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Roccandil

Making Wurm more fun for new players

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Wurm is all about things that take a long time, and it seems axiomatic that many players trying Wurm hit the slow grind and quit. So, unless we can find a previously untapped playerbase of Ents somewhere, the trick is keeping hastier players playing. :)

 

I don't think we can reasonably speed Wurm up, at least on Freedom, without upsetting the playerbase, but I also think there's room to keep players hooked. Specifically, Wurm could much better exploit micro-gratification.

 

That is, when a new player has to repeat lighting a campfire over and over again until they get a success, something's wrong. On the other hand, an action like digging always works if you have the skill, and provides critical RNG successes (gems, bones, etc.), but never random failures.

 

So, if Wurm were my game, here's what I'd do (on Epic, at least) to make the game more fun for new players:

 

1) Remove -all- RNG action failures

 

Whatever it took, I'd balance the game around this principle. I'd consider the long-term nature of the game a kind of contract with the player: yes, Wurm takes a long time to play, but -every- action you take will be worth a little something. I'll never ask you to risk time or effort on RNG gambling, because I respect the time you've spent playing.

 

I believe that principle would be felt and appreciated by newer players, and retain at least a few that would otherwise quit.

 

Ways I'd implement it:

 

- Remove action failures (balance by not allowing creation of items until your skill/tool QL is high enough).

- Remove imping failures (balance by lowering imp sizes).

- Always hit all stat/skillgain for every action, regardless of difficulty or your skill (Epic is close, but doesn't do this yet). So, if you dig, you'll always get digging/strength/body/stam/body/shovel/misc/mind logic/mind gains for every action. Balance gains accordingly.

- Remove shattering. (Design fun item sinks instead.)

- Make enchanting like imping; you want top of the line enchants, you've got to spend a lot of time on them, but following the principle of microgratification, not wild RNG.

- Remove wild RNG creation QL for things like locksmithing, metallurgy, natural substances, etc. You create based on an average of skill and mat QL, so 100 mat QL + 50 skill equals 75QL. That gives players a concrete reason to keep skilling (pun not intended! :P ).

 

2) Make the ideal skilling real work, not fakework

 

Currently, for many skills (especially imping-based skills), the player is rewarded for unnatural behaviors (using low QL tools on Freedom, only imping low QL items on Epic, self-damaging to lower stam bar, etc.), as well as action compression (the need to efficiently use sleep bonus and food affinities by skilling in long, action-dense sessions).

 

I consider all that "fakework", and as much as possible, I'd balance the game around the principle that real work should never have skillgain penalized. I want players to feel free to build, and explore, and have fun as they please in Wurm, and still know they're skilling efficiently, which means they're spending their time well.

 

Again, this is about respecting the time a player spends in the game.

 

Ways I'd implement it:

 

- Adjust sleep bonus to only be spent by action timers and/or skill ticks. That way a player could fire it up and forget and never waste a moment of SB. Balance SB gains accordingly.

- Adjust food affinities to only decay as your food bar decays (so not while you're offline). That way a player could fire up affinities, and do a skilling session broken up by real life, instead of being forced to spend hour(s) in a stretch to exploit them.

- As much as possible, remove difficulty as an effect on skillgain. Right now on Epic it's backwards from Freedom: you get more skill/stat ticks from lower difficulty than higher difficulty. If difficulty of action were irrelevant, then players could do what they wanted, and everything would skill them up the same rate. That means usefulness/fun becomes the driving factor for action choice, not the chore of skillgain. (That's a simplistic solution, I'll grant, and not perfect. A more complicated solution might be something like the knowledge system Fractured is planning to implement. Either way, I want players to feel free to have fun, and not be locked into weird skilling rituals to gain capabilities. I want to be able to skill weapon smithing by making useful weapons for my armory, not imping wooden spears and burning them down to low QL to maximize gains.)

 

3) Remove repetitive clicking

 

This may in part be answered by the new interface, but Wurm is full of carpal-tunnel-inducing actions. I'd relax those requirements as much as possible: I don't want my game abusing my players, and I'd err on that side.

 

Ways I'd implement it:

 

- Allow activities like wall mining to be gated by stamina bars, not queues. That is, one click, and your toon will mine forward/up/down until out of stamina or the wall breaks. I'd consider this for chopping wood, digging resources, chopping veggies, and other such actions. (As a rule, I'd consider queuing a tool for doing complex, diverse actions, while uniform, repetitive actions would be candidates for one-click stamina-gating, especially fast actions.)

- Remove any skill penalties for leveling dirt or rock.

- Repurpose mind logic, and give everyone the 10 queue slots by default. (I now have 7, but playing on an alt with 3 is just miserable for certain activities, especially with fast actions on Epic. Stamina-gating might mitigate this, though.)

- As much as possible, allow all kinds of actions, including imping, to be queued in the crafting window (or an analogue) via one-click queue-filling.

 

4) Expand in-game information available

 

This one is simple in concept: provide more in-game information on what various mechanics, gear, and skills are actually doing for you (enchants, CR, DR, resistances, parent skills, etc.). This draws people into the game, while also giving them more goals.

 

5) Allow all prem toons to ride horses

 

Self-explanatory. :)

 

Granted, I can't see much of that happening on Freedom, but I think it would be doable on Epic. The skill system was certainly a step in that direction.

Edited by Roccandil

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This sounds like WU to me... Two different games, I dont think WO should have such drastic changes.  That's why we have WU for an "easier" game.

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Yeah, I can't really see those changes on Freedom, but Epic already has started in that direction: skillgain is much faster and easier there (I know this from personal experience).

 

Plus, Epic doesn't have much of an existing playerbase to offend or economy to break, and it's supposed to be the fast cluster. I feel like Epic is the ideal place to draw in new players, not Freedom (unless Freedomers are all right with drastic changes).

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when epic went in the easier skillgain route 90% of players complained about how garbage it was.

 

Remove action failures Remove imping failures  Always hit all stat/skillgain for every action, regardless of difficulty or your skill  All that's doing is moving around stuff to give the impression that you've changed something. if you're looking at every single tick and complaining when you didn't get a body strength tick on that imp i'm not really sure what to tell you except that must strain your neck looking to the bottom right for hours on end. pretty much everyone i know either goes off hourly gains, or has skill ticks set to 1.0 and just skills without worrying about optimal ql and stuff. Wouldn't benefit new players as they have well over 50% skillgain rate, and would most likely lose the ability to craft lots of things that they would have had a low % chance to before. They also have skill ticks set to 1.0 by default.

 

 Remove shattering - metallic liquid

Make enchanting like imping i don't care either way i just pay people to do it even though i have a 99 channeling priest, but when i do cast it's about 15 minutes average for a 90+ cast, and imping something t hat doesnt have the 2x imp bonus can take well over 30 minutes.

 

Remove wild RNG creation QL for things like locksmithing, metallurgy, natural substances, etc. that actually makes the skils way worse, if i want a 99ql lock i can sit there and spam locks until i get the perfect one, if i need 90ql steel for my armor i can spam until i get enough and dump the rest into my creation bin, aint nobody gonna grind 87 metallurgy just to make steel plate. again, hourly average, don't look at the individual ql look at the ql of 100 and you can have your average ql idea.

 

the player is rewarded for unnatural behaviors (using low QL tools on Freedom) no no no that is not how you skill imping at all whoever told you that is trash at the game you get 95ql coc tools and you imp something at x.77+23, or within 5 points of your skill. low ql imping tools are complete and utter garbage and i borderline verbally abuse anyone that suggests them in alliance.

 

sleep bonus and food affinities are basic qol things, sleep bonus you can toggle on and off to use effectively, and affinity meals can last for well over 20 hours so having them not go down offline means that someone who doesn't play much could easily get a week of affinity off a single bite/drink so it's not gonna effect anyone with really good affinity meals but definitely nicer for the more casual player.

 

As much as possible, remove difficulty as an effect on skillgain. that's just removing probably the only interesting thing to play around with when skilling to bandaid a gaping hole in the chest that is new players in wurm. newbies are gonna dig dirt, mine stone, mine iron, cut down common trees, all of which are actions under 3 diff. if you use a 1ql tool after 40 you can get 50% skill gain rate mining iron/stone/digging dirt/chopping trees or whatever all the way up to 70 skill, and above 40% all the way up to 85. diff is literally only a thing for skilling above 90 in these cases. just because you don't understand a system doesn't mean it's locked into a weird skilling ritual, if you're at 90 skill you are considered a master at that craft and it'd only make sense you'd need to seek out new ways to grind instead of doing what you were always doing.

The logic of skillgain for things like gathering skills etc is time vs reward. You can mine that area with a woa pickaxe in 10 hours, or you can grab a coc low ql pickaxe, and spend an equal amount of time grinding to make it so you can mine that area with a woa pickaxe in 9 hours. you're rewarded for grinding that skill by being able to use it quicker

"not imping wooden spears and burning them down to low QL to maximize gains" that is literally an epic thing that you're assuming it's how it works on freedom. that's more of a "don't make epic skillgain trash" idea. again, you only use wooden spears after 90 to avoid tempering and you burn them down to within 5 points of your skill if you don't have 99ql logs because imbues don't work on chopping up so they're hard to get. I skilled to 95 pas just imping my entire scale set over and over and it ended up at 96ql each piece, i got leatherworking from 75-85 in the past just from imping my drake after hunting, you get plenty of skill without trying to set up the perfect skilling zone

 

Allow activities like wall mining to be gated by stamina bars, not queues. That is, one click  use a g-series or other programmable key to instantly fill your action queue, that suggestion just makes mind logic worthless.

 

 Remove any skill penalties for leveling dirt or rock. digging and mining are already insanely easy and go up naturally as you use them, i don't think i ever went out to skill digging until i was already 99+, and that was just from building my deed. use flat-raising if you want to grind skill and build at the same time.

 

As much as possible, allow all kinds of actions, including imping, to be queued in the crafting window (or an analogue) via one-click queue-filling. queue filling is already a thing with programmable keys, crafting menu that's just all kinds of abusable.

 

Allow all prem toons to ride horses horses are pretty much a necessity for hunting so don't really see why they couldn't make it so everyone can use horses, but you're capped at 20km/h unless you have over 21bc or something

Edited by Oblivionnreaver
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52 minutes ago, armyskin said:

I'm sorry you still don't understand skilling yet. 

 

This

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I think Epic has suffered enough with changes that weren't well thought out turning people who play there further into second-class customers. A large number of people quit after the new broken and unwanted skill system was put into place along with the nerfing of skills during transfer from the one time transfer. A rather disgusting sting is still felt on a daily basis by the people who remain from the on-going transfer system that is still in place. You should ask yourself why people don't play in your kingdom and not assume that there is not a community out there that still cares, because there is. This is NOT , and I repeat, it is NOT a test server. If they actually decide to put some love into something that could still be a great thing then people may return. If we keep heading in the wrong direction then there will not be anyone left at all.

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7 hours ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

when epic went in the easier skillgain route 90% of players complained about how garbage it was.

 

I wasn't one of them, but I was new. This is about attracting -new- players who wouldn't play under the old system, not mollifying old ones who were already happy with it.

 

Quote

Remove action failures Remove imping failures  Always hit all stat/skillgain for every action, regardless of difficulty or your skill  All that's doing is moving around stuff to give the impression that you've changed something. if you're looking at every single tick and complaining when you didn't get a body strength tick on that imp i'm not really sure what to tell you except that must strain your neck looking to the bottom right for hours on end. pretty much everyone i know either goes off hourly gains, or has skill ticks set to 1.0 and just skills without worrying about optimal ql and stuff. Wouldn't benefit new players as they have well over 50% skillgain rate, and would most likely lose the ability to craft lots of things that they would have had a low % chance to before. They also have skill ticks set to 1.0 by default.

 

If you don't get why a return on investment is important for every action in a game like Wurm, I can't help you. :( Maybe I just can't articulate it, but I can see it.

 

Quote

Remove wild RNG creation QL for things like locksmithing, metallurgy, natural substances, etc. that actually makes the skils way worse, if i want a 99ql lock i can sit there and spam locks until i get the perfect one, if i need 90ql steel for my armor i can spam until i get enough and dump the rest into my creation bin, aint nobody gonna grind 87 metallurgy just to make steel plate. again, hourly average, don't look at the individual ql look at the ql of 100 and you can have your average ql idea.

 

Sit and spam. Exactly. That may appeal to a small subset of the gaming population, but this is about appealing to more than just the people who already are playing the game.

 

Quote

the player is rewarded for unnatural behaviors (using low QL tools on Freedom) no no no that is not how you skill imping at all whoever told you that is trash at the game you get 95ql coc tools and you imp something at x.77+23, or within 5 points of your skill. low ql imping tools are complete and utter garbage and i borderline verbally abuse anyone that suggests them in alliance.

 

Granted, I can't speak to Freedom skilling, just what I read on the wiki/forums. On Epic, however, you're certainly rewarded for doing odd stuff.

 

Quote

sleep bonus and food affinities are basic qol things, sleep bonus you can toggle on and off to use effectively, and affinity meals can last for well over 20 hours so having them not go down offline means that someone who doesn't play much could easily get a week of affinity off a single bite/drink so it's not gonna effect anyone with really good affinity meals but definitely nicer for the more casual player.

 

If someone gets a week out of a 20-hour affinity, awesome.

 

Quote

As much as possible, remove difficulty as an effect on skillgain. that's just removing probably the only interesting thing to play around with when skilling to bandaid a gaping hole in the chest that is new players in wurm. newbies are gonna dig dirt, mine stone, mine iron, cut down common trees, all of which are actions under 3 diff. if you use a 1ql tool after 40 you can get 50% skill gain rate mining iron/stone/digging dirt/chopping trees or whatever all the way up to 70 skill, and above 40% all the way up to 85. diff is literally only a thing for skilling above 90 in these cases. just because you don't understand a system doesn't mean it's locked into a weird skilling ritual, if you're at 90 skill you are considered a master at that craft and it'd only make sense you'd need to seek out new ways to grind instead of doing what you were always doing.

 

I'm speaking from Epic. You are rewarded for -low- difficulty actions and -punished- for anything higher. Removing difficulty from the equation on Epic simply means players could also efficiently skill up doing higher difficulty stuff.

 

Sure, it'd be great if difficulty could matter in a good way, and I might tackle that in a second round, but perfect is the enemy of good enough.

 

Quote

The logic of skillgain for things like gathering skills etc is time vs reward. You can mine that area with a woa pickaxe in 10 hours, or you can grab a coc low ql pickaxe, and spend an equal amount of time grinding to make it so you can mine that area with a woa pickaxe in 9 hours. you're rewarded for grinding that skill by being able to use it quicker

 

Not how it works on Epic. Your rate of gain is not affected at all by WoA, as long as you can keep doing the actions (WoA just means you run out of possible actions faster).

 

So, on Epic, you can do things as fast as possible and still get maximum rate of skillgain.

 

Quote

"not imping wooden spears and burning them down to low QL to maximize gains" that is literally an epic thing that you're assuming it's how it works on freedom.

 

This suggestion is tailored for Epic, which I stated, though perhaps I didn't make it clear enough.

 

Quote

Allow activities like wall mining to be gated by stamina bars, not queues. That is, one click  use a g-series or other programmable key to instantly fill your action queue, that suggestion just makes mind logic worthless.

 

Ming logic should do something else, as far as I'm concerned. And why put the burden of accessibility on the player? As a developer, that's something I'd -want- to take care of for my guests.

 

Quote

 Remove any skill penalties for leveling dirt or rock. digging and mining are already insanely easy and go up naturally as you use them, i don't think i ever went out to skill digging until i was already 99+, and that was just from building my deed. use flat-raising if you want to grind skill and build at the same time.

 

So what if no one uses it to skill? It's the principle of the thing.

 

Quote

As much as possible, allow all kinds of actions, including imping, to be queued in the crafting window (or an analogue) via one-click queue-filling. queue filling is already a thing with programmable keys, crafting menu that's just all kinds of abusable.

 

Screw that perspective. If I make a game, I'm doing everything I can to avoid abusing my players.

 

At any rate, my basic impression of your post is that you're a veteran player mostly happy with the way things are, and as such, you're an excellent example of why Freedom can never be changed to attract new players.

 

As far as I can tell, the only chance the game really has to draw significant numbers of -new- players is Epic. (And I'm -not- speaking of Epic vets who want to go back to how things were, either.)

Edited by Roccandil

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3 hours ago, Challenge said:

I think Epic has suffered enough with changes that weren't well thought out turning people who play there further into second-class customers. A large number of people quit after the new broken and unwanted skill system was put into place along with the nerfing of skills during transfer from the one time transfer.

 

As I've said, the new skill system is, in my view, a huge improvement, and I refuse to play under the "broken" Freedom skill system.

 

As far as I can tell, many of the people who ditched Epic did so, not because of the mechanics of the new system, because they cared about the monetary value of their accounts. That's their business, but I'm totally against catering to that mindset.

 

Either way, appealing to new players is about appealing to people who -didn't- like the old way, and wouldn't play under it.

 

3 hours ago, Challenge said:

A rather disgusting sting is still felt on a daily basis by the people who remain from the on-going transfer system that is still in place. You should ask yourself why people don't play in your kingdom and not assume that there is not a community out there that still cares, because there is. This is NOT , and I repeat, it is NOT a test server.

 

At this point, I see very little risk to continuing to follow the course set by the Epic skillgain change: there are few people left to lose, and many potential people to gain.

 

3 hours ago, Challenge said:

If they actually decide to put some love into something that could still be a great thing then people may return. If we keep heading in the wrong direction then there will not be anyone left at all.

 

I'm not interested in trying to get old players to return. I want to see new people come, and that means new ways of doing things.

 

And that means incompatibility with Freedom.

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5 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

As far as I can tell, many of the people who ditched Epic did so, not because of the mechanics of the new system, because they cared about the monetary value of their accounts. That's their business, but I'm totally against catering to that mindset.

if that was the case they'd be skilling on freedom and porting over to epic to play, but that's not the case, accounts are worthless for the amount of time put into them anyway. everyone left epic because valrei is fundamentally broken, elevation is an insanely bland map, updates happen maybe once every 6 months and there's 0 updates or hints at future updates for epic.

 

7 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

As I've said, the new skill system is, in my view, a huge improvement, and I refuse to play under the "broken" Freedom skill system.

your skilling system is the one that you're imping 1ql wooden spears to grind and punished for high diff actions, not freedom. If i want to skill on gold at 40 mining i can get a 90ql pick and it skills just as well as a 1ql on rock, doesn't sound broken to me, there's a solution to nearly everything if you work it out on the freedom system but on epic you're forced to do it in a certain way? why's that better? I think you might be the single person in the game that thinks epics skillgain is a better way than freedoms, but from what i gather you've never skilled on freedom so your opinion on it is ??? "If you don't get why a return on investment is important for every action in a game like Wurm, I can't help you.  Maybe I just can't articulate it, but I can see it." if someone needs confetti every time they click a button i highly doubt they're going to stick around to play wurm regardless of whether the confetti is half sized every action or full sized every second action. You're trying to attract the gamers that enjoy 5 minute phone games and battle royales to a game that it can take hours just to do something slightly better, it's just not going to work.

32 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

Sit and spam. Exactly. That may appeal to a small subset of the gaming population, but this is about appealing to more than just the people who already are playing the game.

instead of getting the option tom sit and spam for small amounts of higher ql stuff, it's grind locked. going from being able to grind the skill and get consistent high ql mats or spam at low skill and get it, to only being able to grind the skill? why's that better? it's taking away options for no good reason.

 

44 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

At any rate, my basic impression of your post is that you're a veteran player mostly happy with the way things are, and as such, you're an excellent example of why Freedom can never be changed to attract new players.

well that's just your opinion, freedom has a much higher new player retention than epic, and freedoms player retention isn't good to start with.

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As much as possible, remove difficulty as an effect on skillgain. that's just removing probably the only interesting thing to play around with when skilling to bandaid a gaping hole in the chest that is new players in wurm. newbies are gonna dig dirt, mine stone, mine iron, cut down common trees, all of which are actions under 3 diff. if you use a 1ql tool after 40 you can get 50% skill gain rate mining iron/stone/digging dirt/chopping trees or whatever all the way up to 70 skill, and above 40% all the way up to 85. diff is literally only a thing for skilling above 90 in these cases. just because you don't understand a system doesn't mean it's locked into a weird skilling ritual, if you're at 90 skill you are considered a master at that craft and it'd only make sense you'd need to seek out new ways to grind instead of doing what you were always doing.

 

I'm going to revisit this. You speak of the Freedom difficulty system as being a good thing, yet both on Epic and Freedom, at least for imping skillgain, you're rewarded for imping one kind of item to death: say, horseshoes for blacksmithing.

 

That's never made sense to me; I can seriously grind shipbuilding just imping tenons? Or WS just imping carving knives? If I were going to seriously design a skilling system, I'd fix that, and -not- via difficulty. One way would be a bounty system for every possible different action done under a skill.

 

For instance, for blacksmithing, I'd give a skillgain boost for X number of horseshoe imps. Once you hit X, you no longer get the boost, -but-, you could get the boost for X imps of cauldrons. And so on through every item known to blacksmiths.

 

That makes a lot more sense to me than the difficulty system.

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again, the imping thing is the same as gathering, if you want the most skill imp something to x.77+23 constantly, if you want slightly slower gains but more stuff to show for it imp lots of things slightly under your skill. If you "want" to imp different things you're free to but it's just convenient to imp one thing, generally something you want rare.

 

that just sounds like adding tedium for no good reason, which is something you were against not 2 posts ago.

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1 minute ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

if that was the case they'd be skilling on freedom and porting over to epic to play, but that's not the case, accounts are worthless for the amount of time put into them anyway. everyone left epic because valrei is fundamentally broken, elevation is an insanely bland map, updates happen maybe once every 6 months and there's 0 updates or hints at future updates for epic.

 

Oddly, I've seen a lot more players since the update than before, precisely from Freedomers porting over.

 

1 minute ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

your skilling system is the one that you're imping 1ql wooden spears to grind and punished for high diff actions, not freedom. If i want to skill on gold at 40 mining i can get a 90ql pick and it skills just as well as a 1ql on rock, doesn't sound broken to me, there's a solution to nearly everything if you work it out on the freedom system but on epic you're forced to do it in a certain way? why's that better?

 

RNG is almost a non-entity in Epic skilling: no more crazy need to get a 1-39 roll to get a skill tick. Ticks are nearly constant, when done right.

 

Whatever the oddities involved, that in itself is worth it to me (and it's not close).

 

1 minute ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

I think you might be the single person in the game that thinks epics skillgain is a better way than freedoms, but from what i gather you've never skilled on freedom so your opinion on it is ???

 

I've actually skilled on Freedom, before the update, because I was getting kinda meh on Epic. Epic had been fun until I hit the need to do serious grinding, and learned about the 1-39 roll thing. The skillgain update brought me back to Epic, and I won't go back to the old skill system. If it's reintroduced on Epic, I'm gone.

 

1 minute ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

"If you don't get why a return on investment is important for every action in a game like Wurm, I can't help you.  Maybe I just can't articulate it, but I can see it." if someone needs confetti every time they click a button i highly doubt they're going to stick around to play wurm regardless of whether the confetti is half sized every action or full sized every second action. You're trying to attract the gamers that enjoy 5 minute phone games and battle royales to a game that it can take hours just to do something slightly better, it's just not going to work.

 

No, I'm trying to attract more gamers like me. :) It's about microgratification, not instant gratification. It's about removing mechanics that disrespect the time a player has put into the game. It's about removing mechanics that needlessly cause frustration, and push people away.

 

1 minute ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

instead of getting the option tom sit and spam for small amounts of higher ql stuff, it's grind locked. going from being able to grind the skill and get consistent high ql mats or spam at low skill and get it, to only being able to grind the skill? why's that better? it's taking away options for no good reason.

 

I get that that's bad from someone used to the old system, but I'm looking at it from the perspective of someone who's never played the game before. Even now, I'd much prefer to have the skills mean something, than stop grinding metallurgy when chance to create steel hits 99%.

 

1 minute ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

well that's just your opinion, freedom has a much higher new player retention than epic, and freedoms player retention isn't good to start with.

 

Epic is still hard on new players, and there's much less of a support system in place. I'd speculate it's the existing Freedom player base that contributes more to player retention there (that's why I left Epic for Freedom way back before the update).

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If you "want" to imp different things you're free to but it's just convenient to imp one thing, generally something you want rare. that just sounds like adding tedium for no good reason, which is something you were against not 2 posts ago.

 

Tedium? For being rewarded for building (and imping) every item governed by a skill? That seems more interesting than just imping a scale glove! :) As a matter of fact, I know it's more interesting, because the Epic crafting missions that had me build things I'd never built before were always especially fun.

 

The primary point, however, is that "skilling via difficulty" is touted as being more realistic, but how is learning everything about weaponsmithing by just imping carving knives realistic?

 

Truth is, I'm not prioritizing realism. Reality's got entropy in it. :( Games are a way to escape entropy for a little while, so in my view, stacking entropy in them is counter-productive. I'd avoid that as much as possible...

 

That's why as a general principle I want players to be able to do anything powered by a skill, and gain skill at the same basic rate, because players will thus be doubly rewarded for skilling while doing something useful, which, ironically, adds a realistic immersion to the game. Imagine skilling weaponsmithing while actually being a functional weaponsmith (and not having to worry about cramming a bunch of actions together)!

 

Chess moves like that are a large part of what makes Wurm fun (for me, anyhow).

Edited by Roccandil

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4 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

I get that that's bad from someone used to the old system, but I'm looking at it from the perspective of someone who's never played the game before. Even now, I'd much prefer to have the skills mean something, than stop grinding metallurgy when chance to create steel hits 99%.

why would a new player like having their ql capped by skill instead of having it be able to be as high as the ql of the material theyre using? why would this even matter to a new player? what new player is even worried about steel when they don't have iron or charcoal? You're aware higher metallurgy increases the average ql of what you get already? 50 skill with 50ql charcoal would get 46ql average lumps whereas a 90 skill would get 65ql average? 90ql charcoal would be 66ql average at 50 skill and 79ql average at 90 skill. skill and tool ql are equally important for creation ql, 99% create chance doesn't mean you're making it as high ql as you can.

 

12 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

Oddly, I've seen a lot more players since the update than before, precisely from Freedomers porting over.

90% of the time it's for personal goals and to jerk around in pvp for an hour before realizing there isnt any.

 

But for your "epic is the place for new players" that's just not going to work. on average, around 90% of players in your average mmo want 0% to do with pvp, and epic is a pvp enabled server. even in freedom you still get the occasional "don't go to pvp you'll instantly get ganked and camped at the starter town" by people assuming that's how pvp in any game works, and if someone's learning a new game, with the option between pvp and pve, they are going to choose pve nearly all the time. Trying to make a pvp server the "new player experience" is a guaranteed death sentence.

3 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

Tedium? For being rewarded for building (and imping) every item governed by a skill? That seems more interesting than just imping a scale glove!

you were saying not long ago that you should be rewarded for everything you do, that would be locking skillgain potential behind forced actions, which is the exact opposite of what you said you were trying to fix.you may see it as interesting but others will go "oh i have to imp a bedside table then throw it out to skill the best how boring"

5 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

That's Freedom, not Epic. On Epic, you imp the same thing at low QL forever.

you mentioned freedom skilling/imping a few times i honestly dont know if you're talking about both or just epic

 

7 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

That's why as a general principle I want players to be able to do anything powered by a skill, and gain skill at the same basic rate, because players will thus be doubly rewarded for skilling while doing something useful, which, ironically, adds a realistic immersion to the game.

that already happens, if you make a tool you get skill if you imp it up you get skill if you build a house you get skill if you dig dirt you get skill etc etc etc. It's not being penalized for not being as much as the best way, the best way is buffed because it's the most effective way, which may not be the most straightforward. 

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13 hours ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

why would a new player like having their ql capped by skill instead of having it be able to be as high as the ql of the material theyre using? why would this even matter to a new player? what new player is even worried about steel when they don't have iron or charcoal? You're aware higher metallurgy increases the average ql of what you get already? 50 skill with 50ql charcoal would get 46ql average lumps whereas a 90 skill would get 65ql average? 90ql charcoal would be 66ql average at 50 skill and 79ql average at 90 skill. skill and tool ql are equally important for creation ql, 99% create chance doesn't mean you're making it as high ql as you can.

 

I know I'd love to see QL capped by an average of skill and mat QL. That means I have hard goals, with easy to see improvement as I gain skill.

 

Right now the effect is so unseeable that it's not worth bothering. Contrarily, it was more fun grinding beverages, because I could see the juice QL slowly rising as I gained skill: there was an immediate, visible effect to the gains, which kept me going.

 

As a developer, I'd want that everywhere possible.

 

13 hours ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

But for your "epic is the place for new players" that's just not going to work. on average, around 90% of players in your average mmo want 0% to do with pvp, and epic is a pvp enabled server. even in freedom you still get the occasional "don't go to pvp you'll instantly get ganked and camped at the starter town" by people assuming that's how pvp in any game works, and if someone's learning a new game, with the option between pvp and pve, they are going to choose pve nearly all the time. Trying to make a pvp server the "new player experience" is a guaranteed death sentence.

 

I realize PvP is scary to some folks, but what are we going to do, create a new PvE island/cluster with fast skilling like Epic? (Was something like that tried already?)

 

We need a place to attract new people, and while not perfect, Epic seems like the best overall candidate.

 

13 hours ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

you were saying not long ago that you should be rewarded for everything you do, that would be locking skillgain potential behind forced actions, which is the exact opposite of what you said you were trying to fix.

 

I actually agree. I brought it up, however, as an example of why the realism defense of "skilling by difficulty" is weak. :) That is, if you're a master, sure, learning by doing harder stuff makes sense realistically, but then so does learning by doing everything related to a skill, and not just imping horseshoes/spindles/whatever.

 

So, I'm not prioritizing realism: I'm prioritizing freedom. Allow players to do what they want and still skill up effectively, without being tied to a specific course of action.

 

13 hours ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

you mentioned freedom skilling/imping a few times i honestly dont know if you're talking about both or just epic

 

That's probably on me: some points (like the point about realism) seem to apply to both clusters, but the overall thrust of the suggestion is for Epic, since I know these changes will never work for the playerbase on Freedom.

 

13 hours ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

that already happens, if you make a tool you get skill if you imp it up you get skill if you build a house you get skill if you dig dirt you get skill etc etc etc. It's not being penalized for not being as much as the best way, the best way is buffed because it's the most effective way, which may not be the most straightforward. 

 

It doesn't happen that way on Epic, and seems like it would be easy to fix there: just remove whatever's reducing skill/stat tick rate on higher difficulty actions. (I'm wondering if that penalty's a bug.)

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If epic was meant to be pvp focused and easier to get into, why can chaos sermon spam to reset prayers but epic can't? Lol fix that and it helps both vets and new players on epic.

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1 hour ago, totties said:

If epic was meant to be pvp focused and easier to get into, why can chaos sermon spam to reset prayers but epic can't? Lol fix that and it helps both vets and new players on epic.

 

What do you mean? I've leveled multiple priests to 100 faith on Epic, and didn't have any trouble resetting prayers.

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My apologies, good thing it was fixed. Few months ago it wasnt resetting for us. Didn't make sense.

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