Dominance feedback

[Aeris 3,752]

So instead of pretending that Challenge is a tool for working on features for the regular servers you are now open about the fact that you want to fix Challenge for the sake of Challenge and thereby create even more bugs for yourself that will be in need of fixing and spreading out already thin resources over even more servers?

 

Hint: A competitive environment with prizes worth serious cash doesn't motivate people to report abusable features, so even if you would use it for testing PvP features before putting them live you wouldn't get anything out of it. Why report something which you can secretly abuse in order to make money?

[Delamore 6]

Make challenge 3 weeks long, a month is too much.

 

Also give everyone with 5-10 faith less than the person with the most faith bonus faith gain, so people who join in the last week or two don't feel like they can never catch up

Look into cart visibility bugs, if you have more than 3 carts around you'll often have trouble seeing them and the people in them at all.

[Johnny Rascal 2]

I was the mayor for Krillin's Porn Stash, which was one of the only two villages in Jenn-Kellon during this scenario. Overall I enjoyed this scenario much more than the last, but there are some serious fundamental social issues that need to be addressed. Here are my observations:

 

A brief summary of Dominance

Just like the previous scenario, the first few days were the most fun. There were more players online, and they were more active, and they were getting in more fights out in the field because nobody knew the strength of the political factions. Everyone quickly discovered that Mol-Rehan was the weakest of the three kingdoms, and they got dogpiled and imploded around the 5th day of the scenario. The elite fighters in MR used the Black Light (possibly a bug) to convert to HOTS, while the casual players made new characters and joined JK. Up to this point JK had more players total than HOTS, but HOTS had more elite fighters and was somewhat better at fighting in the field. After MR imploded, HOTS had a large advantage in the field and JK was forced to play defensively. The results of the scenario were mostly decided after a successful but costly raid on the 9th day by HOTS against JK. By the 9th day things were winding down and player counts dropped significantly, and there were few large or evenly matched battles in the field. Most fights were either small skirmishes or off-hours raids up to the end of the scenario.

 

Casuals vs Crazy Wurm People (CWPs)

About halfway through the scenario I realized that there were two very distinct types of players, and that they were very heavily segregated. Most of JK was made up of casual players who were either new to the game, or were returning to the game after several years of inactivity. They tend to be less organized, and have more real-life obligations, and enjoy crafting, exploring, and combat in equal measure. Most of HOTS was made up of Crazy Wurm People who are regular players with accounts on other servers. They tend to be highly organized and experienced, and generally prefer combat to crafting, and are willing to neglect their health and real-life obligations to accomplish their in-game goals. It appears that MR was a pretty even mix of casuals and CWPs, and when MR imploded their CWPs all joined HOTS, while their casuals all joined JK. I believe this kind of segregation is extremely bad for the game, because it puts Rolf in a no-win situation where he has to either alienate the new players he needs to grow the game, or the regular players who pay his server bills, and moderate his forums, and organize most of the villages. For the record, I'm mostly a casual, but I can be a Crazy Wurm Person for a few days at a time before my real-life obligations pile up.

 

Three kingdoms are politically unstable

The removal of player-made kingdoms was a step in the right direction, but we still had a problem with MR quickly getting dogpiled until they imploded. Three kingdoms just aren't sustainable, unless you can get them almost perfectly balanced. I'd recommend removing either JK because we don't want to divide the newbies and veterans into separate kingdom, or remove HOTS because symmetric combat is easier to balance. Alternatively, you could remove kingdoms altogether, and just have a big village versus village free-for-all. Personally I think villages based around groups of friends and acquaintances are the natural way to organize players in this game, but it would probably be harder to balance, and would result in fewer large, organized battles.

 

 

That's enough effortposting for now, I'll tackle the subject of village raiding, alt abuse and starter gear later.

[Webba 257]

Please don't use hunted status to decide who gets prizes until it is actually fixed, I got hunted from hitting a bl horse.

[RockyBalboa 565]

i stop becose of discription at HOTS...  for more experiance players.... runing like 3h to or not to found horse... peh...

[Fjorn 4]

Yeah that was sorta dumb, people not having a clue, see HotS is for 'more experience player' go MR or JK... and people that think they're all that go HotS because they're 'more skilled' and then you have the actually skilled people, who seem to have gone 2/3 to HotS and 1/3 to MR

 

As Johhny said, once that raid went down, it drove off a good chunk of our casuals because casuals, like me, really don't want to deal with that long grind of a raid, even without the ridiculousness of the alt spam that was going on.

[akaedis 429]

Honestly, If your gonna use HUNTED & offer rewards to those who follow the "rules" of not inter-kingdom pvp, At-least make sure it works as intended, Not change everything half way through a round causing us to go hunted for attacking a valrei creature.

[Mordraug 2,542]

Not trolling... my exact opinion which got reinforced earlier during a cross-server delivery:

 

Looking at the amount of coastal cliff on Xanadu, putting that side by side with "we hand-crafted this challenge server"... 

 

It feels like a poor choice of use of dev resources.   Xanadu still has shaking ships, wonky influences last I checked, entering a canal flies you right up the mountain courtesy of positioning bug... 

 

Truth be told, wasted potential, wasted monetary potential.  Challenge just aggravates that.  Basically, that's what put me off challenge, specially after seeing that THAT was the "secret project" while we all thought "bridges and/or 3D mines and/or working staircases".

 

tl;dr Feels like a lot more work went into launching Challenge than Xanadu and looking at player amounts on each.... bad business idea all around.

 

Edit:

tl;dr2:  Wurm has LOTS to offer that no other games have on PvE... Wurm has NOTHING to offer over other games for PvP in terms of depth. 

Edited March 5, 2015 by Mordraug

[Audrel 2,223]

Hi,

 

so the Dominance round is over with Cauldron and all. It's not quite working like we hope - initial numbers were a lot lower for various reasons but it's still too steep falloff which is undesirable (there will of course be falloff since people will feel they are too far behind).

 

I saw some feedback in the thread about Dominance opening regarding suggested changes some of which apparently were debatable (returning champs and pmks) while others seemed to have more consensus (removing one kingdom).

 

Regarding quitting:

Please give feedback on why you didn't start playing this time around even if you considered it, or why you quit early on, or why you quit in the middle.

 

Also of course please give feedback on what you think should be improved or even better - what worked very poorly.

 

Rolf

 

I simply didn't play at all, Rolf. Putting it bluntly, there are bugs here older than my account that I deal with on a daily basis. Add to that the tweaking of Challenge to fix its bugs brings the old bugged servers down while that one is fixed. But, that's just me. I would rather resources be put into fixing what we have instead of creating more and expounding the bugs already present. Many of the players like Challenge. I'm not one of them.

[Object 281]

I was chatting about this with an old friend of mine and we both ended up bringing up the fact that we ended up getting challenge instead of an incredibly popular idea back in the day, the hunting server.  The awesome thing about the hunting server is a lot of the old popular ideas in that thread like tents, are already implemented.

 

An old idea for the hunting server would actually be to make two of them, one for freedom and one for epic, basically a pve one and a pvp one.  The only big issue with this is chaos would end up only having access to the pve one, which kinda sucks but I don't really see anyway around it.

 

There would be quite a lot of restrictions on the hunting server, no deeding, no deeding and no terraforming.  Basically the only things you could end up doing are dropping tents, foraging and gathering.  I'd imagine the easiest way to accomplish this is to have the devs deed the entire world and then restrict things via the permission system.

 

The servers themselves don't need to be large, the smaller the better actually, maybe 4x4, and would be connected to freedom and epic via portals from starter deeds.  Maybe even with the ability to create your own portal.

 

Within the servers themselves they would have the normal animal count but there would be new uniques and all uniques would be on a respawn timer.  The best way to do it would be to follow EQ's old system where respawns where between a certain time and a certain time to keep the actual time the uniques would respawn a mystery.  I would also encourage the devs to change the respawn positions once a week to keep people on their toes.

 

One of the biggest issues I see cropping up about the uniques is loot, if dragons respawn there, would they have loot?  This can be handled quite easily by making a 'new dragon' mob (maybe a wyvern?) and have it drop nothing.

 

Another idea that I've more recently heard about with a hunting server is actually to replace all the mobs, basically duplicate them all in the database and have the duplicate drop a special currency.  You could then use that special currency to buy things at the starter towns on the hunting server, maybe things like sleeping powders or seryll.  This would give some real encouragement to grind FS on this new server and killing the unique would end up rewarding a large amount of this currency.

 

In the case of the epic hunting server, this would actually add a place where all the kingdoms would end up being at to grind FS, so pvp should end up happening, if the new currency is added then this would potentially create a new pvp hotspot, especially for the unique kills.

 

This idea isn't really my idea, it's a very old idea that I know you, Rolf, already knew about.  It had so much popularity that I assumed it would have been added with the Xanadu release, when I found out about challenge I just assumed it would have followed this model and was surprised that it didn't.

[Warlander 2,730]

Hunting server... Yes, this is what we Freedomers would really love!

It just need some stronger mobs, maybe kind of zoning with 'Freedom-like only' mobs in one part of a server (for more fresh players and alone hunters) and more challenging others in a second half as well (for experienced groups looking for fun, better loot and 'real' action) and - as Object already said - rewards system implemented. If kept this way and close enough to current servers, I think it would get really popular and hyped.

Edit: Some random events on this kind of server, fully random as well as periodic ones would make things even more interesting IMO.

Edited March 10, 2015 by Warlander

[Omar 479]

I started and quit after like 2 days. Because I couldn't be bothered making more horse gear even some 50ql lol. I wanted to spend time on my epic account where the skills add up.

 

I guess the input time vs enjoyment payback wasn't enough for me when the account will get reset anyway.

 

A 2 month or longer challenge would probably get me back into it. If there's decent starting skills / skill gain.

[akaedis 429]

I started and quit after like 2 days. Because I couldn't be bothered making more horse gear even some 50ql lol. I wanted to spend time on my epic account where the skills add up.

 

I guess the input time vs enjoyment payback wasn't enough for me when the account will get reset anyway.

 

A 2 month or longer challenge would probably get me back into it. If there's decent starting skills / skill gain.

[Dairuka 888]

Combat in Wurm is not engaging.

 

If you can find a way to make it engaging within the systems you have set up already, you will answer your problem without requiring yet another server or gimmick.

 

If the mechanics aren't interesting enough on their own merits, then no amount of content will save your concept of PvP in Wurm.

Edited March 10, 2015 by Dairuka

[Johnny Rascal 2]

Some more thoughts on Dominance:

 

Things I liked:

• The map design. I saw some really neat areas around the Jenn-Kellon mountain that had been modified by hand with the new mapmaking tool and would have made fantastic village locations if they weren't so far out from the HOTA region.
  
• The swapped Black Light and White Light locations. The exact location of the White Light gave a small advantage to HOTS though, because it wasn't as heavily guarded by JR and MR as the Black Light was by HOTS. Going back to two kingdoms will solve this though.
  
• The removal of champions and kingdom titles. It really made the game feel more fair and balanced. I recommend mentioning changes like this in the news updates before the scenario starts, though.
  
• The increased crop growth speed.
  

 

Things that should be changed:

• The Valrei creatures and buffed mobs. Somebody was kiting powerful Valrei creatures into our village mine in the first few days of the scenario and it was very frustrating to deal with. Players were expecting to start the scenario as strong fighters but were getting killed by bears. Either return normal mobs to regular strength, or allow deed guards to aggro on Valrei mobs, or just get rid of Valrei mobs completely.
  
• The Peacekeeper spawns at the HOTA zone. I guess they're intended to prevent alt camping at the resource depot, but they're also discouraging PvP at the depot when there's only a small number of fighters online. Have the Peacekeepers only start spawning when players are in local for a few minutes.
  
• Prayer counts getting reset after a server reboot. This randomly gives some players a faith advantage according to the hours they play at. At the very least you should make it possible to know the faith gain opportunities remaining in the current day.
  
• The mechanic for gaining Hunted status. It's too easy to become Hunted by accident or through a bug, and it should really only happen if the victim dies.
  

 

Village raiding is fine the way it is now

I see a lot of people in this thread complaining that it's too hard to raid villages, but HOTS still raided both (all) JK villages successfully. Their siege on Krillin's Porn Stash took a grueling 4 hours and resulted in a few casualties, but they still managed to drain the token and had opportunities to ransack half of our buildings. Despite winning the fight, they're complaining that it was too hard and they didn't get a chance to salt the earth and spawncamp our village members until they left the kingdom/scenario like they had done to MR a few days earlier. Attacking a main village should be extremely difficult and result in heavy casualties, especially for the raiders, but it should also allow the raiders to steal some things and drain the token. Completely leveling a village should only be possible for forward "war deeds" that aren't the home base for a group of players. Even with the limited damage to our village a few of our members dropped out or became less active because honestly they have enough stress in their daily lives that they don't want to worry about logging in and finding the village in burning ruins, and they don't want to have to be on-call 24 hours a day as the village defense force.

 

Starter gear is perfect for village defense, but could be nerfed for field battles

The use of suicide alt rushes with starter gear is perfectly fine for defending main villages, and if we didn't have that option Krillin's Porn Stash probably would have been leveled and its members mostly driven out of the scenario before it was halfway done. The use of suicide alts with huge axes and main accounts with starter gear was a problem with field battles though, and people were getting back into the fight a little too quickly because of forward deed and tent spawns. Any changes made to starter gear should still allow it to be abused a little for main village defense.

 

Getting Casuals and Crazy Wurm People to segregate themselves less

I think casual players are motivated more by fun, while CWPs are motivated more by in-game social status. Scenario prizes are a great way to encourage CWPs, and it would help if they could transfer their titles and hats/masks to their other accounts on Chaos or Freedom. You could encourage CWPs to distribute themselves more evenly between kingdoms by making it easier to win scenario prizes if they're on a weaker kingdom, like maybe the top 10-20 warriors are recorded at the end of the scenario, and the players with the most kills against these top warriors get prizes. You could get casual players to distribute themselves more evenly between kingdoms by making the game more fun or easier to get started in if they're on a weaker kingdom. One possibility is to give new accounts higher starting skills/characteristics depending on how much time is remaining in the scenario if they're on the kingdom with less territory claimed, or fewer walls built on village deeds.

[Thunderstruck 55]

i didnt play solely cause it was only up for 2 weeks

[icenrns 62]

two week to short

some of us have to work

needs to be 6 weeks ...............

[ownerpure5 322]

Would be nice if it was 2 or 3 months. 1 month is way too short and it takes much time to reset and change all the features for the next round. and also wl vs bl would be nice

[KanePT 699]

I've said this a couple times. I liked the concept of challenge a lot.

I couldn't play during the first "season" and after seeing how people were rewarded i decided not to.

You're rewarding individuals in a team game, that's wrong in all levels, period.

 

So yeah, that's round one for discouragement. Then things are same old, even in challenge. The combat still is the same wurm combat, and after that initial disillusionment the few reasons that might get me to play it were gone. I mean what's the point (i know theoretically the fun and whatnot, but people like the shinnies) of playing a competitive setting if, even on the winning team, earning some sort of reward is not too short of winning the Lotto.

 

And after that, i don't even play wurm, i mean my friends list is in a happy day when 1 of my friends are online, so yeah, what's the point?