Game Development: As Above, so Below

[dreadlus]

Beneath all the whining and crying, I think what everyone means and agree on is that some of these changes make the game not fun at all to play, because ppl simply can't find any fun in a grind that's so obvious it just feels like a huge PITA chore.

They made some great and much needed additions to the game. Natural alchemy added alot of variety to the game, and may be a great motivation to trade, since it'll be hard for 1 group to have all purity types of each kind of herb in decent values. Also, the slight boost for early game foods/insps will definetly be a welcomed change for newbies, easing the growing curve a bit for them, which in turn may help retain more new players. Again, the part about finding stuff of matching purities may be seen as extra work, but if you don't want to do it you can just overlook the elements and combine stuff anyway, its not gonna be worse than it was when you had no purity on any of that stuff.

The part that everyone's complaining about is the tools/buidings getting purity. Yea, I agree we've been living a good life when it comes to seed purity, and I can see how bad the devs dont want us to reach those levels anytime soon.. Loftar even mentioned we werent supposed to reach these levels "easily". Well, compared what farming became to what it was pre-patch, I'd say that calling it easy is the understatement of the century. Not only that, but the pain it is to keep track of purity for bins, having to destroy and rebuild them everytime you can make a better one, waiting a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time for trees to grow only to increase a few more % purity... It would take years for ppl to get to high purities again, and I dont even mean 100%.

I think the devs hit a golden design when they introduced proficiency capping forageables. Why not ditch the annoying bin and pot purities and add proficiency caps on produced humus and planted trees? I'm sure you can come up with a brilliant equation to make humus purity be influenced by stocks and maybe some other prof(s). The problem with this would be the ppl who currently have crazy numbers on their profs because of the old system's flaws... Anyway, the community shouldnt get an asinine mechanic (current compost bins) to make up for previous design flaws. Get a proper mechanic in place, and take the necessary action to revert the levels some have acquired thanks to the old mechanics.

"This is a first inroad into alchemy. Expect more." I expect Jorbtar realize what this patch actually did in terms of gameplay and refine the system so it doesnt feel like the huge PITA it feels right now

[rustles]

So what this last update basically did was dramatically alter the game mechanics making it next to impossible for newer players to compete or ever hope to defend them selves against a large group of criminals with now impossible to reach powers.

I predict this will lead to mass quitting, this is beyond unfair.

Like many people before me have said, the appropriate course of action would be to wipe the server, giving everybody a fair shot at this game.

If not, you'd might as well sell cheat codes and god powers that do 9001 damage while you're at it, that might be the only way to make money after 95% of the players quit. That is pretty much what you've already did, gave people unreachable powers so that they will oppress and drive off any new players.

[RainbowMoostache]

Beneath all the whining and crying, I think what everyone means and agree on is that some of these changes make the game not fun at all to play, because ppl simply can't find any fun in a grind that's so obvious it just feels like a huge PITA chore.

They made some great and much needed additions to the game. Natural alchemy added alot of variety to the game, and may be a great motivation to trade, since it'll be hard for 1 group to have all purity types of each kind of herb in decent values. Also, the slight boost for early game foods/insps will definetly be a welcomed change for newbies, easing the growing curve a bit for them, which in turn may help retain more new players. Again, the part about finding stuff of matching purities may be seen as extra work, but if you don't want to do it you can just overlook the elements and combine stuff anyway, its not gonna be worse than it was when you had no purity on any of that stuff.

The part that everyone's complaining about is the tools/buidings getting purity. Yea, I agree we've been living a good life when it comes to seed purity, and I can see how bad the devs dont want us to reach those levels anytime soon.. Loftar even mentioned we werent supposed to reach these levels "easily". Well, compared what farming became to what it was pre-patch, I'd say that calling it easy is the understatement of the century. Not only that, but the pain it is to keep track of purity for bins, having to destroy and rebuild them everytime you can make a better one, waiting a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time for trees to grow only to increase a few more % purity... It would take years for ppl to get to high purities again, and I dont even mean 100%.

I think the devs hit a golden design when they introduced proficiency capping forageables. Why not ditch the annoying bin and pot purities and add proficiency caps on produced humus and planted trees? I'm sure you can come up with a brilliant equation to make humus purity be influenced by stocks and maybe some other prof(s). The problem with this would be the ppl who currently have crazy numbers on their profs because of the old system's flaws... Anyway, the community shouldnt get an asinine mechanic (current compost bins) to make up for previous design flaws. Get a proper mechanic in place, and take the necessary action to revert the levels some have acquired thanks to the old mechanics.

"This is a first inroad into alchemy. Expect more." I expect Jorbtar realize what this patch actually did in terms of gameplay and refine the system so it doesnt feel like the huge PITA it feels right now

This.

Stop the goddamn QQ already. I'm to much satisfied of it already.

I know i'm not much used to this update. But I will be.

If you do not like the update or think it's to harsh, you mightaswell stop playing Salem because this is a place where whining softbears are not allowed.

[JinxDevona]

Stop the goddamn QQ already. I'm to much satisfied of it already.

I know i'm not much used to this update. But I will be.

If you do not like the update or think it's to harsh, you mightaswell stop playing Salem because this is a place where whining softbears are not allowed.

Some of us are not complaining about the huge humor gaps, etc, etc. Some of us are pointing out that by having bins, pots, kilns, whatever effecting alchemy and purity is too much. Making 4 of everything is not fun. Tearing things down and building better ones repeatedly is not fun. Games are supposed to be fun. I believe there has to be a middle ground between what we had and this.

PS Carebears are allowed in Salem, they are in fact needed in Salem. Carebears give hardcore players something to do (raiding, selling to, etc).

[Darwoth]

So what this last update basically did was dramatically alter the game mechanics making it next to impossible for newer players to compete or ever hope to defend them selves against a large group of criminals with now impossible to reach powers.

I predict this will lead to mass quitting, this is beyond unfair.

Like many people before me have said, the appropriate course of action would be to wipe the server, giving everybody a fair shot at this game.

If not, you'd might as well sell cheat codes and god powers that do 9001 damage while you're at it, that might be the only way to make money after 95% of the players quit. That is pretty much what you've already did, gave people unreachable powers so that they will oppress and drive off any new players.

you are a retard, across all servers there are probably less than 30 total players with 400+ stats, (with the great majority being on plymouth, on my server there is only 1 other that i know of and he is not a raider) the majority of those are quiet darkness farmers you will never meet or hear of. most of the rest will be laying low to avoid losing their characters that are harder to replace due to a dropped connection, critical hit from a brazier (which seem to have been drastically increased) bile drain and so on. until 2 months from now when people are making high end food again, which there is nothing stopping you from being able to do the same by then.

[RainbowMoostache]

Stop the goddamn QQ already. I'm to much satisfied of it already.

I know i'm not much used to this update. But I will be.

If you do not like the update or think it's to harsh, you mightaswell stop playing Salem because this is a place where whining softbears are not allowed.

PS Carebears are allowed in Salem, they are in fact needed in Salem. Carebears give hardcore players something to do (raiding, selling to, etc).

Atleast i'm giving them a warning. But to late anyway. People always like to ignore things.

I did once.

But i'll be out of your guys way now. Got nothing much to do here anymore.

[Orcling]

So what this last update basically did was dramatically alter the game mechanics making it next to impossible for newer players to compete or ever hope to defend them selves against a large group of criminals with now impossible to reach powers.

I predict this will lead to mass quitting, this is beyond unfair.

Like many people before me have said, the appropriate course of action would be to wipe the server, giving everybody a fair shot at this game.

If not, you'd might as well sell cheat codes and god powers that do 9001 damage while you're at it, that might be the only way to make money after 95% of the players quit. That is pretty much what you've already did, gave people unreachable powers so that they will oppress and drive off any new players.

you are a retard, across all servers there are probably less than 30 total players with 400+ stats, (with the great majority being on plymouth, on my server there is only 1 other that i know of and he is not a raider) the majority of those are quiet darkness farmers you will never meet or hear of. most of the rest will be laying low to avoid losing their characters that are harder to replace due to a dropped connection, critical hit from a brazier (which seem to have been drastically increased) bile drain and so on. until 2 months from now when people are making high end food again, which there is nothing stopping you from being able to do the same by then.

It'll take way longer than 2 months since a tree takes 7 days to grow =|

[sabinati]

Some of us are pointing out that by having bins, pots, kilns, whatever effecting alchemy and purity is too much. Making 4 of everything is not fun.

you don't need max purity in every element, though. as a hermit why would you even try for more than one? that ****'s crazy. maybe the big groups have enough manpower to grind up all four elements but not a single player.

compare it to haven: large groups had top q gear because they had enough manpower to dedicate people to specific tasks like farming, mining, prospecting, tree planting, scouting for resources etc etc (not to mention the people that were dedicated to combat).

now consider the haven q multiplier vs salem purity multiplier.
in haven, q10 is your base q. the multiplier is sqrt(q/10), so q40 = 2x, q90 = 3x, q160 = 4x, q250 = 5x, q360 = 6x, q490 = 7x, q640 = 8x, q810 = 9x, q1000 = 10x
is salem, 0%p is your base with a 1x multiplier going up to 10x at 100%p

so your 100%p crops here are the equivalent multiplier of q1000 crops in haven, which, after hitting soil q only went up 1-2q per growth cycle.

haven vets, how many of you have q1000 crops after over a year now of world 6?

[rustles]

So what this last update basically did was dramatically alter the game mechanics making it next to impossible for newer players to compete or ever hope to defend them selves against a large group of criminals with now impossible to reach powers.

I predict this will lead to mass quitting, this is beyond unfair.

Like many people before me have said, the appropriate course of action would be to wipe the server, giving everybody a fair shot at this game.

If not, you'd might as well sell cheat codes and god powers that do 9001 damage while you're at it, that might be the only way to make money after 95% of the players quit. That is pretty much what you've already did, gave people unreachable powers so that they will oppress and drive off any new players.

you are a retard, across all servers there are probably less than 30 total players with 400+ stats, (with the great majority being on plymouth, on my server there is only 1 other that i know of and he is not a raider) the majority of those are quiet darkness farmers you will never meet or hear of. most of the rest will be laying low to avoid losing their characters that are harder to replace due to a dropped connection, critical hit from a brazier (which seem to have been drastically increased) bile drain and so on. until 2 months from now when people are making high end food again, which there is nothing stopping you from being able to do the same by then.

You are calling people retarded because you hugely benefited from flawed design and have a massive advantage over any new player, and got to easily increase your stats where any new player would have to put in at least 100 times more effort to achieve what you got to on easy mode, while there are factions full of over-powered players who are also raiding, taxing, and killing anybody who manages to develop.

I don't believe I mentioned anything about 400+ stat players, as you seem to be suggesting, even reaching 100-200+ would now become next to impossible.

The only reason you are defending it is because you are the one who benefited from it.

[Orcling]

So what this last update basically did was dramatically alter the game mechanics making it next to impossible for newer players to compete or ever hope to defend them selves against a large group of criminals with now impossible to reach powers.

I predict this will lead to mass quitting, this is beyond unfair.

Like many people before me have said, the appropriate course of action would be to wipe the server, giving everybody a fair shot at this game.

If not, you'd might as well sell cheat codes and god powers that do 9001 damage while you're at it, that might be the only way to make money after 95% of the players quit. That is pretty much what you've already did, gave people unreachable powers so that they will oppress and drive off any new players.

you are a retard, across all servers there are probably less than 30 total players with 400+ stats, (with the great majority being on plymouth, on my server there is only 1 other that i know of and he is not a raider) the majority of those are quiet darkness farmers you will never meet or hear of. most of the rest will be laying low to avoid losing their characters that are harder to replace due to a dropped connection, critical hit from a brazier (which seem to have been drastically increased) bile drain and so on. until 2 months from now when people are making high end food again, which there is nothing stopping you from being able to do the same by then.

You are calling people retarded because you hugely benefited from flawed design and have a massive advantage over any new player, and got to easily increase your stats where any new player would have to put in at least 100 times more effort to achieve what you got to on easy mode, while there are factions full of over-powered players who are also raiding, taxing, and killing anybody who manages to develop.

I don't believe I mentioned anything about 400+ stat players, as you seem to be suggesting, even reaching 100-200+ would now become next to impossible.

The only reason you are defending it is because you are the one who benefited from it.

100~ biles are easy to reach, just go with quantity. I got that just from mass butchering animals and mass farming, covering several maptiles with crops only once me & my friends had enough humus(we even scavenged humus from abandoned places) but getting any higher than that is too much of a chore with this new update.