Nappy
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Posts posted by Nappy
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17 hours ago, Radni said:The difference now is that it's much easier to discover the game. It's out there on steam. The game being on steam increases discoverability of Wurm by 10x at least.
You raise a good point although WU has been on Steam since Nov 2015 I think.
My focus is more on the retention aspect. In WU at least a lot of people seemed to disappear after building their first house or getting a deed started. That was usually less then 90 days for most.
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I am waiting to see the actual numbers on the new servers at the 90 days post launch point. Based on observations in WU that's where many people are usually past the initial "build a house/first deed" stage in Wurm. Retention usually becomes a problem at that point.
The new cluster hasn't reached that time point yet.
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As someone who leads teams development teams professionally there are many considerations around how to meet a "date". Sometimes it involves cutting/changing features so you aren't necessarily wrong.
I think the human complexities this time around will quickly over ride the importance of meeting this particular date. Hopefully I am wrong and everyone pulls through fine.
~Nappy
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I suspect you haven't taken into account at least some of the following:
1) People working from home can still become ill or have a need to take care of sick family members
2) While many teams work from home (I lead cross-continental teams) the scale of how many people are working from home is likely to be several orders of magnitude above normal operation for the internet. It will not surprise me to find the internet overwhelmed or very slow performing
3) Video solutions like Zoom, Skype etc are likely to have performance problems as the number of people using their services increases significantly (where before 8 people may have been in a meeting room together, now it's 8 separate sessions for example)
4) Working remotely effectively takes some practice. If the dev teams don't already work remotely then just the act of working remotely will have a learning curve if the team wants to be high performing. Of course the other 3 points are likely to have significant impact on this anyway.
While people have worked from home on an ever increasing scale the change we are going through is much bigger then anyone has likely really planned for when planning their infrastructure. This, coupled with illness, is likely going to have a massive impact.
On top of all of that, think about economic disruption. Factories shut down, people can't go out to shop, delivery services are likely to be curtailed all of which means companies aren't making money to use to pay people. People aren't making money. Net result = very dangerous times ahead and at least for me, Wurm shipping to steam ontime is likely a luxury concern. I would rather people keep themselves safe and healthy. Wurm can come later.
~Nappy
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"Chariots had lost their military importance by the 1st century AD" - Quoted from Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot
However then it got interesting later on -
"It was especially useful during the Hussite Wars, ca. 1420, by Hussite forces rebelling in Bohemia. Groups of them could form defensive works, but they also were used as hardpoints for Hussite formations or as firepower in pincer movements. This early use of gunpowder and innovative tactics helped a largely peasant infantry stave off attacks by the Holy Roman Empire's larger forces of mounted knights"
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9 minutes ago, Noevi said:It's a difficult topic because I feel like as a current player what is good for me and what is good for the game does not align.
If it's successful maybe we can hope to get a transfer over to the greener pastures after a few years like the epic guys got.
All I know is I'm not grinding body stats and buying 100s of euros of sleep powders again.I feel your pain. I used to spend tons of time playing this game, grinding skills and trying to figure out how the game worked. Despite the grinding there were alot of fun times.
It makes me sad to see where the game is today. The biggest motivation behind my comments is actually a strong hope that the game will improve and hope that maybe, my comments, will spur our current team to think about wider issues and how to get to a successful finish line without completely destroying what made this game, it's community.
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re" "From a PvPer perspective, why go roll against old accounts when you can fight the ones at your own level? "
You raise a good point here as well. Back when I first went to Epic I started playing on my usual freedom accounts (this was back when going to Epic was a fresh start, no skills transferred in). After awhile I realized how long it was going to take to catch up to the accounts with years and years of grinding that were ahead of me. I purchased a new main and used it mainly on Epic.
Of course they did the same thing, repeated their Release/Pristine mistake on Epic when they made a one way skill transfer from epic to freedom but allowed freedom to continue to transfer skills into Epic. This ultimately resulted in first the "why live on Epic when nothing counts compared to living on freedom where skills increment and travel to epic" dropping population to the point where they can safely ignore an entire cluster that's basically on life support.
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I think the mistake they made with Release and Pristine was connecting them to the freedom cluster. Keeping them separate would have allowed for a clear skill development path for new players. Instead they did what you said, made the release/pristine player skills useless when they allowed the old ones in. Hopefully they learned from this huge error.
Their better course of action would have been to open another cluster later and allow fresh starts with no option to later connect it to existing clusters etc. This would have kept the game fresher.
I agree with you on the Steam WO, why come to old WO when your life could be so much better and competitive on Steam WO?
Of course, no one has stated that the Steam WO will have same skill and action timers as current WO either. Perhaps they will do a 3 - 5x instead on steam WO. Would very quickly allow people to ramp up.
One clear message that seems to be happening lately is less requirement to make changes the veterans support. It appears they are now looking bigger picture in terms of how to get new people.
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19 minutes ago, Noevi said:I doubt the hopes are for the current WO players. But they are more likely to be willing to spend sure, most of them are already payers. Getting someone that paid once to pay again is orders of magnitude more likely than a completely new player. I think steam launch is hoping to bring in new players, not just get a quick buck out of the current dwindling playerbase.
I don't disagree with you about the need to go bigger in terms of population. They need to escape the constant dwindling of the WO veterans. I doubt their current population numbers are sufficient for their current costs so that means they need new blood.
However, it costs money to experiment by moving to Steam. If they can make more money from people currently on WO + former WO veterans moving to steam then the cost of the experiment becomes less, especially by limiting shorter trials and the cost of referrals when they are used. 1,000 might seem to be a large number when compared against current population. It's actually a very small and conservative number when compared to the 5,000 - 6,000 population we had in previous years.
Additional new players would just make this even better from a success viewpoint especially since I believe the critical test is server populations following the 60 - 90 day time period. That seems to be the critical time point in WU and other recently updated WO servers.Declaring victory before that time point will be premature in my opinion.
So let's look at their possible strategy so far:
- Bring back some players
- Get current WO players to try the steam WO
- Get rid of legal character transfer (makes it more possible for new players to compete even on older servers of course on old WO the next logical step would be a skill reset so everyone starts fresh)
- Reduce/remove money pay-outs (currently in form of traders but could be more coming)
- Increase revenue earned from prem
- Get rid of premium related payouts (like referrals)
- Force people to purchase silver from WO only (especially on Steam where silver will likely be limited)
- Keep the current focus on need to have multiple characters (meaning premiums) in order to have access to the game
- Do something to further increase the deed costs while being able to point to trader purchase as a way to reduce costs over time (otherwise why have traders anymore)? Simple possible change? Make deeds that pay 1s pay 2s. Basically create a "curve" that increases costs on the lower end where most deeds reside. At the higher end less curve impact plus use of traders as well.
All that remains is the clear set of features that enhance Steam WO far beyond Wurm WO at which point population starts shifting big time to Steam WO. With enough time, "Unfortunately old WO servers don't have sufficient population to support them. With the overwhelming success of Steam WO the decision has been made to close the old servers and focus entirely on Steam WO. Players wishing to transfer from old WO can apply for two complementary sleep powders when they move to Steam WO after disbanding their old WO deeds)".
Could this be a bad prophecy? Sure. It could also be a correct one. Only time will tell.
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Let's say 1000 current WO players go to Steam to try it out. If you were the owner of the game would you rather have them pay upfront for 2 weeks or 2 months? What impact does it have on bottom line especially if you also don't have them giving out referrals?
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I think less emphasis on existing population and more on future steam population might change how people are considering the changes.
Think about it. Every new steam player will be a new account. Every single one of them now do not have the 2s option to prem on Wurm. Instead they have to pay more for more time as a prem char on Wurm. Wurm makes more money....
Also, every single veteran who plays on Steam also needs a new account. Again pay more to try it out as a prem.
Next to that pile of money impact on existing players in existing WO is likely not a major concern.
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Two possibilities to consider:
1) Would it be possible to specify a range based on map coords (for example from x1,y1 to x5589,y9232). This would make it possible to make changes to specific areas of map
2) Could you extend this to an equivalent functionality for ores? If this was possible then in combination with #1 it would become very easy to do some regional type spawning of ores.
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Would you consider adding an option for random growth? Sometimes a tile would stay at current growth level rather then progress for one round. With time this could make harvesting happen not all at once for an entire field.
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7 hours ago, Zenity said:There is a difference between challenging the King for the leadership position, and using the a Kingmaker NPC’s like The Lady of the Lake, or Cobra King, I’ve never used the duel ring to fight for the leadership, but I assume the player would have to actually turn up to be challenged in that case, since challenging is a one on one battle between the two rivals for the position.
A king can choose to abdicate, leaving the rest of the kingdom without a king until a new one is chosen by visiting the appropriate NPC and taking the test, or be force abdicated by not logging in for a certain period, or by direct challenge from another player, of the three, abdication and challenge require the king to be logged in, only forced abdication doesn’t, but that means another player must be chosen by the kingmaker NPC.
It can be forced by database edit of course, but that may lead to unexpected consequences, I’d consider that a last resort if there’s no other way. It might be possible to edit the absent player’s password to allow another player to log in for them, by copying an existing player password into the field, then they can abdicate or lose the challenge in the absent player’s place, but use that with caution as well. (No, we don’t actually use passwords in WU, but the field still exists and is unique to a players Steam ID).
I had to do this exact process (editing password) back on one of my servers around 2 years ago. Worked at the time.
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Well it fits the scenario of "About to steal me a new trader". Happened to me. Even though the trader can't be moved by the owner nor can the new deed be challenged in anyway. A support request will result in you being told that it's intended behavior to allow someone to steal what's yours even on Freedom because you didn't have it located on your deed (even if game mechanics don't allow you to place it on deed). Nice way to throw away 50s.
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Calysto? (Ausimus WU server) has a spell that can be used to more specifically locate uniques. I wonder if this mod could be used as a basis for helping with the search for everything from uniques to missions?
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If it works at all like WU then it will be based on steamid rather then ip address. Family relationships can be set within steam as well. Makes sense that this is likely how they will try to base it at least initially. Steamid's always trace back to some form of payment so the connection to a real person is likely stronger as well.
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21 minutes ago, GenSekiel said:Yeah, that is pretty much why I started writing this mod. The vanilla growing mechanics are assuming a server is running 24/7 and it's still slow then.
Rice must be a recent-ish addition and I'm not up to date with new stuff in this game. I kind of rely on people mentioning something like this here, so thank you. I'll try to add it. Is anything else missing at the moment?
Rice grows in water, like reed plants. I am wondering if that explains the difference.
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2 minutes ago, Retrograde said:There have been MANY abuses with traders in the past, and yes, not all have been handled well.
What we want here is a way for us to handle it as best we can to help those legitimately affected because of it. Not just those who bought an existing deed.
I completely understand and support that. Hopefully this will also fix the theft issue that I've experienced. The trader was purchased for my deed by me after I created the deed.
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It's sort of funny to me this level of concern about people profiting from traders being moved. Let me explain why.
A while ago I reduced my deed border so that my trader was now located off deed. Since it remained a citizen of my deed it never disappeared. For awhile it was available to the public to use during their travels which was my intent. Eventually someone came along and tried to deed over top of it to take it over. Even though that didn't work they still blocked it off from everyone else including the person who paid the 50s for it in the first place.
Apparently this is allowed behavior in Wurm. It's OK to separate someone (on Freedom) from a 50s item completely legally in the eyes of the game. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see them somehow ending up owning the trader without me being involved in giving them permission to have it.
Seems like the thief profits here rather then the person who paid money in the first place (and for those interested the trader was purchased after the "getting rich" window closed since I just wanted to learn more about traders at that point).
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It is possible for players to steal traders without the deed falling! I resized my deed awhile ago. The trader was outside the deed border and yet still a member of my deed. Later someone deeded over the trader and blocked it off from everyone else including me, the guy who paid the 50s for it.
The theft is supported by the game rules apparently so even though the trader was purchased by me and still a member of my deed, someone else can prevent me from getting to it. Not sure how that's considered "fair" in anyone's mind. Obviously if they give the one free move then I will move the trader from it's current location to my current deed.
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1 hour ago, Makkhoi said:That has always been an issue with a large part of the PvP player base, they don't care about the game's interest as a whole, and they have too high thinking of their own selfimportance.
You haven't been around Steam enough if you think your review will have any kind of influence on future playerbase on Steam.
Wow, a whole bunch of assumptions there.
I prefer to think that everyone's vote has some impact. I guess some people prefer to make less informed purchases then others.
And pvp? Where did that come from? I spent years and years playing PVE both before and after PVP so I don't think of myself as just a PVP player nor a PVE player. I do like to play Wurm from time to time.
Perhaps you could share some of your Wurm related work with us since you appear to be criticizing others. I don't recall seeing your name anywhere, PVE or PVP.
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I am looking forward to giving WO(steam) a comprehensive review on Steam. Best of luck with the launch.
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(snip)
If not, then there is always single player Wurm Unlimited.
(end snip)
You might want to test that statement. There are WU servers that have higher populations then WO.
The Great Loom Push Of '29
in Deliverance
Posted
The story has largely been lost in the deep mists of time however I believe this is from the era when wagons were just a wishful glimmer in someone's mind.