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Etherdrifter

Unique Changes Poll

Unique Poll - Transparant Vote  

181 members have voted

  1. 1. Which player group do you belong to?

    • I have a premium toon on North Freedom Isle and I do not have a full set of scale/drake
      46
    • I have a premium toon on North Freedom Isle and I have a full set of scale/drake
      17
    • I have a premium toon on South Freedom Isle and I do not have a full set of scale/drake
      41
    • I have a premium toon on South Freedom Isle and I have a full set of scale/drake
      53
    • I have a premium toon on Both and I do not have a full set of scale/drake
      12
    • I have a premium toon on Both and I have a full set of scale/drake
      7
    • I do not currently have any premium toons but have a full set of scale/drake
      0
    • I do not currently have any premium toons and do not have a full set of drake/scale
      5
  2. 2. How often do you take part in private hunts?

    • Frequently (a few times a month or more)
      13
    • Often (once a month)
      15
    • Sometimes (once every 2--3 months)
      14
    • Rarely (once a year)
      19
    • Very Infrequently (once or twice in the last few years)
      33
    • Never (I don't get invites)
      87
  3. 3. What changes do you believe should be implemented for uniques

    • Reduce Spawn Frequency
      13
    • Increase Spawn Frequency
      46
    • Split a set amount of loot between slayers only
      40
    • Distribute the hide/scale by a set amount to everyone in local (for example everyone gets a set 0.05kg of material, regardless of number of people fighting the unique)
      32
    • Distribute the loot to everyone on server, like the ritual rewards do, allowing to claim it for 24h from slaying, similarly to global cast reward sleep bonus
      33
    • Remove the rules and replace them with systemic solution, much like was done with the highway system.
      38
    • Announce when uniques spawn
      59
    • Mark unique's location in some way (maps/beacons)
      41
    • Change nothing
      32
    • Other (note it down in comments)
      21


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Unique hunting is a pretty contentious issue - and a lot of people have differing points of views.

 

Based on this comment to a thread, I've created the poll above. 

 

I've added in 2 extra parts which identify which player group someone belongs to (cluster, attendance of private hunts, and possession of the unique prizes such hunts offer (scale/drake)).  This is mostly to get a feel for the response group.

 

Taking part in this poll is anonymous, since I know some folks will want to hide their views for fear of retribution/accusation.

 

 

 

Edited by Etherdrifter
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Speaking as a player who has tried many times and never found a unique in the years I've played, and also as a player who very rarely sees an invitation to any private slayings, I still believe uniques are a grand prize of sorts that should rely on the principles of capitalism for resolution. If you're lucky enough to find one and maybe (probably) even put tons of time into finding it, great, you get to choose what to do with it. I would absolutely love to get more invitations to private slayings, but that's not anything I can demand when that's someone else's prize they found. They can choose to call over a close group of friends, make it public, hell, even just ignore it and leave it be, but it's ultimately finders/keepers when it comes to this.

 

Just like finding a gold coin laying out in the middle of the woods. Should the finder be required to evenly give everyone else a portion of it? NO! That is their find, and freedom and capitalism allows them to benefit directly. That's why folks like Stanlee and company are a rare but very special anomaly in that they often share with others something valuable they found that otherwise does not have to be shared by any means of logic. When they find that "gold coin", they make an announcement and gather everyone to share it; even though they could absolutely and very fairly choose to keep it all for themselves.

 

The only thing I can personally think of that might make uniques less of a source of contention but also keep them a high value is something like I mentioned in another post: 

 

Maybe just make uniques a highly personal player experience. Only through some certain actions (or even just sheer luck) can a unique become available and visible to a single player through their own actions. Some storyline lore could explain the whys and hows. Then, they can communicate this "sacred knowledge" to anyone they want for help with the kill. Those players can then see the unique and hit it and whatnot, but no one else can see it or interact with it. Would this solve stealthing complaints and others about the system?

 

The mechanics are already sort of there when you see and interact with illusions on the insanity path that others around you cannot.

 

Just throwing ideas.

Edited June 21, 2021 by MordosKull

 

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im not surprised with the results hah I voted in a similar fashion to the majority.

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I believe best fitting option is missing, the.. "lol, nothing ever changes with this, why bother talk about it";

it's kind of self-explanatory, I do not see how I'd fit into any category without way to add comment of take comments into account

 

Is there a point to this poll besides giggles and pointing at random numbers?

 

Problem is always ignored, supported by random people who never show in private kills but always support them and people claiming there's no problem but they are present at few or more private kills, main player base remains without opinion or thinks* there's good balance.

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Beating a dead horse wont make anything change , been like this for years .

One reason was RMT before it was removed.   LOL ya  sure....

I dont see why you dont just make other mobs drop different types of hides or scale .

Make them on par to drake hide or scale , give them each a different look , that is what people seem to be going for  .

That way drake or dragon slaying will be more of a ya i can do it and journal update .

Maybe that will finally put this subject to rest for good .

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I think this pole pretty much sums it up. Particularly the response to question #2.

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It's a shame there's no question "do you actively hunt" because I think that would be very helpful. The problem with this "poll" is that the questions carry inherent bias, with nothing about how often someone finds uniques, hunts, participates in public slayings, or any of the sort. I'd like to see the inherent bias removed and one built around measuring effort/involvement more than "are you a have or a have not?" 

 

Ultimately, the devs don't live under a rock, and I get that some feel it's dominated by a select few. I don't agree with the timed slaying thing and I feel that the majority that want it just want ANYTHING done to stop the perceived hoarding, but I'd like to see mechanics improved to be more fun. 

 

 

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1.I have a full set of drake but i had to buy mine only 1 scale still sets in a LMC i got from 1 public slaying.

2. Rip this system down rebuild it it sucks plain and simple played for 12 years on SFI never got invite never able to join public slayings don't recall many on indy but with a full time job makes it hard to join.

Rift system have been able to join many times between full time job and had some fun. either change it to include all with the chance or strip it from the game.

3. stop making new threads about the same issue when there is one already going please.

 

If it was based on the same system mechanics as a rift it could include other people but you would have to make several rift types to include everyone reasons are.....

 

  • Not everyone has the FS to hit them as it stands so new mechanics need to be added
  • Need to remove private slaying and remove what is kind of a monopoly on a mob
  • A point system could be added to have a market for other items to earn
  • Could give x amount of points to the person who discovers the mob location. Could include a spyglass as a discovery option tool
  • When mob has been spotted the person who spotted it is added to the world msg example...Deathknight has spotted a green dragon sleeping with a FS of 61-80 the dragon will wake in 7days 12hrs an 22 mins Last spotted near Deed.
  1. World message dragon has been spotted with a FS from 40=60 

If you have under or over if try to hit the dragon you get msg the dragon seems to be invulnerable to your attacks. results you can't get any loot or skill nothing from being there.

Drops and amount are based on the difficulty of this mob

  1. World message dragon has been spotted with a FS from 61-80

If you have under or over if try to hit the dragon you get msg the dragon seems to be invulnerable to your attacks. results you can't get any loot or skill nothing from being there.

Drops an amount would be better do to this mob being more difficult to kill for its fight level

  1. World message dragon has been spotted with a FS from 81-100

If you have under an try to hit the dragon you get msg the dragon seems to be invulnerable to your attacks. results you can't get any loot or skill nothing from being there.

Drops and amount would be max do to this being the hardest difficult mob level to kill.

 

  1. What this does is removes alts sucking up rewards.
  2. Stops the dragging of more toons to the area than needs to be causing lag issues.
  3. Allows all Levels above 40 FS to participate in a endgame mob.
  4. Gets rid of GM involvement.

Below is a what if reward

40-60 player with most dmg gets a rare random dragon armor piece but is not awarded any dragon scale

61-80 player with most dmg gets a supreme random dragon armor piece but is not awarded any dragon scale

81-100 player with most dmg gets a Fantastic random dragon armor piece but is not awarded any dragon scale

 

Yes I have a set of drake hide did i earn it no had to buy it which sucks cause i would have rather earned it but do to the mechanics that are inplace i had no choice. Id love to see this changed cause paying 660 us dollars to get a set for a fantasy game that at any time can go under for world reasons is a load of bull.

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1 hour ago, Archaed said:

It's a shame there's no question "do you actively hunt" because I think that would be very helpful. The problem with this "poll" is that the questions carry inherent bias, with nothing about how often someone finds uniques, hunts, participates in public slayings, or any of the sort. I'd like to see the inherent bias removed and one built around measuring effort/involvement more than "are you a have or a have not?" 

 

Ultimately, the devs don't live under a rock, and I get that some feel it's dominated by a select few. I don't agree with the timed slaying thing and I feel that the majority that want it just want ANYTHING done to stop the perceived hoarding, but I'd like to see mechanics improved to be more fun.

 

Literally this, though I'm sure people will just answer that they do even though they're scared to go to the other corner of their map. Poll's pretty useless without having an actual list of all the things that'd influence the input of information.

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7 hours ago, Archaed said:

It's a shame there's no question "do you actively hunt" because I think that would be very helpful.

3 question limit ;)

 

"Hunt/Do not hunt" is a little binary - does active hunting mean you visit old rift sites in the hope of exploiting rng?  Or does active hunting just cover "go far away from deeded hotspots" (which means all hermits who travel actively hunt).  Does it mean "someone told me the spawn window and I go for a walk during that time", or does it mean "I have a free alt at all old rift sites I quickly log in and walk around with"?

 

There is a lot of variation there, and I suspect I have also missed a lot of definitions.

 

In essence, asking "hunt actively or not" tells us nothing useful since we can't nail down intended player behaviour; do we want players camping old rift sites by design, or does a player just wanting to find a dragon when exploring count?

 

5 hours ago, Madnath said:


Poll's pretty useless without having an actual list of all the things that'd influence the input of information.

It has mostly told me that older players are the ones predominantly answering (the high proportion of set owners and SFI players), that the players answering are split between fairly evenly between players who have a full set of scale and those who don't.  So, we can conclude that the sample of 51 is fairly biased.

 

Any changes made would be controversial (there is little agreement).  Returning announcements and systemic rules being the least controversial changes.  "No change" being a clear minority (11/51).

 

Overall, it has told us that a poll in-game on the matter is likely to yield better resules.  As it stands, the server population is just too different from the game's population and too divided to provide a clear guide for player preference.

 

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Apparently, reading this topic, it turned out that if you never find uniques you lazy and scared and you should shut up because you don't know what you talking about and your opinion doesn't matter. That would remove the inherent bias.

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In all honesty no matter what changes they make its obviously going to cause significant upset to someone. I think the current system leaves an awful lot to be desired and absolutely could be changed to encourage more community interaction, but at the same time I'm not sure the payoff is worth the amount of drama it might well generate. The current system is not perfect but at least we know what we get from it, some forum threads every few months and the occassional public slaying mixed in with the private ones.

 

Personally I couldn't care less about scale armor or the thrill of slaying but I do like the idea of more events that bring people together and feel the game is sometimes lacking these. That being said the answer to this does not have to be uniques. There could be new types of armor, weapons and other beneficial things introduced to other new events that are more community friendly.

Edited by HawkHawk
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If you live on SFI and never killed a unique you need to come to Release and get on some tabs. Stanlee and his crew put on public slayings and players give items for loot rolls. Last time around close to 50s of player donated silver, sleep powders, skins and a spyglass were donated for the slaying. Plenty of opportunities on SFI for unique slaying, tomes and bones for just showing up and participating. 
 

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Personally, I used to do slayings all the time on the SFI but have hardly done any on the NFI. There's no actual point in question 1 that is of my situation.

 

The problem is, as much as I want to say the system could use an overhaul (which I do think it could), it's hard to really pinpoint what that overhaul should be. What would be the goal of the overhaul? Would it be to create more public slayings? Would it be to remove the desire for private slaying groups? Would it be to lower the value of scale and drake sets (which are expensive on the NFI especially)? Like what exactly do we want to achieve out of it?

 

We need to identify the problem (if there is one) before we can think of a solution; however, since this is such a contentious issue, it makes it really hard to actually pinpoint that problem. You are going to have the people from private slayings benefitting from those slayings likely wanting them to continue. You have people who haven't been in private slayings but might want to go to them saying otherwise. It's such a weird and unique mechanic in this game that has historically been associated with "greed". So then is "greed" the actual problem instead or is that something just naturally going to happen no matter what we do?

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The only real flaw I personally see with uniques is that they are not sufficiently terrifying.

 

If we can't make them the sort of thing which nearly anyone would dread the thought of coming face to face with, there ought to be something which nobody in their right mind would ever want to encounter, and would require a concerted effort by a large group of people to do away with for the common good.

Edited by Avaxas
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Options I think this poll missed: 

  • The finder has complete control over loot distribution
  • The finder controls the major loot items, but not who gets other things
  • Only players who damage a creature get rewards from the kill
  • The finder gets a reward for finding the beast regardless of anything else
  • Increase deadliness of creatures to the point that any player might be killed by one
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On 11/5/2022 at 1:14 PM, Yumi said:

We need to identify the problem (if there is one) before we can think of a solution; however, since this is such a contentious issue, it makes it really hard to actually pinpoint that problem. You are going to have the people from private slayings benefitting from those slayings likely wanting them to continue. You have people who haven't been in private slayings but might want to go to them saying otherwise. It's such a weird and unique mechanic in this game that has historically been associated with "greed". So then is "greed" the actual problem instead or is that something just naturally going to happen no matter what we do?

 

I think the problem is pretty much:

  1. Slayings are either private/exclusive/elitist — or — there are so many leeching alts that the game slows to a crawl. There should be a happy medium.
  2. Rules about claim, and about loot drops, mean that GMs are frequently required to intervene. These things should tend to run themselves.
  3. Between dragon scale, strange bones, and magical tomes, the stakes are too high. People should be happy to share in community events, not jealously guarding secrets.
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Another issue if you want to only allow "attackers" to get rewards is that wurm has a coded attacker limit to any mob. Meaning, for all intents and purposes you can have 30 x 50 FS players that have engaged the mob and 30 x 90 + FS players that can't hit it due to the limit of attackers. 

 

You either get in or you don't in a combat situation. 

 

Personally I don't like the current system. I've been in this game for a decade and on forums for about that much. I see threads about the unique situation popping about a dozen times a year x 10 years and it's always the same song. People do not like the system. It's elitist, it's random, it paves the way to people monopolozing  the market and personally if I would look at this from a game designer standpoint it actively denies content to people unless they pay RL money for it or its silver equivalent. (yes RMT is gone but I have no doubt people still do deals under the table on paypal or w/e). 

 

And the argument of "go out and look"....I absolutely hate that argument. It has become so disingenuous and biased at this point that only the people who are in the best hunting groups ever give that argument, people who have more time to play than others or people who simply have become to used to always winning that they forget the wurm unique experience for the rest of us "peasants" is god awful. I've been searching for uniques on deliverance for nigh on 4 years total. Four years. FOUR. How many have I found so far? Nada. And I do keep track of spawn timers based on last unique kill.

 

Most people will never find a unique no matter how hard they look. 

 

Why? Because they are penned within the hour when they are found by a group and naturally said group will keep everything hush hush. 

 

So what does this do to a general player experience? People give up looking. Realistically how many hours do you expect a general player to look when he fails to find any uniques? 10 hours? 20? 50? 100? There is a point where any rational player will say 'screw it", these groups are clearly not something to mess with. And as always, groups vary in quality and size. The bigger and well funded ones will always have an edge over the others. 

 

I don't like this system. I don't like any type of design that shifts content that should belong to all into the hands of the few. People don't have an "equal chance" in finding a unique no matter how nice that sentence sounds in your head or in theory. There is no actual equality of opportunity. From what I hear from various people this is one of the issues on NFI that a lot of hunts feature the same names over and over again. Tell me that is a "fair" system. 

 

Lemme put it this way. If it's pure RNG 100% to find a unique the same as it's pure RNG to make a fantastic anvil, but if a player would spam 20 fantastic anvils in a row, wouldn't people raise an eyebrow at that and wonder if there's something broken behind the scenes? 

 

This system is broken. I've said it for 10 years and as usual, I expect another thread like this to pop in another month.

 

Then another month after. 

 

We can discuss this till the cows go home but realistically it's on the devs part to figure out a different system. We've had discussions for 10 years and not much has really changed, has it? Other than disabling spawn announcements, the system is the same as it was a decade ago pretty much. 

 

Don't want to sound doomy and gloomy, but at this point what use are these discussions? There's been 1000 different suggestions regarding uniques. 10 years. Put that into perspective. And what has really changed since then? 

Edited by elentari
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A single person will never be able to compete with Alliances of 10+ people who have timed the killing of uniques so they know the rough day range the unique will spawn, and then will cover more ground every day because they know the rough areas where uniques will spawn. It might take you 2/3 hours to cover a small server, while it takes an alliance 30 minutes.

 

What makes this situation worse is that you no longer know when the uniques have spawned. So a single person could try every day, a few hours a day to go to the likely spawning areas, but they will be spending 10x more time trying to cover the same areas that an alliance dedicated to hunting uniques can achieve. The system is anti single player.

 

This is an observation, this isn't a suggestion to change anything.

Edited by demondan
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15 hours ago, elentari said:

We've had discussions for 10 years and not much has really changed, has it?

 

And how many of this discussions ended up with people being hounded out of conversation for not agreeing with the current thing

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@Tor: Isn't that bit pathetic? The poor ones disagreeing with the (whichever) "current thing" being "hounded"? Mind that the "current thing" changed a lot over the years.

@Demondan: I fail to see the advantage of announcements. They will cause the experts, already sitting in their startholes, rushing out even faster. Actually, the most valuable resource in any MMO is not money (which can help a lot, certainly, like in RL), but disposible time. That's why students, unemployed, pensioners etc. have an edge even over whales (which are often people with more resources but less time). And more time may and will be used for more searching, and thus more finding. Experience and knowledge come in, additionally, knowing where to search.

@Sheffie: Complaining about "leeching alts" and too many participants does no good. The alts, as well as the others, contribute to colour and diversity during events, and are not just "leeching", e.g. holding sermons etc. Insisting that only a handful of players are allowed to participate is no valid point, Wurm must not be a "no more than 50 chars at a time" game. Performance problems during mass events have been addressed and have improved. And the rules are not so hard to understand and follow, GM intervention is not that frequent, and special to Cadence with its somewhat toxic culture which is not restricted to unique slayings. And I fail to see too many secrets left in unique slayings. In fact, SFI is ways more relaxed when it comes to uniques, which demonstrates where the real problem lays.

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49 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

@Tor: Isn't that bit pathetic? The poor ones disagreeing with the (whichever) "current thing" being "hounded"? Mind that the "current thing" changed a lot over the years.

 

Don't think that changed even a little, over the decade. Effectively it's all the same.

Don't ask me, if you wanna say something about something or call it pathetic, just go on and do it.

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5 hours ago, Ekcin said:

@Demondan: I fail to see the advantage of announcements. They will cause the experts, already sitting in their startholes, rushing out even faster. Actually, the most valuable resource in any MMO is not money (which can help a lot, certainly, like in RL), but disposible time. That's why students, unemployed, pensioners etc. have an edge even over whales (which are often people with more resources but less time). And more time may and will be used for more searching, and thus more finding. Experience and knowledge come in, additionally, knowing where to search.

@Sheffie: Complaining about "leeching alts" and too many participants does no good. The alts, as well as the others, contribute to colour and diversity during events, and are not just "leeching", e.g. holding sermons etc. Insisting that only a handful of players are allowed to participate is no valid point, Wurm must not be a "no more than 50 chars at a time" game. Performance problems during mass events have been addressed and have improved. And the rules are not so hard to understand and follow, GM intervention is not that frequent, and special to Cadence with its somewhat toxic culture which is not restricted to unique slayings. And I fail to see too many secrets left in unique slayings. In fact, SFI is ways more relaxed when it comes to uniques, which demonstrates where the real problem lays.

 

Whales always have an advantage in pay-to-win games; they are literally designed that way.  The only exception that gives an advantage over whales is "information" - in this case knowledge of spawn cycles is giving a group unfair advantage.  You're not going to compete with that, no matter how much time you have.

 

Alts are a controversial issue - personally I think they only detract from the game and are proof that the mechanics are designed to promote whaling rather than cooperation.  However, that is a personal opinion.  A player with lots of alts who gets an extra bonus is generally intended; a player with lots of alts being given a license to actively steal from another player is probably not intended outside of PvP.  In the case of a finite loot pool, alts effectively mug other players up to a point (after which, the minimum amount is reached), and so this is probably not intended!

 

This is not an "old cluster vs new cluster" issue - without decent folks like Stanlee who organise public slayings you'd be in the same situation on both clusters.  Trying to paint it thus is just pointless conflation.

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6 hours ago, Ekcin said:

@Demondan: I fail to see the advantage of announcements.

 

That's on you.

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