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Dont view the roadmap as some sort of hard commitment from your side.

Priorities change all the time, so of course the roadmap will need rework from time to time.

 

But a roadmap is a great tool for generating excitement about the game.

If you let us know what your vision of the game is and show us the map on how we can get there, people may have their hope for the game rekindled.

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I think Sindusk is right, and the fact that he sees that, and the PR and current devs don't seem to understand the communication problem, only makes me feel like they are leading us on to pay premium on a game that even they are considering dead and accepting it as that, but still stretching it as much as possible for a few extra money while they can.. I'm really starting to think this is true with each discussion like this i read on forums.. We rarely get any information on what's going on, the game is never advertised

Edited by faty
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A public roadmap and showing what we are working towards is in the works, the devstream launching is also aimed at improving communication with a live back and forth that isn't text on the forums. 

 

We agree that we can share more information and the issues with feeling in the dark, the entirety of this entire change with the dev cycle is to address them by providing more clear and predictable update cycles and allow us to showcase what's coming each minor and major updates. 

 

Major updates will be relatively thin on details while they're in the works, as with any major update that's done, when it's close to launch we'll be going through public testing with it all. 

 

Minor updates will still have news shared via the valrei international, which includes a huge amount of things coming in the update on the 30th already and next weeks will likely have more. 

 

We still do not wish to thrust untested major works on players and rely on feedback to tweak them live, public testing and detailing what's in them prior to the launch will continue as it always has. 

 

The roadmap will also include our statement on epic, and that it is likely to not be touched this year, thus my comments on it here. There's a right time and place for those discussions and we'll be having that soon. 

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7 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

roadmap

You mean this?

didnt read, i wont sift through a huge amount of pve banter

Edited by Votip
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No, a new one coming, it'll still have some parts of that, UI and such, because that's a big deal and has been ongoing for some time, but will include more up to date things 

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17 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

A public roadmap and showing what we are working towards is in the works, the devstream launching is also aimed at improving communication with a live back and forth that isn't text on the forums. 

 

We agree that we can share more information and the issues with feeling in the dark, the entirety of this entire change with the dev cycle is to address them by providing more clear and predictable update cycles and allow us to showcase what's coming each minor and major updates. 

 

Major updates will be relatively thin on details while they're in the works, as with any major update that's done, when it's close to launch we'll be going through public testing with it all. 

 

Minor updates will still have news shared via the valrei international, which includes a huge amount of things coming in the update on the 30th already and next weeks will likely have more. 

 

We still do not wish to thrust untested major works on players and rely on feedback to tweak them live, public testing and detailing what's in them prior to the launch will continue as it always has. 

 

The roadmap will also include our statement on epic, and that it is likely to not be touched this year, thus my comments on it here. There's a right time and place for those discussions and we'll be having that soon. 

 

Well, I've left Elevation as felt being left in the dark for months. Epic is a cluster where time spent stays on the cluster - no skill transfers to Freedom, no benefits shared except some PVE journal goals that may be accomplished easier there.

I've arrived to a decision to abandon the server where we should spent quite some hours of work to recover from a raid and decided it won't worth because I have no clue where Elevation and Epic heads to. In my view the communication that nothing will happen on Epic this year could be really handy many months ago, it could very likely see me to build another spot knowing Ele map will remain for quite a time.

 

Please, pull the heavy curtains aside.

Edited by Jaz
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I just wonder..

How does every pvp thread turn into a ###### show?

It's amazing.. truly is!

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I will explain a bit more what I meant about the lack of communication..

I didn't mean bullet points with what's going to be made or not made and when, or how you guys put together a nice dev stream and streamline the dev updates..

 

What I mean is the dev team's vision for this game.. for pve side, for pvp side.. full transparency with everything that is in the plans.. plans that will change of course with time, but the long term vision will remain..

 

How do you think people receive a message that tells them that for the next 6 months at least they won't get any updates, on a cluster with 3-40 people only, without knowing if your vision is to close that cluster after 1 year, or turn it into something very awesome for PVP ? Just tell us where you see this game next year, 3 years from now.. 5 years from now.. make us believe in your dream and maybe we won't ask so many questions and be so negative all the time..

 

Edit: (suggestion from a friend) If you guys have no plans for Epic and PVP there, then get Sindusk back, fork the code for Epic and let him get his vision made.. it's not like it can get into a worse state than it is now in..

Edited by faty
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10 minutes ago, Finnn said:

I just wonder..

How does every pvp thread turn into a ###### show?

It's amazing.. truly is!

 

Because PvP is currently a ####show.

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Yeah no wonder it is.. talking to a brick wall does that. Some are crazier than others, meaning they stay longer talking to themselfs than others. Usually people leave after enough frustration towards the game and also that frustration shows in forums.

 

Albion seems nice, after 2 hours. :)

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43 minutes ago, Finnn said:

I just wonder..

How does every pvp thread turn into a ###### show?

It's amazing.. truly is!

 

Please don't trivialize our suffering or try to make fun of why we are angry. We love this game, or at least we used to, and it feels like it is on its last few breaths. We want to have some kind of vision for the future, some kind of hope, instead of staring blindly into the unknown and seeing the game continue to decline.

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I think this thread offers only one solid insight, among much soapboxing, FUD, and let's be honest, politics.

 

The PvP playerbase is angry, and the devs really want to placate them.

 

That's a REALLY bad situation, since no-one will be happy whatever the outcome.

 

The devs end up having to switch projects to focus on a PvP update; the PvP playerbase will start squabbling among themselves as to the nature of what the update should do, and everyone else eventually runs out of popcorn.

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1 minute ago, Etherdrifter said:

 The devs end up having to switch projects to focus on a PvP update; the PvP playerbase will start squabbling among themselves as to the nature of what the update should do, and everyone else eventually runs out of popcorn.

We won't be switching to a PvP update, there's balances and adjustments that can be done with existing systems, but we have no plans to take major sweeping mechanics changes as yet 

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1 hour ago, Finnn said:

I just wonder..

How does every pvp thread turn into a ###### show?

It's amazing.. truly is!

Believe me,  if PVE side were ignored, the same kind of banter would happen in PVE threads.

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Are we allowed to be frank about our assessments, without repercussions, if we discuss staff's role in the demise of wurm pvp?

Edited by madnezz
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The Wurm Dev team is quite small and I don't know if anyone realizes how hard these guys work.  I for one am very happy that they keep us informed and try to handle issues as soon as possible.  

Please keep this in mind. 

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6 hours ago, griper said:

Dont view the roadmap as some sort of hard commitment from your side.

Gonna play devil's advocate here for a sec. I feel like it's hard for the dev team to not do that to some extent, when we're the same people putting heads on spikes when talking about our golden mirrors and such, and saying it should be an "easy code/addition"

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51 minutes ago, Lolabelle said:

The Wurm Dev team is quite small and I don't know if anyone realizes how hard these guys work

Time for hiring full-time devs, instead of riding on volunteers backs?

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1 minute ago, Madnath said:

Gonna play devil's advocate here for a sec. I feel like it's hard for the dev team to not do that to some extent, when we're the same people putting heads on spikes when talking about our golden mirrors and such, and saying it should be an "easy code/addition"

You can't make everyone happy, someone is always going to complain about something, and the dev team has to be used to that by now.. Being scared about the feedback is not a reason to stop giving any information to your customers.

PS: turning a silver mirror that already exists in game into a gold mirror and putting it on the traders should not be a hard thing to do and it's not, it was just decided that it will be released along with the web shop (whatever that is).

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1 hour ago, Lolabelle said:

The Wurm Dev team is quite small and I don't know if anyone realizes how hard these guys work.  I for one am very happy that they keep us informed and try to handle issues as soon as possible.  

Please keep this in mind. 

If you where the ceo of a company and you kept getting complaints from your clients that your company was providing a horrible service to them you would investigate it and if it turned out that your current staff is overworked and cant keep up with expected production targets thus leading to angry customers your first task would be to get more staff to sort this issue out

yes wurm dev team is mostly volunteers but even to those a set min amount of hours per week can be expected a standard can be set and if even after everyone is assigned projects to many things pile up then it really would be a good thing to get more help from elsewhere and not "oh i made minecraft mods i know java" kinda devs either not self taught beginner kind but proper ones which even if they work part time could help this game out big time even if they work on a contractor basis of project to project things would get done a lot better and faster and the wurm dev team could have something to show for it
and no "training" a proper dev isnt really a thing as they are expected to be familiar with a position they are hired for within 2 weeks and after 30 days provide meaningful addition to the rest of the team(hence why the "what can you bring us and when" question during interviews)

it really just takes a bit of effort from the current staff team to get things sorted out(like they are slowly (hopefully?) starting to do it seems and hopefully they will learn that leaving people in the dark will lead to angry voices from those who care a lot

so yes we all realize how "hard" they work we know that all to well when a project that for all intents and purposes should not take more then 6 months takes 4 years to do that its all the "hard" work of a too small team that made it take that long
they can not pull the excuse of "we are to small things take time" really as they have devs(proper ones) apply from time to time and almost always get turned down except for the odd case here and there
 

5 minutes ago, faty said:

You can't make everyone happy, someone is always going to complain about something, and the dev team has to be used to that by now.. Being scared about the feedback is not a reason to stop giving any information to your customers.

PS: turning a silver mirror that already exists in game into a gold mirror and putting it on the traders should not be a hard thing to do and it's not, it was just decided that it will be released along with the web shop (whatever that is).

the web shop from what i gather from all the times it was mentioned is basically a cash grab "cosmetics only" web store(the likes you see in minecraft servers and other games private servers and now days "triple a" games) where people can buy things with rl money and it would be items most likely unobtainable ingame otherwise ?

Edited by wipeout

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12 hours ago, whereami said:

Why did you abandon Wurm PvP? Which straw broke your horse's back?

List anything and everything. I want to know why it was that people left, so that we can determine if it was a number of reasons or maybe only a handful.

Soooo, don't tell me later you didn't ask.

 

6 hours ago, platinumteef said:

i abandoned pvp due to lack of it moving in the right direction and the inability to know 6 months down the road whether or not the focus is going to be epic or chaos (and epic has its own skill system that you get nothing for on the freedom side) or a new cluster or freedom or will pvp and its entirety be gone

This is one of the most frustrating things. Years ago, when I started playing Epic, I thought that I will never join a PVE cluster, because why should I? Everything I needed was there. However, due to lack of focus on pvp, communication (people are sometimes still joking about the bridge update, so what? It has been implemented, it works for the most part, but at least people knew what to prepare for), and (in my opinion) ability to gain new players, the Epic cluster went stagnant. Of course, if you keep playing against the same people, you will get tired, especially when deed warfare began over hota area. 

 

PVP Focus:

When I came back, I was forced to join freedom and then chaos due to lack of any activity on Epic. And what happened now? Deed warfare. 

Of course Chaos is a great money sink, but I felt for many years that the PVE mechanics are taking over PVP game, which renders PVP useless. 

My first encounter with PVE mechanics was when during a raid on enemy deed, we realized that you cannot attack or get some of the enemy hell horses, just because they are branded. We had to resort to using aoe spells just to kill then and have them stop attacking us at all times without us being able to retaliate.

 

Then of course comes the deed wars - you need to drop deeds every time you can or else your enemy will bash 1 tower, unlink stuff and put a deed in the middle of your area. Of course, you can raid them, but if you don't have 20 people at hand that can constantly sit there and grief the deed, it's not going down. 

I am fully aware, that the deeds are a way of game earning money, however, it becomes ridicolous that the group with bigger wallets can just do whatever simply because they can afford getting more materials and deeding over bigger area while others cannot really do much about it. This was the thing that made me quit now and I just wish the premium expiry notices came in less often because I'm not reading that stuff unless I hear the game picks up the pace and it becomes relevant again (+ it's annoying to get mail about the cash you wasted for last 2 months of prem).

 

Communication:

In my opinion it would be better to even talk about points of the game that you cannot really change in the nearest future and talking to the community. Currently, there is a plague of early access games. I followed a lot of them and came to 1 conclusion: the ones that were successfull (of course, they first need to be legit, not frauds just collecting cash on kickstarter) were as close to their communities as possible. They were releasing update after an update, even making polls or asking people how do they think mechanics could work. This way, devs were getting another point of view allowing to rethink their implementation and the community felt involved in the game creation. Of course, this would be a hard process here, because the community is already fed up with everything and toxic in many ways (I've been barely cheking out forums because of that), but as Sindusk said - keeping everyone at bay will just kill the rest of the people that feel involved to the game or just cannot bring themselves to sell out everything they worked on for the last years. Good luck running your servers with noone buying silver then.

 

Secondly, when people were screaming that we need to do something with pvp, there were even some talks about the current state that didn't get us anywhere. However, fully admitting that there is a problem with PVP led us to: Highway system, new archeology skill, head bob (that was a funny thing, being in voice comms of discord and hear people logging in to "WHAT IS THIS ABOMINATION AND HOW DO I TURN THIS OFF"). This was all while saying that PVP is still important and relevant. How would you, random citizen feel if they do this to what you are interested in?

 

Gaining players:

 

If you don't start getting fresh blood into the game and advertise, it will just stay the same bloody mess it is today. The playerbase will keep declining until you will have to decide on closing a server or two and it will only be downhill from there. Both the ingame economy and pvp suffer tremendously from lack of new players - noone is really buying stuff anymore because they have alts for this and as I said above - if you don't have any new faces to fight against (just same people buying new accounts for the zerg), you will sooner or later just give this game a 10 year break to never be back again. And of course the same bunch of people sitting in the game means the same bunch sitting on the forums, trolling, bashing staff and creating numerous accounts just for that, so at least you can show that there is influx of new players in the game/forums.

 

 

Congratulations if you managed to get here, I haven't had the strength to read this through after I wrote it :)

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Gah when i think about when i started this game 7.5yrs ago bright eyes, excited there was fervor, a large active player-base, and a healthy fully engaged pvp base on both freedom and epic clusters.  It was so robust my only regret was not finding this game sooner, albeit i only found it accidentally to start.

 

What's not up for debate is the game and lore was clearly coded for pvp to reflect it's highest aspirations and spirit of game experience.  What has happened despite that is the pve aspects of the game have become more popular in player base numbers.

 

To that end I can see why, esp since Rolf who's own orientation was towards pvp stepped aside from daily management, the game has shifted it's focus towards pve features, eye candy type development with a zero sum gain nature that meant less of the pie towards pvp attention and care.

 

What seems bewildering is the appearance of a floundering management that seems lost and one that makes many wild hard to explain directional changes or feature focuses when executed.  Then there is the vast other amt of time comprising the largest part of the pie of talk promise of things to come or why not to come.  Lots of excuses.  What I see overall and especially in this thread are a player base that is deeply concerned and wanton for the game to thrive and remain to play.  I see this same player base describe what it is that is not working for them.  This is critical for it is the very reason they have departed or on the verge of departing.  The player base drop in a substantial way cannot be denied or even talked around any longer.  I can't begin to imagine the loss in revenue stream.  This is a game to players but is still a business first.  What i also see is almost an arrogant defense of decisions and adamant attitude from staff that we know best and are doing all the best and right things.  Clearly wherever the truth lay, there is a great chasm between management assertion and player retention/subscription that don't add up.

 

When and who will take this seriously, or are we all along for a fun house ride?

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3 hours ago, Themystrix said:

Yeah no wonder it is.. talking to a brick wall does that. Some are crazier than others, meaning they stay longer talking to themselfs than others. Usually people leave after enough frustration towards the game and also that frustration shows in forums.

 

Albion seems nice, after 2 hours. :)

please come to my house and not only rip out my ethernet from all of it's housings out to the road feeder from house, and while here please sledge hammer my pc.  I need saving from myself truly. I'm one of those dumb ones that keeps on staying, one of those craziers.  Then again in RL I've long been the one to stay in a relationship long after it's over.  I beg you to come help me help myself.  Pm me i'll give address and phone number.  Let's schedule this.

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PvP and KvK banter originates from our disagreements about PvP, not the lack of attention to it by the staff.  

 

Fundamental PvP problems are as follows:

1.  Numbers (us vs them) plays too critical of a role in our ability to enjoy the PvP game the way we want to.

2.  Legacy items/accounts grossly overpower new players.

3. Balance shattering meta changes made on a whim because the right kingdom complained about something.  (Example:  Karma port = RIP MR)

 

Below these big three, you have people that enjoy different styles of play on a PvP server.  All of the focus has been on style of play (below), and no work has been done to address the fundamental issues (above).

1.  Deed PvP vs open field PvP.  -  Some people prefer open field PvP, because they don't have to spend hours catapulting, trebbing and destroying to get to the goods.

2.  PvP vs Deed building vs Crafting/Collecting - Different people enjoy different hobbies.

3.  The money factor - deed costs, PvP and HoTA rewards, buying selling accounts, etc.

4.  Bug abuse and the selective enforcement of it.

 

Fact is, new players are terrified of Chaos, and they always will be.   That's why, as Rhianna said 20-30 posts back, it's the same 30 people killing each other.

 

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3 hours ago, Retrograde said:

We won't be switching to a PvP update, there's balances and adjustments that can be done with existing systems, but we have no plans to take major sweeping mechanics changes as yet 

 

Well there we go, no new map, no back to basics, no epic soon I'd say. I know a lot of people that want sweeping changes and a simpler meta , well that's good to know though, I wont be back...... I thought we had got through to you guys that without big changes nothing ultimately changes. 

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