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Patch Notes: 03/MAR/20

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On 3/5/2020 at 8:05 PM, Nappy said:

One clear message that seems to be happening lately is less requirement to make changes the veterans support. It appears they are now looking bigger picture in terms of how to get new people.

 

1 hour ago, Fearil said:

I mean, maybe just come clean, would you rather the OG players just sthu so you can get on with your master revamp of the game for this expected Steam audience? Brand loyalty only goes so far, what happens when you've burned through all that and a new set of people are asked to start shouldering the burden? How long can this model last?

 

1 hour ago, CreZ said:

I have to admit I often feel similarly of late too. I'd rather be told to get bent so I can just stop caring.

 

I really love to spend my time in Wurm so I still just suck up the beating I get lately from quite some of the changes. Not sure how long my puffer lasts.

Edited by Jaz
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8 hours ago, Fearil said:

How about just letting things, eg. 2s prem, sit until you have it solidly worked out and ready to be replaced (not we're working on a replacement system, but don't hold your breath), as did not happen with the war machine revamp? How about not changing the hell out of things without fixing old bugs and problems?

The 2s replacement is already out, players can purchase premium from the shop at a reduced rate, the nomad package offers two months for 7.99 euro, and the homestead package offers two months premium and five silver for 11.99 euro. 

 

We have no current intention of adding a new ingame currency option however. 

 

As for fixing bugs and changing old problems, it's what we are doing. Yes some bugs still exist, but it's not a matter of dropping everything to work on those. We have a goal of getting wurm ready to launch on steam which includes not just fixing bugs but biting the bullet on old systems that weren't working as they should. 

 

Edit: We've also gone through and changed many bugs, yes the ones you might have mentioned are still around, but the skillgain bonus for rarity on meditation rugs is just as old a bug that was fixed with this update

 

As for the 2s option, given that the complaints here are from veteran players complaining about no longer being able to generate 2s alts to complete tasks, it highlights the exact problem with it. It was never designed to be used like that and given that by far the majority of accounts purchasing the 2s premium are a) from ips that already have accounts attached, and b) are never premium again after that, it shows its not working as an introductory system for new players. 

 

 

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1 minute ago, Retrograde said:

As for the 2s option, given that the complaints here are from veteran players complaining about no longer being able to generate 2s alts to complete tasks, it highlights the exact problem with it.

if the task is so horrible people are willing to throw money at it until it goes away it highlights a problem with the task imho

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Agreed, and maybe it's a point for discussion too. 

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1 hour ago, Retrograde said:

accounts purchasing the 2s premium are a) from ips that already have accounts attached, and b) are never premium again after that, it shows its not working as an introductory system for new players. 

 

Most of my 2s alts are just storage alts not even sermon alts. That or the occasional mayor for a nature preserve deed.

Of course I'm not really too fussed about it. I'll just pay the 10bucks or whatever instead. I'd do the same for sermons too if I was going to make sermon alts. I don't think this change solves the issues that cause us to make alts nor probably does it stop needless alt creation, it just means more revenue for the game when we do.

 

It *does* impact the proverbial new players who will have to pony up cash though. Instead of being able to forage enough to get their first taste of the good life they'll have to be willing to go out of the game, through the somewhat subpar shop flow (confusing, no prices until sign in, slightly different look and feel, not much marketing to draw them into the purchase) and cough up their cash. While I'm personally all for barriers to entry to help vett out the people who arent going to be committed, it does seem to go against what y'all seem to be trying to accomplish with attracting and retaining newbies.

Edited by CreZ
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Well, I have serious doubts that the 2s prem system ever lured many newcomers, as it was, if at all, poorly advertised. Or, maybe I was too stupid to recognize it (wouln't exclude that either). In fact, I did 40 days of basic playing, not few foraging and botanizing, creating a rowboat, and collecting 11 silver (the last two during a short time of forage/botanize). Then only, I believed to have the ingame cash for a full month of prem and was astonished, and of course delighted that it was 2s only.

 

I do not know whether I was the typical noob - maybe not. Others may have noticed the 2s opportunity. For me it was unimportant anyway as I had planned to sub anyway short after starting playing, only saw no pressure to expend money for what I got for free, namely developing skills towards the skill 20 limit.

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5 hours ago, Retrograde said:

As for the 2s option, given that the complaints here are from veteran players complaining about no longer being able to generate 2s alts to complete tasks, it highlights the exact problem with it. It was never designed to be used like that and given that by far the majority of accounts purchasing the 2s premium are a) from ips that already have accounts attached, and b) are never premium again after that, it shows its not working as an introductory system for new players.

 

Yeah, but don't forget a lot of veteran players are more vocal on the forums.

 

I know of quite a few cases of the 2s getting people their first taste of Wurm prem perks. It was crucial for giving them the opportunity to earn their next 10 with usable skills. There is now no viable non-cash option for them. New player retention is one hell of a hurdle for an aging game in a niche genre without making it harder.

 

I use a chef's knife to slice cheese. Doesn't mean I should have my chef's knife suddenly taken away, especially without a wire cheese board ready to go, because the design of a chef's knife wasn't specifically for slicing cheese... The 2s prem solved a problem that needs solving. If you're willing to consider discussing a solution, you're basically making the argument that maybe the 2s prem wasn't that useless a thing after all. Only, this comes after the fact after a solution, even if it was not an ideal one, has been ninja'd out of existence without a ready replacement. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Am I making any sense? Am I at least making anyone hungry? ;)

 

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I've helped, advised and in some cases commissioned work from a number of new players to their first 2s purchase in Freedom and Global chat, just in the past three or four months - so it was clearly an incentive for some. As other have said, 2s was reachable in play for those who weren't invested enough 'yet' to part with real money, but invested enough to do some work to try prem (and those have got to be the ones mostly likely to convert to longer term players, surely; the ones not daunted by the hard work?)

 

5s is a lot more to earn without premium skills already or a good knowledge of the game and buys just half the amount of game time for a new person for more than twice the price of the 2s system. That feels fsr less achievable.

 

For me, never having had a priest, my small handful of 2s alts allowed me to make mayors for other deeds I founded and planned to found who weren't at risk of disappearing and could gain enough caring slots in the month to keep a wagon's worth of horses and a pet indefinitely. I'm probably in the minority here, I realise, but basically the two 2s alts on my side, even if they never premmed again, each guaranteed another deed with longterm upkeep. They brought in more money for CC than just their initial prem price and weren't just depriving you of my money in SMCs and LMCs as cheap storage (which I don't buy either way).

 

The higher price prem option won't stop me if I really want another, but it'll sure make me think a lot more carefully about it, since what used to be a mere 7s to explore a new whim or community endeavour or nice use for a particular bit of land will now be almost double that each time.

 

Just... adding an alternative use to the much debated sermon alt and storage alt losses here.

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7 hours ago, Retrograde said:

Agreed, and maybe it's a point for discussion too. 

Then let us discuss. Grinding faith to 100 is horrible and boring and please don't give me that play with community bulshit i don't want that. I get that it shoudl take time to get to 100 faith but curently if you're about to do it just by praying it's impossible. Reward rare prayers with faith, reward finishing missions with faith, reward random kiling stuff, farming, idk somthg for each god, saccing rares and supremes, meditations, remove silly 5 times a day cap, just throwing ideas.

Second, grinding chanelling, also increadibily slow and boring without links after 92-93. Atleast allow followers and other priests to be linked to a priest to increase dificulty,  so i can use my regular 4 priests i would normaly play and pay for and some crafter alts instead of making tons of 2s ones..

add coc and ql of statue to actually matters in difficulty of casting, add spells more suitable for above 90 grinding without links.

And no i don't wanna go and make suggestion thread, these problems are so old and obvious to anyone who made and played priest ever in Wurm.

 

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So the problem boils down to "skillgain in these systems are timegated compared to any other skill and I don't like it"? 

 

 

1 hour ago, Fearil said:

I know of quite a few cases of the 2s getting people their first taste of Wurm prem perks. It was crucial for giving them the opportunity to earn their next 10 with usable skills. There is now no viable non-cash option for them. New player retention is one hell of a hurdle for an aging game in a niche genre without making it harder.

 

 

 

 

We didn't just use "players complaining on the forums" but going through the hard data, about 80% of all purchases were for alts, and from the remainder less than 10% stayed prem. It's a big enough number to point out that it wasn't serving the retention OR trial benefits we had hoped. 

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1 hour ago, Retrograde said:

So the problem boils down to "skillgain in these systems are timegated compared to any other skill and I don't like it"? 

Problem boils down to skilling these things is to the border of insanely impossible passed certain trashholds without single use (otherwise useless alts) or decent group of people to play with. Which leads to problem that game shouldnt restrict people who don't want to play with other people that much activly.

I guess that removing timegate on faith gains could work, not should if it would work too well tbh. maybe just removing 5 faith gains cap daily, i'm sure someone has much better crunch of that data to see how fast would be possible to get to 100 faith with that.
As for channeling other ways to increase diff instead of links i guess.. It's a game of numbers that needs to be simulated... But current system is not good obviously since people used so much 2s alts for that.

Edited by kochinac
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1 hour ago, kochinac said:

I guess that removing timegate on faith gains could work, not should if it would work too well tbh. maybe just removing 5 faith gains cap daily, i'm sure someone has much better crunch of that data to see how fast would be possible to get to 100 faith with that.
As for channeling other ways to increase diff instead of links i guess.. It's a game of numbers that needs to be simulated... But current system is not good obviously since people used so much 2s alts for that.

 

Removing the 5 faith prayer daily cap wouldn't make 100 faith more feasible in anything but a long run, but for new players that might decide to play for a while like a couple hours or so a day would get to usable levels of faith way noticeably faster, which obviously would improve gameplay tremendously.  No one enjoys the part of making a priest where you have to pray for months and months before being useful.  It would however mean the journal reward of an extra faith gain a day would need reworking, I'm sure the devs can handle that.  I'd say even make prayers every 10 or 15 minutes to be more accessible to those with shorter time to game a day.  Who gives a crap if people that play for long days or for a long time get a lot of faith from that - those are the people that already have 100 faith.

 

Honestly, as someone that's used links for channeling for a total of like 2 days of remaining prem on a couple characters, the massive draw to links isn't the difficulty, it's not needing to deal with cancerous methods of getting favor or heavily nerfed methods of getting favor.  Stop making favor harder if you want the word "fun" attached to the word "priest"

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3 hours ago, Retrograde said:

So the problem boils down to "skillgain in these systems are timegated compared to any other skill and I don't like it"? 

 

That's close. A more accurate statement would be: "So the problem boils down to "skillgain in these systems are timegated to an unreasonable level compared to any other skill and I don't like it, because it is unreasonable."

 

- or possibly -

So the problem boils down to "reasonable skillgain for faith involves a group mechanic that forces a schedule on my playtime whereupon if I am not available at a specific time, I will have been away from my deed for hours without any faith gain to show for it."

 

Many of the important weapon enchants require 100 faith. In the current system, how long would it take a priest to reach 100 faith if they do not participate in sermon groups? According to the prayer calculator spreadsheets I've seen, to reach 99.98 faith would take approximately 3.48 years, assuming that you pray to the daily limit every day and complete the approbation journal entry the same day you achieve 70 faith.  You'd still need to preach one sermon to a single player to get that last .02 otherwise you'd spend another year or two to reach 100 faith. (If these numbers are incorrect, I'd very much welcome a correction showing the method used.)

 

Obviously that isn't reasonable. It's a fact that sermons / sermon groups are essentially a requirement for priests that want to be able to cast all of their spells.

 

The best case scenario without the use of additional alts (assuming every priest is or has an alt) would be if on day 178 (83.33 faith) you'd swap out your 6 daily prayers with a sermon to your single alt, you could achieve 100 faith in about 317 total days. That actually wouldn't be completely horrible if it didn't require you to log in every 3 hours for 15 hours every single day.

Edited by Arimus
removed empty lines at the bottom
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18 hours ago, Fearil said:

It seems, so much, that we players are asked to shoulder the burden of poor planning and implementation. I myself, am near the breaking point. There is SO much useless work and time wasting in Wurm as it is, I'm not sure I want to continue supporting this management team and it's decisions, when it seems to just get worse.

 

I mean, maybe just come clean, would you rather the OG players just sthu so you can get on with your master revamp of the game for this expected Steam audience? Brand loyalty only goes so far, what happens when you've burned through all that and a new set of people are asked to start shouldering the burden? How long can this model last?

 

I think I said something to this effect before in GL Freedom a few days ago. As far as things go, people on the team are basically now forced to juggle current player goodwill with trying to draw in new players, often at the cost of killing more and more of the goodwill existing players have. When a old player complains, it's worth looking at seriously and not discrediting it because "gaming the system" or whatever is a thing. I'm not saying veteran opinions can't be wonky, but if we're going to easily discredit them on the basis of "you probably or did do this" we're basically doomed to get nowhere.

How many old players stream the game? How many players have they brought into the game? Certainly more than if the game were running as it was before VEN was a thing at least.

 

12 hours ago, Retrograde said:

Agreed, and maybe it's a point for discussion too. 

 

Maybe? At what point DOES it become a point of discussion? Is it when the evil minmaxing veterans stop talking about it and a new person speaks up? Is it in the years after we give up hope? Is it when a dev suddenly feel like it's suddenly worth working on? I think just about everyone in this thread could give a few dozen things that would have been better for the game overall than removal of 2s alts.

I don't think there'd be any complaints even if the post was "We've removed 2s alts but expect a change to make channeling less wasteful and terrible in the very near future"

 

  

5 hours ago, Retrograde said:

So the problem boils down to "skillgain in these systems are timegated compared to any other skill and I don't like it"?


It sounds like you're trivialising when you're wording it like that, dunno if that's intended.

People can at least understand timegating meditation because it's very powerful as far as the perks go, but now with the follower changes nobody is going full gamer mode to reach 30 faith. Even then, meditation is less timegated than faith gains (which I understand is done to the RNG involved with actually getting a skill tick)

Like Gary said, if you removed the faith cap it does nothing to detract from reaching 100 faith while also just making the process of getting to priesthood less dreadful and removing another frustrating timegate goal.

General rule of thumb, average player in the world dislikes randomly timegated goals/objectives when it's limited to X times per day, week, month.

Edited by Madnath
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8 minutes ago, Madnath said:

I don't think there'd be any complaints even if the post was "We've removed 2s alts but expect a change to make channeling less wasteful and terrible in the very near future"

 

To be fair, I'd probably complain about the continuing trend of making the game easier.

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12 hours ago, Retrograde said:

We didn't just use "players complaining on the forums" but going through the hard data, about 80% of all purchases were for alts, and from the remainder less than 10% stayed prem. It's a big enough number to point out that it wasn't serving the retention OR trial benefits we had hoped. 

Again, kinda making my point. It worked for some, and was solving a problem.

 

You guys do a pretty good job rationalizing why you shouldn't gain revenue or a silver drain in game (effectively the same thing).

 

What we're really not hearing is what harm it was doing to the game, other than 'your chef's knife shouldn't be used to cut cheese'.

 

In any case, yeah, a solution to the problem would be well received, I think, whatever that be.

 

 

Edited by Fearil
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17 hours ago, Retrograde said:

We didn't just use "players complaining on the forums" but going through the hard data, about 80% of all purchases were for alts, and from the remainder less than 10% stayed prem. It's a big enough number to point out that it wasn't serving the retention OR trial benefits we had hoped. 

 

There are a couple points of interpretation here.

 

Firstly, trial benefits and their uptake.  I get the 80/20 issue, which is saying that only 20% of 2s premium buyers are genuine new users, but perhaps that is looking at the data backwards.  The real analysis should be of the genuine new users and what they do, rather than of the 2s system and who else is using it.  It wouldn't matter that new users only make up 20% of 2s premium buyers if that represented a significant proportion of the new users.  As a new user who used the 2s system, there were two stumbling blocks that had me delaying pulling the trigger on it.  First, the skill cap was just that, a cap.  If most of my skills were well below the cap (and for me they were) it was difficult for me to see any benefit to be realized by going premium.  Yes there are some other things only available to premium players, but I was nowhere near any of them being a serious option yet, so delayed while I got more skills up towards the cap.    The second issue for me was the thought that I would get only 1 month and then the price would quintuple.  For me, removal of the cap was the ONLY benefit to be seen in premium, and if I could not see 10s/month value in that already (which was the case) then I would be hesitant to outlay even the 2s if I thought it likely I would not want to continue @ 10s/mth (which I was).  Now, if skill gains were faster for premium than not, now that would have been a prompter.  I would have though "wow, this is cool, I better keep this up!)  If I hadn't had a complete change of village - and server - at the same time, I never would have paid actual $ for more premium time.  For myself, I a not sure if my improved experience had all that much to do with premium rather than with finding a more lively and supporting community.

 

Secondly, Premium would have to be a noticeable and highly desirable improvement over f2p - a premium, if you will - pdq in order to be convincing that the gain is worth 10s/month.  The skill caps lift, but really nothing else changes inside of that month. I would suggest that lack of retention is not due to the 2s system but due to the lack of whizz-bang experience for newish players in premium itself.  Perhaps it needs to be considered that the benefits being trialled were not considered worth a dig into actual pockets rather than blame the trial system itself.  If premium were to give players an immediate and noticeable improvement in their experience, they may be more likely to be invested enough to want to retain that improved experience.  It's easy to retain someone who has already invested much, but to retain someone who has invested little, the benefit has to be real, visible and significant.  I don't think 30 carpentry instead of 20 carpentry (for example) is sufficient for that purpose - it may be a 50% increase, but it still won't have opened up huge vistas of possibilities in the mind of a newby like me.

 

Anyhoo, that's my 2 irons worth.

Edited by TheTrickster
minor typo
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We don't need skill gain increase. Simpler fix give F2P a 50% reduction in skill gain and same result.

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44 minutes ago, Evilvision said:

We don't need skill gain increase. Simpler fix give F2P a 50% reduction in skill gain and same result.

I like this because it also extends the amount of time you can be f2p before theres just nothing you can do. Longer runway for more successful takeoffs

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36 minutes ago, Evilvision said:

We don't need skill gain increase. Simpler fix give F2P a 50% reduction in skill gain and same result.

 

 

Yes, same result.  Skill gain rate isn't inherently a problem, but is an easy traction point for premium/non as long as there is a differential.  My only issue with achieving this through hobbling non-prem is that a skill set significantly below the cap is itself a disincentive to go premium.

 

I think the 2 critical questions are "What would a newbie perceive as the major benefit of Premium, from the POV of their limited experience?" and "Would a newbie perceive sufficient value in that benefit to justify buying Premium?"  after that comes the 3rd question "Will the newbie perceive that their Premium experience was sufficiently worth the outlay to outlay some more?"

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5 minutes ago, CreZ said:

I like this because it also extends the amount of time you can be f2p before theres just nothing you can do. Longer runway for more successful takeoffs

 

Except those who need to monetize the game really don't want a longer runway and more delay to Premium.  I guess if they are convinced of the slower conversion paying off with higher retention it would work.

 

 

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Added in missed note from this update:

Change: Mission items now require being the named item for the mission to advance

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9 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

Added in missed note from this update:

Change: Mission items now require being the named item for the mission to advance

so if there's two missions up, you don't get double the chance for a valrei item you have 1/2 chance for 1st one and 1/2 chance for second one, does this mean when you get 2+ missions up they're gonna be half as fast to complete? you can't stockpile them from when you're grinding?

 

horrible change just delete valrei mission item missions

Edited by Oblivionnreaver
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1 hour ago, Retrograde said:

Added in missed note from this update:

Change: Mission items now require being the named item for the mission to advance

Nice ninja nerf.

 

Sorta important, and lost in the fifth page...

 

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1 hour ago, Retrograde said:

Added in missed note from this update:

Change: Mission items now require being the named item for the mission to advance

I see: you did it again. Note that generally, I am not amongst them liking when the game is made easier. But this change is detrimental again, as it punishes the existing player base. What satisfaction do you have from? I think I am now 68% or so through the idiotic 500 mission goal, and certainly will accomplish it some day. But why that chicanery?

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