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Roccandil

Use actions instead of time for Sleep Bonus

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Right now, sleep bonus is simply time-based, which means players are rewarded for cramming as much as they can into a short a window as possible. This also makes it hard to chat, or switch to an alt (for me, at least), because I'm always thinking that if sleep bonus is running, I should be doing something, and turning bonus off and on is complicated by the cooldown.

 

An alternative method would be to key sleep bonus off actions completed. Let's say we got 1K actions with sleep bonus instead of one hour. That way, for example, if I had sleep bonus enabled, I wouldn't care at all about stopping to chat, because if I'm not completing any actions, my sleep bonus isn't ticking away.

 

This would make for a lot more comfortable playing, and might even let me try developing a third alt (because for me right now trying to balance grinding and sleep bonus between two characters is pretty crazy).

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14 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

which means players are rewarded for cramming as much as they can into a short a window as possible

Skilling in general rewards not having downtime.

 

Having it on actions instead of time would be more of a pain in the ass since you'd have to manage wounds/climbing to maximize the amount of skill you get from those actions. Not to mention majority of timers get shorter as you skill up so actions would mess that up.

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The whole "let's make timers longer to get more skill" really frustrates me too. Even with the new system on Epic, I've found that the best way to skill dairy-making is to collect the milk, go to my crops, bring a cheese drill, farm until stamina is low, turn on climbing, and make cheese.

 

That's, well, cheesy. :P

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15 hours ago, Roccandil said:

The whole "let's make timers longer to get more skill" really frustrates me too.

 

If every action gave equal skill, then we'd all be trying to do the fastest skill possible (within the ideal range of best tick rate).

That would suck since instead of having to queue up actions every 2-3 minutes, it'd be every 20-30 seconds. No thank you.

 

16 hours ago, Roccandil said:

An alternative method would be to key sleep bonus off actions completed. Let's say we got 1K actions with sleep bonus instead of one hour.

 

This would just create additional headache.

 

1. It punishes people with high stamina and full CCFP bars. Your stamina drains very slowly.

 

2. It just creates another thing to micro while you're trying to streamline grinding. Yes, we have to make sure we always have something queued up with the current system, but at least we don't have to dink around (for most skills) stamina management and climbing.

 

3. It also precludes using SB for fast actions. Right now you're not really penalized if you're digging with a fast pick or slow pick in terms of skill gain/characteristic gain. With the new proposed system you would be hurt for using a fast pick.

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13 minutes ago, Hailene said:

 

If every action gave equal skill, then we'd all be trying to do the fastest skill possible (within the ideal range of best tick rate).

That would suck since instead of having to queue up actions every 2-3 minutes, it'd be every 20-30 seconds. No thank you.

 

Yes, queuing sucks. We're it me, I'd make actions more like leveling: mine this tile until done, out of stamina, or there's no place to stash ore, and I'd repurpose Mind Logic for something else (maybe stamina use efficiency).

 

I can't fathom why anyone thought Mind Logic as implemented for queuing was a good design decision. It's -fiddly-. :P More specifically, it makes busywork instead of real gameplay, and it also means I'm not as inclined to buy prem alts because I spend too much time fiddling with queues on the chars I do have.

 

If, however, I could automate extended tasks on chars and put them in the background, I would have the time to foreground play more chars, and would be more inclined to spend money to do so.

 

13 minutes ago, Hailene said:

 

 

This would just create additional headache.

 

1. It punishes people with high stamina and full CCFP bars. Your stamina drains very slowly.

 

2. It just creates another thing to micro while you're trying to streamline grinding. Yes, we have to make sure we always have something queued up with the current system, but at least we don't have to dink around (for most skills) stamina management and climbing.

 

3. It also precludes using SB for fast actions. Right now you're not really penalized if you're digging with a fast pick or slow pick in terms of skill gain/characteristic gain. With the new proposed system you would be hurt for using a fast pick.

 

I'm probably thinking more Epic than Freedom right now, but I still think more skill for longer timers is nuts. :P

 

The real issue, as I see it, is that Wurm makes experience equal to level, which causes a host of downstream headaches. I would split experience off from level, such that at 500 exp, you unlock level 2, at 1500, you unlock level 3, at 1.5 million, you unlock level 90, and so forth.

 

Then, I would make tasks always worth the same exp, no matter the player condition or tools (things like CoC aside). Mining rock would always be worth 50exp per action; mining iron would be worth 70, and so on. The balancing for level would not come through less exp earned but in the amount of exp required to gain a level.

 

Yep, you'd want to be able to do actions as quickly as possible, which I think is great. You'd always want higher QL tools and better tool skill and better WoA enchants, instead of this "let's use 1QL tools and fiddle with climbing, and it sucks that my tool skill is increasing because I'm getting quicker timers" silliness. :P

 

In short, Wurm rewards really odd, non-immersive behavior, and is full of repetitive clicking.

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Roccandil said:

In short, Wurm rewards really odd, non-immersive behavior, and is full of repetitive clicking.

 

We've been over the whole tool quality and action difficulty thing before. I don't think we're going to budge on that.

 

Anyway, I have said my piece. I'm just going to leave a -1.

 

Have a good one.

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You all are comfortable with how Wurm works now, and I get that. I also get that the developers have to choose between pleasing the existing customer base and trying to change Wurm to attract more customers.

 

Nevertheless, only a few thousand or so people choose to play Wurm in their spare time. Nearly everyone else who could play Wurm would rather do something else, and I can see why. Wurm is often frustrating, arcane, and downright fiddly in places it simply doesn't need to be.

 

Wurm's strength is presenting an immersive world where there is so much that can be done it's hard to choose what you want to do. These quirks you all hold dear aren't necessary to make that work, and rather, they get in the way of more people enjoying Wurm.

 

 

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4 hours ago, Hailene said:

That would suck since instead of having to queue up actions every 2-3 minutes, it'd be every 20-30 seconds. No thank you.

In my opinion, it sucks that the game promotes using the crap quality tools to raise skill. I slightly understand the idea behind "If you can do it with a bad tool, then you are really good" but it feels weird that skill progression doesn't require higher skill-related material/tools.

 

As for sleep bonus going along with actions instead of time, pretty sure that wouldn't be the best approach because of the fact it actually hurts people who decide to perform their tasks quickly (High ql woa users would perform several tasks and eat up sleep bonus quickly). Time related sleep bonus is currently the best option, BUT it would be nice if toggling the sleep bonus meant that you CONSUME sleep bonus during the action. So if a person really wanted to, they could leave on sleep bonus all day and perform their daily grind. Be able to go to the bathroom, leave for dinner without any sleep bonus being consumed while idle. Sadly the only way that would be possible is to make every skill gained through a timer (Not the case for stuff like weapon skills and hot food cooking... and hot food cooking really should have a timer imo anyway). 

 

30 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

Wurm's strength is presenting an immersive world where there is so much that can be done it's hard to choose what you want to do. These quirks you all hold dear aren't necessary to make that work, and rather, they get in the way of more people enjoying Wurm.

 

Very true, but timed based sleep bonus is actually the best it can be imo.

-1

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43 minutes ago, Yiraia said:

As for sleep bonus going along with actions instead of time, pretty sure that wouldn't be the best approach because of the fact it actually hurts people who decide to perform their tasks quickly (High ql woa users would perform several tasks and eat up sleep bonus quickly). Time related sleep bonus is currently the best option, BUT it would be nice if toggling the sleep bonus meant that you CONSUME sleep bonus during the action. So if a person really wanted to, they could leave on sleep bonus all day and perform their daily grind. Be able to go to the bathroom, leave for dinner without any sleep bonus being consumed while idle. Sadly the only way that would be possible is to make every skill gained through a timer (Not the case for stuff like weapon skills and hot food cooking... and hot food cooking really should have a timer imo anyway).

 

Hmm. Quick actions aren't something I associate with skill grinding (at least on Freedom). If someone is using high QL, WoA tools, are they really going to be using sleep bonus? That may be less of an issue than it appears.

 

Anyhow, I really like the idea to make sleep bonus only be consumed during action duration. As to fighting, I wouldn't mind at all if sleep bonus just ran for the duration of melee combat, and then stopped once no enemies were in melee range. The game already tracks that, might not be hard to piggyback on it.

 

HFC is definitely sticky, but I suppose you could do something like if you get a skill tick outside an action timer, each tick automatically consumes a minimum amount of sleep bonus (whatever that would be).

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52 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

 

Hmm. Quick actions aren't something I associate with skill grinding (at least on Freedom). If someone is using high QL, WoA tools, are they really going to be using sleep bonus? That may be less of an issue than it appears.

The way i play, well played since im on my wurm hiatus, was low ql and coc on tools for grinds that had finite materials. if i only had 2000 materials to do actions with, I would make sure that i spent as much time as I can with the 2000 materials, and get my sleep bonus on every second of it. However, if i had a "seemingly infinite" amount of materials to grind with, then I would use WoA for skill and to progress on my deed. Ex: Animal husbandry; when I decided to raise my AH a bit, I injured myself to 30% health and used low ql coc brushes because I could only brush to many animals at once. Mining; 4 actions for 8 seconds gives as much skill as 1 action for 32 seconds. Sleep bonus isnt consumed more in either case, and same xp would be rewarded with the current (assuming each one gives a skill tick). I grind on silver and theres like 5 veins near me. I make sure I use WoA or BoTD so I can get a lot of silver quickly and still get the same amount of skill. Making sleep bonus based on action would be another smack to the face that gives wurm a step back. It would tell me to drop the WoA-CoC tool and just grind instead of doing something useful if i want to progress skill wise.

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3 hours ago, Yiraia said:

The way i play, well played since im on my wurm hiatus, was low ql and coc on tools for grinds that had finite materials. if i only had 2000 materials to do actions with, I would make sure that i spent as much time as I can with the 2000 materials, and get my sleep bonus on every second of it. However, if i had a "seemingly infinite" amount of materials to grind with, then I would use WoA for skill and to progress on my deed. Ex: Animal husbandry; when I decided to raise my AH a bit, I injured myself to 30% health and used low ql coc brushes because I could only brush to many animals at once. Mining; 4 actions for 8 seconds gives as much skill as 1 action for 32 seconds. Sleep bonus isnt consumed more in either case, and same xp would be rewarded with the current (assuming each one gives a skill tick). I grind on silver and theres like 5 veins near me. I make sure I use WoA or BoTD so I can get a lot of silver quickly and still get the same amount of skill. Making sleep bonus based on action would be another smack to the face that gives wurm a step back. It would tell me to drop the WoA-CoC tool and just grind instead of doing something useful if i want to progress skill wise.

 

Yeah, we're back around to the whole why are we being rewarded for using low QL tools. :( If it were me, it would take X base playtime to get to level 100 in Y skill, and tool QL, enchants, sleep bonus, and affinities would all decrease that, usage would equal skillgain, and I'd balance accordingly. It's the time taken that really matters, not the persnicketiness of the journey. :P

 

Ah well. :(

Edited by Roccandil

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