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How do you think the wurm population could recover?

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2 hours ago, HexD said:

...Stop updating Wurm Online and Unlimited, put all resources into remaking the game from scratch...

 

With the current team, how long before they produce a beta even? 2 years? 5 years? Meanwhile the existing population, left with 0 updates, will die out more.

 

I say advertising is the way to go. I'm glad something is cooking. Better late than never. Wurm is not, and will not be, a mainstream game. Fact is 90% of the gaming crowd will be turned off by its nature (grindy, rng etc that's been talked about to death). While I also believe that Wurm's already got most of the players it's ever going to get, there are still some out there in the wild. Advertising will hopefully get them. When they come to Wurm, all we can do is try to retain them while their fight/flight reflexes fire away, and try to sway that tug of war in our favour.

 

+1 also to the suggestion about offering free 1-month prem with every WU purchase.

Edited by Mataleao

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1 month of free premium on buying WU copy is nice, in theory.

 

For pve it would do.

 

But let's say that player is pvp oriented and wants to try pvp server. He logs in on one of the Epic servers, see all the emptiness and leave.

 

So, maybe first, situation with all the pvp servers should be fixed.

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2 hours ago, Wilczan said:

1 month of free premium on buying WU copy is nice, in theory.

 

For pve it would do.

 

But let's say that player is pvp oriented and wants to try pvp server. He logs in on one of the Epic servers, see all the emptiness and leave.

 

So, maybe first, most PVP servers should be closed.

 

Fixed that for you

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 ADVERTISE IS PROB RIGHT .I FOUND THIS GAME BY ACCIDENT NO ONE NOWS ABOUT IT ITS A TREASURE WELL HIDDEN .  PUT ON  INTERNET. TV, ADS, STEAM AD .GIVE 1 MTHS FREE PREM YES   BUY THE PORCHE NEXT YR . PUT THE PRICES DOWN , PVP IS  DONE N DUSTED  .  MAKE AREAS WERE NEW U GO TO RAID AVERAGE STUFF NOT REAL GOOD STUFF AS THE BIG GUNS WILL JUST TAKE EVERYTHING ,MAKE DIFFERENT GUARDS A BIT LESS SLOWER N WEEKER TO PROTECT THESE AREAS . A COUPLE OF PUZZLES ,A AREA WERE UPTO 5 STRANGERS CAN FORM A GROUP TO GO IN OR ON OWN TO RAID A TUNNEL TO ISLAND  A TIME LIMIT TO GET IN AND OUT.

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43 minutes ago, christopher said:

SHOUTING

 

So basically get rid of the sandbox element and make a wow clone, where the game tells you what to do next.  No thanks.

 

Wurm is always going to be niche.  And it brings a level of complexity only some of the other long-running indy games compare to - Dwarf Fortress springs to mind.  That's always going to be a bit of a niche appeal, but some advertising or PR beyond our current base does feel like it would be helpful.

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3 hours ago, Mataleao said:

 

With the current team, how long before they produce a beta even? 2 years? 5 years? Meanwhile the existing population, left with 0 updates, will die out more.

 

I say advertising is the way to go. I'm glad something is cooking. Better late than never. Wurm is not, and will not be, a mainstream game. Fact is 90% of the gaming crowd will be turned off by its nature (grindy, rng etc that's been talked about to death). While I also believe that Wurm's already got most of the players it's ever going to get, there are still some out there in the wild. Advertising will hopefully get them. When they come to Wurm, all we can do is try to retain them while their fight/flight reflexes fire away, and try to sway that tug of war in our favour.

 

+1 also to the suggestion about offering free 1-month prem with every WU purchase.



Probably aye, we still don't have advertising and its been nearly 16 years. It really isn't difficult to advertise and yet it's never been done because of Wurms limitations, it just can't handle the potential amounts of players that advertising might bring in. Servers being unplayable will kill a game quicker than anything I've come across.

At some point you just have to let things go, bite the bullet and move on. Like Rolf did.

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I am one of the few players that actually played without bigger breaks for soon 9+ years, almost 10.

 

I hope that focus will be on things I can keep on doing with my friends and not necessary whole player base like rifts.

 

The combat system could need a major update so you actually can influence the outcome of the fight and it not just based on random or way to easy. Another thing is to make fighting challenging for a small group in pve. One where each player had an unique role so there could be challenges where you actually had to work together like in other group focused mmo.

 

All the changes to wurm made it easier and easier and made you less and less depend on other players. Example most weapons could not be mailed so each weapon smith had their local customers now 2-3 weapon smiths can support all 7 Freedom servers.

 

I actually hate grinding skills and only do it when there is no other way. Mining is the only skill I really felt that I grinded and used loads of sleep powders. I don't want faster skills I just want the grinding part reduced where you have to do special things to get skill like use crap ql tools. In my opinion skills should always be gained by normal game play.

 

I think there should be more focus on fixing bugs. Many bugs often major bugs existing for years. Bugs where player need help from GM to play the game should have highest priority. Higher priority than adding new features.

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3 hours ago, Sklo:D said:

 

Fixed that for you

Suuuuure, so pvp players won't even touch this game. Good business model.

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16 hours ago, Retrograde said:

Something to do when not grinding for skill alone. 

 

Well, if that's the approach it won't be successful at all. I know we are way past the point where games would be played for intrinsic reward alone, but advertising Wurm as "we have other things to do when we aren't literally Progress Quest" is not exactly appealing. I guess the new fishing system was designed with this mindset: Unusable by newbies and primarily anchored in skill grind.

 

Wurm Online's USP is its persistent world backed with a sense of authenticity. Minecraft's worlds are ephemeral in comparison. That aspect should be expanded and emphasised.

 

And on the technical front: JWS is deprecated. It's way past time for a standalone launcher for WO. Depending on the Oracle JDK is also a huge problem because ideally, you'd bundle a JRE with the launcher and I bet Oracle would want money for that. The path forward would be bundling OpenJDK on Windows and working with OpenJDK everywhere else. I doubt I'm telling you anything new, but from my view this issue is pretty dire.

 

It all comes down to friction, though the issues around Java are more like a brick wall. To say nothing about the bad reputation Java has because of applets.

Edited by Batolemaeus
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Long story short; it isn't going to.

 

WO is directly competing with WU, and price wise WO works out much more expensive pretty quicky (strangely enough, given wurm's age demographic, the people who play it can usually perform simple multiplication...).  4 months premium, or a game for life.  It isn't hard (especially given how long some of the WU servers have been running now).

 

Until WO has a GENUINE free to play (NOT free to try) offering, the population is never going to rise because of the aformentioned competition.  Of course, this will never happen.

 

The other option is to remove updates from WU, but that's just a *palm*-hole move that no-one really wants.  This is probably more likely than the latter option though.

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30 minutes ago, Batolemaeus said:

Wurm Online's USP is its persistent world backed with a sense of authenticity. Minecraft's worlds are ephemeral in comparison. That aspect should be expanded and emphasised.

 

This. This is what Wurm really offers: a massive, persistent, changeable world. That's the core value of Wurm (and what keeps me playing).

 

Making that more approachable is what Wurm needs.

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same questions just another noob last 5 year.....  this is only way...    

   i stop spending money since community didnt spendt a panny

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12 hours ago, Wilczan said:

Suuuuure, so pvp players won't even touch this game. Good business model.

 

What would be different compared to now? ?

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37 minutes ago, Sklo:D said:

 

What would be different compared to now? ?

I guess topic is aiming for future "better" not now.

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4 minutes ago, Wilczan said:

I guess topic is aiming for future "better" not now.

 

There is no way to fill up 5 PvP servers at once. That would require the biggest hype Wurm has ever seen. And this hype will not come from PvP updates.

 

Close 4 and concentrate on one that is the best option.

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23 hours ago, christopher said:

im fine with it but 16 ero plus 3 for my place a mth in aust dollars is 30 dollars ish .   kids    wanna play but u are taking them     out of it    . and the more who play the more fun and run amok the atmosphere .

 

If you pay 16 euro/mth for sub it means that you play 2 premed players, and not even economically, because you could do a 1yr sub for 80euro/player*yr meaning 13euro/mth for 2 premed players. In mainstream games, 16 to 20 euro/month for a single account is a "normal" price. So WO is not expensive at all when it comes to subs.

 

As to the deed, a minimum deed costs 2.42s for the tiles plus upkeep of 1s/mth. An upkeep of 3s/mth spells a fairly well sized deed around 20x18 tiles. Yet even 3s/mth can easily be paid from ingame revenues from killing/foraging/selling to token or selling rares etc., I never had less than 5 to 10s gains per month so far.

 

It is simply untrue that WO is expensive. Granted, one may run deeds for 50eu/mth upkeep or in excess, have 6 premed players/alts etc., and buy lots of silver at the shop. Even then, there are more expensive hobbies out in the world. Please do not spread wrong and untrue rumours.

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1 hour ago, Flubb said:

Largely the same problem as with Java I think. Different runtime platforms for different systems. This would change with .NET Core but I'm not sure it's an all that viable option yet.

And when you port over to another language, even one as similar as C# (from a Java perspective), you might aswell go ahead and recode the thing.

The problem with .NET, and C#, is that it is even more proprietary and therefore left to the grace of Microsoft than Java is with Oracle. As to languages, it depends, I despise C#, an even worse abomination of C than C++, even more than I despise Java :). But that is left to the coders. And Flubb is right, changing the programming language is not an option.

 

I even don't think that most of the complaints about "unmodern" client and UI are justified. "Modern design" will always be a moving target, and I do not see so much where Wurm is really dated. The appearance is better and prettier than that of most actual mainstream games I saw or tried lately, and every UI of any complex game must be learned and trained. Once one has done that, it may be "outdated" already.

 

1 hour ago, Flubb said:

Wouldn't mind having actual 3D caves and bridges that can overlap with houses, this limitation feels the most incredibly archaic of all things that make WO so terribly dated.

 

Here again, I do not see any game which is really competing with Wurm when it comes to building the world. Most "true 3D" games are precooked stuff you cannot modify. So I fail to see that "terribly dated" argument to be valid. Where in mainstream games are you able to build bridges and houses, inside or outside caves, even not overlapping or diagonally? And yes, if there were a way other than complete redesign to extend the possibilities it would be nice.

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15 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

Here again, I do not see any game which is really competing with Wurm when it comes to building the world. Most "true 3D" games are precooked stuff you cannot modify. So I fail to see that "terribly dated" argument to be valid. Where in mainstream games are you able to build bridges and houses, inside or outside caves, even not overlapping or diagonally? And yes, if there were a way other than complete redesign to extend the possibilities it would be nice.

 

Space/medival engineers comes to mind. Minecraft as the go to comparison, too. If we're comparing WO to "most 3D games" you're right, but most games aren't even sandbox games, so if that's not a disingenuous comparison, it's a lackluster one. Even 7 Days To Die has more "degrees" of freedom in terms of where you may build.

Granted, S/ME with all it's voxely glory has massive performance issues for "normal multiplayer" alone, and the 7D model would likely not be feasible either. (Though that may change with the evershrinking popualtion.)

What I mean with "dated", however, is less the cultural shift in approaching sandbox games with modifiable worlds ever since WO was first conceived and more the architectural limitations of modelling the world in one "surface" layer and clobbering additional layers ontop/beneath that. Perhaps there could be a way of recoding it with arbitrary numbers of layers in mind, but these may be hard to consolidate into a consistent "3D" world.

Point is, the kind of limitations seen don't hold up to modern sandbox games.

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You don't need to use Oracle's distribution of Java at all, I don't know why that keeps coming up.

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When having a closer look at the figures Roccandil presented, it seems that the number of PvE players nowadays is largely the same as mid 2012 (by chance the time when I first played Wurm for a couple of weeks), then there was a steep and amazing increase with v1.0 nearly doubling player numbers, and a decline since, interrupted by the Xanadu foundation to some extent.

 

Two questions arise:

- How was the influx of players around 2012/13 achieved, was there a massive PR campaign, or mouth propaganda by players, or what else? What can be learned from that?

- As the main bloodletting on the long range happened in PvP, can anything be done about, and what? There have been discussions about already, though the results seem inconclusive so far.

 

To what I recognize since I started playing end of 2017 the player population in PvE seems stable to me, rather slightly growing than shrinking. Granted that is mainly based on player figures given by /who and on login, but I do not see the dramatic loss of players lately.

 

One should accept that Wurm is and always was a niche game. When I started and played on a basic acc for the first 40 days I saw about 15 or bit more new players logging in and playing a while. None of them stayed for long. My impression was that there could have been more attention towards newcomers. Though I preferred and still prefer to be largely on my own, I missed a bit ways to join the community other than becoming a villager. It needs some time and patience to come into contact with others. I do not know whether that improved with the foundation of Havens Landing but that was certainly a step in the right direction.

 

As to PvP, I personally am sure that I would never play on Chaos with my main character risking my affinities being destroyed. I might though (once I get the time for) join a PvP community on Epic, given the ways to switch characters between the two types of clusters. Insofar I do not see that shutting down Epic would be a way, at least not for me. But I have no idea how representative such a view is. Obviously it is not at the moment. Getting new PvP players will be hard though. That kind of players is a spoiled and demanding crowd out in the MMO world, and has tons of opportunities on dedicated PvP games everywhere.

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What other game costs as much as Wurm Online, and limits you to a single character for that cost?

What other game punishes your actions with fails to make the game more interesting and fun?

What other game gives lower skill gains per action to lengthen the amount of time it takes to accomplish something?

What other game has no real end game for the first 10 years of game play?

What other game still parties like it's 1999?

 

What other game has such a devoted fan-base that is worried sick about it's future!

 

I don't know either.

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19 minutes ago, Eyesgood said:

What other game still parties like it's 1999

 

You say that like it's a bad thing :P

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On 3/25/2019 at 4:38 AM, HexD said:

Stop updating Wurm Online and Unlimited, put all resources into remaking the game from scratch. Designed using modern understanding and keeping it bare bones (no theme park).

When your product is inferior the only way to get people to buy it again is by getting a new product through re-branding the same inferior product or via a new product that's superior to its predecessor. Wurm is not a widely known game but it's known enough to have had it's reputation damaged as everyone I've spoken to that has heard of it says the same thing, it's dated and takes no skill. Long gone are the days where game play was king, now days it's all about bling and hype regardless of game play and we live in a generation where gamer's want instant gratification, straight to the fun bits, there is no journey. Thanks to streaming if your game isn't fun to watch someone else being successful/terrible at it then it's not a popular game and if games aren't popular they are uncool and have a stigma associated with them.

 

We Wurmians are a niche, by putting Wurm into the cross hairs of reviewers and streamers to take a dump on will only damage the game further. One way to bypass this is to present them with a new game, one they can't dismiss as being dated because it'll be brand new, unknown and exciting which will create hype and with lots of hype, even shite games will succeed for a time so a remade, polished Wurm will be good for another 16 years no problem.

Remaking would solve a lot of the problem encountered from old code where we hear the devs say '"Can't do that because of the way it's coded" and similar statements to that effect. Through no fault of Rolf, he did his best and he did great but as far as Wurm evolution goes there has to be a point where a restart is the better choice, not dissimilar to our map resets. Once we get past a certain point it becomes more hassle to try and fix the damage done to the map then it would be to remake it, it's the same for the code base. We take what has been learned and apply it to a new version.

 

So in my opinion the only way to save Wurm is to let it die and be reborn from the ashes.
 

While I agree with you on some points, the game is actually fixable. The biggest issue right now is the user interface and GUI.

 

 

On 3/25/2019 at 6:16 AM, Mataleao said:

 

With the current team, how long before they produce a beta even? 2 years? 5 years? Meanwhile the existing population, left with 0 updates, will die out more.

 

I say advertising is the way to go. I'm glad something is cooking. Better late than never. Wurm is not, and will not be, a mainstream game. Fact is 90% of the gaming crowd will be turned off by its nature (grindy, rng etc that's been talked about to death). While I also believe that Wurm's already got most of the players it's ever going to get, there are still some out there in the wild. Advertising will hopefully get them. When they come to Wurm, all we can do is try to retain them while their fight/flight reflexes fire away, and try to sway that tug of war in our favour.

 

+1 also to the suggestion about offering free 1-month prem with every WU purchase.

Advertising has been cooking forever it seems, but have we actually seen? It's been said before so many times now. Don't get your hopes up. Actions are louder than words.

 

21 hours ago, Sandyar said:

 

I actually hate grinding skills and only do it when there is no other way. Mining is the only skill I really felt that I grinded and used loads of sleep powders. I don't want faster skills I just want the grinding part reduced where you have to do special things to get skill like use crap ql tools. In my opinion skills should always be gained by normal game play.

 

I think mining skillgain needs a update, devs check woodcutting and digging. Okay now go look at mining, it doesn't feel good. Some aspects of Wurm grinding really need to be updated.

 

19 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

Long story short; it isn't going to.

 

WO is directly competing with WU, and price wise WO works out much more expensive pretty quicky (strangely enough, given wurm's age demographic, the people who play it can usually perform simple multiplication...).  4 months premium, or a game for life.  It isn't hard (especially given how long some of the WU servers have been running now).

 

Until WO has a GENUINE free to play (NOT free to try) offering, the population is never going to rise because of the aformentioned competition.  Of course, this will never happen.

 

The other option is to remove updates from WU, but that's just a *palm*-hole move that no-one really wants.  This is probably more likely than the latter option though.

The first thing I'd do if this game was mine would be to make the game free to play with silver being the main thing people would spend money on and a additional cosmetic cash shop. Premium would still exist and totally be worth it if your a veteran player (maybe you get 25% skill gain perk and some extra sleep powder for being subscribed + loyalty rewards).

 

Haven and Hearth, ESO really just about any free to play game has a better system than Wurm's.

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