PVP Server Idea

[Synjor 466]

Controversial idea time

 

Introduce a new PVP server to take the place of Defiance and Epic.

 

The major difference with this new server is that it will reset yearly. This would open up pvp to new, evolving scenarios as well as new systems for rewards and incentives, while also providing a fresh battleground for players after some time.

 

The Server

16kmx16km map featuring one starter island for each kingdom and a mainland approximately the size of an 8kmx8km map.

 

Changes similar to what is seen on Defiance.

Spoiler

Maximum digging slope has been reduced to 150.

Maximum surface mining / tunneling slope has been reduced to 60.

There now needs to be a minimum of 3 tiles between mine doors.

Meditation levels cap out at 9, no scaling sotg.

Hate Damage Bonus now Increases lockpicking chance.

Element Immunity now only lasts 5 minutes down from 30.

Rare vehicles will no longer increase the speed.

Rare horse gear now takes less damage instead of granting a speed bonus.

Drastically reduced speed bonus from the rare speed trait

Horses give birth faster.

Traders have stopped selling some items like resurrection stones.

No teleports like karma recall/farwalkers.

Hell horses and Unicorns cannot be hitched or ridden.

No champions on this server.

Raid windows: 4 hours starter island, 8 hours mainland

A central HOTA zone, with no deeds, buildings, or mine doors allowed.

Random treasure chests and Roaming Depot

The White and Black lights will be much harder to destroy.

Locate artifact will have a cast power dependent chance to locate an underground artifact closest to the player instead of a random one.

Global message when the artifact recharge window opens and closes.

Weapon potions like potion of acid will instead craft one of the other skilling potions.

Village warbonus will now reduce the damage your walls/fences take from siege and no longer increase players damage.

PvP server player count only updates around every hour.

Local list will only display same kingdom players

Locate souls will have a reduced range, this will now include locating corpses.

Off deed reinforcements will have a much higher chance to break when using the disintegrate spell.

Messages like lost link/left the world/logged in will only be shown to people in your own kingdom.

 

Upon first crossing over, a players' starting skills and characteristics are set to x.33 of what they have on Freedom (characteristics having a minimum of 19.5 and a maximum of 25.) This is done to largely level the playing field to start, while still slightly rewarding players for their activity freedom side. After their first crossing, skills must be trained separately from freedom. Coin banks are shared between this server and Freedom. Fatigue and Sleep bonus pools will not be shared.

 

Throughout the year, various metrics revolving around pvp participation will be tracked. These could be as simple as death tab participation, kd ratio, hota/depo captures, to tower creation/destruction, deed drains, kills on enemy deed, kills defending deed, etc. There are plenty more options, but the general goal would be to measure a players participation. Rules prohibiting illegitimate farming of these metrics would be needed. As the year goes on small adjustments could be made and events could be held to help drive pvp should things stagnate or population dwindle. For the last few weeks of the year, raid windows could be increased or completely removed allowing all out war among the kingdoms.

 

At the end of the year, after the server has closed players could receive a slight skill transfer to reward grinding on pvp. They would also receive points based on their participation metrics similarly to Jackal, which could be spent on Freedom for a variety of prizes. Moonmetals, sleep powders, challenge masks and statues (specifying which year and their top metric,)  unique skins, unique titles, and more. Get creative. Rewards could change on occasion. 

 

It would be best to condense the pvp community to one active server. Chaos could remain as a more hardcore pvp environment, as well as for the PMK system. This server would offer players a cyclical pvp system to partake in and have some incentive Freedom side for doing so (while not having to risk anything they’ve worked for on Freedom.) This would be a great chance for players to return to the game, as well as new players to hop in to try pvp and actually have a shot.

 

Also, a good time to release this would be whenever NFI/SFI are linked. (why not soon)

 

 

Now argue

Edited May 5, 2023 by Synjor

[Trash 194]

Introduce a new PVP server to take the place of Defiance, Epic and Chaos.

[Carmichael 687]

46 minutes ago, Trash said:

Introduce a new PVP server to take the place of Defiance, Epic and Chaos.

This.

 

But remove raid windows, as nice as they are. They're also just as dumb.

[Sinnjinn 509]

24 minutes ago, Carmichael said:

But remove raid windows, as nice as they are. They're also just as dumb.

 

so I have to be online 24/7 to defend my deed? No thanks. If you're gonna remove raid windows you would need to make it DRASTICALLY more difficult to raid.

 

EDIT:  As to the OP.  There are some really great ideas here, and some that I'm not very fond of.  For instance, I don't think I would like having to grind separately for Freedom and PvP, (especially since you'd have to re-grind every year)  However, I would be in favor in increasing the skills that don't transfer, like all combat skills, and not just fight.

 

Edit of my edit:  I get what you're trying to do.  You want to incentivize people to be on the PvP server more, and not just grind on Freedom and portal over for fights.  How about something like a passive 10% skill bonus to accomplish the same thing?

Edited May 5, 2023 by Sinnjinn

[Carmichael 687]

1 minute ago, Sinnjinn said:

 

so I have to be online 24/7 to defend my deed? No thanks. If you're gonna remove raid windows you would need to make it DRASTICALLY more difficult to raid.

Yeah, I'd reduce the treb damage by like 50% at least

[platinumteef 2,202]

16 minutes ago, Carmichael said:

This.

 

But remove raid windows, as nice as they are. They're also just as dumb.

 

just inverse it, i think setting an 8 hour window so you can get some damn rest or whatever is probably good enough, nobody wants to defend in the middle of the night, but as they are they're too restrictive for time zones

[platinumteef 2,202]

Just now, Carmichael said:

Yeah, I'd reduce the treb damage by like 50% at least

 

thats because you've never trebbed a deed in your life and don't realize how easy it is to defend against them lol

[Sinnjinn 509]

4 minutes ago, platinumteef said:

 

just inverse it, i think setting an 8 hour window so you can get some damn rest or whatever is probably good enough, nobody wants to defend in the middle of the night, but as they are they're too restrictive for time zones

 

That's great if you don't have a job, or a family, or a life.

[platinumteef 2,202]

2 minutes ago, Sinnjinn said:

 

That's great if you don't have a job, or a family, or a life.

 

time zones hello

 

its a pvp server, not melody

Edited May 5, 2023 by platinumteef

[Sinnjinn 509]

2 minutes ago, platinumteef said:

 

time zones hello

 

its a pvp server, not melody

 

I'm sorry, maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying.  I THOUGHT you were saying have an 8 hour window where you CAN'T be raided.  My response to that is that it still requires me to be prepared to be in front of my computer 16 hours a day.  Almost impossible for anybody with a job, or a family.  

 

If you were saying something different, then I apologize, but I'm lost.

[Carmichael 687]

I'd still say remove it, you shouldn't solely be defending your deed anyways

[Sinnjinn 509]

2 minutes ago, Carmichael said:

I'd still say remove it, you shouldn't solely be defending your deed anyways

 

I disagree.  I really think people should be the difference between a raid being successful or not.  If you're not gonna have raid windows then I need to build my deed well enough that you can never raid it

[Oblivionnreaver 5,175]

3 minutes ago, Sinnjinn said:

My response to that is that it still requires me to be prepared to be in front of my computer 16 hours a day.  Almost impossible for anybody with a job, or a family.  

you uhh, have more than 1 person in a kingdom and have notifications set up? "you have to be at your computer 16h a day on pvp" sounds like something i'd hear on ca help

[Carmichael 687]

20 minutes ago, Sinnjinn said:

 

I disagree.  I really think people should be the difference between a raid being successful or not.  If you're not gonna have raid windows then I need to build my deed well enough that you can never raid it

I'm saying it shouldn't only fall on you to defend. That's why you have groups, and various other players in different time zones.

Edited May 5, 2023 by Carmichael

[Sinnjinn 509]

44 minutes ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

you uhh, have more than 1 person in a kingdom and have notifications set up? "you have to be at your computer 16h a day on pvp" sounds like something i'd hear on ca help

 

I'll admit I'm still pretty new to PvP, and still have a lot to learn.  Does it only take 1 person to defend a deed?

[Deltadoggg 74]

I think for the current player base of PvP servers, Raid windows are a good idea, if servers were merged and kingdoms had a decent group. It could potentially be something to discuss to increase the raid window, or remove it

[wipeout 1,355]

Instead of merging chaos into the bunch and shutting it down just offer a portal up from chaos starter deeds to this new pvp server and problem solved(just make sure the portals are outside the starter deeds) 
As for raid windows it has never made sense why a gameplay mechanic should keep you safe like that "oh there are 2 big groups of pvpers left, well lets just set it to counter their peak play time" the idea has always been stupid and silly
300 steep dirt walls do the job so much more and really are not hard to climb over once you bother grinding your climbing and body stamina a bit so never saw the need for 150 either

The idea sounds fun of a yearly reset but it is just a bandaid fix to the ever present problem of what keeps a person interested in wurm pvp and what benefits does it have over normal play on a pve server for the player itself besides getting to poke the other person with a bigger stick

To make pvp fun and engaging you need numbers you need the freedom and risk of being raided at any time you need a balanced set where deeds can be made tough to raid but not impossible but wurm lacks these and defiance has even more restrictions and less benefits then chaos does making it a dumbed down version that just clearly isnt entertaining enough for people in the long run given how often these topics pop up.

Just if something like this happens leave chaos alone and if anything throw a portal or something on the server to connect it up and watch how people come over for 2-3 months before they all disappear again and the same issue appears as always.

Wurm pvp needs to become rewarding enough and risky enough to make it exciting for those who breath pvp to love it and those who want to be weekend warriors to enjoy it and those who believe they wont like pvp to try it out and enjoy it but this just isn't it its a band aid fix to the idea of "what's the issue with defiance why are we loosing players what can we do to have more players" without really looking at WHY pvp dies on every cluster
 

[Karrde 342]

Why get rid of Chaos? Its the OLDEST active map left. Its so old even Notch has worked on it.

 

The history! The archeology!

[Idlamn 297]

Don't get rid of Epic, please, I like my spot there.

Make home servers more carebear, and make both way skill transfer somehow, so people have something to show for if they want to occasionally play on Epic.

 

Resetting in this game is a bit daunting. I'd hate to see Serenity reset like Affliction did, even though it's not the active Serenity I played on many years ago. Once a year is too long, people will get attached. If it's some short term servers like a week or a month from where you get some stuff to show back home then yeah. But then again better do this in a way back on the Freedom servers.

Maybe optional no-loot pvp or something, dunno.

[Synjor 466]

On 5/5/2023 at 6:10 PM, Trash said:

Introduce a new PVP server to take the place of Defiance, Epic and Chaos.

Personally, I would say Chaos should be kept around as a persistent PvP server for players to utilize their Freedom stats and gear on if they'd like. Further consolidation of the community to only one server would definitely be best, but it's safe to say a majority of the population would opt to portal over to pvp rather than sail to/stay on Chaos.

There just isn't reason for both Defiance and Epic to exist, and we can clearly see both are failures at maintaining long term interest and any kind of healthy population. Chaos can be argued for as it offers other systems compared to Defiance and Epic (pmks, sorceries, freedom involvement, etc.)

 

On 5/5/2023 at 7:11 PM, Sinnjinn said:

For instance, I don't think I would like having to grind separately for Freedom and PvP, (especially since you'd have to re-grind every year)  However, I would be in favor in increasing the skills that don't transfer, like all combat skills, and not just fight.

I get what you're trying to do.  You want to incentivize people to be on the PvP server more, and not just grind on Freedom and portal over for fights.  How about something like a passive 10% skill bonus to accomplish the same thing?

The goal of having players regrind each year is to offer a largely leveled playing field to start. I don't believe a skill bonus is necessary as the gear curve allows for decent enough sets to be made fairly quickly, especially with proper grinding methods being widespread now. Any skillgain bonus could muddy any potential skill transfer as a reward for players at the end of each year.

 

I do feel raid windows are important to have, but if it's felt that they largely dissuade players from raiding due to time zone issues they can always be tuned during or after the year is up. 

A huge benefit of a wiping server for the devs is the ability to make minor changes throughout the year, and the opportunity for sweeping changes for the next server if they're needed, without disrupting current gameplay.

On 5/6/2023 at 10:36 AM, wipeout said:

The idea sounds fun of a yearly reset but it is just a bandaid fix to the ever present problem of what keeps a person interested in wurm pvp and what benefits does it have over normal play on a pve server for the player itself besides getting to poke the other person with a bigger stick

To make pvp fun and engaging you need numbers you need the freedom and risk of being raided at any time you need a balanced set where deeds can be made tough to raid but not impossible but wurm lacks these and defiance has even more restrictions and less benefits then chaos does making it a dumbed down version that just clearly isnt entertaining enough for people in the long run given how often these topics pop up.

Wurm pvp needs to become rewarding enough and risky enough to make it exciting for those who breath pvp to love it and those who want to be weekend warriors to enjoy it and those who believe they wont like pvp to try it out and enjoy it but this just isn't it its a band aid fix to the idea of "what's the issue with defiance why are we loosing players what can we do to have more players" without really looking at WHY pvp dies on every cluster

It seems to me wurm pvp largely dies out when people/groups come under the illusion that they've "lost." That there's nothing left that they can do or accomplish on the server, so they simply quit playing. This leads to a steady drop in player count, which causes more players to eventually quit. Then the server gets to a point where any potential players who would join see that low player count and simply don't bother.

There are plenty of other problems with pvp (and wurm as a whole lol) that could be looked into, but to identify said problems and test potential fixes, the game needs more active players and rapid response to player feedback. We've seen it time and time again, new servers are released and population swells, but in the case of Defiance it quickly dies off by the end of the year as things are left to stagnate. Providing players with a practically fresh server to play on each year would solve the population problem by bringing some players back and offering new players an avenue in, then focus can be put on retention for the rest of the year. See what works and what doesn't, change things as needed and potentially try drastically new things for each new server. Also, offering players rewards they can get for Freedom would go far in terms of making pvp rewarding enough for them to try participating.

 

On 5/7/2023 at 7:41 AM, Idlamn said:

Don't get rid of Epic, please, I like my spot there.

Make home servers more carebear, and make both way skill transfer somehow, so people have something to show for if they want to occasionally play on Epic.

 

Resetting in this game is a bit daunting. I'd hate to see Serenity reset like Affliction did, even though it's not the active Serenity I played on many years ago. Once a year is too long, people will get attached. If it's some short term servers like a week or a month from where you get some stuff to show back home then yeah. But then again better do this in a way back on the Freedom servers.

Maybe optional no-loot pvp or something, dunno.

Obviously closing servers sucks, but Epic is just dead. It hardly offers anything unique anymore and what it does, clearly doesn't interest enough players to warrant it existing as an entire separate cluster. Joining it with Freedom introduces nothing but problems and does nothing to fix the population and various other issues it would face if some kind of reboot were to be attempted. 

 

 

Realistically, I believe for wurm PvP to have any chance at once again achieving and actually maintaining a "healthy population," the player base needs to be condensed to one active server and drastically different things need to be tried. Defiance seemed to be a step in the right direction, but has arguably failed once again in the long term. A wiping server offers new chances to try to create and maintain a healthy environment, without further fracturing the player base.