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Joshh

Plans for population growth?

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1 hour ago, elentari said:

 

Agreed here. We work towards getting so many skills up to a certain level but after that point how often do we use them? After you get your nice set of tools to 80-90 ql, how often will you imp them again? 

 

We'd need some end content that requires us to use the entirety of Wurm's skills for certain purposes. Would be fun if we could invade Valrei or something, and have to deal with all the Valrei mobs and armies posted in the heavens. Something that's challenging, brutal, deadly and really feels like you're working as a team again for a common purpose. Just dreaming. 

with wurm's rewarding reasoning.. you'd get 2 irons reward and possibly lose your scale set there, unable to participate if you do not donate 20gold to enter

entertainment...

 

runes from rifts were supposed to be useful.. oh wait, you're only allowed to use one, you have 2, well you cant even replace 1 of them to make better item.. 2 systems cut off any fun to produce unique items on your own with skill, rng, rng, rng, rng, rng, rng, dice roll, you failed again (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

 

jackal might have been a freedom zone to explore some fun.. but that was killed early

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5 hours ago, Finnn said:

jackal might have been a freedom zone to explore some fun.. but that was killed early

I wish we had another jackal. Or challenge.

 

Just done right this time. 

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Well, having read through the usual rants, not few of them I tend to agree (especially high level PvE challenges).

 

But honestly: All your desires fulfilled (devs working their ass off on), do you really think it would attract new players?

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fact is wurm is an old game with an old style of game play, it will never pull in the insta gratification crowd which dominates with the quick mobile game mindset

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IMO its time to merge all the servers I haven't seen a person join up in xanadu in forever...people starting in Indy sometimes have no idea they can leave Indy...thats messed up ... and to make some random creature camps that can spawn  on map and that might be a challenge to kill ..kind of like a mini Rift but not really ..make it a troll camp with varied toughness of trolls or goblin camp , kinda like they used to have in EQ where you need a group of friends with different skills...like someone who can pull like an archer and someone who can heal so you get people who want to be in villages so they can go on fights in a group and don't have to solo stuff or live out in the middle of nowhere to farm continually and fight off the occasional bear...the reason game loses people is they get bored doing sos ..game needs a little variety and occasional input from players for addition to the game that Devs would consider would be nice too ..

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I think the game must be brewing up for something interesting - considering the dev team has recently been expanded - Budda is now back, and Ostentatio is now full time, as well as the regular team members, plus volunteer devs.  Personally I think the game is pretty perfect as is :P but it's good to see this new investment in staff. :) 

 

 

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Clearly we need dodge roll mechanics.

 

Yes I'm shitposting in this thread because ultimately, every man, woman, non-binary person and child will have their own idea about what "fixes" the population, things they don't like are obviously the cause of it, and things they'd like to see are obviously the fix for it. 

 

This game offers unlimited freedom in skills, actions, and worldshaping, and therefore struggles with keeping people who don't stop and take a big gasp at just how AWESOME that is. So many cries for "endgame" content revolve around focusing on specific skills, or limiting players in some way artificially to force them to team up. 

 

Fact is, you give the player everything they could do with their imagination,  you find out most people's imagination runs pretty dry. 

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Devil May Cry or Tekken style combat to replace the "get close enough to the mob for it to notice you and go afk" system.

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I fully agree with Arch's first post (leaving the fart bit to those who usually have sound switched on). I am not sure how to get more players but think if we manage to keep the recent player base stable it would be a good thing. Personally, I think that merging north and south, in a great event (I had the idea of the intermediate continent to hack, tunnel, and dig through, and still like it), informing all registered premium players about *), could get some of the ten thousands ground to the low retention mill back to the game. Just my (maybe tunnel) vision. 

 

But damn I would love high level PvE mobs though I am sure it would not attract newbies.

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10 hours ago, Archaed said:

Fact is, you give the player everything they could do with their imagination,  you find out most people's imagination runs pretty dry. 

From what I've seen in Wurm, people still need some sort of narrative or direction to follow, to actually do things - Even more so when it is together (A group of players)

Like at impalongs for example. If there are clear games or activities set out, which start at a certain time with someone also telling everyone that as well, then people know what is happening.

Though from what I've seen, there are only a small amount of games that get created.  People play them much more when rewards are up for grabs too.

So having a sandbox with all of the skills...etc does not do much on its own.  It needs a follow through.  It needs to be supported by a interesting narrative or storyline along with good game mechanics.  After all, another big draw to videos games is if you can twitch stream it and wurm is not a very good game to stream.  People also like to get rewards as well and that also pushes them to do things.  As soon as a dragon pops up on a map, 100s of people sail to that location.

I would say that a Sandbox game works the best when the devs work on interesting game mechanics, new features, items, creatures, missions, new rewards and a few storyline pieces to start players off.

The players then have to actually work to craft the world in their image and this does not just mean, having a deed and building a castle and some farms.  It means players taking a more active role in creating the storyline of the game, shaping the lands, having history and sharing that history with others.  Wurm is a living virtual space where people live out their virtual lives. Where people die to hoards of blood thirsty monsters and fight other players while climbing massive dirt walls all at the same time.

Got to say though that wurm is not that exciting.  It feels more like a AFK clicker mobile game.   I feel that there needs to be some excitement somehow to keep people interested in the long term...

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That's not sandbox. 

 

You're suggesting a sandbox game become a sandbox theme park hybrid. 

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17 minutes ago, Archaed said:

That's not sandbox. 

 

You're suggesting a sandbox game become a sandbox theme park hybrid. 

Ah okay, I did not know that :)

 

Though I do like the sound of that though since I used to love theme park world 🌎 and I really liked games that had editors too 👍

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That's... That's not what that means. 

 

Theme Park refers to wow like games where its a guided experience with quests, dungeons, task, dailies, etc

 

Sandbox refers to the idea of it being a world where you can do anything, specifically the lack of theme park elements. 

 

Over time games have built up hybrid versions where there are open world elements in a guided system (see zelda breath of the wild). 

 

You are saying wurm needs to change its entire core element to appeal to a different user base than the existing ones 

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... my two cents ....

Unpopular opinion (and also a TLDR): Wurm doesn't need to change. It just needs to be advertised more to the right crowd.

Like it or not, Wurm is a niche game and that naturally means a high churn rate. Still, it has is "die hards" that are here since ages, like the game as it is (though oppose most changes) and pour enough money in to keep it afloat since over 15 years. And I'd dare to say that as long as you have such a dedicated core group, it means the game must be doing something right and it certainly has a niche it can address to.

If I'd be in charge I wouldn't even think on making drastic changes that would affect the core/identity of the game, just like I wouldn't think on attracting a broader category of players, because this comes with the risk of alienating the existing core group that actually pay the bills and keep the ship afloat.

What I would do instead would be to try to better know my (hard core) customers and try to understand exactly what my current niche market is (not the one I intended to attract, but the one I actually end up attracting) then try targeted promotion towards that category of people. 

For example (and it might be a stupid and slightly offensive example, but I still think it may be relevant): from my anecdotical, personal observations I noticed that many Wurm players (much more than in any other game I've played) are not gamers, or even very tech-savvy people, rather older than younger, generally retired for a reason or other and with a lot of time on their hands. So yeah, if I'd be to advertising Wurm, I honestly think I'd have a better chance targeting communities of recently retired people looking for a new hobby than the mainstream gaming sites. Also, as a person from the spectrum, I can say that Wurm has a lot of mechanics for us, so might even try promoting it specifically to communities of people on the spectrum, rather than to traditional gaming communities where people have a very low attention span and lean more towards ADHD and instant gratification.

Also, for example, I think a missed advertising opportunity was when LiF (which was a very similar game with Wurm) closed their MMO servers. If I would have been in Retrograde's shoes at that time I would have organized an advertising campaign targeting those players specifically with a promotion like "Are you an ex LiF player looking for a new home? Here's two free moths of premium from us to check if Wurm can't be that new home for you!". I think the retention rate among those players could have been considerably higher.

So, TLDR again: Don't change the game (identity), it's great as it is. Don't try to attract new kind of players. Just try to get your customers as well as possible, then target other people in the exact same niche category.

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I am sure there are people like the storyline or the theme park game. Imagine ten people share this common interest.

 

Each of them create their own story, task, and theme and then group them together to become a big story line game. A person only make one game and can play other nine story games.

 

The quest location only reveal after complete the story in person A's deed. The players need to travel to person B-J's deeds to complete the whole story. Everyone can make their own part of the story in their deed.

 

We have books to write stories. Keys, chests and merchants for acting like a checkpoint. Maze and checker board for tasks. I saw there are bunch of planter racks in some of the deeds. They can write the task clue on a pottery planter(naming) and let the players search the clue. Or use ur creativity to make tasks. 

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1 hour ago, Bloodreina said:

Also, for example, I think a missed advertising opportunity was when LiF (which was a very similar game with Wurm) closed their MMO servers. If I would have been in Retrograde's shoes at that time I would have organized an advertising campaign targeting those players specifically with a promotion like "Are you an ex LiF player looking for a new home? Here's two free moths of premium from us to check if Wurm can't be that new home for you!". I think the retention rate among those players could have been considerably higher.

There were many players, retired and active, that left Wurm and went to Life is Feudal, when it started.

Generally LiF players were aware of Wurm Online.

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Given the creator if lif was an ex dev of Wurm, I'd say so lol 

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Advertise Wurm on the Epic Games Store, release the Western Freedom Isles, and improve the new player experience.

 

The donkeys and straw bed rolls were great additions but came very late to retain most of the new players from Steam.

 

Wurm has another chance with Epic Games Store, but this time learn what failed in the Steam release of Wurm so that the Epic Games Store release doesn’t make the same mistakes.

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9 minutes ago, Nukacola said:

Advertise Wurm on the Epic Games Store, release the Western Freedom Isles, and improve the new player experience.

 

The donkeys and straw bed rolls were great additions but came very late to retain most of the new players from Steam.

 

Wurm has another chance with Epic Games Store, but this time learn what failed in the Steam release of Wurm so that the Epic Games Store release doesn’t make the same mistakes.

I'll disagree .. donkeys were and still are quite annoying addition that doesn't fit anything, further ruined the mount balance, f2p players could just be allowed to ride regular horses and be capped on speed, bottlenecking them at some % of horse's speed instead of the mess we're atm(animal types, trait separation, impossible trait combinations); low skill and inadequacy to properly utilize fast mount makes much more sense around skill and the need to be premium for better experience.

 

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4 hours ago, Finnn said:

I'll disagree .. donkeys were and still are quite annoying addition that doesn't fit anything, further ruined the mount balance, f2p players could just be allowed to ride regular horses and be capped on speed, bottlenecking them at some % of horse's speed instead of the mess we're atm(animal types, trait separation, impossible trait combinations); low skill and inadequacy to properly utilize fast mount makes much more sense around skill and the need to be premium for better experience.

 

The donkeys are almost worthless now because the amount of new players coming into the game is dwindling. They would have been more valuable during the beginning of the Steam release, but at that time people were even fighting for cows to ride on.

 

One of the main issues during the beginning of the Steam release was the difficulty in finding any livestock like horses, bison, hell horses, etc. Something that can be addressed if they plan to release in the Epic Games Store.

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Epic Games is 48.4% owned by Tencent (or around that, last time I checked a year ago), a holding company subject to to the whims and desires of the Chinese government. I really dont trust EGS with and wouldn't want Wurm near it. No offence, but EGS wouldn't be a wise move. There's been a lot of chinese spyware floating around the gaming market for the past few years, I'd rather avoid anything related to that. 

Edited by elentari
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Lol, tencent has a stake in everything. Don't let your fear of China make you paranoid

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Not paranoid. Simply cautious. China (and pretty much Russia & the US) have had a terrible record this past decade when it comes to spyware, analyzing online activities & buying shares of software companies or outright brokering deals to get all user data. 

 

The EU has some data protection laws that are completely incompatible with many US, Chinese and Russian companies. There are some news websites I can't even visit in the US because they aggressively collect way too much of a visitor's data.

 

Not just that but EGS has an anticonsumer mindset that outright forbids publishers to sell their games on other platforms other than EGS. They bribe developers and companies to release games only on their platform. Wurm is on steam. 

 

A move to EGS wouldn't even be possible at this stage unless you want to completely remove Wurm from Steam and move it to EGS. And that would ultimately accomplish what? 

 

Opening 3 more servers, another landrush, 4000 more players in the first 2 months, then 3 more dead servers at the end of the year?

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