by jbarefoot » Mon Jul 08, 2013 9:08 pm
forgive me if this has been said earlier, but TL;DR.
MY OPINIONS ON WHY PEOPLE DONT STAY
quick background...played the game since september '12. After 6 months of building a small town with about 8-9 other players realised several things. Stopped playing for a while, came back. Found its very very quiet.
1. What is the point to Salem?
OK, so i've found stuff, ive hunted, i spent 3 days solid flattening some land and hunting non-stop to make a small claim. I've got some farms up, a bakery, a mine and smelters, etc etc. I am set up and ready to pump skills and humours. But... Why am I doing it again? it was fun exploring, and building all this stuff, but it was all to achieve what? grinding stuffed turkeys? Meat pies? make batch of pies, gluttony, replant seeds, log off for 3 days? even if I aim to get humours to 200+ to go into the darkenss, why bother? whats out there?.
2. Humours
PVP in this game isnt really very much fun. The entire isometric view, click here mechanics are clumsy at best, and awful if im honest. Couple that with the entire problem of new characters trying to set up a claim and characters promoted to godlike strength with 300+ humours attacking them. Worst idea ever in my opinion. Noone should be so strong that three guys couldnt take them. The Balance of character strength in this game seems to be a very strange design decision. To sum it up. Im a noob, it will take me at least 6 months to be able to compete, during which time im stuck in a static location open to being raided and killed at any moment. Why Bother?
This part of the game needs reigning in hugely, there needs to be balance.
3. Longevity
There is no discovery in this game, no chance-based variation. Sure, you have purity, which is a great core mechanic. I would have loved to have a seen some form of slightly random invention minigame or something.
4. Griefing - mostly in forums.
This isn't attractive, and impresses very few people. You'd be better off without it. Since this is supposed to be a social experiment, why feed the trolls? Player like myself will simply decide they dont want to spend 10 mins of my life reading about how someone is a %^$^ $%££%£ or some other pleasantries. Sure, people want to let their hair down, but these forums take it too far, and this is coming from a longtime eve online player.
TL'DR
Its a great concept, but humours a re stupidly imbalanced, player can reach godlike humours and have too much advantage over new starts. There isnt really anything to keep you here past a certain point, unless you want big numbers at the top of your screen (humour bars). Also, these forums are unpleasant and hostile, unless things have changed a huge amount in a few weeks. We need to clean up a little.
Best of luck to you Jorb, you have made a great core game, but if you want to attract and keep more people, you're going to have to make everyone a little more average, so that we dont get the situation where to God Ares desides the fate of the other 300 puny mortals on the server. Noone wants to play with Darwoth, even back in primary school.
