Kuwani

You need to lure a troll under your bridge and pen it there for proper completeness.

The visualization helps. I still not sure I like it, but I'm also not sure its reason enough to keep me from trying out things on the other side of the fence some time, thanks.

Can you explain this a bit? I admittedly know little about the curve other than it exists from the little bit of information I've heard and what is on the wiki. Its possible I just don't like it because I don't understand how it functions in action. My knee jerk reactions is one of why would I want something that makes skill gains easier when one of the core pillars of Wurm is slow skill progression? I'm one of those players that would rather slowly work up their own skills and produce their own things rather than buying from someone who has already put in the time. Back to the question at hand, is this difficultly in advancement because you simply succeed more as you advance making it more difficult to do something of the appropriate difficulty to gain skill? That would make some sense, but it seems like it would flatten the top out a bit since you don't need to get as high to produce good QL things which makes me wonder if specialization is worth it after awhile or if it makes more sense to spread out after reaching a particular skill level.

These are interesting reads, thanks for doing them. I've always considered trying out things on the PvP side of the fence, but one of the main reasons I play Wurm is the extremely slow pace of skill progression so I've always found the curve over there to be a turn off.

I'm enjoying watching these. Its nice to see a current let's play starting from newbie status that's current. The longer format is better and the two person banter helps keep it interesting even when there isn't a whole lot going on.

Incoming wall of text, so TL:DR - I'd be on board with this and I've got some where between $1,000 - $10,000 waiting for that sort of project because it could be closer to my ideal game than Wurm currently is and that's already fairly close. I've played Wurm on four separate occasions now. Normally I only last a couple of months before I burn out. That's mostly because I get bored playing alone. I'm 3/20 on getting people into Wurm so its not for a lack of trying, but a lot of people can't really get into it or burn out far quicker than I do. So why is this? Well the most common complaints I've gotten are the clunky UI, dated graphics, boring combat, slow pace, ease of survival, and lack of automation. I'm not going to address all of those because some of those are the things make Wurm what it is. So let's look at the complaints. First the UI, yeah it feels old with lots of menus and sub menus. If I had a copper for every time I heard someone equipped a tool to use it rather than setting it to active I could deed a whole server. Its not horrible, its just old and not very intuitive. If you can't figure out how to do basic things like using your ax to cut down a tree you're likely not going to hang around long. How do we fix that? Well for this particular example perhaps an active tool box of some sort so that 'current using' a tool is more intuitive. Something you just drag a tool into or perhaps presetting the tool belt in some more prominent fashion. They're equipping tools, putting that tool in their hands because it makes sense. If it needs to be set to active some other way it should be obvious. On a related note key binds should be easier to find and set. Some sort of modern key binding UI would do wonders because I don't know anyone that wants to spend time navigating to find the action they're looking for. Next the graphics. They're not bad, but let's face it they are dated compared to what people are use to and yes, I get it there are a whole lot of individual objects and a non-static landscape. There is a ton of data to push around and store so server power is being used elsewhere. What is going on is impressive, but a new player can't see it and likely doesn't care. Since perception is reality for the most part its going to be counted as a strike against the game warranted or not. This one is harder to fix and all you can really do is inform people why there aren't shiny visuals. I will say the object remodeling that has been going on does help some, but in the end this is a trap of more realistic leaning graphics in that they don't age as well as something more stylized. I suppose one could look at a new engine, but most of them out of the box aren't going to support the sandbox elements Wurm has going. Most of their customers aren't looking for that. It doesn't mean those engines couldn't be made to support things like terraforming and individual object rendering/data tracking its just a question of what it takes to get there and if you get there is it going to be efficient. On to combat. Most people I've introduced to Wurm find combat to be pretty dry, almost like dice rolling than anything else. It feels like you're watching it rather than taking part in it which is completely different from the feeling after completing a big project where it feels like -you- did that. There's a sense of agency missing like my actions don't matter beyond the basic setup. Here too, yes I realize you can aim for body parts and wounds in particular areas have effects, but it feels more like RTS combat than RPG combat where you're just issuing orders rather than in it. If that's good or bad is up to individual view points, but it feels different. I'll be honest in that I like action combat, but I don't think it would work well in Wurm so I'm not completely sure how to deal with this one without it going into the realm of twitch style combat. Some sort of active block/parry might help, but I don't foresee crazy over the top abilities coming into the picture. As for ease of survival? Let's face it, staying alive in Wurm is painfully easy most of the time. Food and water aren't hard to come by unless you choose to live an hour walk in land. Monsters are fairly easy to escape from so long as you're not trying to carry a whole tree in your pocket. With that said I should say this is PvE server view and while I know there are more threatening monsters on the PvP servers I don't know how much more difficult they are to simply avoid. Again here this is some what open to personal taste if this is good or not, but risk can add something to the game. As far as the environment goes its pretty easy to overcome. What I would like to see here is something I would call developmental draw. The more developed an area it is the more likely monsters are to spawn or move in that direction. Simple example, if you're a lone farm house with a couple of cows it should be more likely to draw wolves to prey on the livestock. It wouldn't make sense for trolls or bandits to show up because its not worth their time to raid a single farm house, but a village is a different story. Basically the more you have the larger things are that come to try and take it. This would help counter act their being ever lower risk the more developed you get. Or at least properly shift the threats to some sensible direction. The last two are a bit tricky. The slow pace we're not going to get away from and I don't think most of us, myself included would want to, but its something that comes up so I feel I should at least mention it in passing. I've noticed there is quite a large player base in Europe. Perhaps its more common to find people who don't need instant gratification over there than here in the US. It might just be different localized tastes paired with my personal sample of prospective players. Automation is a more interesting one to talk about. I'm not sure how many people would welcome it, but it does have some limited if controversial place and limited automation could work in fitting with the theme. Things that could run off of wind/animal (I would include water, but no real rivers) power to say mill grain on a larger scale or perhaps even a sawmill of sorts. One could think of them a bit like boats in terms of the number of parts, but buildings you setup to fill particular useful tasks. I'd also like to see progressive tiers in there where you have to say build a basic forge to get an advanced forge that then allows you to work something large enough to be made into say a sawmill blade. This isn't an exhaustive list and some of it is the opinion of a small sample, but they're weak points that could stand to be addressed in a Wurm 2. I would love to see a second ground up stab at Wurm because its a fun game and as close to my ideal game as I've found. Its just a game that's fairly entrenched and might be difficult to make changes inside of the existing system. Anyway, my wallet is ready for this if it ever came to be. To close I am interested in know what others think the weak points are and how to address them. There aren't tons of us and I don't know how much capital would be there to crowd fund something like a Wurm 2, but I think it would be foolish to keep a complete rebuild out of the discussion. It might be out of reach, but the process could be useful.

Docks are a great idea, I would love to avoid all the land filling I have to do for some semblance of docks as it stands.

Mildly amused everyone is still west of me, but thanks for the replies so far. I'm mostly looking for the group closest to me and so far that looks like the Green Dragon Alliance. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised there's a bit of distance to travel given the scale of things on this server and the fact the coastal slopes where I live are steep and bare rock.

Once upon a time it wasn't a complete ghost town where I lived, but since I came back to my old deed I've seen all of three people in two months. Are there any alliances in the south east that I might join up with for a little bit of a wider range of local chatter? My deed Talmaria is located at P/Q 24.

I'm also down in the south east and its pretty much a dead zone. The first week there were a couple of critters about, but since then? I see maybe one hostile a week around my area, much less deed if I'm lucky. Its quite the disappointment as I was hoping a new server with vast tracks of untamed land would mean more survival struggle of things trying to eat me not less.

Fencing is an interesting if it works, but since this is off deed and trying to keep trees out rather than in that would be quite the project. I thought of the steppe tile option as I'm pretty sure a tree can't seed there, but I'm not sure if steppe can convert grass or just dirt. I wouldn't want steppe moving into my deed either.

Wow ten tiles huh? That's pretty nuts. I was hoping it was like two or three, maybe five at the worst. I guess I'll be going with oaks long term and in the near term clear cutting everything.

A little bit of visual variety for our bovines would be nice. I'm not sure how much sense it would make for bison, but commons cows definitely

Hrm, I suppose I could do oaks over time as that would be mostly open grass and not block line of sight too much. I don't have that many oak sprouts right so its sounds like deforestation is in the cards for this weekend.

Its not on my deed and I would rather not turn it into lawn as well its an ugly tile in my opinion. Its my perimeter and I would like to keep it free of the pines around me. I could clear cut the forest around me I guess, but I would rather manage it without deforesting the whole peninsula I live on.