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Chinpow

Wurm is dying. At least Epic is.

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Summer is over for BL, not sure if you have been around long enough to know the common trends of power shifts in kingdoms but it certainly isn't anything new for Epic and certainly wont be the last time either

Ebb and flow my friend

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Allow safe PvP. There should be a place where people can try fighting without risking their equipment. Arena or something. Where people can learn and have their fun.

Make PvP more meaningful. There should be things people want to fight over: resource spawns, monster spawns, i.e. important areas to control. It's just a general idea, as we all understand what this is about. We all can generate a ton of ideas.

 

Safe pvp = kill your own kingdom mates at elevation... or duels.

 

More meaningfull pvp? You obviously got no idea how to design games.

How about making the PvP more desirable by making it more FUN.

Yes, fun. Insane idea right?

Ranks, Achivements, Trophies, custom skins, etc...

It's all irrelevant after a short period of time unless the game is fun.

 

Wanna see more action and fun in pvp? how about fixing those special moves so we can actually use various abilities without being in hug range for a duration which in most non-tiny scale combat equals a dead player.

screw it. ill make a suggestion for that.

Edited by Zekezor
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Honestly after my 2 months in Epic, i didnt see much potential. More or less the whole idea of Epic was that there were different scenarios, each linking to the next, each resetting the map with a unique landscape. The way Rolf sold it sounded awesome, but unfortunately harly any of the planned or envisioned ideas were put in.


 


A step in the right direction for Epic would be fore him to reset the map, and create new goals for the players. Rolf could really get a large boost to the population if he did that, certainly if he advertised too.


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Safe pvp = kill your own kingdom mates at elevation... or duels.

 

More meaningfull pvp? You obviously got no idea how to design games.

How about making the PvP more desirable by making it more FUN.

Yes, fun. Insane idea right?

Ranks, Achivements, Trophies, custom skins, etc...

It's all irrelevant after a short period of time unless the game is fun.

 

Wanna see more action and fun in pvp? how about fixing those special moves so we can actually use various abilities without being in hug range for a duration which in most non-tiny scale combat equals a dead player.

screw it. ill make a suggestion for that.

 

Couldn't agree more, i really feel he is part of the zynga developers that stayed when their business model started to crumble once the fad wore off.

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Honestly after my 2 months in Epic, i didnt see much potential. More or less the whole idea of Epic was that there were different scenarios, each linking to the next, each resetting the map with a unique landscape. The way Rolf sold it sounded awesome, but unfortunately harly any of the planned or envisioned ideas were put in.

 

A step in the right direction for Epic would be fore him to reset the map, and create new goals for the players. Rolf could really get a large boost to the population if he did that, certainly if he advertised too.

 

Just look at what happened to bl home, and yes, if he would make the scenarios "worth it" and have a clear engagement where everyone understands what completing this mission will accomplish and have missions that can both be done in small individual groups and work to bring together these groups then yes, it would be a lot better then "find the evil tree and cut it down" or "build this object that requires enough materials to build a small deed and once the mission is won you get nothing else out of it" missions

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Wow.  Sure there are, just because you don't have a band of rejects to lead around.. doesn't mean there aren't leaders.


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Perhaps then what you would want is larger ql jumps per imp rather than changing timers since timers get into changing skill, this is something people have been asking for a long time for horse shoes, perhaps it could be done for plate too though I really don't think it is quite as dramatic as being made out to be (the horse shoes are though, they make you want to /suicide)

This +1. I would recommend like you use the 50 or 70 skill title for this in all stats. An arrows come out at a high ql.

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I think the impact of gear quality should be made less noticeable, so you need to out strategy your opponent even in a 1v1 fight. This includes bows and armor too, so getting hit by one arrow in the legs doesn't mean you're dead on then spot. Put more use into the targeted attacking and defending!

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Strategy is already in place as seen many times over when the side with less numbers wins because the other is too focused on trying to scatter or simply inexperienced and disorganized

*Edit: Also Lorena, no template kingdom will die :P

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Wurm has a lot of ups and downs, especially Epic.  Back in like December in the early times, I remember getting on at 9pm EST, and it was like 6 people online.  Nosyt (Loki), Xallo (Moirai), Myself, and Entendu were like this night crew for BL, we were literally only people on.  We used to go out and raid Lomaner, no one ever was on at all.  It seemed like it was dying.  Epic seems like it's dying a lot, it gets very low, people lose motivation, and people return when they have the time or reinvest their interest in the game.  It's hard for many people to stay interested 365 days a year in Wurm because it's not exactly mind-blowing excitement on the daily, it's very long-term, and for some people that can be a turn off.  They want more action faster.


 


Epic wasn't the best concept, it lost a lot of preplanned features that were spoken about which I think greatly hurt the chances of Epic being a bigger success, and now really the focus of developer seems to be more about furniture, building, and bridges, which is okay, but in the reality of things the PvP system and PvP-related systems likely won't ever change.  If you give it time it'll get popular again, it'll die again, and repeat.  It's not a great system, I don't argue that, but it happens all the time several times a year.  You just have to wait till others aren't bored.  It's the reason most kingdoms do well or perceived as doing well.  JK was only on top like any other kingdom because simply others didn't care enough to really play, and once one kingdom loses interest usually another takes it spot.  That's why sometimes there's a dominant kingdom changing so often because the other two or three just don't give a hoot.  


Edited by Postes
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What games where you invovled in, and in what capacity?

Not that you may have heard about most of them, since we  focus on Russian market. Here is a link to my profile, if that helps. They were MMORPGs, Strategy games, MOBA games, and as mobile developers we made a Tower Defense game, TBS game and a battler. My primary role is production, meaning I am involved in both Developing and Operating. For example I am responsible for analytic and gathering player's feedback to improve the game. This also include feature design and brainstorm. As well as monetize. Yet my proposals were focus on player retention. It's also important that I have played and enjoyed a ton of games from UO and EvE online that are hardcore sandboxes to casual MMO and shooter stuff. 

 

 

Safe pvp = kill your own kingdom mates at elevation... or duels.

 

More meaningfull pvp? You obviously got no idea how to design games.

How about making the PvP more desirable by making it more FUN.

Yes, fun. Insane idea right?

Ranks, Achivements, Trophies, custom skins, etc...

It's all irrelevant after a short period of time unless the game is fun.

 

Wanna see more action and fun in pvp? how about fixing those special moves so we can actually use various abilities without being in hug range for a duration which in most non-tiny scale combat equals a dead player.

screw it. ill make a suggestion for that.

 

Duels does not allow to fight JK vs BL, for example. Nor do they allow mass PvP. I do agree about "fun" part and that's my sole point here. PvP can be fun, but not on Chaos. Because you rarely fight equally, and even trying costs you a lot. That's why the only type of players that get fun are those who dominate. Providing they have their pray. It's no fun for the rest. And painful to even try and do something. Fixing special moves is just a tip of the iceberg. The core problem is that there is no motivation to PvP and it's painful to just try.

 

 

These, 6 excluded (thatone is actually decently good) are all horrible,

 

you are treating wurm as if it should cater to farmville players, but it shoudnt, its different and different people play it, i am active in handheld gaming circles, especially people who used to work for zynga, but left.

This attitude for "quick cash" and "dumbing down" is detrimental to the gaming industry, it does nothing but attract a billion fad players, and when everyone is tired of it they just quit and the servers are empty.

 

the ONLY reason people still play this game is because its very very hard to have done everything, built everything etc.

 

Pvp is ######, but how you suggest it would make it even more ######, the only thing that could help pvp in wurm on a short term basis is a large influx of new players and a large influx of new factions that can stand their own.

 

The reason bl is running dry is because a new server has new opportunities, plus we dont really have any kingdom opposition anymore, sure some local pvp recently at the hota handed us our asses, but on the server side we are dominating and if we are full force we can take on both kingdoms at once.

 

No, I am not. The sole reason I joined Wurm 2 years ago was because it is Hardcore. Full drop. Sandbox. I enjoy this hardcore soul.  You are right that a large amount of people can fix things. But you wont get large numbers at once. And in order for a few numbers to stay, they should have their own share of fun. And they can't at the moment. Because if you are not in a pack and you don't have unlimited equipment or easy means to replace it, PvP is not for you. You have no reason to try it, no safe place to fight against equally powerful enemies, no place to learn. You get nothing from it. It's painful. 

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My votes:

1. no

2. no

3. no

4. yes

5. yes

6. yes

 

+1 to this.

 

As for saying no to 1, 2 and 3... Wurm is supposed to be a dinosaur. It's supposed to make you want to rip your hair out. It isn't a big game in terms of player count - it's a big game in terms of required effort and high difficulty. It is such a difficult game to enjoy, but without that it would not be Wurm. It's one thing to be a game developer and look at what's successful and try to repeat the formula - e.g. trying to replicate Minecraft - but it's another thing to make something else as ludicrously unique and difficult as Wurm.

 

It's comparable to playing the Sims with cheats to me. It's actually quite grindy to get your Sims to have lots of money, a good career, a big house... so to make it "easy" on yourself you spawn in tons of cash and live easily. And an hour later you're bored stiff with nothing to do. I would hate to see Wurm ever go that way or go down the "easy" route, we'd get more players for a little while but eventually everyone would up and leave to the next Minecraft impersonator.

Edited by Docterchese

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Map reset for Ele would bring people in sure right just like new map for BLH...  How did this really go?  The first few weeks there were 50-70 online, but after that?  Seems the steady number is around 25-30, and consider how many usual Ele players are over there making deeds, then it really isn't very impressive.


 


Holidays come, school comes, vacations, people that can only enjoy being on top and can't handle losing, people can't handle being raided into the ground, people get bored of being on top, people get burned out playing all summer, it happens every year.  A couple months ago (maybe more) we would see 60-70+ on Elevation alone, now primetimes seem to be around 30-35, just give it another month or so and it'll probably rise again for whatever reason. 


 


As odd as it seems to be, Epic has had somewhat more pvp lately with lower numbers.  If that keeps up then people will get interested and numbers will rise. 


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Map reset for Ele would bring people in sure right just like new map for BLH...  How did this really go?  The first few weeks there were 50-70 online, but after that?  Seems the steady number is around 25-30, and consider how many usual Ele players are over there making deeds, then it really isn't very impressive.

 

Holidays come, school comes, vacations, people that can only enjoy being on top and can't handle losing, people can't handle being raided into the ground, people get bored of being on top, people get burned out playing all summer, it happens every year.  A couple months ago (maybe more) we would see 60-70+ on Elevation alone, now primetimes seem to be around 30-35, just give it another month or so and it'll probably rise again for whatever reason. 

 

As odd as it seems to be, Epic has had somewhat more pvp lately with lower numbers.  If that keeps up then people will get interested and numbers will rise. 

First of all, general statistics for games says that summer time has the least amount or active players. Normally. But that doesn't matter here. Do not take it as an offence, but you are on top of the food chain, being able to enjoy PvP. That's why you can only see people coming on and off and consider it normal. Cause that's the way it always was. Epic can only be a place for a small amount of people. Despite it is designed for a large groups. It will never grow, only, possibly, re-grow.

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This is a significant issue, but I don't think Rolf even thinks it exists. He likes his game this way, which is the reason Notch left him all those years ago. Rolf is too stuborn, and the players have become stuborn. Nothing will ever be done about these issues, so the game is done. It will slowly die out, with only a few loyal vets remaining.

Radical change from the bottom up is needed. But, doing this would split the community so much chaos would unsue for at least a little while.

This is the issue: Wurmians have gained a false idea of challenge. Since everything in wurm takes tons of time, people tricked themselves into thinking they were accomplishing something challenging. However, Wurm is actually EASY and has little challenge. It just takes a lot of time. Once people realize this the game loses its fun and they quit.

Edited by Haravin
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  1. Reduce timer for all actions by 3.

Speed up crafting by 3.

Eliminate rarity system. Alternatively, make some resource spawns rare (like rare iron ore) and all things produced from it should be of according rarity. Let them exhaust and respawn fast, so people will be constantly eager to look for them and control.

Make mid\high-end PvE content. It could be castles\garrisons with guards\human NPCs\goblins\whatever that can sometimes drop weapons\armor that is worth using.

Allow safe PvP. There should be a place where people can try fighting without risking their equipment. Arena or something. Where people can learn and have their fun.

Make PvP more meaningful. There should be things people want to fight over: resource spawns, monster spawns, i.e. important areas to control. It's just a general idea, as we all understand what this is about. We all can generate a ton of ideas.

 

 

1. Epic only. It's a mistake to assume that everyone wants to build quick so they can go pvp or hunt or whatever. Many Freedom players spend 90% of their time making gorgeous deeds and the build times are part of the experience. It is the equivalent of a daughter wanting a dollhouse. Busy dad buys her one. Crafty dad builds her one. Why did he bother? Because he enjoyed dong it.

2. Same as #1.

3. No, I think rares added a new element to crafting, but need to be refined further. Hell No tot the second, it just gives a rather massive bonus to whoever controls one

4. As always, yes! Why are there no real 'lairs'?. Goblin villages, Wolves' Dens, Troll Mounds? And I am not talking about an icon that spits out mobs. I'm talking about a dense crowd of mobs that stay in an area and include special mobs that help the others by healing or ranged attacks or slowing attackers.

5. PvP participation might double or more if some of the risk is removed. Partial loot, Protected deeds, staged battles, arenas, consensual pvp etc. There are a lot of players out there that would not mind spending the afternoon pvping, but got pushed out of the sport by a minority of obnoxious players that take it too far. Reduce the risk and they will come.

6. I'd say make it more fun is a higher priority, but yes, in war zones battles should actually have impact otherwise it becomes endless skirmishes. This is mostly a population issue, however. If you had the numbers you could have decisive battles with deeds and kingdoms disappearing. the problem is that the current offering and nonadvertising (patent pending) just doesn't draw the needed numbers to have a real war.

Edited by Othob Rithol

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Meh theres always lulls in player activity for various reasons (seasons, work, school, bored, life in general), and many times player sales are due to people downsizing after taking on too many accounts. Ive known many players to have bought and sold quite a few accounts in their time playing.


 


And then theres lulls in pvp activity as group dynamics shift, not to mention voids left when particularly extreme shifts occur.


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Then why are you ###### posting? ###### off

 

LOL PvP only suggestion forum pls

 

Anyway, some good points were brought up. The above quote even proves the need for a PvP only suggestion forum and a code split. Other than that:

 

> People are afraid to die because of full loot. Why? Gear takes a long time to replace. Randomness casting and imping times take a day or more to get "decent" gear - 70+ql and enchant power, which is still low end and will put you at a disadvantage.

> PvP is unbalanced and broken. Fix the faction vs. faction and god vs. god mechanics to be different and unique but balanced. Priests need to be balanced with non-priests, med paths need balancing, and pretty much everything in Red Baron's thread needs to be looked at and seriously slept on.

> The numbers game is terrible. Ten 70/50/50 fighters will beat 3 90/90/90 fighters just because of numbers. If the three have one or more players with gone, they may stand some kind of a chance, but they will all die under normal circumstances with little to no gain or success. Those three have put more time into improving their accounts and playing the game, and they should be rewarded for that. They should at least be able to get a couple kills if they know what they're doing, not be slaughtered because they're outnumbered.

> Deed raiding sucks on both sides. It takes hours for attackers to get anywhere against any type of defense effort, and defenders lose everything or "cheat" to avoid it (using alts, for example) if the deed is breached. IMO raiding should be higher risk and higher reward than open PvP, but neither should be the major setback that they are now when an encounter is lost. 

 

I guess it's just that the risk is very high. If you wipe, you waste a day or more replacing gear. If your deed is raided, you lose literally everything. If we can balance this, tone down the penalty for losing a fight, and make this right, maybe PvP and Epic stand a chance, a chance to become something bigger and bolder than anything else.

 

I know that we don't want it to become too easy, but even the masochists among us need to give a bit if we want to expand our playerbase, bring the community together, and make PvP more enjoyable.

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I have heard Wurm is dying for almost 7 years now, strange how I feel the game keeps getting better.


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1. Epic only. It's a mistake to assume that everyone wants to build quick so they can go pvp or hunt or whatever. Many Freedom players spend 90% of their time making gorgeous deeds and the build times are part of the experience. It is the equivalent of a daughter wanting a dollhouse. Busy dad buys her one. Crafty dad builds her one. Why did he bother? Because he enjoyed dong it.

 

2. Same as #1.

Sure people like to build. I love to build, but if you love spending 5+ minutes doing one wall (not even going for mats), you need fresh air. One thing is liking to build, and a very different thing is having to endure the brain melting boredom that becomes playing wurm. You need so sort of disorder to actually enjoy playing one character with no distractions in Wurm. Wurm is awesome and all that but the awesome part is the job done. Doing the job is excruciating.

If you built stuff in 1/3 of the time it takes you'd still enjoy the buildings, it would just take you less time to make them, and thus you could enjoy it MORE.

Its like Haravin said. Some people confuse the boring time consuming aspects of the game with a challenge. But it only challenges two things, your patience and your having better things to do. There's no intelectual or physical challenge.

 

3. No, I think rares added a new element to crafting, but need to be refined further. Hell No tot the second, it just gives a rather massive bonus to whoever controls one

I agree partially with you on this, specially on the rare veins and whatnot. But Rares could and should have been made more interestingly than they were. For starters they're not even that rare by any standards. Rare items should be renamed uncommon or something, and Supreme to rare.

 

4. As always, yes! Why are there no real 'lairs'?. Goblin villages, Wolves' Dens, Troll Mounds? And I am not talking about an icon that spits out mobs. I'm talking about a dense crowd of mobs that stay in an area and include special mobs that help the others by healing or ranged attacks or slowing attackers.

There's a bit of logistics involved, and i guess too much work for the devs. And you should remember that devs don't like to work. And even something that should have become as trivial as launching a new server apparently merits a vacation on the following week. (Resulting of course in the absense of fixes for a while after something new is added).

I don't think anything like this will ever be made. I mean there were 2 great chances for this to have happened. The first was the introduction of Valrei critters. At first i thought it would be awesome. But they were made to spawn too randomly, and like always the most destructive creatures seem to have always the more rampant AIs. So it became so troublesome at the time that there was an outcry to remove them from PvE (which at the time included chaos btw) because they were simply too strong for the current FS average on the existing servers (maybe except a bit of inde and chaos).

 

The second and most obvious chance to create something meaningful on the PvE side was the reintroduction and the respawning of Uniques. It could have been handled to make them sorta like "World Boss" encounters on PvE, making them a goal and an achievement. Again, because of fear of ostracizing the minority who deals in drake armor the reward for those slayings is so far removed from the risk, that it devolved to hush-hush "Elite" sort of event. Where its pretty much the same cadre of players that attend.

 

5. PvP participation might double or more if some of the risk is removed. Partial loot, Protected deeds, staged battles, arenas, consensual pvp etc. There are a lot of players out there that would not mind spending the afternoon pvping, but got pushed out of the sport by a minority of obnoxious players that take it too far. Reduce the risk and they will come.

Its not just reducing the risk, but SHARING the risk. I mean if your village is raided, pretty much ALL your stuff (except what you hide through exploiting alts and merchants, and the tiny Bank). You also risk part of the money YOU PAY to keep the village running. And what does the attacker risk? Pretty much only what he carries with him and he prepares to risk.

Then of course there's Stuff like the Sparta ( ithink that was the name of the deed) Incident, and the overwhelmingly obvious favoritism plays we see in the game, particularly towards Chaos players.

 

6. I'd say make it more fun is a higher priority, but yes, in war zones battles should actually have impact otherwise it becomes endless skirmishes. This is mostly a population issue, however. If you had the numbers you could have decisive battles with deeds and kingdoms disappearing. the problem is that the current offering and nonadvertising (patent pending) just doesn't draw the needed numbers to have a real war

But the population issues derive from the lack of interest that PvP generates because of lack of balance, proper combat, and defined objectives and Fun.

 

 

I have heard Wurm is dying for almost 7 years now, strange how I feel the game keeps getting better.

You have what? 4 times the servers? Not even counting that Xanadu is the size of 4 of the bigger servers previous to it. And yet you have little over twice the number of players. And i'm not sure how reliable that statistic is, because if my friends and neighbors are any sample, everyone ends up with 2-3 premium alts, if nothing else just to be mayors of their other deeds. So yeah, wurm improved on the eye-candy aspect, they even did some positive things to improve player retention (including reducing some of the timers a bit if you don't remember that) but too little and too scattered. The main issues still exist, the PvP half of the game is a sick joke, and yet some poor people still plough through it for the notion of some personal glory or gain...

I've been playing Wurm for nearly 5 years now, and we've been having Bridges dangled in our faces like the proverbial Carrot since then. That's how fast wurm develops. If its not something easy and flashy the devs are slow, lumbering and simply don't work on the stuff.

I mean real development on bridges started a year ago. That's 4 years after they said they were working on it. And even that is being slow and lame. Of course made worse because due to people being afraid of floating into space with proper 3D physics and collision or their neighbors literally jumping the fence, the whole matter is probably drawn out further than what it would be from simply applying a proper 3D physics engine to the game.

 

I mean Rolf announces he has a fix for collision issues with houses, and as a side effect he could enable us to jump and fly. And many people actually preferred to have bugs and problems to having those awesome options.

I mean a big issue with Wurm is the reluctance of the devs to "offend" the few conservationist players that just want to keep playing the same way for 100 years.

Edited by KanePT
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