Happy New Year! 2016 Road Mappish

Announcements of major changes to Salem.

Happy New Year! 2016 Road Mappish

Postby JohnCarver » Thu Dec 31, 2015 7:49 pm

Greetings Salemites,
I may at a later time decide to expand on this post with more concrete timelines, however, for now I have decided to just compile a list of mechanics that have received some level of serious thought, discussion, or the beginnings of implementations on the test server so you can see what the future MIGHT bring. As with all our goals I do not anticipate the totality of this list to be accomplished this year, but it gives you an idea of things we are interested in.

2016 Hopefuls:
Exploration Event System:
The concept of Exploration Events is that over some duration or interval of time (hopefully with the turn of each season) we will be able to successfully spawn "Events" through the maps of Salem. This would mean that while you may have traveled the beaches of Providence 1000 times in the past, on a new season it might be possible that a beached whale full of 100 bones, lard, and whale oils has spawned on the beach. Or that the forest tile you have traveled dozens of times in the past now has an eagle roosting in the tops of the tree with a nest ripe for the plundering. Perhaps the same mountain you have visited now has something rare and spectacular peaking out through some snow that has melted during an everbloom and perhaps on a path you encounter a traveling NPC selling rare and mysterious wares. The idea here is simply that we can dynamically spawn 'events' while you are exploring with a frequency that makes them special and amazing, while making the promise to the worthy explorer that every tile is not guaranteed to be the same from the last season that he transversed it.

Button Depressing Technology/Archery:
The mortar was our first attempt at getting slightly more user-input and user-interaction into combat and conflict in Salem. This will hopefully be a theme throughout the year in future implementations and one fairly nice milestone would be getting a reasonable technology in for the actual duration in which y'all depress buttons through various actions. Archery will probably be our first attempt at dabbling in this. The damage, distance, trajectory and/or other aspects of a 'skill shot' being implemented based on either the length of time in which you draw back your bow and/or the angle in which you fire the arrow, hopefully both.

Hidden Object System:
Storing massive amounts of data in every tile of Salem is not exactly reasonable given the sheer magnitude of tiles. However, we have had discussions about possible implementations of allowing for objects who simply choose to remain invisible and/or otherwise not present themselves to your clients at the point when you load an area. This will open up the design space for the ability to bury treasure, plant land mines, and other fun things that become available when objects become hidden.

Tarot Card System
Trading Cards, Mini-Game involving a card-hall in town. Booster Packs. Witches leaving Tarot cards on another players table for ill effects. Just more fun rare things to collect and trade. We have a lot of hopes and dreams for this system. For those not familiar I suggest you research the origins and history of DayZ or even modern day MOBAs. Not because I plan on implementing a Zombie Apocalypse but because I find it fascinating how an entire genre and highly addicitive and fun game can be 'born' inside another game. I have dreams that as time rolls on and Salem evolves that we can add fun 'games' inside of the game via various town halls. Tarot Cards can hopefully be a little mini-game within the 'game' of Salem.

Book System Revamp
Books were rushed out at the end of the last development cycle. Unfortunately, I feel this system didn't reach its potential due to failure in a lot of polish. UI work is still one of the more challenging aspects for us, however, we hope to revamp the book system so that the Best Seller list is on a rotating time-table as well as polish up the ease and simplicity of writing books in the fist place.

Horse Breeding
Fairly straight forward. Their dynamic property will be their 'speed'. I very much like the idea of players trying to constantly achieve and breed the fastest horse in Salem.

Donkeys & Mine Carts
Transporting ore through various levels, and across various levels of your mine should have a system to automate it. Its fairly complex in the ways we wanted to implement it but I'm hopeful somewhere in 2016 we can find space for it.

Tailoring Revamp
Clothing was one of the first things we did when acquiring the title. Therefore, its one of the oldest things we have not touched. I think we can do better with dyes, bolts of cloth, maybe custom embroidery images, etc. etc. Not as much thought on this but its certainly on the table for this year.

Combat Revamp
More skills, more buttons to press, more stances to be in, more skill to defeat an opponent. Quite simply we can do better.

Raiding Revamp
I'm ok with absurd amounts of time spent to break a base on Providence. I'm not ok with the 'majority' of that system being transplanted to Popham. A larger difference between the two servers in terms of that will be evaluated. Also raiding on Providence should be more fun. So while the raid may still take either absurd time, efforts, or materials. The act of attempting to break into a fortress should be more fun for the aggressor attempting it.

Pet System
Dogs, Cats, and most importantly Falcons. Specifically a Falcon House. Even more specifically a Falcon House 3D drawn and designed by Marp Tarpton. Please copy and paste the following form Letter in a PM to Marp Tarpton to accelerate this implementation:

Dear Marp Tarpton,
My name is _________ and I have been playing Salem since ____ of ____ 20__. While I have enjoyed much of the art, animals, and creative direction of the game I have always felt something is lacking. That something is Falcons. Falcons are a majestic creature that I feel only the most skilled of artists and modelers could truly capture their essence. It is for that reason that I write you Marp. It is because I believe that you and you alone have the artistic talent, motivation, and pure determination to tackle the daunting task of creating a Falcon and Falcon house for your player base. We need you Marp more than we have ever needed you before. i've got a fever, and the only prescription is Falcons.

Your Loyal Player and Potential Customer,
___________


Archaelogy System
Digging should be more fun. Rewards for digging massive holes in the ground should be had. This is the system to do it but there have been challenges in determining what is a fair and reasonable 'starting elevation' for the purposes of calculating the treasures. We will hopefully devote some time to solving this.

Water Based Monsters, & Dynamic Water Based Fight Systems
Sharks. Hopefully with Lazer Beams attached to their heads. But at least Sharks.

(2) New 'Boss' Monsters akin to Mother Bat
Tolba & Moskwas

More Risky Behavior incentives for playing in a Blood Moon
Animals will soon have the technology to know what season they died in. Which will create additional incentive to hunt in blood moons.

Faith-Based Character Progression Paganism, Priests, Etc.
We have gone 100 different ways with this. The biggest problem is I don't like yet another system in addition to witches that would cause you to choose a 'path'. I am very much in love with how Salem rarely locks you out of one decision simply because you chose a different one. Faith-based systems are very inclined to force players to do this and developing one that allows that flexibility has proven challenging. We will take another go at it tho.

A new "world":
Not a new server. We have Mineworld, Dreamworld, Overworld. We hope to add in another 'world' this year for you to explore and generally romp around in.



This thread seems like a nice little place for you to make LARGE suggestions since you already have a thread for "Small" Suggestions. Also if there is some dream for some system you have always wanted that I have no intention of doing this would also be a nice thread for me to crush your dreams in a public setting. So let me go ahead and start with the things we will NOT be doing in 2016

WILL NOT GO IN FOR 2016

Pathfinding
PvE only Server
ceedat wrote:the overwhelming frustration of these forums and the unnecessarily over complicated game mechanics is what i enjoy about this game most.

Nsuidara wrote:it is a strange and difficult game in no positive way
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Re: Happy New Year! 2016 Road Mappish

Postby Heffernan » Thu Dec 31, 2015 7:52 pm

new Clothes, tophats, and other rare clothes in shop pls i wanna look sexy soon :P
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Re: Happy New Year! 2016 Road Mappish

Postby HolyLight » Thu Dec 31, 2015 8:02 pm

I hope you can forfill your roadmap. When some of these features are implimented you will see my return, to once again roam the world of salem.

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Several of them changes feel familiar. ¦]
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Re: Happy New Year! 2016 Road Mappish

Postby Icon » Thu Dec 31, 2015 8:04 pm

Hemp?
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Re: Happy New Year! 2016 Road Mappish

Postby Qiresea » Thu Dec 31, 2015 8:09 pm

2016 will be an awesome year :)

thanks for your hard work, john & dev team !! :)

all the best for 2016, lots of health and happiness to you and your families !! <3
Darwoth wrote:It really is not fair that every time you try to jab at me you make yourself look more retarded than any retort i could come up with.

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Γιά την Κυρία των τριών βασιλείων: της γης, του ουρανού και της θάλασσας.
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Re: Happy New Year! 2016 Road Mappish

Postby matan002 » Thu Dec 31, 2015 8:20 pm

YAS!
Lachlaan wrote:The motherbats await a spanking, for the sake of fields.
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Re: Happy New Year! 2016 Road Mappish

Postby Heffernan » Thu Dec 31, 2015 8:27 pm

since JC supposedly has stuff for holidays planned and we didnt have much events this year, im waiting for JC to login and F5 the shop page every 5min whos with me?
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Re: Happy New Year! 2016 Road Mappish

Postby Tulgarath » Thu Dec 31, 2015 8:28 pm

I look forward to your vision of these features. How I see things is rarely how others do, so it'll be interesting to play within your continued vision.
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Re: Happy New Year! 2016 Road Mappish

Postby Irving » Thu Dec 31, 2015 8:29 pm

Holy **** this sounds so good!
IM BACK!
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Re: Happy New Year! 2016 Road Mappish

Postby Heffernan » Thu Dec 31, 2015 8:31 pm

restart for "crash bugfix" like we dont know its more stuff JC ¦]
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