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Retrograde

Weekly News #16: Day at the races

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A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace - Ovid

Hi Everyone,


This week will have a focus on community events and how we're going to be looking at them in the future, including setting up a system to allow us to promote your events!


Patch Notes:

Spoiler

Patch Notes 21/APR/16

April 21, 2016
  • Bugfix – Salt, flint and gems will now land in the same pile as shards.
  • Bugfix – Floor reinforcements can now be removed even when the tile is at maximum mining depth.
  • Bugfix – During some actions checks for errors should now occur before giving skill gain.
  • Bugfix – Allowed the ability to always lead animals on a PvP server.
  • Bugfix – Expelling kingdom members has been improved, with feedback given upon failures.
  • Bugfix – Combat Rating calculation for Player Vs Player has been corrected to 1 CR point per 5 fight skill.

Day at the races

We’re mixing things up a little bit with no riddles this month, a horse race through some of the sights of Deliverance will be our April event! With Enki providing the horses and gear, everyone will have an even ground to race with. All you need to bring is yourself, and 21 body control! (and maybe some armour, a weapon, and  a nominated next of kin). The race is on the 30th and I look forward to seeing you all there

 

Social media

We'll be looking at how we operate with the current social media (promoting both Wurm Online and Wurm Unlimited with the same accounts) over the next week. Wurm Online and Wurm Unlimited have very different audiences, and we want to engage with you all with content that appeals to you, so make sure to check out our twitter @Wurmonline and our Facebook Wurm Online Official!


Events and community

As we all know, community events are a huge part of Wurm, from Impalongs and GM run hunts to Wurm Unlimited events on each server. We’ve setup a new email address, events@wurmonline.com allowing you to tell us about your event, and we’ll share it with everyone so it gets as big as you want it to be. Obviously this will mostly be a benefit for Wurm Unlimited, but we’re also looking for player centric events to share in from Wurm Online too, so don't be afraid to let us know about your next gathering.

 

Design a starter deed

I forgot to give an end date to the competition last week, so it will run until the 28th, and will be announced on the 29th in the news.


Community content

 

Over the course of several years, people on Independence may have noticed Hughmongus and Skyefox within their local, moving slowly and mumbling numbers. This is because theyve been working extremely hard on a properly scaled and accurate map of Indy.The community map for independence has been a hand drawn map since the days of Darkmalice, with Hughmongus picking up on an old project designed to accurately map the server.

They’ve counted out roads, resources and every coastline, and have finally shared their complete (well, full, they intend to continue to update and map the changes of the land) map. Check it out here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5evRFXJXhXONkktVjE4MUJaYjA/view

 

Thats it for this week,I got a raspberry Pi for my birthday, so I'll be fiddling with that over the weekend, I hope you all have a great weekend, and carry on Wurming!

 

Retrograde and the Wurm team

 

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I have to point out that it's nowhere near International Pi Day ;)

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I'm looking forward for the day when Blossom, on Pristine, will be included in a contest to be redesigned :D

 

Horse race, sounds like fun!

 

Spoiler

take-the-horse-they-said-it-will-be-fast

 

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*fails to notice any mention of upcomming stuff related to pvp*

Been a bunch of weeks for planning pvp related things, whats in the works?

each dev got like 40h a week of work so whats cooking? (and i dont mean fuzzy comments like "Oh meditation sorta maybe gets changed at some point later with... uh... balance... sorta", gimme something more defined)

What has actually been worked and heavily discussed?

Edited by Zekezor
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Be reminded that several starter deeds still need designs submitted! :)

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1 hour ago, Zekezor said:

*fails to notice any mention of upcomming stuff related to pvp*

Been a bunch of weeks for planning pvp related things, whats in the works?

each dev got like 40h a week of work so whats cooking? (and i dont mean fuzzy comments like "Oh meditation sorta maybe gets changed at some point later with... uh... balance... sorta", gimme something more defined)

What has actually been worked and heavily discussed?

+1 I would love to know whats in the works for pvp or if they even started to work on pvp

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2 hours ago, Pingpong said:

I have to point out that it's nowhere near International Pi Day ;)

Pretty sure that's not the only present he got either! Hope he doesn't get confused and eat it. ;-)  Glad it was a good birthday, Retro.  Here's to many more \~/

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3 hours ago, Zekezor said:

*fails to notice any mention of upcomming stuff related to pvp*

Been a bunch of weeks for planning pvp related things, whats in the works?

each dev got like 40h a week of work so whats cooking? (and i dont mean fuzzy comments like "Oh meditation sorta maybe gets changed at some point later with... uh... balance... sorta", gimme something more defined)

What has actually been worked and heavily discussed?

let's face it zeke. Horse races are more important than:

paying-year.png

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12 hours ago, Zekezor said:

*fails to notice any mention of upcomming stuff related to pvp*

Been a bunch of weeks for planning pvp related things, whats in the works?

each dev got like 40h a week of work so whats cooking? (and i dont mean fuzzy comments like "Oh meditation sorta maybe gets changed at some point later with... uh... balance... sorta", gimme something more defined)

What has actually been worked and heavily discussed?

 

Things will be happening in the near future.

 

Going to expand on this a little, because either people aren't reading or things aren't sinking in and the weekly trolling of the News is getting old.

 

The contracted positions were not specific to programming. They were specific to administration tasks that were left behind by the departures of Erik and Alex. So to ignorantly assume that because we are contracted and now have a miraculous 40 hours a week to spend on PvP changes is a bit dense and short-sighted. In all actuality you're breaking forum rules by intentionally soliciting an emotional response, which you've gotten.

 

My task specifically has to do with managing the code base as a whole and the game servers, which I have been doing. The goal is to work towards a more structured update schedule where all updates are given ample time on Test with patch notes posted when they go to Test so players are kept informed and can help with the testing or just poke curiously at things. This is what has been taking priority over PvP changes, as it has a great deal to do with how we would like to handle the changes coming. Do take note that I promised PvP changes will have time on Test to help ensure that they are proper before going live.

 

This isn't as simple as just setting some dates and such. It involves a new structure to our code repository and introducing a new way of doing things to the entire team. There's much more to the plan, but that's the essence of it.

 

I think it's about time to keep the constant checks on the status of the PvP changes off the news. It's not as if it hurries anything along and it simply helps to further drive a wedge in the player base. We know PvP needs help, we know it needs work. The departures and contracts shook things up a bit and have put a delay on what we had hoped to accomplish by now.

 

 

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3 hours ago, Keenan said:

 

Things will be happening in the near future.

 

Going to expand on this a little, because either people aren't reading or things aren't sinking in and the weekly trolling of the News is getting old.

 

The contracted positions were not specific to programming. They were specific to administration tasks that were left behind by the departures of Erik and Alex. So to ignorantly assume that because we are contracted and now have a miraculous 40 hours a week to spend on PvP changes is a bit dense and short-sighted. In all actuality you're breaking forum rules by intentionally soliciting an emotional response, which you've gotten.

 

My task specifically has to do with managing the code base as a whole and the game servers, which I have been doing. The goal is to work towards a more structured update schedule where all updates are given ample time on Test with patch notes posted when they go to Test so players are kept informed and can help with the testing or just poke curiously at things. This is what has been taking priority over PvP changes, as it has a great deal to do with how we would like to handle the changes coming. Do take note that I promised PvP changes will have time on Test to help ensure that they are proper before going live.

 

This isn't as simple as just setting some dates and such. It involves a new structure to our code repository and introducing a new way of doing things to the entire team. There's much more to the plan, but that's the essence of it.

 

I think it's about time to keep the constant checks on the status of the PvP changes off the news. It's not as if it hurries anything along and it simply helps to further drive a wedge in the player base. We know PvP needs help, we know it needs work. The departures and contracts shook things up a bit and have put a delay on what we had hoped to accomplish by now.

 

 

 

While I understand your reasoning you have to try and do the same thing to us, we went from having ~70 players on serenity alone 2 years ago to 50 people on the entire cluster of 4 servers at any time and nothing has been done even months after you guys got all into pvp fix mode(except 1 small change to remove the alert on territory entry, which took you weeks to do and probably had nothing to do with people constantly bugging you in posts about how you couldn't even manage that simple of a change). Don't act surprised your paying pvp customers are getting fed up with you(as a company not individuals), do something about it instead and prove us wrong, action > talk...  There has been alot of talk about wanting to fix it, but very little action from you guys to back up that talk. Action does not mean instantly fixing it 100% but at least showing us you are activity working on the issue which your reply basically says there is more important stuff to be worked on which kinda goes against the we are working on it mantra you want us to believe.

 

da89a04921dd2a2fd2b204ded87a38f6.pngVS The maybe 50 max on at peak hours now spread across 4 servers...

 

Edited by Darklords

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2 hours ago, Keenan said:

So to ignorantly assume that because we are contracted and now have a miraculous 40 hours a week to spend on PvP changes is a bit dense and short-sighted. In all actuality you're breaking forum rules by intentionally soliciting an emotional response, which you've gotten.

 

No I'm not. Untill someone says "We have changed our plan for pvp and its going to take much much longer" (or "not at all for quite some time", etc) then we as customers will presume the plan hasnt changed much... cuz ya know... we dont participate in your internal dev meetings... we only get announcements here.

I'm not expecting each and every dev to spend 40 hours on pvp, thats silly, but what im asking is whats being discussed from those 40 hours of time ya got. (for the devs related to pvp code, obviously, im not asking the freekin art devs)

 

And I guess you want me to apologise for asking about whats being done after all the PVP hype and announcements?

Guess what, aint gonna happen.

This is the feedback we got AFTER the team contracted:

 

On 2016-04-08 at 7:36 PM, Retrograde said:

Contracting Crew

We are in the process of contracting several existing developers to take over vital parts of the production and development of Wurm as well as other non developer positions for other important tasks in keeping Wurm running. This means that the workload will continue to be shared with our awesome dev team getting some recognition for the tireless work they do. There's been some big changes suggested with taking over these roles, and I can't wait to see what comes of them. Once the positions are finalised we will let you all know!

 

PvP changes
I know I know, each restart has you all on the edge of your seats, but worry not! While there's plenty of changes still in discussion, some have been decided upon and should start rolling in next week (cough Information Minister cough). Some of these changes may take time as we go through the process, but they will start rolling in with the updates soon!

 

On 2016-04-14 at 2:09 PM, Retrograde said:
On 2016-04-14 at 2:03 PM, Banzai said:

So all we need to wait for is-

1. SotG nerf - Looking at it, evaluating run on effects atm (huge axes, truestrike, etc)

2. Tower conquering and easily placing a minimum size cheap deed down dead center of enemy territory which would be close to impossible to remove because of... #3 oh and did i mention CHEAP, MINIMUM SIZED deeds? - Being looked at as well, need to ensure a working system though

3. Karma porting. remove it pls - also in the works! Full details not ironed out yet though

 

 

 

Now by the sound of your post, its not gonna be any pvp stuff for quite some time and thats fine.

All you gotta do is say it and everyone will stop being hyped and ask about the pvp changes.

But untill then, people will keep asking about it.

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So far all i heard is promises...

 

First when the new Elevation was released there was a promise that Epic was to get more attention.... didn't happen.

Now we had all these talks about PVP being worked on but no real info after ironing out some of the things needed to be worked at.

I think most people understand that this is not something that will be "fixed" in a week but the total lack of updates / info on how things are going is what drives people away from the pvp servers. Every week we wait to see what changes been made and we get a horse race instead o.O

 

As things are right now with the population on the pvp servers you might aswell merge them, no point trying to go for pvp on Epic when you have 5-10 players on Elevation from another kingdom to go look for on a map the size of Russia...

Homeservers might with luck have 10 unless you go to MR wich seems to be the only kingdom with some people in it still. Probably mostly because of Magranon almost always winning the valrei scenarios....

 

Without the work on pvp Epic will die out, nobody gonna be going out for a 5 hour sail to maybe just maybe see a player from another kingdom. 

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3 minutes ago, Meep said:

So far all i heard is promises...

 

First when the new Elevation was released there was a promise that Epic was to get more attention.... didn't happen.

Now we had all these talks about PVP being worked on but no real info after ironing out some of the things needed to be worked at.

I think most people understand that this is not something that will be "fixed" in a week but the total lack of updates / info on how things are going is what drives people away from the pvp servers. Every week we wait to see what changes been made and we get a horse race instead o.O

 

As things are right now with the population on the pvp servers you might aswell merge them, no point trying to go for pvp on Epic when you have 5-10 players on Elevation from another kingdom to go look for on a map the size of Russia...

Homeservers might with luck have 10 unless you go to MR wich seems to be the only kingdom with some people in it still. Probably mostly because of Magranon almost always winning the valrei scenarios....

 

Without the work on pvp Epic will die out, nobody gonna be going out for a 5 hour sail to maybe just maybe see a player from another kingdom. 

+1 on this post

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How about this if u cannot give any info on what is happening to Epic / Chaos just close them down since they pretty much dying out due to the LACK of care / updates what they so badly need to bring people back into the pvp servers.

Its not rly hard to do a post letting people know step by step when updates coming and what they will bring or keep doing it this way and have people getting upset and posting on forums.

DO THE SMART THING AND LET US KNOW WHAT IS COMING

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gYigAFd.jpg

 

speaks for itself ehh, waaaay too late for anything really...

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Retro mentioned in some other post that he would rather have epic reset if it's dead enough, but how dead is dead? When will a reset or merge be considered?

I'm curious about this because I don't see how any of these planned pvp changes are going to save epic, it's pretty much beyond saving now

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25 minutes ago, Worksock said:

Retro mentioned in some other post that he would rather have epic reset if it's dead enough, but how dead is dead? When will a reset or merge be considered?

I'm curious about this because I don't see how any of these planned pvp changes are going to save epic, it's pretty much beyond saving now

Move all epic characters to freedom, reset epic every 2 years, move the characters to freedom at the end of each cycle, repeat

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13 minutes ago, changer said:

Move all epic characters to freedom, reset epic every 2 years, move the characters to freedom at the end of each cycle, repeat

 

but chev, we have it so easy as epic players :0

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I don't think any amount of time or changes is going to help epic it is just a dying server cluster and probably should be merged with chaos in some way. 

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The dead of epic was expected with all the stuff that is shared with freedom cluster, nothing about epic is unique anymore (player gods, valrei creatures, missions and all the stuff that made epic different) besides a skillcurve, which is only worse and slower forimportant skills like stamina and meditation. So yeah.

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Well, I hope you guys get a more workable system going. I know it's hard to make changes to a large system like this.

I also understand the frustration of the players. They love the game, And keep trying to push forward. But are hampered by many things all the time.

I agree that epic and chaos should be a server cluster. I think the xp rate should be normal. And all abnormal settings should be reserved for Wurm Unlimited.

I can't help but feel that Wurm is in a learning cycle.  Where you finally realize all the past mistakes, And start taking new steps to insure the longevity of the game as a whole.  Or maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part.  But i do love this game, And nothing out there can replace it.

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even if you offer a "pay money to transfer your account to freedom" kind of thing, i would do it and i am sure many others would too...

how epic is right now it's basically just a WU server where everyone is waiting for the owner to actually come to the point where he says "###### that, i am out, see ya"

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Yeah, I don't think my cluster can be miraculously revived by very minor balance changes anymore. I ended up writing like a four or five paragraph post and just erased it, i'll leave it with this:

 

I really don't know what to say or how to say it without being mean outside of the fact i'm incredibly disappointed as i really invested a lot of time trying to get attention to glaring balance issues and flaws with how its features were handled over the past few years. (and not just me, other big names like Posteh have also wrote up large wall of texts doing so.) Now that the server is quite literally nearly completely dead, the new balance changes still aren't likely to come out for a long long time.

 

I really just don't even know what to say, i'm about equally as disappointed in myself for waiting this long to sell out. Even a merge at this point would be far too late as there is hardly anyone to merge together so the population wouldn't even be high enough to breathe PvP in again. (still laughing at the people who told me that this wasn't necessary at the time.) It would just be a quality change for those who want it who remain on Epic.

Edited by Propheteer
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oh boy horse races this will surely make me want to log in again

horses can't karma teleport so at least they're balanced 
thank you for the lack of care I'm currently having a lot of fun in Eve despite coming back and being complete garbage ( welcome to a skill based game, not who spent 6 months grinding a time based, RNG based skill that instantly makes them competitive after 6 months of daily grinding! )

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