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Nappy

Bringing a gasp of life back to Epic

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7 hours ago, Roccandil said:

 

The difference is that the new skilling is intuitive: I use the best to get the best result, as opposed to the really bizarre gyrations required to get results within 1 - 39.

 

For me, at least, skilling has been a lot more fun since the update.

 

I think the old system makes sense (if something is too difficult/easy, you won't learn much), but it's just boring and annoying. Making something logical doesn't always equal making something more fun. I guess many experienced players don't mind it so much, because they knew the tricks anyway.

 

I think conceptually the new skilling system makes more sense too, but I haven't tried skilling enough to find out if it's really better. In my short experience, it seemed a bit easier but not noticably faster.

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I think, in the long run, there are three scenarios that lead to unhappiness and further player decline on Epic:

 

1) The devs don't make the changes suggested.

2) The devs do make the changes suggested.

3) The devs do something completely random that no one suggested.

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7 hours ago, Czar said:

I think, in the long run, there are three scenarios that lead to unhappiness and further player decline on Epic:

 

1) The devs don't make the changes suggested.

2) The devs do make the changes suggested.

3) The devs do something completely random that no one suggested.

 

The question, in that case, would be whether or not the devs can attract enough new players, ignorant of Epic's past, to replace the losses.

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On 2/11/2018 at 2:24 PM, Roccandil said:

 

The question, in that case, would be whether or not the devs can attract enough new players, ignorant of Epic's past, to replace the losses.

which makes me wonder if maybe they'd like to have the new UI and tutorial they've been working on implemented before they make the kind of overhaul that would bring in many new players to Epic.

Best foot forward assuming new players aren't necessarily going to give it very many chances. 

 

You sell a car and the doors fall off, people aren't likely to be back later.

Enhancing the hinges before selling the car is probably time well-spent.

Just a thought, no dog in the race here.

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Too bad station wagons with wood panels aren't our first choice of car.  lol

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Picking up on one thing from earlier, some aspects of the new mission system are just horrid.  The sacrifice missions are just painful - it's not bad enough you have to go find critter X (damn deer!), but now you have to half beat it up, and then drag it to an altar to sacrifice.  The old method, where you could tame then lead then sacrifice at the altar was a whole lot less painful, and plenty enough work to make it non-trivial.  Used to see people actually doing these, but I haven't seen a sacrifice mission (on either epic or pve) getting any attention from players for a while.  And create 300+ multi-ingred items?  Nope.  And getting rid of everything other than the base god missions on pve means even fewer bother - at least there used to be enough of a selection available that the stupid ones weren't a problem.

 

If the part of the intention behind the mission changes was to get more people participating, then that failed; fewer people do them now than before.  Stuff needed fixing, so there's some good, but feels like it should be a fair bit better.

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9 hours ago, Wonka said:

The old method, where you could tame then lead then sacrifice at the altar was a whole lot less painful

 

The old method was to drop a bowl blessed to your god under the animal then sac it, no need to tame or anything

 

But that's still painful and annoying to stare at constant 30 second timers when instead you could just kill it faster and actually get skill for it

 

Theres two methods to get mission items for saccing, digging or investigating. So why not allow both killing and saccing to work, if saccing really has to stay?  Can even give saccing x2 reward bonus, I don't care, it's not enough to make me care about actually saccing still

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18 hours ago, Wonka said:

Picking up on one thing from earlier, some aspects of the new mission system are just horrid.  The sacrifice missions are just painful - it's not bad enough you have to go find critter X (damn deer!), but now you have to half beat it up, and then drag it to an altar to sacrifice.  The old method, where you could tame then lead then sacrifice at the altar was a whole lot less painful, and plenty enough work to make it non-trivial.  Used to see people actually doing these, but I haven't seen a sacrifice mission (on either epic or pve) getting any attention from players for a while.  And create 300+ multi-ingred items?  Nope.  And getting rid of everything other than the base god missions on pve means even fewer bother - at least there used to be enough of a selection available that the stupid ones weren't a problem.

 

If the part of the intention behind the mission changes was to get more people participating, then that failed; fewer people do them now than before.  Stuff needed fixing, so there's some good, but feels like it should be a fair bit better.

 

The missions often seem to assume much higher populations than actually exist. The drop rate on the digging/investigating missions is so low it's clear you need many players doing it at once, and of course there are the "God X requires 24 of you to give Y to the avatar".

 

I also find the animal saccing missions annoying if only because of the random nature of the saccing timer. You do all that work to get the half-health creature into domain, and then it's going to be a gamble every sac attempt. :(

 

If it were me, I'd remove the gamble, and instead tie the sac timer length to fight skill, creature difficulty, and knife QL, and if you're too low fight, you can't sac at all.

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4 hours ago, Roccandil said:

 

The missions often seem to assume much higher populations than actually exist. The drop rate on the digging/investigating missions is so low it's clear you need many players doing it at once, and of course there are the "God X requires 24 of you to give Y to the avatar".

 

I also find the animal saccing missions annoying if only because of the random nature of the saccing timer. You do all that work to get the half-health creature into domain, and then it's going to be a gamble every sac attempt. :(

 

If it were me, I'd remove the gamble, and instead tie the sac timer length to fight skill, creature difficulty, and knife QL, and if you're too low fight, you can't sac at all.

I'am currently at intense digging, removing dirt from large parts of terraformed terrain and moving to another place.

When those type missions were active I tend to collect about 2-6 items per hour of digging. Highest score were 20 items for 3-4 hours of digging, while mission expected to sacrifice 40 of them (Desertion). This type of missions is time consuming but doable.

 

Missions of "x of you give to avatar" are hopless with current population. The same for Avengers of Light killings etc.

 

Animal saccing is just very annoying...

 

Edited by Wilczan

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22 hours ago, Wilczan said:

I'am currently at intense digging, removing dirt from large parts of terraformed terrain and moving to another place.

When those type missions were active I tend to collect about 2-6 items per hour of digging. Highest score were 20 items for 3-4 hours of digging, while mission expected to sacrifice 40 of them (Desertion). This type of missions is time consuming but doable.

 

Earlier today I dug about 900 dirt and found 6 mission items. That was a very encouraging drop rate. :) I then later dug about 750 dirt, but only found one item (and only at the very end). That was a discouraging drop rate.

 

If it were me, I'd make the chance of finding an item go up as players dug and -didn't- find one (and reset once they did). That way, players are more encouraged to keep digging and not give up during dry spells, while still allowing RNG to give players "hot streaks".

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I just started playing this game and I started on Affliction a week or two ago and its great. I really think more people should try Epic. At first theserver looked completely dead and I hardly was getting any replies in the kingdom chat, but eventually I found someone that moved from elevation and was looking for a place to setup a deed. I showed him the abandoned ruins of a really good spot I was squatting in and he made me the co-founder and we are going to build it into something nice. =

 

Everyone here is really friendly and I feel a sense of community that I don't get from other games. I think people look at the population of around 30 people over 4 servers and would rather play on something like Xanadu, but each server only has one alliance it seems with elevation having 1 per kingdom so the communities may be small but very tight-knit and there's always people to interact with.

 

Another reason I really like epic is that due to the population change it has a lot of ruins of huge deeds from the past. I know people may think this is a sad sight and not a good thing but I absolutely love exploring and sometimes looting ruins and trying to uncover bits and pieces from the past. I haven't tried to new archaeology skill yet but I would assume that there would not be a better server to try it on.

 

The epic cluster is also the only part of this game where there can be an entire server for an enemy kingdom. I've done missions on desertion with another guy and I gotta say its really cool feeling like you're on an entire server that wants to kill you and accomplishing things for your own kingdom.

 

One thing I've got to say though is that if its possible you guys all need to absolutely respond to people in kingdom chat. I know it may be bad because of the whole thing with spies but I would think that the first thing people would do when they join is say hello to the people on the server. If no one responds and there's no one in local it actually makes people think there is absolutely no one to play with. When I joined I thought only 1 or two people max were on at peak which I ended up seeing was not the case when I joined the alliance. 

 

There was also another noob with me when I joined and he was trying to talk to people in kingdom chat as well with only 1 person saying stuff at most. I haven't heard of him since then so I assume he must have quit the game or joined another server.

 

But yeah Epic is great and it doesn't feel pointless to play on like some make it out to be. I'm actually having a lot of fun here and I love all the people.

Edited by Chestburster
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Welcome to Epic Chestburster. Great write-up on your initial impressions.

 

At some point a group of us will drop by and give you a warmer welcome so that you too can experience the wurm adrenaline spike that often happens when an enemy pops local. :)

 

With that said keep enjoying yourself, keep exploring and keep finding what you like about the game.

 

You are right, there are a lot of good people playing on Epic. This applies not just to the underdog kingdom of JK but also to MR, Rome and of course BL too.

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The way I see it and I'm guessing here, is that there are 2 developers that work on Wurm Online and there are a lot of great ideas to put into Wurm to please the player base.  They can't and won't do anything with Epic because they lose all resources for the new game client and other additions they trying to make the game better as a whole and stop lag and other stuff that we all need.

 

I don't see anything happening to Epic since there is no team and never will be a team to focus on PvP.  The PvP population is so low right now it probably doesn't matter to them.  I think there are 2600 active subscriptions and maybe 400 of them are all about PvP?  Again I'm just guessing on all this, but how I feel it is.

 

They just need a bigger staff and a 100% focused team on PvP even if it's 1 developer.  Epic is a Beta battle ground where they can change whatever they want and work with the community without screwing with freedom and making that player base unhappy, but they not taking advantage of it.  Was hoping they would when talk was going on in November.

 

I don't think the Dev's respond because maybe this is the answer and not like they can just come out and say "Hey sorry guys.....we don't have the resources to care for PvP right now, but will keep you hoping so you keep playing the game".

 

No disrespect to the Devs at all and no attacks and understand if that's the case.  Making sure this isn't taken the wrong way...

 

This is also why pretty much PvP needs to be focus on either Chaos or Epic and mainly Epic since it is it's own thing that is full PvP with no PvE issues.

Edited by nicedreams
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I don't think the issues with regards to Epic is about PvP or anything like that - but rather the players being afraid to embrace it at all. I've always appreciated a good view from my deed and I've always at some point been fed up with my view - whether it be a couple of newbie shacks or a massive bridge stretching across the bay. If you don't mind stuff like that, you might as well stay on Freedom. However, I enjoy having the ability to smash down an ugly bridge - whatever the "social repercussions" might be. The alignment system is good enough for sorting out any griefing between players, and there's also some sort of monarch to reign over any of the kingdoms. Freedom seems like anarchy to me, despite having played on Independence for quite some time.

If you want to experience the wilderness, fear and other stuff - Epic (or Chaos for that sake), head on over. The home server model is the best one for PvE, and as far as I'm concerned when I started playing on JK-H back in the day: the way the game is meant to be played.

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6 hours ago, John said:

I don't think the issues with regards to Epic is about PvP or anything like that - but rather the players being afraid to embrace it at all. I've always appreciated a good view from my deed and I've always at some point been fed up with my view - whether it be a couple of newbie shacks or a massive bridge stretching across the bay. If you don't mind stuff like that, you might as well stay on Freedom. However, I enjoy having the ability to smash down an ugly bridge - whatever the "social repercussions" might be. The alignment system is good enough for sorting out any griefing between players, and there's also some sort of monarch to reign over any of the kingdoms. Freedom seems like anarchy to me, despite having played on Independence for quite some time.

If you want to experience the wilderness, fear and other stuff - Epic (or Chaos for that sake), head on over. The home server model is the best one for PvE, and as far as I'm concerned when I started playing on JK-H back in the day: the way the game is meant to be played.

I have to agree with you mostly. The home server concept is great: a reputation system to control player actions instead of a hard mechanics. I would fully move to epic fulltime, if not for the no skill transfer. If I had joined Wurm back in the day, I would probably have been one of the Epic guys.

 

Now, however, its too late. The future of Epic is uncertain. The recent changes did little to revive the cluster and with the two major groups leaving, its unsure what will happen. I started my deed on Affliction, and I am having fun, but its hard to make it a full time venture ad I would love it to be.

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8 hours ago, John said:

However, I enjoy having the ability to smash down an ugly bridge - whatever the "social repercussions" might be.

 

The other side of that coin is someone who spent hours making said bridge getting it smashed because you didn't enjoy the view. And as the population numbers shown - the vast majority of the player base have no interest of being in that position.

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Without new blood coming into the game there is no reason to fix epic. The only people we would be able to pull with fixes are freedomers, but they are starting to hurt from low pop as well.

 

Seems like its not so much a pvp problem but a wurm problem.  The pvp servers just felt the effects sooner.

       

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I feel like I will be around until they turn the lights off. There is simply no alternative to the Wurm experience, and the Epic one is without equal. 

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Couple points that might make epic more fun to play or bring a gasp of life back

 

- Remove home servers. Couple nights ago there were 22 people spread out over 4 islands and who knows how many of those were alts

- Bring back the old Elevation map, or make another map that everyone agrees on at 8km x 8km

- Allow skill gain to transfer both ways

 

Small map, hopefully more players coming over for skill gain should = more fights for territory and kills

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3 hours ago, Baramor said:

Couple points that might make epic more fun to play or bring a gasp of life back

 

- Remove home servers. Couple nights ago there were 22 people spread out over 4 islands and who knows how many of those were alts

- Bring back the old Elevation map, or make another map that everyone agrees on at 8km x 8km

- Allow skill gain to transfer both ways

 

Small map, hopefully more players coming over for skill gain should = more fights for territory and kills

How the old Elevation map looks?

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For starters they should change the /who to show population of each server also.  Sucks to not know which server to go to for finding a fight.  I understand it means if a raid or something is happening, but already same thing on Chaos.  Population rises then something is going down.

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lol

 

it probably only took about 4 years of many people fighting for it to be the way it is now but by all means please change it back

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At this point in time, I think our player base would like to see new idea's implemented for player vs player in Wurm. Tons of idea's have been suggested from very intelligent players in the past, I'm afraid to say this but none have really been considered. What we have here is a failure to communicate to the developers on how to bring about the change. 

 

How many epic threads, about how it's dead, or how good it 'used' to be do we need? We need to try a different approach. OP is onto something here, however the lack of developer comments really is concerning.

 

We need to look forward to the future instead of being nostalgic for a system hardly no one used as well. I know that's hard for everyone to accept but let's face it, epic died for a reason. So changes like this could spark the revival of PvP.

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