A Brave New Salem

[Horis]

The game clearly isn't for them. How is that HnH has a decent population with the same mechanics? Permadeath isn't the problem

HnH population is a whopping 300? Impressive! (/sarcasm)

HnH has had a lot more work done on it. It's never been neglected like Salem has. It's as if seatribe ran out of "inspiration" and lost the ambition to see the job through. There is so much that can be done to easily improve the game. And as far as population potential goes, nobody can tell me there aren't enough gamers out there who would find permadeath a most interesting challenge.

Nobody but those still playing believe this game can last another 8 months. MM inc. can change that if they deliver on the promises. They have one chance to show us they know what they are doing. Take permadeath out and they will lose the vets.

[martinuzz]

There will always be those who enjoy a challenge, and they will always be rewarded for taking the path less traveled. You are free to pretend that your sheepish mentality makes you right. In reality, those who enjoy Salem will know in their hearts that their experiences are more meaningful and last with them longer than anything offered by the games catering to the masses.

It seems your prolongued exposure to certain Swedes is starting to rub off on you. For a minute there, my first thought reading your post was 'hmm, did John let jorb post on his account?'

[Dallane]

The game clearly isn't for them. How is that HnH has a decent population with the same mechanics? Permadeath isn't the problem

HnH population is a whopping 300? Impressive!

300-500 with a game that has ZERO advertisement and **** graphics.

HnH has had a lot more work done on it.

Slight

It's never been neglected like Salem has.

There have been just as much if not more neglect in the game.

Please do some research and think b4 **** posting

[MagicManICT]

The game clearly isn't for them. How is that HnH has a decent population with the same mechanics? Permadeath isn't the problem

HnH population is a whopping 300? Impressive! (/sarcasm)

Nobody has ever done a tracking site for HnH that I'm aware. Peak populations have been near 2k on simultaneously and the number of returning players numbers when there are major changes with a new world are usually around 10k (estimate based on peak time player counts).

Is that as impressive as "10 million copies sold worldwide?" hell no, and who gives a ****. Making a game is like making music. You do it for the love of the art. If you attract 10 million followers, great, but if you attract even a few thousand, you have made an accomplishment.

Besides, it's not about how many people love your art, it's about the impact you make on the industry as a whole. Rogue-likes have been around since the early 80s, and yet they haven't had more than a niche audience. Even AAA games like the Diablo franchise that have included hardcore mode with permanent character death really weren't very frequent until the last few years. Now you have a slew of games being developed or published that have permadeath as an option to play or is the only option. Has that all been because Seatribe released Haven & Hearth 5 years ago now? No, but I think it been one of those influential games that the right few have heard of.

[joshnpk]

Could you make it so that when someone picks up a scent and tracks it to the criminals base, the person who is tracking the scent receives a buff called something like "The grace of god"? What this could do is when the person tracking the scent reaches the criminals base and try's to break in to summon the criminal or even catch them online the damage they receive from the criminals braziers and torch posts is less than it normally would be?

I feel this would encourage a community of raiders focused around finding scents and bringing criminals to justice as it would be a lot more practical that just raiding random players land, and would also create a better system of natural justice as if you were good and left no scents you would have a lot less to worry about as opposed to a player who was a very naughty boy and as a result left lots of scents. Even if you were good and left no scents you obviously still could be raided however I feel something like what I have suggested would make the game slightly fairer and would somewhat discourage people from raiding others just for the things they have, but at the same time making the act of leaving scents a lot more dangerous.

Also If you are tracking a criminal from a scent I don't think that you should leave scents your self for bringing them to justice or breaking theirs walls etc in the process.

[JohnCarver]

Interesting ideas.

We are in the CONSTANT process of evaluating a parallel process to enforcing justice with scents and general pvp without scents. Right now, you correctly point out that having scents does not give you any advantage other than help finding your assailants location. We hope to change that. Almost everything is on the table right now when it comes to this mechanic as we feel it is one of the largest core elements that needs evaluation.

[Feone]

Hard to provide a longer entry period when early deaths happen randomly, with the victim virtually unable to make decisions to help avoid them. The only thing a new player can do is settle as far away from other people as possible, which kind of defeats the point of playing an MMO. You either need an invulnerability period for new characters (which would be exploited in countless ways), or a safe zone where new players can get through enough content to really get hooked. Boston can't work because allowing people to build anything there hasn't worked out well at all in the past, and you can't get to much content without building stuff. A possible solution could be player built "safe" zone, where new players could develop under protection of defences erected by established players. But for this to happen the established players would need a strong incentive to build and run this, either in form of some passive benefits (raising civilization rating for thwarting witchcraft) or by integrating the newbies into their town's economy via player-built market stands.

I think the whole concept of safezones etc simply doesn't work well in Salem. Building up that early newbie camp in the wilderness is probably the single most effective way to keep players coming back. Simply to see that first piece of home that you just made, despite the game being hostile & hard to figure out at first. As such, having to abandon it to end up in the real world is going to discourage players.

Permadeath and newbies don't go well together, especially not when any sort of teamwork is heavily discouraged. I think reworking the town system should be the first priority. When players can work together without requiring 100% trust there might just be some more incentive to save the occasional newbies life, or bring them into your town.
To do this I think a few elements are neccesary:
Better marking of possessions. It doesn't have to enforce ownership, but being able to mark items as property and leaving a (non-summonable, fleeting) scent when taking something from allies would be nice. Being able to tell eachother that you want/own something would help teamplay between people who don't know eachother. Being able to see who brought in what would probably be beneficial as well.
Secondly, better management of permissions over claims. Being able to seperately define access to types of equipment as well as the types of actions. Players in party shouldn't, IMO, gain permissions the way they do now either.
Lastly, a messaging board of sort. For the major/ town officials to communicate with their players without having to be online or using third party applications.

A type of reward for not being mean to newbies could help as well. Perhaps new characters could have a say.. 10 day period in which they are marked as newbies. Acts of violence against these could incur heavier penalties & acts of kindness could perhaps give some form of reward. Perhaps both penalty & reward could relate to the witchcraft system as some sort of karma.

[ElCapitan1701]

Salem it's not minecraft.

There is a long way from minecraft to Salem, and I`m not saying, Salem needs to be anywhere near Minecraft. I`m just suggesting to take one thing out of Salem: the possibility to kill someone without provocation. You still can kill him, if he had entered your area, you still can kill him, if he engaged a fight and you still can kill him, if he had killed anyone else....but you can should not be able to kill him, if he wants to stay out of trouble. This maybe 95% Salem, but it`s still very far away from Minecraft. And if non-consensual killing is gone, all those players, which love the exploration, crafting or building part of Salem will find a new home in Salem.

The new leadership seems to have the same idealistic point of view of (human) players as the old ones: they think, if you make the game and the experience intensive enough, players will restart after they had been killed. That`s wrong. You will lose 99% of players, who had been killed without provocation,because they are human. Maybe if you look at Seatribe stats, you might see, that I`m right. And to be clear: I`m not talking of those players who get killed in a fight or a animal hunt, they or their group initiated... I`m sure, players still playing Salem are those which don`t (and maybe never had) need to fear to been killed in a non consensual fight. So, if you aim for 500-2000 players, fine. You might get those, if they are all member of one tribe, because there will always been one dominating tribe/clan etc. in the long run. And their only motivation of playing will be to absorb new content and kill new players, and then they will post some nice pictures in forums and tell the world how stupid those new players have been....your really think, that can work?

The old H&H community has succeeded in leading Jorb and Loftar and Salem into an dead end - as a reward they got, what they wanted from the start: H&H has its developer back.
I hope, the new developer realizes, that what we need is not only a Brave new Salem, but also a Brave new Developer perspective.

[Dallane]

Retardation

Just stop. Your dreams of a terrible game won't happen. Give a actual suggestion on how to change permadeath instead of removing it. There is no point to the game without the threat of loss.

The old H&H community has succeeded in leading Jorb and Loftar and Salem into an dead end - as a reward they got, what they wanted from the start: H&H has its developer back.

You are more clueless then once thought. Permadeath isn't the problem.

[martinuzz]

I`m just suggesting to take one thing out of Salem: the possibility to kill someone without provocation.

Dude, that's like saying "I'm just suggesting to take one thing out of Need for Speed: cars"

go away, to your hundred thousand games already out there, that do not have the unique drama setup that defines seatribe games.