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Othob Rithol

Moneysink item: Livestock statuettes.

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For a price of a few coins, you can buy a small statuette of livestock. When used it offers a pop-up where you select species (chicken, bison, cattle, sheep) and gender. The appropriate basic, non-traited animal spawns in that tile after a delay (no insta-horses for pvp). Ideally it would be worked into the normal domestic spawn system to keep the server balanced. Priced specifically to be cheap enough for a player to buy several, but high enough that it is cheaper to buy from another player. 


 


 




One problem presented does seem to need addressing: The idea that someone could use the item and be stuck waiting for a long time for the next spawn. My solution would be for the item to not create a creature, but to transform an existing creature into the one desired. It probably has to have all the suitable pvp limits (no enemies in local or high timer or yada yada) although if I were a pvper I'd get a kick out seeing my horse turn into a sheep or pig.




Edited by Othob Rithol
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Most anti-Wurm suggestion ever?


What would be the point or benefit of this except to cater for people to lazy to look for the animals. Its one of the main themes in wurm, to have to create everything from pretty much nothing, including finding or purchasing your animals.


 


If you mention Xanadu as a reason, i'll counter with: "You knew it would be bigger, by such logic animals would be more widespread (inde and Chaos also have more problem finding animals than all the smaller servers, now you have one that's four times bigger, thus expected results are 4 times worse), travel times wouldn't improve either. So man up to your choices."


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Would please those on islands, but then again... bridges.. +/- 1


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I am all for anything that gets me animals on my island that can not swim but i think the crate idea is best and more realistic. With crates you can even get aggressive ones too but no traits just lead click the crate and load.


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I know this is Wurm.  But that would be a pay to win item and how would it work with a cap?

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Domestic animals certainly can't be seen to be dramatically pay-to-win...a handful of cows or hens doesn't cost much at all and doesn't change balance between competitive factions.


 


As far as how it would relate to the cap, I think the best possible solution would be that it marks that tile to have a guaranteed spawn of that type the next time the server would spawn a domestic creature on its own.


 


Pricing wise, I think it should be somewhat hefty in base price, but charged. Four charges (which would give a breeding pair of two species) being 5s seems fair to me, but that is just my opinion.


 


Editted for pre-morning tea grammar.


Edited by Othob Rithol

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Most anti-Wurm suggestion ever?

What would be the point or benefit of this except to cater for people to lazy to look for the animals. Its one of the main themes in wurm, to have to create everything from pretty much nothing, including finding or purchasing your animals.

 

But that's the entire point behind money sinks, to cater to the people who don't have a lot of time but do have money. That's how the entire micro transaction scheme in the f2p genre works. If you can't be bothered to find a good vein, buy a Rod of transmutation. Need to travel somewhere by foot and back, but can't be bothered making both trips? Use a farwalker twig. Can't be bothered to maintain your items? Buy a magic chest. Can't be bothered to hire a mag priest to collapse a tile (or to wait for it to happen naturally)? Buy a shaker orb. Can't be bothered spending too much time grinding? Buy sleep powder.

 

The entire game is already set up like this. So it being an anti-Wurm suggestion is a strange comment.

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At first it sounds like a nice idea, perhaps a few changes, Such as you cant use it for horses? since those you can lead across water, so like, bison/cows and other animals that you can't, Sorta to cater to people who live on islands or in regions that you cant reasonably get land animals. In addition, maybe have the gender randomized?


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I was thinking at first of random gender, but I can imagine a few rages from people that used 2-3 or more and still don't have a breeding pair. Picking the gender makes it less likely that buyers will walk away feeling cheated.


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But that's the entire point behind money sinks, to cater to the people who don't have a lot of time but do have money. That's how the entire micro transaction scheme in the f2p genre works. If you can't be bothered to find a good vein, buy a Rod of transmutation. Need to travel somewhere by foot and back, but can't be bothered making both trips? Use a farwalker twig. Can't be bothered to maintain your items? Buy a magic chest. Can't be bothered to hire a mag priest to collapse a tile (or to wait for it to happen naturally)? Buy a shaker orb. Can't be bothered spending too much time grinding? Buy sleep powder.

 

The entire game is already set up like this. So it being an anti-Wurm suggestion is a strange comment.

Yep. The whole game is pay to "win", right down to the purchasing of deed tiles (resources). The more you spend around here, the more you have. That's why I get a chuckle out of people going on about how they'll quit/hate Wurm if it goes p2w.... it always was, far before they even found the game.

Anyway, to stay OT... i'm okay with this. Visited Indy for the RoS cast yesterday and the SW was just like it's been for years and years: void of wildlife. A money sink such as this suggestion would help areas that have always been problematic with critter spawns... on all maps

I agree that horses should not be one of the available species.

 

 

Pricing wise, I think it should be somewhat hefty in base price, but charged. Four charges (which would give a breeding pair of two species) being 5s seems fair to me, but that is just my opinion.

 

I think your pricing structure is a little high, Othob. Four charges (animals) per 5s would mean ea bison/sheep is gonna cost 1.25s. I've never seen a 5 speed bison go for that much, let alone a non-traited. I would think that 10 charges per 5s would be more reasonable... 50c per animal, still costing more than what's available through the player market.

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But that's the entire point behind money sinks, to cater to the people who don't have a lot of time but do have money. That's how the entire micro transaction scheme in the f2p genre works. If you can't be bothered to find a good vein, buy a Rod of transmutation. Need to travel somewhere by foot and back, but can't be bothered making both trips? Use a farwalker twig. Can't be bothered to maintain your items? Buy a magic chest. Can't be bothered to hire a mag priest to collapse a tile (or to wait for it to happen naturally)? Buy a shaker orb. Can't be bothered spending too much time grinding? Buy sleep powder.

 

The entire game is already set up like this. So it being an anti-Wurm suggestion is a strange comment.

LOL The mag priest was interesting, sicne the orb is more expensive, but ok.

Yeah i get the nature of money-sink and premium shop items (you should be aware that i've defended that all the time, and the F2P-ish nature of wurm), but this is really not the kind of item you want. SPECIALLY NOT when breeders have been hit with nailed hammers for years because of the animal population caps. Adding a mechanic that can spawn them freely is really NOT what you want to add to the game.

 

Just because there's F2P or a cash shop you can't just throw in stuff willy-nilly.

A good example comes to mind with FlyFF. A interesting MMORPG with cash shop where the western publishers turned greedy and a single item caused 30-50% of the population to quit. We knew the Japanese version of the game had pets that could be purchased in-game, and people were excited about the prospect. But when pets were about to come out the western version of the game decided, 30 minutes after putting them in-game on a vendor, to roll that back and put them in the cash shop. A single item caused the game to drop to a fraction of previous pop. Of my 100 guy guild only 10 were left after 3 weeks.

 

So yeah as you can see even something marginally useful (the pets would pick loot for you) can have BIG consequences. Similar things happened in other games where a single change on the cash shop caused exodus from the games. This might not be the case, but still not a item i'd put out there. Specially since its not really that rare to find a horse, lots of breeders will sell them cheap or give away with lesser traits.

So in all honestly this would simply make the community less active, the economy more stagnant, and mess up the animal ratio even more. No thanks.

Edited by KanePT

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Your comparison other cash shops are flawed, that pet from FlyFF is, according to what you mention, a cash shop only thing, not obtainable in any other way? Thus it is in no way similar to the proposed item in this topic. If this proposal included the removal of breeding and spawns then the comparison would work. That pet from FlyFF shows an issue with cash shops in many games, the moment you include good stuff which is only obtainable from those cash shops is when you start to alienate your players and drive them away to other games. Hyping up a new item (even if they didn't hype it, but the players took it upon themselves to do that) without mentioning that it's going to be cash shop only is also a hilarious mistake. Sounds like the FlyFF devs dropped the ball big time, either by not having a good enough understanding of human psychology or by being out of touch with their player base and not having noticed the build up hype.


 


 


So the real issue you bring up is that the item could harm the viability of breeders. So, traits + lower price is not a good enough reason to buy an animal from a breeder even when the proposed money sink item exists? I very much doubt this is true for horses, though of course traits don't matter much on non-horse creatures, as there are no traits which affect milk/wool harvests (these really should be added to the game for those creatures), so I can see your point for cows/sheep/etc. Maybe such traits should be added, or the proposed money sink item needs to be prohibitively expensive, like 5s for a single animal? At 5s the impact of this item on breeder profit should be negligible.


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Actually, as wurm things go, I can't see this as being a bad thing if WELL priced.  By well priced I mean expensively.


 


50 silver buys you any vein you like.


 


How much should any animal you like cost?  Well a vein is a finite resource, animals are infinitely renewable.  However animals offer much less in terms of gain, save for horses which can net you a good profit if you take the time to breed.


 


I would say allow certain animals (cow/bull, chicken/rooster, sheep) for those who want to use this for farming, but charge em through the nose (25 silver per statue).  While horses WOULD be nice for fo priests (think of all those genesis cast requests!) I think it would be too unbalancing.


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-1 Even on an island you will get what you want, you just have to be patient and wait for those animals to start spawning, they always do, eventually..


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Your comparison other cash shops are flawed, that pet from FlyFF is, according to what you mention, a cash shop only thing, not obtainable in any other way? Thus it is in no way similar to the proposed item in this topic. If this proposal included the removal of breeding and spawns then the comparison would work. That pet from FlyFF shows an issue with cash shops in many games, the moment you include good stuff which is only obtainable from those cash shops is when you start to alienate your players and drive them away to other games. Hyping up a new item (even if they didn't hype it, but the players took it upon themselves to do that) without mentioning that it's going to be cash shop only is also a hilarious mistake. Sounds like the FlyFF devs dropped the ball big time, either by not having a good enough understanding of human psychology or by being out of touch with their player base and not having noticed the build up hype.

 

 

So the real issue you bring up is that the item could harm the viability of breeders. So, traits + lower price is not a good enough reason to buy an animal from a breeder even when the proposed money sink item exists? I very much doubt this is true for horses, though of course traits don't matter much on non-horse creatures, as there are no traits which affect milk/wool harvests (these really should be added to the game for those creatures), so I can see your point for cows/sheep/etc. Maybe such traits should be added, or the proposed money sink item needs to be prohibitively expensive, like 5s for a single animal? At 5s the impact of this item on breeder profit should be negligible.

The thing on flyff is just an example how you can break a game with a single cash shop item. Not saying its the same as this suggestion, just an example of the impact that a seemingly innocuous thing can have.

 

Its not about breeder profit. I guess you didn't really read my post. Its about:

1) It has NO reason to be. One thing is how hard it is to find a certain vein (and that costs 50s). A very different thing is getting animals. Many people will GIVE AWAY animals with lower traits. And they're not that easy to find in the wild if you don't want traits at all.

2) If it has little to no potential of actual positive use, why add it?

3) It can, however, be used to break the cap and indirectly grief other players and even cause issues with the server. Since you can force-spawn animals with it. After all the problems created by breeder-hate and whatnot, with the addition of the ratio, nerfs to enchanted grass, increased disease and miscarriage (specially with forced bad ratio off-deed) and inbreeding issues, it would send a very bad message to everyone that was affected by this if now, suddenly, people could spawn as many animals as they want. Even at 5 s a piece it wouldn't be too much of a challenge for many a player to double or triple their animal stock with this instantly.

 

And seriously, except for someone extremely lazy (or with ill intentions), i don't see why anyone would even want this. There's a ton more positive and usable items that could be added as a cash shop that would have no potential negative impacts, such as cometics, items to add crests to your stuff, signature changers on items, etc.

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Perhaps telling another unrelated story about how statuettes ruined a game might hold traction, and not come off as settling a personal score.


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-1. I understand the dilemma with people on islands but I'm far too familiar with the way things usually go as soon as animals are involved to allow myself to believe that islanders would even get a chance to benefit from this. As soon as any type of domestic creature is made easily available in any way people will start hoarding just for the sake of hoarding and you'd just end up with a bunch of people on islands who've bought livestock spawners that can't do anything because the server has already hit its creature cap.


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Perhaps telling another unrelated story about how statuettes ruined a game might hold traction, and not come off as settling a personal score.

Personal score? With whom? For what?

I don't hold "scores". When i have a issue with someone that person gets to know about it and its dealt with. Grudges and passive-agressive things are for little people.

 

This suggestion is crap, it is. I seriously don't know what angle you want to play with suggesting this, but there's a whole array of stuff that would do better than this as far as money skin or premium cash shop items.

 

My "story" was a reply to Ecrir's post about cash shop items, simply stating that not all cash shops are good, and in many good games the cash shop ruined the game. Other than that i've been always vocal in support of having a cash shop for Wurm, with actual useful and not P2W stuff that could bend the game to its death.

If you don't want to learn from other people's past mistakes, then maybe learn from Wurm's. Messing with breeding as always caused ripples in the game and we're still feeling some from the Ratio.

 

If you don't want to spend time finding a couple animals, then i might suggest wurm isn't really for you. Because now its spawning animals cause you don't want to leave the deed, next thing will be spawning materials or walls because it takes too long. Next thing you know people want "Creative Mode" in wurm. Not really a bad thing, but really not a good thing in a MMORPG with a persistent world.

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Kane, you seem to be forgetting that location can have a big effect on how often you run into animals. If you live on an island or on the top of a mountain then it's much harder to run into animals, in the first case there's a limited area where they can spawn, in the second case you need to descend the entire mountain (that's easily 20-30 minutes for a serious mountain) before you've got a chance of really running into stuff. That's the 2 extremes, besides that there are other locations with less animals, like when you are surrounded on three sides by water, or water on 2 sides and cliff on another side. Or when you are sitting between two mountains and on the coast, so there's only one place from where animals can really come. Those are all examples of how location can greatly reduce the chance, or increase the effort, of finding the creature you are interested in. And the more creatures are added to Wurm, the worse your chances of finding a specific creature become.

 

Your comparison of transmutation rods in post #19 is just weird. You say that it is hard to find good veins, but that it's a totally different thing with animals because people sell them for a low price or give them away for free? But then you state that finding animals without traits isn't very easy at all. How is that any different from ore? People who mine high ql ore get plenty of low ql rubbish along the way, I know people who also sell that for a low price and sometimes even give it away. So ore is in exactly the same situation as animals there, except that you can spawn high ql ore for 0.5c per ore (10k ore for 50s). So high ql ore is as hard to find as untraited animals, but unlike untraited animals you can create high ql ore with a trader item. So I fail to see how you conclude that being able to spawn an animal (with delayed spawn as proposed in post #10, making your third point irrelevant) is a bad thing at a reasonable price, when there's already a precedence with ore.

 


there's a whole array of stuff that would do better than this as far as money skin or premium cash shop items.

 

red herring. This proposed item does not exclude those proposed items. This item doesn't even need graphical work, while all those cosmetic items do. Completely different things and no where near mutually exclusive.

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One problem presented does seem to need addressing: The idea that someone could use the item and be stuck waiting for a long time for the next spawn. My solution would be for the item to not create a creature, but to transform an existing creature into the one desired. It probably has to have all the suitable pvp limits (no enemies in local or high timer or yada yada) although if I were a pvper I'd get a kick out seeing my horse turn into a sheep or pig.


 


This also negates (in a better way than prior ideas negated) the nonsense about someone grieifing a server by wasting a paycheck buying animals and spawning them all inside their secret volcano lair. First off, my lair isn't a volcano; gnomes don't like the heat. Secondly that idea is about as far fetched as the fears that someone would deed an entire server when variable sizes came out.


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