Posting Game Suggestions Everyday Til JC Acknowledges Salem

[pistolshrimp]

If there were to be another expedition, would Gluttony need to be modified due to a reversion of the available purity of ingredients? It could be somewhat like the discovery system of Haven where once all of the ingredients are discovered by a character, the subject recipes are unlocked. Here it's more about discovering a recipe "success" which a character can later recall?

This isn't a bad idea, and I've thought about this, or something were in Skyrim you can mix ingredients OR use a recipe, but I'm open to this, but I think in general this will be no unsuccessful recipes, just lower Gourmet Value recipes, so the need for anything formal will be low. Obviously the wiki can be updated to show actual recipes combinations, but ideally there would be no actually recipe buttons. It might sound pedantic of me but I feel it take too many clicks to make really anything in this game, especially food recipes if you aren't just spamming one recipe, having a mix ingredients type system would streamline the buttons considerably to just A Process Food button (with its sub options) and Snack Foods (with its sub options). One of the guiding ideas that I've been working with in the background while coming up with suggestions is reducing clicks. But again, you idea is good, and may turn out to be a better option, possibly less daunting for newer players.

If status is sufficiently difficult for alts to maintain (to me it seemed like a decent affluence set would circumvent this substantially), this proposed system would make it more difficult (or at least time consuming) to raise an army of alts.

Yeah this is the idea for sure. Affluence clothing and other Check-In Status Points won't be worth nearly as much as Global Status Points so while they will help speed up the creation of an Alt too much. I feel like Status should be like playing the game as a main should allow you to level up FASTER, but creating up an alt should be EASIER. Never should either be both.

[Taipion]

Are you actually proposing that there should be no way to get your humors further apart than 1?!
That kind of sounds odd.

[matan002]

Sneaking in a post here just to tell Pistolshrimp that what he's doing is awesome, regardless of how effective it is. This forum has been on the brink of radio silence for quite a while now and the last thing that this game needs is a lack of hope and enthusiasm from the playerbase. The custom client, our wiki, the occasional livestreams, this forum thread, our discord and every community driven interaction in this game is what keeps it alive. As a small, tight knit community, we shouldn't keep quiet at all, how would that ever encourage newer players to pick up the game and join us? it wouldn't. Radio silence is something that could eventually kill this game, and I really don't want to see that happen...

[pistolshrimp]

Are you actually proposing that there should be no way to get your humors further apart than 1?! That kind of sounds odd.

Yes. I can't really see any meaningful game play advantage to having de-synced biles. Sometimes I'll focus on upping one bile more than another in my alts if I am going to a certain type of Alt, like I'll focus only on BB and YB if I am making a thief, or just YB for a porting alt, or Phlegm and BB for like a basher, but those are convince builds. I would have nothing against my porting alt having all the same stats if it required the same amount of work.

Sneaking in a post here just to tell Pistolshrimp that what he's doing is awesome, regardless of how effective it is. This forum has been on the brink of radio silence for quite a while now and the last thing that this game needs is a lack of hope and enthusiasm from the playerbase. The custom client, our wiki, the occasional livestreams, this forum thread, our discord and every community driven interaction in this game is what keeps it alive. As a small, tight knit community, we shouldn't keep quiet at all, how would that ever encourage newer players to pick up the game and join us? it wouldn't. Radio silence is something that could eventually kill this game, and I really don't want to see that happen...

Thank you. To be honest I was initially a little worried I was going to annoy the community by doing this thread, but instead I have received a lot of suggestions, arguments, and just general acknowledgments of support. I'm not really one to gush, but it's made me feel really positive about this community and how much potential it has. We are like those sea monkeys, dried out now, sure, but if JC would just give us a little water we will spring back to life. Thank you all for your tolerance and support.

[pistolshrimp]

Day 19: Gluttony Rework - Part 2 Assembling Food / Chef's Table

Recap: Almost all recipes will be removed and are now coded behind the scenes pushing players to experiment to create Food for Gluttony. Food have a Gourmet Value that is mostly influence by how much effort you put into making your food and better quality ingredients. I feel this idea is relatively intuitive.

Why it's Good for Salem: Essentially this would allow Salem to have one of the most versatile and unique food crating systems in any game. This system would be infinitely expandable without really having to worry that new foods would make old foods worthless. It also establishing the new way I think all high end variable crafting in Salem should be, through a profession table, with the output depending on what items are placed inside, with less focus on external crafting recipes, to decrease clutter and make exploring crafting just as relevant as exploring the world.

New Work Station: Chef's Table
1 Main Slot
3 Appliance Slots
4 Ingredient Slots
1 Spice Slot

Breaking Down the Slots:
MAIN SLOT: The item placed in this slot is the biggest factor in determining the output, right now. You place an item of dinnerware into this slot. Placing a Plate in the Main Slot makes a entree type dish, placing a bowl makes a Salad or a Bowl type dish, a Pot makes a Stew/Soup type dish. Currently I envision dinnerware being super easy to craft, and not having much impact on Gourmet Value, but if the system needs to be expanding expensive dinnerware options might be added, ie Silver Plate, or Golden Bowl, etc. An item in this slot is required.

INGREDIENT SLOTS: At least 2 Ingredients are always required, but it accepts up to 4. This is where any processed or Unprocessed Foods can be placed and these are also main driver of the output.

SPICE SLOT: This is an option slot where any salt, any spice, any sweetener can be placed. This slot may sometimes modify the output but generally is there to allow for additional Gourmet Value.

Lets look at a really simple example of how this system. Rabbit Meat + Dry Pie Dough in INGREDIENT SLOTS + Plate in MAIN SLOT = Rabbit Pie. Rabbit Meat + Dry Pie Dough INGREDIENT SLOTS + Bowl in MAIN SLOT = Rabbit Pot Pie.

Those are the 3 slots are the main drivers of the Output. The additional slots of are for processing food rather than making recipes. Here's more of what that means. With a guiding principal for Gourmet Value output being more work = higher Gourmet Value, there will be a variety of options for processing to add value to your food.

APPLIANCE SLOTS: Appliance Slots holds items like a Cutting Board, a Vegetable Grater, a Grill, a Frying Pan, a Griddle, etc. I don't have these all figured out yet, but its an expandable idea. The concept is you can equip and appliance and use it, or you can place it in the Chef's Table and right-click the table and use it. Think of the Frying Pan you can use it on a fire, or just place it in the table and it doesn't require you to hold it or be at a fire. I envision a Store Chef's Table that includes a a Cutting Board permanently built into the table

Processing recipes are like normal recipes buy generally require an appliance either to be equipped or in the Chef's Table. They might be something like Fry Food and output a Fried X Food. Different processing recipes are unlocked by higher cooking type skills, so your average Gourmet Value should progress naturally as you play the game.

For instance: Food ---> Processing ---> Chops (Requires a Cutting Board equipped or one in APPLIANCE SLOTS of you Chef's Table.
Chop = Any Raw Ingredient ---> Chopped Raw Ingredient | Unlocked with Simple Cooking.
Dice = Any Raw Ingredient ---> Diced Raw Ingredient | Unlocked with Intermediate Cooking.
Mince = Any Raw Ingredient ---> Minced Raw Ingredient | Unlocked with Advanced Cooking.
Julienne = Any Raw Ingredient ---> Julienned Raw Ingredient Unlocked only with opting into the Cooking Profession.

Obviously others could be Grilled X Food item made with a Griddle, or Grated X Food with a Grater, etc. Not all ingredients need to be processed through the table, Dried Fish and Smoked ingredients are made through drying racks and smokers as normal, also raw, non processes ingredients can be placed in there as well, but as I have mentioned processing = more work on the player so therefore more Gourmet Value on the output. For example 4 fruits and a bowl might make a fruit salad but four chopped fruits a bowl in the main slot and honey in the spice slot might make honey glazed stewed fruit which would obviously have a higher gourmet value.

[Ronch]

We are like those sea monkeys, dried out now, sure, but if JC would just give us a little water we will spring back to life.

That mind-picture is awesome, and accurate.

[Taipion]

Are you actually proposing that there should be no way to get your humors further apart than 1?! That kind of sounds odd.

Yes. I can't really see any meaningful game play advantage to having de-synced biles. Sometimes I'll focus on upping one bile more than another in my alts if I am going to a certain type of Alt, like I'll focus only on BB and YB if I am making a thief, or just YB for a porting alt, or Phlegm and BB for like a basher, but those are convince builds. I would have nothing against my porting alt having all the same stats if it required the same amount of work.

Now that is a dangerous statement, as it clearly shows how you either do not know that part of the game, or you assume your way of playing is superior.

- For a BB-drain-tank (guy only getting hit by def, not doing anything else) it is pointless to have anything high up except BB.
- For a basher you need only phlegm and BB.
- For a combat char (and to some degree a hunter char), you mostly only need YB and blood, though some phlegm/BB helps but it will ideally be much lower than the others.
- A petty thief does not need anything but BB and a little phlegm usually...
^Those chars are meant to die eventually, having full 500-600 all stats on a combat char or basher or BB-tank would be a waste.
Yes, it is debatable how much basic stats (100-all, 200-all,...) could be considered "no effort", and it may not be the wisest idea to have your basher have only 5 blood and 5 YB and then realize you want to carry something or you got bitten by a rat and KO or so...^^ but that would not be uncommon really.

Above that, chars for certain tasks may also require uneven humors, like:
A good cotton char only needs like 500-700 YB and as much phlegm as you see reasonable (300 min, maybe 1k+ if you love glacier water), but has no use for other humors, even if you use it also as a general worker char.

Even a main may have intentionally uneven humors, having them all even is only good for the scalp score. ^^
Yes, you may want to have it partake in docks sometimes, may want to go hunting on your safe private hunting area or mine deep mine lvls or so...
But if you don't, because you have chars for these tasks, you may only want to go for higher BB after reaching something between 1k and 2k all stats, because higher BB is always useful for being able to study a lot at once, and regen BB faster.
And if you do want to take a good sparring every once in a while, you may want to leave you mains phlegm/BB at again something around 1k-2k and just up YB and mostly blood after that.

You may also have a completely different take on that than what I just described, with different goals regarding humor lvls and applications,
but there definitely is a point in having different humors at vastly different numbers, and some people would be quite upset if that would not be possible anymore.
And why? Because it makes a hell lot of a difference if you make a ton of alts and they all have to have even humors whereas only 1 or 2 are actually needed.

[pistolshrimp]

You may also have a completely different take on that than what I just described, with different goals regarding humor lvls and applications,
but there definitely is a point in having different humors at vastly different numbers, and some people would be quite upset if that would not be possible anymore.
And why? Because it makes a hell lot of a difference if you make a ton of alts and they all have to have even humors whereas only 1 or 2 are actually needed.

I'm not going to quote or address everything you're saying because you are correct in everything you said. I think currently there are lots of meaningful reasons to save the effort and only focus on certain biles, especially on your alts. But my question remains, do you lose out on anything meaningful if you had them all even?

In some games de-synced values might have provided alternate ways of playing. For instance look at Pokemon. Generally you want perfect IVs, but there are some situations where you might not want that. (For instance you want the Alakazam to have very low attack so you can spam confusion). Currently you have de-synced biles simply out of convenience not because it opens up a different game style.

My proposal is that when you Gluttony you get a base addition to all biles equally, therefore synced biles would requires NO extra work to have, so no one would have to be upset. Besides I want to de-emphasize the alt game by moving the benefits you gain from alts to other mechanics. (Note I said de-emphasize not remove). I don't want to make Salem easier at all, but I want to move around the difficulty to more meaningful aspects of the game.

[pistolshrimp]

Day 20: Gluttony Rework - Part 1 Dealing with Purity and Gourmet Value

Recap: All values on cooked food are removed and replaced with a single value, Gourmet Value. The Gourmet Value is determined by a variety of things, but essentially reflect the idea that the more time you put into making your meal the higher quality it will be.

Gourmet Value Factors:
1. Type of Ingredient - Slugs & Kritters generally going to have a lower gourmet values than say domesticated meats. This will follow the effort principal, you can find Slugs & Kritters by simple foraging, Domesticated Animals you have to raise.
2. Type of Processing of Ingredients - Ingredients prepared in someway before hand add more Gourmet Value than not. So Diced Carrots adds more than just Carrots, and Julienned Carrots add more than Diced.
3. Number of ingredients used - more is generally better.
4. Was a Spice Used - using spices increase the gourmet value of your foods.
5. Type Matches - For example using Smoked Salts and a Smoked Meat will add Gourmet Value.
6. Chance related to your Sugar and Spice Stat.
7. Quality of Ingredient - Perfect Food adds more Gourmet Value than normal ingredients, Spoiled Foods add less.

Perfect Food:
Instead of adding a stat modifier Purity now affects the chance to get Perfect Quality Food Items. So harvesting a 90% Purity Field would give Perfect Quality Crops 90% of the time. Perfect Fruit Chance from Bee the Purity of Skeps. Perfect Fish based on chance, Rod (maybe bait), and Temperature. Perfect Domesticated Meat Chance from the animal's stats, and knife type. Perfect Wild Meat would be based off knife type, temperature (colder the higher the chance), and animal (ie Monster versions of creatures have higher chances of Perfect Meat). Perfect Foraged ingredients from temperature (colder the higher the chance), etc. etc.

This way people who have put in the work of purity still retain a huge advantage, but as its not a numbers game, ie having perfect fruit doesn't inherently mean food made from it will be great - the recipe also matters - new recipes don't need to be balanced around purity.

Idleness:
Idleness is a buff that you will receive after 8 hours of being logged off. This buff will have a score, although this score doesn't necessarily need to be visible to the player, determined by:
1. Sleep in bed or log off?
2. Quality of Bed.
3. Sleep Bonus of pajamas are wearing.
4. Did you have withdrawals, disease?
5. QQ debuff, the higher the QQ buff the higher your idleness.
Doing any activity such as as Dig, or Lift, or Run or crafting any recipes immediately dispels your Idle Buff.
Smoking Tobacco adds to your buff but doesn't give it if it is gone. New Gluttony can occur at any time, but only once a day, so most people will want to do it right when they wake up as they will still have the idle buff.

New Gluttony - Pride, Greed, Gluttony, and Sloth:
New Gluttony essentially will be eating prepared foods made through the cooking system, you can eat as many foods as you wish but the gourmet value you eat will be averaged out. After you finish eating you will receive a flat gain to all biles equally based on a combination of factor:
1. How much food you ate - Gluttony
2. The average gourmet value of the food you ate - Greed
3. Your Status points - Pride
4. Idleness- Sloth

New Stall in Providence w/ NPC (Maybe just rework of Jordon Gamsey): Any player may bring in a dish they made and check it in with the NPC. If the gourmet value is in the top 5 of items made that week, (resetting on sunday). The NPC will sell it at 2 silver per gourmet value point. You will revive 75% of it's sales. In this way people could potentially support themselves via cooking and people can also benefit from great dishes made by other characters. Gluttony leaderboard is replaced with highest gourmet values recorded, and becomes a cook leaderboard.

[Ronch]

My proposal is that when you Gluttony you get a base addition to all biles equally, therefore synced biles would requires NO extra work to have, so no one would have to be upset. Besides I want to de-emphasize the alt game by moving the benefits you gain from alts to other mechanics. (Note I said de-emphasize not remove). I don't want to make Salem easier at all, but I want to move around the difficulty to more meaningful aspects of the game.

What I see you wanting out of gluttony in Salem, already exist but is very limited to a player's time played per day in Salem.
ie: cravings
In craving's current state a player can only raise all humors in sync maybe 5 or 6 times per day, depending on how much time that player can play each day.
BUT, that amount of times per day lowers exponentially the higher a player's character's humors are.

JC offered us the option of two gluttony system choices, either make leveling humors totally dependent upon cravings and he will adjust cravings to accommodate our needs in an update, or rather have him adjust recipes to tweak gluttony to accommodate higher humor builds that some of our players already have in their existing characters.
...I can not see JC gutting gluttony and totally overhauling it to accommodate your anti-alt bias.

So, I suggest if you want players humors to raise in sync, then offer ideas more in line with "cravings" since that is one of the options JC gave to us as to our input or feedback concerning his plans to update gluttony via either: cooking-recipes or cravings.
...I am confident that JC is leaning toward tweaking cravings, because recipes will be a much larger, labor-intensive and frustrating task to tweak.

Anyway
I'm beginning to discern that many of your ideas here so far are blatantly anti-alt, even though you try to sugarcoat it when vet players call you out on it.
...I agree with Taipion, you are over looking (or intentionally disregarding) one of the most important and unique features of Salem, which IMO is there are numerous different directions a player can take to accomplish any/every objective a player may choose to take on in this game, from newb to vet.

You seem to want to coral all of those various different directions that players currently have available to them to reach their goals or objectives in Salem into only one narrow cookie-cutter way to accomplish this, that, or any goal a player may want to accomplish in Salem.
To be frank with you: it is stifling. And again, your anti-alt bias appears to be an evident theme in a number of your ideas already shared with us here so far.