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wipeout

why? why is the stronghold like this?

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When you guys teased the whole "after this many jackal beacons are closed a stronghold would spawn" i imagined it would be some nicely terraformed "stronghold" ontop of a mountain or a towering platform above a desert with dirt walls sky high and multiple walls reaching to a giant courtyard where the final battle would take place

I wasnt really expecting a 5 minute deedplanner job that just screams "hey guys you know that stronghold we promised players? Ya anyone got any ideas of what to make for it? No? okay give me 5 min il come up with something simple"
I just hope that the final fight will be worth it for those who spend all this time destroying beacons and arent just left with a "fancy" rift to murder with a overly tanky and buffed  up warmaster at the end that is renamed to jackal king or something silly like that

Sorry but this is just yet another nail into the coffin of what could have been a great plan but rushed out and poorly designed thing and yes im being negative not because im angry but because im sad i enjoyed jackal i did what i wanted to do on there even while being slapped in the face by the lack of content and lackluster skill transfer and repetitive beacons that once you seen one you seen them all(why not make higher ql ones spawn the towers the warmaster spawns and such)

In the end it just seems like jackal was a cash grab with 1 new main feature being the reason why it even became a thing and its just a pet project blown up to be this big giant thing that looks great from afar but is empty from up close


Sorry just sad and wanted to let this out maybe next time make the design of the stronghold be ontop of a mountain with dozens upon dozens of platforms all locked off by magical barriers that people have to fight through to reach the next stage and the next courtyard of this fortress slowly working your way  up the mountain past buildings full of loot and monsters to kill and make it seem like your actually going to fight the endboss
Something like that might actually make people be happy about jackal and be a unique experience but i know its more work and a lot harder to create something like that and spawn it in by scripts then a flat 43x43 mirrored design

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The design of it is plain because Budda was stepped down towards the end of the project and between addressing bugs and ensuring the stronghold existed at all there was little time for major polish.  It is the zone for the final fight, not really a labyrinth of puzzles. This is the first iteration and as such has areas to improve upon which we've already taken plenty of feedback.

 

If you enjoyed jackal thats great! If you have reasonable ideas about how it can be improved please feel free to do so, but enjoy it for what it is, a first run through of a project that's going to ensure ongoing and engaging content for players, with the ability to really mix up pve styles without impacting existing players who do not wish for it. 

 

The negative attitudes and comments make constructive feedback difficult to sift through. While I'm completely aware that you are disappointed in how the first iteration of jackal has missed that certain "something" that you were hoping for, the best course of actions would be to give ideas and discuss what can happen next run, because of the way Jackal is designed changing the mechanics mid run is not possible without causing major issues. 

 

 

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40 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

The design of it is plain because Budda was stepped down towards the end of the project and between addressing bugs and ensuring the stronghold existed at all there was little time for major polish.  It is the zone for the final fight, not really a labyrinth of puzzles. This is the first iteration and as such has areas to improve upon which we've already taken plenty of feedback.

 

If you enjoyed jackal thats great! If you have reasonable ideas about how it can be improved please feel free to do so, but enjoy it for what it is, a first run through of a project that's going to ensure ongoing and engaging content for players, with the ability to really mix up pve styles without impacting existing players who do not wish for it. 

 

The negative attitudes and comments make constructive feedback difficult to sift through. While I'm completely aware that you are disappointed in how the first iteration of jackal has missed that certain "something" that you were hoping for, the best course of actions would be to give ideas and discuss what can happen next run, because of the way Jackal is designed changing the mechanics mid run is not possible without causing major issues. 

 

 

For me im just sad was hoping for something great but its understandable as to why it wasnt finished if he was in charge or played a big part in design for it 

Im just hoping that next round it will be more ❤️  just had to write that up first so that it wont bug me much

Oh what you could maybe do is run a competition on the forums where people can design a giant stronghold and the one that is picked gets converted into that rounds stronghold? that way the design aspect of that will be taken out of you guys your hands and you are only left to convert it into a script for spawning

Edited by Retrograde
Fixed the quoted post
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2 hours ago, Retrograde said:

If you have reasonable ideas about how it can be improved please feel free to do so, but enjoy it for what it is, a first run through of a project that's going to ensure ongoing and engaging content for players [...]

Being angry and bitter serves you little, and only further reinforces your own negative attitudes. Give ideas and discuss what can happen next run, because of the way Jackal is designed changing the mechanics mid run is not possible without causing major issues. 

 

Perhaps you shouldn't treat your players as guinea pigs for the devs lacking design skills. There's "we're still improving" and then there's "we didn't even finish it and hope the players do it for us", the first leaving an impression of "this was cool, but next time can we do X?", while the latter spawns posts such as this one. And people would even do that and help you, as shown by wipeout's response. You have so incredibly much goodwill of the community and you're burning through it like nobodys business with your endless dismissal and deflection at every given turn, giving piss poor answers such as this that amount to "you mad, bruv?". It's like you haven't even read the original post.

 

To recap the suggestions:

  • Stronghold design is incredibly underwhelming, making for an unintruiging battle place that's too open and shallow. Multiple stages with different designs would mix it up, with intermediate loot
  • Make the entry to the stronghold more difficult (dirt walls, ontop of mountain)
  • Beacons are repetetive and could at least use ramping up difficulty more

It's all in the OP, given by someone who had spent 3 months on your half-baked product and the best you can come up with is condescending OP with platitudes about being "bitter and angry helping nothing".

 

Edited by Retrograde
Moderation edit hastened.
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Development takes time and man power. The problem comes, where are you going to get 10-20 people to test something like this, over a period of 3 months. In which they would have to consistently play like the players would? The only way Wurm can do this is by allowing the players to actually play it live, not as a test. If it were only a test, the turn out would be MUCH lower than it was.

 

Its the first run of something that will keep going, the first run wont be the best it can be. Things take time to polish up and get feedback on. Especially on an event of this scale.

 

Edit: The best thing we can do, is provide proper feedback on the mechanics. Complaints can be good, but need to be phrased right. I like your second post Wipeout :P its written well. I love that idea of having a contest, I have some ideas myself ;D

Edited by Nicrolis
Last edit? i swear?
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33 minutes ago, Nicrolis said:

Development takes time and man power. The problem comes, where are you going to get 10-20 people to test something like this, over a period of 3 months. In which they would have to consistently play like the players would? The only way Wurm can do this is by allowing the players to actually play it live, not as a test. If it were only a test, the turn out would be MUCH lower than it was.

 

Its the first run of something that will keep going, the first run wont be the best it can be. Things take time to polish up and get feedback on. Especially on an event of this scale.

 

Edit: The best thing we can do, is provide proper feedback on the mechanics. Complaints can be good, but need to be phrased right. I like your second post Wipeout :P its written well. I love that idea of having a contest, I have some ideas myself ;D


Well as flubb posted up so nicely(besides the blatant attack on staff that got his post deleted)

"

To recap the suggestions:

  • Stronghold design is incredibly underwhelming, making for an unintruiging battle place that's too open and shallow. Multiple stages with different designs would mix it up, with intermediate loot
  • Make the entry to the stronghold more difficult (dirt walls, ontop of mountain)
  • Beacons are repetetive and could at least use ramping up difficulty more

"

Was what he had said outside of the attack on staff but in the past i have asked and i will keep asking for give us community engagement with designing things the staff team is small yet you got us use our goodwill and our willingness to help and yell at you when you do something wrong to make wurm better like a while back there was talks of a updated wurm trailer so i mentioned why not make a community contest out of it with the reward being a bit of sleep powder and 3 months prem it wont cost cc anything and will make people who see the trailer think "oh hey nice trailer and wait this is made by the community? thats great these devs are in touch with their community i like this game already"
Its the same thing here if you guys are struggling on designing something or you dont have the time for it and its a time sensitive project like the stronghold design here run a community contest you got us as a resource use it

And nicrolis i post so much feedback some of it good some of it bad that certain people dont read it anymore >.> but that wont stop me from posting it
And sure development takes time but there is a difference between "hey we lost this person who worked on this so lets leave it unfinished" and "hey we lost this person but instead lets see if others can help out oh what about the community they already know the stronghold is a thing why not run a contest to help design it" and call me crazy but i would spend 3 months testing something out just for the sake of getting it wiped(look at jackal ;):P ) wurm is a game we all love and hate some of us more then others

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35 minutes ago, wipeout said:

(besides the blatant attack on staff that got his post deleted)

 

The last sentence I can understand was rather aggressive, but I'd call it tough love. It wasn't integral to the post in its entirety though so he could have just edited that out instead of deleting the whole thing, because the rest pertains to a general trend of half-baking things these days and offloading the onus of making the experience enjoyable on the players in form of making them basically test it out first, and I think that's important to point out and pretty relevant to the topic. So I'll say it again without the burden of any of the other facetious stuff I said: "We are still improving" is a thinly veiled excuse for "We are making you playtest this" in this instance.

 

You make an excellent point about upfront community involvement though and I really hope for those still playing the staff takes heed of that. 3 months into Jackal you get "Oh yes, by the way, the stronghold is pretty meh because Buddha went, hope you can wait another 6-9 months until you get another shot at a better experience."

They knew this at the time. Even if direct involvement wouldn't have been feasible - and to be fair, there are plenty points for that, some of which you implied with your point about programming spawning of mobs in arbitrary structures, but also some secrecy component that started with the lack of an ingame map and surely extends to the layout of the stronghold being unkown to everyone. They could have still taken a step back and said "woah, this is kinda dull, perhaps we should give a heads up that we couldn't finish this up".

And this is where I think CRC is failing you guys. Not the devs exactly who were pinched for time and resources, but the people would ought to communicate this up front by having a bit more (self-)awareness about these things. If this had been done, I think it would have genuinely softened the blow if you knew to lower expectations for the stronghold (I gave up on Jackal long ago and even on Wurm because of it, but I'm still flabberghasted over that image there). Because getting the apologia after the fact doesn't undo that sinking feeling one gets when you realize "oh, this is it..."

I could have said it in a less abrasive manner but I think that point still stands as a criticism.

Edited by Flubb
wrong word, grammar hard when tired
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1 hour ago, Retrograde said:

because Budda was stepped down

 

I like that phrasing. In soviet wurm the party steps down you!

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2 hours ago, Nicrolis said:

Development takes time and man power. The problem comes, where are you going to get 10-20 people to test something like this, over a period of 3 months. In which they would have to consistently play like the players would? The only way Wurm can do this is by allowing the players to actually play it live, not as a test. If it were only a test, the turn out would be MUCH lower than it was.

Fair point, the team is small to begin with and  1 month after jackal released they had to shift the focus anyway on the steam launch and lose the main dev on the project (is Budda still volunteering atleast or stopped completely?) so that made jackal development even harder i would imagine especially since they had to spend alot of time on making the skill transfer work.

 

Actually considering the rate of the skill transfer, honestly, from my point of view, working so hard on making it work is a huge waste of time because the impact it has on wether someone wants to play jackal or not is negligible.

 

Actually i lied.. is infuriating:)

 

So because the jackal player base is so understanding and beta testing a product while paying same ammount for their subscription i see 2 options:

 

The dev team increases the skill transfer by ALOT as a thank you to the loyal handful that still plays there and even bothered to grind teh whole fortress mission in 3 months from launch,

 

Or makes jackal free to play without capping the skills at 20 for those who chose to do so, because then new players can get on jackal at no cost (existing ones can lure their friends in with no prem needed) and can just learn how to start from 0 and how to survive and when they decide to get a prem toon and move to Freedom they already have extended knowledge of those aspects of the game and even testing for older players:

 

Say you  want to make a lib priest can just go to jackal with you existing priest on freeedom and get to see if you like lib priesting on jackal while you can still use your deity on freedom thanks to the loadstones.

 

I vote for increasing the skill transfer by ALOT but i am telling you i may be on to something with the free no skill cap play on jackal thing:  prem players can get skins and 0.00001% on skills every month while new players can just come and see if they like the game with no strings attached and all their skills will matter while they learn how to wurm from the vets, CA help, or weird section on adult websites?:)

 

Being able to learn how to wurm now and feel like your skills matter when there are 15y old grinded toons in the economy is the hardest thing for newbies if they start on Freedom.

 

But if they start on jackal they learn how to survive from nothing and how to grind and have their skills mean something in the entire server ecosystem while they get to fight and sail etc.

 

And since theres no item crossing and basicly 0 skill crossing with a total wipe is not like their skills could bother the vets on freedom.

 

L.E. I also D E M A N D  that all the toons that  have atleast one skill above 80 on jackal should get the title Beta Male :)

Edited by Cipacadrinho
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2 hours ago, Flubb said:

 

 

Perhaps you shouldn't treat your players as guinea pigs for the devs lacking design skills. There's "we're still improving" and then there's "we didn't even finish it and hope the players do it for us", the first leaving an impression of "this was cool, but next time can we do X?", while the latter spawns posts such as this one. And people would even do that and help you, as shown by wipeout's response. You have so incredibly much goodwill of the community and you're burning through it like nobodys business with your endless dismissal and deflection at every given turn, giving piss poor answers such as this that amount to "you mad, bruv?". It's like you haven't even read the original post.

 

To recap the suggestions:

  • Stronghold design is incredibly underwhelming, making for an unintruiging battle place that's too open and shallow. Multiple stages with different designs would mix it up, with intermediate loot
  • Make the entry to the stronghold more difficult (dirt walls, ontop of mountain)
  • Beacons are repetetive and could at least use ramping up difficulty more

It's all in the OP, given by someone who had spent 3 months on your half-baked product and the best you can come up with is condescending OP with platitudes about being "bitter and angry helping nothing".

 

Since I've gone and removed the offending bits I've unhidden it, it was my plan to have the forum moderators change it but given that it did upset you I went and did it myself. 

 

I agree my wording came across a little strong, which is why it was edited. 

 

The feedback is all valid and will go a long way into working on Jackal round 2, we'll be taking some time to address multiple areas raised and do hope the next round to be much more engaging. 

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3 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

Since I've gone and removed the offending bits I've unhidden it, it was my plan to have the forum moderators change it but given that it did upset you I went and did it myself. 

 

I agree my wording came across a little strong, which is why it was edited. 

 

The feedback is all valid and will go a long way into working on Jackal round 2, we'll be taking some time to address multiple areas raised and do hope the next round to be much more engaging. 

+1 cookie for retrograde 

I cant wait to see j2 come around in the future and i hope that it will be a lot better and hey dont be afraid to ask the community for help if ever needed no matter how "boring" the task might seem there is almost always someone whos willing to help

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8 hours ago, Nicrolis said:

Development takes time and man power. The problem comes, where are you going to get 10-20 people to test something like this, over a period of 3 months. In which they would have to consistently play like the players would? The only way Wurm can do this is by allowing the players to actually play it live, not as a test. If it were only a test, the turn out would be MUCH lower than it was.

 

Its the first run of something that will keep going, the first run wont be the best it can be. Things take time to polish up and get feedback on. Especially on an event of this scale.

 

Edit: The best thing we can do, is provide proper feedback on the mechanics. Complaints can be good, but need to be phrased right. I like your second post Wipeout :P its written well. I love that idea of having a contest, I have some ideas myself ;D

so you are saying jackal was launched in half way before have most things completed as wurm usual releases...
 

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What a beautiful design. I guess it's some kind of tribute to 80's computer games?

 

Plain and simple heartless 5 minute designs is what we need.

 

Elon approves.

 

p07vrwf8.jpg

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12 hours ago, wipeout said:

I wasnt really expecting a 5 minute deedplanner job that just screams "hey guys you know that stronghold we promised players? Ya anyone got any ideas of what to make for it? No? okay give me 5 min il come up with something simple"
 


I'm very inclined to agree and sent a pm offering my creative assistance before i read your post.
I avoided the design a starter deed competition because im not competitive (with anyone but me), it woulda messed with my muse but the game needs to shine and as i said in the pm that i wrote before i read your post `The focus of Jackal should look better than a 5 minute piece of code`
Im told `there is a history of volunteer players making art content for the game and then withdrawing their fair use agreement for it` which is why CC isn't so keen on repeating history but to be frank, just make us sign something that witholds the specific architect and states that any part of the game is owned by the game. Much like fb does with anything you put on there.
There is such incredible talent within the player base and it is very broad.
We're not all hungry for acclaim, initial recognition is enough. Laurels are enough. Use the family not just the staff.


I wrote that before reading the PR responce, so, first iteration. cool. like i said, if u need me i can help but it's very solo work and i'll need the map file. I'll not commit if it's a competition tho i believe a compo would also be a good thing.
The design flaw is not a question of the lack of labryinths or complicated design sets.. it's the complete absence of creativity that bugs me.
This is too important to not use as a representative for the potential of wurm and i sincerely hope it evolves.


saw the Cybertruck,  relatively cheap and modular, it just needs a paintjob.

imo Looks ace with a paintjob, i'd enjoy owning one if i'd already bought my Porsche.

Edited by Steveleeb

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9 hours ago, tamat said:

so you are saying jackal was launched in half way before have most things completed as wurm usual releases...
 

Thats not what I said at all. Everything takes time to get right. When you do not have people who can test for months, you only have the option of using the playerbase's feedback to improve your update. The Jackal update was released in a finished state. Improving jackal doesn't mean it wasnt completed.

 

You make a mallet. its 11ql. Its completed. BUT it still can be improved if you want it to be a higher ql.

Edited by Nicrolis

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Ok What did you guys imagine to have instead than?
Anybody with better plans than a few walls to keep you safe?

 

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Does anyone remember the short lived Challenge server? No? 

 

With the devs focusing on Steam, and Budda's departure, i can already see Jackal following it in it's footsteps.

 

Either way, we will be waiting at least a year until the next phase. And with it being Budda's pet project (him leaving was the reason it was unfinished) means that there's a high chance it will just simply fade away.

 

And how the hell does this work anyway? A major dev can simply just leave the team amidst of a supposedly "big" project, thus making all of his work unfinished?! That's just messed up management beyond belief. 

Other companies at least allow the project to be finished and for the said dev to finish up his work before he leaves the team 

 

Edited by atazs
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30 minutes ago, atazs said:

Does anyone remember the short lived Challenge server? No? 

 

With the devs focusing on Steam, and Budda's departure, i can already see Jackal following it in it's footsteps.

 

Either way, we will be waiting at least a year until the next phase. And with it being Budda's pet project (him leaving was the reason it was unfinished) means that there's a high chance it will just simply fade away.

 

And how the hell does this work anyway? A major dev can simply just leave the team amidst of a supposedly "big" project, thus making all of his work unfinished?! That's just messed up management beyond belief. 

Other companies at least allow the project to be finished and for the said dev to finish up his work before he leaves the team 

 

budda had his own reason to leave, probably we never will know but clarily non contingency plans

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20 hours ago, tamat said:

budda had his own reason to leave, probably we never will know but clarily non contingency plans

 

he was "stepped down" as retro put it, it's not his decision or reasons.

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I would have used all that above wasted energy to something that would have made the game better.  After all, we are all on the same side.

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6 hours ago, Zalxis said:

I would have used all that above wasted energy to something that would have made the game better.  After all, we are all on the same side.

we cant, mods cant be used on wo and most suggestions if get response only get a "QoL means make wuem easier thats why dont adding it"

 

Edited by tamat
typo
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10 minutes ago, tamat said:

we cant, mods cant be used on wo and most suggestions if get response only get a "QoL means make wuem easier thats why dont adding it"

 

 

I got: "Most of your mods wouldn't work out in Wurm Online" Kinda disappointing getting no recognition at all, but well seems like having cool stuff like Vein breakers making it possible to remove veins in your way and so on are not needed in Wurm Online.

Edited by Sklo:D

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43 minutes ago, Sklo:D said:

 

I got: "Most of your mods wouldn't work out in Wurm Online" Kinda disappointing getting no recognition at all, but well seems like having cool stuff like Vein breakers making it possible to remove veins in your way and so on are not needed in Wurm Online.

We got vein breakers its called me or kreigar or a bunch of others who will gladly mine out a vein or something for you so long as you give us a way to clean it all up and food ⚒️

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