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WO Steam Discussion

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2 hours ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

bonus damage is only if they haven't logged in for 84 days, putting it in perimeter doesn't do anything if they still play apart from prevent repairs.

Exactly that. As to b/fsb etc.perimeters don't do much, but there is good reason for them not to decay fast as offdeed storage often makes sense, be it for mining/road building, or fishing/hunting, or to small squatters with a house but no deed. If a stranded b/fsb bothers so much put it on lava, or in an abandoned mine (collapse, fill up, forget, let cavein do the work). Place provides with fairly good moving speed for such objects. Unfortunately, not for vehicles anymore, but even that can be settled.

 

Edit (@Drathania): An influx of new players will of course create some issues. But you cannot eat the cake and keep it. Either we want a silent death in dignity (or not) for Wurm, or we want fresh blood.

Edited by Ekcin
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creating a new set of servers for steam release will not change how new players feel about the game itself but will seem like more of a quarantine to keep them away from our main community...

 

we already have jackal server a resetting fresh start server which it seems has been forgotten, our current servers are nearly empty and adding more to freedom is utterly pointless (even if they are separate at the start) wurm needs more follow-through and permanent fixes... we have too many servers and as much as people hate to admit it they are all 90% empty throwing out more servers is not a long term gain, rather its quite the opposite. Whenever the new servers are absorbed into our current ones, they will quickly fade and the extra revenue they generated will be abandoned and it will just be another expensive mistake we cannot get rid of easily.

 

updating and improving the UI and polishing the game is exactly what has needed for a long time, these are the features that will keep the new players from leaving as soon as they log in, but we also need to improve the rest of the experience.

 

putting them on their own steam server at the start will not be any different than having them join the existing servers. current players will flock there for awhile and flood the market for coin just the same as if they were on the main servers. the new players will be out-skilled in a matter of days there will be quality goods for sale far beyond their own capabilities just the same as our current servers they will be back to making bricks and mortar.

 

 having established neighbors isnt something that drives players away, its the fact that for them to get a foothold in the economy their only option is monotonous bulk materials like bricks, mortar or something similar. to enter as a tradesman can take months of work and perilous grinding. (yes i am aware the banning of RMT is the only way to cure this cancer, but its a very long road to recovery because of the mindset that using these pay-to-win ghost-in-a-shell accounts is socially acceptable)

Edited by Evilreaper

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On 4/16/2020 at 9:54 PM, Evilreaper said:

creating a new set of servers for steam release will not change how new players feel about the game itself but will seem like more of a quarantine to keep them away from our main community...

 

we already have jackal server a resetting fresh start server which it seems has been forgotten, our current servers are nearly empty and adding more to freedom is utterly pointless (even if they are separate at the start) wurm needs more follow-through and permanent fixes... we have too many servers and as much as people hate to admit it they are all 90% empty throwing out more servers is not a long term gain, rather its quite the opposite. Whenever the new servers are absorbed into our current ones, they will quickly fade and the extra revenue they generated will be abandoned and it will just be another expensive mistake we cannot get rid of easily.

 

updating and improving the UI and polishing the game is exactly what has needed for a long time, these are the features that will keep the new players from leaving as soon as they log in, but we also need to improve the rest of the experience.

 

putting them on their own steam server at the start will not be any different than having them join the existing servers. current players will flock there for awhile and flood the market for coin just the same as if they were on the main servers. the new players will be out-skilled in a matter of days there will be quality goods for sale far beyond their own capabilities just the same as our current servers they will be back to making bricks and mortar.

 

 having established neighbors isnt something that drives players away, its the fact that for them to get a foothold in the economy their only option is monotonous bulk materials like bricks, mortar or something similar. to enter as a tradesman can take months of work and perilous grinding. (yes i am aware the banning of RMT is the only way to cure this cancer, but its a very long road to recovery because of the mindset that using these pay-to-win ghost-in-a-shell accounts is socially acceptable)

 

The steam server feels like a test for wurm, if it gets a new popular crowd (its what they are hoping) then they can put more man hours on improving the game to stand the test of time. Even though WU got 70% positive reviews it was only a test to see if wurm had a market still, the complicated and tricky server setups put off alot of steamers but some servers managed to flourish. 

 

Wurm Online suffers from not reaching out to any audience and has been forgotten in time. I believe the steam server approach is a great way for wurm to be reborn. Some errors was corrected and have been removed for this new start in wurm such as player gods and meta mediation paths, RMT, god armageddon events etc. If it succeeds im sure they will feel like its worth putting money to tackle the rest of wurm and grow from there, new combat system, improved servers you name it.

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4 hours ago, Nocturnes said:

Wurm Online suffers from not reaching out to any audience and has been forgotten in time.

 

I don't think this is the main reason for the low number of active players.  Wurm Online suffers from the entire design of Wurm Online, where it's supposed to take AGES to get anything done.  In a fairly large guild of gamers I was once a member of, over 100 people, only one other member could stand to play the game at all.  Sitting in front of a stone wall in a mine for three or more minutes doing nothing but hitting the same hot key over and over until the wall finally breaks, or sitting in front of a forge, or a pile of logs, etc.  NOBODY wants to do that in a game, other than a very very tiny select few.

 

Even I hate that aspect of the game, but I enjoy the freedom of a sandbox game with terraforming, etc.  So I suffered through the incredibly boring parts.  When Wurm Unlimited came out, and the action timers could be increased to a point where most of the game was fun, I never went back to WO.  Even that didn't sway the members of the guild.  It's just not a fast paced game, and that's what 99% of gamers want, in my opinion.

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2 hours ago, Ricowan said:

 

I don't think this is the main reason for the low number of active players.  Wurm Online suffers from the entire design of Wurm Online, where it's supposed to take AGES to get anything done.  In a fairly large guild of gamers I was once a member of, over 100 people, only one other member could stand to play the game at all.  Sitting in front of a stone wall in a mine for three or more minutes doing nothing but hitting the same hot key over and over until the wall finally breaks, or sitting in front of a forge, or a pile of logs, etc.  NOBODY wants to do that in a game, other than a very very tiny select few.

 

Even I hate that aspect of the game, but I enjoy the freedom of a sandbox game with terraforming, etc.  So I suffered through the incredibly boring parts.  When Wurm Unlimited came out, and the action timers could be increased to a point where most of the game was fun, I never went back to WO.  Even that didn't sway the members of the guild.  It's just not a fast paced game, and that's what 99% of gamers want, in my opinion.

 

well good thing they are fixing lots of the annoying parts of wurm for the new release huh?

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20 hours ago, Ricowan said:

 

I don't think this is the main reason for the low number of active players.  Wurm Online suffers from the entire design of Wurm Online, where it's supposed to take AGES to get anything done.  In a fairly large guild of gamers I was once a member of, over 100 people, only one other member could stand to play the game at all.  Sitting in front of a stone wall in a mine for three or more minutes doing nothing but hitting the same hot key over and over until the wall finally breaks, or sitting in front of a forge, or a pile of logs, etc.  NOBODY wants to do that in a game, other than a very very tiny select few.

 

Even I hate that aspect of the game, but I enjoy the freedom of a sandbox game with terraforming, etc.  So I suffered through the incredibly boring parts.  When Wurm Unlimited came out, and the action timers could be increased to a point where most of the game was fun, I never went back to WO.  Even that didn't sway the members of the guild.  It's just not a fast paced game, and that's what 99% of gamers want, in my opinion.


While I agree that the majority of gamers want fast paced instant reward systems these days (as can be seen quite easily from modern multiplayers being released like fortnite) there is still a large audience who like the slow grind.
EVE is one of the few games on the market who reached a high pop while still boosting a system that takes 3 years + to reach the competitive end game and where you can sit and watch some lasers absorb a rock for 3 months straight back and forth between your base only to afford a larger cargo hold.

But games that take alot of time for progress is having a come back, WoW Classic was a success by far and its way way waaaaay slower then retail in almost every aspect as even getting a mount in that game takes hours of mindless material grinding to scrap some gold.
Then we have path of exile who follows the same type where you can replay the game a hundred times only to get a few more stats on your main character or old runescape and so on and so on.

To me though I dont personally like the grind when it gets to "repetitive or mindless" I like a game that takes A LONG TIME to reach anywhere in said skills or progress but I dont support that it have to be boring and mindless grind as the only way to reach that goal. 
For these changes that spices up the grind im more then happy but dont make the game any easier, thats not wurm, those games we already have a ton off in the market.

Edited by Nocturnes
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WoW follows the rule of "easy to play, hard to master".

 

Wurm should also follow it, to make it easier to the new players and more challenging to vets.

Only epic skill curve system follows that rule, kinda

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3 hours ago, Wilczan said:

WoW follows the rule of "easy to play, hard to master".

 

Wurm should also follow it, to make it easier to the new players and more challenging to vets.

Only epic skill curve system follows that rule, kinda

 

The epic curve is a very interesting concept. In general what makes Wurm very complicated is the old UI which is in the works, so things should get better one day.

Edited by Sklo:D
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On 9/23/2019 at 11:29 PM, Rolf said:

Yeah, although because we lose almost every player who don't want to pay as soon as they hit this ceiling we should consider simply slowing down skillgain instead. We'll see. Also I like the idea of letting people start at 10 or 15 or so.

 

Firstly, "starting" at 10 or 15 skill isn't really starting is it?  Unless skills can drop down into the sub-10 range, that is.

 

There is a bit of discussion around ditching the ceiling and changing to a change of skillgain rate.   I think that there is a much better way to encourage conversion.  Have skills gain rapidly 1-10 or 1-15, and then curve the rate downwards so that from 20 (for example) on it is very slow on F2P, but for premium the rate is kicked up a notch (something not only noticeable but dramatic, like >5x). 

 

For me the hard cap being the only real factor in premming (because when the first skills are hitting 20 none of the other benefits were really being considered because a. I didn't have the resources and b. I didn't know what I was missing), it actually had a delaying effect, in that I wasn't about to pay to get 1 or 2 skills over the cap while others where well below it.

 

Perhaps an approach could be a skill booster, elevating both the base skill level and the gain rate  - effective for x gameplay hours free and then only functioning on prem accounts. Technically, this would probably function more as a "choke" - build in the increases but then for anyone not prem and more than x hours in both the skill and gain are both noticeably suppressed.

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2 hours ago, TheTrickster said:

I think that there is a much better way to encourage conversion.  Have skills gain rapidly 1-10 or 1-15, and then curve the rate downwards so that from 20 (for example) on it is very slow on F2P, but for premium the rate is kicked up a notch (something not only noticeable but dramatic, like >5x). 

 

For me the hard cap being the only real factor in premming (because when the first skills are hitting 20 none of the other benefits were really being considered because a. I didn't have the resources and b. I didn't know what I was missing), it actually had a delaying effect, in that I wasn't about to pay to get 1 or 2 skills over the cap while others where well below it.

 

Perhaps an approach could be a skill booster, elevating both the base skill level and the gain rate  - effective for x gameplay hours free and then only functioning on prem accounts. Technically, this would probably function more as a "choke" - build in the increases but then for anyone not prem and more than x hours in both the skill and gain are both noticeably suppressed.

I don't like the idea at all of Premium being a "Booster" this definitely translates to a "Pay-To-Win" at that point.
One of those, "You can do absolutely everything you could ever want to in-game without a dime. BUT if you give us money, we'll make it so you can do that stuff faster!"
That's awful and it's never a good feeling, whether you can afford to pay for that boost or not.

There's a couple of games that do something like this, offering "Boosts" for subscribing to them. I would much rather we maintained this "Premium Subscription" method we have already. A completely Free-To-Play until a certain cap, and then pay to go beyond and experience the full-game.

I also want to point out that I like the rate that things are now. Speed them up and it becomes far too easy to achieve things in my opinion. One of the things I adore about Wurm is that you have to really work for what you have, if you boost things too much where's the work left over?

I have a x2 rate Wurm Unlimited server for example, and I don't really like that rate either. I feel I'm progressing through the skills too quickly as it is. Bumping these up to x5 and I would have 0 WANT to subscribe because at that rate it's just ridiculous!

Edited by Zera
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11 minutes ago, Zera said:

I don't like the idea at all of Premium being a "Booster" this definitely translates to a "Pay-To-Win" at that point.
One of those, "You can do absolutely everything you could ever want to in-game without a dime. BUT if you give us money, we'll make it so you can do that stuff faster!"
That's awful and it's never a good feeling, whether you can afford to pay for that boost or not.

There's a couple of games that do something like this, offering "Boosts" for subscribing to them. I would much rather we maintained this "Premium Subscription" method we have already. A completely Free-To-Play until a certain cap, and then pay to go beyond and experience the full-game.

Agreed. I feel the skill limit for f2p should just be increased rather than convolute the system with boosts, curves, etc.

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1 minute ago, Jore said:

Agreed. I feel the skill limit for f2p should just be increased rather than convolute the system with boosts, curves, etc.

Either increase the F2P account limit or find a way to slow down the skill-gain for F2P players.
Don't increase the rate at which we are at now.

 

The idea is to give the F2P folks time to learn and decide if they're liking the game, right?
And the problem is they don't decide that it's worth the premium by the time they reach 20 cap in their preferred skills. Boost that to 25 or 30 tops, give them the ability to Ride a horse and drive a cart at the very least.

Unfortunately what they're getting now is "I have to walk everywhere, I can't even jump." (Which jumping is a big deal to people these days) "I can't run and I can't drive a cart either. The best I get is this slow cow, but I walk faster than that!"

Give them a higher cap, maybe change the curve a tad to make early game gain just a little slower (Which would in turn make everything just a tad slower too), that should give new players plenty of chance to experiencing different things in-game without feeling like they literally can't do certain features.

"I can ride a horse and drive a cart, I can build a house, I can farm and I can sail"
but..
"I can't drive a wagon, I can't build a stone house, I can't sail a big ship"

Sounds a lot better than:
"I can walk everywhere I want to go, or ride a cow slower than I walk"
and..
"I can continue to cower in my tiny little house but have no reason or need to keep animals because I can't even use them."

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1 hour ago, Zera said:

I don't like the idea at all of Premium being a "Booster" this definitely translates to a "Pay-To-Win" at that point.
One of those, "You can do absolutely everything you could ever want to in-game without a dime. BUT if you give us money, we'll make it so you can do that stuff faster!"
That's awful and it's never a good feeling, whether you can afford to pay for that boost or not.

There's a couple of games that do something like this, offering "Boosts" for subscribing to them. I would much rather we maintained this "Premium Subscription" method we have already. A completely Free-To-Play until a certain cap, and then pay to go beyond and experience the full-game.

I also want to point out that I like the rate that things are now. Speed them up and it becomes far too easy to achieve things in my opinion. One of the things I adore about Wurm is that you have to really work for what you have, if you boost things too much where's the work left over?

I have a x2 rate Wurm Unlimited server for example, and I don't really like that rate either. I feel I'm progressing through the skills too quickly as it is. Bumping these up to x5 and I would have 0 WANT to subscribe because at that rate it's just ridiculous!

 

 

How is a system that caps you from doing pretty anything substantial, such as it is now,  NOT pay to win?  It would be nigh on impossible to earn enough in-game silver for your one-person only shack-on-deed.  You can't ride anything but cows, can't "sail" anything but a rowboat.  Can't load/unload.   There is a lot of stuff experienced players do that I think they take for granted and forget that a non-prem player can't and doesn't even know what they are missing.  The premium subscription method you currently have is classic pay to win.  You pay money and gain a bunch of access/ability that gives you an advantage that is impossible for non-premium players to equalize - that is the epitome of pay to win.  Not that wurm has a "win" condition as such.

 

All I am saying is that the gain rate is better tool to adjust than the skill cap.   My experience was that the only benefit I could see from outside the curtain was lifting the cap.  Raising that cap would only delay conversion longer and slow down cashflow.

 

What I proposed mixes both Trial and Free to Play in the one experience.  You get a taste of what you COULD have in premium (hence trial) and then if you don't bite the taste is taken away and you are left with Free to Play.  Currently, there isn't really a trial, because a new player cannot try some of the stuff that is behind the paywall (again, definitely pay to win).

 

1 hour ago, Zera said:

Give them a higher cap, maybe change the curve a tad to make early game gain just a little slower (Which would in turn make everything just a tad slower too), that should give new players plenty of chance to experiencing different things in-game without feeling like they literally can't do certain features.

"I can ride a horse and drive a cart, I can build a house, I can farm and I can sail"
but..
"I can't drive a wagon, I can't build a stone house, I can't sail a big ship"

Sounds a lot better than:
"I can walk everywhere I want to go, or ride a cow slower than I walk"
and..
"I can continue to cower in my tiny little house but have no reason or need to keep animals because I can't even use them."

 

 

Yes.  That is a very good comparison.  I don't know that both a higher cap and slower gain will achieve that, though.  It would result in quite a bit of the second scenario before any experience of the first.  Nevertheless, this comparison is exactly what I am getting at.  Give new players an understanding of how they benefit from premium.  Currently the premium game and the non-premium game are surprisingly different.  Before premium, I really could not explore unless I was exploring a towered highway (i.e. a walking tourist).  I could keep animals, but it was hard to see the point as I really didn't have much use for them, and spent most of the time repairing and re-imping fences.  Had a visitor come through and knock up a QL50 fence like it was nothing and I immediately felt like I was wasting my time.

 

Notice the common starting conditions on WU servers, and think how that can be leveraged back into WO.  On many, even the 1x/1x action/skillgain the starting characteristics are sufficient to ride and to drive a cart, and often to load/unload.  Why?  Because that gets people past the "working on progressing enough to start Wurm" period and into the "playing Wurm" stage.  If you want people to pay to play Wurm, let them play Wurm for a bit instead of only the "preamble to Wurm."

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2 minutes ago, TheTrickster said:

How is a system that caps you from doing pretty anything substantial, such as it is now,  NOT pay to win?  It would be nigh on impossible to earn enough in-game silver for your one-person only shack-on-deed.  You can't ride anything but cows, can't "sail" anything but a rowboat.  Can't load/unload.   There is a lot of stuff experienced players do that I think they take for granted and forget that a non-prem player can't and doesn't even know what they are missing.  The premium subscription method you currently have is classic pay to win.  You pay money and gain a bunch of access/ability that gives you an advantage that is impossible for non-premium players to equalize - that is the epitome of pay to win.  Not that wurm has a "win" condition as such.

 

All I am saying is that the gain rate is better tool to adjust than the skill cap.   My experience was that the only benefit I could see from outside the curtain was lifting the cap.  Raising that cap would only delay conversion longer and slow down cashflow.

 

What I proposed mixes both Trial and Free to Play in the one experience.  You get a taste of what you COULD have in premium (hence trial) and then if you don't bite the taste is taken away and you are left with Free to Play.  Currently, there isn't really a trial, because a new player cannot try some of the stuff that is behind the paywall (again, definitely pay to win).

 

 

 

Yes.  That is a very good comparison.  I don't know that both a higher cap and slower gain will achieve that, though.  It would result in quite a bit of the second scenario before any experience of the first.  Nevertheless, this comparison is exactly what I am getting at.  Give new players an understanding of how they benefit from premium.  Currently the premium game and the non-premium game are surprisingly different.  Before premium, I really could not explore unless I was exploring a towered highway (i.e. a walking tourist).  I could keep animals, but it was hard to see the point as I really didn't have much use for them, and spent most of the time repairing and re-imping fences.  Had a visitor come through and knock up a QL50 fence like it was nothing and I immediately felt like I was wasting my time.

 

Notice the common starting conditions on WU servers, and think how that can be leveraged back into WO.  On many, even the 1x/1x action/skillgain the starting characteristics are sufficient to ride and to drive a cart, and often to load/unload.  Why?  Because that gets people past the "working on progressing enough to start Wurm" period and into the "playing Wurm" stage.  If you want people to pay to play Wurm, let them play Wurm for a bit instead of only the "preamble to Wurm."


It's not pay-to-win anymore than World of Warcraft's "Level-Cap" system to TRY the game.
Wurm isn't stopping you from doing anything within your minimal skills, it just cuts off way too early to really experience what the game has to offer.
A Free-Trial with a "Pay for More" isn't "Pay-To-Win" as it isn't giving any bonuses, it's unlocking further progression. Progression that you and everyone else still has to work for at the same rate.
I think you are confusing "Pay Wall" with "Pay to Win".  "Pay to Win" is an advantage. "Pay Wall" is you cannot progress further without paying for it.
Wurm is a Pay-Wall game, not Pay to Win. Although the idea of selling in-game coin could be considered Pay-To-Win in many ways...

The problem is as I mentioned in my most recent post, that players aren't experiencing by any means all of what Wurm has to offer.
Now that doesn't mean we give them everything, that defeats the purpose of the Premium Pay-Wall in the first place, but there's no reason we can increase the Skill Cap to distance that Wall to give new non-Premium players a taste of what Wurm really does offer.


I hate that WU servers are just giving away skills like the Riding, Driving and load/unloading though. I feel that's far too much and takes away a lot of the appropriate progression to learning how the game works and how earning different functions, skills and abilities are truly rewarded for your hard work.
Many WU players from these servers have come to take these things for granted and get quite upset when they aren't readily made available the moment they login.



 

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I am an old-school player, and remember when "free to play" was actually shareware that you ordered from a mailing catalogue and came on 5.25" floppies (I think I even have a couple 8" discs stored away).   The free or demo portion of the game was often actually fully featured but scope-limited.  

 

E.g. Descent, DukeNukem3d and a couple of others, you played all the way through and actually got the pay off of a job completed, but if you wanted more you got the paid version to continue.  

 

How would that translate to an MMO Sandpit?  Not sure.  Maybe instead of a starter deed have a starter island, with a premium purchase buying passage to the wider world.  

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9 minutes ago, TheTrickster said:

I am an old-school player, and remember when "free to play" was actually shareware that you ordered from a mailing catalogue and came on 5.25" floppies (I think I even have a couple 8" discs stored away).   The free or demo portion of the game was often actually fully featured but scope-limited.  

 

E.g. Descent, DukeNukem3d and a couple of others, you played all the way through and actually got the pay off of a job completed, but if you wanted more you got the paid version to continue.  

 

How would that translate to an MMO Sandpit?  Not sure.  Maybe instead of a starter deed have a starter island, with a premium purchase buying passage to the wider world.  

I believe this was a thing back in the day, where non-premiums couldn't leave Golden Valley server.
Every other map was locked unless you were an active premium subscriber, even if your character lost premium you couldn't login until you renewed.

That didn't go well then either as you couldn't participate with your friends who were premium at the time and other limitations.

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20 minutes ago, Zera said:

Wurm isn't stopping you from doing anything within your minimal skills

 

Except "within your minimum skills" is the issue.  You cannot ride a horse, drive a cart, sail, load or unload, remove walls or fences (at a time when you are much more likely to get it wrong and need to do exactly this), carry more than 140kg.    You are not trialling the game, because you are not experiencing the game, just a bit of a whistle-stop tour of it.

 

You cannot become a priest, brand animals, accept other citizens on your deed.  Those are bonuses you get when you pay.

 

20 minutes ago, Zera said:

A Free-Trial with a "Pay for More" isn't "Pay-To-Win" as it isn't giving any bonuses, it's unlocking further progression. Progression that you and everyone else still has to work for at the same rate.
I think you are confusing "Pay Wall" with "Pay to Win".  "Pay to Win" is an advantage. "Pay Wall" is you cannot progress further without paying for it.

 

Nope.  In Wurm, if you pay you gain and advantage.  If you let your premium lapse, you do not simply stop progressing, you regress (although, yes, the regression is limited).  You are at a disadvantage. You need to pay to regain you advantage.  Pay to win.  It's not an odious form, like some games, but it still qualifies.

Edited by TheTrickster
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Just now, TheTrickster said:

 

Except "within you minimum skills" is the issue.  You cannot ride a horse, drive a cart, sail, load or unload, remove walls or fences (at a time when you are much more likely to get it wrong and need to do exactly this), carry more than 140kg.    You are not trialling the game, because you are not experiencing the game, just a bit of a whistle-stop tour of it.

 

You cannot become a priest, brand animals, accept other citizens on your deed.  Those are bonuses you get when you pay.

 

 

Nope.  In Wurm, if you pay you gain and advantage.  If you let your premium lapse, you do not simply stop progressing, you regress (although, yes, the regression is limited).  You are at a disadvantage. You need to pay to regain you advantage.  Pay to win.  It's not an odious form, like some games, but it still qualifies.

That is why an increase in the skill-cap was suggested.

Increase the skill-cap to 25-30 allow new players to experience that riding/driving, increased movement capabilities but without giving them TOO much.

F2P is only intended to decide whether you like the game or not. It's not intended to be "Free to Play to the very end".
If that was the case, what would be the point for Anyone to ever spend money on Premium?

Are you suggesting we remove Premium altogether? Go completely Free-To-Play? Because giving Premium a "Boost" is the very core definition of advantage.

Trial is "Trial", you TRY it. You TRY the game out, explore the features, the gameplay and the things it offers. If you're just going to give them the possibilities for everything, it no longer becomes a "Trial" it's just the flat-out game itself.

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2 minutes ago, Zera said:

That is why an increase in the skill-cap was suggested.

Increase the skill-cap to 25-30 allow new players to experience that riding/driving, increased movement capabilities but without giving them TOO much.

F2P is only intended to decide whether you like the game or not. It's not intended to be "Free to Play to the very end".
If that was the case, what would be the point for Anyone to ever spend money on Premium?

Are you suggesting we remove Premium altogether? Go completely Free-To-Play? Because giving Premium a "Boost" is the very core definition of advantage.

Trial is "Trial", you TRY it. You TRY the game out, explore the features, the gameplay and the things it offers. If you're just going to give them the possibilities for everything, it no longer becomes a "Trial" it's just the flat-out game itself.

 

 

No, I am suggesting the same aim as I think you are.  Allow new players to actually experience the game. 

 

I think the comparison you gave above was spot on, it is much better to experience some riding, driving, sailing, building but know that there is more/better of the same with premium.  Otherwise I don't think it as actual trial, if key elements are beyond reach.  I only have my own experience to go from, but I switched when I had a few skills capped out, and still found it a long and frankly boring grind to achieve the additional gains needed for things like horseriding, tearing down inconveniently placed fences (I couldn't fence in my yard properly because of low rope fence "features"  that I couldn't destroy and replace).  I don't mind grinding thousands of stone bricks, but I would like it to be for the purpose of producing bricks, not have the bricks merely as a byproduct of my desire to get rid of a useless fence.  I couldn't even flatten my own yard, because of boundary paving.  What I got for my money was licence to grind some more.  Woohoo.  

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2 minutes ago, TheTrickster said:

 

 

No, I am suggesting the same aim as I think you are.  Allow new players to actually experience the game. 

 

I think the comparison you gave above was spot on, it is much better to experience some riding, driving, sailing, building but know that there is more/better of the same with premium.  Otherwise I don't think it as actual trial, if key elements are beyond reach.  I only have my own experience to go from, but I switched when I had a few skills capped out, and still found it a long and frankly boring grind to achieve the additional gains needed for things like horseriding, tearing down inconveniently placed fences (I couldn't fence in my yard properly because of low rope fence "features"  that I couldn't destroy and replace).  I don't mind grinding thousands of stone bricks, but I would like it to be for the purpose of producing bricks, not have the bricks merely as a byproduct of my desire to get rid of a useless fence.  I couldn't even flatten my own yard, because of boundary paving.  What I got for my money was licence to grind some more.  Woohoo.  

I think that's a good argument for raising the cap just a bit more too.
The fact that even though you premium with everything at 20 you've still a long way to go before you can really truly do anything with it (besides command a cart at 20.1 Logic). It hardly makes going Premium look like it's worth it, especially if you can't spend a lot of time playing on a regular basis.
Not that Premium is expensive, because it isn't. But when it feels like you're paying for an entire month or more of Premium just to reach the next step of noticeable features, it hardly feels worth it, especially since you aren't certain what those features are since they weren't exactly introduced (unless you watched other players do it already) as you tried the game out for yourself.

Personally when I started back in the early days, pre-tutorial I believe. I recall just being dumped into the wild and left to figure everything out clicking and what I could find on the wiki...
I had no idea what was available in the game let alone what I could or couldn't do because of the limited account. The only thing I saw was a few run-down wooden buildings, fences pieces all over the place and a nasty looking Lava Fiend not far off.

These days we've got all kinds of stuff all over the place, although the New Map will not be showing off a bunch of stone buildings, etc; to start with.
But there's no feeling of progress in the F2P. It feels very stationary and unrewarding.
It's one thing to ask assistance of your neighbors for help doing something you can't quite yet do. It's another to feel completely helpless and wonder why you're playing a game that doesn't feel like you're able to do anything. Currently that's what the Trial version feels like.

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36 minutes ago, Zera said:

But when it feels like you're paying for an entire month or more of Premium just to reach the next step of noticeable features, it hardly feels worth it, especially since you aren't certain what those features are since they weren't exactly introduced

 

36 minutes ago, Zera said:

But there's no feeling of progress in the F2P. It feels very stationary and unrewarding.
It's one thing to ask assistance of your neighbors for help doing something you can't quite yet do. It's another to feel completely helpless and wonder why you're playing a game that doesn't feel like you're able to do anything. Currently that's what the Trial version feels like.

 

 

That's it in a nutshell, really.  

 

 

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On 4/20/2020 at 4:40 PM, Ricowan said:

 

I don't think this is the main reason for the low number of active players.  Wurm Online suffers from the entire design of Wurm Online, where it's supposed to take AGES to get anything done.  In a fairly large guild of gamers I was once a member of, over 100 people, only one other member could stand to play the game at all.  Sitting in front of a stone wall in a mine for three or more minutes doing nothing but hitting the same hot key over and over until the wall finally breaks, or sitting in front of a forge, or a pile of logs, etc.  NOBODY wants to do that in a game, other than a very very tiny select few.

 

Even I hate that aspect of the game, but I enjoy the freedom of a sandbox game with terraforming, etc.  So I suffered through the incredibly boring parts.  When Wurm Unlimited came out, and the action timers could be increased to a point where most of the game was fun, I never went back to WO.  Even that didn't sway the members of the guild.  It's just not a fast paced game, and that's what 99% of gamers want, in my opinion.

Problem is, you increase the skillgains and timers and people will hit the "end game" quicker and nothing really starts to matter, and people will leave in droves when they've done everything, grinded everything to 99, solo uniques, and got nothing to do. 

Modding could solve that, and does solve it to a small extent, however modding WU is like pulling teeth and hardly any really good mods exist that improve on this aspect.

 

Wurm is about the community, however that community doesn't exist in WU outside of a select few servers that have been there since the beginning. 

 

Wurm doesn't need to be "easier" for new players. Part of the challenge is how hard it is. 

Yes it does need an UI overhaul, and it does need more documentation, but what it really needs is something to freshen up the experience and to break up the grind. 

Sadly though, whenever the devs release something, it is usally half assed, unfinished, and even more time consuming. And they usually never get finished or polished before the devs move on.

 

Fishing for example went from decent to terrible. 

Rifts are a good idea, but their implementation is terrible. 

Edited by atazs

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How many of you ACTUALLY played with the epic curve though? The epic curve and skillrates are exactly what Wurm needs to bring in a steam audience at the minimum. Skills were still a grind on epic, but compared to stock freedom it's so much better. 

Old School RuneScape is a pretty good example of how much grind people are willing to do. Most skilling in Wurm is as boring to train as Agility is in Runescape. 

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6 hours ago, Radni said:

How many of you ACTUALLY played with the epic curve though? The epic curve and skillrates are exactly what Wurm needs to bring in a steam audience at the minimum. Skills were still a grind on epic, but compared to stock freedom it's so much better. 

Old School RuneScape is a pretty good example of how much grind people are willing to do. Most skilling in Wurm is as boring to train as Agility is in Runescape. 

There's quite a few games out there these days that require a lot of work to make any real noticable progress though, and these games are eaten up anyway.
Look at ARK: Survival Evolved and Atlas.
They've got a butt-load of players every day and while they may not have "Grind this skill" or "Watch this timer" it still takes a lot of Grinding to make any real progress (and maintain it if you're on PvP servers).

It isn't so much about the speed in which something is achieved or maintained that's what gets and holds players, it's whether or not it's a reasonable task to do so.

The current rate at which things are given/received in Wurm is fine, it's part of what makes Wurm what it is after all. The Epic Curve is there for PvP purposes solely because can you imagine spending Freedom/PvE rates/curve to lose it all in a PvP environment as often as you possibly do? Not very appealing...

I don't think the Epic Curve belongs on PvE at all, there simply is no reason for it.

 

Either making a slight adjustment to early Horse Riding Skill/Cart Driving requirements or increasing the F2P skill-cap should be plenty enough for new players to go from there.
It gives plenty of a foothold in the game to understand what it is, how the progress is going to be and allows them to learn new things Skill/Ability wise.

 

The problem I feel with Wurm is that most folks look at it as a "Grind Game" to begin with. They park themselves in front of a task with the sole purpose intention of just focusing on leveling a skill.
Which is all fine and dandy, but in reality if that's the route you're taking you only have yourself to blame.
Personally I've found a lot more pleasure in focusing on just the tasks at hand to accomplish the work needed around my homestead and allow the skills to come as they will. When you focus more on the game as a Build, Survive and Design game than a Grind game, you enjoy it a lot more in the long run.

Sure timers aren't exactly the greatest, and reaching certain skill milestones are a PITA if you don't focus those skills in some instances (in which case I'll just run around and imp everything I can pertaining to that particular skill) but it's a great opportunity to multi-task.

 

As I keep telling my Husband, Wurm is a Multi-tasker's dream-world. I can watch my Netflix, eat my breakfast, get some mining or building done in Wurm and just relax without having to stress about anything.
I'm looking forward to being able to tend my farms, brush my horses and continue working around the homestead after my daughter is born here soon.

If things were sped up that would increase this workload at a much higher rate and feel more like I'm breezing through things too quickly.
There's a time and place for "Faster" and that's all fine and dandy in an environment that requires it, like PvP. But PvE isn't one of them.

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On 4/23/2020 at 8:02 AM, Zera said:

Either making a slight adjustment to early Horse Riding Skill/Cart Driving requirements or increasing the F2P skill-cap should be plenty enough for new players to go from there.
It gives plenty of a foothold in the game to understand what it is, how the progress is going to be and allows them to learn new things Skill/Ability wise.


Has there not been an adjustment in the past already? I noticed that I was able to ride a horse and a cart without premium - or is that only for people who already have been premium and reached the body control for riding before? :o

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