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DemonaNightshade

Valrei International: Canoe Believe It?!

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As someone who holds four deeds with traders I will voice my opinion as gently as I can (bites tongue takes deep breath)

 

 

Will you please, for all that is good in Wurm, stop f..lustering (insert any other word that starts with f there) with the players investments.

 

I can't begin to count how many  times I've had to learn to deal with it because someone decided something we have already invested time and money on was no longer desired by someone making decisions.

 

I can give you a pretty good idea how many more times I will "roll with it". It's less than the fingers on one hand.

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maybe pull out of steam ,. and bring back allowing real market trading. so we can all sell off our deeds and characters and say goodbye.  lol  not really i don't want to leave. but i had plans to play all day today. but after seeing this announcement i can only check the forums. and alt tab to the game for a few min .  i am truly bothered by this.  moving servers i disbanded a deed with a trader on it. taking the loss. because i knew i'd make the silver back in savings on my new large deed.   

 

knowing over the next 5-10 yrs i'd be happy with my deed and the 200 silver a yr upkeep i pay saving 50s a yr with the trader.  now learning i may not even make the silver i lost back.   just puts a bad taste in my mouth. to the point of not wanting to play right now, I just took a month break from wurm. came back yesterday got a ton of work done. got up this morning playing again having fun. then read this trader mess. 

 

devs please get involved and take it back. leave the traders in.   if it is 100% for sure the  only way to merge the servers then i 'll live with that. but if it''s just cus your adding the items to the store.. lol just leave the traders alone. 

 

i think i'll just log in everyday to enchant grass, then out and go play something else. until we have answers

 

Look what you made me do. now i'm whiny .....

Edited by validate
Look what you made me do. now i'm whiny .....

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2 hours ago, ChampagneDragon said:

As someone who holds four deeds with traders I will voice my opinion as gently as I can (bites tongue takes deep breath)

 

 

Will you please, for all that is good in Wurm, stop f..lustering (insert any other word that starts with f there) with the players investments.

 

I can't begin to count how many  times I've had to learn to deal with it because someone decided something we have already invested time and money on was no longer desired by someone making decisions.

 

I can give you a pretty good idea how many more times I will "roll with it". It's less than the fingers on one hand.

I've already decreased my spending on this game 100x over the last few years and finding less and less reason to keep it up.

 

This game will never truly expand if the income drops, we can't see the financials of the game of course but as more and more long term players with high deed costs and multiple prem characters decrease their spending, I don't think a new player a week will compensate for the profit loss.

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Gonna go out on a limb and say anyone who has been using a trader for the 20% discount has more than recouped the cost of the initial investments, at 35s, a 20% discount will earn itself back in 18 months, not to mention full price of trader reimbursement Anyone crying about their investment being messed with either missed the fact that at the end of the day they walk away with the cost of the trader + whatever savings they made, or they're being deliberately disingenuous, I'm inclined to believe the former, so don't worry! 

 

Aside from that,  these changes look awesome! 

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the changes look good to me especially the new useful alchemy bench however please keep in mind that like myself not everyone can afford to increase what thye spend on the game, i do own one trader  and if i lose the discount i will have to spend more silver to upkeep that particular deed, i am not happy with it but will make do  most likely with unpremming more of my alts to cope with th eincreased costs. on a different note this doesnt stress me out nearly as much as not knowing wether i will continue to be able to purchase silver like i normally do when the shop changes. i would appreciate a look at the other pages of the improved silver shop so that i can be assured that i will still be able to pay for my game like before or not.

however i am not going to complain about the trader issue as much because i will simply play less of my toons each month if i lose the ability to get the discount on my deeds. 200usd is all i can play with for entertainment a month and that is fixed by how much i get for my disability from my government and rl bills that get paid first

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6 hours ago, Darklords said:

On Canoe PvP balance, what do you think would need to happen there to make them work without total removal.

Maybe limiting to 1 unfinished canoe in inventory? Unable to load/drop on any vehicle? Not sure. But that would not even hurt in PvE.

Edited by Ekcin
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9 hours ago, Nirav said:

There is a bit of dishonesty in this post that makes me sad. Wurm is full of extremely loyal players who have invested a ton of time and energy into the game, and who are not at all unintelligent. Putting the loss of the traders at the end of a post about some genuinely cool changes, and presenting it in a vague and "oh by the way" kind of way is insulting and a little bit cowardly. It does not achieve anything other than damaging trust some, and causing stress and more questions. Please treat the players who have been around the longest like the brilliant obsessed imping contributing fantastic weirdos they are, and come up with something that saves their deed discounts. And please talk to us with clear, straight communication that honors both the staff and players. It is too bad this went this way because this is a very cool post about some neat changes. Perhaps the trader situation is still being pondered, and that is cool, but I would have liked to have seen a more direct and detailed communication about it. This community can be trusted, in a general sense. Wurm is full of amazing folks. Be straight with us. 

My first impression was the very same, it is widely used in politics to announce good things and bring down the sledgehammer at the end trying to soften or hide the bad news.

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The negative effect of removing the trader discount (sudden 25% increase in deed upkeep) seems to be easy to compensate for, just reduce all deed upkeep prices permanently by 20% and you will have a horde of happy and satisfied players.

 

Perhaps adding a deed upkeep reduction item to the silver shop could work well, that's an easy way to reintroduce it

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2 hours ago, Archaed said:

Gonna go out on a limb and say anyone who has been using a trader for the 20% discount has more than recouped the cost of the initial investments, at 35s, a 20% discount will earn itself back in 18 months, not to mention full price of trader reimbursement Anyone crying about their investment being messed with either missed the fact that at the end of the day they walk away with the cost of the trader + whatever savings they made, or they're being deliberately disingenuous, I'm inclined to believe the former, so don't worry! 

 

Aside from that,  these changes look awesome! 

 

This is a terrible stance, because it's not about the investment of the trader cost, but the promise of a cheaper deed upkeep after putting in an initial investment. The point of the trader discount wasn't to provide a reimbursement for people who had already purchased traders, it was provided as a means to lower monthly deed upkeep permanently by investing and waiting those 18 months, as you have mentioned. This is obvious because traders weren't locked out of being purchased when the previous changes went in, they were still available and advertised as such.

 

This is essentially changing what many players may have planned for - putting down a larger payment upfront for a deed with a trader they planned on living in for many years with the promise of the deed upkeep being cheaper so they could afford the monthly costs. Now, many people may be forced to reduce their deed sizes, which may be extremely painful for some.

 

In a sense, this change is akin to your monthly mortgage payments going up by $200 (or whatever)/mo despite the massive down-payment you put on it to begin with, when you had the cash to afford it. It's illogical, and certainly unfair to those who've invested into it.

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Reading the VI post I was really amazed about
* the canoes: I can see good use of them even for established players roaming the maps on horseback (yes PVP side is something that needs to be discussed)
* timers and messages - despite the fact that much of the amusement of my first months in Wurm came from the obscure ways of Wogic  and from the laughably huge misconceptions we made how the mechanics worked ,it is very likely I'm the minority there
* Alchemy Cupboard really needed this change. Was a deco mostly until now.
* adding missing success chance displays are really a great addition

 

Then I kept reading further and first frowned on Silver Shop. It is a good idea in general but value -not monetary but rarity- of skins will definitely be much lower than before and putting the buffs that could be purchased for Marks into the silver shop feels like pushing Wurm to the pay-to-win direction. Those prices need to be set very carefully - or how about to buy those only for rare+ coins? That might add the extra value of rare+ coins that they completely miss now (except being used as food haha).

 

The freight train then just hit me in the tunnel of the side note of that section: The removal of traders and thus losing the deed upkeep bonus. It sends a real bad message, many comments before this post already explained  why. It is always a big bite to lose such an advantage and this is really different than the case of fountain backpacks was. Please consider an idea similar to what Drogos brought up. Also we definitely need a more detailed plan asap, it will be a woodscrap stuck under my skin until further info is out, I hate the idea to reduce deed sizes or disband them.

 

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It's a +20% upkeep cost to increase company profits and i can understand that.

The problem is it's sneaky announced suddently and quite hidden at the end of a post without details about it... and i think it's intended, not a lack of communication skills in my opinion.

 

I would have preferred a frank approach: "Ok guys we need to increase our profits by removing the Trader feature because our company needs more funds" or any other reason.

 

And most of all, announcing it when all details have been prepared. If you announce it and then say "oh we don't have all details about it" it's not correct because, again, i think it's intended to prepare our minds for a change or any other politic method.

You clearly knew that announcing the removing of the Trader feature would bring a tons of questions and reactions, but you wanted to "measure the ambient temperature" before making it hotter or colder.

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So yeah, the 20% upkeep discount with current traders...

 

Seeing the dev's avoiding to say it straight: "With this change, the 20% upkeep discount will no longer apply", and Keenan not popping in here, for further clarification, gives me the impression that they dont have plans to put the 20% discount back ingame after the traders are completely removed.

Perhaps they are testing out to see how bad the negative feedback will be, and when it grows to big, they'll announce: "No worries, a replacement is here."

 

Let me give some potential solutions to not anger to many deed-owners AND even pormoting loyalty in the progress:

  • If an account who holds a deed has over 1 month of premium time, his/her deed gets the 20% upkeep discount => promotes players to stay loyal and keep their premium time topped up.
  • Let players exchange 1 silver at the token to get 1.2silver worth of upkeep chips (like the ones we get from treasure maps) => this way you dont de-value the silver bought in the shop, and you actually make the entire playerbase happy , because now everybody can enjoy a discount for upkeep => encouraging more people to make deeds, thus increasing the need for silver from shop, thus more money for the ceo's/dev's/etc

 

2 solutions that dont cost a player (really) anything extra, and which result in more money for you guys AND don't result in negative publicity (steam ratings arent good already, negative changes like this are a sure way to get it review-bombed even harder).

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Enki wasn't exactly shy in letting us know that the parent company is looking to get more involved in Wurm - especially with how rewards are given out and how staff like Enki interact with the community. Alongside this, more involvement from a parent company always means more methods of monetizing it and this is most likely exactly what it is. 

3 minutes ago, Syhl said:

It's a +20% upkeep cost to increase company profits and i can understand that.

The problem is it's sneaky announced suddently and quite hidden at the end of a post without details about it... and i think it's intended, not a lack of communication skills in my opinion.

A removal of a feature like this should be at the top of a post.

 

Personally, I don't really use traders - even my larger deeds were just filled with gold years ago and have been left to eat through it as time ages - but even as recently as last week ive seen newer players be recommended to buy a trader - and those players going through with it - we see discussions of how certain sized deeds were designed and budgeted. It will effect how these players plan their deeds future. If that just means they need a few more silver a month, it isn't quite the end of the world - but enough crying about financial situations in GL-Freedom has made it evident that his game is played by a lot of players that skim cash to keep their deeds up to their own 'playable' standards.

 

The suggestion thread created about how to tackle this, whether it be through introduction of other means for a discount or not will be a good place to discuss whether or not a discount is planned to be brought back - because if I was in the position of a financial adviser working for the company id be saying 'Why are we giving them a 20% discount exactly?' and I am sure 'Because players invested into it and made game decisions based on it' will not stir any hearts. 

 

 

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11 hours ago, arakiel said:

 

Would be nice to have a choice between a refund or grandfathering deed tokens with the 20% that currently have a trader.

 

I am not affected by the change (got 3 smaller deeds instead of one large one, no trader here), but to me that sounds like the most fair solution.

 

Other than that a good update, just when i startet to tinker with colourmaking \o/

Bit of a pity that the canoe is rotting so fast, it looks really nice, but a good thing for new players.

I remember that my first boat was a real gamechanger back in the old days.

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My impression from this is that orders came from the higher ups and the devs just have to accept it "Either remove traders or find a way to increase Wurm's profitability this fiscal quarter".  Personally I doubt anyone at CGC holds any game design experience or even know what mechanics in-game traders use. Usually corporate suits have no f***** idea what works in game design and when they start to poke their nose into things they turn sour almost every time.

 

That being said, CGC needs wurm to be more profitable. I can understand that but simply making it more expensive and thus screwing with the in-game economy is not the way to go. Games like Amazon's New world messed up the in game economy so hard they bled out most of their players after having gold duping bugs, exploits and massive inflation take over in game. Even the lead game designer of Path of Exile once stated that the in game economy is basically the heart of the player's trust, and if you screw that up, you'll lose people (rightfully so).

 

I can understand ADDING stuff to the shop that incentivizes people to spend money and honestly if someone in management even bothered to read the suggestions forums you'd find some pretty clever ideas on how to make wurm more profitable without screwing the existing player base, examples :

1. Expanded bank space for tokens (5 spaces is really low)

2. Deed improvements from cash shop. For example you can add a purchasable bonus to crafting speed (15%?) on deed. Or faster breeding timers. Or faster crop timers.  Or even LOCKING crop timers so a crop looks decorative on deed, similar to starter town crops.

3. Functional or decorative NPC's for deeds. (makes them look more lively)

4. Adding things like wand of the seas to the shop. (atm they are pretty much unattainable, so why not?)

5.  Imping rods , new item. Increases the % to successfully imp an item by 25% for 30 minutes. Helps high level grinders and even low level players to work on their items.

 

This will not be a popular decision for anyone. My concern is if it takes a "Gamigo" turn, aka trying to milk wurm for all it's worth by increasing its cost before players leave. I've seen plenty of games die out with approach in mind.

 

I hope I'm wrong but there really isn't a way to sweeten the idea of increasing costs to the playerbase other than just being upfront about it. As nirav pointed out, wurm has many intelligent players, you won't be able to sneak intent past them with marketing-speak.

 

Personally here's my own 2 cents. If you want to increase wurm's profitability please add things to the game so players want to spend money on it, not take stuff away.  No one likes when their things are taken away, as simply and obvious as it sounds, but seems someone in CGC needs to be reminded of this.

Edited by elentari
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If you start selling pay to win elements like that, you will kill off the game in 1-2 years.

Old players will stop playing, new players... well, you won't lure many new players to this game, no matter what you do.

It will always stay a niche game (hopefully for the next 20 years...).

 

From my point of view they just continue to modernise the game, reworking the shop and hence traders are even more needless than they already was.

Sucking money from player by removing the 20% discount would be a pityful try, i don't think that was anyones intention.

(Otherwise they wouldn't give you back the silver for the traders.)

 

Its a cleanup of old and clunky relicts from the past i suppose.

 

Just give the players the choice between getting the silver for the traders back or get a one-use-token you can put on your deed token for the 20% discount and the matter will

be forgotten in a couple weeks.

 

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And who of thise so called "experts" that can be probably back tracked that never ever made right decision come up with the "coin sink" idea? In this game where you actually buy the currency with real money which i have to mansplain now is defaqto a real currency milking sink

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Looks like its time to start planning a downsize.. what a pain I've just finished the perimeter fence.. I can only see this loss of 20% driving off more of the playerbase.. wouldnt be such an issue if there was more to draw new players in but alas theres not.

Unfortunately I can only see this as a bad thing. I'm not sure why this would be announced if the details are still being worked out, its simply creating a volatility till implementation that will just feed the fires of discord and chase off more players.. (when you might yet backtrack) 

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3 hours ago, Archaed said:

Gonna go out on a limb and say anyone who has been using a trader for the 20% discount has more than recouped the cost of the initial investments, at 35s, a 20% discount will earn itself back in 18 months, not to mention full price of trader reimbursement Anyone crying about their investment being messed with either missed the fact that at the end of the day they walk away with the cost of the trader + whatever savings they made, or they're being deliberately disingenuous, I'm inclined to believe the former, so don't worry! 

 

Aside from that,  these changes look awesome! 

Yes we will get the cost of the trader back which is good but many people including myself got them for the 20% reduction in deed cost per month. People have the choice to buy a trader for the 20% discount so it's not as if it is unfair for some.

 

Now those people who expanded with the 20% in mind to keep to their budget might have to resize their deeds and lose a lot of it. Why should we have to be forced to pay more or resize? The people that did not want to buy a trader won't be bothered about the change as it won't effect them but it will to people who use them to manage deed upkeep cost.

 

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I for one applaud changes that evens out the playing field for newer players with smaller purses. And I apologise to newer players who are truly enjoying the game with a positive mindset, and thought they could read reactions to the exciting new changes in this thread.

 

This thread proves once again that entitled veteran players are a curse to Wurm.

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8 minutes ago, Cista said:

 

I for one applaud changes that evens out the playing field for newer players with smaller purses. And I apologise to newer players who are truly enjoying the game with a positive mindset, and thought they could read reactions to the exciting new changes in this thread.

 

This thread proves once again that entitled veteran players are a curse to Wurm.

I also welcome better changes to make it easier for new players but why should older players be penalised for that? It is a choice to buy a trader, not forced upon anyone.

 

Those "entitled veteran players" as you put it also help new players in the game, take them on to their deeds at no cost to them. I don't know if you've had a bad experience with older players but don't lump everyone in the same bracket.

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10 minutes ago, DannyUK said:

I also welcome better changes to make it easier for new players but why should older players be penalised for that?

 

Noone is being penalised. The players are even getting their trader purchase refunded.

The idea that richer players should pay less in deed tax is an abomination. It's not fair in the real world (where the richer actually pay a HIGHER percentage tax) and it's not fair here.

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23 minutes ago, Cista said:

 

I for one applaud changes that evens out the playing field for newer players with smaller purses. And I apologise to newer players who are truly enjoying the game with a positive mindset, and thought they could read reactions to the exciting new changes in this thread.

 

This thread proves once again that entitled veteran players are a curse to Wurm.

 

How is something that is accessible by even newer players considered something that only "entitled veteran players" can benefit from....?

 

You can literally buy a Trader from any starter deed under the assumption that your deed upkeep will be cheaper. This is not a detrimental change that evens the playing field out for only veterans, it's a detrimental change to a mechanic that everyone has the ability to enjoy equally.

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1 minute ago, Cista said:

 

Noone is being penalised. The players are even getting their trader purchase refunded.

The idea that richer players should pay less in deed tax is an abomination. It's not fair in the real world (where the richer actually pay a HIGHER percentage tax) and it's not fair here.

Yes they are getting the cost of the trader back but they are losing out on the cost of the deed going forward. Those people also planned that into their expenses to resize with the 20% in mind now they lose some of their deed or pay even more for it.

 

I wouldn't mind if the solution was those people who have a trader keeps the discount on that deed only going forward, any future deeds put down you won't get the 20% but seeing as people already planned their deed years ago I don't agree with having to pay more for it or smash buildings down to resize.

 

You say richer players, not everyone playing wurm is rich, I'm certainly not in fact it is the opposite but I still chose to buy a trader to fit in with my budget. Buying a trader isn't forced upon new players at all, as I say many people with large deeds take these new players in, give them what they need tools, resources etc at no cost to them. You are painting them out to be bad people, not everyone is.

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9 minutes ago, Xallo said:

You can literally buy a Trader from any starter deed under the assumption that your deed upkeep will be cheaper. 

 

If you are a veteran or a whale. New players just starting out generally don't have that kind of silver to invest. If they dream about starting a deed, they will have to pay the full deed tax.

 

I have hosted upwards of 50 new players on my deeds, they founded dozens of new deeds, then dozens more deeds, but none of them went out and bought a trader as far as I know.  

 

Edited by Cista

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