More journal goals for different activities and playstyles

[elentari 2,660]

I know Wurm is structured around the idea of classless gameplay due to its sandbox nature but this exact design offers players the freedom to choose their own playstyle. 

Some people prefer to build lavish estates or palatial underground fortresses. Some people dedicate their time to care for huge flocks of animals of all types. 

Others are focused on the farming / gardening / forestry of Wurm and are green thumbs through and through. Some enjoy the shipbuilding aspect of wurm, some are crafters and impers. 

 

All playstyles are valid for Wurmians and classless so why shouldn't the journal goals offer the same freedom? 

I'm not neccesarily asking for a revamp of the journal system, however giving players a choice on what types of goals to pursue would do wonders. 

 

For people who enjoy AH and breeding, a goal like "Groom creatures 2500 times" would make more sense than asking them to " Imp 200 swords to 80 ql" (random example). You could even have a journal tier of the "Master of menageries" or something like that , another like "Path of the builder" - for those who prefer building infrastructure, deeds and cave fortresses. 

 

Give people new journal tiers based on the playstyles they want. Associate difficulty settings to such goals in terms of "time invested" and let people choose their own playstyle and goals to do. 

 

I do wonder how many people avoid certain sections of the journal goals simply because they hate some activities in Wurm and they get burned out doing things they dislike just to get a goal finished or not. 

[Zexos 468]

Great idea!  Makes me think of Life Goals from the Sims games for some reason.

[Finnn 3,318]

sure +1

[Borstaskor 503]

Sounds like part of the theoretical roadmap Sindusk proposed in this thread

 

+1

[elentari 2,660]

Yep, it's pretty much exact that. I didn't want to delve in as much detail as Sindusk but it's how I envisioned the system in the future.  

Something for everybody. 

[Finnn 3,318]

28 minutes ago, elentari said:

Yep, it's pretty much exact that. I didn't want to delve in as much detail as Sindusk but it's how I envisioned the system in the future.  

Something for everybody. 

most active will still try to do the most of it, where possible.. for the rewards.. it's part of the game tho.. if there's content.. somebody might or might not work to explore it(is it bad if somebody wants to play the game more..😄)

[Katrat 2,296]

13 hours ago, elentari said:

I do wonder how many people avoid certain sections of the journal goals simply because they hate some activities in Wurm and they get burned out doing things they dislike just to get a goal finished or not. 

+1 I have avoided finishing a journal tier, as the last remaining task involves winning ten spars, but not because I lack the ability. With a fight skill of 92 I can indeed easily win those with anyone in my area and much of my alliance. In fact my deed partner even offered up his alt priest as a sacrifice for the endeavor, but it just doesn't sit right with me that a peaceful PVE player such as myself should be forced to soundly beat a friends helpless priest to achieve a journal goal. And of course another option would be to terrorize a few newbs which also is not something I'm in to so the task and the tier remain unfinished.

[Ekcin 2,417]

I would not outright -1 beforehand, but tend to reject or at least plead tp seriously curb the initiative.

 

Looking back at old personal goals, and journal to recent top, I would say that a large number of goals "forced" me to activities I would otherwise have avoided or procrastinated for a long time or forever. Not all, but at least some prove to be a lot of fun and/or extended my perspective and understanding of the game.

 

Certainly, everyone will hate some goals (500 cooking recipes for me e.g.), or fully understand only when forced to (special tile fishing in my case, along with rod fishing), sometimes even have fun when "forced" to (lockpicking here).

[elentari 2,660]

4 hours ago, Ekcin said:

Certainly, everyone will hate some goals (500 cooking recipes for me e.g.),

 

That one I hated as well, not because it was difficult for me but because it was mainly a quest to look at spreadsheets. As complex as the cooking update was, a lot of the recipes were there just for flavor but there's a reason everyone mid maxed meals and pizzas in the end. 

 

While some goals are useful to give you new wurm activities you might have otherwise ignored, I would argue it's not a sandbox game if it "forces" you to do things you dislike or aren't compatible with your playstyle (pacifist player for example). 

 

Which is why it's preferable to have options. 

[Eleraan 354]

As long as they add something for brewer's I'm down.  I work kinda passively on my journal.  Normally there is one thing each tier that is the limiter, once that is done I just knock out the rest. 

[TheTrickster 2,285]

I would really like to see exploration brought into the mix.  It is a valid playstyle, but gets no love.  Pure exploration is about the only activity that generates no ticks on anything.  

[elentari 2,660]

Brewing beer/ gin/ wine, etc.  for more in depth journal goal would definitely be awesome and actually give some meaning to that skill.

 

I'd also do something with papyrus making such as "Build a library and fill it with 500 books. The library must be a 7x7 construction, owned by you, and have 2 floors. The books must be present in the library. You'll get a library card which you can right click on the building to see if the conditions are met to declare the building a library.".

 

As for exploration I'm going to point out there's about 30-40 threads asking for cartography to be a thing in this game as a skill to replace some useless skills in game (such as stealing). Making your own maps,  finding points of interest, manually writing down areas of the map as you explore would be an amazing goal and encourage people to get to know their neighbors and servers.

 

I'd also add some goals for people  who volunteer their time to doing infrastructure work such as canals/ highways. Some of them can be manually checked by a GM to see if how they look at the end. For me, these builders and terraformers their are the unsung heroes of wurm.

Edited June 30, 2021 by elentari

[perji 79]

On 6/29/2021 at 11:06 AM, elentari said:

I know Wurm is structured around the idea of classless gameplay due to its sandbox nature but this exact design offers players the freedom to choose their own playstyle.

 

Add a list of diverse goals for each journal tier and let people do whichever they like, like for example add 40 goals for each tier (one for each important skill) and allow the tier to finish when any 10 from that bunch are complete.

 

8 hours ago, Ekcin said:

Looking back at old personal goals, and journal to recent top, I would say that a large number of goals "forced" me to activities I would otherwise have avoided or procrastinated for a long time or forever.

 

Speaking of the now defunct personal goals, I too had procrastinated doing that until they announced the retirement of the goals. At which point I got into gear on completing them. One of them was to build a caravel, so I promptly paid someone 10 silver to buy an unfinished one and finish it. The ship was lost to decay because I wasn't able to anchor it on my own deed, so I lost 10 silver worth of ship simply because the game forced me to build it when I did not need it nor want it and no one wanted to buy it either.

Obviously after such a net loss I won't be doing things I don't want to simply because the game dictates I should. Choosing your own path is a big selling point (and advertising) of Wurm and personal goals, valrei missions and now the journal go against that.

[TheTrickster 2,285]

1 hour ago, perji said:

Add a list of diverse goals for each journal tier and let people do whichever they like, like for example add 40 goals for each tier (one for each important skill) and allow the tier to finish when any 10 from that bunch are complete.

 

This, I think, is the best way to implement something like this while still avoiding set character classes.

[elentari 2,660]

As long as we don't have anymore rifts....I'm happy. Literally almost everything except rifts. I'll be happy to sit for 100 sermons as long as rifts aren't in the mix.

[Finnn 3,318]

really? you'd gladly wait for few days 24/7 and do nothing and pretend to be a bot at active sermon location? such joy.. such gameplay..

[elentari 2,660]

Well I'd leave my char online while I am at work. No downsides for me, other than the power consumption. And other people benefit from sermons as well. 

I'd rather do that then waste so much time sailing to rifts and back or see the same things happening at rifts for the 80th time. Sorry, they're just bore fests after you do a few dozen. 

 

Wish we would have gotten a few choices. I mean the priest goal got revamped a bit when they changed the prayer skillgain. I dont' see why giving choices and alternatives would be a bad thing. Give me 10 000 trolls to kill instead. At least I can do that at my own pace. Or make me imp 1000 swords to 85 ql. I can do that too. As long as it's at my own pace and not when I'm lucky enough for a rift to coincide with my free time. 

Edited June 30, 2021 by elentari

[Ekcin 2,417]

sorry this whining about rifts is boring. You admitted that you did the cooking from spreadsheets .. me too, apart from the 140 recipes a friend copied, so you are not so principled to not "cheesing". You do not need to sail to rifts, just have a priest at  the server border to summon you, cross, have someone to summon you, do your whacks, at end of rift summon back, cross server, recall home. Each rift a couple of minutes and a bit idle in the safe camp. Rinse and repeat.

 

Compared to other goals that is trivial. Personally I always enjoyed rifts and still do though I don't sail to all of them as so much more is to do in Wurm. Trying combat variants (ok I am PvE, PvPers may not need that), helping others in combat, my priestess summoning over people, meeting other players .. boredom, no, unless you choose to hate it like a defiant toddler (or Madnath, not that there is much of a difference).

 

Edit: and nothing against sermons. I had very pleasant interactions while my priests sermoned towards their 100 faith.

Edited June 30, 2021 by Ekcin

[Finnn 3,318]

30 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

sorry this whining about rifts is boring. You admitted that you did the cooking from spreadsheets .. me too, apart from the 140 recipes a friend copied, so you are not so principled to not "cheesing". You do not need to sail to rifts, just have a priest at  the server border to summon you, cross, have someone to summon you, do your whacks, at end of rift summon back, cross server, recall home. Each rift a couple of minutes and a bit idle in the safe camp. Rinse and repeat.

 

Compared to other goals that is trivial. Personally I always enjoyed rifts and still do though I don't sail to all of them as so much more is to do in Wurm. Trying combat variants (ok I am PvE, PvPers may not need that), helping others in combat, my priestess summoning over people, meeting other players .. boredom, no, unless you choose to hate it like a defiant toddler (or Madnath, not that there is much of a difference).

 

Edit: and nothing against sermons. I had very pleasant interactions while my priests sermoned towards their 100 faith.

idk I don't have a priest at all, let alone at every server and every rift site to summon me from the border.. and yet another priest to summon me back on the boat at the border after the rift... 

 

you're overshooting there with the summons

 

numerous times it was said that it's better to have kill x rift mobs rather than close 100 rifts.. most of them happen at "worst possible times"(any time that is not convenient for 1 or another reason), in addition .. these events give NOTHING useful at this point and take 2-4 or more hours easily.. travel to and from them can take additional time

 

nothing about the mentioned so far is positive, no reason to like rifts, if we had troll tier mobs to kill there.. sure we'd have a bit more fun fighting the mobs.. but with the high stats, it's just pinata ganking and high rng for the hits

 

 

[Ekcin 2,417]

22 hours ago, Finnn said:

idk I don't have a priest at all, let alone at every server and every rift site to summon me from the border.. and yet another priest to summon me back on the boat at the border after the rift...

..

Please, this is not about whether that goal is the best, or whether 50 rifts wouldn't have sufficed to drive Madnath nuts. This is about "it is not possible because of long travel, I have to work .." etc. All that is not overly credible.

 

The point with the cross server summon is about the complaint over long travel times. If there were anybody to complain about that it would have been me, as it takes me over 2200 tiles to sail to the next ocean border from my boat mine (and other 100 ca. to get there from my deed 1000 slope above water). But in fact, at best winds, it is a 20 minutes job, and 50 at worst ones (driving me crazy though ). I never used the tricks I described as I had not that many priests at that time, and none able to command a knarr then. And I always wanted to really participate in rifts, with my own horse and cart. Got 100 rifts in bit less than a year though.

 

If you know some priests (or friends with a priest) able to summon in coastal on any server outside yours, it is a matter of less than a minute for them on the 8x8 and 2 minutes on Indy to cross the border and get you there. At most rifts I visited lately summons were available. And just to serve the goal, 20 points or so suffice, gives you a crap MM but so what. Once got the lift over the server border recall home or town portal would be your friends in case you have no summoner handy.

 

You may ofc claim, grumpy as you always strive to appear, that you have no friends at all 😎, but I doubt. And much more I doubt you haven't recall home, or at least enough karma for some town portal. It is all about "stomp foot, I hate it" 😎.

[elentari 2,660]

22 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

Please, this is not about whether that goal is the best, or whether 50 rifts wouldn't have sufficed to drive Madnath nuts. This is about "it is not possible because of long travel, I have to work .." etc. All that is not overly credible.

 

I'm a bit tired these days, so I'll summon Finn and ask him to collate the niarja data for rifts from the past month on SFI. Tell me how many of those rifts fall within reasonable hours. 

 

Reasonable hours: After 19:00 gmt + 2 and before 23:00. Take in account anything past 23:00 means at least 2 hours invested and that means a rift started at 23:00 means it ends at 01:00 past midnight, giving too few hours of sleep, I'll probably do it in the weekend but hecking tired. Not all of us get to work from home. And pre-pandemic, doubt more than 1% of wurmians worked from home anyway so they can have some Wurm cheating time on a different PC while working. 

 

I don't want to sidetrack the discussion but my suggestion and this thread was about giving players options so they can be happy and have a positive gameplay experience of their choosing as per the very concept of a sandbox game. The journal goals are in the end the goals the devs envisioned, not necessarily the players.  

 

Brew beers, kill deers, shear sheep, kill seals, whatever floats a players boat, as long as they can do it on their own time and not be bound by anything less than that. 

Edited July 1, 2021 by elentari

[Finnn 3,318]

42 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

...

 

You may ofc claim, grumpy as you always strive to appear, that you have no friends at all 😎, but I doubt. And much more I doubt you haven't recall home, or at least enough karma for some town portal. It is all about "stomp foot, I hate it" 😎.

Spoiler

schshh.. there's brand image to protect here..

err..*cough* generally not a fan to bug people for this/that.. it's a sandbox.. you should have some options without that.. but being able to pm people for a summon or karma port.. isn't an option to probably 80% of the players in the game, fine summons might be not possible to only 30-50%(lots of loners out there, I'd imagine.. they LOVE to call themselves 'hermits')

 

mah dood..

IF - WE - DO - COMPLAIN - ABOUT - THAT   --   THERE MUST BE A REASON

it's a thing for years... rift spawn times SUCK

 

it's a regular game... why is it so insane to you that people play games to have some kind of fun and not be triggered by them?

Why do you think people do not play the full loot pvp, it's frustrating to not have option or word in things

 

why do you think we want to be able to participate in these events at reasonable times, and have reasonable event difficulty

 

none of that is a question.. and I won't be collecting any data for rift times, it's different for 'everybody', it's based on where you are and when it happens for 'You'

Currently online:

Total players

536/14680

 

 

how many do you think participate in rifts, under 30~, what is that 10-15% participation on average? or LESS.. because these under 10 people rifts exist...

 

W H Y    D O    Y O U    THINK    I S    T H A T    SO?

 

--edit

22 minutes ago, elentari said:

I'm a bit tired these days, so I'll summon Finn and ask him to collate the niarja data for rifts from the past month on SFI. Tell me how many of those rifts fall within reasonable hours. 

 

Reasonable hours: After 19:00 gmt + 2 and before 23:00. Take in account anything past 23:00 means at least 2 hours invested and that means a rift started at 23:00 means it ends at 01:00 past midnight, giving too few hours of sleep, I'll probably do it in the weekend but hecking tired. Not all of us get to work from home. And pre-pandemic, doubt more than 1% of wurmians worked from home anyway so they can have some Wurm cheating time on a different PC while working. 

no

...sadly we have no participation numbers for past rifts on twitter.. but times are more often bad than not, you have 8h work or school, ~same for sleep, some time to travel irl, irl stuff and chores, and there's not that much time to play games... it's not hard to figure why people are mad about the dumb event not being in reasonable times to do it, and in addition wurm travel sucks - it's a time sink, rng wind boat ql = useless, rune 10% lol,  traits on mounts rng on/off.. your control over your time in the game.. not that good as you might think..  in addition if you go to a .... rift with 5 people.. you're easily stuck there for 1-2 hours -> have few alts in local and it gets uglier..

Edited July 1, 2021 by Finnn

[Ekcin 2,417]

To make it short:

Thanks for your response, Finn, and I do not want to derail Elentari's proposal too much. Generally I am not against it, as long as my concerns are heeded and players do not just run away from "less popular" aka less convenient goals. It may be hard to find the balance, but the idea is ok.

 

So: It is not about the general disgust of vets about rifts which is much of an attitude. Also I am indeed unsure about the amount of work, I made it in less than a year under unfavourable conditions (long way even to reach the server border) so it is not that impossible though one may demur that I am outright crazy. But it is in fact a pain to fulfill the goal when one hates it. Anyway, on SFI there are 7 rifts in bit more than a week at revolving dates, able to be scheduled 9 days in advance. Some may be out of discussion, but is it really harder than the 25 resource veins for a non miner? If one is mad for the goal (the veins or the rifts) there is a way.

 

To Elentari: I assume the restriction applies to working days. On Weekend this week, there are 2 afternoon rifts, Saturday 16:45 UTC+2 on Deliverance, and Sunday 14:16 UTC+2 on Release. Should you decide to spend an after rift visit to beautiful Release (it has the most beautifully cladded and adorned underground canals in all Wurm) you may "waste" the time til the drake slaying starts. On Monday at 18:16 UTC+2 a rift starts on Exodus. Should you make it to the site the evening before til 23:00 UTC+2, you would certainly not miss round 3 or 4 so get the goal. As mentioned it is about whacking or even targeting 20 times.

 

But as said, I do not want to derail Elentari's proposal. If there are sensible alternative goals, go ahead though it would be a shame to let Madnath off hook 😎

[Zuelatak 235]

I believe what I'm about to say coincides roughly with what Sindusk said cause I talked with him about the idea to begin with, but I would love to the journal make it's way to catering to skills specifically.

 

So for instance, the "Going the Distance" tier which normally rewards 2.5% skillgain across all skills would INSTEAD reward 2.5% skillgain in Carpentry skills and the journals needed to complete the tier would be entirely Carpentry based.

 

That way you can unlock the bonuses much quicker and for the things that you want to do. Obviously this kind of world would need like 138 categories if multi-tiered entries but it's the world I would love to see us move towards. 

[Finnn 3,318]

1 hour ago, Zuelatak said:

I believe what I'm about to say coincides roughly with what Sindusk said cause I talked with him about the idea to begin with, but I would love to the journal make it's way to catering to skills specifically.

 

So for instance, the "Going the Distance" tier which normally rewards 2.5% skillgain across all skills would INSTEAD reward 2.5% skillgain in Carpentry skills and the journals needed to complete the tier would be entirely Carpentry based.

 

That way you can unlock the bonuses much quicker and for the things that you want to do. Obviously this kind of world would need like 138 categories if multi-tiered entries but it's the world I would love to see us move towards. 

this makes "absolutely" no difference to a person grinding MANY 90.0/+ skills;

it's a huge shank for casuals, if that is the goal here