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Keenan

Caffeine Rework

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4 minutes ago, Finnn said:

what about workarounds like epic portals

Restlessness will follow over to epic and back

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greate work, seems like you found a good balance with the new changes.

 

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Just a couple of questions:

Restlessness is restored simply by being logged out? Or explicitly by logging out via the 'sleep' command on any valid target?

 

If CCFP no longer factors into sleep bonus usage while caffienated, what is the true rate of SB decay if at 100% CCFP? Is it merely 200% of the default rate with CCFP completely ignored, or is it 200% of the CCFP-factored rate?

 

My only concern is that this encourages the "Alt Meta" that was discussed in the feedback thread - play one alt until fully restless, then log it off for 5 days and play a different alt.

I already know of a few players who have been doing this with the fatigue timer. I am also concerned they might start doing it with this timer.

Are there any thoughts on if and/or how to discourage this behavior from becoming even more normalized?

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I feel like this topic needs not only a detailing of the changes, as has been helpfully provided with slim rationale, but quotes like

 

"I think the intention of caffeine is, after the grinding with caffeine, u stay online doing normal wurmy thing in wurm rather than log out."

"Not taking into account how and who would use this mechanic and the various ways they would, shows a disconnection between the, I dunno, Designers and the player base and a lack of knowledge of what goes on in the game."

 

Indicates a serious need to outline the goals of caffeine, the problems encountered with the current system, and the reasons for the fixes. I'll always point to Path of Exile as the pinnacle of patch notes - look at this stuff

 

754757e552156c5ac5b577221d44be2a.png

 

I mean, damn.

 

From here I turn to conjecture to try and explain the patch notes as best I can, but this starts with a strange conclusion:

It appears the intended audience of Caffeine is people who have trouble keeping their sleep bonus below maximum.

 

Walk with me here. And before you say "how would casual players access the high-difficult coffee" the solution there involves saying "WTB barrel of coffee"

 

Problem:

Some players are unable to keep sleep bonus below cap. This feels bad, because it feels like the game is punishing you for not playing with all the wasted skill. potential.

 

Solution:

Added Coffee and Teas, which double SB use and skillgain, allowing these players to drain that SB.

 

Problem:

There's no reason to not use Caffeine, it's the superior grind for everything.

 

Solution:

Couple caffeine to Fatigue, draining at x4 rate at maximum effect. This means that for dedicated grinders, you can get more skill per day not using caffeine.

 

Problems:

Some skills don't use Fatigue, so caffeine is still pretty much mandatory there. Fatigue also has a whole host of problems. System is strong enough that even dedicated grinders are still using it often, with Sleep Powder and the like creating runaway skillgain.

 

Solution:

Decouple Caffeine from Fatigue. Introduce Restlessness system, which means you're only getting 6-7 hours of caffeine grind per week tops - exactly as much as you're generating naturally, so sleep powder can only reasonably be used on caffeineless/RoSless grinds.

 

Perhaps one of the devs can clear up where I guessed the motivations wrong. And mind the firing line - I'm not trying to say if any of these are good or bad solutions, merely reasoning for these changes so we can have more meaningful discussions about their usefulness.

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28 minutes ago, Aleck said:

Just a couple of questions:

Restlessness is restored simply by being logged out? Or explicitly by logging out via the 'sleep' command on any valid target?

 

If CCFP no longer factors into sleep bonus usage while caffienated, what is the true rate of SB decay if at 100% CCFP? Is it merely 200% of the default rate with CCFP completely ignored, or is it 200% of the CCFP-factored rate?

 

My only concern is that this encourages the "Alt Meta" that was discussed in the feedback thread - play one alt until fully restless, then log it off for 5 days and play a different alt.

I already know of a few players who have been doing this with the fatigue timer. I am also concerned they might start doing it with this timer.

Are there any thoughts on if and/or how to discourage this behavior from becoming even more normalized?

Hi Aleck, yes restlessness is restored simply be being logged out. The sleep command is not necessary to qualify for restlessness reduction.

The natural sleep bonus decreases have remained untouched, only the extra decreases provided by caffeine is unaffected by CCFP. So to answer your question, 200% of the default rate with CCFP completely ignored.

The Alt Meta is a very deep and long subject that we probably shouldn't get into here. But in short, I don't think caffeine would be abused anywhere near to the extent that other mechanics are currently being abused by alts. With only 5 hours of caffeine grind a week, I feel like it is still quickly overshadowed by something else, like limitless sleep bonus usage for example.

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so how do i get access to the test server? all the information and links i can find to it seems to be outdated

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27 minutes ago, bawat said:

Hi Aleck, yes restlessness is restored simply be being logged out. The sleep command is not necessary to qualify for restlessness reduction.

The natural sleep bonus decreases have remained untouched, only the extra decreases provided by caffeine is unaffected by CCFP. So to answer your question, 200% of the default rate with CCFP completely ignored.

The Alt Meta is a very deep and long subject that we probably shouldn't get into here. But in short, I don't think caffeine would be abused anywhere near to the extent that other mechanics are currently being abused by alts. With only 5 hours of caffeine grind a week, I feel like it is still quickly overshadowed by something else, like limitless sleep bonus usage for example.

That means anybody not using coffee gets more from their sleep bonus because of the ccfp bonus?
By grinding 1 hour IRL with caffeine bonus, we use up two flat hours of sleep bonus. (?)

But by not using caffeine we'll get 2hours and the ccfp bonus, at the cost of slapping keys for TWO hours instead of one, or I misunderstood something?
 

https://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Cooking#Nutrition_.26_CCFP

Quote

Benefits

Nutrition & CCFP

Every edible item has different nutritional values, as well as values for calories, carbs, fats, and proteins (CCFP). When items are combined to create a resulting item, the CCFP values are combined to give the result its own CCFP values.

  • Calories – High bar reduces stamina drain
  • Carbs – High bar reduces water usage
  • Fats – High bar increases favour regeneration, and reduces drain on sleep bonus.
  • Proteins – High bar reduces food usage

 

There was a good question somewhere above: if intoxication timer is being consumed by sleep bonus seconds that have passed under the influence of caffeine, or only per action like fatigue.

I'm only guessing that the answer is the first part?

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2 hours ago, bawat said:

Yes, as you pointed out, regenerating will take longer. Is it a buff or a nurf? Depends on if you're the target audience or not.

This is not something you want to say as a developer

Your target audience is the player base that's it don't publicly try to divide casuals vs hardcore players look at the history of changes made in favor of pvp players or pve players it just causes uproar and more issues and pressure to the point where everything goes to ######.

My opinion after reading the 4 pages here still shows that this will not help casuals as most casuals will not be investing in coffee as they don't want to spend most of their time grinding a number in their limited amount of playtime so creating mechanics to "help" them grind easier is 1 a waste of time 2 really not needed mechanics like this should be a nice bonus to have and the timer really should tick down regardless of being online or not and why?

Because any mechanic that encourages not playing will just enforce the idea of "they dont want us to play their game" this has been shown in other games in the past that had similar features, you want mechanics that keep people coming back for more not for less this is something that a lot of us have pointed out in the past before wurm staff really need to start to focus on player retention with non game ruining mechanics that are enticing to keep players around beyond those who get hooked on the grind.

If the timer took 5 days of time to go away and sleeping in a bed takes away 2 seconds for every second spend in a bed after an hour i think most people would not have an issue with it anymore at all but being told "oh ya 5 days worth of offline time before you can use this feature again" will leave the feature ignored like rifts are now or epic.

All that this update will do with restlessness is make it be a feature that will be mostly ignored by 99% of the players except that 1% that want to minmax their grinding time and grinding gains as most casuals really do not want to spend their limited time stuck grinding in the most efficient manner they just are not focused in trying to play catchup with the grindy people none of them are so why target this feature so much around them? Plus even the casuals who play 1-2 days of the week spend those 1-2 days working on their deed or resource gathering/refining and just sometimes they might spend some time making items for a bit but most of the time they just deal with the fact their skills arent that high.

There really does seem to be a big disconnect between the devs and the playerbase still and features/updates like this just show that that is the case. The intention is great but there is no problem here the "casuals need a way to catch up to grindy people" is the wrong line of thinking you want "how can we make casuals spend more time playing our game then others"


I get that you want to create a feature to help casuals vs active players but you should make features that try to turn those casuals into regulars not try to make features that are meant to benefit them but wont, This is the same issue with creating pve mechanics that harm pvp or vise versa that has happened in the past plenty of times.

 

Anyway all that aside please try to make mechanics that work for most of the playerbase vs a small fraction vs something like this in its current form.


And as usual someone pointed out poe's patch notes before i got around to doing it for once ❤️ but their way of handling bugs of releasing patch notes of engaging with the community is what every developer should strive for as a standard of releasing content and fixing bugs as poe's way of handling on those points is honestly the best i have seen from any company and it is not hard to do it just takes time and having a small dedicated group or a person who's sole focus is to be that engagement point, the "oh wurm is a small team" can't be used anymore and it never could yet it was still used for it but i can tell that patch notes and notes about new features/mechanics are starting to get better but as evidence of this topic "oh i left that out of my notes" and such comments there is still a long way to go so please do keep trying to become better at sharing all info and communicating between each other to make sure that all info is shared about changes/new features and preferably take the stance that poe has taken with their recent patch notes of going "here is the problem, and here is the solution to it, and here is the exact number changes" approach of patch notes i know it is more work but it is worth it in terms of clarity.

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Like others, I'm confused about how caffeine will affect skill gain and SB drain.

  1. Standard skill gain with no SB or caffeine is affected how? I believe this will be the same as always.
  2. Skill gain and SB drain while using SB and no caffeine? I believe this is still the same as always. Fats reduce drain on SB usage.
    • skill gain: 2x standard skill gain sized ticks.
    • SB drain at 0 Fat: 1hr SB used is 1hr SB drained.
    • SB drained at 100 Fat: 1h SB used is 2/3 h SB drained. I'm not sure of the actual number and use 2/3 (actually a 1/3 reduction) for convenience.
  3. Skill gain and SB drain while using caffeinated SB? 
    • skill gain: 4x standard sized skill ticks? We can also say it's 2x a SB sized tick?
    • SB drain at 0 Fat:  1h SB used is 2h SB drained and 1h restlessness accumulated.
    • SB drain at 100 Fat: 1h SB used is 1-1/3h drained and 1h restlessness accumulated. Here it's a 2x usage MULTIPLED by 2/3 (which is a 1/3 reduction) to get the 1-1/3h drained. Good game design dictates that fats have the same benefit regardless of caffeinated status. Otherwise, your penalizing players who eat well. Or you're creating weird meta-game scenarios where people try to get the most from the system. Uniform treatment of fats means there is no optimal and no one is penalized.

 

 

Lastly...Restlessness simply puts a hard cap on how much caffeine boost SB one can benefit from over a time period. It is simple and has no effect on other aspects of playing. Wurm wants to limit caffeine usage and I think this does it well.

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Just adding something here and ill hope u remove that thing ill still have caffine bugs thats hard to get removed from game ( caffine affective when it shouldnt be ), so ill get that buff coz the system is not still working yet or?

Something ill noticed if ill log out with caffine on mode, ill log like 2 days later its there with no timer at all the caffine. ofc ill can probably get more of it, but yea still think its should be a wide reset of caffine buff when launching this just a thing to think on so ppl dont get the restless buff coz the caffine is bugged into the chars as they keep doing.

Edited by MrCoolMan
added info

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I had a play on the test server and it seemed to function as expected.

 

The new 100 caffeinated + sleep bonus ticks are 3x skill gain, so you use 2x the sleep powder and get back 2x the benefit, no longer gaining additional skill per sleep powder/mission, this is a good change.

 

Being able to drink at full was great, it does one sip per action making it easy to get up to full caffeine without wasting, its a bunch of clicks but this seems like a nice trade-off.

 

Restlessness seems to create what I've assumed is the intended effect which is that you can use up 2 times the amount of passively gained sleep bonus by using all your available caffeine. To clarify my experience

  • At 100 caffeine in 5 real minutes I used 10 minutes of sleep bonus, this generated 5 minutes of restlessness
  • At 24 caffeine in 5 real minutes I used 10 minutes of sleep bonus, this generated 1 minute (rounded) of restlessness

This seems like a fair system as you get a scaled benefit and usage out of any amount of caffeine.

 

My two comments would be:

  • I'm sure this is planned but add a buff bar icon
  • Is 0.01 power per minute the best scale for this as 100 minutes is an odd unit of time

For the impact for me on an average weekday for me I'd get about 45 mins of sleep bonus and restlessness back,  I can then use up that sleep bonus and still have 22 minutes of restlessness to spare to use on sleep bonus from missions or powder.

 

I'd be interested to hear about fat's interaction with sleep bonus, is the plan that you lose the benefit of fat when using caffeine? This would mean that the most "optimal" use of sleep bonus is to never use caffeine, it would create a trade-off between time spent and utilising sleep bonus. I'm not saying this is an outright bad thing just want to clarify if this is the intended trade-off. (I didn't get around to testing this as I suck at cooking)


As a heavy alt user (I have a main crafter, two caster priests, a farmer alt and a ropemaker alt) this will likely encourage me to use my sleep bonus a bit more on my alts, and as for my main I'd likely use caffeine when I have less time to grind for a week and not use it normally. I think it would come down to if I'm using sleep powder I'd want to get the best efficiency from it and perhaps its a good thing that optimal speed is not the best, except for resource limited skills which this is a reasonable buff to.

It definitely seems to benefit a few groups of players now:

  1. People with less time to play
  2. People who only want to grind for a couple of hours a week
  3. People grinding resource limited skills (pan filling, metallurgy)
  4. And of course Alts

 

All in it seems like a good change, I've personally done a lot of channelling due to the 0 fatigue cost and amazing efficiency of sleep powder and I know a fair few people who have been grinding out 0 fatigue skills and especially pan filling. 

Edited by Lethyria
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25 minutes ago, Lethyria said:

The new 100 caffeinated + sleep bonus ticks are 3x skill gain, so you use 2x the sleep powder and get back 2x the benefit, no longer gaining additional skill per sleep powder/mission, this is a good change.

Lethyria, your math is wrong.  You aren't getting back 2x the benefit. The fact you've observed this on test bothers me greatly.

 

Spend 2 hours non-caffeinated SB time and get 2 hours of double sized standard skill ticks.

Spend 1 hours caffeinated SB time, which will consume 2 hours of SB time, but you'll only realize the equivalent of 1.5h of double sized standard skill ticks.

 

With caffeine we need 2x SB usage and 4x standard tick size else there will be a usage inefficiency or penalty. It will be smarter to not use caffeine in the vast majority of cases. A player would need to be playing so little they would waste it and thus the inefficiency doesn't matter. I'm guessing this is playing maybe 2 hours a week.

 

Restlessness provides a hard cap on caffeine usage. Why do we need a usage inefficiency too?

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6 hours ago, Stinboi said:

so how do i get access to the test server? all the information and links i can find to it seems to be outdated

For steam user to get access to test server.

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7 hours ago, joedobo said:

Lethyria, your math is wrong.  You aren't getting back 2x the benefit. The fact you've observed this on test bothers me greatly.

 

Maybe I did a poor job of explaining this, here is a worked example, assuming 0 fat for now.

 

Scenario Grind Hours Sleep Bonus Hours Consumed Total Skillgain Skillgain From Grinding Skillgain From Sleep Bonus Skillgain Per Sleep Bonus
2 Hour Grind SB 2 2 4 2 2 1
1 Hour Grind SB + Caffine Current 1 2 4 1 3 1.5
1 Hour Grind SB + Caffine Proposed 1 2 3 1 2 1
1 Hour Grind SB + Caffine Proposed + 1 Hour Grind No SB 2 2 4 2 2 1

 

As you can see currently caffeine gives more sleep bonus per hour than just using sleep bonus.

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12 hours ago, wipeout said:

This is not something you want to say as a developer

Your target audience is the player base that's it don't publicly try to divide casuals vs hardcore players look at the history of changes made in favor of pvp players or pve players it just causes uproar and more issues and pressure to the point where everything goes to ######.

My opinion after reading the 4 pages here still shows that this will not help casuals as most casuals will not be investing in coffee as they don't want to spend most of their time grinding a number in their limited amount of playtime so creating mechanics to "help" them grind easier is 1 a waste of time 2 really not needed mechanics like this should be a nice bonus to have and the timer really should tick down regardless of being online or not and why?

Because any mechanic that encourages not playing will just enforce the idea of "they dont want us to play their game" this has been shown in other games in the past that had similar features, you want mechanics that keep people coming back for more not for less this is something that a lot of us have pointed out in the past before wurm staff really need to start to focus on player retention with non game ruining mechanics that are enticing to keep players around beyond those who get hooked on the grind.

If the timer took 5 days of time to go away and sleeping in a bed takes away 2 seconds for every second spend in a bed after an hour i think most people would not have an issue with it anymore at all but being told "oh ya 5 days worth of offline time before you can use this feature again" will leave the feature ignored like rifts are now or epic.

All that this update will do with restlessness is make it be a feature that will be mostly ignored by 99% of the players except that 1% that want to minmax their grinding time and grinding gains as most casuals really do not want to spend their limited time stuck grinding in the most efficient manner they just are not focused in trying to play catchup with the grindy people none of them are so why target this feature so much around them? Plus even the casuals who play 1-2 days of the week spend those 1-2 days working on their deed or resource gathering/refining and just sometimes they might spend some time making items for a bit but most of the time they just deal with the fact their skills arent that high.

There really does seem to be a big disconnect between the devs and the playerbase still and features/updates like this just show that that is the case. The intention is great but there is no problem here the "casuals need a way to catch up to grindy people" is the wrong line of thinking you want "how can we make casuals spend more time playing our game then others"


I get that you want to create a feature to help casuals vs active players but you should make features that try to turn those casuals into regulars not try to make features that are meant to benefit them but wont, This is the same issue with creating pve mechanics that harm pvp or vise versa that has happened in the past plenty of times.

 

Anyway all that aside please try to make mechanics that work for most of the playerbase vs a small fraction vs something like this in its current form.


And as usual someone pointed out poe's patch notes before i got around to doing it for once ❤️ but their way of handling bugs of releasing patch notes of engaging with the community is what every developer should strive for as a standard of releasing content and fixing bugs as poe's way of handling on those points is honestly the best i have seen from any company and it is not hard to do it just takes time and having a small dedicated group or a person who's sole focus is to be that engagement point, the "oh wurm is a small team" can't be used anymore and it never could yet it was still used for it but i can tell that patch notes and notes about new features/mechanics are starting to get better but as evidence of this topic "oh i left that out of my notes" and such comments there is still a long way to go so please do keep trying to become better at sharing all info and communicating between each other to make sure that all info is shared about changes/new features and preferably take the stance that poe has taken with their recent patch notes of going "here is the problem, and here is the solution to it, and here is the exact number changes" approach of patch notes i know it is more work but it is worth it in terms of clarity.

 

 

I think alot of ppl are confused what casuals in wurm are as the definition isnt really written in stone.

 

A casual can be a player who like you said just doesnt like grinding and rather spend their time in wurm for other things or other games. 

 

But then there is a large group of players that currently is called "casuals" but is an audience that do want to grind and is very much competitive in nature but is hindered by real life in order to catch up to the players with more hours at their disposal. 

 

This is the audience that benefits most from this system, in other games "mmos usually" this was solved with "rested" like wow for example a widely popular system. But in wurm sleep bonus can be gained outside the rested status thus increasing the gap futher between players with alot of time and players with little time. This is where caffine seems to work best in order to be what maybe SB was supposed to be at first? 

When something is added we most stop thinking that we lose something just because it isnt something that we currently would be using in the game. Content is content no matter if im participating in it or not. I do think we will be able to see more new players stick to Wurm because they now feel like they can catch up even if they dont have the oceans of time others might have.

Edited by Nocturnes

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On 1/25/2022 at 9:17 PM, Wurmhole said:

Ok, I am rather new to the caffeine system, but here is my take:

 

Sleep bonus was originally designed to behave like many other games and allow the casual player to be slightly more competitive, but sleep powder turned into a tradable commodity and purchasable from the traders, so it completely defeated the purpose.  In addition, avid players now work the system of hitting all the Rituals on all the servers, via faith changes, etc.  Oh wait, missions too!  The avid players powers through all the missions to get even more SB.  So the SB system is an advantage to the avid player and detriment to the casual player.

 

So rather than dial that back and make Sleep Bonus something that only accumulates during sleep (or Dev apologies for downtime), caffeine has been added to try restoring the original intent of giving the casual player a chance to have some elevated skill gains in the brief time they have to play.

 

The more you try to add band-aids on top of band-aids, the more the wound under it all will fester.

 

As a casual player, it takes time and resources to set up and operate the whole system, not to mention the need to now skill up beverage making to do it all, or simply go to the Wurm store, buy more silvers and pay someone in-game for the coffee.  All of this, then actually must now do, to try and keep up with the avid players, who are ALL using coffee on the regular.

 

So these caffeine fixes coming have some merit and seem noble, but the core problem still exists.  It actually isn't a benefit to the casual player at all.  The entire system is unneeded complexity that ultimately benefits the avid players.

 

Imagine a world where skill gain formulas get tuned up to compensate for eliminating powder, Rite global cast SB and mission SB.  The only SB ever coming from... wait for it... "sleeping".  Now you have the true, original intent of Sleep Bonus and it actually benefits the casual player for once.

 

(make Ritual global spells and missions give other rewards that aren't balance changers.  Could gain points for purchasing more skins or points for the "Antique Store", where past xmas presents and other special decorative gifts would be available).

 

Edit:  For the record, when I play, I typically play 10-12 hours a day. Terrible I know, but I am not one of the casual players mentioned above.

This

because of availability SB has become the norm in grinding, it has stopped being that BONUS, which it was originally intended for. Now we have circled back to the beginning and another "bonus" will be added -to help casuals. In reality I think, it helps the hardcore grinders again more, which means, in the future more caffeine bonuses should be made available.. again with the intent to help casuals. Until it becomes norm again. Point is, whatever you add to casuals, will be available to hardcore people, who are more effective in what they are doing and will probably utilize it much better.

 

Even when you (hypothethically) would start limiting playing times, so that every player could play 2 hours per day, there would still be gap between people.

So I think the whole issue is not, whether meditation, lockpicking or shield bashing should be included in the caffeine bonuses. The whole bonuses system is fundamentally flawed. Take two steps back and re-evaluate the whole thing instead of, like Wurmhole said, trying to add bandaids on top of bandaids.

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1 hour ago, Lethyria said:

 

Maybe I did a poor job of explaining this, here is a worked example, assuming 0 fat for now.

 

 

 

Scenario Grind Hours Sleep Bonus Hours Consumed Total Skillgain Skillgain From Grinding Skillgain From Sleep Bonus Skillgain Per Sleep Bonus
2 Hour Grind SB 2 2 4 2 2 1
1 Hour Grind SB + Caffine Current 1 2 4 1 3 1.5
1 Hour Grind SB + Caffine Proposed 1 2 3 1 2 1
1 Hour Grind SB + Caffine Proposed + 1 Hour Grind No SB 2 2 4 2 2 1

 

As you can see currently caffeine gives more sleep bonus per hour than just using sleep bonus.

Caffeine has the effect of doubling gains. 

 

this means that if you grind for an hour on caffiene, you have the skillgain result and sleep bonus consumption of grinding two hours on SB. By this nerf, grinding an hour on caffeine gives the skillgain result of grinding one hour on SB, and one hour not on SB, and also the consumption of two hours sb. 

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Ultimately, everything I've read here, including dev responses boils down to no one understanding how the target demographic plays. 

 

Caffeine is aimed at players who play max one hour a day, but while playing play so efficiently that they will be able to hit these targets. 

 

This again brings into question how much work has been done identifying the "casual playerbase" and their playstyles, as I feel this misses every mark it tries to hit beyond a "neat" system.

It alienates players who have time on their hands as it confers little to no bonus unless they're logged off, meaning your more established players feel they have to actually log off to make grinding efficient, and it is so limited that even casual players will fall behind. 

 

I don't grind often, but I'm logged in a lot, I do basic chores around the deed, I chat in GL, I spend the majority of my time AFK. Coffee means I can make the time I grind more effective and actually advance when I have the headspace to grind (change headspace to time, etc for anything else). 

 

With this system, I'm encouraged to be logged off when I cannot play, as otherwise when I do have the time to grind, I won't be able to, meaning the more idle casual players will infact be benefitting from being offline, meaning the world is smaller, and your active users drops. 

 

My solution to this is similar to how fatigue works. Have restlessness decay in increments logged on or not. Add a bonus for being logged off in a bed if you must, but if I am actively punished by continuing to play after hitting the limit, I'm going to be logging in less. 

 

And if the real goal is helping casuals gain skill, for the love of Fo, have it work on meditation, if they have limited playtime they need the help. 

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I feel like this entire discussion, and the entire approach to game design demonstrated here, is deeply misguided.

 

When you pitch Wurm to someone, do you focus on all the different ways you can manipulate the rate at which a number in a table goes up? No? Then why are you focusing so much effort on an elaborate game of manipulating the rate at which a number goes up instead of on the things that you yourself think are interesting about Wurm?

 

There are now multiple systems in the game, and lots of developer hours spent, on adding complicated ways of manipulating the rate of Number Go Up. Cooking, for example, is almost entirely geared around timed Number Go Up bonuses. You've spent all this effort to create recipes and models for foods, and all they do is give skill bonuses? Now you add caffeine, and all it does is this complex interplay of meta bonuses with sleep bonus and Number Go Up.

 

Why does cooking not provide immediate bonuses? Why doesn't caffeine?

 

It is utterly baffling to me that caffeinated drinks don't influence stamina or stamina regeneration, that different foods don't give immediate and useful bonuses like added strength, speed, agility, health, or more creative effects.

 

In essence, why is this all so boring?

Edited by Batolemaeus
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Well reading all this, i can say congratulations, you had great update after a while, you litteraly just needed to add that coffein ignores the water bar and we would have feature month ago to use, now instead we have this confusion that nobody likes because nobody understands it and nobody wants to bother to understand honestly

Edited by kochinac
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On 1/25/2022 at 5:39 PM, ChampagneDragon said:

I don't understand teh restlessness.. IMO that's worse than the fatigue drain. At least with fatigue we could do some actions that didn't drain fatigue to allow it to regenerate. With this restlessness change the only way to renew it is to not be in game... that's definitely going to help with population numbers... 🙄

I don't take it as a way to force people to not play, I take it as a way they limit the consumption. Once you hit 5 hours then just take a break off the caffeine. So what people didn't play wurm before coffee came to the game, then they introduced coffee and people started playing wurm, and by limiting coffee people stop playing again? I don't see the logic in this 

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1 hour ago, Batolemaeus said:

different foods don't give immediate and useful bonuses like added strength, speed, agility, health, or more creative effects

 

This should be made into a suggestion! We do have alcohol and endurance sandwiches but there is definitely a lot of potential for more buffs with different kinds of foods. There are TONS of food items that are hardly ever used because they don't provide much nutrition or useful affinity timers. I can totally see something like cookies as a snack to carry while hunting to provide a health regeneration buff or something like that :) 

Edited by Vorticella

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1 hour ago, Batolemaeus said:

It is utterly baffling to me that caffeinated drinks don't influence stamina or stamina regeneration, that different foods don't give immediate and useful bonuses like added strength, speed, agility, health, or more creative effects.

Partially true here, the buffs in game could use more diversity. But keep in mind things like CCFP do affect other stuff , you just don't see them. For ex, your total stamina is actually affected by having max CCFP. Nutrition also plays a role in other effects like the ability to recover from a disease or a minor skillgain boost. 

 

I'd agree it would be nice to have "strength foods" or buffs that affect walking speed on PvE at least. Hell I'd feed red bull to my horse if it'd make it go faster :)) 

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First, I apologize if this sounds angry or aimed at any one person. I promise it's a point that ya'll are failing to see and I feel this is the only way you may actually hear it.

 

18 hours ago, bawat said:

That's correct, Restlessness is a buff that can be found in the Spell Effects window. It follows the player between servers and clusters.

 

I feel like you completely missed the point in my question Bawat. As it sits RIGHT NOW, if I cross a server line with any buff, that buff goes away after logging out and back in unless I do more of it on the new server and then it bugs the buff to be way beyond what it should. What steps have been taken to fix that? Am I going to be able to cross a server, logout and completely remove the relentlessness buff and abuse the system? What stops me because it certainly isn't good game design. It isn't mechanics that works, and it isn't enforceable by devs, GM's or anyone because you know the problem exists and you haven't bothered to fix it (to my knowledge).

On top of that, why would you focus on making a game mechanic that encourages your players to be logged out of your game. You can say it's an optional mechanic but lets all be real here you don't know who pays your paycheck or keeps the servers on because it's sure as hell is not the casual players. It's the hard core grinders, with 10 alts and 5 deeds. It's the players who are currently using this mechanic to actually enjoy the balance of the game that should have been fixed first but wasn't because this was poorly made and poorly implemented to begin with having little to no communication with the playerbase and since it's not pulling in the casuals to play more you're doing nee-jerk fixes and taking months upon months to actually get anywhere. You have a system that could have been amazing but I agree with Archead. If the only way I can get the most out of the time I have is to be logged out a good portion of it, I'll go find another game. I'll spend my money somewhere else with somebody else. 

At this point, I'm going to be totally and brutally honest, you've got a knife in the side of the game with this crap, lets hope we have a game in a year or two.

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I see caffeine with the restless debuff as being what sleep bonus was meant to be. A skill boost usable only about 5 hours a week. No missions or powders to extend it. The changes to caffeine power and bean weight means coffee will be even cheaper.

 

My only issues with the changes are the having to log off. Just make it tick down on or offline.

 Make sure you can't exploit the buffs with server crossing.

 

Don't limit any skills. It works on anything sleep bonus works on.

 

The way this will play out is simple. Those who now use sleep bonus will use caffeine. Those that don't now use thier sleep bonus  won't later just because of caffeine unless it is made more obvious as a feature. As others have said "casuals" don't normally use forums. 

 

Part of this is also lack of knowledge of the system. Half my coffee buyers are repeat buyers. The rest are people who are just trying it out. I've basically got a explanation of how to use coffee to copy paste now as most don't know how to "use" coffee. And ask if I can explain it.

 

Maybe for new players they get a jar of it as starter with an explanation. As with most wurm features, ignorance is keeping it out of the hands of whom the devs seem to want to use it.

 

Just my 2 coppers. 

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