Thoughts on Salem (possibly the worst game i ever played)

[femputer]

Oh sorry. Well you need a deed to protect as well as silver to extend this protection, what about using arrowheads in the recipes for claims or even extending protection? Nevermind that for the moment. I think it must have been the compost bin, and requiring nails to build one, waiting 2 hours for each humus as well as paying silver for seeds. What if i wanted to make a conpost bin with wooden plugs instead of fancy 30s nails? Maybe they could implement that and make it a structure that degrades or gets worn out easily. I couldnt be fcked to hunt another 80 or so crickets to raise the money for nails and seeds. I had wooden boxes full of indian arrowheads to make charms, but feathers do not drop as the devs have coded for a lower drop %. It is these prohibitive expensive recipes that really frustrate me. As well as an absence of strategies to make silver in reasonable time, hides are worth almost nothing and yet we have an eight hour waiting time for a 4s rabbit hide, the way feathers drop you have 3-4 hour wait for savage charms. Arrowheads to extend protections or lowering he costs of making a claim would represent conflicts of the time and be a nice mechanic, instead of waiting or feathers.

[Procne]

Look, there are plenty of ways to make silver, it really isn't a problem. Apart from charms and crickets you can also sell snake / rabbit skins. Beaver skins go for 12s as well.
Add to it that many players will buy some foragables, it's enough to check trade forum. For example I pay 30s for a mix of 24 chestnuts / snails / mushrooms. Other people pay more.

Not to mention that buying nails from NPC for 30s is a huge mistake as most players sell those for 15s or less. I think that even at player stalls you can buy them for 20s.

After playing for 2 months I made couple thousands of silver, and I'm not even close to people who concentrate on making silver. Sure, it was slow in the beginning, but I still had plenty of fun then.

If it's all too slow for you then this game won't be good for you. Although it's still much faster than Wurm.
It's fine if you don't like this and that and talk about it. That's feedback. But it can't be done in "do this and that because game sucks" manner. Understand that many people love it the way it is.

[femputer]

On raonoke finding discounted nails was a problem. Id like to add that after building a house and stove, i learnt that the 10+ autumn delights i had prepared could not be baked in a stove but for some reason had to be barbecued in the dying embers of a camp fire (and only four at a time) or smoked in a meat smoker using charcoal. An autumn delight, that was referred to in game as an 'unbaked' autumn delight. Isnt that just a little bit crazy? I hadnt checked the wiki as i had assumed an 'unbaked' autumn delight could be baked in a stove but no, you actually have to smoke/barbecue them. sigh.

[Glennfinnan]

The only way of [mass] acquiring nails that I can accept is by producing them.
That's fairly easy when you get your mining site up [I'd suggest at least 2-3 smelter].
You can fuel the meatsmoker with branches just as well [unless something was changed, didn't use it in a while].
Meatsmoker is also pretty easy to build when you have your own mining site.

[Qukatt]

in the beginning I made my fortunes by gather grass like a mother and mass producing hay. I couldn't hunt.

Now you can find free snake skins in trees and bushes, it's fab. a much needed addition to my vast pennies at the time (hah, yeah like 5 silver cause I kept on building). Also, if you have a lime deposit and not intending to smelt ore, that's a pretty good income. Also having a labourer alt who you go and hire out to people who need land flattened and cba doing it themselves.

edit: I wanted to share the worst MMO I had played. It was called Dark and Light and I played it for maybe an hour before I closed it and moved on (without biatching). What I didn't like about It was their "innovative" real eco system. of course this meant my "kill 2 pigs" was off the bat impossible. The hundreds of people who had piled in at lauch killed all the wildlife they could find and left the opening area completely barren of appropriate level creatures. I intended to come back at some point because it was pretty and had other good systems however when I did go to check it out again the game was dead.. as in there were no longer any servers to run it.

Also Wakfu, turn base real time combat.. wtf yo?

[anfros]

I think what the OP doesn't understand is that every action in this game is not only a step in the present but also a long term investment. A lot of things in this game takes time to complete, hides take 16 hours of effective time to turn into leather, coal clamps take 3 days to burn, crops and plants take a couple of days to cultivate. All of these things, while they force your pace down, also forces you to plan ahead. They also give players who play together an advantage as it allows them to produce stuff more efficiently.

Say for example I realize that my claim is going to come under attack very soon, and I don't have enough braziers to protect my stuff. To build more I need Iron, but I only have very little stored up so now I need to quickly produce more. Unfortunately I have depleted my coal supply, and since a coal clamp takes 3 days to burn I am going to have to either trade for coal/iron or leave my base with inadequate defenses. This whole situation could have been avoided if I had just made sure to either build proper defenses when first constructing my base or if I had made sure to keep a supply of coal/iron at hand at all times. This sort of thing can have huge impact for individual players or, if this happened to one of the big groups out there, to the entire community. And as the game development progresses we will see much more of this kind of thing. Take for example in the future when we get proper firearms. These will require gunpowder to use, and gunpowder is, among other things, made from coal. Take my last example, and say I have neglected to replenish my gunpowder supply. This would set me at a disadvantage to an opponent who had made sure to keep his supply at a good level. This is what makes this game a true sandbox, the decisions you make now will affect your options later on. I don't know about you but without this, I wouldn't have the slightest interest in this game. Because ultimately this game isn't as much about how good you are at specific elements of the game but the decisions you make while playing it.

And as for money being hard to acquire, this just isn't true. I've played this game for 2 ish months and so far I've build 10-something claims, several of which have been rather large, payed town taxes, been murdered while holding a purse with >1000 silvers, bought more nails than I can remember, bought seeds and helped noobs with silver for their first claims. To this day I have payed exactly $0.00 for this game, all of my silver has been earned through savage charms, hides, cricket teams and trading. Anyone claiming silver is hard to get has yet to master even the most basic elements of this game. Yes, the spawn rate for indian feathers is much lower than for indian arrowheads. Lesson: Stop stockpiling arrowheads and start foraging for other inspirationals, my suggestion would be Singing Old Logs as these are always in high demand and can usually be sold for a reasonable price, or if you are going to start farming/gardening you are going to require New World Gourds, which can usually also be sold, although at a lower price. If you do this you will find that you are finding quite a lot of feathers. When I go foraging I almost never go out in search of a particular item but just wander around and pick up everything useful I can find.

[gargojl]

Lol not sure if OP is troll or if it's just his way of living - cry about everything you dislike in hope to change it for the easier.
I mean he is playing or at least spending time on the game, so there must be something he likes.

I want to add this is one of the best games I played in a while and I have easily played dozen of MMOs over 10 years. I met some lovely people who I now live with and work up our settlement.
I love doing everything even the most repetitive tasks, I definitely never have time to idle. The closest to "idling" I get when I stop to chat.

Sure there's this first impression of game being unfinished - which we all know is true, it's beta after all - but it definitely has something very attracting.
And if devs work hard on it I have no doubt this will turn out to be a great game.

[FantM]

As a matter of fact, i have played with several different people of various abilities. Started settlements with new players, joined exerienced villages etc. I understand what black bile is and how it works. When studying, I kept fish and berries with me to keep it full, as well as taking the -time- to learn literacy and formal education, the process is still very very slow and is an obvious time sink. Consider the gameplay is based on survival, in part - learning the skills to survive; once you have gathered/manufactured the materials necessary to craft inspirations, you shoudnt then have to wait again several minutes for an imaginary bar to fill up. It doesnt seem like you have really read what i have written. Even survival mods for games like starcraft ii, show more innovation, and realism, kobold tribes is a good example - if you have access to that game. Salem as i have experienced it is grind, i expected so much more.

Really, you started a settlement and joined in a village in one day! That is a pro right there!

[Mushibag]

Really, you started a settlement and joined in a village in one day! That is a pro right there!

Started settlements with new players, joined exerienced villages etc.

No, he started & joined multiple settlements in one day. That is some 1337 ****, we should be asking him how to get the most out of this game, he obviously has it mastered.

[Dallane]

Really, you started a settlement and joined in a village in one day! That is a pro right there!

Started settlements with new players, joined exerienced villages etc.

No, he started & joined multiple settlements in one day. That is some 1337 ****, we should be asking him how to get the most out of this game, he obviously has it mastered.

dear lord he could be some sort of master spy playing like that