A Brave New Salem

[Dallane]

1. Frustration that they cannot achieve 50%+ Purity.
Why? I mean, why should I want to achieve "50%+ Purity" so bad that I'm frustrated I can't? Is there some meaningful end-game content that I cannot experience or it just is too hard to experience without items of 50%+ purity? What should, say 70% purity on items, give to a character?

2. Boredom that they have all skills.
If I have all the skills doesn't it actually mean that I can experience every single aspect of the game? Isn't it a bit like saying that, apart from character progression, there is little else to do in the game?

3. Frustration that many proficiencies cease to matter on their values.
Same as 2, does it have to matter? Will it make a huge difference? If I find that raising a proficiency (or any kind of stat in any game) just doesn't give me any significant benefit I just stop doing it and I concentrate on something else... tactics perhaps? Growing a community with a goal maybe? I still believe we are saying that there is not much to do here apart from out-growing all other characters stat-wise and that isn't even beneficial cause from a certain point onward is just higher numbers really...

1. Because your glutton is going to be terrible once you reach a certain humor level.
2. There is nothing to work for to develop your character
3. Again there is nothing to work for and be better at.

Fact is characters are boring and have no actual value.

[JohnCarver]

I'm not a veteran. I'm far from having experienced the fullness of the game as it is. However I feel the cause is a bit more systemic then what, at first glance, seems you are referring to.

I'll try to explain, if I fail at that feel free to ignore me completely. I just want to clarify in advance that I'm actually trying to be constructive in the attempt to extract a "design analysis" (I know it sounds pretentious... sorry about that) out those statements.

Fair enough. Keep in mind though that many people have been here longer than you and as such many people have experienced a game and systems that in many ways were improvements over the systems currently implemented. To put it plainly, a man never misses what he doesn't have. Therefore, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if you lack the perspective to realize what you are missing that the veterans might call out for. (no offense).

1. Frustration that they cannot achieve 50%+ Purity.
Why? I mean, why should I want to achieve "50%+ Purity" so bad that I'm frustrated I can't? Is there some meaningful end-game content that I cannot experience or it just is too hard to experience without items of 50%+ purity? What should, say 70% purity on items, give to a character?

Purity was once the end-game content. Once you have made every item in the game, and have every skill in the game. What are you going to do? How long are you going to stick around when you have seen and done it all? Purity was a means to give incentive to do it all again and make it BETTER this time. This was made worth it by nice multipliers to the goods. I feel those multipliers were a bit too high, but still the reward was worth it. There was very much a purity market and purity goods were in demand. So I guess in short, anybody who isn't currently interested or fixated on purity simply hasn't gotten to the last frontier that is purity.

2. Boredom that they have all skills.
If I have all the skills doesn't it actually mean that I can experience every single aspect of the game? Isn't it a bit like saying that, apart from character progression, there is little else to do in the game?

There are plenty of things to do. But players generally play MMO's for a feeling of advancement. Skills are the single largest bump in advancement here. Humours go up slowly, proficiencies slowly, terraforming slowly, purity slowly. Everything in Salem is a slow crawl to a finish line that is really only defined by a players own will and desire to declare it a goal in the first place. Skills are the one thing where you can point to it and say "Look here. I'm suppose to get this. And when I do, the game changes dramatically". So why would we want a player to reach the end of this in as little as 60 days.

3. Frustration that many proficiencies cease to matter on their values.
Same as 2, does it have to matter? Will it make a huge difference? If I find that raising a proficiency (or any kind of stat in any game) just doesn't give me any significant benefit I just stop doing it and I concentrate on something else... tactics perhaps? Growing a community with a goal maybe? I still believe we are saying that there is not much to do here apart from out-growing all other characters stat-wise and that isn't even beneficial cause from a certain point onward is just higher numbers really...

Character progression does not have to matter. But I think you will find in almost all enjoyable titles it does.

4. Boredom that animals almost always drop the same exact thing every time.
I hope you are referring to quality of the drop... but wait isn't purity of the drop already a quality indicator? You are not saying you want wild animals to drop random equipment or silver right? (I'm actually kidding on this, I'm sincerely convinced you are not )

A deer should definitely drop a fiery sword of angry beaver. It should also roll random properties between 1-100 and be 3-5 times the size of your character so you look extra special and cool. j/k! You are right I'm not implying that animals drop equipment or silver. I AM saying that butchering, hunting and the entire experience would be a lot more interesting if there was always that small chance of something super special. I will save those super specials for the actual patch as it is one of the earlier ones. If you had 20-40 different monsters to hunt I would say this would not be as important but currently lack of monster diversity must be mitigated by item diversity in our opinion.

5. Frustration at the early-game in general and the learning curve.
I totally agree on this and I'm thrilled to know how do you plan to facilitate the early-game experience.

Better Tutorials & Interfaces. Less Headaches (I'm looking at you tinder drill).

6. Frustration you can't be a witch.
I admit it, I'm totally ignorant on this subject... what should I be able to do as a witch? I kind of grabbed an earlier post where witches were described as the "paranoia inducing element" of the game but I fail to see how this will translate in gameplay terms. Will the witches be some kind of solo players hunted by everyone else? Or maybe a faction of their own with a different agenda and a specific reason for infiltrating towns (but then you can't really wear a pointy hat can you..)? Or is it just some kind of spellcaster "class" so that each town will have their own witches?

In most cases solo players hunted by everybody. Not spellcasters. There is a mechanic in place that makes sure a witch is not safe-guarded in a town. now if she has joined one to have easier prey to curse and hex may be a different story.

7. Boredom after raising turkeys given no other animals to keep and maintain.
I'm ok with diversity. I'm also ok with giving players diverse reasons to engage in the game so thumbs-up to the "farm mini-game" expansion.
At the cost of looking rude however, I would just argue that unlocking content is just another form of charcter progression, gameplay interaction is what matters to me the most. If every different animal/crop needed an, even slightly, different minigame to engage in and then in turn was used to unlock some kind of different mid- or end-game mechanic (maybe combat stances supported by food types? going wild with imagination here...), now that would be really interesting imho.

I think we can call content and character progression two very different things. Animal Husbandry is being developed with a little bit of bragging rights and showmanship element to it as well.

Now I will try the really difficult thing, and probably cover myself in shame even more in the attempt: Is it correct to say you are implying that frustration comes from (A) a weak correspodence between charcater development and unlocking meaningful ways to interact with the game and (B) a substantial lack of meaningful gameplay to engage in altogether when character development starts to become a slow crawl?

I totally twisted your words didn't I?

I do see your attempt to get me to focus my attention to the "What comes Next" after I have maxed out my character. However, the beauty of Salem is that you cannot max out your character. Now it is our job to make sure advancing him is always fun and desirable.

Thing is I have this idea nagging at me that the only thing that really unlocks by raising proficiencies is the ability to raise humors and raising humors is needed to physically beat up other players (ok breaching walls and then beat up other players)... and that's what the game is all about right now am I right? (which is not necessarily a bad thing, maybe in the current state of things is just not that interesting after a while)


Cheers to the new devs! YAY!

You are correct. For many players the game boils down to just being stronger than the other guy. We don't want to stop that. We do want to make sure that players not interested in that don't leave the title proclaiming they beat it simply because it has less than a few short months of progression to achieve.

[Potjeh]

And when you get to 100% purity, what then?

[nonsonogiucas]

1. Because your glutton is going to be terrible once you reach a certain humor level.
2. There is nothing to work for to develop your character
3. Again there is nothing to work for and be better at.

Fact is characters are boring and have no actual value.

Different choice of words but I think we make the exact same point.
If a characters is not developed in a unique way that makes it useful to interact with a game in an interesting way, then it has no value and becomes boring.

It looks paramount at this point to enforce separation of specialization between players. At least that way a character can be useful to an other, hopefully bringing more players to play together in bigger towns. (that of course if we value community interaction as a goal per se. I do)

[Dallane]

hopefully bringing more players to play together in bigger towns. (that of course if we value community interaction as a goal per se. I do)

The only way to bring people together in towns is to make having a town a secure thing to have instead of ticking time bomb.

[martinuzz]

The only bot I am sure exists in Salem (but afaik, has not been shared by it's creator, or even used this server, since loftar asked him nicely not to share it) is a lime bot. It can dig up lime boulders, chip them, and when inventory is full, automatically walk to leanto.
Not a major advantage I'd say, since it still needs player attentention constantly, to empty it's inventory.

The other bot that I find likely to exist , but have never seen proof of, is a tree chopping bot.

But to all those people screaming 'omg bots are providing a terribly unfair advantage you have to stop them!"
I'm sorry you were trolled into believing those exist, but it is funny to see you do.

[nonsonogiucas]

Fair enough. Keep in mind though that many people have been here longer than you and as such many people have experienced a game and systems that in many ways were improvements over the systems currently implemented. To put it plainly, a man never misses what he doesn't have. Therefore, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if you lack the perspective to realize what you are missing that the veterans might call out for. (no offense).

I promise I will hear what they say on the subject and will be humble enough to admit I was wrong in my assumptions.

Purity was once the end-game content. Once you have made every item in the game, and have every skill in the game. What are you going to do? How long are you going to stick around when you have seen and done it all? Purity was a means to give incentive to do it all again and make it BETTER this time. This was made worth it by nice multipliers to the goods. I feel those multipliers were a bit too high, but still the reward was worth it. There was very much a purity market and purity goods were in demand. So I guess in short, anybody who isn't currently interested or fixated on purity simply hasn't gotten to the last frontier that is purity.

I can totally understand for someone a stat-grind actually is the game and I also totally respect them having fun with that. I just want to point out that I found Salem by looking for "heavy crafting sandbox games" and "world pvp". Stat grind is usually associated with theme-park games, sandboxes shoul not fail to deliver that "something else". I also totally agree that defining what that "something else" is is definitely your job.

I do believe Salem has the potential to make "world scale pvp" the true end-game just like EVE Online. (again, I know I am biased )

There are plenty of things to do. But players generally play MMO's for a feeling of advancement. Skills are the single largest bump in advancement here. Humours go up slowly, proficiencies slowly, terraforming slowly, purity slowly. Everything in Salem is a slow crawl to a finish line that is really only defined by a players own will and desire to declare it a goal in the first place. Skills are the one thing where you can point to it and say "Look here. I'm suppose to get this. And when I do, the game changes dramatically". So why would we want a player to reach the end of this in as little as 60 days.

I do not propose you give players a faster growth, actually the other way around. I would also argue that is a mistake, and I think you already agreed with that, to let every character do potentially everything.
Let me argue again that there are out there titles where the finishing line is not dictated by the "oh my I don't really feel like grinding more just to glutton a table of 80% purity food in order to gain that 1 more point in black bile".

Character progression does not have to matter. But I think you will find in almost all enjoyable titles it does.

I argue that it has to matter at least as much as to be fun. If the goal is for the game to be played

I AM saying that butchering, hunting and the entire experience would be a lot more interesting if there was always that small chance of something super special. I will save those super specials for the actual patch as it is one of the earlier ones. If you had 20-40 different monsters to hunt I would say this would not be as important but currently lack of monster diversity must be mitigated by item diversity in our opinion.

I agree.

Better Tutorials & Interfaces. Less Headaches (I'm looking at you tinder drill).

Not totally convinced it will suffice if you still instantly die as soon as you leave Providence. And I point out that you actually have to leave Providence to build even a woven basket. Letting noobs do their first crafting / building inside Providence would be better imho, but I will wait and see. Amaze me

In most cases solo players hunted by everybody. Not spellcasters. There is a mechanic in place that makes sure a witch is not safe-guarded in a town. now if she has joined one to have easier prey to curse and hex may be a different story.

I'm on slippery ground here but... who wants to play solo and mercilessly hunted by everyone by default? Wouldn't a witch have to be incredibly OP to even stand a chance.

I think we can call content and character progression two very different things. Animal Husbandry is being developed with a little bit of bragging rights and showmanship element to it as well.

I'm fine with that too.

I do see your attempt to get me to focus my attention to the "What comes Next" after I have maxed out my character. However, the beauty of Salem is that you cannot max out your character. Now it is our job to make sure advancing him is always fun and desirable.

I understand that different players will find different "beauties" in the same game. What I do not think true is that "unlimited progression" always equals "unlimited gameplay". Could also mean "unlimited boredom". There are games that are fun even without character progression, I would argue that a game could bring "player progression" and that is, by definition, unlimited.

You are correct. For many players the game boils down to just being stronger than the other guy. We don't want to stop that. We do want to make sure that players not interested in that don't leave the title proclaiming they beat it simply because it has less than a few short months of progression to achieve.

I am ok with more content. However more content could also mean "more things to lose" as soon as the position of my base is revealed. It could in turn mean more rage quits. You could argue that a rage quitter doesn't deserve to play Salem. I would argue that more players is in your best interests more than mine

[JohnCarver]

And when you get to 100% purity, what then?

You won't. The formula is now written with a more logarithmic curve to it. The high the seeds the better chance they will actually go down instead of up, and therefore, the more fields you must simultaneously run to get that lucky jump higher.

However more content could also mean "more things to lose" as soon as the position of my base is revealed.

Every player who has the ability to maker braziers has the ability to completely eliminate any risk to his base. This won't always be the case. But pretending like you have something to lose the minute you are found only tells me that you either

A) have not made a brazier

B) have not tested one.

[martinuzz]

And when you get to 100% purity, what then?

You won't. The formula is now written with a more logarithmic curve to it. The high the seeds the better chance they will actually go down instead of up, and therefore, the more fields you must simultaneously run to get that lucky jump higher.

Won't that reach a point fast where that lucky field does not produce enough seeds, to replant the amount of fields needed to have a chance to get that next lucky jump higher?

[Potjeh]

The point is that meaningful progress will eventually cease. You're not solving the issue, you're just delaying it. All it accomplishes is allowing more cycles of the same old gluttony, which has too many cycles as it is.