Yonder - Sandbox MMO in PreAlpha

[Sagis 5]

Think Mobile? As in development for mobile? But....I don't wanna! *throws tantrum*

 

Looks very promising project with not stricted payment option. But you think twice, because mobile devices are the future. Many and many people started to stop purchasing of these stationaries and laptops. In other words, they slowly dissapearing from a market share too.

Or/and there another way to play a some of games via cross-platform systems, like Jagex done on Runescape. Html5 idea looks very good for a different OS/platforms.

 

I hope you will not forget these mobile peoples, who don't want to buy an heavy weight laptop or light one tablet with a x86 of cpu architecture +windows os  to play wurm (on example), because android devices are unfriendly to this game.

 

Well good luck with a this project and don't thrown it away

Edited February 16, 2015 by Sagis

[silakka 2,360]

Enough phone games in the market. There will always be space for computers. Tiny phone cant fully replace them

I would personally like decorative items like shiny hats and capes with tiny +10% skillgain bonus for example.

Those could probably generate more money than a complex f2p and p2p separation.

Especially if the skillbonus hat lasts only 30days per purchase

[Sagis 5]

Enough phone games in the market. There will always be space for computers. Tiny phone cant fully replace them

Edited February 16, 2015 by Sagis

[silakka 2,360]

*claps for creativity on looking at my postcount -.-* totally relevant

I also meant mobile devices. They're getting better yes. But do not offer same things that bigscreen stationary devices do

[paterso 104]

Please please, calm down. No need to have a go at postcounts and debating trolling.

 

For the idea of purchasing items, we were thinking more like unique looks applied to crafted items (So yes, like fancy hats and capes, but they are applied to specific crafted items). 

 

As for this mobile debate. Mobile is an advancing industry area, yes, but it isn't going to give players anywhere near the control they need to play a good sandbox game in my opinion. Not anytime soon, anyway.

MMOs on mobile do exist I guess, but they're usually aimed at simplification, rather than diverse control. 

 

 

As for the topic of F2P limits, I've been discussing it a bit more since my last post here, and we're shifting the outlook towards Premium being more of a bonus-mode. For example, being premium for (e.g.) £7.99 a month would mean you get some boosts like 10% bonus skillgain at all times, you get a monthly injection of premium currency, and you get a discount on the premium-currency store if you are a recurring subscriber. It would combine other things like skill-limits and crafting, too.

 

The main big changes regarding skills/crafting would be two things though: 

 

1: (Although this may make little sense due to it being something I've not mentioned before) You would have access to unlocking skill specializations more than non-premiums do. To explain this feature, the idea is that we simplify the basic skill system a little by giving the game 'Main-Skills'. Players, Free and Premium alike, would be unrestricted in these areas. However, to get a lot more advanced crafting options, you would have specialization skills. The main-skills would usually offer the basics of each specialization. For example, take Smithing as a Main-Skill. It would perhaps have some guns, pistols and rifles alike. However, Gunsmithing specialization would be dedicated to that area of crafting. The catch would be that a free account can only unlock a certain amount of specializations (Again, with a store option to choose them again). Whilst premium would get more, with store-options to buy more if they are dedicated players (or people who do not want to be premium but want one or two more specializations).

 

2: As briefly mentioned in the previous point, you'd be unrestricted in your main-skills, and we'd probably open up settlements to F2P, but in the interest of making Premium worthwhile (Business Models are annoying, even as the lead-developer I find it rather annoying to know we have to consider it), we would be opting to give Premiums a reasonable advantage in regards to the upkeep of settlements.

[Lycanthropic 523]

You sir, have peaked my interest

 

I like your vision on the seperation of servers, sounds logical and easy to maintain a f2p and p2p balance.

 

 

About free vs prem players pvp. I'd rather go for a free vs free pvp. That gives a basic range of combat options. Then tempt them with: "If you go prem, siege-warfare will be possible, specialized weapons and traps will be available, etc..."

That way, people trying out the game can get a taste of how the basics of pvp would work (without the need to balance out prem players), and have some motivation (if they like what they see) to support the game and go prem.

 

 

Am I correct in reading that you have a "Rolf"-vision in terms of: "You worked for that account, you can sell it for real life money"

If so, me like, because its always good to know, that should one ever run out of stuff to do (or real life forces you to do other stuff), that there is always the option to get even a small bit of cash out of what you spend your time in.

 

 

 

The terraforming. Above ground you raise/lower columns on the y-axis, how will this work underground? Will that go according to the x-axis? You said something about multi-layered worlds and acces between mines and world would be by a shaft. But I cant really see how its gonna work if you only change stuff by raising and lowering on the y-axis. (enlighten me please )

 

I see you have a picture of a mine entrance, seems like it will be some kinda portal-ish thing you place on the surface world, to be transported to the underworld?

 

 

 

You thinking of letting the alpha loose on Steam? Or are you looking for us Wurmians to make the Alpha sweat?

 

 

Anyways, looks promising so far for a preAlpha, hope you can transform it into a very nice "Version 1.0"

[Ecrir 887]

Premiums could cross to the F2P world but would not be able to access premium-exclusive content whilst there.

 

I assume that F2P players then can't visit the premium servers? If so, you might want to consider that in Wurm the premium player base growth increased by quite a bit after the F2P players could play on the premium servers, like Independence. This is because by letting the F2P players play in the same environment as the premium players, those free players are much more exposed to the things which they are missing, which increases the odds of them investing in premium. After all, if you hardly know what you are missing, then why buy premium if you are happy with what you have?

Another reason why growth increased was that the free players formed communities on their servers and they stuck with them. Many were willing to buy prem but they were not willing to leave their community for one of the premium servers. Due to that, premium offered nothing to them, thus they didn't buy it.

 

So I'd advice looking into a system where both types of players reside on the same servers, but where the premium players have their premium advantages at the same time. In your last post it does look like you are already moving in that direction, which is good to hear

[paterso 104]

Well, for PvP, I guess separation would be good, but we also have to consider that the split in playerbase, especially whenever we begin premium-options, will cause the Premium-Ghost-Town effect. 

I do support the idea of giving them a taster however. One idea was to exclude actual combat skills from the skill-limitations and consider them as main skills, but that has its own issues in regards to the availability of crafting gear and such.

 

As for profit-vision, I am of the mindset that says you can sell the account but if it goes sour, I will be there to say I told you so.

 

Terraforming. Fair enough to covering this part. The idea is that mines are actually flat. You can not terraform a mine. Instead, the columns are all 100% maximum height. When you mine it, the column is cleared and you have a flat tile of mine-floor. To get deeper, you need more mining skill to go down to a new layer, but that's not an anytime-soon development.

 

 

*reads the small text*. The Mine-Entrance is to teleport you to the next Mining Layer. Advanced miners will be able to extend it to go deeper and onto another layer later on.

To quickly clarify that note of the Underworld, we currently have very little plans to go treading into Fantasy-land. Narwhals and Cthulhu, maybe, but no demons or anything. That is subject to change, but probably going to stay the same.

 

 

As for letting the alpha loose? Good god no. Just no. Also I think it's too incomplete to be accepted, even by the great almighty Valve. Mainly due to their new guidelines on a game being at least playable. I do spend a couple of hours a day on Yonder, but a lot of it is documenting how I can crash the server and working out what 'lol-idk'-error I have this time.

 

Realistically what we'd like to do is bring the game to great public-attention across Alpha and eventually present it as a kickstarter campaign. It's a good way to gain publicity and it can help us fund server costs, setting up a company, and help with financial situations of poor and starving developers. That being said, we still need another programmer and 1 more 3D artist. Just to balance the workload out more. We currently have 2x 3D artists, my programmer Ivan, and myself, along with an SFX artist who is interested in joining us in Alpha.

 

And yes.

The Wurmians can bleed the Alpha dry.

So can every other forum I can find that is related to simulation and/or sandbox gaming.

 

Publicity is key here, so we need to keep spreading the word as development progresses.

 

 

 

I should write a novel on how to respond to developer questions.

 

 

 

 

**Edit**

 

Sorry, completely missed the new comment whilst I typed this up.

 

Yeah, again it comes down to how we want to split the playerbase, if at all. The more we mix them, the more we will have to setup obvious barriers too, though, which in turn can annoy some people when "Sorry, you aren't premium" pops up a little too often for their liking (In many cases, if it popped up at all).

Edited February 16, 2015 by Traslogan

[paterso 104]

New blog post explaining the new Regrowth-system and how it helps us regenerate the living world of Yonder

 

http://yonderdev.blogspot.co.uk/

 

 

 

Again, still here to answer questions of course

[silakka 2,360]

What does Yonder mean

[paterso 104]

It means a vast distance or 'over there'. Basically the term can be used to say something is "over Yonder", meaning far over there or far away. Suits a game-world that isn't based on any legitimate place in the world.

[rosedragon 2,282]

mm two men army.. good luck! Gave you a like on facebook, hopefully I remember to keep up to date.

In matter of payment, as game designer I would say whichever best for your goal. Is it to maintain a happy team and stable server? Grow userbases to be popular? Or settle for niche group but reap much money? Or maybe tons of potentials to sell to bigger company? Each use different approach and use different degree of resources and human talents.

 

As a player I hate p2w, especially model used in mobile games, but they are effective.. some more effective if the game is fun enough.

[paterso 104]

mm two men army.. good luck! Gave you a like on facebook, hopefully I remember to keep up to date.

In matter of payment, as game designer I would say whichever best for your goal. Is it to maintain a happy team and stable server? Grow userbases to be popular? Or settle for niche group but reap much money? Or maybe tons of potentials to sell to bigger company? Each use different approach and use different degree of resources and human talents.

 

As a player I hate p2w, especially model used in mobile games, but they are effective.. some more effective if the game is fun enough.

 

 

It's actually four of us at the moment. That excludes the SFX artist who was interested in collaborating with us since he hasn't technically joined us yet.

 

Thanks for the like, of course! *Craves more*

 

 

I'd like to avoid Pay-To-Win in most circumstances, and selling to a bigger company would waste the point of making a game we want to play, I think.

As for userbase, we'd like to grow the userbase as much as possible of course. We'd have to come up with more dynamic world creation or larger-scale world-designs to cope with a large playerbase but that's a challenge we'd be up for taking if it presents itself.

 

The goal is to find the balance of creating persistence through the game's world(s) by supplying sufficient and worthwhile content for enough users to enjoy it so that they keep the Yonder-World alive.

[wipeout 1,355]

on the topic of money one could do a combination of them all get the skill bonuses that some mmo's offer next to an item store similar to what csgo has aka reskins for items/sticking to pure aesthetics and like wurm with some content(again pure aesthetic) locked for high skilled players only (imagine the thrones in wurm or being able to make a stone house stuff like that)

from all the games i tend to play a setup like that makes it worth it for me if it was just a skill boost i wouldnt bother really considering the guy with prem might spend 5 weeks on something and i might spend 5 weeks and 5 days on the same thing to get where hes at in skill wont matter much but if being prem opens up certain area's of the game that are normally locked it suddenly becomes worth it

i remember years ago only reason i went prem on my 2nd char was that i wanted him to become a priest(he was a f2p account for 2 years)

now limiting entire servers to prem only would be good if they where dedicated to something say full out pvp server in the middle surrounded by f2p servers or if you go into region based resources(eg valuable ores in mountain ranges) having a server where those resources show up in an increased quantity would attract people to go prem to go there

the beauty of a sandbox game is that when it comes to ways to make money you dont have to limit yourself to paying subscriptions or item store because everyone else does it you can give everyone who is f2p about say 80% of the game and the remaining 20% well prem up to get it

its pretty much how wurm has it and to be honest thats the best way i have seen it yet

but good luck on creating it and i hope to see it become something beautiful

[paterso 104]

Well the idea of limiting crafting to payments comes in with the idea of skill-specializations, as I mentioned a few posts up. Unlocking  a specialization means unlocking a whole range of new crafting opportunities as you level that skill up.

 

I'm slowly going against the idea of splitting the community up. It's great if you have a lot of players so two different games can run, but to be realistic that can take a long time to reach, and we will probably only support one or two servers at first anyway (We're looking at £50-£70/month on our starter servers, hence we will begin donation-begging sometime this year).

 

I do agree that we have a lot of flexibility with this project though, and we will definitely work towards trying to find a good balance between F2P and P2P.

[Interloper 11]

Well the idea of limiting crafting to payments comes in with the idea of skill-specializations, as I mentioned a few posts up. Unlocking  a specialization means unlocking a whole range of new crafting opportunities as you level that skill up.

 

I'm slowly going against the idea of splitting the community up. It's great if you have a lot of players so two different games can run, but to be realistic that can take a long time to reach, and we will probably only support one or two servers at first anyway (We're looking at £50-£70/month on our starter servers, hence we will begin donation-begging sometime this year).

 

I do agree that we have a lot of flexibility with this project though, and we will definitely work towards trying to find a good balance between F2P and P2P.

 

Its far better to attempt a kickstarter or indiegogo campaign than to do donations if you haven't already. This of course requires a decent proof-of-concept so that it actually gets you somewhere. I'm not entirely against donations but they wont last you very long. Wikipedia has to deal with this every year and its fairly depressing every time I see that banner. I am no game designer and I do not know the scope of your game development so I will only say this: running on donations alone until your game is properly fit for being monetized can be financially risky.

 

What I've seen so far looks promising. Good luck!

[paterso 104]

We definitely want to do a kickstarter campaign sometime, but I totally agree that there needs to be more visible development first. For us that involves getting some way into Alpha, covering some basic features that we think make the game playable and potentially taking on one or two more developers to maximize our efficiency.

 

Anyway. I believe some people wanted a video.

 

I can't promise I'll have sound on it, but give me another half an hour and I'll be posting up a video for you guys!

[Griffith 362]

more codey codey, less posty posty

 

lol jk

but im more of a visual person, all the advertising in the world

wont work if you dont show a product

 

good luck with the project tho

[paterso 104]

So.

 

I now present:
 

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jInpcMjb3zI

 

 

It highlights some terraforming, mining and some basic world-regen. No startup client or Woodcutting previews just yet, but they will come in time.

Apologies for the YouTube Music, but it was as good as it gets until I talk to my composers a bit more next month.

 

 

I *Highly* recommend HD for the sake of the Terrain looking pretty.

Edited February 18, 2015 by Traslogan

[Interloper 11]

So.

 

I now present:

 

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jInpcMjb3zI

 

 

It highlights some terraforming, mining and some basic world-regen. No startup client or Woodcutting previews just yet, but they will come in time.

Apologies for the YouTube Music, but it was as good as it gets until I talk to my composers a bit more next month.

 

 

I *Highly* recommend HD for the sake of the Terrain looking pretty.

Quick question have you settled on this particular perspective of top down third person?

Edited February 18, 2015 by Interloper

[paterso 104]

Yeah we have. It's an intentional stylized look. As an indie team it also helps us negate the issue of trying to make acceptable first or third person graphics. I do personally like it however. In the long run I think it will give nice viewpoints for aesthetics from player-design

[paterso 104]

So folks.

 

We put that preview video out and I got some nice feedback from sharing it around places (Most people seemed to like the music).

 

And we've just finished up on some of our other Pre-Alpha mechanics such as the regrowth system and some chat interface stuff.

 

 

Which Means:

 

Server Testing Time!

 

Basically we've officially covered all of our main Pre-Alpha targets and we're going to spend the next week hunting down some server-crashes and fixing a few bugs, but apart from that we are on-course for moving onto Alpha for March!

 

This means we're ready to give people a small preview of what we've got already, just to get a feel of how the game runs in its most basic form. Aka Stress-Test the Pre-Alpha!

 

 

If anyone's interested, we'll pop our official servers up on Saturday 28th of February at 7.30pm GMT for a couple of hours (Though we can't guarantee the server won't need restarted during that time!)

 

If you'd like, we'll post the download links up on the facebook page, and if the forum-mods are fine with download-links here, we'll submit it as our final official reply to this Pre-Alpha post on the forums too!

We'd like to see how far our server can be pushed with what we consider minimum-competency specs this Saturday, so if you are interested in coming along, please extend the invitation to others!

 

For any questions about the Saturday Night test (Which I am officially calling Saturday Night Yonder, now, by the way), I can answer them here, on the facebook via comments, posts or messages, and of course on the actual test, myself and my programmer Ivan will be online with anyone present

Edited February 22, 2015 by Traslogan

[paterso 104]

We put up some more info regarding the Saturday stress-test (Anyone's invited as it will only be for a couple of hours)

 

http://yonderdev.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/the-end-of-pre-alpha-stress-time.html

 

https://www.facebook.com/InfiDesigns

 

I can still answer questions here on this post but I'll be on the server on Saturday to answer questions too.

[paterso 104]

The Test-Server is up for 2hours folks! 10+ online right now.

 

https://www.facebook.com/InfiDesigns

 

http://www.infinitus-designs.com/

 

Get the DL from the links above if interested.

[Belrindor 663]

Well done. I very much look forward to seeing the game as it evolves.

My contribution to the test was...

Fort Kitty Litter! A lovely 4 x 4 fort complete with crenelations and 6 x 6 defensive moat. (Half of which can't be seen from the pic, but it went all the way around.)

 

Fort Kitty Litter had a bit of a run in with another fort, Fort Mush(y).

When offered the chance to donate tribute in the form of microbrews and Belgian chocolates, they pretended to pay tribute, but instead paid with... *gasp*  poisoned microbrews!

After which, war was declared. And much fun was had by all.

All things considered, I had about fifty times more fun testing Yonder in Pre-Alpha than I did with the Pristine Treasure Hunt tonight. (Don't even get me started on that...)

In fact, it was the one saving grace of an otherwise totally crappy evening.

 

So again, well done. And I look forward to continuing the battle with Fort Mushiness!

Edited February 28, 2015 by Belrindor