Gwyn

Under the current system, a player's efforts (prayers to charge favour pool) are public domain. Think about that for a second: the fruits of players' efforts are up for grabs by other players. And by publicly trying to share these fruits with the community (via announced pre-planned casts), they make it extremely probable that a self-interested minority will reap them for themselves. Sorry, but if that's not a description of PvP play I don't know what is. It's completely at odds with the ethos of PvE (where, for example, stealing is prohibited and land can be safe-guarded by deeding). I mean, PvP's fine if you're into that kind of thing, but I'm not. Exclusionary play – where my success means someone else's failure, frustration, or exclusion – gives me no pleasure whatsoever, and I resent being pushed into it in a gaming environment that is nominally PvE, which is what I signed up for three years ago. So as for your suggestions, well, they don't address this underlying issue. Regardless of how group casts are organized, players still have no guarantees of ever getting a chance to participate in a rite; in fact, their chances would go down as everything would depend on the dumb luck of being online at the right time. Nor do they have any protections from other players if they decide to take on the mammoth effort of charging the pool single-handedly (see Flubb's recent experiences on Xanadu).

As far as I'm concerned, this thread has already succeeded. Flubb, you've gone above and beyond what any player should have had to do in order to prove irrefutably that the current rite mechanics are anathema to open, pro-community cooperation. You single-handedly provided a large part, if not the majority, of the server favour for recent rites on Xanadu. Thanks to this thread and the efforts of your Flubbregation, the devs have now had it demonstrated to them that pre-planned open-invite organized casts are futile. I call that a job well done. None of us on the roster was ever owed anything, so in my opinion however you want to move forward is up to you. But from a practical standpoint, I no longer see any sense in pre-scheduled casts.

Wargasm, your strawmanning is getting tiresome. No one is arguing for easiness.

Don't follow your reasoning. Casting the rite isn't 'doing the work'; charging the favour pool is. And that 'work' is exactly what's not being rewarded under the current system because the pool is shared and open to draining by anyone. And even if you do consider casting the rite 'doing the work', the same 'work' would have to be done by subsequent casting groups in this proposed change. So what exactly is your point?

The problems with the current global spell journal goal are widely evident. Suggestion: Casting a rite triggers a 24 hour window in which the same rite can be cast repeatedly without limit on that server. All benefits (sleep bonus, char gains) can be claimed only once in this window, regardless of number of casts. This would put an end to the drama and maintain the spirit of cooperation intended by the devs. Plus, it seems fitting: major real-life religious ceremonies are performed by multiple groups in multiple locations. The limiting factor is not the number of participants but the time period, such as the summer solstice for a druidic gathering. A time window would make a good in-game analogue of this.

Hear, hear. Same goes for altars and probably a number of other models.

Answers offered so far by non-devs: Snoo, Wonka: It is too difficult to change. Wargasm: The goal is competitive by design. Goldfever: There is no problem in the goal itself.

Why have you still not removed or jerk-proofed the rite journal goal? Time and again, rites have been sniped from those of us trying to organize group casts for everyone's benefit. Time and again, this sniping has been pointed out and alternative goal mechanics have been suggested. So ... Why do you continue to heavily reward PvP-style sniping and punish PvE-style cooperation among PvE players? To put it bluntly, from a player's perspective this is starting to feel like a mindf*ck. This is not a suggestion thread; we have plenty of those already. Please limit discussion to answering these questions. Non-devs, feel free to offer your own theories about the rationale at play here. First post below reserved for summary of answers and/or theories.

Yes, I consider this thread as a general announcement and I leave aside the question of malicious intent as it's an unnecessary assumption and is not actually an integral component of 'sniping'. 'Sniping', if you look at the traditional use of the word, is about personal gain, not malice. And the fact is that Holy Crop was cast by a kingdom-mate of an active PvPer who was in the group PM you made to those of us who had signed up for it. You announced rite was ready to Player X, and within a couple of hours Player Y, kingdom-mate of Player X, does the rite. Of course, we can't know what happened there, but it's awfully suspicious and on balance I think it's safe to say it was 'sniped'.

Fair enough. Perhaps I should have put my idea into a suggestion thread of its own. Just to set the record straight, I count three snipes on Xanadu since this thread was started. In fact, the last rite of each kind has been sniped. Rite of Spring now Holy Crop two weeks ago Ritual of the Sun a month and a half ago The last of these in particular rankles with me. I had started a thread alerting the community to the nearly full RotS favour pool and organizing a community cast. Then someone who admitted to having no knowledge about rite mechanics hijacked it and organized the rite before the favour pool was even full, meaning it could have been anywhere from 50% to 99% full. By some miracle, they managed to fill the favour pool – several hours after their stated cast time – and then immediately cast the rite. In doing so, they excluded me and others who had signed up first on my thread and later on this consolidated one. Though they acted in the open, that is still a snipe.

That could cause other problems, especially considering the currently low player population. Less popular rites might be difficult to assemble a team for if previous rite participants were blocked from acting as batteries. Here's an idea: how about 'participate in a rite' is expanded to include prayer contributions to the rite favour pool. Once a character has contributed a total of, say, 10k prayers to successfully cast rites, the goal requirements are satisfied. Such a change would give players more control over their own goal progression. Most importantly, it would mitigate the current (really, really not fun – hint, hint) feeling of being robbed every time a rite you need is sniped on your server. Something like this seems like the fairest way forward if there's no hope of the goal being ditched altogether.

Don't confuse nuance for self-contradiction. My position is that although it feels like something is being stolen, strictly speaking nothing is being stolen because the game mechanics make rite favour public domain. TL;DR Bad game design is rewarding players for being jerks, and getting other players hurt through their actions.

Problem is, a player can have already done the rite (even many times) and still have good reason to cast it again - not necessarily 'with deliberate intent to do harm to others'. Some examples where this might be the case: 1. Player wants to get rite done on priest alts / friends' priests and fears if they don't snipe it, someone else will first. 2. Player wants 5-hr sleep bonus now, because Player has free time to grind / sleep bonus deficit / premium time right now, and not whenever the organized rite is planned to be cast. 3. Player wants the prestige of being named as the rite caster and going down in Wurm history. Are these selfish actions? Sure, but they're not done purely out of malice and therefore not griefing. These actions come from the same place as private unique slays. If you base game goals on finite resources, you'll get players acting grabby and selfish. Not nice, but by no means terrible. And hey, it's a sandbox game and some people like some degree of competition. But I see two relevant differences between uniques and rites: (1) here, the finite resource (rite favour) is generated by everyone (prayers), so it really does feel like something is being stolen from you if you've been charging the pool on your server and the rite gets sniped; and (2) players have no alternate way of getting the associated reward, and what an immense reward it is – +5 cast power. It's a downright diabolical design choice for a supposedly PvE game: is this an MMO or a 'social experiment'?

As annoying as rite sniping is, you cannot punish someone for playing within the rules, especially when their behaviour is (a) heavily rewarded by game mechanics and (b) therefore not necessarily malicious. The solution is to rework the daftly designed rite journal goal or simply chuck it.

Currently, 26 ore fragments must be painstakingly combined before the ore can be smelted. Maybe this is some kind of dev joke but if so, the humour in it escapes me. Suggestion: Version 1. Allow uncombined ore fragments to be smelted to produce a lump 1/26 the weight of a full ore, or the corresponding proportion for semi-combined fragments. Version 2. Allow uncombined ore fragments to be instantly combined (no action timer), much like any combinable bulk item.

I make and use a lot of steel and, believe it or not, the current mechanics already make it well worth the effort, especially for weapons, armour, and tools that see a lot of wear like pickaxes, shovels, and chisels. That said, a small increase in the bonus, say 30% less damage versus the current 20%, might entice more players to discover the benefits for themselves. Either way, I personally will continue to choose steel over iron anytime I can.

Getting back on topic ... As someone might have said, had they been born in our time: the reports of the death of Wurm's markets have been greatly exaggerated. I can only speak from my own (pretty extensive) experience. In the short time this thread has been running, I've made several major sales across multiple sectors (ships, bulks, tools, armour). Overall, I haven't lowered my prices since I started playing three years ago; if anything they've gone up because I'm less cash-desperate and therefore less inclined to discount goods to generate coin. And although many would-be buyers do find cheaper offers elsewhere (they sometimes tell me so), I continue to sell far more than I need to for my enjoyment of the game. Right now I am swamped with orders that I didn't even seek out – the customers came to me. Meanwhile, as a buyer I have had to pay more for certain goods/services in the past month than two years ago because there were no better offers. So I'm seeing some prices go up while others go down and still others stay level, as I would expect in a functioning, evolving free market. True, the player base is dwindling, but the attrition has also included players who were net sellers/hoarders, leaving gaps in certain sectors of the market. All their stock then becomes largely irrelevant to the supply/demand equation; if goods/services aren't actually on the market, they may as well not exist as far as pricing is concerned. At the end of the day, however, you'll only know where the opportunities exist by diving in and seeing what doesn't sell, what does, for how much, and how long it takes. My advice would be to take any claims of spiralling prices from would-be buyers with a very, very large grain of salt; even if they are substantiated, there is no moral imperative to discount just because someone else sold the same thing for less. Stick to your prices and gradually adjust (up or down) according to your eagerness to close a sale. Simple as.

Looking for best deal out there on very large volume of bulk veg (any ql). Up to 30k, perhaps more if the price is right.

Producing a lock of the exact QL required will be a pain, and virtually impossible for 100 QL bins. (I recently made thousands of locks using 100 QL iron on my 70 LS Mag priest, and not one came out at 100 QL.) And I'd hazard that it's 100 QL bins that players will most want these attached to first. Suggestion: Allow the QL floor to be set within a certain range of the lock's QL. Tentatively, +/-5 QL seems reasonable, or at a minimum +/- 1 QL.

Hi Lumpy The deal is I start and complete the colossus (add the last brick). I need to build a colossus for a journal tier, which is the only reason I'm offering to do the labour for free.

This is a one-time deal: first come, first (and last) served! Colossus of Vynora built at location of your choosing for only the price of the mats – 6s.

Price reduced

Might go down that route, if this doesn't pan out. But for now the sale is still on! Parsley, sage, and thyme also available (albeit in smaller quantities).

Rosemary gives twice as much favour as garlic for Nahjo/Libila priests and it is very hard to obtain in large quantities at high ql. You're a funny guy, Angel ?

Bump