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agentusp

Map refreshment

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A big part of the new player experience is claiming a wild piece of land and shaping it to your liking. Many people, especially new players, are put off after seeing all the abandoned settlements. Not only do these places take away potential  spots for new people to settle, they also give off this "desolate" "abandoned" feeling, which many people do not like.  When watching new player experiences, for example on youtube, one can see their frustration about all the human trash left behind. It also shows that people do like to leave this game, which of course is a part of life, but lets not make it too obvious.

 

You can clearly see the spikes in player numbers when new maps are released, with slowly declining numbers afterwards. It would do no harm to hire someone, to take care of at least part of the long abandoned places, restore its former wild state. That would be removing all these awful slabs and cobble, collapsing mines and restoring veins, regrowing trees etc. This is a better solution than creating new maps, which spread the community and make the very rewarding social aspect of this game less satisfactory.

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All structures, even bridges, decay if abandoned. I am an explorer and a scavenger, one of Wurm Urbex (Urban Exploration) people and I think we all wouldn't appreciate any "automated clean-ups" of abandoned deeds, I think archaeology people wouldn't either. Not to mention that one person trash is other person treasure. 🙂 What other people abandoned is fun to explore, you can get nice items there, or nice hints and ideas how to build own deed. While writing this I visited 165 deeds, countless abandoned ones, I did 4898 km, and considering I am playing only 93 days, it is 52,66 km daily, Xanadu circumference is about 128 km, so it is like I ran around Xanadu every 2,25 days, to make a long story short - it would affect my and I think not only my, game play negatively significantly. The fact that nothing lasts forever in Wurm was even shown on trailer - as a decaying, abandoned place that one was once teeming with life and it is the advantage of the game not a problem. 

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Hopefully not restoring it like the first elevation map, big ass 200 slope dirt pillars lol, yeah a concern is that stuff will sit there but doubt it will be a mega issue

Edited by Firecat

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True, they do decay, but dirt will not go back to its former state. I do understand the urban explorer thing. I am one myself, but I also do know that abandoned urban exploring is not something everyone likes. In fact, I would say it is a minority of people that like walking over old decaying stuff. You said it yourself, countless abandoned ones you've visited, would it be so bad if we restored some of the land to its natural state so people can actually not stumble upon the already worked on pieces of lands wherever they go?

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That doesn't sound like something which you could automate easily, after all say somebody takes all the dirt from an area without ever deeding said area, do you restore it so the dirt can be taken all over again, or do you skip it because it was never deeded? Then say there was a deed which did a lot of terraforming, both on and in a large radius around the deed, what do you restore then? Then say a highway also runs through said former deed, restoring the dirt layer would make the highway unusable, what do you do then? All of this is the kind of headache that you just don't want to deal with as a dev, and especially not hire people for whe you could hire another dev instead.

 

Say somebody put years of work in the terraforming of their deed but has to quit for a year or two due to RL and forgets to put enough upkeep in there. Then said player returns and nobody has deeded over the area, lucky him, except that all those years of terraforming seem to have been reset => ragequit.

 

Overall I think it's one of the strengths of the game that you can still see such terraforming work even years later.

 

 

As for all the other things you mentioned, that's already how the game works. Mines collapse (off deed reinforcements also decay) and new veins can form during collapses (you could try to get new veins on purpose on your deed by making collapses as likely as possible). Pavement like slab and cobble also decay if they aren't used for a long enough time and grass and trees will spread over the area again. The fact that paving tends to remain most of the time is likely because people still travel through the area.

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43 minutes ago, agentusp said:

True, they do decay, but dirt will not go back to its former state. I do understand the urban explorer thing. I am one myself, but I also do know that abandoned urban exploring is not something everyone likes. In fact, I would say it is a minority of people that like walking over old decaying stuff. You said it yourself, countless abandoned ones you've visited, would it be so bad if we restored some of the land to its natural state so people can actually not stumble upon the already worked on pieces of lands wherever they go?

 

Someone put an effort to shape this dirt up, so if you don't like it put an effort to shape it down. IRL if you buy a lot and you don't like what previous owner did, you just demolish/terraform, you do not call the president to make it how you want it to look.

Edited by Platyna
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These arguments... heh. I am speaking from the new players perspective and from information I've gathered from actual new player experiences. You do not seem to understand that, but it is ok, not everyone has the ability to try not to look through his own eyes.  All I was suggesting was to increase the truly wild and untouched land experience for new players, some way that does not involve making another server. Either way, I've said what I wanted to say, so go ahead and display more of your intelligence if you wish, the thread is yours dear citizen.

Edited by agentusp
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Re-naturalising an area is infinitely more difficult than flat-squaring it.

 

Flat-squaring usually takes place using the level command, whereas re-naturalisation is almost exclusively done using digging (and also dredging).

 

I'll not go into the nightmare of trying to get natural coast-grass/reeds, or erasing all traces of a ruin (some reinforced tunnels have been around for the better part of half a decade).

 

 

However, sometimes there are long-standing ofdeed terraforming that we do want to last (roads being a key one, but also hidden gardens and the like). 

 

 A little ground shifting that created small 2-4 high bumps in flat areas, or smoothing out dirt slopes over time to a reasonable level (60 steepest?) so that a new player moving in can actually work with the land rather than having to preme up before working on it wouldn't be unreasonable.  Just stop it happening within 5 tiles of a paved tile, or on a deed, so if players want an area to naturalise, they can just remove the paved area or undeed it.

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I am one who dislikes the "ghost town" impression a lot, but I would not want this.  I have advocated for simplifying "restoration" terraforming and even moderate, slow, limited automated "smoothing", but stressing the limited and player-driven nature of this.

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whats the point? you will anyways make flat 100x100 from that wild areas. 80% of people doing that.

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I have made several posts suggesting we be able to lock pick OFF Deed Only to clean up the abandoned clutter and crap on the old servers, pack off old carts, hand carts bsbs, and other cast off junk to either be used or tossed on a lava tile. GMs never give it even a look, and 1% of the population throws a fit over lock picking off deed. Same with ships and wagons. I have even suggested making locks decay at same rate of containers they are on. That way at least at some point the trash will get picked up and hauled off to disposal. Now un-terraforming that can be very time consuming and just not sure how to approach that.

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Plant  the orchards on abandoned deeds, they are not fully natural, but they are beautiful and useful, pry the non-essential pavement, collect sprouts in the area and plant them. Excellent forestry/gardening/digging experience. 

Edited by Platyna
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Earthquakes and tectonic plates simulation to automate the naturalization process in 3, 2, 1...

 

No, seriously. I used to do manual naturalization of abandoned places a lot back in my days on Indy. It was actually a great fun.

Edited by Borgir
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4 hours ago, agentusp said:

A big part of the new player experience is claiming a wild piece of land and shaping it to your liking. Many people, especially new players, are put off after seeing all the abandoned settlements. Not only do these places take away potential  spots for new people to settle, they also give off this "desolate" "abandoned" feeling, which many people do not like.  When watching new player experiences, for example on youtube, one can see their frustration about all the human trash left behind. It also shows that people do like to leave this game, which of course is a part of life, but lets not make it too obvious.

 

You can clearly see the spikes in player numbers when new maps are released, with slowly declining numbers afterwards. It would do no harm to hire someone, to take care of at least part of the long abandoned places, restore its former wild state. That would be removing all these awful slabs and cobble, collapsing mines and restoring veins, regrowing trees etc. This is a better solution than creating new maps, which spread the community and make the very rewarding social aspect of this game less satisfactory.

 

2 hours ago, agentusp said:

These arguments... heh. I am speaking from the new players perspective and from information I've gathered from actual new player experiences. You do not seem to understand that, but it is ok, not everyone has the ability to try not to look through his own eyes.  All I was suggesting was to increase the truly wild and untouched land experience for new players, some way that does not involve making another server. Either way, I've said what I wanted to say, so go ahead and display more of your intelligence if you wish, the thread is yours dear citizen.

We get it. We understand what you are saying. But how to go about doing it we dont know. Are you offering to do this yourself for payment? If so, ill pay you to come "naturalize" a couple old places near me.

 

I too wish the abandoned deeds were "natural" when i drive by. But at the same time, i would be pissed if i came back after a break to find all by work completely gone. I came back two weeks ago after a year off due to work. Everything but the bed and a BSB was gone. BUT, because all the work i put into the land was still here it was an easy fix. Lucky me.

 

At some point i plan to drop dirt piles on the old deeds to give it a little randomness and pull out the paved tiles. But until then it is what it is.

 

There is no "one size fits all" solution to this, no option will make everyone happy that im aware of..but if you come up with one let us know.

Edited by xReesex
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