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Wurmhole

Challenge numbers round 2

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The first challenge had about 160+ active players online at prime times, in the first week.  This one didn't even hit that opening day I think?  First weekend after opening I only see peak numbers in the 60s.  If this server ever went to a premium to play mode, I can't imagine even half that many playing.


 


My nudge to say "let's not do v3.0 and put all dev time towards existing issues".


 


I think any revenue gained from challenge will be dwarfed by the revenue lost from unhappy people closing deeds and dropping prem.


 


Did we need yet one more topic on this?  I say yes, until I hear a clear plan of action on how things will be resolved for this growing base of unhappy Wurmians.


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I totally agree on that and all i see is people from my ally quitting and selling their stuff/deeds, really demotivating atm.


Also constant lag and disconects which makes the game unplayable really


God help us..

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I think it holds some merit on new pvp development like testing things without putting them in the game but the facts have shown that no matter what they do the pvp here is just not popular.  


 


Have they done any advertising other than the emails? Without a little bit of advertising then what do they expect to happen? It will only draw from the current player base without it and most of them are pve players and have no interest in the pvp servers. 


Edited by Kegan
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I hear they are hoping a youtuber will come to help advertise

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I think it holds some merit on new pvp development like testing things without putting them in the game but the facts have shown that no matter what they do the pvp here is just not popular.

It COULD have held merit as a testing server if it hadn't been for the fact that it's a competitive environment where the prizes you win earns you premium for months and more. We all know the outcome if the choice is between reporting a bug with an exploitable feature and making $$$.

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I usually play on Chaos only, and tried out Challenge v. 2 today.


Didn't bother trying the first one, as I assumed it'd be pretty boring, bugged and stale.


 


I liked the changes they did to the concept, respawn with full equipment etc. And the map layout fits the design as well.


 


However, while I was somehow able to get my medium maul skill up to 42 (effective 66) in about 2 hours... That's rather a joke than a "wow". I skilled at a rate of ~1 skill per creature slaughtered. I killed almost anything I came across, except for trolls and sol demons.


 


In all this time, I did not see a horse. But after 2 hours:


[22:53:04] You mount on the mature brown cow as the driver.


 


Horses are just way too rare on this server. It's silly. They are vital to pvp, and make this an incredibly boring experience.


 


Anyway, I'd rather play Mount and Blade if I wanted pvp of this kind.


 


 


Not gonna bother 'playing' that server any more than this.


Edited by Balmore

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At this point , its just beating a dead horse. The only question is how long will they continue to beat it and expect it to do something.


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I think the biggest "problem" is the player base - most PvP people tend to search for fast-paced, low-risk, quick to learn games, Wurm is the exact opposite. Challenge is trying to get closer to what most PvP'ers like, but... They already have a lot of games just for them, Wurm cannot even get close to them in a current state (and literally the whole "core" gameplay would need to change to be able to take part in this competition).

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I think while challenge is fun for some, I find myself quickly returning to epic from it because there's nothing keeping me there long term. No fun house projects, giant castles or real terraforming to do... Not really motivating to do it since it's not long term.

But some people love it, but I fear that once it goes premium only very few people will play it.

Either Rolf needs to advertise ( if you can pay for this staff and freelance work, you can pay for a banner ad) featuring challenge and etc.

But like firefly said, wurm publicity/advertising is a joke. Aside from one game conference and being mentioned in notches past works on his wiki page ( how I found wurm) there is no way to know about it.

PR/advertising need to step it up, but god knows they won't.

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The problem with Wurm Online staff is that when they do something, they do too much of it and neglect everything else. 


 


  • When Rolf nerfs something, he nerfs it too much and when he boosts it, he boosts it way too much also.
  • When they shift forces to a new project, they motivate themselves too much on it and neglect everything else.
  • When they moderate, they are overzealous.
  • And the list goes on ...

 


I nave no problem with part of the money we pay getting invested in new ideas, but some of it must bring value back to it's sources to keep them happy too.


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Sacrificing your one bird in-the-hand (PvE) so you can MAYBE catch the two in-the-bush (higher profit per a player on PvP).


Edited by joedobo
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what makes PvP higher profit?  Is it because people hire a ton of templars? Honestly unsure and curious, having never done PvP here.


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what makes PvP higher profit?  Is it because people hire a ton of templars? Honestly unsure and curious, having never done PvP here.

The war is expensive. Ask the Iron Bank of Bravos ;)

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what makes PvP higher profit?  Is it because people hire a ton of templars? Honestly unsure and curious, having never done PvP here.

 

I don't think the profit per player on the PvP servers is higher.

 

People on PvE may pay less for their deeds, but a bigger percentage of players actually have a deed of their own there.

You can cover a vast ground on Chaos without finding a single deed, because the players live together in huge fortified towns.

 

I'd say, across all current kingdoms even the most active deeds average at around 10 guards. That is main deeds, not frontline war deeds. Those have usually less guards as the players are highly active to defend these and they don't protect much valueables anyway.

 

Another aspect that makes PvE actually more valueable is the selfishness of the players there. (Sorry, I don't mean to insult, but this is based on experience / hearsay)

On Chaos each of the kingdoms is a big family. There is usually no charge for weapons, armour or tools.

Just imagine if you'd charge your fellow fighter to improve his weapon or his armour and he cannot afford it. He'll fight next to you in crap gear.

How could he be helping you effectively that way? So you want to improve his stuff for free.

Same goes for enchants.

On Freedom on the other hand, I often hear that people charge even the people in their alliance. Maybe with an alliance discount, but still.

 

Thus, I believe while there may be a higher number of guards per deed on Chaos, but far less deeds in total, Freedomers buy more silver from the shop to acquire their gear than PvP players do.

 

 

I often experience this "problem of payment" with fresh recruits who just came over from the Freedom Isles. They really want to pay for anything in the village.

It's silly. While the conversion from the Freedom Isles kingdom on Chaos is done with a few clicks, it takes quite a while to convert their mentality to that of a PMK player. :P

 

This is probably one of the things most players on Freedom don't grasp either. They are afraid of losing their gear. But any good community on Chaos will do their best to replace any gear that is lost in a fight or raid (again: for free).

Of course, this is often limited to the skills of their comrades, but the bigger the community, the higher the choice of skills. :)

However, the replacement of drake / scale or rare items is rather unlikely. ;)

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Using OP's logic I would say wurm online itself doesn't have enough total players on any server or combined servers to justify continued development of any kind. 

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I doubt Rolf created this game with dollar signs in his eyes.

This is an indy game and not an EA cash-grab game. Whether one server makes more profit than another is totally irrelevant as long as the game as a whole generates enough money to keep the servers running and pay the salaries of the staff.

That's usually the good thing about indy games, they are not created for the sole purpose of generating money but to satisfy the creative needs of the persons developing them.

This game is Rolfs game and will be created the way he wants it. Which is pretty clearly a pvp orientated sandbox game.

Whining about either the amount of profit a server generates or about the further development of the pvp aspect of this game is pretty useles.

Aparently the pve side of the game is developped enough, otherwise it would not have a bigger playerbase than the pvp side.

So logically the pvp side gets more attention to bring it on par with the pve side.

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I think that the kind of gameplay that most people play wurm for is the long lasting and meaningful kind. As in your actions have consequences but it takes a long time to achieve your goals. A fast paced action oriented game does not suit the playerbase. Rolf mentioned somewhere that he would perfer a twitch based combat system. This is all fine and good but whats more important is that you actually feel like your working towards something. Challenge takes that away and replaces it with premium time which really doesn't mean too much.


 


I think Rolf would have more success with pvp if he modeled it based off of individual goals. On freedom you are mostly looking to create a badass settlement and/or achieve a high skill in something. Many people sustain their interest in this game through goals like this that are difficult but not impossible to achieve. The satisfaction from achieving these goals can last long enough for another goal to be set. This happens naturally without much 'direction' from mechanics other than an inablility to create difficult items, large houses or high ql tools until a high skill is achieved.


 


On chaos this does happen but everything is more of a community effort. Individual effort is somewhat less important and community effort is put on a higher level. This is great but it also takes away the "I have achieved a goal" feeling that you get since, well, it wasn't just you. One of the things that kept me on chaos for so long was trying to get a high fightskill and becoming a champion. I wanted to have something I could call my own but the emphasis on community effort means that, more often than not, it was hard to appreciate my own contribution since it was so tiny.


 


I am not saying chaos and pvp in general should be less community oriented. I am simply suggesting that for the purposes of increasing the appeal of pvp there should be some sort of goal that is achieved by the individual. Freedom can take a few pointers from chaos as well in the sense that Freedom could use some more community based efforts. In short: Chaos needs more individual focus and Freedom needs more community focus. Just my 2 cents.


Edited by Interloper

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I think the biggest "problem" is the player base - most PvP people tend to search for fast-paced, low-risk, quick to learn games, Wurm is the exact opposite. Challenge is trying to get closer to what most PvP'ers like, but... They already have a lot of games just for them, Wurm cannot even get close to them in a current state (and literally the whole "core" gameplay would need to change to be able to take part in this competition).

 

This.

 

On launch day in 2006 there were exactly two servers: home (pve) and wild (pvp).  Ores were capped at QL50 on home.  Everyone spawned at newtown on the home server and you had to swim to the wild server.  Either rolf or notch called the home server "tutorial island" and said that "the real game will happen on the wild server." this of course never materialized because they failed from the very beginning to understand that wurm players are about 85% pve vs about 15% pvp.  

 

Add to that rolf's brilliant epiphany where he decided over lunch to turn the home pve server into a pvp server in an attempt to force everyone to play his PVP game.  That was another failure on his part to understand his playerbase.

 

Nine years later rolf is still chasing after that 15%.  Perhaps one day he'll actually focus on pve stuff like bridges and abandon challenge as he should.

 

/rant

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The reason I decided not to play this round is because it only lasts what, 2 weeks?  I had wanted it extended to 3 months.  


 


Challenge lasting only two weeks is just a waste of time.

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The reason I decided not to play this round is because it only lasts what, 2 weeks?  I had wanted it extended to 3 months.  

 

Challenge lasting only two weeks is just a waste of time.

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what makes PvP higher profit?  Is it because people hire a ton of templars? Honestly unsure and curious, having never done PvP here.

I guess its a little misleading. You might think I'm directly referring to what each player spends. I'm going off what i've seen other PvP post on forums and mostly from people that I feel know what they are talking about. Who isn't important. 

 

Another way to express it would be to say that overall profit of PvP could be expressed by total profit/ total premium players. Using this metric I'm pretty sure we'd see a higher profit per a player then a similar metric applied to PvE.

 

I'd guess that PvP pays much per a deed. It also likely buys more res stones and travel twigs.

 

What Balmore says makes sense in that PvE probably buys more silver overall. I kinda wonder how much of this silver ends up funding Chaos deed guards because they uses their Champions and high skill accounts to craft sellables for PvE.

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so what you're saying is you're upset your waste of time didn't waste more time

 

Well, it's more like sitting down and playing chess for 1 minute or finishing the game.  One is useless; the other satisfying.  Two weeks is not satisfying to me.

Edited by Eyesgood
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