Publicity

[Delerium]

1. if the game was going to be realistic it would be possible to walk up and take your **** mid trade, but then you could kick their ass, so Boston would need to be PVP and it would be possible for someone to show you some high quality goods and then give you low quality. Both of these things can be mostly solved by not being an idiot, if someone is standing around find a different barrel, if someone walks up then take the stuff out of the barrel and wait for them to leave, and if you don't want to get scammed into buying lower purity stuff then buy from traders with good reputations or exchange goods in small amounts. The big problem is that its possible to log out next to a barrel, wait for some one to start trading and then log in and swipe their stuff, there should be an area around the barrels where you can't log out.
2. They could probably work on improving the stalls but its not really a big deal, at least not on the server I play.
3. There are incentives to group and help each other, even for hermits. There are player quests, I say that I will give you X if you do Y and then you go and do it.
Purchasing with a stall would be a nice addition but really isn't as critical as many of the other problems the game has. This is not a single player game, you will do much better if you work with others and you will have a much easier time staying alive and recovering when you get killed/raided if you are part of a group.
4. Full loot perma-death pvp and crafting sandbox are not incompatible, the only reason I play this game is because it has both full loot perma-death pvp and crafting sandbox gameplay.
And there will never be a care bear server. What would you even do on one? It would become without the treat of other player the game would become boring and you would run out of things to do before you even hit 100 humours.

Both you and Dallane are speaking from your own personal likes and play style, and by far don't speak for the majority of gamers in general. You are already here and have stuck around, so of course you like the game, as do I. If you consider the actual topic of this post, it's not about your personal likes and dislikes, but instead about publicity, and whether it would be a good or bad thing to advertise this game. We are a small niche of players, and the vast majority of gamers out there would give this game bad reviews for the exact things I listed off. That's why I feel like most publicity this game gets right now will be negative, not positive. I like this game, but most won't, and you can't run a business catering to such a small minority of a few hundred players.

An open system is an open system, it doesn't matter if it's permadeath or not. EVE is full loot/destruction and, if the players aren't smart, has serious death penalties. They have 300k players and have grown every year for the last 10 years. 100% of everything in EVE must be crafted or harvested by players (exception is basic blueprints which much be thoroughly researched). So yes, they can and do mix. I could also mention Ultima online (which is still going after 15 years) and others which have various levels of PvP death penalties.

If all you're looking for is a safe crafting game where you can design and build things without others taking a crap on your art, you're just not going to find one that is an open multiplayer game. Minecraft has mods to decrease griefing, but that I'm aware, doesn't get rid of it completely. A Tale in the Desert has a player government and manages itself, but still can't manage to completely eliminate various forms of griefing (mostly because some of these are actual competitions). (These are the only two games I know of that are multiplayer and have pure crafting elements to them.)

None of the games you listed have the potential for griefing on the most basic level that Salem has. For instance, almost every single current day game has the ability for player to player secure trading. It's a feature of MMORPG's that has existed for a long time and most players just expect it to be there. Eve has player buy/sell markets that are secure and expansive. ATITD has no form of PVP whatsoever, and no way to steal items you have stored away. Minecraft doesn't really count, as it's not even close to massively multiplayer. This game goes above and beyond the concept of griefing other players, to the point that nothing you own or store is ever safe. To my knowledge, I don't know another crafting sandbox style MMORPG that has as much potential to grief as Salem.

Also, don't think on such a small scale. These things may not be a huge deal right now but lets say Salem had grown to the 300k players that you said EVE has. Do you think the trade/market methods used right now could possibly scale to deal with that many people? Something like 20 market stalls for 300k players would be a joke. Hell, physical market stalls at 1 per player isn't even scalable.

[Dallane]

If you consider the actual topic of this post, it's not about your personal likes and dislikes, but instead about publicity, and whether it would be a good or bad thing to advertise this game. We are a small niche of players, and the vast majority of gamers out there would give this game bad reviews for the exact things I listed off. That's why I feel like most publicity this game gets right now will be negative, not positive. I like this game, but most won't, and you can't run a business catering to such a small minority of a few hundred players.

This is made to be a niche game. The devs understand this and made it how they wanted instead of bending to the mass of idiots.

Their other game which is exactly like this one but more developed due to its age has a large and active player base.

[alloin]

instead of bending to the mass of idiots

[MagicManICT]

bending to the mass of idiots.

Why EVE has 300k players. 250k of them never leave Empire space. 3/4 of that never leaves highsec.

[Delerium]

If you consider the actual topic of this post, it's not about your personal likes and dislikes, but instead about publicity, and whether it would be a good or bad thing to advertise this game. We are a small niche of players, and the vast majority of gamers out there would give this game bad reviews for the exact things I listed off. That's why I feel like most publicity this game gets right now will be negative, not positive. I like this game, but most won't, and you can't run a business catering to such a small minority of a few hundred players.

This is made to be a niche game. The devs understand this and made it how they wanted instead of bending to the mass of idiots.

Their other game which is exactly like this one but more developed due to its age has a large and active player base.

H&H could hardly be considered to have "a large and active player base." According to this at the time of this post, only 825 people are logged in. Granted that's probably still higher than Salem, but no where near what a game needs to be at to have the financial success to make it anything more than a (possibly full time) hobby for the devs. That is unless those players are dumping loads of cash into the game, of which i seriously doubt.

And again, remember the topic. This topic is not about how much you like the game, but whether or not it's smart to do large scale advertising. If you do attempt large scale advertising, you are actually trying to appeal to the "mass of idiots" you stated the devs didn't want to bend to.

[Claeyt]

bending to the mass of idiots.

Why EVE has 300k players. 250k of them never leave Empire space. 3/4 of that never leaves highsec.

That's still 50,000 outside of empire space and tons outside of high sec. Lotta players to blow up.

More importantly griefing there is much less here, and less personal.

[Darwoth]

the problem with the gaming industry now and ever since shortly before world of warcrap released is that games stopped being made by gamers wanting to make a great game and shifted to "wal mart" type companies trying to make money by making them appeal to the unwashed masses of retards like delerium, i would much rather play a game like this even if it only had a few hundred people total than some themepark pvp-lite piece of **** like eve (funny you mention that game, ex guildmate of mine is the lead dev for eve)

for the last several years there has not been much worth playing except emulators and small indie games where the devs do not care if they have a large playerbase, like this one. if you dont like this game move to one of the many that cater to people like you instead of trying to **** your pants all over our swingset.

[MagicManICT]

H&H could hardly be considered to have "a large and active player base." According to this at the time of this post, only 825 people are logged in.

Compare it to other indie MMOs (those that lack a major publisher or developer). That's actually a very large population. There's not many indie MMOs given the complexity of design and maintenance on the servers, but you'll find most get by with a few hundred or even just a few dozen.

[Dallane]

Their other game which is exactly like this one but more developed due to its age has a large and active player base.

H&H could hardly be considered to have "a large and active player base." According to this at the time of this post, only 825 people are logged in. Granted that's probably still higher than Salem, but no where near what a game needs to be at to have the financial success to make it anything more than a (possibly full time) hobby for the devs. That is unless those players are dumping loads of cash into the game, of which i seriously doubt.

And again, remember the topic. This topic is not about how much you like the game, but whether or not it's smart to do large scale advertising. If you do attempt large scale advertising, you are actually trying to appeal to the "mass of idiots" you stated the devs didn't want to bend to.[/quote]

A game with zero advertisement other then friends spreading the word compared to this game that has actual advertisements for a long ass time its not doing 2 bad.

[MagicManICT]

but no where near what a game needs to be at to have the financial success to make it anything more than a (possibly full time) hobby for the devs.

I can prove your statement wrong. A Tale in the Desert runs with less than a thousand subscribers paying about $14 a month (it's less than your typical WoW account) and the dev was even taking bitcoins at a value of even less than that. (They were running about $8 USD/btc at the time, but I know they hit a peak over $25 at one point before coming back down.) With 800 players logged in during prime time (about 4-10p EST), you can figure about 4-6x that in active players in most MMOs if I recall a minor stat study done several years ago (assuming it still holds true). That's more than enough to pay the devs to keep up with the game and then some if you just figure $10 per player per month, and that's at half of what the industry average is for money spent on a "F2P" MMO.