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hankrearden

Should wurm be easier or more difficult

should wurm be easier?  

197 members have voted

  1. 1. Should wurm be harder or easier

    • harder wurm requiring more trade/interaction
      60
    • easier wurm requiring less trade/interaction
      16
    • difficulty level is fine
      114
    • dont know or dont care
      7


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    There is a tradeoff between the difficulty in creating/crafting certain types of goods, and the market for those types of goods.  Obviously people would prefer things to be easier, but at the same time people want those same things to keep their value.  Over the 5+ years I have been here, I have seen this game become far easier and less demanding, while at the same time seeing the value of many things fall.  Of course, some fall in value is due to the silver coin to Euro exchange rate change, but some of the overall decline in item value is simply due to the fact they are easier to create.


    Take boats for example.  Many of you will remember the time when materials were lost on item creation failure.  This meant to build a boat, you not only needed ship building skill but also real good cloth tailoring and rope making, not to mention a good sized resource farm.  Making a boat bigger than a sailboat was not a good idea for most people.  However, making a boat was more rewarding due to the sheer difficulty of the task.  This created a market for boats, and people wanting to buy boats were creating other markets so they could afford boats.


    The question to the player base is this: Are we better off with more self sustainability and less need for specialization and economic interaction?  Some players get enjoyment from relying on no one (was still possible a while back, just couldn't have everything), while others enjoy the economic interactions or others still who preferred local gift economies (villages).  Over the last 5 years it seems to me the game has tilted towards the self sufficient lone mayor type, at the expense of the other preferred play styles.  Some other points to consider:


 


Has the mailbox killed the local marketplace?


The effect of BSB on the market for bulk goods?


Material loss on creation failure: other market consequences?


 


I am hoping to get a real discussion going on these and other issues.  Which direction should wurm take and why?


 


add in: I should note I am using the term 'economy' in the traditional sense, meaning the volume of silver coins exchanged for goods and services over a time period.


Edited by hankrearden
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Why does the game have to revolve around the "market" all the time? The game becomes more enjoyable if you focus on gameplay instead.

Edited by Aeris
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Why does the game have to revolve around the "market" all the time? The game becomes more enjoyable if you focus on gameplay instead.

This

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What do you mean by 'Difficulty'?


Not much in Wurm requires any form of player 'skill', so it isn't difficult in the classical sense.


Wurm is time consuming. Do you mean 'should wurm be more time consuming?'


 


It has also gotten 'easier' to produce high quality materials over the past 5 years as more and more people have reached higher and higher character skill levels. 5 years ago, there weren't that many people who could produce 90ql+ goods and provide 90+ enchants. Now, there are quite a number of people to pick from should you wish to purchase any goods of that high quality.


 


I would like to see some sort of actual player-skill introduced into Wurm, rather than just click and wait. (Some form of mini-game maybe that reduced timers or increased skillgain etc if you were actually paying attention and participating rather than just afk mashing a keybind every 2 minutes for mining say) I have no idea how it would work, but I think it would be nice and add some degree of 'difficulty' to Wurm, beside just being tedious.


 


The old style of crafting, where you lost materials on a failure was just that...tedious. It didn't make Wurm harder or more enjoyable...it just made things take longer and more resources.


 


The only way to 'improve' local trade would be to either cap the number of skills you can have above say 70 (So 1 person can't produce everything themselves and are forced to trade. Doesn't work in reality as they would just use alts instead) or cap local resources, so you have to move around and barter. (Problem with that is, 1 thing will always be in more demand than another...no one is going to want to trade 1k iron lumps for 1k slate...at least not often enough for trade to work) Neither options are good and I haven't heard of any other proposed alternatives.


 


A real cash economy is always tricky when it comes to 'balancing'. If you can make everything for free in the game in a reasonable time period and have fun doing so, no one is going to pay for with real life money. People are only going to use real euros to pay for things that either they don't have the time for or they don't enjoy doing. (Excluding rare/unique type items such as scale armor and supreme tools etc...which don't really count as 'local economy' anyway)


That means that either the game has to have lots of boring things or lots of time consuming things. Or both. Otherwise, no one will pay each other to perform 'jobs' for them. (Why would I pay someone 5 euro to play the fun part of the game for me? Why would I pay someone 5 euro for something that only takes 5 minutes?)


 


As Aeris said...play for fun, not for profit. (If you enjoy making profit, then that is you having fun and what you should be doing)


Edited by Outlaw
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Easier =/= less trade - everything depends on your village, difficulty is not related to the market at all.

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Why does the game have to revolve around the "market" all the time? The game becomes more enjoyable if you focus on gameplay instead.

The market is one way in which players interact.  for those who prefer a gift economy, villages provide that.  It is more a question of interaction than making money.

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The market is one way in which players interact.  for those who prefer a gift economy, villages provide that.  It is more a question of interaction than making money.

 

That's the main problem with PvE Wurm.

If you play on Chaos/Epic, there is tons of interaction within villages/kingdoms.

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Here is the thing for me. I don't want this game to be about an elite veteran group of players making money off of newer players, which is what it kinda felt like when I started a few years back. I think that is going to turn off many new players real fast, if they think the "game" is just a "con" to get their money. Unless you are a hardcore player, you are going to be paying money to the people who ARE hardcore players, just for simple basics. You can say people should not expect to be playing for free, but we are not talking about money that is going to developers -- we are talking about real money profits for a small group of veteran elite players.  I never liked that aspect much either of Entropia/Second Life, where you had this pyramid of a few at the top making money and the masses at the bottom whose main function is buy stuff from them.


 


On the other hand, Marketplace and commerce IS an enjoyable feature for many. If anything is going to be "profitable" I'd rather it stay as things people are too lazy or time-constrained to make themselves such as bulk construction materials, or non-essentials such as item & weapon enchantments, dragon gear, rare drops, sleep powders, and pvp special items (ores, drops etc).  But those people get very upset if you tweak things to make it more difficult/profitable. I think its better for the game that basic tools/weapons/armor/horses/boats etc stay in a more affordable range, basically cheapish because given some  effort  "almost anyone can make them."


 


There will still always be a market from people who don't have much time to play but do have more disposable income. They are not going to want to spend 100 hours ingame making something they could pay for with a couple dollars. 


 


Current difficulty is fine.


Edited by Brash_Endeavors
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The market is one way in which players interact.  for those who prefer a gift economy, villages provide that.  It is more a question of interaction than making money.

And what I'm saying is that we won't get a more enjoyable game if we "improve the market". The focus should lie on improving the gameplay because if you have to jump in and out of your cart 50 times to be able to load crates or walk around with 60 different keys while disconnecting randomly every 15 tiles a working "market" will mean squat.

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    There is a tradeoff between the difficulty in creating/crafting certain types of goods, and the market for those types of goods.  Obviously people would prefer things to be easier, but at the same time people want those same things to keep their value.  Over the 5+ years I have been here, I have seen this game become far easier and less demanding, while at the same time seeing the value of many things fall.  Of course, some fall in value is due to the silver coin to Euro exchange rate change, but some of the overall decline in item value is simply due to the fact they are easier to create.(The main reason for this is due to oversupply. You can say that by making things easier you increase the quantity of items available and thus it drives the price down, and this is correct,(Supply and demand 101) however, the solution is not really in making things easier or harder to create, its about having enough sinks. There has to be a balance of input vs output. Right now there are far too few sinks and traditionally the devs have tried to address imbalances by using decay or dmg in combination with a natural attrition system which says if we make the better stuff reallllly hard to make then this will weed out those not serious enough about the particular skill. These are simply too inefficient as sinks. One can make the game easier, as you say and still keep the costs of goods the same or drive them higher if you have efficient sinks in place. So the solution is to find additional sinks and stop relying on the few we have.

    Take boats for example.  Many of you will remember the time when materials were lost on item creation failure.  This meant to build a boat, you not only needed ship building skill but also real good cloth tailoring and rope making, not to mention a good sized resource farm.  Making a boat bigger than a sailboat was not a good idea for most people.  However, making a boat was more rewarding due to the sheer difficulty of the task.  This created a market for boats, and people wanting to buy boats were creating other markets so they could afford boats. (This is a good example of current sinks not being efficient enough. The natural attrition system just isnt working here, at times it did, but only for a short while. If you want to make the game easier then you have to have better sinks.)

    The question to the player base is this: Are we better off with more self sustainability and less need for specialization and economic interaction?  Some players get enjoyment from relying on no one (was still possible a while back, just couldn't have everything), while others enjoy the economic interactions or others still who preferred local gift economies (villages).  Over the last 5 years it seems to me the game has tilted towards the self sufficient lone mayor type, at the expense of the other preferred play styles.  Some other points to consider:

 

Has the mailbox killed the local marketplace?

The effect of BSB on the market for bulk goods?

Material loss on creation failure: other market consequences?

 

I am hoping to get a real discussion going on these and other issues.  Which direction should wurm take and why?

 

 

I put my answer to your question here

It addresses everything you are speaking about.

Edited by sunsvortex

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Needs more variety, specially in crafting before any of the above can truly be addressed.... or so says Mordy =P


 


Suggestions' Forums has loads of it, lots of it relatively simple to implement from a coding standpoint.. at least should be, if not the engine needs some serious hired love.


 


Examples:


More control on ships and ways to speed them up:  Half sail for parking in tight harbors during gales, ways to speed up ships to make the (oh yeah, should be fixed too) typical light breeze.


That long-requested midpoint between sailboat and cog, the 9-crate ship.


Crafting variety like:  Handle material affects different weapons in different ways (so handle on sword is less of a factor than say, a halberd).


Different metals and alloys (in normal PvE world) having different properties on armors, mixed material armors.


Different crafting facilities like smelters and such, people have also suggested things like pipes, windmills and such for a bunch of different uses including supplying water past the random water sources in the ground.


More cooking recipes with different effects from food.


More booze recipes.


More everyday use alchemy potions.


Making taming more engaging, including taming more than one animal.  Just make it a Freedom only thing, worst we can do with 6 tamed animals is raid PvP with a slightly better chance =P


 


And so on so forth, I just listed my personal favorites


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Why does the game have to revolve around the "market" all the time? The game becomes more enjoyable if you focus on gameplay instead.

Because it's this game unique in game economy that sets it apart from other MMO Games. To be able to produce and sell and be rewarded for your hard production and labors within the game gives the game a tangible feeling while playing it. A feeling of ownership and pride. To know you spent so long building that  village or Item so it could be sold to another player for a real in-game currency and then to know that item,village,toon is gonna be around for a while. The in game market is everything to this game, without it then it be just like mine craft. The markets have everything to do with this game. Players know it. GMs Know it, Devs know it and so does Rolf. It seems as if its falling apart so they should do something to fix it even if it means reverse in some changes made. Example when they decided to change digging, those that worked so hard at that skill lost something. All the sudden everyone could level. Was made to easy. No need to higher a landscaper anymore anyone can do it. It's these kinds of changes that are hurting the market. As game gets more simple and user friendly then seems less people depend on other people for help and the desired skill sets they hold.

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Brash_Endevors: good points on how a balance in the market should be, could very well be best for the game that way.


 


Shadow_Ronin:  Mudflation is more about the chronic high inflation in most every mmo.  Wurms economy is fundamentally different, and we have actually seen deflation over the last few years.  Also no expansions making previously made items worthless(maybe a few exceptions)


 


Sunsvortex:  I agree with you partly.  I think oversupply would be compensated by wurms population growth over the last 4 years.  However i think the crux of the problem is lack of demand, due to specialization not being as necessary as it once was, forcing the profit hunters into the few areas where specialization is still needed.  The idea (in this post) is to not reinforce these few areas (ws'ing etc) but to broaden the areas in which specialization is needed.  The idea of more sinks is good :) and i believe it should play a large part in the future of wurm/


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And what I'm saying is that we won't get a more enjoyable game if we "improve the market". The focus should lie on improving the gameplay because if you have to jump in and out of your cart 50 times to be able to load crates or walk around with 60 different keys while disconnecting randomly every 15 tiles a working "market" will mean squat.

Actually, yes, we will get a more enjoyable game as every other MMO out there has a vibrant auction house / trade system. Half those MMO's have their trade systems as the center piece of their games. They all have at least 20 times the number of players that wurm has and they all retain those large player bases in part because of their respective trade systems. In every MMO that I have ever played, which is about all of them, there is always a very large contingent of players that their whole style of play is centered around trade and or playing the markets. All the MMO's that have both pvp and pve deal with those two groups basically the same way, either keep the meaning of pvp contained and meaningless, IE Rift / WOW or they tie the two worlds together using trade systems. Wurms current trade system can do neither....at all. Its broken and completely inefficient.

 

If we get a trade system in that actually works for everyone then we can start to look forward to over all higher numbers in player retention and when this happens it benefits everyone...from player to dev to Rolf.

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Sunsvortex:  I agree with you partly.  I think oversupply would be compensated by wurms population growth over the last 4 years.  However i think the crux of the problem is lack of demand, due to specialization not being as necessary as it once was, forcing the profit hunters into the few areas where specialization is still needed.  The idea (in this post) is to not reinforce these few areas (ws'ing etc) but to broaden the areas in which specialization is needed.  The idea of more sinks is good :) and i believe it should play a large part in the future of wurm/

Yes, i can see your point, however, Wurm currently has absolutely 0 player retention. If new games come out that are similar to WURM (Land, Housing Terraforming, farming) wurm takes a hit, and with so few players any hit is a hard one. So player retention is a big issue, which is why I would contend its still an oversupply issue and we need better sinks or simply more of them.

 

Specialization is fine,I think it needs to be reworked and I have seen people put out beautiful ideas on it in the suggestions forum, but its not really the solution to the issues you addressed. A real trade system is. One can still go in and tweak specialization but it still works under the principal of natural attrition, which when scaled, simply breaks down. If one reworks a trade system that allows everyone to participate and removes all the erroneous logistics that really add nothing but complexity and frustration without reward, then we have a foundation to address balance, we have something to build new / improved specialization on. I dont think its a good idea to keep trying to address balance issues with the current mechanics. Over and over when you compare contrast Wurm to other similar MMO's the highest common denominator between wurm and them is a good trade system. Wurm simply doesnt have one. And its absence affects everything. Wurm is only half a game, we have PVE which is fleshed out pretty well (1), half a trade system as it doesnt allow everyone to be involved in it as its a pay to play setup and completely player dependent(.5), and pvp is an unqualified disaster and doesnt really count.(0).

 

All successful MMO's have a 3 prong foundation -PVE, Trade, and PVP.

 

Im not trying to veer the conversation away from specialization, its just the solutions to this are at a higher level. The foundation level, and unless the foundations are addressed, specialization at best can only be a band aid.

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And what I'm saying is that we won't get a more enjoyable game if we "improve the market". The focus should lie on improving the gameplay because if you have to jump in and out of your cart 50 times to be able to load crates or walk around with 60 different keys while disconnecting randomly every 15 tiles a working "market" will mean squat.

I dont believe that these two things are mutually exclusive.  Improving general game play requires lots of coding hours (as in they are not low hanging fruit).  This thread requires only our well thought ideas and 'might' not require much coding time to implement.  That decision would be up  to the dev team based on their resources and perceived benefit.  No reason to not discuss possible solutions.

 

Also i can understand why some people less nerdy than myself would not want their free time exposed to market influences.  I remember when Indy was new, there actually were villages with multiple villagers.  I imagine being in a village back then had great advantages.  Since i was a stubborn newb hermit and can only speculate, I am wondering if some old timers could chime in on village life back then?  Do you think it is better now with easier solo play?

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I find myself agreeing with both Brash and Aeris (surely to nobody's surprise) but on a truly self-centered note I would enjoy Wurm very much more is the was more intentional, difficulty-by-design requiring more player interaction and trade. I don't particularly enjoy the fact that with little extra difficulty I can do everything myself. I prefer my games to have somewhat more realistic limits in to what one character can accomplish.


 


Good example ofdifficulty-by-design would be nerfing farming yields coupled with a more intense cooking/nutrition system or adding in clothing but also requiring it for good health and having weather and use degrade it. However, the "you can master every skill" aspect of Wurm essentially nullifies any sort of requirements other than time/effort; and the playerbase will usually reject anything resembling additional required effort on their part.


 


But like Aeris, pointed out, Wurm has more than enough difficulty-by-poor-design. That would need to be addressed before even I, the glutton for grueling survival pve that I am, would seriously want any major change in the current mechanics. Alas, seeing as I don't believe such remedies are forthcoming (or even seen to be needed by the developer) I'll still be chiming in support for the aspects I'd like to see added.


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Shadow_Ronin:  Mudflation is more about the chronic high inflation in most every mmo.  Wurms economy is fundamentally different, and we have actually seen deflation over the last few years.  Also no expansions making previously made items worthless(maybe a few exceptions)

 

Where we run into mudflation is in skills.  The pool of highly skilled players grows much faster than it shrinks, more people grind or sell their accounts than outright quit the game.  A larger pool of high end toons competes for a smaller piece of the diminishing market.  Enchants, weapon, armor prices, etc have all plummeted because of this.  The only constants we see are in items that aren't heavily skill based (bulk materials).  Rarely is someone going to be concerned about buying high ql bulk materials.

 

Granted that might not be classic mudflation, but due to Wurms economy being player funded, the value of items depreciate instead of the currency inflating.

Edited by ShadowRonin

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I'd love to see much more player interaction through trade. The forum selling and chat spamming is awful and has tired me of Wurm. Working hard to create products and then having no trade system for competitive business is just not good enough.


 


I wish Rolf would look to EVE and work towards regional and automated auction houses, for instance an auction house in each spawn point - isolated from each other. This would work fantastic in Wurm's setting and create huge activity around these areas, and trade routes everywhere. Looking at dead player markets everywhere is just sad.


 


Also, OP is correct that Wurm has become a game for the hermits and couples that live in their isolated deeds and do not interact much with others, but create everything by themselves. I dunno how to fix that, or rather I do, because regionality of resources would force players to interact and trade with each other. However, the Catch-22 is that nobody in the currently retained playerbase wants that kind of changes  :)


Edited by Cista
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 If new games come out that are similar to WURM (Land, Housing Terraforming, farming) wurm takes a hit

 

Oh yea if games like Shroud of the Avatar (albeit no terraforming there) and Life is Feudal (terraforming) were fully realised and they come with a more challenging and dynamic feature distribution and trade options, I would probably not be looking back.  

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Content deleted, misunderstood topic.

Edited by Mozdog

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I dont know what mushrooms you ate son, but please give me some.


 


Hard "well not as hard as you ppl belive" - Freedom , chaos


 


Middle - Epic


 


Walk in the park easy - Challenge


 


What more do you want? Maybe some more servers? You want maybe a server where you do 1 action and you get 100 skill in that? Wow, what mode is that? supermode?


 


Whats with you people and your quest for instant gratification, maybe its the way society is today and the way of the youths. But it doesnt work like that in real Life. Better remember this or else you will get butthurt!


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For starters I should note I am using the term 'economy' in the traditional sense, meaning the volume of silver coins exchanged for goods and services over a time period. (will add this to first post).  Some people view the term as 'how much profit one can make' which is not a correct use of the term.

 

 

 

 I dont think its a good idea to keep trying to address balance issues with the current mechanics.

 

This is where i disagree, although i am looking forward to getting into your topic you linked.  We need to focus on current mechanics if we want a change anytime in the next year or two.  While the economy 4 years ago was not perfect, it was much better than it is now.  trying to find a more vibrant economy like back then would not require much work, only the will and the knowledge of what to tweak and what to leave be.

 

Its all in your Mind

It is possible the overall economy is doing as good as ever, just being captured by fewer top end players.  I have no doubt your income would knock the socks off of many of us.  If this is the case, we should ask ourselves is a more inclusive economy better for wurm?  Is there even an easy fix?

http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/99831-xanadu-grand-compromise/#entry1009291
http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/99736-a-look-at-xanadu-in-light-of-pr-launch/

 

edit: added links to some previous discussions and fixed a sentence that got chopped off

Edited by hankrearden

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