A Brave New Salem

[Potjeh]

I'd like to hear your thoughts on:
- Character power. Unlimited and mostly proportional to time invested into grinding, or will there be a point where you've done sufficient grinding to 1v1 *any* character? If the latter, where would this point be?
- Base construction vs destruction investment. If breaking a base is easy, what's to stop griefing with alts from becoming the winning strategy? If breaking a base is hard, how will you make leaving scents dangerous?
- Rhythm of the game. Do you think that the current system of requiring user input every minute or two is fine? If not, are you aiming for lessening the time between user inputs (ie speeding up various actions such as crafting doughs), or allowing characters to work longer without player supervision (ie queuing actions).
- Internal security. Should the game provide tools for limiting destructive potential of infiltrators, or should the emphasis be on extensive recruit screening? Ie, should typical towns be big and open for immigrants, or tight-knit and really hard to join if they're worth anything?
- Automation of player interaction. Will there be market stands? If yes, will they be in Boston, or will it be left to players to build and secure their own marketplaces? How about fully automated player-scripted quests?

[wiatrak]

well thx for the answers, next one, will we be able to hit 100% again?

[JohnCarver]

well thx for the answers, next one, will we be able to hit 100% again?

Yes in theory, no in practice. Current formulas being tested on our software is raising the purity slower the higher it becomes.

[wiatrak]

That's what we've got now, but max we could find was 11-12%, further upgrades would mean painful alchemy works towards +3-4%

and how about client?! right now we've got latikai and ender, will you support open client or make your own?

[Champie]

I'm glad Salem is changing developer, Jorb and Loftar made a great game but in my opinion had no idea how to develop it further.
I couldn't force myself to read all the posts in this topic, so i have few questions which could have already be answered.

If you are asking questions of the fictional character MushMouth created by jorb, then you definitely need to read all the threads related to the topic. Also, I am really excited about my new book that I want to be awesome with your help.

Check outmy thread in CUaH so that you can see how real books are written with lots of good ideas and really determination to make it awesome. I skipped worrying about other stuff, like short stories, poems, interactive fiction, letters to my mother...no if you want to be a book writer you have to write books with more than 300 pages at least and really get people to say "OHHH aw" and maybe even cry if we want them right at the beginning so they can get past the 10 pages that usually suck in most books that can't even be trilogies or more because they start out so lame! Check me out and give me one of your abandoned paragraphs or something but not a character because I have one right now and neored gave me a really cooll idea that a moderator didnt like but I liked so the moderator could maybe be a bad guy in it and maybe neored could be a bad guy gone good who wanted me to dies, but not too good, cause that would be weird for the main character the fictional character MushMouth created by me

[Greb]

Will you be implementing Indians?

[JohnCarver]

I'd like to hear your thoughts on:
- Character power. Unlimited and mostly proportional to time invested into grinding, or will there be a point where you've done sufficient grinding to 1v1 *any* character? If the latter, where would this point be?

We don't want to adjust the inherit passive advantages of attempting to brute force your way to the top. That being said, we don't want a player to feel helpless either. At some level they will be. We have no intentions of having a 15/15/15/15 taking down a 150/150/150/150 unless the latter was afk for absured lengths of time. That being said, we don't find it unreasonable that the more cunning, capable, and committed 80/80/80/80 take down someone twice his size either. Our solutions currently being explored are rooted around other mechanics involving clever preparation as mitigating factors to a humour gaps.

- Base construction vs destruction investment. If breaking a base is easy, what's to stop griefing with alts from becoming the winning strategy? If breaking a base is hard, how will you make leaving scents dangerous?

I'm assuming we are talking about Breaking INTO a base as opposed to leveling one. Leveling a base in a single night will be significantly harder. Breaking INTO a base we have hopes to be much easier. As for griefing alts, I wouldn't consider waste to be a walk in the park, and if you are leaving scents then you are understanding the risk that somebody with waste may break in and kill you. Don't leave scents if you don't accept the risks.

- Rhythm of the game. Do you think that the current system of requiring user input every minute or two is fine? If not, are you aiming for lessening the time between user inputs (ie speeding up various actions such as crafting doughs), or allowing characters to work longer without player supervision (ie queuing actions).

I like queuing actions. I don't like a broad speed up to the game itself. I agree its too slow, but I also think there could be systems to give you a bit more to do in those slow periods that would be more rewarding than simply speeding everything up.

- Internal security. Should the game provide tools for limiting destructive potential of infiltrators, or should the emphasis be on extensive recruit screening? Ie, should typical towns be big and open for immigrants, or tight-knit and really hard to join if they're worth anything?

A little bit of both. I like the ideas of spies being the zerg neutralizers and do not wish Salem to boil down into every other game that is simply a matter of numbers. That being said, the risk of taking a new player is too high to the reward that they are worth their weight. As such, towns require more permissions to allow for the better handling of social interaction to build trust. Although, at the end of the day, the accomplished spy may finally work his way to the top no matter what I do, I don't want to take that away from the game either.

- Automation of player interaction. Will there be market stands? If yes, will they be in Boston, or will it be left to players to build and secure their own marketplaces? How about fully automated player-scripted quests?

I like the idea of trade hubs, regional goods, and the like. But they are all in the 2015 bin. I do not like the idea of a completely absent system of formal trade. 2014 could expect to see the old stall system with modifications to make their ownership less permanent and the opportunities to achieve one more frequent.

That's what we've got now, but max we could find was 11-12%, further upgrades would mean painful alchemy works towards +3-4%

and how about client?! right now we've got latikai and ender, will you support open client or make your own?

We expect to continue to support the open license of the client. We hope to better leverage the players who have proven themselves invaluable to the game through successful clients. To put it bluntly, in a perfect world we will have an amicable relationship with the modding community where the Default client is in a perpetual state of borrowing from things we identify as nice things in the other clients.

People should see 90% purity again, but said advancements will be after several months of herculean efforts. One purity simulation model we coded had nearly 120 cycles of field rotation before the player had what we would probably consider an end-game purity. We don't feel that to be absurdly unreasonable as each cycle feels like a nice step in the right direction.

Will you be implementing Indians?

Not before witches.

[wiatrak]

well im a type of a crafting guy so im mostly interested into it.

Adding more content will result in more diversity in characters. Right now we've got one crafter alt per base.

Speaking about alts. I'd like to know if we should be used to play 1 character or have an alts for diffrent things(pvp and such), when we look on the perma death its not worth investing all your time into one character. What will you say about that?

Crafting = take material -> make a thing, i dont know if you've seen vanguard crafting, i tried to play it but it wasn't the game i liked, still that system was awesome. Any chance we will get some complexity to crafting?(this game was somewhat called "crafting mmo")

[Okocim]

and how about client?! right now we've got latikai and ender, will you support open client or make your own?

We expect to continue to support the open license of the client. We hope to better leverage the players who have proven themselves invaluable to the game through successful clients. To put it bluntly, in a perfect world we will have an amicable relationship with the modding community where the Default client is in a perpetual state of borrowing from things we identify as nice things in the other clients.

Thats pretty bad idea in my opinion. I know, Custom Clients made Salem playable, but it gave unfair advantages to few players who were able to create them.
Is this a programming competition or mmorpg?
And one more question? Are u going to do something with bots, or are u going to just allow them?

[Potjeh]

How about that 80/80/80 going up against an 800/800/800? Ie, will there be a cap on stats, even if it takes infinite effort to reach it? If yes, how much grind would one need to invest into a character to go toe to toe with a character that's very close to this cap?

How will the game differentiate between breaking into a base and leveling a base? Virtually any structure can be used as a wall. And yeah, waste takes moderate grind investment, but it's orders of magnitude lower than the investment required to build a decent base. Trading a waste character for a whole base would be a pretty good deal for the attacker.

As for the speed, I'm not referring to things you just need to wait a long time for (like timber piles), but can do other stuff while you wait. I'm talking about actions that you can't interrupt if you want them done, but which take excessive amount of time (such as making doughs or felling trees). Queuing actions sounds like a pretty good way to handle that, but you'll need to do a lot of work on the interface for that to work out. I might want to make five bear and deer meat pies, three deer and bear and four beaver and rabbit without juggling ingredients like crazy to exploit the current LIFO system for selecting ingredients.