Bile Cap

[Snowpig]

The part with the botting is indeed a game design weakness. There are plenty of methods to reduce/prevent bot usage in MMOs. Not having them in Salem is a result of "no time/don't care" of the devs.

btw. even the possibility to change visuals (read: raider mode on custom clients) is in my opinion a game design weakness, because it gives users with access to custom clients/modifications an unfair advantage because it is achieved through stuff they do outside of the game.

[Potjeh]

Botting is pretty much unpreventable other than with manual inspection by GMs, and the devs are firmly against having GMs.

And speaking of client mods, I'm quite surprised that autoparry isn't standard by now.

[Snowpig]

I think the consensus is that the devs have their reasons to design Salem as a game of "use everything that works to gain advantage"-competition. Therefore it is myopic to ask for a balance of only one aspect of this competition (read: biles) and ignoring the other twenty aspects.

[Potjeh]

Just what are those other twenty aspects?

[jwhitehorn]

As for dedication I am here little longer than you and still didn't changed my attitude,

No,
You quit in less than 6 months and then came back to spew your nonsense and uneducated ideas all over the forum again.

Chief PeePooKaKa
MM Tribe

[Snowpig]

twenty is only a placeholder for a number. But if you want some detailed list i could put in some points:

- biles
- time to play (10h vs 2-3h)
- client (custom vs. default)
- botting
- access to development-ressources (read: masons)
- access to random dev-information thrown in the IRC
- 3rd-party tools (mapping)

&c &c

[darnokpl]

Which reminds me of that joke about a guy driving a car on a highway: In the radio a message is broadcasted: "Warning! On Highway 123 a wrong way driver was spotted..." - That guy becomes furious: "One?!? - There are literally thousands of them !!"

Yes, Devs went in wrong way few years ago and on many game design layers, but I hope this new patch will change that.

Supporting only group of people that is playing more than others won't be able to, won't give salem bright future and 6 months after this wipe we will have again 10 people online - that is wrong way imo.

Allowing no-lifes to get stats able to run from any danger (300 bile char can easly run from 5 characters with 100 biles) that is another wrong way and wrong design.

They can't stop people from creating alts, but they are trying to make people invest on single character and develop it endlesly - that won't work with PERMADEATH! - wrong way and terrible siege design.
Most people, unaware that alts are REQUIRED here to have fun, they prefer to logout and lose base than fight and lose base and character.
"Pros" are aware that making many murder alts is a good thing and they will create them no matter there will be biles cap or not. But with cap all those alts would be equal in fight to those people that does play single character.

Most no-lifes makes raids mostly for bases that are not protected (citizens are offline) - one more terrible design.
Fun game should encourage people to fight on raid, not to logout if you feel you are too weak or to pick bases that owners are not in game.

You can still play relaitvely safely (provided you protect your place with some brain) and progress with 2h / day playtimes. Sure, you won't be the king of the server, but you wouldn't expect that, would you?

Relative safety in this case means until nobody knows where your base is, you can enjoy the game, but when no-life people will find you then you and your base are dead, if you are playing only 2h/day.

[Potjeh]

Biles, time to play and botting are all parts of the same problem, namely that PvP is too much about preparation and too little about execution.

Custom clients are just an unfortunate fact we have to accept, because the devs don't seem to have any interest in developing a usable client.

As for Masons, we get zero inside information.

[Procne]

And no, you can't play the game to the full extent at 2h/day. You'll never be able to engage in PvP playing like that, because you'll always be heavily outstatted. And PvP is a huge part of the game, not being able to do it is worse than not being able to farm or mine.

So you do want to take part in competition but you expect to be competitive when you play 2-3h / day. The only type of games which allows this are MOBAs, where in each round everyone starts from 0. Or the games with "energy" mechanics where you are allowed X actions per day and that's it. Because how else would you stop players willing to take more effort to gain an edge?

The game is a competition in who can burn more time on tedious ****. 10+ hours is what your run of the mill hardcore player will pull off. But then, a bot can pull 24h. And multiple bots can pull more, so the arms race will inevitably wind up in people running dozens of bots 24/7. It happened in Haven, and the only reason it hasn't happened in Salem yet is because of the low population which prevents formation of the critical mass of scripting savvy players.

Can you give me an example of PvP oriented MMO where you are competitive by playing 2-3h / day, which is not MOBA?

As for devs not caring about finances, that was the entire point of making Salem. If they didn't worry about money Haven would be a lot better game than it is right now.

If they really wanted to get more players to play then they would provide more friendly environment. And they don't. To me they simply realize some vision of a game, which would be cool in their opinion. And that's it.

[jwhitehorn]

As for Masons, we get zero inside information.

This is simply not true. It may be true that "some" Masons that I would refer to as the "pity-mason" might not get information but that would only be a result of their own laziness to read specific threads and/or seek it. It has been proven time and time again that Jorb and Loftar are not shy to share non-public information to those who pursue it. Therefore, any communication medium that is not available to the public gives an added benefit to gather inside information. Why Potjeh likes to lie to the public about something so trivial and accepted is beyond me. This reminds me of when people say "Well the forum has nothing to do with anything in-game". Certainly it may appear that way but the ability to coordinate and PM players here on the forums directly influences your ability to organize in-game and is the primary reason I have a PM-only forum account for just that purpose.

Chief PeePooKaKa
MM Tribe