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New Salem dev video
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/videos/gameID/582/videoId/2330
One of the devs talks about crime and punishment. Nothing new really, but the gameplay footage in the background looks a bit better than previous videos imo. It has a more polished and "finished" feeling.
Comments
ya the combat part of the video looks pretty good, i like the swordmenship style fighting beats their haven and hearth graphic of the dude just standing there with a popup over his head showing the skill used lol
though im not overly impressed with the ranging aspect of either game.. it leaves too much up to the ranger player, as well most of the crimes are commited by high levels with whole villages as backup. normally against noobs or weaker towns who have 0 % hope of fighting back
but i guess it does work to a point.. still not a big feature i like in either game really
Yeah, it seems their philosophy is that people should band together in townships, rather than go hermit. I kind of like that though, since I think something is wrong when the majority of players are soloing in an MMO.
the problem is, you cant trust anyone in these types of games, the HnH forums are filled with people begging for vengance because X player betrayed them and killed them after joining their village, or they did something that pissed someone off and they wiped out everyone in the "town" because they could.
player run policing is like anarcy and then some
nothing is more enjoyable then investing months of work in to a town only to have 1 person piss all over it because they can
but i do agree soloing in any MMO is really boring.. i fall asleep gaming most nights as im solo 90% of the time lol (better drops solo then grouped which i think is retarded too)
While I agree player policing never works, I do believe scamming and infiltration should be part of any sandbox game.
In EVE for instance, trust is a highly valued commodity and getting accepted and included in powerful corps is almost a game in itself. Paranoia is abundant, because so is spying and coporate theft.
But EVE also has safezones patrolled by NPC police. As long as you stay there you're relatively safe; you don't have to indulge in corp politics straight away just to survive. I'm afraid Salem will be very, very hard on the new player - at least after a few months when larger townships are established (and closed to outsiders) and high-level RPKs roam the land.
oh ya i agree, inflation is common place even in real life. as for scamming i can do without it... unless its price scamming
but offering an item that is not what you payed for or tricking you in to a trap just to kill you, i find kinda weak.. but thats just me.
im really worried on how they plan to setup player spawns.
in HnH you spawn in the wild.. it could be next to a bear/pig that kills you right off, or next to a player's town/house who kills you because they can..
from what they have said on salam.. monsters will spawn alot more in the "dark" forest areas but at day 0:0:0 of launch there will be 0 player towns.. so how will they protect brand new players?? they never seem to cover any of that in their dev vids that i have noticed..
are we going to spawn in a "starter" town?? or spawn in the wild and risk being killed right as we spawn in by who knows what... then months later once the PKers start romping around.. how will brand new players get anywhere
if they are wiped when they start...
sure a new toon has nothing to lose or gain from dying (hnh you die you can recover a % of your learning points and any land/items you had) but still alot of people do not like dying when they first start
Wow this is really a interesting game, and I think that the danger in start with 0 starter towns gives it a charm. Everything is playerbuilt and such makes it very very different. PKers might become a problem but if you gain something from killing PKers I bet there is going to be a lof of people around dropping every PK that comes close.
actually you couldnt be further from the truth lol. PKing in HnH is the exact same as salem.. you unlock the skills to fight another player and skills to kill and loot them, then find someone to use them on. people will only hunt you down if you are an easy kill or you hit someone in an alliance or something.
most of the time people have to "pay" to have someone even bother hunting down a PK doesnt actually mean they killed them
having 0 safezones will kill off a majority of the player base, much like HnH has almost no player base i think the most i have seen online on that game (going by their website) was 600-800 players which is not a hell of a lot for an MMO. if salam does infact go the exact same route (which is shaping up to be) it wont have a large retention of players. people will sign up and day 1 get killed.. bam that person rage quits and so do their 1-30 friends.. now the game is down up to 30 players and any possible players from those as well.
but time will tell.. i frankly dont really see how they plan to setup starting players.. as they have said the "wild" areas (places scarcely populated by players or towns) will be heavy in hositle monsters.. so if you are brand new that means you start in the wild?? or what??
I have quite different opinions on the matter than you it seems. If people ragequit when they get killed then so be it, I wont. To me its a charm with the permadeath system and gives the game a thrill. Also you keep some of your skills so w/e, HnH doesnt look interesting to me but Salem does.
well we dont know yet if you how much skill retention on death you have.. in HnH you only get 75% skills if you set your toon up for it. but doing so, means you can not change any of the other statuses as it alters the main one. as well learning items for skill points becomes harder as an item that normally would give 10k skill points now might only give 5k or less..
most people do not preplan for death at "level" 1 -5 when they are just starting out. so we will see on that. i just know if you alter your character setup either to boost passive str or hit points or hp regen.. you alter your other status slider which effects XP (LP) generation from items, as well as causing your self to lose more learnt points upon death.
given the nature of MMO players now days... where they state a game with 100k-1mill subs as a failure... if salam suffers the same player pop their first mmo HnH has.. people will be calling it worse then a failure
not everyone enjoys spawning in to a world at level 1 and being PK/camped while having 0% chance to fight back.
hopefully they dont do the wild spawn points but have a set "safeish" zone for new people to spawn to atleast learn the game.