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On November 06 2012 23:47 alfyma wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2012 02:28 sabas123 wrote:i thought the game was already launched0_O anyway if anybody with tl want to play with me someday or invite me in the tl village plz go ahead and do so  Nope, development was stalled for a really long time while they wrote code that allowed multiple servers, and travel between them. That is done now, so we expect that frequent updates should resume. New beta keys should be being doled out soon, if you have signed up to the newsletter, and open beta is apparently going to start in about a month. I don't actually know if anyone else is playing, Serejai made a character but I never saw him online. After that I was involved in a little drama and ended up being killed by a superpower ( http://tumbleweed.sabinati.com/2012/11/03/synnvaerds-saga/ ), and so I lost my kin list, so no idea if he is playing still . Skarphedin, my current character, is alive and well on the plymouth server - I'm not really a "village" kindof person, but I like neighbours/friends in game, so if anyone wants to add me then pm me here for my homestead secret. I expect the game to get a lot more fun now that frequent updates have resumed - new stuff to play with and all
I'm actually very concerned about the future of this game. I had some discussion with Paradox employees about the condition of the Salem forums and moderation issues. The end result seemed to be that they were happy with the current state of the community (trolling, racism, etc were all acceptable). I understand that this is a PvP game and drama is going to happen (and should happen) but they seem to have a very loose definition of what acceptable drama is. They did, however, make a forum post a few weeks ago about some drama situation that popped up and seem to be moving in the right direction (ie, more professional moderation) so I'll reserve judgement a while longer.
The second issue that concerns me is the multi-server support. This game is already suffering from a small player retention rate. We went from 800 players online in the first few weeks of closed beta... down to about 100 online for the last few months. For whatever reason the developers are very, very confident that this game will see a massive surge of players at release (like 1500-2000 online at a time) and as such decided that multiple servers were a necessity. As it currently stands, however, multiple servers has split the community from 100-120 online at a time to a mere 20-40 online at a time on each of the servers. You can literally walk for HOURS and never see a single other player.
I am not at all confident that the playerbase will increase enough to justify multiple worlds. Ever. As such I can't help but worry about the future of this game. I really, really want it to do well - I enjoy the gameplay quite a lot and I also like the social interaction it creates. That enjoyment is reduced drastically, however, if the playerbase is split apart.
I really hope they push out some amazing content updates in the next 2-3 weeks because I feel like they wasted a LOT of time doing completely unnecessary things to the game (multi-server, custom website).
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I think pretty much everyone apart from Paradox agreed that prioritizing multiserver support was stupid - I honestly have no idea why Paradox *made* the devs work on this rather than actual content. It also seemed to overrun massively, which I believe is why noone is playing the game right now - without more content, people got bored and wandered off. I think the game could well attract a couple thousand players - h&h had probably ~500 at peak, perhaps more due to timezones, and Salem is much more forgiving in many ways. But they kindof shot themselves in the foot by boring many of the most eager players off the server, and now they are going to have to work really hard to get them back.
I have kindof warmed to the gameplay - actually I think it is much better than the curiosity system in haven, and kindof solves the "alt army" issue somewhat. It just needs a LOT more content, which it will hopefully now get.
As to the forum issue, I also hate the racism, and I agree that a lot of the people have no idea what real drama is. I've been trying to educate them . Trolling is "allowed" in some subforums but not all - one of the major griefers in the game was just permabanned from the forums for trolling in the recruitment section, for example. Honestly its not *that* bad apart from a handful of people. The issue with "unprofessional moderators" is massively exaggerated by a handful of users btw, and I really hope they are not turning people off the game.
I really think people should try it out again, since there are two virgin servers its the perfect time to do so! The gameplay is really awesome, and frequent content patches should now be arriving.
(btw eventually it will be possible to travel between servers, they are just separated for now so that they can develop naturally for a little while)
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Got into early beta myself but my account information was lost when they moved there info and forums off of paradox. Does anyone know of any giveaways for Salem keys? Or if anyone is interested in a Dota 2 invite i'd be interested in making a trade.
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If I had a beta key, I would try this game out
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I'd love to try it too. Just need to register and there's a high chance to get a key or is there some other way?
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On November 07 2012 16:14 Razt wrote:
Got into early beta myself but my account information was lost when they moved there info and forums off of paradox. Does anyone know of any giveaways for Salem keys? Or if anyone is interested in a Dota 2 invite i'd be interested in making a trade.
What happened to you actually happened to a lot of people. If you contact TotalyMoo (in the #salem irc, for example) he should be able to sort it out for you, I believe.
There should be lots more beta keys released imminently... sign up to the newsletter, follow them on twitter etc, so that you know where to go
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I can't understand this... Are they attempting to create some kind of artificial scarcity for players? If so why? It's not like they are struggling to fill their servers, in fact it's pretty much the opposite. The game as far as i know is never going to cost money due to it being micro transaction funded, so it's not like they would be losing out on sales.
If they want buzz to spread, they need people playing their game. Which in turn requires access to beta keys, which they are restricting for no reason?
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On November 08 2012 02:34 chaokel wrote:I can't understand this... Are they attempting to create some kind of artificial scarcity for players? If so why? It's not like they are struggling to fill their servers, in fact it's pretty much the opposite. The game as far as i know is never going to cost money due to it being micro transaction funded, so it's not like they would be losing out on sales. If they want buzz to spread, they need people playing their game. Which in turn requires access to beta keys, which they are restricting for no reason?
Yeah, I have absolutely no idea why it is being done like this. Perhaps they want to progressively increase the number of people playing, or something, to test the servers in a slightly more controlled manner... but I agree that they really need to work on getting the word out. I'm trying my best to get you guys to play it ;(
Anyway, there you have it... I posted it here as soon as I found out, I hope anyone who wants one can get one in the next few days.
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On November 08 2012 02:47 alfyma wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2012 02:34 chaokel wrote:I can't understand this... Are they attempting to create some kind of artificial scarcity for players? If so why? It's not like they are struggling to fill their servers, in fact it's pretty much the opposite. The game as far as i know is never going to cost money due to it being micro transaction funded, so it's not like they would be losing out on sales. If they want buzz to spread, they need people playing their game. Which in turn requires access to beta keys, which they are restricting for no reason? Yeah, I have absolutely no idea why it is being done like this. Perhaps they want to progressively increase the number of people playing, or something, to test the servers in a slightly more controlled manner... but I agree that they really need to work on getting the word out. I'm trying my best to get you guys to play it ;( Anyway, there you have it... I posted it here as soon as I found out, I hope anyone who wants one can get one in the next few days.
You played with us originally right?
How much has the game changed since then?
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They honestly don't seem to understand how to properly manage a game of this type. I'm a bit shocked since Paradox is the company that handled Magicka which, to my knowledge, was a pretty big hit. How they're managing to completely screw up everything in regards to Salem confuses me greatly.
I asked them for some beta keys to give out on here months ago and was caught off guard when they pretty much told me they didn't need or want any help promoting the game. I've dealt with many developers before, both indie and mainstream, and this was the first time a developer told me they didn't want free publicity.
They seem pretty hellbent on keeping the playerbase as small as possible right now and the only reason I can think of for doing so is that Paradox isn't at all happy with how the game has turned out. Think of it from a financial standpoint - regardless of how little money Paradox has put into this game so far, they are NEVER going to make it back. It's just not possible.
Servers: ~$500/mo minimum (likely a lot more)
Staff (two employees, let's say $10/hour): $3,200/mo
Cost of a backpack: $10
Amount of players that spend $10 on the store/game: 10% (probably being generous here given the nature of the game)
Number of NEW players required every month to break even: 3,700 (because old/current players will not spend money on the cash shop since it becomes trivial to produce silver after your first week of playing).
From my own experiences running a Minecraft server for this community... my donation rate was closer to 1-2% than 10%, and that's from people who want to help the community. The recent Speedrunning marathon had 990,000 viewers and only 1,100 donated. That's a 0.1% rate.
Any way you look at it this game simply isn't going to be profitable in its current state and I can't help but wonder if they are intentionally keeping the playerbase small because of that. Maybe it makes it easier for them to cut their losses in the next few months if they need to? I don't know. I can't think of any other logical reason to turn away players on a game that's already bleeding them left and right.
I wish I wasn't so negative in this thread lately because I really, really enjoy this game; much more than I did Haven and Hearth. It just seems to be mismanaged at every possible step of the way 
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Anyone manged to snatch an extra key? I missed the oppertunity
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This is a pretty interesting given that I live in MA lol. There's an Asian Buffet in Salem that's cheap and they give TONS of seafood, raw oysters!. Mmm, yup that's what comes to mind when I think of Salem.
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just got the beta, where the tl people at cant decide which server to be in
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On November 09 2012 03:18 Snuggles wrote:
This is a pretty interesting given that I live in MA lol. There's an Asian Buffet in Salem that's cheap and they give TONS of seafood, raw oysters!. Mmm, yup that's what comes to mind when I think of Salem.
I was thinking the same thing, well aside from the Asian buffet lol...
I wonder what my town looks like in this game
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Man seeing this thread revived makes me want to play again.
However the time commitment needed as well as the low player count really is making me uncomfortable about starting again.
In fact one of the things i least look forward to is the player turnover; having people quit and join all the time really takes a toll on your memory for these things.
Maybe if servers have a decent population and enough new features are added I might start again. Haven certainly was an entertaining experience while it lasted.
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Wish they scrapped it already and went back to developing Haven, that game was amazing
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On November 09 2012 12:22 eSen1a wrote:
Wish they scrapped it already and went back to developing Haven, that game was amazing
There's no money for them in haven xD
Any development they do in Haven has to be pro bono
One thing i think they did right in comparison to Haven is switch defense mechanisms; In theory braziers feel much more right than just walling up and hoping for the best.
EDIT3: Actually this whole game reeks of pay to win. The silver prices are so ridic high I dont see myself taking the time to farm any of the things. Forget playing this game
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Its really not play to win; silver is absurdly easy to get once you progress past the first few hours of the game. Once you can kill crickets you have a steady supply of silver .
As for braziers, they are awesome compared to passive defense like in Haven, I agree
As to Serejai's points, I'm pming the community manager about them, hopefully he will clear things up a bit...
I'm hermitting on Plymouth, fyi, but if you guys want to start a proper village i would recommend one of the other servers for it to be a more level playing field - Roanoke seems to be more crowded right now, not sure why.
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Eh if I were to start playing I think I would only be interesting if I started as a group with some other TLers.
I'm willing to form a startup group though, perhaps in Roanoake. PM me if interested.
Also alfyma, do maple leave respawn yet? I recall that being one of the more annoying things, having to walk for half an hour to get a maple leaf, lol
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EPT
