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Bloodreina

Uniques penning and private killings

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I will start by saying that I understand that this (uniques penning and private killings) is something that is totally legit, so I don't accuse the people doing it of breaking are rules or doing anything wrong.

 

Yet, the whole situations doesn't really feel right... there were ten dragons / dragons hatchlings kills on the NFI. From these, two were public and eight were private within the same group of about 10-12 people (plus alts). I really think that the way things work right now is destroying the community, splitting it between the rich (who keep getting richer with every kill) and the rest of us, the plebes, who can't feel any other way than being completely left out.

 

Although I do have some ideas (like rules changing from the devs, general acceptance for people once they match certain transparent criterias - like get to 70 FS and weapon skill and you're in, or some kind of embargo where the rest of us would stop trading with those people), I can't say I really have a solution of what either the devs, the elitist jerks group (*), or the rest of the community as a whole could do, but since I don't feel that this is right at all, , but I mostly wanted to open the subject, maybe other, smarter and more experienced people, can actually come with some ideas about what we could do to solve this problem and reduce the gap between the elite group(s) and the regular players...

 

-----

 

(*) that's mostly a joke related to an old wow site, not really thinking they're jerks; in fact I have three people from said group in my FL and, except this, they're very cool people

 

Edited by Bloodreina
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I would say to make some versions of the uniques able to be penned and other versions of them, not able to be penned or even just get rid of being able to pen them all together.

 

You could force a creature to stay within 50 tiles or so of where it first spawned with game code. Then it will roam around an area but will not roam out of its set range. Then that makes the monsters feel more alive then just a caged creature ready for the slaughter.  It also means that people can gather around an area to kill it without having to worry about it leaving an area even though it is not penned.  it makes it more of an adventure.  You are actually going on a hunt. Going to scout it and then fight it as it moves around...etc but it is not moving in such a vast area that it becomes a chore.

 

They are meant to be the games big challenges in a way.  Yet they can feel like just a big punching bag.  Lets have some fear and blood lust. Risks...etc 👹

Edited by Zexos

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Although I agree with the sentiment, as you state quite clearly, these players are doing nothing wrong.

 

I simply try to think of real life where some people have a lot more than others and they too are (in the main) doing nothing wrong- they simply have a talent that gives them an advantage over us lesser mortals!

 

On the WU server that I play on, we have a rule where unique hunts have to be public and advertised a week ahead but with 20-30 players and a couple of people in 'charge' that is much easier to do than with potentially 100's of players.

 

The private penning and killing of the unique creatures may be disliked by some but I cannot see what could be done to prevent players from playing within the rules- unless the rules are changes and that obviously is not up to me.

 

Some may suggest a referendum on changing the rules but being from the UK, I would urge the developers not to go for this :) 

 

 

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But to be honest, whats stopping you to go look for uniques or making group that will go do the same and be competition to those people who are doing that?

I don't wanna say that current system is good or bad. I also don't like public dragon slayings too, as its always you go for the trouble of sailing and traveling there, try to be on time and then its usually delayed because  bunch of people don't try to be on time, and for all that hastle of getting there you get something ridiculous as 0.01kg of scale (ok, blood too). Never in the right mind I would host dragon slaying for whole server of lazy people who just want to show up  for everything plated after all the effort of pening it and time spent finding it.

Now the thing thats stopping me is lack of time, and deciding that i would prefer to spend that time on grinding and building my deed instead of chasing uniques because the first thing has guarantied reward and second one does not, as you can spend entire day searching for it and see it pened by someone else leaving you with empty hands, second i don't like coordinating with other people and like to depend on myself...

 

Edited by kochinac
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in my opinion a simple yet effective solutions is that make the uniques able to just break through pens, that makes it so that a hunting party would have to first scout it out, and keep an eye on the unigue so that the rest of the party can arrive and deal with it. It is how hunting works and penning the creatures should not be allowed i mean come on who is gonna fence in a dragoon if the was one in the real world, how could you these are powerful dangerous adversaries you would think that  they would be able to pretty much go where they wanted.

although truthfully i dont personally care much because i am more interested in doing my projects than usually attending a hunt.

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11 minutes ago, Zexos said:

just get rid of being able to pen them all together.

 

11 minutes ago, Zexos said:

You could force a creature to stay within 50 tiles or so of where it first spawned with game code. Then it will roam around an area but will not roam out of its set range.

 

These are somewhat at odds, because keeping it within a set number of tiles is akin to penning the creature, albeit in a larger area (although I think 50x50 is really not large). I'd advocate letting it roam free, and maybe faster. This makes hunting it more prevalent.

 

Think of Godzilla. You don't pen Godzilla. Godzilla goes wherever he pleases. It's up to people to hunt him down and stop him, if they can (to date, People: 0, Godzilla: 100+).

 

Let the creatures roam, hard and fast. First, this would cause a scare. Second, people would have to chase it down, and likely you'll get a lot of scouts saying where it is. Of course, once engaged the creature "stops" to fight, but it can continue on it's rampage through the map if it is not killed. 

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13 minutes ago, Zarwaddim said:

 

 

These are somewhat at odds, because keeping it within a set number of tiles is akin to penning the creature, albeit in a larger area (although I think 50x50 is really not large). I'd advocate letting it roam free, and maybe faster. This makes hunting it more prevalent.

 

Think of Godzilla. You don't pen Godzilla. Godzilla goes wherever he pleases. It's up to people to hunt him down and stop him, if they can (to date, People: 0, Godzilla: 100+).

 

Let the creatures roam, hard and fast. First, this would cause a scare. Second, people would have to chase it down, and likely you'll get a lot of scouts saying where it is. Of course, once engaged the creature "stops" to fight, but it can continue on it's rampage through the map if it is not killed. 

Yeah, my idea was more so trying to find some sort of balance between the people who like to pen and the people who like a bit of a hunt but not to much of a hunt.

 

I actually had a dream this morning with a red dragon from wurm in.  It came out of a cave after destroying some cave walls and then ran through towns, forests...etc after me while I tried to fight it and so did other people but we did not stop the dragon.  So kind of like your idea lol

 

This also makes me think of something that some villagers told me about, that happened many years ago on Release.  There was a troll king that spawned on the island where the harvestmoon village was.   The troll king actually made its way into the Harvestmoon village and started to cause destruction lol  maybe more threats of adventure like that might be interesting now and again :)

Edited by Zexos
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28 minutes ago, Pandalet said:

moved to suggestions

 

With all respect, this was not a suggestion (since it was not only or even mostly aimed at DEVs), but an open discussion trying to also find solutions to this (potential) problem within current game mechanics, so please don't bury it here, but move it back to the town square. If that's not Ok, I will remove any reference to devs actions and repost there, but please advice what to do.

Edited by Bloodreina

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As to the moving, the decision was certainly up to Pandalet, though I would not have felt it necessary. But shifting to Suggestions is not "burying". Some of the most lively (and sometimes severely derailed) debates happen in Suggestions so the always drama loving forum community certainly looks here.

 

As to the subject: The first unique killing at all, a private Green Dragon Hatchling slaying, occurred October 16 on Melody, followed by a public goblin leader killing on October 25 on Cadence. Next, also Cadence, were two public ones, Kyklops November 2, and Black Dragon November 11. All in all there have been 17 unique slayings in ten weeks, 8 of them public. That is nearly a public slaying every week.

 

Even though we had a great upsurge of public slaying on SFI, much by the initiative of Stanlee, Ehizellbob and friends, we not always have a public slaying on all of SFI every month, and I cannot say that I am discontent with.

 

Organizing a public slaying is quite some work - I know that as our alliance organized two in the last 3 years, me participating in creating one of those events. A public slaying every week is likely to burnout the organizers. So I would suggest to stay patient.

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The way that uniques are now incentivized private slayings since they drop a set amount of hide/scale that is split amongst the slayers. So the less slayers there are, the more hide/scale each slayer gets. So the optimal strategy currently is to pen yourself a dragon, make 30 free alts and rush the dragon with all of your toons and you get all the hide to yourself. The second best strategy is form an alliance with as few fighters needed to slay a unique and pen as many uniques as you can to be slain by said alliance. In order for someone to choose to make their slaying public, this person must be a kind hearted soul who is willing to give all of their hard work and valuable treasure to friends and strangers alike. This person is akin to a lottery winner who takes handfuls of their winnings and scatters it amongst a crowd. There aren’t too many people like this out there, and I am happy there are some like this in Wurm. 
 

I am hopeful that this issue will be addressed by the devs. The solution needs to be a fundamental change in the mechanics so either there is little to no incentive to keep ones slaying private or so that private slayings are not possible.

 

I’d like to point out that rifts is an event that has been designed to prevent private rifts. I am not saying I want uniques to be exactly like rifts. What I am saying is that it is possible to design these events so that they remain open to all who want to (or have the time to) participate in them.

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oh the soft spot ,yes id love to say what i think about the hoarding of these dragons ,2 public 8 private seems unfair ,think there was a post on this before n from memory the new guys will all get if they were there to much good stuff for nothing is what i got from it so ,your not going they aint inviting you just the mates club ok ,hell they even control when the war master is or isnt killed at rifts depending on if its to late at nite for them .solution is dragon comes out at end of rifts after wm is dead only ,that will put a spanner in the works

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A public slaying does not always have to be well organized in advance, announced a week early and set up with flags and whistles. It's very nice if it's done that way, but there's also the simple alternative.

 

I'll take an example from not too recent past, in Xanadu. The Death Tab popped up for everyone in server, announcing that someone had just been burned alive by a dragon. Now, there is room for speculation, if that player did not have death tab enabled whether or not things would have rolled out differently.

But anyway, the word was out. The finder (and nobody questioned who was the owner/finder) decided to have the slaying publicly, and have it the same evening/day. In about 2 hours time, since the death message popped, near 20 players had already gathered in the village of this player. More were streaming in, even from other servers. Priests were doing summons. For the size of Xanadu, this was impressive, really.

The dragon was killed [link], near the location it had been found, within a few hours since the word got out. No penning, no deeding, no complex organizing. And honestly, it was the best dragon experience I have had and I think that's what a dragon encounter should be in ideal world.

 

 

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Maybe have uniques spawn and if not killed in x amount of hours, teleport someplace else? 

 

But with regards penning, without penning I bet many people wouldn't have even got to a slaying, as all pubic slayings I have went too over the years the "creature" was penned by some kind folks who shared and made it public.

 

The system could be better, should be better but it is what it is.

Edited by Badvoc
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The clear difference to me is dragons vs humanoids, penning is not the core issue here. The other uniques are killed publicly as they are not forced to share the tome or bone with other people, the more people the more blood created. With dragons there is a fixed quantity of scale that is divided, even if you cannot pen the dragons would still be killed privately in some percentage. There will always be some uniques killed privately for the challenge and that is fine within a sandbox game, you should do what you want to, but currently the distribution of scale and hide means that people who find uniques often have no incentive to kill it publicly as they'd lose out on scale/hide.

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The problem is that increasing scale/hide gain would devaluate the armour. That cannot be the goal.

 

And having every unique killed in public will also devaluate public slayings as community events.

 

Though we have ways less slayings down here in SFI I enjoy them and rarely miss one. One slaying a week would be overkill. And I fear a lot that it will prove to be on NFI too. Two public dragon/drake slayings in 10 weeks (obviously even 3 as I recently heard) is not a bad turnout. It won't provide everyone with a drake/scale armour for sure. But even each dragon/hatchling killed in public would not.

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38 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

The problem is that increasing scale/hide gain would devaluate the armour. That cannot be the goal.

 

And having every unique killed in public will also devaluate public slayings as community events.

 

Though we have ways less slayings down here in SFI I enjoy them and rarely miss one. One slaying a week would be overkill. And I fear a lot that it will prove to be on NFI too. Two public dragon/drake slayings in 10 weeks (obviously even 3 as I recently heard) is not a bad turnout. It won't provide everyone with a drake/scale armour for sure. But even each dragon/hatchling killed in public would not.

 

These are both valid points, especially for SFI it would be unfair to destabilise the scale/hide price. 

 

On the greed side I'm more personally interested in blood, as for scale/hide there are a few routes you could go down:

  1. Rework distribution to better reflect people who hit it more, this may appeal to some people but wouldn't change the pro/con balance for the people who put the work in to find them.
  2. Rework distribution to give a fixed amount, this could remove some of the con to public killings but would have to be a carefully controlled lever to keep the level of scale in the game healthy.
  3. Reintroduce scale for butchering, this would give a benefit to those that put the work in to pen the creature but could create a closed off market. 
  4. Other Ideas that a dumbo like me has not thought of
  5. A combination of above.

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On NFI, I think part of the issue is that a group of players have teamed up to make Dragon slaying a money making thing.. They slay more for the money they can make and less for the fun of it. They dont even have to be the ones to find the Dragon. Everyone around knows they can help pen a Dragon so they call on them for help, and then once it is penned they buy the Dragon from the finder.  Then they control the slaying and they dont even have to invite someone else (not part of their slaying team) that is part of the penning event. 

 

I was the second person ( after the first person lost it) to find a Red Dragon on cad the other day. I was helping the original person to refind it and then pen it. That person called the slaying group to help thinking they needed more help. While i was making a cave next to it and someone else (a friend) was watching it, the slaying group came in and moved it further away and made a new cave for it.. I ended up helping them close the cave up and was barely extended an invite to the slaying, but he put conditions on that invite..

 

Conditions

 1st- don't spread it around that you were here.  too many people get in the way, and I don't wan't people thinking if they 'help' they automatically get an invite

 

 2nd -  It's just you.  no friends, no alts,s an you can't tell ANYBODY until after the slaying

   (But he had 4 alts there and 1 other person had an alt also)

 

 3rd -  Because I had to buy the claim, you'll have to pay 10s.  We all share the costs when we have to buy one.. 

(22 toons in slaying, 4 his and another with an alt, means he got about 170-180s from everyone) ( He paid 150s for it) so without the loot he is ahead, even with the 4s it cost for the deed. 

 

So see, he doesn't need to hunt, others will do the hunting for him and he can just come throw money at it to get the claim/ownership of the slaying..

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@WhFawnIt isn't clear to me whether you're more angry with the person who bought the dragon, or the person who sold it.

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I think that the solution for these quarrels is cluster merge. Until then "slaying rights" as a commodity is weird but not out of  bounds of game rules.

 

Adding further bandaids to the slaying procedures would either spoil public slayings, or add further inconsistencies and differences to cluster codes making merge even harder. So do not touch it.

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Im mad that as a community we have allowed this group of "slayers" it get rich enough to buy there way to controlling almost all the Dragon slayings. Also some of this group of slayers are also the same ones trying to control the Casting of the Global Rites. If we dont follow their way then they threaten to ban us from even the public slayings. i understand that they cant ban me from the local area of a public slaying but they can keep me from getting inside the gates to help with the slaying. I think this is total BS and im tired of seeing these bullies push everyone around. 

 

 

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If someone threatens to exclude you from public slayings, singling you out from slaying deed, it might be a reason to report her or him unless s/he has sound reasons to act that way. If that is threatened to press compliance to a global spell casting date, even more. At least in my opinion, the latter at least would qualify as griefing (while I am not sure about the further).

 

But beg your pardon, this stinks a bit like intra community grudges and quarrels. Maybe you should cool down a bit.

Edited by Ekcin
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If you find a unique and want to claim it for yourself, see this post (this info--or at least a link to the post--should really should be in the wiki if it isn’t already):

 

 

Particularly the section I'm quoting below:

 

“First come first serve!
What does it mean to be the first? I am so glad you asked.
 
Normally, first person on scene is the one to claim the unique, but arguments do arise and we need something more solid to go on at this stage. So let us start a more tangible system by which if an argument were to arise, an arbitrator can be sent out to scout the situation, and determine decisively who is first.
 
Step 1. Commit one of these actions within range of the unique.
              Mine a tunnel
              Build a colossus
              Dig a dirt, heap of sand, clay, tar, lava
              Plant a sign
              Cut a tree down
              Build a bridge
              Surface mine a shard
Step 2. Remember where you committed the action! If the arbitrator cannot find proof of work, then your claim will be denied.
 
Keep in mind, the above is only necessary if there is a dispute, which will likely only happen during the first few hours of discovery, but for your own sake, commit one of the above actions should you encounter a unique creature and wish to claim it for your own group to eviscerate."

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5 hours ago, WhFawn said:

Im mad that as a community we have allowed this group of "slayers" it get rich enough to buy there way to controlling almost all the Dragon slayings. Also some of this group of slayers are also the same ones trying to control the Casting of the Global Rites. If we dont follow their way then they threaten to ban us from even the public slayings. i understand that they cant ban me from the local area of a public slaying but they can keep me from getting inside the gates to help with the slaying. I think this is total BS and im tired of seeing these bullies push everyone around. 

 

 

Go out and put in the 100s of hours that he has into hunting unique and then maybe you can lock them down for yourself, or make them all Public... your choice... Don't get salty, be grateful you got an invite at all as you was not entitled to one!

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On 5/7/2022 at 9:08 AM, WhFawn said:

On NFI, I think part of the issue is that a group of players have teamed up to make Dragon slaying a money making thing.. They slay more for the money they can make and less for the fun of it. They dont even have to be the ones to find the Dragon. Everyone around knows they can help pen a Dragon so they call on them for help, and then once it is penned they buy the Dragon from the finder.  Then they control the slaying and they dont even have to invite someone else (not part of their slaying team) that is part of the penning event. 

 

I was the second person ( after the first person lost it) to find a Red Dragon on cad the other day. I was helping the original person to refind it and then pen it. That person called the slaying group to help thinking they needed more help. While i was making a cave next to it and someone else (a friend) was watching it, the slaying group came in and moved it further away and made a new cave for it.. I ended up helping them close the cave up and was barely extended an invite to the slaying, but he put conditions on that invite..

 

Conditions

 1st- don't spread it around that you were here.  too many people get in the way, and I don't wan't people thinking if they 'help' they automatically get an invite

 

 2nd -  It's just you.  no friends, no alts,s an you can't tell ANYBODY until after the slaying

   (But he had 4 alts there and 1 other person had an alt also)

 

 3rd -  Because I had to buy the claim, you'll have to pay 10s.  We all share the costs when we have to buy one.. 

(22 toons in slaying, 4 his and another with an alt, means he got about 170-180s from everyone) ( He paid 150s for it) so without the loot he is ahead, even with the 4s it cost for the deed. 

 

So see, he doesn't need to hunt, others will do the hunting for him and he can just come throw money at it to get the claim/ownership of the slaying..

This here sounds like someone who got invited to a private slaying getting upset that they were invited. This is one way you don't get yourself invited back to another slaying "ever". You complain about them charging 10s when you walked away with more than 10s in scale and the blood. If they had alts that is on them they were the ones hosting the slaying. Being the 2nd on scene doesn't make you the claim owner of the unique. Maybe next time you shouldn't help then if your going to be this upset.

 

6 hours ago, WhFawn said:

Im mad that as a community we have allowed this group of "slayers" it get rich enough to buy there way to controlling almost all the Dragon slayings. Also some of this group of slayers are also the same ones trying to control the Casting of the Global Rites. If we dont follow their way then they threaten to ban us from even the public slayings. i understand that they cant ban me from the local area of a public slaying but they can keep me from getting inside the gates to help with the slaying. I think this is total BS and im tired of seeing these bullies push everyone around. 

 

 

Private slayers have been around for years in this game it's nothing new. Also there is no way to control the Global Rite Spells. When they are ready to be cast all you have to do is get enough priests together to cast them. As for the banning of public slayings I don't think i've ever heard of anyone banning from a slaying. But even if they did it's their event their rules. Hell would be a shame if someone would host a private invite only slaying charge x amount of silver to be able to attend the slaying. Remember no one has to do public slaying they do it to be nice. From what I can tell this group hosts tons of public slayings. You might not want to shoot a gift horse in the mouth next time.

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