Town Of Salem - Kickstarter

[oops_ur_dead]

:P Isn't he already banned?

No, his ban was temporary.

[Righteous]

Cya in Town of Salem! (-those that stay here)

[Damus_Graves]

Anyone posting about something that is not about Town of Salem in this thread from here on is getting heavily infracted

[Dudemanguy12]

If it were up to me, I'd make the theme based off of the Illuminati rather than the Salem Witch Trials. People will be confused with the Mafia being around at that time. Like as Righteous (lol) said, bandits could work for the name instead of the Mafia.

Although I prefer the Mafia theme, just do what needs to be done. My biggest grudge against this game is the theme. xP

[SuperJack]

I don't play the forum Mafia, I haven't been here since it started. I joined when the game was already heavily developed. I donated money because I enjoyed it, and donating money has not given me any extra power, or made people listen to me more.

I love it, you can tell that after all this time it has been very well balanced whilst being able to have a wide variety of different setups, which could only of been done by listening to everyone. Of course people who go on the forums first time, post a crazy suggestion that will upset the balance are ignored.

I just don't like that the theme is based on The Witch Trials of Salem. The audience of this game you want to target worldwide, currently it only favours Americans that have learnt history. If you want it to be successful you have to have it target a world wide audience. It's not self preference. Its just business Mafia sells a lot better than Salem Witch Trials. Werewolves would be better than Salem Witch Trials, but it would be harder to fit all the role names to fit a werewolf theme.

If you don't want Mafia or Werewolves, how about Pirates? Pirates sell big time (Especially since their revival from the Pirates of the Caribbean)

And yes, my biggest grudge against this, is the theme. Which is why I am not donating. If it was changed I would most likely donate $100 since i could see it being successful then.

[Dagaen]

I just don't like that the theme is based on The Witch Trials of Salem. The audience of this game you want to target worldwide, currently it only favours Americans that have learnt history.

I'm Polish and I know about Salem:P Well, probably not EVERYTHING, but enough to don't mind this theme.

Still, it's a good point. More...default name certainly would help. Some people avoid everything that is remotely close to some fantasy settings, why scare them away?

[Deantwo]

My best advice to Town of Salem devs is controversial, but never the less what I think is for the best. (And from what I've discussed and hear from others in lobby as well)

Please DO NOT listen to feedback from long time members of this community!!

Make your own game(!), start your own forum, and start collecting fresh feedback from those who are genuinely interested in this new game, and it's success! ...I beg you!

You have some good feedback or ideas in your otherwise long post here, but starting your post with this was really really unneeded.

You will quickly notice that too many people here come from a Forum Mafia, or even EpicMafia backgrounds, OR some have been in SC2 Mafia from the very beginning, but gradually stopped playing as the game expanded and started to become unfamiliar.

If you eat too much of the their feedback (the same ideology that has been preached around here for the last couple of years), then you'll quickly end up with a dumbed down slow-mo game like EpicMafia, with 3Citizen, 1 Sherif, 1 Doctor and 2 Mafioso's and last can last 40+minutes, because 3 clueless people can't decide who of the them unchecked, sounds least trustworthy.

I do not see how this is a negative thing. Getting view points from many kinds of players can be good, it is then up to the developer to decide on what he wanna do with said feedback.

If you look at SC2Mafia, it has become what it is because of it's players.

• The SC2Mafia players don't like Citizen? Then allow them to exclude it.
• The SC2Mafia players don't like Mafioso? Then allow them to exclude it.

Sadly most of the SC2Mafia players all want shiny buttons to click at night, and the whole mind game at day is mostly reserved for trolling.

I think this problem came to be mostly because of how the SC2 lobby system work. You click a "play" button and you get thrown into a game with random people, some want to it fast, some one it slow.
There are so many different play-styles that can be used in this game thanks to it's customization options and setups. But blindly throwing everyone together is a horrible idea, but this cannot be changed it a good way for SC2Mafia.

A thing Town Of Salem could really benefit from would be a better "find game" mechanic. Something like a list of games or game types, like a special category for people that don't mind playing with Citizen/Mafioso, and a category for people that don't like them.

That way we don't have too many players of different play-styles in one game.

You want to make mafia cool, new, fresh, smart, fast and accessible! Reinvent the classic mafia game for the 21st century!
Let people play with their friends without SC2.
Let people experience the core concept of lies and deceive, for the sole purpose of having fun.

I would even go so far as to not try to familiarize it with "Mafia" at all:

What about a small town with Bandits (instead of mafia)?
What's wrong with a werewolf role?
Make a new universe for your game!

This I have to agree with, I have talked about this somewhere here or maybe it was on Skype.

Renaming the "Mafia" faction to something more suited for the current art style would help a lot with the theme confusion. "Bandits" is a good suggestion for this, my first thoughts were mostly "demons" or "monsters".
And if "Cult" are planed, they could be renamed to "Werewolfs" maybe.

[clementine]

I'm a huge fan of The Crucible/the Salem witch hunt theme of this game! That being said, I have a few suggestions about the artwork/layout of the game. (Not sure if it's too late to change this).

1. The art color scheme isn't "dark" enough to truly stay consistent with the theme. I think that the nighttime images seem alright, but if you could try to greyscale the daytime images a little more it might be a little more spooky and evoke the right kind of mood.

2. I really dislike the cutesy Winter Map as a different background style for the game, as I think it moves even further away from what is fitting with the theme. The desert theme as well, I really do not like, as it seems a lot more wild west than salem witch hunt. I think that the biggest problem I found is that the game seems to be a bit confused in terms of consistency with the theme.

3. I think that the current bodyguard icon, serial killer icon, and mayor icon listed on the kickstarter page seem more "wild west" themed than Salem witch hunt themed. This could be fixed by staying more consistent with a more grey color palate than the wood-ish color palate.

4. For the Salem witch hunt / the Crucible, I think of courthouse rooms. Not sure if this would be feasible to incorporate into the game, but if the player on trial could give their defense in a "courthouse" setting I think that would really add to the atmosphere.

Disclaimer: This is coming from someone who hasn't played the game but just looked at the kickstarter video/page. I'm interested in trying this when it becomes available separate from facebook.

[Mateo]

the game looks like a whodunit in animal crossing. if you're not going to take the atmosphere seriously, why even base it in salem?

seriously, this looks like farmville and all those crappy facebook games by zynga. if thats the style you're going for, just make it a facebook app and not a browser game

[Darkbouncer4689]

Thanks guys. I am definitely going to consider some changes to make the theme more consistent. I like the idea of bandits a lot actually, I will probably run with that idea. I don't want the game to be limited to only pilgrim style characters, I am considering having it just be a fantasy place where many different styles can fit (what is the theme of SC2 Mafia anyways? a 2100s high tech society?). As high fantasy roles such as Werewolves are added to the game it will make it seem more fantasy anyways. I want to allow fun and goofy characters and houses and maps to be in the game. Being 100% true to any theme will limit these kinds of things.

[Darkbouncer4689]

As a follow up question, do you guys feel it would be better to have little theme and allow for all kinds of characters, houses and maps or stick true to some kind of theme and limit the variety of these things?

[Dudemanguy12]

Thanks guys. I am definitely going to consider some changes to make the theme more consistent. I like the idea of bandits a lot actually, I will probably run with that idea. I don't want the game to be limited to only pilgrim style characters, I am considering having it just be a fantasy place where many different styles can fit (what is the theme of SC2 Mafia anyways? a 2100s high tech society?). As high fantasy roles such as Werewolves are added to the game it will make it seem more fantasy anyways. I want to allow fun and goofy characters and houses and maps to be in the game. Being 100% true to any theme will limit these kinds of things.

That's very good to hear. Very agreeable actually. SC2mafia is supposed to be mafia themed, but with SC2 style models. The mafia have tommy guns, so there's your giveaway.

As a follow up question, do you guys feel it would be better to have little theme and allow for all kinds of characters, houses and maps or stick true to some kind of theme and limit the variety of these things?

Dunno if you're using the point system like SC2mafia (Haven't checked much of it actually), but for Donors and people who have spent enough time with the game, you should be able to pick and be open to different models. Just like people have character limits/color limits in SC2mafia.

[fred]

Having more themes would make your game .. more enjoyable and replayable. It's definitely something you should consider.

[SuperJack]

Then if you are to have multiple themes, you are going to need a game name to match this.

[maccabbe]

I would keep in mind that you are not trying to make sc2mafia but a new game, one that should be an overall improvement in terms of gameplay, not graphics.The biggest probelm with sc2mafia isn't that you have to play from sc2 but what limitations there are in making games in sc2.
1. There is a player limit of 15, I see no reason to enforce this in Town of Salem. Make the maximum lobby size huge and allow for players to decide a sensible size.
2. You cannot rejoin a game in sc2mafia. Instead if a player leaves then I recommend making them psuedostumps, no action or votes but they can be killed and lynched. When they come back let their role be restored.
3. The "host" does not setup a game before it fills but afterword, make it so players know the setup they are joining before they join it.

If you want to compete with epicmafia my advice would be to focus on server stability and stamping out gameplay bugs. However there are several things that are in epicmafia that I would like to see in this game. Epicmafia allows you to exclude or include any role into a setup, then it is possible to hover over an icon to see icons of all included roles. This allows for additional customization and quick reference for players. However a problem with epicmafia is that new players do not have icons memorized. sc2mafia uses a role list without icons which can be hovered over for additional information. I would like to see these two approaches combined.

On a side note I find the model's hands very disconcerting. Could you add an option where they put them in their pockets?

[Mircutio]

Correct for now. There will be other ways to login in the future. Do you think the community has a large amount of people without facebook accounts?

Use Google+ if you can, I hate Facebook and deleted my account years ago and was very happy I did.

[IronWaffle]

Wanted to try the alpha out, but the link www.blankmediagames.com/townofsalem gives an error and endlessly refreshes the page. Both of firefox, and internet explorer.

[Deantwo]

Wanted to try the alpha out, but the link www.blankmediagames.com/townofsalem gives an error and endlessly refreshes the page. Both of firefox, and internet explorer.

Yeah. Seems like the alpha is down.

[TimeTrx]

Shouldn't this be locked now?

[AppleyNO]

Shouldn't this be locked now?

No....

[J]

Is this dead? Wanted to look into integrating it with a large forum

[AppleyNO]

Is this dead? Wanted to look into integrating it with a large forum

Yea this died.