There are a couple of problems I see now:
First of all, the start of the game is agonizingly slow and uninteresting, more so than even Haven & Hearth. I don't understand why this was set up this way because unlike H&H, being in a group of people doesn't even speed things up significantly and you can basically do nothing when you just start out, not even pick up branches. This has to be adjusted.
It's really hard to find people to play with and bring them to wherever you want to settle. Sure, everyone can meet up in Boston, but if you pay 20 silver to get a homestead to get away from people and towards resources, only the person paying gets transported making actually playing with each other really difficult. In H&H by contrast, you could give a person a hearth secret and they could start the game next to your hearth fire, making community settlements fairly painless to set up.
Boston sucks. In early versions of H&H, there way a starting point for every player. Soon enough, the area surrounding it was a labyrinth of undeveloped claims with no tree in sight. This is happening here too. The no-building zone around the city is only a band-aid. You can't find anything useful for at least half an hour in any direction, and you need 20 silver to even get a convenient way to travel while keeping your inventory.
This is just so badly thought-out considering the experiences of the developer's previous game, it's amazing. In H&H, you start in the middle of nowhere, you can build everything you need by yourself/with friends and there is no wasteland around a starting city anymore, which is so much better for a crafting MMO. Get rid of Boston completely.
Otherwise though, I like the complexity of the various resources you have. It's really quirky and strange, and I'll stick to it at least for a while to see how it goes. My complaints are major though, and I don't see a big future for this game if they repeat the mistakes of their previous one.
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Originally Posted by Smashbox
