Is the community really being listened?

[vinius 1,498]

Almost every thing that changes in wurm is based on complaints/advice/requests from players. It may not always be the opinion of the majority, but when people make a suggestion that rolf likes, he's gonna implement it. Just changing things based on majority is stupid, rolf picks things he likes/agrees with from what people suggest. Even though often its a request from one person (posteh) or biased side  ;D

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[Hogwash 177]

MMO forums....

[Ayes 3,715]

One thing to bear in mind more or less anywhere, not just Wurm, is that you'll find the unsatisfied are hte most vocal, so you'll see a thread against something with 20 people agreeing. However, the 500 happy players often won't bother to mention anything about it.

I very much agree with this part of Hordern's post, although in Wurm I would substitute the word *unhappy* for happy, which is why I never vote on forum polls, as the results indicate nothing other than who can marshall the most compatriots to their side of the issue. I rather see them as just a place to state my viewpoint on the issue and leave it at that.

As to the community being listened to, yes I believe they are on these forums but that dosen't mean that their desires will mostly be put into effect within the game. Rolf does seem to be very open to at least considering the opinions of the playerbase but I still see his bias as being towards the pvp aspect of the game, so the PvE portion of it may suffer at times from that mindset.

=Ayes=

[Garis 210]

One thing to bear in mind more or less anywhere, not just Wurm, is that you'll find the unsatisfied are hte most vocal, so you'll see a thread against something with 20 people agreeing. However, the 500 happy players often won't bother to mention anything about it.

Exactly.  This well-known phenomenon is called "negative response bias".  The part does not necessarily reflect the whole.

[Eyesgood 2,121]

As for listening to the community what can i say ... This forum has about 200 active people, half of them are programmers ... Go figure if it is possible to listen to that community

Not true in the least. Iirc there are 6 or fewer programmers/coders/devs on the forum.

depends on the context of this i reckon..

as to actual Wurm Dev's there's 5 iirc.  As to actual IRL 'programmers' there's 8-10 in just staff alone and i know at least another 5 players who are coders as well.

Make that 6 players.  I am a C#, .NET, SQL developer by profession.

[Hordern 2,177]

*sob*, my typo ['hte' instead of 'the'] has now been quoted about 6 times, it makes me flinch every time I see it

[Enola 53]

As for listening to the community what can i say ... This forum has about 200 active people, half of them are programmers ... Go figure if it is possible to listen to that community

Not true in the least. Iirc there are 6 or fewer programmers/coders/devs on the forum.

depends on the context of this i reckon..

as to actual Wurm Dev's there's 5 iirc.  As to actual IRL 'programmers' there's 8-10 in just staff alone and i know at least another 5 players who are coders as well.

Make that 6 players.  I am a C#, .NET, SQL developer by profession.

Make it 7, then.

PHP/MySQL, Flash and JavaScript at work; C++, Java and Python as a hobby.

[neopherus 257]

Yeah, I meant Wurm coders Reassuring to see so many players with coding knowledge though

[Brash_Endeavors 4,735]

I think part of the original quote was truncated is the confusion:

This forum has about 200 active people, half of them like to think they are programmers because they once took a college class. The other half are game designers (the half that can't actually code)

[Klaa 4,872]

I hope the community isnt being listened to... we're emotional and whiny idiots  :-X

[orthanas 7]

I'd say the community is definitely being listened to.  You have to do a lot of forum reading and paying attention to undocumented changes and documented changes.  Like double doors wasn't mentioned in the changes.  And Rolf also wouldn't say, we added double doors because of so and so on the forums suggested it.

[Budda 2,675]

Speaking of all these programmers, anyone got extensive experience with GLSL?

[Devean 51]

I gave it some thought lately and discussed with my wife, and we came to the following conclusion.

The art and client developers listen to the community, and even if the changes are slow, they are good and consulted with the community.

Rolf almost never listens to the community. He listens to a handful of players only. When the outcry about a yet another horrendous change is loud enough, he then sometimes, I say: sometimes, implements unwillingly a way overdue 'fix,' that never seems to really fix the problem. Rolf has an image of the game as he would like it to be in his mind, and horse-flaps on his eyes. He makes the game for himself, has no clear roadmap for it, and expects people to pay for it...

This works as long as the people want the same. I can anticipate the retention graph plummeting in a little while.

[Ayes 3,715]

Some blunt wording there Devean. Although it is not far from the truth, I would not lay it all out in that manner. The thing is, Rolf created and developed this game (with Notch in some capacity) and holds the virtual keys to it. If he were to get discouraged by a lot of harsh responses, he could at any time just close the whole thing down.

As I see it, his interest in further developing the pvp aspect of the game is what holds his interest and keeps him motivated to keep improving Wurm, in effect keeping his creation alive. With Rolf focused on the pvp aspect of the game, things will just continue on with slow improvements of both the pvp and PvE aspects of the game.

The only real dramatic increase in the PvE aspects of the game would come if Rolf sold the game to some larger gaming company who would then develop the PvE aspect with all sorts of enhancements and let the pvp portion fade out into oblivion. Until something like this happens the best we can do is to just enjoy the game for what it is and try to make comments that will help the PvE portion of the game better for all who enjoy it.

=Ayes=

[Devean 51]

I have nothing against Rolf focusing on the PvP aspect, although, reading some of the comments by PvPers, he isn't doing a great job there either.

I have much against, though, Rolf neglecting PvE due to the time devoted to PvP and not getting another server dev to help him with PvE code (which I believe should be separated), or even take this task off him.

[Ayes 3,715]

Devean, although I have no use nor interest in the pvp aspect of the game and would just as soon see it die its natural death, as it only hinders the real potential of the PvE portion; that is not my call to make and I doubt Rolf will ever let go of his devotion to it. This is why I just try to enjoy the PvE portion and hope it will continue to get some improvements as Rolf continues to focus on his pvp child.

=Ayes=

[Devean 51]

@Ayes: I know Rolf sadly won't let PvP go, and I'm not saying he should. I would like to see him forking the code and taking onboard someone who would take care of PvE, someone with a better understanding of the nature of sandbox/crafting games, so Rolf would only deal with PvP/Epic. I think it would be beneficial for both parts of the playerbase.

@RainRain: Look at the player number graph. Ktnxbi.

[hankrearden 144]

@Ayes: I know Rolf sadly won't let PvP go, and I'm not saying he should. I would like to see him forking the code and taking onboard someone who would take care of PvE, someone with a better understanding of the nature of sandbox/crafting games, so Rolf would only deal with PvP/Epic. I think it would be beneficial for both parts of the playerbase.

@RainRain: Look at the player number graph. Ktnxbi.

One interpretation of the graphs could suggest that the lower number of pvp players could be attributed to Rolf's PVE focus over the last 2-3 years, as opposed to a general lack of pvp interest.  This is one reason he is focusing on PVP right now, to get those numbers up. 

[Ayes 3,715]

@Ayes: I know Rolf sadly won't let PvP go, and I'm not saying he should. I would like to see him forking the code and taking onboard someone who would take care of PvE, someone with a better understanding of the nature of sandbox/crafting games, so Rolf would only deal with PvP/Epic. I think it would be beneficial for both parts of the playerbase.

Yes I agree, it would be great if this would happen but I still think the pvp aspect will hold the game back, as the PvE portion of the game has so much more potential to be developed and enhanced bringing more players into the game, thus more profits to the developer. Catering to 10% of your playerbase (pvp) makes little sense to me.

=Ayes=

[RainRain 591]

To whoever warned me pm me so I can discuss that.

And for clarification I'm not trolling.

Freedom was created after the original few servers, of which had pvp.

Until freedom and tv, every server has had pvp.

The majority of community likes pve more, and it's pretty obvious Rolf likes pvp more considering how he 1. Focuses on updating pvp, 2. LIVES on the pvp server, and 3. Almost all content from pve is on pvp, and alot of content for pvp is missing from pve.

[Makarus 458]

All this "put the old dog down" talk about pvp is disheartening.

While it would be nice to see a separating in PVE/PVP server coding, I will agree there... but Wurm is a sandbox, that tries to cater to more than one crowd.

PVP has been and always will be a core part of Wurm Online. Another developer for the core code sets, possibly focused on PVE would allow both to be fully fleshed out... then we'd see some fast improvements.

On that note, we've been getting a lot of updates. seems roughly 50/50 for pve/pvp. I'd say hold on and see what happens over the next few months.

[Facesofmu 4]

I'm wondering if part of this conversation is being muddled up by different ideas on what posters consider are the "PvP" aspects and the "PvE" aspects?

[Makarus 458]

i'd say the reason the pve/pvp is mentioned, is because some pvpers think too much focus is going on for pve, while pve'rs think too much is on pvp.

overall, i think the dev team listens closely, and tries their best to figure out the best middle ground in most cases.

[fatboy 448]

+1 to having 2 devs teams, 1 for pve 1 for pvp, then both crowds get what they want and then the game gets the much needs focus in these areas to help the game thrive :-)

[Keldun 335]

It's no wonder, the Art Team listens better to the community, simpy because they are community, Mostly voluntears That's also why it takes them so long, they don't have that much time to spare.

However, you now? Zcul is a varely recent addition to the Server team, He has mostly done PvE features and bugfixes sofar. He is seems better at communicating, so heads up!

As far as seperating pvE and PvP Code, this is definitely not necessary, Because the features that he has nerfed to be broken on PvE are broken on PvP the same way as well. And PvP players are complaining about it the same way too.

It's just a certain type of vocal loosers that don't want the enemy to have certain advantages they themselfes did not bother to get. Rolf doesn't need to split the code, he needs to stop listening to those loosers, otherwise his PvP will never amount to anything.