Game Development: Project Mayhem

[colesie]

The implementation of brick walls which require a ram or cannon or simply changing the trial timer to 24 hours of potential destruction time and you'll see a big change in the game just from that alone. If we had stable bases and livestock it would draw in a massive audience of people who are interested in the crafting side of the game. Currently it's just a game of who rebuilds their bases the most often and who summon killed who. You will not see an increase in server population so long as people cannot feel at least the slightest bit safe with their possessions at any given time. I should not be herded into a village just because there's a better chance of me lasting a little bit longer should someone decide to drop a waste claim. At least with a 24 hour timer it gives solo players a fair chance at breaking the trial themselves.

I'm not so much asking for instant gratification as I am saying that if you're going to make the game overly complex and apply a massive time-sink, the least you could do is add a legit defense mechanic so that it's not all done in vain should someone decide to piss in your cornflakes.

[Jalpha]

I don't mind the complexity involved in the games mechanics. In my mind, it gives the game longevity.

I don't mind gluttony being such a slow purposeful grind either. The same goes for the purity system as it is currently evolving. (Really I think the main reason so many people have a problem with the purity grind now is that everyone isn't on the same level.) Quality was a pain in the ass to work on across the board in hnh and it was practically impossible to gain access to the nodes needed to get there on your own. But you could trade for items to give you a boost in quality on your hermitage. Eventually Salem would progress to such a point as well.

But the process of starting as a noob... The digging... Building walls... Trying to find food that won't kill you... (Bunny rabbits were a massive bonus to the hnh noob). Most of that I don't mind but... Humour regeneration really sticks in my craw. When you finally find a nice location it's probably not going to be flat, and there will be a lot of digging which is made multiples more painful by the need to constantly search for food. If you don't have labouring and a metal shovel... you can forget it. I remember the grind to labouring being a bit of a challenge when I first started out, I don't know if it's changed.

Then it gets destroyed, and you start again somewhere else... And again a few months later. And again.

Then you wonder why you bother with defences at all and you just throw up a bit of token defence to keep noobs out, because you know anyone determined enough is going to get inside. You stop building cupboards, because they will only be destroyed and who wants to grind out thousands of silver for convenient storage. This leads to the nightmare of managing a million and one altvaults. From there the game just turns to ****. You are required to forsake all convenience because there is no defence.

[colesie]

You are required to forsake all convenience because there is no defence.

Exactly this. You (Jorb and Loftar) can crank out all the coolest buildings and tools etc but in the end, no one with half of a brain is going to even bother to build them. Cool or not, it's simply not worth the silver. I'd rather save my silver and village hop to leave scents however I please.

[McTc]

the crippling grind in nearly every aspect of the game.

This is interesting. Where is the crippling grind, more specifically? What's the difference as compared to Haven, for example?

Building is a bit of a PITA in Salem, and I guess that the time sensitivity of gluttony could make it feel grindy, but more than that? Farming requires some mental attention, I guess.

From what I've seen/done/heard from new players it goes a little something like this

Early game:
Foraging: Running around aimlessly looking for studies and food until about 20 or so in a few select stats; this now comes with the added bonus of boiling mushrooms for regen food! Because of this, even more time is spent crafting noob foods and looking for specific items in order to make them which is even more derping around aimlessly and then derping around even more to make a tinder drill for the chance of cooking your finds. (If the drill breaks, guess what? You get to forage more to heal that blood champ!) Since the cauldron bsns, a whole branch of the noob food groups is basically ignored. People without access to the skill to make a cauldron, people who lack the materials for one, or people who have no set location yet (aka noobs) will simply avoid mushrooms. If food is not readily available your skill grind is not as seamless and much more annoying. Skill grind is very repetitive and after you do it more than a few times in early game you'll learn to dread it.

Looking for a base location: Scouring the map looking for an unsettled patch of land with no real neighbours around and that is preferably on the edge of multiple biomes that you feel you'll need. (You'll still need to make a lime alt regardless because there's no way to have enough lime near you to sustain any form of decent base.) Selecting base location can take hours, or even days.

Money making: Shooting crickets with a sling over and over and trying to punch them down in order to afford your first true weapon. After you get your necessities (backpack, sword) you then need to start grinding crickets even more in order to afford your p claim. You're expected to do brain-numbing tasks yet again in order to continue.

Gluttony: Grinding animals and making various foods/boiling mushrooms for many hours in order to get to humours that you can actually do something with (30-40ish) (Not to mention the grind for all of the butchering/cooking skills just to make anything semi decent and the skills needed just to damage the animals in the first place)

Claimed land: Grinding crickets to buy a shovel, grinding to labouring, foraging and cooking for a few hours in order to get enough food stockpiled for you to start flattening your land.

Flattening land: Hours upon hours of flattening the land just so that you can begin working on a base. Many bases end up ****** and half-assed because people simply get tired of this step. Even more forage grind needed after your initial food stores run out.


Mid game:
Foraging: Still derping around and studying inspirationals. You're able to kill animals now which helps with the silver grind of making leather, selling hides or simply gluttonying food that isn't poisonous and takes 20-30 minutes to be edible. You may still be grinding hay in boston for cash but some might be saved to test out farming and tiers now. By now you know the Boston claim inside and out. Every grass patch, every ridge and every lake. Why? Because you've just spent the last 3-4 weeks on it foraging for crickets and grass bro! You're likely covering a lot more ground looking for purity nodes in your area.

Metal: Grinding crickets/hay to afford materials for your first smelters/stamp mills and finding your first mine (likely not in the ideal place where you would prefer to settle, but you settle there anyways out of convenience). Burning a few bars and moving lime around from nearby nodes (lugging them back to your base or running back and forth) You're expected to either, risk your main/your farmer or make a lime alt and port the lime to your base through boston.

Gluttony: You're likely not eating meat anymore but the food you are eating will take a lot more time and planning, grinding of tiers and constantly checking purity.

Claimed land: Your land is likely claimed now, but you're currently feeding upkeep via crickets or metal. You've likely got the main area of your base leveled and a few walls up, but you'll soon be wanting to expand which requires more flattening.

Base design: Your walls are up and the rough outline of your base is established so you are now going to start burning metals for braziers/industry. You spend the better part of your day making coal clamps and lighting them, the next few days are spent staring at your clamps and foraging/afking until they're ready to be used. You then spend a long time transporting lime or making a brand new fresh character to use as a lime alt for porting it back to your base which requires 2 clients as a minimum to do metals. You finally get your coal and lime ready and in your smelters and they're burning. Most of your time is spent fueling smelters and watching movies while they burn. This process is put on repeat for a few days, weeks, or even months depending on your play times and how many people are with you.


Late game:

Your base is now established, you have a decent amount of tiered fields and you are able to support your upkeep with metals or raid loot. You're likely either buying your own hay, or you're grinding it harder than ever before because you now need it for field tiering. You must make coal clamps en mass and port thousands of lime to your base to store in signposts via your lime alt to always be thinking of defenses and you now have to worry about village upkeep (likely this is also the case midgame as well but endgame for sure) Lime must be ported every few days in order to keep your fields overflowing with crops per harvest (because with all that tiering you're going to want to get dat bang for your buck) You're constantly looking for purity nodes, worrying about purity and checking and rechecking items compared to others. You're destroying and debuilding industry objects as you upgrade (not so much yet, but in the future yes) and raiding is likely a big part of your time spent ingame.

If you do not own a stall, or you do not have friends who allow you to sell on their stall you likely will not be making it to the late game stage, nor will you be able to rebuild in a decent amount of time without having to grind most of it back all over again. Should your character die in pvp or your base be raided, you go back to square one. Not many people make it to this point in the game and the ones that do are usually running the entire server.

Even with muli-clients running all day long it is still a very large amount of work for someone to be doing (and some of us do it alone). In nearly every stage of growth there is some needlessly overcomplicated step or two that slows you down and it's just not fun after you've done it more than once or twice.

In haven it goes a little more like this:

Start by discovering things for the first few skills and studying some nooby curios you find. Kill ants and fish for food and get your first few stats up. (50 exploration, 56 survival, 40-50 intelligence, etc) This can take a few days but can be shortened if you're not slack-ass about it.
Making a palisade and p claiming it. This is fairly straight forward, cut down trees, make the materials from foraging in your area and then build your first wall.
Making a brickwall and village claim it then setup crossroads leading in and out. This can be done within the first few weeks of playing and it's a major step into the game.
Potentially making a curtain wall to avoid rangers but it's not needed if you want to invest in some armor and keep your hearthfire inside.
You're now able to start competing with the other players, or you can begin farming in peace. There's no purity, just quality. Quality increases based on your farming skill which you can raise with studies from your farms. The quality simple is just much simpler and much easier to understand for the average player and there's far less running back and forth/grinding the same **** over and over again for small results.

You can have a fighter alt and a farmer alt which is encouraged, but at no point do they need to be logged on at the same time in order to accomplish your daily tasks. Building is very nice, you can take in your location square by square and trace out your design in stone right away. There's no flattening and no ***** around with phlegm. Just stamina, water and generic food every few buckets of water you drink and you're golden. You don't need to forage around for specific things to regen specific biles, and you don't need to bake cabinets full of pies before you begin. It's just gives you a far more productive feel. For the time you actually spend building in Salem, the other 80% of your time is spent doing grindy ***** in order to continue your work. Not to mention it's just dust in the wind once your base is found as a hermit anyways.

I've been saying this since alpha,

Salem takes a very simple idea and makes it 10x's more complicated then it ever should have been
Metal, purity, gluttony, humus, witchcraft, flattening, early skills, alchemy, field tiering, just to name a few. The idea of this is I suppose to add a dimension of realism to the game, but in the end it just translates into more grind and way more time invested in menial tasks and comparing numbers to one another.

Late game takes far too long to reach and it is fairly hard to do without the help of others or without a stall to help with your living costs otherwise, you're still stuck killing crickets in boston until you turn blue in the face. Since there is no reincarnation system other than keeping the claims, losing your base/character really does put you back on your ass for months to come. This might be fun for raiders, but when thinking of the average gamer who is trying out the game it will not end well.

Yes. Salem is a "crafting MMO" but if you're going to make it so complex and time consuming, at least let people have a better chance to keep what they've worked for.

To summarize:
[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

This post made me want to try out H&H

Thank you colesie for pointing out difference between the two.

[Bittereinder]

For my 500th, I'm going to vent in color

....and for christ's sake, make the top PVP gear only purchasable through the store. Why in the hell would you make the top gear craftable, you're trying to make money off the Salem PVP crack addicts. Make them buy the 5 slot stuff and better weapons, let them craft the 4 slot stuff but buy the 5 slot stuff off the store. Don't just give out mass drops of new stuff in Live Plays, give them out for bug hunters or uber-testers who communicate with you, like you did with Colesie. Make the guys buy it off the store. Also, sell all the Store gear in pieces for Real cash for those who want another one to slot or are missing a piece of the set. $4 for each piece of Clothing or whatever. You guys are screwing Paradox's money making ability by only offering Packs. Make the store bigger.

They should add a Frenchman's or Spaniard's pack for example, a witch's pack, a native indian's pack, a pack with all ingame weapons, a pack with all mystery hats, ... and also lower the price of the silver and the founding father's pack in the store. Seriously, who would pay $100 for 5000 virtual coins?

More variety = more choice = more sales. I completely agree.

I'm not buying anything till I'm starting on a fresh server. Can you pay with paypal btw?

[Jalpha]

You can pay with PayPal.

[dageir]

A Hessian mercenary pack would be great aswell.



They were hired by the english.

[martinuzz]

Gosh. 32 different corn puddings. It differentiates not only between the different corns, but also the garlic. If it also differentiates between cloves and whole bolls, it's 48 corn puddings.

[darnokpl]

Early game:
Foraging: Running around aimlessly looking for studies and food until about 20 or so in a few select stats; this now comes with the added bonus of boiling mushrooms for regen food! Because of this, even more time is spent crafting noob foods and looking for specific items in order to make them which is even more derping around aimlessly and then derping around even more to make a tinder drill for the chance of cooking your finds.

So early game time frame is increased, we all like early game?

Looking for a base location: Scouring the map looking for an unsettled patch of land with no real neighbours around and that is preferably on the edge of multiple biomes that you feel you'll need. (You'll still need to make a lime alt regardless because there's no way to have enough lime near you to sustain any form of decent base.) Selecting base location can take hours, or even days.

And what is wrong with that? You would like game where you drop base day 1 and start making murder alts? We just need larger maps to get more good places with lots of biomes and lime near (more lime spots pls). From my experience salem is game where your first camp is not your main base, first you build little camp near woods and level up character to get basic items and building, making some silver and then you move to better location with perfect biome set and lime near by.

Money making: Shooting crickets with a sling over and over and trying to punch them down in order to afford your first true weapon. After you get your necessities (backpack, sword) you then need to start grinding crickets even more in order to afford your p claim. You're expected to do brain-numbing tasks yet again in order to continue.

Yea that sucks, would be nice to have more silver sources, maybe selling boiled mushrooms or some other herbs would give early game some more silver and imho deer skin should cost more that rabbit and more than beaver!!!

Gluttony: Grinding animals and making various foods/boiling mushrooms for many hours in order to get to humours that you can actually do something with (30-40ish) (Not to mention the grind for all of the butchering/cooking skills just to make anything semi decent and the skills needed just to damage the animals in the first place)

Gluttony up to 50 is fun cmon. As for boiling well would be nice to have some bar to show us progress.

Claimed land: Grinding crickets to buy a shovel, grinding to labouring, foraging and cooking for a few hours in order to get enough food stockpiled for you to start flattening your land.

Flattening land: Hours upon hours of flattening the land just so that you can begin working on a base. Many bases end up ****** and half-assed because people simply get tired of this step. Even more forage grind needed after your initial food stores run out.

That with food stockpiled is ok, remember you should have whole group of people building camp, so some of them are hunting for deers and some are digging.
But terraforming with labouring skill should be buffed to dig faster (or terrain height should increase/decrease faster) and chars should lift much more dirt.

Mid game:

Metal: Grinding crickets/hay to afford materials for your first smelters/stamp mills and finding your first mine (likely not in the ideal place where you would prefer to settle, but you settle there anyways out of convenience). Burning a few bars and moving lime around from nearby nodes (lugging them back to your base or running back and forth) You're expected to either, risk your main/your farmer or make a lime alt and port the lime to your base through boston.

You should move terraforming to mid game

Gluttony: You're likely not eating meat anymore but the food you are eating will take a lot more time and planning, grinding of tiers and constantly checking purity.

And what is wrong here? You have to run and explore less, but craft more.

Base design: Your walls are up and the rough outline of your base is established so you are now going to start burning metals for braziers/industry. You spend the better part of your day making coal clamps and lighting them, the next few days are spent staring at your clamps and foraging/afking until they're ready to be used. You then spend a long time transporting lime or making a brand new fresh character to use as a lime alt for porting it back to your base which requires 2 clients as a minimum to do metals. You finally get your coal and lime ready and in your smelters and they're burning. Most of your time is spent fueling smelters and watching movies while they burn. This process is put on repeat for a few days, weeks, or even months depending on your play times and how many people are with you.

Well that 40 minutes and 15 coal right click to fuel smelter is pain.

In haven it goes a little more like this:

Start by discovering things for the first few skills and studying some nooby curios you find. Kill ants and fish for food and get your first few stats up. (50 exploration, 56 survival, 40-50 intelligence, etc) This can take a few days but can be shortened if you're not slack-ass about it.
Making a palisade and p claiming it. This is fairly straight forward, cut down trees, make the materials from foraging in your area and then build your first wall.
Making a brickwall and village claim it then setup crossroads leading in and out. This can be done within the first few weeks of playing and it's a major step into the game.

What? Why you jumped sooo much? Describe it like in Salem, early, mid and late do not jump few weeks in 4th line!
You forgot you have to find hql water and clay and this can take few days.
You forgot that every group member would want to get curios in Salem different profs require different inspi, so you can split a bit and level up few people with different set of profs.

Potentially making a curtain wall to avoid rangers but it's not needed if you want to invest in some armor and keep your hearthfire inside.
You're now able to start competing with the other players, or you can begin farming in peace.

In salem if you drop 2xstone wall + 5 braziers you are safe for 2 weeks even without town bell.
In HnH try to destroy ram with your peaceful farmer

Building is very nice, you can take in your location square by square and trace out your design in stone right away. There's no flattening and no ***** around with phlegm. Just stamina, water and generic food every few buckets of water you drink and you're golden.

Yes, if you found spot large enough for your base and without clifs that can not be destroyed and you should settle near swamps, so searching for different biomes with hql water and clay near by? Or you drop satelite camp near hql spots and port alt with goods to your town?

[MagicManICT]

I'm going to only comment on two things from colsie's post:

1. Silver: It's supposed to be hard. If you want "easy" silver, buy it off the store. One could probably argue that this is the reason why it should be significantly cheaper. It's already too easy to farm once you get past 10-15 biles just farming rabbit skins and wandering the forest and collecting snake skins out of stumps.

2. Mushrooms: While having the debuff slows how often you can glutton, I just don't see the issue here. My only complaint is that Witch's Hats are the best and easiest source of black bile early. You can easily hit 15-20+ (and leave everything else at 5) if you don't think about what you're doing and make it harder on yourself getting everything else up to that point where hunting and farming would normally take over for plain foraging. Maybe having that fat debuff will discourage anyone from pigging out on these things.