jonsnow

If you say anything at all about an employee, they could end up opening a lawsuit against you. Defamation of character is a real risk here in America. It is extremely unprofessional. Having managed large teams before I could not imagine announcing on any public forum, the removal of a staff member no matter how bad the person was.

and what i'm saying is that's called a bad game experience. Something typically you want to avoid if you want to keep your player base. It doesn't add to the experience of wurm, that's that. It's just... tedious, annoying, and not even implemented well (not being able to find it easily, grass covering/clipping it, etc). I could see in the future having a hardcore server with a hardcore ruleset, but if we're trying to appeal to as many players as possible this current system IS junk.

Not having your code base separate is really a bad idea. You should be catering to the steam community, which means you are now directly competing with other games on the steam platform. To compete, you're going to have to deviate from the existing player base that does not like, nor want any future changes that make the game more convenient for new players as these changes would change the core experience and gameplay. Like I said before, your market is already tapped for the existing game. Further marketing would not help, because niche games like this are sought out by players looking for a game like this. You are now trying to strike gold, and to strike gold you need better tools. Those tools do not allow you to keep the old folk town up and running. As new players come in, they're going to want things changed... As your player base on steam becomes bigger, which do you listen to the new player base that wants now-day gameplay mechanics or the old player base that likes the game the way it is? The only way to satisfy both is to keep the game code separate. Learn from your mistake with the PVP servers, when you made changes to PVP it adversely affected the PVE side. Example, animal taming nerf. Adapt, as WU has shown you anything... It's that variety is a good thing. Not everyone wants fast action timers, not everyone wants slow action timers, not everyone wants fast skill gain... not everyone wants a ton of creatures, others love extreme environments... You obviously are going to do what you think is best, but I'm not confident in your decision making given the weirdness of the cooking update, the fishing update, and archeology. The continued effort to make PVP work, yet no one plays there... and the dying devotion to your existing fan base.

In America, you cannot mention anything to do about the removal of a staff member... Only that they "moved on". I don't know how this works in the EU, but announcing any staff changes to your customer base seems really unprofessional.

This is exactly why the game is failing and you need to launch on steam. It really worries me that you care so much about the people on the freedom server think about people playing on another brand new server. This is a business, think like a business. These aren't your friends they're your customers. They're already happy, and continue to play... so you should keep them happy so they continue to pay. That's where it should stop. You should now be looking at how to make the most money possible, because frankly that's what the conversation is going to be about in a couple months after your shareholders don't see gains. With more capital means more game improvements, new content, and additional infrastructure. So in the end reaching for capital helps both parties.

True... can wurm create these single player experiences online, that rival say... The Village, 7 Days to Die, or any other experience that goes online as well, and creates stories using modern technology? When I can jump into one of those games, which have their own grind in different ways which are enjoyable (exploration to find tools/resources vs menu grinding). It's true it's an MMORPG setting, but if you're playing it solo does the solo experience stand up? Have to analyze every style of play and find out where your weaknesses are or steam is going to eat the reviews! I've almost exclusively played this game solo the last couple years when I've come back and find myself at a lack of "what to do". Combat requires high ql gear, which requires grinding. Boats require carpentry/boat making cloth making and rope making... which requires grinding. Almost everything in the game is behind this giant wall of grind. Does the grind = the experience? Or is the experience the end game of what you get after the grind? I know a lot of people on here will say, grinding is part of the journey. While I play Wurm Online singular, I can grind out 10 games of the The Village, or some other fun game... How is that not similar to the grind in wurm? IF I spend 40 hours in one game, vs 40 hours in here the only difference is a number. I get a number in wurm, showing my progress. I come back to Wurm for a story, and leave disappointed every time. It never lived up to my desires and dreams for a solitude experience out in the wild, exploration and experiences abound. When you really get into Wurm, it's a pretty empty game. Almost all the content is solely around your village and the content inside that. There's no stories outside your village, unless you are playing with other people. Then you're just relying on people to keep people around and well... I've seen plenty of empty deeds on Freedom leaving solemn messages, "Fred... You haven't been on... I miss you"

No one cares about retention, they care about making game the game that they've always known... It's like a captain, and their ship. They don't care if it's sinking as long as they're onboard.

It would be a simple thing to make it so if a tent is in the hold of a ship then it acts as a spawn point. Also, Why do things decay so fast on a boat! I put my armor on there and regretted it

tailoring is one of those skills that definitely needs a lot more content, particularly on the high end. There should be things that only a high level tailor could make, that take a LOT of time. Dresses, and such. Unique hats, scarves, capes...

Yes but how do you make it so they can have their own stories without having to join a town that's willing to take care of everything for them? What exploration/PVE content is there? What story driven content is there? There in lies the problem...

It actually would benefit vets more, as vets will have more resources to utilize from farming and such. I agree the timers definitely need fixing, but what I'm aiming at is a reason to make something specific in the early game vs just eating random bits of food just because you're hungry and need to fill the meter. There was just simply NO reason to make anything other than the simplest meal possible. This sucks! There's so much content in the cooking field yet there's no reason to search out the recipes and develop new meals! At least not until you get high enough skill level, and even then are you really going to bother figuring out what meals to make until super high level? What I'm particularly targeting is the new player experience, having started on Jackal I was mostly just eating meals and breakfast as they were easy and simple to make. This resulted in me eating the easiest thing possible. It also meant that no farm land was dedicated to making new resources for cooking, as I was instead just foraging for a few bits of food and eating it immediately. If we had an experience bar that after eating varieties of foods would gradually fill up there would be a goal as soon as you start - I want to be a lumberjack, focus on lumberjacking... so I need to eat this specific type of food to gain affinities in it. Also as far as the affinity gains go, obviously this would be very long term and would not be immediately gained . Affinities aren't OP, they're what... 3% more exp gain? Hardly anything. Still, gives purpose and goal where one is lacking. You could do this for all skills! For example, sacrificing a barrel might produce exp for a different affinity. Making utilizing all those "imped" items useful!

I've felt since I came back and tried the cooking system that the current version only really rewards high level players, and the benefits are really negligible to the new player experience. What I was thinking would be better, and you can tweak this how you want: Eating foods should instead gain experience. Experience in what? Affinities! For example, a pizza with a lot of ingredients might give you exp in several skill affinities. Of course it would take a lot of time to gain the affinities, but lets say after eating corn bread for 3 months you might have enough experience to gain an affinity on your character for that skill. Leave the current system in as well, to give high level players also an advantage over the new players... but I think this is necessary in order to make a demand for all types of ingredients. Thoughts? How long should it take if you're eating regularly to gain an affinity? We would also need an experience page. This page could also tie into other reward systems for other skills! Doing things could reward exp towards these affinities. For example, hunting might reward you with affinity exp.

I definitely think this is a terrible idea if you shoot for early next year, you need probably two years to turn the game around. Honestly, you should go dark for like a year or two, invest decent capital into revamping wurm to be more mainstream. Otherwise, you will face the same problems you always have... loss of retention. This game has just way too many archaic ideas and systems that a person in this day and age shouldn't want to deal with. Way too much clicking, for example. Way too much... You've been listening to this really loud and hostile 300 person player base for too long, and it's isolated you and put you on an island. Now the game is unsuitable for the large influx of players coming to try it out via steam. You need to do more research on what things a gamer wants in a game like this, and maybe do a whole new version for steam. Start sending out email surveys to old players who didn't come back, asking why they left. Get some data going! Anyone who wants the current version has already found it, as it's VERY niche and most of us sought it out. I can tell you I've come back 10-15 times since I started playing Wurm, and always hit that "wall" where you realize you've accomplished everything and now it's just "Imping" stuff to be higher ql. So much stuff needs to be fleshed out as well, as burn-out is a real concern when the time it takes vs the reward isn't proportional (like turning cotton into string is wasted game-time). The other concern, is that they won't be on equal footing. The vets WILL come to this new server, they will form towns together and not let any new players in and dominate the marketplace/take advantage of newbies. Newbies will still have that experience that they "cannot" compete as Jackal has shown, many of these vets have a LOT of time on their hands. Some reached 50-60 in a skill in a week or two on jackal, same thing is going to happen unless you put caps on skill gain to give everyone a fair chance. This will ruin the experience for new players. Within a month some of these players will have very high skill levels, and you'll end up in the same situation where anyone coming in after that first month is now going to be at a severe disadvantage, feel like there's no point in grinding for a month, etc... There's a lot of reasons new players leave, and leave fast... and it's not really just that they cannot compete with vets. In fact I bet you that's only like 10% of the reason. My most recent new player leaving experience was they went out hunting, died lost their stuff spent their whole night trying to find their body couldn't find it and never logged in again. Stuff like that cannot happen, that's what you call -bad game experiences-. I also saw vets leave because of the lack of real-estate on jackal resulted in neighbors being too close together. I would say increasing the given size of a deed (free amount) would be a good move, as giving people a lot of real estate is never a bad thing and allows their neighbors not to feel "too close". This also might help with griefing/trolling. It would also increase the value of the deed itself, convincing people going "free" to establish a deed to claim a large plot of land. This experience was only in two weeks of playing on Jackal, as I myself have left as the grind just burned me out and I'd rather spend my nights playing Factorio, RimWorld, etc... I always wanted a more fleshed out hunting/animal content as the grinding part of wurm never interested me, but the idea of being a provider did appeal to me (going out getting supplies and giving them to people who do grind). Spirit guards/guards made this type of gameplay impossible, as guards provided so much meat and resources you would never need to go hunt. Nor does anyone need any protection. Unfortunately there's really no reason to explore anything in Wurm, which usually results in shut-in syndrome, where you feel like you're not actually doing anything but grinding/stuck in a cave or in a house. Also I would not do PVP anymore, stick to just PVE your team isn't big enough to do two types of games, and they really are two different games... Plus PVP usually ends up affecting the PVE content poorly, as it results in nerfs instead of buffs usually. I will also mention that... I am embarrassed to tell my friends I play this. I invited one friend many years ago to try it, and he literally laughed at me and said, "You really want to develop wrist problems playing a stupid game?". He was referring to the massive amount of menus and clicking and how there really wasn't any content on the surface of the game, it was all hidden and you had to "battle the menus" to win it. Even my wife who loves Stardew Valley, Minecraft, and My Time at Portia tried it and said, "I have no idea why you play that game it's so ugly and not cute or fun at all. It tries to be hardcore but it thinks hardcore is being boring and complexity means hiding the game from you." Once again referring to the endless grind and menus and having to use a wiki for everything. I would recommend getting feedback from a lot of the Wurm Unlimited players who left as well... and the server admins from those servers and see what they found made players leave/dislike the game even with the bonuses WU offers. The biggest concern is there... WU IS NOT a huge success. It did alright, but the player base is about the same as what you have already... So if people aren't playing WU< why would they pay to play WO? It's the same game, just better. It's also completely free after you buy-in for what, 5 bucks on humble bundle? Or was it 2.50? Also, get rid of failing on creation a(with the exception of imping) and make sure gaining skill on failure is a thing (on imping). The most concerning part to me, is the fact that you're even asking the current player base for advice. Respect them, let their servers run and let them benefit from new content created by the new income... but by no means should they be providing input on a business decision. Business decisions are to secure capital, not to please an existing player base. This should be kept internal, and announced when ready as anything announced too early will be met with some degree of negativity and could cause you to not go through it even though it's a sound decision in the long run. It simply doesn't affect them since a new server would be created separate from the main branch. You should be looking to the future, not to the past. You're trying to increase your player base. If you don't do this, then there is no future for Wurm Online and the player base will continue to decrease... If your thinking is "we'll find more of the vets style of players!" Then you are going about this all wrong! All the players that are like your current player base are already here or playing WU! The version going on steam needs to be the best possible version of Wurm! This player base is quick to tell new players, "Then this isn't the game for you." When someone doesn't like something. This is not a healthy player base to have introducing new players! I would rate out of all the games I've played... Wurm Online behind League of Legends for most hostile community to new players.

Why is it an insult to live with your parents? I wish I could still do that! Lol... I'm just jealous of their free time. When I started jackal there are people who were doubling my skill every day. Was amazed and jealous Still, this community makes me so angry! They are so rigged and stuck in their views. No room for improvement or change. Exactly Damascus, it's not like I'm not willing to consider other versions of the idea. It's the fact that some just shoot down immediately new ideas because "this is wurm, get gud". Or this attitude that "They're just not people who would enjoy wurm". I've ran a business before, and I can tell you that if they came in the door they wanted to spend money. That's the case with players. They came in the door, they wanted to play the game. Something in the game prevented them from playing it and seeing it as a worthwhile investment. For a new player to stumble on wurm means they were specifically looking for a game like this, as there's absolutely no advertising. You have to dig to find it.

Wonka this is exactly the reason players like you are ruining wurm! That attitude exists here, because everyone who felt otherwise already left from their poor experience! A game shouldn't be catering to the small majority of players who remain because they like a crappy feature. They should be looking at how to keep players around, and corpse retrieval in it's current form is junk. show it on the map, and let us see where it is, or have a beacon highlight the location or something. Anything is better than the current form. The forests aren't exactly easy to navigate as is. Sometimes we die due to faults not our own, we get lag stuck or whatever. I'm not particularly affected by this. I just lost a friend I was playing with because he couldn't find his corpse, he was new to the game and spent 3 hours trying to find it. He hasn't logged on since. His voice is my voice now. He was a regular player every day logging in until this experience. The community is killing this game. It's completely unwilling to adapt to the times, and change to attract a new player base. Hopefully the new company doesn't cater to the few remaining players and looks to the potential players it could have.