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Sheffie

Let's try to improve unique creature battles

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I do wonder if we'd ever have a system that tracks reasons why players quit, how many would check the box "I hate dragon slayings monopoly" amongst the reasons.

 

I mean imagine , having an option in Wurm to check a box "I'd like to quit the game" another  popup box appears where the player can leave his feedback on WHY he leaves the game.  


Such info would be good for wurm development I think. Would give valuable input on what to change, instead of relying on player sentiment on forums that might not convey the full picture. 

 

As for uniques, I still think that the fact we have the same threads after 10 years, shows that there is a severe discrepancy in the design philosophy of wurm and what players want.

 

After so many years, honestly can't understand how the few remaining hundreds of players in Wurm can still throw the argument "Wurm's not a game for everyone, go find another game to play if you don't like it"....when the same threads and issues pop up 6 times a year. 

 

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As to "deflating the value of hides" aka trivializing drake/dragon armour, the solution would and will not be making it all more available, but ending the north-south cluster divide. There is enough scale, hide, and ready parts and sets in the game, only it is concentrated in SFI for obvious reasons. Sets and mats are not cheap in SFI either, but affordable if one values them and is willing to pay the price, be it time and dedication, running to every public slaying, spending silver, or a mix of all three. "Deflating" that would be a bad move.

 

On NFI with 3 servers just existing for less  than a year, and roughly double of actively playing accounts, there is no solution unless the GM relentlessly helicopter hide and scale to make up for a twenty to thirty fold lower availability. Doubtful whether that is a viable solution even for NFI, or for the GM work schedule (assuming they want to do that in an at least minimally immersive way). Planning for cluster merge would be the better way.

 

As to the accusation against Skatyna: She is perfectly right. No strawman argument, on contrary. With my limited experience of 3.5 years, I know about at minimum 6 cases where players just ran into a dragon, was part of two of them in some ways. Does not sound elitist to me. All those cases comprise of players who were roaming around a bit, but not searching uniques at all.

 

As to that the game lacks higher level PvE content: YES, indeed. And there should be solutions. At least a few more rift camps could be a start. Though I have first hand knowledge of 6 7 unique encounters, I have only hearsay knowledge of 2 rift camp findings. And rift camps (good idea btw.) would be only one kind of higher level PvE opportunities. There must be more of them, many more.

 

The execution of a few trolls etc. becomes boring once your FS is beyond 80, here changes must be. Crippling uniques or continuing the obnoxious drama of losers and enviers does not lead anywhere.

Edited by Ekcin
addendum

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6 minutes ago, elentari said:

I do wonder if we'd ever have a system that tracks reasons why players quit, how many would check the box "I hate dragon slayings monopoly" amongst the reasons.

You're kidding. Anybody leaving for that reason must have serious psychological or other personal conditions.

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14 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

You're kidding. Anybody leaving for that reason must have serious psychological or other personal conditions.

 

if you give them 3 options to choose from why they are leaving, sure 30% will "leave" due to that reason. if you give them the open text field to type in the reason only - uniques wont even make top 100..

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People may not specifically list dragons as the reason they quit, but I know several people who quit because they felt Wurm had little endgame content for them. If the unique system worked better, it could be that endgame content.

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I fully agree that the lack of adequate PvE challenges is an issue. Yelling at unique hunters does not help though.

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2 hours ago, Ekcin said:

You're kidding. Anybody leaving for that reason must have serious psychological or other personal conditions.

saying that things are ok the way they are with all clues you miss to pickup and calling people mentally unstable isnt helping either

3.5 years.. with roughly 2 uniques per server .. lets see 8 servers x2 uniques a month x12 months.. x 3.5 = what?

seems like a lot of uniques.. and you know about SIX ... that were found randomly.. WOW.. so many.. writing the number from that small math there is so insane.. I'd rather not. things are so ..... fine indeed; it's all shared equally and seems to be well balanced to have what "70"-90% of uniques farmed by small teams?

 

game is certainly in no need for some help with this, it's certainly not showing any new player with some sense that this is a dont-get-involved game; some people actually read steam reviews before dipping a finger into that new mmo, in this one you get no armor change from level 20-30 on sub-armor skills unless you spend 1-300-600+ euro with latest pricing of near silver for 0.01 hide and scale.. so ******* good man, uuuhh why wouldn't a person start to play wurm, it's perfectly balanced, there's so much content you get to do, except endgame.. unless you're having all the time in the world to run around servers for hours twice a month.

 

--that aside..---

can't say I give a .. about any mercy to priv teams, for me it's better to only get an event that is for everybody and end all kinds of dramas, BUT .. if a few whiny keys crying for few silvers even if it's few golden coins that just flow.. is needed.. old mechanic can stay.. they still wont be happy either way if price of same loot devaluates with accessible content by everyone 

 

AMUSING to read all protectors of small groups every time.. especially every time somebody says 'I've been ONCE to a slaying and I SAW A DRAGON, it was amazing, private slayings need to stay'.. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

If you have a point at least share it honestly.. writing to protect the nonsense your buddies cause to the game is just low.

I'm not saying YOU specifically are doing that .. but c'mon you get the example, and you can see there's N number of posts with same problem every year and nothing is ever done about it, and we keep reading blank posts with 'things are fine, you're lazy blah blah..' YEAH.. tell people having a life outside of the game that spending 10+ hours constant running around the map is required, or that with 2-3-4hours a day of playing you have NO HOPE TO ACHIEVE ANYTHING EVER... OK... you have 1 good reason why people leave and dont bother to play, aside from subscription and upkeep costs.

 

--edit

copy/pasting emojis from google is "bad for the environment"

Edited by Finnn
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If I was boss...(aka this is what I'd do regardless of what opposing arguments might be.)

1. Uniques spawn in zones like rifts and have a big light beam to show where they are. They are already tethered to a location. The light beam would be just like rifts so players would be given ample opportunity to travel to the location before the event starts.

2. Players would be blocked from gatekeeping access to a unique. They are a public resource.

3. Uniques would ONLY DROP blood and for dragon-kin leather and scales. Distribution of these resources would be equal for all. For each premium (where applicable for the creature): one blood, a piece of leather and a piece of scale. No one is allowed to have more, you get an equal share.

4. Add an new creature on par with champ trolls that drops dragon hide and scales. This is not a unique, it a random spawn creature. They should be smaller spawn population because of difficulty.

5. Add a new system that lets players make imbues from common resources, like rockshards, with alchemy. No priest magic needed. The recipes would be very cumbersome. Further, perhaps 10,000 rock shards for a single mining imbue.

 

 

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34 minutes ago, Finnn said:

[just the usual stuff]

Yawn not "the new player" again. That is on top of utterly possible pathos and hypocrisy. You have no clue about "the new player". Even my understanding as still kind of noob is waning. You have even less right to speak about new players.

 

I know quite well that I never cared wet sh*t about uniques in my first year of playing just because I was to busy to learn, develop my skills, mine, build, fight. I even did not go to a rift before 14 months of playing. I loved public slaying from the first one I visited though.

 

I would like a few more public slayings, sure. I would like not all done by Stanlee and his team as I fear they could burn out. There might and should be more incentives. But caveat: There have been already adjacent weekends with 1-2 slayings, and significantly dropping participation. Never all, or even most uniques will and can be slayed publicly.

 

But given your troubles with math: Ok, leaving Chaos (is their thing), there are not 2 spawns per server if the explanations given were correct, rather 1..1.5 of them. That makes maybe 18 uniques per server and year, let us say 12 of them dragons/drakes, 84 per year. For Xanadu where I and people close or known to me encountered 6 *) of them  this is a fairly high rate in less than 3 years. It just falsifies the assertion that finding uniques is for elites, cheaters, and colluders with corrupt devs.

 

*) as to the revised number of accidentially found dragons: 1. black dragon found by Mordeith  (LVA, public) 2. dragon found by Macoofer (forget which dragon, public) 3. white hatchling found by a player (I was around and participated a bit albeit not until kill which was private) 4. blue dragon found in L14 Xan (public slaying) 5. red dragon found on Indy (public slaying) 6. red dragon Xan G14 (LVA, public) 7 ? dragon found by Aroma (P14 public)  . Further on I recall that Stanlee mentioned uniques finding him or friends not the other way round.

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go read the numbers at niarja for the past few months.. see how it is and what % is with under 20-30 participants, tells enough

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5 hours ago, Skatyna said:

if you give them 3 options to choose from why they are leaving, sure 30% will "leave" due to that reason. if you give them the open text field to type in the reason only - uniques wont even make top 100..

 

I didn't mean a pop up box that has a few options to click and one of them would be " I quit the game cause dragons bla bla..." I meant more of a pop up box or an ingame option for a player to leave his feedback when he quits.

 

The data could be gathered to get a general idea on what ( negative ) aspects of the game contributed or made a player quit. 

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2 hours ago, Ogare said:

3. Uniques would ONLY DROP blood and for dragon-kin leather and scales. Distribution of these resources would be equal for all. For each premium (where applicable for the creature): one blood, a piece of leather and a piece of scale. No one is allowed to have more, you get an equal share.

This is kinda the issue with public slayings where player X brings 10 alts and still gets more than someone who just plays on his main or perhaps is the person who organized the public slaying in the first place. 

 

It reminds me a few years ago in my city, there was this deadly heatwave that hit the country. Story goes that the authorities were so concerned about the number of people calling for emergency services due to passing out in the street or having heartattacks that they set up "water & cooling tents" across the city. Basically they were city sponsored tents where you could ask for some water (as much as you needed) , and could sit down a bit in the shade to cool down. It was a good idea. On paper. 

 

Problem is, being in Eastern Europe, it didn't take long for people bringing 5 liter plastic jugs to fill them and bring them home so they could save money on buying water. The program got scrapped in a few weeks when more and more people began abusing a public free resource made to save lives and generally improve people's day by avoiding heat exhaustion. 

 

I personally saw how sometimes families as big as 5-6 people were threatening the 2 city volunteers managing a water tent with beating their ass if they didn't move away from the water coolers. 

 

Moral of the story is that people's behavior always tends to how to maximize their own gains, often times at the expense of others if there are no regulations or authorities to discourage such behavior. 

It's nothing new under the sun, but wurm's current unique system encourages 2 negative social behaviors that have the same theme ( selfishness due to greed or fear)

 

1. People do public slayings and bring their motherlode of alts to dilute the scale/drake hide pool and get as much as possible for little to zero effort.

2. People hold private slayings precisely because they don't want to do them public, thus avoiding diluting the # of scale to "unworthy participants". 

 

Sorry for the double post. 

Edited by elentari

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I do not really see your argument. The water example (as part of the "tragedy of the commons" scenario) in my opinion shows how shitty it is that people must buy water (and I do not mean the 0.00175€/litre we are paying for water from the tap).

 

What does it prove for unique fights? Nothing. As to the 10 alts I never saw them, 2-4 of them, ok. Number of slayers (area history, Niarja, IRC) ratio to players in local seldom exceeded 1:3, often not even 1:2 anytime I checked, and that includes those there for the blood etc. but not for the fight. When players are paying for several subbed alts it is perfectly in their right to participate in events where resources are shared between premium account holders. There is no extra privilege for "sole main" players, and I fail to see the point for (ok anti alt crusade is a different discussion).

 

And no, people do not always maximize their gains. The mere existence of public slayings disprove that.

 

And as to the scolding of private slayings: They contribute better to availability of mats and sets than public ones as the materials are less dispersed and more likely to be marketed or else circulated. And it sounds odd to me to morally ostracize private slayers. As already stated, all Wurmians "privatize" public resources, always. And they also give away, donate or else redistribute them.

 

At least in SFI, the effort of joining a hunting group and finally get to a set is arguably higher than creating support beams, bricks, mortar, or dirt, market it, and just buy the stuff.

Edited by Ekcin

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2 hours ago, elentari said:

This is kinda the issue with public slayings where player X brings 10 alts and still gets more than someone who just plays on his main or perhaps is the person who organized the public slaying in the first place. 

 

It reminds me a few years ago in my city, there was this deadly heatwave that hit the country. Story goes that the authorities were so concerned about the number of people calling for emergency services due to passing out in the street or having heartattacks that they set up "water & cooling tents" across the city. Basically they were city sponsored tents where you could ask for some water (as much as you needed) , and could sit down a bit in the shade to cool down. It was a good idea. On paper. 

 

Problem is, being in Eastern Europe, it didn't take long for people bringing 5 liter plastic jugs to fill them and bring them home so they could save money on buying water. The program got scrapped in a few weeks when more and more people began abusing a public free resource made to save lives and generally improve people's day by avoiding heat exhaustion. 

 

I personally saw how sometimes families as big as 5-6 people were threatening the 2 city volunteers managing a water tent with beating their ass if they didn't move away from the water coolers. 

 

Moral of the story is that people's behavior always tends to how to maximize their own gains, often times at the expense of others if there are no regulations or authorities to discourage such behavior. 

It's nothing new under the sun, but wurm's current unique system encourages 2 negative social behaviors that have the same theme ( selfishness due to greed or fear)

 

1. People do public slayings and bring their motherlode of alts to dilute the scale/drake hide pool and get as much as possible for little to zero effort.

2. People hold private slayings precisely because they don't want to do them public, thus avoiding diluting the # of scale to "unworthy participants". 

 

Sorry for the double post. 

 

 

Counterpoint: Stanlee's frequent public slayings.  

 

I would also disagree with your "moral of the story" in its "always" absolutism.  My people are rightly proud of a heritage of stepping up to help others at personal cost.  True they have also been seen fighting over toilet paper - so I would likely be well-advised to also avoid "always".

 

My own personal experience in Wurm has been almost without exception players willing to advise, share, outright give away what they have.  "Almost" because there are indeed exceptions, but that they are exceptions is beyond doubt for me.   

 

My everyday armour, and my back up set, and my backup backup, have all been given to me freely.  Likewise some of my favourite tools and weapons.  My boats get imped when I am not looking.

 

Sorry, I just don't accept that " people's behavior always tends to how to maximize their own gains, often times at the expense of others".

 

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, TheTrickster said:

Sorry, I just don't accept that " people's behavior always tends to how to maximize their own gains, often times at the expense of others".

 

 

I intentionally phrased it as "tends" and not as "they always do so". Thing is, all it takes is for a quarter of the wurm pop of even 10% to act this way to get this shitty system. 

It's similar to when WoW classic came out, on some servers I saw how bots were so flagrantly harvesting mineral nodes / herbs / farming certain mobs, that your average player barely had any chance to level up his skills. (also blizzard really dropped the ball at policing bots, some were only banned for 1 week even after video proof, then unbanned and back to their script...lovely company what can I say)

Were the bots a very small % of that wow server? Yes. But you have to keep in mind it doesn't take many rotten apples to spoil an entire barrel. 

 

I am happy you had good wurm experiences, I truly am, I've had many as well, but I've also seen acts of such selfishness that it left me mind boggled on how people would go to such great lengths just for some in game pixels at the end of the day. 

 

My point is not to provide a negative perspective on human morality or exhort how people tend to be more selfish instead of selfless, but you have to keep in mind one thing and that is even with RMT gone, silvers still do have a $ equivalent and I'm pretty sure somewhere, people still do such dealings under the radar. And even if that weren't the case, if no one would engage in such low profile dealings the fact is having a lot of silvers in your bank is still equal to $ since you can pay for a lot of deed upkeep (costs $), you can buy prem (obviously costs $) and other things. A confounded variable might be the fact people aren't even aware how they associate such things with RL money (see my last phrase) 

 

My general point is that as long as there's a real life monetary incentive, there will always be a certain class of people trying to game the system as much as possible. Whether by monopoly or by having as much of the dragon market share as possible, the current wurm rule system fosters such behavior and has fostered it for a long time. We might not have wow bots but we do have a psychological - money incentive to not share things with others or play nice. 

 

On a side note, there's a nice presentation from a behavioral economist / psychologist on how our behavior changes when we associate things with RL money or not. It's quite enlightening to see how many more people cheat / steal when there's a weaker connection between the stolen item and money (like stealing a can of coke) or when the social norms encourage it in a certain system. Just throwing it out there. I think any MMO should consider behavioral economics when designing mechanics, especially these days when there are so many "pay for advantages" mechanics. 

 

Edited by elentari
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On 6/28/2021 at 8:21 AM, elentari said:

[..]

I felt that post extremely hypocritical and slanderous "not wanting to exhort .." but comparing unique hunters to bots, and to introduce Dr. Daniely's points about cheating (btw. I find it outrageous to advertise the Google spyware and data theft mafia, I refuse entering the Youswamp whereever possible, but that may be just me).  I read a bit into his books (not that I consider him so much the big guru, but amusing lecture), and his writings do not buttress your point. Hunters are neither cheaters nor bots, and not outstandingly selfish or egotist, which cannot be said about all of the unique complainers.

 

The unique stuff serves a couple of goals to be balanced among one another, namely

  • providing material for extraordinary and prestigious armour and other items (bone, tome)
  • providing material for more widespread albeit still rare buffs (bloods)
  • providing high level content for dedicated and experienced players
  • providing an opportunity for public, player created events.

I fail to see conflicts between public organizers in the way that they feel "their" uniques taken away by evil private slayers. On contrary, I found frequent event organizers on both sides of those kinds of slayings. And frankly, given I would stumble over a drake in the wild, with my allies on hiatus or in holidays for the next week at minimum, I would most probably call a couple of players I know to kill the beast. With a dragon, not sure. But organizing a publc slaying is work and effort. Generally, I find the recent unique code and proceeding, albeit not perfect, quite acceptable. The "improvements" proposed are mostly short sighted and a mess. And ostracizing hunters is the worst possible.

 

The real problem is the lack of high level PvE content. When beyond FS 80 there are not many challenges left. And I heard about more people stumbling over uniques than over rift camps, to name those. That is not good and not necessary, though even rift camps are only limitedly high or end level fun. And I do not think that drake, scale, tome, or bone quantity should be inflated. Maybe with exception for NFI, at least for a while. But that would not solve the lack of high level PvE content.

Edited by Ekcin
typo

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2 hours ago, Ekcin said:

Quote

Hunters are neither cheaters not bots, and not outstandingly selfish or egotist, which cannot be said about all of the unique complainers.

:) …😄🤣

amusing thought

 

Can I use this as forum signature?

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8 hours ago, Finnn said:

:) …😄🤣

amusing thought

Can I use this as forum signature?

If any, rather that one

Quote

The real problem is the lack of high level PvE content.

Edit: but ofc up to you, by courtesy, take the typo out (I did so in my post already).

Edited by Ekcin

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On 6/28/2021 at 4:21 PM, elentari said:

I intentionally phrased it as "tends" and not as "they always do so".

Well "always tends" actually, with which I still disagree.  My actual experience of people's behaviour is that maximizing their own gains  at the expense of others - is as I said exceptional - it is not the trend and it is definitely not often.  This applies both in-game and IRL.

 

The thing is, I don't even think that hunters who choose to keep unique kills to themselves are maximizing their own gains at the expense of others.  What expense?  There is none.  

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