Has anyone noticed we lost 800 players since the start of the year?

[salahahdin 453]

We were at like 3600 or something at the beginning of the year and now we're in the 2800s, whats happening?

[Retrograde 12,013]

Christmas present caused a spike of people purchasing premium to receive them, a similar spike occurred when we had the gifts mid last year. 

[Ayes 3,715]

Spikes in Wurm "population" are mainly based upon Alt subscriptions. There is no real way for those graphs to reflect the true population of *individual* players since so many players have Alts due to the way the game is structured. I always shake my head when players attempt to talk about game population knowledgably and refer to graphs to prove anything pertaining to this.

 

Only the Wurm staff individual who can look at the books and see the individual payment methods can come close to having some idea of how many *individuals* play the game. Even then there are anonymous payment systems that obscure *individual* counting. Maybe this is why the game just relies upon *income* as being of substance to determine it's success; thus, when players avoid payment through various free subsidies the game enables, in the end the game hurts itself.

 

Forget game "population". All smoke and mirrors filled with ghosts.

 

=Ayes=

[Nomadikhan 2,196]

I sold off a few merchants....

[Pingpong 1,070]

Just out of idle curiosity, does letting subs drop on all the alts who were premmed up for fountain pans and such count as poor customer service and unfixed bugs? Or is that just a massive label you apply ?

[Corsan 199]

3 hours ago, Angelklaine said:

Do you do nothing but post about how much you dislike the staff? I mean, seriously lol. We get it. You don't like it. But making inane posts about your hatred for the people who develop the game you love is not going to change a thing. Don't be the problem, be part of the solution.

 

He's probably reaching the point I reached 2 times previously where I just up and left Wurm (Taking my money with me both times.) because certain people in power decided to power trip out and make comments just disappear like mad and stick their heads in the sand instead of admitting there's a problem. He's actually the person I messaged when I came back because I was wondering if my stuff was even still there, and he took a quick boat trip out to check and was able to bring me back to the game. (Now been paying for another 5+ months of prem time. Actually paying the devs, not buying coin/getting game time in-game with it.) He's been part of the solution.

Now maybe some of them can start adjusting some of the blatant problems that both of us have pointed out over the years, that have lead to some of these aggravations that made us get to that stage where we want to leave, or are annoyed enough to do so.

Or they can just keep ignoring them and watching the game decay/slide into oblivion as it keeps losing people. The markets are crashing hard, there have been a LOT of quality of life fixes and 'prettying up the facade' type things lately...which is certainly a good start, and they have lately after a LOT of goading started locking down some of the worst bugs the game has, but mainly with 'help' from their player-base/coders out there who can't see the code except for in their WU standalone versions.

I've been reporting bugs I come across, and giving as much information as I can in each of mine as I come across them, and I have watched them throw out fixes for them, so I'm a little more happy than I was in the past because it actually looks like they are doing stuff. But there is certainly still probably a bit of corruption going on somewhere in the team if people are getting harassed like he is. (I previously had a similar problem. I was limited/not allowed to discuss certain things, and it got on my nerves a lot. Especially when I'd sit there for half an hour getting my thoughts in a proper order, and written down/sending them off to the forum and then having the whole post just disappear into thin air. It's wasting someone's time, and it's not amusing in the least. I can see why he's slathering the sarcasm on thick now.)

I'm not sure about the whole 'how many we've lost', but I have been noticing people (LONG TIMERS even)...giving up in chat and selling off/wandering off to other games. I'm not seeing some of the same people I'd been talking with just a month or two ago.

It's when people start feeling like they are being ignored, slighted, or are really annoyed by some certain mechanic that they pack it in and just leave. Sometimes without even telling someone. Some people leave a 'why I left', others state it in in-game chat.

Personally I was seriously loving the cooking update...found 475 recipes and was hunting more down. I'd taken a small break from recipe hunting and had been working on pushing up all my cooking and cooking sub-skills. Guess what they just did? Changed the cooking polling rate and made what I'd been doing broken/not work anymore. That's going to have me losing interest real fast, as what I'd been gearing up to do is now broken. When someone made a post saying pretty much what I thought on the matter? The Community Manager just proceeded to tell us it's not broken and that it's for our own good. Uh. No. It's not. That, plus a bunch of the features added lately have been horribly miss thought out.

Snowballs that require you to gather a few hundred of, that don't even come out at 99 QL, and that you need a full icebox of 99 QLs to have it last through the winter? That's wasting time you could be actually playing the game/having fun...and there's not even a skill associated with it, so you can't 'get better' at it. So it'll stay just as annoying as the first 5 times you did it. That's not 'fun'. That's obnoxious as heck. Not counting the one time you miss that season since they nerf-sticked winter and made it barely last at all because people complained about the whiteness, so you have a very small window of snow gathering ability even.
 

A gigantic mega-server with all kinds of problems...that they just keep proceeding to tell us that we either need to deal with it or move. Anyone who points out that it's been broken for over 2 years and that the optimization stuff isn't working...and that they need to crunch down and do something different with it...just gets harangued and insulted into silence. I personally DO NOT SEE MOBS at my deed. I'm lucky to even see one, maybe 2 per day nearby my deed (Which often tends to lead to me going 'YIPPEE SOMETHING TO KILL!' in chat and people are like 'Why are you so happy about that?'). I have to travel to fight. Travel which takes time. Time which they are wasting. I don't even want 50+ mobs by my deed every day. I just want to be able to step outside my gates and skill a little without having to travel over half an hour to 45 minutes to even find something to fight. Don't tell me to 'go to a server border and cross to another server' because that's also half an hour's travel time and takes the chance of me running into one of those server hopping bugs that can do all sorts of bad things like DELETE MY BOAT, or delete something in it, or have my boat not come with me, or some other random happenstance that comes from the strange mishmash of coding in this game.

I personally have been 'dealing' with a lot of the more obnoxious things to play what is otherwise mostly a good game, but I'm noticing things are starting to go downhill again. I may eventually do what others have done and sell off/leave and find something else. Do I want to? No. I'd rather they fix some of the more glaring problems so we can get back to enjoying the game. Stop doing things that scare players off. I don't care if you advertise the game, because personally I find advertising to be crap (And I block it.)...if people want a certain type of game, they'll look for it. You just need to make it easy to find. Get put in more lists, get your game's name out there. Like I said elsewhere, I read a tiny blurb about Wurm on MassivelyOP every once in awhile, and it's almost always 'Ho-hum' stuff that leaves you like 'Why wasn't that in the game to begin with?'. It's not stuff that usually intrigues people and makes them like 'Oh, I should give that a try!'.

The tutorial for this game was atrocious when I started the game. I heard they tweaked it a very tiny bit, after I went through, but it was still just as bad. I tried to get a friend to come over here from Runescape, and she looked at the tutorial and was like 'No way.'. Wouldn't even hear/listen about all the cool features after that. First impressions are pretty important. Second is not allowing the people to just 'skip' the stuff you're trying to teach. Most of us players sit in Freedom chat repeatedly explaining the mechanics to new folks who just ignored all that information handed to them and just went through the portal instead. Most of them promptly run around for awhile, get killed a few times, then give up in annoyance. The occasional one finds a deed that trains new folks. Then a lot of them you never hear from again either. Probably because the people tell them they should work on some skills/make something and they hunker down and realize how much actual work it would take to get anywhere in the game and log off for good. I feel sorry for the people who run those noob training deeds. The turnover is killer on this game. If you're going to run a tutorial, make it more hands on and less 'Read this sign' type stuff. People often learn by doing. There's a rare few who learn by reading.

I could just keep going...it's not like anyone listens to the things we have to say on the matter anyway. Maybe that's just me being defeatist, but I've played through enough games before this one to know enough about how they say they want to listen to you, but when you actually put ideas out there, they get ignored. (I used to sit on suggestion forums endlessly putting out ideas...then I realized those games could actually turn around and monetize my ideas, and would then earn money off my ideas and I would never earn anything for the intellectual property I put out there...so I stopped for the most part. I occasionally put a helpful idea on the table here or there, but otherwise...I don't waste my time. They are actually the one's getting paid here. Not us. If they want to disrespect their customers, that's on them.)

[Sklo:D 2,210]

Yeah player counts are alerting.

 

When I started in June 2008 I can remember that Wurm Online hit about 2000 premium players a few months later. So Wurm is almost back to where it was 10 years ago.

[Riddles 16]

Well, I for one am new here.
Loving the game thus far.
Quite the underrated game I must say.
I survived a mine cave in and much much more as I chose a PVP server (I wont say which one ) to pretty much start on (not counting my Xanadu character that I goofed the name on)
My neighbors have been very kind and helpful in the kingdom I chose.
Now that I think I have a slight hang of things,
I re-rolled my character and I think I'm ready to go out into the world to make some silver on Xanadu.


Riddles, coming to a village near you.

"Hi, I'm new around here."

[Retrograde 12,013]

2 hours ago, Corsan said:

Now maybe some of them can start adjusting some of the blatant problems that both of us have pointed out over the years, that have lead to some of these aggravations that made us get to that stage where we want to leave, or are annoyed enough to do so.

Blatant problems like what? If you have issues you'd like addressed, it always pays to be specific.

Or they can just keep ignoring them and watching the game decay/slide into oblivion as it keeps losing people. The markets are crashing hard, there have been a LOT of quality of life fixes and 'prettying up the facade' type things lately...which is certainly a good start, and they have lately after a LOT of goading started locking down some of the worst bugs the game has, but mainly with 'help' from their player-base/coders out there who can't see the code except for in their WU standalone versions.

Player based input has ALWAYS been important in identifying bugs and fixes, those who use WU code have provided extremely important help in pointing out issues within the code, and those who report bugs and how they can reproduce them are CRUCIAL in all forms of development, (this is why when windows/mozilla/anything wants to send a crash report when it crashes) It is nothing about "goading" it is about the crucial information being supplied that allows us to identify the cause. If we are to routinely just read through tens of thousands of lines of code to check if it all works we'd never get anything done. 

I've been reporting bugs I come across, and giving as much information as I can in each of mine as I come across them, and I have watched them throw out fixes for them, so I'm a little more happy than I was in the past because it actually looks like they are doing stuff. But there is certainly still probably a bit of corruption going on somewhere in the team if people are getting harassed like he is.

The forum rules apply equally to all, if someone continues to violate them and toe the line, their posts will be removed, this is not harassment.

 

(I previously had a similar problem. I was limited/not allowed to discuss certain things, and it got on my nerves a lot. Especially when I'd sit there for half an hour getting my thoughts in a proper order, and written down/sending them off to the forum and then having the whole post just disappear into thin air. It's wasting someone's time, and it's not amusing in the least. I can see why he's slathering the sarcasm on thick now.)

It's not hard to stick within the forum rules, they're quite simple. don't bash/insult the staff or dev team, and if a post is removed, shoot a PM to a mod, don't start rampaging in the thread about posts being removed, I actually wrote something before addressed at those who seem to not understand the "dont challenge moderation" rule. 

It's dead easy to raise issues and concerns without insulting, almost every person who posts on the forum manages it, it just requires not getting personal.

Personally I was seriously loving the cooking update...found 475 recipes and was hunting more down. I'd taken a small break from recipe hunting and had been working on pushing up all my cooking and cooking sub-skills. Guess what they just did? Changed the cooking polling rate and made what I'd been doing broken/not work anymore. That's going to have me losing interest real fast, as what I'd been gearing up to do is now broken. When someone made a post saying pretty much what I thought on the matter? The Community Manager just proceeded to tell us it's not broken and that it's for our own good. Uh. No. It's not. That, plus a bunch of the features added lately have been horribly miss thought out.
You are confusing "broken" with "not ideal". As I've said before, we're checking out lag and how it impacts from that, even small WU servers were encountering noticeable lag from the recipe polling, there may be tweaking in how it runs now, but we need to see our server side reporting first. I've already raised this with the dev team as an issue to review in the next week.

Snowballs that require you to gather a few hundred of, that don't even come out at 99 QL, and that you need a full icebox of 99 QLs to have it last through the winter? That's wasting time you could be actually playing the game/having fun...and there's not even a skill associated with it, so you can't 'get better' at it. So it'll stay just as annoying as the first 5 times you did it. That's not 'fun'. That's obnoxious as heck. Not counting the one time you miss that season since they nerf-sticked winter and made it barely last at all because people complained about the whiteness, so you have a very small window of snow gathering ability even.

Winter has been short for years, 99ql snowballs aren't necessary either, but can continue to be tweaked. The aim of the larder is not to eliminate decay forever, but to simply slow decay, there are other decay free options for those who wish to keep their meals indefinitely.
 

A gigantic mega-server with all kinds of problems...that they just keep proceeding to tell us that we either need to deal with it or move. Anyone who points out that it's been broken for over 2 years and that the optimization stuff isn't working...and that they need to crunch down and do something different with it...just gets harangued and insulted into silence.

Optimisation has worked, and will continue to work, it's not one fix, it's a lot of little things that add up, servers are doing dozens of things at any one time, and each one needs to be improved, we've improved how harvest timers worked (that was causing the time freezing on xanadu) and how many other things work, we will continue to do so.

 

I personally DO NOT SEE MOBS at my deed. I'm lucky to even see one, maybe 2 per day nearby my deed (Which often tends to lead to me going 'YIPPEE SOMETHING TO KILL!' in chat and people are like 'Why are you so happy about that?'). I have to travel to fight. Travel which takes time. Time which they are wasting. I don't even want 50+ mobs by my deed every day. I just want to be able to step outside my gates and skill a little without having to travel over half an hour to 45 minutes to even find something to fight.

Mob AI is another planned work with complete overhauls, the focus will be on better mob dispersal as well as better combat mechanics

 

Don't tell me to 'go to a server border and cross to another server' because that's also half an hour's travel time and takes the chance of me running into one of those server hopping bugs that can do all sorts of bad things like DELETE MY BOAT, or delete something in it, or have my boat not come with me, or some other random happenstance that comes from the strange mishmash of coding in this game.

Lagging when crossing servers is a pain, our GM team works hard on ensuring anyone who does get stuck crossing borders is set on the right path as soon as possible, I haven't heard of any lost items (locks don't count) but we would endeavour to replace anything lost ASAP.

I personally have been 'dealing' with a lot of the more obnoxious things to play what is otherwise mostly a good game, but I'm noticing things are starting to go downhill again. I may eventually do what others have done and sell off/leave and find something else. Do I want to? No. I'd rather they fix some of the more glaring problems so we can get back to enjoying the game. Stop doing things that scare players off. I don't care if you advertise the game, because personally I find advertising to be crap (And I block it.)...if people want a certain type of game, they'll look for it. You just need to make it easy to find. Get put in more lists, get your game's name out there. Like I said elsewhere, I read a tiny blurb about Wurm on MassivelyOP every once in awhile, and it's almost always 'Ho-hum' stuff that leaves you like 'Why wasn't that in the game to begin with?'. It's not stuff that usually intrigues people and makes them like 'Oh, I should give that a try!'.

I'm not sure what your aim is here, what glaring problems are you referring to? 

The tutorial for this game was atrocious when I started the game. I heard they tweaked it a very tiny bit, after I went through, but it was still just as bad. I tried to get a friend to come over here from Runescape, and she looked at the tutorial and was like 'No way.'. Wouldn't even hear/listen about all the cool features after that. First impressions are pretty important. Second is not allowing the people to just 'skip' the stuff you're trying to teach. Most of us players sit in Freedom chat repeatedly explaining the mechanics to new folks who just ignored all that information handed to them and just went through the portal instead. Most of them promptly run around for awhile, get killed a few times, then give up in annoyance. The occasional one finds a deed that trains new folks. Then a lot of them you never hear from again either. Probably because the people tell them they should work on some skills/make something and they hunker down and realize how much actual work it would take to get anywhere in the game and log off for good. I feel sorry for the people who run those noob training deeds. The turnover is killer on this game. If you're going to run a tutorial, make it more hands on and less 'Read this sign' type stuff. People often learn by doing. There's a rare few who learn by reading.

We've stated in half a dozen places that an updated tutorial is in the works, it will be coming with the updated UI,

I could just keep going...it's not like anyone listens to the things we have to say on the matter anyway. Maybe that's just me being defeatist, but I've played through enough games before this one to know enough about how they say they want to listen to you, but when you actually put ideas out there, they get ignored. (I used to sit on suggestion forums endlessly putting out ideas...then I realized those games could actually turn around and monetize my ideas, and would then earn money off my ideas and I would never earn anything for the intellectual property I put out there...so I stopped for the most part. I occasionally put a helpful idea on the table here or there, but otherwise...I don't waste my time. They are actually the one's getting paid here. Not us. If they want to disrespect their customers, that's on them.)

Again, I'm not sure what disrespect you're referring to here, we work intensively with the suggestions board and also provide large amounts of feedback as well as take ideas on in upcoming projects. Most suggestions aren't bad, but given dev limitations aren't always able to be taken on at the current time. Our list of projects both in the works and desired is never ending, but our goal is to focus on what we can implement in a reasonable tiimeframe and get those out. I also aim to tailor the weekly news to features coming in the near future as well to ensure that what we do work on is not left feeling drawn out before it even arrives.

 

[milksteak 13]

After vowing to never play again a few years back, I came back about a month ago because a certain someone is no longer lead dev.  I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed at how low the pop is but it does seem like the current developers are doing a much better job than the previous one, although my expectations are next to nothing from the last guy so its hard to judge. I do think things are finally on the right track, not perfect but nothing is, but I'm mostly worried that its too little too late but I really do hope they turn it around.  And also I'm sure they have almost no money for marketing, but its business 101 you have to advertise even if its just to say there are new lead developers (we all know a ton of people left because of rolf)

[Reylaark 1,100]

On 6/2/2017 at 0:01 AM, salahahdin said:

We were at like 3600 or something at the beginning of the year and now we're in the 2800s, whats happening?

@Greyfox @Corsan

No, I had not noticed.

Are you having fun in game?

 

I'm having a lot of fun in game when I get a chance to play.  I never seem to have enough time to do all the things I want to do!  Mostly building the core of my deed bit by bit.  A mix of pottery brick and rendered walls.  Have a wooden barn going as well.  Already planning its renovation and haven't even finished it yet lol.

 

A meal yesterday gave me axe affinity, and with the extra sleep bonus we all received, I decided it was a good time to go do some grounds-keeping.  Thinned out all kinds of pine trees.  Those things grow like weeds.  Don't like leaving stumps so foraged, botanized, collect grass, etc.

Found raspberry and blueberry bush sprouts!  So grounds-keeping eventually turned to landscaping, which reminded me the heavy chain fences don't really fit my deed anymore and will need to be reconsidered, though I should probably plant my next round of crops... which brought me down to the reed patties, where my dock needs expansion so I can work on ship-building.  Of course I'll need more dirt for that, which is why I got a WOA dredge at auction, though leveling another terrace by the barn soon to be finished and renovated would be a good idea too and that will yield dirt, or require dirt...

either way, getting hungry, quick bite to eat and into the mines, need more iron.

 

So yeah, I hadn't noticed that players chose to perhaps go have fun elsewhere, if that's the case.  Having too much fun myself.

 

46 minutes ago, milksteak said:

After vowing to never play again a few years back, I came back about a month ago because a certain someone is no longer lead dev.  I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed at how low the pop is but it does seem like the current developers are doing a much better job than the previous one, although my expectations are next to nothing from the last guy so its hard to judge. I do think things are finally on the right track, not perfect but nothing is, but I'm mostly worried that its too little too late but I really do hope they turn it around.  And also I'm sure they have almost no money for marketing, but its business 101 you have to advertise even if its just to say there are new lead developers (we all know a ton of people left because of rolf)

If not for Rolf, them folks would have had nothing to leave to begin with... and you'd have nothing to return to.

[Niki 2,278]

 

Money is a problem? Simple ways to advertise without a budget:

Create a media team, Get fans that already play to make inspirational videos to post on YouTube or send to high subscriber YouTube channels that specialize in getting the word out (not talking about Massively Overpowered with only 2,400 subscribers.) Try harder please PR team.

Use Reddit, Post the website on some subreddits, use game play footage on there regularly. This isn't done really I check Reddit all the time. The potential growth is expected.

Hire more PR, I think expecting one guy to do all the work isn't fair, might be worth expanding soon.

Twitch Streamers, lets face nowadays it's the norm to get people into a new game through Twitch. You want to advertise with the big Twitch people. Try to get a streamer into the genre and not on that just plays World of Warcraft all day.

Steam Release, adding WO next to WU seems a logical choice - and before you say the steam crowd have cooties or whatever is just immature, so don't quote me saying that shenanigans! Don't build a wall to keep them out of your sandbox.

Promotional Incentives, this is my favorite because it gets the money and should be used more often. Use the money into google analytics and more advertising.

Cash Shop, use that money for more ad space.

 

Player retention: 

TUTORIAL, Clearly the highest thing on the agenda for them.

UI, Again obviously.

Discord, IRC is the way of the past... it's also a chore to force your player base to setup, so they can ask a question and get ignored by the DEV! Getting in touch with your player base and answering questions will really helps with player retention, some people have brought up bad customer service; well I'll be honest that's not exactly incorrect. 

Listen to your players, Some of us have industry experience, while we might sound ungrateful once in awhile it's because we feel neglected. Don't forget to feed us every now and then.

Fix bugs, This game has a lot of bugs and it drives people away and takes years to fix. Unacceptable. Can't figure something out? Ask the community or ask for outside help. Being passive about isn't fair to your players.

Help players in need, You know when you're a noob and get trapped in a enclosure trying to kill a brown bear for a mission and ran out stamina on a hill? Turns out you can't get helped because a staff member think your up to no good (true story.)

Toxicity, Needs to be improved on, chat filters and stuff could help with that, having a age requirement to join maybe. Warning signs at tutorial when joining epic or chaos about some angry people that want to murder you and call you mean words. 

Lag, Xanadu lag is here to stay you say? Unacceptable but what can we do? Warning signs when joining Xanadu about lag at least.

This game is too hard to pick up, This game can take months or years for a new player to master, this can go back to the tutorial. Teaching them how to terraform, cut a tree or even build a house would help. Golden Valley is fairly large so make use of the space, educating them on keybind use with already default keybindings is helpful. The status bar is for clickers. Don't burn them out though. You should give them some faster timers then they would have after the tutorial.

Newbie Tools, As previously said on another thread I think it would be nice if they started out with a few enchanted tools so they don't feel the need to replace everything instantly.

How to make money, We need more options for new people to earn money instead of foraging coins and selling bulk trying to buy that enchanted chisel so they can make another 5k stone bricks to buy another tool! This clearly leads to them quitting after the first 1k brick grind and it's not fun! (True story, I've had many a noob disappear from my deed.)

 

This is just some stuff you can do. Thanks.

[Retrograde 12,013]

25 minutes ago, Niki said:

 

Money is a problem? Simple ways to advertise without a budget:

Create a media team, Get fans that already play to make inspirational videos to post on YouTube or send to high subscriber YouTube channels that specialize in getting the word out (not talking about Massively Overpowered with only 2,400 subscribers.) Try harder please PR team. When we do a major release we contact dozens of different places, not everyone runs with it though, we cannot force them.

Use Reddit, Post the website on some subreddits, use game play footage on there regularly. This isn't done really I check Reddit all the time. The potential growth is expected. Reddit has strict rules about the way content is shared and "advertised" on reddit, if you want to see more content, post it.

Hire more PR, I think expecting one guy to do all the work isn't fair, might be worth expanding soon. im so lonely help pls

Twitch Streamers, lets face nowadays it's the norm to get people into a new game through Twitch. You want to advertise with the big Twitch people. Try to get a streamer into the genre and not on that just plays World of Warcraft all day. We've worked extensively with WU streamers, and the general consensus is the same, Wurm is a hard game to stream, it's not action packed and it's not all that exciting minute to minute. The factional fight guys do amazing work using more of a Podcast style play, and Emoo did awesomely with his timelapsing, not to mention Malena with her showcases, but the fact is most streamers want entertaining and exciting content, while Wurm is fun to play and grow your character and deed, it's not exactly a spectator game for live play.

Steam Release, adding WO next to WU seems a logical choice - and before you say the steam crowd have cooties or whatever is just immature, so don't quote me saying that shenanigans! Don't build a wall to keep them out of your sandbox. This is not in the works at all, WU is our steam release.

Promotional Incentives, this is my favorite because it gets the money and should be used more often. Use the money into google analytics and more advertising. Im not even sure what you mean here

Cash Shop, use that money for more ad space.

 

Player retention: 

TUTORIAL, Clearly the highest thing on the agenda for them. Do I need to repease myself?

UI, Again obviously.

Discord, IRC is the way of the past... it's also a chore to force your player base to setup, so they can ask a question and get ignored by the DEV! Getting in touch with your player base and answering questions will really helps with player retention, some people have brought up bad customer service; well I'll be honest that's not exactly incorrect.  https://discord.gg/TsGRN6S

Listen to your players, Some of us have industry experience, while we might sound ungrateful once in awhile it's because we feel neglected. Don't forget to feed us every now and then. I could do some weekly news blogs, or communicate changes that might impact players in advance, and even work with compromises in tough situations, I could also talk in threads like this and respond to player concerns.  light hearted joking aside, I think that many are overlooking how far we've come in the past year, and we continue to work very hard on improving things further. I know communication was an issue in the past, and It's something I stressed very strongly with Rolf when I joined this position, and something I've continued to push with Budda, Keenan, and all the other members of the dev team. I collect feedback and generate discussion where possible, and I make sure to provide as much of an answer as I can when questions are asked.,

Fix bugs, This game has a lot of bugs and it drives people away and takes years to fix. Unacceptable. Can't figure something out? Ask the community or ask for outside help. Being passive about isn't fair to your players. I'm not even sure what you mean here, we have an entire subforum dedicated to bugs  and discussion of them, we ask for help dozens of times with bugs. In the past six months over 300 public bugs have been addressed. 

Help players in need, You know when you're a noob and get trapped in a enclosure trying to kill a brown bear for a mission and ran out stamina on a hill? Turns out you can't get helped because a staff member think your up to no good (true story.) We do help in situations players cannot get themselves out of, we are not lifeguards. General rule of thumb is, if you can get out by yourself, do so, it's a sandbox.

Toxicity, Needs to be improved on, chat filters and stuff could help with that, having a age requirement to join maybe. Warning signs at tutorial when joining epic or chaos about some angry people that want to murder you and call you mean words.  That doesnt help anything, we have chat rules for a reason, and age requirements don't help anything. 

Lag, Xanadu lag is here to stay you say? Unacceptable but what can we do? Warning signs when joining Xanadu about lag at least. It's not here to stay, we never said it was here to stay.

This game is too hard to pick up, This game can take months or years for a new player to master, this can go back to the tutorial. Teaching them how to terraform, cut a tree or even build a house would help. Golden Valley is fairly large so make use of the space, educating them on keybind use with already default keybindings is helpful. The status bar is for clickers. Don't burn them out though. You should give them some faster timers then they would have after the tutorial. <Insert another comment about UI and tutorial>

Newbie Tools, As previously said on another thread I think it would be nice if they started out with a few enchanted tools so they don't feel the need to replace everything instantly.  They already start out with new player tools ,enchanting them doesnt help anything.

How to make money, We need more options for new people to earn money instead of foraging coins and selling bulk trying to buy that enchanted chisel so they can make another 5k stone bricks to buy another tool! This clearly leads to them quitting after the first 1k brick grind and it's not fun! (True story, I've had many a noob disappear from my deed.) Telling new players that they can earn premium ingame is great, it even motivates some, but handing them 5000 shards and telling them to make bricks with 20 skill or less and 20ql tools is downright mean. While it's a possibility in later stages to earn silver to pay premium, I'd rather pull toenails than make bricks or any bulk services with 20 skill, in my personal opinion new players should not be pushed down this path, as it only hurts retention, why stick with a game when your "trial period" is repeating and failing an action 5000 times? 

 

This is just some stuff you can do. Thanks.

 

[Amadee 1,543]

Sigh. Ever since I started playing, and probably going all the way back to the beginning of the game, we get these threads periodically that invite all the doomsayers to air their grievances and predict the end of the world with their laundry list of generic complaints, citing all kinds of graphs, biased polls, server numbers on any given day, global warming, you name it.  To listen to the folks in those threads (wish I had a silver for every one I've seen), Wurm shouldn't even be here.  Yet here we are.  lol.  This too shall pass.

 

Wurm is still here and getting better & better every day.  The glass-half-empty folks seem to forget, or they weren't here, how much has changed and improved (or they don't care since it wouldn't fit their narrative).  I remember well, stick horses that you rode standing, all characters looked the same, single story houses with only a few wall choices, deeds had to be square so expanding had to be on all 4 sides, no deed stakes, no crafting window, and before my time I hear there were no bsbs, no fsbs, no boats, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc,.....the list is mind boggling tbh. 

 

As for the initial question....have I noticed we lost players? NOPE!!  I'm having too much fun playing with all the new goodies we keep getting.  I can hardly keep up with them.  lol.   So we lost some extra alts that were created for Christmas or other occasions, big deal.  Happens every year.  Guess what....it'll happen again next year and we'll get another one of these threads. 

[Thorakkanath 444]

Heh, time to put in my 2c in as well, although I am pretty sure three quarters of the community knows my opinions on the matter for YEARS

 

1. stop bogging the system even more by releasing new content - no one will die if they don't see new content for a year (remember the old days?)
2. priority -  fixing bugs (especially visual bugs and bugs that can kill you, but all types of bugs should be targeted)
3. MAIN PRIORITY - optimizing the game - geez guys, 11+ year old game that runs worse than AAA games of 2017 on the same hardware (the absolute first time this became a problem is when lighting was broken with the release of 1.0, before that things were fine)
4. reorganize the staff and the process of helping players - forums are good for discussions, tickets are good for solving problems, MOTIVATE people to come forward with their issues - at the moment, the way code club is dealing with user-submitted bugs feels like 'meh, what do these people want now' instead of 'hmmm something is obviously not working, let's check it out'

 

Sure it's far more fun to work on new stuff than to debug old stuff - but is it fun for the users?

 

 

PS: and before anyone says anything  about lack of resources/people - a long time ago Rolf was doing it all by himself - sure, we were standing on horses, and we didn't have fancy stuff like now, but the game was running WELL

 

if he could do it alone, why cannot a team of...too many to count...do?

Edited June 3, 2017 by Thorakkanath

[Retrograde 12,013]

3 minutes ago, Thorakkanath said:

reorganize the staff and the process of helping players - forums are good for discussions, tickets are good for solving problems, MOTIVATE people to come forward with their issues - at the moment, the way code clud is dealing with user-submitted bugs feels like 'meh, what do these people want now' instead of 'hmmm something is obviously not working, let's check it out'

wait, what? we have a dedicated QA member who does extensive bug work, we also have rewards for those who report exploitable bugs, what do you mean? 

[Sklo:D 2,210]

5 minutes ago, Thorakkanath said:

1. stop bogging the system even more by releasing new content - no one will die if they don't see new content for a year (remember the old days?)

 

+1

 

Same opinion here, Wurm is still focused on an old system which can't compete with the new stuff around. It is like putting new parts into an old computer. It will work until some point when you need to renew the base of the PC.

Edited June 3, 2017 by Sklo:D

[Kadmint 528]

Geez, another thread about so much crying and crying about the same things answered by staff multiple times. If everything's so bad, switch the game, or read the old posts staff have made about these very things you keep crying about. How unsatisfied can people be... I'm hoping to see sometime a day, where people actually post more of a nice things about this game and giving pure credit of all the amount of work. 

[Niki 2,278]

Promotional incentives are kind of like that anniversary thing you did awhile back Retro, or Rolf's green head gnome. Small things like that, use that money for ad space. Not to mention it's fun?

If you were to add a chicken hat to the game or the old pmk crown, you'd make some money let me tell you...

 

I appreciate the response but you took most of my feedback and simply discarded it. I genuinely don't bother to go out of my way to give you industry advice usually either because of how fast it's broken down. Goes back to taking player suggestion/feedback. Opinions are best left at the door, do whats best for the game.

 

The game has improved over the years correct @Amadee, doesn't mean growth is. Everyone is passive with how excellent the game is turning into, well sure it's great it's impressive but I'd still prefer people to experience it with. This is a social game right?

 

Wurm isn't even on the list on many search engines. The adspace could be improved is all I'm saying. "Sandbox mmo" shouldn't be the only trigger. I get this cost money which is why I suggested taking the cash shop revenue and doing more incentives to get people to spend money. 

 

 

[Niki 2,278]

6 minutes ago, Kadmint said:

Geez, another thread about so much crying and crying about the same things answered by staff multiple times. If everything's so bad, switch the game, or read the old posts staff have made about these very things you keep crying about. How unsatisfied can people be... I'm hoping to see sometime a day, where people actually post more of a nice things about this game and giving pure credit of all the amount of work. 

People need a voice. A voice get's things done remember my thread about embarking? Most Wurmians are not using the forums and a lot of this is spoken about in GL or private alliance chats. I apologize for trying to see this game grow to a decent number like 1k online players at once? Honestly though I'm not sorry cause even 1k isn't big enough because most are alts.

[Retrograde 12,013]

3 minutes ago, Niki said:

People need a voice. A voice get's things done remember my thread about embarking? 

Just to clarify, crucial information allowing us to reproduce the issue at will is what fixed it. 

[Kadmint 528]

1 minute ago, Niki said:

People need a voice. A voice get's things done remember my thread about embarking? Most Wurmians are not using the forums and a lot of this is spoken about in GL or private alliance chats. I apologize for trying to see this game grow to a decent number like 1k online players at once? Honestly though I'm not sorry cause even 1k isn't big enough because most are alts.

But that's not the case I was talking about. Sure they can have a voice, but crying about the stuff over and over again which are under construction, like "fix ui" "fix tutorial"? Like "yea, we are fixing them, just it's not appearing to you right now". With proper conversation about the things that bother, but devs have might not put thought into yet, are the ones needing the attention. Not this monthly happening feast on forum where same things are cried about like devs would be ignorant folks. 

 

I have myself found it useful to have a proper conversation about when cooking update came and at the same time it took away the usefulness of Refresh-ability when eating. I started a topic about it, defended the cause and quite soon they changed it. 

[Niki 2,278]

Just now, Retrograde said:

Just to clarify, crucial information allowing us to reproduce the issue at will is what fixed it. 

The thing is most of that was common knowledge if you played the game. Should the player two years later make a thread asking for people to give insight for a bug to be fixed? Hmm probably not. I don't remember a thread asking for embarking bug feedback. How many people left the game because of that, in your next mailer mention the bug is fixed maybe. That might help.

 

 

[nicedreams 1,035]

People really think that this game is going to bring in a lot of people?  lol

 

- Most people don't want to sit in front of a forge most of the time playing

- Most people don't want to make thousands of bricks and mortar sitting in the same place for hours on end.

- Most people are stuck more on graphics and character design (black desert) than the actual game itself.

- Most people want instant combat action.  Wurm combat sucks and is super boring.  I have over 85 fight skill and hate every minute.

- Most people want the cookie cutter aspect and want quests to tell them what to do to keep them busy.

 

This is one of those niche games that I just don't see a mass following of.  Like for every 100 people trying Wurm I think only 5 would stick around.  Maybe even less.

 

So regardless I think it will always be a small community game.  I really do wish the best of luck on growing the game of course.

Edited June 3, 2017 by nicedreams
spelling fix

[Thorakkanath 444]

1 hour ago, Retrograde said:

wait, what? we have a dedicated QA member who does extensive bug work, we also have rewards for those who report exploitable bugs, what do you mean? 

 

I know this is pointless, but I have 5 minutes...

 

(A) love how you only addressed that part of my post

(B) you are proving the point of the code club's attitude towards issues, as described in my previous post in this thread - your reply is exactly that attitude 'meh, what do these people want now' - instead of taking the feedback and seeing how can things change, you dismiss it or prove it to be incorrect or pointless

(C) so non exploitable bugs don't matter and do not deserve a reward?

(D) to answer your question - its completely preposterous that in a game - more less a premium-per-each-character type game - there is no official support. By using forums you basically have a community support where SOMETIMES SOMEONE from staff looks into. What kind of system is this? Completely free games (mind you not like this limited form of free present in Wurm) have 100% staff response rate to user issues. The stupid part is that the community support is great an all, but the game isn't open source, so unless someone is really a beginner in how to use a PC, not much can be said and done from that side. Oh, and for almost 2 weeks there is a thread made by me in technical issues on the horrible performance with wurm on top-end systems. How can that dedicated QA member help?

 

But I am sure there is a way to dismiss everything I have written here too  I am sure of it, it is the Wurm way

 

Bottom note: this is not a personal attack to you Retro - as a person, but criticism to Code Club's policies - that you, together with (most of) the staff are using, and I know how ingrate your job must be at times (like this). But you being the staffer that responds...

Edited June 3, 2017 by Thorakkanath