Valrei International. Cadence Rising

[Darnok 214]

I can see that a few people have presented their ideas on how the new server should look, so I will also add my 3 cents.

Maybe the server should be a combination of PvP and PvE?

New players who would like to play in PvE, if they have not committed any offense (stealing or destroying walls and buildings), after losing a fight with another player should only be knocked to the ground, not killed.
A knockdown would block skill gains for 1-2 hours, but not reduce skill levels already acquired.
The player who knocked us down could rob the PvE player, but not everything, just a certain number of items. Each item has a designated value here, so determining that shouldn't be a problem. The game should compare the level of combat skills of both players and if the winner is much stronger than the loser, the value of items he can take is small, if their levels are equal, the loser can lose a lot.
A player could not be robbed more than once every 30 minutes.

 

Stealing deeds would be possible, but should take a long time, e.g. stolen items as long as they are on the robbed deed slow the thief by 50% or more.

And the thief on the deed should have 20-30% lowered combat skills.

The same deed cannot be robbed by the same player more than once every 48 hours. Here the rule about balancing loot should also apply that the stronger player that breaks in and is stealing, the lesser can be his loot. For example, if a group would attack a deed where one person lives, the value of items they can steal would be low. But if a group from one village was attacking and taking items from another village where the sum of the inhabitants skills is close to or equal to the sum of the aggressors skills, the loot value would be greater.
 

The player who stole or destroyed anything (each structure has an owner) is considered a criminal and the owner may put a reward on that players head. Same as an attacked player should be able to designate amount of money for the one who attacked and knocked him down.

Thanks to this, other players (bounty hunters) will be able to hunt criminals and even if they attack him, there will be no bounty for their heads. Deed (or the village where the criminal is) can be attacked and looted without any consequences for the attackers.

[Melros 588]

5 hours ago, Retrograde said:

We have several tools at our disposal, including dumps that cover ALL deeds. This data, plus the growing reviews that finding suitable land is becoming more and more difficult as we continue to push to grow Wurm tells us that we need to be future-proofing. 

 

Wurm servers need a specific density to flourish, and that is hurt by players being spread out too far, but also by being too tightly packed together. The current density and growth mean we need to have more freely available land for players to travel, hunt, and skill without stumbling across other deeds. 

 

To clarify, Harmony has more settlements than Xanadu, which is 4x its size, and melody has almost as many settlements as Independence.

 

Both servers are reaching a point where finding suitable land for deeding is growing tough and discouraging new players. 
 

 

I feel like the xanadu metric is flawed...as...well...xanadu is empty. In its hay day was harmony still 4x more? Surely when those servers were at their peak they would have contested...

 

A 16x16 seems ridiculously big for this player count. Why not release a new 8x8?

 

None the less, more land for me to grab on an alt at launch. Gotta get those bugged animal pathing gains.

Edited August 16, 2020 by Melros

[Object 281]

I remember the Pristine and Release launch, I actually owned 5 deeds at one point and had tons of open space around me on Release.  Now here on Harmony I have a single 13x27 and blocked in on all sides....

[Schiann 995]

18 hours ago, Stargrace said:

Instead of spreading players out even MORE, I'd love to see some innovative ideas to encourage new players to join up to the older freedom clusters. There's lots of space (hi, 10 players on celebration...) and offering a handful of perks or some encouragement could go a long way instead of (yet another) server.

Several folks suggested this to Retro during one of Emoo's streams, and his response was to scoff and laugh, so I don't think he'll be passing that on to the dev team. 

[Marlon 303]

The snowflakes don't know how to survive if they aren't on the coast. No idea why it's such an issue, the magic of inland settlements seem to go over most heads. Well, spreading thinner, could have sworn this mistake was made and lamented before... enjoy it anyway. Im sticking to indy and harmony (indy became glorious now that all the right people left)

[Retrograde 12,013]

23 minutes ago, Schiann said:

Several folks suggested this to Retro during one of Emoo's streams, and his response was to scoff and laugh, so I don't think he'll be passing that on to the dev team. 

I don't recall scoffing and laughing at all. 

 

As I've said in multiple places, it's not about incentivising it, the perks and encouragement are the ability to play with people your level, not against the southern isles with decade old accounts, high end characteristics and skills, and hundreds of gold coins. 

 

If new players want the old server experience it's there, but encouraging that has to balance against the fact they will never be equal to the level of the existing players. 

 

It's not about encouraging, it's about the fact that old servers offer little for a new player to feel like they're taking part in shaping the world. 

[Platyna 521]

@RetrogradeI am a new player and I never felt like I can't stand a chance against old players. I got few skills high and I do compete with them in a few areas (like animal sales). I love Ind being ancient. There is an excellent suggestion:

 

Could the devs give it a go? It would have a zero effect of the economy and it is an additional choice for new player - an extra perk - you can never have too much of them. 

 

I also remember that when I logged in first time, I was alone, in a big city, and if not the fancy roads with green markers, I followed out of curiosity, and got lost into more inhabited area I would probably quit. I made some suggestions how to make new people to live in starting areas, so they are not so empty. 

Edited August 16, 2020 by Platyna

[Hanel 18]

4 hours ago, denully said:

maybe make a few more starter areas on each map, so people dont all deed our the area at the drop, no new player wants to use 2 hours running to find a place to deed.
and maybe old players should stop going crazy and deeding giant deeds at spawn  

 

The steppes and deserts have lots of empty land to deed. 😆

 

Stop putting clay only on the coasts. That's a disincentive to move inland. Put clay inland and you get more people there. 😉

Edited August 16, 2020 by Hanel

[Tilda 651]

1 hour ago, Retrograde said:

I don't recall scoffing and laughing at all. 

 

As I've said in multiple places, it's not about incentivising it, the perks and encouragement are the ability to play with people your level, not against the southern isles with decade old accounts, high end characteristics and skills, and hundreds of gold coins. 

 

If new players want the old server experience it's there, but encouraging that has to balance against the fact they will never be equal to the level of the existing players. 

 

It's not about encouraging, it's about the fact that old servers offer little for a new player to feel like they're taking part in shaping the world. 

 

This is your opinion on what being a new player is all about. I disagree completely. Not all of us have been here from the very beginning and still managed to enjoy  shaping our part of the world and skilling up our characters, with and without the help of older players. For myself I never saw the older players as some kind of hinderance to me or something I had to compete against with no chance to ever " be equal to the level of the existing players". I had no desire to do that anyway, doh any game that is not brand new has more experienced players! I just wanted to play, and the experience and skills of older players I actually found very helpful to newbies overall.

 

Anyway, this one response pretty much sums up where we are going and confirms my fears for the older servers, no matter Rolf's promises from the past, he doesn't call the shots anymore so those promises in the long run mean nothing now.

Edited August 16, 2020 by Tilda

[Retrograde 12,013]

3 minutes ago, Tilda said:

 

This is your opinion on what being a new player is all about. I disagree completely. Not all of us have been here from the very beginning and still managed to enjoy  shaping our part of the world and skilling up our characters, with and without the help of older players. For myself I never saw the older players as some kind of hinderance to me or something I had to compete against with no chance to ever " be equal to the level of the existing players". I had no desire to do that anyway, doh any game that is not brand new has more experienced players! I just wanted to play, and the experience and skills of older players I actually found very helpful to newbies overall.

 

Anyway, this one response pretty much sums up where we are going and confirms my fears for the older servers, no matter Rolf's promises from the past, he doesn't call the shots anymore so those promises in the long run mean nothing now.

I'm more referring to the evidence that most new players are going to the northern freedom isles despite being aware of the southern freedom isles and their history than my own opinion on what being a new player is about, frankly I enjoy being able to skill with coc tools. 

[Tilda 651]

19 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

I'm more referring to the evidence that most new players are going to the northern freedom isles despite being aware of the southern freedom isles and their history than my own opinion on what being a new player is about, frankly I enjoy being able to skill with coc tools. 

 

Ok then I apologize for saying that was just your opinion. However,  a new player can have just as much fun 'rebuilding' and repopulating the existing servers in my opinion, so when I see some thought going into incentives to them to try that instead of adding more and more new servers to be mucked up (and fast with those kind of numbers) then I will start to feel a bit more secure that existing servers aren't eventually going to be wiped out. Who remembers when 'older' players and alliances created special 'newbie' friendly areas especially to help them get started out on or near their deeds or just in the wilderness? An area with forges, ovens,  a safe place to sleep and some free food and starter supplies to tide them over until they felt ready to head off and drop a deed. Those took love and dedication, needing regular repair and restocking, and were always very appreciated since the same was not really available in the starter towns. We don't really do that anymore do we, because the new players just aren't there enough, and it is a real shame.

 

Fingers crossed that at some point the powers that be start to see that they are throwing the baby out with the bath water by not showing the love to the existing servers.

[Kelody 333]

18 hours ago, Johnsammy said:

Just merge all the PVE servers, there's a HUGE amount of land available on the old servers for new and old (returning) players to make deeds, if you wait too long then the north/south economies might be too different to make merging possible.

What the "merge the servers" crowd doesn't realize, is half the players on the new cluster have/had deeds and characters already on the old cluster and want the fresh start.

[Badvoc 204]

They should be no incentivising or perks for old lands, that isnt fair to be honest, aren't we the same game just across different servers?

 

Whats next give a perk if you settle Exo but not indy as indy has more players than exo?

 

Many MMO's have different servers or server clusters and each cluster is the same, the players choose where to go and thats the way it should be, freedom to choose, its why we all love wurm the choice.

 

At the start each new character can choose where to go and thats the way it should be, no ones fault 99% of people choose northern lands, want more people on the south why not go out and actively recruit people to join you there, make the case for people using old lands instead of trying to get the devs give out cheap bribes, which would be seen for what it is imo.

 

RMT leaves a nasty taste in games and the southern lands are tainted by it rightly or wrongly, northern lands dont have that baggage.

 

 

[Eyesgood 2,121]

Maybe it's time to start providing some additional transportation options between servers besides just ship transport and one-way portals...

[Arronicus 642]

9 hours ago, Zander said:

To give a little insight to anyone wondering about the reasoning behind this, here is two direct quotes from Samool, long time wurm developer:

 

AND

 

TL:DR; This is because

• CCAB is still seeing large numbers of new players showing up
• is anticipating even more new players with initiatives coming later this month
• Practically all coastal areas on Harmony have been deeded over and practically all desirable terrain on Melody has been deeded over, leaving new players VERY limited options for where to settle themselves, if they don't want to join an existing deed.

 

 

 
This is an EXACT copy paste of my comment on reddit, and while it's a little flattering that you would want to pass it off as your own, it's also tacky of you to post it here without crediting where you copy and pasted it from

 

[Schiann 995]

4 hours ago, Retrograde said:

I don't recall scoffing and laughing at all. 

 

As I've said in multiple places, it's not about incentivising it, the perks and encouragement are the ability to play with people your level, not against the southern isles with decade old accounts, high end characteristics and skills, and hundreds of gold coins. 

 

If new players want the old server experience it's there, but encouraging that has to balance against the fact they will never be equal to the level of the existing players. 

 

It's not about encouraging, it's about the fact that old servers offer little for a new player to feel like they're taking part in shaping the world. 

 

Brand new players don't know - and in many cases, don't care - about 'equal skill level'. Your skill level in relation to others has almost zero impact on your own gameplay on PvE servers.

Anyone who has played a video game that's been out for a while knows there are going to be people who've played longer than you. That said, there are already people on Northern Freedom servers that are so far ahead that new players starting today will never 'catch' them. So the problem of skill disparity between new and average players and those who love to grind is not solved by any of this.

Open space for new players has been an issue for years and years, and has never been solved by opening server after server.  It's fun for a few months, but people drift away from Wurm or move to the latest server released, soon everyone's server only has 20 people on it and you rarely pass another person in local.

The point a lot of us have tried to make is that currently land on any server is often treated as single-use - if it's been touched before, it's no longer wanted - but it's still useable and can be reshaped into nearly anything you want it to be. How much of that is being communicated to brand new players?  Why not add to the PR videos a bit of old terraformed land being completely transformed? Reshaped, trees planted, etc?
I get that almost everyone loves fresh, unmolested wilderness, but spreading everyone too thinly hurts the playerbase, too.

[Zexos 468]

5 hours ago, Retrograde said:

As I've said in multiple places, it's not about incentivising it, the perks and encouragement are the ability to play with people your level, not against the southern isles with decade old accounts, high end characteristics and skills, and hundreds of gold coins. 

 

If new players want the old server experience it's there, but encouraging that has to balance against the fact they will never be equal to the level of the existing players. 

 

It's not about encouraging, it's about the fact that old servers offer little for a new player to feel like they're taking part in shaping the world. 

That can be a plus for new accounts. 

When I joined wurm a few years ago (I think) I was greeted on the Golden Valley Server by a village recruiter, another human being who asked if I wanted to join their village.
If I did not say yes, then I think my experience of wurm might of been a more short one.

I got invited to a village on Release called "Harvest Moon" which had quite a few old vet players with a few new players coming along every now and again.

What I liked the most was being able to ask the old players questions, to get help, advice, instructions, chat, learn history, find out what is dangerous and where to go.
So much stuff and help was provided by being in that kind of a community setting with friendly people.

I was not comparing myself with others - More so, I tried to find loopholes and ways to get more land over time in the village.  While collecting old items and loot from old buildings and deeds around the area.

Nothing was better for someone who wanted lots of easy goods and items then going to old deeds and buildings and taking all of the items for myself, to deck out my house & garden with.  Sure I made teraforming mistakes in the land, destroying slopes in other peoples land, destroyed fences, opened mines along routes which the villagers used for their travel or made a mess of things sometimes for the villagers but er lol it was a learning experience.  A good experience that helped me along my journey.

Everyone has their own play style and personal way of playing a game.  Along with their own needs and wants. 

If you share the good side of the old servers with the newer players on steam then that might help to draw people in.


Pros of old servers for example: 

Old abandoned deeds with free items ready for the taking + Some of these old deeds are great places to start your own deed from since sometimes they can have built up walls, ready made rows of fruit trees and sometimes even clay and tar nearby.

Lots of roads for fast travel and the highway routes mean that if you want to explore other villages you can route your way to them with the waystone highway system.

Alot of mines have already been dug out but this can be a plus since then you can take over old mines and open them up even more.  Sometimes they even have old items and lights in them which can help alot if you have some tar with you to light them up.

Lots of good high end items for cheap everywhere!  Lets not forget about the impalongs as well! 

 

The lands are filled up with alot of monsters and this can be a plus for people who want to skill up their fighting skills.  I hear that users are finding it hard to find monsters on the newer servers because it is so packed.

There are lots of built up villages around the old servers to travel around and look at (If their gates are not locked of course)

Guard Towers cover the maps to help with monsters out in the wild.

There are also bridges that help with moving over to other islands and up cliffs sometimes.

Oh and of course, the great amount of vet players who can help you with advice, links to guides and resources, items, where is best to hunt or where to find certain items. They also make great new friends to meet and make as well

 

Edited August 16, 2020 by Zexos

[Ecrir 887]

 

7 hours ago, Retrograde said:

it's about the fact that old servers offer little for a new player to feel like they're taking part in shaping the world. 

 

I would strongly disagree that that's a fact at all. Considering how thinly populated the south cluster is compared to the north, a new player has a lot more ability to shape the world down south as there's more room in general for them, unless you're only considering the narrow vision of economics. And I certainly hope that that bias isn't being picked up by new players and is thus driving them towards the North cluster under wrong pretenses.

 

5 hours ago, Retrograde said:

I'm more referring to the evidence that most new players are going to the northern freedom isles despite being aware of the southern freedom isles and their history

 

That's only evidence that new players pick the north servers more often than the south servers when they need to make that choice. But you can't use that as evidence for anything else without knowing why they make that choice you. For example, do they simply prefer starting on a server without old characters, or do they expect that there's more free land on new servers simply because they are newer, or is the menu where they must choose naturally biased towards one of the two clusters? Etc

 

So far I see a lot of assumptions about why most of the new players went north over south, but I've yet to hear that players have been asked to fill in a questionnaire or something like that to determine why they actually made that choice.

[kochinac 1,395]

5 hours ago, Retrograde said:

I'm more referring to the evidence that most new players are going to the northern freedom isles despite being aware of the southern freedom isles and their history than my own opinion on what being a new player is about, frankly I enjoy being able to skill with coc tools. 

I disagree with statement that most new players go to new servers because they want untouched lands and fresh server. I think new players are mostly confused at first and go with the flow where they are slightly pushed by you because everything on Steam screams just new servers and not old ones. In marketing efforts old servers are highly dissmised compared to new ones. I would say that people who wanna specificly go to new servers are players who played wurm before but for some various reasons are frustrated and wants a fresh start and untouched lands.

Todays stream from Xana was a good move and should more often stream from old servers now to introduce them to new players following stream. Also providing one way portals from north to south might not be bad idea at this point.

[Skatyna 443]

whats the argument here? always and i mean always if you are new to a game - you choose the most newer server to start.. its a rule of thumb. facts. 

The only exception is if older servers offer you huge intensives to play there, by that i mean faster skill gains by a lot to a certain level, starting skills of 40 eg, free premium for few months, free deed upkeep in comparison to a completely fresh start on new servers. then you think where to play, if no huge intensives - you play on new server. 

 

Retro's argument that a player does not choose the old cluster that he cant compete vs 10y old accounts is only partially true. most of the players cant compete vs others on the same server starting same time as one might play an hour a day, another one is living in a game. once again, intensives are needed on the old clusters to get ppl in. Is this beneficial for the devs? doubt it - giving away free premium brings no profit, so it wont happen. differentiating skill gains and skills - once again too much work for no profit, and ofc no profit potential - no stuff gets done. simple here. New server = profit, so if they feel its needed it gets added. us old timers can cry as much as we want. we are minority now aka irrelevant lol

[Brash_Endeavors 4,735]

15 hours ago, Vilgrith said:

much of the currently deeded land on melody also appears to be opening up shortly due to the influx of players who purchased the bundled premium and silver who have already abandoned their deeds to decay.

 

 

I don't think you really know that "much" of the deeded land on melody is "already abandoned to decay."  Much is one of those vague words that sound BIG and thus are prone to wild exaggeration.  I think it is highly unlikely, in fact.

 

Unless you know every single one of those players, you don't know the status of those "abandoned" spots at all.  Maybe  those  players  play different timezones than you, so you never see them online. Maybe some have busy work and family lives and can't play every day like you.  Maybe they jumped in at the opening to make sure they had a spot reserved, then had to go back to real life until their free time allowed them back to pick up again on wurm.

 

I have neighbors on all sides of me, and there are often long stretched when I don't see any of them, but eventually all of them have checked back in, done a little more work, then vanished again. I have no doubts there are a couple spots that people walked hours to get to, threw down a token, then logged out to never show again, but I doubt very much those make up "much" of the server.

 

I doubt "much" of melody is "abandoned to decay"  at all at this stage, and I certainly doubt this is anything you have any privileged information about. These, after all, are the people who failed to find good decent land in the first days of harmony, and went to Melody only some time after the initial land rush there. In addition, a lot of people who are unsure about the game, are likely to have held back on putting any money in. If they are so new they do not know whether they even like Wurm or not, then unlike the hyperlevelling vets they are going to be a lot slower to hit level 20 in anything, you can pretty much play Wurm free for a month if you are a casual player.

 

Where are you getting this information that "much" of melody is already "abandoned to decay"? Because you saw a token someplace on  undeveloped land, had no idea where the person is or their plans for that land, and just decided they have already packed up and left?  Because I have a deed that would match that description, I paid for it now so it will be there for me when I have the time to focus on that spot.  And I bet a lot of other active players have tokened areas they paid for for future use as well, and will get back to when they can.

 

Or this was just a guess based on "Most people don't like Wurm anyway and quit within three hours"?  Are the people lacking a good space supposed to twiddle their thumbs for 3+ months to see whether those spots are in fact abandoned?  Because refusing to make needed room for new players "because they probably will quit anyway" becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. 

Edited August 16, 2020 by Brash_Endeavors

[Kelody 333]

The problem with southern cluster isn't the lack of players, but the lack of quality space (excluding Xanadu, which has it's own challenges). The small servers may have 10-20 people playing, but they have hundreds of deeds with a year or more upkeep in them. Either spare deeds, hunting deeds, breeding deeds, or just abandoned, they cover the coasts(the main reason for the new server). So you can choose to deed a cliff on the water, or deed inland, but the old servers don't have acres and acres of prime coast land available either.

 

Deeded land on Melody and Harmony won't become available for at least 2.5 months because of the min 3 month upkeep in deed creation. Far too late for people looking now.

Edited August 16, 2020 by Kelody

[Object 281]

I love how someone here called people who want waterfront real estate 'snowflakes' because it's 'too hard' to deed inland....

 

How about maybe waterfront property is more desirable because that's what they prefer?  Why is it that when I see a new player say "I can't find any of the spots I wanted undeeded" I hear the response "Go join someone else's property, you'll like it more"....  How about it they have the money to spend on their own deed....let them spend the money on this game....seriously...

 

What I want to know is which direction it is to sail to from Harmony cause we're packing up already.

Edited August 16, 2020 by Object

[BattleWall 218]

26 minutes ago, Object said:

What I want to know is which direction it is to sail to from Harmony cause we're packing up already.

 

You can Plot Course on your ship and sail to it from any coast. You don't have to sail directly to it from harmony.

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

10 hours ago, Retrograde said:

It's not about encouraging, it's about the fact that old servers offer little for a new player to feel like they're taking part in shaping the world. 

 

This paper does seem to support that: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.163.6347&rep=rep1&type=pdf

However, if I were being critical (which I always am!), the author does appear to jump very quickly towards the "power imbalance" factor.  They don't offer any strong justificiation for it being a causal factor; they introduce the idea without any reference and it's not really all that plausible unless the game is entirely achiever/killer orientated.