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LorenaMontana

So whats gonna happen?

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What is going happen is the true hardcore players are going stay and slowly expand their deeds. Then one day my 1,000 x 1,000 is going bump into some broke ass players 20x20 deed. Then make 3 more deeds surrounding his to starve him out and continue my expansion.

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7 hours ago, MrGARY said:

the term selfish keeps being thrown at people against merging

 

uh i might be uncertain here, but wanting to delete content/dictate how other people should play for your own amusement until you quit again (as usual for most saying this) is the very definition of selfish

 

it makes a whole lot more sense to me to focus on fixing bugs, balancing gameplay, overhauls, new unique content that actually stays unique and not slapped onto freedom like the rest of the "unique" content, basically things to keep players coming back permanently without forcing away players, rather than doing huge improper bandaids that run players away to draw in players for weeks/months at a time like resets or merges

 

lets be honest here.  we need players, not consolidation.  not justifying having enough people for one server, rather figure out how to grow the game so all servers are full again like they used to be

 

This post makes me think a bit more about the 2013 graphs that someone had posted somewhere on the forums. From memory (and i could be remembering completely incorrectly) there were 900 people on Serenity, 200 on Elevation, 500 on MRH and 100 - 200 on Aflliction. Again, not sure I remember the numbers correctly.

 

If that was the high point back in 2013 what changed since then to drive the people away?

 

- Was it truly only bugs that eventually made people walk away in disgust?

- Did the increasing focus on the concept of hardcore, Elevation style PVP eventually cause people to abandon the Epic homeserver life style that they had been playing up until then?

- Social factors, what was the average time that people back then could dedicate to the slow grind in Wurm compared to the amount of time they have today?

- What about noob welcome to Epic. What kind of greeting do they receive? Is it enough for them to hang around or do they leave in disgust meaning that as veterans leave the game there are little to no replacements?

- What about Forum wars? Does that build a sense of Epic community or just once again drive people away?

- I personally feel that resets destroy PVP on a server while people focus on rebuilding deeds etc. Better to figure out a way to keep a server going unless there is a really important reason to remove it. Anytime you reset a server you lose people and you lose even more people when pvp slows/stops for the rebuilds

 

From a purely business viewpoint if there really were that many people on Epic then compared to now then it represents a tremendous loss of revenue, likely enough to make it way less smart to pour money into Epic now compared to Freedom where there are still more paying customers.

 

If I owned Wurm and I thought the game was dwindling as fast as population charts leads me to believe then I would focus well over 90% of my effort on the core business where the majority of my remaining revenue was. Stabilize that core and then worry about the outlying fringes especially the ones that make a tremendous amount of noise and have already quit the game.  Freedom PVE is likely that core. If you look at the recent PVP bug fix speed and future commitments for PVP it lines up nicely with this approach doesn't it?

 

Another game I play from time to time is The Long Dark. It's a survival game that tries to give people a real balance while also maintaining appeal to as many groups of people as possible. One of their developers or leads was interviewed and he made a comment that the most vocal players in his game were often the ones who wanted the most hard core gaming experience and if he had listened to them exclusively then the game would have appealed to such a smaller audience that it would never have achieved the success that it now has (in Steam EA btw).

 

I personally enjoy the harder style of PVP found on Elevation. I also recognize that in Wurm there are many different play styles and if we cater to one play style to the exclusion of all others then people vote with their feet and leave. With the huge number of people who have left I find it hard to believe that it comes down mainly to buggy PVP.

 

~Nappy

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Personally I believe the only way Epic can be somewhat fixed is mirroring the Characters skills with the Freedom Cluster account (Grandfather the top skill on both clusters), and allowing a way to transfer some loot back and forth from the clusters such as special bank slots 

 

The game Devs have push Freedom cluster over these years and few Freedom accounts want to re-level characters

 

So Epic can turn in a Quick Game of PVP and hunting for freedom accounts and Epic get more blood

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10 hours ago, Nappy said:

From memory (and i could be remembering completely incorrectly) there were 900 people on Serenity, 200 on Elevation, 500 on MRH and 100 - 200 on Aflliction. Again, not sure I remember the numbers correctly.

 

Those numbers are completely wrong - by far too high. The whole cluster has probably never seen 900 people online, let alone a single server.

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1 hour ago, Eobersig said:

 

Those numbers are completely wrong - by far too high. The whole cluster has probably never seen 900 people online, let alone a single server.

In no way saying you are wrong. My memory may be incorrect and although I searched for awhile this morning I was unable to find the post that had the graphs I was think of.

 

Even if the numbers are incorrect the general population downward trend isn't so I think my comments are still relevant.

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epic during prime could see just under 100 or over 100 across the cluster. If they would have allowed free accounts across the cluster and allowed fighting to be capped at 50 compared and body stats to 25 you'd give free accounts a reason to stay and play.

 

Epic was seen as a new start from wild, no windows of opportunity, farwalker amulets, bags of keeping etc

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Just an anecdote: recently the Affliction alliance has grown to the size of the old BLE alliance, and new accounts have sprung up -- and remained active -- on BLE as well. This is a major change considering we were the "dead" kingdom just a few weeks ago.

 

Nothing too significant has happened mechanics-wise, so what gives? Why do we suddenly have people -- old and new players alike -- who are giving it a shot and staying around? In a "dead" kingdom on a "dead" cluster, no less?

 

If I were to guess, it's because we've started making a conscious effort to build community here. If you pay attention, people are constantly poking their heads in to see what the game's about. But too often they're swatted away as spy alts or newbies who "won't stick around anyway," and when they're treated as outcasts and ignored, "not sticking around anyway" turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Start acting welcoming to them, talk to them, offer them help, and suddenly they're part of something and they're inclined to keep playing.

 

Wurm is a community game, and PvP servers are supposed to offer the most tight-knit communities here. We can complain about balance or whatever, and it is important, but moon metal and Smoke of Sol aren't what scare newbies away. You can have all the mechanics changes in the world but you still won't get the population you want until you become willing to alter your own behavior to accommodate those extra players. Rather than waiting for PvP to arrive gift-wrapped on our doorsteps as we are all so prone to doing, we have to take the steps necessary to make it happen. Anything on the devs' end is secondary.

Edited by Fawkes
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2 hours ago, Fawkes said:

Just an anecdote: recently the Affliction alliance has grown to the size of the old BLE alliance, and new accounts have sprung up -- and remained active -- on BLE as well. This is a major change considering we were the "dead" kingdom just a few weeks ago.

 

Nothing too significant has happened mechanics-wise, so what gives? Why do we suddenly have people -- old and new players alike -- who are giving it a shot and staying around? In a "dead" kingdom on a "dead" cluster, no less?

 

If I were to guess, it's because we've started making a conscious effort to build community here. If you pay attention, people are constantly poking their heads in to see what the game's about. But too often they're swatted away as spy alts or newbies who "won't stick around anyway," and when they're treated as outcasts and ignored, "not sticking around anyway" turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Start acting welcoming to them, talk to them, offer them help, and suddenly they're part of something and they're inclined to keep playing.

 

Wurm is a community game, and PvP servers are supposed to offer the most tight-knit communities here. We can complain about balance or whatever, and it is important, but moon metal and Smoke of Sol aren't what scare newbies away. You can have all the mechanics changes in the world but you still won't get the population you want until you become willing to alter your own behavior to accommodate those extra players. Rather than waiting for PvP to arrive gift-wrapped on our doorsteps as we are all so prone to doing, we have to take the steps necessary to make it happen. Anything on the devs' end is secondary.

 

Having built up a community in multiple kingdoms multiple times, let me tell you what will happen.

 

You having a good environment and infrastructure will generate a small number of people, these people will either quit because they dont like the game, leave the kingdom/quit the game over x incident, or stay.

 

If they stay, later on down the line, they will either like the game for what it is and stay (a large minority, most of these people are what you see on PvE servers.), and then you have the people who thirst for PvP. Those people, once they realize how broken it is. It might take months, might take years, they will try something new or quit like most other experienced PvPers have.

 

It helps some, but it is no substitute for proper developer action which is heavily needed (more than it was two-three years ago when complaints about balance started to hit high levels.)

Edited by Propheteer

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11 minutes ago, Propheteer said:

It helps some, but it is no substitute for proper developer action which is heavily needed (more than it was two-three years ago when complaints about balance started to hit high levels.)

 

It's definitely not a problem with a single concrete answer, that much is clear. But I'm trying to think of what has changed since 2013. More people have Gone, people are stacking Valrei buffs, moon metal is everywhere, and player gods are a thing now. The first three are easily fixed by changing some numbers around and tacking on some penalties here and there.

 

And if that's the case and I'm not forgetting some huge game-destroying feature, then it really doesn't warrant all of the doom-and-gloom apocalypse threads. "Wurm is dead and it'll never get better" doesn't really make sense to me when people's biggest grievances can be boiled down to changing a few variables in the code.

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20 minutes ago, Fawkes said:

 

It's definitely not a problem with a single concrete answer, that much is clear. But I'm trying to think of what has changed since 2013. More people have Gone, people are stacking Valrei buffs, moon metal is everywhere, and player gods are a thing now. The first three are easily fixed by changing some numbers around and tacking on some penalties here and there.

 

And if that's the case and I'm not forgetting some huge game-destroying feature, then it really doesn't warrant all of the doom-and-gloom apocalypse threads. "Wurm is dead and it'll never get better" doesn't really make sense to me when people's biggest grievances can be boiled down to changing a few variables in the code.

 

Changing something easier than those few variables took 3+ months, how long do you think it would take everything else?

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BL is dead kingdom, numbers don't lie : http://affliction.wurmonline.com/mrtg/wurm.html

 

http://elevation.wurmonline.com/mrtg/wurm.html

 

I will let the graphs do all the talking here. The devs simply threw us a bone or a treat to make us a bit happy thinkin it would kill our hunger for changes, but it hasn't. Were the changes that happen needed yeah but doesn't change much and won't magically resurrect the community. They gave us these changes to buy them time for bigger changes but it took 4 months for a change like information minister, with that time frame it would take 4+ years till any meditation overhaul or pvp. Considering that informer was literally deleting a line of code, imagine these big changes that need to be coded from scratch and take work. 

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Epic is dead as a whole atm. I remember when weekends showed up to 100-150 onine at peak times. Fights were awesome and the game was fun then. Now it has just become a grind fest for Valrei and most ppl just log in to check that their ###### hasn't been feked up. There is a lot of heart left it just seems to be a weak pulse atm. From what I see personally nothing is being done but minor fixes and the odd promise in our Friday news.

 

<3 Lockdown 

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51 minutes ago, Lockdown said:

Epic is dead as a whole atm. I remember when weekends showed up to 100-150 onine at peak times.

I remember 100+ on serenity alone long after launch...


I recall having 50+ people on ts in BLE the first days of epic... (and there was more than one BLE group)

 

Good times.

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If more people even knew about Wurm, that would start to solve all problems. It's not about catering to a wider playerbase or even changing 'broken' game elements. Most people quit, some hate it, yet some latch on to become diehard residents (even today); we just need to get more people through this filter. It's all about the niche being found, not eliminated. Most will quit.

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I was actually thinking about trying epic, I love the idea of a portal. Skilling up does not bother me too much as it lets me try different things with the same account.

 

And I agree the information for Wurm Online is not out there, I had totally forgotten about the game until I ran into by accident when I was reading something on some sandbox game. This game requires a certain mindset and does not cater to insta-gratification unless you have a large sum of money you can throw at it.

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I do think there are too many servers now. Both PVE and PVP. Yes there is loads of free area, but with that comes isolation which really defeats the purpose of Wurm. To be a community, get to know your neighbors and collaborate on issues and projects. I miss JK Home. One server, alot of close friends and loads of activity.

 

This is one reason I am not playing.  it is too deserted I feel. anyone I want to see i have to sail for hours. not sure how the new sailing things works, but I lost interest in WO. I am liking WU now, no more grinding and no worries of griefing.   I hope maybe one day WO will be the game I started playing many years ago again.  I miss all my old friends.

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Some folks want seclusion.  I'm one of them. 

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I stay out of these PvP discussions because 99% of the time I got no business interfering... but I can share a tidbit that might be useful. Why I won't ever play on a PvP server in Wurm.

 

I have several reasons why I never joined a PvP server in Wurm (I won't list them all), but the second most important and relevant reason of all in the list is that I don't want to join the PvP community in this game, because of the Players themselves and how they treat each other. I have watched for almost a decade now how the PvP talk to one another, how they interact, and frankly I'd rather go mine roids in low sec space in EVE or try and join the Goons (I hate Goons) then to join the PvPers here. It's not all the Players on the PvP servers that bother me, there are some great Players that play on Chaos and Epic, it's the few and they are enough to make me glad I never went to Chaos or Epic. "A few rotten apples" definitely applies here.

 

That's my feelings on all this and my opinion doesn't count for squat... but seriously, maybe the reason why Wurm PvP is dying is in part due to some of the PvPers themselves and how they treat each other. It bothers the hell out of me and maybe it bothers others as well. This point has been raised many times and ignored many as well. Save the PvP for ingame and keep it off the forums, OR lock up the PvP forums like they SHOULD BE, because it might be fun smacktalk talk but it stinks like dirty laundry to others who don't know the Players involved.

Edited by geode
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Maybe just don't be so sensitive 

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or we can try to have a better image so more people want to try out pvp rather than players being wurm's own enemy, who knows

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43 minutes ago, Josh said:

Maybe just don't be so sensitive 

 

Sensitive? It's about respect for your fellow players, even if they are the enemy. I have had respect for all of you PvP Players over the years and I show that respect by almost always staying out of your discussions, and through other ways.

 

Another kind of respect is the mutual respect Players are supposed to have for each other when they share a game. If you fail to, or refuse to, give respect to other Players you share a PvP server with then you are as much a part of the problem as the bugs Rolf doesn't fix.

 

And a big part of how a Player show others they actually respect them is how a Player treats others when they encounter them on the forums or social media and new players checking out Wurm for first time will know as well whether there is a good community in Wurm or a toxic one.

 

I can't explain it better than that... you either get this, or you don't.

 

 

Edited by geode
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Whats going to happen from here? It's a few steps:

1. Continue to address key issues raised in PvP, things surrounding either broken mechanics (permissions), or improving mechanics that are currently bypassed (tower capping)

2. Define what we want to see PvP be, define what currently works, what doesn't, and what needs to change to make PvP fun

3. Spend time rehauling PvP with a clear focus and goal in mind, as well as ensuring that what also comes to PvE does not cause unbalanced playstyles.

4. Testing and refinement

5. Release a PvP content overhaul that doesn't simply tempt PvE players with shiny items, but provides engaging, challenging and fun mechanics.

That isnt to say that during the time this will take there will be silence. I will be ensuring to work closely with both the development team and you all in communicating our progress, as well as showcasing new features, mechanics and content. We'll also be taking feedback and organising group discussions with PvPers over this time.

This won't be an overnight fix, but we are committed to improving PvP and raiding and will spend the time necessary to ensure that it gets the attention it deserves.

A project like this is huge and takes time, it's not a simple recalculating of numbers, but much more indepth planning, discussion and testing. Our goal is to rebuild PvP from the ground up, focusing on keeping it balanced, functional, and most importantly, fun.

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Whats going to happen from here? It's a few steps:

1. I'll finish writing anticheat for Wurm Unlimited probably in about a week or two if I'm not busy

2. WU servers will have the ability to enforce fair play by restricting client mods and people will be drawn to pvp on WU

3. Servers will make use of various mods to fix the things that we see as broken (and a lot of these mods already exist)

4. Well run servers will become popular and pvpers will largely flock to those rather than the slowly developed WO

5. Everybody will have a great time and Rolf will shut down epic and chaos

That is to say that during the mere week or two this will take there won't really be any status updates from me. I will be ensuring to work on my own time when not busy with class, as well as doing so at my own pace, leisure and ability. I'll also be taking feedback from a few select modders who I am familiar with.

This will be an overnight fix, and will greatly inhibit players' ability to cheat on PVP WU servers.  I like the idea of a fair WU and I will spend the time improving the security of the anticheat to ensure that it achieves the desired outcome.

A project like this isn't that difficult and doesn't take much time.  It's a simple writing of native libraries, checking the validity of the client against known accepted versions, securely reporting to the server, and testing its implementation. My goal is to provide an even playing field in PvP on WU servers, so that hosts can focus on keeping it balanced, functional, and most importantly, fun.

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