Search the Community

First thing that needs to be said here is that I am not making the suggestion out of jealousy. I have owned a trader in the past and I have profited the existence of them in the present. I recently had enough cash to buy a trader as well. Furthermore I am suggesting something that would impact the income of some of my friends. I make these suggestions not out of spite but because I truly believe they would create a better gaming environment for the entire community. It is also worth mentioning that I am following the thought pattern stated by Rolf. I submit this as proof that I am not alone in thinking the trader mechanic is both in need of replacing and was not intended to become what it has. Although it may seem obvious in retrospect, the thousands of players examining a game mechanic will always manage to take advantage of something a developer does not foresee happening. The Reasoning Thought process leading to the suggestion is summarized here for you. Open the spoiler for an almost 1600 word explanation as to why I believe these points to be true. Ctrl+F on the bullet number should send you right to the point in question since the spoiler contains quite a few paragraphs. Thanks for reminding me MattSquare. This fix is tailored from a PvE standpoint. It has unintentional effects on PvP I'm sure, and Matt has already mentioned priest mains on PvP servers would be rather left out under this scheme. Wurm is too harsh on free accounts to truly be F2P (In large part for balance reasons with PvP). This proposed system does not address that concept and was never intended to. This suggestion is not aimed at beginners, but is primarily intended at retention of “Midcore†players. The trader system relies on using a relatively large amount of capital to secure an infinite revenue stream for significantly less effort than any other reasonable profession. The trader system can be first come first serve. The trader system is not contributing to coin circulation from the player standpoint. Rolf stated the trader system was never intended to be private income, but was supposed to be open to everyone. In order to prevent the system being abusable, it has to be limited to premium accounts. Furthermore, it should never allow you to pay your premium through hardcoded ingame means alone. This system cannot supplement traders without hurting them or forcing their removal as an income source entirely. How this system is implemented is up to the developers. If done badly it could cause a lot of harm, and I have no power to suggest how that is done. The game should be playable with nothing more than a the RL$ subscription fee. This includes having money to spend in the economy. Income sources available to beginners all involve mortgaging their future income for a pittance today. The income source should encourage gameplay that also aids in long term development, which is Wurm's biggest selling point after all. 1. Wurm is too harsh on free accounts to truly be F2P (In large part for balance reasons with PvP). This proposed system does not address that concept and was never intended to. The reality is I never considered Wurm to be a free to play game. Although it is theory doable, the relative number of players who have managed to successfully play this game without RL money at any point is very tiny. This suggestion is not aimed at helping these people directly, as the skill cap already hinders them so much in game that I do not see any suggestion making this game truly free to play. 2. This suggestion is not aimed at beginners, but is primarily intended at retention of “Midcore†players. As much as helping beginners is noble, the reality is many of those players are not going to end up being suitable for the niche gameplay that Wurm offers. Retention strategies aimed at them therefore end up benefiting many players who will never end up playing no matter what bonuses you offer them. As such I choose to aim this at the middle ground players, who would often end up fitting into the midcore playerbase. The reason for selecting them is because they have already proven that they enjoy Wurm, and have already paid their first premium with real money (F2P going to prem without RL would 99% of the time be a hardcore player). Between beginners and midcores, I feel targeting the latter will probably have a better success rate per effort put in. 3. The trader system relies on using a relatively large amount of capital to secure an infinite revenue stream for significantly less effort than any other reasonable profession. Let's face the honest reality, this is actually quite a realistic system. But there are many things in the real world that we do not wish to emulate in the virtual. Income disparity would happen to be one of those things. This issue would not be nearly as much of a problem if draining a trader took as much work and was as reliable as selling goods. It is however more reliable, although still tied to the economy, and significantly less work. Because access to draining requires significant capital, this leads to a situation where the rich get richer, and the barrier to entry remains quite high to average capital players. 4. The trader system can be first come first serve. In my mind this is the same issue that we have with unique dragons, although I think it is far more of a problem there than here (and no, lets not get into that discussion here). But the reality is the first person to an area gets the right to take up trader slots. In a game with a very low server turnover like Wurm, I personally find the system to be flawed in that sense. I do not think this pops up as a problem often but that doesn't mean it is a flaw. 5. The trader system is not contributing to coin circulation from the player standpoint. Since the majority of the coins are going to the top of the income pool, who often use that money to pay deeds and/or accounts, Much of the money that comes out of the trader system is dumped immediately back into the king's coffers. This does not aid with the economic starvation that we have frequently run into as an issue in this game. No one has money to buy things, but they can't find work to get money because no one can pay them. 6. Rolf stated the trader system was never intended to be private income, but was supposed to be open to everyone. I think this is one of the most compelling issues. When he originally implemented traders, there was no intention that they would be used privately (Going off statements he made when he opened up for suggestions of how to replace the trader system). No matter how you look at the system, if that was stated as not being intentional it is clearly not functioning according to design. In hindsight it is always easy to see what will happen, but with thousands of eyes looking at a problem players are always going to find a way to use a system unexpectedly from the developer standpoint. There is no use crying over spilt milk in that sense. 7. In order to prevent the system being abusable, it has to be limited to premium accounts. Furthermore, it should never allow you to pay your premium through hardcoded ingame means alone. As I mentioned before, I had no intention of enabling free to play players with this suggestion. I feel the design of the game does not support them enough and a simple Band-Aid to their solution of getting them premium faster would not change that fact. Furthermore it should be obvious that allowing someone to pay their premium solely with this mechanic would break the income scheme of Wurm entirely. Rolf does have bills to pay. 8. This system cannot supplement traders without hurting them or forcing their removal as an income source entirely. The system needs to be accessible, which means that it has to be hardcoded and not rely on trading with other players. As a result it has to use silver as a reward. The guaranteed income supplement that comes from sleeping powder is a nice benefit but many players choose to forgo it simply because it is a hassle. But it's pretty clear that we couldn't just distribute more money into the economy without hurting the economic models that are already set up. As a result this money would have to come from the same pool that is given out to traders. Meaning that their income would be severely hampered at the very least, but for the aforementioned flaws with the trader system it seems best just to eliminate it entirely. 9. How this system is implemented is up to the developers. If done badly it could cause a lot of harm, and I have no power to suggest how that is done. It goes back to the issue of knowing this suggestion causes grief to certain players who rely on trader income. In a perfect world I would implement this solely in a new server and make the placement of NPC traders a convenience costing 5-10s or something similar. This would minimize the issues for players currently heavily invested in the system. I do not want this to be slapped onto every server and cause sticker shock to the players who are involved, but for many reasons the developers could decide that is the only reasonable course of action (Structure of serverside coding might be a good example of something that would force an all or nothing change). I simply do not have enough information to make meaningful commentary on the implementation of the system. 10. The game should be playable with nothing more than a the RL$ subscription fee. This includes having money to spend in the economy. I'm not suggesting something like sleeping powder where we just hand out “moneyâ€, but the ease of access to some form of guaranteed income should be available to any player paying the premium time (I'm not opposed to F2P ingame accounts getting access to this however). Perhaps 2-3s per month, enough for a small deed and money to spend in the economy. Convenience of access is quite important. And no, the sub+ingame coin options in the shops are not priced to be even moderately reasonable. I suppose bringing those packages down to a reasonable price might solve this bullet point alone. 11. Income sources available to beginners all involve mortgaging their future income for a pittance today. The income source should encourage gameplay that also aids in long term development, which is Wurm's biggest selling point after all. The issue here lies with the use of multiple accounts. I am not looking down upon those who do so, in fact I have three characters that I run myself. But that does not discount the fact that they have an income impact on the world. Many players will want to play with a single account open. Perhaps they want to watch a movie in the computer doesn't have the RAM required, perhaps they are uncomfortable switching between multiple accounts. Either way many people who play this game and fall into the demographic I have chosen for income support will mostly not be multi accounters. And that bulk goods department is skewed by the few players who choose to set up multiple accounts to create items with. This simply means that for a single account your time spent making bulk goods will be heavily lowered in value as a result. Furthermore the creation of these items often comes with little or no long-term gain. As a result you are mortgaging your future income from whatever skill you could be grinding to instead make a small amount of money today. This system is anything but encouraging for player that has been playing for one or two months. I have watched many players flounder in the 1-2 month phase with this issue. Whatever solution we provide should encourage gameplay that also benefits the long-term development of the character and provides immersion into the strong point of Wurm. Which is longterm development and growth. This reasoning is why I disagree with the sell feature of tokens. It acts the same as bulk goods production, we are making players trade time spent to gain future abilities/income source and time spent enjoying the most important attribute of Wurm's gameplay in return for a small amount of money. The suggestion: Take money given to traders, and instead split it up between every active premium account. The money should accumulate relatively often, but keep a rather low cap on the total amount available (2-3s). The income will be earned by selling items to traders or merchants in much the same way that the current sell option works. However, there are conditions attached: Selling an item will return a % of your current pool total.The item must be crafted by the character selling it.Any skill that creates an improvable item works, the item being sold must be improvable.The item quality must be within a limited range of your characters current skill in the craft required to make the item.The higher quality the item, the more % of the pool is given to you.My point of view on this: Players will be rewarded for working on any skill that interests them so long as it has improvable products. They are being rewarded for taking part in the most engaging and interesting part if Wurm's mechanical gameplay. While there are minor disparities between the costs of items for different crafts, I do not see this as being unbalanced enough to cause a problem. Higher skill players will still have the option of engaging in a craft they are relatively unskilled in if they prefer that instead of making 95 quality tools. And ultimately put if they have all their skills 90+ I don't see them as needing an income supplement. Furthermore, I believer in the concept of "Trickle Up Economics": income being handed out lower-level players will encourage spending on items they are not high enough skill to produce. It would increase the amount of trade seen by higher level players and as a result benefit their income in an indirect manner. No one is getting a free meal, but in the long run everyone would benefit from this system. Aight, my mind is ready. Bring on the hate. Edit: Cleaning grammar, and numbering bullets for easy searching over a particular point you may disagree with me over. Edit2: I am a PvE player, if this has unintentional effects on PvP please bring them up for discussion.