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@Calk

Good call, I had been meaning to but forgot. I think something like this can only have impact if there are enough voices echoing it (politely) though, honestly wonder if it wouldn’t help to have several big name players petition these concerns.

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At the end of the day players who want to play fast and loose with their characters and reroll often, will do so. Trying to force it on the ones who don’t will only ever speed up burnout and overall negativity/discouragement. As I mentioned in another thread, especially when the game and all the stories in it are created and driven by the players, it’s not a good system. We barely have any players left as it is.

The Hunt should be at most twice a year and take powerful (keyword powerful, so T2s with extra foci or T3+) supernaturals off the grid for a certain amount of time, like 1-3 months depending on tier, give them the option to fatecraft or reroll if they want to, and that’s it. Slap a temporary debuff on them for good measure so they have to RP being enfeebled and adhere to theme for a couple weeks once they return.

No taking away karma, no locking people behind a modifier that gimps them as T1s which feel virtually unplayable to me given they are severely limited both in mechanical combat, and roleplay mechanics thanks to their stats being so low or outright inaccessible due to tier gating. Things be getting a little too real when a character is actually struggling to pay the mortgage on their house or maintain their shops, ones other players enjoy and make use of, because they can’t pull in enough income anymore to sustain it. Not sure Nova realizes how much these things directly impact everything, including roleplay.

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@Maise
You say that you welcome these themes, yet on at least two occasions were blatantly no-selling and making light of situations that should have been tense at the bare minimum, frightening if realism were considered. Particularly for a character that was seemingly unaware of the supernatural prior? The second time around you were not the most egregious offender in the room, but I bring this up in case you weren’t aware to what extent it comes off as outright dismissal in your roleplay. The irony here is that when this happens during an antag scene, you are essentially being the bully while someone is only trying to interact with you, to create tension and excitement, to give you a story to tell and maybe act on later.

So yes, much about the game itself has been discouraging players certainly but one of the worst culprits for waning interest, a feeling of wasted effort, a lack of desire to bother with violence/antag or to engage with many active PCs altogether is just that. The dismissal. The lack of realism. The lack of human response from characters to threats, violence, or ambient themes of danger. These are aspects of the game that you, the player, have every bit of agency to affect change on.

On a more general note the Hunt really did take a lot out of people. I hope beyond hope that Nova reads all of these honest and overwhelmingly negative player experiences and feedback posts regarding it and makes needed changes, or I doubt the game will survive. Especially for one that is entirely player-run and relies on its community to create stories, events, interest etc, harsh punishment that invalidates our investment is pretty much lethal.

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Reminder that New Haven’s theme, as indicated on the website’s main page, is meant to be supernatural horror. Sometimes it’s chill, sometimes it’s funny, and sometimes it’s violent. If every interaction you have in the game outside of one person causes you to cringe, the issue may be your expectations.

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Where are your parents

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Get help. And a better hobby.

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Would also really love clarification on OP’s questions, as well as:

-What’s the expected timer for all tiers?

-Will this always target your main/ first character, or will it randomly pick from your alts too? Can more than one of your characters be taken at the same time?

-If unspent pkarma is deducted by the Hunt , can it be re-accumulated again on that character once you escape?

It seems like there’s still a lot of question marks over the Hunt and how it’ll continue to affect us moving forward, so while I’m glad our spent pkarma was wiped and I can accumulate enough to tier back up, the worry now is that I’ll do so in a month just to get nabbed again in March. Or I hoard it to use after the next Hunt only for it to be taken away without being able to get it back again or something.

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Does that mean then that nothing is going to be changed, no characters who were wrongly nabbed will be adjusted? This has put a pretty significant damper on player motivation at a time when morale was already on the lower end after losing like half the community.

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I keep meaning to write a lengthy post regarding the Wild Hunt and karma gains, with a bunch of thoughts with respect to reward vs punishment in this game and how unpleasantly skewed that balance is. Still might but been low on energy and motivation, the latter of which is pretty widespread here in the wake of this bugged Hunt.

So for now I’m going to piggyback on the OP. I’m not sure anyone feels the mechanical detriments of this more keenly than combat forward T2s with 1 focus, imo. No matter how you slice it this system, while I also understand and even agree with its necessity in theory, is incredibly punishing and needs a rework but at least T3s getting knocked down to T2 will still find themselves capable in mid-tier mist hunts and rescues. Being T1 again is basically crippling, and moreover I don’t understand the point or significance in setting back someone before they’ve even achieved anything through the karma system to begin with.

TLDR, my thoughts on the Hunt/Karma sitch are:

-Should not affect T2/1FP characters, to me there’s no point and it only demoralizes players who are already at the bottom of the food chain.

-T2s who HAVE earned karma to purchase foci and T3+ should be able to recover their lost karma over time, or if a permanent deduction is non-negotiable let it be a much smaller amount. In general however, punishing the players who have done extra to support the game is just bad practice.

-Hunt should be once a year, maximum twice, to give it the relevance and meaning it’s meant to have and players time to actually progress their characters to a point where that would matter.

-Karma should be something people can acquire more easily. Not everyone is a DM/Storyrunner type and many have genuine anxiety over having to run plots. Said plots, while fun, are usually self-contained stories and rarely have any impact or relevance to the live grid world. Even if only a much smaller/slower accumulating amount, reward your players for supporting events, for being active and engaging their fellows, reward them for sticking to and enforcing theme. Some of us are better as copilots; we shouldn’t be more or less locked out of progression because of that.

Which brings me to my biggest and most controversial suggestion regarding the Wild Hunt. I don’t really feel like character’s age of existence should matter here at all; I feel it should be based on engagement and contribution to the community as a whole. Because of how karma is gained, so long as someone feels comfortable enough coming out of the woodwork to run a plot every month or so they can progress, even if the rest of the time they remain indoors/in private mode and are never seen in public. Never engage with the rest of the player base. Never help with raids. Never attend events.

Many of the PCs that were taken this hunt are always out there causing trouble, antagonizing, helping new players, participating in crucial content for borough securing, upholding theme, etc. They are accessible and enjoyable to engage with and help keep the world alive more than any amount of plots can, or have. Why should they be subject to the same punishment as someone who does virtually none of these things?

Reward the good players that are still here, help us feel like our time and effort is valued. Especially when a community is this small and every meaningful contribution matters.

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@Xai I’d 100% agree with you if this only targeted players who haven’t been engaging with the rest of the community lol or at least didn’t mechanically penalize the ones who have been consistently. It’s not just stat loss is the thing, which would be easy enough on its own to gain back through roleplay, but the whole karma discussion is prob better left for its own thread.

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It does seem like a bug so I hope it’s fixed/reversed accordingly. This seems like an awfully punishing system and is going to really cripple the current T2-dominant community, like someone mentioned mist rescues are going to be a much riskier ordeal and for myself this basically puts an abrupt end to all my solo hunting efforts. The very limited ways to gain karma were already preventing me from acquiring more foci or tiering up as is, so if that needs to be done just to get back to where I was it’s hard to know when that will happen, if ever.

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