Salem

As a player from the first beta, terraforming was something that I found would be cool, but quickly realize it really wasn't meant for this game. It was more of a nuisance than anything else and it is extremely frustrating for newcomers unless you're going to live on a hilly and unattractive land. I had my fair share with this feature from other crafting MMOs such as Xsyon and Wurm Online and for their games, it worked. The reason it doesn't work in this game is because of it's point of view. It's pretty hard to see what's level and what's not and using ctrl click is annoying. The only other option we have is to use a 3rd party client to figure out what's going on, but even then it's pretty complicated to download and use, I'm sure the average player doesn't want to go out of their way to even bother with that. To add insult to injury, digging takes absurdly long and drains your stats very quickly, especially for a new player who hopes to flat their new land which is in the early stages of the game.

Now Salem shares plenty of similarities as Haven & Hearth and in Haven & Hearth, terraforming didn't exist. I've got to say, that made it so much more entertaining to play than Salem. All Haven & Hearth had was cliffs, which is a whole lot better than what we have in this game. I also really wouldn't see the problem with having a flat land, it'll make them game overall more attractive in my opinion. Well take the feedback as you will...

the vast majority of the game is like 90% flattened already, it is nothing like it used to be back then (unfortunately, as natural landmasses that were present in the old servers are not here)

I personally enjoy the downtime that comes with terraforming. Plus it allows for clay to be much more abundant if you don't have a clay patch near you.

How would you suggest going from a world with varying height to a completely flat world as well?

Darwoth wrote:the vast majority of the game is like 90% flattened already, it is nothing like it used to be back then (unfortunately, as natural landmasses that were present in the old servers are not here)

Maybe I spoke too soon, I just though that since there was terraforming that it was still pretty bad. I guess that's a least better, but still think that terraforming shouldn't exist, it's just not that great for a game like this.

connersalem wrote:How would you suggest going from a world with varying height to a completely flat world as well?

I'm hoping it'll be easy to do with coding.

If it takes absurdly long you are probably doing it wrong.
Use a shovel.

Secondly, there are perks to doing it. You can find some nice digging artifices, some ok random foragables and a lot of grubs to help with humour recovery and gluttony.
With a few skills learned the bile drain isn't bad at all, easily recovered with just the grubs.

I'd say find a flat spot of land to build your newbie camp on, develop a bit and don't bother with terraforming untill you find a place worth settling for its access to biomes, mine, water, lime or clay etc. That way you will have the right skills to make digging much less of a pain.

Feone wrote:If it takes absurdly long you are probably doing it wrong.
Use a shovel.

Unless things changed with that mechanic without my knowledge, I was using a shovel.

Feone wrote:I'd say find a flat spot of land to build your newbie camp on, develop a bit and don't bother with terraforming untill you find a place worth settling for its access to biomes, mine, water, lime or clay etc. That way you will have the right skills to make digging much less of a pain.

I'll go check it out and see if the land is a lot flatter than it once was.

But if we remove it, we wouldn't have things like fighting pits or massive hills with churches at the top and such like some committed people have done in the past.

JinxDevona wrote:But if we remove it, we wouldn't have things like fighting pits or massive hills with churches at the top and such like some committed people have done in the past.

Sacrificing this for not having to worry about wasting tremendous amount of time digging up land so it can support a city? Well worth it to me.

Trenix wrote:

JinxDevona wrote:But if we remove it, we wouldn't have things like fighting pits or massive hills with churches at the top and such like some committed people have done in the past.

Sacrificing this for not having to worry about wasting tremendous amount of time digging up land so it can support a city? Well worth it to me.

I rather like it personally.

It's one of those things you can just do for a while and see a nice result immediately. It also gives away locations from further away so it has some gameplay relevance.
Yea it can be tedious and time consuming but everything in Salem is. It's just one more thing to do in this game.

Trenix wrote:

JinxDevona wrote:But if we remove it, we wouldn't have things like fighting pits or massive hills with churches at the top and such like some committed people have done in the past.

Sacrificing this for not having to worry about wasting tremendous amount of time digging up land so it can support a city? Well worth it to me.

If you are digging an area big enough to support a big town, you should have others to help with it. Also, It shouldn't take that long with the right tools and skills.