Exploration: Part 1 - Public Testing!

[Stanlee 3,434]

Items dug up inside the chests do not have proximity permissions, enabling others to steal it freely. This has been an issue with Archaeology caches, and persists here. Not major by any stretch - got my doubts it may have come up live ever, but nice to see a fix.

 

The clues are shockingly reasonable on such a small server (8km x 8km), but I have concerns that doing this on a large server like Xanadu be somewhere between "exercise in frustration" and "complete writeoff" - perhaps remedied by better clues on bigger servers, or a second map that appears on the bigger ones that's more zoomed out, or even a "in a the southeast" type deal.

 

 

Thanks to Tronn for spotting the place and making the clues seem a little less scary to me (QL92 clues look like this mess, lower QL and you can see roads and the like, map looks a bit worse in this image due to resizing in photoshop)

[Wulfmaer 413]

With the changes/addition in this client version, it is crashing with a NullPointerException.

 

 

[Budda 2,670]

22 minutes ago, Wulfmaer said:

With the changes/addition in this client version, it is crashing with a NullPointerException.

 

 

 

Thanks, this has been fixed. Will take ~10 minutes before the client is updated.

[Annuile 217]

Big thing that came up was the rewards - They definitely aren't currently worth the effort put into it, especially if they're limited to being obtained purely via MOIs.

I explored a lot, found a lot of maps and chests today, and overall the system seems to work well - Annoyances included seem to be part of the design to mislead you a bit with the map images shown (smudging, incorrect terrain shown in parts etc) but that is all manageable once you figure out the locational tracking system when you examine the map. 

Overall I think it has a really good framework, but dear lord the rewards really need to be reviewed. 

 

Leather, Cotton, Tar, Wemp Plants, Iron Lumps, Chess Pieces, Gems, Sleep Powder, Source Crystals, Charcoal - This appears to be the only obtained items from the chests so far after several are opened. The only things I would take from the chest would be the Gems, Sleep Powder and (maybe) the chess pieces, but those would get redundant pretty fast unless there was something really special about the ones you get from the treasure chests.

 

This was my end result for doing a 91ql map - Something that took 6 stages of me running across the entire map every time, having to fight creatures that took me down past half health while wearing full 90ql drake armor and using a 90ql adamantine huge axe. Every single time I got a new clue, it spawned 4-6 creatures (Including Sol Demons???).  

 

It's too highly tuned with rewards that are sorely lacking as it stands. I think with some more balancing done to the tables it has a ton of really great potential. I'll continue running through more chests, but mechanical issues seem to be fairly stable as of now.

[Aelha 180]

Ok. I'm so frustrated. Its been hours and just the distances like the Fairly far and such are not good enough directions .

[BattleWall 217]

Few Concerns as others who spent hours testing this today. Please stop censoring the rewards. If what is on the test server is not what you plan on releasing let us test the end product. No other game I have every tested censored aspects of an update. Allow us to test the entire thing so that everything can be fixed now instead of when you decide to launch it. 

 

I also believe the directions need to be updated some as well. Make them say which direction from you it is when you examine the map like the Locate Soul spell does. 

 

My overall Opinion on this Update is that it wasn't worth sticking around for so far and wouldn't keep my attention for very long. Locking content behind a Random Number Generator and then possibly to get a low roll at that for a map is concerning. Id rather it not be added to the game in its current state. 

 

If this was supposed to launch on the 31st in a few days I can only imagine how the community would have reacted to what is in place now. Its a great idea for a system in the game but it need a lot of work.

[Archaed 2,280]

15 minutes ago, BattleWall said:

Few Concerns as others who spent hours testing this today. Please stop censoring the rewards. If what is on the test server is not what you plan on releasing let us test the end product. No other game I have every tested censored aspects of an update. Allow us to test the entire thing so that everything can be fixed now instead of when you decide to launch it. 

Do we know rewards are being censored?

 

I think the hints should swap distance with direction, but that's about it. 

Edited May 29, 2022 by Archaed

[Bekador 208]

 

Bug 1: Mined till I got a rare casket, tried to open it but nothing happenend even after several tries, dropping and picking up the map etc.

Fix 1:  Needed to restart the client to get a clue pop-up. 

 

Examples of "Novice" Rank map clues, with screenshots from the first to the last clue including rewards :

Spoiler

 

Map 1:

 

 

Gave up after 1h of searching. Without direction and at least approximy distance its more like searching for a needle in a haystack. Only way to make it half-way usable on bigger servers would be if we put towers on the community maps and that would require an enormous effort by the community. Not worth it for 2-4 leathers and some coal.

 

Map 2:

Clue 1:

 

I was able to solve this clue after a bit of searching. Map parts are easier to solve than clues:

 

Clue 2: 

 

reward: 

 

Map 3:

Clue 1:

 

Solving:

 

Clue 2 QL 3:

 

 

Clue 3 QL 3 map:

 

Clue 3 solved:

 

Rewards:

dissapointing for 2 h search...

 

Edited May 29, 2022 by Bekador

[TheTrickster 2,284]

Second map - an actual map.  These are much more useful than the text boxes.  I did get quite turned around fighting the guardians, though, so it took me 20-30 minutes to find my way back to the dig the dig spot - and that is with cutting down some trees and making log piles and packing the earth on the previous dig attempts.

 

The "You feel you are right on top of it" definitely should be the same range as the actual dig range to find; and directional cues on examine would definitely help.

 

The effort:reward ratio is discouraging.

 

 

 

Edited May 29, 2022 by TheTrickster

[Wulfmaer 413]

Still on second map, in the first go through, and while I dislike being negative current feelings would be best summed up as "this is not the exploration you are look for".

 

The first map took me from the edge of the map a little over half way over. Location found by spending time out of the game comparing the map and map dump, fairly easy as it was just one colour apart from a splodge in one corner and some wavy line - off to the east side of the central steppe. And now onto the next map, below, and "You have a feeling you are very far away from the location."

Lacking any clues as to even an approximate direction / location to look at best is going to be pot-luck. A bit of riding changes it to "extremely far away. A lot of riding, and spamming examine on the map, gets it down to "fairly far away". But, still nothing on the map that looks remotely similar.

 

On server other than the very smallest, this is going to be more trouble than it's worth.

 

-- update --

eventually found the second map location, same area shown in the map dump below - to my eyes the only shape that looks remotely similar is the sand on the southern edge.

Edited May 29, 2022 by Wulfmaer

[Rhianna 892]

4 hours ago, Annuile said:

Big thing that came up was the rewards - They definitely aren't currently worth the effort put into it, especially if they're limited to being obtained purely via MOIs.

I explored a lot, found a lot of maps and chests today, and overall the system seems to work well - Annoyances included seem to be part of the design to mislead you a bit with the map images shown (smudging, incorrect terrain shown in parts etc) but that is all manageable once you figure out the locational tracking system when you examine the map. 

Overall I think it has a really good framework, but dear lord the rewards really need to be reviewed. 

 

Leather, Cotton, Tar, Wemp Plants, Iron Lumps, Chess Pieces, Gems, Sleep Powder, Source Crystals, Charcoal - This appears to be the only obtained items from the chests so far after several are opened. The only things I would take from the chest would be the Gems, Sleep Powder and (maybe) the chess pieces, but those would get redundant pretty fast unless there was something really special about the ones you get from the treasure chests.

 

This was my end result for doing a 91ql map - Something that took 6 stages of me running across the entire map every time, having to fight creatures that took me down past half health while wearing full 90ql drake armor and using a 90ql adamantine huge axe. Every single time I got a new clue, it spawned 4-6 creatures (Including Sol Demons???).  

 

It's too highly tuned with rewards that are sorely lacking as it stands. I think with some more balancing done to the tables it has a ton of really great potential. I'll continue running through more chests, but mechanical issues seem to be fairly stable as of now.

 

With a 91ql map I would ahve thought a hota statue or scrap of drake or / and scale at least, Def not worth coming back to the game as it is in its current state.

[Darklords 2,238]

The rewards are something we will be revising for sure, thanks for the feedback so far will get some information about proposed changes to that up soon.

 

[Tpikol 1,057]

i got a challenging map to find a guard tower and after an hour i never got further than "you are close", got tired of runing in circles and stopped. that was just the first of 3 to 5 clues.

[Lethyria 161]

I  had a difficult map to find, I forgot to screenshot it but it was just inn the middle of a forest with no discernable features while running around, the map had some dark spots but I couldn't relate them to any obvious terrain. I found it by using the distance indicator which is quite easy tbh.

[Aleck 316]

Here's how it went for me so far:

1) Spent 30 minutes mining until I finally got a map:

2) Followed it to this area of the map:

3) Uncovered this clue:

4) Eventually figured out that was here:

5) Ran around spamming examine on the map until I found a massive area that was "a stone's throw away" and proceeded to dig, and dig, and dig, and dig, and dig. I started packing squares to try to narrow down where to dig next. It didn't help.

6) After more than an hour of digging in circles across a pretty vast swath of land, I gave up.

7) Final screenshot of some of the ground I covered. There's more, but I'm lazy and it's late. Every packed spot was described as "a stone's throw away" from the treasure:

 

 

First impression: I had more fun grinding channeling to 90 on multiple alts than I did "exploring" here. It would have been helped a little if the rewards weren't revealed to be little more than trash and a hit of sleep powder, but even if I had the promise of getting a rare bone I wouldn't want to do this.

 

I really wanted to like it, but after spending more than 3 hours testing it with the above results, all I'll say is that if it goes live in its current form, any maps I find will probably just be sac food.

 

 

Suggestions: 

1) Narrow the "You feel you are close" ranges significantly or give some additional information, somehow, of where I need to look for the thing. It isn't fun to spend hours failing a "dig for treasure" check over and over and over again in a 50x50 tile radius that is supposed to be only a stone's throw away from the mark.

2) Get rid of the text hints completely or make them target much more significant & easy to locate structures, or upgrade into maps for their follow-up clues.

       I'm seriously glad I didn't get a note hint in my experimentation - my SO spent hours wandering the steppes to find and examine one guard tower, just to be sent into the forest to try to find another guard tower to examine. That's something I wouldn't have tried at all. Also, the hints are significantly more difficult than the maps, especially when targeting fairly insignificant buildings like guard towers. Is the goal to make this as hard as possible?

3) As others have said, the rewards are not even remotely worth the effort.

 

 

Okay, I went back and poked around a little bit more after venting my frustrations above, and I think I've found an actual issue in regards to #1..

 

In the screenshot below, the tile my horse is standing on is where I ultimately found the second clue (which gave me a third map, of course, because I've gotta really work for that 27ql leather scrap):

 

Anyway, here is the possible bug:

All of the packed tiles said they were a stone's throw away. ALL of them.

Meanwhile, the tile I'm standing on to take the screenshot said I was merely "very close", which is also what it said clear on the other side of the low hill on the horizon.

The system is almost completely dependent on spamming 'examine' to hot-and-cold your way to the proper spot to dig (which is already sad), but on top of that it's extremely inconsistent on what it counts as hot vs cold.

 

Okay, so after figuring out how badly the "stone's throw away" bit was treating me and discovering the "You are right on top of it" message, I found the actual chest stupidly quickly, even though it was in the woods without much in the way of landmarks:

 

After hours of frustration and swearing that I'd never want to do this on the live server, here was my reward:

 

Edited May 29, 2022 by Aleck
Added a bunch of stuff instead of triple-posting

[Lisimba 779]

1 hour ago, Wulfmaer said:

 

 

I can see what it's going for, the green shades match up pretty well with the tree density:

 

[Aleck 316]

44 minutes ago, Aleck said:

First impression: I had more fun grinding channeling to 90 on multiple alts than I did "exploring" here. It would have been helped a little if the rewards weren't revealed to be little more than trash and a hit of sleep powder, but even if I had the promise of getting a rare bone I wouldn't want to do this.

 

I really wanted to like it, but after spending more than 3 hours testing it with the above results, all I'll say is that if it goes live in its current form, any maps I find will probably just be sac food.

 

 

Suggestions: 

1) Narrow the "You feel you are close" ranges significantly or give some additional information, somehow, of where I need to look for the thing. It isn't fun to spend hours failing a "dig for treasure" check over and over and over again in a 50x50 tile radius that is supposed to be only a stone's throw away from the mark.

2) Get rid of the text hints completely or make them target much more significant & easy to locate structures, or upgrade into maps for their follow-up clues.

       I'm seriously glad I didn't get a note hint in my experimentation - my SO spent hours wandering the steppes to find and examine one guard tower, just to be sent into the forest to try to find another guard tower to examine. That's something I wouldn't have tried at all. Also, the hints are significantly more difficult than the maps, especially when targeting fairly insignificant buildings like guard towers. Is the goal to make this as hard as possible?

3) As others have said, the rewards are not even remotely worth the effort.

 

Anyway, here is the possible bug:

All of the packed tiles said they were a stone's throw away. ALL of them.

Meanwhile, the tile I'm standing on to take the screenshot said I was merely "very close", which is also what it said clear on the other side of the low hill on the horizon.

The system is almost completely dependent on spamming 'examine' to hot-and-cold your way to the proper spot to dig (which is already sad), but on top of that it's extremely inconsistent on what it counts as hot vs cold.

 

Finally double-posting to highlight these items and add the below...

 

Second impression: After figuring out how easy this is to cheat via riding in circles clicking 'examine' until I get the correct message, I like it both more and less.

On the one hand, I'd be willing to do that once in a while for a sleep powder, though I am still far more likely not to bother - especially on the note clues vs the map clues.

 

On the other hand, it seems very gimmicky now that I've approached it that way and somehow less satisfying than if I had fought through the rage and frustration of an hour ago with nothing more than a vague picture to go by.

 

 

I'm not sure what to suggest on how to fix this.. Implementing a timer on how often we can examine would fix the gimmick while greatly increasing the frustration.

Edited May 29, 2022 by Aleck

[elentari 2,660]

9 minutes ago, Aleck said:

On the other hand, it seems very gimmicky now that I've approached it that way and somehow less satisfying than if I had fought through the rage and frustration of an hour ago with nothing more than a vague picture to go by.

 

This morning I was thinking about how the difficulty of maps works vs rewards. 

 

The maps we get are indeed very small but that would make sense only for the "high end" level ones. 

 

Novice maps and the next tier of difficulty could give you maps but "Scaled up" to let's say half a map grid on a 8x8 server so the player has a pretty decent idea of where to go. This also makes sense within the context of the world and the update. Someone wanted to protect something but also wanted to make sure he'd find it in the future so he made a more detailed map about an area. This will give most players a more decent direction to go to.

 

Now the high end maps, it makes sense that the pieces we get are scaled down to very small maps since the owner obviously wanted to keep them hidden and protect them. That's how I view how map difficulty should be handled.

 

Scaled down / scale up the resolution of maps vs server size. Novice difficulty maps could either present an entire map grid or half a map grid to at least give you an idea where to go. 

[Aleck 316]

So here's a bit more information, second-hand this time, describing my understanding of my SO's experience with an 11ql "note" clue rather than an actual map:

 

First clue:

 

Took her about an hour and a half of circling the massive steppe to get lucky and find the correct tower. Rewarded with this:

 

 

That was 2.5 hours ago. I've had time to lose my mind packing dirt and venting on here while she's been charging aimlessly back and forth through thick forest trying to find the correct guard tower.

When I figured out that we could examine the map to get a hot/cold reading, it still took her most of an hour to start closing in on "You are very close" rather than simply "You are far or very far" away.

After that, it was a quick matter of following the pings to finally find the correct guard tower in the middle of dense woods and get her reward:

 

One of the suggestions I saw earlier was to give a direction indicator when you are too far away. Definitely want to throw that out there again. Having an indicator of "You are very far away and think it's probably to the east" would be far more helpful than racing across a thousand tiles to just see "You are very far away" over and over.

 

That would save a fantastic amount of frustration for these notes, especially.

Edited May 29, 2022 by Aleck

[Ajala 581]

This sounds like it's going to totally suck on Xanadu.

[Aristia 37]

37 minutes ago, Ajala said:

This sounds like it's going to totally suck on Xanadu.

Or Independence really. Is there any consideration on making it less of a nightmare on the larger servers?

[Darklords 2,238]

Just now, Aristia said:

Or Independence really. Is there any consideration on making it less of a nightmare on the larger servers?

 

40 minutes ago, Ajala said:

This sounds like it's going to totally suck on Xanadu.

 

We are looking into changes to better communicate where you need to go, but also note that there is distance limits they can be it will not pick any spot on the entire server it will pick something within a range depending on the difficulty. I understand that is not the only concern there and we are working out the best route forward based on all the feedback so far we appreciate everyone taking the time to test it out and letting us know about these kind of things. We will be making changes till it feels right and will let everyone know when/what those changes are on test within the next few days.

[Baloo 709]

Well, being 70 and totally dumb when it comes to using any cryptic instructions, I am not able to log into the test server, either on steam or WO - tried on steam to add -c and nothing happened and could not make a new client - then i tried just having -c and lost the original long string of stuff - so am now stuck somewhat.  Have no idea how to select test client on WO laucher - can't find the option for that.  Does any of this have to do with being on Linux?

[Tpikol 1,057]

1 minute ago, Baloo said:

Well, being 70 and totally dumb when it comes to using any cryptic instructions, I am not able to log into the test server, either on steam or WO - tried on steam to add -c and nothing happened and could not make a new client - then i tried just having -c and lost the original long string of stuff - so am now stuck somewhat.  Have no idea how to select test client on WO laucher - can't find the option for that.  Does any of this have to do with being on Linux?

i use linux and just made myself a little script to launch the wurmlauncher with this "./WurmLauncher -c" just havin that on the same folder is the launcher and using it opens the options to choose clients.

i just make a text file and renamed it to .sh

[Drogos 515]

12 minutes ago, Baloo said:

Well, being 70 and totally dumb when it comes to using any cryptic instructions, I am not able to log into the test server, either on steam or WO - tried on steam to add -c and nothing happened and could not make a new client - then i tried just having -c and lost the original long string of stuff - so am now stuck somewhat.  Have no idea how to select test client on WO laucher - can't find the option for that.  Does any of this have to do with being on Linux?

What I did, was open the folder where I installed Wurm, then right click "Open terminal window here", then typed: 

./WurmLauncher -test

Edit 1: Just tested, I copied the "Wurm Online" launcher on my desktop, and then just pasted a copy of it, renamed that copy to "Wurm Online Test", and then right click "Edit launcher", and added in the -test in the command there. Seems to work well also (using xUbuntu).

Edited May 29, 2022 by Drogos