Crucially Needed Improvements

[Trenix]

1) Digging System - It's very hard to find out exactly what's flat, what needs to be dug, and what needs dirt. There has to be something that'll tell us exactly what's going on with our plot of land. This makes terraforming unbearable and complicated for any newcomer.

2) More Tooltips - Both food and inspirations don't tell you exactly what they're going to give you before you craft them. Sure the purity will change their results, but it'll still be nice to know the defaults, because not every food and inspiration is the same, they're used for entirely different things. We shouldn't be forced to keep checking the wiki so we can memorize every item in the game or gamble with our resources and hope that that's the item we were expecting.

To be honest, I've already quit this game and was planning on never returning until I was introduced the Enders Client. Now all my friends are using it so Salem can actually be payable. This 3rd party software adds features that should have already been in the game before it was released. These improvements are crucial and should be added as soon as possible, because it can deter players from the game rather quickly. Some things I can manage like running into trees because of the lack of path finding, but this is just too much. I also don't like the idea of relying on mods, because at some point they will get unstable and/or abandoned.

[Kandarim]

As you answered yourself, both these problems are solved by the custom clients. The other seatribe game has illustrated that the devs more or less intentionally leave the programming of a decent client to the community, as well as that there will always be one more modder to take up the shovel when old ones quit / abandon their client. And, let's be fair, Ender has a pretty good track record (understatement of the year award here?)

[Trenix]

As you answered yourself, both these problems are solved by the custom clients. The other seatribe game has illustrated that the devs more or less intentionally leave the programming of a decent client to the community, as well as that there will always be one more modder to take up the shovel when old ones quit / abandon their client. And, let's be fair, Ender has a pretty good track record (understatement of the year award here?)

But people don't want to rely on a mod and most new players wont even know that this mod even exists. This game does very little for new players, this is coming from personal experience from me and even my friends that I tried to convince to play. This mod basically completes an unfinished/unpolished game and feels like it's literally a requirement. If the enders client for some reason gets abandoned or becomes unsupported, I truly feel like my only option is to quit the game because it's otherwise dreadful to play. It really shouldn't be like that...

[jcwilk]

But people don't want to rely on a mod

Proof is in the pudding, people love ender's client and latikai's client. You can talk all you want about what should or shouldn't happen, but there are only two devs working on this game and they're making anything but speedy progress as it stands. Asking them to take care of the minutia of the client as well isn't doing anyone favors as it would just slow down server-side development (what -really- matters as far as game mechanics go). Pragmatism first, idealism second.

[Trenix]

But people don't want to rely on a mod

Proof is in the pudding, people love ender's client and latikai's client. You can talk all you want about what should or shouldn't happen, but there are only two devs working on this game and they're making anything but speedy progress as it stands. Asking them to take care of the minutia of the client as well isn't doing anyone favors as it would just slow down server-side development (what -really- matters as far as game mechanics go). Pragmatism first, idealism second.

Proof is that the player base is dying and has been since closed beta. This along with many other unresolved problems, is exactly what's causing it. Like I said, most people don't know about these mods. In fact, I never even heard of latikai's client until you mentioned it. I'm not asking for this just for my own self benefit, but to possibly help the game out so I don't see anymore abandoned settlements. I've yet to even see a player in-game besides in Boston. The features that the mods provide are needed in order to play the game efficiently without frustration and confusion, they're not just add-ons that personalize your game. The developers should fix this or at least make the mods be downloadable in-game so everyone can notice them.

[jcwilk]

Proof is that the player base is dying and has been since closed beta.

Getting new players into the game isn't helpful if the game is still lacking critical mechanical fixes. If you look through things that actual players complain about, which are representative of what new players would be complaining about after they advanced beyond being new players (assuming they don't leave), very little of it is client stuff, it's all game mechanic things... Whether legacy goods floating around ruin the game, whether the purity system sucks, whether glutting sucks, balance of raid mechanics vs defense mechanics. These concerns are what salem is about, if they don't get fixed soon then the game really will die.

Also, the beauty of open source is that any improvements that ender or latikai make can trickle back up to the main client. I haven't verified this but I'm guessing that's how :cam sucky made it into the main client, ender's had it as a great added feature, everyone liked it, and it pressured the devs to put it into the vanilla client because why not? It's open source so they just had to copy the code over with some tweaks.

Not really sure what to say further. If it wasn't for ender's then there probably would be no players playing at all rather than a decreased population. If you think most (or any) people quit because the vanilla client sucks then you're very sorely mistaken. It's the game mechanics that drove them away and it's the game mechanics that will keep new players from advancing beyond new players, even if they get past the first few hours because of eye candy.

That being said, it wouldn't hurt to make a note on the client download page about the custom clients so that they don't have to wait until they talk to another player for the first thing they say "you're using ender's right?"

[jwhitehorn]

Like I said, most people don't know about these mods.

This just shows how inexperienced you really are then. 100% of everybody I have ever met uses a custom client. I know this for a fact because if anybody I ever met didn't then I directed them to it. "most" active Salem players use the mods. It is unfortunate that you are one of the lesser-educated or lesser-researched member of the community but please don't play the game for a week and come on here and explain how to "fix" it. Once you have played the game for 1-2 months and have a clear picture and perspective of what you are getting into then your feedback will look far less ridiculous.

Chief PeePooKaKa
MM Tribe

[Dallane]

Proof is that the player base is dying and has been since closed beta.

No actually it hasn't.

Pop didn't die till last gluttony "fix". Complaining about something as little as a custom client that everyone but you knew about isn't a really big concern for the devs

[Trenix]

No actually it hasn't.

Pop didn't die till last gluttony "fix".

The population has been dying since the game came out. I've seen many charts that people provided proving it, I don't think they were a hoax. It's so easy to get a large player base in closed beta by simply giving out beta keys and providing hype. However with all those people that got a key, more than half quit soon after. The game just isn't appealing to the general public because of it's overcomplicated systems which were intended to battle macroers, which only ended up killing gameplay. This is something that seatribe is known for, with H&H and all. That and the fact that not many people actually like rogue games such as these. The only reason I play this game is because there isn't really any other crafting MMOs that is actually worth the money that the developers ask for.

Complaining about something as little as a custom client that everyone but you knew about isn't a really big concern for the devs

The only people that know about it are the ones that didn't quit the game.

[Trenix]

Like I said, most people don't know about these mods.

This just shows how inexperienced you really are then. 100% of everybody I have ever met uses a custom client. I know this for a fact because if anybody I ever met didn't then I directed them to it. "most" active Salem players use the mods. It is unfortunate that you are one of the lesser-educated or lesser-researched member of the community but please don't play the game for a week and come on here and explain how to "fix" it. Once you have played the game for 1-2 months and have a clear picture and perspective of what you are getting into then your feedback will look far less ridiculous.

Chief PeePooKaKa
MM Tribe

By far the best feedback you're going to get, being that I am a new player and this is my impression of the game thus far. First impressions do matter and could be why the player base is so low. I'm really surprised that no one finds it embarrassing that we must all rely on a modification to keep the game in check and make it do what it's supposed to. Well that's pretty much all that I have to say...