Darnok's gameplay and UX suggestions

[Chihuahua 82]

PLEASE NO NEW LANDS 😭

[Darnok 209]

4 hours ago, Cecci said:

 

You really are way way off now. To the point I actually logged in to state that fact.
Stop spamming nonsence already.
 

 

I'm honored, but I'd be even more happy if you read whole post, not just 7 words.
I've read other suggestions about merge and mine seems to be the least limiting on both sides.
The core of the idea is a common land for trade and residence, if someone from NFI and SFI would want to live next to each other.

 

As for option that creates emotions (although I think that most of emotions are rather triggered by the fact that a person can get emotionally attached to textures and slopes of tiles, not by my posts),

this option was created as an answer to question in another thread - "what is the advantage of core idea? ".

[DaletheGood 1,073]

I am 100% against any connection between SFI and NFI. Ever.

I am also 100% in favor of Darnok not posting another thing in this forum. Ever.

[Shmeric 581]

  

On 7/24/2021 at 11:15 PM, Darnok said:

Final suggestions and a break for a few months ...

 

🤥

[Darnok 209]

10 hours ago, Shmeric said:

  

 

🤥

 

Seems like I started the season for suggestions 🙂

 

As for travel between SFI, NFI and New land it should be available for larger ships, rowboats should be too small for that.
And the map itself could be made up of many medium-sized islands separated by deeper waters, so that ships would not get stuck in shallows.

[Darnok 209]

16 hours ago, Drayka said:

It takes longer for the devs to create new and unique content, than it does for a playerbase to descend on it like locusts, completely consume the new content and be clamouring for more. Same deal with the film industry, and the publishing industry.

 

There are a lot more people out there with the bias to consume new challenges as fast as possible, than there are people talented to develop new content for others to consume. (Despite most of us being paid to do exactly that, for our society.) We are hard-wired to be curious and to overcome challenges. Producing engaging, pro-learning content that resists being consumed instantly, yet doesn't cause people to rage-quit, is like trying to hybridise a university mentor with an arms-race security expert. They have to balance completely opposing attitudes in regards to the playerbase, yet make their product appealing enough to earn a decent return for their labour, and weather being constantly seen as the bad-guys for not being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent deities with a flawless track record of pleasing everyone, all of the time.

 

Walk even 10 metres in someone else's shoes, before biting the hand that feeds you. Don't settle for merely seeing it from the perspective of an insatiable consumer.

 

I don't expect Devs to be infallible just to be reasonable.

 

A year ago, I noticed that most of the Wurm population are veterans, but this situation seems to last a lot longer, which I think is unhealthy because it forms a loop.
Devs create new content that will please the community, that is, veterans, and they expect new and more advanced content, because content for newbies they already know and this is what makes Wurm more and more hostile to new players.

And if new players leave before they appreciate content created to please veterans, then situation persists because community is not diverse.

It cannot be changed without causing dissatisfaction in largest part of community, which will be deprived of new content for a long time, because Devs creating or improving elements with which new players come into contact will have to postpone  creation of new mechanisms for advanced players.

The simplest solution to this problem is to deal with content that is intended for both groups (vets and beginners), such as AH or new maps or by making combat more balanced and more informative for newbies, like I am suggesting in here.

Veterans will quit sooner or later, unless they pass their traits of interest to Wurm, their children or grandchildren, so without new players game will disappear over time.

Edited August 3, 2021 by Darnok

[Drayka 485]

I might point out the logical flaws in your perspective, but in your shoes I would feel wound up that the audience I'm trying to talk to is focusing on minutiae rather than hearing what I am trying to tell them.

 

So I'll try to say to you what I would say to myself, if I were in a set of shoes that looked a lot like yours.

 

There's something wrong here. You know there's something wrong. And every time you think you know what it is, all these ideas come to you about what a solution would look like. And you try to tell people, and they only seem interested in protecting what they have, instead of perceiving that there's something, very very wrong here. Something so catastrophically wrong that it's more important than protecting what they have. You've been trying to tell them. You've always been trying to tell them. You can't imagine a time when you could stop telling them because even if they listened, you aren't certain that it will be enough. And no matter what anyone tells you, you KNOW that you can solve this, that it is yours to solve, that you have the answers, the way to fix everything that's wrong. Nothing dents that certainty, not even the moments when you look back at what you've written and you doubt yourself. The certainty remains, defying all rational expectation and logical justification.

 

I don't pity you. I'm not angry with you. I don't think you or your ideas are worthless, or not worth my time. I don't think veterans are more valuable than you. I know there is nothing wrong with you, and I know that there never will be, no matter how strong that feeling of wrongness gets.

 

And in your shoes I'd probably ignore all that as a bunch of unintelligible gibberish - I certainly did for the first decade of being told such things. But that doesn't stop it being true-forever, no matter what.

 

IIRC, its very irritating at first, when someone seems to ignore everything that you think is wrong and seems to talk about something else entirely, which doesn't seem to make any sense. But trying to make sense of someone saying things like that to me, is what I look back on as the true beginning of my life. Everything before that was just fog and wrongness and nobody caring except that it disturbed their peaceful little existence.

[Darnok 209]

10 minutes ago, Drayka said:

I might point out the logical flaws in your perspective, but in your shoes I would feel wound up that the audience I'm trying to talk to is focusing on minutiae rather than hearing what I am trying to tell them.

 

So I'll try to say to you what I would say to myself, if I were in a set of shoes that looked a lot like yours.

 

There's something wrong here. You know there's something wrong. And every time you think you know what it is, all these ideas come to you about what a solution would look like. And you try to tell people, and they only seem interested in protecting what they have, instead of perceiving that there's something, very very wrong here. Something so catastrophically wrong that it's more important than protecting what they have. You've been trying to tell them. You've always been trying to tell them. You can't imagine a time when you could stop telling them because even if they listened, you aren't certain that it will be enough. And no matter what anyone tells you, you KNOW that you can solve this, that it is yours to solve, that you have the answers, the way to fix everything that's wrong. Nothing dents that certainty, not even the moments when you look back at what you've written and you doubt yourself. The certainty remains, defying all rational expectation and logical justification.

 

I don't pity you. I'm not angry with you. I don't think you or your ideas are worthless, or not worth my time. I don't think veterans are more valuable than you. I know there is nothing wrong with you, and I know that there never will be, no matter how strong that feeling of wrongness gets.

 

And in your shoes I'd probably ignore all that as a bunch of unintelligible gibberish - I certainly did for the first decade of being told such things. But that doesn't stop it being true-forever, no matter what.

 

IIRC, its very irritating at first, when someone seems to ignore everything that you think is wrong and seems to talk about something else entirely, which doesn't seem to make any sense. But trying to make sense of someone saying things like that to me, is what I look back on as the true beginning of my life. Everything before that was just fog and wrongness and nobody caring except that it disturbed their peaceful little existence.

 

Maybe some people simply cannot understand the perspective of another person, that is, one who is very different from them and is guided by something other than themselves or that they know.

After all, all we can do is judge other people's motives by applying our own experiences and motives that we know and consider rational or not.

But what if the other person has completely different motives, one with which you have never come across? Unless you think that you have already known the whole world and can understand every person in every corner of the world, but then there is actually something wrong here.

The fact that you think you know what someone's shoes look like and that you can understand other person after reading a few posts shows which option we are dealing with here 🙂

 

 

 

[Darnok 209]

Updated for shields balance.

[Archaed 2,280]

This change actually benefits veteran players, who have higher characteristics, and therefore can go with cloth/leather, take just as little damage, and not have to worry about mounting a horse. Additionally, characteristics would mean they can use faster weapons and out damage new players just the same. 

 

This just punishes new players who rely on heavier armour as their characteristics won't help as much.  

 

You've also failed to take into account different weapon choices, benefits, drawbacks in those, as well as metal/wood types in shields. 

 

You have added complexity and "depth" but at the cost of creating a system that is now bad for new players who rely on plate etc to survive fights? 

 

I honestly can't tell your goals anymore, I don't think you can either. 

[Darnok 209]

2 hours ago, Archaed said:

This change actually benefits veteran players, who have higher characteristics, and therefore can go with cloth/leather, take just as little damage, and not have to worry about mounting a horse. Additionally, characteristics would mean they can use faster weapons and out damage new players just the same. 

 

This just punishes new players who rely on heavier armour as their characteristics won't help as much.  

 

You've also failed to take into account different weapon choices, benefits, drawbacks in those, as well as metal/wood types in shields. 

 

You have added complexity and "depth" but at the cost of creating a system that is now bad for new players who rely on plate etc to survive fights? 

 

I honestly can't tell your goals anymore, I don't think you can either. 

 

What if equal opponents are fighting each other?

 

The goal is balance. Perfect balance... as all things should be 🙂

 

[DaletheGood 1,073]

If i haven't already, let me just say -1 to another useless suggestion from Darnok

[Sheffie 1,120]

This is a weird way of saying you want NFI players to be able to buy ships from SFI players

[Darnok 209]

10 hours ago, Sheffie said:

This is a weird way of saying you want NFI players to be able to buy ships from SFI players

 

I don't mind buying high ql decorations from SFI 🙂

 

If you combine it with my other suggestion about storms and create regions that would be around New land ... then having high ql ship would be very important and ship builders on both NFI and SFI should like it very much.

NFI --> storm area --> New land <-- storm area <-- SFI

Edited August 8, 2021 by Darnok

[Sheffie 1,120]

Saying that high quality ships are decorations just lowers your credibility further

[Darnok 209]

21 hours ago, Sheffie said:

Saying that high quality ships are decorations just lowers your credibility further

 

Well we don't have naval battles so they are more floating containers that move a little faster when they have better ql.

I have already suggested several times how few things could be improved and the demand for ships increased.

[christopher 208]

there is a chance the market would set itself anyway ,just a island in the middle and you have to go through there to access the other side and anything goes ,both sides can be un happy sounds fair

[Locath 533]

On 8/8/2021 at 7:47 AM, Darnok said:

then having high ql ship would be very important and ship builders on both NFI and SFI should like it very much.

 

I'm a bit lost here. Why are ships given as an example? HQL ships are available on both clusters anyway so opening the market for higher competition on price, without necessarily adding more customers (because those are just a decoration, right?) would make no shipbuilder happy perhaps?

[Darnok 209]

39 minutes ago, Locath said:

 

I'm a bit lost here. Why are ships given as an example? HQL ships are available on both clusters anyway so opening the market for higher competition on price, without necessarily adding more customers (because those are just a decoration, right?) would make no shipbuilder happy perhaps?

 

Read whole thing, I also suggested regions with storms that would damage ships and lack of starting cities (so you have to spawn on NFI or SFI and buy ship before you go to explore New land), as well as fact that the rowing boat should not be allowed to cross maps, so I see only advantages for shipbuilders here.

 

And in my opinion you are also missing the fact that New land = more new players. After all, a larger community means more customers for both sides NFI and SFI.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Darnok

[Locath 533]

1 minute ago, Darnok said:

damage ships and lack of starting cities

 

2 minutes ago, Darnok said:

as well as fact that the rowing boat should not be allowed to cross maps, so I see only advantages for shipbuilders here.

 

So why would anyone want to go there if they are already on a land mass which has everything easily available?

 

There were suggestions of hunt servers but those didn't include "if you go there, you'll end up stranded because your only mode of transportation gets destroyed"

 

3 minutes ago, Darnok said:

New land = more new players.

Land rushes are a thing, i agree but if people are forced to invest time and money to get to that new land, why bother? everything already exists on the server they are currently on.

[Darnok 209]

3 minutes ago, Locath said:

 

 

So why would anyone want to go there if they are already on a land mass which has everything easily available?

 

There were suggestions of hunt servers but those didn't include "if you go there, you'll end up stranded because your only mode of transportation gets destroyed"

 

Land rushes are a thing, i agree but if people are forced to invest time and money to get to that new land, why bother? everything already exists on the server they are currently on.

 

Why people from Har and Mel went to Cad, they had everything they needed on a few days older maps? 🙂

 

I myself suggested adding maps with new biomes/animals/plants/trees/resources so that players have a reason to travel between them.

Another suggestion was to desynchronize seasons so that on this new map it would be spring or summer when it is winter on Har/Mel/Cad.

 

I do not know when there are seasons on SFI, whether in the same period as on NFI or not, but with New land as a hub that would allow import of resources during winter, many players would probably find it more interesting than simply complaining about winter and shortening it .

[Locath 533]

8 minutes ago, Darnok said:

Why people from Har and Mel went to Cad, they had everything they needed on a few days older maps?

Because of lag which was making it unplayable and lack of shoreline room for deeds.

Neither of which is an issue at this stage.

 

If it wasn't for the fact that once the server hit 900+ players online we were getting 20+ second lag spikes, people would hardly abandon their nice deeds, pack up and move to unknown places. People simply got desperate enough to forfeit the money they spent on purchasing and expanding their deeds, pack their lives and move.

 

There aren't enough players to fill the shore lines or to cause lag so thinning the player base across more servers would make them all look more barren which in turn makes more people leave.

No matter if their ships get damaged or not, no matter how much hassle is involved in moving to the new lands. We have seen it happen with each new server. Land rush happens, novelty wears off, players who decided to give it a try to have an even playing field realize it's not quite the game for them and we end up with the same problems every time.

[Darnok 209]

1 hour ago, Locath said:

Because of lag which was making it unplayable and lack of shoreline room for deeds.

Neither of which is an issue at this stage.

 

Thank you for this argument, it confirms something that I am trying to show in another thread and on a level that I have not thought about before. That means, zero sum game exists even at such a level that the mere fact of playing on the same map causes other players to lose something 🤣

 

1 hour ago, Locath said:

 

If it wasn't for the fact that once the server hit 900+ players online we were getting 20+ second lag spikes, people would hardly abandon their nice deeds, pack up and move to unknown places. People simply got desperate enough to forfeit the money they spent on purchasing and expanding their deeds, pack their lives and move.

 

I know players who have deeds on Har/Mel and Cad at the same time, so this argument does not apply to everyone.

 

1 hour ago, Locath said:

There aren't enough players to fill the shore lines or to cause lag so thinning the player base across more servers would make them all look more barren which in turn makes more people leave.

 

What you don't understand is that space itself is content in Wurm and the content lures people to game.

 

1 hour ago, Locath said:

No matter if their ships get damaged or not, no matter how much hassle is involved in moving to the new lands. We have seen it happen with each new server. Land rush happens, novelty wears off, players who decided to give it a try to have an even playing field realize it's not quite the game for them and we end up with the same problems every time.

 

This is not a problem with my idea, but with some bad designs on which several features of Wurm are based, which I have been criticizing for some time, by the way.

[Locath 533]

3 minutes ago, Darnok said:

I know players who have deeds on Har/Mel and Cad at the same time, so this argument does not apply to everyone.

No, it does not, at one point i was running 11 deeds between different servers. People have different reasons for that but vast majority moved out of Harmony when new servers opened simply because the game was unplayable.

 

5 minutes ago, Darnok said:

What you don't understand is that space itself is content in Wurm and the content lures people to game.

As someone who owned one of the biggest deeds in Wurm's history (over 44k tiles), I think i understand that. What you don't understand is how vast the maps are. My deed didn't make a dent on the available tiles count.

 

7 minutes ago, Darnok said:

but with some bad designs on which several features of Wurm are based

This is a false statement.

People decide that Wurm isn't something for them rarely because of how it looks or works. Yes, there are problems and many things could be done better but if you try Wurm because some website suggested it as "similar" to this other game you played (for example Boundless), you are going to try it, realize that it has nothing to do with the genre you were hoping for and you'll leave.

 

You can give it Cryengine 3 and make people's horses die in winter and make ships fall apart and, for completely logical reason which fits both of the above, make fallen trees never decay on deed (!) but a person who was looking for a game similar to Eco or Subnautica (both of which are suggested as similar to Wurm) is going to give the "free game" a try, no matter if during a land rush or not, and realize that this is a genre of its own.

 

And as such genre, it has a lot of mechanics which need to be learned before being judged. People these days have problems with reading and that's fine but blaming the game's low population on the fact that vets have horses or that there isn't enough terrain/maps to go around (!) is not showing much thought or experience put in to such comments.

 

 

[Sheffie 1,120]

Ah yes, the "Wurm is a zero sum game" theory.

 

Explain how people leaving a server makes that server less desirable, please, in terms of "zero sum game" theory.