Salem Goes Open Beta

[Rhiannon]

(Such as the murder only permadeath)

no way, h&h needs more permadeath - more PvE challenges and dangers, and more hilarious and embarrassing ways to die besides murder.

and bears that swim

lol, hum, in a game so rich and pregnant with possiblilties ansd things to do/accomplish, me thinks only a very immature intellectually challenged individual would only see the above as "Fun" or the potential of a world sandbox like h&h...jussss sayin...lol

[borka]

nah - bitza is just an "Ultra"

[bmjclark]

Fuck Salem.

Maybe sometime soon they can finish that shitty game and fix the one that has some hope of ever being worth playing.

[bitza]

(Such as the murder only permadeath)

no way, h&h needs more permadeath - more PvE challenges and dangers, and more hilarious and embarrassing ways to die besides murder.

and bears that swim

lol, hum, in a game so rich and pregnant with possiblilties ansd things to do/accomplish, me thinks only a very immature intellectually challenged individual would only see the above as "Fun" or the potential of a world sandbox like h&h...jussss sayin...lol

yeah, maybe that's it, i'm immature and intellectually challenged. or...maybe not everyone who plays h&h plays it your way.

this is h&h, not minecraft, not farmville, not salem. it's not meant to be a happy romp through the woods, it's meant to be dangerous specifically for new characters - you shouldn't be able to kill a bear after 2 days on a new char. the animal AI tends to mess with the pacing of the game a bit too as it becomes way too easy to kill animals - once you have a boat and sling and some marksman there's really not much stopping you from building a village idol. (incidentally i think vidol needs more expensive materials as well!)

one of the biggest problems (imo) with h&h is the heavy competitiveness that mostly started in w3 with russians vs. sodom. as seen countless times, people are willing to resort to any glitch or undocumented trick to get ahead. ever started on day 1 of a new world? among other things, people in a new world are rushing to kill bears and deer for village idols.

if it's day 7 of the new world and i want to get bear teeth for an idol, what am i going to do? am i going to train up 200 ua and 150 melee and take it head on? hell no...i'm gonna get 30 marksman and sit in a boat. boring gameplay, that, and i think the pacing of the game would go a whole lot better if certain commodities (like bear teeth) were harder to come by. if nothing else, we wouldn't see nearly as many vidols everywhere if bear kills weren't so easy to cheese.

perhaps it's not my viewpoint that's immature and intellectually challenged, but yours. your argument here boils down to bascally "animals with murder are too hard and they need to be removed and everyone who disagrees with me is a moron" - this is literally what you said in your response to me.

but regardless of what you or i think at this point, careless and clueless players will be chewed up by bears and other animals, and this is the way it should be. there are no continues or extra lives in h&h. it's called permadeath, not perma-inconvenience. i suppose you think drowning shouldn't be lethal either

[bitza]

let's talk about new worlds for a minute..

for an organized group of lets say 5+ active people (and everyone is always super active at the start of a new world), it's quite possible to have a brickwall village with cows in the first week or 2. here's how we the goons always started a new world, and i imagine it's similar to how many of the hyper-competitive villages do it (sodom AD Dis ainran and so forth)

1. find and secure good clay
2. find and secure an iron deposit
3. pali, vidol, wrought, steel, brickwall
4. cows
5. stat grind, lp grind, quality grind, maybe some pvp, quit cause you did it all. some people keep playing cause you can grind your crops to q500 or try to kill everyone on the server, or be a knight in shining armor tracking scents, or statue an entire grid, or grind up to troll punching or make artwork or a trade village or a town for noobies, etc.

there are many ways to play h&h but i feel this is pretty much the only way to keep up with the pvp race. in a new world, if i'm spending my first day building timber houses and chicken coops, the other guy got the good clay spot. in the first week, if i have a palisade, the other guys are making brickwalls and vidols.

it's kind of sad that we have to rush through the pre-industrial and pre-agricultural stages as quickly as possible to keep up, but that's the way it is. maybe something can be done about that though?

i will admit that i want bears to swim and murder us because i want to see people suffer, but that's not the only reason

vidols are one place where brickwall becomes a whole lot easier to build once you can warp clay and iron ore to a vidol for processing. vidols are also used offensively for sieges and force-declaims, and it's really not that big of a deal for an experienced player (starting a new character) to get to the point of making one. as it is now, i can have a vidol with a LS alt entirely on the other side of the world, and keep it maintained without ever having to step foot on the property! and i can do this alone. and if i want more bear teeth for another idol, all i need is 30 marksman and a sling and a boat, and it's no danger to me whatsoever.

in other words, i feel that encountering a bear, even at the river, should give a feeling of "oh shit, is it worth risking my life for bear teeth for that idol (or skin or meat or w/e). right now it's, "oh, cool a bear" (chip stones and spend 20 minutes slinging from your boat, no sweat for a dead bear)

one of the cool things about h&h is that, like real life, if you choose to participate, you should expect your ass to get handed to you from time to time

[borka]

hardening the PvE (swimming bears) and making the gap even bigger for not so experienced ( or even new) ppl because of that well organized, acitive Veterans PvP race in which only a minority is involved...?!?

While i find a lot you've stated right i don't think that PvE has to be changed in the first place, but it's just my opinion...

[bitza]

swimming bears would be a "hardening" all around for everyone, so that players wouldn't be able to make multiple village idols in the first week of a new world for instance. or as a veteran player, do you think you're still able to handle a bear at 30 marksman if it can swim?

[TeckXKnight]

Bitza makes some very valid points. A big part of the issue is that some areas are too easily overcome. Remember World 4? Where there were people with millions of lp within a few hours of the world starting thanks to how easy it is to stone animals to death? Then World 5 opened with the first few vidols going up within a few hours. Making animals harder isn't just a nerf against new players, it's a HUGE nerf against older players and sets a lot of their strategies back. Lacking things like hq bones, meat, leather, and teeth means that older players spend the first few days on par with other players.

What should be added to compliment this though? Some mechanism for tracking or evading animals so that new players and older players alike can avoid these new super-animals at least somewhat successfully if they're paying attention. Making players be alert while in the wild isn't bad gameplay. Letting players effectively skip huge sections of the early game is.

[Sweetness]

Because H & H is in alpha, I'm inclined to forgive its many imbalances but at times they make the game almost as unplayable as the current lag.

If J & L ever get back to developing the game again, I hope they will change the over all balance. I agree with Bitza - players get to rush through the early game and kill bears in less than twenty-four hours, players who have a team to play on can get a brick walled city in in three days flat and in two weeks they are effectively impregnable and immune to retaliation if they practice pvp.

[borka]

i think i should get out of this discussion because it's plain "supress the freedom of the majority to tame a minority"