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Wurmhole

Livable Starter Towns with Mentors

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You complained a bit about alts, suggested re-opening golden valley, complained about alts again then suggested they get free premium while in golden valley. Your main reason is leaning more towards "I don't like other people using alts more effectively than me" and you're lumping it in with the new player experience so it'll be slightly more liked.

 

I assure you over 90% of new people are leaving before they even hit 10 in a skill, giving them the option to farm rares with the increased Moment of inspiration chance premium accounts have ,then using either of the ways you've put in to skip tutorial island and completely ignore your anti alt island isn't going to do much except make macroing new accs more lucrative, letting them mess around in an empty server with the ability to drive a large cart isn't drawing anyone in, and forcing people making alts to grind a bunch of stats to 20 without coc or sb is going to turn people off making alts or just make them buy accs that have finished the tutorial, or nahjo batteries and depriest them to skip doing the tutorial.

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The post where I describe GV as the "newbie island" counts around 260 words, 2 of which are the word: "alt". So no, I'm not leaning more towards "I don't like other people using alts more effectively than me" even more so that I don't use alts at all. The only time I did use an alt was to create a harbour deed which I moved to a few days later and the toon was never used since. 

 

For all I know you're bashing my idea solely because it would limit alt access and you're trying to make it look like I'm the crazy one crying over alts. 

 

Think about it for a second and remake your answer to one either constructively criticising the "GV for newbies" idea or one agreeing with it.

 

I believe you do realise that most newbies that did or ever will try out Wurm start out by dreaming big. At least I did and everyone else I asked about it said they did too. You know, great adventures, big castles, kingdom wars etc etc. The first thing that draws them away from Wurm (let's try to be as in-detail as we can here) is the feeling of being overwhelmed. There's a huge amount of information to acquire, skills to gather and a UI that is very strange to many people. Consider someone trying out Wurm after they've been playing Rift for years. First thoughts would probably be along the lines of "well, this must be the newbie area so I'll just start punching that spider and get some loot". That's because nobody told them, back when they created their Wurm toon, that this is a very different gaming experience than anything on the market. 

 

1. We don't have difficulty areas, the whole world is on the same difficulty level in every spot. Other games do.

2. Getting skills that will make you feel useful and acknowledged in the world of Wurm will be tiring, exhausting and will take months or years in some cases. Most games don't have that.

3. The learning curve is actually a vertical wall. Covered in oil. Burning oil. Most games don't have that.

4. Even the daily tasks and chores that you need to do around your place will take a lot of time ranging from an hour to three or more. Most games offer daily tasks taking up 30 minutes of your time that aren't necessary for your toon's well-being.

5. Riding a cart or a horse can save your ass and belongings in most situations. Most games make your toon run faster than any mob right from the beginning.

6. Good armor and weaponry are fairly luxurious goods. In most games good armor and weaponry are common items.

 

I could go on about how different Wurm is but I think you get the point. Add the feeling of being new to Wurm - where you feel extremely lost and not sure what to do now or what you even could do, or where your possibilities end. 

 

To rephrase my rant - newbies leave Wurm because their skillsets aren't necessary in our world and because nobody shows them the possibilities of the game.

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You didn't spam the word alt, so what? Paragraph 1 is entirely about alts, Paragraph 2 is talking about how alts are the only accounts being made and newbies wouldn't mind a tutorial while it'd inconvenience alts. Paragraph 3 doesn't mention alts at all. Half the post is about alts even though you only said the word alts twice.

 

I don't care about the new newbie island, i've got about 20 accounts already made and just not being used but it's a pretty big turnoff for people that want priests, batteries and alts dedicated to brick/mortarmaking or shaftmaking or arrows or whatever boring stuff you want done on an alt so you can actually do something interesting on your main. 

 

There definitely should be a much better and interactive tutorial that shows you the basics of prospecting/mining, flattening/leveling, what mobs to avoid (everyone i've ever invited to the game has died to a wild boar after i've told them to kill passive animals, they never expect it to be that much stronger than a pig that they can kill with 1fs), it should also be entirely avoidable should you choose to, inconveniencing players for doing something that's almost expected of you (Seriously, i know of a single person who only has a priest account and no alt), Things like priests are designed around getting you to have multiple accounts. Some people hate the idea of tutorial handholding and being forced to stay in an area that they'll have to abandon after a while can make them not enjoy the game, Wurm is a sandbox after all, and being told what to do and what to grind before heading into the real game is the complete opposite of a sandbox.

 

I'd say the areas near the spawns are pretty devoid of enemies due to all the settlements, and the further away from them you get the more enemies you'll find in an area, in south east indy i can afk on a spot that's not near the road and get 10+ minutes of fighting done, while near the howl and surrounding areas i'd have to get reveal creature casts to find anything. Man-made easy area i guess. Most of the people that quit in under a week that i asked about it pretty much all complained about crafting while starting out, one of my friends built a 2x2 house on a weekend, logged off after finishing it and came back next weekend to find that one of his walls had already fallen down, and he had to spend another half an hour attempting to repair it, since he'd fail that too. I eventually bought him wurm unlimited and we made a server with 30 starting stats 2x skills/timers timers and the game was suddenly much more enjoyable for him since he could actually do something without his avatar spending 5 minutes hammering a plank into the wall with a nail. It's not the "dreams being shattered" that's the problem, it's that you're completely useless until you spend an hour grinding that stat up, and every stat you ever want to use will require an hour invested before actually being useful. I think changing the starting stats to 5-10 would make it a bit easier, since with 1 stat you're sitting there failing until you've got a little bit of skill.

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Um, no. Paragraph #1 is an outline of the "GV remade" idea with a sentence about alts. It shows the general rules my original idea employs. Paragraph #2 consists of three sentences and (again) only one of them is about alts. The other two are trying to convince the readers of the importance of changes to the way we introduce new players to Wurm that my (again) original idea would bring forth. That's it. These are the only two sentences where alts were mentioned and the only two sentences which contexts do actually shed light on alts. However out of the whole thirteen, and basically a half, sentences only two speak of alts. This leaves us with of less than 20% (~15% to be more precise) of the text devoted to the subject of alternative characters, which basically speaks for itself. It's true that I do have my reasons to believe Wurm without alts would be a far more interesting place, however (as I've just proven) my earlier post is not about them. Perhaps you should stop nitpicking. 

 

To return to the improtant matter however - the first part of the first part of your third paragraph speaks the golden truth. The rest of the paragraph is pretty much your opinion to which I have vaild counter-arguments and then we reach the fourth paragraph which also speaks the truth. You said newbies hate being completely useless and here our points of view meet to create a beautiful unified vision. This is the main thing we need to fix in Wurm, hence my idea of GV strictly for new players. The previous sentence should show you well enough that I don't want to make people's lives more difficult by making alts less accessible.

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+1 to the idea, we do it on Wu and people play way longer than learning it via tutorials or YouTube.

 

It really does work, as long as it's able to be moderated or unable to be abused.

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On 6/13/2017 at 10:58 PM, Oblivionnreaver said:

...for people that want priests, batteries and alts dedicated to brick/mortarmaking or shaftmaking or arrows or whatever boring stuff you want done on an alt so you can actually do something interesting on your main. 

 

I was going to say we are pretty much forced to have alts since no toon can have more than one deed, and yes I agree, it is almost impossible to play a priest as a main (unless you have some friends around who can do some stuff you are restricted to do).  Furthermore, people are encouraged to buy prem on occasion as the priest can't do a lot of priesty stuff unless they are prem, and two unpremmed chars can't trade deeds either.  

 

Functional starter towns will give people who want to actually play the game, a chance to learn the basics.  Alts only created for a purpose like becoming a priest for another toon or taking care of a second deed, is pretty much not going to "live" in a starter town.

 

 

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