kwyl wrote:If the devs wanted to guarantee my retention and future financial support today they would have to immediately provide me with a horse or broom or some other mode of fast sightseeing, an icon on the minimap indicating my home or leanto, an indication of my characters facing direction on the minimap (I am using ender's client at present and it does neither of those things but has some nice features) and there would have to be something done about the proficiencies etc. system. Either quit taking all my other points too or make more inspirationals/mats available. (...) It's not that I don't want to work at a game but I do want it to be an escape from my reality that gives me some enjoyment and maybe an occasional feeling of success.
@green: I totally agree.
@red: That`s the tricky part. This would lead to a mistake most MMOs do, imo: the emotional flatness or a "everything is fine" game. You know, in the early days of MMOs, they let you travel hours to reach a new zone. This was frustrating sometimes - but: when you reached your goal, you had that feeling to be far away or "alone" - you were happy. As happiness is a relativ emotion you can`t be happy without being not happy before. So actual MMOs don`t give you those moments of frustration - you can port instantly everywhere. That`s what I call "everything is fine" - you never get frustrated, but you are also not really getting happy with your game. But Salem does need the emotion to be far away or deep into nature as it comes with the setting of Salem. So I would be cautious eliminating all exhausting elements...
Another example would be crafting. In actual MMOs you don`t need to collect your ingredients for your recipe - that`s doing your companion (SWTOR) or your bridge crew (STO) or the shop (LOTRO) for you. Or you never need more than two different ingredients. So you never get frustrated and you get your items crafted just fine. But there is no honor or proud in it on the end.
There are much more examples, like fights you never lose, or weather, which is always good...
It would be nice if Salem stays inconvient in some parts...as for now I think it needs to shift to more comfort but doing it the right way. The difficulty may also be, that this is no matter to talk about with the community. If you ask people, if they want to travel 1h or get a horse and do it instant - they will vote by majority for the second. They won`t be happy with it - but they don`t know, what they are missing. And also a personal note: when we found our current location in Salem after hours of climbing, walking and prospecting - yeah - we were happy!