Make cherries/tomes soulbound/non-tradeable

[elentari 2,660]

Title itself is pretty self explanatory.

 

One of the greatest issues this game has ever had is how a lot of people with deep pockets on pvp servers have bought and sold tomes/cherries to various kingdoms thus giving them a huge boost in pvp. From my own personal experience on chaos/epic i've seen dozens of people saying "i cannot pvp competitively if I don't have a few tomes/blood of angels/true strike". 

 

It's not a much of a mystery the system has been abused (with no punishments) over the years so alts could win the same stuff over and over again. Now with the added acceptable exploit of people doing freedom goals on Epic soon everyone and their mother will earn new tomes and cherries.

 

My proposal is simple. You win any cherry/tome via missions/scenarios/goals, that item becomes soulbound. Meand you can't drop it, can't lose it if you die and that  you cannot trade it.

 

Means if you have a premmed alt with 0 skills but did a lot of missions , CONGRATZ! that premmed alt if it wins anything, only he can use it. Means if you wanna sell the alt, someone else will have to grind it. Doubtful anyone will for just 1 tome though, but you never know..

 

This way it will prevent two toxic trends to continue in wurm : A) the continuous support of the pay to win mentality in the pvp area where people with a lot of money simply buy their way to get massive advantages (e.g. 5 players targetting you with True strike spell, research that if you want) 

 

B ) People steamrolling accounts on epic to do easy achievements to get tomes that they could sell on freedom and influencing A. 

 

TLtdr: Make tomes and cherries soulbound, can't trade em, YOU have to earn them for yourself and that's it. Actually earning something through ingame mechanics not paying RL money for it. 

[elentari 2,660]

An addendum, for the vanilla wow players, it's kinda similar to first seeing someone in full t3 armor back in 2005-2006 or whenever you played. You knew that player didn't buy that armor since it can only be earned. Kinda same system. But I guess I have this meritocratic mentality that keeps popping up in my posts. 

[Wulfgarr 810]

You do get 3 charges.. so you use 1 and put it bank? Maybe instead you get 3 random soulbound charges which you do not get. Although not sure if it is needed, i think giving people with something they cannot trade would be bad, also if i would play epic and do alot of missions i might end up with tons of the same tomes which i cannot use. Also how would uniques work? All in all i think we need to just realise that tomes values will go down, people will get access to it (atleast until they change the valrei thing) and something very exclusive will become more common for all which is a good thing. Looking as the same happend to drake and scale with respawning uniques i think it is a good way forward.

 

Commenting on people playing on freedom doing some goals on epic - i am not sure why that is a problem. We all pay for the whole content, we pay for the whole sandbox which is epic and freedom thus we should be able to choose how and where we play and what we do there. So i am leaning to -1. 

[Wulfgarr 810]

And tbf the easiest way to lower the P2W system is giving more access to tomes, meaning it will be not worth much meaning everyone will have it thus removing the problem while not gimping everyone. 

[elentari 2,660]

Well you now get 1 charge with the current system, at least on Epic, and it's a random piece usually, like archeology which needs to be combined with 3 other pieces. For example i won a fragment of blood of angels which I need to combine with other 2 bloods to get a full charge. 

 

My point is another. Epic is now mostly a dead zone which is being sucked dry by people not really wanting to play there, but using it for their own interests so they can go back to freedom.

 

As to why it needs to be soulbound?

I could draw attention to the 50 alts people have been using on Epic over the years to simply take tomes and cherries from others. Alts which simply did 300 scenario points for a lottery ticket and won dozens of cherries/tomes over the years. Is that a fair system? Alt spamming? 

[elentari 2,660]

Tomes/cherries used to be something you earned. True, it was a stupid RNG system but you still had to invest a lot of time doing missions, knowing the valrei map, where to guide your god and earning them. Then the new system kicked in, with other flaws, but it's still a system where alts can abuse it. As long as items don't remain soulbound, it's still a pay to win. 

 

AS for your suggestion , make them common. Tbh that would sort of negate the whole point of getting permanent effects. I wouldn't be against them. I admit, I am biased against two things but I would accept for them to be common and earned through archeology for example. 

 

But I am speaking as a player who did over 2000 missions on Epic over the years and hard won his tomes/cherries. And also I am speaking as someone seeing other people spam alts just so they can maximize their % chances so ONLY their alts could win tomes/cherry charges. But yeah, despite my efforts, I would still support a system where cherries/tomes would become common, if for nothing else, to at least stop these stupid exploits still being allowed in the game.

[Wulfgarr 810]

But by chancing them soulbound you are talking about the whole mechanic and thus winners + uniques aka the whole freedom also. So suggesting something that will benefit epic and harm freedom because people worked hard on missions on epic and against alt abuse is not the way to go. Ill +1 every thread which decreases alt abuse, as long as it does not make problems which it solves, but ill -1 a thread which suggest changes which only harms freedom, does not actually give anything to epic (except a bandaid to the whole missions and alt spamming solution). It is impressive that you did 2k missions on epic, but that is not the point to change mechancis on freedom. Everyone who pays and plays can and should be fully able to use epic and freedom and not be punished for playing 2 sides, even if it is for tomes and achievements.  

[elentari 2,660]

To simply not harm freedom , it's about changing the goals so they can ONLY be done on freedom. I don't see why it's ok to hop over to another (dead) server where you don't really want to play, just to do your goals, so you can win a tome you don't even want , just to sell it? I dunno, but I see something very wrong with that picture and already gave the arguments why it can be exploited by rolling new toons with easy goals, do them on freedom and Epic, and sell the tomes on Freedom/Chaos. 

 

 

[Wulfgarr 810]

5 minutes ago, elentari said:

To simply not harm freedom , it's about changing the goals so they can ONLY be done on freedom. I don't see why it's ok to hop over to another (dead) server where you don't really want to play, just to do your goals, so you can win a tome you don't even want , just to sell it? I dunno, but I see something very wrong with that picture and already gave the arguments why it can be exploited by rolling new toons with easy goals, do them on freedom and Epic, and sell the tomes on Freedom/Chaos. 

 

 

but if i pay for the game why should the game limit me? Also how do you check who plays epic and who does not? If id play epic full time why should i not be able to do them while i am on freedom? Why do i have do it twice? Why does someone have a problem of me getting a winner title playing the fullest on 2 clusters and getting a tome for it? I have never understood the logic how i hurt you by doing that? Because it makes a paywall? Couldn't you do the same? You just choose not to. Ill +1 suggestion where it heavily gives you better chances to get a tome if you have more scenario points so the 300 point alt thing wont be worth it, but making it soulbound i wont support. Making anything soulbound in wurm would be dumb. 

Ill add also this - i did it for the title not tome. Winner sounds like one of the coolest titles ever. 

Edited June 15, 2018 by Wulfgarr

[Mclavin 3,704]

What about groups that want to share, why do I need 9 slimes, not everybody looks to sell. 

[JakeRivers 2,921]

I have no problem sharing my tome charges with friends.

[MrGARY 12,421]

As someone that admittedly "abused" alts in Valrei to increase chances of winning, its extremely easy to see how people just look past WHY it was actually necessary.  Back in the day, only one tome dropped with 3 charges, which meant that I'd spend countless hours and days and weeks and karma to just watch the tome go to people that cut one tree outside their deed, kill a bull, or play pve on deed making some chairs while they brag about how they did nothing and yet get a 3 charge tome.  Obviously the best way to fix this as a player is to increase the amount of accounts it can go to.  It is a crappy solution but the devs offered no solution of their own until it was changed to be 3 1 charge tomes, which was better but extremely far from perfect.  Nearly EVERYONE at least in MR still abused alts so to compete you had to use alts too, especially since 3 drops still meant 3 people with literally 1 point winning (until it was actually fixed to require 300 pts to get a ticket) and you didn't even need premium (which we constantly presented this specific issue to devs and took 5? years to get this very important fix in).  This new system actually encourages more alt use than before, given the fact that only one actual tome drops, so you need more alts to collect these stupid fragments if you are lucky enough to not get a lump, aside from the fact that Epic doesn't even have the playerbase to get all the rewards so if you don't use alts the fragments will go to no one at all...  But now that I've collected every tome I wanted on Epic and we don't need to complete tome goals anymore, Valrei isn't even useful or worth the time anymore.  Unless super bored, and which case there will still be alts because otherwise like said the fragments will go to no one.

 

With the epic to freedom "merge" I was denied the right to keep the used tomes that took me 5 years to fully accomplish so I must use the personal goal system to get back what I've earned and this obviously requires the use of alts and always will require the use of alts unless the option ever arises where you can use the same account over and over.  It's no secret based on how much certain people that know who they are whine about myself and another person that we "win' the game together and it's obvious why, the tomes are 3 charges, there are 2 of us, math is pretty easy.  Making the rewards attached to the account and only that account removes the multiplayer teamwork aspect of the game, which is not a very great idea in my opinion and I'm certain many others that win as a kingdom/friend/group would not like it either.  As hard as it was to tell on Epic, Wurm is in fact /not/ a singleplayer game.  On a side note its probably not very exciting that someones only option to "win' the game being a red cherry or white cherry (or white tome, or huge egg, or wand...), the ability to use alts makes it ok but if you couldn't trade tomes then that's bad. 

 

Ultimately none of this is really the players fault for any situation that has been presented.  It's the system.  Valrei has been nothing but the opposite of perfection.  Tome drops from uniques favor whoever had the most time/resources/luck.  Personal goals went from one extreme of "hard" to the other extreme of easy.  Restricting the tomes themselves is not the answer.  The real answer is probably a personal mission system with no competition that is repeatable without silly goals like a billion wine or repairs, not too easy not too hard and the prize is random from a moon lump type to a tome fragment.  Maybe even add in an extremely low chance to get a tome fragment from investigating, maybe even an extremely low chance to dig (dirt/sand) up a tome fragment the same as rare bones, could even add that same chance to mining (rock) so its not locked to one resource.  Maybe even add the key to freedom as a possible, where it can give the same up to 3 tomes as normal, with the ascended/planeswalker title, but no actual demigod on Valrei leaving that to Epic.  Maybe it even will require an overhaul of sorts on sorcery spells to balance the few that are "strong" and fix the 90% that aren't worth the karma cost, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  I've been waiting years for the distance on sorcery spell casting to be fixed inline with the same distance priest spells can be casted.  Imo, the passive buff/weaknesses that tomes give are the only thing really balanced in the sorcery system and are fine as is.

Edited June 15, 2018 by MrGARY

[Anarres 246]

On 6/15/2018 at 4:25 PM, elentari said:

 I don't see why it's ok to hop over to another (dead) server where you don't really want to play, just to do your goals, so you can win a tome you don't even want , just to sell it? 

Tomes have 3 charges on freedom. Of course people want them, you just can't use the other 2 charges on the same account, so they trade with each other.

 

The more important point, seems to me, is that I definitely don't see a problem in people hopping on Epic, and I did it too. I met nice people, I enjoyed immensely the skill transfer with curve applied - hey it makes one feel much "more skilled than they were" -, I loved seeing how you can start with nothing again, feels like an adventure.

 

No, it's not my wurm-home. So? I enjoy it anyway. I still enjoy it after I finished my goals.

I honestly don't see the problem with it, and I'm sorry to see that you do. You see, I also enjoy hopping on Exodus when there's a rift in a good timeframe for me. That's a server that was not my home in any sense, and there was an incentive beyond just "how 'bout just go to Exo tonight". It's the same thing for me, as with Epic. Do you think rifts should be walled off from players not on the server? Please don't.

 

It seems to me that the idea of the one-way skill transfer might have been exactly to get people to try Epic easily. They have this way reasonable means, and, with (some) goals, they have an initial incentive. It might work or might not work long time as you want, yes, I get that, but that's a different story. Your proposal here is only "deny freedomers any tangible incentive to try Epic!". I don't see at all how that helps Epic - or Freedom.

[Anarres 246]

On the initial proposal, to make them "soulbound", sure, could be considered, but you'd need to make tomes one charge for personal goals, don't touch uniques, and I'm not sure how well that would go with the players when 1) goals just became attainable, and 2) the goals system will disappear and be replaced with some other system. Maybe it's an idea to consider for that "other system", it seems late now for this one.

[Oblivionnreaver 5,174]

If it gave you 3x 1 charge tomes that you could only trade if you had already used that tome on that account it'd work i guess, seems like it's just a bandaid for the goals being way too easy that it's worthwhile to spam alts and do them.