Each skill tree with a questline

[elentari 2,660]

My proposal would be to add more incentive and rewards for working on skills in the following approach.

Currently all skills are gained through usage. You improve mallets, you gain carpentry. You kill mobs you get fight skill.

 

I'd add a secondary system based on your current skill: Skill quests.

 

Each 24 hrs the system will generate from a pool of quests randomized quests for 1 skill per player. Similar to the mission system but with the possibility of choosing your own reward based on current skill + quests completed over time.

 

Let me give you a practical example :

 

Say we're talking about the first week of August. Player Bob gets a tailoring quest. He currently has 30 tailoring but isn't that interested in grinding tailoring at the moment.

The quest stipulates the following: "There's a shortage in the land of kingdom tabards. If you could create, improve 50 tabards to 25 quality and donate them to <Insert NPC spawned in the starter town>  he may reward you with any of the following:

A) A tailoring skilltoken you can use anytime. It will increase skilgain in tailoring by 50% for 15 minutes.

B ) A bag of random goodies. May contain: a rare foodtype, some iron coins, a random medium ql weapon, a random rune, etc.

C) A randomly generated tailoring tool such as : an enchanted needle, a runed pair of scissors, etc.

 

Let's say Bob chooses to undertake the quest. 

Note: The conditions imply he clicks "accept" for the quest but he won't know the quest requirements beforehand else he could cheat and make the tabards in advance. Here's the twist. While accepting this quest he will not actively gain skill in tailoring (skillgain disabled for it) but when he finished he'll gain Skill quest points.

 

Skill quest points or SQP for short can be accrued over time and redeemed at a shop for various bonuses or items in game.  Similar to Rift points or Marks Shop.

It would add more depth to skills in general due to choosing between A) Rewards or B ) Skillgain.

SQP's can be redeemed for:

1. Titles (Aka Novice Quester)

2.Temporary affinity tokens, aka 50% skillgain in something for 15, 30 or 1 hour

3. Items such as capes or clothing based on skill (blacksmith apparel, tailor's outfit, miner's clothes, etc.)

4. Speed tokens (temporary increases creation speed by 50% for 3 minutes) for skills that imply working with items. Those that don't imply having items simply have their timers shortened : aka digging, tracking, etc.

5. Character potions.

 

Another cool aspect is you could integrate this system with the tutorial. Simply have part of the tutorial introduce SQP's like "create a malled and imp it" (it's also in the Journal goal I believe) so players have another dimension of skills vs rewards.

 

High Skills should come with difficult quests : 90 fight skill? A quest might ask you to kill 20 trolls in unarmed solo combat, no outside aid from players, npcs or tamed animals.

 

Thoughts?

[Nordlys 1,428]

I generally like you suggestions. I also lile this one. It made me almost go make some tabards just by reading it!

[Cipacadrinho 390]

I like the fact that you are trying to improve the game but i don't like the ideea because it would just mean adding more quests into a sandbox game.

 

The identity of Wurm is grindy sandbox and you come from a right place trying to make it more fun but the problem is you will just be adding daily quests on top of an already grindy sandbox game so then you will end up with people having even less time to derp and chill because the meta will now be run around completing as many skill dailies as possible to get enough tokens to hit that 70 weaponsmithing while the devs are hiding under the desk from the shouting mob of people that grinded the skills to 90+ when thre were no tokens and cries and screams and .... well.

 

Is just my opinion tho.

[Jeston 316]

I am wondering when I am gonna get my skill cape runescape style, GIVE A REASON FOR CAPE SLOT!

[Nordlys 1,428]

6 minutes ago, Jeston said:

I am wondering when I am gonna get my skill cape runescape style, GIVE A REASON FOR CAPE SLOT!

Do your journal and fly with a cape like supermaaaan.

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

Unintrusive and entirely optional.

 

I like it.

 

You'd need specialist quests for priests (I wonder what prayer quests would be like...), but I can easily see this as being fun if well implemented (a big if given how most implementations on wurm pan out).

[elentari 2,660]

Well maybe we can remove skill tokens and preserve other reward types.

 

My main idea revolved around the concept of "Reward of skill" vs "Reward of items and/or small temporary boosts". You choose what you want in the end.

I'd just want the skilling system to have more depth than what it currently is which is mostly a grind fest.

[Cipacadrinho 390]

9 minutes ago, elentari said:

Well maybe we can remove skill tokens and preserve other reward types.

 

My main idea revolved around the concept of "Reward of skill" vs "Reward of items and/or small temporary boosts". You choose what you want in the end.

I'd just want the skilling system to have more depth than what it currently is which is mostly a grind fest.

 

That works for me too is a fair point as long as it does not change the meta as in: someone asks in CA_Help what is the best way to grind x skill and the answer will be: well you have to do this mission every day to get this buff then grind the skill.

 

And if we think about it the current missions kinda already do what you are asking for: you have to craft and give the items or sacrifice or kill some mobs and then guess what you get sleep bonus that is literally a boost to skilling up.

[elentari 2,660]

I just gave a rough example off the top of my head. Yes indeed current missions are karma/SB oriented as rewards but honestly we all have to admit they vary wildly in the effort vs reward part while some missions aren't really done anymore except maybe by a small 1% of players. Not many are interested in karma if they don't pvp and not everyone burns their SB.

 

The skill questsI envisioned were made to add a different layer of reward for doing stuff in Wurm, if players want to. You can always grind skills. But you can also work towards other types of reward.

 

Complex skill quests could involve other types of activities. For example let's say you get a "blacksmithing quest" that requires you to improve 50 different blacksmithing tools to 70 quality *they must not bear your signature". Aka a solo impalong if you will.

An archery quest could involve killing a troll using less than 10 arrows.

A farming quest could involve planting 500 tiles of onions in 1 day.

A forestry quest could involve pruning 200 grape bushes in less than 2 hours.

Other skill questscould add a fun twist such as "drag a large cart with a passenger on it for 1000 tiles". I can imagine some people having fun with having man-drawn carriages cracking a whip or a joke in the process. Aka that would be a body str or a body stam quest.

Many other examples can be found for any skill really, too lazy to write them all down.

 

[ArthurHawkwing 176]

I would say this would work very well for the New Steam Servers, 

[TheTrickster 2,288]

On 6/19/2020 at 9:26 PM, Cipacadrinho said:

I like the fact that you are trying to improve the game but i don't like the idea because it would just mean adding more quests into a sandbox game.

 

This.  

[Flubb 773]

On 6/19/2020 at 11:56 AM, elentari said:

Player Bob gets a tailoring quest. He currently has 30 tailoring but isn't that interested in grinding tailoring at the moment.

 

Gotta agree with @Cipacadrinho, this sentence alone is a nail in the coffin for the meta this would induce. Bob doesn't want to do tailoring at the moment, period. Valrei missions are somewhat different because you do these for the sleep bonus (mostly not worth the effort) or karma (for the few who actually need it regularly, which is why they are so seldom done on freedom.)

 

For more concrete criticism, I think dailies are way too fast-tacted for a slow game like Wurm. Even if you are able to accept multiple quests at a time, you need to commit fully to finishing the quest or else they will probably stack up. Might have to dedicate a whole playsession to a quest the moment you accept it, or suffer the skill gain freeze as long as you let your "real" goals distract you, which may involve the skill you have an active quest for, but not the way the quest prescribes. I'm playing devil's advocate of course, as I often do, but if this would come close to panning out like this, I feel a bit queasy about the concept.

 

I like the complex quest idea in your last post though....remove the skill gain freeze, and just assign one quest for all skills and a new one when one is done.

It may be "only" a matter of framing, but to me this would feel more like something optional, like "if you're going to grind this, here's one way for it", or even give you a wide catalogue of things to undertake when you have some downtime and no idea what to do. All the while, the vastness of options would clearly suggest that not everything needs to be done at a time.

Quests without any progress (if it is trackable at all) could be replaced within a week so you aren't stuck with quests that you are sure you don't want to do at all.

 

 

Below I had typed out a proposal for a more open ended quest system, but I feel it's going a bit far in "salvaging" the core idea and too involved, after writing the above following my counter proposal to the OP, so feel free to ignore it.
 

Spoiler

 

I do like your core idea of giving a purpose to the grind though. It would also provide an item sink for said grind, to some extent. Perhaps a more "open ended" concept would work better?

Like a guild hall in every starter town, which can either post

1) mass orders for "item X"

2) "private" job postings by anonymous benefactors for more specific item requests

 

variation 1) would work pretty much like Valrei missions, but award SQP (Or Guild Hall Credits in this case) based on participation, but with a few twists and tweaks to prevent the bumrush of veteran players out-spamming lower skilled players.

Usually people are very nice and considerate about this, but let's not invite bad gameplay experiences for lower skilled characters.

Now, in order to accomodate everyone in this, let's not make it "n items of at least x quality". Instead, the posting stays up until a certain date, and one posting exists for each skill at a time (or a selection of skills). However, you can only submit 1 item per (x days/week/mass order?).And the better the item (in terms of quality, and perhaps even rarity), the more credit you get. This incentivizes everyone to bring their A-game in crafting no matter their level, gives them plenty of time to set aside for it, and constantly rotating item requests bring in a little variation.

There's a lot you can tweak on this idea, like

• rotating weekly and allowing one submission in total
• only posting orders for a few skills at a time
• rotating based on global participation, but unlike valrei missions, guild hall requests set a deadline N days after the last item was submitted, but they will take some extras after (So everyone gets a chance still to get their submission in)
• While multiple postings are up, your "item of the week" spans across all of them. If the guild hall requires a fishing rod, a huge axe and a saddle at the moment, it will only take one of those submissions at a time. This way there is no "pressure" to accomplish all of them; you pick your choice where you want to gain credits and skill most.

But I think you get the gist of it. It's generally meant to be a bit more relaxed than dailies, and be more open towards individual plans of players.

 

2) could work pretty much like OP proposes, personalized item requests tailored to your skill level without prior knowledge what needs to be done. But rather than getting one daily for a random skill, you can choose a contract for a skill of your choice once every week or two weeks. Again, picking your own battles rather getting dropped something on your head to do or ignore.