Epic, Complete 180°

[Quicktor 1,348]

make minedoors on 180 work like they used to....no shitty ass "open if enemy in local"

i dont want a fkin wardeed everywhere

 

also, didnt really read your whole post keenan, but +1 for passing it along

[Mclavin 3,704]

I want towers to be chained like they use to aswel, no war deeds in middle of nowhere.

[Roccandil 959]

Quote

Would it help if we did what some other games do and consider PvP "seasons"? This way working up to changes that will be in effect for a specific amount of time before they change again? I think it would serve better than having the News posts trolled every 3 months for 3 months before another round of PvP updates go in.

 

Path of Exile does this, and it seems to work for them. Every new season/campaign brings a new round of rebalances, mechanics, items, etc. (I don't play it any more, by the way, too much RNG for me, but I did like the concept of seasons.)

[vvorbat 2]

14 hours ago, Keenan said:

That said - another thing is, how long until that's also "boring"? How long until folks leave again and only return here to take more pot-shots at game play they've essentially asked for, meanwhile demanding more be done? Simplifying the game play means that there's a chance of it becoming more stale. Raids on Chaos were 10-20 people flinging rocks at 2-4 people patching holes. If they even logged in. What does it look like on Epic right now?

4

 

That's a really solid point here that I think a lot of people aren't considering.

How in a game where time is a major factor to consider. Do you stop pvp from going stale?

 

Let's look at the rock throwing really fast, should two to four people be able to repair a wall that's being attacked by catapults. No probably not. So how do we fix that? You could set some form of extended repair timer when PVP is happening. Splash damage to catapults so that if you are by a wall that's being hit you take damage too or simply remove repairs on walls that are actively taking damage ticks.

 

 

The biggest problem I see for PVP is the low population. Wurm has a lot of servers with very few people online, this leads to a lot of free space.
Do you consolidate servers? That's going to upset people that have spent a lot of time and effort on their deeds.

So do you remove/replace an existing server? Now you have to find a way to encourage people to actively move on to that server. That comes with its own set of problems. Do you allow mail, do you let people transfer characters. Do you make it a fresh start?

That doesn't even touch the issues around retaining interest or even getting people there in the first place.

Do you go PVP only or PVPVE. World bosses/champions.

Some form of territory control for kingdoms.

Should the spawn points for each kingdom be attackable, if so what incentive should there be for doing so?

Do you even need kingdoms?

What type of map should it be?

 

The list of considerations, potential issues and problems just grows and grows. Yet we can clearly see that the current iteration of PVP needs investigating, it doesn't have the player retention it should.

Creating an overhauled PVP system isn't going to happen overnight. It's just too big an undertaking.

 

 

What I'd be really interested to see would be any current design documents on potential PVP changes. Or some kind of idea on what route the devs are thinking.

[Quicktor 1,348]

to say "oh what if we change it and you get bored of it yet again" and just do nothing is not a good solution @Keenan

you just cant deny the fact that all of the pvp community thats left wants something new, something better, and yes maybe we dont even know exactly what, but we know many other things we have stated that havent been tackled at all.

 

for example the fact that changes like minedoors being able to go through while an enemy is in local makes it so you have to have a safety net / deed every few locals, hence making it so people rarely leave deeds.

locate soul only being changed on epic, where it doesnt even make sense after you decided to do a 1 time transfer, who would play on there if there is literally no way to improve your skills without wasitng time, since as soon as you go onto freedom you essentially start at zero again.

the huge gap between players / accounts that have been around for years and years, that new players / accounts couldnt even make a dent in their armour without spending 2 years on grinding themselves.

 

or, the biggest problem yet, that there are 5 pvp servers with about 50 players across all of them combined.

 

you can keep saying "you will get bored if we do this, will get bored if we do that", but fact is, the longer you wait, the less people you will have to "get bored"

[Keenan 5,539]

1 hour ago, Quicktor said:

to say "oh what if we change it and you get bored of it yet again" and just do nothing is not a good solution @Keenan

you just cant deny the fact that all of the pvp community thats left wants something new, something better, and yes maybe we dont even know exactly what, but we know many other things we have stated that havent been tackled at all.

 

for example the fact that changes like minedoors being able to go through while an enemy is in local makes it so you have to have a safety net / deed every few locals, hence making it so people rarely leave deeds.

locate soul only being changed on epic, where it doesnt even make sense after you decided to do a 1 time transfer, who would play on there if there is literally no way to improve your skills without wasitng time, since as soon as you go onto freedom you essentially start at zero again.

the huge gap between players / accounts that have been around for years and years, that new players / accounts couldnt even make a dent in their armour without spending 2 years on grinding themselves.

 

or, the biggest problem yet, that there are 5 pvp servers with about 50 players across all of them combined.

 

you can keep saying "you will get bored if we do this, will get bored if we do that", but fact is, the longer you wait, the less people you will have to "get bored"

 

Note the bold section above the boring part, Quicktor. I think players often forget that we are also players. I felt like putting both my player response and my developer response there. Of course as a developer we can't say "you will get bored, so we won't do anything". As a player though, I'm making the point that despite everything about PvP, it always seems to feel boring. I also pointed out that I've not had the liberty to play the newer changes, so I really wanted more responses that maybe detailed what worked and didn't work about that.

 

@vvorbat The server part is very tricky. As I'm so famously quoted saying, I felt the new Elevation server missed its mark years ago. I've seen people suggest getting rid of home servers as well as merging Chaos into Epic for one PvP server. To be fair, it's rather simple logic that more land and fewer players makes for a less than effective PvP situation. It's why if I ever get the time to do my own WU server, the PvP server will be quite small. People need not only a reason to go out and fight, but to be able to find people fight as well. But this is one way to look at it.

 

Part of the point of epic scenarios and missions was to create something to have players contest over. That mechanic was the most recent to see some reworking done, so again it would be interesting to see what is and isn't working there.

 

At the end of the day, Budda and myself need to work through our current tasks before we can come back around and focus on PvP. It would be helpful if we could get input specific to what has been done while we're working on these tasks. That's pretty much the TL;DR of my other post. Instead of focusing on new ideas right now, tell us about what we've already done.

[Roccandil 959]

2 hours ago, Keenan said:

Part of the point of epic scenarios and missions was to create something to have players contest over. That mechanic was the most recent to see some reworking done, so again it would be interesting to see what is and isn't working there.

 

All right, here's my perspective (and since I didn't play much before the rework, this will not involve before/after comparisons):

 

What's working:

 

- Scenarios get people on home islands more involved in working together toward a single goal.

- Missions are a logical draw to enemy islands.

- The Valrei scenario concept feels more naturally "Epic" than HOTA. HOTA feels contrived to me, Valrei doesn't.

 

What's not working:

 

- Scenario wins seem largely determined by the initial RNG drop (and then by RNG spikes thereafter). Missions are often painful, require a great deal of dedication (and thus opportunity cost), and if it doesn't look like a god has a good chance, it's very easy for players to shrug, wait for the next scenario, and do something more important.

- Missions do have good rewards, but they're often not enough to be worth it if you don't think you have a chance to win the scenario. (I wish you could accumulate more than 5 hours of sleep bonus via missions, for instance. If I'm at 5 hours, then I have less reason to work on missions.)
- Mission difficulty ratings seem to have little resemblance to actual mission difficulty. Traitor missions, for instance, tend to be much harder to complete than their difficulty rating would suggest.

- The missions themselves often feel contrived (how exactly does cutting down a tree aid my god?). I wish missions felt more relevant. I'll grant this is nebulous, and I don't really know how "relevant" missions would look. :)

- As described by Alexgopen, the scenarios seem biased.

- Gambling karma to commune is a downer.

- Scenario reward distribution RNG can be a downer.

 

[FranktheTank 1,901]

22 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

 

All right, here's my perspective (and since I didn't play much before the rework, this will not involve before/after comparisons):

 

What's working:

 

- Scenarios get people on home islands more involved in working together toward a single goal.

- Missions are a logical draw to enemy islands.

- The Valrei scenario concept feels more naturally "Epic" than HOTA. HOTA feels contrived to me, Valrei doesn't.

 

What's not working:

 

- Scenario wins seem largely determined by the initial RNG drop (and then by RNG spikes thereafter). Missions are often painful, require a great deal of dedication (and thus opportunity cost), and if it doesn't look like a god has a good chance, it's very easy for players to shrug, wait for the next scenario, and do something more important.

- Missions do have good rewards, but they're often not enough to be worth it if you don't think you have a chance to win the scenario. (I wish you could accumulate more than 5 hours of sleep bonus via missions, for instance. If I'm at 5 hours, then I have less reason to work on missions.)
- Mission difficulty ratings seem to have little resemblance to actual mission difficulty. Traitor missions, for instance, tend to be much harder to complete than their difficulty rating would suggest.

- The missions themselves often feel contrived (how exactly does cutting down a tree aid my god?). I wish missions felt more relevant. I'll grant this is nebulous, and I don't really know how "relevant" missions would look. :)

- As described by Alexgopen, the scenarios seem biased.

- Gambling karma to commune is a downer.

- Scenario reward distribution RNG can be a downer.

 

No dude, no scenarios.

[enricodandolo 122]

20 hours ago, Keenan said:

 

I'm always down for saying "Proph, you don't know what you're talking about". It's probably obvious to others, but feels nice to say. To be fair, I don't think Rolf had anything to do with it. It was merely a "we should do this so they'll stop crying". We care about your feelings ❤️

 

As for PvP changes - it's a nice read. I can say I'll bring it up, but that's all I can say. We've said it a number of times. We are focused on other projects at the moment. Don't bump this for two months and then cop an attitude that "the devs never do anything" when we've been openly stating where our focus is. It just makes it look like you can't follow the bouncing ball.

 

AS A PLAYER
One thing I *will* point out, especially about removing features: There's usually two sides. I would probably enjoy a server where the meta is more rounded, which is pretty much what this is suggesting. Moon metals were always too easy to dominate on Chaos in my opinion and I never agreed with a certain kingdom view of "all moon metal goes to the kingdom". It creates some unwarranted elitism when the point is to just have fun and clang crap together until someone falls down. Yet there's usually two sides - the side that has it and the side that doesn't. The fact that one side is allowed to dominate it at all means there's an imbalance in my mind. Something else my kingdom never agreed with me on. Yet I can understand how that side can feel like they're being punished for "winning" if it's removed or if the balance is restored. So the question is - who is "winning"? Who has the easy access that isn't bumping this thread? Anyone? No one? I'm asking seriously as I don't play PvP anymore.

 

That said - another thing is, how long until that's also "boring"? How long until folks leave again and only return here to take more pot-shots at game play they've essentially asked for, meanwhile demanding more be done? Simplifying the game play means that there's a chance of it becoming more stale. Raids on Chaos were 10-20 people flinging rocks at 2-4 people patching holes. If they even logged in. What does it look like on Epic right now?

 

AS A DEVELOPER

I look at PvP as a complex system. When you're dealing with a complex system, it's easy to look at one part of it and say "There's your problem!" without considering the system as a whole. This system by its very nature is made up of everything from the players together in their kingdom, the mechanics in the server, to the players on the other side that they're fighting. If players on one end of the system are given too much, the players on the other end will no doubt be unhappy, and vice versa. It's up to the middle bit of mechanics - which in of itself is a complex system - to try and help keep everything balanced.

 

When I see ideas, they tend to be looking at a very small area of concern. This idea has to do with the things that were added to try and make Epic more "epic" and in turn added more "meta", essentially. But what is the bigger picture? How many folks have played through the changes Budda implemented? I see conflicting accounts here - some saying moon metal is required, others pointing out that armor was reworked. I, myself, hobble around in a silly plate set still. So could some of this be just a lack of exploring the changes already made? There's also the idea of managing expectations. Right now it seems like the PvP community's expectations are all over the place. Hence the toxic commentary at times and the unhelpful "devs don't do anything" posts that only serve to demoralize us as a team. Would it help if we did what some other games do and consider PvP "seasons"? This way working up to changes that will be in effect for a specific amount of time before they change again? I think it would serve better than having the News posts trolled every 3 months for 3 months before another round of PvP updates go in.

 

Just some thoughts. No filter and all. Forum mods - if they call me stupid, it's not staff bashing.  

I mean, you have to understand that the entire pvp community, the most veteran players are very vocal about this. They have been playing this game for very long and have seen changes come in for the past decade. I'm sorry, but the pvp in this game is destroyed by power creep. It's not because people are "bored" but because there is such a huge difference between the haves and have nots. The have nots get stomped until they quit and the haves keep playing until they run out of people to kill. The higher you set the gear and required stat ceiling the more this divide grows... and EVERY TIME!! Whether its the challenge server, the epic server... people FLOOD back to the game to experience the pvp before it becomes a game of "who has time to grind 16 hours a day and who can only grind 3-4 a day" and the latter part tends to quit because theyre so massively out-powered.

 

Moon metals, meditation, hell horses, functionality of rares on boats... these things have only made it harder to become a pvper. There is noone who has pvped consistently who will say that this is not the case. It feels like content for the sake of content with wanton disregard for the impact it has had. I miss the days where the biggest problems the pvp scene faced were farwalker ammys and GM decisions, the game doesn't draw its fun and uniqueness from the insane amount of ways you can power up your toon, it makes its mark from the insane way you can conquer and wage war with your enemies and affect the lands and kingdoms that occupy it, until such a time as one kingdom has become such a strong position of "haves" and all the "have nots" refuse to play, where at that point it should likely be reset. It has always been that way. I don't think the Dev team has ever intrinsically understood this point, for many years it seems as though the dev team has a very hardcore skew towards their understanding of freedom and lack of understanding of pvp.

 

Either way, pvp seasons would be better than this...

Edited May 19, 2018 by enricodandolo

[Roccandil 959]

1 hour ago, FranktheTank said:

No dude, no scenarios.

 

Well, a developer asked, so... :)

[enricodandolo 122]

Wowzers this topic is great

[griper 535]

Good to see developers reading and responding to the Suggestions forum.

 

[gbgbo 38]

i just played WU and i got the feeling back... plz hurry to fix this. I need this in my life!!! i can pay dubble for a month prem just give this to me...

[Yiraia 427]

On 5/9/2018 at 9:44 AM, FranktheTank said:

This should appease everyone, a fresh map, fresh game, mixed with a refreshing change to what is considered the "end game" content.

Don't player gods originate from players doing epic missions? Many people left the game when Nahjo was nerfed (corn saccing). If the unique feature player gods were to be removed from epic, would they stay on freedom? Or would everybody have to switch back to Vynora the original 3 priests for pve.

[FranktheTank 1,901]

11 minutes ago, Yiraia said:

Don't player gods originate from players doing epic missions? Many people left the game when Nahjo was nerfed (corn saccing). If the unique feature player gods were to be removed from epic, would they stay on freedom? Or would everybody have to switch back to Vynora the original 3 priests for pve.

There are a few options for this

 

1. Remove Player Gods everywhere - I do not recommend this option, there has been an established balance in the game for quite some time now and I do not see their removal everywhere as a good thing.

2. Shift Player God Mechanic to Chaos - Likely not wanted by a lot, but a solution that would see missions/tomes/godhood on Chaos.

3. Make current gods Legacy - Remove the feature from Epic, however keep the current player gods in the game as a legacy on Freedom/Chaos. There just won't be anymore.

4. Keep Scenarios and Missions on Epic for Godhood, but change it - Another proposed change would be to allow the godhood missions to continue, instead of tomes/current items, change it with hota statues, and other cosmetic items in game (god statues, masks, spyglasses, res orbs) with the small chance to get the key to ascension. Achieving demigod/godhood on Epic would yield a title, cosmetic armor (robes of the god) (maybe) and possible a toggle "aura" that could either darken or brighten the area around a person like a lantern. 

 

My preferred option for this would be 3, making it a legacy. But I am willing to flesh out any additional options from anyone, or add and detract from the current 4 I listed.

Edited May 22, 2018 by FranktheTank

[Angelklaine 4,266]

On 5/18/2018 at 5:38 PM, Keenan said:

That said - another thing is, how long until that's also "boring"? How long until folks leave again and only return here to take more pot-shots at game play they've essentially asked for, meanwhile demanding more be done? Simplifying the game play means that there's a chance of it becoming more stale. Raids on Chaos were 10-20 people flinging rocks at 2-4 people patching holes. If they even logged in. What does it look like on Epic right now?

This right here kinda took the wind out of my sails. Here's why.

 

You can't expect to make an online world, release it, and then sit back and say "I'm done". That's essentially by definition what developers call "maintenance mode" and its effectively the death of an mmo. In a mmo, developers are expected to continuously release updates that keep people interested in the game. If you don't release updates regularily, you will loose players because it will become "boring". That's a fact, and updates are why the developers stick around after releasing an mmo.

 

The problem I belive with Wurm is that "meaningful" updates are far and in between. A cupboard here, a dying feature there, new hell horse colors six months from now, etc. When a pvp meaningful feature is released, it will be years before another one is seen (the Epic changes, for example). When was the last time a whole new type of armor was released? A new weapon? How long since a new meditation path? A new spell? Add to that the back and forth trying to please everyone and a year or more pass between a big change is seen on the PVP arena.

 

You can't reasonably expect players to not be bored with the same scenario for years on end. If you don't refresh their interest in the game, they will go look for their entretainment elsewhere.

 

Imagine yourself as a player when the last big feature was released. Lets take for example, Archeology (nevermind the facts behind if it was good or not). A lot of players were excited and went out there looking for long disbanded deeds. The community was abuzz with the new skill, even PVPers made posts offering players escorts through Chaos to visit iconic deed locations. Everyone was excited. Then it died down, got boring, and now no one talks about it.

 

That will be the case with every single feature out there. People will use, abuse it and eventually grow bored of it. Thats why they cry and whine and complain and ask for more. In the pvp scene in general changes are very rare and far in between, including bug fixes, and this leaves the pvp community dissatisfied. 

 

On 5/18/2018 at 5:38 PM, Keenan said:

When I see ideas, they tend to be looking at a very small area of concern. This idea has to do with the things that were added to try and make Epic more "epic" and in turn added more "meta", essentially. But what is the bigger picture? How many folks have played through the changes Budda implemented? I see conflicting accounts here - some saying moon metal is required, others pointing out that armor was reworked. I, myself, hobble around in a silly plate set still. So could some of this be just a lack of exploring the changes already made? There's also the idea of managing expectations. Right now it seems like the PvP community's expectations are all over the place. Hence the toxic commentary at times and the unhelpful "devs don't do anything" posts that only serve to demoralize us as a team. Would it help if we did what some other games do and consider PvP "seasons"? This way working up to changes that will be in effect for a specific amount of time before they change again? I think it would serve better than having the News posts trolled every 3 months for 3 months before another round of PvP updates go in.

3 months is a pretty long time for a player. When you sit there experiencing the same bug every time you do an action, get that embark bug, or when you run into a mine and suddenly your hell horse dissapears... yeah, its a pretty long time. Maybe not for you as a developer when you have to spend hours designing the code. 

 

However, its not every 3 months, not even close. The last big pvp change was over six months ago, and yeah I know you'll say "but we just redid the pvp affinity system". But see, that's not a featue, thats fixing what was broken and considered maintenance, not something new for people to play with. So lets be generous and say you release a new pvp feature every six months. That's a pvp change twice a year and its not nearly enough to keep people interested.

 

In closing, developers do not determine what players should consider "boring". You can't set a standards for players to reach to play your game. Its the other way around. Players set the standard, and its the gaming company's job to find that sweet spot to keep those players entretained. Without players you don't have a game, or a business, and those players will leave if you don't keep them entretained. 

 

If you don't think 3 months are a long time, go stand on one leg for three months and come back and tell me how much fun it is. I'm not saying you should release a pvp feature every week, but you can't expect people to happily wait for years for you to come with something interesting.

 

[FranktheTank 1,901]

Bumperino

[Roccandil 959]

Where do resets stop? If Wurm Online servers get reset willy-nilly, then why play WO over WU? Wurm Online's stock in trade is permanence.

 

Actually, to everyone wanting an Epic wipe, why -not- set up a WU server, just the way you like it?

[Wilczan 2,048]

3 hours ago, Roccandil said:

Actually, to everyone wanting an Epic wipe, why -not- set up a WU server, just the way you like it?

I don't think that everyone wants to wipe Epic, if so it's rather about making new smaller Elevation.

[FranktheTank 1,901]

7 hours ago, Roccandil said:

Where do resets stop? If Wurm Online servers get reset willy-nilly, then why play WO over WU? Wurm Online's stock in trade is permanence.

 

Actually, to everyone wanting an Epic wipe, why -not- set up a WU server, just the way you like it?

I can think of one good reason, hacks.

 

The mods people can do to clients allow them to see everything, remove trees, and more. 

 

Oh and no, no one has successfully fixed a server of that. I have been to every server where they "fixed" the issues, and the hacks work fine.

[Roccandil 959]

3 hours ago, FranktheTank said:

I can think of one good reason, hacks.

 

The mods people can do to clients allow them to see everything, remove trees, and more. 

 

Oh and no, no one has successfully fixed a server of that. I have been to every server where they "fixed" the issues, and the hacks work fine.

 

Makes sense, but it's kinda sad, too. I'd don't suppose you can set up a WU server by invitation only, and rely on an honor system?

[Angelklaine 4,266]

5 hours ago, Roccandil said:

 

Makes sense, but it's kinda sad, too. I'd don't suppose you can set up a WU server by invitation only, and rely on an honor system?

Then it will be devoid of players. Whats the point then? 

 

The biggest issue is that players want stability. This is not possible without players.  Its like a catch 22. A chicken and hen problem. Locking up a server private pushes away the entire steam community and leaves you with whatever handful of guys who can join. Those will be bored quickly without others to play with. Then if you open the server publicly, hacks happen.

[enricodandolo 122]

On 5/25/2018 at 1:00 AM, Roccandil said:

Where do resets stop? If Wurm Online servers get reset willy-nilly, then why play WO over WU? Wurm Online's stock in trade is permanence.

 

Actually, to everyone wanting an Epic wipe, why -not- set up a WU server, just the way you like it? 

As others have said WU is only possible to be played with unpoliceable client mods. If you dont use them because you dont believe in it, someone else will. There is no way to detect this, no anti-cheat. A GM can catch a macro but thats as good as it gets... Do you think I'd be playing on official WO if I knew I could play no mods WU? Absolutely not. You can't just make a whitelist server either because, as Angelklaine said, you'd have basically nobody playing. I almost wish that WU could get WOs anticheat in some form that the players can't decompile and inspect, but the problem of course it that it'd lead to being able to abuse the anticheat systems with impunity until they find a way they can abuse it on the main game.

[gbgbo 38]

bump i i just invited 20 russians

[FranktheTank 1,901]

Hey Hey Look at this Thread, its pretty nice!