Making Game Progression More Visual

[Hailene 362]

So currently in Wurm we generally have only two states for things: finished or unfinished. The vein with 10,000 ore or the same tile mined down to 1 ore looks exactly the same. A full health tree vs one with 99 damage? Still standing tall. A boat with just a few connected keels or one with just a single peg missing? Exact same incomplete boat.

 

There's a real lack of visual progression in our work. It's either there or not. And for some longer term tasks (particularly for newbies when a single rock tile can take 20 minutes!) it's a bit unsatisfying. For us veterans, we sort of know how long things take so it doesn't bother us, but for new players (both new to the game and players more accustomed to more modern games) the lack of physical feedback is quite off-putting.

 

So I'd suggest adding more visual progression on most things, but starting off I think adding 3-4 more states to common things that newbies do (like mining, cutting trees, building walls) would make the visual feedback of their work more obvious. It would spur them on to continue doing what they do.

 

This could just be something like having cracks appear in veins or rock tiles as we mine, a cut in trees as we hack them down, or a few more stages to partially completed items like forges, wagons, ships, and walls as players get closer to finishing it.

 

The nice thing about this is that it doesn't have to be done all at once. If the person in charge of art assets can only do a 4 stages of a wagon today and not touch stone wall progression in 5 months then there shouldn't be a problem. It can be done as quickly or slowly as is feasible. Or even if they add just one more stages to wagon (with 2 or 3 more anticipated later), then just adding the one extra stage would still be nice.

Edited June 16, 2017 by Hailene

[Myriad 52]

+1

 

[Erevorn 130]

+1, I've met plenty of newbies that were unsatisfied with no way to tell how much more actions left until you make the tunnel

[Gwyn 328]

Big +1

[Etherdrifter 2,517]

Visual feedback is the best kind of feedback.

 

+1

[Natzumi 0]

+1

 

Altho it will need alot of new models into the game for every "stage" they implement. 

But it will make progression feedback really great.

[Lupe 19]

+1 Not having visible changes have always bothered me. It is one reason why I like being able to see decay because then you know something has changed.

[Firestarter 1,210]

I've always liked this idea, but never got around to writing it up as a suggestion.

 

+1

[Lei 346]

Very much like this idea, though I feel it would be quite the undertaking and take a lot of time and effort.

 

+1 regardless

[Hailene 362]

3 hours ago, Lei said:

Very much like this idea, though I feel it would be quite the undertaking and take a lot of time and effort.

 

The art team can do it one piece at a time if necessary. It's incremental, so even if we have to wait 5 years for it to be "fully" implemented, we can still enjoy the first change within weeks while the rest is implemented.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

This suggestion was proposed to me by one of my friends that quit after a couple of weeks of playing. He was frustrated with the game which he said was "basically just watching bars fill up". And to a new player that's what it mostly is.

[koroth 238]

+1

 

I agree with this especially in the areas such as smithing, where you pretty much just stand around clicking your mouse. This is part of why people call skill gain progress "grinding". The lack of visual feedback can be extremely boring.

[Legios 496]

I always wondered, sandbox game.. with minimal graphical input.. so much of the same.. +1. I want to see more variety of stages Same thing with animals there is at least 3 or 4 age stages that provide almost no input on their appearance.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Legios

[Raix 98]

+1

 

even taking it a step further and having more sounds would be nice. If there were rock textures of increasing crackage to show how far along you were with tunneling or breaking a rock wall, it would be cool to hear a shambling of rocks sound each time the texture progressed to the next "stage". It would make the game feel more alive.

[Klaa 4,872]

Personally gfx artists are a lazy lot that can use more work, so sounds good here. 

[Erevorn 130]

Quote

Bridges will be in by Christmas.

- Rolf, 2006

 

Just wait for the art boys.

[Hailene 362]

9 hours ago, Erevorn said:

Just wait for the art boys.

 

Sweet. So we'll see it sometime around 2045. Earlier than I anticipated.

[Hailene 362]

Any other opinions on this? I hope in general this is something the staff is already working on in the long-run, at least?

 

It'd greatly increase the appeal of the game without changing the soul (IE mechanics) of the game.

[Alkhadias 548]

+1