by tyrtix » Thu Mar 26, 2015 1:05 pm
Well, i've played Salem some time ago, returned recently as i knew about some work done on the game...last time left for some months: had a decent house surrounded with stone walls, one day i found it raidedand just got bored about the total lack of informations about how to protect myself decently. I mean, reading the wiki leaves me with more doubts than help, the forum is somewhat even worse as the topics are from different patches and what you can do today may be totally different from what you read.
Another thing was the lack of a decent trading interface, even if Salem is far better than H&H on this topic, still the limited inventory and transport capabilities made really hard (or impossible for some items) to trade. Before someone says something, i tell you that it's nearly impossible to trade items that had to be lift....
As i said, i came back nearly one month ago, saw the new inventory and said: wow! now i can at least trade a bit more efficiently...a day after into the game made me to think to play again Salem.
The new system screwed trading: i just ran around a bit, loaded my inventory of some 100's items, found 2-3 of the prized 7-uses inspirationals... and around 300 coins in a single run worth of indian thingies.
I can say i'm a noob on the new system, and the new inventory was just overwhelming: filling it with 200 items and have to move them by single clicks O_O and after that, store them in, at best, storage crates at 15 items at a time!
This was nonsense, as i though that a weight system should stop me from collecting everything i saw, especially if i can't just store them elsewhere.
Gluttony too was changed, i knew the system from before and reached 60 black bile in 2 days, 50 in the others, too easy.
And still, even if i played the game, i missed vital informations like the new farming things (and where to buy them), gems and witchcraft, got a disease with my first character and died 'cause i can't find anywhay what was happening to me, and so on.
Some conclusions: for a noob the game have TOO MUCH informations that have to be known to play decently, and all of this right at start, and basically nowhere to find them. The wiki is heavily outdated, the forum is totally unpractical in searching informations that you have to find quickly, as you cannot read a 300-pages manual for getting right a bit more in the game. These two things make literally not a learning curve, but a stair step that players have to jump (with the help of another player) or needs instruments to climb (like coming from a similar game), but many players can only stare at, then turn their back and go elsewhere.
If they manage to get over that step, they have an interesting world to discover, but some things are incredibly hard, and others are incredibly easy to make: find iron is totally different than farming a few crops, possessing a stall seems nearly impossible (i found stalls last time i left...many were empty but i cannot find informations on how to own one until i saw a system message pop-up saying that there was an auction for them...), making hundreds of containers filled with everything, even good foraged inspirationals seems even too easy now, until you find that you can't store them safely...
Things i think that can help:
- a small safe time for noobs in wich snakes and bears won't attack them and you won't catch diseases: loosing inspiration points because of that make everyone ragequit, as you can't do anything w/o those lost points.
- a rework of inventory: get a bit back with a fixed inventory, just larger and with weight, and make stackable items in tenth, and some containers like sacks that works for small things like nuts, grass, leaves and such
- i up the newb "island" with permadeath at the end of it, while make the noob select from a few items to get along with: want to kill things? here a carving knife; want to be a farmer? here some seeds. I find this more of a pilgrim/frontier flavor than other things