, as an alternative: None of the societies are righteous, in comparison. The Conclave, The Vigil, and to a lesser degree the Court all encourage characters in them to be immoral. In The Court, all tier 2s are capped at rank 6, as an example, meaning inevitably one must be tier 3 if they seek power in that society. The Iron Moon Lodge and The Sons of Olympia both have faction mechanics that encourage violence as well. One easy solution to this for any characters that want to spend time with a tier 3.. Is to become tier 3. The lure of corruption.

I think some things can be tuned back, but yeah. If you wanna RP with good people that want to remain good people, then it only makes sense to do so in moderation? Else, why play an antagonist? Why exactly SHOULDN’T being a horrible person not absolutely disrupt and destroy your social life with people, isolating you from those you care about as you mindlessly pursue power. The pursuit of power is designed to be a lonely one, and over time all you have are enemies as you grow further away… Or you can be redeemed. To be corrupted is to surround yourself with corruption and power. If you’ve stopped pursuing corruption and power, then the pursuit of humility in order to stay with those you love is a real, meaningful direction of character development.

I’d say, if any change could be made, would be to give lower tiers more incentive to be corrupted/receive invitation? Even the 63rd antagonists are relegated to some situational instances to get victims, as absurdly powerful as these new tools are, they’re actually easy to avoid. But maybe consent and opt-in strategies are more important to the health of the game in light of some of horror stories Haven’s had to deal with in the past, especially with problematic players.

To ask, in response to T3 feeling unrewarding, what is the ‘reward’ we are looking for?

[Ckaleb]

More or less agree with that. Using no examples, there were a lot of cases in H6 of people using high tiers strictly as a means of progression, like they were leveling a character, but not giving back to the grid? People who would isolate themselves on these incredibly mechanically strong characters but give no interaction, meaning whenever they actually engaged with anything happening on the grid you would end up less with story-beat villainy and more ‘I have come to combat/KO punch you into an anti-climax.’

That all leads into a tangent, so suffice to say the correction on higher tiers seems to be trying to remove that incentive to play a vastly more powerful character. The Wild Hunt takes them faster, it’s only 1 more focus point for a relatively high karmic cost, and they’re harder to be around (among other things).

Maybe in some edge cases there are points to be made, especially texts, for invitation increase to be diminished. But in general it’s important to consider both what it means for your character to not only be ‘evil,’ (tier 2s can also be evil, just not corrupted explicitly by the supernatural world- as stated in ‘help moral tier’) but someone who can never make the world better than they found it.

[Ckaleb]

From ‘help invitation’

“Invitation goes up as characters interact with those of a higher moral tier.
The more personal or focused the attention is the faster it increases, for example,
roleplaying one on one in a private setting. Invitation doesn’t go up if the characters
are engaged in some activity like they’re on a plot or in a fight. Invitation can
also be increased by making bargains with demons.”

[Ckaleb]

As the former leader of the Conclave, having captured two boroughs with a spread of only 10 players for all of that favor, I earned maybe 1k favor, or a little more, being very persistently active against most content(top 3 within my society), across the 7(5? I forget) weeks since capturing Highgate and 4 weeks since capturing Redstone.

I do think, just mathematically, if a group of less people bring the same level of achievement it takes another group 20 to do, that the favor dispersement should reward that group more. This, at some level, encourages players to create characters for more factions rather than dog-piling on one. Not everyone should be getting favor and there are a lot of factions/societies that could afford more participation. I still think merit should relate to reward. It’s more that, in my case in many others, merit doesn’t seem to be applicable. Or, there are other factors at play. As Maina speculated, schemes and raids might decimate your borough’s favor gain if they go unattended. Someone threw out that some people are earning 7000 favor? That seems absurd, as it’s written that boroughs produce 1000 favor a month.

But I mentioned this in a petition back when borough results were hidden and order file no longer showed percentile participation. A lot of our confusion is coming from a place of ignorance. Literally who knows what the problem is. It’s a huge missing equation and we’re just left with the results. Feedback is important, and there are a lot of parts of Haven that are veiled by design so that people don’t ‘game’ it, and it’s having an expected adverse effect. Who knows how much you’re participating in these big groups? You might not have access to ‘faction report,’ and if you do, you’ll only know the top 3 earners in very specific instances of information. Your options therefore, if you want to set earning favor as a goal for yourself, are to tirelessly engage in content without much creative backbone (hunting, patrols, schemes, events, all the content for favor’s sake instead of RP/story’s sake), or to move on. The middle ground is just a practice in frustration until we have information.

And, if we move on and stop prioritizing favor personally to stop feeling frustrated, ultimately, FOMO hits and the people that do mindlessly engage ‘enjoy’ the relics, charms, etcetera, while you ‘miss out.’ Anyway. TLDR, frustration makes sense, Haven’s just a teeny-bit built that way. I decided to stop participating in the game’s reward cycle and just RP with another character, and it’s helped me quite a bit.

[Ckaleb]

Feel you. Personally, having run the Hollow Conclave and having not really received anything meaningful for the effort, I lost motivation with the society/faction system and just decided to play a character with less stress.

It’s a shame, because the new stuff looks cool. Loved the concept of relics and charms and all that, but having ‘succeeded’ as a society with such low members and getting nothing for the effort? Oh well.

[Ckaleb]

I’ve been ruthlessly removing myself from the room when tier 3s are around, and am probably one of the most active players on the grid. I don’t do Fabled quests either. Truly, there’s something missing in the feedback with the system.

[Author]

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