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Chinpow

Wurm is dying. At least Epic is.

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Hello there. Welcome to yet-another-stupid-topic where I share my no-one-cares thoughts on this matter.


 


You may have noticed, but online numbers on Epic have dropped a little bit. Over the last year we lost many active players to a point when major factions almost entirely disappeared. We had times when the whole Elevation had mere 10-20 online. Oh, right, those times are not gone.


First MRE collapsed. Than JKE. Now it’s turn for BL, who consumed the rest of our active players.  By the way, you may want to check our auction tab, you will see many good accounts there for a cheap price.


 


Now let’s cut that dramatic line and talk a bit about why is this happening. Before I start, let me first tell a bit about myself. I am quite familiar with game industry, in fact I’ve been working in it for more than 8 years, first on PC MMOs, now switched to mobile. I’ve seen lots of projects gone up and down, participated in a few developments and played a lot. My honest wish for Wurm is to rise and shine.


 


From my professional point of view, despite sandbox MMOs are all shine now, Wurm is like dinosaur in this new age. If it won’t evolve, it will die.


What is the core problem of Wurm? Basically, it’s because “Effort spend < Fun receivedâ€. By this I mean that in order to have fun you need to spend 3 times much effort. And since almost all content is limited, except for PvP, your fun eventually drops, but the effort stays almost constant.


 


Here is an example. In order to build a house, you have to spend 10 hours of your life. It is an enormous amount of time, if we compare it to modern games. Over time, this number will drop by 5 hours, but how much more fun will you get after your fourth and fifth house?  A good example of a game that utilizes building is (forgive me, Rolf) Minecraft. Building is fast there. And it’s fun. This was an example, I am not saying we should be all like Minecraft. Of cause, some players like it hardcore. Not many, but they do.


 


If we look into crafting, this “fun formula†will be even less balanced. In order to craft yourself equipment, you have to spend hundreds of hours. And how much fun will you get? Eventually zero. Rarity system makes it even worse, since at some point normal items are not seen as something worthy.


 


Now, when it comes to PvP in Wurm, it can be extremely fun. But it is rarely equal for both sides and occurs extremely rare. All because of the efforts you have to spend in order to replace your lost equipment. People prefer to sit in their castles, because the fun they may get (if they win) is much less than the risk. I've got a rare ada helmet, for example. And extremely good ada maul. Do you know how many times they have participated in PvP? Zero. In fact this have stopped me a few times from participating. 


 


Now, let’s talk about fixing this. All devs prefer to have simple solutions at the minimal cost, so I will propose the most simple solutions.


 


  1. Reduce timer for all actions by 3.
  2. Speed up crafting by 3.
  3. Eliminate rarity system. Alternatively, make some resource spawns rare (like rare iron ore) and all things produced from it should be of according rarity. Let them exhaust and respawn fast, so people will be constantly eager to look for them and control.
  4. Make mid\high-end PvE content. It could be castles\garrisons with guards\human NPCs\goblins\whatever that can sometimes drop weapons\armor that is worth using.
  5. Allow safe PvP. There should be a place where people can try fighting without risking their equipment. Arena or something. Where people can learn and have their fun.
  6. Make PvP more meaningful. There should be things people want to fight over: resource spawns, monster spawns, i.e. important areas to control. It's just a general idea, as we all understand what this is about. We all can generate a ton of ideas.

Oh, and the last thing. There is but one hardcore sandbox game that survived everything and evolved. Eve online. Have a good look at it.


I hope Wurm will become another good example. Thanks for reading.


Edited by Chinpow
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Epic only : i dont play there, so dont care


 


other servers : No, -1 to all


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My votes:

1. no

2. no

3. no

4. yes

5. yes

6. yes

This. Not sure about the NPC things.... but we could use some interesting areas (not instances) on map that can be destroyed... Well Chaos and Epic have altars, but maybe make their effect stronger so there is more motivation to fight for them then just priesting up..

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Tried Epic and it was a nightmare was killed several times because I did dare to come to close to someones land, (yeah a char with no skills is very dangerous) after this I tried joining a deed where I was first treated like a spy and and when I finally managed to gain there trust I had to skill what they liked so basically a slave ... and then is the other side fighting in Wurm is just plain boring ... Wurm is a great game when it comes to liberty and building but the fighting is crap .. 


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I gotta agree that Epic is dying. Most of my friends have already left the game and others just log in for meditations like myself. Basically theres just nothing to do anymore, sure new updates add a few features but none of them change the way the game plays.

On your suggestions, I find 4th and 6th the ones worth looking into. Because as of now I have no need to expand and to hold land, since basically everywhere everything is the same. Also hunting is just grinding with no reward whatsoever. And PvP, unbalanced and broken as usual.

Also on replacing equipment in PvP. Its a bloody pain in the ass. You have to make a good plate set, weapon, shield, pendulum, bow, horseshoes, saddle, rings etc... Oh and lets not forget you have to enchant everything. It's just too big of a risk to die. The time you have to spend is literally a day to replace these things. I believe that timers should be sped up. Sure it will break the economy, but would you rather have a poor economy or no players playing the game?

I think your other points are nice as well, but many old Wurm players would disagree as usual which is another problem this game faces.

 

Epic only : i dont play there, so dont care

other servers : No, -1 to all

Keep in mind that Epic is a big part of Wurm and the fate of it in the end affects all clusters. Edited by Edvinas
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Is this statement true or false?


 


Epic server attracts more casual players compared to freedom cluster.


And casual players comes and goes, quick to jump on the latest MMO release.


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Epic only : i dont play there, so dont care

 

Then why are you posting? off

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I agree with points 4-6, as full drop loot is a disincentive to pvp. I'd throw the ability to damage/destroy another person's deed into that same list too. I'd never settle on a pvp server as long as that is possible. We certainly also need mid/high tier pve content that doesn't come down to big group vs single unique mob. But I find the way in which you draw the conclusions that things need to be sped up (points 1-2, possibly 3) flawed.


 


You say that Epic is dying, low amount of players, etc. Then I look at the graphs of a non-epic server to see if the issue is also common there, for example take a look at the graph for Independence, it doesn't show a decline at all. Sure there was a drop thanks to Xanadu, but after that it has remained steady. Most of the Freedom servers are showing similar statistics, though some, like Xanadu, are in decline (Xanadu has plenty of it's own issues which can help explain this drop). Even the Chaos server has remained steady.


 


Then lets look at the main difference between Epic and the rest, on Epic skill gain is much faster. Faster skill gain results in shorter action timers much sooner than usual. So overall it's much easier to reduce the required effort on Epic compared to the other servers. That's the main difference, and then you claim that making it even faster will help. This claim I don't quite understand, as looking at this information I'd draw the opposite conclusion.


 


The more effort it takes to build something, the more rewarding it will feel once you finish it. For most of Wurm's PvE players, I think we can safely say that this rewarding feeling equals fun received, especially when something was a group effort. It's for that same reason why you also see people build a lot of huge projects in minecraft. Building a small house just isn't interesting there as it takes no effort at all. Because it is so fast paced, not unlike Epic, the average player will also move on to another game faster because you will have seen everything quite quickly. If it wasn't for the friends I did projects with in Minecraft, then I'd have moved on to another game after a month.


I think that, as Tissotx points out, is one of the reasons why Epic is dying. Epic is aimed at casual pvp players and such players tend to move from game to game rather quickly, but Epic's influx of new players is insufficient to counter this as wurm isn't advertised much, not on Steam, etc. Thus players leave it faster than that they join, this reduces the activity on the server, which increases the pace at which players leave.


Edited by Ecrir
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Epic skills much faster to begin with meaning the skill to make pvp acceptable quality gear comes very easily, cooldowns were removed to make casting replacement gear much less painful, elevation is more village orientated so there are more people to specialise and help everyone replace gear if you do not want to be self sufficient, people are afraid to lose the rare and moon stuff but normal gear is so easily replaced, seems that people just become more and more spoiled and look down on regular gear.


 


If you want to not be afraid to lose gear then use replaceable gear and get out there to have fun


 


The numbers have been fluctuating forever and the lulls come and go we have had things implemented to fight over like hota and battlecamps but the rewards just tend to be not worth 'risking' anything for which comes back to using replaceable gear for the sake of having fun not for what it is worth, though some will always view the death alone as some kind of pride crushing event despite the gear.


 


Its also not that hard to pre stock the gear during pvp down times to ease the 'burden' of replacing things after death.


 


Im not against the idea of trying to add new features to brighten things up a little but two things I think are the main issue would be peoples attitude to dying and the lack of advertising to bring in new players.


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I am ok with these suggestions for Epic. But if this proposal is also for Freedom then -1.


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As you can see, I am not proposing to speed up skillgain. Heck, PvP happens much later than you learn how to craft decent equipment. The issue here is about time to replace it. And even than, there is no point in it.

Stocking equip? OK, a lot of us do this. But, you know, how much fun in loosing a full plate set even of 70-80 ql comparing to the time needed to replace it? Are you willing to try and fight for no reason risking a few hours of your time you will loose into equipment? No.

Improvements should be on both sides. Easier to replace and more meaningful PvP. 

Edited by Chinpow

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At one point of time wasnt it going to be a feature where goblins would make little villages and attack deeds. but yeah... end game pve is pathetic in wurm.


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Perhaps then what you would want is larger ql jumps per imp rather than changing timers since timers get into changing skill, this is something people have been asking for a long time for horse shoes, perhaps it could be done for plate too though I really don't think it is quite as dramatic as being made out to be (the horse shoes are though, they make you want to /suicide)


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Epic skills much faster to begin with meaning the skill to make pvp acceptable quality gear comes very easily, cooldowns were removed to make casting replacement gear much less painful, elevation is more village orientated so there are more people to specialise and help everyone replace gear if you do not want to be self sufficient, people are afraid to lose the rare and moon stuff but normal gear is so easily replaced, seems that people just become more and more spoiled and look down on regular gear.

 

If you want to not be afraid to lose gear then use replaceable gear and get out there to have fun

 

Not really. If by "acceptable qualty gear" you mean gear that is combined 20-40% worse than other players' gear, sure, but thats pointless, you will be the weakest character on the field, no matter what your skills are. Real usable gear is very hard to get, supreme items, moon metal gear. These are so much better that you don't stand a chance with easy to make normal iron/steel gear. I don't know what you find fun about going into a fight knowing you have a huge disadvantage and don't stand a chance.

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Epic skills much faster to begin with meaning the skill to make pvp acceptable quality gear comes very easily, cooldowns were removed to make casting replacement gear much less painful, elevation is more village orientated so there are more people to specialise and help everyone replace gear if you do not want to be self sufficient, people are afraid to lose the rare and moon stuff but normal gear is so easily replaced, seems that people just become more and more spoiled and look down on regular gear.

 

If you want to not be afraid to lose gear then use replaceable gear and get out there to have fun

 

The numbers have been fluctuating forever and the lulls come and go we have had things implemented to fight over like hota and battlecamps but the rewards just tend to be not worth 'risking' anything for which comes back to using replaceable gear for the sake of having fun not for what it is worth, though some will always view the death alone as some kind of pride crushing event despite the gear.

 

Its also not that hard to pre stock the gear during pvp down times to ease the 'burden' of replacing things after death.

 

Im not against the idea of trying to add new features to brighten things up a little but two things I think are the main issue would be peoples attitude to dying and the lack of advertising to bring in new players.

i agree with smegain. My main concern isn that things need to change but they become stale. The new affliction map brought a huge new life to BLH. i think extending this and creating a new elevation map would bring new insentive to join there. I also know much of the maps have giant broken holes in them making it very difficult to build plus the size of elevation is small imo. maybe it's is just the layout and lack of broken land that creates that.

 

I would like to see other home servers and elevation offered the same option  that bl was. For a reset. on top of that i do feel the community has to change a little in respect to how "dreadful" pvp is. I have recently had alot of freedomers join up with us and there idea of epic was very wrong. In fact many of them love the increased danger and pvp, i would like to see more veterans of epic to invite there freedom friends over to see that epic isn't as insanely bloodthirst as people seem to think. 

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Not really. If by "acceptable qualty gear" you mean gear that is combined 20-40% worse than other players' gear, sure, but thats pointless, you will be the weakest character on the field, no matter what your skills are. Real usable gear is very hard to get, supreme items, moon metal gear. These are so much better that you don't stand a chance with easy to make normal iron/steel gear. I don't know what you find fun about going into a fight knowing you have a huge disadvantage and don't stand a chance.

i have never had moon metals in pvp on epic and have great success in many cases. I have also had loses like everyone.  Items don't make or break a victory but i do agree the give an advantage for the risk of loosing them.  i would like to see restone removed to increase that risk.

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The thing is though Judi, sure gear can be fight outcome changing when given equal numbers but the fact is that wurm is hardly ever even numbers. The relevance of the gear becomes less when given more numbers


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Not really. If by "acceptable qualty gear" you mean gear that is combined 20-40% worse than other players' gear, sure, but thats pointless, you will be the weakest character on the field, no matter what your skills are. Real usable gear is very hard to get, supreme items, moon metal gear. These are so much better that you don't stand a chance with easy to make normal iron/steel gear. I don't know what you find fun about going into a fight knowing you have a huge disadvantage and don't stand a chance.

Not really. Pretty much everytime we kill anyone, they drop normal plate an normal weapons. Rarily people have glimmer helms, which aren't that special and some ada weapon. I wear normal plate myself with a rare longsword, though I doubt rarity on a weapon really matters.

There are some people who wear real expensive or powerful equipment, like full seryll sets but that's just a couple of people.

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There are some people who wear real expensive or powerful equipment, like full seryll sets but that's just a couple of people.

Bling bling <3

 

2014-08-29.png

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I have a drake set, seryll chain set, gold barding, some sweet weapons.


 


I use them when hunting but I sure as heck don't take them into combat, I don't mind losing a set of plate armor and moderately enchanted weapons when I die.  I don't go to many battles but the last one I was in I wore 40ql studded and still had fun.   Never liked end game raiding or pvp much but always ended up a clan leader in every game organizing/leading groups.


 


I know i'm a pvp noob who doesn't use TS - but as long as you are willing to lose your affinity, a little bit of fight skill and a backup set of armor/weapons - go have fun.  And who knows, your side might even win and then you get loot.  =)


Edited by leaf

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Hello there. Welcome to yet-another-stupid-topic where I share my no-one-cares thoughts on this matter.

 

You may have noticed, but online numbers on Epic have dropped a little bit. Over the last year we lost many active players to a point when major factions almost entirely disappeared. We had times when the whole Elevation had mere 10-20 online. Oh, right, those times are not gone.

First MRE collapsed. Than JKE. Now it’s turn for BL, who consumed the rest of our active players.  By the way, you may want to check our auction tab, you will see many good accounts there for a cheap price.

 

Now let’s cut that dramatic line and talk a bit about why is this happening. Before I start, let me first tell a bit about myself. I am quite familiar with game industry, in fact I’ve been working in it for more than 8 years, first on PC MMOs, now switched to mobile. I’ve seen lots of projects gone up and down, participated in a few developments and played a lot. My honest wish for Wurm is to rise and shine.

 

From my professional point of view, despite sandbox MMOs are all shine now, Wurm is like dinosaur in this new age. If it won’t evolve, it will die.

What is the core problem of Wurm? Basically, it’s because “Effort spend < Fun receivedâ€. By this I mean that in order to have fun you need to spend 3 times much effort. And since almost all content is limited, except for PvP, your fun eventually drops, but the effort stays almost constant.

 

Here is an example. In order to build a house, you have to spend 10 hours of your life. It is an enormous amount of time, if we compare it to modern games. Over time, this number will drop by 5 hours, but how much more fun will you get after your fourth and fifth house?  A good example of a game that utilizes building is (forgive me, Rolf) Minecraft. Building is fast there. And it’s fun. This was an example, I am not saying we should be all like Minecraft. Of cause, some players like it hardcore. Not many, but they do.

 

If we look into crafting, this “fun formula†will be even less balanced. In order to craft yourself equipment, you have to spend hundreds of hours. And how much fun will you get? Eventually zero. Rarity system makes it even worse, since at some point normal items are not seen as something worthy.

 

Now, when it comes to PvP in Wurm, it can be extremely fun. But it is rarely equal for both sides and occurs extremely rare. All because of the efforts you have to spend in order to replace your lost equipment. People prefer to sit in their castles, because the fun they may get (if they win) is much less than the risk. I've got a rare ada helmet, for example. And extremely good ada maul. Do you know how many times they have participated in PvP? Zero. In fact this have stopped me a few times from participating. 

 

Now, let’s talk about fixing this. All devs prefer to have simple solutions at the minimal cost, so I will propose the most simple solutions.

 

  1. Reduce timer for all actions by 3.

Speed up crafting by 3.

Eliminate rarity system. Alternatively, make some resource spawns rare (like rare iron ore) and all things produced from it should be of according rarity. Let them exhaust and respawn fast, so people will be constantly eager to look for them and control.

Make mid\high-end PvE content. It could be castles\garrisons with guards\human NPCs\goblins\whatever that can sometimes drop weapons\armor that is worth using.

Allow safe PvP. There should be a place where people can try fighting without risking their equipment. Arena or something. Where people can learn and have their fun.

Make PvP more meaningful. There should be things people want to fight over: resource spawns, monster spawns, i.e. important areas to control. It's just a general idea, as we all understand what this is about. We all can generate a ton of ideas.

Oh, and the last thing. There is but one hardcore sandbox game that survived everything and evolved. Eve online. Have a good look at it.

I hope Wurm will become another good example. Thanks for reading.

 

What games where you invovled in, and in what capacity?

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  1. Reduce timer for all actions by 3.
  2. Speed up crafting by 3.
  3. Eliminate rarity system. Alternatively, make some resource spawns rare (like rare iron ore) and all things produced from it should be of according rarity. Let them exhaust and respawn fast, so people will be constantly eager to look for them and control.
  4. Make mid\high-end PvE content. It could be castles\garrisons with guards\human NPCs\goblins\whatever that can sometimes drop weapons\armor that is worth using.
  5. Allow safe PvP. There should be a place where people can try fighting without risking their equipment. Arena or something. Where people can learn and have their fun.
  6. Make PvP more meaningful. There should be things people want to fight over: resource spawns, monster spawns, i.e. important areas to control. It's just a general idea, as we all understand what this is about. We all can generate a ton of ideas.

These, 6 excluded (thatone is actually decently good) are all horrible,

 

you are treating wurm as if it should cater to farmville players, but it shoudnt, its different and different people play it, i am active in handheld gaming circles, especially people who used to work for zynga, but left.

This attitude for "quick cash" and "dumbing down" is detrimental to the gaming industry, it does nothing but attract a billion fad players, and when everyone is tired of it they just quit and the servers are empty.

 

the ONLY reason people still play this game is because its very very hard to have done everything, built everything etc.

 

Pvp is , but how you suggest it would make it even more , the only thing that could help pvp in wurm on a short term basis is a large influx of new players and a large influx of new factions that can stand their own.

 

The reason bl is running dry is because a new server has new opportunities, plus we dont really have any kingdom opposition anymore, sure some local pvp recently at the hota handed us our asses, but on the server side we are dominating and if we are full force we can take on both kingdoms at once.

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