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Esert Sunset - Joelle

Esert Redesign with the Fire & Sand alliance

 

Hi Everyone!

Retrograde here with all the news and happenings on the dev and team side of Wurm. There's quite a few exciting things in the works (and some LONG LONG LONG desired) but alas, I cannot tease them just yet, I cannot wait to see them come in, so as soon as I'm given the green light, you'll know all about it! 

 

So lets get into this weeks news!

 

Shatterproof potions

The shatterproof potions which came with the rifts have been somewhat buggy for a long time, but with the last update they were adjusted and should now work correctly, providing 4-5 protections against cracks when channeling, and 1 protection against a shatter, the full details can be found in the last patch notes, but one bit that was missed was that it can be applied to any item, NOT JUST WEAPONS. So enjoy!

 

A new Lead Chat Moderator

I'd like to say a big welcome to our new Lead Chat Moderator, Idony! Idony has stepped into the role after the departure of Shrimpiie and will be working with the Community Assistants and Chat Moderators as they do their work. I look forward to working with her and the CA/CM team in the future

 

Freedom epic mission building 
Based on feedback about fears of epic mission buildings being deeded and griefing issues stemming from that we'll be making a slight change to how ritual missions generate.

Previously, and up until the introduction of this system, ritual missions generate from a total maximum pool of 18 buildings (3 temples, pylons, foundation pillars, spirit gates, shrines, obelisks). These are the ones that are completed as part of a mission requiring it.

From the next update, ANY mission building off deed will be eligible for a ritual mission to generate on it, they will no longer need to be built in accordance with a specific mission.

Again, this applies only to PvE ritual missions, chaos and epic will require the 18 and block deeding as usual.

 

Unstable client work
Unstable works continue, with more focus on improving performance and those crashes, with the memory allowance upped with the recent version. This might have been noticed by some as their client usage went up above 2GB, but this was due to giving the client more breathing room to work, which performed well.

Some had some issues however, so we'll continue to look at those.

More work with shaders in on the way, with this awesome comparison, can you spot the difference?

shader.gif

 

Upcoming starter deed makeovers
This week has seen proposals for two new starter deed makeovers, with blossom on Pristine and Whitefay being looked into. We'll be opening the proposals for Blossom some time this week in the Pristine subforum, and the whitefay one will follow shortly after, I'm keen to see what you all come up with, so get together and work out a proposal!

 

Community content - I'm a star!
This week saw the release of the Factional Fight episode starring me! I went through the midsummer event with the brothers and answered all of their questions (well, most of them, I can't tell everyone who my favourite dev is now, can I?) There's also a little teaser about something big upcoming, what do you think it is?

I'd like to thank the Factional Fight guys for having me, and for all their work contributing to making Wurm as enjoyable as it is, I know I was hooked on their videos early on in the game, as I'm sure many of you all have been too, so thanks guys, and I'd like to also say Brian totally needs to start the videos with "Hello! How are you?" Right? Right.

 

That's it for this weeks news, We'll be back this time next week with all new info, but until then, keep on Wurming!
Retrograde & the Wurm team

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Your voice is evil, Retro :P So evil! 

 

Love the potions and the unstable changes! So many good changes happening these days! 

 

Congrats Idony ;) 

 

Just a short poem for today, since apparently I'm obligated to write these now:

I love this week's news, I think they're just great

However, my mirrors... they are again late!

Just waiting and hoping and sitting around 

Still to my character's looks I am bound!

 

People been wondering and saying strange stuff

"Is she transgender, must be, sure enough?" 

The answer is no, I just don't like a dude

Where I want a female to be viewed. ;) 

Edited by Yldrania
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This will make ritual missions into a mess.  Maybe they should be changed to "go perform a ritual at any foundation pillar", "go perform a ritual at any pylon", etc, so that a set of mission constructions would be available to any deed or alliance that cares to prepare them.

 

edit:  this would also require making ritual missions work like normal missions, where all participants get SB instead of only people in range of the monument when the mission is completed

Edited by Noizhead
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Congrats, Idony! I so look forward to working with you!

 

And because Retro used that screenshot, thank you to everyone who everyone who made the Esert redesign project on Exodus happen! There were some hangups with it, but finally everything is complete and I recommend that everyone go take a look when they get the chance. I am very pleased with the result. ?

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The changes of mission structures will not eliminate the problem if someone deeds over one which was built previously by someone to have some nearby.

At first sight the solution may be what Noizhead mentioned.

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2 hours ago, Noizhead said:

This will make ritual missions into a mess.  Maybe they should be changed to "go perform a ritual at any foundation pillar", "go perform a ritual at any pylon", etc, so that a set of mission constructions would be available to any deed or alliance that cares to prepare them.

 

edit:  this would also require making ritual missions work like normal missions, where all participants get SB instead of only people in range of the monument when the mission is completed

 

I agree, i was one of the people who brought this up as an issue and Retrograde seemed very concerned with the idea of players having "penned ritual builds they can control" and those people being the only ones affected by the changes and potential griefing by deeding them. As i pointed out at the time (so did you noiz) the big issue was that deeding them and cancelling them out does not have any method in the code for allowing a new mission to proc or to move the ritual spawn to a different pylon/obelisk/whatever. This feels more like an attempt to nerf people who have done this than a fix to potential griefing and comes with a host of its own messy issues. Like some servers being covered in tonnes of locked or unknown location ritual items (some in caves) while others have less, or some players (like those who liked to use epic builds to claim undeedable land for themselves) having lots of unfinished ones they can now spam around their own deeds for convenient extra rituals. In fact once missions have been completed the unfinished ones can no longer ever be created so this can't really be balanced out by player action, on Exodus all of the build items are impossible to create, i believe foundation pillars are all completed on all servers. Overall this change kinda works as a workaround to the issue we brought up but the new issues need to be dealt with.

 

Anyways! Congrats go to Idony who i believe will be a great LCM :)
And hey we finally completed Esert!? @Joelleyou didn't tell me you were finishing it off i'd have come over to help xD


I brought it up with samool the other day but i hope to see more tweaks with the unstable lighting because this is how it changed for me 

http://imgur.com/a/L2WZq

 

Edited by Nadroj
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As the developer in charge of the epic mission structure change, I'm sitting down and taking note of all your suggestions to improve it even further. I really do like the suggestion of Noizhead that it should only look for a certain type of structure per instance though, and will be adding that clause.

 

The practice of "securing" target items with structures on freedom is not intended, and I will be asking the GM team to consider treating it as unfair game play, with final say on the subject left to Enki.

 

Thank you all for caring!

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If the missions only looked at type of structure (any pylon, any temple, etc.) then it might render the need to invalidate on-deed structures superfluous. Many deeds have mission structures displayed openly as decorations, monopolization concerns (if ANY structure will do) might not be a significant concern anymore.

 

Edit: Sure, having one of each structure would be convenient, but I've had mission targets (including traitors) practically throw themselves on my sword. That's pretty darn convenient! Maybe this could be delt with by increasing the number of people doing the ritual?

Edited by Darmalus

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congrats idony.

Edited by Arium

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looking forward to the big surprise.. I luv surprises especially when the word big is used in the same sentence. .. yeah big... BIG!!! cool loking forward well done Idony you have fine examples to role model by!!!!!  Enki again luv the Aussie accent yu seem like a secent guy with a god healthy sense of humour continue the good work!!  I've yet to watch the indepth questions part as I wanted to complete the mazes without any help and did so now I ca watch.. heheh.. take care all and happy Wurmin!!

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29 minutes ago, Jberg said:

The practice of "securing" target items with structures on freedom is not intended, and I will be asking the GM team to consider treating it as unfair game play, with final say on the subject left to Enki.

 

No one wants to build these, pylons are what, 80 difficulty?

 

Those that took the time to build them should be able to enjoy the rewards.

 

These build missions been going for years with no one building the structures.

 

I think the main reason we 'secured' the recent ones built on exodus was to prevent others from 'securing' them, I don't have a problem with that being changed, as long as there is access to the structures I am fine with a race to complete a mission.

 

Please do not remove these, its been nice doing runs to do the missions with a group of players when they come up, its a real social event.

Edited by JakeRivers
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44 minutes ago, Jberg said:

The practice of "securing" target items with structures on freedom is not intended, and I will be asking the GM team to consider treating it as unfair game play, with final say on the subject left to Enki.

 

 

Could be using some "autofix" like guard towers "fix" fences under them?

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Just now, Jaz said:

 

Could be using some "autofix" like guard towers "fix" fences under them?

 

What would you set the limit to for distance to a structure? Not hard to build a 10x10 donut house, make it too large and all of a sudden buildings will have problems that are not even close to these things.

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40 minutes ago, Jberg said:

The practice of "securing" target items with structures on freedom is not intended, and I will be asking the GM team to consider treating it as unfair game play, with final say on the subject left to Enki.

 

As someone who has zero clue about missions structures, (zero, zip, zilch, nada, etc., lol), I would love it if someone could maybe post an explanation of these somewhere.  Maybe a "Mission Structures For Dummies" type post?  The wiki doesn't give much insight.   What I know of them is that they look very cool and I have a couple on my deed for decoration.  Does this mean I am guilty of "securing" target items?  Are my pylon and obelisk supposed to be doing something that I am preventing?  All this talk of what to do about the mission structures is going right over my head.

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I can understand the desire to have a rule to prevent them being penned, as Jake says it will feel a bit harsh to people who went to the (honestly its insane) huge effort to make pylons having anyone on the server be able to benefit from their work. But....allowing players to keep other players from the rituals is something that just doesn't sit well overall. 


Hopefully @Jberg can find a nice balance between the older system and these new changes, for one thing i think it should be strongly considered to allow them to be built anytime if players want to. This is because with the recent changes we are effectively acknowledging that they are just decorative items on Freedom and not important mission items, this goes double imo if we're having "any epic build proc a ritual", though i prefer Noizheads idea because we won't have players making 20 around their deeds. Basically if anyone can make one anytime and you only need one of each type near your deed to benefit from participation i think would be fairest for all. Would need to be changed to participants getting the reward not just the people in local at time of completion though as Noizhead said.

Edited by Nadroj
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20 minutes ago, JakeRivers said:

I think the main reason we 'secured' the recent ones built on exodus was to prevent others from 'securing' them, I don't have a problem with that being changed, as long as there is access to the structures I am fine with a race to complete a mission.

 

Please do not remove these, its been nice doing runs to do the missions with a group of players when they come up, its a real social event.

 

Exactly - a race condition when the mission pops up add a thrill to the game. I think the key is to find the good number of players needed to complete a mission if it is doable at any of the same type of structures.

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2 minutes ago, Amadee said:

 

As someone who has zero clue about missions structures, (zero, zip, zilch, nada, etc., lol), I would love it if someone could maybe post an explanation of these somewhere.  Maybe a "Mission Structures For Dummies" type post?  The wiki doesn't give much insight.   What I know of them is that they look very cool and I have a couple on my deed for decoration.  Does this mean I am guilty of "securing" target items?  Are my pylon and obelisk supposed to be doing something that I am preventing?  All this talk of what to do about the mission structures is going right over my head.

 

The soon-to-be-changed system involved the ones that were built at the proper locations under mission parameters being the only ones capable of spawning a ritual mission. Basically if you created one that did not announce to you that you have just completed a mission, then this doesn't apply to you. There are lots of decorative ones but each server can (at the moment but not for long) only have 3 of each type (3 corners of the server) actually be linked by missions to rituals. Once those 3 missions for each type are completed it becomes impossible on your server to make unfinished ones of that type anymore as they can only be started for missions. Players who know the locations of these often pen them up with walls and gatehouses after building them so as to always be the ones to benefit from the ritual, which gives sleep bonus to everyone in local when the ritual mission is completed.


With the new change all decorative ones (including yours if off deed) will potentially be able to spawn a ritual mission. Which as we've been outlining above could have some issues.

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Well, this requires some guessing!

 

3d caves

Growing something in caves for animals to graze

No water splashing sounds after mounting

Saddlebags or baskets for horses

Uncovered wagons and installing benches in wagons for lots of alts

carts and wagons follow slopes again

increased reach range from vehicles

sprouting while mounted

dig/mine to container

New UI

New secure web management for characters

Customizable chat/event tabs, to highlight key text in different colors, like "you need a mallet..."

Real banisters (railings), rather than fences for upper floors in houses

Meditation skill gain tweaks

Epic rinse and replace? (I don't pvp, but I see requests for epic changes constantly)

So many things it could be!

 

Edit: Add a new PvE server, much smaller than Xanadu, with locked borders - or simply a Code Club hosted/managed WU server.

 

Edited by Wurmhole
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2 minutes ago, Jaz said:

Exactly - a race condition when the mission pops up add a thrill to the game. I think the key is to find the good number of players needed to complete a mission if it is doable at any of the same type of structures.

 

When these missions come up we make it a group effort to do, some get karma and everyone else gets the SB, so its always hey lets go do this and then proceed to herd all the cats together at the mission hub, its fun.

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As for missions:  Why not just eliminate the whole epic mission structure mission system from freedom and replace with more "go build a chair, or kill a wolf" missions?  Then the structures can just become decorations for anyone that wishes to create them.

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10 minutes ago, JakeRivers said:

 

What would you set the limit to for distance to a structure? Not hard to build a 10x10 donut house, make it too large and all of a sudden buildings will have problems that are not even close to these things.

Point is there... tried to ease up on GM intervention needed

 

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6 minutes ago, Jaz said:

Point is there... tried to ease up on GM intervention needed

 

 

Max there is 18 structures, exo has 15 active due to one structure being bugged and 2 buried in rock who knows where, no other server has that many or even close to that many. Would not take that much effort to initially clean up the stuff that is locked down. After that structures found to be locked down can involve a support ticket like anything else.

 

What I don't want to see is the knee jerk reaction we witnessed with source springs when one dev did not like how people can lock them up with a building or a deed so they were just simply nerfed to the point where they are no longer useful as a place to get karma.

Edited by JakeRivers

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38 minutes ago, JakeRivers said:

I think the main reason we 'secured' the recent ones built on exodus was to prevent others from 'securing' them, I don't have a problem with that being changed, as long as there is access to the structures I am fine with a race to complete a mission.

 

Please do not remove these, its been nice doing runs to do the missions with a group of players when they come up, its a real social event.

 

The key thing is access to the structures - though this really becomes a significant annoyance when you see missions repeatedly coming up for a particular structure and they are never completed.

 

With the proposed change to deeding over these structures, securing is to be honest a valid response to protect the hard work of building these structures.

 

Maybe a solution is that if the mission for a particular structure is not completed for a number of times, the structure is deemed not to be available and either triggers the GM team to investigate (if it deemed to be unfair to block access), and/or said structure is turned into being a decoration and not used for future missions.

Edited by Wulfmaer

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54 minutes ago, Jberg said:

As the developer in charge of the epic mission structure change, I'm sitting down and taking note of all your suggestions to improve it even further. I really do like the suggestion of Noizhead that it should only look for a certain type of structure per instance though, and will be adding that clause.

 

The practice of "securing" target items with structures on freedom is not intended, and I will be asking the GM team to consider treating it as unfair game play, with final say on the subject left to Enki.

 

Thank you all for caring!

i already went a bit on a rant there, sorry about that.

 

anyways, what i was saying is that it shouldn't be a thing that you just disallow penning because missions should be for everyone. i kind of dislike this freeloader mindset paired with the fact that the old system required you to build those things in specific locations that you could not change.
having the people who actually worked on those (partially stupidly hard) structures miss out on their deserved rewards just because someone else lives closer to the location the old system required.

 

so my suggestion would be similar to noizheads mentioned above.

remove the specific requirement for a certain structure. allow people to perform a ritual at any construction of the specific type (pillar, pylon etc)

remove the active mission requirement to build them and allow people to build them whenever they want. remove the construct abc at xyz missions completely.

remove the area reward. currently everyone in local of the finishing structure gets sleep bonus. change this to instead be participation based, same as any other mission.

increase the required ritual performer number by a fair chunk based on actual online player count at the time of the mission spawning. this will allow more people to get in on the mission. theoretically. of course it would always be possible for one person to solo the mission if he has enough alts yet the same holds true for a "sacrifice 1000 of xyz item" mission.
possibly add a modifier to the participant number for the different structures. while everyone easily could build a foundation pillar since they are a joke you will not be able to find many people who would build a pylon.

keep the penning. if people actually went through the effort to build the required structure they should still have the chance to use this exact structure to join in on the mission. if another person wants to get the sleep bonus benefit he can build his own structure and participate. that way he actually has to fulfil a requirement to benefit off those very easy missions, yet is not just freeloading off other peoples efforts. every other mission requires people to do a specific thing too. while most of them are easy, eg build a small barrel, kill a wolf etc, you have to actually do something to be eligible for the reward.

 

other than that i have to say that i agree that the current epic construction design is far from what it was likely intended to be. a group only has to put in the work to build all structures once and can then live off the missions continuously.

however, in this regard those missions are also completely different from all other missions in that the rituals do not involve any special work and the work you put in initially is the work that you would otherwise have to do going from mission to mission.

i would even go as far as allowing people to perform the missions on deeded structures as long as they are of the right type. it is, after all, reasonable to deed something you do not want others to impact in any way. if you have built an off deed structure so you can participate in missions yet penning is not forbidden, someone could come by and snatch it with a house. and i do agree that that would suck.

 

 

 

 

 

now let me go a bit off the path with my thoughts here.

if you really want to get rid of penning mission structures you could also base the eligibility of a person to perform a ritual on a specific structure based on the owner who actually finished it. if you are his friend or in his alliance, you are allowed to, if not too bad for you. while this sounds harsh at first it would possibly bring groups together to actually work on a structure that then everyone of them can use.

 

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