Uni-directional Skill Transfer Between Clusters - A Longevity Plan

[Skatyna 439]

5 hours ago, Sindusk said:

allowing Northern Freedom accounts to move to Southern Freedom and keep their skills, but not transfer currency or items.

 

10 hours ago, elentari said:

Any form of "uni-directional skill transfer" will only serve to depopulate - the already empty - old Freedom Cluster. Southern Isles. 

 

This has already taken place. Epic is a case study in itself. It was already dying out before that skill transfer  - as Freedom was/is already dying out - and the skill transfer was simply the last nail in the coffin. Why do we want to repeat history again?

 

[atazs 965]

Huge -1

 

This isn't needed at all. It's more overcomplicated ###### that is full of loopholes and exploits just like the Epic transfer was. Efforts and development should be spent elsewhere. The servers might also be connected in the future, again adding to the exploit and window of opportunity factors.  

 

Just add one way portals to the North Freedom Isles and allow anyone to leave to the old servers, let them bring anything they can carry with them, and with no way back, while keeping their skills 1:1 

 

Edited August 19, 2020 by atazs

[Arronicus 641]

+1.

 

Absolutely bizarre number of comments in here that clearly show the commenter either didn't read, or didn't understand the suggestion. 

 

I would genuinely love to know how people think this would be exploited, if no currency or items can be tranferred, and skills only go one way, between 1x servers, from newest to oldest. 

 

Quote

overcomplicated ###### that is full of loopholes and exploits just like the Epic transfer was

 

Like what in this case?

[elentari 2,660]

What exactly is overcomplicated in it? It's just a one way copy transfer. it's been done before. Wurm didn't die or break or imploded. 

 

What exploits are there ? I am genuinely curious how this could have a negative impact. Please argument.

[TheTrickster 2,284]

It's not just a one way copy transfer.  It's transfer back and forth at will, with skills copying one way.  That is definitely over-complicating.  

 

Skill up to say 70 in NFI, tfr south for 70 skill and grind it to 85, tfr nth and it drops back to 70, grind it up to 75 and transfer south again - what will the skill be?  75?  85?  If the question has to be asked because it isn't plainly obvious then it is overcomplicated

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by TheTrickster

[elentari 2,660]

If it works like the system on Epic, then in your example, the player in question would still have 85 on SFI while having 75 on NFI.

 

If I grind blacksmithing on Freedom to 70, it will copy over to Epic to 70.

 

However...

 

If I grind BS to 90 on Epic, it won't copy back to Freedom. In this scenario, if I grind BS to 79 on Freedom and port over to Epic, my BS will still be on 90 on Epic.

 

SKill on freedom has to be Higher than skill on Epic in order for it to copy over. If it's already higher on Epic, it won't copy. In your example it would work the same way.

[Finnn 3,317]

On 8/18/2020 at 6:03 PM, John said:

What about Epic!? :'(

🤔

 

Vast new lands  connected to freedom and converted into PvE,

dragons, dragons, dragons everywhere,

I'm all down for a 10silver scale suit deal though

[Ecrir 887]

On 8/19/2020 at 9:20 AM, elentari said:

Unfortunately the Freedom>Epic skill favoritism only depopulated Epic in the long run. In a game where "skill" matters, the moment you say "you can gain skill here and it transfers there, but not the other way around" is the moment where you depopulate a server. This shouldn't even be a debate. It happened.

 

Any form of "uni-directional skill transfer" will only serve to depopulate - the already empty - old Freedom Cluster. Southern Isles. 

 

I doubt the Epic case applies here at all. For one in this suggestion skills only transfer one way (north to south). For Epic you could transfer skills off that server, thus depopulating it. In this case you can transfer skills only from North to South. So if we look at what happend to Epic then this would depopulate the North cluster, not South. It would thus help repopulate the Southern Isles.

[Ecrir 887]

On 8/19/2020 at 9:20 AM, elentari said:

Unfortunately the Freedom>Epic skill favoritism only depopulated Epic in the long run. In a game where "skill" matters, the moment you say "you can gain skill here and it transfers there, but not the other way around" is the moment where you depopulate a server. This shouldn't even be a debate. It happened.

 

Any form of "uni-directional skill transfer" will only serve to depopulate - the already empty - old Freedom Cluster. Southern Isles. 

 

I doubt the Epic case applies here at all. For one in this suggestion skills only transfer one way (north to south). For Epic you could transfer skills off that server, thus depopulating it. In this case you can transfer skills only from North to South. So if we look at what happend to Epic then this would depopulate the North cluster, not South. It would thus help repopulate the Southern Isles.

[Threap 401]

On 8/18/2020 at 7:03 AM, Sindusk said:

You have 50 mining on South Freedom. You obtain 70 mining on North Freedom. Next time you transfer to South Freedom, your South Freedom mining will be 70.

 

This would have been a okish idea if it was implemented before the launch so we could use existing characters on north freedom just starting over with no skills, doesnt fix the problem that everyone now has two characters. 

[Ekcin 2,415]

It seems to me that everybody is reading something into the suggestion, mainly stuff that is not written in it.

 

To say that first, my opinion is -1. I widely agree with atasz in this respect, and see additional issues.  Threap correctly states that the "transfer" of those who wanted to play on the new Northern servers has already happened, in the way of creation of new characters.

 

The suggestion, if tried to implement it now, would create a bunch of issues and require significant rework of the login database and account management, especially in holding different bank accounts. This would also affect the shop, so it would be real customer accounts with all legal responsibilities, not only "game stuff" like skill points. On the one hand, you could buy prem for the account over all servers, but had to specify the cluster, maybe even clusters in a future with more servers (which I fail to see right now) in case of buying silver.

 

I do not say that it would be impossible, but indeed damn complicated as it would also create legal and accounting complexities, and the need to undergo all these changes on a live system. I fail to see the utility for such an effort.

 

Also, the general idea seems somewhat strange to me. It seems to comprise that you have identical accounts on a new cluster like NFI as well as on an "old" cluster like SFI equally, then are assumed to grind at least certain skills up on the "new cluster", higher than on the "old" one, and be entitled to carry the "skill surplus" back to the "old" server or cluster.  The idea of keeping currencies apart seems to stem from the (possibly justified) assumption of large thesauri of ingame currency on the "old" cluster.

 

And this scheme is believed to be useful in the future, with the idea that further new, separate clusters or servers be created. While I can of course not know the future, I fail to see that creating ever new servers is the means to increase the player base.

 

The recent significant increase in participation has only partially to do with new server creation. Main reason is that the game was presented to the largest community on online players, and obviously found some interest there. This confirmed the often reported observation that the core reason for the decline of participation was the virtual invisibility of Wurm in the outside world, and the aging and life changes of the original audience. That now 4 servers do exist instead of 2 (1 PvE 1 PvP as scheduled) results from the magnitude of response on the steam opening. In the future it would be a big success if a participation roughly in the current range could be sustained. Creation of ever new isolated servers does not seem the right way to me.

[Sindusk 2,448]

On 8/24/2020 at 7:23 PM, Ekcin said:

The suggestion, if tried to implement it now, would create a bunch of issues and require significant rework of the login database and account management, especially in holding different bank accounts. This would also affect the shop, so it would be real customer accounts with all legal responsibilities, not only "game stuff" like skill points. On the one hand, you could buy prem for the account over all servers, but had to specify the cluster, maybe even clusters in a future with more servers (which I fail to see right now) in case of buying silver.

 

There's no technical concern about implementing this system. Premium would transfer between clusters. Currency would not. The same database that stores faith also stores the player's currency. The technology doesn't need to be developed, it's already there.

 

On 8/24/2020 at 7:23 PM, Ekcin said:

I do not say that it would be impossible, but indeed damn complicated as it would also create legal and accounting complexities, and the need to undergo all these changes on a live system. I fail to see the utility for such an effort.

 

There's no legal concern about implementing this system. You buy currency for the cluster you're on. If there was some legal concern about this, people buying sleep powder and not having it transfer between clusters would already be an issue.

 

On 8/24/2020 at 7:23 PM, Ekcin said:

Also, the general idea seems somewhat strange to me. It seems to comprise that you have identical accounts on a new cluster like NFI as well as on an "old" cluster like SFI equally, then are assumed to grind at least certain skills up on the "new cluster", higher than on the "old" one, and be entitled to carry the "skill surplus" back to the "old" server or cluster.  The idea of keeping currencies apart seems to stem from the (possibly justified) assumption of large thesauri of ingame currency on the "old" cluster.

 

And this scheme is believed to be useful in the future, with the idea that further new, separate clusters or servers be created. While I can of course not know the future, I fail to see that creating ever new servers is the means to increase the player base.

 

The recent significant increase in participation has only partially to do with new server creation. Main reason is that the game was presented to the largest community on online players, and obviously found some interest there. This confirmed the often reported observation that the core reason for the decline of participation was the virtual invisibility of Wurm in the outside world, and the aging and life changes of the original audience. That now 4 servers do exist instead of 2 (1 PvE 1 PvP as scheduled) results from the magnitude of response on the steam opening. In the future it would be a big success if a participation roughly in the current range could be sustained. Creation of ever new isolated servers does not seem the right way to me.

 

If new servers are not launched in the future, the game will stagnate. After a few months, a year, or some amount of time - new players will look at the game, be interested, then realize they will be enormously behind everyone else. I would not be playing right now if not for a fresh server. Had they launched on steam with the same south freedom servers, I wouldn't have touched the game. The best way to bring new faces into the game is exactly what happened: major update + launch new servers.

 

If they're happy with stagnation, then I agree this suggestion is pointless. But considering recent actions taken, it looks like they're not in maintenance mode anymore. They want to get the game into the hands of more people. The best way to do that is with new servers, and my suggestion keeps the old servers attached in a way that doesn't screw over their loyal player base nor upset the ecosystem.