elentari

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Everything posted by elentari

  1. Not worth the effort most of the time and they feel like a "hidden lootbox" mechanic with just enough gray area to not be defined as a loot box. Getting one = gated by RNG. Getting few steps = more RNG. Getting good loot? Even more RNG.
  2. Have to confirm I've been fed up with many wurm sounds for years to the point where I've played for the past 6-7 years without sound. I used to like the old soundtrack but the new one just seems too sedated for me to even bother, feels more like public asset music but that's just me. Also some sounds are annoying, specially the combat sounds are just too damn loud and grating. In combat we range from complete silence to awful animal and bestial screams to dead silence again, it's jarring as heck. Can subscribe to the portcullis issue as well, as someone who had a deed on Epic with doors, fences, houses, portcullises, the sounds adding up in 15 seconds from travelling through them can really get on your nerves, specially when the background is just windy steppe. One issue I think is the lack of audio balance, as in audio is not balanced to be in the background and instead it's just too damn loud in the forefront. I would actually make a poll after this to see how many people play wurm with sounds off. I want to note one thing, I don't mind the sounds themselves, I think they are alright, the issue is their frequency that piles up in a short amount of time and creates a disjointed cacophony. Here's an example of what I find to be a masterclass in audio design, how perfectly balanced the forest sounds are with the soundtrack, character footsteps and general ambiance. Birds singing, sheep bleating, a rooster crowing, the lapping of waves near the sea, windy sounds near the mountains, an owl's hoot at night, the creaking of a rope bridge, it's basically a chef's kiss from me. It's something that I sometimes just put on youtube when playing wurm and makes me feel more immersed than any of wurms audio designs.
  3. Doesn't mean that TOO MUCH RNG is a good thing. I had 50 gardening by watering plants way before they introduced trelises and imping them for skill. You know how I felt when they introduced them? Happy. I was happy players wouldn't have to waste hours of their life watering plants to gain skill in gardening. Same thing for meditation. Not only do we wait a long time for a tick, but there's also no guaranteed chance you get any. I'm at 70 med atm and it's basically a 50/50 chance for me to get a tick every time I med and I hate it. Meditation paths are strong when you hit 70 and unlock their abilities but past 70? Their rewards are dubiously useful. Recall home is a nice feature but not that amazing, you can always karma home too. People act like meditation gives you these uber abilities, it's just some small buffs. The only big difference is path of insanity / power for pvp and path of knowledge for grinding. But having RNG to get skillgain every 30 minutes a limited times per day is way worse than having RNG when imping horse shoes due to the number of actions available. And yeah, drcheese said it best, how is meditation even engaging to players? There's a reason most players I've known really hate it because it's just another AFK skill. Wurm has TOO MANY afk skills or afk actions that take away the attention of the player from the game, which in game design terms is actually a cardinal sin. You want the player engaged not leaving the screen. It's like I would write a book that would make a reader skip chapters. Would that be considered a good book? And why a 2 minute timer? Suggestion : 1. Either always give a skill tick when meditating or 2. Keep the RNG as is but reduce the med timer to 10 seconds because let's face it...2 minutes is an absurd and needless timer that makes the player not engage with the game.
  4. I think the issue is on two mechanics as people have previously pointed out, namely : RMT + lots of private groups selling their scale / drake for high prices. Back when we had RMT the following phenomenon happened : Player Mike decides to quit so he sells his drake set, drake pieces or scales for euros / dollars to Bob. Thus the resource remains in circulation and does not become a scarce resource. Mike gets 50 dollars or whatever he asks for and the value of said drake / scale remains virtually unchanged. Now multiply this transaction between Mike / Bob a thousand times over a period of 10 years or so and you basically just have more scales / hides remaining in the game. Then RMT gets removed so when Mike now quits the game he either donates his stuff to a friend or he simply quits with his scale / drake either to never return again or maybe he will return in a few years time. In any case , that resource is now taken out of the economy, with no potential to be traded anywhere since Mike doesn't want to risk a ban. Thus we have a resource now that's even more scarce. Then we add the public hunts, which people have pointed out, you basically get a 0.01 reward, something a lot of people don't necessarily bother with, or just those with 10-20 alts since they benefit more from the mechanic. Add to that the controversial private slaying issues people have been hammering on for a decade and you have a situation where private groups dictate prices and wealthy players that can afford a lot of alts invariably dilute the drop rates for everyone else in public slayings. Is the current price of a dragon scale or drake hide armor justified? In my opinion no. I still believe we need more ways to acquire scales and hide besides the endless unique drama and threads that pop up every three months or so like clockwork. RL inflation shouldn't play into it unless people are selling the silvers they get from selling scale / hide on the black market, aka for RL cash. If that is the case, then a few unsavory individuals are ruining an entire aspect of wurm's high end economy, but that's just speculation on my part. Although considering how many shady people have been banned in wurm over the years over stuff that just boggles the mind, I wouldn't be surprised at this point.
  5. Being on various forums for the past 20 years, stuff like this is exactly done and gives the feeling that it's easier to ignore feedback when it's moved to other parts of the forums this way. Personally don't like the change. Feedback was always given there and it was a standard. Again we have no proof that the previous discussion on the patch thread turned "uncivilized" since it was locked and deleted. Also, I''ve been on the wurm forums for the past 10 years or so and can tell you, the section of "suggestions and ideas" is usually the one that's ignored the most. That's all I got to say. Not sure if I'll bother giving any more feedback in the future after this.
  6. The closed thread was the right place for a few reasons: A) It was an update thread and those tend to be looked at by a lot of wurmians thus having more visibility for conversation. B ) Historically speaking the suggestions forums are filled with threads and staff rarely comment on them. C) The thread had some engagement going and people were leaving feedback which is what you really want in the end from your playerbase. Feedback won't always be positive and that's ok.
  7. Not certain where it was getting out of hand. But imho it's a heavy handed approach that all but destroys any form of conversation and feedback. If some players post offensive things, then it's up to the forum mods to delete said posts and issue them a warning. But locking an entire thread? That's too much in my opinion.
  8. I don't mind it to be fair. Would start feeling the benefits sooner before hitting lvl 11. As for "get info" yes please rework that. It's an absolutely useless ability right now compared to path of love or others.
  9. Actually there is. It's defined by a general theme of a world presented in a believable way. if for example I write a story set in 16th century France about noblemen and mercenaries , then after 400 pages of established descriptions of medieval / nobility life, traditions, dishes, habits, social mores, laws, armors, weaponry, castle and architecture descriptions, heraldry and all that I suddenly add a T-34 Russian tank that just kills the local butcher (who was the main character) and end the story on page 410 then that's a crappy story. If I don't hint to the reader what's about to happen, that time travel is a thing or whatever then I just committed a literary sin, namely to create a believeable world, also rarely known as the aletheic principle in literature. Another example would be randomly adding laser pistols in Ghosts of Tsushima, which by the freaking way, has one of the most accurate historical representations of medieval Japan , both aesthetically and culturally. Let me ask you this, would you feel ok if we added laser pistols in that game? Would it feel right? Would it make sense? Would it not break the immersion? Immersion exists, it's literally one of the goals of any artist in the world to create an immersive experience whether we talk about music (the listener being enraptured by a song) , whether we talk about books - the reader using all his imagination and believing the story he is reading is true, whether we talk about video games - where an experience is greater than the sum of its parts. One of the best horror games ever made was Amnesia The dark Descent. Why was it an immersive experience? Because the devs put a lot of love and care in designing the world but also the audio feedback to the player. The creaking of floorboards, the scuttering of insects in a corner, the panicked breathing of the character, the grinding of teeth, the pattering of rain on broken windows, the wind howling through the trees or through open corridors, all of those things accumulated in an immersive horror experience. Immersion exists. Just because we don't measure it in liters or decimeters, or whatever simple metric you want, it exists and it's one of the reasons some games are insanely succesful like Alien Isolation who carefully replicated the technology and world of the first movie.
  10. I've said what I wanted to say many times on the subject, I don't like the direction the design is going and it's going into clown territory. And arguments like "it's a game, it doesn't matter" are the most shallow and pointless arguments to be made. Any game is designed as an experience and when players have expectations of an experience any betrayal of that leads to player loss in the long run. Sure you can chase short term profit with cutesy item skins but you'll end up sacrificing long term growth. People hated Gothic 3 when they saw it had almost nothing in common with its predecessors. People hate the recent Settlers game for how dumbed down and shallow it is. C&C Tiberium Twilight and later games were a farcry from the design of the original games and reviews show it for what it is, just another quick cashgrab riding on the coat-tails of a well known franchise. Speaking of reminds me of the goof Blizzard did at their convention with announcing Diablo on mobile in front of an entire PC playing fanbase who were expecting a PC game. Do you guys not have phones? Also games are a business and losing fandom trust is a hard thing to repair. The best compromise the dev team can do to solve this issue is to implement an option to "turn off visibility of item skins" so players aren't forced to look at a gaudy, clashy clown show. (As a side note I'll also point out that one of the worst companies in the world, Gamigo has an interesting business model. They buyout MMO active IP's with low-medium player base, they introduce excessive monetization, hundreds of (ugly) skins for a quick cash grab, then let the MMO naturally die or they close it down when it no longer is profitable. Rinse, repeat, etc. Not saying Wurm Online is currently owned by Gamigo, but if it ever is, you can stop wurming in that point. )
  11. As a vyn follower that went to both wellsprings of knowledge and akashic mirrors I can say it's not worth the bother at all. Kinda sad that vyn content for this holy sites thing is pointless, so far the content is meaningless for me. Too much effort to babysit a holy site for a supposed buff that's not properly explained.
  12. Not sure, but I am leaning towards either a rarity bug now or a stealth nerf to the system , or maybe the entire system was rework to prevent old "exploits" with people using the rarity spamming system maybe. In any case, rarity now is...well more than rare. I am getting random rare cherries as I pick em but no MOI's on praying, farming, mining for a while now.
  13. Haven't gotten a new map in a couple of months despite mining, fishing and praying on my alt. So how often would I use this content? Assuming I ever get access to it of course. And no, not a fan of buying maps, it's RNG on top of RNG, on top of some more RNG , on top of more casino RNG...yeah, content.... ( makes contemptuous gestures at the whole system )
  14. I think one common pet peeve, not sure if it was mentioned or not is to fix server crossings. Too many gms receive what, hundreds of tickets per year with lost boats? This really needs to be fixed. While we're on the topic, I remember the first thing I made in wurm was a raft to explore the surrounding coastline. Lo and behold my surprise when the raft was nothing more than a container. It either needs to be renamed or removed since it gives the wrong impression for people looking to make a boat.
  15. Would be nice if we had something like in game tourist attractions for each server, maybe a server board to see "interesting locations " in wurm for people. Otherwise you'd have to rely a lot of personal advertising.
  16. [14:27:46] A mystical fountain whose waters quench curiosity as well as thirst. It has a benevolent aura. Power: 100.0, Corruption: 0.0. Managed to max out the vynora well spring on release. The buff it gives seems profoundly underwhelming + there is no explanation to it how it actually works. The description in status effect is "slight increase in rarity when improving" but what does it actually translate to? What is a 100 power buff from it? 1% chance? 10% ? 25%? Does the rarity buff for imping also affect affinity chance ? Is it valid for any types of items improved? Is it just for vyn followers or? The mobs it spawns are just aquatic mobs so I guess for those that want a champ dolphin it's nice.
  17. Hmm i think the purification still needs to be amped up a bit. [20:39:59] <Elentari> [20:39:50] A mystical fountain whose waters quench curiosity as well as thirst. It has a benevolent aura. Power: 1.0, Corruption: 47.682175. Before first purification. [21:04:08] <Elentari> [21:01:24] A mystical fountain whose waters quench curiosity as well as thirst. It has a benevolent aura. Power: 2.8483868, Corruption: 46.926968. After the first. [21:04:19] <Elentari> [21:04:15] A mystical fountain whose waters quench curiosity as well as thirst. It has a benevolent aura. Power: 2.8483868, Corruption: 46.257664. After the 2nd purification. Toon is a 53 exorcism , still seems a bit low, I'd increase the purification tick size by 3 times from what it is now at least.
  18. Aye... if this is true then why bother tying it to exo skill if it's so RNG? As was said before we need an increase in the purification size. Also holy sites need to be redesigned so they don't need a high number of people. Simply put a holy site should be accessible even to a solo player. At the moment it's not. Not everyone for example is a lib priest or follower so I imagine those sites will probably have fewer attendants.
  19. Also wanna add, that as a design choice, the assumptions of # of players actually attending holy sites is wrong. If you assume 20-30 or more players will be at holy sites then you are wrong. I've been to 3 sites so far and all of them had a max of 5 players just checking them out of curiosity. The idea that we "improve" the holy site ql by praying is pointless for 2 reasons. #1 The improvement tick for holy sites if laughably low. An improvement of 0.5 ql with 4-5 player around means that altar will be gaining maybe 2 pts every 30 minutes assuming they all coordinate. (this is another wrong assumption) This in turn will lead to people leaving the holy site once they realise that the buffs they get is tied to holy site ql. Example : A wellspring of vynora on release is around 15 ql now. An imbibe action gives a 7 minute buff to rarity / affinity while doing imping actions near the holy site. The 7 minute buff is ridiculously low and wears off fast then you need to wait 30 minutes until you imbibe again. If the holy site was around 60 ql then the buff would've been around 30 minutes, well worth the trip then. But we can't get to a 60 ql holy sites due to A) Not enough people going there to pray and B ) Not enough people there to cleanse corruption. #2 Corruption mechanics as they are are in my previous post. Simply put the math here is all wrong and we cannot cleanse corruption fast enough. Not to mention people will not login to afk for 1 hour and then do a "timed" purify action with a long cool down. This type of gameplay encourage people to simply close wurm not to engage with the game. If you want to make holy sites engaging make it so corruption is cleansed faster with higher ticks of removing damage and larger ticks of increasing its ql faster so people actually have a real gameplay reason to visit them. No one is gonna bother sticking around at a holy site when they understand how the math works against : any form of fun, any form of motivation to visit one, the buffs are laughably low, the corruption is horribly skewed and the lack of timers for purification, holy site improvement and action to use altar, for example imbibe or gaze. All in all, holy sites as they are now designed are based on too many flawed assumptions and those need to be fixed for holy sites to be a viable content. As they are no one will bother using them since corruption is too much and the imp for holy sites is too low. Tldr : wurm doesn't have 10 000 players visiting holy sites so fix the math so they can work for a low number of players.
  20. Tried purifying a vyn wellspring of knowledge on release shorly after it got corrupted. Had 18 corruption. Purifying with a 1 exorcism priest gave this : [18:08:20] <Rivenwind> [18:07:57] Malignant energies overrun you, causing (INVALID ENCHANTMENT, REPORT THIS AS A BUG!).
  21. with the risk of reposting (i also posted on the patch notes for 7 march but in case it wasn't seen there) "So here's the math I am seeing and this really needs to be fixed asap. It seems that if you have 50 exo you basically fix 0.5 dmg or corruption, however you want to call it. Let's ask a question...how many players in wurm actually have this skill over 50? https://www.wurmnode.com/skill/Exorcism Bout ...3.... Let's assume some chaos boys have some pts in exorcism too so maybe 5-6 people in the playerbase have mediocre exorcism skill. Taking this math into account it would take all of the players with the highest exorcism skill in the game to work and coordinate perfectly just to reduce corruption to zero assuming they'd be tied to that altar for around 12-18 hours in a single day. We really need a rework for exorcism and how much corruption it cleanses. Exorcism is actually one of the worst skills to grind , evidenced by the fact that no one has ever bothered to skill it. If you really want to use exorcism to cleanse altars, at lease multiply the repair / purification tick by at least 10x or 20 x. The playerbase doesn't have exorcism, no one has it except for a literal handful of players."
  22. Instance the tutorial so the instance is reset and make it more interactive and less text heavy as people have suggested. The current tutorial almost has zero interactivity. The fact that the "combat" section is a joke with a sign saying something like "gone on vacation" (unprofessional if you ask me) makes me wonder why it was put there in the first place if nothing teaches a player how to fight. Wurm's combat is clunky and archaic. In 2023, auto combat is not really an intuitive thing in an MMO. Especially auto combat with long text feedback. 99% of games give you a damage number for a reason guys. It's easier to read "You do 37 damage" than "You maul venerable fat hell scorpius deadly hard in the head and damage it". Quality of life? Add numbers to wurm? Have players learn the basic stuff, including combat against simple mobs so they understand what they're doing. We have journal goals for beginners like "Basic : Nature" or "Basic : Carpentry" but we have nothing related to combat. There are a lot of things to say about the tutorial but the gist of it is that it needs to be interactive, less text, has to cover a new person's experience with the game (not a vet) , needs to offer follow up info after the tutorial is done and for pete's sake rework corpse runs for new players so they don't end up quitting after their 3rd death.
  23. So here's the math I am seeing and this really needs to be fixed asap. It seems that if you have 50 exo you basically fix 0.5 dmg or corruption, however you want to call it. Let's ask a question...how many players in wurm actually have this skill over 50? https://www.wurmnode.com/skill/Exorcism Bout ...3.... Let's assume some chaos boys have some pts in exorcism too so maybe 5-6 people in the playerbase have mediocre exorcism skill. Taking this math into account it would take all of the players with the highest exorcism skill in the game to work and coordinate perfectly just to reduce corruption to zero assuming they'd be tied to that altar for around 12-18 hours in a single day. We really need a rework for exorcism and how much corruption it cleanses. Exorcism is actually one of the worst skills to grind , evidenced by the fact that no one has ever bothered to skill it. If you really want to use exorcism to cleanse altars, at lease multiply the repair / purification tick by at least 10x or 20 x. The playerbase doesn't have exorcism, no one has it except for a literal handful of players.
  24. Even when we do purify, no one really has any exo skill to do it and the damage repaired is like 0.01 or 0.02. When the corruption is 30 dmg it's really mathematically impossible to actually purify a holy site. Purification needs to be changed and increased x10. Agreed this seems to be a weird mechanic.