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Eyesgood

What Is Wrong With Wurm?

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I logged on today with one of my many alts and did a quick /who.

 

[12:39:36] 107 other players are online. You are on Independence (295 totally in Wurm).

 

I remember a few years back how that many of us were watching with anticipation to see that one-liner above read "2000 totally in Wurm".  It was back in the days when the regular population seemed to hover around 1700-1800 and it was actually fun to watch the number grow month after month.  So, from then to now, lots of new content has been added to Wurm.  New items, new mechanics, new maps, new graphics -- lots of "new".  I think it is obvious to anyone that adding "new" is not the problem.  But every time the numbers swing low, somebody decides its time to divide the population and create a new map, or a new adventure, or a new something-or-other.  Now it is a new platform (i.e. Steam).  But that has already been done...  When are the devs going to realize that the world of Wurm already contains YEARS of content.  I am not saying stop making new content.  I am saying, Content is NOT THE PROBLEM.  I'm saying, stop trying to dangle something new in front of the players in hopes that they wont leave like 90% of the population has already done.  If Wurm is the Ultimate Sandbox, and the ultimate sandbox is constantly getting new content, but yet the population keeps dropping, and dropping, and dropping...  Something must be wrong with Wurm.  My question is, What is it?  While I might be able to list a dozen things, I will just mention 2 things I believe are wrong with Wurm.  Maybe you can mention yours as well?  Maybe the devs might take notice at any trending thoughts among the few remaining players of this amazing game.

 

1.  The TCO (total cost of ownership) is wrong.

 

Devs seem to have the mentality, "We are not going to make Wurm more affordable."

Hardcore Players chime in with, "If you want to play the best sandbox ever, you need to be willing to pay for it."

 

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened with Wurm had Rolf decided NOT to jack the price of premium way back when.  I know back in 2009 when I started playing, I distinctly remember thinking how awesome it was that I can pay 5 Euro a toon and be able to have more than one so I could experience both crafting and priesting. That was back in the day when $9.95 a month subs were commonplace.   I would venture to say there would be more than 295 in Wurm today had Rolf not done that, which would translate into more income for CC and more players populating the lands of Wurm.  But we will never know now...  They way of almost every game today is to go free-to-play and have a shop for non-pay-to-win items.  CC has neither.  I suggest a NEW MONETARY MODEL for Wurm.  I don't care what it is, so long as it makes Wurm more attractive to new and existing players and more affordable.

 

2.  Toon Trading is wrong.

 

CC allows any of us to fork out a thousand dollars for an awesome toon for sale by another player and there you have it, instant skills and instant advantage.  However, CC gets NOTHING, ZIP, NADA from that transaction.  There is something wrong with that picture and I will illustrate what it is.  Suppose CC announced tomorrow they had decided to offer awesome pre-made toons with varying pre-made skill-sets that could be purchased from the Wurm Shop, ranging in price from $50 to $500.  They might offer the Master Miner with 90 mining, or the Master Carpenter with 90 carpentry skills, or the Soldier with 50 fighting skills.  What would happen?  Current high-level players would totally freak out and cry foul, calling Wurm a total pay to win game.  But it is that already, only CC gets nothing and the players get everything.  That is not fair to CC in my opinion.

 

I am not suggesting CC start competing with commodity toons on the market today.  Rather, I am suggesting CC recognize this pay-to-win mechanic is killing the game and STOP the sale of toons altogether.  Cut off the head of this pay-to-win system.  Link a toon to a permanent email address or charge a player to change an email address of a toon.  Only allow one toon per email address.  Ban players who are caught selling their toons.  Do SOMETHING to prevent toons from being sold or at least do everything possible to deter it.  Can't do that?  Impossible to stop the trade?  Ok, then, add a mechanic to the game that allows a player to transfer skills gained into a skill-injector type object and make players BUY the injector from the shop.  Then, they could sell skills in the game but CC earns money as well.  Do something that allows CC to benefit from the toon trade, or else, get rid of it altogether.

 

Those are two things in my opinion that are currently wrong with Wurm.

 

What are yours?

Edited by Eyesgood
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Steam WO will hopefully eliminate character trading.

I wholeheartedly agree that it has pretty much ruined the state of the game.

 

It isn't exactly P2W but it is heavily contributing to the stagnation of the game that is currently happening, by making sure that the old characters will always be around, and they will always be dominating the market and the servers. 

 

The number one problem with Wurm is the lack of advertising and terrible PR 

Edited by atazs
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Agreed, I've always opposed the character trading.

 

I don't agree with your analysis of the TOC. I think the cost is just fine and I've never really had to invest money in the game.

I'm did the math and I have made more money back than I have invested in this game.

 

The community grows up and next to that, and some point you just get bored of something. It's the cycle of life.

When I started playing this game, I had just finished my studies, was unemployed and single.

Now, 6 years later, I have a full time job and a girlfriend...

 

There are more important thing in life than playing this game.

 

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Rant time. My train of thought is at risk of not being the most coherent here. Just my general impressions and realisations of the last months dumped into some paragraphs.

 

3 hours ago, Eyesgood said:

lots of "new".

 

But never anything innovative. Just more layers of the same old stinky onion, overcomplicating things more without adding to them in essence.

The cooking update was fine but just added more carpal tunnel induction for the few who are into cooking.

Then came the fishing update that noone asked for.

We got Rifts, which most of the people cannot even attend because of its terrible scheduling. These involve hours of "combat", after hours of travel, and both components are completely mindless. The only reason Rifts got me excited was for multitasking 3 toons on a cart in it. But taken by itself, who would want 3+ hours of "Stand next to this mob and wait"? The combat system doesn't warrant an event like this in the slightest.

The trend I see here is that CCAB is completely out of touch with anything a player with moderate to decent standards would wish for. If I explained to anyone that the biggest PvE event consists of travelling up to 2 hours ingame, just to stand next to some mobs barely doing anything for 4, and then returning whence you came, they'd think I'm insane for playing this. And in retrospect, I don't see what kept me except the illusion that the grind will go anywhere some day. But it doesn't. This game is nothing but potential that the devs are unable to bring out. Once you realise this, it doesn't matter how wonderfully grindy it is, you're grinding for the sake of grinding.

 

In between we finally get quality locks, but CCAB took it way too literally, like a genie twisting ones wishes in the most malevolent way possible.

Hitching posts are finally in the game, years after it had been simply modded for WU.

Still no way to utilise highways for fast travel in any way despite numerous requests, because pressing X and tipping your vehicle with A and D for well over an hour to get anywhere is supposed to be fun?

Basically, what is considered QoL, and how it's implemented, is way behind the modding community or, again, completely out of touch with the playerbase, where genuine wishes are ignored for years or finally implemented in a way that doesn't even get confused clapping. Just irritated shrugging about why it had to be this way, leaving one to wonder what bet a dev must have lost to stick to such a decision.

 

And then there's the flimsy attempt to make a new server hoping the landrush will draw new people in. Yes, Jackal. It's barely more than just a new server.

There were no new people though. Premium player graphs show there wasn't nearly a dent, so it was just veterans being forced to reskill all over again. This could have hit some mark at least if it weren't just veterans, but news of Jackal has seemingly never left the Wurm Information sphere - if there was ever a failure in advertisement that could be attributed to such a narrow window, other than the general "there aren't enough ads for Wurm", this is the prime example.

I don't want to dwell on that dumpster fire any more than I already have since it was the straw that broke the camels back for me, but it's the culmination of all the mismanagement that happens around Wurm right now.

Underdeveloped, off the mark in design, and no word to be heard about it outside this echochamber.

And of course it was buggy and required loads of fixes afterwards like so many things recently. QA has noticably gone down the drain this year. In this latest instance, with the Jackal skill transfer, some people even were effectively unable to log in and play. This is bad enough on its own, but iIn a subscription based game, that is completely unacceptable. People pay for this time, it's not yours to waste with endless field tests.

 

And on the notion of "this is the ultimate sandbox game": It's not that, either. The building options are too severely limited to hold a candle to anything contemporary. Instead it has this amazing breadth of skills and things to do, but none of them can be put to any actual goal other than what you set yourself. And with a dwindling player base, and the game giving no incentive, no narrative, no goal to aim for anything...what's the point? Before I quit I started a tunnel project but when I thought about how barely anyone will benefit from it because there's noone left to do so at this point...well, it soured this last attempt to keep myself in the game, to say the least. I can do ridiculous projects in sandbox games. But if noone is around to share it with and it's done in the most passive, uninteresting way possible by watching a bar, I might aswell play Minecraft and save myself the cost for multiple characters and a deed, and enjoy many, many more degrees of freedom over Wurm.

 

1 hour ago, Bittereinder said:

Now, 6 years later, I have a full time job and a girlfriend...

 

There are more important thing in life than playing this game.

 

Apart from romantic involvement, this is exactly what caused the friction to grind down my illusions about where this game (and by extension my efforts in it) are headed. Anywhere but the gutter.

 

 

I hate to say it, but I start to agree with ol' Gladys these days. Not for his precise reasons, but the sentiment that PvP makes a lot more sense for Wurm as it is is finally dawning on me. There's no proper PvE and I've come to the conclusion that there never will be. And as a sandbox game, it is extremely lackluster. As for something to grind, yeah, it does that "best", because no other game has the balls to make such demands from the player as Wurm does, for good reasons.

 

Too bad full loot PvP in a persistent world just isn't for me, and it's dead here anyway. But if I had any suggestion at all for the Steam release...focus on either one, probably leaning towards PvP. Wurm has an identity crisis between what it tries to be (PvE) and what it originally was conceived as (PvP, this shows in how many skills are still completely moot in PvE). But currently it's doing neither properly. You're probably closer to being a decent PvP game at this point, since the PvE part hasn't really developed anywhere, and with the snails pace development is going, the effort it takes to make Wurm a decent PvE game is likely out of scope since that would require an interactive combat system or better AI and more involved ways to fight it.

 

Fix the PvP meta for Steam, and this might get anywhere. As a PvE game, I think it will just flounder against the competition.

Edited by Flubb
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I was watching a yt video the other day, it was from around 2007. And it struck me how everything looked

so old. It looked like from the 80's, a mild version of the 80's. The hairdos, the clothes, the tvs on screen flickering.

 

In the last 10 years the world has changed so much its mindblowing.

 

Im an old guy and i myself am stuck in the mud in many of my ways. Same for Wurm.

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Maybe its my nostalgia speaking but i miss a lot of the old textures, models and the old emotes

 

Also i fully agree with Flubb.

The fact that Jackal (which was hyped up to be this next big thing for both veterans and new players), was not advertised anywhere whatsoever outside of these forums with the exception of some random streams that are once again, not advertised anywhere but here, and maybe on Facebook? just boggles the mind. All we hear is excuse after excuse. It's like the devs are ashamed of it (and the game) or are purposely not advertising because it"s "not finished" and that it's "being improved upon" from our feedback. 

 

Well by that logic every single MMO and multiplayer game out there is constantly being improved upon. 

 

Either that or the conspiracy theorist in me thinks that they are not advertising on purpose and have an ulterior, mysterious motive. What that motive could be, i have no idea.

A prime example: One of my friends (an ex staff member) wanted to make a Wurm fansite/blog that would have dealt with the game and he genuinely wanted to put the game out there. His idea was quickly shot down my Retrogarde who told him that they are doing the exact same thing. Said friend then have decided to abandon his project.

 

That was at least half a decade ago and we have never seen anything like it yet.

 

The devs also seem to have no spine when it comes to the community. The fact that they can just flat out lie about promised AND "advertised" features, and then never mention them again in any public announcements (WU modding API) or give an apology in the hopes that we will just simply forget it and move along is just disgusting. 

And when they are confronted about it, simple, random comments "yeah they aren't coming, now move along" is enough for them.

 

Actually i should take my original point back.

 

The number one problem with Wurm isn't advertising, it is Rolf himself. 

Edited by atazs
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i dont even know why i bother commenting on this thread, since everything i (or a couple of other people say) will get immediately removed and we'll get threatened with a ban

RIP gladiator btw

 

but i can do nothing else but agree with @Flubbhere 100%

i can merely point out another big thing that the remaining "community" of wurm has to deal with on a day to day basis, while fighting with dwindling player numbers

its the random censorship that is being flung into the masses

 

i almost feel like being on an ellen or oprah show, you get a censor, and you get a censor!

you cant just silence everyone who is posting something mildly controversial or critic on your game

the day will come where you have banned everyone who cares about what direction the game goes and you will be at square one, good luck with that

 

as i said, i dont know why i even posted, probably gonna get a warning or get banned

but see this as a legitimate wake up call

mass banning people isnt the solution for a healthy game enviroment, especially not if you are close to releasing on steam

 

@Flubbhit it 100% tho

46 minutes ago, Flubb said:

Wurm has an identity crisis between what it tries to be (PvE) and what it originally was conceived as (PvP, this shows in how many skills are still completely moot in PvE).

 

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1 hour ago, Quicktor said:

you cant just silence everyone who is posting something mildly controversial or critic on your game

the day will come where you have banned everyone who cares about what direction the game goes and you will be at square one, good luck with that

 

 

 

 

Looks like they already have banned everyone who cares about the game , there's so many people I know including myself left the game because of the direction both pvp and pve has taken since 2013 -2014

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12 minutes ago, Rhianna said:

 

Looks like they already have banned everyone who cares about the game , there's so many people I know including myself left the game because of the direction both pvp and pve has taken since 2013 -2014

Caring about the game is not an excuse to harass developers, players, or break rules. 

 

I'm 100% in agreeance that the game nowadays is not like the game was in 2013 because that was six years ago and games change. If the argument is that content is not delivered fast enough then it's an ongoing struggle, most mmo's run with dev teams of large numbers yet we are incredibly small.

 

If it's moderation we work on being as transparent as possible, but considering some players who have hurled rather horrible abuse at staff are still commenting in this thread about moderation I'd say we tend to give enough leeway. 

 

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Oh I agree games change, I left because I don't like the direction the game took. Starting with changes to archery, then adding armor nerfs when doing archery, culminating in Sindusks priest changes without the necessary balancing. And to be honest I won't come back unless major changes to pvp are either balanced or reverted. It is a sign how much people are passionate about this game though that us ex players still comment and frequent the forums - it IS because we care about the direction of the game and the game itself

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21 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

If it's moderation we work on being as transparent as possible, but considering some players who have hurled rather horrible abuse at staff are still commenting in this thread about moderation I'd say we tend to give enough leeway. 

 

its not only that

if a post lets the game or a staff member look bad, then also coming from a player you guys personally dont like, its immediately removed

 

the "abuse" you speak of is critic in most cases, just cause you cant take it doesnt mean its abusive

i am banned in your very own twitch chat cause i said hello, literally

that you dont like me and some other pvp'ers is clear and i couldnt care less, but dont say you are transparent

 

the gallows section was made cause there was a huge outcry about not being transparent enough

you caved in at first, posted a little bit in it, acted

all good and dandy

but where are all the other "missing person" cases?

 

right, just swept under the rug

like it or not, and i am pretty sure you know by now and you are just trying to secure some milk in your fridge in the last minute, but you are doing a horrible job 

 

the last person that got swept under the rug just a few hours ago was @Gladiator

may he rest in pieces...

 

am i next daddy?

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited by Quicktor
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17 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

If it's moderation we work on being as transparent as possible, but considering some players who have hurled rather horrible abuse at staff are still commenting in this thread about moderation I'd say we tend to give enough leeway. 

 

 

hey all i did was poke fun about you calling me out on ruining the entire new elevation experience as a whole and i got moderated

 

tell me how thats a horrible abuse at staff lol.. you literally said I was the sole reason elevation 26.0 didn't work out, the least i should get to do is make fun of you for it

doesn't seem very transparent mate

 

these are among the reasons nearly every pvper has left the game, you still got a few people here and there, but chaos has 4 people online right now, and normally its 0-2 people, something is more wrong than just "players are being mean to us"

 

to think that I used to actually care about the success of this game at one point, for a game many of us downright love, i don't know how we managed to end up in this position. Oh wait nvm i do

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The gallows are for ingame bans, forum bans are for continued toxic behaviour and attitudes. Constantly and consistently bashing the game and staff despite repeated warnings leads to an open door to leave. 

 

the outcry of moderation applied to PvP tends to stem from the hands off approach ingame, which leads to being used to what can push the line out of the game. 

 

There's a huge difference between criticism and abuse. 

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aside from that there's a big difference between quality of life and just making the game easier. 

 

There's also a lot of discussion about the QoL that we'd like to see in the game personally, from audio improvements to general creation changes. 

 

If you would like to discuss what areas of QoL you'd like to see (and discuss their QoL factor vs just making things easier) I'd be more than happy to chat with the devs and give feedback

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1 minute ago, Retrograde said:

aside from that there's a big difference between quality of life and just making the game easier. 

 

There's also a lot of discussion about the QoL that we'd like to see in the game personally, from audio improvements to general creation changes. 

 

If you would like to discuss what areas of QoL you'd like to see (and discuss their QoL factor vs just making things easier) I'd be more than happy to chat with the devs and give feedback

 

we had a massive discussion on pvp changes that never went through, but were promised that "this time these small changes are 100% going to come through"

 

none of them did

 

everyone quit chaos

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I recall discussing what the november PvP update was going to include. That being postponed after the change of leadership was an unfortunately unforseen circumstance and was out of my hands

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2 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

I recall discussing what the november PvP update was going to include. That being postponed after the change of leadership was an unfortunately unforseen circumstance and was out of my hands

 

neg, we're talking way before that, tangleweave changes and everything, this was MONTHS before a november update was spoken about

 

I can go through and grab all of the information and cite it, if you want me to

Edited by platinumteef
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Oh right, those were passed along as per my role, I'm not the one who decides what gets worked on though. 

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3 minutes ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

#freewimble

Yeah that's not happening. Given his behaviour post temp ban he's earned himself a full permanent ban from the forums. The matter is in the hands of the GM team now 

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Retro, if you are interested in QOL feedback, how about being more generous with travel options?  Travel is meant to be realistic and immersive, and I get that.  But at some point travel becomes more of an endurance challenge and hindrance than anything else.  Travel is insanely frustrating.  In my case, I have wanted to leave Xanadu for two years now.  Travel time is literally the bane of that decision.  I have so much stuff and it takes so long to go from A to B that I have literally sat on the decision.  It takes me at least 2 hours to travel by boat from my deed to the edge of the map, and I am nowhere near the center of the map.  One thing that has made playing WU so fun is the ability to have a portal on deed that can take the player to the spawn city on the map, and back.  Wurm already has portals from Freedom to Epic.  Why not give players the ability to have more portal travel options?  Why not let players create portals on deed that can take them to capitol cities, where they can then enter the large portals that take them to other map capitols?  I remember one of the things that was frustrating for the recent video series guy (who no longer plays by the way) is that once he entered the portal to Xanadu, he was stuck there.  There simply is no reason for a player to quit due to travel.  Travel is vital to Wurm, but the restrictions prohibit fun at the cost of immersion in so many ways.  I appreciate the creature cages, the other QOL improvements related to travel.  But they don't go far enough to be worth all the trouble the huge time sink generates.

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Portal travel has been discussed, but it bypasses a lot about wurm. You become far more secluded in your own little bubble because you don't travel and see others, you just hop between your own zones. 

 

It creates a huge block to engagement and removes the entire aspect of adventuring. 

 

Wanting to save time on travel is fair, we've been discussing ways of speeding up sail travel away from land and various factors about that (also improving how vehicle movement feels with this upcoming update) but at this point being able to portal between servers and deeds is not something that we feel fits within our goals for the game. 

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I don't even know what to post anymore please just ban me if I cant comment in this thread. Thanks

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6 minutes ago, Madrocks said:

I don't even know what to post anymore please just ban me if I cant comment in this thread. Thanks

If you're having trouble, I suggest brushing up on the rules here:

 

Calling staff Gestapo should be a pretty obvious no no.

 

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