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enoofu

State of Wurm Skilling

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Always wonder what other people's opinions on the wurm skill system

 

My personal opinion is that Wurm Bling is mostly centered into 3 skills which are Fine carpentry ,Blacksmithing and Masonry just about every physical object in game comes from them outside of food/crops, clothing/armor, weapons, flags/rugs, boats, animals and a few other things

 

Pretty much everyone that plays is working on leveling those skills till they get bored since they are the items that show case their deeds and allow them to skill other skills

 

PS:    This is also hurting the game as a lot of Veteran players have leveled these skills to a very high level and their isn't any other heavy weight skills 

 

Around 10 other skills create decent finished items ingame outside of the big three such as Ship Building, Armour Smithing,  Weapon Smithing   Cloth Tailoring and Leatherworking but lack the item depth of the big three   

 

Pretty much the rest of the skills ingame either are for production of the above skills, cooking,or fighting

 

Cooking related Skills are in a bonked (They Work but Food in general isn't doing well) State largely do to the vast amounts of food ingredients that is created by butchering, farming,  botanizing  and forage plus legal exploits in Path of Love , Magic Chest, BSD/Crates and Religion Rare Saccing  which worked around the original cooking system which was King of creating lots decay and forcing players to daily search for new food

 

Then their is meditation which is the most horribly thought out skill for skilling since its has a time limit and RNG dependent  also, please Rolf remove the RNG

 

Added to the fact that no new skills have been added lately and quite a few skills lack decent item progression such as thatch, and/or a new player can access the entire line with very little leveling 

 

This especially hurts the fighting related skills since someone can buy the best weapons and armor ingame as a newbie and only see a major difference in DPS with the only barriers being related to mounts and ships

 

Which is counter to most games which usually give out weapons and armor usage rights as they progress though their fighting skills to award them, for example as a player levels Longbow this could lead to a Heavy warbow they could now use

 

Wonder what everyone else thoughts on the current game skilling system

 

Edited by enoofu
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1 hour ago, enoofu said:

Then their is meditation which is the most horribly thought out skill for skilling since its has a time limit and RNG dependent  also, please Rolf remove the RNG

 

+1 especially for the remove the RNG on meditating.  RNG also needs modifying throughout the game, to properly take into account skill level, ql of tool used, etc - for example reaping fruit, with high nature and forestry skill and high ql sickle should not result in produce ranging in ql from 1ql with dmg thru to 99ql = ridiculous. 

 

I know of at least one v.long term player who is battling to find skills to work on now, having over 30 at the 90+ level... so yes new skills are needed and old ones, like milking and cheese making, milling and making of woollen items all need to be looked at and improved or continued. 

 

Cooking is a farce atm and new recipes for higher skills are needed that work, e.g. risotto is awful.  Dead ends, like red mushrooms and kelp need attention too.

 

There are plenty of new skills that could be developed, e.g. glass making (using sand and kiln) and making of pipes (both water bearing ones and perhaps even smoking ones) and brewing of beer, which would need hops to be grown and/or foraged for. 

 

We have marble items, but what about wrought iron items?  We have some clay items, but no clay pipes to transport water to decorative fountains for example, this could lead to a plumbing skill, which might also involve paving skill, as the pipes would need to be buried in trenches.  Then how about brass taps into basins, making another use for brass and maybe another skill.  Papyrus and use of reeds could be developed with larger printing presses for newspapers and books, leaflets, etc.  The list is endless as to possibilities....

 

 

 

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Quite a few skills could easily be improved for example thatched walls could actually use thatch from the thatch skill instead of mixed grass

 

It just seems like the Devs forgot about 1/2 the skills currently ingame

 

Quote

Papyrus and use of reeds could be developed with larger printing presses for newspapers and books, leaflets, etc.  The list is endless as to possibilities

Yeah, Papyrus needs some serious help as most people don't even touch it 

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6 hours ago, enoofu said:

PS:    This is also hurting the game as a lot of Veteran players have leveled these skills to a very high level and their isn't any other heavy weight skills 

 

The concept of building Skills (and Body Characteristics) over time creates "Veteran Players" (except for those who purchase these Characters from others who have put their time and efforts into them). These true Veteran Players do not hurt the game but improve it from using their Skills to create items, either to use themselves or sell to others who will benefit from them. This in no way "hurts the game" but rather gives more motivation and a sense of accomplishment from playing it.

 

This is called *earning* these benefits and is what *motivates* players to raise their Skills and Body Characteristics. I find it "strange" whenever players who have put less time into the game denigrate this concept and advocate for changes to be made in order to shortcut their time and efforts to achieve this same status. Players can only create certain things in something resembling a reasonable timeframe because of these earned Skills and Body Characteristics, which fairly closely resembles how RL functions and also motivates people to pursue certain objectives and careers. Although within Wurm it can be agonizingly slow the end results are the same, which leads to a certain pride and satisfaction in their accomplishment.

 

In short, if the time and effort required to achieve these elevated Skill and Body Characteristics is too much to bear just shell out the cash to buy someone else's account. Undoubtedly there will be little personal accomplishment associated with it but then at least you could *imagine* yourself to be a Veteran Player and start figuring out what to do with this "Veteran Account". Painful and slow as it is the Skill and Body Characteristic gain system works well within the concept of Wurm Online. Head to the WU servers if you wish to have access to a much more rapid pace, as they can be quite fun when there you will shortly be able to do things that in WO would take you years to achieve because of the much slower progress here.

 

=Ayes=

Edited by Ayes
senteced
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I applaud Wurm for making majority of creations possible even at low skills, no matter how many attempts it may take. I would be sad if we would see "level progression" to access more when our skill is magically higher. In real life if I would have access to plate armor, I could wear it... if I would have access to variety of bows and arrows, I could shoot with all of them. All of these with 1.00 skills.

 

Then there is this whole concept of "skill progression". Yes, we can look at Wurm with the mindset that all skills are from 1.00 to 100.00 where 100.00 is considered "done, completed" and everything in between is "in progress". What an agonizing view.

 

Debunking the OP;

"Pretty much everyone that plays is working on leveling FC/BS/Masonry till they get bored". Not true. Among the people I know in Wurm, Its rare to see a player who worked in the combination of those three. Even seeing two out of three is rare.

"This hurts the game". Nope, some players having very high very many skills hurts nothing. This is because skill is merely a matter of access to range of Quality. Scarcity of higher QL items is based on effort put into the imping process. For 100 skill Blacksmith it takes some time to make 70ql shovels, but at 100 skill it starts feeling like "making bricks with 100 stonecutting" to make such shovels. 100 skill blacksmith would rather make the shovels at 90ql, and that already requires enough effort that not many among so highly skilled blacksmiths care to invest.

"Rest of the skills that make rest of the game items". This is why having high skill in FC/BS/Masonry hurts the game even less. Many players say the same thing once they hit 90+ skill in any meaningful crafting skill, that they lost the desire to devote SB on that skill and lost desire to devote time to get the skill up. After 90+ skill it seems much more compelling for players to make 90ql items as fast and efficiently rather than focus on maximizing skillgain. Then, there is this "all-around-phenomenom" which I am consistently observing from players whose "main crafts" are quite much all 90+ and highest ones go somewhere between 95 and 99... that they start looking in skills list "as a whole" and go on missions like "getting all crafting skills to 20, 30, 50, 70, ...". I can only imagine this is due to the fact how slowly skills progress at, say 95+ in comparison to "grinding for one hour" some skill from 1.00 up. I tell you it feels wonderful to see some real "skill progress" now and then, when your main skill which you use many hours every day for months does not even show change in the last decimal (+.01 not yet there).

 

The game has several juggernauts who got a list of many insanely high skills, but even those have meaningful skills left to focus on if they wish to see some "skill progress".

 

It is not the veterans we need to be worrying about when it comes to "running out of skills to grind", nor anyone else. Wurm has gotten changes and quite likely will continue getting changes, some of those include new skills or new uses of existing skills, so we ought to get more to grind before the most insane single player of all times is even close to saying "I completed Wurm skill progression."

Edited by Raybarg
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Reads "their" when it should be "there"

*cringe*

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5 minutes ago, griper said:

Reads "their" when it should be "there"

*cringe*

 

Fixedit, those words were even redundant.

 

I cringe when I read something like "there stuff came from there". So I am not putting "there" instead of "their" if you are correct about it being wrong.

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I'm willing to believe that my approach to skills isn't *typical* (or even always entirely healthy) but I think the system is great and checks a lot of important design boxes:

 

New players can have fun and try out basically everything very quickly - check.

It takes ages to 'get good' at 'everything', so there's plenty of need for community and/or working at stuff - check.

If you want to grind then there's TONS of potential, but it really isn't mandatory if you don't - check.

It's essentially impossible to 'complete' but it is quite possible to achieve things others never have - check.

The game is rewarding for both experts AND all-rounders - check.

 

To be honest I can't understand  lot of the OP, but on the point of accessing different kit as skills increase - no way.  That's a feature of other games but is entirely contrary to the more 'sandbox' nature of Wurm.  Also it would just give yet another massive advantage to established players, which probably isn't great for encouraging new players.

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leather working is the best skill, dont see how this one lacks depth as youll need

woodcutting>firemaking>natural substances = lye

fighting>butchering=hides + nat sub grinding parts + high ql pelt for blacksmithing

blacksmithing = high ql tools for letherworking /platesmithing scale armor

stone cutting = high wl whetstone for blacksmithing

 

even cooking for high ql nutrition for faster healing while hunting

 

i kind of see all the skills working together

 

also i dont get what you mean when you say "plus legal exploits in path of love" ? you mean refresh?

 

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Yeah "refresh" from Path of Love and Religious Sac tends to do serious harm to the cooking line

 

Do agree that leathersmithing isn't a bad skill, just that I feel it could have a few more items and that it's in a lot better shape then most skills

Edited by enoofu

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If you are mostly focussed on the numbers then you are doing it wrong.

 

Play the game do stuff, do other stuff, do more of the original stuff you were doing, or not, but just...... play...... the....... game.......

 

Numbers come as a natural consequence of having fun in the game. Focus on them or ignore them, the numbers will continue to climb so its better to focus on enjoying yourself.

 

Sure many of us will go into a numbers grind at some point, the most probable reason being you want a title now and not in two weeks time, something I'm more guilty than most of doing this. The thing there is its often done as a change of pace which can be enjoyable in its own right.

 

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On ‎24‎/‎06‎/‎2016 at 9:49 PM, Baloo said:

new skills are needed and old ones, like ... making of woollen items

Now I KNOW you've been playing a lot longer than sheep have been in-game...

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I think that the skill lists could use some housekeeping it improve clarity and the current structure actually limits what could potentially be done I think.

I'd separate weapons and tools, make a Weapons skill with all swords, axes, mauls, clubs and so on meant for combat under it. Then turn Misc into Tools and put everything that is not intended for combat (but could be used) in there. Why does X have a CR nerf? Its a tool, not a weapon. Clearer way to communicate designer intent to players.

There are tons of other skills like this. Smithing has far, far to many skills piled up under it, Nature could use reorganizing (Milking and Animal Taming should be sub skills of Animal Husbandry). Jewelrysmithing should be Jewelry Crafting, since a pearl necklace (just one example) should not involve me banging it with a hammer, but I could see making a gold necklace giving both Jewelry Crafting and Goldsmithing skill.

I like the skill system over all, but like a house long lived in I think it needs to be tidied up.

I'll make a longer, more comprehensive suggestion in the suggestion forum later.

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22 hours ago, Berris said:

To be honest I can't understand  lot of the OP, but on the point of accessing different kit as skills increase - no way.  That's a feature of other games but is entirely contrary to the more 'sandbox' nature of Wurm.

 

Actually I really started to notice this trend increase with Fine Carpentry in that certain items could not even be attempted to be created without a predetermined starting skill level. The noticeable start of it in FC was with the creation of Wagons when they were introduced into the game. Then many players were focused upon grinding up FC to reach the minimum skill required to even start one, or finish a started one by someone else.

 

Yea, before this time there was the low skill level of 30.00 for building brick houses but this set skill starting requirement really took hold with FC and was expanded upon from that point. Not too keen on this concept myself and was a bit disturbed to see it take hold to be virused into other skill facets.

 

=Ayes=

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On 6/24/2016 at 3:45 AM, enoofu said:

Always wonder what other people's opinions on the wurm skill system

 

My personal opinion is that Wurm Bling is mostly centered into 3 skills which are Fine carpentry ,Blacksmithing and Masonry just about every physical object in game comes from them outside of literally everything else.

 

Pretty much the rest of the skills ingame either are for production of the above skills, cooking,or fighting, or anything else.

 

Cooking related Skills are in a bonked (They Work but Food in general isn't doing well) State largely do to the vast amounts of food ingredients that is created by butchering, farming,  botanizing  and forage plus other ways to gain food/nutrition without eating that I don't like so I'll call them "exploits."

 

Then their is meditation which is the most horribly thought out skill for skilling since I am impatient.

 

Added to the fact that no new skills have been added lately other than the war machines that I don't use so I'll just not mention them and quite a few skills lack decent item progression such as thatch, and/or a new player can access the entire line with very little leveling 

 

This especially hurts the fighting related skills since someone can buy the best weapons and armor ingame as a newbie and only see a major difference in DPS with the only barriers being related to mounts and ships never mind that they get killed easily because they can't run away on a horse and don't have a high enough combat rating to kill monsters -- this system is broken because I say so.

 

Which is counter to most games which usually give out weapons and armor usage rights as they progress though their fighting skills to award them, for example as a player levels Longbow this could lead to a Heavy warbow they could now use. I'm just going to ignore the fact that special moves unlock at higher weapon skills and you can target specific areas with a bow at higher bow skills. I'm also going to ignore the fact that having higher crafting skills allows you to improve items to higher levels that will make them last longer or be more useful.

 

Wonder what everyone else thoughts on the current game skilling system

 

Fixed. Changes are in bold. 

In all honesty though, I would like to see more skills added, even skills like "leather knife" and "whetstone" for those tools and others.

Edited by irobotnik8
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Most skills already exist in a network, even if only paired with a production skill.  Yes, BS and (to a lesser degree) carp/FC are really useful, since they get used a lot.  So is WS (which also covers some of the skills).  Oh, and LW (or possibly PAS/CAS) if you want to imp your own armour.  And AH if you'd like to breed your own animals.  Probably need AT for that as well.

 

There are always some skills that could use some more uses - milking, for example, or baking or unarmed fighting - but the general state of skills is pretty good.  And if you're seriously running out of things to grind to 90, then I can only suggest that it might be time to start a new character.

 

To extend Aum's point, PAS is another good example:

High PAS to actually make the plate parts

High metallurgy + coal making for steel

High woodcutting and mining for raw materials

If you don't buy your tools (and get someone else to reimp them), add BS, stone cutting, butchering, etc.

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High PAS could alone be good side-skill for steel production if interest or skill levels in Metallurgy/Coal-making are lacking. Just make bunch of crap steel, imp forge-load of breastplates with good smelting pot. (Byproduct; fantastic breastplate and never need to worry about purchase of prem time.)

 

Thanks to the "common knowledge" that having PAS title on to boost imping speed and being able to imbue tools with armor smithing potions... its a viable option to maintain decent stock of steel to supply the rest of skills needing it.

 

Thanks to smelting pot, anyone "more new to game" who is not already insanely high with so many hard-to-grind skills revolving around steelmaking, just focus on PAS.

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On 6/24/2016 at 5:49 AM, Baloo said:

 

+1 especially for the remove the RNG on meditating.  RNG also needs modifying throughout the game, to properly take into account skill level, ql of tool used, etc - for example reaping fruit, with high nature and forestry skill and high ql sickle should not result in produce ranging in ql from 1ql with dmg thru to 99ql = ridiculous. 

 

I know of at least one v.long term player who is battling to find skills to work on now, having over 30 at the 90+ level... so yes new skills are needed and old ones, like milking and cheese making, milling and making of woollen items all need to be looked at and improved or continued. 

 

Cooking is a farce atm and new recipes for higher skills are needed that work, e.g. risotto is awful.  Dead ends, like red mushrooms and kelp need attention too.

 

There are plenty of new skills that could be developed, e.g. glass making (using sand and kiln) and making of pipes (both water bearing ones and perhaps even smoking ones) and brewing of beer, which would need hops to be grown and/or foraged for. 

 

We have marble items, but what about wrought iron items?  We have some clay items, but no clay pipes to transport water to decorative fountains for example, this could lead to a plumbing skill, which might also involve paving skill, as the pipes would need to be buried in trenches.  Then how about brass taps into basins, making another use for brass and maybe another skill.  Papyrus and use of reeds could be developed with larger printing presses for newspapers and books, leaflets, etc.  The list is endless as to possibilities....

 

 

  1. Meditation doesn't have any more RNG than any other skill.
  2. Skill checks generally do take into account skill, tool QL, and so forth. The issue you're seeing with harvesting fruit is that the difficulty actually goes up with skill, so that at high enough skill you can no wind up getting poor quality fruit with the same tool. You're not the first to complain about this and it definitely does need changing. In principle, I don't think the difficulty of an action should go up with skill... certainly not that much.
  3. We essentially do have wrought iron items... kind of. Right now the game just has "iron" items with no particular sense of carbon content or anything like that. I don't know that splitting non-steel iron into separate types is very useful.

 

I definitely agree we need more uses for a lot of what we currently have, though. From what I hear, changes to food and beverages are in the pipeline ("Soon") so the developers are certainly aware of that. I think this is the worst case of the game having a lot of useless cruft. After all, the current food situation is "always eat meals, only bother with these certain crops, and in fact, don't eat at all because Refresh is plentiful and better". It's good to know this is going to be addressed.

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For some reason initially read this as skiing, which would be cool (literally and figuratively).

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On 28/06/2016 at 8:51 PM, Hordern said:

Now I KNOW you've been playing a lot longer than sheep have been in-game...

 

True ! and I was excited when sheep and woollen items came out, but, but.... just hats and tapestries ?  Okay a few woollen squares for special furniture items - but where are them woollen blankets, jumpers for the winter and woollen leggings and woollen mittens and scarves, etc - which can be dyed in lovely colours.  There is a whole new skill there to be had: "wool item maker" or whatever that kinda crafts person would be called. Woollen suits could be 1 up from cloth suits maybe ?  And most effective in the winter season... ?

 

Which reminds me: when are the paint / dye issues going to be fixed ?

 

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1 hour ago, Baloo said:

I was excited when sheep and woollen items came out, but, but.... just hats and tapestries ?

 

Woolen hats are the best. Just give them to others as gifts and then pull them over their eyes. Not pure wool per se but you can see the point?

 

=Ayes=

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2 minutes ago, Ayes said:

 

Woolen hats are the best. Just give them to others as gifts and then pull them over their eyes. Not pure wool per se but you can see the point?

 

=Ayes=

 

Coal lumps are still best gift, left on empty tile in front of friends home main door.

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On 6/24/2016 at 10:44 AM, Ayes said:

 

The concept of building Skills (and Body Characteristics) over time creates "Veteran Players" (except for those who purchase these Characters from others who have put their time and efforts into them). These true Veteran Players do not hurt the game but improve it from using their Skills to create items, either to use themselves or sell to others who will benefit from them. This in no way "hurts the game" but rather gives more motivation and a sense of accomplishment from playing it.

 

This is called *earning* these benefits and is what *motivates* players to raise their Skills and Body Characteristics. I find it "strange" whenever players who have put less time into the game denigrate this concept and advocate for changes to be made in order to shortcut their time and efforts to achieve this same status. Players can only create certain things in something resembling a reasonable timeframe because of these earned Skills and Body Characteristics, which fairly closely resembles how RL functions and also motivates people to pursue certain objectives and careers. Although within Wurm it can be agonizingly slow the end results are the same, which leads to a certain pride and satisfaction in their accomplishment.

 

In short, if the time and effort required to achieve these elevated Skill and Body Characteristics is too much to bear just shell out the cash to buy someone else's account. Undoubtedly there will be little personal accomplishment associated with it but then at least you could *imagine* yourself to be a Veteran Player and start figuring out what to do with this "Veteran Account". Painful and slow as it is the Skill and Body Characteristic gain system works well within the concept of Wurm Online. Head to the WU servers if you wish to have access to a much more rapid pace, as they can be quite fun when there you will shortly be able to do things that in WO would take you years to achieve because of the much slower progress here.

 

=Ayes=

 

I think you missed his point.

 

Its that everything revolves around those skills, and that there isn't really any alternative to them that it hurts the game. Not so much those skills being grinded hurting the game.

 

To clarify: by revolve, the majority of the features originate from those skills and as such they end up being the only ones that feel fleshed out. Other skills don't change very much, but having the equipment that originates from those changes everything. (that is how i interpreted the first part of his post, the rest seems to be rambling about other things not in-line with his original point.)

Edited by Propheteer

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Lot of good points here... I enjoy a lot of skills that are no mainstream really. From terraforming to thatching and cooking etc.

We do need new skills, and they can simple add these by:

1. Using tools that already exist and have no purpose

2. Using skills that exist and have no purpose (like tracking.... come on.... )

3. Using other elements that exist, but can add dimension (water, swimming, fire, forest fire, tree burning, water that is not always fresh !)

4. just get creative, there is a lot of room to improve.

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