Bay 12 Games Forum

I'M TOO BUSY MAKING STEEL

And losing keys . . . .

Let's review:

FYI, permadeath and player-enforced law and order work nearly perfectly in H&H.

I love that you start your opinion with "FYI".  A large number of people disagree with you.

Well those people must suck at the game, because I've only been killed once in nearly two years of constant playing. And even that death was mostly my own stupidity (took armour off and went AFK). Basically, these people are building a surface fort without any walls, traps or soldiers, and then complaining that goblin sieges are OP.

Why, yes, those people who don't agree with you must be bad at the game.  You have such a way with argument.  It's astonishing, really.

Are you a proffessional strawman builder?

Dude, I quoted your own statement.  Try again.

My statement is that people who get randomly ganked suck at the game, because some rather simple safety precautions make it virtually impossible to die in this way. Your interpretation is that people who disagree with me suck. How is that not a strawman?

So, clearly, your argument is that people who don't agree with you are bad at the game.  It's fine if you now realize that isn't a great argument, but saying "it's a strawman argument" to deflect from that really is kinda lame.

Okay, done with this.  Feel free to have the last word.

Well those people must suck at the game, because I've only been killed once in nearly two years of constant playing. And even that death was mostly my own stupidity (took armour off and went AFK). Basically, these people are building a surface fort without any walls, traps or soldiers, and then complaining that goblin sieges are OP.

Why, yes, those people who don't agree with you must be bad at the game.  You have such a way with argument.  It's astonishing, really.

Don't be silly, permadeath works just fine. You just have a lot more tension when playing it.

I used to play a certain MMO in beta with permadeath turned on only. It was incredible. Your life depended on other players and since you could only group with permadeath on people (when you had it on, of course), the tension in dungeons was incredible and heart pounding, since you could lose days of work in a snap.

It was great.

You had the choice to play with permadeath or not.  There is no choice in Salem/H&H.  There's a reason why no major MMO has automatic permadeath: it doesn't work.  I also note you said "lose days of work in a snap".  A MMO won't succeed if people only play for days instead of months or years, and people will not be happy if they stand to lose months or years of work.

Here's my take:  it will fail, and hard.

Now that isn't really going out on a limb considering that most MMOs fail, but I can't see a thing in this one that is going to generate enough of a fan base to sustain it.  The "Free to Play" model means no monthly subscription, and probably no cost to acquire the game, but there will have to be some sort of revenue generation.  To me, that means a cash shop.  That could be okay if it doesn't include actual in-game benefits to PvP, which is at the heart of this MMO.  But I think it will have to include such benefits.  I just don't see the type of player attracted to a PvP permadeath MMO being that interested in a pretty hat, or some other cosmetic purchase.  Not enough revenue means shut down for a commercial game.

Edited to add: To finish the other part of my point, if the cash shop does include PvP enhancements, then those with the most cash will dominate, and it won't be worth playing.

In the meantime, H&H will continue along its own flawed path, but now with less dev time applied to it.  Oh, well.

Server sure seems down to me. (running the little file you download from pressing the play now button fails, so I'm quite certain the server is actually down)

Is it usually down this long?

Reports on the wiki say that some people are sometimes able to connect, but that they keep getting kicked off after intervals.  Also, the mini maps don't load, and textures aren't loading.  Those two things are both loaded via http requests, so it looks to me like an Apache problem, or perhaps even a ddos, but that is entirely speculation.

As for downtime, it's sometimes down a while when they're asleep or traveling, and since we know that yesterday they were in New York, I say it's because of that.

I'm finally in a rowboat, and traveling the seas at my leisure, with an entire crate of brill fillets. I guess I'll travel the world until i find somewhere I'd like to set up a log cabin.

Oh, is it a good idea to log off in a boat?

No.  Land and hide the boat behind a tree or a rock first (note this won't help if people have the x-ray enabled client).

Well, this explains a few things.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/01/20/paradox-interactive-announces-salem-mmo/1

ETA: Jorb/Loftar are making a game with Paradox