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A first Beta impression
I am enjoying the beta more than I expected to, I only applied on a whim, the quasi 3d look and cutesy-ness put me off. I have played for maybe 3 evenings worth and have learnt what seems to be loads of skills through finding and studying objects. It's very much a survival game, you need to find enough food to keep living, study craft and later on perform combat actions.
There appears to be a great deal of depth to the crafting, it is no surprise the full title is Salem: The Crafting MMO. This along with the sheer size of the wilderness is what will make permadeath murder scarce, anyone who wants to jump in and kill people will need to put a lot of effort in to get to that point and gankers and crafters tend towards a different mindset.
I enjoy not knowing who people are until you memorise them and label them yourself, it makes you wonder about life without a fixed identity. I haven't been very social so far, more crazy man living deep in the woods in my shack, occasionally going to Boston to sell items.
I actually like games that just throw you in and make you work it out for yourself so the lack of in game tutorial is refreshing. I would like to see changing camera angles made easier.
Comments
Yeah, the unforgiving fight to survive in the wild nature is indeed appealing. I built a small house, living like a hermit, in the middle of nowhere. Haven't seen any other person near my home for over 7 hours of exploring around my house.
For those new to Salem: there is only one city (which also contains NPCs), the rest is wild nature. You can teleport freely back and forth between your home and the city (name of city is called Boston), but to teleport from any other location you need to empty your inventory. Since the world is huuuuuge, so you really need to memorize where you went so that you avoid being forced to lose the inventory items to find home/city.
I've walked hours and hours south of the city, and I am still not sure I've reached the bottom of the map.
"Look at me when I'm hitting you!"
I've never played many Sandbox type games but always wanted to...this actually sounds quite interesting. One thing I kind of miss from old school MMOs was the excitement from heavy death penalties etc, it made the game far more immersive. I'm unsure if I'd have the patience to deal with a permadeath, but it would be interesting to try.
Thanks for taking the time to write this.
Nice reading the beta impressions. Gameplay sounds very much like Haven & Hearth (made by the same developers).
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
How does it rate on the Grind Scale as compared to other games? The only other sandbox(y) game I played was SWG, but in that, I was not an Artisan so I never really delved deep into crafting. Mostly because, While SWG had one of the best crafting systems in an MMO, if you went down that road, it's pretty much waht you did, and I didn't want to be limited to a crafting only kind of game. I am looking for an MMO with a lot of options. If I want to craft extensively, great, if I want to combat extensively, great too. Ryzom is a sandbox and has a setup that I'd want, Unfortuneatly, Ryzom has a very low population and is very grindy. As far as My Theme Park history goes, if the game has weak crafting, I never really played very far.
My next MMO, needs to have comprehensive crafting. But not in such a way that if I pursue Crafting, I have to sacrifice other areas. So I am watching this game as well as a few others, but If advancing in the game becomes another job, I already have one I can get paid for. LOL.
Any experience you have is much appreciated. thanks.
the poster formerly known as melangel :P
Thank you for your post. I have been watching this game for a while. can't wait to try it out.
Yes, I am scared to head too far away from my lean-to in case I get lost and can't find my way back.
Talk about your boot strap project. LOL, sounds fun.
while i didnt get in to the beta, im kinda bothered with how they setup the learning system, going by the paradox videos of "letsplay" on their forums.. they revamped the old LP system to a more grindy version..
instead of putting a 10LP item in to study now i have to find lower quality items to raise stats before i invest in that 10k lp it.. while also finding/making food to actually study (as the study ability runs out as you study)
i personally dont like it.. i dont see what was wrong with the older system, sure it means pumping survival and perseption to fine toad stools and floatsom kinda pointless (using the old HnH way) now you have to spend even longer just to learn skills..
if you are default base stats and learn a 10000 xp item you just wasted 9500 xp
instead of just time spent like HnH's system.
there seems to be literally no XP bleed over.. so you cant stockpile XP for skills you basicly have to invest 100% even if you only need 10%.
also is there any higher quality textures out for it?? maybe its just the quality of youtube (using the video's posted max) but god the textures look really washed out like a game from 2000's
i hope they didnt just copy and paste HnH to 3d textures... and tweek it abit
the lets play make salem sound like a worst grinder then a F2P asian cookie cutter..
which i sure hope is not the case.. HnH had a pretty nasty unforgiving grind to it as well ><"
reading those posts makes it sound like they finally made a reason to have the cartography skill that HnH had.. there was next to no reason to have/make maps of any area.. as you can just fast travel with the hearth teleport button... you walk 24hrs away and BAM home again..
if they disabled that (to a point) that means having/making maps now becomes needed.. as does inkweed rofl ~gets in to beta and hacks in my HnH ink pots~ rofl
It would require a lot of math to figure out which one is grindier: Haven & Hearth or Salem. While the method of acquiring skill experience is significantely different compared to Haven & Hearth, the requirements are very different too.
I can tell you this though: the "Mine Entrance" in Salem is far easier to obtain timewise than the "Mine hole" in Haven & Hearth, but there seems to be major differences in how they function as well.
Salem Recipie: Board x30, Brick x40, Stonex20, Nails x8
Haven & Hearth recipie: Block of Wood x300, Board x40,Rope x20, Hardened Leather x10,Leather x20
The Haven & Hearth one is a complete nightmare for a hermit due to how hard it is to get the Wax which is needed for the Hardened Leather.
In Salem, the only "difficult" part was the Nails, which require 30 silver each, but you gain 40 silver from selling a crafted item (to the NPC in the starter city Boston, which is also where you buy the Nails) made out of the bodies of 11 dead grasshopers. Which takes less than 30 minutes of gameplay (grasshoppers die in 2-3.5 hits with complete newbie stats as long as you have learnt the Stomp skill, which does an AoE stunning stomp-attack, which is not hard to learn).
I think one large paradigm shift from Haven & Hearth to Salem, is that active playing is rewarded far more than it was in Haven & Hearth. In Haven & Hearth you had these items which you studied, and those items could take hours to study to gain skill points, so it was more of a passive gameplay. In Salem, I haven't seen any item that takes over one hour to study.
Sure there are still things which requires a lot of time to pass, like farming, but at least the skill point acquisation is now based on actively playing the game rather than "put them in study interface then logout/afk". This system has of course its drawbacks in that it rewards active players more than they did in Haven & Hearth.
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As for the graphics & artstyle: I don't think it looks good and I don't think it looks any charming either. It is just "acceptable" as means to an end. The faces look very ugly though and I am glad that on my screen I am in almost all cases just seeing it from behind.
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There are problems and the developers are actively changing/introducing things. One example is how the "smooth stone" (one item to get skill points) from the introduction video part 3 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFHC6GeiSuM, was very hard to get since there were so many people near Boston and same goes for with "maple leaves", so they introduced a new starting skill "Childish Things" which new players get for free and make them able to craft new "items for skill points" using gatherable items which are easier to find.
In other words: they reckognized a problem which came with a larger population, which beta-testers have reported and then they implemented a system to fix it.
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I will have to say that it is far from an AAA MMORPG, it is not even a BBB one and that is very noticable. However, they do have some experience in the field and I was particularely impressed by the maths behind their "purity" system. See http://salemwiki.info/index.php/Purity. The math is not difficult, but the system they used works elegantly and really lives up to the name "purity".
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There is a lot of undocumented things and the wiki is nowhere near being complete. For some the lack of information and tutorials can be enjoyable, but for others it can be frustrated.
I can say that after learning any new skill, I go through every list and section of my interface to see where new options and new buttons have appeared. It feels like "WTF did I just learn, lol". I have a small idea by reading the decorative text and the name of the skill, before learning, but that doesn't mean I know exactly what I will get since there so many ways in which the developers could have matched the text and name.
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One may ask: why Salem instead of Haven & Hearth? Well, one reason is because there are new systems to learn, old systems to forget about and there is a new world to explore and understand. Less glamorous reasons: because Haven & Hearth is not receiving any development and Salem doesn't have anywhere near the lag problems seen in Haven & Hearth.
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Thanks for the info, 234.
I actually like the quoted part of your post because it was one of my pet peeves in Haven & Hearth that having high-skill alts was so easy and common with just feeding them curios.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
agreed. thanks for the point of view twothreefour.
the afk stuff bugged me as well, but i dont really like the phlem way they did studying..but thats just me, i find that kinda "learning" as a grinder not just simple xp gaining.
i never did finish my mine hole in HNH rofl i think its just short logs or something.. does me no good as i dont have stats for mining... did they atleast change that aspect?? or do you have to have 100 str just to mine (or so it comes across) or can you actively attempt to mine at "noob" status?
makes me wonder how people will handle the pvp if they cant quickly farm up an alt... HnH's bane was always people had like 4 toons on the go.. be it an bot for something or grinding stats for pali-bashing.. (which i hope they narfed in salam..i dont personally believe 1 man should beable to break down a fortified wall imo)
read because it wasn't a GW2 thread.
Thanks for posting, I have been inbetween games for quite som time now. This sounds interesting enough to check out, I like the idea of a hermit in the woods.......................
At this point there are 15 different "proficiencies" (those are the ones you level by "studying" for "skill exp"); the actual skills (which unlock crafting options/attacks/actions) require a combination of those to be learnt.
At this point in the beta, only two of the 15 proficiencies have a secondary effect besides the primary effect to be a requirement to learn actual skills: "Mines & Mountains" (which reduces risk of falling when climbing and decreases damage taken from falls) and "Stocks & Cultivars" (which is good for better farming). I suppose the remaining 13 to get their secondary effects too before beta is over.
Currently, you can attempt to mine at "noob" status, but that might change in the future.
Edit: To mine, you need the "mining" skill, which is high tier skill, which takes a few days to acquire (takes that time since you nead to learn several skills to unlock the "mining" skill. The skill it inself is not ridiculously expensive, and compared to Haven & Hearth it is far to start mining.
Edit2: There are limited amount of places where you can build "mine entrance", the ground needs to look like below.
(Picture is from wiki)
It appears as if those are though more common than the natural mine caves in Haven & Hearth, but still limited enough to cause people to fight over them if the population becomes much larger. (Haven & Hearth has several hundreds active players logined during most times)
oh so you dont need to boost survival and perseption to find rossroot anymore?? to find ore vains? kinda sucks to take that out but i guess they might help people find spots to mine..
the drawback to HnH i found was almost every cave point was taken to some extent even by alts just ploping claims on it and paling the door (could tell it was an alt given it was just that..)
thanks for replying though. hopefully they arent limiting the "hermit" players. i know the minehole was the next best thing for a hermit to have if not a secured cave
limiting that might tunnel vision the player base to limited locations, while that might not seem too bad.. it can be for a totally brand new player if they are kinda forced in to contact with more experianced or long time players who can just pk at will.
have you heard any thing on how the PKing will be delt with? will it be the similer "whiteknighting" of HNH where you have to beg and plead a ranger to hunt someone for you? or is the pk looking to be little bit less extreme?? (aka a person wont just kill you for the sake of killing you..)
I agree with this, I was disappointed to find there was a custom client which marked resource on the minimap which basically meant you see all available resource instead of spotting it for yourself. It is clearly approved as there is a thread on the official forums.
well if its the ender client.. that has been the stable for these guys since HNH... as without ender's hnh client the game is downright unplayable.. as it gives you a map out line of boar attack ranges and such. and land claims... which the base client never had.. and really should have..
frankly if they are still using ender as their go to for client.. im kinda worried they are basicly just making hnh 2.0... which means the game will have the life span of moldy bread... i like hnh but frankly i dont want an exact clone >>" which every beta video i watch sums this up to..
its like playing CoD 1 and then playing CoD 2... same game just a flashier cover... i hope its just a beta thing and that they will make their own offical client...other wise whats the point not using cheats in the game too... they allowed botting in hnh to the point people had 1+ alts just logging trees and another 1+ just transporting trees.. same with mining and farming..
i kinda hoped having paradox as a publisher they would hopefully curtail the "modding" aspects of the game.. i like the ender client but id rather have it as the offical default >>" then a 3rd party
Too bad, it looked really promising.. : (
What is the overall impression of this game?
Some statements by the developer known as "Brother Bean" in the CB forum:
Botting and custom clients are first of all two entirely separate issues. On the subject of custom clients Ender -- who developed the standard custom client for our other game H&H -- has been in the Salem alpha for quite some time with the more or less explicit intention on our part that he'd be able to develop a custom client if he so choose. I fully support him in that endeavor and think it's great that he does what he does.
There exists a misconception that we *can* somehow prevent custom clients from being used. If we could in any feasible way do that we just might, but since we can't -- a user's system is always in a very fundamental sense in control of all I/O that the client sends, receives and presents -- we have instead opted for the alternate route of encouraging their development. The best we could ever hope for is making custom client builders jump through some hoops, and that is ultimately an entirely futile exercise. Why not let people innovate and add convenient things to the game that we didn't think of or simply didn't put in there?
On the subject of botting our general philosophy is to try to remove incentives for botting rather than trying to attack and prevent botting as such. The latter approach we believe to be flawed for the same reason that we do not prevent custom clients from being used: The user's system is always in control of all I/O. We cannot change that, nor would we really want to.
and here is a reply Brother Bean wrote to the tester Dallane:
I'm trying to figure out why everyone who post about custom clients lead their post directly into botting. Other then foraging i have no idea what would be a good bot to even have. With a forage bot your character will be exposed at all times and with limited inventory space you will not get far even with eating and study along the way. Without all the teleporting that happens in hnh you will have to stay outside your walls or hope that your script works to close a gate. HnH botting was done behind brick walls, deep in a mine or with alts collecting tons of dirt clay or trees. Most of those activities are much different here and don't really make sense to bot.
"
Indeed. It has been a conscious and ongoing effort on our part to try to design mechanics in such a way that botting them doesn't feel attractive. The main concept we throw around in our discussions on the subject is "decisions". The one thing that machines cannot do as effectively as humans -- lacking the inherent capability of teleological action -- is to decide between multiple outcomes where all potential outcomes are -- in one sense or another and depending on context -- acceptable. For example, do you eat the chestnut, or do you study it? Most humans A) Have no problem whatsoever determining which course of action best advances their present goals and
Mechanics that lend themselves well to botting are mechanics that are completely devoid of decision making -- i.e. that are dull and repetitative -- foraging in Salem is probably the least decision intensive activity you can engage in presently -- walk, pick, walk, pick, walk, pick -- and that is a concern of ours that we have been discussing ways of changing. As Dallane points out, however, we at least have the saving graces here that you cannot wilderness spawn freely as you can in Haven, and that you cannot teleport home with things in your inventory. A bot that walks out to gather poo-poo must thus, at the very least, be able to make its own way home again.
I fully expect there to be bots accomplishing various tasks in the game at one point or another -- to the extent that such tasks can be isolated and performed well and efficiently in a closed circuit that a bot can handle -- so don't take this as some sort of declaration of victory on my part in the war on the machines. The war on the machines never ends, but I like to think that the frontlines are at least not collapsing in on us.
I got killed of 2 days ago.
I got attacked by two "raiders" ( I think they were anyway), one with a gun, the other with a sword. I dodged and dodged and ran and swam until the attack portrait dissapeared, then because I thought it would work I closed my client, as its the only way to log out, figuring my character not being in combat would just dissapear. Logged back on to be certain finding him gone.. A foolish mistake, made because there was talk on the forums about it ( unconfirmed though).
Sadly enough, this marks the end of my Salem period, the huge time investment required to keep up with fellow villagers and the first 10 hours being quite monotonous are just htings I don't have time for right now.
The game is alot of fun though, and the social aspect is just... Well great, it is much more easy to meet people, and there is actually a point to it. I don't know, I had fun but i'm not doing it again.