Gluttony system

[Tonkyhonk]

what i miss from haven is simple food giving slow stats, so working on most anything (except for chatting and trading) could give you a chance of growing but very slowly. here in salem, i use up phlegm by labour or bb or yb for w/e, but food only replenishes each humour and no growing at all by simple playing. this actually hurts casuals.
the gluttony system is like bon fire party with expensive tablewares in haven, yet it is the only way to raise your stats here. (btw, i miss eating while sitting at tables too! kinda wierd eating while standing in front of a cupboard or chests)

i understand that this system is complicated to prevent bots, but i still hope normal eating could also give a chance of raising stats too. (like maybe a very small percentage, like 10% or something of what you could do with the gluttony, so that it would be just time-wasting and food-wasting for bots to use this as a stats raising method.)

dont misunderstand, i think the gluttony system is neat (as long as you understand how it works) and it should stay, i dont think it needs a whole rework so far, except that adding some good intro would be nice. but id like to see another "normal" eating style which actually can reward our game-play just a bit, while co-existing with the gluttony system for hardcores to raise stats.

[Sevenless]

The only issue I see there tonky is the fact that often you mass eat one or two foods just for stat restore. Passive stat increasing would have to be completely random, or raise all 4 bars equally to prevent complications.

But yeah, easier early game foods (up to stat 30? 40? Something like that) would definitely help out beginners while they learn the system.

[Steve]

Lets dumb down a beautiful character improvement system to appeal to the masses, after all, this is what Paradox wants anyways.

With all respect, I find the character improvement system in Salem not beautiful but absolutely horrible.

It's a sure recipe to grow armies of alt-drones: as long as you have a ready supply of food (and the larger villages and towns will have the supply) you can just feed a new character to fighter stats. Enter the kitchen as new character with 5B and 5YB, come out 2 hours later with 50 in both stats. Rinse, repeat to get even higher stats or make another fighter drone. Not beautiful to me.

[Sevenless]

Lets dumb down a beautiful character improvement system to appeal to the masses, after all, this is what Paradox wants anyways.

With all respect, I find the character improvement system in Salem not beautiful but absolutely horrible.

It's a sure recipe to grow armies of alt-drones: as long as you have a ready supply of food (and the larger villages and towns will have the supply) you can just feed a new character to fighter stats. Enter the kitchen as new character with 5B and 5YB, come out 2 hours later with 50 in both stats. Rinse, repeat to get even higher stats or make another fighter drone. Not beautiful to me.

The only difference is who's doing the work really. In Salem, the work is "pre-done" in that case. Making a mass amount of food like that is by no means an easy task, it takes time. And generally speaking, since this is permadeath, being able to quickly raise a character is useful. In a way, as long as your village is alive you haven't lost everything since they can help you get back on your feet. Older villages can raise characters more quickly based on the purity "capital" they've built up.

I quite like the system, but I see a lot of my friends having trouble with it. And I don't want them to stop playing because a core mechanic is just too complex for the average gamer to truly master. That is Salem gamers, we get a lot of gamers from non-gaming backgrounds you have to remember.

Now that being said, I could write a paste eater description of how to raise stats at P1 (Eat Y, X and Z for stat 2), but this system gets hellishly complicated when we go past base purity. I haven't even finished analyzing the intricacies of late game purity foods.

[ElCapitan1701]

That is Salem gamers, we get a lot of gamers from non-gaming backgrounds you have to remember.

How`s that? I thought Salem is very specific and doesn`t appeal to the average MMO player. At least they are MMO players, so they always have a background. I don`t see anyone playing Salem as its first game?

[Sevenless]

That is Salem gamers, we get a lot of gamers from non-gaming backgrounds you have to remember.

How`s that? I thought Salem is very specific and doesn`t appeal to the average MMO player. At least they are MMO players, so they always have a background. I don`t see anyone playing Salem as its first game?

Interestingly enough no. The crafting/building system attracts a fair amount of female gamers. Girlfriends of gamers usually and it's quite often their first MMO. You find an unusual amount of older gamers here too because the game is somewhat similar to UO, and often they jump into salem from private servers of UO that have been around forever.

[ElCapitan1701]

...or these chars are only twinks or alt-chars from the male players I only believe such things, if I hear them in TS.

[MagicManICT]

...or these chars are only twinks or alt-chars from the male players I only believe such things, if I hear them in TS.

Troll much?

On the serious side, Sevenless does provide a good point here... Girlfriend/wife involvement is to the point that devs on one of the new games coming out has called one of the easy co-op modes "girlfriend mode" internally.

[Sevenless]

...or these chars are only twinks or alt-chars from the male players I only believe such things, if I hear them in TS.

My fiancee forages for me in Salem. She used to be my cheesemaker in Haven. She had 0 previous gaming experience with MMO's or anything even remotely similar. In the start up of commercial beta the girlfriend of one of my villagers played with us (confirmed via voip chat I might add). In pre-com I had a lovely lady playing with me whose only game experience other than Haven was a city/empire based game called Ebony. Still miss moxi, she loved cutting trees down for me.

Anyway, I certainly have personal experience that supports the girlfriend theory at the very least. The carebear village internal life of Salem and Haven is very attractive to casual and female gamers alike.

[eldoran]

i would like the idea, about the newbie food, would make the system easier in the early game, i mean, no one want that game to become a casual mmo, but make it easier for newbies isn't bad...all the pros which don't like newbies and want a hardcoregame wich no one else can, want and like to play, have to shout up...i like the game idea and want this game to be a succsess and for that its a good idea to make the start for new players easier in order to attract and hold more players....

thats my opinion