Posted April 30, 2019 So once the cash shop is implemented do we get a non subscription model introduced ? ? because otherwise the cash shop is just a cash grab and doesn't offer any benefit to your dwindling player base 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted April 30, 2019 1 hour ago, Rhianna said: So once the cash shop is implemented do we get a non subscription model introduced ? ? because otherwise the cash shop is just a cash grab and doesn't offer any benefit to your dwindling player base The Cash Shop is definitely the way to go to sell these types of optional items since it puts more income directly into the game which then as you put it, will "benefit your dwindling player base". Much better than selling these items through Traders that those who make their coins in game would prefer. Already the game offers (too) many ways to get "free" coins in game which players then use to avoid paying out any cash from their own pockets to support it. Nothing "cash grabbing" about this but just an attempt to gain more income to support the game's progress. I can understand too that it would take some time to setup a Cash Shop along these lines since the current one is very simplified to serve just the functions of Premium Time and Coin Sales. Actually when they do get this Cash Shop setup I would prefer that Deed Upkeep and Premium Time only be available to be paid through it as well to eliminate the ability of players to avoid paying RL cash for these services. Although paying Deed Upkeep only through the Cash Shop might be very difficult to setup. =Ayes= Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted April 30, 2019 (edited) A cash shop huh? Hopefully the money from it will go towards advertising, or maybe even hiring more devs Edited April 30, 2019 by atazs 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted April 30, 2019 (edited) 2 hours ago, Ayes said: Actually when they do get this Cash Shop setup I would prefer that Deed Upkeep and Premium Time only be available to be paid through it as well to eliminate the ability of players to avoid paying RL cash for these services. Although paying Deed Upkeep only through the Cash Shop might be very difficult to setup. =Ayes= So you want to be the one to tell every new player "Oh ya deeds? You can only have those if you pay more real life money every month next to a subscription service"? Just watch as how many people will just say "Ya no thanks i'll pass" and move on to the next game that doesnt require 2 or more subscriptions to enjoy playing a game And it would also prevent quite a few people form playing the game mainly teenagers and young adults or people who can barely make ends meet in rl and work their behinds off to get enough silver every month to get their premium back to the retro replies As for the cash shop itself i hope this doesn't go out of hand and sticks to cosmetics only but hey who am i kidding every cash shop that has been added to any game has gone from cosmetic only to providing ingame bonuses over time but hey put the money to getting more players and more devs not just into a blackhole with no return on it Also as for your "oh they are volunteer devs they cant spend much time on wurm" volunteer or not they should be held up to a standard of atleast a few hours a week of work with the more the better they joined your staff team to work on this game not to have a fancy dev tag and be part of an exclusive club if your excuse for features not coming out is "our dev team is too busy doing other none wurm related things" then you have to really look for a new dev team that makes wurm be higher up on their priority list Edited April 30, 2019 by wipeout 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted April 30, 2019 I think everyone is going way too hard against the devs and Retro here. Wurm is such an old and crumbly codebase, I can imagine developing for it being enough of a hell. That goes hand in hand with the low(sh) amount of paid and volunteer devs that actually maintain this game. I don't mind more time being taken on a per update basis, and things being added to updates to make up a larger update. Take the Golden Mirrors for example. The game doesn't need them urgently, rolling them out into a new version of the store makes a lot more sense than just dumping them on traders for like, 2 silver. But otherwise, I do agree the state of play for Epic needs to be discussed with the community sooner rather than later. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted April 30, 2019 1 hour ago, wipeout said: Also as for your "oh they are volunteer devs they cant spend much time on wurm" volunteer or not they should be held up to a standard of atleast a few hours a week of work As soon as you force an unpaid volunteer to dedicate a slot amount of hours to the game, you're going to lose the eligibility of a lot of them. It would be honestly unfair. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted April 30, 2019 Thing is, we often suggest many small changes that takes little effort to implement, that add a lot of quality of life for players. Things, that could be done almost "on the fly", yet those things ares still put into queue waiting loooooong time to MAYBE be considered to change. Lack of developer for those small changes, and old bug fixes, that could be done in small update - EACH week. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted April 30, 2019 12 minutes ago, Madnath said: As soon as you force an unpaid volunteer to dedicate a slot amount of hours to the game, you're going to lose the eligibility of a lot of them. It would be honestly unfair. Expecting 2 hours a week from a volunteer is not a bad thing if they cant offer you 2 hours per week(unless something comes up that actually prevents them from doing so(say being sick or something)) then should they really be a dev for a company? no one expects them to put in 30 hours a week just a few thats all 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted April 30, 2019 10 hours ago, Retrograde said: Again, this is why we have been tight lipped, golden mirrors are coming with a cash shop that hasn't been implemented yet. That's what it's waiting on. We have shared that they are coming and gave no date, because it's a small part of a much larger and more intricate project. The reason it has taken time is the developer in charge of it has not had the time to devote to it. That isn't about needing longer time between releases, that issue is why there has not been a more public roadmap with our plans and goals, being such a small team means we have to work on one project at a time. It's the crux of this issue, we have shared information in the past and there is justifiable disappointment it's not in the game, our fault was sharing it before it was close enough to release. We would have been much better waiting to be able to confirm the shop work was under construction and/or close to complete before sharing what will be in it. We plan on sharing more with future dev logs, news and devstreams because that gives us an opportunity to work through it and give more tangible things to show as opposed to trickled content making it feel like little has been done. This past 3 months has seen a huge amount of bug fixes as well as tweaks to everything from the 1.10 update, there has been considerable work considering only one paid developer. Volunteer developers are working on projects in their own time, but that means projects take longer to complete, such as creature cages and chicken coops. Our goal is to improve and address your issues raised, and to do so we need to start working towards it. We will show progress and help keep you all informed of what's going on, the argument isn't against that, it's that our focus is shifting to this development cycle is what we are working on and what's going in, once we're set up and rolling we can share more 12 hours ago, Angelklaine said: The above is a rhetorical question you don't need to answer. I know why is not out yet, so I dont need a long winded explanation that there is some other feature that will be released first that is holding it back. That is not my point. I think you missed my whole point, even though I pointed it out clearly. If the team laid out a plan or a teaser or an idea moving forward (i.e. an incoming expansion) you wouldn't need to give details, but would tease the players with things to come. This will satisfy most of the player base and build anticipation which is what keeps players interested between releases But what do I know. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted April 30, 2019 Only one paid developer? We clearly need more. I hope that's being looked into. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 1, 2019 (edited) On 4/30/2019 at 4:00 AM, Ayes said: I can understand too that it would take some time to setup a Cash Shop along these lines since the current one is very simplified to serve just the functions of Premium Time and Coin Sales. Actually when they do get this Cash Shop setup I would prefer that Deed Upkeep and Premium Time only be available to be paid through it as well to eliminate the ability of players to avoid paying RL cash for these services. Although paying Deed Upkeep only through the Cash Shop might be very difficult to setup. I think cash-only premium makes sense; in fact, it's the only way I buy mine. As far as a sub goes for an MMO, it's one of the cheaper games on that front. However, the moment deeds become cash-only is the moment the game actually dies. Deeds are also what propels the sub fee to ridiculous amounts if you want anything other than a single small deed, assuming you want to support the game by paying for it out-of-pocket. Edited May 1, 2019 by Delacroix Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 1, 2019 Honestly the excuse of having a small development team is getting old. There has been at least 10 people I know that have applied, most of which never even got a response. You cant grow the team if you don't even try. It is clear help is needed, start allowing people to help and stop keeping everyone in the dark. 8 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 2, 2019 (edited) As far as i remember, the game was always ran by volunteers. In fact, when i started playing it was even smaller than it is now, being developed mostly by Rolf alone. I remember whenever he would go on holidays (at least 2-3 times a year) there would be massive server issues that nobody was able to fix until he came back. The game went "gold" then got "released" with 1.0, then we have WU, yet the dev team has remained and remains pretty much 90% of volunteers. It boggles my mind really, and the excuse of "the developer assigned to X can't work on it because he has no time" has to stop. Start employing full timers, or at the very least, better volunteers that actually have time to work on stuff. If what the above person said is true, that you don't even reply to people who apply to your team, then it is even worse than i thought. Surely such a small company and a relatively unknown game that is Wurm doesn't get hundreds of applications a day or a week that you get so overwhelmed by them? Edited May 2, 2019 by atazs 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 3, 2019 I can't say I agree much with the sentiment here. Ever taken a pile of spaghetti code written in a horrible language, and tried to change the way it does something before? If you have, you know why no-one of any sane disposition would give a clear timeline on delivery dates. I've been around for a fair bit of time, and while I do often post 'controversial' suggestions, I've also watched the community carefully. At this point, if a feature is mentioned the playerbase either wants to know a firm roadmap towards it (and expects it soon), or complains that some other 'far more important' feature isn't mentioned. Neither of which is positive publicity, especially if it gets delayed because a tiny change suddenly turns into rewriting part of the engine. No large mmo gives any inkling of upcoming features to the community until said features are near their final stages. That kind of news would be nice. Roadmaps are usually planned rollouts of mostly implemented features (unless your team leader is some kind of deranged sadist), not "we want to add this" but "ok so, we have mostly finished adding this and now it is going through 4 months of in house testing to remove bugs". 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 3, 2019 14 minutes ago, Etherdrifter said: If you have, you know why no-one of any sane disposition would give a clear timeline on delivery No one is asking for clear timelines. In fact that is exactly what we are NOT asking about. Instead we are asking for SOMETHING because its been several months since anything significant has been announced. The priest overhaul was nice, yes, but its been already a quarter since and we don't know whats in the road ahead of us. More than that, the whole Epic community has been on a slope for what? Half a year? More? And yet people who play there has heard nothing but radio silence about it. Regardless I didn't make this thread to ask for an update. I made this thread so we could discuss with staff the way they are censoring the community. Retro made his argument about how they are not, and some players chimed in and then it all got railroaded into game features and when will stuff be done. That's the way the cookie crumbles though and that goes to show is a topic people want to talk about. Spaghetti code or not, it is not the community's problem that coding Wurm is hard. They are offering a service and we are paying for it and so we would love to be assured our money is well spent here instead of elsewhere. That is all. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 3, 2019 1 hour ago, Angelklaine said: More than that, the whole Epic community has been on a slope for what? Half a year? More? And yet people who play there has heard nothing but radio silence about it. Not half a year. I think closer to two years. However sometimes a lack of concrete answers can indeed lead to concrete actions. Actions like refusing to resub characters and letting deeds disband. For all the discussion here that is often around what can the players do to improve player retention, the reality is that the biggest ownership of this topic rests with the people who control the game, the administration of it and the support of it. If people in a "Community Relations" role are unable or not permitted to give clear answers that keep the community focused in a positive direction then eventually the players take things into their own hands. The more vocal ones speak out (and are often ignored (which in itself is a failure of the community relations role)). The quieter ones, or those who give up, just leave. ~Nappy 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 3, 2019 6 hours ago, Angelklaine said: More than that, the whole Epic community has been on a slope for what? Half a year? More? And yet people who play there has heard nothing but radio silence about it. You do realise that nothing short of divine intervention is going to help epic right? Most of the people on there are transients gaming the goal systems; the real residents are even thinner than Xanadu! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 3, 2019 (edited) On 4/29/2019 at 5:41 AM, platinumteef said: my only question is: you've been kind of leading us along for some time now with changes to epic as a possibility ( I don't mean this in a negative way, its just a fact) and is the new "system of not telling anything coming forward" going to just, keep delaying the delay Looks like someone is figuring out PR and retention. @AngelklaineI have been saying this game was on life support for a long time, Sindusk was an interesting variable to the mix that certainly changed the dynamic. With his depature I am not surprised by this change, and expect a life support announcement in the next year. Edited May 3, 2019 by FranktheTank Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 4, 2019 On 5/3/2019 at 6:32 PM, FranktheTank said: Looks like someone is figuring out PR and retention. @AngelklaineI have been saying this game was on life support for a long time, Sindusk was an interesting variable to the mix that certainly changed the dynamic. With his depature I am not surprised by this change, and expect a life support announcement in the next year. I doubt the game will be on life support within a year. As much as I think the writing is on the wall, and as pessimistic as I am about the game now, the game has already gotten so far with having us all as a captive audience. Unless something truly drastic happens, I think the game is safe for another few years. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 5, 2019 How long before it's acknowledged to be a serious issue though, looking at the prem graphs we are at a steeper decline than before the prem jumps for holiday season and free prems, following this new trend from the new year, unless it finally plateaus we are only a few months from dipping under 2000 premium accounts when the holiday/new years peak was 2652 It's not good news and it would be nice to hear what the plan for it is, aside from generic pr comments picked from the hat filled with generic pr comments that every company's pr team uses. Action speaks, words don't 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 5, 2019 On 5/3/2019 at 3:14 AM, Etherdrifter said: You do realise that nothing short of divine intervention is going to help epic right? I disagree. I believe there's a plan that would help Epic immensely and make it one of the best places to play. All it would take is to explain that plan and then commit to making it happen. It wouldn't come anytime soon, and would draw quite a few questions, but I truly believe that plan is one of the best ways forwards for Epic. At the very least, you'd see more players there. That's for sure. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 5, 2019 13 minutes ago, Sindusk said: I disagree. I believe there's a plan that would help Epic immensely and make it one of the best places to play. All it would take is to explain that plan and then commit to making it happen. It wouldn't come anytime soon, and would draw quite a few questions, but I truly believe that plan is one of the best ways forwards for Epic. At the very least, you'd see more players there. That's for sure. Does it involve a table full of cake? I like cake. I would go to Epic for cake. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 5, 2019 1 hour ago, Sindusk said: I disagree. I believe there's a plan that would help Epic immensely and make it one of the best places to play. All it would take is to explain that plan and then commit to making it happen. It wouldn't come anytime soon, and would draw quite a few questions, but I truly believe that plan is one of the best ways forwards for Epic. At the very least, you'd see more players there. That's for sure. does that mean there was a plan, or is this speaking hypotheticals Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 5, 2019 5 hours ago, MrGARY said: Action speaks, words don't Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted May 5, 2019 7 hours ago, Sindusk said: I disagree. I believe there's a plan that would help Epic immensely and make it one of the best places to play. All it would take is to explain that plan and then commit to making it happen. It wouldn't come anytime soon, and would draw quite a few questions, but I truly believe that plan is one of the best ways forwards for Epic. At the very least, you'd see more players there. That's for sure. And which elder god does this plan involve invoking? Jokes aside; epic needs a population of non-pvp players to draw in pvp players (killer communities are just not self sustaining unless the death pentality is negligable). I can't see a feasable way to draw in non-pvp players to epic that doesn't lead to a net player loss overall. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
