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Keenan

Development Update 2021-09-22

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2 minutes ago, Joemog said:

Would be crazy to waste time on Epic when there's new super active servers in dire need of fixes

With risk of sounding entitled here, i think we deserve some attention as well don't you think ?
I mean after all, even though we're on Epic, we are players too.

Edited by Rukhal
spelling kekW
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Now I think I may be confusing some things at this point (conflating some bits of Challenge with bits of Epic) but back when it was all just words and ideas, I remember having the impression that Epic was going to revive the old concept of home servers and revitalize PvP because people had been deserting Wild and focusing on Freedom. What had most interested me was how there were supposed to be periodic wipes of the cluster so that people would have opportunities to get in on the next restart at equal footing. The hihg spped skilling and the shorter lived world were an appealing alternative to help supplement the grind and the projects at home on Freedom. It was also far more appealing than jumping into a PvP situation with 500year old immortal accounts with 888skill in every characteristic. I was pretty excited to join, so was my mayor/friend. We missed the start by about a month due to poor timing of the launch with RL stuff, but we had planned to go jump in after the first reset. Of course then there wasn't one (until they redid the one map 50 years later) so we never did.

 

The repeating, predictable, scheduled resetting to provide continuous opportunity to join in on equal footing was the one thing I had really wanted to get out of it. Granted this doesnt solve the issue of what to do with all the years of effort invested by people since the idea of doing the resets was dropped, but it was the only thing about Epic that ever encouraged me to go there vs Chaos or just staying on my deed. </0.02>

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Yo some of these posts are actually good and i respect the transparency and honesty regarding some things.

I'll be honest, I'd love to give more of an insight onto my opinions on Epic and the rest of the game and whatever else people are talking about right now, but i'm pretty burnt after doing that for something like a year. I like where communication is going right now, though- particularly with Keenan's posts and clear outlining of some issues (skill transfer stuff and opinions on epic sticking around) and am rooting to see more of that. Good luck gamers.

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If I could move my silver from NFI to epic, i would be happy to reroll and give the place ago, maybe some way to allow silver to be account bound and have more than 1 character per account, would help?

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27 minutes ago, Badvoc said:

If I could move my silver from NFI

Are NFI completely separated from rest game? I played only on epic, and when logged my acc to Chaos, I was able to see my bank there.

Come to JK/Serenity. We have cookies stuff to do.

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1 hour ago, vasisuelle said:

Are NFI completely separated from rest game? I played only on epic, and when logged my acc to Chaos, I was able to see my bank there.

Come to JK/Serenity. We have cookies stuff to do.

NFI gets pvp(defiance) portals, not epic.

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What I’d like to see as well is an incentive to go to Epic servers, I’ve played there and on freedom since Epic opened, it’s been a long time for both my characters, both Freedom (Zenity), and Epic (Jahpeople). The first few years were very busy, lots of players, lots of action, but for various reasons people stopped playing there, until Epic was indeed a ghost cluster, and I could log Jah in and find myself completely alone on the cluster, given the minor bug where if you’re the only player on a server it reports no other players at all, even if there is someone else on one of the others. The skills transfer did revitalise things somewhat, with a number of players coming over to get achievements and generally enjoy the effective skill curve, even knowing the skills they gained would not be transferred back to freedom, getting the tome for winning on freedom made it worth it.

 

Of course this stopped when the whole achievements system was changed to the present journal system, fewer came over, many returned to freedom and never came back. Then the third Elevation reboot, that attracted a number of players too, but after a while, for whatever reason, this too lost interest. Went back to freedom, and Chaos.

 

So here we are, a handful of players, still enough on a good weekend to take down a hatchling, if we can persuade some mates from freedom to come over for a slaying. Why are we still here? Are we tougher, more determined, a different breed of Wurmian? Not at all, we’re here because we enjoy playing on Epic, even though it is, at this point, freedom+, PVE with added environment, (way more mobs and animals to hunt for a start, and uniques we can’t kill easily, but still stomp some of us into puddles). For me personally, it’s because Serenity in particular is my home, it has been since 2011 in some shape or form. I personally love it, every hill, valley, mountain and even the craters and crack from Valrei events from bygone days.

 

So, what would attract others to Epic? It’d have to be something other servers don’t have, something in keeping with the ideals of uniqueness that Epic was born with. So what have we had recently that was unique to Wurm, something that introduced new assets that Wurm didn’t have previously, and does not have now?

 

How would players feel about having the Jackal experience on Epic? Models, assets, wood types, even some of the terrain features? There’s a whole load of developed game assets just doing nothing, it doesn’t need to be full on jackal rules, maybe just some of the trees, the weird wood types, the creatures, just so that it’s different enough from the rest of Wurm. All it would need would be a few ‘Jackal’ events to change some areas to be like Jackal, allow those event areas to produce the trees and animals, sit back and watch, the same way I introduced some trees and stuff to the dirt islands on Serenity all those years ago.

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If I have to watch the launcher validating all these graphics files every time it updates they might as well be used for something

+1 to fancy woods!

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Epic used to have unique features but they were all slowly offloaded to freedom so that pve players wouldnt have to go there to access them.  If you are going to spend time finding more then perhaps keep this in mind.

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2 hours ago, SmeJack said:

Epic used to have unique features but they were all slowly offloaded to freedom so that pve players wouldnt have to go there to access them.  If you are going to spend time finding more then perhaps keep this in mind.

I don't think anyone from freedom wants to go to epic for unique epic features if we can't take harvest from them back home to freedom though, or some kind of reward for being on epic...

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Just now, kochinac said:

I don't think anyone from freedom wants to go to epic for unique epic features if we can't take harvest from them back home to freedom though, or some kind of reward for being on epic...

That's the problem. That mentality right there. 

 

There are two games, epic and freedom. You're not supposed to be on one to benefit the other. 

 

Jackal round 1 was the beginnings of that, aiming at having "fresh land" to play on that still benefitted you back on your "usual" ground. 

 

Epic however is not that, it's there to be someones usual ground. The idea that you have to benefit on Freedom to play on epic is what waters down epic. 

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So, while repeating Keenan's caveat that there hasn't been any decision made on this, and it's not my personal decision to make, it seems that for some people, having a sensible skill transfer will be enough to get them playing on Epic.  However, for some this isn't sufficient.  It seems clear to me that addressing this will be part of the solution (but not the whole solution), and that includes finding a way to not leave everything since 2017 out in the cold.  Keenan has already covered the logistic difficulty in getting this right, even when we have a clear plan of what we want to do, so I'll just repeat that it's hard.  Before we can work out the 'how' we need to settle on the 'what' - exactly what are we transferring (skill-wise), and how do the different skill systems translate back and forth?  We need something that doesn't lead to massively OP corner cases, while also not penalising one side or the other.  In my opinion, some small differences would be fine - say, channeling being 10% easier to skill on Epic than Freedom - to give some flavour and difference in play without unbalancing things.  Perhaps some more cosmetic rewards may only be achievable one side or the other (e.g. titles).

 

This is a complex problem, and there is a legacy of previous changes that has to be considered as well, which doesn't help.  Unfortunately, overly simplistic solutions, applied too quickly are likely to just make the problem even worse, and increase the work required for the 'right' solution.  I get that the situation is disheartening for some folks - it's not a great place for the dev team either; please be assured that although we don't have a fast answer ready to go, this is something we really do want to fix.

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On 9/23/2021 at 8:21 PM, TheTrickster said:

Are you sure this is true?  Epic certainly attracts me, for the most part, except that the whole "you can neither take nor bring back ANYTHING, including character gains" repels me more than the rest attracts  me.  As a die-hard explorer, I already know that I will have very little to show for my expeditions.  However, having put in the work (and frankly relied on generosity) to be sufficiently well-equipped to travel the wilder places with only a little concern for safety (and able to take relevant precautions at need), while I would LOVE to explore Epic, I don't want to arrive there naked and helpless and have to do re-do all that non-exploring stuff just to get to the exploring bit, and then have zero to show for it.  

 

I can appreciate what you are saying regarding transfers, but the lack of transfer and the lack of attraction for Epic are not two separate and unrelated issues, at least to me.

 

On 9/24/2021 at 6:38 AM, Ryaanna said:

 

You already have incentive to play on Epic - the last incentive you left there and that's 2x skill gain.

 

You don't need any special maths to transfer skills back to freedom, just transfer it 1 : 1.

 

Effective skill can stay on Epic and actual skill can go on freedom like it is. Nothing less nothing more. Simple.


Epic has only ONE thing that even interests people, that is the 2x skill gains - but there Isn't anything else you get from going there, AND you lose what you got while you were there after you leave.
now i'm not saying epic doesn't have other things that could interest people, but that is how some see it: "What do I get out of going there? Jack diddly squat."  but then we also don't need a 'black market' from epic showing up on freedom either.
 

 

18 minutes ago, Pandalet said:

So, while repeating Keenan's caveat that there hasn't been any decision made on this, and it's not my personal decision to make, it seems that for some people, having a sensible skill transfer will be enough to get them playing on Epic.  However, for some this isn't sufficient.  It seems clear to me that addressing this will be part of the solution (but not the whole solution), and that includes finding a way to not leave everything since 2017 out in the cold.  Keenan has already covered the logistic difficulty in getting this right, even when we have a clear plan of what we want to do, so I'll just repeat that it's hard.  Before we can work out the 'how' we need to settle on the 'what' - exactly what are we transferring (skill-wise), and how do the different skill systems translate back and forth?  We need something that doesn't lead to massively OP corner cases, while also not penalising one side or the other.  In my opinion, some small differences would be fine - say, channeling being 10% easier to skill on Epic than Freedom - to give some flavour and difference in play without unbalancing things.  Perhaps some more cosmetic rewards may only be achievable one side or the other (e.g. titles).

 

This is a complex problem, and there is a legacy of previous changes that has to be considered as well, which doesn't help.  Unfortunately, overly simplistic solutions, applied too quickly are likely to just make the problem even worse, and increase the work required for the 'right' solution.  I get that the situation is disheartening for some folks - it's not a great place for the dev team either; please be assured that although we don't have a fast answer ready to go, this is something we really do want to fix.

 

the one thing that keeps running through my mind is "What was the Goal of Epic?". wish i had a better ability to search for stuff.

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4 hours ago, Archaed said:

That's the problem. That mentality right there. 

 

There are two games, epic and freedom. You're not supposed to be on one to benefit the other. 

 

Jackal round 1 was the beginnings of that, aiming at having "fresh land" to play on that still benefitted you back on your "usual" ground. 

 

Epic however is not that, it's there to be someones usual ground. The idea that you have to benefit on Freedom to play on epic is what waters down epic. 

I tend to agree with that statetment that Epic and  freedom should be 2 diferent playgrounds for 2 sorts of people who wouldn't have need to go to the other side. But there is apparently reason why freedom is usual playground for most and epic is not. there is a reason why jackal/challenge  works and epic don't.

Pushing epic to still be someones usual just becase of exclusive content will again probably result in failure while rebranding it to something else might have success... I think "that mentality" comes mostly from exclusive content on other side.

Problem with phraze adding initiative is that i don't think you can add it outside of "that mentality" otherwise one will always be dominant playground and the other will be redundant. For freedom is known what sort of audience it suits, maybe define audience to which epic suits and freedom doesn't(people who want pvp with reset periods, faster grind and jump into endgame, people who wouldnt play wurm on freedom anyway) and market the hell out of it to them, without need for any initiative because thats designed to their need and freedom isn't, but also without people on freedom feeling left out. Because if you do something like for example(dumbest example i could think of now) add moonmetal veins on epic and not on freedom for initiative you will end up with bunch of people from freedom whining and asking to be able to get them back to freedom.

My point is, whatever you do, doing something exclusive in terms of content for Epic in order to give initiative is wrong aproach as it will give one side reason to feel left out.

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I note that the conversation seems to keep coming back to what do freedomers bring BACK from going to epic. I'd have thought the question would more often spin off into what can we give players from freedom when they go to epic to encourage them to try it out. Its another world through a magical door where you can live and play without consequences or losses in the "real" world. This already does interest people. Then they arrive iun a new world with no goods, no tools, no friends, and no home, get bored/overwhelmed, and unless they're trying to complete personal goals and "Win the game" or are jsut trying to bank sleep bonus without having to find a bed... theyre gone again back to freedom to talk smack about how dead  and pointless Epic is to help ensure it stays that way.

 

So I ask rather than how can we exploit Epic for the betterment of Freedom characters, how can we make Epic more accessible and enjoyable for people who want to step away from the grind and the chores so they can go enjoy an afternoon of fantasy and fun and bring back stories to encourage others to do the same?

(and without losing their prized fantastic purple dragon scale armor they like to flex in while fighting wildcats and hellhounds)

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Honestly, I think a big problem right now for epic bringing in new players is that they they have no idea what it is. Myself, I'm still kind of unsure. The wiki doesn't say a lot about it and there doesn't seem to be a lot when starting a new account guiding you that way. There's not a lot of discussion you see about it, other than it's a dead cluster and no one knows what to do with it.

 

What about putting out some information of the appeal of epic and holding some competitions/challenges that are unique to epic to draw more players in? Can toons from NFI go there?

 

Again, I'm not incredibly familiar with it so my suggestion may be ridiculous.

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2 minutes ago, Skullripz said:

Honestly, I think a big problem right now for epic bringing in new players is that they they have no idea what it is. Myself, I'm still kind of unsure. The wiki doesn't say a lot about it and there doesn't seem to be a lot when starting a new account guiding you that way. There's not a lot of discussion you see about it, other than it's a dead cluster and no one knows what to do with it.

 

What about putting out some information of the appeal of epic and holding some competitions/challenges that are unique to epic to draw more players in? Can toons from NFI go there?

 

Again, I'm not incredibly familiar with it so my suggestion may be ridiculous.

 

No, toons can't cross from NFI to Epic. 

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10 minutes ago, Bakhita said:

 

No, toons can't cross from NFI to Epic. 

 

So, were talking about how to fix a dead cluster and half or more of the Wurm population can't even access it? Not saying it would fix it, but it certainly seems it wouldn't hurt.

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9 hours ago, Archaed said:

That's the problem. That mentality right there. 

 

There are two games, epic and freedom. You're not supposed to be on one to benefit the other. 

 

Jackal round 1 was the beginnings of that, aiming at having "fresh land" to play on that still benefitted you back on your "usual" ground. 

 

Epic however is not that, it's there to be someones usual ground. The idea that you have to benefit on Freedom to play on epic is what waters down epic. 

 

Yeah, it's easy to get wrapped up in Epic; I never even thought of it this way. And I can't answer with any moral certainty.

 

Certainly, Freedomers who have no interest in Epic, and never want to go there, should not be penalised in any way with respect to Freedomers who are using Epic (from a fairness perspective).

 

Although I fail to see how it's possible to attract new players to Epic without offering them something, and by something I mean either keeping skillgains from Epic, gear, or abilities.

 

Well that just made this even trickier to figure out :D

 

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If a different rate of gaining skill gain is an issue then remove this feature from epic.

Instead, increase character's SB limit by a lot and let online character gain SB for performing actions on epic, but don't let use SB on epic, player should be able to turn it on only when character returns to NFI. And you will have players on both servers all the time.
I like the idea of having access to new types of resources, but it only makes sense if I can take those resources back to Cad.

 

Main question is what about PvP?

PvP in a form in which my deed is unprotected is out of the question, because most of current PvE players or new players, will not like it.

Edited by Darnok

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Thoughts on what it woudl be like if Defiance and Epic were linked for boat travel? 

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6 hours ago, Tomatoes said:

we also don't need a 'black market' from epic showing up on freedom either.

I think it's kinda "rude" description. Black market are dupes, or other sort of things obtained by exploiting game bugs. Why have you chosen such wording?

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2 hours ago, Darnok said:

PvP in a form in which my deed is unprotected is out of the question, because most of current PvE players or new players, will not like it.

Yea. That's why it's cool to cooperate, make new friends and build big deed. Have ppl from different timezones, coordinate online. 

Also, on homeservers enemy fighting skill is capped. Thus enemy will have 50FS, and 4-5 newcomers with FS barely above 30 should be able to shoot him down. 

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1 hour ago, vasisuelle said:

Yea. That's why it's cool to cooperate, make new friends and build big deed. Have ppl from different timezones, coordinate online. 

Also, on homeservers enemy fighting skill is capped. Thus enemy will have 50FS, and 4-5 newcomers with FS barely above 30 should be able to shoot him down. 

 

Nice, but the fact that you can be attacked at any time does not make sense for me.

 

In my opinion, the kingdom should be the first line of defense, that is, kingdoms should be in peace by default.
A king who declares war must sacrifice some resources (food, containers, tools, other miscellaneous goods) in order to be able to declare war on another kingdom.
During war both kingdoms have to pay upkeep in form of player-crafted items, so there would also be an economic victory option, because if the opponent could not deliver items to the capital, they lose economically.

 

The second line of defense is an alliance whose leader should be able to designate a place to build the fortress.

As long as opponent has not captured fortress, deeds of alliance members cannot be raided and on territory of their alliance members also cannot be attacked, but if they go outside they can be attacked and killed.

 

The last line of defense is private deed. But even if my deed is raided, I can surrender and then if the opposing kingdom wins the war, me and my deed are part of this enemy kingdom as reward for winning the war, but they cannot kill me or rob me.

 

If such layers were added to game to protect players who do not want to participate in wars, probably PvE could even be removed and no one would object, because from point of view of PvE players, they would be 100% safe all the time.

With the exception of such a limitation that during war it is better not to leave alliance territory and when alliance fortress collapses they would be limited to their own deed, but upkeep of war should increase daily, so no kingdom would be able to wage war endlessly.

Wars would be fought by those who would want to fight in PvP, and those who did not want to participate would simply switch sides and become part of another kingdom.

 

 

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