Darklords

2023 Roadmap

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10 hours ago, Darklords said:

On the mechanics in general, the main issue is we don't want to make this change let you pick and choose the best enchants you cast during a day and put them on a few selected items as that will greatly increase the rate those tools come into the game. It's tough to just throw something like that out there and its a balance we do need to consider with changes like that as they can get out of control quickly and can be near impossible to revert by the time the issues become apparent.

Tbh I think you shouldn't bother with this feature at all at current system if that's your goal. I would just remove it from the list and abandon development as I don't see it being used or useful.

Whole priest system and enchanting is also very far from ideal and adding this I see no point.

Can you name us some scenarios where you think this will be used?

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11 hours ago, Darklords said:

 This is also only for item enchants so any other spells they have/we may release would not be available from this ever.

Do I understand well that this change will not only apply to spell gems but nerf "item enchants", i.e. tools, weapon, armour, materials enchants in general?

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I quite enjoy the thought about new players finding a scroll, gem or anything other that contains 32coc og 28lt for example. Heck, give them one of these items to start with that contains information on how to acquire more. Cap should be somewhere 20-35 power. Power of 0 is just offending. :p 

They should drop from all hostile mobs i think, and not be combinable in any way or form.

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9 hours ago, Rocklobster said:

 

If you can't give us what we, the players who pay to keep wurm running, want...then why bother with this change at all? Like CD is saying, there are so many more important areas to spend time on rather then a new feature that no one will care about.

 

The sort of people who find getting enchants or soliciting the services of a priest hard are also the sort of people who are unlikely to post on the forums. It's important to remember that forum users are not a representative example of the entire user base.

 

  

3 hours ago, kochinac said:

Tbh I think you shouldn't bother with this feature at all at current system if that's your goal. I would just remove it from the list and abandon development as I don't see it being used or useful.

Whole priest system and enchanting is also very far from ideal and adding this I see no point.

Can you name us some scenarios where you think this will be used?

 

Yours is the perspective of a player who is highly engaged with the community and familiar with the economy - many people would prefer not to have to directly interact with a priest and send items away for enchants. I can definitely see people wanting to buy enchants from a merchant instead.

Edited by Ols
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12 minutes ago, Ols said:

Yours is the perspective of a player who is highly engaged with the community and familiar with the economy - many people would prefer not to have to directly interact with a priest and send items away for enchants. I can definitely see people wanting to buy enchants from a merchant instead.

Uncontrary i'm extremly introverted and despise being force to have interaction with people for having things... But the proposed system is dumb just as current enchanting system is dumb. Why would anyone waste gems for dubious results, or buy excesive amount of spell gems when he can get guaranteed spell power at guaranteed price at priest? Having a way to buy specific power of enchant would be much better, my point of view is either provide that or don't bother...

If anything they should try to improve enchanting system to make it better instead of working on this...

Edited by kochinac

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And the main argument we don't wanna make cherry picking enchanting for weapons easy, like is that really that bad thing? Enchanting weapons is terrible expirience, needing several priests in exact order with no option  to dispell targeted enchant... If anything having to apply enchants on weapons via gems instead of traditional way would improve gameplay... If you want to balance it out idk, make it more expensive, give it not 100% chance to apply, leave 1% shatter chance on applying,  make it incremental like imbues... everything is better than just lazy copyng a mess of bad system. I really don't think this game should be about playing roulette instead of working up to goal slowly.

Edited by kochinac

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I agree with some of the concerns brought up about the spell gems. I am mostly worried that they will not be used at all as it would be much easier to just send the item to be enchanted to the priest. If it requires a gem, this increases the cost of these spell gems making the less desire able to use.

 

Thank you Darklords for clarifying why we should be able to determine the power when casting on the gem. I agree that it would make enchanting in certain situations easier than it is now.

 

But I still think that the way these gems are currently planned, they will be very underwhelming. Many people might not know what it looks like to get 90+ casts, let alone 100+, but it is brutal even with really high skills. So someone might buy 10 of these gems from a 99channelling priest and maybe get one 90+ but possibly not any.

 

Maybe if the spell gems were a more rare resource then that might balance it and allow for determine the power when casting on the gem. For example, maybe you can only cast on a star gem. 

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if the goal is the let new players find some of this gems so they can experience enchants early on, why not just make them an item players can find (with whatever power limit you set)  and not craftable at all? seems like it would be easier to do because then you wouldnt have to worry about how it affects priests.

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I wanted spell gems for strong wall and maybe few other spells , not for enchants .

Yes some players have allot of gems , do they plan to add the extra cost of that to the enchant , so costing more then just having person send a item over ?

As for tutorial , add back the first version they had 10 years prior it was ok , much better then what is today   .

Just go read steam forum about what people think  also .

 

I am not impressed with whats going on , it may be good but feels empty not sure why ?

It is as 1 step forward and two back .

 

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22 hours ago, Ecrir said:

 

Even then the new player can end up with some seriously bad luck, like a 0 power LT cast. Is that really what a new player with a lack of funds would want to receive by spending the little bit of money he/she has? I could easily see some rage quitting from an outcome like that and even my near 90 channeling priest occasionally gets such casts. Meanwhile there are merchant threads where you can get a guaranteed 75+ LT cast for 20c....

 

So yeah, such rng gambling is nothing but a trap for new players, especially when taking current market prices into account (I looked at the south prices since that's where I play).

 

Take into account gem prices and with the above cast price example from south freedom islands I really don't see where these spell gems would even fit in the market. Due to the rng you'd have to price them below the cost of blank gems just to compete with the pricing for guaranteed casts...


I’m not familiar with the SFI market but this change doesn’t sound as applicable to SFI like you said.  It would definitely be used more on NFI from a pricing and population standpoint.   Another option is to reduce the difficulty when applying a casted gem on an item to offset the additional risk and rng.  Like a hidden difficulty reduction if that’s even possible.  Many aspects of the game are rng.      I don’t stand to benefit from this change at all, as I don’t own priests on freedom nor play the markets.  As long as players understand the risk and there’s some sort of disclaimer when selling these,  I don’t see this as game breaking or predatory as ppl are making it out to be.

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On 2/5/2023 at 4:32 PM, Darklords said:

Spell Gems

Spell gems will be a new item we are introducing later this year to make enchants more accessible to newer players and add some QOL for players selling enchants to players. These gems will allow you to cast an item enchant onto them, recording your channelling level and any faith bonuses you had at the time and locking it into a gem. Another player can then use one of these to cast on an item as if they were you; this will function like a normal enchant with the same chance to shatter an item as the casting priest and will roll the spell power when using the gem not when creating it. We also plan to have versions of these capped at 30 power enchants drop/come from sources in the game to give newer players a chance to get some basic enchants while still leaving the market open for good enchants needing to come from priests. This one may be a little controversial and we would love to hear some feedback on it.

 

I think this is a great idea, though I would also like to suggest that some new spells be added as well (given they can be dropped, the naysayers can no longer really argue it's priest gated content!)

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7 hours ago, Ols said:

Yours is the perspective of a player who is highly engaged with the community and familiar with the economy - many people would prefer not to have to directly interact with a priest and send items away for enchants. I can definitely see people wanting to buy enchants from a merchant instead.

 

In which case those people would still be better off just buying fully enchanted items from merchants. Even if they already have (partially) enchanted items it would still save them a lot of money unless they win the lottery. Worse is that those players are probably the easiest ones to scam too as they're less engaged with the community and thus likely less aware of how bad of a deal those gems are.

Edited by Ecrir
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What if spell gems that dropped from treasure chests, missions, (whatever they're coming from) had a chance to have two enchants that wouldn't normally be allowed together, similar to multi-rune items from archaeology? These would be limited in cast strength, and would only be able to be dispelled from the item they're placed on.

Potential to be broken, but would be interesting lol

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10 minutes ago, Ecrir said:

 

In which case those people would still be better off just buying fully enchanted items from merchants. Even if they already have (partially) enchanted items it would still save them a lot of money unless they win the lottery. Worse is that those players are probably the easiest ones to scam too as they're less engaged with the community and thus likely less aware of how bad of a deal those gems are.

 

I agree.

Those players would be easier to get "scamed" as long they are splashing the cash into this game, but most probably aren't and are quiting as soon they figure out how much they have to spend on stuff if they don't wanna make bricks all day like they are usually being told on how to make money in game.

 

All those new players we try to retain can't wait to overpay for spells in gems and that kind of stuff so they don't have to make another 4 alts and pay like 40euro per month  to unlock all the aspects of the game and get a chance to afk grind all in hope to get a chance to use those spells before they rage quit/ burn out.

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On 2/8/2023 at 7:45 PM, Darklords said:

The reason its not just directly transferring enchants to those comments is that would make tailoring a perfectly enchanted weapon far to easy as you just pick 2 of the best enchants and add them to an item. A low quality item that would normally shatter extremely easily trying to get multiple or even single 100 casts would now be trivial.

 

That makes sense, but isn't that also pretty easy to address by limiting the power of an enchant that can be stored in a gem? For example by capping the max to [gem ql - x] where x could be 10, or 20, etc? Then you cannot use it to make top enchanted gear, you'd still need the current enchanting methods for that.

 

Another alternative could be to let the gem become less effective when used on items with 1 or more enchants. For example the more enchants on the target item the less effective the transfer of an enchant from a spell gem could be. With this option you could still use a 100 cast spell gem and put it on a blank item, but you wouldn't be able to put it on an already enchanted item without the final result ending up weaker than what was on the spell gem.

 

 

With either of the above two approaches it would also become possible to introduce even high power spell gems to loot pools without making the enchanting of perfect weapons trivial.

 

There's probably more ways to prevent the issue mentioned, without turning the entire thing into an rng gamble fest.

Edited by Ecrir
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QOL Idea - Make the ability to rename animals a role we can give to members of the deed not just the mayor.

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I'm back from 3 years of stop wurming since the developement of steam servers, with what was at least a "controversial" operation as a matter of management of bugs and in-game exploits, tied to...well, we all know what...i see the new staff have some people i know ingame to be very nice people, so i hope things changed, and took back my toon in Harmony, that was buried 3 years in a cave that then collapsed... had to mine my way out like a lich.

I've read almost all the posts and it feels like some players really never played the game: most of the answers are hypersemplifications to just make the game super-fast and super-easy, a lot of them have concepts coming in from more modern games wich, more often than not, will destroy the spirit of the game itself, making it like the thousands of the same that spans the net these days...crafting stations? really? I still want to be able to craft my stuff wherever i am, so NO, thanks but no.

/longpost, prepare yourself

The roadmap looks nice, with the only controversial part about gem enchants, wich need a truly good polish of both the system AND  the spells before coming live, else it may break an awful lot more than it fixes...for instance, some people here are right that some spells stored in gems may become dangerous for the game (light of fo, but also strongwall could lead to plenty of griefing...), and is almost pointless for enchants. Gems (or particular items) in my opinion could store "minor" enchants that may raise the enchant level of a tool by a function of the total, up to 100, otherwise should be limited to a certain difficulty or power of spells and nothing more, leaving the higher level spells only to priests...

For building and crafting: make the small cart work as a container you draw materials from, in the crafting order of the crafting menu, even by coding standards should be easy to implement and will ease both building and crafting by a lot.

A lot of the game parts needs some love and polishing: remove long standing bugs and nonsenses like inability to leash back a pet or animal that was unleashed on a someone else deed, find some use for large saddle or remove it from the list, fix the boots volume if it was not already fixed, collision of leashed animals with some items that unleash the animal, rafts beign what they are now, basically pallets, and so on...

A lot of skills needs some reasons to be in game: thatching is one, wich was addressed at least a bit but still needs a lot more uses like the ability to make baskets and other containers (big light container like large amphorae but cannot carry fluids?).

Animal husbandry and taming needs both some more chances to get skill ticks, and taming need a reason to exist: AH may let choosing basic traits to breed so we have a  chance that a group of traits is chosen in preference during breeding...Taming should be reworked like AH to have pets have a number of points wich gives access to tricks, like for example a sprint wich raises speed for a short time, resistance to pain that lessen the  damage the creature gets, special attacks and maybe a raise in stats or things like that, at least there will be a point in having a pet wolf or bear besides beign a magnet for aggro.

Cooking and recipes: no need for 500k recipes if all are exactly the same as a meal, some recipes should give minor bonuses, maybe giving temp affinity to the father skills for example, else is an overcomplication that almost no-one found useful in game since it was made., making the skill have an humongous potential completely wasted for game purposes.

Ropemaking: add a way to salvage stuff maybe to get some more skill, else it's still make bowstrings ad libitum. Low issue tho

Healing has always been kind of a problem as the implements to heal oneself are very limited, except for priest enchants and spells. Adding minimal equipment for healing, even basic stuff like an ointment for burns (incidentally giving us some more skill ticks in alchemy?), a stitch patch made from cloth and silver needle for cuts, a paste for bites should give us the bits to have things that works like covers, maybe a bit better, that will grants us more first aid ticks, and more items to craft with various skill is always better.

Metallurgy needs some expansions, maybe adding glass items to the making: grind sand to make raw glass will also raise milling, another neglected skill, and glass containers may just be a cosmetic addition but funny to have, maybe useful for some alchemy. Metallurgy is also used in RL to purify metals, tho adding resources to purify bronze, steel and electrum to make them in better ql a tiny bit easier, could be a thing.

Jewelrysmithing will be relevant once you change the other two damage spells for frost and fire to behave similarly as poison damage: either change all the damage of the weapon into cold/fire, or add a relevant enough part that both the spell AND the jewelry will be at least a bit useful to have, else Bloodthirst and poison will always be the meta, and BT it's immensely more power than firebrand: maybe also by adding affine jewels, like a necklace with a ruby will give 30% more damage from firebrand.

Meditation need a bit of rework since the only truly useful paths are two: love and knowledge, and the latter can be done AFTER you did part of the first and gained enough skill while having relevant abilities from the path. Even PoP is meh except for 1 or two powers, the others are not existant almost, and to think medi should be an endgame skill... lol

Stealing could be utterly changed into another skill, i am not even sure anyone uses it in pvp, tho would be cool if it will be useable in any way, but dangerous, so...
Lockpicking is a thing that i dunnow why is not useable: once a character is not online for a while, everything he have should be lootable (say 4-6 months?), this will solve the damn cart and ship problem, giving a chance to retrieve the vehicle, wich may get damage in the picking process, and the chance to recover rare vehicles left behind...or just destroy them, at least we will have a LOT less clutter to look at.

There are a couple spells never used, and there's a reason for that: it's better to look at them like you wish to do with runes, because anything in game that is not used, is a waste of resources somehow, even if the use is purely cosmetic.

And that's it for me.

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35 minutes ago, Finnn said:

@Darklordswhat happened to the map dumps, is there ETA for the release

Should be fairly soon.

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I love you devs!

Is there any chance that "ride" keybind will be added? That would be so smooth to jump on horse together with "start_leading" bind.

Edited by ZealotSE
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nvm :) 

 

Thanks for the Roadmap!

Edited by Muse

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On 2/15/2023 at 3:56 PM, Darklords said:

Should be fairly soon.

Um, kinda wondering if this is a 'western world' soon, or more like when I lived in Jamaica and the answer to 'when?' was always 'soon come' which meant anything from a few hours to a few months? Was kinda hoping it'd be with today's latest patch...

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7 hours ago, DaletheGood said:

Um, kinda wondering if this is a 'western world' soon, or more like when I lived in Jamaica and the answer to 'when?' was always 'soon come' which meant anything from a few hours to a few months? Was kinda hoping it'd be with today's latest patch...

The map dumps are done and being reviewed, will come out along with a Valrei International post next Monday.

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15 hours ago, Darklords said:

The map dumps are done and being reviewed, will come out along with a Valrei International post next Monday.

Sweet! Thanks! :)

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When will SFI and NFI be connected, perhaps by portal idk?

 

Feels like enough time has lapsed since NFI launched.

 

What's the hold up?

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