focusing on community for WO

[hankrearden 144]

The main advantage WO will hold over WU is community and interaction.  However, many changes in WO over the years has made the game more solo friendly, and thus easier.  WO can't (and shouldn't) try to compete with WU on easiness and solo-ability, and instead should focus on changes that incentivize interaction, even though this will make the game necessarily harder.

 

What changes could be made to WO to foster more player interaction?  Would like to hear some ideas.

 

Some suggestions from me:

1.  Bring back material loss on a creation failure - would bring about more trade in areas people are not highly skilled in.

2.  Make mail more expensive - mail should be limited to top tier items only, which would now be more costly to obtain (money or time).  This could cause people to prefer to live around populated trade areas, or purchase mid-grade stuff from neighbors.

 

[Kadore 926]

Never worked in everquest over the long haul, it won't here either,  you never win by forcing players into a direction with obstacles,  higher coin cost or time sinks.

 

Time is a precious commodity, all this does is punish people with a life that do choose to play WO with limited time and have zero interest in WU. 

 

The current community exists for better or worse,  so have left to get away from it, some will never leave until their last friend does.

Edited November 26, 2015 by Kadore

[Griffith 362]

wheres the nolike button?

 

i mean yes we need more community promoting mechanics and activities,

but i dont think what you suggest will hep that. hey augment decay so i need 10 people

repairing my stuff?  wont help i dont think

[Chiqa 742]

While I agree fostering the community vibe is a good /positive thing , I have to disagree on both ideas. Particularly the mail.

Easing ravel would help increase the flow of people from place to place to place. 

[Kadore 926]

One thing Everquest did as the game grew in size was add faster travel, I still boggle why Wurm remains so archaic in this respect, the low numbers of Celebration out at the fringes seem to support this.

[Mistvengery 141]

Def no mail cost increase...its up to the people to get more involved and have community spirit not to have mechanisms in place to push them towards that.  The spirit of wurm should be the people !

[Klaa 4,872]

The carrot usually works better than the stick (combining the two with subtly can be even better).

 

In this context, fostering community relations can consist of events that people will want to go to and/or participate in.

 

The rest happens on its own.

Edited November 26, 2015 by Klaa

[Mistvengery 141]

Every month there is activities  of one kind or another.

Jberg does a great job at his regular monthly event and continues to come up with more events.

Impalongs have been happening more frequent

Increased spawn have created more  unique creature kill group events

Booskii added the first ever Cast-a-long

 

And those are just recent events that continue to grow...

[faty 423]

The thing that drew me to play this game is the people interaction. So if something can be implemented to ease that, that would be much better than what op suggests.

Why not buildable freedom portals just like the epic one so we can easily travel between islands to see friends. This will no affect the economy much as you won't be able to cross with anything except inventory, but at least I won't have to sail all night to get to an event or help a friend on another island.

[Eobersig 1,006]

7 hours ago, hankrearden said:

The main advantage WO will hold over WU is community and interaction.  ...

 

I'd say this first sentence of your suggestion is already wrong. I do not play WU but it's obvious that there are a good number of WU servers with plenty of community and interaction. You need to find the difference between WO and WU elsewhere - community and interaction can be found on both.

[Xalorum 766]

Seems to me removing mail cost would increase trade and hence increase interaction between players 

[Ecrir 887]

I'd do the following:

 

Greatly cut down on mail cost or remove it altogether. The mail cost is a barrier between trade, thus limiting interaction.

 

Greatly increase boat speed, or redesign the boat travel system, for example so you can go from any server to any other server (simply let the player choose where they want to go when they get to a border). In the current system travel takes ages, thus it's another barrier to community interaction.

 

Add portals between existing servers so you can go from any starter city to any other starter city on any server in the same cluster. Reasoning is the same as above. Boats would still have a use, namely to move bulk materials and not everybody lives near a starter city anyway.

 

Add permanent player made (so with proper management, password, etc options) in game chat channels which players, villages and even entire alliances can join. This way even if a group of friends is spread out over multiple servers they have an easy way to stay in touch with each other (and no, irc does not in any way count as an easy, player friendly way to achieve this.). I've seen it happen often enough now that with the addition of a new server a group of friends ends up split over two servers and gets out of contact with each other. This reduction in community interaction then slowly results in people playing less and less until they eventually quit.

 

[Clatius 455]

You could always limit people to a certain number of professions instead of being able to do basically everything. It would make for more alts but for those alts to perform well they would have to be premium alts. It should at least help somewhat in community. 

[PWreset 66]

reason to make stuff "easier" is new players.

 

Whats the point in a new players existence for the old players when his skills are low, and all related other stuff he does is of low ql. he will then just be usefull for terraforming and other  rather "low" works. Which in reverse means the new player knowing the other old gamer spent like 1000h+ to get where he is. And so a new player will need AGES before finally adding some true new value for the community he joined.

 

A reason why a new server gets rushed by so many players is the even situation all start with. And so all have an rather equal valuable. Untilt he No life hardcorgamers outclass and obsolete the casuals which then start to retreat.

 

Material loss is the worst idea of them all because it makes the new player even have a bigger gap to the veteran player.

 

There needs to be a system that connects veterans and new players better. The farming veteran will always harvest because he gets the valuable stuff, the newbie not, because it is not granting much if you farm 2 ql 20 pumpkins while the veteran gets his 8 pumpkins of high ql.

 

And this continues to everything, form ore mining to smithing to whatever.

 

I feel it right now again by playing WU. If youare the active gamer you and the world around you grows with you. But when you are the lowie, you justs tand ther ein the huge world where you have not much use except dedicating a LAOD of skillgrind for items without use until you reach a similar level or skill as the people around you.

 

Interaction is the best when everyone around needs each other. But as a low character you feel a bit like a useless sidekick. And then selling your crap is even more harder because others already have their high ql enchanted tools to sell.

So at this one point I love that in WO you can do everything on your own, yet it also is the doom for player interaction because the vets have most stuff so high up they don't need anyone around anymore.

 

it would be cool if we had some menthorship programs where a scholar or 2 can use the skill of their master, or at least to 80% when he is around. This way two newbies could be as useful as their master and they can all 2 or 3 together work with equal efficiency to the same goal.

 

or make some profession choices so a player can choose like 10 skills he can max up to 100 and the rest can not exceed 60.

Edited November 26, 2015 by PWreset

[hankrearden 144]

6 hours ago, Xalorum said:

Seems to me removing mail cost would increase trade and hence increase interaction between players 

It would increase to volume of trade overall, but it would reduce the number of players on the selling end (which for many would be more enjoyable).  The low cost mail system creates a 'winner take all' market, in which only the most elite can sell their products.  also - player interaction through wurms mail interface is a lower quality interaction.  travelling to a near by merchant or neighbor for a lower ql alternative will be a richer experience.

 

1 hour ago, PWreset said:

reason to make stuff "easier" is new players

yes, that was the logic the past few years.  we now have WU for the new players to get hooked on this type of game.  IMO, WO needs to differentiate itself from WU, and the only way i can see WO doing that is making a slightly harder game to require more interaction and cooperation.  Any other type of changes to WO can and will be copied in WU.

 

Any chance this can be moved back to town square?  the purpose of this thread is to come up with ideas for increasing player interaction.  my two suggestions were just to get the ball rolling.  Suggestion forum is more appropriate for discussing the pros and cons of a particular suggestion only.

15 hours ago, hankrearden said:

What changes could be made to WO to foster more player interaction?  Would like to hear some ideas

 

[Retrograde 12,013]

One of the great things about the Wurm community is how it has always come together. From the early independence impalonogs held in festival cove, to slayings held all over the place in recent times, we're alway amazed at the events you all come up with and host.

 

Spellcast does have his monthly hunts, which are impressive feats, and we do look at other community events as possibilities, but the most impressive and awesome events come from you all naturally, rather than forced by us. We love each and every reason you all find to get together or interact, but we do not wish to penalise players for not taking part in community intraction, that would be horrible.

 

Travel changes to speed the process up are a common request, and something I'd like to spend time looking into improving without losing the distinct style of wurm and resorting to generic portals. Of course things such as this do take time and don't always provide fast results, but requests to change the system are being listened to.

 

There are many opportunities for players to gather, be it impalongs, hunts, markets, auctions or anything you can imagine. It is my desire to see you all with the tools for interaction and connection available to interact with each other as easily as possible, and I'll be there taking part!

[Rathgar 959]

I have to disagree, I think that giving bonuses for interaction would work better than punishing players into interacting.  Maybe a bonus like nutrition, but that measures how many friends/allies you have in the area.

[Steveleeb 1,067]

On 26/11/2015, 03:58:03, Kadore said:

One thing Everquest did as the game grew in size was add faster travel, I still boggle why Wurm remains so archaic in this respect, the low numbers of Celebration out at the fringes seem to support this.

I'd kill for SoW. i would. I think it's the only thing i miss since discovering wurm
that and the orc trains.

------------------------------------------------
Sorry i have no thoughts on WU.
hoping players will develop it and our developers will transfer some of the cream.
If i wanted to risk map wipes and database corruptions on player run servers, i'd play mc.

As for WO,  restrictions of any kind, we already have. and it works.
with all due respect, I don't like your suggestions at all.

-1

Edited December 2, 2015 by Steveleeb

[Luceat 38]

I think the mailbox actually are bad for the community.

 

An EVE-online system where you can have a contract to pick up something at a specific tile in deed is better. Allow courier contracts as well together with collateral.

Works great in EVE, in wurm you have the added benefit of actually catching a glimpse of the person you are buying from or selling to or the courier.

 

Also, one may consider that the mailbox is "stealing jobs" that many wurmians would enjoy doing.

 

Furthermore, you may get local economies since the market is no longer global with almost free shipping, which is great for trade.

[Hailene 362]

I believe the mailbox stifles the mid-tier economy.  Why bother to buy from your 70 BS neighbor when that 100 BS will make the 70QL tool faster and cheaper (even including mail costs)?  Easy, you won't.  At least probably won't.

 

Personally I'd say you can't mail beyond adjacent (neighboring) servers.  And even then, increase the mailing cost.

 

Have people buy local.  This gives more people more chances to sell goods rather than a few people with the best enchants and highest skills gobbling up all the customers.

 

This does have the negative affect on the consumers, though. They have fewer choices and at higher prices...but I think it balances out in the end.  More people will actually feel needed.

[Kadore 926]

 Since we love to just add stuff to the game with little to no forethought, lets go ahead and prove or disprove removing the mailboxes for the betterment of the community, I'll go ahead and bet 10s now it will end as a total failure.

[Proximo 402]

The servers don't have enough population for any kind of "community" feel outside of Xanadu.  Taking HUGE step backwards in quality-of-life isn't going to make the game feel any better in that aspect.

 

Combine that with the fact that the person you need to do business with is now very likely 6+ real-life hours away from you, and the idea of forcing people into a "community" feel through the economy....I don't see it working.

 

Wurm Online has two MASSIVE issues right now for an MMO:

1.  Pathetic server populations on huge maps.

2.  The most idiotic and convoluted travel system leading to ABSURD commute times.

 

And yeah I know people will say #2 is part of the "charm" or "realism" of Wurm....but the game has this dichotomy where players can massively shortcut certain mechanics by casting magical spells etc etc.  So that doesn't really fly with me.

 

Xanadu was bad enough.  Wurm Unlimited has smashed my friends list and Alliance to pieces.  The playerbase feels more fractured than ever.  And you wanna talk about community?  I play on Independence and I haven't seen more than a handful of players in-game in months!  When I first started Wurm it actually felt like an MMO.

 

No offense but I hate both of the OP's ideas.  How is that supposed to help with anything?

[FreeTineen 430]

On 11/26/2015, 10:33:31, Retrograde said:

One of the great things about the Wurm community is how it has always come together. From the early independence impalonogs held in festival cove, to slayings held all over the place in recent times, we're alway amazed at the events you all come up with and host.

 

Spellcast does have his monthly hunts, which are impressive feats, and we do look at other community events as possibilities, but the most impressive and awesome events come from you all naturally, rather than forced by us. We love each and every reason you all find to get together or interact, but we do not wish to penalise players for not taking part in community intraction, that would be horrible.

 

Travel changes to speed the process up are a common request, and something I'd like to spend time looking into improving without losing the distinct style of wurm and resorting to generic portals. Of course things such as this do take time and don't always provide fast results, but requests to change the system are being listened to.

 

There are many opportunities for players to gather, be it impalongs, hunts, markets, auctions or anything you can imagine. It is my desire to see you all with the tools for interaction and connection available to interact with each other as easily as possible, and I'll be there taking part!

Speed up travel times, reduce number of abandoned servers, reduce cost of game (its an inde game) WO does not compete with most ftp options. Its empty because it isn't good enough to compete.

[Midas 28]

Êncourage community interaction? Yes, absolutely!

 

But honestly I do not see how making things harder (and more frustrating) will add anything to that goal or will make WO more attractive.

[Luceat 38]

I had another idea to also improve density of players in WO (albeit, i'm hardly the first).

As I understand it, a lot of the issue is that "prime real estate" i.e. coastal areas, are deeded very quickly.

There are a ton of one-man deeds.

There are even a ton of alt deeds that just include a trader for free cash.

 

This obviously creates a lot of area that is deeded, but very sparsely populated.

Instead two things may be done:

1. Remove traders or simply force all traders to be public or something. If you keep them, have them not buy stuff, all their profits go to kingdom coffers instead to be drained through foraging etc.

2. Introduce a plot system. A plot is a part of a deed. Any premium player may have one plot for free of a fixed size. Plotted part of deeds do not count towards deed upkeep, or at least reduced rate. This should increase the incentives to get more villagers.

 

Removing of mailboxes for a EVE contract system does not have to make things inherently harder.

For the contract system to work, you would have to build another object in place of the mailbox. Lets call it the "Contract ledger"

 

For the buyer:

Go to Contract ledger

press add contract

Select visibility=Public or Private (private requiring a character name)

select "hatchet" from filterable dropdown menu

Select QL=70 +- 5

Select Rarity=Normal

Select Reward upon delivery 20C

Select drop-off-point "Sloping sands contract ledger"

 

Two options now to have this contract fulfilled,

The seller may personally transfer the item to sloping sands, upon arrival accepting the contract

The seller may create a courier contract to move a hatchet to sloping sands, complete with collateral. When the courier delivers the item, the seller may remotely complete the buyers contract.

 

See how it works in eve online in the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUMpmLIlnW0