A noob is going to quit when.....

[JohnCarver]

Greetings Salemites,
Our next stop on the road map is going to be trying to devote as much as we can in the next 30 days to the first 30 minutes of Salem. For that reason I'm interested in hearing about stories of when and how you were thinking of quitting in your first 30 minutes of Salem. And hopefully a few stories about the friends you came here with who didn't make it.

A few quick ground rules:

#1: No stories about the client. The client needs work, we know it, and its on the agenda.

#2: No stories about the graphics. We are not going to remodel every 3D model here to make prettier eye candy.

#3: Nothing about the tutorial, or lack of tutorial. We are redoing it.


We are trying to focus on purely game-play things for this dialogue. I would appreciate it if you could also refrain from bringing up things that we have already changed such as "My friend quit because trees chop @ 1%" as Trees no longer chop at 1% and this information would be a bit obsolete.

I also encourage anybody who has not made a new character in the last 90 days to do so and let us know what you think. I have played no less than 5 characters now from 5/5/5/5 to 40 or so in all prof and humors in the last few weeks. Each time I learn something new or find some small tidbit that just doesn't feel right. Also, if you have that one close friend who you have waited to force to play Salem. Now would be a nice time to sit him down and watch him struggle for half an hour and report to us what you find in the name of science.

[Thor]

Most of my IRL friends quit when we started Salem because the lack of information on how to do things. I was the only one who bothered to check the wiki for everything, so I continued playing.

[JohnCarver]

Most of my IRL friends quit when we started Salem because the lack of information on how to do things. I was the only one who bothered to check the wiki for everything, so I continued playing.

Do you think we are better off creating paragraph long tooltips on the crafting build menus giving people a shove in the right direction? Or leave Salem to the explorers who will figure it out?

[Thor]

This is the dilemma, I reckon. How much information is enough? Exploration aspect is one of the most important aspects of Salem that draws me to it personally.

[Rubberduckbandit]

I think an optional tutorial would be nice like a generic "base" where starter things are placed like braziers and basic walls and basic starter tools and when they right click it(or a sign next to it) it gives a brief explanation "whittle bench-most basic woodworking crafts will be done here" or like "personal claim- one of the biggest necessities a would be settler would need to claim their own land"

[pistolshrimp]

I'm going to suggest again putting a Wiki or Help button up at the top of the website pages where it says Forum, Server Status, Account, ect. I think pointing towards the forums is better than paragraph long tool tips - those tend to make a game seem more complicated, "What, I have to read all that to play?"

[Thor]

Cheesy line of quests could work too. Rewards could be inspirationals and ultimately a claim deed.

[Rubberduckbandit]

A big sum of the playerbase doesn't use the forums, its stupid of them not to, but it's true, not to mention the language barrier of many people not knowing english.

[pistolshrimp]

I've spied in on dozens and dozens of leantos, many I can tell have been long since abandoned, often times it seems that people at the begining collect lots of everything they can find around them, however very few times do I see any crafts or buildings. I think in part its a lack of direction or "story" that leads noobs to quit. They collect a few items but aren't really sure why they are doing it, why they want to collect those items.

[Procne]

There should be info that some things have to be bought / obtained from other players, and cannot be made by a newbie. Example: iron and nails. I remember that I spent some time trying to figure out where to get the nails as a newbie, I just assumed I can make everything on my own.