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PromisedOne

Unique Slaying Mechanics Revamp

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This has been talked about to death over the years and now that I am back in Wurm I see it still has not changed.  I honestly thought with the change to Steam and removal of RMT this would of finally gotten the revamp it really needs.  My suggestion is below in detail.

 

1.) Like Rift events unique slayings will now provide a set number of points to each participant who attempts to strike the unique.  This means alts sitting in carts doing nothing will no longer leech free blood.  This does mean that hoarding uniques no longer serves a purpose by removing the direct monetary value of said uniques.

2.) Points given will be based on the unique slayed, but can be used cumulatively for certain items in a unique shop such as a rare strange bone (Butchering uniques will no longer have the chance to yield rare bones)

3.) All tomes will now be in the unique shop and assigned point values along with rare and supreme bones

 

So after a few months of unique slaying a player's point card would look something like this.

 

Red Dragon Points: 100

Forest Giant Points: 200

Goblin Leader Points: 100

Black Dragon Hatchling Points: 100

 

Players would then be able to redeem points for item as listed below:

 

Goblin Leader Blood: 60 Goblin Leader Points

.05kg Drake Hide: 75 Any Hatchling Points (Figure out the color part later)

.05kg Scale: 75 Any Dragon Points

Rare Strange Bone: 1,250 Any Unique Points

Tome of Blank: 1,000 Any Unique Points (1 Charge)

Summer Hat: 5,000 Any Unique Points

Small Steel Magical Chest: 2,500 Any Unique Points (You see where I am going with this)

 

The back end requires a database to keep track of players and point totals while the front end requires a store user interface to redeem those points.  Drops and butchered items aside from meat would be removed and the system already outputs who was attacking a unique so the people to be awarded points already exists.  The dev time to do this is actually not that bad, and I am willing to donate my personal time to code changes if that is what it takes.  I would love to seem some suggestions on the point table, additional items to be added to the uniques store, or what you think is good or bad about it.  Lets finally flush this out and make it a thing worth doing rather than having the constant bickering about uniques, private hunt parties, etc.  With this system you build a foundation to introduce limited time items available in the unique store.  Also goes without saying you must be premium to obtain points from a unique slaying.

 

Now I know all the tryhards are not going to like this because it will directly affect income from uniques, but the reality is this change is healthy for the game as a whole.  More slayings will be public, more people will be logging in and playing for these, and more interaction will occur across servers.  I look forward to reading your responses below on why or why not to do something like this in Wurm.

 

Edited by PromisedOne
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There's apparently plans for a rework at some point; but as always we know nothing about it or when it may happen.

 

But for the love of god, no more point systems.

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If you can make it fair and inclusive without points please provide a suggestion.

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I agree it needs a revamp.

15 minutes ago, PromisedOne said:

So after a few months of unique slaying a player's point card would look something like this.

 

Red Dragon Points: 100

Forest Giant Points: 200

Goblin Leader Points: 100

Black Dragon Hatchling Points: 100

Seems to me you would need a lot more spawns for this time line. At least on Xan. Which I'm all for btw. ;)

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The main reason uniques are quietly killed is dragon hide & scale. Bloods can go to all premium players in local like it does now. 

 

Hide/scale is a set amount divided between all that are in local. THAT is the main reason for private slayings and is what needs to be changed.

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15 minutes ago, PromisedOne said:

This does mean that hoarding uniques no longer serves a purpose by removing the direct monetary value of said uniques.

artificial scarcity would still be a monetary reason to not make them public, as would the logistics of an event (hosting a public slaying takes hours of preparation for penning, setting up deed, all that stuff). With no extra monetary value to the penner, hosting a public slaying would be cash out of pocket for them, which would reduce the likeliness of a public slaying, as they could kill it with their friends and not spend time/money making a pen deed.

 

i'll give it a 6/10

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Yes I agree, and by removing them from butchering and making them obtainable via points the private slaying would stop.

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I would suggest if the point system were to be used a spawn frequency should increase a bit.  If people want to kill one with a few friends that just means less points circulating, but since many of the items can be obtained by points from various uniques I don't see this as a problem.

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How would this help? People would still just use private groups of high level players to maximize their points. The work isn't killing them, it's in finding and penning them.

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This would unlock access to items by allowing players to redeem points for them via the "Any Unique Points" method.  This means players cannot get a tome via hunt groups unless they kill a ton of uniques and obtaining said points is the same regardless of the number of players until the hard cap is reached.  I believe this is currently 25.  Obviously the fact they can be penned in mines is part of the problem, but without in depth knowledge of the unique creature AI I am not sure how to fix it.

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Rifts are already critiqued and unloved in the community as it is - forming a unique system like a rift system is bound to fail as it is.

This fix looks ugly and sounds awful.

 

-1 

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On 4/7/2021 at 10:05 PM, Jore said:

There's apparently plans for a rework at some point; but as always we know nothing about it or when it may happen.

 

But for the love of god, no more point systems.

There have been plans for reworks for years; like many of wurm's systems.

 

Reworks rarely work out!

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On 4/7/2021 at 11:10 PM, PromisedOne said:

Yes I agree, and by removing them from butchering and making them obtainable via points the private slaying would stop.

 

What Oblivionnreaver points out is a good reason on why just that won't stop private slayings. By keeping slayings private small groups will have most of the points. Everything you can get through points will then be much rarer and thus worth more. So this proposed system has a financial incentive to keep slayings private.

 

 

If you really want to make private slayings hard then the uniques will probably need to spawn like rifts, in a specific area at a specific time, so that people know where to go and when to go there. Of course you wouldn't want another red beacon in the sky for it, so instead perhaps an in game message (on every village message board?) of a dragon terrorising an area (specific square) and that a hunt will be started for it at a specific time (at which point it will spawn somewhere in the square). This way it's not exactly like rifts, people will still need to find the unique in a potentially large area (as the size of a square differs per server). A group could then go to that square before the dragon spawns, spread out, find it and hunt it down.

 

Private slayings wouldn't be impossible, it would just require said private group to find and kill the dragon before others, turning it into a race to kill the unique. While it has some similarities to rifts, they are minor at best as rifts come down to fighting waves of enemies in a very specific area and this would come down to hunting down 1 creature in a much larger area.

Edited by Ecrir
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On 4/7/2021 at 11:18 PM, Gawain said:

Nah. It is fine as is

 

If the problem is constantly pointed out it is pretty clear that it is not fine as it is. 

 

I am absolutely in favor of a change of how the unique system works, but not sure that a point system would do it. As I suggested in other threads, for me the best way would be to give to all local players the same amount of hide/scale, such as for the blood, and the person hosting the event and butchering the unique would always find a rare+ bone, a skull and a tome/other fancy item as reward for the effort in finding/penning the unique and organizing the event.

Once every player get the same amount of hide/cale there would be no more reason for make them private.

Edited by Luttuosa
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20 minutes ago, Luttuosa said:

 

If the problem is constantly pointed out it is pretty clear that it is not fine as it is. 

 

I am absolutely in favor of a change of how the unique system works, but not sure that a point system would do it. As I suggested in other threads, for me the best way would be to give to all local players the same amount of hide/scale, such as for the blood, and the person hosting the event and butchering the unique would always find a rare+ bone, a skull and a tome/other fancy item as reward for the effort in finding/penning the unique and organizing the event.

Once every player get the same amount of hide/cale there would be no more reason for make them private.

And kill the value of ingame items as well. No.

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1 minute ago, Gawain said:

And kill the value of ingame items as well. No.

 

It wouldn't; tons of players would like to have their own armour, so people would sell/buy hide/scales anyway; each player would get a little amount of it, so the market wouldn't collapse. Or another way could be to give all the hide scale via butchering, so the host/finder/owner of the unique once butchering it would find a rare+ bone and a tome OR 1kg of hide/scale.

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2 hours ago, Luttuosa said:

If the problem is constantly pointed out it is pretty clear that it is not fine as it is. 

 

This is faulty logic, and is simply not true. 

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3 hours ago, Katrat said:

 

The list goes on.

 

And it'll go on until someone comes up with a solution that doesn't reduce Uniques to a "yOu pArTicIPaTeD!1!" event or a terrible point system.

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It will go on as there is always something to rant. The unique mechanics complainers are in fact split into several different factions. Not all of them disclose their motives.

  • Some just envy and hate those who roam the servers and detect uniques, suspecting them to be unfair and to cheat, and/or are generally adverse towards private slayings.
  • Another large group just wants easier and cheaper access to hide and scale for everybody, or at least to themselves.
  • Some want as many public slayings as there are uniques, others detest and deride them as "clown shows".
  • Some want uniques ways harder than they are, some wants everybody have the opportunity to hit them, and have same reward. 
  • Some want all alts removed from the scene, some even from the game.

It is obvious that the different classes of complaints contradict each other and/or are incompatible. Most "solutions" proposed will set up not few of the actual complainers giving the next pretext to lambast the bad unique system and scold the devs (and the bad unique hunters or whatever).

 

Actually it is time to chill down, think harder, make proposals that do not alienate others, or at least not more than unevitable (as the current system does as well). There is no easy solution, other than shutting down uniques, or just Wurm. That would certainly end the strife.

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1 hour ago, Ekcin said:

The unique mechanics complainers are in fact split into several different factions.


Aye. I certainly don’t envy the devs and can see why they’ve not changed the unique system for so long. All these factions can get some enjoyment from uniques some of the time. All the suggestions I’ve seen to ‘fix’ uniques would leave at least one faction out in the cold.

 

So either the devs need to bite the bullet and publicly state that uniques are intended for fewer factions than they currently serve and move towards that end, giving more satisfaction to some and alienating others, or they need to double-down and publicly state they’re happy that uniques serve a purpose for so many players, even if not all at the time.
 

Wurm is the epitome of a sandbox mmorpg and allowing different players to deal with uniques pretty much how they see fit feels more right to me than changing the system to actually discourage if not outright deny certain play.

 

Personally, a lot of the grumbling feels to me more about people being unhappy with the rate at which they personally accumulate hides and blood and the suggestions they make seem more about maximising gains for their particular play style than how to increase enjoyment of experiencing uniques. 
 

So I’m inclined to say leave the system as it is until I see a suggestion that focuses on the experience more than maximising rewards for fewer playstyles.

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so nothing changes you win again ,does this stuff slowly fall apart or does this hundreds of dollars of armour stay perfect forever ? id like to no btw , i see the big clans all got it and as for the rest of us u can tell who has the right friends or not , if my glimmer can shatter then your drake or dragon armour should have faults to i think ,maybe that would force change somehow ,u cant just say some can find 100 dollar bills n share them and others never can cause its to hard to even out ,

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6 minutes ago, christopher said:

so nothing changes you win again ,does this stuff slowly fall apart or does this hundreds of dollars of armour stay perfect forever ? id like to no btw , i see the big clans all got it and as for the rest of us u can tell who has the right friends or not , if my glimmer can shatter then your drake or dragon armour should have faults to i think ,maybe that would force change somehow ,u cant just say some can find 100 dollar bills n share them and others never can cause its to hard to even out ,

 

EBKsBKN.jpg

 

Dragon scale hemorrhages QL even at 100 repair to the point where I miss drake. Both armour types can shatter. And that suggestion does nothing to solve the primary issue at hand.

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