Benediction: Modify/Replace Global Cast Requirement

[Mowglia 190]

As promised (in GL Chat) here is my whinging thread about the Global Cast requirement for Benediction

 

And also as promised I waited until I got it done on all 3 of my priests so no one can accuse me of trying to make this easier for myself.

 

I just feel very strongly that players should not be put through this.

 

So why is this particular journal goal a bad thing?

 

 

1) Since players can make silver from casts, and Benediction increases the power of those casts, then this journal goal gives a financial incentive to hold other players back. I'm not saying all, or even most players would do this, but some absolutely would.

 

2) It penalizes players who have to work long hours. If you can only spend a few hours a week playing Wurm then your chances of participating directly in a Global Cast are virtually nil.

 

3) It penalizes more solitary players who don't have a wide network of friends and acquaintances, and/or those that don't hang around in chat all day. Ideally a player's personality would not cause them any disadvantage in Wurm.

 

4) It penalizes those who live in the "wrong" time zone. For example, some Wurm players are Australian, and since as far as I can tell the majority of Global Casts are organized by Americans and Europeans, then those in the "wrong" time zones have it hard. In the recent Global Cast on Xanadu (for example) one player had to get up before 4am on a work day in order to make it.

 

5) Not least of all it causes many players a lot of worry and stress, because completing this journal requirement depends upon other players' co-operation, and thus removes a player's agency to determine their own fate.

 

 

What can be done about it?

 

Well no one is asking for this journal requirement to be removed, only modified or replaced. The one good thing I can say about this requirement is that it's related to Global Casts, which is cool, because Global Casts are a priest-thing. There's something aesthetically pleasing about this.

 

Personally I would replace it with something like "Receive benefits while under the influence of a Global Cast 5 times". Or 10 times, or whatever...

 

This enables all players to at least have a fair chance of logging on to get that prayer done regardless of their work hours, time zone, contacts, personality, etc, as they have a 24 hour window in which to do it, and all they need to do to see whether Global Casts are currently in effect is to check Niarja at (https://www.niarja.com/universes/online).

 

And it would take some time to achieve this, which is also good, as getting Benediction should not be easy.

 

Since we cannot pray twice to stack benefits under the same Global Cast then I assume Wurm already tracks this to some extent, and hopefully it wouldn't be too difficult to implement a counter, while retaining the aesthetically pleasing aspect of having something related to Global Casts still be part of obtaining Benediction.

 

 

Alternatively, StanLee had the idea of "rather than addressing particular 'problem' journal entries, they should add a couple more tasks to each section, but keep it that you need to clear the same number to complete", which is also a pretty decent solution.

 

 

So there it is. If you hate the Global Cast requirement to Benediction (as it stands), as so many of us do, then please voice your support here and let's try to change this.

Edited November 15, 2021 by Mowglia
typo

[Archaed 2,280]

Just to clarify, 

 

You managed to get this done on all three of your priests, meaning it's not particularly hard. 

 

There's also numerous opportunities with players posting in advance to allow others to join in on the cast. 

 

I don't think anyone is holding anyone back at this point, and I don't see anyone going to the length of trying to stop others from getting it. 

 

Player cooperation in an MMO is a necessity, and I fail to see why this would be needed to change

[platinumteef 2,205]

is this really an mmo? most servers have less than 10 people 

 

 

+1

Edited November 15, 2021 by platinumteef

[Milkdrop 278]

35 minutes ago, Archaed said:

I don't think anyone is holding anyone back at this point, and I don't see anyone going to the length of trying to stop others from getting it.

 

To be fair, the RoS cast my Vyn took part in was organized by Mowglia (thanks for that again) and we were scared it could/would be sniped, this has happened more than once.

Someone with their personal Priest army shows up, doesn't care that Freedom even tells them there is a planed cast on the Forums and goes ahead to just do it.

(has happened, was no fun at all)

It resulted in me just giving up even trying cause I did not want to stress myself out over it.

Now that I was gone for a while from the game due health reasons I tried again when I saw Mowglia post on the Forums and this time we were lucky.

Given we had to extend the cast by a day or it would have interfered with a slaying, it was somewhat scary.

 

On the other note, I am a hermit style player (a bit of a chicken to travel ) and it was nice to see something else and get together with other people to do this, it was a nice experience even as small as it was.

 

If everyone would 100% respect Forum Posts about a Rite Cast being organized and there would be zero chance it being sniped, that would be a huge improvement.

(Maybe add it to the rules?)

On the Timezone point, yea... had it been in the middle of the night for me I would have not taken part, but I would have tried again next time and not stressed about - IF sniping wasn't a possibility.

It is not like Benediction is a 100% must-have, it is a nice-to-have imho, we went years without the journal rewards and did fine.

 

I can see both sides to this, but I think Stans idea sounds like a valid one, people can still get the benefit without having to be scared of snipes or being in under represented timezones.

Edited November 15, 2021 by Milkdrop

[Tpikol 1,057]

why stop there? just change any journal entries that require me to do anything i didn't want to do anyway.

 

the point of the journal is to make people do things that nobody wants to do, thats why half of it is about fishing.

[Mowglia 190]

1 hour ago, Archaed said:

Just to clarify, 

 

You managed to get this done on all three of your priests, meaning it's not particularly hard.

 

 

Yeah, it only took me 7 years, or however long it's been since Benediction was a thing

[Archaed 2,280]

1 hour ago, Mowglia said:

 

 

Yeah, it only took me 7 years, or however long it's been since Benediction was a thing

Two and a bit

[Mowglia 190]

15 hours ago, Archaed said:

Two and a bit

 

Yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe it wasn't "particularly hard" for a player like me. A player who can hammer Wurm all day every day, who keeps an eye on the forums and various chats, who has a network of contacts and friends that can give them the heads up, one that can travel anywhere relatively easily (having multiple summoners), and who lives in the right time zone and cluster. After all, it only took two and a half years, lol.

 

But what about the other players who aren't in this position? You made the elementary mistake of assuming that because it might not be particularly hard for certain players, then it isn't particularly hard for all players. Except it's all players we're thinking about here, right?

[Stinboi 367]

6 hours ago, Mowglia said:

 

Yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe it wasn't "particularly hard" for a player like me. A player who can hammer Wurm all day every day, who keeps an eye on the forums and various chats, who has a network of contacts and friends that can give them the heads up, one that can travel anywhere relatively easily (having multiple summoners), and who lives in the right time zone and cluster. After all, it only took two and a half years, lol.

 

But what about the other players who aren't in this position? You made the elementary mistake of assuming that because it might not be particularly hard for certain players, then it isn't particularly hard for all players. Except it's all players we're thinking about here, right?

 

This +1

[Nicholai 79]

On 11/15/2021 at 1:45 AM, Archaed said:

Just to clarify, 

 

You managed to get this done on all three of your priests, meaning it's not particularly hard. 

 

There's also numerous opportunities with players posting in advance to allow others to join in on the cast. 

 

I don't think anyone is holding anyone back at this point, and I don't see anyone going to the length of trying to stop others from getting it. 

 

Player cooperation in an MMO is a necessity, and I fail to see why this would be needed to change

 

 

I think a rework is indeed needed.  As things are now, Anyone can topple the efforts of others JUST BECAUSE THEY WANT TO.   This is PvP.

[elentari 2,660]

On 11/15/2021 at 11:52 AM, Tpikol said:

the point of the journal is to make people do things that nobody wants to do, thats why half of it is about fishing.

Is that a wise thing to put before the players? "Here is a gameplay aspect you'd never want to do anyway just so you can finish a journal goal tier". 

 

Personally I love the suggestion of "journal goal choices' put before the players. I am not sure if Sindusk or whomever initially suggested it but it went along the lines of "If you don't want to plant 2000 trees" you can for example "Kill 1500 spiders" instead. 

 

Forcing people into goals that not only are unfun, but they actually stress players isn't the goal of a game. It's just gives people more reasons to quit Wurm. See the 100 rifts issue which still is going on today. 

 

Not to mention these types of goals force people to be time gated but also event gated. Sometimes you just can't be online to do them. Compare these types of goals with stuff like imp items x 100 000 times which is a goal you can undertake whenever you have free time. 

 

If the point of a goal is to make people do things they don't want to do...perhaps I need to revisit the definition of fun. Pretty sure most people don't play games to do things they don't want to do. 

[Ecrir 887]

On 11/15/2021 at 9:45 AM, Archaed said:

Just to clarify, 

 

You managed to get this done on all three of your priests, meaning it's not particularly hard. 

 

There's also numerous opportunities with players posting in advance to allow others to join in on the cast. 

 

I don't think anyone is holding anyone back at this point, and I don't see anyone going to the length of trying to stop others from getting it. 

 

Player cooperation in an MMO is a necessity, and I fail to see why this would be needed to change

 

I managed to get it done on my 3 priests as well after many years of trying, here's how it went: I'm pretty much a loner, don't communicate that much (I'm quite introverted). So I grinded up a bunch of batteries, together with my 3 priests, and kept them all under the same god (Lib). For years I missed every opportunity to get the global spell cast, always being slightly too slow, etc. Then one day someone was kind (foolish?) enough to announce on the forums that a cast was available and I was lucky to read it within 10 minutes. So I logged everything on, went to the right server, sniped the hell out of it and felt like an ass for the rest of the day, but hey, at least mission finally accomplished.

 

Frankly, i feel that the game would be much improved without this specific journal requirement existing. The main reason being is that it's a must have for Benediction, and you need Benediction in order to be competitive (so you could also say that the real problem is that the bonus Benediction is way too good), thus many people want it, while there's only a few casts per year. The moment you realize that a cast is available, and you try to gather other players to help cast it, is when you risk somebody finding out about it and him/her casting it on his/her own, like I eventually did. Since with enough money thrown at the game, no player cooperation is actually needed in order to get this journal requirement.

Edited November 21, 2021 by Ecrir