Game has no Content?

[Sevenless]

To be fair, that farmville quote has always been a completely unbased insult towards carebears. Mind, they also called us moral-less psychopaths so hey fair's fair.

Calling Zynga games casual is a hilarious insult to that genre. Their proper name is "social gaming", and there are many people incredibly addicted to the games who play for hours upon hours per day, *every* day. Casual within the gaming industry refers not to the length of time you play/day, but the frequency of play. Casuals usually only play 1-2 days per week at most, so a "weekend warrior" well fits under the description of a casual player.

In effective playstyle, sandbox mmos (Wurm, Salem, Haven, ATitD) and social games like farmville share very little in the way of mechanics other than A) People playing together and B) Some form of reference to farming. Sandbox MMO's often make it playable solo, but beneficial in a group. Social games on the other hand severely restrict your access to gameplay unless you're linking up with other players. And the kicker is, the players who play social games don't find that system onerous, but genuinely enjoy what amounts to viral marketing for player retention.


And honestly? The people who actually play farmville aren't half as entitled as the people I've called farmvillans in the past

[yurara]

I'v traveled uncivilized land three times, and arrived at about (-210, -16) based on the SALEM map website. my humors are 41, 32, 36, 37 so I could travel to there.
but while traveling, nothing is found and I've never felt the need to travel the uncivilized after that.

there's no content to play in salem world. It's bored. even I learned horticulture. I've been looking for playable, but nothing. why is the uncivilized nothing?

[staxjax]

Not another one of these threads.

There is nothing in the darkness YET. If you are so bored, go play something else and come back at a later date once more content has been added.

And your humours suck btw, no way you could even compete in pvp with those humours if you tried. I'm also guessing you dont have a very pure mine, and by the way your humours look...your crafting is weak and all your food is still 0% pure as well. Learn to craft, then come back here again and tell me about the lack of content.

[dullahx]

such a rude answer, felt like you jumped at this guy's throat

[staxjax]

I did, and I should have merged it with this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1061

As a matter of fact, let that be the thread to talk about how boring and lacking in content Salem is. I'm locking this.

[Tonkyhonk]

A good example is Tonkey using the motte and bailey city as an example. I know from people in that village azkanan stoped playing right about when the dirt was done digging... didn't have the drive to go any further with the game.
Already 50% of your real life examples aren't with us anymore. ShadowAltan I hope you don't prove me further right:P
Even your example of you doing the newspaper isn't compelling towards the game play and every other example is just as easily done somewhere else.

Azkanan/projeear never last long, but he is always good at starting something new, and if someone continues doing it, he comes back and rejoins in, but soon he gets bored and gone. its him being himself.
dunno about ShadowAltan, but there are quite a few who dont speak up but do such stuff, keeping most to themselves unless asked. doesnt have to be "quest" quest, but could be some experiments with the game mechanics available, trying to experiment pretty deeply. at least we had many of those in haven.
ill have to admit that Dis members had been pretty good at doing projects even though what they did were mostly a rehash of others in the past worlds, they still show achievements occasionally, while many who spoke against them were just plain complainers.

fyi, the newspaper has its own purpose and objectives that i do not intend to talk about to the general public.
(and its not some kind of conspiracy theory chief poop once or twice tried to bring up.)
you are nowhere near to call it "compelling" without knowing my intention, imo, nor do i wish to compel you was only mentioning it to say i have my own.

there are things you can do here a lot easier than in other available MMOs due to its freedom AND permadeaths w/ open pvp, but thats that. if you think you can do your projects on other games, just go ahead and enjoy, you really dont need to waste your time complaining here. but anyone coming here only to expect devs to babysit your entertaining needs, expect to be flamed by me. (and no, this last part is not a personal note to you, bowden, just in general "you".)

[baronbowden]

Nah i know Tonkey,

My concern is at the end of the day the game has to be commercially viable. Whoever is in charge of finance and the cash shop needs to do some real statistical evaluation on if people are doing multiple transactions in silver or if people just buy a bit to start once and never touch the cash shop again.

IMO this game will probably attract a core following but as it stands I dont even know a single player who is a fan of the game who will actually put real USD/Euro into the game. There really isn't a reason to.

How will we ever get content/support if the game can't earn enough for the company putting it out to make a bit of profit and pay developers a reasonable salary/revenue split.

B

[Sevenless]

I've got a villager who loves terraforming. We have a nice sized piece of flat land mostly due to his love of the activity. More than we really need for our current population. Yesterday he asked me "So now that we're mostly done the base, what now?"

And the honest answer is "Nothing". Not because the game is content less, there's mines to try and find, silver to acquire, crops to grow. But because ultimately, all video games are "pointless" if you run out of things you want to do in them. Sandbox games are just a little more prone to you realizing everything is pointless because the game doesn't dangle goals in front of you to complete. Like collect 85 golden baubles. If the game didn't have a completion meter for that, how many people would genuinely want them anyway?

Right now there is the glaring problem that many of the possible purity grinds are missing. Trees, equipment, workstation purity grind. But even if we had those players always come back to the eventual question of "what now?". Here's how I answer that:

Do you enjoy your daily routine? Is Farming/Hunting/Baking enough to keep you pleased with the game mixed with social interaction? If the answer is yes, then there's your goal. If the answer is no, and you're always striving to complete a project, I think it's time to move on to another game or enter the pvp world in a serious manner.

[Tonkyhonk]

I've got a villager who loves terraforming. We have a nice sized piece of flat land mostly due to his love of the activity. More than we really need for our current population. Yesterday he asked me "So now that we're mostly done the base, what now?"

he could go dekasegi if he so wishes

[Steve]

... If the answer is no, and you're always striving to complete a project, I think it's time to move on to another game or enter the pvp world in a serious manner.

I fear many, many people already followed your first suggestion, i.e. moved on to another game.

The game's practically in open beta, seeing the amount of keys up for grabs - but very few people stay with the game. I reckon player retention must be very low for Salem. And with such a low population one could argue that multiserver support should be near the bottom of the priority list ... *sighs*