Salem

Just an opinion!

First, I really like most aspects of this game:
+ Crafting is completely different to those boring grinding games.
+ Being able to form the landscape, chop and plant trees is simply beautiful.
+ Setting up farmland is nicely implemented; as if the Damokles-sword of Farmerama was above the dev's head.
+ The graphics are refreshing different to all that most beautiful and glossy wannabe-cute stuff out there.
+ There's no chat-filter that cuts down a normal conservation into a collection of ***.

But second, this game is heavily imbalanced, and this is why I quit before even started:
- PvP is poorly implemented. New-worlders are nothing more than 'Treaty-fodder'.
- It does not require any player skill to kill another character. There's no need to i.e. place a proper headshot to destroy weeks and months of playtime of someone other; having the right skill and some humours will suffice to totally spoil someones fun and efforts.
- Assuming paradox is not developing this game for mere christianity and charity, but to make some money: I personally cant think of anyone that likes the idea of loosing his/her hard earnt money to some unsocial unemployed sicko leveling 24/7. But the actual game-design is an invitation not to spend any money, but just to level and kill another character for his equipment, giving the previous mentioned social class quite an advantage.
Additionally the perma-death will make you lose everything you ever spend, time and money. Again, there's folks out there not having the time and/or desire to care about an army of alt-chars.

Furthermore, I cant play a game in good conscience, that invites player to do criminal acts and even murder without any penalty - Having a steadily raising number of people running havoc and shooting innocent people is the tip of an iceberg of an ideal with gangster-style and cold-blooded coolness, just compensating mind weaknesses. And each game also reflects society and will add another drop. So, I, for myself, will not support any game, where you can freely wander around and kill other people without any disadvantage. I know that paradox hasn't any educational mission, but there is pretty much nothing you can do to keep underages from playing (the question for date of birth is a joke). But they finally do have some kind of responsibility for what they offer publicily; being aware of that and/or just considering profits is something different.
//ethics-mode off

This is what I suggest and heavily demand to keep self-righteous tribes and other ethnics in boundaries, for even the in-game represented era wasn't as lawless as it is depicted - and keeping in mind, when starting the game, I was told to have a puritan character, settling over to the new world: be it puritanism, calvinism, anglicanism or whatever, afaik none of these religious streams encouraged criminal acts, so:

Each character should have an attitude (or salvation), which starts at a neutral point and depending on his/her actions, will raise it to one or the other direction, being 'holy' vs. 'evil', or whatever you want to call it.

Killing beasts (crickets, snakes, etc.) will add little towards an evil attitude. Even soil-digging might add very little to that, for disturbing the former god-given balance.

Stealing, destroying other player's properties will add towards an evil attitude, the murder of another character will add heavily.

Being constructive, crafting (not a weapon, or esp. nothing with iron) will add towards a good attitude, farming or even planting will add more.

Becoming more and more evil, the character should suffer a real disadvantage: At a certain point he/she will become an 'Outlaw', will have 'wanted posters' sticked throughout Boston and maybe the wilderness. There might be a bounty in silver, which might attract headhunters - so players getting a thrill in it may hunt each other.

But main point is a 'jail'! If an outlaw ever enters Boston, he/she will be hunted down by town-guards (which shouldnt be too weak) and sentenced to jail, where the outlaw can't do much more, but perhaps play a board game with a guard (or count the chalk lines representing his/her time in jail again). Additionally, being in jail diminishes your humours, the longer the more. And yes, this might lead to the fact that a sentenced mass-murderer will leave jail with humours like a starting character!

To get things balanced, each character might have an 'age', depending on playtime, which will define the duration of the sentence. So, if someone murders a long played character, he/she will be sentenced for much longer than for killing a newb. And just to make it clear, jail should be a real pain, not being able to walk around freely for days, weeks or even months, depending on the crimes commited.

Players might be able to make a silver donation in church, to set their attitude bar towards good. But, a murder shouldnt be easily bought or crafted off! like, you can raise your attitude towards good, but only to a certain degree. I.e. donations on a daily base for a long period (again depending on crimes commited) will make the outlaw status go off. And yes, it's not easy for an outlaw to get into the church in Boston for there are still the town-guards. But donations should not be the only way to move the attitude bar towards good, there's still farming/planting which will help.

Having an evil attitude shouldnt be a disadvantage, as long as you dont become 'outlaw'. On the opposite, I cant think of any dis/advantage being good/holy, except for a halo perhaps. On the other hand, to make things complicated, the attitude might have an influence on the alchemic values and events, i.e. bad chars get higher chance on salt/mercury, whereas good chars get sulphur/lead more easily. Making it more interesting to keep a char balanced, to easily make slight moves into one or another direction. Or some artifacts might be usable with a good/evil char only. Finally, to come to an end, one shouldnt become outlaw by simply digging soil like mad or killing crickets all day.

After reading through, putting a char into jail would take it off the game. To avoid this, a friend may craft a spoon and smuggle it into the jail, thus enabling the prisoner to slowly dig himself out, often ending on rocks which cant be dug. Not too easily though, always under surveillance in danger of being caught and even kept for a bit longer. On the other hand, notorious killers and witnessed murders should be hung and taken out of the game the same way their victims are!

To add some more balance, players are always under some kind of paranoia, afraid of meeting some malevolent char. Having the jail in mind, there might be a set of marshals wandering through the wilderness, always on the look for some wanted outlaws. That will give those killers the same paranoia and make for a balanced paranoia, imho.

Every reasonable comment is appreciated.

I'm not really sure if you're aiming with a "Here's what wrong with Salem and I'll be back if it ever gets balanced out," if you're merely suggesting something for a game you've completely given up on, or if you're suggesting basically the same ideas a few others have already come up with and posted.

If the first case, sorry to hear your issues, and all the more anyone can say is that "it's a beta test" and that the devs are listening to and reading what players have to say. Some of the things are within their design ideas and others aren't. They're goal isn't to make a mass market game.

If the second case, I'm not sure what to say. Why expend the energy if you've given up on the game completely.

In the last case, please use the search function and look up similar ideas. Google may be more helpful. The idea of a morality scale of some sort has come up several times, in several ways, and is in use in a variety of games. In nearly every one of those games, it just doesn't really work other than to deny the "immoral" some access to another part of the game they don't really need, anyway, or can easily get around the "morality" mechanic via an alt or buddy. (I will say this is a good bit more involved than a few of the others, but it still falls under the exact same category.)

I don't think I'll fall into one of your categories.

> the devs are listening to and reading what players have to say

is the same what I've heard (chapter 'Salem updates': http://wizzley.com/review-of-salem-beta-dec-2012-jan-2013) and that's excactly what and why I did this. Just added another (my) personal opinion/game experience, like stated in the very first phrase - or what else are the devs supposed to listen to?

Sorry to hear that the stuff was already suggested elsewhere, but I did only play a game and tried to give a feedback. I did not study a forum.

keep up the good work

I don't think jail and town guards and the like are something we'll ever see. At least, I hope not. Since this is a sandbox game, it's meant for the players to create a system of justice and enforce punishment on evildoers.

Plymouth has the tribe, which you mentioned, where you can pay the treaty to keep from being raided and have raiders hunted down and killed if you do get raided. The other servers used to have rangers who hunted down criminals for a larger one time fee though I don't think there are so many of them anymore.

The point is, there are consequences for committing criminal acts. Any player that kills or steals or whatever leave scents behind, and those scents can be tracked to their base and the criminal killed if you're able or if you hire someone who is able. (Of course, revenge has gotten a lot harder with the introduction of waste claims, but it is still a beta and maybe there will be another change to fix that.)

Judge wrote:Just an opinion!

First, I really like most aspects of this game:
+ Crafting is completely different to those boring grinding games.
+ Being able to form the landscape, chop and plant trees is simply beautiful.
+ Setting up farmland is nicely implemented; as if the Damokles-sword of Farmerama was above the dev's head.
+ The graphics are refreshing different to all that most beautiful and glossy wannabe-cute stuff out there.
+ There's no chat-filter that cuts down a normal conservation into a collection of ***.

But second, this game is heavily imbalanced, and this is why I quit before even started:
- PvP is poorly implemented. New-worlders are nothing more than 'Treaty-fodder'.
- It does not require any player skill to kill another character. There's no need to i.e. place a proper headshot to destroy weeks and months of playtime of someone other; having the right skill and some humours will suffice to totally spoil someones fun and efforts.
- Assuming paradox is not developing this game for mere christianity and charity, but to make some money: I personally cant think of anyone that likes the idea of loosing his/her hard earnt money to some unsocial unemployed sicko leveling 24/7. But the actual game-design is an invitation not to spend any money, but just to level and kill another character for his equipment, giving the previous mentioned social class quite an advantage.
Additionally the perma-death will make you lose everything you ever spend, time and money. Again, there's folks out there not having the time and/or desire to care about an army of alt-chars.

Furthermore, I cant play a game in good conscience, that invites player to do criminal acts and even murder without any penalty - Having a steadily raising number of people running havoc and shooting innocent people is the tip of an iceberg of an ideal with gangster-style and cold-blooded coolness, just compensating mind weaknesses. And each game also reflects society and will add another drop. So, I, for myself, will not support any game, where you can freely wander around and kill other people without any disadvantage. I know that paradox hasn't any educational mission, but there is pretty much nothing you can do to keep underages from playing (the question for date of birth is a joke). But they finally do have some kind of responsibility for what they offer publicily; being aware of that and/or just considering profits is something different.
//ethics-mode off

This is what I suggest and heavily demand to keep self-righteous tribes and other ethnics in boundaries, for even the in-game represented era wasn't as lawless as it is depicted - and keeping in mind, when starting the game, I was told to have a puritan character, settling over to the new world: be it puritanism, calvinism, anglicanism or whatever, afaik none of these religious streams encouraged criminal acts, so:

Each character should have an attitude (or salvation), which starts at a neutral point and depending on his/her actions, will raise it to one or the other direction, being 'holy' vs. 'evil', or whatever you want to call it.

Killing beasts (crickets, snakes, etc.) will add little towards an evil attitude. Even soil-digging might add very little to that, for disturbing the former god-given balance.

Stealing, destroying other player's properties will add towards an evil attitude, the murder of another character will add heavily.

Being constructive, crafting (not a weapon, or esp. nothing with iron) will add towards a good attitude, farming or even planting will add more.

Becoming more and more evil, the character should suffer a real disadvantage: At a certain point he/she will become an 'Outlaw', will have 'wanted posters' sticked throughout Boston and maybe the wilderness. There might be a bounty in silver, which might attract headhunters - so players getting a thrill in it may hunt each other.

But main point is a 'jail'! If an outlaw ever enters Boston, he/she will be hunted down by town-guards (which shouldnt be too weak) and sentenced to jail, where the outlaw can't do much more, but perhaps play a board game with a guard (or count the chalk lines representing his/her time in jail again). Additionally, being in jail diminishes your humours, the longer the more. And yes, this might lead to the fact that a sentenced mass-murderer will leave jail with humours like a starting character!

To get things balanced, each character might have an 'age', depending on playtime, which will define the duration of the sentence. So, if someone murders a long played character, he/she will be sentenced for much longer than for killing a newb. And just to make it clear, jail should be a real pain, not being able to walk around freely for days, weeks or even months, depending on the crimes commited.

Players might be able to make a silver donation in church, to set their attitude bar towards good. But, a murder shouldnt be easily bought or crafted off! like, you can raise your attitude towards good, but only to a certain degree. I.e. donations on a daily base for a long period (again depending on crimes commited) will make the outlaw status go off. And yes, it's not easy for an outlaw to get into the church in Boston for there are still the town-guards. But donations should not be the only way to move the attitude bar towards good, there's still farming/planting which will help.

Having an evil attitude shouldnt be a disadvantage, as long as you dont become 'outlaw'. On the opposite, I cant think of any dis/advantage being good/holy, except for a halo perhaps. On the other hand, to make things complicated, the attitude might have an influence on the alchemic values and events, i.e. bad chars get higher chance on salt/mercury, whereas good chars get sulphur/lead more easily. Making it more interesting to keep a char balanced, to easily make slight moves into one or another direction. Or some artifacts might be usable with a good/evil char only. Finally, to come to an end, one shouldnt become outlaw by simply digging soil like mad or killing crickets all day.

After reading through, putting a char into jail would take it off the game. To avoid this, a friend may craft a spoon and smuggle it into the jail, thus enabling the prisoner to slowly dig himself out, often ending on rocks which cant be dug. Not too easily though, always under surveillance in danger of being caught and even kept for a bit longer. On the other hand, notorious killers and witnessed murders should be hung and taken out of the game the same way their victims are!

To add some more balance, players are always under some kind of paranoia, afraid of meeting some malevolent char. Having the jail in mind, there might be a set of marshals wandering through the wilderness, always on the look for some wanted outlaws. That will give those killers the same paranoia and make for a balanced paranoia, imho.

Every reasonable comment is appreciated.

Too lazy to farm cricket teams for 30 minutes, not our problem.

goodbye and good riddance, your morals aren't needed here.