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crimsonearth

(Thread no longer relevant, please close) Help us make Sloping Sands more inviting

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Hello team,

 

I'm writing to humbly ask whether you might consider reducing the size of Sloping Sands in the westerly direction by 10 tiles, and reducing its overall perimeter from the current 20 to the standard 5 tiles. Here's why:

 

1) Compared to other servers, Sloping Sands is a pretty bleak area for new folk to spawn into. When I first joined the server back in 2013 it was my first introduction to Wurm Online, and the area around it was built up by players in a beautiful way that inspired me to go and find a patch of countryside and start my own deed. These days, Release is quiet and we've all moved away from the starter deed, which means it's just sand and dirt and mountain as far as the eye can see with a couple of lonely houses on the horizon. Since we can't help to develop and beautify Sloping Sands itself (which comprises three buildings in which new players can't do anything except trade with the public traders), I'd like to, possibly with the help of some other community members, build a small community deed on the west lake there with open access for existing and new players, with an inn with free beds, stables with free horses, a community tavern and so forth, to make Sloping Sands an inviting place to land, and to show what few new players we get there what can be done in Wurm and give them a safe place to sleep, acquire a first horse, and get food past that first 24 hours in game if they're not yet ready to head out in the wilderness completely alone, or until they find an active recruiting village to join elsewhere on the map, like Harvest Moon Lagoon, where there's room for them to build and farm. 

 

2) The deed of Sloping Sands and its perimeter covers almost all of that beautiful little lake to the west, despite the fact that the outer wall of Sloping Sands ends ten tiles inside the deed border on its west side. The 20 tile perimeter has no negative impact on us to the north and east, and is a minor annoyance to the south in that any deed necessarily has 25 tiles of space between it and the end of the developed area of SS, but to the west, the perimeter and excess deed tiles of SS means pretty much that whole lovely lake is consumed. It's a waste of a beautiful space.

 

3) Larger perimeters no doubt used to serve to protect access to starter deed areas and to prevent over-development in the initial land-grab, but Release is seven years old now and we need to work harder to entice people to stay. In addition, the new highway system means that the roads into and out of SS are well protected from rogue deeders and builders, and reducing the perimeter from 20 to 5 would still leave the highway to the east tunnel safely within perimeter space of deeds, and the highways to the north similarly safely within deed and perimeter space.

 

4) I'm happy to put in time, resources and silver needed to make the area more inviting. I'd just like to do it in a way that complements and leads naturally on from Sloping Sands, rather than one that hugs the edge of a 20-30 tile stretch of no-man's land to the south and west of SS. I belong to an alliance of kind and generous community-minded players who have built several of the highways, bridges and canals that make Release as accessible as it is, and we're skilled builders and craftspeople who love our server; I'm sure some of them would be willing to help with or take over management of it if for any reason I ended up putting Wurm down for a while. Let us make it more inviting for newer players to join our community.

Edited by crimsonearth
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Bumping this. I don't know of this suggestion is something that would be given consideration by whatever team control the starter towns or not, but if not, would be helpful for someone to indicate that so we can get started on other projects instead.

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I agree fully we need to make rel slopping sands better. Unlike many other starting area's it needs love care and ability to make it look nicer for all . Have some nice redo instead of looking as if your going onto a lost old sever .

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I am a longtime resident or Release and live somewhat near Sloping Sands. I have seen many other starter towns being redone, but ours still looks like a desolate wasteland that is not inviting or welcoming in any way. I would be very enthusiastic about this project and would gladly donate time, materials, items and silver to a community improvement project for making this area nice. I also agree with Crimson that building a newbie friendly open access deed near to the town as it is now is difficult and impractical due to the huge perimeter and would love to have an open deed on the lake where new players could actually live, pickup and use items, smith things, and interact with the deed as opposed to buildings that are just there but aren't functional or visually appealing for them.

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Hey folks, 

 

Finally had a sort-of-an-answer to this from Retro on another thread. I'll let Fairy + Yuri know too. Never mind; it was a nice idea!

 

 1 hour ago, crimsonearth said:

 

On that note: 

I don't think SS really shows off anything that can be done in Wurm, or reflects the style or community of the server, and what little is there is almost completely un-interactable for players both new and old.

 

If the answer to the above suggestion is 'it's complicated and we need more time to consider it', or 'no, sorry' that's fine but we've got an alliance of prem'd PCs here waiting for someone to acknowledge the suggestion so we know whether it is likely to be considered, or whether we should get our teeth into other projects we all have going.

Sloping sands is likely to be opened up as another deed design comp shortly. 

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What do you mean? I totally support this! 

 

What we'll do though is open it for other residents of pristine Release to put forward their own ideas too! 

 

a deedplanner file will be provided and you can all work together to build the plan, if yours wins you get to build it

Edited by Retrograde
No pristine members allowed!
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Hi Retro,

 

This thread was about developing the area around SS (it's on Release, though, not Pristine) with a community run deed for new folks. 

 

If there's going to be a competition to redo the starter town, then our suggestion to make a nice deed bordering it to welcome new folk (and to compensate for SS not offering them anything much) is no longer needed because presumably the new SS will fill this gap and this particular plan of developing the west lake is redundant if SS is going to be upgraded since deedplans submitted may well want all that perimeter space.

 

Very happy for other folks to compete to design it, and would welcome it. It's not my thing, personally, but so long as SS gets the love and attention it sorely needs, that's all we really wanted for it. Thus: thread no longer needed.

Edited by crimsonearth
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