[Stitch]

@LiteBrite

They do, yes. You’ll generally get a notice via scouts if you’re around that the character has been abducted. I’ve seen people bust out rituals and phone traces the moment it happens.

[Stitch]

I’ve said this a few times this thread, but I’ll reiterate it again: you need to be prepared for your characters to lose. To be interrogated or tortured, or just generally for bad things to happen to them. Not every conflict needs to turn into organization vs organization, especially if the person wronged is lower on the totem pole. Why would the Hand go DEFCON 1 over an intern being kidnapped, for example? If you’re beaten up and just interrogated? Fine. Lick your wounds, remember who did it, plan your long-term revenge, hit them when their guard is down. I am incredibly suspect at some of the potential meta communications that happen when someone is abducted, to a point where I think the scouts message on people being abducted by non-mists monsters should either be removed or delayed to make it very clear when meta communication is playing a factor in miraculously finding someone abducted.

[Stitch]

The first thing I’d add to help this regard? Messages on a faction member getting abducted by non-mist monsters needs to be removed.

[Stitch]

All of this aside,

Mojo touches on something very important here that I do think we should start penalizing people on: you need to be ready to lose or get hurt. There’s a reason that getting captured and potentially tortured is not a content warning thing. I’ve also seen in past iterations, as a bystander, where people seem to MAGICALLY know where someone is when blindfolded and in a room where they can’t be traced — and I’m going to be honest: that needs to get cracked down with an RP malus or loss somewhere this iteration. You also need to let people get antag’d and not turn it into a massive organizational vs organizational issue each and every time. It’s one thing if a faction leader gets abducted, but if it’s a small timer in your organization? Let them facilitate and RP how to get revenge later as an individual.

I will say this as well: if you antag, expect and be willing to be antag’d in return.

Basically, people need to be better sports or, in my opinion, lose access to antag options.

[Stitch]

I definitely haven’t had any issues driving into and crashing into the mists by basically doing the same thing that Rev said, but it stinks for anyone who doesn’t realize due to how they typed in their drive location that they’ve driven smack dab into them. I do think the drive message should tell you where you’ve elected to drive to to help eliminate that.

But yeah, in general, it helps to ensure that you’re regularly checking the weather and map to know where the Mists are. I personally really like this system. The only time I can imagine it getting really bad is if the Mists blow into your neck of the woods when you’ve got an event planned or they linger at your house for literal days so getting back home or to your shop can be horrid. I see a lot more magical cabinets being a thing this iteration.

[Stitch]

I definitely think pathing should take the mists into account so you’re not inadvertently driving your vehicle into them, and I can imagine it being super frustrating thinking that you’re driving to one address only to drive smack dab into it. I think an easy change there would be for ‘drive’ to tell you where you set off driving towards so you can have warning.

The other thing is that, thanks to a bug, rescuing anyone is near impossible right now because enemies just immediately respawn on top of you and in droves.

[Stitch]

I don’t really think everyone has the same mentality in game-ifying Haven. Sure, the abuse potential exists and this may wholly anecdotal, but I’ve yet to see anyone join smaller organizations with the intent of doing nothing, interacting with no one, and so forth with the express purpose of just currying favor rewards.

Also, I disagree that everyone starts in the Hand in every new iteration. Generally, and historically, it’s the Temple that gets the most amount of activity and people because everyone is T2 or T3-1 and the Temple historically favored orgs like that. I’d say we have a lot of Hand this go-around because we have a lot of newer players due to Content Warning existing, and I’ve noticed that a lot of newer players tend to play in The Hand. With the Order allowing T3s, this has also likely taken some of the shine off of the Temple, since they were historically the only alternative for T3s outside of the Hand.

In essence, I think orgs having some kind of favor malus if they are way too large is okay. There is literally no other drawback to stacking a ton of people in one place, and more people means that you can feasibly hold more boroughs, do more activity, etc.. I think the potential for abuse is greater if the amount of favoir is increased to people with a ton of people in their org because that means things like charon coins are going to become horribly stockpiled and there will be no sense of finality for some people’s characters as a result. Being in a large organization already confers pretty massive advantages as far as literally all of Haven’s systems are concerned, plus a ton of roleplay opportunities. Favor being more prolific among characters in small organizations is the one thing that encourages people to make PCs in smaller organizations, and I think that’s a good thing.

[Stitch]

I don’t really see that as happening. I see the current Favor system as likely needing some tweaks in terms of costs, but it’s a good thing to incentivize people to have PCs in other orgs on grid, because there’s literally no other disadvantage towards having a ton of people.

Also, as someone in a smaller organization, I would absolutely NOT deter anyone from joining or kicking them out. I can’t speak for every small group, but we’d be happy to have more people to get involved and RP with.

Some of these orgs just have way too many people who are all very active right now, so the favor accumulation is going to be low.

[Stitch]

The Grid
It will ideally get fleshed out more as more is added to it. Even if characters disappear, their shops will remain until someone elects to buy it up and do something with it or otherwise. It’ll just take time in this regard, but we finally don’t have a deficit of shops. I agree with Matias that spectating and watching it grow has been an enjoyable experience. I do agree that I’d like to see more loft/shop combos to encourage people to move to other places than Downtown, and it’d make sense to have these in the kind of city that Haven is. Not having a vehicle because you accidentally crashed it after getting the hell out of a post-Big Game Hunt is -painful- though in terms of getting around.

The Lookfor
The helpfile needs to be better. Mechanically, I understand it, but it’s still very… uh. Difficult to wrap your head around what you’re doing. I think Encounters should also be independently launched with Lookfor as well, rather than included with the other patrols.

Windermere
The college is okay, and definitely a notable improvement on historical iterations. Sure, it doesn’t have as much ‘presence’ as White Oak and ‘that which shall not be named’, but that might be a good thing, to be perfectly honest.

LLM Interactivity
Good. I think I still have some moral issues with how LLMs/GenAI is trained, but it does give some good stories that are grounded and make sense within the context of the lore, for sure. Definitely a plus.

[Stitch]

The favor economy is only outrageous for very large organizations. I will note that in my second week, I was given a fairly large amount for being in a smaller organization and I think that’s the point. While I’m not sure if that much favor for researching a scheme is particularly necessary, I do think limiting the favor economy on massive organizations is the right call to encourage people to spread out their PCs on the grid.

[Author]

Posts