Fundamentals?

[Chiprel]

I propose new building for town - gallows. Town members can vote on someone and he can be hanged without murder debuff.

Lol town of salem

Nothing bad ever happens in this town.

[Shrapnel]

Wow! Two core mechanics are on the workbench, JC is rubbing his chin, eyes moving from one to the other.. he turns to the forums with a vote.

I think both proposed changes are good in their own way, Its hard to make a choice.

Proficiency.
Mindless work in Salem for me is a great distraction, im usually the only one in my town that makes a habit of going out to collect grass, mine tiles, sift rubble, chop trees, or make iron in bulk so that way we have enough to last a while, i dont hate or dislike it, i actually prefer it over the complex tasks, i leave those for someone who both enjoys the satisfaction of the complexity, and has the higher proficiency for it.

The system doesn't have to change all that much to accomplish the change you proposed (from a players perspective, behind the scenes might be a disaster), simply making it so you gain points in that proficiency when doing a related task would be good enough. Example: You have Level 10 Hammer & Nail, 1000 points to fill the bar so you saw some boards, you get 5 points per board, 995 points later, your bar is full and you can choose to buy a skill with it or increase the cap.

Gluttony.
Boy oh boy.. the noobs nightmare. I've had 4 of my friends try Salem, every single one of them had troubles learning the gluttony system, ive also watched 2 streamers start playing Salem, they where also confused. Either they didn't listen during the tutorial, or it didn't explain it well enough. But when i had to explain how the system worked to each of my friends i often found it hard to explain it in a way that made sense. "You need to find the food with the color of the humor you want to increase, then click the forks and click on the same color food to gain points until you hear the noise and the number increases." Doing that proved unhelpful, because they didn't pay attention to the tooltip (which i completely forgot about at the time) pointing out that you have a 90% chance to lose 90% in that foodgroup, so they where eating 10 frogetti at a time, only going up one point and wasting the rest because it destroyed that foodgroup on the first one. I facepalmed and had to re-explain the system, AND explain the foodgroup loss/gain.. It was exhausting.

A rework of the gluttony system would benefit the noobs, still being somewhat of a noob myself, i would welcome this change. It would be much easier to explain that you need to match the food to the craving, than the mess i sputtered in the paragraph above.

Spoiler discussion about the Poll Results, Dont click if you haven't voted.

After voting, It seems the community is split 3 ways almost evenly.. while i understand that people don t want Salem to change, im still shocked at how many people voted not to change either of the mechanics. I don't really have much to say about it, i just felt i needed to point that out..

[Stormie]

As an old player I enjoy the systems as they are. It's unique, deep, and tards can't figure out the mechanics. Even older players think they know and dont. I play because it's fun, not to protect some way of life in this game. Any of these changes won't make me quit. I'm happy seeing development.

[Thor]

Keep things complicated enough to keep the gap between a noob and an older player large enough. Noobs become older players eventually after all later on if they stick around. I don't think anyone benefits from catering to stupid and lazy noobies. Challenge, risk and the feeling of a genuine adrenaline rush have always been the best features of Salem to me.

[Darwoth]

it is hilarious the way EVERY time an opinion on a SPECIFIC matter is solicited we end up with 50 morons that do not know how to play the game screaming to redesign the entire game in the image of their ****** themepark suggestions which of course always has zero to do with the actual discussion at hand.

1> raiding is not broken, you are all just incompetent. every single person on this forum that ***** about "how it is impossible to raid" are the same ***** that never amounted to anything other than newbkilling in each of the previous servers and are simply butthurt that the difficulty in raiding said newbs has eclipsed their own ability. i have taken down NUMEROUS heavy fortified towns with brick walls on this server by myself and it typically takes me about one full afternoon of raiding to secure the town, usually with some kills thrown in from the initial defense.

so then, WHY cant those of you with a half dozen+ raid and accomplish the same thing i do in only a few hours? because you suck thats why. the lack of HOB posts is due to the fact none of you are competent enough to do anything to create one and i seldom post my own.


2> pve servers, no permadeath, redesigned this that and the other for newbs, "waah waaah i have a 200 stat guy and you have a 200 stat guy, you should not be able to make a 200 stat guy faster than me after playing for a year and half waah waah"

you people are the exact sort of pathetic entitled ***** as the losers that collect a welfare check. you know nothing about anything but are never short of "great ideas" to **** out of your mouth, you are the exact type of retards that have ruined every other game over the last 15 years and left us with an industry of wow clones.




back to the discussion at hand, if skills can be gained through inspiration in addition to a bonus for activities i dont see a problem.

gluttony should be left alone.

[TotalyMeow]

Removed Derails except Darwoth because he makes a crucial point. This is a thread about a specific matter. This is not the place to crowd in with your pet idea thinking that just because a dev made this thread, he'll want to read your post about something entirely different. That sort of thing just leads to us ignoring the thread and doing whatever we think is best. Seriously, if you think some fundamental system needs changing and you have what you think is an awesome idea, then make a new thread for it. It'll get a look. Just remember that saying things like ''Remove Expeditions'' or ''Make Permadeath less like Permadeath and more like every other MMO out there'' is like going to the Iditarod and saying "this race would be so much better without dogs!".

[JohnCarver]

So far I see Procne being the lead advocate AGAINST the proficiency points per task. I of course see the warnings against having a system that makes inspirationals obsolete, but when have you ever known me to be 'generous' with a nice thing? The example of 5 Hammer & Nail per board sounds pretty darn accurate to what I was thinking and if all minor tasks were in that arena of gains I think you wouldn't feel empty handed when doing a task for a few hours that was purely helping a friend but certainly not 'ignore' inspirationals just to cut 300 boards instead of just studying your coffin plank.

Gluttony is my larger frustration because as Meow mentioned the existing system has handicapped the implementation of Cabbage, Domestic Meats & Fruit food groups the way we have wanted to. EVERY little food represents a large problem with balance and all for a system that so many seem to not understand or enjoy in the first place. Darwoth was 100% correct tho that the majority of the changes proposed would hurt the ease of alt-creation. Something I have a hard time caring about but something to consider for those who make a habit out of heavy alt-usage.

[lachlaan]

So far I see Procne being the lead advocate AGAINST the proficiency points per task. I of course see the warnings against having a system that makes inspirationals obsolete, but when have you ever known me to be 'generous' with a nice thing? The example of 5 Hammer & Nail per board sounds pretty darn accurate to what I was thinking and if all minor tasks were in that arena of gains I think you wouldn't feel empty handed when doing a task for a few hours that was purely helping a friend but certainly not 'ignore' inspirationals just to cut 300 boards instead of just studying your coffin plank.

Gluttony is my larger frustration because as Meow mentioned the existing system has handicapped the implementation of Cabbage, Domestic Meats & Fruit food groups the way we have wanted to. EVERY little food represents a large problem with balance and all for a system that so many seem to not understand or enjoy in the first place. Darwoth was 100% correct tho that the majority of the changes proposed would hurt the ease of alt-creation. Something I have a hard time caring about but something to consider for those who make a habit out of heavy alt-usage.

The PvP system as is seems to revolve mostly around alts that go crazy criming all over the place and then spend most of their life in the stocks. I could be wrong as I'm a pvp noob but that's at least the way I see it. Given that, I think there's this weird balance that can never be met considering the status quo, where the speed with which you can get back on your feet determines how likely you are to pvp, but that in turn affects how much end-game feels rewarding, in comparison to how long it takes to get there. Tricky balancing I guess, and you'd have to either go the path of flimsy everything, chars, infrastructure etc, and quick reconstruction of all infrastructure and chars, or long term development and more penalty for messing with such development.

As for gluttony, let it be known I'd enjoy a new system either way, but that might just be my enjoyment in learning how to best do it. So if it'd help bring gluttony full circle, just think up ways to make alt-raising somewhat more tolerable, similarly to how we have noob foods now for the first 70-80 points.

[Stormie]

Gluttony is fine. It works.
Inspirational learning is fine. If you Want to add passive learning then ok. But it works as is.

Don't kill my alt usage. The game promotes it as it is designed.

[agentlemanloser]

In general, I agree with item #1, or at least the need for a bit of a rethink. However, you should be very careful in how you approach modifying this aspect of the game. Whatever you do, you should aim for additions and alternatives to gaining proficiency points instead of major changes to how this system operates. If I understand you correctly, you mean to say that mining one boulder might translate to a 50pt progression for the M&M proficiency. Depending on level, mining a hundred boulders could translate to a point or two progression up the M&M ladder. I have no problem with such a system. Studying an inspirational is instant, gaining proficiency through tasks is slow but requires no inspiration points—this is a good approach for early weeks of play, and also offsets the irritation of a depleted inspiration point supply. Keep the proficiency gain low enough per task, and higher levels would still prefer study to practice, as study is faster. I would welcome such an additional system.

As for your other approach, which is requiring a number of repetitive tasks to learn a skill, I must emphatically disagree. Make no mistake, I am not fundamentally opposed to skills requiring certain feats exterior to the numbers themselves, but such an idea should only be considered in relation to high-level skills. Take Viscera & Bits as an example. Anyone making a hunting alt will, of course, shoot for this skill. That said, a hunting alt will, by definition, be hunting, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to require that Viscera & Bits requires certain numbers of kills of, say, most or all Light-related fauna. Since it takes a bit of time to put a higher level skill on an alt, I can’t see that requirement for a higher tier skill being an impediment. However, as Darwoth wisely pointed out, putting such hoops on low- and mid-tier skills would be profoundly annoying and simply be a way to discourage alt creation. For better or worse, this is a game that requires multiple characters. Even so, having a few more restrictions on the genuinely high-level, endgame-ish skills is a different animal, since anyone who raises an alt to that level won’t have a problem playing the character, provided the requirements are directly related to the alt’s profession. A high-level trade skill might as well require practice of the trade. Please note, however, that I am not saying one should chop 100 trees, or, in this case, kill 100 rabbits, 100 beaver, etc. before the skill Viscera & Bits could be acquired. That kind of requirement would be insane. Rather, some smaller number of cricket, rabbit, rattler, beaver, deer, bear, and cougar is not at all unreasonable. Asking me to kill 100 crickets to get small game hunting would, however, be beyond unreasonable.

And, while I am discussing alternative methods to proficiency gain, let me say that you have missed a trick with the scribing system. We currently have fifteen proficiencies. We also have a scribing system not fully integrated into the gaming experience. Why do we not have craftable books related to each proficiency? For instance, when a person reaches 100 T&N, they can craft the Ars Sutura, a consumable multi-use inspirational requiring paper, leather, and inspiration points to create. The inspirational would fit in somewhere at the mid to upper end of the T&N scale, only granting points to that one proficiency and drawing a much larger BB and inspiration toll to use. At 300 T&N, a better version drawing far more inspiration points for a far better outcome could be made. At 500, an even better version, etc. This would be a relatively simple addition to the game, since you already have skins for arcane books in the code. When you previously played with this idea, you were thinking about instant acquisitions of skills, which is a difficult thing to balance. Simply using the scribing system to craft another category of inspirationals dependent on one’s own level of skill requires very little balancing and would add another facet to the in-game economy, making extremely high proficiencies more profitable.

Gluttony, on the other hand, is a tricky system and I don’t feel qualified to speculate much on what would or would not work. I agree with Darwoth that it works well enough (though I do have nostalgia for the earlier incarnation). I will say this, though: my above point about additions and alternatives rather than sweeping changes probably holds here as well. Your craving-per-hour approach strikes me as wrong, but the craving idea is not a bad thing in and of itself. Better would be a simple graphic display during a gluttony session representing temporary cravings or, for that matter, temporary dislikes. Immediately after the gluttony session starts, a craving window accompanying the current list of food groups would appear, showing both a food group and a specific food item randomly. The food group craving would come with, say, a 50% full & fed up reduction per item consumed, while the specific craving food would come with a 100% reduction and a .5X effectiveness bonus. Once a humor point was gained, the craving would reroll. Below the craving window would be a dislike window, showing a food group and a food item with the inverse bonuses of the ones above. I could even see a dynamic system emerging, similar to H&H’s personal beliefs system, related to one’s culinary preferences and gastronomic adventures. If a player eats nothing but deviled beaver and nutcracker suites (during gluttony sessions or not), then that player might find that they only like the meat group and dislike everything else, certainly a double-edged sword during gluttony sessions. Over the course of a session, the single craving would eventually be “filled,” leaving no remaining possibilities for bonuses. I can’t imagine such a system being difficult to implement either, since it would be little more than a matter of counting what was eaten. This type of approach wouldn’t be a sweeping change, either, since the old system would still exist. Rather, it would add another layer of complexity and would foster the creation of certain kinds of mid-level alts while making the development of higher level characters a bit more interesting. But, like I say, this is a complex system already and my suggestion might have other drawbacks.

This is also a good time to point out that I am not satisfied with the alchemy simplification—or, rather, I like the aether simplification, but I also wanted complexity as well. Why not simply reactivate the old alchemy equipment with code tweaks, allowing for the boosting of aether by another 100%, if only for food? I’m sure many people would be entirely willing to set up a lab dedicated to mass raising their bagels from 95% to 125%, even though many meth-lab level risks accompany the task. Complexity isn’t a dirty concept in game design. Rather, complexity is an addendum to a solid base of elegant simplicity and is thus a reward to those of us who enjoy depth.