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Bloodreina

Uniques penning and private killings

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Sorry for the double post, but I didn't want to edit my post above.

 

I also want to talk about something I always THOUGHT was a good idea, but now I don't.  Madnath completely changed my mind.

 

I had always thought it would be a good idea to change hide/scale drops to reflect performance.  Only people who do damage get hide/scale, and the more damage you do, the more you get.  The problem with this approach is that is pushes everybody into using the meta weapons, and I think that's bad.  This is PvE, where you can use any weapon you want.  Seriously, you can make most anything work.  Sure, that guy using a 2-handed sword might not kill a troll as quickly as I can, but if that doesn't bother him, he should keep using it...and there are some sweet skins for the 2-handed sword.

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2 hours ago, Tor said:

 

Good one, dragons aren't bugged.

 

So now you know the GM shouldn't and won't have time to do GM Stuff? Well okay, let me know more about GM and about their time, so we can suggest more stuff in there according to Gm time availible according to you

Tell me how dragons are bugged. I insist.

 

And yes, GM's need time to do GM things and we shouldn't needlessly waste that time on silly fixes that make no sense and remove a massive aspect of the system from the game. This is a shock to you? Is that the best argument you can come back with? GM time is valuable, they are the people who handle low to mid level bug issues that need addressing ASAP, they are the ones who teleport people and boats when crossings fail, they're the ones who actually work to keep things ticking on in real time.

 

What sounds better when proposed to a player?

"When you explore you might find a unique mob, like a dragon, drake or humanoid that drops bloods and/or scale and drake hide"

Or

"Yeah every three weeks or so you go to this beam and a GM just spawns a dragon in haha"

 

2 hours ago, Finnn said:

FACT is that most uniques are priv kills and that harms the community, and starves the majority of players of rare content drops and something to do.. besides the everyday chores.

If few fellas need a big bear to poke with sticks to brag and so on.. give them some other content that is not crippling the comminity, with still important drops.. but not the rarest armor and decorations in the game, it's a no-brainer fact.

 

I believe it was Stanlee who said it best. Be the change you want to see. Go out there and make the slays public. Don't cry over spilled milk if you miss one or two.

Those who cry for change to a system they don't want to interact with ultimately breed ideas that completely miss the mark of what a dragon hunt and slay should be.

Always up for the system to be changed and tweaked. I'm not up for removing the bulk of the content of it just to appease people who don't understand it or work with it.

 

A change to uniques needs to cover as much ground as possible with mechanics while not cutting away too much of it. When the solutions often posted about make the entire thing trivial, it loses any special meaning. Look at the Capi thread from last year, where they went above the rules staff set to post a concept idea that was as terrible as most and almost copy pasted from other suggestion threads.

Dragons and humanoid uniques help to encourage exploration, finding one is always a risk reward to hope for. Removing it to make it some staff spawned thing, or rift beam signaled junk just serves to rip away a large part of this absurdly large spanning sandbox experience.

Edited by Madnath
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45 minutes ago, Sinnjinn said:

When I first started as a private slayer I thought the system was  a lot more broken then I do now....not to say there aren't' problems, but I think any discussion has to first pinpoint the problems.

 

IMHO the two main problems are:

1) The inequitable distribution of information.  So what do I mean by this?  A person who finds a Unique is in a much better position to find the next one then anybody else.  It's not that big of a problem when it's only one, but it compounds greatly if the same person (or group) finds 2 or 3 in a row.  Both the spawn timer, and the spawn location mechanic give huge advantages to those who know when and where previous spawns happened.  There are things we hunters can do to minimize this advantage, but it still exists, and is probably the main reason it can be so hard for people to enter the world of Unique hunting.  And even getting some of the information about the spawn timer and spawn locations mechanics can be REALLY difficult.  The information is out there, but it's not easy to find. And on top of all of this, we never know when a Unique spawns, only  when the window is open.   The reason I've mentioned a few times above about spending SO much time hunting, is that the vast majority of the time you're searching, it hasn't spawned yet.  I'm not suggesting they should be easy to find, but SOMETHING to help know when they have spawned would reduce the barrier of entry into Unique hunting.  Maybe something as simple as increasing the chance of the spawn at every window?

 

2) Uniques don't ever die.  this one is pretty simple, and I think pretty simple to fix.  Simply have Uniques capable of dyeing due to age or starvation just like any other mob.

 

Also, while I would love to know with a little bit more precision when they spawn, I would love to see the areas they spawn in greatly increased.  would add more fun to the hunt, especially knowing that hunt is less likely to be a complete waste of time.

 

In general, I would be in favor of a complete rework of the system.  I once read a post shown to me by Stanlee about changing the system from an extremely limited resource that everyone fights over, to an extremely rare unlimited resource.  the general idea was similar to treasure maps.  you find fragments of a map while out hunting mobs.  when you have enough pieces you put it together and 'find' the location of a dragon.  So person (or group) A killing  a dragon has no effect on person' (or group) B's fragments and ability to find and kill a dragon.  This also redefines public and private slays in a nice way.  A 'public' slay would be 100 or so people getting together and all contributing the 2 or 3 fragments they have.  A 'private' slay would be 10 to 15 people all contributing the 20 or 30 fragments they have.  Nobody is 'taking away' from anybody else.  Of course you would need to make the fragments rare so as not to flood the cluster with Uniques, but that could easily be monitored and adjusted until you dialed it in

+1

 

A system like this is actually what I was hoping the exploration update was going to involve, too.

 

Anything along these lines to give players a more interesting/meaningful thing to do than wander aimlessly around known and suspected spawn locations on a timer and fight endlessly on the forums would be a huge improvement.

 

Not to mention this would greatly democratize the process and allow anyone to get involved. Literally all they would have to do is find friends to hunt with and contribute map pieces that they found.

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22 minutes ago, Madnath said:

Tell me how dragons are bugged. I insist.

 

And yes, GM's need time to do GM things and we shouldn't needlessly waste that time on silly fixes that make no sense and remove a massive aspect of the system from the game. This is a shock to you? Is that the best argument you can come back with? GM time is valuable, they are the people who handle low to mid level bug issues that need addressing ASAP, they are the ones who teleport people and boats when crossings fail, they're the ones who actually work to keep things ticking on in real time.

 

What sounds better when proposed to a player?

"When you explore you might find a unique mob, like a dragon, drake or humanoid that drops bloods and/or scale and drake hide"

Or

"Yeah every three weeks or so you go to this beam and a GM just spawns a dragon in haha"

 

 

I believe it was Stanlee who said it best. Be the change you want to see. Go out there and make the slays public. Don't cry over spilled milk if you miss one or two.

Those who cry for change to a system they don't want to interact with ultimately breed ideas that completely miss the mark of what a dragon hunt and slay should be.

Always up for the system to be changed and tweaked. I'm not up for removing the bulk of the content of it just to appease people who don't understand it or work with it.

 

A change to uniques needs to cover as much ground as possible with mechanics while not cutting away too much of it. When the solutions often posted about make the entire thing trivial, it loses any special meaning. Look at the Capi thread from last year, where they went above the rules staff set to post a concept idea that was as terrible as most and almost copy pasted from other suggestion threads.

Dragons and humanoid uniques help to encourage exploration, finding one is always a risk reward to hope for. Removing it to make it some staff spawned thing, or rift beam signaled junk just serves to rip away a large part of this absurdly large spanning sandbox experience.

 

First of all, if the current team don't have time and resoruces to pursue whatever idea, they simply won't consider it and thats fine, just let them decide what  they have time for and not you or me for forum points. Of course, every thing suggested, even the simpliest and easiest thing need time and resoruces investment and idk why do you ahve to brought up twice now, like it's only you that cares about GM time.

 

Second, i don't really care about dragons in the current state, i am more interested in digging tar, personally.  My suggestion about GM spawning dragon is to the players that feel entitled to be at one.  "IF they really need to have that", then they might as well have it, it's pretty much same thing as someone else provided it for the. And all that, only if  there's meaningful alternative provided, non-bugged dragons for the hungers and gm spawned one for the entitled. Jokingly so.

 

Dragon mechanic is not flawed? Well  why theres special set of rules for them not backed up with gameplay mechanic

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6 minutes ago, Tor said:

 

First of all, if the current team don't have time and resoruces to pursue whatever idea, they simply won't consider it and thats fine, just let them decide what  they have time for and not you or me for forum points. Of course, every thing suggested, even the simpliest and easiest thing need time and resoruces investment and idk why do you ahve to brought up twice now, like it's only you that cares about GM time.

 

Second, i don't really care about dragons in the current state, i am more interested in digging tar, personally.  My suggestion about GM spawning dragon is to the players that feel entitled to be at one.  "IF they really need to have that", then they might as well have it, it's pretty much same thing as someone else provided it for the. And all that, only if  there's meaningful alternative provided, non-bugged dragons for the hungers and gm spawned one for the entitled. Jokingly so.

 

Dragon mechanic is not flawed? Well  why theres special set of rules for them not backed up with gameplay mechanic

 

1st, I honestly have 0 idea what you're even trying to convey anymore. I don't even know if you know anymore. If you have to fall back onto "let them decide if they can do it" then it's probably not a good idea. And when we're discussing ideas and concepts to hopefully come into game, and we're funding the game, I think it's fair and normal for people to show some basic interest in how things would go/be developed/handled. It's pretty normal, I dare say.

 

2nd, except it's entirely backed up with gameplay mechanics. You use mechanics in place to show your claim, to be used by GMs in the case of a dispute. Just because there isn't some big gameplay button saying to claim now like a dodgy iPhone winning ad, doesn't mean it's not backed up. The thread and its rules have helped GMs to prove ownership and rule accordingly.

Also, a "flaw" isn't a bug. That's something you said was there. Again, I ask you to back it up.

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3 minutes ago, Madnath said:

 

1st, I honestly have 0 idea what you're even trying to convey anymore. I don't even know if you know anymore. If you have to fall back onto "let them decide if they can do it" then it's probably not a good idea. And when we're discussing ideas and concepts to hopefully come into game, and we're funding the game, I think it's fair and normal for people to show some basic interest in how things would go/be developed/handled. It's pretty normal, I dare say.

 

2nd, except it's entirely backed up with gameplay mechanics. You use mechanics in place to show your claim, to be used by GMs in the case of a dispute. Just because there isn't some big gameplay button saying to claim now like a dodgy iPhone winning ad, doesn't mean it's not backed up. The thread and its rules have helped GMs to prove ownership and rule accordingly.

Also, a "flaw" isn't a bug. That's something you said was there. Again, I ask you to back it up.

I am pretty sure there's overwhelming urge of virtue signaling that you care so much about GM time, Everyone time is valuable, period.

 

That's rules insered after drama and people complaining wasting staff time, nothing to do with gameplay mechanic. I agree they serve the purpose and should have been temporary, not years by now

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12 minutes ago, Tor said:

I am pretty sure there's overwhelming urge of virtue signaling that you care so much about GM time, Everyone time is valuable, period.

That's.... not even an argument.

 

12 minutes ago, Tor said:

That's rules insered after drama and people complaining wasting staff time, nothing to do with gameplay mechanic. I agree they serve the purpose and should have been temporary, not years by now

At this point I realise there's no meaningful conversation to be had here. I've asked two times what the bug is, and you've evaded that question twice by trying to insist the etiquette thread is somehow proof of a bug when it's really a directive on what to do in a sitation where you find a unique.

 

Take the L mate, go on.

RF266AE.jpeg

Edited by Madnath
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Perhaps the reason that we haven't seen a major change is that there is no consensus about what the change ought to be. Perhaps if we could agree on what we want, we might have a chance of getting it?

 

(This isn't me talking as a member of the staff, but as a game designer with an interest in improving the design of this game.)

 

I think that having people search for clues and/or fragments of dragon eggs would be a great mechanic. It allows larger or smaller groups of people to co-operate to create a dragon fighting event. What would happen once an egg is compete? I'd suggest that someone cast a Bless spell on it, making it whole and viable, and beginning a magical process that soon produces a hatchling. Potentially I'd have a full-grown dragon appear in the area, too, possibly even a pair. The chances of additional dragons could depend on the number of people around, which would introduce an element of uncertainty and risk, help encourage major group events (varied loot / more per person), and discourage the bringing of useless alts.

Edited by Sheffie
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5 minutes ago, Madnath said:

That's.... not even an argument.

 

At this point I realise there's no meaningful conversation to be had here. I've asked two times what the bug is, and you've evaded that question twice by trying to insist the etiquette thread is somehow proof of a bug when it's really a directive on what to do in a sitation where you find a unique.

 

Take the L mate, go on.

RF266AE.jpeg

 

It's not even an argument your virtue signaling about how much you care, cherish and value GM time. Everyone here are entitled to their own opinion, you might not agree or like, but it's not up for you to decde how someone else won't have time for it.

 

Where's the bug? The unique special rules contain guideline how to not get banned for something you can do in game. Mean, you can do something not intended.

 

I don't get what this L thingyis about, but sure, i will take the L, cutiepie.

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22 minutes ago, Sheffie said:

Perhaps the reason that we haven't seen a major change is that there is no consensus about what the change ought to be. Perhaps if we could agree on what we want, we might have a chance of getting it?

 

(This isn't me talking as a member of the staff, but as a game designer with an interest in improving the design of this game.)

 

I think that having people search for clues and/or fragments of dragon eggs would be a great mechanic. It allows larger or smaller groups of people to co-operate to create a dragon fighting event. What would happen once an egg is compete? I'd suggest that someone cast a Bless spell on it, making it whole and viable, and beginning a magical process that soon produces a hatchling. Potentially I'd have a full-grown dragon appear in the area, too, possibly even a pair. The chances of additional dragons could depend on the number of people around, which would introduce an element of uncertainty and risk, help encourage major group events (varied loot / more per person), and discourage the bringing of useless alts.

 

I think the fact there's no community consensus is more of an indication that the staff probably have no real idea either. It's a very difficult thing to resolve, because the community hates every idea because there's some element that's usually a hard downgrade too.

 

Rift idea? Nobody likes rifts already, making the dragons use that mechanic is just silly and removes a lot of what makes finding, penning and killing dragons go away. Again, Capi's thread was the most fleshed out version of it and yet it's still trash.

GM spawned? Lazy, unintuative, removes a massive chunk of the system that's good, takes GM time better spent on tickets and actual user support. Also means uniques never spawn naturally anymore which would be a shame.

The egg has some merit to it, because it offers a new way to interact with things potentially. I'd be against offering double dragons at a time, given that means there's a chance of just a really weird split. Think of the tanks! It's a struggle to get just one sometimes.

 

With an egg, I'd propose something more grandiose. Egg fragments or clues to one is a neat idea, but I'd be against just a simple bless to make it fertile. The egg should be stone, petrified over time to protect it. To make it fertile, it must be charged with something. You could have a few options here. You could make it so a priest of each religion has to cast something on it, or at the same time over an action window. Or maybe rites create beams at starter deed altars of that god, and you channel the rite favour into that? Similar to recharding Chaos artifacts.

I just feel it likely wouldn't be enough for players who crave a bigger hunt, who love the more free form exploration style it currently offers. But I like that it still offers the ability to do it private or public. We'd still need to address the elephant in the room of how exactly distribution would work though.

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9 minutes ago, Madnath said:

With an egg, I'd propose something more grandiose. Egg fragments or clues to one is a neat idea, but I'd be against just a simple bless to make it fertile. The egg should be stone, petrified over time to protect it. To make it fertile, it must be charged with something. You could have a few options here. You could make it so a priest of each religion has to cast something on it, or at the same time over an action window. Or maybe rites create beams at starter deed altars of that god, and you channel the rite favour into that? Similar to recharding Chaos artifacts.

I just feel it likely wouldn't be enough for players who crave a bigger hunt, who love the more free form exploration style it currently offers. But I like that it still offers the ability to do it private or public. We'd still need to address the elephant in the room of how exactly distribution would work though.

 

There are some really good ideas here.  And you're right about the hunt, not getting that thrill at finding a dragon like you do currently is one of the downfalls of this, but you are actually going out and getting rewards for your hunts more often.  Another is no penning, and I agree with what people said earlier, penning a Unique really is a lot of fun. But I think the advantages outweigh these.  I think the best way to do it would be the fragments are a drop from mobs.  Higher CR of the mob, more likely to drop a fragment, like the holiday items.

 

You would just need to be careful that whatever you're doing to make the egg fertile wouldn't be too cumbersome for a large group...like having to take it to a special place, then back again.  As that would hinder public slayings

Edited by Sinnjinn

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Just now, Sinnjinn said:

 

There are some really good ideas here.  And you're right about the hunt, not getting that thrill at finding a dragon like you do currently is one of the downfalls of this, but you are actually going out and getting rewards for your hunts more often.  Another is no penning, and I agree with what people said earlier, penning a Unique really is a lot of fun. But I think the advantages outweigh these.  I think the best way to do it would be the fragments are a drop from mobs.  Higher CR off the mob, more likely to drop a fragment, like the holiday items.

It'd be fairly easy to get around no penning with an egg. You just need a comically large spoon to crack it open.

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37 minutes ago, Tor said:

 

It's not even an argument your virtue signaling about how much you care, cherish and value GM time.

 

I don't get what this L thingyis about, but sure, i will take the L, cutiepie.

 

He pointed out that the GMs shouldn't be wasting their time dealing with something that should be handled by the mechanics, on a serverside level. Something which I wholeheartedly agree with. Developer work and Game Master work are two different sides of working on the game, and shouldn't be confused with one another. Do some of the GMs also work with the programming? Yes, but not in the capacity of GM. They don't log into their GM account to solve bugs in the code. And they shouldn't have to use GM powers to handle something that should be handled by the server itself, based on dev code.

You wouldn't call up the customer service at Microsoft to ask them to log in to your computer at 3am every night to handle the Windows updates for you (or at least I hope you wouldn't). It's the same with asking GMs to handle the unique spawns: It's something they shouldn't do. It would be a waste of their time, even if they could technically do it.

 

Since you're promoting the right for everyone to express their opinions: Why are you trying to belittle the opinions of others by calling them virtue signalling?

 

Also:

37 minutes ago, Tor said:

I don't get what this L thingyis about, but sure, i will take the L, cutiepie.

 

Gross.

 

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What i wanna see is:

- Unique spawns randomly, they are big and destructive

- Requires the cummuniy or large group effort to be killed within time frame and not be postponed, otherwise the unique leaves

- Rewards, maybe another unique currency that can be exchanged with loot of choice

7 minutes ago, Aeris said:

 

He pointed out that the GMs shouldn't be wasting their time dealing with something that should be handled by the mechanics, on a serverside level. Something which I wholeheartedly agree with. Developer work and Game Master work are two different sides of working on the game, and shouldn't be confused with one another. Do some of the GMs also work with the programming? Yes, but not in the capacity of GM. They don't log into their GM account to solve bugs in the code. And they shouldn't have to use GM powers to handle something that should be handled by the server itself, based on dev code.

You wouldn't call up the customer service at Microsoft to ask them to log in to your computer at 3am every night to handle the Windows updates for you (or at least I hope you wouldn't). It's the same with asking GMs to handle the unique spawns: It's something they shouldn't do. It would be a waste of their time, even if they could technically do it.

 

Since you're promoting the right for everyone to express their opinions: Why are you trying to belittle the opinions of others by calling them virtue signalling?

 

Also:

 

Gross.

I was saying, they should decide what is wasting time for them and not him. For you that's wasting time as well? Sure, that's fine. I am pretty sure you have your own ideas that's not wasting time for you, but it is for someone else.

 

I am not mixing GM and development time, i am saying for everything time is needed and it's so obvious, every single suggestion in here would be anyone involved time intesitive, does it mean it shouldn't be suggested?

Well, don't think there's universal GM tasks that every GM in every game are doing exactly the same, or microsoft tech support. If someone don't have time to do something, they shouldn't do it

Because to me it sounding like virtue signaling, feel free to disagree as you doing it now anyways.

 

Really, what's so gross to you?

 

Even tho, the proposal of GM spawned uniques is ridiculous, it provides pretty much exactly the same, of what vast majority of players are doing: Showing up to a slaying event provided by someone else to get they blood + whatever item they might won or get.

And about the "unique hunting". There's elephant in the room that havn't been addressed yet. How many players been banned for not-so "accidental" stumbling on unique? And how many aren't discovered, or noticed and banned yet? I don't see or noticed any changes been made yet, so the info is probably still out there

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Here's an idea.  go with something along the lines of the egg idea...except when the egg breaks open it's a shapeless, formless blob that is invulnerable for 30 minutes and then disappears.  To get the dragon to take shape, it needs to be subjected to complete darkness.  So you still have to pen it...you just break open the pen right away and kill it.

 

You could even leave the existing Unique mechanic alone, and implement this in addition.  Something along the lines of 90% of all 'wild' spawns are humanoids, and 10% are dragons....so hunting them wouldn't really be a thing, but you could still run into them while out doing whatever.

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 Chiming in with a few wild things here

 

On 5/10/2022 at 10:24 PM, Pnutp said:

Not only that, when any humanoid is found, Public slayings are organised and take time and effort.

 

When I read this I initially scoffed, "what are you on about, I've seen two this week"

Looked it up and, yeah, last 2 weeks, 4 private humanoids

But they're all SFI. NFI's had 40+ at just about every humanoid slaying since the beginning of the year.

Congrats on having your stuff together there.

Humanoids are basically no skin off the teeth of a private team: even a shout in Freedom and waiting 30 or so minute is nice enough. And if you made a cave and organized a time for your team, well, I'd be interested to hear the reasoning for not inviting people for bloods; I struggle to think of one.

 

On 5/13/2022 at 5:12 PM, Sheffie said:

my understanding is that this didn't work because the mine was outside of the dragon's "leash" radius.

 

Just want to say I've taken dragons from the northeast of Release over to my slaying deed, this just isn't a thing.

 

4 hours ago, Sinnjinn said:

I once read a post shown to me by Stanlee about changing the system from an extremely limited resource that everyone fights over, to an extremely rare unlimited resource.  the general idea was similar to treasure maps.

 

I linked it earlier in the thread but here it is again. IDK what you're all about with casting bless and dark caves or whatever, that seems like overengineering when we haven't even overcome the weaknesses of my suggestion. The main goal of the suggestion is a system by which uniques are still a difficult goal, but the attainment of them doesn't put you at odds with other players who were doing the same. The main weakness, as I see it, is that we lose the sheer beauty of finding a unique in the wild - that wild panic when something has come to end you, and no buildings or fences will stop its wrath. Going up a 20 slope road, teammates behind you who haven't spotted it yet, trying to save them with a

 

Quote

[21:11:17] <Stanlee> BEHIND
[21:11:18] <Stanlee> US

 

I strongly recommend against banning people from public slays. As someone who runs them, I'm often tempted by the idea, especially when people are being absolutely disgusting and I would regret seeing their names. However, in my view, this merely creates a list of people with incentive to mess with you. That and if I ban one, I know it's a slippery slope for me. This advice can be soundly ignored by private slayers, where the etiquette outlines that you're well within your rights to seek GM intervention if someone won't leave the area.

 

1 hour ago, Tor said:

And about the "unique hunting". There's elephant in the room that havn't been addressed yet. How many players been banned for not-so "accidental" stumbling on unique? And how many aren't discovered, or noticed and banned yet? I don't see or noticed any changes been made yet, so the info is probably still out there

 

Are you referring to the players banned in the past for such actions?

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Hello!

 

 

I'd like to chime in here with an official statement on the status of unique hunts. Right now, things will be playing as-is. That's not to say we're content with the current system, but that we are not yet ready to make sweeping changes to it at this time. What we are doing is reviewing the enormous amount of feedback and formulating ideas on where things will be going next. The current unique system, with a few minor tweaks, has been a part of Wurm for a long time and it does not seem right to take it away right now without something to replace it.

 

I also want to address the drama that a unique hunt causes. It really does pain me to see the fighting within a mostly close community over something that exists within the game we all come together to play. That's one reason why I want to see this fixed. That said though, I do ask that you all remain civil. People have opinions and ideas, and while you do not have to agree, please try to be constructive in your criticism. The fewer back-and-forth posts we have to sift through to find the opinions of the community, the easier it is for us to come to conclusions that might benefit the community.

 

All of that said, thank you for your passion and for raising these issues.

 

Happy Wurming!

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5 hours ago, Sinnjinn said:

In general, I would be in favor of a complete rework of the system.  I once read a post shown to me by Stanlee about changing the system from an extremely limited resource that everyone fights over, to an extremely rare unlimited resource.  the general idea was similar to treasure maps.  you find fragments of a map while out hunting mobs.  when you have enough pieces you put it together and 'find' the location of a dragon.  So person (or group) A killing  a dragon has no effect on person' (or group) B's fragments and ability to find and kill a dragon.  This also redefines public and private slays in a nice way.  A 'public' slay would be 100 or so people getting together and all contributing the 2 or 3 fragments they have.  A 'private' slay would be 10 to 15 people all contributing the 20 or 30 fragments they have.  Nobody is 'taking away' from anybody else.  Of course you would need to make the fragments rare so as not to flood the cluster with Uniques, but that could easily be monitored and adjusted until you dialed it in

Okay, this is getting into "suggestion" territory  🙂

 

I think something like that would be workable, BUT there should still be some uber-champion level dragons out there.  Something that doesn't roam far, has a mine/cave lair for it's treasure, and is approaching impossible to kill.  Basically, the best you could hope for is a) knock a few pieces of scale of it and/or b) grab some loot from the lair while it is hopefully engaged elsewhere.  (Oh, have the dragon loot the corpses of its victims - not full loot, but something).

 

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2 hours ago, Tor said:

And about the "unique hunting". There's elephant in the room that havn't been addressed yet.

Wait. we have ELEPHANTS now??   

 

How do we get it on elephant slays?  Are they some super-private secret thing being controlled and hidden by a sinister Elephant Hunting Group?

 

EDIT:  Oh, no, now I REALLY want Mûmakil in Wurm! 

 

 

Edited by TheTrickster
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On 5/14/2022 at 5:53 PM, Sinnjinn said:

In general, I would be in favor of a complete rework of the system.  I once read a post shown to me by Stanlee about changing the system from an extremely limited resource that everyone fights over, to an extremely rare unlimited resource.

 

Totally loving this idea, with some extra 2c thrown into the mix.

 

 

Exploration for Unique Creatures

The exploration aspect of unique discovery is a wonderful idea.  Whether "shards" are found via Archaeology, looted from humanoid kills, or found as treasure, it would be inclusive for everyone.  Issues that I can see would be related to trust and hoarding of the shards to try to queue up multiple kills at once.

There are a couple of ways to address hoarding and kill stacking.  To begin, reduce the frequency of new shards depending on how recently a previously discovered unique has been killed.  As time goes on, the frequency increases to some set number, to encourage another kill.  This encourages cooperation and discourages holding shards for long periods of time.

Then you could key each shard with a unique id internally.  When the unique creature that corresponds to the unique id on a shard is killed, that shard crumbles to dust.  This means that a shard can be used for one specific unique creature and none other.

One issue of trust can be avoided.  Instead of handing your shards to someone to construct an item, let any shard be used to begin a construct representing the unique.  Only one construct can be built.  If someone tries to ninja build one in a hidden location, each shard can be used like a compass that draws the holder to where the construct is located.

The construct can only be built above ground, off-deed, and a deed may not be placed over the construct at any time.  Attempts to restrict access to the construct would be a punishable offense.

To continue an existing construct, activate your shard and right-click the construct.  No skill should be required, and the continuing message should suggest that the shards are drawn to the construct to form the finished work.  Once completed, the construct would slowly begin to come to life as the unique creature, a server-wide announcement would appear (orange text in Event window), and any remaining shards would begin to glow; the remaining shards would continue to serve as a compass to the unique creature until it dies.

The creature should be leashed to its creation tile, and not move far from it: no taking something public and penning it for an attempted private kill.  If it is somehow dragged to a deed, deed kill permissions would not apply.  However, if your small group is capable of finding the shards, building it, and killing it, more power to you.

 

Rewards go to those within some to be determined distance from the kill.



Truly Wild and Powerful Unique Creature Events

For the truly wild and powerful unique creatures, as much as it is hated, the rift-style zone creation with terrain deformation is probably the best option.  But for the sake of aesthetics, for this and for rift battles too, the effect should just be temporary: it should be a sort of terrain overlay.

While the event (unique, rift, whatever else) is in progress, the landscape appears different from its proper form and terraforming is disabled.  Once the event is concluded, the affected area slowly reverts back to its proper order.  Terraforming is re-enabled once everything is back to normal.  Map dumps would show only the original landscape, not the event zone landscape overlay.

Note: this is something that is beneficial Right Now (tm), given the complaints over terrain deformation with rifts, and would allow piecemeal implementation and testing of some of the different aspects of this idea.

Building would be permitted in the event zone, but the unique creature should kill you before you finished and then raze anything you did manage to construct.


In an empty local area, off-deed, the unique creature(s) spawn with an associated structure: a large cave for dragons, a small village of huts for goblins, a grove of giant trees for forest giant, etc.  These uniques would be only semi-aggressive: territorial and leashed to their structures.  They should give up chase once you are a sufficient distance from their structures, and they should be increasingly aggressive and more prone to random ranged attacks the closer you are.

Oh yeah, the uniques should have ranged attacks as well as melee attacks.  If anyone is standing still for any length of time in the event area, such as while attempting to construct something or just idling while waiting for a reward, the creature should launch an AoE attack at your location that will kill you if you don't move before the effect concludes.

After a period of time -- say, relative to the length of time it would take a 100% full creature to starve -- if the unique is still alive, then the event ends, the unique despawns, the structures rapidly decay (within a minute or two), and the event area slowly reverts back to normal.

To receive a reward for slaying the unique, you need to be in the event area, engaged in combat, and have either approached to within melee range of the creature, or have cast an offensive spell at the creature, or have healed those who are in combat with the creature.  Every character should receive the same reward, and the quantity/quality of the reward should not vary based on participation or any other factor.  While this will incentivize alts, those alts must also be actively participating in the kill; remember, idly standing around would just get you killed.

There should be no loot on the corpses, and butchering the corpses should produce nothing special beyond what you might normally find on a butchered corpse.  It's completely opposite of what you'd expect in most games, but let's just avoid adding anything used to create drama.

Ideally, the strength of the creatures and their adds should be such that you would want a large-ish group to participate.  A group of 5-10 of your closest buddies probably shouldn't cut it for this.
 

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I would love to see Huge Egg's added back into the game. Would be cool to hatch dragon's whether it be for a public or private slaying. Maybe they could be worked into the Treasure Maps, or maybe they can be added into the mark's shop as a random gift. I know it doesn't solve any of the issues with the Unique system but would be cool to see in the game again. Just my 2 cents.

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23 hours ago, Zakiah said:

One issue of trust can be avoided.  Instead of handing your shards to someone to construct an item, let any shard be used to begin a construct representing the unique.  Only one construct can be built.  If someone tries to ninja build one in a hidden location, each shard can be used like a compass that draws the holder to where the construct is located.

I gave this some thought, and liked the idea at first, but I can see a situation where you don't know who has, or hasn't contributed their shards.  Also I could see someone holding back their shards, the construct isn't finished, then they come back later and finish it and kill the beast privetly.  No, I think it's much better to simply give all the shards to one person and have them construct the egg.  There are plenty of people with a good enough reputation for this to be done with minimal risk.  Even most of the private slayers I know (myself included) would be happy to construct it for a public slay and not screw anybody.

 

And I like the idea of limiting rewards to those people who actually contributed shards...would stop the alt problem, but I'm not sure how you would code that.

 

As for the rest of your ideas, there is some merit there, but it's all mostly just way to complicate

Edited by Sinnjinn

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On 5/16/2022 at 10:17 PM, Zakiah said:

 

Totally loving this idea, with some extra 2c thrown into the mix.

 

 

Exploration for Unique Creatures

The exploration aspect of unique discovery is a wonderful idea.  Whether "shards" are found via Archaeology, looted from humanoid kills, or found as treasure, it would be inclusive for everyone.  Issues that I can see would be related to trust and hoarding of the shards to try to queue up multiple kills at once.

There are a couple of ways to address hoarding and kill stacking.  To begin, reduce the frequency of new shards depending on how recently a previously discovered unique has been killed.  As time goes on, the frequency increases to some set number, to encourage another kill.  This encourages cooperation and discourages holding shards for long periods of time.

Then you could key each shard with a unique id internally.  When the unique creature that corresponds to the unique id on a shard is killed, that shard crumbles to dust.  This means that a shard can be used for one specific unique creature and none other.

One issue of trust can be avoided.  Instead of handing your shards to someone to construct an item, let any shard be used to begin a construct representing the unique.  Only one construct can be built.  If someone tries to ninja build one in a hidden location, each shard can be used like a compass that draws the holder to where the construct is located.

The construct can only be built above ground, off-deed, and a deed may not be placed over the construct at any time.  Attempts to restrict access to the construct would be a punishable offense.

To continue an existing construct, activate your shard and right-click the construct.  No skill should be required, and the continuing message should suggest that the shards are drawn to the construct to form the finished work.  Once completed, the construct would slowly begin to come to life as the unique creature, a server-wide announcement would appear (orange text in Event window), and any remaining shards would begin to glow; the remaining shards would continue to serve as a compass to the unique creature until it dies.

The creature should be leashed to its creation tile, and not move far from it: no taking something public and penning it for an attempted private kill.  If it is somehow dragged to a deed, deed kill permissions would not apply.  However, if your small group is capable of finding the shards, building it, and killing it, more power to you.

 

Rewards go to those within some to be determined distance from the kill.



Truly Wild and Powerful Unique Creature Events

For the truly wild and powerful unique creatures, as much as it is hated, the rift-style zone creation with terrain deformation is probably the best option.  But for the sake of aesthetics, for this and for rift battles too, the effect should just be temporary: it should be a sort of terrain overlay.

While the event (unique, rift, whatever else) is in progress, the landscape appears different from its proper form and terraforming is disabled.  Once the event is concluded, the affected area slowly reverts back to its proper order.  Terraforming is re-enabled once everything is back to normal.  Map dumps would show only the original landscape, not the event zone landscape overlay.

Note: this is something that is beneficial Right Now (tm), given the complaints over terrain deformation with rifts, and would allow piecemeal implementation and testing of some of the different aspects of this idea.

Building would be permitted in the event zone, but the unique creature should kill you before you finished and then raze anything you did manage to construct.


In an empty local area, off-deed, the unique creature(s) spawn with an associated structure: a large cave for dragons, a small village of huts for goblins, a grove of giant trees for forest giant, etc.  These uniques would be only semi-aggressive: territorial and leashed to their structures.  They should give up chase once you are a sufficient distance from their structures, and they should be increasingly aggressive and more prone to random ranged attacks the closer you are.

Oh yeah, the uniques should have ranged attacks as well as melee attacks.  If anyone is standing still for any length of time in the event area, such as while attempting to construct something or just idling while waiting for a reward, the creature should launch an AoE attack at your location that will kill you if you don't move before the effect concludes.

After a period of time -- say, relative to the length of time it would take a 100% full creature to starve -- if the unique is still alive, then the event ends, the unique despawns, the structures rapidly decay (within a minute or two), and the event area slowly reverts back to normal.

To receive a reward for slaying the unique, you need to be in the event area, engaged in combat, and have either approached to within melee range of the creature, or have cast an offensive spell at the creature, or have healed those who are in combat with the creature.  Every character should receive the same reward, and the quantity/quality of the reward should not vary based on participation or any other factor.  While this will incentivize alts, those alts must also be actively participating in the kill; remember, idly standing around would just get you killed.

There should be no loot on the corpses, and butchering the corpses should produce nothing special beyond what you might normally find on a butchered corpse.  It's completely opposite of what you'd expect in most games, but let's just avoid adding anything used to create drama.

Ideally, the strength of the creatures and their adds should be such that you would want a large-ish group to participate.  A group of 5-10 of your closest buddies probably shouldn't cut it for this.
 

have you considered the fact that this is a "bot game", some can and will run multiple accounts to "hoard" and farm whatever pieces, you've seen how some have thousands and thousands of bulk buildings mats, farmed on 1 or several accounts

 

control of events should not be simply given into players, this is not your typical pve or pvp mmo, mechanic should enforce the "fairness" of it all, "luck"(this allows alts to utilize some grabbing) and incentives are good to reward participation...

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22 hours ago, Sinnjinn said:

I gave this some thought, and liked the idea at first, but I can see a situation where you don't know who has, or hasn't contributed their shards.  Also I could see someone holding back their shards, the construct isn't finished, then they come back later and finish it and kill the beast privetly.  No, I think it's much better to simply give all the shards to one person and have them construct the egg.  There are plenty of people with a good enough reputation for this to be done with minimal risk.  Even most of the private slayers I know (myself included) would be happy to construct it for a public slay and not screw anybody.

 

Not knowing who has or hasn't contributed their shards is the primary thing that pushes players just a tiny bit more toward honesty.  As explained, the intention is that there be more shards discovered than are needed to actually complete it because you are depending on a herd of cats to cooperate.  You will also have people hoarding shards to try to screw the system; it's the sad nature of humanity.

If you keep the total number of shards needed somewhat random and somewhat vague, like when prospecting for "Good", Adequate", Very Good" veins, then you increase the difficulty to exploit.  Hmm, also if some contributed more to the building process than others, that would further add uncertainty and reduce the ability to count shards while watching the state change to determine max.

From the proposal, "As time goes on, the frequency increases to some set number, to encourage another kill.  This encourages cooperation and discourages holding shards for long periods of time."

The longer someone or several someones try to hoard shards, the more shards are going to be found, and the more frequently they will be found.  If someone and 5-10 buddies try to hoard shards to complete it instantly, it could be that it gets completed without them.  And that is intentional in the design.

From the proposal, "Once completed, the construct would slowly begin to come to life as the unique creature ..."

When I suggested that, I was originally thinking 20-30 minutes.  A bit of time to allow anyone logged in to notice the change and potentially make their way toward the construct.  It may be that a 24-hour counter begins, much like the Rites, so people can have advanced warning.  I'm actually liking the 24 hour counter the more I think about it.
 

2 hours ago, Finnn said:

have you considered the fact that this is a "bot game", some can and will run multiple accounts to "hoard" and farm whatever pieces, you've seen how some have thousands and thousands of bulk buildings mats, farmed on 1 or several accounts

 

control of events should not be simply given into players, this is not your typical pve or pvp mmo, mechanic should enforce the "fairness" of it all, "luck"(this allows alts to utilize some grabbing) and incentives are good to reward participation...

 

Indeed.  As mentioned above and in the proposal, it is intended there be more shards discovered than actually needed to complete the structure.  The proposal suggests that discovery would increase over time to encourage completion, perhaps in some sort of exponential curve, but ultimately the Devs control the knobs to tune how slowly or how quickly the process progresses.

The proposal also suggests that the shards be unique to each construct and useless once that construct is finished and the unique killed.  Any leftovers would just be destroyed at the next opportunity.  You won't be saving shards to stack builds and kills.

When the current construct is built and its special creature killed, shards for the next may begin to be discovered.

Those who put in the effort to hunt for the shards in all their various ways of finding them should be rewarded with more opportunities to participate in the kills.  However, if some characters are consistently producing many more shards than anyone else, perhaps those characters should be flagged for investigation.
 

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This is about penning uniques not mud slinging. If there are troubles with other players call a GM for mediation. They are not really happy about but will try their best. If the story you are telling happened that way it may have been not good but also no real big deal. If the trees were in your perimeter it was certainly wrong to cut them, especially when declaring one wants to keep them. Only this is the story from one side only. But, as said, all this slander is fully off topic here. I shall report if you go on.

Edited by Ekcin
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