That being said, most online gamers are attuned to different game styles than what salem offers, and i feel most players never get to experience "Salem" before they pass judgement then either quit or continue. Now, i am sure everyone would love an ever expanding player base why not hindering any game play offered by what makes salem, well salem.
Let me start by explaining were i got my idea from. Runescape.
When runescape was first launched, it was a new kind of concept offered to the gaming world, and to help people's transactions to this new kind of game offered, newb island was created to given them parts of the games full experience in a small compact tutorial completable within an hour or so.
To that extend i have come to believe that such a thing should be introduced into salem, to help bring in new players, keeping the game in its current state as well help people understand what salem is all about, before quitting without experiencing the game itself. I feel this will attract people who would never dream about playing a perma death mmo, most of all in salems current state, were your basically get dumped in the game with almost no direction of what to do.
My vision of what newb island would be, and how it could be implimented.
East of boston on any new generated map would be an island XXX tiles high by XXX / XXX tiles wide, meaning people can roam around the bottom in a boat, but never climb it. Easy creatable with dev tools as thats environmental editing only, once a template is made, it can be created on any new server.
The coding side would be changed as thus (Im not a coder so unsure how much real manpower this would need).
When you name your character, You spawn in the current place and create your characters image, after this, you have the option to either go directly to boston, or go into a games tutorial (Strongly suggested to new players of salem / h&n).
On The island, you will have to follow a quest chain / tasks, and at the end maybe get a small reward of a wooden shovel + axe (will help new players who spent 1 or 2 hours on the tutorial).
When you spawn on the island you are given the warning, that if you leave / logout during this phase, there will be no return with your current character to the island to learn the game knowledge you "need to know" to survive and 1-2 hours should be given to complete the tutorial which will give you a great overview of the game and what to expect.
To start you will be explained how finding / gathering items work, and will need to find / loot a foraged item (running around a little, huge spawn increase rates of item needed) to find 1 item, once you find 1 item, you will be given a few foraged items (inventory spawned) and explained you can make cooked foods. After this, you could be told to go to a designated cooking area with fires which are ever lasting once apon arrival, be spawned several materials to make cooked items, and you need to make a few cooked items. After cooking, it explains how some foods require different cooking methods. Pies need bread ovens for example, not "all the details", but some of the basics. After you cooked the food + done some reading, you are given several food items, and explained how glutony works in better details and are told to level some biles. After you have used the food and gained 3-5 random biles, its time to be given seeds to sew into a field, which instantly grows, but it tell you seeds can take days to a week to fully grow, and explains that different seeds produce different items used for a range of things like leveling, and crafting clothing. Lets say it gives you cotton, then are told to make a cloth, given some extra materials and create a fancy clothing item, a jacket or something. From here, it will basically give you the lowdown on what salem is all about, you have understood the crafting of foods, gathering, farming, its time to understand combat.
Once in the "combat" area, you are given a cricket to fight (spawns on entery)which you easily kill. Then you are shown the real meaning of the game and are given a basic humanoid AI npc to fight.(here some nice split endings can happen) Once you fight this character, If you KO him, you are given the option to "Strike the killing blow", or just "revive him". Doing either option would explain what happens, mercifull but the consequences of maybe letting him live, or kill him. If you are KO'd, you are then killed by the NPC, enter like a fake death screen explaining what has happened, and after any ending + explination you are spawned in boston, saying "It was just a dream on the boat of my "possible future"", and that was your home / land you had.
The newb island could emphasize how this area "could be what your home could look like" and that you are defending it at the end, and what the result could be, and explain even if you are killed, your next character can "inherit" your land etc. Such a place could be done on a huge scale, and must allow character collision, multi use of looms, fires, fields are not problem as instantly grown + harvested(done in like 5 seconds so u can see some animation, no extra seeds to abuse) to emphasize a village, or on a small scale of 1 mini map tile (but hundreds / thousands of them could fit in the sea east / along the east coast as they would only spawn / load when a new player enters the newb island and not take endless server space, as it would only call up the created template of the land, with a possible 2h limit to the newb island when you are kicked from it (give countdown timer) to emphasize a hermit / solo player, but explains how wanting to only ever play solo comes with risks.
I could endlessly go into more details about how things like this COULD be, yet would have no clue about the coding size of such things, but i cannot see it being too big of a problem, all the features exist in the game, quest / update triggers of newb island could be done by entering new claims which already exists(would need several claim triggers), and spawning items into inventory exists, it would just be spawned when entering a new claim trigger, when you also get a popup / window you can scroll through to read what to do in thus new area + with your new items. The creation of the land would be minimal on time with dev tools, and going by the logic of just re arranging the current item/spawn coding which already exists into a route created on an optional spawn location of tutorial / newb island should not take "that long".
This place should give you a small reward of for example, keeping the few low level biles gained, keeping a wooden axe + spade or such, as such things could be gained just by running around randomly without the tutorial, as well as a few inspirational items to get you started for time spent on the island.
If you are never going to change your interface / add no radar, and still continue your allowance of modded clients, you could create a side note about this why on the island, and explain such modded clients can give advantages of mini map radar icons, grid's for leveling land and a few extra bonus's.
Such a place would give them the feel of some salem basics in 10/20/50/100+ hours worth gameplay compact into a 1-2 hour session. This i feel would attract players who normally judge a game in a few short hours like most gamers do when switching games, and keep them interested for the long run, and not just wonder around aimlessly with no direction which you currently seem to get with the game, and hope you do not fall in to a trap other players can set up and quit.
Anyways, this is my contribution for today, its not mud slinging either
You could add / remove / edit some of my suggestions of the newb island, this was just a basic break-down of what should happen on a minimum scale.
Thanks for reading (if you did)
TL:DR, Newb island. Go play runescape and understand why newb island was made to create a place were gamers can transcend into a new world of gaming.
This would be my strongest game changing suggestion, as the current introduction / lack of ingame hub features is so minimal and bad, that it alone detours potential players away who do not know about modded clients existing, or how the new game gene salem brings to the mmo world works.
FYI, i never even knew h&h existed until it was mentioned in an irc chat 1 week after i started playing salem, which i followed for almost 1 year through my various mmo websites i visit. So please do not bring h&h into this discussion, this is salem, i only know salem. I know quite a few players i met in salem also who never knew h&h existed until after they started playing salem, and that they have been following salem for several months some of them. Salem.
PS: Sorry for any bad spelling or grammar i am lazy and bad with words.
