Game Development: Project Mayhem

[Shizen]

With all the 1000s of new different items from the cooking recombinations, this would be a good time to create more stalls in the capitals for players to acquire. Let's start with 57 new stalls on each server, to celebrate the 57 different types of meat pie.

57 stalls, 1 for each player still playing?

[Tamasin]

I agree in spirit, though not necessarily in detail with Colesie's post. For me, the grindy/"bad" parts of the game that make it much less fun to play are the constant need to search for better water nodes. What an insanely tedious process. And Alts. Water Alts. Lime Alts. Alt Banking. All absolutely vital to effective play, all really boring/tedious to deal with. Multiple characters is workable, but It's having alts that have to interact with each other that pushes it into the tedium category.

Beyond that, everything is far, far too ephemeral. I can't agree more with the disparity on time to create any aspect of a base, compared with time needed to destroy it. Not only is it bad design, it also just doesn't make any sense. Busting stuff up aught to take (a lot) longer. Not more p, just more time. A lot more time. What about all those materials? Why don't you have to lug pieces of broken wall out of the way? Those chunks should have to be hauled off (and be available for re-chipping for stone/lime, replaning, etc.). Do you spend the time to clear your bashing area properly, or leave it congested making it easier to box you in? When you bust down a wall, it shouldn't magically disappear, either. It aught to be damaged (and therein repairable). Raiders can then "climb" over it, like climbing a cliff. You want to remove it root and branch, it should take *a* lot more time, and that time should not be mitigated by having X biles. Biles don't make me dig faster, or haul dirt faster, chop wood faster or chip stone faster, but they do make destroying the walls faster. That's just inconsistent, but it's significant in any discussion of this aspect of the game. The same issues hold true with buildings and every other damn thing one builds for a base.

You shouldn't be able to port anywhere with stolen goods. You want to steal it, lug it out. And it'd be nice if there was some mitigation against spiteful raiding. I can't carry this, so I'm going to empty every container's stuff onto the ground. Server technology wise, things need to decay on the ground, perhaps, but in that place between simulacra fidelity and real world-game world compromise, just because you dump the contents of my cabinet on the floor, shouldn't make it all magically disappear in the typical gap between my login sessions.

The lack of defense and extreme time disparities in time to create vs. time to destroy, coupled with the increasingly location/grind based aspects of advancement in the game (trees & farms), means that once a faction loses its foundations (which against competent opposition will be as soon as they lose "the big fight") they are out of the game. They have no ability to rebuild, and the grind to get back there will take them months. During which time, for 0 cost, their opposition can swoop in and reset them. Scent system guarantees that whatever big fight occurs it will be the only big fight. Scent system also ensures that once one faction attains supremacy, no one else may play in their reindeer games (no one else can afford to leave a scent anywhere). In fact, scents become flares in this system, alerting the reigning group that someone is grooming a combat alt, and inviting them to come stomp it out. It's a flawed model.

There are no niches. It's a winner take all game, slow enough paced that hiding is not even a feasible option. The longer and more involved the game becomes, the more glaring all these flaws will become.

But hey, the rules to the game change faster than it takes to exercise those rules, so wtf.

this had me thinking a bit.

i definitely agree about the alts.

i'm just a noob that hasn't had a base destroyed yet, but i know i'll be pretty mad when it does happen. i like the idea about walls and rubble and climbing!
couldn't some of this stuff be ameliorated by politics? like, if a faction took over just a decent sized area rather than a whole damn server and defended that, people could live there with much less worry over being raided.

[jwhitehorn]

The implementation of brick walls which require a ram or cannon or simply changing the trial timer to 24 hours of potential destruction time and you'll see a big change in the game just from that alone. If we had stable bases and livestock it would draw in a massive audience of people who are interested in the crafting side of the game. Currently it's just a game of who rebuilds their bases the most often and who summon killed who. You will not see an increase in server population so long as people cannot feel at least the slightest bit safe with their possessions at any given time. I should not be herded into a village just because there's a better chance of me lasting a little bit longer should someone decide to drop a waste claim. At least with a 24 hour timer it gives solo players a fair chance at breaking the trial themselves.

I'm not so much asking for instant gratification as I am saying that if you're going to make the game overly complex and apply a massive time-sink, the least you could do is add a legit defense mechanic so that it's not all done in vain should someone decide to piss in your cornflakes.

This is an excellent post to highlight the viewpoint of the VAST MINORITY of players who have lost multiple bases. People who take the 3-5 minutes to establish a political connection to factions in power build in complete peace. Its unfortunate for those who are too stupid to do so but that is certainly not an argument to change any game mechanics.

Chief PeePooKaKa
MM Tribe

[colesie]

The implementation of brick walls which require a ram or cannon or simply changing the trial timer to 24 hours of potential destruction time and you'll see a big change in the game just from that alone. If we had stable bases and livestock it would draw in a massive audience of people who are interested in the crafting side of the game. Currently it's just a game of who rebuilds their bases the most often and who summon killed who. You will not see an increase in server population so long as people cannot feel at least the slightest bit safe with their possessions at any given time. I should not be herded into a village just because there's a better chance of me lasting a little bit longer should someone decide to drop a waste claim. At least with a 24 hour timer it gives solo players a fair chance at breaking the trial themselves.

I'm not so much asking for instant gratification as I am saying that if you're going to make the game overly complex and apply a massive time-sink, the least you could do is add a legit defense mechanic so that it's not all done in vain should someone decide to piss in your cornflakes.

This is an excellent post to highlight the viewpoint of the VAST MINORITY of players who have lost multiple bases. People who take the 3-5 minutes to establish a political connection to factions in power build in complete peace. Its unfortunate for those who are too stupid to do so but that is certainly not an argument to change any game mechanics.

Chief PeePooKaKa
MM Tribe

And again one power governs an entire server. One should not have to bow down to one group for an entire server. I'd rather be raided and killed by random raiders than one group controlling everything.

[the_pilgrim]

I'm a former HnH player and I've started playing Salem only recently. And when I first played HnH, I also came in during a period where powerful factions were already established. I'd like to share that there is indeed a significant increase in both difficulty and complexity for newcomers coming into this game today compared to its predecessor.

I'll suspend further judgement on whether this is a completely good or bad thing, but Salem definitely feels a lot more grindy than HnH. That, coupled with the high risks built into a perma-death game may certainly turn off a lot of new players. It may be wise to ease up on the complexity and time investment for newcomers so they can build up early defenses a little bit more easily, seeing as they run the risk of being steam-rolled at any point during their early game. Perhaps simplify / streamline the road towards owning a small claim and some basic walls and defenses?

Just my two cents, but some change in this direction would encourage more newcomers to rebuild after raiders attack rather than quitting the game after their first raid. It would also increase the amount of "prey" for the established raiders, as well as improve the chance for rival factions to develop and shift the balance of power from time to time. The last thing this game needs is a steadily shrinking player base.

[dageir]

Actually I dont notice a lot of difference in grind between the two games. It all depends on the goal you set for yourself. For now I have set up a base and try to get production to flow as smooth as possible. Once set up in a base I find that there are few things that need to be done to keep it going. If you plan to have a 800 humours monster, well then it will feel like a grind.

[darnokpl]

I'll suspend further judgement on whether this is a completely good or bad thing, but Salem definitely feels a lot more grindy than HnH.

Right because getting 800 ua or palibasher-level str is not insane grind in hnh

[FutureForJames]

This is an excellent post to highlight the viewpoint of the VAST MINORITY of players who have lost multiple bases. People who take the 3-5 minutes to establish a political connection to factions in power build in complete peace. Its unfortunate for those who are too stupid to do so but that is certainly not an argument to change any game mechanics.

This is a political argument you are making. Not a game design one. Political debates belong in HoB.

If the game design strongly supports a certain political development, then it is of relevance to bring it up here. Is it a coincidence that Roanoke developed into a position similar to Plymouth? I certainly don't know, but it is of interest to discuss.

[the_pilgrim]

Actually I dont notice a lot of difference in grind between the two games. It all depends on the goal you set for yourself. For now I have set up a base and try to get production to flow as smooth as possible. Once set up in a base I find that there are few things that need to be done to keep it going. If you plan to have a 800 humours monster, well then it will feel like a grind.

It's the complexity and the speed of the early grind. For example, in HnH you could hunt rabbits (and other animals) from the beginning and gather bones for your first claim, which you could then expand as long as you had some foraged curios. In Salem, to reach the same level of development you need to gather enough skills AND humours to grind leather (or forage savage charms for hours), which then turns into tiny amounts of silver for your first claim. While you could argue that this is to keep personal claims few and scarce unlike the semi-permanent claims in HnH, the upkeep on personal claims should already have taken care of that. I'm not even going to touch the subject of additional land flattening requirements, dwelling and defenses.

The point is to step back and think about the difficulty and complexity of a newcomer to the game, who has no support from a village or any other players who have established themselves. The initial difficulty and time intensive nature of early game in Salem is far steeper than most players can tolerate. Sadly enough, even newbies in HnH have a better chance of making it through early game.

[the_pilgrim]

I'll suspend further judgement on whether this is a completely good or bad thing, but Salem definitely feels a lot more grindy than HnH.

Right because getting 800 ua or palibasher-level str is not insane grind in hnh

Of course it is. But my point is that it is the end-game that is supposed to have a steeper curve, not early game. I wasn't too worried in HnH on getting palibashed, since in the combined time and effort some raiding town puts into grinding up one palibasher, I can easily prepare small item caches and secondary camps elsewhere. Also, the risk of bringing out a palibasher outside helped minimize attacks that would not result in some sort of net gain for the village, since they also risked losing the character to a small group of ambushers. Generally, palisades would keep out small-time bandits and even higher level griefers simply because of the effort and risk involved in the attack.

I'm stating my opinion here on behalf of newcomers to Salem. A steep difficulty curve for starting out seems out of place in a perma-death game. When players finally get found and killed (as they eventually will), they need to be encouraged to rebuild rather than quit the game. Again, a shrinking player base doesn't help anyone in this scenario.