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Patch Notes 13/OCT/16

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18 hours ago, MisterTeddy said:

 

I think rather than just "fix" things like this, you should look into why people are doing it in the first place. People don't do this for weapon skill because it is fast enough to hunt legitimately. People abused certain methods of shield training without taking damage because shield skill increases very slowly, and sitting in a pen is actually faster than fighting and hunting. This should be looked into (ie. skill gain raised while hunting mobs, not just mechanics to prevent abuse). Positive incentive generally works better than penalty.

 

This x1000

 

As silly as it sounds, I remember a kids book read to my class when I was like 5 about how the sun and the wind made a bet with eachother that one could remove the coat off the back of a man walking down the road, and the other couldn't.

The wind tried blowing the coat off the man, but the man just held onto it and didnt let go no matter what, so the wind gave up.

Then the sun comes in and sweats the man out until the man takes his coat off, because he wanted to.

 

That's always stuck with me since I'm reminded of it in games, mostly wurm, time and time again. Developers should find out why players use an undesired method (pen training) and then boost the natural, favoured method (hunting shieldskill gains) they'd rather them use as oppose to just nerfing the undesired method. They were using that method because the natural way is hugely inefficient, so why not make it efficient in the first place?

You'd then see most players out hunting for skill instead of pen training without even having to change pen training at all. It'd be seen as a very positive update by the player base and everyone would be happy. Now, lots of people are unhappy and are instead waiting for whenever these combat skillgain boosts through natural PvE get added. It's left a bitter attitude to the whole situation.

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This game is to discouraging when it comes to leveling a characters skills i get on average 1.00 in 1 skill a day and now I do NOT want to play because I have to preform yet another task on my 3 toons while leveling. Its slowing down my 1 pt a day to the point i don't see me wanting to play. Its to much for to little it always has been with this game and now its worse.

 

Edited by Pwnin

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On 14/10/2016 at 3:08 AM, Propheteer said:

 

This makes it so frustrating based on the fact that after like 60 skill its an hour per skillpoint, you need 70 to be viable in pvp but most people shoot for 90.

 

Time to go back to encouraging new players to use exploits and alts to circumvent this change, because otherwise they will likely quit when they realize it will take them much more effort and time to catch up to the rest of the pvp population.

 

If you want to encourage people to not afk one of the slower grinds, maybe increase the skillgain for it instead?

 

 

Here we go again Devs. This effects people desire to pvp, which is already hurt. Even though you consider it a unattended play, you are yet again taking away something from the players and make it harder for new players. Do we need to say it all the time and you still don't get it. As stated above. If you want to encourage people to not afk one of the slower grinds, maybe increase the skillgain for it instead? 

 

Don't take things away with out some alternative. You just anger your playerbase.

Edited by Milosanx
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9 minutes ago, Milosanx said:

 

Here we go again Devs. This effects people desire to pvp, which is already hurt. Even though you consider it a unattended play, you are yet again taking away something from the players and make it harder for new players. Do we need to say it all the time and you still don't get it. As stated above. If you want to encourage people to not afk one of the slower grinds, maybe increase the skillgain for it instead? 

 

Don't take things away with out some alternative. You just anger your playerbase.

 

What if "angering the playerbase" didn't matter? Suppose the focus wasn't on what needs to be done to retain players but instead the focus was on how to limit the support impact required for players?

 

If you apply the focus lens with this in mind to recent decisions would that spark a decision path that could lead to what the WO direction seems to be lately?

 

- Fountain pan - keep them in, support impact - get rid of them. no more support impact beyond angry posts and a few people gone

- Hell horses change - original way, support impact from tickets when they unhitch - patch it out as is now the case, no more support impact beyond angry posts and a few people gone

- Shield training change - original way, I am guessing more effort to identify macroing/cheating/AFK stuff - new way, no more support impact beyond angry posts from the very people who are loudest in general on the forums and perhaps a few will leave

- Griefing deeds occur - support the griefer rather then the person griefed - less support impact since investigation requirements are little to non-existent

 

Think through more changes over the past year. If it's about keeping customers/players then I suspect different actions would be occurring then what we are seeing. If it's really about doing as little as possible to support players while taking their money, well this could be why.

 

Words don't really matter, it's the actions that reveal the reality.

 

~Nappy

 

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Well, let's take a small look at the examples you said.  We have such a small playerbase.  Each example has people leaving.  The last example has been running off people for years.  So that will continue as well.  How are they getting new players?  I'm sure some new ones come from time to time but enough to replace all the ones being run off?  No.  But guess when it is small enough then it will not matter which way anyone wants the game to go.

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26 minutes ago, Nappy said:

 

What if "angering the playerbase" didn't matter? Suppose the focus wasn't on what needs to be done to retain players but instead the focus was on how to limit the support impact required for players?

 

If you apply the focus lens with this in mind to recent decisions would that spark a decision path that could lead to what the WO direction seems to be lately?

 

- Fountain pan - keep them in, support impact - get rid of them. no more support impact beyond angry posts and a few people gone

- Hell horses change - original way, support impact from tickets when they unhitch - patch it out as is now the case, no more support impact beyond angry posts and a few people gone

- Shield training change - original way, I am guessing more effort to identify macroing/cheating/AFK stuff - new way, no more support impact beyond angry posts from the very people who are loudest in general on the forums and perhaps a few will leave

 

Good changes often result in less hands-on support being required. Turns out when mechanics are buggy or exploitable, more support is needed; who knew!

 

Really, all those changes you mentioned are good in the long term. Shield training sucks without the abusable methods that are now more explicitly banned/counteracted, but that's why they're also looking into ways to improve shield training such that you can increase it reliably without having to do that in the first place.

Edited by Ostentatio

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49 minutes ago, Ostentatio said:

 

Good changes often result in less hands-on support being required. Turns out when mechanics are buggy or exploitable, more support is needed; who knew!

 

Really, all those changes you mentioned are good in the long term. Shield training sucks without the abusable methods that are now more explicitly banned/counteracted, but that's why they're also looking into ways to improve shield training such that you can increase it reliably without having to do that in the first place.

Long term doesn't matter when enough get fed up, it's never personal until something you enjoy is effected, perhaps your enjoyment is in defending the game no matter what.

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I like improvements that take away the grind too, don't misunderstand me.

 

On WU I can't remember the last time I used the WO shield training methods to get skills up. Instead I hunt and it's far more enjoyable.

 

Same with most other skills, indeed it's the advantage of higher speed WU servers, you can actually just earn skill doing things instead of some of the crazy WO things you have to do instead.

 

Of course my point was that if the intent is to improve player retention as the main focus then delivering the changes would likely be done in a different way that is far less confrontational and provides a Win/Win for both staff and players.

 

~Nappy

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For me, I don't really care about shield skill, I don't play grinding skills. I actually care about this for others that have low to medium shield skill. People that have 90 in this used this way to level their skill, now they have theirs. For now, everyone else has the disadvantage. This is where it annoys me. "They got to do it this way, why can't I do it that way now too". Also, if there is going to be a better way coming, why not leave it in until it comes?

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6 hours ago, Milosanx said:

For me, I don't really care about shield skill, I don't play grinding skills. I actually care about this for others that have low to medium shield skill. People that have 90 in this used this way to level their skill, now they have theirs. For now, everyone else has the disadvantage. This is where it annoys me. "They got to do it this way, why can't I do it that way now too". Also, if there is going to be a better way coming, why not leave it in until it comes?

As has been stated before:

 

It was not explicitly removed, it was removed as a side effect of addressing an exploit being abused by players.

 

1.3 wiill come with an improved shield skill gain system that will work much better.

 

Again, afk shield grinding was not a desired mechanic, it was a symptom of shield skill being pretty difficult to grind, so instead of just bringing back a bad mechanic, our focus is on improving the base mechanics to make it easier to raise through active gameplay.

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1 hour ago, Retrograde said:

As has been stated before:

 

It was not explicitly removed, it was removed as a side effect of addressing an exploit being abused by players.

 

1.3 wiill come with an improved shield skill gain system that will work much better.

 

Again, afk shield grinding was not a desired mechanic, it was a symptom of shield skill being pretty difficult to grind, so instead of just bringing back a bad mechanic, our focus is on improving the base mechanics to make it easier to raise through active gameplay.

Why does the fix always follow the removal of what people have been doing for ages?

 

You make it sound like these methods ( bug, exploit, unintended, whatever you wish to call it ), just appeared, pen bashing has been in the game longer than some of the current dev team has played.

 

If this was always unintended, and all the future things you plan to remove as well, get off your ass and work on the fixes prior to just removing the things people use because it's become the normal way.

 

 

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3 hours ago, Kadore said:

Why does the fix always follow the removal of what people have been doing for ages?

 

You make it sound like these methods ( bug, exploit, unintended, whatever you wish to call it ), just appeared, pen bashing has been in the game longer than some of the current dev team has played.

 

If this was always unintended, and all the future things you plan to remove as well, get off your ass and work on the fixes prior to just removing the things people use because it's become the normal way.

 

 

 

It has been stated many multiple times now - the fix had nothing to do with shield training, it was just an unfortunate side-effect to fixing the actual exploit that some players were using for combat training in general. Nobody is saying that shield training using penned animals is an exploit.

 

Shield training using penned animals is still very much possible for the time being, it just requires switching to a different creature when you hit your cap of skillgain. We know this isn't ideal, and we know that shield training in general is a slow skill (which is why pen training is even a thing) - but it is not so much of an issue that makes us want to immediately revert the fix for the actual exploit just for the sake of slightly less annoying shield training for the next few weeks. The fix for the actual exploit was pushed through because there has been more of it cropping up very recently, causing a strain for GMs trying to track down those abusers - and once again the extra slight annoyance of having to switch creatures wasn't enough of a reason to push back the fix for a few weeks while we tested better ways of shield skillgain to happen.

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I have removed multiple posts from the start of this thread being created, There is no problem with constructive feedback good or bad but any posts that go over the top or are a breach of forum rules will be removed, And dealt with by the forum moderation team if required.

 

Regards

Shakys (Forum Moderator)

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Just to clarify.

 

All feedback is passed on to the developer team, this includes hidden posts.

 

At this point we're coming full circle, the exploit has been fixed, this has affected shield skill tactics. This won't be reverted, instead we will have an improved system coming with the 1.3 update in November.

 

I'm locking this thread as there's no point to allow it to continue.

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