User friendliness... (Please forward to devs)

[Athriaxo]

First a few words about me: I am a 26 year old German Game Designer working mainly in the fields of Feature Design, QA and QC on a freelance basis.
I am writing this so (you) the devs get a better understanding on how a new player (who is a hc gamer but no geek or fanboy) feels when he gets into the game and because I want this Game to be a success so more companys will be brave enough to make games based on crafting.

Soooo I just finished playing Salem for two hours... that´s just about as much as I can take...
Heres why:

) The Tutorial has too much writing and even in fullscreen mode the writing is WAY too small even for people with good eyesight.
) The Skilltree is overcumbered and not intuitive at all, in fact, nothing seems to be intuitive in this game.
) Movement feels very slow, boring, even annoying at times... auto routing would help greatly coupled with the option of minimap navigation.
) Having collision detection with other players is fine but not if 10 people are enough to clog a street. If the game goes live and 100+ players are in the starter town this will lead to problems.
) Theres no way of telling harvested objects from those that are not.
) Resources are spread WAY too thin... this is the Beta and it took me about 1 hour just to find ANYTHING I could use to make a (inspirational?) item.
) Community is a big part of online games and while it might seem like a good idea to have a realistic aproach to the chatsystem in reality it is neither good nor realistic. In the real world you have all your senses to tell one person from another in the game you are down to a single one. Imagine 100 people with the same screenname (???) writing things at the same time in a chatroom.
) Last but not least: Why the strange names, why the complicated leveling system? The game is complex enough as it is there is no NEED for any of those things. I am sure some people like it but that is one out of 100 and on a commercial level this strategy will lead to massive failure.

Dear dev team please consider postponing the release and I would even go so far as to urge you to pull the plug on the beta as the game in its current state will only turn interrested potential players away forever as most people dont give a game a 2nd chance if they did not like the beta/demo etc.

I expect a lot of resistance and hate coming to me from the community now but that is due to the fact that 99.9% of players who do not like the game and have left frustrated will never set a foot into this forum so I hope all of you will keep a open mind when reading this.

Best regards,
Lucas

[Droj]

Regards the the ??? thing. This happens once you have memorized someone. You can then give them a name yourself from the buddy list or make them kin to find their actual character name. Other than that this isn't a AAA MMO so you shouldn't be expecting out of the box features you would commonly find in those. In my opinion you haven't played it long enough, try sticking it out for a bit more, learn more skills, build a farm, get metal production up and running and you'll soon probably find yourself enjoying this niche game.

The game in its current state is very playable which can't be said for some other game in development out there. The only thing it is truly lacking at the moment is content and that has been promised. So other than that things are progressing smoothly.

[Stonefac3]

Just going to chime in here, hopefully some of this will make sense to you. These are at the very least some helpful hints to get you playing more easily.

#1: I would recommend being able to spend at least 4-6 hours at the start of your character to get a nice sizeable area to settle, and most of the area cleared of trees and debris. (You will need to be playing this game several hours a day in order to really get anywhere in the game world.)
#2: Don't become attached to any items or characters. Period.
#3: Think of this more as a real-life survival situation, as opposed to a game where you must find coins to save the princess. The princess is in another castle. Trust me.
#4: It's a java based game, the text and resolutions are not perfect, you may try adjusting your desktop resolution to save your eyesight and to properly read the in game text, which is VERY valuable to beginning players. Please read these, they are designed to be helpful to you as a new player to the game.
#5: The skill tree has a few main points, and once understood, it becomes fairly easy to use. Your skill caps must be met (full green bar) then you click on the bar and it ranks up your skill, while spending ALL xp you had banked. Very simple. If you repeatedly study the same types of inspirationals, you will gain a -% modifier to the xp you get from those same items.
#6: Movement is made to make you want to use run and wander to gain a speed bonus, which in turn cost your character biles, which in turn forces you to gather. Also, the pathfinding is better when you use a custom client and click on the objects on the radar. Try using Ender's client to see if that helps you.
#7: This is a long term game, plants can take up to a week to grow, and fields can take months to build up. Be patient. This isn't an instant gratification game (until you slide that sword in between a person's ribs and murder someone who earlier murdered a friend of yours).
#8: You'd be surprised how many people think the community of this game is bad or negative, and while there are the fair share of drama queens and trolls, the majority of the playerbase are intelligent, reasoning, determined players, who will stop at nothing to survive. This includes "out-surviving" you. If you get upset at the game within 2 hours and give up, their little niche in the world is thus protected from one more player who would rape and take it from them if they were so inclined. The ingame system starts people off you memorize as "???" and you are allowed to assign a CUSTOM name to anyone you meet. You can also use the ingame system to chat just by using a keyword and the friends list.

All in all, I would recommend maybe another playthru, or at the very least, open your eyes to see what the devs do have to offer and comment on it further when you have played on it for more than 2 hours.

Okay. Done ranting.

[Stonefac3]

Also, here is a fairly good new player experience guide that may help you along your way!

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1657

I hope your next attempt at playing goes better!

[Athriaxo]

Hey guys!

Thank you for your tips but this realy isnt about me not understanding the game its about what I know from my experience to be too much for the average player.
I have seen this happen over and over: The casual player gives a FTP game 10 minutes to win him over, the hardcore player gives it 1 to 2 hours... asking them to stick around for longer would require a very large pot of gold waiting at the rainbow wich maybe there is but that is not communicated to the player in the game.

Additionally while having Tutorials on the Forum etc. is a great thing you must remember that 85% of players will NEVER see the forum AT ALL! If this wasnt a game that I find so very interresting because its all about crafting I too would not have bothered to come to the forum after playing the game and having been disappointed about it.

Regarding #6: While its makes sense that a custom UI could help, again one must remember that I am not talking about me personally but about most common players who would NEVER go thru such lenghts in order to play. A large part of wich would probably not even know there are such addons aviable!

#8 Again you have missed the point of what I was trying to say: A person coming into the game only seeing messages without names will be deterred by this and especially when the game has just launched imagine 100 new players all asking questions and not even knowing who is talking ... imagine having a screen full of people and there are chat bubbles popping up everywhere nobody would even know who is answering his question and if hes actually answering HIS question or some1 elses... example: Player ??? (1) asks: Where can i find maple leaf? Player ??? (2) asks: How to get away from here? Player ??? (3) answers: You need to take the boat! ... now how would player 1 or 2 (remember they are new) know if it was theyr question that has been answered by player 3? So you see in a game without such things as eye contact or sense of direction of sound this system is not aplicable.

The bottom line is you may not want to hear or believe it but I guarantee you from my many years of experience in the gaming industry: This game if not drastically overhauled WILL COMMERCIALLY FAIL ON A MASSIVE SCALE!!!

And let me stress this one more time: There is no use in recommending me to "play longer" because this topic is NOT ABOUT ME it is about the 85% of players who will never come to the forum because they are discouraged right away and never come back!

[Arillious]

Hey guys!

Thank you for your tips but this realy isnt about me not understanding the game its about what I know from my experience to be too much for the average player.
I have seen this happen over and over: The casual player gives a FTP game 10 minutes to win him over, the hardcore player gives it 1 to 2 hours... asking them to stick around for longer would require a very large pot of gold waiting at the rainbow wich maybe there is but that is not communicated to the player in the game.

Additionally while having Tutorials on the Forum etc. is a great thing you must remember that 85% of players will NEVER see the forum AT ALL! If this wasnt a game that I find so very interresting because its all about crafting I too would not have bothered to come to the forum after playing the game and having been disappointed about it.

Regarding #6: While its makes sense that a custom UI could help, again one must remember that I am not talking about me personally but about most common players who would NEVER go thru such lenghts in order to play. A large part of wich would probably not even know there are such addons aviable!

#8 Again you have missed the point of what I was trying to say: A person coming into the game only seeing messages without names will be deterred by this and especially when the game has just launched imagine 100 new players all asking questions and not even knowing who is talking ... imagine having a screen full of people and there are chat bubbles popping up everywhere nobody would even know who is answering his question and if hes actually answering HIS question or some1 elses... example: Player ??? (1) asks: Where can i find maple leaf? Player ??? (2) asks: How to get away from here? Player ??? (3) answers: You need to take the boat! ... now how would player 1 or 2 (remember they are new) know if it was theyr question that has been answered by player 3? So you see in a game without such things as eye contact or sense of direction of sound this system is not aplicable.

The bottom line is you may not want to hear or believe it but I guarantee you from my many years of experience in the gaming industry: This game if not drastically overhauled WILL COMMERCIALLY FAIL ON A MASSIVE SCALE!!!

And let me stress this one more time: There is no use in recommending me to "play longer" because this topic is NOT ABOUT ME it is about the 85% of players who will never come to the forum because they are discouraged right away and never come back!

I tried making this point when I first started a few months back. I have an extensive gaming background and am a software programmer by profession and after spending so much time figuring out the most basic tasks, I kept asking myself how the average player is going to put up with this.

What's sad is that after I got past all the usability mechanics and the non-intuitive nature of the game, it actually is a really great game. Unfortunately, the vast majority of players who give Salem a shot will not get past an hour because they will give up.

As a warning, you are going to get flamed to **** for this and they will try to point out specific points of your post and how you can overcome them. What they fail to realize is that the normal player wouldn't of even came here to post, they would of already given up by now.

[Droj]

And let me stress this one more time: There is no use in recommending me to "play longer" because this topic is NOT ABOUT ME it is about the 85% of players who will never come to the forum because they are discouraged right away and never come back!

Where are you getting these statistics from? Also it's hard not to miss the forums when there is a link on the same page as account registration/management.

[Shiala]

The newbie experience needs improvement. I think a lot of people will agree with that. The tutorial needs work and I would like to see it have less long blocks of text in windows and more hands on training. This is definitely a game where you learn much more by actually doing things. Reading guides and the wiki or watching a video walk-through doesn't make the game click in the minds of a lot of people in the same way as a guided tutorial that has them craft some basic things. It's a steep learning curve and the game plays very differently than most people are used to. Once you get it, you've got it and it's just a matter of learning the finer points of the game.

In my opinion, one of the most frustrating parts of being a newbie is trying to find stuff for your first inspirational. Since the ability to see foragable items is based on proficiencies and skills, a fresh character can see very little of what's actually there. I have had the experience of wandering around for ages trying to find ANYTHING to study. It sucks because I know the stuff is there, I can go foraging around that area on my main and find stuff every 10 feet. Perhaps instead of making newbies forage around the city claim to find stuff for that first inspirational, just have a smooth stone appear in their bag when they get off the boat. Have them study it to get survival skills and explain that they will need to forage out in the world to get more things to study. Making them wander around that claim for a very long time just to find their very first inspirational just frustrates people right off the bat. Once they use their free wilderness port and get away from there, it's much easier to find foragables.

[Dallane]

The newbie experience needs improvement. I think a lot of people will agree with that. The tutorial needs work and I would like to see it have less long blocks of text in windows and more hands on training. This is definitely a game where you learn much more by actually doing things. Reading guides and the wiki or watching a video walk-through doesn't make the game click in the minds of a lot of people in the same way as a guided tutorial that has them craft some basic things. It's a steep learning curve and the game plays very differently than most people are used to. Once you get it, you've got it and it's just a matter of learning the finer points of the game.

In my opinion, one of the most frustrating parts of being a newbie is trying to find stuff for your first inspirational. Since the ability to see foragable items is based on proficiencies and skills, a fresh character can see very little of what's actually there. I have had the experience of wandering around for ages trying to find ANYTHING to study. It sucks because I know the stuff is there, I can go foraging around that area on my main and find stuff every 10 feet. Perhaps instead of making newbies forage around the city claim to find stuff for that first inspirational, just have a smooth stone appear in their bag when they get off the boat. Have them study it to get survival skills and explain that they will need to forage out in the world to get more things to study. Making them wander around that claim for a very long time just to find their very first inspirational just frustrates people right off the bat. Once they use their free wilderness port and get away from there, it's much easier to find foragables.

could of done the smart thing and left the boston claim

[MagicManICT]

I think the devs are aware of some of your points, and if this were a big-budget game, some of them wouldn't be an issue (there'd be enough manpower to fix them quickly and do usability research and all that).

On other issues, well, it's my opinion that they are trying to change the way we think of MMOs and gaming. You don't do that by doing things the same way everyone else has done them.

I think you have some very valid points there and pretty well thought out. Browse through this forum and I think you'll find the number one complaint about the UI is the font size, and is probably tied with the camera that won't stay still.