Salem: 0 \ Haven: 1

[Seizure]

Ahh, this is the stuff comedies are made of.

So glad I came to visit.

[Scubas]

Ahh, this is the stuff comedies are made of.

So glad I came to visit.

I agree, pretty hilarious to see posts in tandem with one another, alternating between praising Salem's artwork, and shitting on it.

As for the combat someone mentioned earlier... I never got in a fight with anything in Salem, so I never got my come to my own conclusions on that.

[NOOBY93]

Ahh, this is the stuff comedies are made of.

So glad I came to visit.

I agree, pretty hilarious to see posts in tandem with one another, alternating between praising Salem's artwork, and shitting on it.

As for the combat someone mentioned earlier... I never got in a fight with anything in Salem, so I never got my come to my own conclusions on that.

I got in fights with animals and people.
Killed a person once, KO'd a person in a duel once, but those damn animals...
I'll tell you, their jumping around gets on your fucking nerves when you raise your biles so much it becomes annoying to regenerate them.
Conclusion:
Fighting people is fun, fighting animals is painful.

[g1real]

kill yourself

I'm glad you have shared your opinion and dressed it up with points to why you don't like me or the combat.

[Sevenless]

My thoughts on why Salem didn't make it:

Development speed / Release point

Salem was released in what gaming industry terminology would call mid alpha. The majority of the "required" mechanics to make end game work were not in place. Unfortunately, with a small dev team, updates were no where near fast enough to prevent players from capping out into an endgame that was relatively devoid of tools for emergent gameplay.

Unstable/Shallow mechanics

Due to the release being so early, purity and defense mechanics were not fully implemented and tested. The changes to purity/defense killed the community population heavy due to how impactful the changes were. Going from Nodes to Only Farming/Metal purity to Re-intergrating purity was a nasty shock and each time the community nosedived in population. And the times when defense was massively underbuffed lead to a blooding in the community that cost numbers quickly.

And ultimately, even after a year we're still missing large chunks of the end game (witching/animal husbandry). Shallow end games lead to lower player retention for obvious reasons.

Capped crafting grind

Ultimately crafters like the ability to improve infinitely. It's a huge part of what makes their long term gameplay. With a capped system, eventually you tap out and can't go further. No matter how long it takes to reach said cap, the wall still looms over you. The depth of the crafting system was also quite shallow. There was no Dhelm or equivalent items that were truly valuable and difficult to craft.

Lack of specialization for crafting professions

From a crafting and economy point of view, specialization breeds trade. In an attempt to reduce the impact of proficiencies and how unfair they could make the game, crafters got shafted into having no meaningful way to differentiate themselves and form roles. The talisman system helped somewhat with this, but I still feel the complexity and variety of crafting professions in haven shows impactful crafting levels to have a more meaningful and enjoyable impact on gameplay. Specialization is also a very important way to promote trade, which I felt wasn't nearly as prominent or important in Salem as it is in haven. Trade being good because it allows socialization, as well as creating a profession for players with relatively little dev effort involved.

Simplistic Combat

For reasons beyond my understanding, salem combat never became complex and engaging according to most fighters I talked to. Removing the defense/attack bar and all the associated complexities from it seems to have over simplified combat to the point that higher skill fighters didn't find it engaging.

Lack of World Rebirth

Before this reset, haven seems to mostly have had accidental world resets. The truth is sandbox games with free form construction depend upon server resets. This is quite evident in the other games living in this genre (A Tale in the Desert and Wurm) which both revolve around the reset of worlds and new server launches respectively. However, this is of even more importance with regards to haven due to permadeath. Factions can kill out their competition from the game for the most part, leading to large groups "winning" the server. A small nucleus of hardened vets remain to fight it out, but even a chunk of those eventually get bored and decide to wait for the next world reset.

[g1real]

points

Fair points, although I still don't see the deal with the combat. Maybe because I barely engaged in PvP aside from the occasional sparring that I won easily. It was fun having to actively dodge and find openings in attacking the animals and having to find their attack patterns and what not to do. I never had a problem with huge bile drains - it's probably because I didn't suck at it, which is what makes a lot of other people hate it. Because their grind stats aren't the major factor anymore in determining combat effectiveness.

[Sevenless]

points

Fair points, although I still don't see the deal with the combat. Maybe because I barely engaged in PvP aside from the occasional sparring that I won easily. It was fun having to actively dodge and find openings in attacking the animals and having to find their attack patterns and what not to do. I never had a problem with huge bile drains - it's probably because I didn't suck at it, which is what makes a lot of other people hate it. Because their grind stats aren't the major factor anymore in determining combat effectiveness.

If you've only sparred occasionally, I don't think you're really the expert to ask about combat no? I'm in exactly the same position, I don't spend my whole time fighting so my opinion on combat doesn't terribly matter.

What it comes down to though is that Salem is checkers compared to Haven's chess. Same general concept, but there's a hell of a lot less complexity. And spending a whole day playing checkers would drive you up the wall, while it's ok for an occasional match. Meanwhile in haven I know people who spend 4-5 hours a day sparring.

[Potjeh]

Because their grind stats aren't the major factor anymore in determining combat effectiveness.

You know nothing, Jon Snow.

[g1real]

If you've only sparred occasionally, I don't think you're really the expert to ask about combat no? I'm in exactly the same position, I don't spend my whole time fighting so my opinion on combat doesn't terribly matter.

What it comes down to though is that Salem is checkers compared to Haven's chess. Same general concept, but there's a hell of a lot less complexity. And spending a whole day playing checkers would drive you up the wall, while it's ok for an occasional match. Meanwhile in haven I know people who spend 4-5 hours a day sparring.

Haven's combat is more complex in a strategical sense, Salem's combat is more complex in a reflex sense. That's what I gather from it anyway. I don't think the checkers/chess comparison really goes up. It's just that people dislike hitboxes and the ability to miss because the other player walked out of the attack. While in Haven an attack that goes will guarantee to do it's effect.

I don't mind if people discredit my opinion on the subject because I had less experience about it, it doesn't affect my ability to form an opinion about it. Because you have people like Potjeh who, fully integrated into the established hardcore circlejerk, will just spout oneliner posts without any real argument.

Also I know people who love to play checkers all day, same goes for chess. I'm good at the latter but I still don't want to play more than an occasional match.

[Potjeh]

I'm spouting one-liners because I just have no clue where to start a proper argument, since your view on both games' combat systems is just plain wrong through and through. People who have done extensive testing of Salem's PvP, like Darnok or Mushibag, all agree that it's all about the humour level there. Conversely, in Haven you have people like Vigilance consistently beating the crap out of people with higher stats. True, a big part of it was hitting people on the move, but even with the recent movement combat nerf a more skilled player will beat a less skilled one even if the less skilled one has twice as much UA.