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Darklords

Development Update - 2023-01

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The new year is well underway and I know everyone is eager to see our plans for it. We wanted to update everyone with the timelines we are currently working with while we finish up the final details of our Road Map and Holy Sites. I hope everyone has had a great start to the new year so far and here is our planned schedule for things coming up in the next few weeks.


 

Road Map

 We are currently putting the finishing touches on our roadmap and are planning to have it out early next week. As mentioned this year we want to focus on improving parts of the game that have long needed it. These include things like totally redoing our new player experience, bringing the tutorial into the main game and removing the need for a dedicated tutorial server. This will allow players to learn the game where they plan to build instead of a long tutorial at the start trying to cram as much information in a short period as we can. We also would like to improve upon the process of selecting a server, hopefully giving players more information about which server would interest them the most to start on. This new tutorial will walk you though the basics of Wurm and guide you through building a small house and furnishing it with some basics such as bulk containers and forges/ovens. We have plenty more lined up which we will be going over in more detail next week with our roadmap post.


 

Holy Sites/Goblin Camps

We will be reopening public testing for Holy Sites in the coming days with some better mechanics to keep them spawned in this time. Our current tentative release date, should the testing go well, will be around February 9th for Holy Sites with Goblin Camps following it up early in March. We appreciate everyone's patience with us here as we finish up the polishing of these features to make sure they are something people will enjoy on launch.


 

2023 Map Dumps

As with every year we will be releasing our yearly map dumps in February for everyone to see all the amazing progress everyone made in 2022 so stay tuned for those soon.


 

Defiance Player Made Kingdoms (PMK)

In PvP News we will be enabling PMKs on Defiance soon along with the Holy Sites update in February.  This will come along with some restrictions on them to keep base kingdoms viable and not overrun by the new kingdoms.

  • You will only be able to make/expand PMK influence on the center most strip of land shown below.
  • Any tiles outside of this zone will not allow towers or villages from player kingdoms to be placed.
  • Normal kingdoms may expand into the PMK zone, but once you have founded a PMK you will not be able to expand outside this area.
  • This area provides no other benefits/penalties other than blocking expansion outside it for PMKs.

 

Feedback thread for the PMK changes.

 

defiance_pmk_map

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PMK's won't be viable because of the stipulated restriction's. 

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41 minutes ago, Darklords said:

In PvP News we will be enabling PMKs on Defiance soon along with the Holy Sites update in February.  This will come along with some restrictions on them to keep base kingdoms viable and not overrun by the new kingdoms

 

The map is too restrictive. Also, BL being rebalanced was discussed months (years?) past. Is this still in the works as well? I'm not sure we'd PMK given this proposition anyway, but I also hate being forced into BL if we do PMK, because they are so overpowered compared to WL.

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1 hour ago, Darklords said:

 

Defiance Player Made Kingdoms (PMK)

In PvP News we will be enabling PMKs on Defiance soon along with the Holy Sites update in February.  This will come along with some restrictions on them to keep base kingdoms viable and not overrun by the new kingdoms.

 

yeah, pmks at this point would be such a disadvantage, this map really makes no sense. can't tower to the wl/bl while default kingdoms can deed near them? i'd just swap to hots for libs absolutely broken spell set instead

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Throw any feedback for the PMK stuff into this thread, we can def reevaluate the layout.

 

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And on the PvE side...

1 hour ago, Darklords said:

Road Map

 

These include things like totally redoing our new player experience, bringing the tutorial into the main game and removing the need for a dedicated tutorial server. This will allow players to learn the game where they plan to build instead of a long tutorial at the start trying to cram as much information in a short period as we can.

Wasn't this just Haven's Landing? Unless you mean having a new tutorial that you go through at a starter for the most basic of stuff and then having a new tutorial you can start when you find a spot you want to build at?

 

1 hour ago, Darklords said:

Holy Sites/Goblin Camps

 

We will be reopening public testing for Holy Sites in the coming days with some better mechanics to keep them spawned in this time. Our current tentative release date, should the testing go well, will be around February 9th for Holy Sites with Goblin Camps following it up early in March. We appreciate everyone's patience with us here as we finish up the polishing of these features to make sure they are something people will enjoy on launch.

What came of discussions around balance? There was a lot of significant issues raised in initial reveal and the elaboration post that came after. I don't expect a list of possible changes here or anything, but will there be a fresh post for any changes done before going live or with the roadmap? Holy sites were so heavily slanted in one gods favour, with only one coming roughly close to that level via pure uniqueness of what it offered.

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Although I'm glad to see PMK's being released, it's too late and too far gone. And now it comes with really stupid map restrictions??

PMKs should have been enabled from the start.

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3 hours ago, Darklords said:

We are currently putting the finishing touches on our roadmap and are planning to have it out early next week. As mentioned this year we want to focus on improving parts of the game that have long needed it. These include things like totally redoing our new player experience, bringing the tutorial into the main game and removing the need for a dedicated tutorial server. This will allow players to learn the game where they plan to build instead of a long tutorial at the start trying to cram as much information in a short period as we can.

 

 

who else misses the tutorial we had two overhauls ago in like 2013 where you walked around a short one-way course. You'd walk around and open a well to drink, fill a lamp post with tar and light it, climb up an area and trudge through some tar tiles. At some point you'd get a wound and have to mend your wounds with some cotton. I really miss that one and thought it did its job a lot better than these new ones

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2 hours ago, Madnath said:

And on the PvE side...

Wasn't this just Haven's Landing? Unless you mean having a new tutorial that you go through at a starter for the most basic of stuff and then having a new tutorial you can start when you find a spot you want to build at?

 

What came of discussions around balance? There was a lot of significant issues raised in initial reveal and the elaboration post that came after. I don't expect a list of possible changes here or anything, but will there be a fresh post for any changes done before going live or with the roadmap? Holy sites were so heavily slanted in one gods favour, with only one coming roughly close to that level via pure uniqueness of what it offered.

 

24 minutes ago, rangerklypf said:

 

who else misses the tutorial we had two overhauls ago in like 2013 where you walked around a short one-way course. You'd walk around and open a well to drink, fill a lamp post with tar and light it, climb up an area and trudge through some tar tiles. At some point you'd get a wound and have to mend your wounds with some cotton. I really miss that one and thought it did its job a lot better than these new ones

 

The idea is for this to be more of a guide to starting the game that you do on an actual game server you plan to play which will reward you with small things similar to journals as you progress with a new nicer UI for it which we also hope to extend to journals. Then we hopefully are leaving you off with a decent foundation to stick around Wurm after learning all the basics as we can include many smaller things that the old tutorials would just make it to long and boring to throw at you all at once. Also helps for people who normally skip the tutorials as this will give them some incentives to actually do these learning steps and automatically show them to new players without needing to go into menus with the new UI element for it.

 

On the Holy Sites note we will be sure to update the notes with changes when the testing is back up for it.

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Finding friends

 

I think a lot of new players (but by no means all) come to Wurm after a recommendation by a friend, and very often they want to meet up with their friend(s) in those first few hours - but haven't a clue how to contact or find them.  They probably have to use a 3rd party communication method to ask their friends how to get together in Wurm.  Many end up as lost souls asking CA_Help where their buddy is - and on finding out - next ask how to change servers.

 

The new friendships made in the first few hours, days and weeks of play, often end up being the longest lasting, and very often it's these friendships that keep us playing years later.  To many, the Add Friend system is not clear, obvious or intuitive but rather obscure, and again, calls to CA_Help asking how to add a friend are very common from new players.  

 

Very often the new player's real word friend is not even online, and friends can not be added while offline.  So while the new player may know the friend's name and maybe even the deed name they need to find, they are still left to try to make their way to an unfamiliar location on an unknown server without a guide.

 

Friendly focus.

 

I think the Add Friend and inter-server communications need an overhaul with the new player in mind. 

 

Inter server chat should be activated by default - I *think* this is the case currently, but it should be part of the tutorial to send a basic /tell PM and get a response, perhaps using an NPC/AI Agent on Golden Valley which could be messaged like a player and will respond back with helpful information, in a similar way to the way the /help command does now.

 

Add Friend:

  • I would like to see the ability to right click menu > Add Friend, by right clicking on a player name in the PM chat window, in the same way you can Use a name. 
  • I think there should be more feedback on the Status of the friend's request - how the friends request is progressing, whether the other person has yet to respond, has accepted, if the request was incorrectly typed (try again) or failed for some other reason (not the fault of the new player). 
  • It might be good if the Add Friend system would *not* time out so soon due to inactivity or quit if the other party is offline, but would instead stay active for maybe a week especially when either player is offline. 
  • There could be a Status tab for each friend request which pops up for the players next time they log in. It would not show the online/offline status of the other party until the friends request is accepted.

I think this might help to reassure the new player that their friends request is being taken seriously, and not just thrown back at them as a fail.

 

On PvE, it might be good if the real world friend could create some sort of beacon that stays active on their deed even when they go offline, so that the new player can portal once directly to that beacon even if the mayor is offline, in a similar way to a karma teleport spell.

 

Just some ideas! :) 

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Huh? Did I miss some inside joke with the way that PvP map is zoned? This is a joke, right??

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2 hours ago, Drayka said:

Huh? Did I miss some inside joke with the way that PvP map is zoned? This is a joke, right??

 

I think the ideea is that pmk's usually are formed by strong accounts and then the template kingdoms get choked out by them so they want to give template kingdoms plenty of breathing space so that the new players have a guaranteed area to play and expand on.

 

The only issue i see here is that the template newbies would have to go thru pmk lands if they wanna reach other template newbies to fight with but at the end of the day you cannot perfect balance something especially when it comes to pvp.

 

So i reckon is sort of a compromise of how to not discourage new players on new toons from playing Defiance while allowing pmk's to be formed on it.

 

So now that they restrict the pmk's area they could atleast allow them to have both BL and WL followers and priests in them (teehee)

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BTW meditating, does that fit somewhere in the list of things to get a buff/rework for the better any time soon?

 

 

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44 minutes ago, Finnn said:

BTW meditating, does that fit somewhere in the list of things to get a buff/rework for the better any time soon?

 

 

 

I've never needed to use SB for the full 2 minutes? I always activate @ 3 Seconds, works a charm, as of yesterday evening

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9 hours ago, Darklords said:

 

 

The idea is for this to be more of a guide to starting the game that you do on an actual game server you plan to play which will reward you with small things similar to journals as you progress with a new nicer UI for it which we also hope to extend to journals. Then we hopefully are leaving you off with a decent foundation to stick around Wurm after learning all the basics as we can include many smaller things that the old tutorials would just make it to long and boring to throw at you all at once. Also helps for people who normally skip the tutorials as this will give them some incentives to actually do these learning steps and automatically show them to new players without needing to go into menus with the new UI element for it.

 

On the Holy Sites note we will be sure to update the notes with changes when the testing is back up for it.

 

I dig it, sounds good to me! And cheers for the update on Holy Sites, hoping we can get something with some banger balance for the other gods

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Information overload is a concern; though, at the same time a tutorial is also when the game is being shown off.

 

Dont tell people it gets better after X amount of Y, dazzle em with the good stuff early. Convince that player the game is worth investing time and energy into.

 

By the same token the tutorial and beginning areas should show the most polish and attention to detail.

 

Also don't forget to have options for skipping sections or the entire tutorial.

Edited by Karrde
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I love all these suggestions for friends and wanted to add another.

Make it so when someone DOES actually figure out how to send a friend request for it to be more noticeable.

With all the trash in the event log (and by trash i mean things I don't need to see) it quickly disappears, specially if you are in a area with a few people doing other things.

If some new person tries to add you as a friend and then is just gets ignored they make think that THEY are actually being ignored. In truth we don't even see the request in the first place.

Ping it on the screen like when a deed disbands, give it a sound like when you get a PM or better yet move it to its own tab like PM's.

 

Spoiler
16 hours ago, Muse said:

Finding friends

 

I think a lot of new players (but by no means all) come to Wurm after a recommendation by a friend, and very often they want to meet up with their friend(s) in those first few hours - but haven't a clue how to contact or find them.  They probably have to use a 3rd party communication method to ask their friends how to get together in Wurm.  Many end up as lost souls asking CA_Help where their buddy is - and on finding out - next ask how to change servers.

 

The new friendships made in the first few hours, days and weeks of play, often end up being the longest lasting, and very often it's these friendships that keep us playing years later.  To many, the Add Friend system is not clear, obvious or intuitive but rather obscure, and again, calls to CA_Help asking how to add a friend are very common from new players.  

 

Very often the new player's real word friend is not even online, and friends can not be added while offline.  So while the new player may know the friend's name and maybe even the deed name they need to find, they are still left to try to make their way to an unfamiliar location on an unknown server without a guide.

 

Friendly focus.

 

I think the Add Friend and inter-server communications need an overhaul with the new player in mind. 

 

Inter server chat should be activated by default - I *think* this is the case currently, but it should be part of the tutorial to send a basic /tell PM and get a response, perhaps using an NPC/AI Agent on Golden Valley which could be messaged like a player and will respond back with helpful information, in a similar way to the way the /help command does now.

 

Add Friend:

  • I would like to see the ability to right click menu > Add Friend, by right clicking on a player name in the PM chat window, in the same way you can Use a name. 
  • I think there should be more feedback on the Status of the friend's request - how the friends request is progressing, whether the other person has yet to respond, has accepted, if the request was incorrectly typed (try again) or failed for some other reason (not the fault of the new player). 
  • It might be good if the Add Friend system would *not* time out so soon due to inactivity or quit if the other party is offline, but would instead stay active for maybe a week especially when either player is offline. 
  • There could be a Status tab for each friend request which pops up for the players next time they log in. It would not show the online/offline status of the other party until the friends request is accepted.

I think this might help to reassure the new player that their friends request is being taken seriously, and not just thrown back at them as a fail.

 

On PvE, it might be good if the real world friend could create some sort of beacon that stays active on their deed even when they go offline, so that the new player can portal once directly to that beacon even if the mayor is offline, in a similar way to a karma teleport spell.

 

Just some ideas! :) 

 

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First were plans for VR in Wurm.

 

Then, skill for making maps, in game, where people used to play without maps, learning their surroundings.

 

Now another tuturial revamp. Couse people love using tutorials.

 

Who make those decisions?

 

Why precious time of small development team is wasted on those things? Like Wurm has no bigger problems.

Edited by Wilczan

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too restrictive. PMKs are meaningless if this is the case.

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What is the problem, if somebody cares to explain... since only small bit of the player base plays on pvp maps.. what does the planned change break or prevent from existing so far gameplay?

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1 hour ago, Wilczan said:
Now another tuturial revamp. Couse people love using tutorials.

 

Who make those decisions?

 

Why precious time of small development team is wasted on those things? Like Wurm has no bigger problems.

 

 

Wurm has horrific player retention. On Steam, just 13% of new players complete the tutorial - 87% (!!!) quit before then or skip it. A better measure of staying in the game is joining a village - only 3% of new players join a village, of which some of those will be alts of existing players - so Wurm retains maybe fewer than 3% of people who try the game.

 

Old School Runescape (OSRS) is a good point of comparison, it's an old and relatively intricate MMO a bit like Wurm - 60% of OSRS players complete the tutorial, and 32% complete the "Cook's assistant" quest (i.e. manage at least a few hours of gameplay). 16% complete the much harder Dragon Slayer quest (which requires 10-20 hours of work, easily, and not everyone does it.)

 

Wurm's new player retention is terrible, including when compared to other games. Let's put it another way:

 

More than 97% of people who think this game is worth trying get scared away within the first few hours of gameplay. This is at least 5-10x worse than comparable MMOs like Old School Runescape.

 

Wurm maybe has 1k to 2k premium players right now, but it will not survive long-term without getting new players through the doors by improving new player retention.

 

Not only will new players keep Wurm alive, it's also great for the game in many ways, like:

  • More funds to pay more developers
  • A better in-game economy
  • Larger, more exciting events

 

In summary:

 

As a long-time player, I think improving the new player experience is essential. More new players = Wurm survives (and thrives) for longer, and that benefits everyone. I miss ~10 years ago when Wurm routinely had ~2k players logged on at once, it was so much more exciting.

 

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8 hours ago, Docterchese said:

I think improving the new player experience is essential.

 

it is essential, however key thing here is none of the players joining for the first time expect a game in 2023 to look like a time jump back to 1990s with Nintendo like game graphics and there's no cure for that ever in wurm, unless Wurm-2 is released on a different platform (anything but java) to start with that again I don't see happening ever

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2 minutes ago, Skatyna said:

it is essential, however key thing here is none of the players joining for the first time expect a game in 2023 to look like a time jump back to 1990s with Nintendo like game graphics and there's no cure for that ever in wurm, unless Wurm-2 is released on a different platform (anything but java) to start with that again I don't see happening ever

 

I really, really don't think graphics are as important as gameplay.

 

Case in point: Minecraft has sold 238 million copies, which makes it the most sold game in history. Minecraft's graphics are much more basic than Wurm.

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1 hour ago, Docterchese said:

 

I really, really don't think graphics are as important as gameplay.

 

Case in point: Minecraft has sold 238 million copies, which makes it the most sold game in history. Minecraft's graphics are much more basic than Wurm.

 

Yes, but Minecraft has a better art style, and that does matter.

Wurm wen't with a "realistic"(for the early 2000's) look, which looks not all that great in 2023.  

And no engine is going to change that with an art team of 1-3 people.

So that's something that can't be much done about.

 

However we can deal with that pesky tutorial, and that's what the dev team is putting their focus on.

Which is great :)

Edited by Timoca

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