Game Development: Project Mayhem

[Vedmak02]

Omg, whining and nagging all the time.
Its realy !EASY! to start the game now. Its easier than it was month ago. You just walk and grow all your skills(much faster now!). In few days you'll have all skills to build small village, you can build stone walls and braizers. You had alredy gotten enough money from Chasms to buy some iron and build mine and smelter. And if you build it in right place, you won't be found there for some time.

C'mon guys, it's realy easy!

[the_pilgrim]

Omg, whining and nagging all the time.
Its realy !EASY! to start the game now. Its easier than it was month ago. You just walk and grow all your skills(much faster now!). In few days you'll have all skills to build small village, you can build stone walls and braizers. You had alredy gotten enough money from Chasms to buy some iron and build mine and smelter. And if you build it in right place, you won't be found there for some time.

C'mon guys, it's realy easy!

What is a "Chasms"? Is that something you can forage?

If that is a person, then you must have me confused with someone else.

[Procne]

He meant charms. The things you make from a feather and an arrowhead

[Vedmak02]

He meant charms. The things you make from a feather and an arrowhead

+1

P.S. Sorry for my grammar mistakes, English is not my native language. Just studying

HaVe FuN!

[MagicManICT]

You don't need to grind leather, just dry the hides from rabbits. This is better, and for the most part, easier silver than crickets if it weren't for the March Hares. If you can hit 10 Bl/YB, crickets become easy, and at 15-20, they are trivial. It's not hard to hit these numbers, either. One can do it within a few hours of starting with experience in the game, and a completely new player should see them in their first day or so.

[the_pilgrim]

He meant charms. The things you make from a feather and an arrowhead

+1

P.S. Sorry for my grammar mistakes, English is not my native language. Just studying

HaVe FuN!

Ah, the savage charms. Yes, you can make some money with that. But from several hours of foraging, I've only found enough to form two. Nowhere close enough for a player claim.

Again, I'm discussing here to compare the state of early game grind between HnH and Salem. You may be of the opinion that Salem is fine the way it is, and I respect that. But what I'd like to point out is one possible reason reasons why the player base seems to be shrinking. I'll leave it to the more experienced folk to talk about factions and raiding and all that end-game stuff (until I get there myself, hopefully).

[the_pilgrim]

You don't need to grind leather, just dry the hides from rabbits. This is better, and for the most part, easier silver than crickets if it weren't for the March Hares. If you can hit 10 Bl/YB, crickets become easy, and at 15-20, they are trivial. It's not hard to hit these numbers, either. One can do it within a few hours of starting with experience in the game, and a completely new player should see them in their first day or so.

One can do it within a few hours of starting with experience in the game, and a completely new player should see them in their first day or so.

starting with experience in the game

And this is why I also mentioned complexity. Just my two cents, but early game was nowhere near this complicated back in HnH, and this certainly can discourage new players. Not that HnH was in any way newbie friendly, but making things even harder for new players doesn't seem to be a good idea.

While I understand the complexity is needed to an extent, it may be wise to push it a little further down the road so that newcomers have enough time to digest all of these new mechanics. After all, Salem needs more new players for it to become financially viable when it goes out of Beta. I doubt if the game can survive on the current population of established players alone.

[MagicManICT]

I'm trying to recall my first experiences in HnH, but that's been years ago now. Now, I can have a claim up and can actually hunt deer and bear within a few hours now. But then, look at all the bugged systems in that game. It's not really a comparison and not really fair to do so.

Anyway, to recall my first week in HnH.... it wasn't even the current system, so I'm not going to bother making the comparison. I was already a vet when the curiosity system was implemented, so my experience with the game and any relation I can make to the "grind" level of a newbie is completely skewed. Under the xp v1.0 system of HnH, a new player would be doing good to have a decent claim up in a week.

In Salem, $5 buys you enough silver to have your claim up before you even step out of Boston. For $15, you get your claim and the skills to place it (along with some fancy clothes). Free to play doesn't mean you get easy mode for free.

edit: FYI, I will never consider myself a complete newb at any game. One of the first things I do is pick up the rules book and spend a few hours reading it over. Add in my years upon years of gaming experience from military simulation games, war games, a wide variety of RPGs, etc., and I'll already have a huge jump on those just dipping their toes in the water, so can I really consider my experience in a game as a newb objectively as a way to help improve the starting game without adding in that?

[the_pilgrim]

I'm trying to recall my first experiences in HnH, but that's been years ago now. Now, I can have a claim up and can actually hunt deer and bear within a few hours now. But then, look at all the bugged systems in that game. It's not really a comparison and not really fair to do so.

Anyway, to recall my first week in HnH.... it wasn't even the current system, so I'm not going to bother making the comparison. I was already a vet when the curiosity system was implemented, so my experience with the game and any relation I can make to the "grind" level of a newbie is completely skewed. Under the xp v1.0 system of HnH, a new player would be doing good to have a decent claim up in a week.

In Salem, $5 buys you enough silver to have your claim up before you even step out of Boston. For $15, you get your claim and the skills to place it (along with some fancy clothes). Free to play doesn't mean you get easy mode for free.

edit: FYI, I will never consider myself a complete newb at any game. One of the first things I do is pick up the rules book and spend a few hours reading it over. Add in my years upon years of gaming experience from military simulation games, war games, a wide variety of RPGs, etc., and I'll already have a huge jump on those just dipping their toes in the water, so can I really consider my experience in a game as a newb objectively as a way to help improve the starting game without adding in that?

To be fair, I'm not a newbie to perma-death myself. Being an experienced HnH player, I did join a few villages for the past few Worlds and set up a few hermitages to both palisade / brick wall level ( depending on the resource for that site) and farms up to cheese, a small iron mine, etc. I would say that I am very familiar with mid-game to early end-game from HnH. I was very surprised at the increase in complexity in it's spiritual successor, Salem. Did not expect a game to get even more difficult to learn than HnH, to be honest.

That said, don't ask about my past. What happens in HnH stays in HnH. I've come to the New World to start a new life, so to speak.

[MagicManICT]

That said, don't ask about my past. What happens in HnH stays in HnH. I've come to the New World to start a new life, so to speak.

Seriously, though, compared to EVE and a few other games I've played, HnH and Salem both are simplistic, so it's hard for me to judge properly. The best rule of thumb I can use on comparing a game with how hard it may be for a new player is how quickly are all the rules and depth thrown at a player. EVE hits you like a brick wall and you have to deal with 90% of the rules set before you even fly out of the station the first time. Compare this with old school Dungeons & Dragons. Tons of rules, but they were presented in modules. With the Basic set, you just had to get familiar with the basics of magic, a few spells, the basic combat rules (roll a d20, look up a chart for your armor, etc), and so on. Each module added a few more rules and more spells and abilities. Most of your MMORPGs work the same way.

With Salem, the only thing you have to deal with early on is foraging, skilling, and gluttony (we'll leave confronting possibly hostile players out for this discussion).

Gluttony is hard to understand. Certain players will grasp it much faster than others, but overall, it is one of the hardest core concepts in the game if not the hardest. I don't see any way to make it easier, though. Maybe someone will come up with the right questions to ask for someone else to come up with a near perfect guide for explaining it. I enjoy it now that I understand it, and I like that there is an eventual hardcap to the max humor a player can get (based on mathematical formula of diminishing returns, penalties, and "consumption rate") compared to HnH's no set max (in theory, there should be a cap on attributes there, too, but a discussion for another place).

Skilling gets boring fast, though. I think part of it is the complexity of the skill system and having to look things up constantly. Part of it is just having to constantly find more food to fill up BB. I know the devs have done a lot to speed this up and make it less cumbersome (love the recent changes). I think my biggest annoyance is having to look things up on the wiki all the time when I need those few points in this particular proficiency. I just don't play enough to have the list of easily obtained items that give a hundred or so points in Prof X memorized. (Might make for a useful page on the wiki, though.) I know jorb and loftar like calling it the Starcraft menu, so make it more like the Starcraft menu: show the materials required (for all) and the proficiencies given (for Inspirationals). Not my idea; just repeating it because I like it. I'm sure the original source can be tracked down. This would help with part of the tedium, but not sure it would resolve it completely. Another thing to try would be decreasing amount of BB consumed per proficiency gain, or at least rebalancing it a bit. Berries are easy to come across, but when I'm eating them all for skills, I have less food in my limited inventory for gluttony, which in turn has an effect on my skill up rate (SP gain/tick is based on current BB).