Please change journal entry requirement(destinations unknown)

[Araxiel 19]

Please reduce the number of rifts you are required to close to complete that portion of destinations unknown.

Requiring 100 rifts is just way too much for your average player to complete. I understand this portion of the journal is meant to be hard but at a point it becomes nearly impossible unless you are someone who doesn't have rigid responsibilities. 

Due to work and the need to sleep I currently can only make on average 1 rift a week, if I'm lucky 2 and very rarely 3. Heck due to nearly all of last weeks being early AM for me I didn't get to participate in any. At this rate it is going to take me close to 2 real life years to complete from start to finish.

How can I keep my attention on this for that long? I get that you want people to keep playing so you get their premium. I mean come on though, isn't 2 years of a persons life asking a bit much to be able to complete this journal?

If the number I can do is average then halving it to 50 would be a very reasonable request. That is still an entire year spent going to rifts if you can only do one a week.

Another point to make is that everything else in destinations unknown is complete-able with a year of dedication to playing daily, so why is this so much longer?

 

Just as a visual aid here are the upcoming rifts in my timezone:

Spoiler

Week of 3/15 to 3/21

Celebration - 2020-03-18 04:15 AM   - SLEEPING
Deliverance - 2020-03-18 09:32 AM   - WORKING
Release - 2020-03-19 03:10 AM   - SLEEPING
Exodus - 2020-03-19 05:11 PM   - IF I LEAVE WORK EARLY I CAN MAKE THIS
Independence - 2020-03-20 07:43 AM   - WORKING
Xanadu - 2020-03-20 10:50 AM   - WORKING
Pristine - 2020-03-21 03:24 AM   - SLEEPING

 

Also I know there are going to be those who have finished this requirement posting -1's because they had to do it so everyone else should to. To those that might I simply request that you don't unless you have legit input as to why this is a bad idea.

 

Thank you and have a great day 🙂

Edited March 16, 2020 by Araxiel
Added visual aid for timezone

[elentari 2,660]

I agree with this specific goal as well. The rest, while time consuming can be done in a relatively short amount of time based on how much you want to play.  Catch 1000 fish, doable.

 

But this goal?

 

This goal requires specifically logging on certain times when the rift opens. Due to my work schedule (and sleep obviously) I simply cannot make 95% of rifts. They either happen at 4 am or in the mid afternoon when I am at work. I haven't done a rift in ages. As for other goals?

 

You can spend a few weeks killing mobs and hunting. You can do missions in a short amount amount of time if you're dedicated. But rifts imply modelling your own work schedule to Wurm, and not vice versa. And no offence, but no game (that doesn't rely on scummy f2p pay-to win models) should encourage a players to login at certain times to do certain activities. Out of all the goals that I've had, this one is the least I've had progress with.

 

Either reduce the no. of rifts to 50 (which honestly can still take a year to complete) OR change it to a different personal goal.  Perhaps something akin to :

1. Breed 500 horses.

2. Heal 5000 wounds.

3. Improve 10 000 arrows.

4. Cook 20 000 meals.

5. Etc.

 

Anything that doesn't involve logging in at a specific time which may or may not favor 50% of the player population.  And just for reference, future rifts that happen either at work or in the morning.:

 

Celebration

2020-03-09 11:15 AM2020-03-16 11:15 AM2020-03-18 11:15 AM -> nope

Deliverance

2020-03-09 04:30 PM2020-03-16 04:30 PM2020-03-18 04:30 PM - > nope
Release

2020-03-10 10:10 AM2020-03-17 10:10 AM2020-03-19 10:10 AM -> nope

Exodus

2020-03-11 12:11 AM2020-03-18 12:11 AM2020-03-20 12:11 AM -> maybe if I go to sleep at 2 am....

Independence

2020-03-11 02:43 PM2020-03-18 02:43 PM2020-03-20 02:43 PM -> nope

Xanadu

2020-03-11 05:50 PM2020-03-18 05:50 PM2020-03-20 05:50 PM -> nope

Pristine

2020-03-12 10:24 AM2020-03-19 10:24 AM2020-03-21 10:24 AM -> nope

 

All of these are basically anti-euro timers. People that work in europe cannot make most if not all of these.  Most europeans work from 09:00-17:00 which means none of those rifts are doable for most players. And the fact that some may argue that after Covid-19 we can work from home, that still implies work and not Wurm.

 

Please fix this goal. Preferably soon and not in 2022.

Edited March 16, 2020 by elentari

[MrGARY 12,421]

27 minutes ago, elentari said:

This goal requires specifically logging on certain times when the rift opens. Due to my work schedule (and sleep obviously) I simply cannit make 95% of rifts. They either happen at 4 am or in the mid afternoon when I am at work. I haven't done a rift in ages.

All of these are basically anti-euro timers. People that work in europe cannot make most if not all of these.  Most europeans work from 09:00-17:00 which means none of those rifts are doable for most players.

 

It's everyones time zone though, since rifts are on an increasing time cycle not a fixed one.  I can go weeks/months at a time before they are in a fitting time zone for me and I'm not european. 

Someone will probably say it's just because I'm not going to all servers, yeah, I'm not, I only do two servers when available.  A goal shouldn't require us all to have deeds/horses/slow boats with cages to travel to every server fighting time to get all the rifts.  It's not feasible for anyone that doesn't stay home all day dedicating their entire life to this game, it's also not fair for normal people to get to participate once or twice a month.  Just to emphasize this for devs, one rift a month from scratch will take more than 8 years to complete this goal.  Someone like me that usually averages 3 a month would still take 3 years from scratch.  How is this even remotely acceptable?  Why is someone that can only play casually worth less equality than someone else that lives breathes and poops wurm?  Do the devs not realize the issue is that the goal relies on a fixed time event overlapping someones available play time?  Do they not realize that you can have incredibly harder goals than 100 rifts that are accessible to everyone's game time so people can tackle it when they actually play and it might actually get done?  I'd rather do the 70 prayer goal.  Lord knows I could complete that on freedom on every single account of mine before I finish 100 rifts on one...

[Oblivionnreaver 5,174]

retro appears to be not here to make a snarky comment so i'll be filling in for him today

 

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

 

no need to thank me, and remember, rifts suck

Edited March 16, 2020 by Oblivionnreaver

[Schiann 994]

Just going to add my support for changing this goal, for exactly the reasons already stated. 

[Retrograde 12,013]

35 minutes ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

retro appears to be not here to make a snarky comment so i'll be filling in for him today

 

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

 

no need to thank me, and remember, rifts suck

No no not at all for this one. 

 

this one is about expected times for it to be completed and it is a bottleneck, which I absolutely get. 

[elentari 2,660]

So we have goal that's expected to be completed in a few years vs other goals that could be doable in a few months/weeks? I don't really see the reasoning behind that other than just padding out a game with more "grind".   Most goals should take a relatively equal amount of time to be completed to maintain consistency. I'm not asking for things to be easy. I would like for them to not be huge timeskings.

 

Keep in mind the last stage of Journal Goals takes a long time overall to do all of them. 

 

100 rifts = time spent doing all journal goals.

 

Talking from personal experience here but it took about a full year (and mostly commited to the goals)  to take all journal goals to around 90%. I'm not even at 40% for rifts yet, and most of those were pre-journal rifts or on Epic. Struggling to find a timeframe to actually do rifts at all.

 

It's a bit over the top to have 1 isolated goal be a timesink equal to all journal chapters put together. 

 

I'd also like to add that most personal goals are soloable. This one relies on having a decent group that can clear a rift in 2 hours. Depending on number of participants it can take longer. Factor in that's at least a 200 RL hour investment in one goal, and that's the optimistic number. The realistic one would be around 300 hours.I added 1 full hour that implies riding or sailing to/from rift and preparing supplies for it as needed. (meals, cotton, mining, chopping).  That's around 12.5 full days asked of every player if they want to complete that goal fully.

 

How about as a complementary suggestion to what Mrgary said, either reduce nr. of rifts needed or add extra rifts per server. Instead of 1 open rift, add 5 per server.

Edited March 16, 2020 by elentari

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

Or, add mini rifts (weren't these supposed to be a thing?) and have those count?

[Wilczan 2,048]

And now imagine trying to complete this on empty Epic serwers like Desertion.

[elentari 2,660]

I can't imagine. It won't happen.

[CreZ 284]

The arguments presented about the inaccessibility of the rifts seem sound. I know I certainly can't be bothered to spend all of my playtime chasing them down, traveling to them, and destroying my schedule to slog through them.

 

That said, why is everyone making it sound like it is imperative that they complete the journal goals at all much less within any set amount of time? The journal was the replacement for personal goals but no one was rushing out to make 52x10^10000 litres of wine or repairing a duotrigintillion walls ( at least until the announcement that the system would be removed). If the rewards for completing the journal are so overpowered that everyone feels compelled to complete them to the point that they would give up their sleep and their gameplay freedom to complete the goal then maybe the rewards should be restructured instead of, or in addition to, changing the goal . Completing this stuff should be entirely optional and not "feel" mandatory.

[Ekcin 2,407]

I am not sure about all that. I did 100 rifts in about 11 months, and could have done in less but had other projects such as LVA tunnel, mining, and some other. I understood that not few people hate rifts. If the devs decide that this is enough reason, ok. But all assertions the goal were unachievable are pathetic and untrue.

 

In fact, the journal is not meant to be done in a few months. But 1 rift per week (2 years to complete), or even 2 (done in a year) is no issue on Freedom, for no timezone, for nobody who wants it done. For Epic, the situation is certainly different.

[LionIX 354]

Allowing Rift Scout Parties to count toward this journal goal would be great. They’re not super common so would still time gate things. They also don’t force you to do them at specific times (and you don’t have to spend over an hour to participate). It also encourages people to get out and explore. 

[Ekcin 2,407]

Problem with rift scout parties is that they are fairly easy to find (with reveal creatures) on the small servers while being more unaccessible than rifts e.g. on Xanadu, similar prolly on Indy and Chaos. So you would possibly just create another imbalance. Not that I am really opposed to that. But I am not really fond of dumbing down the goal for a few. Because while a rift gives reward for every participant with "decent" participation, a camp is wiped fairly fast by a small team or even a single player.

[Tor 523]

2 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

Problem with rift scout parties is that they are fairly easy to find (with reveal creatures) on the small servers while being more unaccessible than rifts e.g. on Xanadu, similar prolly on Indy and Chaos. So you would possibly just create another imbalance. Not that I am really opposed to that. But I am not really fond of dumbing down the goal for a few. Because while a rift gives reward for every participant with "decent" participation, a camp is wiped fairly fast by a small team or even a single player.

Scout party is easy to solo, but it should get you 1% participation at least as it's still some kind of related activity. While the real rift you can attend without a weapon and tag on the mobs, still can get a participation and reward without contributing much or any at all and get you that 1%.

 

I agree with the other comments,  maybe change it to reach like 50 body strenght or something like that, at least that kind of enocuragment would be benefital for the character

[Oblivionnreaver 5,174]

55 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

In fact, the journal is not meant to be done in a few months. But 1 rift per week (2 years to complete), or even 2 (done in a year) is no issue on Freedom, for no timezone, for nobody who wants it done. For Epic, the situation is certainly different.

Rifts take about 3 hours when you factor in travelling and whatnot for other servers, maybe up to 4 if you're travelling across xan and back. Considering that people generally work for 8 hours, sleep for 8 hours, commute from place to place, work out, socialize, all that stuff, 3 hours for a single point out of 100 is a bit much. "not meant to be done in a few months" and "one journal goal out of 10 takes years" are two different things.

 

in an afternoon of hunting on cele it's rare to even find one rift camp, but if someone wants to spend as much effort as it used to take to find uniques to find 1/100 of a journal goal all the power to them

Edited March 16, 2020 by Oblivionnreaver

[Tor 523]

so basically if you don't sleep, work, or have a whatever commitement when the rift is happening, you can spend up to 2 hours traveling to location, tag mobs for 5-10 minutes and then afk for up to 2 more hours. 100x miltiplier

[Ekcin 2,407]

1 hour ago, Tor said:

so basically if you don't sleep, work, or have a whatever commitement when the rift is happening, you can spend up to 2 hours traveling to location, tag mobs for 5-10 minutes and then afk for up to 2 more hours. 100x miltiplier

To many rifts, a summon is possible. And the "tag mobs" is definitely not true. You have to cause damage on a rift creature which is killed later for making it count (don't know whether that is fixed now, but i noticed that summoned creatures despawning at summoner's demise did not count even if badly hit). Only tagging does not achieve anything, not even hitting and not causing damage (other than in unique fights). And you need "decent" participation at minimum (10-15 kills or so) to make it count for the journal. Granted that is not hard to achieve.

 

And ok, how long does it take to have a skill at 99? to do 250 missions? To get 120 titles?

Edited March 16, 2020 by Ekcin
addendum

[Madnath 3,113]

The most frustrating thing about the rifts isn't that it's a "long term goal" it's the degree of how timegated it is and how bad it is because of that. Journal is so strong because it serves multiple purposes

It's a great learning platform for newcomers.

You can work on it in your own time, as you can and as you see fit.

Rifts have a place in the journal, but not 100 of them.

[elentari 2,660]

2 hours ago, Tor said:

so basically if you don't sleep, work, or have a whatever commitement when the rift is happening, you can spend up to 2 hours traveling to location, tag mobs for 5-10 minutes and then afk for up to 2 more hours. 100x miltiplier

 

And that's the healthiest game design possible, isn't it ? :)) 100% player immersion 

[Tor 523]

38 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

To many rifts, a summon is possible. And the "tag mobs" is definitely not true. You have to cause damage on a rift creature which is killed later for making it count (don't know whether that is fixed now, but i noticed that summoned creatures despawning at summoner's demise did not count even if badly hit). Only tagging does not achieve anything, not even hitting and not causing damage (other than in unique fights). And you need "decent" participation at minimum (10-15 kills or so) to make it count for the journal. Granted that is not hard to achieve.

 

And ok, how long does it take to have a skill at 99? to do 250 missions? To get 120 titles?

When jackal opened i made a new account and did just that, just checked it have 211 rift points. Havn't played for a few months so not sure if anything changed about it, but i doubt.

 

Not going to argue about those other goals, but at least there's not a certain time frame weekly where you can get a skill point, do a mission or get a new title

[Araxiel 19]

2 hours ago, Ekcin said:

I am not sure about all that. I did 100 rifts in about 11 months, and could have done in less but had other projects such as LVA tunnel, mining, and some other. I understood that not few people hate rifts. If the devs decide that this is enough reason, ok. But all assertions the goal were unachievable are pathetic and untrue.

 

In fact, the journal is not meant to be done in a few months. But 1 rift per week (2 years to complete), or even 2 (done in a year) is no issue on Freedom, for no timezone, for nobody who wants it done. For Epic, the situation is certainly different.

 

Maybe you missed the part that due to work(10 hours a day for me) and sleep(roughly 6-8 hours a day) I would have to get incredibly lucky for multiple rifts to fall in my possible playtime. And I don't spend all of my time playing when I'm not working or sleeping so that cuts the rifts I can do down even further. I never stated that the last journal entry could be done in a few months. I said a year if you are dedicated enough. But for someone like me I can't get past this "timegate" that is rifts without minimum 2 years to complete it. I don't know how you did 100 rifts in 11 months, maybe your responsibilities aren't as rigid as mine and you can afford a fairly flexible schedule to chase them from server to server. But not everyone that plays has that luxury. Like I stated, last week due to their times I wasn't able to hit any of the rifts. This week if I take off work early I can hit the one that is 5:11pm my time. But I personally don't think I should have to leave work early or stay up all night to get this journal entry done. I understand that the way the rifts cycle means there will be a good week for me every once in a while where I can hit like 3 to 4 in a week. But that just averages out these many weeks where I can't get any at all.

[Ekcin 2,407]

23 hours ago, elentari said:

So we have goal that's expected to be completed in a few years vs other goals that could be doable in a few months/weeks? ...

 

Here we are at the core of the problem, and why I am against changing anything at the 100 rifts goal. Why should the last part of the journal, thought to demonstrate long time committment to the game, be "doable in a few months/weeks"? Why then not giving out the rewards for free to anybody?

 

It is the same I dislike with the rants about uniques. There are some who afford time and patience, accumulated experience, and learnt techniques to track and hunt down uniques, and there are some who are just lucky to stumble over one. I never felt envy about. Maybe I shall try some day to find uniques - outside public slayings - too, maybe not.

 

17 hours ago, Araxiel said:

Maybe you missed the part that due to work(10 hours a day for me) and sleep(roughly 6-8 hours a day) I would have to get incredibly lucky for multiple rifts to fall in my possible playtime. ..

I know those situations though I am not in one at the time. Before I played Wurm, I was in a game with even more social events like boss hunts and other community challenges which were set at fixed dates and times always more or less convenient for participants around the globe. And I had a contract with well 50hrs weekly work time, and stand by duty from time to time, with a weekend commuting over 900km by train. As those events were significant to me - part of my off job pastime after all - I managed to participate on many of them though it was not easy all time.

 

It is trivial that in all online games, those with lots of disposable time (the "time rich") are at advantage, often on cost of being unemployed, or retired. That's life.

 

Edit: When I wrote "I am against changing anything at the 100 rifts goal", that is my personal feeling about. If the goal, and doing rifts at all, is indeed so much loathed by a wide part of the community, I am not the one wanting to spoil their fun, and don't lose anything if this goal is changed. Only my impression is that the "philosophy" behind demanding that is wrong.

Edited March 17, 2020 by Ekcin

[Wilczan 2,048]

6 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

Here we are at the core of the problem, and why I am against changing anything at the 100 rifts goal. Why should the last part of the journal, thought to demonstrate long time committment to the game, be "doable in a few months/weeks"? Why then not giving out the rewards for free to anybody?

Tasks could be very hard to do, could require long time committment, all would be fine. But I guess would be better if people could achieve those tasks solo, like 99% of the journal entries.

 

There are some ghost servers (on Epic), where you have hard time to gather rift group once, not to mention 100 times.

 

Sometimes time zones goes in the way, couse you need to fit the group in their spare time.

 

 

[Ekcin 2,407]

4 minutes ago, Wilczan said:

Tasks could be very hard to do, could require long time committment, all would be fine. But I guess would be better if people could achieve those tasks solo, like 99% of the journal entries.

There are some ghost servers (on Epic), where you have hard time to gather rift group once, not to mention 100 times.

Yes, I agree about Epic. I am not sure about a solution for.