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Rolf

Dominance feedback

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I quit challenge day 2. You do more crafting than pvp and at the end.. What's the point? I know I'm not gonna be anal about getting the 20s/premium things so eh? What can I do there that I can't do on epic? I'd rather skill grind on epic.

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Why did I not play Challenge?

 

Well the main reason was  the fact that I'd have had to neglect my deed for two weeks and have half of my month's premium expire without any use on it.

 

However, after thinking about it a bit, I think that perhaps 'Challenge-Like' events on PVE servers that would combine PVP and PVE elements in a way that would encourage participation, but as someone else mentioned, not incur the risk of skill loss that could seriously pooch a PVE player and cause them to not want to participate.

 

Optional PVP events were already suggested. How about devoted PVP areas? Maybe add a smaller island to every map where you are flagged for PVP when in that area. If that's possible with the mechanics. You'd certainly know better than I whether this is, our could be, possible in game.

 

Also, one HUGE factor that prevents me from trying PVP...

 

This might not be a very popular view with PVP folks, dunno, but why not remove skill loss entirely in the game? In my view it's archaic and outdated.

(Or at the very least, remove it in PVE.)

 

Sure, back in the early days of MMO gaming it was 'hardcore' and edgy and 'cool'. But now, it's just annoying. If I get surprised by a troll whilst I am AFK for a split second, I don't need to lose skills that'll take me hours/days/weeks to get back. That discourages, rather than encourages, exploration and creative game play.

Potential skill loss discourages me from doing many things I'd like to do in the game, because I simply don't want to spend my valuable play time dealing with it.

To wit: I've got kids now,(including a VERY colicky newborn) and I haven't got the time I used to, to re-gain skills every five minutes because some random mob jumped me.
In fact, I've pretty much, with one exception, hung around my deed for the past month+ solid.

Why? Because if I step out of my gate and get aggro'd by a mob, and I need to see to my little one, I can't log out. I'll be dead and then get hit with a skill loss on top of having to get my corpse. If it was just a corpse run like most MMOs, then no real big deal. Annoying, but no biggie. But skill loss? Nope, nope, nope.

 

I imagine quite a lot of our players are in the '40-ish' demograph. People who have been gaming for years now, but aren't kids or young people anymore, and just don't have the time sink that we used to. That doesn't mean we don't want to play. It does mean we only like having to do things *once*. Most of us, anyway from what I've seen. Dunno what the PVP people thing, but all of the PVE folks I've talked to, to the last person, say they really don't like the skill loss thing.

 

Probably a bit more than ye asked for, but they do tie in to PVP, as well as illuminate why certain folks with real world responsibilities, just can't get into PVP in it's current form.
Hope this has provided some food for thought.

 

And thank you for saying your next focus is BRIDGES! Much love there, boss! :)

Edited for formatting. The forum hates spacing in Wordpad it seems. :P
 

Edited by Belrindor
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And for god's sake, remove the hunted effect. It's buggy as hell and was screwing up our limited attempt to PvP as whitelighters.  We were getting hunted for such lovely things as: Killing BL guard tower guards. Bashing BL Guard Towers. Picking a building's lock in BL territory holding horses safe. And other such nonsense that was both causing hell horses to randomly attack , as well as stripping cavalier from people on the last day/next to last day who had very little they could spam for skill points to get it back.


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Factional fight challenge video explains it all.. Too manny alt abuses, attacking people from same kingdom, blah blah..


Also thanks for focusing on bridges, freedom is what keeps this game running so give those people what they want :)


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Busy with work the first week, so things snowballed to the point it wasnt worth starting late.

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I've been playing wurm since about 2005 (with some long breaks) and apart from the last beta, the only time I've played on PvP servers has been both Challenge rounds. 


Challenge suits me quite well. Because of that pesky RL, I occasionally need to take breaks of a few weeks or months from game. And even at my most intense, I can probably only play about 2 hours a night 4-5 nights per week.


So a server that allows quick skill gain and resets fairly frequently is appealing for me to do PvP.


 


Regarding people dropping out, I think that in the first round, it was running over Christmas, and I suspect I'm not the only one in wurm who had to reduce game time, if not stop altogether over the holidays. I think it is unavoidable that players will lose motivation to play if their kingdom is marginalised, its members will lose motivation. Whether or not the best alternative is to limit number of kingdoms to 2, I don't know. In BL vs WL, WL will have all three deities instead of Mag vs Fo+Vyn, which may shift the balance a bit. An alternative could be to try preventing kingdoms becoming marginalised - perhaps a two-phase Challenge, where there's an initial non-PvP phase at first, during which the kingdoms can establish themselves, before the full PvP kicks in.


 


Regarding PMKs, I would lean against reintroducing them - at least in the form I remember from the first challenge (and it is quite likely to be different from how they were actually working, so please forgive my ignorance if my understanding is incorrect). My main sticking point is that as I remember, you couldn't spawn into PMKs from the tutorial, just the HOTS/JK/MR deeds. That introduces a slight imbalance in that the PMKs can control more who they let in, whereas HOTS/JK/MR can't. Of course this is easy to remedy - if someone makes a PMK, make it possible to join that from tutorial. Another thing is that if the map is designed for three kingdoms, which makes it somewhat easier to balance the map for those kingdoms, but that balance is easily lost once you've add another Kingdom


 


Other random thoughts


  • Consider adding a pelt to the starter kit. I know this is pretty easy to get, but it would allow you to upgrade your kit earlier.
  • Things that take long times need to be faster - breeding, farming. Meditation is probably not even worthwhile on Challenge.
  • Lots of things changed between the two first rounds of challenge - that makes it hard to spot causes for the different effects. What about running some challenges back to back on the same map (apart from ore map, starting points of uniques etc), but with small changes in rules between each? E.g. if the day after Dominance completed, another round started, same as Dominance but with e.g. PMKs enabled. Or a longer duration. Or without armour+weapons on spawn. Or whatever other single change

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I didn't play because I feel you are trying to split up the PvP community too much.

There simply isn't enough people in your game to justify chaos, epic and challenge. Pick two, one has got to go.

 

My feelings, PvP is too spread out IMHO and I really dont want to put effort into something thats gone in a month. I am just not that interested. If I want a PvP fix, I go to Chaos.

Edited by conmcb25

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If you are completely dead-set on keeping a fast paced Challenge server here is one idea:

-Remove all skill progression--completely. Challenge becomes a PVP survivor simulator (think DayZ/Rust and not Elder Scrolls Online).

-add tracking and systems for body temperature; hypothermia; sleep/fatigue

-add more details to disease system

-finish the water purity idea (drinking water must be purified, cant drink salt water)

-add complexity to wounds, infections, healing, etc

Finally: do anything humanly-possible to incorporate interactivity into combat mechanics, i.e. click left mouse to swing or right mouse to block

Edited by Atlas

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Of course there's some work to be done, but the idea of a challenge server is a great one. My main character Idlehumor is from Xanadu and had not experienced pvp before this challenge. I spent about a week on Cauldron as Sigue and the experience I had was pretty mixed but for the most part, it was a good one.


 


The skilling and the supply depot were the two biggest factors in how I experienced the challenge. In my opinion, it seemed like dragon scale received from the supply depot was the most desirable to all players. I was not lucky enough to get a dragon scale set myself, but I improved my skills in preparation to either take a set from another player or to fend off other players long enough to get scales from the supply depot myself. I wouldn't have stayed as long as I did if it weren't for Uhivra who helped me raise my fighting skill and gave me tips on pvp. 


 


At one point, there were a bunch of us in the alliance who were getting on two ships going in opposite directions around the island to find some pvp action. There were not enough spots on the ships, so we had a spar with the two players with chain armor for that last spot. Metalgear and I had a really close fight. I believe he had a maul and large iron shield and I had a longsword with medium iron shield. Metalgear (or Snake as others called him) started off strong doing a lot of damage in the beginning and managed to shield bash me at some point, but I ended up getting more hits in and just barely won the spar. I think I had more fun in that spar than the entire time on challenge. Uhivra was encouraging me in my PMs saying stuff like "get to higher ground." and "SHIELDBASH! SHIELDBASH!" lol was great. 


 


I think the challenge would have gone much better if there were only one or two main events a day where people could prepare for bigger battles rather than the supply depot re-spawning items every 2 or 3 hours. There also seemed to be a lack of urgency to stop the enemy from capping outposts. I think there also needs to be a way to give players more direction and purpose to keep them interested and to help everyone feel useful. I most commonly didn't join pvp battles because I felt I wouldn't make a difference. In fact that's the main reason why I left challenge early because I felt that I couldn't make any difference to an unclear outcome. 


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main problem I had for the map was near coastlines the slopes were to steep to regain stamina easily. While I thought it was much more even than the first in terms of positioning of kingdoms. I felt that once one side became to powerful the other side couldn't counter it by recruiting the other white light kingdom.


 


the problem with spawning with armor and weapons is that there was no timer on how often it allowed you to respawn with it. Anyone could start a char and zerg off attackers at a deed. I feel once per hour would be better. While yes they could just have 10 alts, but at least they would have to break to log in a new one.


 


While the noob armor wasn't that great, it was better than nothing. but to decrease the need for alt respawning with gear, is to make gear even faster to improve. 


 


I read someone's suggestion to create gloves, boots, and sleeves and horse shoes in 2's. but to go even further to make that armor or horse shoe decent (70+) ql quicker.


 


Crops and breeding should also be quicker to produce. when pretty much everything is sped up, those should be as well to make them viable. instead of just forage/botonizing and finding a random no trait horse.


 


all said and done, I did have a lot of fun for the first week. but when WL'er fell behind we couldn't recruit to even things out. yet the entire time wl'er could convert BL. by either going to the light or when that was disabled, stealing to lose alignment.

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Heres an idea although in my personal experience open mindedness is usually lol "shieldbashed", give players the option to spawn with certain skill sets ie: crafter, fighter, priest. and then allow them to skill whatever they wish from there, also for gods sake please increase spawn timers for Horses and randomize traits. And for the sake of all things holy in this game when someone dies as soon as the body is looted they should decay to dust in like 30 mins - 1 hour irl same goes for piles of items. (btw this should help with server lag)!!! One more thing since im thinking now, how about instead or even along side neutral guards we have scaling uniques protecting the resource spawns for example day one have a greenish troll or even a pair and then day two have a pack of hell hounds, but lets have a little more "challenge" in retrieving the loot. Also have a random dragon spawn every day or only let drake/scale drop from unique kills and, make several uniques available a week. or make it a team effort when retrieving the resources that you have to kill all the guards and the last one drops a key to the kingdom so as to speak. Honestly i could sit here all day and come up with different ideas in order to retain the masses but lets be realistic I love pvp but the vast majority of wurmians are a pve community and therefore there will have to be some substantial level of pve to attract them to come and stay.                                                                                             


Edited by Mordekai

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keep doing unconventional for wurm things on the challenge server and using it to test wurm without alot of the unneeded stuff.


no kings and no champions was great, that way every player felt important and there was no players being forced to play unhealthy amounts to be some sort of ingame god


 


Fix building/terraforming in the hota, you can still do it currently.


Reduce item count for a pvp set by combing gloves, sleeves and boots into pairs instead of two items to make improving take less take but still take the same amount of materials.


 


announce your changes because there are plenty of people who would have wanted to play wurm without champions and kings, nobody can sell challenge if you hide all the selling points.

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I played to the last day and the last hour. I learned a fair amount about wurm pvp this challenge.


 


what i really want is a gladiator death match type arena i can join from freedom, one that i can take my main toon to with all his skills and all his gear without worry to loose it on death, have a nice battle or castle siege with a group a friends or a lobby of randoms that maybe takes 30minutes to 2 hours , that i can measure myself in and learn about fighting and grouping and working together., then teleport back to freedom and get on with the "persistent world"


could even hold competitions for castle designs that would go into these siege scenarios.


 


challenge as it is would also be more appealing if there was no drop of equipped items atleast, and you were able to get back into the fight while still working on your gear and skills, and you could summon a spirit mount/horse/rideable worg with karma, i would be interested in joining a challenge like that, even at 1 week long to see how it played out, what kind of battles near the end when everyone is in scale has lots of sorcery spells and karma to use them and ppl actualy pvp the whole time, because they can summon a mount and get back into the fight.


dont give me starter gear, but let me craft it and improve it and keep it on death, that's all


 


 


lastly when i eat a foraged berry can i get a little bit of water back? :)


 


 


 


 


 


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Why didn't I play challenge ?


 


I didnt play Challenge because what attracts me to wurm pvp is a long lasting war with longterm goals andI have already Chaos that covers that. But that's just me and I think I represent just a small portion of the satisfied group of customers of wurm online.


 


What is my perspective on it though as an outsider ?


 


Ventures sometimes succeed and sometimes fail. There's no deterministic formula that will tell you when a game setup will succeed and attract players. Most of the time failure, but most importantly success comes unexpected. That's why the most important thing in such ventures is experimenting and pivoting. Experiment by making minimum viable setups that don't waste a lot of resources and when you see them not working, change into something different. Only when a setup seems that it's getting traction allocate resources to accelerate its growth.


 


Going for Challenge #3 would obviously mean a case that shouts for pivot but instead is treated as if it was getting traction while it's not. Try something completelly different, maybe some type of weekend combat arenas like League of Legends or something. After all, pve was a pivot from pvp and it did work quite well ;)


Edited by Sizzle

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I recommend trying something crazy each round, for example an Archery-only (or Melee-only). 


 


 


I am against any changes that make it easier for those who get an early lead to keep their lead throughout the rest of the challenge. This would include champs, kings, not spawning with gear, etc.


 


Lets not let challenge just be another wurm where the people who get an early lead get to keep it merely because they were first. It should be a "CHALLENGE" to keep that early lead on the challenge server.


Edited by chademaster

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As many people on other topics said we have a lot of servers who are not really diffrent from playstyle.

So if you really wanna make some changes why not setup diffrent kind of playstyle wurm servers.

For example pve servers:

-1st server like indy original skillgain and action timers

-2nd server indy like landmass but with 5x skillgain and original server timer

-3rd server indy like landmass original skill gain but action timer from challenge or even faster

That could also be applied to the pvp servers.

So what i mean, what wurm really need is not endless new server with diffrent maps and some shiny stuff, it really needs some huge diffrence between each, one for grinder, one for builder, one for explorer. And even if they arent connected who cares.

The most guys i met lost interesst becouse everything is so slow...not that you need to skill to 100 in one day but just if you build a normal house maybe 4x4 with stonewalls you waste so much time to gather the materials for it and thats what many people get to leave becouse not everyone has 24 hours a day to play.

A little bit back to topic please rolf try a pve server with the stats of challenge and you will see so many people who would join that server much more than any pvp server!

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A little bit back to topic please rolf try a pve server with the stats of challenge and you will see so many people who would join that server much more than any pvp server!

 

I think the beer vampire has a very valid point here.

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Tie respawning with gear to respawn points, so a deed might let 10 people respawn with gear every hour depending on size, but a tent lets you spawn only once with gear an hour.


Having gear respawns tied to the spawn point, you can "drain" a deed of gear respawns during a raid regardless of how many alts there are.


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Honestly Wurm PvP needs a massive overhaul (I believe most people agree is some form or another). Currently weapons/armour are to similar or unbalanced so most people use the exact same setup.

Cloth armour = useless

Leather armour = useless

Chain armour = to slow for the amount of protection

Plate armour = only viable option unless you own dragon armour

Drake armour = Similar to plate in protection but you can move faster (most people will stick with plate sine drake cost actual $)

Scale armour = more prtection than plate and faster movement speed (best of both worlds but it will cost you)

In a nutshell everybody now uses plate.

Weapons come in 3 sizes with 3 basic option to choose from (sword, maul, axe).

Small weapons = almost useless as every form of healing will fully heal any wound that can be dealt. With moon metals and a cap on how fast you can swing, they aren't even faster than med weapons. There is no noticeable parrying advantage or loss so stamina during fights.

Medium weapons = better in every "noticeable" way over small weapons and you can still use a shield

Large weapons = only reason to not use these is the lack of a shield

It used to be there were noticable different swing speeds between the 3 main weapons and each type of weapon had a specifics armour if was "noticeably" effective against. Various adjustments and moon metal have minimalized these differences.

Sorry the post is getting to long and I'm sure people don't agee with various things I have said but without great detail the general thoughts in this post are accurate.

To sum up my thoughts, PvP is stale and boring without enough variety and forethought in your armour/weapon choices. In general everybody just grabs their plate/longsword/large metal shield and hopes they have the number advantage when they PvP.

Tried to break this down to the simplest form and didn't even touch shield bashing, spells, Valerie powers etc etc...

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The varying archery and channeling nerfs when wearing certain armors was a step in making other armors more viable by giving plate disadvantages to counter its current advantages.


 


On the otherhand Ive seen and heard more than a little backlash on that change.


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A little bit back to topic please rolf try a pve server with the stats of challenge and you will see so many people who would join that server much more than any pvp server!

 

^ this guy has an amazing point, the main reason I moved from freedom to epic was because I didn't have the time some of the freedom vets do to take a few months to grind a skill to 80 or beyond.

 

Another note as well, I actually had no idea challenge even existed.  I don't play Wurm actively anymore but I subscribe to the newsletter, I remember getting an e-mail about Xanadu but no e-mail about Challenge.  If I had of known about Challenge I definitely would have come back to play and brought a few of my friends as well.

 

I personally think the appeal of Challenge is more for new or returning players, not really existing players.  It's even been noted several times in this thread that people don't want to split their time between a main and a challenge toon.  So I think the best thing that would work for Challenge is either change it to a PvE server and focus the 'challenges' around pve achievements or try to advertise it more on external websites.

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I'd like to see some incentive to drain tokens and disbanding deeds.  Wurm missed the mark on sieging deeds this round, toons respawning with gear brought deeds back into the unraidable realm...I'd like to see some incentives for draining deeds and defending them added, perhaps a "most token drains" category. 


 


The outpost camp control idea was great however it lacked a scoreboard...if we could have seen score would have greatly increased the incentive to go out and fight for the camps.  As it stood we were in the dark on who was in the lead and the urgency there may have been on defending a camp.


 


edit - Also a "most enemies killed on deed" category would be cool with the title "Royal Defender" as a reward and a golden shield.


Edited by Santhire
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I personally think the appeal of Challenge is more for new or returning players, not really existing players.  It's even been noted several times in this thread that people don't want to split their time between a main and a challenge toon.  So I think the best thing that would work for Challenge is either change it to a PvE server and focus the 'challenges' around pve achievements or try to advertise it more on external websites.

 

New or returning players made up like 80% of jk this round.

Some pve group goals on challenge would be great, maybe some sort of project that the pvpers can protect.

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I played the first two hours or so. Helped build a tower and place a deed. Then i logged off and each time i tried to log back in, I just couldn't bring myself to play.


 


Last round I really enjoyed terraforming with the short timers and large skill gains. To make a deed we could defend and landbridges to give us an advantage.


But this round there was no reason to terraform at all. Map appeared to be plain and deed defences would not help or last.


 


Also grinding seemed so pointless with the server lasting so little. I'd rather grind and terraform and play on Epic where stuff stays.


 


But maybe the main reason I did not attempt to pvp is alts. It was already ugly enough on Storm, but 70fs and respawning with gear too?


 


I think that's all from me.


Edited by Pidgeoni
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If you are completely dead-set on keeping a fast paced Challenge server here is one idea:

-Remove all skill progression--completely. Challenge becomes a PVP survivor simulator (think DayZ/Rust and not Elder Scrolls Online).

-add tracking and systems for body temperature; hypothermia; sleep/fatigue

-add more details to disease system

-finish the water purity idea (drinking water must be purified, cant drink salt water)

-add complexity to wounds, infections, healing, etc

Finally: do anything humanly-possible to incorporate interactivity into combat mechanics, i.e. click left mouse to swing or right mouse to block

 

I agreed with you up to the point of wanting to add left and right click attack and block. No thanks already at a disadvantage because of pings, last thing we need is another method to lose and people to complain about losing to someone else who is running at very little ping versus 1000 m/s.

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