Lack of interest between arrival in boston and wilds

[Sevenless]

Buy food for silver.

And that's what they do, but honestly not a lot of people are selling food. Not the good kinds anyway. I've stayed out of trading entirely this time around and the slower progress is keeping me occupied at least.

What we really need is a good old fashioned war to spice things up.

[Potjeh]

If there aren't enough takers, you need to raise your offer.

[Darwoth]

fact is the majority of people on the planet are both stupid and lazy, this is not a game for the stupid or the lazy.

most will never bother to learn how to really play the game and many that do will quit as soon as they get robbed/killed/knocked out by a snake and lose inventory.

eventually enough folks that this game caters to will discover it or get accounts and the numbers will be where they need to be, in the meantime expect every 5k keys to add only 50 - 100 permanent players

[kwyl]

Hello everyone. I just got my key from 10 ton a few days ago and don't have 24 hrs in the game yet and I'm only playing for what the game could become. What it is currently is simply a closed commercial beta test. If the final release is exactly what we have now, I doubt I'll continue to play. That is not to say the current version is bad in any way. It's just that I have a vision of my perfect game and all aspects are important to me. 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. I have no problem with the LA % system but it seems that the alternating study method doesn't work for me. Might be doing it wrong or maybe it only works once, the first time you study the item. If that's the case, a greater selection of inspirationals would be good. 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. Since we all know I will not be granted these wishes in 5 minutes and maybe not at all, I will just slow-play this game until something else wins my interest. I really like the concept, but it's not my game to change. Who knows what will become of it? Gotta stick around to see.

[TotalyMoo]

Just to clear things up, we're not planning for Salem to be a small scale super niche game for only the hardcorest of hardcore players. Neither are Jorbtar developing this game purely with their vision in mind and with closed eyes to commercial aspects.

We want Salem to be as great as many of you feel it has the potential to be. We work with minimum staff on the project right now, yes, but that doesn't mean there's no room for change to the bigger and better.

Salem is a project by two great indie developers that we at Paradox support wholeheartedly, not some small project that we're planning to leave half-done.

As for the current state of the game. Of course there's room for a lot more, and many (me included) play the game simply to help it improve with feedback and see how it develops. This is after all a closed beta test, having 100% player retention is not the thing we're worried about at this stage.

On a more personal note, I would like to personally shake the hand of every single beta tester in this game. You're awesome.

[baronbowden]

Moo,

One fantastic Gem in this thread.

-A compass option that can be enabled/disabled.


I don't know if it is for immersion but the ability to set waypoints to your homestead or boston would be a great usability feature that would improve gameplay imo.

[ElCapitan1701]

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!

[Steve]

Might as well throw my opinion in here as well.

(Short background: playing Salem since a few days, playing too much, have played H&H as well, for about half a year.)

I see one big problem with Salem and retention: it's called the crafting MMO, thus drawing a certain population of players. But for new players there's actually not much crafting to do, some curios, some food, and that's it - the game's much more the run-around-for-hours-and-gather-stuff MMO than the crafting MMO. And one could argue that this is a week point to retain new players. Especially because this run-around-and-gather-stuff-for-hours gameplay isn't very exciting.

- The map is computer generated and as such doesn't make much sense and offers few landmarks and practically nothing worth exploring. The rather ugly ridges and the ugly water certainly don't help. Remember, the new player doesn't have climbing or swimming.

- Depending on where someone spawned with his first random wilderness lean-to the initial gameplay phase can be vastly different for different players as well. Spawned in the woods? Bad luck - you might have to run for hours before you can see anything else than what you've seen at your lean-to.

- Spawned in the woods again? Your progress grinds to a halt. Many early curios, in fact almost all, need Autumn Grass - and you might be hours away from a patch of grass.

That can be very monotonous first hours, too monotonous for many people, no matter how patient they are. And you don't get another random wilderness spawn without paying RL cash - very few new players will part with their cash when all they've seen from Salem are huge expanses of endless forests with nothing in it.

[Ketu]

- Depending on where someone spawned with his first random wilderness lean-to the initial gameplay phase can be vastly different for different players as well. Spawned in the woods? Bad luck - you might have to run for hours before you can see anything else than what you've seen at your lean-to.

- Spawned in the woods again? Your progress grinds to a halt. Many early curios, in fact almost all, need Autumn Grass - and you might be hours away from a patch of grass.

That can be very monotonous first hours, too monotonous for many people, no matter how patient they are. And you don't get another random wilderness spawn without paying RL cash - very few new players will part with their cash when all they've seen from Salem are huge expanses of endless forests with nothing in it.

Most of this has little impact if people, as Sevenless suggested in his starter thread, think of characters as tools.
And in some cases disposable tools, storage sheds and safes.

It's easy to abandon a character if you get a bad wilderness spawn spot.
Then it's 5 minutes to make another character to takes your chances at another.

[staxjax]

Just to clear things up, we're not planning for Salem to be a small scale super niche game for only the hardcorest of hardcore players. Neither are Jorbtar developing this game purely with their vision in mind and with closed eyes to commercial aspects.

We want Salem to be as great as many of you feel it has the potential to be. We work with minimum staff on the project right now, yes, but that doesn't mean there's no room for change to the bigger and better.

Salem is a project by two great indie developers that we at Paradox support wholeheartedly, not some small project that we're planning to leave half-done.

As for the current state of the game. Of course there's room for a lot more, and many (me included) play the game simply to help it improve with feedback and see how it develops. This is after all a closed beta test, having 100% player retention is not the thing we're worried about at this stage.

On a more personal note, I would like to personally shake the hand of every single beta tester in this game. You're awesome.

Then why make the game so hard and grindy that over 90% of the players that try this game will quit after an hour or two ?